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This book examines the many and varied uses of apocalyptic and anti-Catholic language in seventeenth-century English dra

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Apocalypse and anti-Catholicism in seventeenth-century English drama
 9781108416146, 9781108235914, 1108416144

Table of contents :
Cover......Page 1
Half-title......Page 3
Title page......Page 5
Copyright information......Page 6
Dedication......Page 7
Table of contents......Page 9
Acknowledgements......Page 10
Note on Texts and Terminology......Page 13
Introduction......Page 15
I......Page 16
II......Page 30
III......Page 37
I......Page 38
II......Page 55
III......Page 71
I......Page 73
II......Page 74
III......Page 95
I......Page 108
II......Page 112
III......Page 120
I......Page 136
II......Page 139
III......Page 155
IV......Page 159
V......Page 177
I......Page 178
II......Page 180
III......Page 191
IV......Page 198
I......Page 213
II......Page 217
III......Page 234
Conclusion: Drama and the Legacies of Anti-Catholicism......Page 254
II......Page 270
Primary Sources......Page 275
Secondary Sources......Page 284
Index......Page 293

Citation preview

APOCALYPSE AND ANTI-CATHOLICISM IN SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY ENGLISH DRAMA

This book examines the many and varied uses of apocalyptic and anti-Catholic language in seventeenth-century English drama. Adrian Streete argues that this rhetoric is not simply an expression of religious bigotry, nor is it only deployed at moments of political crisis. Rather, it is an adaptable and flexible language with national and international implications, offering a measure of cohesion and order in a volatile century. By rethinking the relationship between theatre, theology, and polemic, Streete shows how playwrights exploited these connections for a diverse range of political ends. Chapters focus on playwrights such as Marston, Middleton, Massinger, Shirley, Dryden, and Lee and on a range of topics including imperialism, reason of state, commerce, prostitution, resistance, prophecy, Church reform, and liberty. Drawing on important recent work in religious and political history, this is a major reinterpretation of how and why religious ideas are debated in the early modern theatre. adrian streete is Senior Lecturer in English Literature, 1500–1780 at the University of Glasgow. He works on early modern literature and religious culture and was awarded a Leverhulme Research Fellowship to write Apocalypse and Anti-Catholicism in Seventeenth-Century English Drama. He is author of Protestantism and Drama in Early Modern England (Cambridge University Press, 2009), editor of Early Modern Drama and the Bible: Contexts and Readings, 1570–1625 (2012), co-editor of three other books, and author of numerous articles on early modern literature.

APOCALYPSE AND ANTI-CATHOLICISM IN SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY ENGLISH DRAMA ADRIAN STREETE University of Glasgow

University Printing House, Cambridge cb2 8bs, United Kingdom One Liberty Plaza, 20th Floor, New York, ny 10006, USA 477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, vic 3207, Australia 4843/24, 2nd Floor, Ansari Road, Daryaganj, Delhi – 110002, India 79 Anson Road, #06–04/06, Singapore 079906 Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge. It furthers the University’s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of education, learning, and research at the highest international levels of excellence. www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781108416146 doi: 10.1017/9781108235914 © Adrian Streete 2017 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2017 Printed in the United Kingdom by Clays, St Ives plc A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data names: Streete, Adrian, author. title: Apocalypse and anti-Catholicism in seventeenth-century English drama / Adrian Streete, University of Glasgow. description: 1 [edition]. | New York : Cambridge University Press, 2017. | Includes bibliographical references. identifiers: lccn 2017010267 | isbn 9781108416146 (Hardback) subjects: lcsh: English drama–17th century–History and criticism. | Religion and literature–England–History–17th century. | Apocalypse in literature. | Anti-Catholicism in literature. | Anti-Catholicism–England–History–17th century. classification: lcc pr678.r43 s87 2017 | ddc 822/.409382–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017010267 isbn 978-1-108–41614-6 Hardback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

For Theresa, Ben, and Rory Cor meum

Contents

Acknowledgments Note on Texts and Terminology

page viii xi

Introduction

1

1 Antichrist and the Whore in Early Modern England: Cultures of Interpretation

24

2 ‘What News from Babylon?’: Marston’s The Dutch Courtesan (1605) and the Spanish Peace

59

3 ‘Mere Idolatry’?: Resistance and Rome in Middleton’s The Lady’s Tragedy (1610)

94

4 ‘Occultus Rex’: Caroline Politics and Imperial Kingship in Massinger’s Believe as You List (1631)

122

5 ‘Purple Pride’: War, Episcopacy, and Shirley’s The Cardinal (1641)

164

6

‘Rebellion Orthodox’: Arbitrary Rule and Liberty in Dryden and Lee’s The Duke of Guise (1682)

199

Conclusion: Drama and the Legacies of Anti-Catholicism

240

Select Bibliography Index

261 279

vii

Acknowledgements

I am deeply grateful to the Leverhulme Trust for the award of an Individual Research Fellowship, which freed me from my usual teaching and administrative duties in order to research this book. Having an extended period of time to read, think, and write in relative peace is a rare thing in academic life. I only hope that the resulting book does at least some justice to the Trust’s generosity. I began this book in one institution and finished it in another. My thanks to Queen’s University, Belfast, for granting me a period of study leave that was appended to my Leverhulme Fellowship. During this time I was able to research in the British Library, National Library of Scotland, Bodleian Library, Folger Shakespeare Library, Library of Congress in Washington, DC, Vienna University Library, Ludwig Maximilians University Library, Munich, and the Library of the British School in Rome. I am indebted to staff at these various institutions for their assistance, but particularly to Georgiana Ziegler at the Folger, who took the time to discuss my project with me at an early stage and to point me in the direction of various primary sources. I am also grateful to the staff in Special Collections at Queen’s University Library, Belfast. I have spoken about matters apocalyptic and anti-Catholic at a number of places and am thankful to colleagues and students for invitations, discussions, and hospitality. Particular thanks to Shakespeare’s Globe, London; the National University of Ireland, Maynooth; Trinity College, Dublin; and the University of Galati, Romania. I also want to thank Roze Hentschell for inviting me to be a respondent to her seminar on ‘The Church’ at the Shakespeare Association of America Conference, Toronto, March 2013. My erstwhile early modern colleagues in the School of English at Queen’s, Mark Burnett, Edel Lamb, and Ramona Wray, deserve particularly warm thanks for their council and friendship. Mark kindly read the entire manuscript and made many helpful comments. My Heads of School at Queen’s during the period that I was working on the book, Ed Larrissy viii

Acknowledgements

ix

and Paul Simpson, are models of support and scholarship. Paul and I spent many happy hours in a Donegal clinker discussing this book, and much else besides. Thanks as well to the members of the convivial Irish Renaissance Seminar. In 2014 my family and I moved back across the Irish Sea home to Scotland. My new colleagues in the School of Critical Studies at the University of Glasgow have been both welcoming and kind, particularly Stephen Burn, Matthew Creasy, Kimm Curran, Maria-Daniela Dick, Christine Ferguson, Mary Ellis Gibson, Jane Goldman, Katherine Heavey, Vassiliki Kolocotroni, Willy Maley, Rob Maslen, Kirsteen McCue, Bryony Randall, Elizabeth Robertson, Jeremy Smith, Scott Spurlock, Richard Stacey (who kindly read the first two chapters), and the late Des O’Brien. The University of Glasgow houses one of Europe’s great academic libraries and my thanks to Bob MacLean of Special Collections for his expert guidance in tracking down images. I am grateful to the broader community of scholars who have kindly shared their knowledge of early modern literature and religious culture, who offered support, intellectual and moral, or who simply listened to me grousing about the end of the world. Thanks then to Victoria Brownlee, Patricia Canning, Dermot Cavanagh, Marilina Cesario, Brian Cummings, John Drakakis, David Dwan, Andrew Hadfield, Nigel Harkness, Moyra Haslett, Roger Holdsworth, Paul Innes, Andrew King, Russ Leo, Debbie Lisle, Gail McConnell, Sinead Morrissey, Stephen O’Neill, Patricia Parker, Andrew Pepper, Shaun Regan, David Reid, Freya Sierhuis, Caroline Sumpter, Jennifer Waldron, Helen Wilcox, and Susan Wiseman. Elizabeth Evenden-Kenyon generously shared her work on Anglo-Iberian literary relations with me, and Valentina Calderi kindly let me consult her fine thesis on the Anglo-Spanish Match in a global context: I am most grateful to both. A conference held in June 2013 at the University of Sussex, ‘Popes and the Papacy in Early Modern English Culture’, allowed me to air some of the ideas contained here – any conference that has a panel devoted to Barnabe Barnes has to be a good thing. Thanks to the organiser, Paul Quinn of the Sussex Centre for Early Modern Studies, for asking me to attend and to helpful conversations with other delegates including Tom Charlton, Simon Davies, Peter Lake, Susannah Monta, Kendra Packham (who provided some helpful references), Chloe Porter, Michael Questier, Duncan Salkeld, and Alison Shell. I am grateful to my press readers for their considered comments and suggestions, all of which have strengthened the book. My editor at Cambridge University Press, Sarah Stanton, has supported my work for a number of years and I appreciate her guidance and candour. Thanks also to Tim Mason and to

x

Acknowledgements

my copy editors Stephanie Sakson and Sindhujaa Ayyappan for guiding the book through the final stages. Any errors contained here are mine alone. Lastly, heartfelt thanks to my family, especially my sisters and siblingsin-law, and to my friends who put up with me and my ways with good humour and understanding. Thanks to my parents-in-law for their support and kindness. My own parents have always listened with attention and encouraged with love. For this, and for their ever-open hearts, I am forever grateful. This book is dedicated with gratitude, admiration, and much love to Theresa, who makes everything both possible and worthwhile. The other dedicatees are our two beautiful boys, Ben and Rory. I hope that their wonderful ability to find joy in life never leaves them.

Note on Texts and Terminology

Unless using a modernised, edited edition of an early modern text, I have generally quoted primary texts as they were originally written and punctuated, although I have modernised some letter forms in primary quotations (i.e. long ‘s’, j/i, and vv/w), and have silently expanded in some places for the sake of clarity. Unless otherwise noted, biblical quotations are taken from the Geneva Bible (The Bible That Is, the Holy Scriptures . . . [London: Christopher Barker, 1599]). A note too on terminology: early modern Protestantism often makes a distinction between Roman Catholicism, seen as a corrupt religion headed by the Pope, and the Catholic Church, a primitive institution that existed before the supposed political usurpation of the papacy. The Catholic Church connects the elect to the apostolic founders of the Church. This is the ‘true Church’ reestablished at the Reformation. A good example of this distinction is seen in the title of a text published in 1586 by the Protestant Sir William Herbert called A Letter Written by a True Christian Catholike, to a Romaine Pretended Catholike. I use the terms ‘Roman Catholic’ or ‘Roman Church’ throughout in order to retain this distinction. I also use words such as ‘popish’, ‘popery’, and ‘papist’ at various points. Although these terms are now commonly understood as pejorative, my use of them reflects their early modern usage as contemporary synonyms for the practices and adherents of Roman Catholicism (some Puritans also use the first two terms to criticise Roman Catholic ‘remains’ within the English Church). The distinction between anti-popery as a religious criticism of the practices of Roman Catholicism and anti-papalism as a political critique of the activities of the Roman Catholic Church is an important one. However, my use of the term ‘anti-Catholic’ in the book generally implies, unless otherwise stated, the combination of these religious and political strands.

xi

Introduction

Nowe at the last the holy Ghost bringeth in Iesus Christ vpon the Theatre of the world, as it were to play his part in this tragedie. (Arthur Dent, The Ruine of Rome, 1603)

This book examines the political uses of apocalyptic and anti-Catholic language in seventeenth-century English drama. This rhetoric is part of a Europe-wide Reformed polemical culture that stresses the opposition between the Roman Catholic and Protestant religions. It allows individuals to read spiritual and temporal matters and to participate in disputation. Yet opposition does not imply inflexibility. By the beginning of the seventeenth century in England this is a commonplace and supple language, one that is well embedded in Protestant interpretative culture.1 After the accession of James to the English throne in 1603 and the Union of the Crowns, Church and state face a number of challenges, some inherited, some new.2 The Roman Catholic Church and its theology remains an identifiable common enemy for English Protestantism. However, the attitude of James and his government towards Rome is capable of multiple interpretations. Opposition and accommodation towards Rome strive for precedence in Jacobean England, a political legacy that the later Stuarts never quite manage to contain. This book traces that 1

2

By ‘Protestant interpretative culture’ I mean the exegetical, theological, and polemical modes of analysis and argument commonly used by Protestant writers and that are described in more detail in this chapter and the next. On the Union, see Bruce R. Galloway, The Union of England and Scotland, 1603–1608 (Edinburgh: John Donald, 1986), and Scots and Britons: Political Thought and the Union of 1603, ed. Roger Mason (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994); Mark Kishlansky, A Monarchy Transformed: Britain 1603–1714 (London and New York: Penguin Books, 1997), pp. 65–88, and The Accession of James I: Historical and Cultural Consequences, ed. Glenn Burgess, Rowland Wymer, and Jason Lawrence (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006). I use the term ‘state’ to refer to what Michael Braddick calls a ‘coordinated and territorially bounded network of agents exercising political power’ (p. 6) – State Formation in Early Modern England c. 1550–1700 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).

1

2

Apocalypse and Anti-Catholicism in Seventeenth-Century

legacy through the varied dramatic uses of apocalyptic and anti-Catholic language during the seventeenth century. I argue that this language is not solely the property of Puritans or extremists, is not simply an expression of religious bigotry, and is not just a rhetoric used at moments of political crisis such as the Gunpowder Plot, the Great Fire of London, or the Popish Plot. Rather, it is an expression of ‘true’ religion that is made throughout the century by moderates and militants alike, by those somewhere in between, and even by those sympathetic to Rome.3 It provides a cohesion and order that, for many, is both rational and affectively satisfying. An adaptable and multifarious language, it offers us a mirror onto broader cultural preoccupations. As the epigraph to this chapter intimates, it is also an inherently theatrical discourse. In the aftermath of the ‘turn to religion’ in early modern studies, fine work has been done on religion and the literary sphere.4 This book turns our attention to the connections between theatre, theology, and polemic, examining how seventeenthcentury playwrights exploit these connections for diverse political ends.5

I I begin with two ideas that are central to Protestant interpretative culture. The first is the polemical Reformist argument that the Roman Catholic Church is religiously corrupt and politically dangerous. The second is the more general religious belief that the world will come to an end as promised in the prophetic and apocalyptic books of the Bible, particularly 3

4

5

Anthony Milton, Catholic and Reformed: The Roman and Protestant Churches in English Protestant Thought, 1600–1640 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 35–36. My book is indebted throughout to Milton’s study. The terms ‘bigot’ and ‘bigotry’ are first used in 1598 and 1616, respectively – Oxford English Dictionary Online (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013). See Debora Kuller Shuger, The Renaissance Bible: Scholarship, Sacrifice and Subjectivity (Berkeley and London: University of California Press, 1994); Steven Marx, Shakespeare and the Bible (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000); Peter Lake with Michael Questier, The Antichrist’s Lewd Hat: Protestants, Papists and Players in Post-Reformation England (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2002); Brian Cummings, The Literary Culture of the Reformation: Grammar and Grace (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007); Beatrice Groves, Texts and Traditions: Religion in Shakespeare, 1592–1604 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2007); Hannibal Hamlin, Psalm Culture and Early Modern English Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), and The Bible and Shakespeare (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013); Michelle Osherow, Biblical Women’s Voices in Early Modern England (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009); and Elizabeth Clarke, Politics, Religion and the Song of Songs in Seventeenth-Century England (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011). The etymology of the word ‘polemic’ in Greek relates to war and hostility and the OED records the first usage as 1614 – Oxford English Dictionary Online. For related work in this area, see Jesse M. Lander, Inventing Polemic: Religion, Print, and Literary Culture in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006); Antoinina Bevan Zlatar, Reformation Fictions: Polemical Protestant Dialogues in Elizabethan England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), and Polemic: Language as Violence in Medieval and Early Modern Discourse, ed. Almut Suerbaum, George Southcombe, and Benjamin Thompson (Farnham: Ashgate, 2015).

Introduction

3

in Revelation.6 Apocalyptic and anti-Catholic ideas do not have to go together. Yet during this period they are often closely linked. Between 1522 when Martin Luther’s New Testament is first published and 1700, nearly 1000 editions of and commentaries on Revelation are published in England alone.7 Most of these commentaries advance an anti-Catholic interpretation of Scripture. They argue that the Book of Revelation describes the emergence and eventual destruction of the Roman Catholic Church in temporal history. This is an event that prefigures the apotheosis of spiritual history: the second coming, last judgement, and end of the world. Revelation is a highly allusive text and has been interpreted in multiple ways in the West. As Christopher Toenjes notes: ‘Due to its rich imagery and symbolism, it catered to a thirst for biblical verifications of idiosyncratic interpretations of the past, present, and future.’8 In the early modern period Revelation is commonly understood as an allegory of spiritual and temporal history. It also prophesies the end of history itself. Early modern interpretative culture is steeped in imagery drawn from the book: the seven seals and vials (5:1, 15:7), the four horsemen (6:1–8), the Whore of Babylon (17:1–8), the beasts from the sea and earth (13:1–18), Gog and Magog (20:8), and the New Jerusalem (21:1–2). Revelation lends itself to the expression of rhetorical enargia, visual and verbal. Albrecht Dürer’s famous woodcut series depicting scenes from Revelation is, as we see from the front cover to this book, irreducibly dramatic, and the visual imagery inspired by Revelation is striking and symbolically rich. Some feared the end; others fervently anticipated it. While some may have been sceptical of the possibility altogether, the belief that the end would come is commonplace.9 Clearly not everyone agreed with a Protestant interpretation of the apocalypse, least of all Roman Catholics. They generally see the antichrist as a figure still to emerge, so rejecting the Protestant association of that figure with the institution of the papacy.10 There is also 6

7

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9 10

Although I understand ‘apocalyptic’ as a theological term and ‘anti-Catholic’ as a polemical term, there is no clear distinction between theology and polemic in the seventeenth century. Based on the calculation in Andrew Cunningham and Ole Peter Grell, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: Religion, War, Famine and Death in Reformation Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 4, and the bibliography in The Apocalypse in English Renaissance Thought and Literature, ed. C.A. Patrides and Joseph Wittreich (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984). Christopher Toenjes, Islam, the Turks and the Making of the English Reformation: The History of the Ottoman Empire in John Foxe’s Acts and Monuments (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2015), p. 104. Milton, Catholic and Reformed, pp. 36–37. See Andrew Crome, The Restoration of the Jews: Early Modern Hermeneutics, Eschatology, and National Identity in the Work of Thomas Brightman (Heidelberg: Springer, 2014), pp. 60–61. See also Bernard McGinn, ‘“Wrestling with the Millennium”: Early Modern Catholic Exegesis of

4

Apocalypse and Anti-Catholicism in Seventeenth-Century

a fair degree of disparity amongst seventeenth-century Protestant commentators as to how the Book of Revelation should be read, as well as a variety of attitudes to the Roman Catholic Church, ranging from moderate accommodation to militant opposition.11 But whatever approach is taken, the recurrence of anti-Catholicism and apocalypticism in early modern English Protestantism is remarkable.12 By ‘anti-Catholicism’, I mean the polemical argument that the Roman Catholic Church is a doctrinally false and dangerous anti-Church. From John Bale to Christopher Marlowe to John Webster to Nathaniel Lee, playwrights explore this idea in numerous ways. Alison Shell has shown how Italianate settings; tropes of corruption; dazzling objects, ornaments, and idols; hypocrisy; devilry; wolfishness; and damnation are the stock in trade of anti-Catholic imagery on stage.13 Roman Catholicism is seen as a kind of drama: alluring but deeply dangerous. These images have political implications. They underlie the commonplace claim that the Roman Catholic Church uses its performative spiritual authority to usurp temporal power and persecute the ‘true’ Reformed Church. These ideas are regularly connected. As William Perkins writes in 1601: ‘by the Whore of Babylon is meant the present Church of Rome: & this whore is said to be drunk with the blood of the Saints . . . they of the Romane Church haue long thirsted for the bloode of prince and people in this land’.14 Even for a moderate Puritan like Perkins who is interested in conciliation between the Churches, Roman Catholicism is a religious and political threat.15 To oppose Rome is one’s godly duty. In Anthony Milton’s words: ‘Conflict with Rome was seen as being of the essence of Protestantism.’16 By ‘apocalypticism’, I mean the prophetic and providential idea that the final

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15 16

Apocalypse 20’, in Imagining the End: Visions of the Apocalypse from the Ancient Middle East to Modern America, ed. Abbas Amanat and Magnus Thorkell Bernhardsson (London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2002), pp. 148–167. See Ethan H. Shagan, The Rule of Moderation: Violence, Religion and the Politics of Restraint in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011). A comparative study of Roman Catholic and Protestant apocalypticism is beyond the scope of this book. Although much less studied, Roman Catholic writers in England such as William Allen, Robert Southwell, Robert Parsons, Richard Crashaw, and those on the continent such as Thomas Harding and Robert Bellarmine, often use Revelation and apocalyptic tropes to counter Protestant polemical attacks. In his A Trve, Sincere, and Modest Defence, of English Catholiques . . . (Rouen: Fr Parson’s Press, 1584), Allen defends Roman Catholics from charges of political sedition by criticising those Protestants who defy their Princes as examples of ‘Antichristian pride’ (p. 208). Alison Shell, Catholicism, Controversy and the English Literary Imagination, 1558–1660 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 56–104. William Perkins, A Treatise of Gods Free Grace, and Mans Free Will (Cambridge: Iohn Legat, 1601), p. 14. See William Perkins, A Reformed Catholike . . . (London: I Legat, 1597). Milton, Catholic and Reformed, p. 37.

Introduction

5

judgement of Christ and the end of the world as described in the Bible, particularly in the last book, will be imminently revealed.17 I also understand ‘revelation’ in its more grammatical and literary manifestations as an active uncovering or disclosing of truth (OED, def. 2), particularly the exposure in/as drama of ‘false’, worldly Roman Catholic practices that masquerade as spiritual truths.18 Of course, to say that a particular conflict feels like the end of the world can simply be a general lament in a period that was not short of terror. And to use the trope of whoredom may just be an expression of commonplace misogyny. Not every theatrical whore is the Whore of Babylon nor is every wicked character on stage an antichrist. This book argues instead for a more flexible, variform way of reading this religious language in drama, one that is sensitive to the possibility of dramatic allegory and analogy but that does not try to reduce plays to these modes of reading. As I suggest, apocalyptic and anti-Catholic languages are commonly used in conjunction with other literary discourses on the seventeenthcentury stage. In Chapter 2 I consider John Marston’s ludic, sceptical use of these languages in The Dutch Courtesan and how they inform the broader philosophical and political concerns of his drama. As a number of plays, from the medieval Miracle pageants to Doctor Faustus to The Dutch Courtesan, show, the evocation of the end of the world does not preclude jokes and laughter, however sardonic.19 In a time where pain and fear are never far away, the idea of end of the world can also be a source of intense hope and joy. Revelation 21, which promises ‘a new heauen, and a new earth’ (21:1), contains the evocative lines: ‘God shall wipe away all teares from their eyes, and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, neither crying, neither shall there be any more paine: for 17

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See Arthur Dent, The Ruine of Rome . . . (London: Simon Waterson, 1603), sig. AA3v. Millenarianism – the belief that Christ would return to reign for 1000 years as a prelude to the end of the world – is not particularly popular in Elizabethan and Jacobean England and is a phenomenon largely of the Civil Wars, a period when the public theatres are officially closed. See Bernard Capp, The Fifth Monarchy Men: A Study in Seventeenth-Century Millenarianism (London: Faber and Faber, 2008). For a classic account of the trope, see Frank Kermode, The Sense of an Ending: Studies in the Theory of Fiction with a New Epilogue (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). See too Stephen D. O’Leary, Arguing the Apocalypse: A Theory of Millennial Rhetoric (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994); David Norbrook, Poetry and Politics in the English Renaissance, revised ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 28–52; and Shell, Catholicism, Controversy, pp. 23–55. On more sceptical views, see Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic: Studies in Popular Beliefs in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century England (London: Penguin, 1991), pp. 198–206, and Alexandra Walsham, Providence in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 218–224. Two Shakespearean characters who combine scepticism, mockery, and apocalyptic or prophetic language are Edmund in King Lear and Lucio in Measure for Measure.

6

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the first things are passed’ (21:4). These words offer the promise of transcendence, that humanity’s corrupt, suffering body might be cast off and a pure spiritual existence attained.20 The apocalypse discloses a truth that fallen humans can only ever glimpse dimly: spiritual truth is revealed truth. Such ideas inform dramatic writing too. We see them explored in Thomas Middleton’s The Lady’s Tragedy, Philip Massinger’s Believe as You List, and in a number of plays written before the outbreak of the Civil Wars. Although Protestantism stresses a literal interpretation of Scripture, it also draws heavily on typological exegesis. This is an interpretative method that fuses theology and polemic, spiritual and temporal history, national and international politics.21 In typological exegesis the Old Testament providentially foreshadows the fulfilment promised in the New Testament. Old Testament events and figures are read in relation to the work, death, resurrection, and judgement of Christ. David is a ‘type’ of Christ, or the Song of Songs is an allegory of the mystical marriage of Christ and the Church as described in Revelation.22 Typological readings of Revelation stress its eschatological character: it is concerned with the ‘last things’: death, judgement, heaven, and hell. Other scriptural books are interpreted eschatologically in this period too, including Daniel, parts of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel, the Song of Songs, Zachariah, Matthew 24, the Epistles of John (where the antichrist is discussed), the Epistles to the Thessalonians, Timothy and Peter’s Epistles, and the apocryphal 2 Esdras.23 There is nothing particularly new about this kind of exegesis: it is a feature of patristic commentary and is part of the 20

21

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23

This verse originates with Isaiah 25:8 and is common in ars moriendi books. See John Moore, A Mappe of Mans Mortalitie . . . (London: T.S. for George Edwards, 1617), pp. 260–261. It is also quoted during the Popish Plot at the end of a prophecy detailing the emergence of a king with powers of renovatio – A Prophecy of England’s Future Happiness . . . (London: Thomas Dawks, 1680), single sheet. On typology and biblical exegesis, see Thomas H. Luxon, Literal Figures: Puritan Allegory and the Reformation Crisis in Representation (Chicago and London: Chicago University Press, 1995). See also Kevin Killeen, ‘Chastising with Scorpions: Reading the Old Testament in Early Modern England’, Huntingdon Library Quarterly, 73, 3, 2010, pp. 491–506; Early Modern Drama and the Bible: Contexts and Readings, 1570–1625, ed. Adrian Streete (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), pp. 1–26; and Hamlin, The Bible in Shakespeare, pp. 90–94. See Richard K. Emmerson, Antichrist in the Middle Ages: A Study of Medieval Apocalypticism, Art, and Literature (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1981), pp. 30–35, and Clarke, Politics, Religion and the Song of Songs, pp. 13–15. See Katherine R. Firth, The Apocalyptic Tradition in Reformation Britain, 1530–1645 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979), pp. 5–6, and Paul Christianson, Reformers and Babylon: English Apocalyptic Visions from the Reformation to the Civil War (Toronto and London: University of Toronto Press, 1978), pp. 5–6. A number of these biblical books are also read in an anti-Catholic light.

Introduction

7

exegetical method favoured by medieval commentators.24 After the Reformation, though, the religious implications of this way of reading change. The narrative of the temporal rise of the Roman Catholic Church, its perceived corruption, and its eventual displacement by the ‘true’ Protestant Church draws on typological arguments that anticipate this victory in the Bible. As Kevin Killeen puts it, ‘typology worked as a mode of reading the present that was resolutely distinct from allegory, a practice of interpretation liable to the arbitrary and, for English Protestants, deeply tainted with Roman Catholic obfuscation of meaning . . . Typology purported to discover the conjoined nature of historically disparate events or figures.’25 As we will see in the next chapter, the distinction between allegory and typology is perhaps not as absolute as Killeen suggests. Nevertheless, virtually all early modern Protestant commentaries on the book of Revelation offer a typological interpretation. It is also a commonplace in Protestant historiography, as we see in John Foxe’s influential apocalyptic martyrology Acts and Monuments.26 The Protestant Church views itself as the true ‘Catholic’ Church. Its emergence during the Reformation is a restoration of apostolic purity, not the establishment of a ‘new’ Church as its Roman Catholic opponents claim.27 The anti-papal roots of Protestantism are nourished by typological reading. They support a story based on the emergence, corruption, oppression, resistance, and eventual triumph of the ‘true’ Church in historical and spiritual time. Ecclesiastical and national histories are read in tandem as commentators interpret politics through a typological lens. The influence of this mode of reading 24

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26

27

The medieval fourfold method of biblical interpretation is literal, allegorical, moral, and anagogical. The relationship between allegorical and typological exegesis has been much debated by biblical scholars. The former is traditionally seen as more spiritual and symbolic, and the latter as more historical and literal, hence the Reformers’ preference for typology. See Erich Auerbach, ‘Figura’, in Scenes from the Drama of European Literature (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984), pp. 11–76, and Toenjes, Islam, the Turks, pp. 107–108. However, recent work has pointed to the interrelations between the allegorical and typological in Reformed theology. See John S. Pendergast, Religion, Allegory and Literacy in Early Modern England 1560–1640: The Control of the Word (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), esp. pp. 37–66. Kevin Killeen, The Political Bible in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), p. 35. Toenjes, Islam, the Turks, pp. 100–125. Toenjes notes four general approaches to the exegesis of Revelation: preterite (reading the book mainly in its early Christian context), historicist (investing contemporary history with apocalyptic significance), futurism (reading Revelation beyond the past and present), and idealism (Revelation as ahistorical battle between good and evil). See Alexandra Walsham, ‘History, Memory, and the English Reformation’, The Historical Journal, 55, 4, 2012, pp. 899–938 – Walsham notes the link between Reformed historiography and ‘apocalyptic expectation’ (p. 905). See also S.J. Barnett, ‘“Where Was Your Church Before Luther?” Claims for the Antiquity of Protestantism Examined’, Church History: Studies in Christianity and Culture, 68, 1, 1999, pp. 14–41.

8

Apocalypse and Anti-Catholicism in Seventeenth-Century

can be seen in many genres, including chronicles, antiquarian writing, sermons, poetry, and plays.28 In Protestant interpretative culture, the eventual defeat of the Roman Catholic Church is taken as a necessary temporal prelude to the end of the world.29 Following the defeat of the antichrist, the true Church will be revealed, Christ will return to judge all, the dammed will be cast into a lake of fire, and the New Jerusalem of the elect will be established.30 In the word of Augustine Marlorat: ‘whomsoeuer God hath chosen before the foundation of the worlde, hee cannot perish . . . & that whomsoeuer he hath reiected he cannot be saued although he do all the workes of sayntes’.31 Even if one is disinclined to Marlorat’s Calvinistic gloss on election and reprobation, medieval and early modern Christians of whatever confessional identity are taught that the end of world brings judgement, division, and the triumph of the elect. This view can be found at all levels of Protestant culture, from highly learned, scholarly tracts and commentaries to popular pamphlets and ballads.32 Again, there are those who question aspects of these theories and they are subject to the same ebbs and flows in intellectual assent that all popular explanatory systems are. As we will see in Chapter 4, some Armininans during the reign of Charles I give short shrift to the Calvinistic interpretation. The cleric Richard Montagu provoked controversy by challenging Calvinist orthodoxy on the papal antichrist. During the late 1620s and ’30s more generally, philosophical scepticism drives the development of a more rational theology wary of dogmatic pronouncements. A number of thinkers associated with the Great Tew Circle prefer a more minimal conception of 28

29

30

31

32

Milton, Catholic and Reformed, pp. 31–59, 128–228; Killeen, The Political Bible, pp. 22–51. See too David Womersley, Divinity and State (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010). See Christopher Hill, Antichrist in Seventeenth-Century England (London: Oxford University Press, 1971); Richard Bauckham, Tudor Apocalypse: Sixteenth Century Apocalypticism, Millenarianism and the English Reformation: From John Bale to John Foxe and Thomas Brightman (Abingdon: Sutton Courtenay Press, 1978); Firth, The Apocalyptic Tradition; Christianson, Reformers and Babylon; The Apocalypse in English Renaissance Thought and Literature, ed. Patrides and Wittreich; Norman Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millennium: Revolutionary Millenarians and Mystical Anarchists of the Middle Ages (Pimlico: London, 2004); and Cunningham and Grell, The Four Horsemen. The OED cites 1340 as the year of first use of the word ‘antichrist’ in English (in a text by the mystic Richard Rolle) – Oxford English Dictionary Online. Augustine Marlorat, A Catholike and Ecclesiasticall Exposition of the Holy Gospell after S. Iohn, trans. Thomas Timme (London: Thomas Marshe, 1575), p. 501. For examples of popular anti-Catholic tracts, see William Kethe, A Ballet Declaringe the Fal of the Whore of Babylone (London: W. Hill, c. 1548), and Thomas Naogeorgus, The Popish Kingdome . . . (London: Henrie Denham for Richard Watkins, 1570) – the latter poem was translated ‘for the benefit of the common, and simpler sorte’ (p. 2). See too Walsham, Providence in Early Modern England.

Introduction

9

Christian ethics.33 Here, the discourse of apocalypse and the papal antichrist, although still discernible, is kept at arm’s length. William Chillingworth’s 1638 book The Religion of Protestants uses the language of the papal antichrist rather carefully.34 Indeed, Chillingworth’s attempts to find moderate common ground between sectarian religious divisions led to him being accused of Socinianism.35 The fact that apocalyptic and anti-Catholic language is so pervasively rejoined during the run-up to the Civil Wars is in part a reaction against this sceptical, minimalist turn in Caroline theological ethics.36 Some modern revisionist historians are also wary of this language. Kevin Sharpe, a scholar usually so sensitive to the importance of language and ideology, has written: ‘Like the European witch craze, English hysteria about popery undoubtedly signals a larger psychological phenomenon: a need to explain ills that could apparently be ascribed to no natural causes.’37 This choice of terms is revealing. Anti-popery is hysterical and irrational, a collective psychological flaw in the populace. It would be foolish to deny that some expressions of anti-popery can be understood in this way. It is not a particularly pleasant phenomenon, and it can be an outlet for bigotry and violence. But to only view anti-popery in this light is reductive. It risks simplifying one of this culture’s richest if most problematic languages. As Christopher Hill, Katherine Firth, Peter Lake, Linda Colley, Anthony Milton, and others have shown, it is a language that made good ‘rational’ sense to many.38 The revisionist account is on much stronger ground when it notes that anti-papal language informs the 33

34

35

36

37

38

See Richard Tuck, Philosophy and Government 1572–1651 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 272–278. He refers to debates in English Protestantism about the papal antichrist and questions some of the Church traditions associated with the antichrist – see William Chillingworth, The Religion of Protestants . . . (Oxford: Leonard Lichfield, 1638), §v, p. 154. Sarah Mortimer, Reason and Religion in the English Revolution: The Challenge of Socinianism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 63–87. Apocalypticism and anti-Catholicism are central, although in very different ways, for two of the greatest political thinkers of the period, John Milton and Thomas Hobbes. See David Loewenstein, Representing Revolution in Milton and His Contemporaries: Religion, Politics, and Polemics in Radical Puritanism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp. 175–201; Milton and the Ends of Time, ed. Juliet Cummings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003); and J.G.A. Pocock, ‘Time, History and Eschatology in the Thought of Thomas Hobbes’, in Politics, Language and Time: Essays on Political Thought and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), pp. 143–201. Kevin Sharpe, Remapping Early Modern England: The Culture of Seventeenth-Century Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 287. See Peter Lake’s classic essay ‘Anti-Popery: The Structure of a Prejudice’, in Conflict in Early Stuart England: Studies in Religion and Politics, ed. Richard Cust and Ann Hughes (London and New York, 1989), pp. 72–106, as well as Hill, Antichrist; Bryan W. Ball, A Great Expectation: Eschatological

10

Apocalypse and Anti-Catholicism in Seventeenth-Century

Whiggish historiography that first emerges in the aftermath of 1688.39 The relationship between anti-popery, Protestant triumphalism, and national identity is a complicated one. We can see why the hegemonic aspects of this narrative have been criticised by revisionists. Nevertheless, while the charge of Whiggery may add piquancy to this historical critique, it is less useful for explaining the political relationship between anti-popery and Protestantism during the seventeenth century. In the most well-known eighteenth- and nineteenth-century iterations of Whiggish historiography, the triumph of the British nation-state is underpinned by an account of spiritual history that is often deeply antiCatholic. Such language reflects a common prejudice that by this stage needed little justification.40 The problem with the revisionist critique is that it is always in danger of collapsing early modern and modern antiCatholicism into each other. Early modern anti-Catholicism may be related to its various modern manifestations. But it is not the same thing. During the later sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, what can look like polemical triumphalism is often deployed to shore up a deeply embattled, unstable sense of nationhood. This is especially the case when considering England’s inconsistent, often precarious involvement in European affairs. In a commentary on Revelation published in 1573, William Fulke says: ‘in our age, what tumults he [Antichrist] hath raised vp in France, in Germanie, in Spaine, and in Flanders, who is there throrow out all Europe which knoweth not? and in England, what hath he practised and wroughte euen this present yeare that we write these thinges’.41 Important events,

39 40

41

Thought in English Protestantism to 1660 (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1975); Bauckham, Tudor Apocalypse; Firth, The Apocalyptic Tradition; Christianson, Reformers and Babylon; Marjorie Reeves, The Influence of Prophecy in the Middle Ages: A Study of Joachimism (London and Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1993); Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation 1707–1837 (London: Pimlico, 1994), pp. 11–54; Walsham, Providence in Early Modern England; Bernard McGinn, Anti-Christ: Two Thousand Years of the Human Fascination with Evil (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000); The Encyclopaedia of Apocalypticism, 3 vols, ed. John J. Collins, Bernard McGinn, and Stephen J. Stein (London and New York: Continuum, 1997–2000); Milton, Catholic and Reformed; and Cunningham and Grell, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. See Sharpe, Remapping Early Modern England, pp. 4–20. On the Victorian rewriting of seventeenth-century foreign policy, see Steven Pincus, Protestantism and Patriotism: Ideologies and the Making of English Foreign Policy, 1650–1688 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 1–4. See too Colin Haydon, Anti-Catholicism in Eighteenth Century England, c. 1714–80 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1993), pp. 16–19. William Fulke, Praelections vpon the Sacred and Holy Reuelations of S. John, trans. George Gifford (London: Thomas Purfoote, 1573), sig. H3v. The ‘tumults’ mentioned here refer to the European conflict over the Low Countries, the French Wars of religion, and the threat of Mary Queen of Scots, who was discussed repeatedly in the 1572 parliament. On the last point, see J.E. Neale, Elizabeth and Her Parliaments 1559–1581 (London: Jonathan Cape, 1958), pp. 241–312.

Introduction

11

notably the Reformation, the machinations of Rome, and any number of national and international conflicts, are read as signs of the end times. More locally they also allow writers to comment on England’s often volatile involvement in international politics. In this sense, anti-Catholic and apocalyptic interpretations legitimate political interventions that might not otherwise be possible.42 This is a period when people are attuned to political events as harbingers of broader spiritual change and can read those signs in multiple ways. So, apocalyptic and anti-Catholic language is multifaceted: it is capable of expressing reason and emotion, objectivity and prejudice, nuance and belligerence, fact and fantasy, affirmation and doubt, as well as the grey areas between these binary poles. Although I have learned much from the pioneering work of Frances Dolan and Arthur Marotti in this field, both tend to reinforce the view that anti-Catholicism in particular is a ‘crisis’ language associated with moments of political upheaval.43 By contrast this book argues that this language is used in times of stability and volatility alike, reflecting the unsettled political nature of the state during the seventeenth century. There is no single, monolithic Protestant view of the Roman Catholic Church during this period because there is no political consensus on the nature of the relationship between the two religions. Indeed, as we will see, ‘several modes of anti-Catholic discourse developed which did not rely on the simple representation of popery as a satanic inversion of normative Protestant values’.44 During this century ‘multiple modes of anti-Catholic polemic’ exist and we need to understand them on their own terms.45 I want to say a word here about the affective power of early modern religious language. The Bible is verbum Dei and is venerated as a sacred book. Readers and writers, including dramatists, draw on a rich exegetical culture that includes marginal notes in Bibles, sermons, and commentaries 42

43

44

45

This typological mode of thinking is used to read astrological or meteorological occurrences, and even the phenomena of everyday life. See Thomas, Religion and the Decline, and Walsham, Providence in Early Modern England. Although both critics do discuss Roman Catholicism and toleration, the association of antiCatholicism and crisis persists in both studies. See Frances E. Dolan, Whores of Babylon: Catholicism, Gender, and Seventeenth-Century Culture (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999), pp. 4–5, 23, 31, 38, and Arthur Marotti, Religious Ideology and Cultural Fantasy: Catholic and AntiCatholic Discourses in Early Modern England (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005), pp. 31, 48, 92, 132. Anthony Milton, ‘A Qualified Intolerance: The Limits and Ambiguities of Early Stuart AntiCatholicism’, in Catholicism and Anti-Catholicism in Early Modern English Texts, ed. Arthur F. Marotti (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1999), p. 88. Ibid. See Lake, ‘Anti-Popery: The Structure of a Prejudice’, pp. 72–106.

12

Apocalypse and Anti-Catholicism in Seventeenth-Century

on biblical books.46 To read Scripture is to open oneself up to the possibility of being altered, physically and spiritually, by its words.47 It is widely agreed that religious language can alter affect.48 As William Tyndale says of the New Testament: ‘Evangelion (or what we call the gospel) is a Greek word, and signifies good, glad, and joyful tidings, that make a man’s heart glad, and make him sing, dance, and leap for joy.’49 Tyndale means this literally. The encounter with Scripture is transformative. It alters the heart, the seat of human passions, producing a spiritual transformation in the reader.50 In a similar vein, Erasmus writes of his desire that Christ’s gospel ‘shuld be so swetely taught that they might be enflamed to love him And that after they shuld procede by a litle and a litle crepinge by the grovnde vntyll that by insensible incrementes they springe vp to be stronge in Christ’.51 Scripture initiates a change that is physically affective and spiritually affirmative. Polemical writing is similarly directed towards the passions. Here is William Fulke’s account of Roman Catholicism as an affective defect: the corruptions of Antichrist were so depely roted in the hartes of men, that euen vnto this daye, althoughe the LORD in great mercye by placinge a noble and vertuouse Prince to raigne ouer vs, whiche hathe set vp and maintayned his holy woorde, hathe outwardlye banished them, they remayne still in the mindes of the people: but whereto maye this be imputed, that in all places almost of this Realme, the greater parte beare more fauour to the monstruouse proceadinges of the man of sinne, then to the pure Gospell of Iesus Christ but that they are kepte in such ignoraunce and blindnesse, that they haue not tasted of the power of Gods word.52

Opposition to the Roman Catholic Church is a ‘daungerous fighte’ to reorder those ‘afflicted’ by its false ministrations, to convert them back to 46

47

48

49

50

51

52

See my ‘Introduction’ to Early Modern Drama and the Bible, pp. 1–26. On biblical interpretation in everyday life, see Hamlin, The Bible in Shakespeare, pp. 9–43. In part, this explains the centrality of preaching in the Reformed tradition. See Bryan Crockett, The Play of Paradox: Stage and Sermon in Renaissance England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995). See Susan C. Karant-Nunn, The Reformation of Feeling: Shaping the Religious Emotions in Early Modern Germany (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), and Alec Ryrie, Being Protestant in Reformation Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), pp. 17–98. William Tyndale, A Pathway into the Holy Scripture, in Writings of the Rev. William Tindal (London: Religious Tract Society, n.d.), p. 110. See Gail Kern Paster, Humoring the Body: Emotions and the Shakespearean Stage (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2004), pp. 12–13. Desiderius Erasmus, An Exhortation to the Diligent Studye of Scripture . . . (Antwerp: J. Hoochstraten, 1529), sigs. A4r–A5v. Fulke, Praelections, *iiiv.

Introduction

13

righteousness, and to catechise those who waver. This polemical rhetoric tries to claim the passions of the ‘hartes of men’ for the reformed religion.53 Playwrights, preachers, and anti-theatricalists alike often comment on the connection between language, performance, and the passions.54 They inherit the Classical idea that the theatre is a place where communal discussion and disputation takes place within the civitas.55 Of course audiences are not invariably susceptible to a play’s political and religious claims, nor will they respond to them predictably.56 A good case in point is the tyrant Alexander Pheraerus, who Sir Philip Sidney describes in his Defence of Poetry (1595) weeping at performances of tragedies. Yet the tyrant makes sure that he leaves those performances that move him before they change his basic nature. Sidney’s statement on Pheraerus’ experience – ‘it wrought no further good in him’ – suggests that it is dangerous to put too much trust in theatre’s ability to move affect in the correct moral fashion.57 Yet Sidney accepts that drama can stir audience affect in unpredictable ways.58 Such an appeal can be read politically. As engaged members of the civitatis, dramatists can address the res publica through the theatrical manipulation of emotion. One good way of doing this is to harness the power of religious and polemical language. Early reformist plays and interludes by dramatists such as John Bale, Lewis and William Wager, and Nathaniel Woodes use affective language to proselytize Protestantism. By the seventeenth century such overtly religious drama is less common. Yet the affective force of apocalyptic and antiCatholic language remains a powerful tool in the dramatist’s rhetorical 53

54

55

56

57

58

Ibid., *iir. On Roman Catholicism as theatrical playing, see Naogeorgus, The Popish Kingdome, pp. 11–14. On rhetoric and political culture, see Wayne A. Rebhorn, The Emperor of Men’s Minds: Literature and the Renaissance Discourse of Rhetoric (Ithaca and London, 1995). Of course, they do so for rather different reasons. See Jonas Barish, The Antitheatrical Prejudice (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981); Kevin Sharpe, Reading Revolutions: The Politics of Reading in Early Modern England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000); and Beatrice Groves, ‘“Nowewole I a newe game begynne”: Staging Suffering in King Lear, the Mystery Plays and Hugo Grotius’s Christus Patiens’, Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England, 20, 2007, pp. 136–150. On early modern theatre’s Classical influences, see John Orrell, ‘The Theatres’, in A New History of Early English Drama, ed. John D. Cox and David Scott Kastan (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), pp. 92–112. See too Lily B. Campbell, Scenes and Machines on the English Stage During the Renaissance: A Classical Revival (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1923), and John Parker, The Aesthetics of the Antichrist: From Christian Drama to Christopher Marlowe (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2007), pp. 15–24. See Ann Jennalie Cook, ‘Audiences: Investigation, Interpretation, Invention’, in A New History of Early English Drama, pp. 305–320. Sir Philip Sidney, ‘A Defence of Poetry’, in English Renaissance Literary Criticism, ed. Brian Vickers (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2003), p. 363. Following Aristotle, Sidney writes that tragedy stirs ‘the affects of admiration and commiseration, [and] teacheth the uncertainty of this world’ – Sidney, A Defence, p. 363.

14

Apocalypse and Anti-Catholicism in Seventeenth-Century

arsenal. In the light of recent work on early modern emotions, we need to study how playwrights use this rhetoric to move the passions and address politics.59 Consider here Barnabe Barnes’ play The Devil’s Charter (1607). Written in the aftermath of the Gunpowder Plot and performed before James at Court by the King’s Men, this avowedly anti-Catholic drama draws on a wide range of imagery to depict the affective and political threat posed by Roman Catholicism and its adherents, the Borgias. Pope Alexander VI is represented as a necromancer, a murderer, and a sodomite who commits incest with his daughter. He is also a politically assertive figure, ruthless in maintaining his ‘imperial state of Rome’ (I.iv.196) through the machinations of his son Caesar. Barnes shows James and his Court a militant nightmare of a politically dominant papacy. The Pope also manipulates Scripture and religion for his own ends. Speaking in soliloquy about his pact with the Devil, he says he has ‘banish[ed] out faith, hope and charity / Using the name of Christian as a stale / For arcane plots and intricate designs’ (I.iv.11–13).60 This cynical oraculum undermining God’s words shows how Alexander uses reason of state – political expediency trumps religious propriety.61 During this period all Christians are expected to revere the Bible and not to invoke its words lightly. In Matthew 12 Christ warns against blasphemy, saying that ‘euery idle worde that men shall speake, they shall giue account thereof at the day of iudgement’ (12:36). Some may have recalled this warning when the devil returns to ‘judge’ Alexander at the end of the play. The Pope is also represented as a monstrous, sexually ambiguous figure whose corruption emanates from his very person. One character notes that 59

60 61

Scholars are starting to address religious affect and drama – see some of the essays in The Renaissance of Emotion: Understanding Affect in Shakespeare and His Contemporaries, ed. Richard Meek and Erin Sullivan (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2015), and John J. McGavin and Greg Walker, Imagining Spectatorship: From the Mysteries to the Shakespearean Stage (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), esp. 1–42 and 128–143. See more generally Christopher Tilmouth, Passion’s Triumph over Reason: A History of the Moral Imagination from Spenser to Rochester (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010); Paster, Humoring the Body; Reading the Early Modern Passions: Essays in the Cultural History of Emotion, ed. Gail Kern Paster, Katherine Rowe, and Mary Floyd-Wilson (Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004); Shakespearean Sensations: Experiencing Literature in Early Modern England, ed. Katharine A. Craik and Tanya Pollard (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013); and Passions and Subjectivity in Early Modern Culture, ed. Brian Cummings and Freya Sierhuis (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013). The reference is to 1 Corinthians 13:13. See Tuck, Philosophy and Government, pp. 31–64; Andrew Hadfield, Shakespeare and Republicanism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 43–53; and Valentina Calderi, ‘The End of the Anglo-Spanish Match in Global Context, 1617–1624’, PhD thesis (University of Kent, 2015), pp. 43–84.

Introduction

15

he is libelled as the ‘Antichrist’ who ‘with the menstruous poison of his breath might choke the whole conclave’ (I.iii.23, 32–33).62 The Gunpowder Plot is commonly depicted in contemporary polemics as an attempt to choke the political state. This shows the kind of affective language that Barnes is tapping into.63 Moreover, the monstrous and the menstruous are closely connected in anti-Catholic writing.64 Alexander’s fluid gender and corporal identity is part of his threat. This is not only a figurative association. As generations of polemicists had argued, proximity to the Pope can be deadly. The same logic applies to sex. Alexander’s daughter Lucretia dies by the ‘burn and sting’ (IV.iii.66) of poisoned cosmetics. And the handsome Manfredi brothers are killed by the aspics applied to their breasts by the Pope, depicted in this scene as a homoerotic Cleopatra (complete with references to Shakespeare’s play on the Egyptian queen).65 The Devil repeatedly tells Alexander before his damnation that he is ‘Polluted’ (V.vi.95), his very being ‘poison’ (V.vi.195) to all who come within his orbit. Those watching the play in 1607 must therefore have experienced an uneasy frisson. As Peter Lake explains in a seminal essay, anti-popery offers ‘a way of dividing up the world between positive and negative characteristics, a symbolic means of labelling and expelling trends and tendencies which seemed to those doing the labelling, at least, to threaten the integrity of a Protestant England.’66 Barnes is satirising the papacy along these lines: the audience’s closeness to the culturally noxious Borgias makes for exciting, polemically spiced theatre. Indeed, the writing of polemic is a godly activity for Protestants and it is possible that Barnes would have understood his play in this way.67 But in pointing out the dangers of the papacy,

62 63

64

65

66

Barnabe Barnes, The Devil’s Charter, ed. R. B. McKerrow (London: Nutt, 1904). See, for example, William Hubbard, Great Britaines Resurrection . . . (London: TC for Arthur Iohnson, 1606), sigs. B3v–B4v. References to menstrual cloths and impurity are found in Leviticus 15:19–30, Lamentations 1:17, and Ezekiel 18:6, 22:10, and 36:17. In act III, scene 1, of The Alchemist, Ben Jonson’s Tribulation Wholesome uses the idea to attack Roman Catholicism. The image is commonly used in theology to discuss righteousness and in polemics to attack Roman Catholics – for a text that does both, see Thomas Beard, A Retractive from the Romish Religion . . . (London: William Stansby, 1616), pp. 87–88. On monstrosity and anti-Catholicism, see Victoria Brownlee, ‘“Imagining the Enemy”: Protestant Readings of the Whore of Babylon in Early Modern England, c. 1580–1625’, in Biblical Women in Early Modern Literary Culture 1550–1700, ed. Victoria Brownlee and Laura Gallagher (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2015), pp. 213–233. The association of Roman Catholicism and sodomy is commonplace – see Thomas Williamson, The Sword of the Spirit to Smite in Pieces That Antichristian Goliah (London: Edward Griffin, 1613), p. 47. 67 Lake, ‘Anti-Popery’, p. 74. Milton, Catholic and Reformed, pp. 37–38.

16

Apocalypse and Anti-Catholicism in Seventeenth-Century

the play also exposes the audience to the same religious affections that are so fatal for the characters on stage. Anti-Catholic polemic has to tread a fine line between ridicule and horror, censure and exposure. In the theatre, polemical passions and representations must be convincing, even transmittable to the audience. So the boundaries between polemic and theatre are dangerously blurred throughout The Devil’s Charter. As we will see, early modern playwrights explore, even exploit, the religious passions produced between these boundaries.

II The book begins with the accession of James to the English throne in 1603. It ends with the ‘Glorious’ revolution of 1688. The first chapter starts with Classical and medieval texts and the conclusion extends the discussion into the latter half of the eighteenth century, examining the literary and cultural legacies of anti-Catholic and apocalyptic thinking. It thus offers a longue durée approach to the literary history of the period, considering important continuities and innovations in religious, political, and literary thought.68 My methodology is rooted in historical contextualisation and close reading. This allows me to trace a related set of ideas that recur over the span of years covered in this book. Early modern drama is a dialogic form and that dialogue is both generic and historical.69 It is also a dialogue that pays little heed to the retrospective designations that we conventionally use to parcel up this period. Such historiographical labels are, to be sure, often necessary. This is a rich and complicated period of literary history and my approach does not claim to answer all the methodological problems that are attendant on the historiography of the seventeenth century. Fernand Braudel’s argument that the longue durée approach which he famously formulated ‘is the only language binding history to the present, creating one indivisible whole’ can sound unapologetically Whiggish, especially in 68

69

See Thomas Cogswell, Richard Cust, and Peter Lake, ‘Revisionism and Its Legacies: The Work of Conrad Russell’, in Politics, Religion and Popularity: Early Stuart Essays in Honour of Conrad Russell, ed. Thomas Cogswell, Richard Cust, and Peter Lake (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), pp. 14–15. See too Peter Lake and Steven Pincus, ‘Rethinking the Public Sphere in Early Modern England’, in The Politics of the Public Sphere in Early Modern England, ed. Peter Lake and Steven Pincus (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007), pp. 1–30. The idea originates in the work of Fernand Braudel – see his essay ‘History and the Social Sciences: The Longue Durée’, in On History, trans. Sarah Matthews (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), pp. 25–54. On early modern drama as dialogical and dialectical, see Womersley, Divinity and State, pp. 10, 115–135.

Introduction

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the aftermath of revisionist and postrevisionist debates.70 However, by emphasising continuity and innovation, this book follows an influential collection of essays that aims ‘to tell a dialectically coherent story of cumulative change that runs from the later sixteenth century through the eighteenth century’.71 The book also gives an international perspective on religious arguments that are often still seen in predominantly English/British terms. Here my work has been influenced by scholars such as Elizabeth Evenden-Kenyon, Barbara Fuchs, Eric Griffin, Jane Pettegree, Jonathan Scott, and Daniel Vitkus, who have encouraged us to take a more transnational view of this period.72 By emphasising the national, international, and global imbrications of early modern religious culture, this book traces through the drama shifting attitudes towards England’s engagement with its co-religionists and religious opponents abroad, particularly in relation to the concept of imperial monarchy. Here I am indebted to the work of Thomas James Dandelet. His recent book has reconsidered the idea of the ‘Imperial Renaissance’, citing it as the ‘dominant master narrative’ in political culture during this period.73 An imperial monarch is the sole ruler in matters temporal and spiritual within his or her realms.74 The idea of imperial monarchy draws on ancient Roman models that are apocalyptically inflected during the medieval and early modern periods. Most major seventeenth-century European monarchies 70

71

72

73

74

Braudel, On History, viii. On revisionist debates, see Sharpe, Remapping Early Modern England, pp. 3–37. Lake and Pincus, ‘Rethinking the Public Sphere’, p. 15. See too Paulina Kewes’ essay ‘History and Its Uses’ in her collection The Uses of History in Early Modern England (San Marino: Huntingdon Library, 2006), esp. pp. 12–13, 22–26. Jonathan Scott, England’s Troubles: Seventeenth-Century English Political Instability in European Context (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); Barbara Fuchs, Mimesis and Empire: The New World, Islam, and European Identities (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001); Daniel Vitkus, Turning Turk: English Theatre and the Multicultural Mediterranean (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008); Eric Griffin, English Renaissance Drama and the Specter of Spain: Ethnopoetics and Empire (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009); Jane Pettegree, Foreign and Native on the English Stage, 1588–1611: Metaphor and National Identity (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011); and the work by Evenden-Kenyon referred to at various points in this book. Thomas James Dandelet, The Renaissance of Empire in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), pp. 3, 8. Dandelet challenges the ‘republican narrative of the Renaissance’ (6) that has dominated political and, more recently, literary scholarship. I read these imperial and republican narratives together at places in my book, most notably in my use of reason of state. John Cramsie, ‘The Philosophy of Imperial Kingship and the Interpretation of James VI and I’, in James VI and I: Ideas, Authority and Government, ed. Ralph Houlbrooke (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), p. 43.

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consider their crowns imperial, including the Stuarts.75 As we saw above, Barnes’ Pope Alexander also uses the term to describe his papal monarchy. Protestant polemicists often evoke the spectre of an imperial papacy dominating the spiritual and temporal realms. During the Oath of Allegiance crisis Roman Catholic polemicists such as Robert Bellarmine raise the spectre of Roman Catholic imperial authority in matters temporal and spiritual in order to attack the political authority of the English monarch. Away from the heat of polemical battle, the reality is more tempered. During this period the political domination of Spain and later France meant that the papacy tended to focus on its spiritual imperial power and temporal authority in Rome.76 This fact was not unknown in England. Yet the idea of a popish plot retains a tenacious grip on the English political imagination.77 It reveals powerful anxieties about the imperial reach of European Roman Catholicism and the weaknesses of English imperial ideology. The recurrence of this idea, and its discussion on stage, tells us much about the political constitution and stability of the English state. Although they all nominally owe religious allegiance to the papacy, the political aims of Spain’s ‘three Philips’ (II, III, and IV), Henri IV, and Louis XIV sometimes align with Rome and at other times diverge.78 So when I discuss Roman Catholic temporal monarchy in this book, it is with the understanding that the political agendas of these various kings are not invariably in harmony with the aims of the papacy. The concept of reason of state is a useful way of understanding the tensions between religion and politics in this period. Richard Tuck and Maurizio Viroli have shown how, as intellectuals across Europe assimilated sceptical, Stoical, and republican thought, the idea that necessity and self-preservation may involve the political use or misuse of religion is central to the development of political theory.79 This idea can also be used to understand Protestant conceptions of imperial monarchy and their frequent invocation of apocalyptic and anti-Catholic 75 77

78 79

76 See Dandelet, The Renaissance of Empire. Ibid., p. 66. On fantasy and reality in anti-Catholicism, see Marotti, Religious Ideology and Cultural Fantasy, pp. 1–7. Henri IV converted from Protestantism to Roman Catholicism in 1593. See Tuck, Philosophy and Government, and Maurizio Viroli, From Politics to Reason of State: The Acquisition and Transformation of the Language of Politics 1250–1600 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992). Reason of state is not the only way of approaching religious politics in this period; constitutional and ethical approaches are also important – see Paulina Kewes, ‘Henry Saville’s Tacitus and the Politics of Roman History in Late Elizabethan England’, Huntington Library Quarterly, 74, 4, 2011, p. 525. However, I focus on reason of state because of this book’s interest in drama, politics, and polemical culture.

Introduction

19

discourses from Elizabeth onwards. Fuchs has drawn our attention to ‘the continuities and interdependence between the formation of early modern nations and their imperial aspirations’ and the connections between ‘internal sovereignty and external expansion’ during this period.80 The seventeenth-century Stuart monarchs all see their crowns as imperial.81 But they inherited a set of problem from the Tudors that had never been systematically resolved. How should Protestant imperial monarchical authority best assert itself internationally in relation to Roman Catholic power, spiritual and temporal? This is a century when, despite the establishment of colonies in the Americas, ‘the overseas British empire remained a nascent phenomenon’.82 Imperial power might be asserted through military intervention and economic activity abroad, but neither was likely to produce an Empire to rival Spain or, later, France. Unlike Philip II or Louis XIV, the Stuarts did not concertedly commit to the kind of prolonged military conflicts needed to establish an Empire.83 Engagement with foreign powers necessarily involved a trade-off between political necessity and spiritual values. For instance, when it was revealed in 1678 that Charles II and many of his supporters were in the pay of the French, it seemed to many that Protestant religion was being deliberately undermined for political and economic self-interest. The Whig reaction against Charles draws heavily on apocalyptic and anti-Catholic languages because it enables simultaneously political attack and religious defence. Reason of state thus allows us to explore the trade offs between religion and imperial monarchy that characterize the century. I focus on five plays by John Marston, Thomas Middleton, Philip Massinger, James Shirley, and John Dryden and Nathaniel Lee. These texts cover comic, tragic, and historical genres, allowing me to explore different political uses of apocalyptic and anti-Catholic language on stage. I also look at a number of less well-known playwrights throughout. I do not study Shakespeare directly in this book for two reasons. First, his canonical status means that his interest in religion has been well documented in recent 80

81

82

83

Barbara Fuchs, ‘Imperium Studies: Theorizing Early Modern Expansion’, in Postcolonial Moves: Medieval through Modern, ed. Patricia Clare Ingham and Michelle R. Warren (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), p. 73. The term is first introduced in the Henrician ‘Act in Restraint of Appeals’ in 1533 – see G.R. Elton, The Tudor Constitution: Documents and Commentary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1960), pp. 344–349. See also David Armitage, ‘The Elizabethan Idea of Empire’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 14, 2004, pp. 271–272. John Kerrigan, Archipelagic English: Literature, History, and Politics 1603–1707 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), p. 50. Dandelet, The Renaissance of Empire, p. 272.

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Apocalypse and Anti-Catholicism in Seventeenth-Century

years.84 Second, by examining a number of fine plays that still do not receive the level of critical attention that they deserve, I want to show how widespread and recurrent these ideas are in early modern theatrical culture. Although I discuss explicitly anti-Catholic drama throughout, this book’s main focus is on the more pervasive, relational uses of this language on stage.85 Seventeenth-century drama bears out the contention of modern religious historians that this is not just a language of ‘crisis’. Rather, it is inscribed into the rhetorical warp and weft of drama written across the period. Hence my interest in the dramatic allusion to Revelation, the reference to religious controversy, the reworking of polemical source texts, and how these relate to other literary narratives at work in a play. My chosen playwrights address a variety of public spheres, some localised and contingent, others more stable and continuous.86 Some plays are written by Protestants and some by writers who flitted between this religion and Roman Catholicism. All use anti-Catholic and/or apocalyptic language for a wide variety of reasons. They might attack, satirise, or modify a particular political view; mediate between competing political ideologies; defend a particular political faction or religion from attack; comment on court politics; explore the utility of prophecy; interrogate monarchy, especially in a European context; or defend parliament. Some plays are identifiably anti-Catholic and apocalyptic in tone and politics; others focus more or less on one of these languages. The chapters that follow examine in some detail dramatic language and imagery, much of which is extremely rich and allusive. Doubtless there will be disagreement on particular interpretations: some readers may prefer elusiveness to the readings offered here. There are also other authors and literary traditions that could have been examined. I regret that there is not space to consider masques and city pageants or to look at poetry in more comparative detail. 84

85 86

For recent work on Shakespeare and religion, see Groves, Texts and Traditions; Alison Shell, Shakespeare and Religion (London: Arden Shakespeare, 2010); Shakespeare and Religion: Early Modern and Postmodern Perspectives, ed. Ken Jackson and Arthur Marotti (Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 2011); David Scott Kastan, Will to Believe: Shakespeare and Religion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014); and Shakespeare and Early Modern Religion, ed. David Loewenstein and Michael Witmore (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015). On Shakespeare and apocalypse, see Cynthia Marshall, Last Things: Shakespearean Eschatology (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1991); Peter Milward, Shakespeare’s Apocalypse (Tokyo: Renaissance Institute, Sophia University, 2000); and R.M. Christofides, Shakespeare and the Apocalypse: Visions of Doom from Early Modern Tragedy to Popular Culture (London: Bloomsbury, 2012). Marotti, Religious Ideology, p. 132. Lake and Pincus identify the post-Reformation public sphere as a temporary space of debate – see Lake and Pincus, ‘Rethinking the Public Sphere in Early Modern England’, in The Politics of the Public Sphere, ed. Lake and Pincus, p. 6.

Introduction

21

At the heart of this book is my conviction that early modern drama should be understood within the broader nexus of religious, political, and intellectual history.87 I adopt the practice of historically informed close reading, paying detailed attention to the literariness of these dramatic texts, their analogical and intertextual complexity, especially their religious language and allusions to Scriptural texts.88 Periodic legislation prohibiting the direct discussion of doctrine does at times curtail what can be said on stage.89 Yet the Bible is the most politically significant book of the early modern period and even ‘a brief allusion to a biblical story could open up a fund of associations, ambiguities, and analogues’.90 In a culture that stresses the typological interpretation of Scripture – the sense that all biblical texts point beyond themselves to larger narratives at work in spiritual history – it is important to pay close attention to the implications of biblical allusions in drama.91 They are often used by playwrights to direct audiences’ political antennae.92 Chapter 1 offers a broad overview of how various Classical and medieval ideas inform early modern formulations of apocalyptic and anti-Catholic language. Chapter 2 explores the Elizabethan framework for Anglo-Dutch relationships, attitudes towards the Spanish and Dutch at the start of James VI and I’s reign, and the politics of the Anglo-Spanish peace treaty of London signed in 1604. I argue that John Marston’s play The Dutch Courtesan (1605) draws subtly on the language of apocalypticism and anti-Catholicism, offering a sharp and funny critique of Jacobean domestic and foreign policy. This is not an anti-Catholic play; but it does use the language of anti-Catholicism in a politically sophisticated,

87

88

89

90

91

92

See Adrian Streete, Protestantism and Drama in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), and Streete, ed., Early Modern Drama and the Bible On close textual analysis as a methodology for studying early modern plays, see Patricia Parker, Shakespeare from the Margins: Language, Culture, Context (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1996), esp. pp. 1–19. On the legislation and censorship of drama, see Annabel Patterson, Censorship and Interpretation: The Conditions of Reading and Writing in Early Modern England (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1984); Richard Dutton, Licensing, Censorship and Authorship in Early Modern England (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2000); and Cynthia Susan Clegg, Press Censorship in Elizabethan England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), and Press Censorship in Jacobean England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001). Groves, Texts and Traditions, p. 25. See also Richard Dutton’s comments on the ‘audience’s capacity for analogical reading’ of early modern drama’s political significance – Licensing, Censorship and Authorship in Early Modern England (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2000), xvii. See Early Modern Drama and the Bible, ed. Streete, esp. pp. 1–9, and Hamlin, The Bible and Shakespeare. On the political uses of the Bible more generally, see Killeen, The Political Bible.

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Apocalypse and Anti-Catholicism in Seventeenth-Century

amusingly sceptical way. Chapter 3 argues that Thomas Middleton’s The Lady’s Tragedy (1610) offers a dramatic response to the assassination of the French monarch Henri IV and the controversy over the Oath of Allegiance. The play explores questions of loyalty and Roman Catholic subversion, using anti-Catholic language and an apocalyptic structure. I also consider the play’s censorship and uncover a new set of historical narratives that Middleton draws on. These complicate existing critical readings and support the contention that this is a drama with an antiCatholic subtext. Chapter 4 studies Philip Massinger’s Believe as You List (1631) as a response to Caroline religious and political conflict. During the period in which Massinger is writing this play, apocalyptic and antiCatholic language comes under attack from the avant-garde wing of the Church. By exploring the play’s censorship and fascinating source texts, I argue that Massinger uses this language to mediate between competing religious and political factions. Chapter 5 examines The Cardinal (1641) by James Shirley as a response to the collapse of Charles I’s personal rule, the Irish rebellion, and the fall of William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury. It looks at how apocalyptic and anti-Catholic language is used by moderate royalists and Protestant radicals alike, allowing us to rethink literary ‘opposition’ in the 1640s. I argue that Shirley’s play combines critique and loyalty through its use of this language. Finally, Chapter 6 concentrates on the political crisis surrounding the potential succession of Charles II’s brother James, the Popish Plot, and the development of radical Whig political ideology during the 1670s and ’80s. This period saw the most concentrated volume of apocalyptic and anti-Catholic drama written during the seventeenth century. I focus on a play, The Duke of Guise (1681), written by two men known for different political stances, John Dryden and Nathaniel Lee. A reworking of an earlier anti-Catholic play by Lee, the text tries and fails to mediate between competing ‘party’ factions. This is effectively a Tory play on a Whig topic, the French wars of religion. Questions of liberty and the political utility of the mob are linked to the language of anti-Catholicism throughout. The Conclusion offers a brief account of theatrical responses to William of Orange’s invasion in 1688, as well as the dramatic survival of apocalyptic and anti-Catholic modes into the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Focusing on the rebellions of 1715 and 1745, I look at how the threat posed by the Stuart pretenders was discussed on stage. I end by thinking about how certain Enlightenment ideas of liberty, toleration, and secularity are bound up with the legacy of apocalypticism and antiCatholicism.

Introduction

23

III Apocalyptic and anti-Catholic languages in early modern drama cannot be studied in isolation. I read them in relation to other literary discourses at work in a play, with an understanding of national disputations and with an eye to the broader European contexts within which these arguments are conducted. This is a language with theological and polemical origins. At times it is ‘oppositional’ or ‘intolerant’.93 In this respect, it reflects the embattled nature of national identity during the seventeenth century and the perceived threat of Roman Catholicism at home and abroad. Yet it is also a flexible and sophisticated discourse capable of considerable political nuance and affective persuasion. It provides a common language for various stripes of religious opinion. This is why dramatists from diverse perspectives use this language throughout the seventeenth century. If this book encourages further debate about the variegated modes of religious and political address that are possible in the early modern theatre then it will have served a useful purpose. 93

Benjamin J. Kaplan, Divided by Faith: Religious Conflict and the Practice of Toleration in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap/Harvard University Press, 2007), p. 37.

chapter 1

Antichrist and the Whore in Early Modern England Cultures of Interpretation

Early modern apocalyptic and anti-Catholic discourse draws on a wide range of Classical, biblical, medieval, and Humanist ideas. In this chapter, I explore how these intellectual strands are used before and after the Reformation. I then examine how theatrical and visual culture draws on such strands, suggesting how they relate to the generic, national, and international preoccupations of early modern drama. My main argument is that the seventeenth century sees the development of a flexible apocalyptic and anti-Catholic discourse closely attuned to political tensions within the state.

I One problem faced by early modern Humanists is how best to understand the very different accounts of creation, matter, and the end of the world found in Classical texts and in Scripture.1 Book one of Ovid’s Metamorphoses (8 CE) offers Christian readers an alternative account of the world’s creation and destruction. As Arthur Golding’s 1567 translation has it: Before the Sea and Lande were made, and Heaven that all doth hide In all the worlde one onely face of nature did abide, Which Chaos hight, a huge rude heape, and nothing else but even A heavie lump and clotted clod of seedes together driven, Of things at strife among themselves, for want of order due. (1. 5–9)2

1

2

For ancient and classical theories of creation and destruction, see Ancient Cosmologies, ed. Carmen Blacker and Michael Loewe (London: Allen and Unwin, 1975), and Norman Cohn, Cosmos, Chaos and the World to Come: The Ancient Roots of Apocalyptic Faith (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2001). See too Jonathan Bate, Shakespeare and Ovid (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993). Ovid’s Metamorphoses: The Arthur Golding Translation 1567, ed. John Frederick Nims (New York and London: Macmillan, 1965).

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25

Matter is not created ex nihilo as in Genesis but preexists the moment that it is brought into ‘order’. Ovid goes on to explain that after the four ages, Jove becomes angry with mankind and determines to destroy it in a great flood. He chooses this method over bolts of lightning because he fears to set the heavens on fire, and also because: He did remember furthermore how that by destinie A certaine time should one day come, when both Sea and Lond And heaven itself should feele the force of Vulcans scorching brond (1. 302–304)

Despite the difficult idea of Chaos, which does not fit well with an ex nihilo account of creation, generally these Classical theories are syncretised with Christian ideas in Humanist culture.3 Indeed, Ovid is often quoted approvingly in apocalyptic writing, as in the commentaries of John Napier (1593) and Hugh Broughton (1610).4 At the start of the Metamorphoses, Ovid draws on the Epicurean physics and cosmology of Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura (c. 54 BCE), a text that has recently received a great deal of scholarly attention.5 Lucretius’ controversial argument (developed from Aristotle) that ‘nil posse creari / de nilo’ (1. 155–156) is also used in defences of Christian cosmology, natural science, and providentialism during the period, as in John Dove’s A Confutation of Atheisme (1605) and Ralph Cudworth’s The True Intellectual System of the Universe (1678).6 Lucretian ideas may be alluded to in King Lear’s ‘Nothing will come of nothing’ (I.i.89), and it is notable that this play explores the interplay between Classical and Christian theories of creation and destruction by drawing

3

4

5

6

Alexandra Walsham, Providence in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 171–176. See too Craig Kallendorf, ‘“From Virgil to Vida”: The Poeta Theologus in Italian Renaissance Commentary’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 56, 1, 1995, pp. 41–62. On Christian Humanism and its assimilation of Classical ideas of chaos and creation, see Michel Jenneret, Perpetual Motion: Transforming Shapes in the Renaissance from da Vinci to Montaigne, trans. Nidra Poller (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001), pp. 81–103. On Ovid, see John Napier, A Plaine Discouery . . . (Edinburgh: Robert Waldegraue, 1593), pp. 46, 89, and Hugh Broughton, A Revelation of the Holy Apocalyps . . . (Middleburg: Richard Schilders, 1610), p. 310. This is largely because of Stephen Greenblatt’s The Swerve: How the Renaissance Began (London: Bodley Head, 2011), although scholarly consideration of Lucretius’ influence in the period predates this book. See my essay ‘Lucretius, Calvin and Natural Law in Measure for Measure’, in Shakespeare and Early Modern Religion, ed. David Loewenstein and Michael Witmore (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), pp. 131–154. See John Dove, A Confutation of Atheism . . . (London: Edward Allde, 1605), pp. 2, 27, 94, and Ralph Cudworth, The True Intellectual System of the Universe . . . (London: Richard Royston, 1678), pp. 29–32.

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extensively on apocalyptic language and imagery.7 To consider the end of the world is to consider physical matter itself, how it came to be, and how it might eventually be destroyed. The discussion of prophecy and empire in Virgilian texts also influences the Reformers’ interpretations of Revelation.8 In book six of Virgil’s Aeneid (19 BCE), Aeneas listens to the prophecies of the Cumaean Sybil and goes with her into the Underworld: ‘Ibant obscuri sola sub nocte per umbram / perque domos Ditis vacuas et inania regna’ (6. 268–269).9 After leaving the Underworld, Aeneas’ own famous prophecy of a Roman golden age under Augustus Caesar follows (6. 777–807).10 Such passages underpin the connection between prophecy and the imperial theme in the apocalyptic commentary tradition, especially the idea of a universal ruler or last world emperor with powers of renovatio.11 Other Classical descriptions of the Underworld are important, not least those found in Seneca’s plays, which are so influential for early modern dramatists. In the first act of Thyestes (first century CE), Tantalus says: To pooles and floods of hell agayne and styll declining lake, And flight of tree ful frayght with fruite that from the lippes doth flee, To dungeon darke of hateful hell let leeful be for me To goe. Or if to[o] light be thought the paines that there I have, Remove me from those lakes agayne in midst of worser wave Of Phlegethon, to stand in seas of fyre beset to bee.12 7

Titi Lvcreti Cari, De Rervm Natvra, Libri Sex, vol. 1, ed. Cyril Bailey (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966), and William Shakespeare, King Lear, in The Norton Shakespeare, ed. Stephen Greenblatt et al. (New York and London: W.W. Norton, 1997). See L.C. Martin, ‘Shakespeare, Lucretius and the Commonplaces’, The Review of English Studies, 1945, 83, 21, pp. 174–182; William G. Elton, King Lear and the Gods (California: Huntington Library, 1966), pp. 46–57; and Joseph Wittreich, ‘“Image of that horror”: The Apocalypse in King Lear’, in The Apocalypse in English Renaissance Thought and Literature, ed. C.A. Patrides and Joseph Wittreich (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984), pp. 175–206. 8 See Kenneth Borris, Allegory and Epic in English Renaissance Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 13–52. 9 Virgil, Eclogues, Georgics, Aeneid I–VI, trans. H. Rushton Fairclough, rev. G.P. Goold, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 1999). 10 David Norbrook has shown how English republican writers often draw on these Virgilian passages – Writing the English Republic: Poetry, Rhetoric and Politics, 1627–1660 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 332, 369, 441, 466. 11 See, for example, David Pareus, A Commentary upon the Divine Revelation . . . (Amsterdam: C.P., 1644), p. 344, and William Bates, The Divinity of the Christian Religion . . . (London: J.D. for Brabazon Aylmer, 1677), p. 154. See too Marie Tanner, The Last Descendants of Aeneas: The Hapsburgs and the Mythic Image of the Emperor (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), pp. 119–145. 12 Seneca His Tenne Tragedies Translated into English Edited by Thomas Newton, intro. T.S. Eliot, vol. 1 (London: Constable, 1927), p. 57. There are also a number of proto-apocalyptic speeches in this play, for example, by the Chorus at the end of act IV (lines 788–884) or in the scenes in the final act where Atreus reveals his crimes to Thyestes.

Antichrist and the Whore in Early Modern England

27

In early modern England, the most well-known dramatic fusion of these Virgilian and Senecan tropes is found in Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy (c. 1587–1592), one of the most frequently performed plays of the period. As Frank Ardolino has shown, Kyd offers a sharp critique of Spanish imperialism towards Portugal (and by extension England) through a typically Humanist elision of Classical and apocalyptic language. Building on this work, Eric Griffin has argued that the play is concerned with the entanglement between ‘two nations which read the present in terms of mythic past and an apocalyptic future that have long since determined its meaning’.13 This imperial model and its internationalist perspective are influential for other dramatists, as I explore more fully in the next chapter. Other Classical ‘apocalypses’ could be mentioned here. Book one of Virgil’s Georgics (c. 29 BCE) contains a famous account of heavenly tumult, omens, earthy battles, ghosts, natural disorder, and opened graves, all of which signal disaster and which Virgil uses to rouse Rome to greater imperial glory (1. 461–514).14 This passage is often invoked in discussions of empire and apocalypse. It is quoted, for instance, by William Fulke in his Praelections (1573) and by Broughton in A Revelation of the Holy Apocalyps (1610).15 Virgil even makes an appearance in the popular Protestant Geneva Bible, mentioned by Francis Junius in his marginal commentary to Revelation.16 A passage in book two of the Georgics (‘septemque una sibi muro circumdedit arces’, 2. 532–540) is sometimes used by commentators on Revelation to confirm that Rome and Babylon are synonymous. As William Perkins asks in his Lectvres vpon the Three First Chapters of Revelation (1604): ‘What boy, I say, in the Grammer schoole doth not vnderstand this to be meant of the citie of Rome, although the Poet in that place doth not once name Rome?’17 Last, sections of Lucan’s Pharsalia (c. 65 CE) describing the eventual fall of the Roman Empire and the battle between Pompey and Caesar are often used in apocalyptic 13

14 15

16 17

See Frank Ardolino, Apocalypse and Armada in Kyd’s Spanish Tragedy (Kirksville: Northeast Missouri State University, 1995), p. 12, and Eric Griffin, English Renaissance Drama and the Specter of Spain: Ethnopoetics and Empire (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009), p. 93. Prodigies and portents are also the stock in trade of writers such as Plutarch and Livy. William Fulke, Praelections vpon the Sacred and Holy Reuelations of S. John, trans. George Gifford (London: Thomas Purfoote, 1573), pp. 114–115; Francis Junius, ‘Commentary on Revelation’, in The Bible: That Is, the Holy Scriptures . . . (London: Christopher Barker, 1599), chapter 17, verse 9, note c; Broughton, A Revelation of the Holy Apocalyps, pp. 55–56. Junius, ‘Commentary on Revelation’, chapter 17, verse 8, notes 13 and 15. William Perkins, Lectvres vpon the Three First Chapters of Revelation . . . (London: Richard Field for Cuthbert Burbie, 1604), p. 349. See too Napier, A Plaine Discouery, p. 35.

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writing.18 English Protestant exegetes give imperial Roman discourse a Christian gloss. The fact that so many of these commentators explicitly oppose the Roman Church and Spain (and later in the century France) shows how English apocalyptic writing often casts national opposition to Roman Catholic and Hapsburg (or Bourbon) rule in an imperial light.19 Many of these intellectual strands would have been familiar to Dante, Wycliffe, Chaucer, or Langland.20 Reformers in the late-medieval period criticise both ecclesiae and religio.21 Luther begins as an Augustinian monk with a soft spot for Virgil who tries to reform the Roman Church from within.22 Anti-papalism is a medieval invention informed by imperial Classical discourse.23 It is the political establishment of the Reformed Churches across sixteenth-century Europe that allows Protestants to lay claim to the medieval language of anti-papal critique. It also enables them to tap into an apocalyptic tradition that is the common heritage of all Christians and to recast it as one of the most powerful languages in Protestantism’s rhetorical arsenal, anti-popery. To this end, a number of late-medieval and Humanist writers reconsider the relationship between prophecy and history.24 One important strand is found in the writings 18

19

20

21

22

23

24

The relevant sections are in books 1 and 7 – see Lucan, Pharsalia, trans. J.D. Duff, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1977), pp. 7–9, 367–434. For an early modern use of the passage in book 1 in an apocalyptic context, see Thomas Jackson, The Eternal Truth of Scriptures . . . in the Works of the Reverend and Learned Divine Thomas Jackson D.D. . . ., 3 vols. (London: Andrew Clarke for John Martyn, Richard Chiswell and Joseph Clark, 1673), pp. 110–111. On Virgil, Lucan, and apocalypse, see Morton D. Paley, Apocalypse and Millennium in English Romantic Poetry (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), pp. 15–16. See also David Quint, Epic and Empire: Politics and Generic Form from Virgil to Milton (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), pp. 189–199. Writers across the religious divide draw on a common set of Classical ideas and texts. See Tanner, The Last Descendants, pp. 119–145. Dante’s De Monarchia (c. 1311) advances a theory of imperial, universal monarchy over that of the Pope, informed by Virgilian writing – Dante, Monarchy, ed. Prue Shaw (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). For Dante, the universal monarch is the Holy Roman Emperor, who draws power directly from the ancient Roman Empire – he is less interested than Petrarch is in reviving ancient Roman imperial models. See Thomas James Dandelet, The Renaissance of Empire in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), pp. 24–25. See James Simpson, Reform and Cultural Revolution: The Oxford English Literary History, vol. 2 (1350–1547) gen. ed. Jonathan Bate (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002); Cultural Reformations: Medieval and Renaissance in Literary History, ed. Brian Cummings and James Simpson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), and Reading the Medieval in Early Modern England, ed. Gordon McMullan and David Matthews (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009). On Luther’s love of Virgil, see Carl P.E. Springer, Luther’s Aesop (Kirksville: Trueman State University Press, 2011), pp. 11–15. See Curtis V. Bostick, The Antichrist and the Lollards: Apocalypticism in Late Medieval and Reformation England (Leiden, Boston, and Cologne: Brill, 1998). See Tim Thornton, Prophecy, Politics and the People in Early Modern England (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2006), and Jonathan Green, Printing and Prophecy: Prognostication and Media Change 1450–1550 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2012).

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of the Calabrian mystic and prophet Joachim of Fiore. The Joachimite tradition has a clearly defined ‘historicist’ slant. It interprets temporal and spiritual history together as moving through the Augustinian six ages, marked by the Trinitarian status of father, son, and holy spirit. Only when the last status is achieved will the world move towards the renovatio or seventh age promised at the end of days.25 Such ideas are culturally influential across Europe. In the words of one scholar, ‘Renaissance ideas of restoration and reformation in both Catholic and Protestant circles owed some of their hope to the expectation stemming from Joachim’ and his belief that ‘the Book of Revelation expressed a continuous history of the Church and the hope of further improvement to that Church within human history.’26 These ideas inform texts such as Thomas Wimbledon’s famous fourteenth-century sermon given at Paul’s Cross. Drawing on Joachim and Hildegard of Bingen, Wimbledon argues that if thou see in the seculer menne that darknesse of syn beginneth to haue the mastry it is a token that the world endeth. But when thou seest Priests that be put in the top of sufferancie of spirituall dignitye, that should bee as hyls among the common people in perfect lyuing, that darkenesse of sin hath got the vpperhand of them, who doubteth but that the worlde is at an ende? Also Abbot Ioachim in the exposition of Ieremy sayeth That from the yeare of our Lorde. M.CCC. all times be to be suspected to mee and wee be past this suspect tyme, nigh CC yeares.27

The connection between anti-clericism and the imminent apocalypse finds a ready audience before and after the Reformation: Wimbledon’s sermon was often reprinted during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.28 Apart from shaping how medieval radicals interpret the prophetic and apocalyptic books of the Bible to comment on the ills of contemporary society, Joachimite theories of renovatio and a last world emperor who purges society in anticipation of the end times retain their appeal well into the early modern period. Such ideas are found throughout the commentary 25

26

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Richard Bauckham, Tudor Apocalypse: Sixteenth Century Apocalypticism, Millenarianism and the English Reformation: From John Bale to John Foxe and Thomas Brightman (Abingdon: Sutton Courtenay Press, 1978), pp. 30–31. Katherine R. Firth, The Apocalyptic Tradition in Reformation Britain, 1530–1645 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979), p. 5. See too Bauckham, Tudor Apocalypse, pp. 29–31, and Marjorie Reeves, Joachim of Fiore and the Prophetic Future (Stroud: Sutton, 1999), pp. 136–165. Heinrich Bullinger’s influential A Hvndred Sermons vpon the Apocalypse . . . (London: Iohn Daye, 1573), praises Joachim in the Preface (sig. B5v). Ralph [Thomas] Wimbledon, A Sermon No Lesse Fruitfull Then Famous . . . (London: Iohn Charlewood, 1579), sigs. E3r–E4v. See Alexandra Walsham, ‘Inventing the Lollard Past: The Afterlife of a Medieval Sermon in Early Modern England’, The Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 58, 4, 2007, pp. 628–655.

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tradition and in popular compendia such as Stephen Batman’s The Doome warning all men to the Iudgement (1581). I explore this tradition further in Chapter 4.29 This essentially optimistic strand of thinking is contrasted by a more pessimistic approach found in the writings of the Lollards, or Wycliffites. This group often criticise the medieval papacy and predict its overthrow.30 John Wycliffe’s De Pontificum Romanorum Schismate was probably written in the late 1370s/early 1380s in response to a notorious ecclesiastical schism. Because of a disputed papal election, rival popes vied for preeminence in Rome and Avignon. In the text, Wycliffe offers an apocalyptic interpretation of the crisis: ‘For þis unkouþe discencioun þat is bitwixe þes popes semeþ to signyfie þe perilous tyme þat Poul seiþ schulde come on þes laste dayes.’31 Despite this particular claim, however, Wycliffite thinking also uses an ‘allegorical representation of the continual sufferings of the true Church’, one that needs to be decoded and interpreted.32 Perhaps the most well-known medieval text that brings the historical and the allegorical together is William Langland’s great dream vision, Piers Plowman (B Text c. 1376–1379). This poem ends with antichrist and his followers besieging Holy Church and Conscience resolving ‘To seken Piers the Plowman’ (XX, 383).33 Although the point is open to debate, the poem’s conclusion comes down on the side of ecclesial reformation rather than overthrow, even if the apocalyptic framework implies that the latter will not be long in coming.34 Piers Plowman remained popular after 29

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32 33

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Stephen Batman, The Doome Warning All Men to Iudgement . . . (London: Ralph Nubery, 1581). See too James (Giacopo) Brocardo, The Reuelation of Saint Iohn . . ., trans. James Sanford (London: Thomas Marsh, 1582), a commentary deeply influenced by Joachimite ideas. Apocalyptic commentators discuss prophetic figures such as the Sibyls, Hildegard of Bingen, Jan Hus, and others. See The Apocalypse in the Middle Ages, ed. Richard K. Emmerson and Bernard McGinn (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993). On Lollardy, history, and apocalypse, see Anne Hudson, The Premature Reformation: Wycliffite Texts and Lollard History (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), and Bostick, The Antichrist and the Lollards. See too Simpson, The Oxford English Literary History, pp. 322–382, and Brian Cummings, The Literary Culture of the Reformation: Grammar and Grace (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 15–26. John Wycliffe, De Pontificum Romanorum Schismate, in Select English Works of John Wyclif, ed. Thomas Arnold, vol. 3 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1871), p. 242. Firth, The Apocalyptic Tradition, p. 6. William Langland, The Vision of Piers Plowman: A Complete Edition of the B-Text, ed. A.V.C. Schmidt (London: J.M. Dent, 1993). On Langland and apocalypse, see Morton Bloomfield, Piers Plowman as a Fourteenth-Century Apocalypse (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1962), and Kathryn KerbyFulton, Reformist Apocalypticism and Piers Plowman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990). For competing views on the pessimism or optimism of Langland’s apocalypticism, see Kenneth Emmerson, Antichrist in the Middle Ages: A Study of Medieval Apocalypticism, Art, and Literature (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1981), and Kerby-Fulton, Reformist Apocalypticism.

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the Reformation, championed by writers such as Robert Crowley as a forerunner of Protestant concerns.35 As he explains in his 1550 edition of the poem, it was written: in the tyme of Kynge Edwarde the thyrde. In whose tyme it pleased God to open the eyes of many to se hys truth, geuing them boldenes of herte, to open their mouthes and crye oute agaynste the works of darckenes, as dyd John Wicklyfe who also in those days translated the holye Byble into the Englishe tonge and this writer who in reportynge certayne visions and dreames, that he fayned hym selfe to haue dreamed doth. . .rebuke the obstynate blynde.36

Langland’s work, refracted through Crowley’s Protestant lens, also influences early modern poets such as Edmund Spenser, Michael Drayton, and George Wither.37 The mantle of the prophetic poet who hymns imperial power is worn with particular skill by Spenser. Though by no means an extreme Puritan, nor uncritical of the apocalyptic narrative, the imperial view of monarchy remains central to his poetic vision. Throughout his epic The Faerie Queene (1596) his praise of Elizabeth is framed by imperial language and imagery, as is the depiction of Una in Book One.38 By contrast, the antichristian figures of Duessa and Archimago undermine this claim to authority. Duessa is depicted as the ‘sole Daughter of an Emperour’ who has ‘the wide West vnder his rule’ and who has set his throne in Rome ‘where Tiberis doth pass’ (Book One, Canto Two, 23).39 Her Roman Catholic imperial lineage is a threat to both Una and, by implication, Elizabeth. While we can call Una an allegory of the True Church, Duessa a type of Whore of Babylon, and Archimago a kind of antichrist, Spenser’s figures were also decoded by early modern readers, most notably James VI of Scotland, who objected to the trial of Duessa because it supposedly represented the fate of his mother 35

36

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See Anne Hudson, ‘The Legacy of Piers Plowman’, in A Companion to Piers Plowman, ed. John A. Alford (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), pp. 251–266, and Sarah A. Kelen, Langland’s Early Modern Identities (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008). Robert Crowley, Preface to The Vision of Pierce Plowman . . . (London: Robert Crowley, 1550), sig. *IIr. See A.C. Hamilton, ‘Spenser and Langland’, Studies in Philology, 55, 1958, pp. 533–548; Judith Anderson, The Growth of a Personal Voice: Piers Plowman and the Faerie Queene (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976), and Katherine Little, Transforming Work: Early Modern Pastoral and Late Medieval Poetry (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2013). For two views on Spenser’s treatment of imperial monarchy, see Richard F. Hardin, Civil Idolatry: Desacralizing and Monarchy in Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1992), esp. chapter 3, and David Lee Miller, The Poem’s Two Bodies: The Poetics of the 1590 ‘Faerie Queene’ (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), pp. 68–119. Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, ed. A.C. Hamilton (Pearson: Harlow, 2007).

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Mary, Queen of Scots. Allegory and typology, apocalypticism and anti-Catholicism: all intermingle, sometimes uneasily, in Spenser’s great epic.40 The assimilation of these Classical and medieval ideas by early modern writers raises the matter of periodisation. Brian Cummings and James Simpson have argued that the very existence of period boundaries between medieval and early modern has a revolutionary ethos: ‘Our very conception of historical periods, divisible into detached segments of time punctuated by liberating convulsions, is itself the product of revolutionary aspiration to neutralize the pathologies of time and start again.’41 Yet this is not a move without difficulty: ‘the humanists of the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries conceptualized their own place in history not so much by inventing the modern as by inventing the “medieval”. They created the third term as a conscious polemic.’42 Early modern Protestantism offers a polemical redefinition of the ‘medieval’ in order to affirm an invariably partial interpretation of temporal and spiritual history. This ‘liberating convulsion’ is part of a broader Humanist revision of historiographical practice that is achieved by rewriting the relationship between Classical, medieval, and post-Reformation Christian history.43 The idea of an imperial ruler who possesses a universal authority over the temporal realm and who will reform the spiritual realm as a prelude to the second coming is a powerful one in medieval and early modern Europe.44 After the Reformation in England, the monarch, rather than the Emperor or the Pope, is invested with temporal and spiritual authority. The contingencies of religion and politics often occlude the articulation of the imperial idea in early modern England. But it is an idea – part reality, part fantasy – that does not go away.

40

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42 43

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See Florence Sandler, ‘The Faerie Queene: An Elizabethan Apocalypse’, in The Apocalypse in English Renaissance Thought and Literature, ed. Patrides and Wittreich, pp. 148–174; Joan Grundy, The Spenserian Poets: A Study in Elizabethan and Jacobean Poetry (London: Edward Arnold, 1969); David Norbrook, Poetry and Politics in Renaissance Poetry, rev. ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002); and Michelle O’ Callaghan, The ‘Shepheards Nation’: Jacobean Spenserians and Early Stuart Political Culture, 1612–1625 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000). Cummings and Simpson, Cultural Reformations, p. 3. Such an impulse would also have been familiar to apocalyptic commentators writing on the prophecies of the four kingdoms in the Old Testament book of Daniel (7: 1–28). The four empires are traditionally interpreted as Babylon, Assyria, Greece, and Rome – see Bernard Capp, The Fifth Monarchy Men: A Study in SeventeenthCentury Millenarianism (London: Faber and Faber, 2008), pp. 20–21. Cummings and Simpson, Cultural Reformations, p. 4. It could also, in certain hands, be called revolutionary, as the Peasant’s War of 1524–1526 and the emergence of radical spiritualist and Anabaptist groups in Europe demonstrate. See Dandelet, The Renaissance of Empire.

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The connections between ‘Rome’, ancient and Roman Catholic, are systematically rethought by Reformed commentators on Revelation. We can see this in various historiographical discussions of imperium.45 Take the example of the ancient sibylline oracles, referred to by Christian writers throughout the medieval and early modern periods.46 As mentioned above, the Cumaean Sybil is Aeneas’ guide to the Underworld in the Aeneid. Virgil also refers to the sibylline oracles in his fourth Eclogue (37 BCE). This text (‘Ultima Cumaei venit iam carminis aetas; / magnus ab integro saeclorum nascitur ordo’, 4. 4–5), his prophecy of a child who sees the coming empire (4. 7), and his reference to a chaste virgin (4: 8) all inspire Christian writers to conflate the return of a pagan golden age with the coming of Christ and the eschatological promise of Revelation.47 In De Civitate Dei (c. 410 CE) Saint Augustine argues that the Erythraean Sibyl prophesies the coming of Christ.48 He also notes that this Sibyl may have ‘liued in the Troyan war long before Romulus’ and so only Christian writers can fully understand the prophecy.49 De Civitate Dei is written at a period when the authority of the Roman Empire is under assault: small wonder that Augustine is interested in prophecies that seemingly predate that Empire. The imperial inflection of Augustine's historiography appeals to the Reformers as much as his theology. If these ancient texts can be used to affirm the reality of the historical Christ, then they can also be folded into a broader narrative that promises the return of Christ and the establishment of the City of God in the face of Rome’s diminishing temporal power. Virgil uses the sibylline prophecies in the pastoral Georgics to promote a cyclical idea of historical desolatio and renovatio that is used in the service of an imperial pax Romana. Augustine translates that sentiment into a desire for temporal desolatio to be overwritten by spiritual renovatio. More than anyone, Augustine is responsible for combining the Classical idea of history as a series of cycles with the belief 45

46

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48

49

See John E. Curran, Jr., Roman Invasions: The British History, Protestant Anti-Romanism, and the Historical Imagination in England, 1530–1660 (London: Associated University Press, 2002). On the Sibylline prophecies, see Jessica L. Malay, Prophecy and Sibylline Imagery in the Renaissance: Shakespeare’s Sibyls (New York and London: Routledge, 2010). On prophecies and apocalypse more generally, see Bauckham, Tudor Apocalypse, pp. 162–184. See Frances Yates, Astraea: The Imperial Theme in the Sixteenth Century (London: Pimlico, 1993), pp. 33–34, and Borris, Allegory and Epic, 13–52. Augustine of Hippo, The City of God . . ., trans. J.H. (London: George Eld, 1610), pp. 702–703. Augustine is unsure if the prophecies are by the Erythraean or Cumaean Sibyl, but opts for the former – see Yates, Astraea, p. 36. Augustine, The City of God, p. 703. Augustine is not a millenarian, however, and the seventh age is spiritual, not temporal.

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that history is also moving towards a predetermined end.50 This idea of the six ages, as well as Augustine’s sceptical view of Roman power, is important for early modern Protestants. They see themselves as living in a similarly transitional period when authority is shifting in uncertain ways. Empires may rise and fall, but there is a larger providential purpose at work in temporal affairs. Augustinian renovatio also allows Protestants to conflate opposition to the Roman Catholic Church with a prophetic narrative that either predates or opposes the Classical Roman imperium. In his The Historie of Great Britaine (1611), John Speed argues that the historical moment of ancient Britain’s subjection to Rome’s ‘vniuersall peace’ sees the articulation of a promise. It is shown in the sibyl’s prophecy from Virgil’s fourth Eclogue and book one of the Georgics, from which Speed quotes, that Christ will come to reign over all and the ‘vniuersall subiection’ of Rome will be as nothing.51 To oppose the state of Rome is also to undercut Rome’s claims to historical authority. In late sixteenthand seventeenth-century England, the more sceptical view of Roman history found in Tacitus and Suetonius influences this kind of reading, as do debates about reason of state and the historical formation of national constitutions: Bullinger quotes both of these Roman authors approvingly in his commentary.52 These arguments also apply to the inheritor of the Roman imperium, the Roman Catholic Church. Speed reinterprets the ancient prophecies so that the British state and Church can claim an authority that predates their historical emergence in the sixteenth century.53 Reformed historiography is grounded in an imperially inflected eschatology. It offers a complete rethinking of ‘Rome’, ancient and Roman Catholic, an imperial legitimation of the Reformed state and monarch, and a promise of the revelation to come. The most well-known practitioner of this kind of history, and one whose work is drawn on by Speed, is the Lutheran historiographer John 50

51

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Christopher Toenjes, Islam, the Turks and the Making of the English Reformation: The History of the Ottoman Empire in John Foxe’s Acts and Monuments (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2015), p. 106. John Speed, The Historie of Great Britaine . . . (London: William Hall and John Beale, 1611), pp. 188–190. See Bullinger, A Hvndred, pp. 89, 169. For other uses of Tacitus in apocalyptic writing, see Thomas Brightman, A Revelation of the Apocalypse . . . (Amsterdam: Iudocus Hondius and Hendrick Laurenss, 1611), p. 474, and Thomas Thompson, Antichrist Arraigned . . . (London: William Stansby for Richard Meighen, 1618), p. 144. See Felicity Heal, ‘Appropriating History: Catholic and Protestant Polemics and the National Past’, in The Uses of History in Early Modern England, ed. Paulina Kewes (San Marino: Huntingdon Library, 2006), pp. 105–128.

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Sleidan (Sleidanus).54 He develops an important Protestant Humanist version of the translatio imperii, the translation of empire, drawing on the prophetic language and discussion of empire found in the Books of Daniel and the Prophecy of Elias, the works of Virgil, Augustine, and, later, Joachim of Fiore.55 Sleidan formulates a model in which ‘the culmination of God’s plan came with the last of the four great world empires, which reached its political pinnacle with Charles V and its religious perfection simultaneously with Luther’.56 Spiritual and temporal history is interlinked but Sleidan emphasises the triumph of the former. He also uses the Joachimite idea of the last world emperor.57 The political emergence of the Roman Catholic Church is seen in these terms. More radical millenarians such as the Fifth Monarchists would draw on some of these ideas during the English Civil Wars.58 To interpret Revelation is to understand the usurpatory history of papal authority: ‘And so is the pope successively become a ruler aboue emperours and kynges, and al christendome vniuersallye.’59 The establishment of the Reformation is a key stage in restoring the Church to its primal state of grace, so the argument goes. In freeing people from the thraldom and slavery of Roman Catholicism and establishing a reformed monarchy, the Reformation inaugurates the end of days. Some argue that this restoration will be led by a strong military leader. Throughout the seventeenth century in England, militant Protestantism invests various figures with the imperial hope of renovatio by arms. By contrast, other strands of Protestantism are more gradualist, trusting in the institution of monarchy or, during the Civil Wars, parliament, not putting 54

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Sleidan’s work is well known in early modern England. See Johannes Sleidanus, A Briefe Chronicle of the Four Principall Empyres: To Witte, of Babilon, Persia, Grecia, and Rome . . . (London: Rouland Hall, 1563). On the translatio imperii and religionis and the apocalyptic commentary tradition, see Firth, The Apocalyptic Tradition, pp. 2–8. On Daniel and Protestant apocalypticism, see Paul Christianson, Reformers and Babylon: English Apocalyptic Visions from the Reformation to the Civil War (Toronto and London: University of Toronto Press, 1978), pp. 5–6. See too Capp, The Fifth Monarchy Men, pp. 13–22. Donald R. Kelley, ‘The Theory of History’, in The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy, ed. Charles B. Schmitt, Quentin Skinner, Eckhard Kessler, and Jill Kraye (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 751. See more generally Daniel R. Woolf, The Social Circulation of the Past: English Historical Culture, 1500–1730 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005); The Uses of History in Early Modern England, ed. Kewes; and Antony Grafton, What Was History? The Art of History in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). On Sleidan and the last world emperor, see Firth, The Apocalyptic Tradition, p. 128. For the idea in Foxe, see Toenjes, Islam, the Turks, pp. 195–196. See Capp, The Fifth Monarchy Men. These ideas are also used by messianic Roman Catholic writers – see Reeves, Joachim of Fiore, pp. 128–135. Walter Lynne, The Beginning and Ending of All Poperie Being Taken Oute of Certaine Old Prophets . . . (London: John Herforde, 1548), sig. C3r.

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too much hope in any one figure, and stressing the end of days as a collective judgement. I will return to these ideas later. In the Protestant exegetical tradition that develops during the sixteenth century, readings of Revelation foreground the intertwined nature of spiritual and temporal history. Alexandra Kess has shown that while Sleidan’s historiographical model is intended to offer an account of ‘salvation history’, it is also flexible enough to allow Protestant writers ‘to consolidate state and religion’.60 Important examples of this kind of work include Johann Carion’s Chronicle (1537), Andreas Osiander’s Conjectures of the Ende of the Worlde (1544), Melchior Ambach’s On the End of the World and the Coming of Antichrist (1550), Matthais Flacius Illyricus’ Magdeburg Centuries (1559–1574) and Catalogus testium veritatis (1556) – a writer known to Bale and Foxe – as well as the extremely influential commentary on Revelation written by Heinrich Bullinger (1557) and published in England in 1572.61 Here, Bullinger identifies the reign of the eighth-century Carolingian king Pepin as marking ‘The beginninges and preludes of the empire translated’.62 Similar arguments are made in the work of Protestant reformers such as John Bale’s equally important commentary The Image of Both Churches (1545) and The Pageant of Popes (1574), his friend John Foxe’s famous Acts and Monuments (multiple editions between 1563 and 1684), where, as one writer put it, ‘the whole glory and power of his [the Pope’s] Babilon, that is drunken with the blood of Saints and Martyrs, [is] vtterly defaced’, and the marginal exegetical notes to the popular Geneva Bible, especially Francis Junius’ commentary on Revelation, which was appended to all copies of this text from 1599.63 In fact, the point at which Junius alludes to Virgil’s Georgics in his commentary also marks the point that the Roman Empire is 60

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62 63

See also Alexandra Kess, Johann Sleidan and the Protestant Vision of History (Farnham: Ashgate, 2008), p. 1. For more on these texts, see Firth, The Apocalyptic Tradition, pp. 14–18, and Andrew Cunningham and Ole Peter Grell, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: Religion, War, Famine and Death in Reformation Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 49–50. Carion’s Chonicle was translated into English by Walter Lynne: The Thre Bokes of Cronicles . . . (London: S. Mierdman for Gwalter Lynne, 1550). See too Andreas Osiander, The Coniectures of the Ende of the Worlde . . . (Antwerp: S. Mierdman, 1548), and Bullinger, A Hvndred. On Bale, Foxe, and Flacius, see Elizabeth Evenden and Thomas S. Freeman, Religion and the Book in Early Modern England: The Making of Foxe’s ‘Book of Martyrs’ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), pp. 73–79. Bullinger, A Hvndred, p. 199. William Middleton, Papisto-Mastix, or the Protestants Religion Defended . . . (London: T.P., 1606), p. 196. The most influential edition of Foxe’s text is the 1570 edition (STC 2nd ed. 11223): The First Volume of the Ecclesiasticall History Contaynyng the Actes and Monumentes . . . (London: Iohn Daye, 1570). On the centrality of the Geneva Bible in early modern England, see Hannibal Hamlin, The Bible in Shakespeare (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), pp. 9–42.

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‘translated into another’ and its authority ‘that before was ciuill became Ecclesiastiall’.64 Given the popularity of this Bible in England, and of Foxe’s Acts and Monuments, it is reasonable to suppose that many were familiar with this imperially framed apocalyptic historiography.65 Certainly not all Protestants read Revelation in an imperial light. Nor does every exegete interpret this book in relation to temporal political events and figures. But this typological approach is widespread and well known during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. As Arthur Dent writes in his popular commentary on Revelation (1603): ‘we liue in an age wherein the most of the things prophecied in this booke are fulfilled’.66 David Norbrook notes that this way of reading ‘challenged the Augustinian distinction between temporal and spiritual spheres, and in so doing it gave renewed importance to the active political life’.67 This helps to explain the popularity and political capaciousness of many Protestant commentaries on Revelation. In addition to specific theological and philological exegeses inspired by the studia humanitatis, exegetes are able to relate the broad sweep of spiritual history to the contingent specifics of national and international politics. This includes the rise and fall of the major historical empires, the emergence of the spiritual and temporal authority of the papacy (seen as an ungodly usurpation), the persecution of the saints and martyrs under various wicked temporal rulers, the (re)emergence of the ‘true’ Protestant Church, its ongoing political travails, and its eventual triumph.68 As Richard Bauckham notes: ‘Whereas the medievals still located the end of the Roman Empire in the future, the Protestants placed it firmly in the past, holding that the papacy has usurped the powers of the Empire and subjected Europe to itself rather than to the Emperor.’69 John Napier’s A Plaine Discouery (1593) offers the reader a historiographical account of the rise and fall of empires that is folded into this providential narrative.70 Yet his grand sweep does not preclude specific comments on contemporary politics. Writing for instance of the 1588 Spanish Armada, Napier says: ‘God hath by the tempest of his 64 65

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Junius, ‘Commentary on Revelation’, chapter 17, verse 8, notes 13 and 15. Numerous texts – commentaries, sermons, polemic, and popular pamphlets – draw on these ideas. See Walsham, Providence, pp. 170, 225–280, and Woolf, The Social Circulation of the Past, pp. 58–60. Arthur Dent, The Ruine of Rome . . . (London: Simon Waterson and Cuthbert Burbie, 1603), sig. AA3r. Norbrook, Poetry and Politics, p. 34. On the studia humanitatis and politics, see Tuck, Philosophy and Government, pp. 1–64. 70 Bauckham, Tudor Apocalypse, p. 120. Napier, A Plaine Discouery, p. 8.

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windes, miraculouslie destroyed the huge and monstrous Antichristian flote, that came from Spaine.’71 Although an act of providence, God intervenes to destroy the enemies of the state. Protestant exegesis of Revelation serves eschatology, history, and the state alike. In The Image of Both Churches Bale reworks Augustine’s concept of the two cities. He draws a contrast between the ‘true Christian Church’ and ‘the proud church of hypocrites, the rose coloured whore, the paramoure of Antichrist, and the sinfull sinagoge of Sathan’, enabling his readers to distinguish between the two Churches and warning them of the affective deceits employed by the Roman Church.72 After detailing the ‘persecution, tyrannie, and murther’ of Christians under various Roman emperors, he interprets the opening of the fourth seal and the fourth horseman of the apocalypse in Revelation as the moment when Pope Boniface III (607 CE) usurps imperial temporal powers from the Byzantine Emperor Phocas. Although Protestant commentators differ on precisely when the papacy’s political emergence begins in earnest, Boniface’s reign is often singled out in the commentary tradition. For Bale, Boniface’s actions upset the balance between spiritual and temporal authority. As Popes gain in imperial authority so the people are enslaved: ‘Then were kynges deposed and made monkes, Emperours put downe & paryshe prestes set vp.’73 This shift also paves the way for the emergence of ‘Mahometes secte’. According to one popular argument, the Ottoman Empire is covertly working in the service of the papacy’s temporal ambitions.74 Bale is sceptical of the Roman Catholic Church. It is an anti-Christian counterfeit, a spiritual front for temporal ambition – here is reason of state writ large. This battle between the true and false Church resounds throughout Protestant polemics. The Whore of Babylon emblematises the latter Church, her cup representing ‘the false religion that she daielye minystreth’.75 To drink from her cup is to experience religious and affective disorientation. Like many other Protestant commentators, Bale rejects the Roman Catholic idea that the antichrist is a single figure still to emerge. He argues that there has been a succession of antichrists occupying the chair of St Peter, enemies of the

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Ibid., p. 183. Napier also discusses the St Bartholomew’s Day massacre in Paris at p. 184. John Bale, The Image of Both Churches . . . (London: John Daye, 1550), sig. A3v. See too Crawford Gribben, The Puritan Millennium: Literature and Theology 1550–1682 (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2000), pp. 26–56. Bale, The Image, sig. L2v. See also Ggg4v. Not all Protestant commentators linked the power of the papacy to the Muslim Ottoman Empire. See Bauckham, Tudor Apocalypse, pp. 93–99. See also Toenjes, Islam, the Turks. Bale, The Image, sig. X4v.

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true Church.76 The important point is not so much the individual Pope but the ecclesial institution that he represents. As a later commentator puts it, the Church in England is ‘the Church of Christ, and the Church of Rome the Church of Antichrist’.77 Only at the second coming can ‘the Romysh Pope and Mahomete’ be defeated and the ‘newe Hierusalem’ established.78 These apocalyptic and imperial foundations of the Reformed English Church are crucial.79 In the case of Foxe, his martyrological narrative of a true Church (re)emerging from the darkness of persecution gives a prophetic cast to Tertullian’s old adage that ‘sanguis martyrum est semen ecclesiae’.80 Foxe’s 1563 Preface to Acts and Monuments addresses Elizabeth as an imperial monarch and heir to Constantine.81 She is not simply a national monarch. This is significant because the implication is that, like a Roman Emperor or a Pope, the queen’s spiritual authority transcends national borders. Commentators such as Bale, Foxe, and John Jewel are so interested in the early Church fathers like Tertullian and Origen, the history of the early Church and its martyrs, and in Constantine, because they see parallels between that period and the European Reformation.82 They believe that their actions enable the restoration of the ‘Catholic’ Church’s apostolic purity by an imperially authorised monarch.83 If done properly in England, theological reformation will then enable the broader

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Christianson, Reformers and Babylon, p. 16. See too Bauckham, Tudor Apocalypse, pp. 91–112. There is no consensus on this subject, but virtually all Protestant commentators before the advent of Arminianism are in agreement as to the antichristian nature of the papacy as an institution, with many also identifying certain individuals, including various Popes and Roman Catholic monarchs, as antichrists. Thomas Williamson, The Sword of the Spirit to Smite in Pieces That Antichristian Goliah (London: Edward Griffin, 1613), }5v-r. Bale, The Image, sig. Hl8v; sig. Ll2v. See Andrew Hadfield, Literature, Politics, and National Identity: Reformation to Renaissance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 51–80, especially p. 63. See also Yates, Astraea, pp. 39–42. For the use of Tertullian’s adage in an apocalyptic commentary, see Sir William Herbert, A Letter Written by a True Christian Catholike, to a Romaine pretended Catholike (London: Iohn Windet, 1586), sig. F3v, and Dent, The Ruine of Rome, p. 65. See Dandelet, The Renaissance of Empire, pp. 255–259. On Foxe, apocalypse, and the ideological differences between the 1563 and 1570 editions of Acts and Monuments, see Thomas Betteridge, ‘From Prophetic to Apocalyptic: John Foxe and the Writing of History’, in John Foxe and the English Reformation, ed. David Loades (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1997), pp. 210–232. On the various editions of Acts and Monuments, see John N. King, Foxe’s Book of Martyrs and Early Modern Print Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), and Evenden and Freeman, Religion and the Book, esp. pp. 186–231, 278–319. Dandalet, The Renaissance of Empire, pp. 253–254.

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European restoration of ‘Christes vniversall Church’.84 English apocalyptic historiography commonly sees the Church in both a national and a pannational context.85 It is not a narrowly nationalistic discourse. This view underlies important international political questions that come into focus during the second half Elizabeth’s reign. Should England primarily be concerned with the defence of its own monarchy and Church? Or, as part of the Europe-wide reformed community, does it not also have political obligations beyond its borders? Clearly the story of the Reformation does not end with Luther or Charles V, and so during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, writing on the end of the world develops sophisticated ways of carrying on. Apocalyptic writing is double edged and adaptable. It allows for prophecies to be made, remade, and reinterpreted, for the end point to be identified and then pushed back, and for interventions to be made in the political realm.86 In Frank Kermode’s succinct phrase: ‘Apocalypse can be discomfited without being discredited.’87 Protestants can discuss the imminent end while continuing to deal with worldly matters. Such a deferral is also, as John Parker has argued, implicit in Christ’s own promises in the Gospels: ‘The beauty of Christ’s apocalyptic discourse arises . . . from the way the performance itself represents the nearest instance of the end it proclaims for the simple reason that it can make proclamations only so long as the end has not come.’88 Less abstractly, this is another reason why the idea of ‘history’ is so important in early modern Protestantism and why anti-Catholic and apocalyptic writing regularly reflects on contemporary political events.89 In anticipation of spiritual transcendence, the focus turns to the imminence of temporal politics. It also explains why the English Protestant commentary tradition encompasses a number of eschatological views, from covenant theology to 84

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John Foxe, The First Volume of . . . Actes and Monumentes . . . (London: Iohn Daye, 1576), }2r. This problematises David Armitage’s argument that early Elizabeth imperial ideology is Anglo-centric, insular, and defensive – he overlooks how writers like Foxe deliberately draw on national and European sources for their argument that imperial monarchy can institute a universal Church. See Armitage’s ‘The Elizabethan Idea of Empire’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 14, 2004, pp. 269–277. See Hadfield, Literature, Politics, and National Identity, pp. 63ff. On Foxe, see Bauckham, Tudor Apocalypse, pp. 73–88, and Firth, The Apocalyptic Tradition, pp. 69–110. See too Patrick Collinson, ‘Truth and Legend: The Veracity of John Foxe’s Book of Martyrs’, in his Elizabethans (London and New York: Hambledon and London, 2003), pp. 151–177. Such an impulse drives the ‘updating’ of the history of the martyrs in subsequent editions of Foxe’s Acts and Monuments well into the twentieth century. 88 Kermode, The Sense of an Ending, p. 8. Parker, The Aesthetics of Antichrist, p. 15. See Bernard Capp, ‘The Political Dimension of Apocalyptic Thought’, in The Apocalypse, ed. Patrides and Wittreich, pp. 93–124. See also Anthony Milton, ‘A Qualified Intolerance: The Limits and Ambiguities of Early Stuart Anti-Catholicism’, in Catholicism and Anti-Catholicism in Early Modern English Texts, ed. Arthur F. Marotti (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1999), p. 97.

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millenarianism.90 Writers from across the religious spectrum read and interpret Revelation and address a wide variety of audiences. The flexibility of this rhetoric and its political usefulness are two of the main reasons why dramatists use this language so often throughout the period.

II In his preface to Samson Agonistes (1671), John Milton writes, ‘The Apostle Paul himself thought it not unworthy to insert a verse of Euripides into the Text of Holy Scripture, 1 Cor. 15.33; and Paraeus commenting on the Revelation, divides the whole Book as a Tragedy, into Acts distinguished by Heavenly Harpings and Song between.’ Later he notes that the Church father Gregory of Nanzianus ‘thought it not unbeseeming’ to write a tragedy called ‘Christ suffering’.91 There are many medieval and early modern plays that explore ideas of renovatio ecclesiae and mundus.92 One of the finest surviving high medieval plays, the so-called Ludus de Antichristo (c. 1150), dramatises the arrival, triumph, and eventual defeat of antichrist. ‘Ludus’ can mean a play, a game, and a joke or jest: this connection between apocalypse and laughter is a significant one as we see in Chapter 2. While spiritual history is important to the author of the Ludus, he also allegorically examines the twelfth-century political struggles between Emperor Frederick I Barbarosa, various secular monarchs, and the papacy.93 The question of imperial power and who possesses it is at the heart of this play. The dramatic nature of divine judgement at the end of the world (as well as the odd jibe at ecclesiastical failings) is explored with great power in a number of later English medieval plays, such as the York and Chester Cycles, the latter of which includes an antichrist play.94 Some biblical characters in the Cycles such as Noah’s wife, Herod, and devils are presented as comic figures, though the laughter that they produce ranges 90

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Gribben, The Puritan Millennium. See too The Oxford Handbook of Eschatology, ed. Jerry Walls (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010). John Milton, Preface to Samson Agonistes, in Milton: Poems, ed. B.A. Wright (London: J.M. Dent, 1969), p. 439. Christopher Hill, Antichrist in Seventeenth-Century England (London: Oxford University Press, 1971), pp. 2–8. The Play of Anti-Christ, ed. and trans. J. Wright (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1967), pp. 24–40. See too Bauckham, Tudor Apocalypse, p. 92. Barbarossa’s struggles with Popes Adrian IV and Alexander III inform this play’s events. For the York Cycle Judgement, see Everyman and Medieval Miracle Plays, ed. A.C. Cawley (London: J.M. Dent, 1993). For the Chester Cycle, see The Play of Anti-Christ, from the Chester Cycle, ed. W.W. Greg (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1935). On the connections between medieval and early modern drama, especially Shakespeare, see Helen Cooper, Shakespeare and the Medieval World (London: Methuen, 2010).

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from jest to mockery to fear. In the York Judgement pageant, the elect and the damned are divided by the angels, judged by Christ, and cast into hell. Staging eschatology is central to medieval dramaturgy. It also informs Elizabethan and Jacobean drama, as in the final scenes of Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus (c. 1588–1592) or Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure (1604). Some Cycles continued to be performed well into the sixteenth century, and a number of early sixteenth century writers draw on these medieval dramatic models as they defend the Reformation on stage.95 In Thomas Kirchmeyer’s anti-papal and apocalyptic Latin drama Pammachius (1536–1538) we see morality forms combined with those of Classical comedy.96 The play features allegorical abstractions such as Truth alongside historical personations such as Pamachius and the apostles Peter and Paul.97 As John Hazel Smith notes, this play is important for a number of English Reformers who see drama as a useful way of proselytising their religion.98 Probably the earliest surviving anti-papal play written in English, John Bale’s King Johan (c. 1537–1540), as well as John Foxe’s later Latin Christus Triumphans (1556), are influenced by Kirchmeyer’s play. They also combine allegorical abstractions and historical personifications to explore the connections between temporal and spiritual history. An intriguing-sounding play – now lost – called De Meretrice Babylonica was written in 1548, possibly by King Edward VI. One text that almost certainly influences Foxe is Bernadino Ochino’s Edwardian dramatic dialogue A Tragoedie or Dialogue of the vniuste vsurped primacie of the Bishop of Rome (1549).99 Both Pammachius and

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On the survival of medieval cycle and ecclesiastical drama into the seventeenth century, see Paul Whitfield White, Drama and Religion in English Provincial Society, 1485–1660 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008). See too Andrew B. Crichton, ‘Kyng Johan and the Ludus de Antichristo as Moralities of the State’, The Sixteenth Century Journal, 4, 2, 1973, pp. 61–76. Kirchmeyer also went under the Latin surname Naogeorgus. A verse text by Kirchmeyer in 1570 that expresses similar ideas to Pamachius was published in London in 1570: The Popish Kingdome, or Reigne of Antichrist, Written in Latine verse . . ., trans. Barnabe Googe (London: Henrie Denham for Richard Watkins, 1570). A translation of the play, edited by C.C. Love, is available as part of the University of Toronto’s REED project: http://projects.chass.utoronto.ca/ rnlp/pammach.html. The combination of allegorical abstractions and historical personations (the latter often biblical or Roman) has its roots in medieval drama. See the Middle English play of Mary Magdalene and the Croxton Play of the Sacrament, both in Chief Pre-Shakespearean Dramas . . ., ed. Joseph Quincy Adams (London: George G. Harrap, 1924), pp. 225–262. Two Latin Comedies by John Foxe the Martyrologist: Titus et Gesippus. Christus Triumphans, ed. and trans. John Hazel Smith (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press for the Renaissance Society of America, 1973), pp. 42–44. See too Ardolino, Apocalypse and Armada, pp. 51–52. On Ochino, see Mike Rodman Jones, ‘The Tragical History of the Reformation: Edwardian, Marian, Shakespearean’, The Review of English Studies, 63, 262, 2012, pp. 743–763.

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Christus Triumphans were performed at Cambridge, the first in 1545, the second in 1562–1563.100 These texts can be categorised generically as comoedia apocalyptica, a phrase found in the dedicatory material and Prologue to Foxe’s play. Comoedia apocalyptica fuses the spiritual and the temporal, national and international concerns, through drama. Combining the Classical genres of Old and New Comedy with Christian allegory and typology, it invites readers to decode the play’s political aims. In Foxe’s Prologue, the poet asks for ‘silence of you, new spectators, while he brings onto the stage something new for you to see: to be precise, we bring you Christ Triumphant’.101 The play dramatises the ‘divine comedy’ of creation, fall, rebirth, and salvation, allowing for a generic intermingling of tragedy and comedy. As in Piers Plowman, Ecclesia is oppressed by the forces of antichrist. Satan promises to seduce men with ‘all manner of life’s pleasure, the Circean cup as it were’, to offer ‘painted glories, worldly empires, and distinguishing titles’, and to use Pseudamnus (the Pope) as his vehicle, enjoining him to bribe his way to the pontificate.102 Foxe’s play may not be funny in the way that Chaucer’s The Miller’s Tale or Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream are. But it does display a bawdy, satirical humour that is reminiscent of the medieval Cycles and that anticipates Jonson. For instance, the fall of Pseudamnus and Pornapolis (the Whore of Babylon) is depicted through the apodioxis found in earthy Lutheran polemic: ‘Men won’t be led by the nose much longer’, Pseudamnus is told; ‘they’re farting at your orders and shitting on your bulls. Your keys are worthless, but your thunder and triple crown are universally scorned, for they say Christ himself lives and that a body which sustains two heads is a monstrosity . . . they firmly believe that you are the Antichrist.’103 Africus and Europa argue for a war to restore the true Ecclesia, but she demurs: ‘Except by the coming of Christ, this beast cannot be destroyed.’104 It is notable that Ecclesia plays down the temporal militant argument, preferring instead the spiritual war of the second coming. For Foxe drama can advance an imperial apocalyptic interpretation of history, even if only as a mirror of the divine revelation promised

100

101 102

Two Latin Comedies, pp. 34, 43. For more on these plays, see Lily B. Campbell, Divine Poetry and Drama in Sixteenth-Century England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1959), pp. 153–153, 174–188, and John N. King, English Reformation Literature: The Tudor Origins of the Protestant Tradition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982), pp. 422–423. Two Latin Comedies, p. 229. See also Evenden and Freeman, Religion and the Book, p. 79. 103 104 Two Latin Comedies, p. 311. Ibid., p. 351. Ibid., p. 359.

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at the end of the world.105 At the play’s conclusion, Ecclesia dresses for a wedding, but the arrival of the bridegroom is not staged. The drama ends instead with an Epithalamion sung by the company calling on Christ to come: ‘Too long are the ages you have been away from the earth, oh saviour, while we your people groaned, mangled by wolves.’ Only then, ‘Babylon will fall, and the exalted power of kings: Christ alone will have power through all the world.’106 This could be a radical conclusion: all temporal authority will eventually be as nothing. Yet it also points to the limitations of the comoedia apcalyptica: ‘The Poet has shown what he could’ yet these can only ever be ‘marvellous preludes’.107 Drama can promise the apocalypse, it can prepare the spectators for the second coming. But it cannot ultimately stage the End. In the absence of the Messiah, we are left with the compromises and contingencies of worldly politics. The religious structure and dramatic rhetoric found in Christus Triumphans and, more importantly, repeated in commentaries, sermons, and numerous other writings influences the writing of drama. The Humanist practice of imitatio helps to disseminate key ideas: the translatio imperii and studii, opposition to Roman Catholicism, and the relationship between temporal and spiritual history are all exemplary and commonplace themes in Protestantism whose centrality is heightened by exegetical repetition.108 Whatever their personal faith, post-Reformation dramatists clearly understood dominant Protestant methods of reading these themes. Other sixteenth-century plays and interludes that can be considered in this light include Lewis Wager’s The Life and Repentance of Mary Magdalene (c. 1550–1562), William Wager’s The Longer Thou Livest the More Fool Thou Art (c. 1559–1568) and Enough Is as Good as a Feast (c. 1559–1570), lost texts such as Papists (1559) (perhaps performed at court) and Mock Mass (c. 1563–1565) (perhaps performed at Cambridge), texts such as King Darius (c. 1565), Henry Cheke’s Free Will (c. 1565–1572), New Custom (c. 1571), Nathaniel Woodes’ The Conflict of Conscience (c. 1570–1581), and the lost Pope Joan (c. 1580–1592). In some of these dramas the characters are solely allegorical. Wager’s The Longest 105

106 108

For more on the connections between early reform and drama, see Paul Whitfield White, Theatre and Reformation: Protestantism, Patronage and Playing in Tudor England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993). On Foxe and apocalyptic comedy, see Norbrook, Poetry and Politics, pp. 33–34. 107 Two Latin Comedies, p. 367. Ibid., p. 371. On exemplarity, see Timothy Hampton, Writing from History: The Rhetoric of Exemplarity in Renaissance Literature (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990). On the translatio imperii and literature, see Heather James, Shakespeare’s Troy: Drama, Politics, and the Translation of Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).

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Thou Livest contains abstractions such as Piety or Ignorance who invite audiences to perform a kind of religious decoding, encouraging them to reflect on Protestant doctrine. Many other plays and interludes follow Bale and Foxe in combining allegorical abstractions with historical characters. In New Custom the title page informs the reader that ‘Peruerse Doctrine’ is in fact ‘an olde Popish Priest’, and in Woodes’ play we see Philologus (lit. Learned Man) alongside his sons – the realistically named Gisbertus and Paphinitius – confronting abstractions such as Horror and Theologus.109 In the last two decades of the sixteenth century, dramatists develop the relationship between allegorical abstraction and historical personation: the former mode does not disappear but the latter comes to dominate representation in the public theatres.110 While it would be tempting to connect this shift to the general Reformist suspicion of allegory and a preference for a typological interpretation that is more obviously grounded in history, the first waves of reformist drama show us that the reality is more complex. As John Pendergast puts it: ‘Although many Reformation exegetes were unwilling to acknowledge the prior nature of allegory to typology, and the resulting ontological dependence of typology on allegory, many of the same exegetes made room at least rhetorically for allegory.’111 Typological reading, however historically situated it is, can never completely escape the pull of allegory. In the Reformed tradition apocalyptic history is, as we have seen, susceptible to a spiritual, even allegorical reading. The implications of this mode of reading have been underappreciated by scholars of early modern drama. An important play in this respect is Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus (A Text c. 1588–1592). It draws on Woodes’ A Conflict of Conscience and includes apocalyptic and anti-Catholic imagery. More than in Woodes’ play Faustus deals with the effects of doctrine on individuals who occupy a historically identifiable time and place. Think here of Faustus’ debates with Charles V or the famous (mis)reading of Scripture in Faustus’ first soliloquy. Whether done wilfully or not, his exegesis is closely bound up with contemporary Calvinist debates about election, 109

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A New Enterlude . . . Entitled Newe Custome . . . (London: William Howe for Abraham Veale, 1573), title page, and Nathaniel Woodes, An Excellent Newe Commedie Intituled, The Conflict of Conscience . . . (London: Richard Bradocke, 1581). On key shifts in dramatic form during the sixteenth century, see David Bevington, From ‘Mankind’ to Marlowe: Growth of Structure in the Popular Drama of Tudor England (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1962), as well as his Tudor Drama and Politics: A Critical Approach to Topical Meaning (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1968). John S. Pendergast, Religion, Allegory and Literacy in Early Modern England 1560–1640: The Control of the Word (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), p. 50.

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reprobation, and predestination.112 And yet the play does not completely forgo the allegorical implications of Faustus’ fate. Through abstractions such as the Seven Deadly Sins and the Good and Evil Angels, audiences are reminded that the allegorical and the typological are related modes of reading. Another important example is Kyd’s popular The Spanish Tragedy where a Classical abstraction (Revenge) and a Ghost (of Don Andrea) are embroiled in the political affairs of Spain and Portugal. The temporal machinations of Hieronimo, Lorenzo, Bel-Imperia, and Horatio are read through the dramaturgical frame occupied by Revenge and the Ghost, reminding the audience that politics also has a spiritual significance. The fact that both of these plays continue to be performed regularly throughout the seventeenth century is important. They keep a form of dramaturgy that has direct roots in the reformist theatrical and exegetical tradition in the public consciousness. They also help us to see why allegory retains a theatrical hold throughout the century. Most obviously in allegorical plays written at moments of political tension such as Dekker’s The Whore of Babylon (1605/6), Middleton’s A Game at Chess (1624), and William Bedloe’s The Excommunicated Priest (1679), there is a self-conscious return to older modes of reformist theatre. However, we also see allegorical figures appear intermittently in a number of other plays (such as Time at the beginning of act IV of Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale), in academic drama, in City Pageants, and in the Court Masque. Allegory is the exception rather than the rule in seventeenthcentury theatre. Yet even in a Protestant interpretative culture that prefers the typological mode, the use of allegory on stage reminds audiences that typological readings are themselves a form of allegory, one that invests imaginative or past events with present meaning. Even in the more historically situated drama of the seventeenth century, politics can have a temporal and spiritual significance. Of course the broader cultural assimilation of apocalyptic and antiCatholic discourse in the seventeenth century does not preclude scepticism towards, or even mockery of, that language. Some of Shakespeare’s early characters use anti-Catholic terms: King John’s tirades against the papal legate Pandolf are a case in point, as are Gloucester’s threats to the Bishop of Winchester in 1 Henry VI (c. 1591). Hotspur in 1 Henry IV (c. 1596) is a good example of a figure who uses religious and militaristic rhetoric but whose 112

See Adrian Streete, Protestantism and Drama in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 140–161.

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belligerence also leads to his downfall.113 In his later plays, Shakespeare presents these languages in a more detached, sceptical way. In Antony and Cleopatra (c. 1606) he explores how the Roman imperium problematically foreshadows the Christian imperium through numerous references to Revelation. And in Macbeth (c. 1606) – another play full of references to Revelation – he sceptically interrogates the Stuart evocation of the ‘imperial theme’ (I.iii.128). In Francis Beaumont’s The Knight of the Burning Pestle (1607), the language of the Spenserian would-be-knight Rafe is used to parody the inflated rhetoric of militant Protestantism, while also drawing attention to the potential for this group to mobilise independently of the state.114 As mentioned, Ben Jonson has little time for hotter forms of apocalypticism and anti-Catholic language. He regularly mocks the Puritans, most famously in The Alchemist (1610) when Ananias criticises Surly for his ‘profane / Lewd, superstitious, and idolatrous breeches’ and concludes: Avoid, Satan Thou art not of the light. That ruff of pride About thy neck betrays thee, and is the same With that, which the unclean birds, in seventy-seven, Were seen to prank it with on divers coasts. Thou look’st like Antichrist in that lewd hat. (IV.vii.49–55)115

For more extreme Puritans, the expression of anti-popery is a sign of election: this is precisely the logic that Jonson satirises here.116 In Bartholomew Fair (1614), Zeal-of-the-Land-Busy’s thunderous uses of apocalyptic and antiCatholic language are undermined because of his hypocrisy, as well as his inability to beat a puppet in debate.117 And in Volpone (1606) and The Alchemist Jonson derides the Hebraist and biblical commentator Hugh Broughton for his obscure style and apocalyptic enthusiasms. Despite the cultural centrality of apocalypticism and anti-popery, these ideas and their adherents can be exposed to Juvenalian scorn and Montaignean scepticism onstage.118 113

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For an argument that Shakespeare is generally sceptical of militant Protestantism, see Robin Headlam Wells, Shakespeare on Masculinity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). Francis Beaumont, The Knight of the Burning Pestle, ed. Sheldon P. Zitner (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004). Ben Jonson, The Alchemist and Other Plays, ed. Gordon Campbell (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995). Anthony Milton, Catholic and Reformed: The Roman and Protestant Churches in English Protestant Thought, 1600–1640 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. 36. Jonson, The Alchemist and Other Plays. See also IV.v of Middleton’s comedy A Trick to Catch the Old One where the malevolent and drunken Dampit is described lying in his bed ‘like the devil in chains, when he was bound for a thousand years’ (7–8), a reference to Revelation 22:1–2. A Trick to Catch the Old One, ed. Valerie

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Anti-Catholic and apocalyptic images are disseminated in a popular print culture underpinned by a providential view of the world.119 Despite Protestant iconophobia, images of papal corruption or the Whore of Babylon are found throughout contemporary visual culture. They reinforce popular anti-Catholic sentiment, offering people a way of understanding their country’s place in the world and defending their Church and state. It is unlikely that dramatists were unaware of this polemical visual imagery. One drama apparently indebted to contemporary visual depictions is Thomas Dekker’s The Whore of Babylon. Written in the aftermath of the Gunpowder Plot, the play was not a success on stage, perhaps because its apocalyptic reading of recent European history is overly didactic, owing more to the commentary tradition and allegorical poetry than to the demands of the theatre.120 Exploiting the political situation in 1605/6, Dekker represents his Whore verbally and visually. At the start of the play, the Empress of Babylon is shown as a spiritual and temporal ruler: Empresse of Babylon: her canopie supported by four Cardinals: two persons in Pontificall roabes on either hand, the one bearing a sword, the other the keies: before her three Kings crowned, behinde her Friers, &c.121

This tableau depicting imperial Roman Catholic authority over spiritual and temporal rulers is similar to contemporary visual depictions.122 Albrecht Dürer’s influential Apocalypse of 1498 shows the Whore of Babylon seducing kings and merchants. In early modern England similar imagery of the Whore is found in printed books, engravings, woodcuts, and broadsides.123 A striking example is found in Hugh Broughton’s A Concent of

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Wayne, in Thomas Middleton: The Collected Works, ed. Gary Taylor and John Lavagnino (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). During the Civil Wars and Republic, Jonson is an important model for royalists who want to satirise apocalyptic and anti-Catholic enthusiasm. Tessa Watt, Cheap Print and Popular Piety 1550–1640 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991); Walsham, Providence in Early Modern England; Clare Haynes, Pictures and Popery: Art and Religion in England, 1660–1760 (Aldershot: Ashgate 2006); and Malcolm Jones, The Print in Early Modern England: A Historical Oversight (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2010), pp. 133–159. See Susan E. Krantz, ‘Thomas Dekker’s Political Commentary in the Whore of Babylon’, Studies in English Literature, 35, 2, 1995, p. 280. Dekker also wrote the anti-Catholic verse and prose polemic The Double PP in 1606. Thomas Dekker, The Whore of Babylon, in The Dramatic Works of Thomas Dekker, vol. 2, ed. Fredson Bowers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1955), p. 501. See Krantz, ‘Thomas Dekker’s Political Commentary’. On the Gunpowder Plot, see Philip Caraman, Henry Garnet 1555–1606, and the Gunpowder Plot (London: Longman, 1964); Gary Wills, Witches and Jesuits: Shakespeare’s Macbeth (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995); and Antonia Fraser, The Gunpowder Plot: Terror and Faith in 1605 (London: Weidenfeld, 1996). The Empress calls her triple crown ‘imperial’, as does the king of Spain. Jones, The Print, p. 137. See more generally Watt, Cheap Print, pp. 88–90, 150–159.

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Scripture (1590) (Figure 1). Similar to contemporary Dutch and Italian depictions of prostitutes, we see the Whore with her breasts bared. She holds the cup of fornication in her right hand and the sceptre of power in her left as she tramples over Babylon. Dekker’s tableau evokes this kind of commonplace visual image. It also creates a problem for the viewer. As noted, reformed culture is generally wary of the image. Visual or theatrical representations of religious corruption must tread a fine line between iconophobia and iconophilia. Depicting the Whore in the public theatre reminds the audience of their common foe. Yet her presence, even as a negative representation, is dangerous: there is always the potential of seduction to the ‘false’ religion.124 More subtly drawn politique representations such as Pandolf in Shakespeare’s King John, Ferdinand and the Cardinal in John Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi (1614), or Ignatius Loyola in Thomas Middleton’s A Game at Chess keep the image of the manipulative Roman Catholic in the public consciousness. They may also evoke visual polemics.125 In The Duchess of Malfi images of wolfishness abound. Ferdinand suffers from lycanthropy and calls himself a ‘sheep-biter’ (Vi.ii.45), an image that taps into the polemical association of Roman Catholics as wolfish persecutors of sheep/martyrs: we may recall here Foxe’s depiction of Christ’s people ‘mangled by wolves’ in Christus Triumphans. Earlier, the Duchess appeals to heaven to ‘cease crowning martyrs / To punish them’ (IV.i.105).126 In the image (Figure 2) from the title page of an abridgement of John Foxe’s Acts and Monuments, the Pope is shown sacrificing sheep while martyrs burn in the background. Webster’s verbal allusions draw their authority from such allegorical visual representations. Polemical and dramatic imagery occupy a common ground, allowing theatrical audiences to encounter the enemy of the state. Like Macbeth, Barnabe Barnes’ The Devil’s Charter makes much of King James’ interest in necromancy. As we saw in the previous chapter, the play starts with the Pope’s pact with the Devil. Later the Pope conjures a king from hell who appears wearing an imperial crown, and in the final scene the Devil returns and, à la Faustus, drags Alexander off to hell. The 124

125

126

Unlike various Popes and Cardinals, the Whore of Babylon appears infrequently in extant early modern drama. Aside from Dekker’s play, she is most commonly depicted in anti-Catholic squibs and Pope burning pageants written during the Popish Plot of the 1670s–1680s. See Christina Marie Carlson, ‘The Rhetoric of Providence: Thomas Middleton’s A Game at Chess (1624) and Seventeenth-Century Political Engraving’, Renaissance Quarterly, 67, 4, 2014, pp. 1224–1264. John Webster, The Duchess of Malfi, ed. Leah Marcus (London: Bloomsbury, 2009).

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Figure 1

Hugh Broughton, A Concent of Scripture (London: Richard Watkins for Gabriell Simson and William White, 1590).

Image courtesy of University of Glasgow Library, Special Collections, S.M. 229, sig. F5r.

Antichrist and the Whore in Early Modern England

Figure 2

An Abridgement of the Booke of Acts and Monumentes of the Church . . . (London: SN, 1589), title page.

Image courtesy of University of Glasgow Library, Special Collections, BDF-f.6.

51

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association of the Pope with the Devil is another visual commonplace that informs such polemical dramatic representations.127 For instance, in a number of Pope-burning processions held during the Popish Plot, a devil is shown whispering to the Pontiff.128 These events, like the Gunpowder Plot ceremonies held annually on 5 November, memorialise popish atrocities past and present through a kind of recursive cultural imitatio. Often accompanied by violence, these rituals shore up the powerful national myth of popish subversion and Protestant perseverance. This is vividly depicted in one image (Figure 3), printed after the Great Fire of London in 1666, which shows the Jesuits, aided by the Pope, indulging in pyrotechnic subversion of the state. The insistent repetition of such images in visual and verbal culture shows us just how much Protestantism needs the papal scapegoat as a form of representation. As René Girard has shown, the scapegoat possesses a ‘harmful omnipotence’.129 Anti-papal iconography, burnings, processions, and plays offer a temporary outlet for laughter, mockery, anger, and violence. Yet the threat remains.130 The anti-Catholic scapegoat haunts the seventeenth-century cultural imagination. The performance of these symbolic rituals is a marker of national selfassertion and anxiety. Important work in the so-called new British history has shown how the political history of England in this period is intertwined with its major European neighbours, especially Spain, France, and Holland.131 In the words of John Morrill, ‘one of the unfulfilled dimensions of the new British history is to examine the way different parts of Britain draw differentially on parts of Europe’.132 Drama often mediates 127

128

129

130

131

132

Jones, The Print, pp. 133–134. See Nathan Johnstone, The Devil and Demonism in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006). See, for example, The Solemn Mock Procession of the Pope . . . (London: Nathaniel Ponder, Jonathan Wilkins and Samuel Lee, 1680). See also Joseph Monteyne, The Printed Image in Early Modern London: Urban Space, Visual Representation, and Social Exchange (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), pp. 155–214. René Girard, The Scapegoat, trans. Yvonne Freccero (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989), p. 43. See David Cressy, Bonfires and Bells: National Memory and the Protestant Calendar in Elizabethan and Stuart England (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1989). Tony Claydon, Europe and the Making of England, 1660–1760 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007); Thomas Cogswell, The Blessed Revolution: English Politics and the Coming of War, 1621–1624 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989); Paul Hammer, Elizabeth’s Wars: War, Government and Society in Tudor England, 1544–1604 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003); John Morrill, The Nature of the English Revolution (London and New York: Longman, 1993); Jonathan Scott, England’s Troubles: Seventeenth-Century English Political Instability in European Context (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); and Quentin Skinner, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, vols. 1 and 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). John Morrill, ‘Thinking about the New British History’, in British Political Thought in History, Literature and Theory, 1500–1800, ed. David Armitage (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), p. 46.

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Figure 3 Pyrotechnica Loyolana, Ignatian fire-works . . . (London: Printed for G.E., 1667), title page. Image courtesy of University of Glasgow Library, Special Collections, Robertson Bf 68-d.20.

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that relationship. We might think here of John Fletcher and Philip Massinger’s contentious play on the Arminian controversy in Holland, Sir John van Olden Barnavelt (1619), or Middleton’s scathing critique of international Roman Catholicism, A Game at Chess, both of which draw on polemics with a national and European focus. Spain and France are Roman Catholic countries, and the Protestant parts of the Netherlands finds itself under attack at various points from these two powers throughout the period. This helps to fuel English fears about overt or covert popish infiltration. Accusations of popish plots often go hand in hand with a critique of Spain or France’s political ambitions and a defence of England’s place within the Protestant international. The idea of a popish plot is first articulated in Elizabethan England in the aftermath of Pius V’s Bull of excommunication against the Queen, Regnans in Excelsis (1570).133 We see it emerge again at points throughout the seventeenth century, for instance after the Gunpowder Plot, during the marriage negotiations for James I’s children, with the emergence of Arminianism during the 1620s and ’30s, during the collapse of Charles I’s personal rule, before and after the Irish Rebellion of 1641, after the Great Fire of London, and most notoriously during the Popish Plot. This recurring perception that the Protestant state is susceptible to Roman Catholic assault is a mark of political vulnerability. This can be explained by reference to Jonathan Scott’s important work on anti-Catholicism: What one notices first about the seventeenth-century English fear of popery are its range and power: it spanned the century; it crossed all social boundaries; as a solvent of political loyalties it had no rivals. What one should notice next is that it is inexplicable in a purely national context. Within England in the seventeenth century catholics made up a tiny and declining proportion of the population: protestantism was secure, and was becoming more so. It was in Europe that the opposite was the case. Between 1590 and 1690 the geographical reach of protestantism shrank from one-half to one-fifth of the land area of the continent. The seventeenth century in Europe was the century of the victories of the counter-reformation, spearheaded by Spain in the first half of the century and France in the second. It was the century in which protestantism had to fight for its survival. This was the context for fear of popery in England, which found itself thrust into the front line against the European counter-reformation advance.134 133

134

See, for example, Heinrich Bullinger, A Confutation of the Popes Bull . . . (London: John Day, 1572), p. 38; Thomas Lupton, A Persuasion from Papistrie . . . (London: Henry Bynneman, 1581), pp. 19–20; and John Jewel, A View of a Seditious Bul (London: R. Newberrie and H. Bynneman, 1582), pp. 67–75. Scott, England’s Troubles, pp. 29–30.

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Understood in this context, the fear of popish plots makes sense. At such moments, bellicose self-assertion and defensive insecurity jostle for preeminence. Certainly, this did not stop people from reading Roman Catholic books, conversing with their recusant neighbours, or, in the case of a number of aristocrats, being influenced by developments in CounterReformation and Baroque art, and in the more ephemeral spheres of fashion and manners. The Grand Tour exposed many individuals of means to Roman Catholic culture.135 Moreover the expression of a more irenic attitude towards Roman Catholicism can be glimpsed haltingly at points during the period. Seventeenth-century anti-Catholicism is not a consistent discourse and this admixture is part of the story as other scholars have shown.136 Yet when anti-Catholic rhetoric takes on a more embattled tone and binary structure, it reveals the fault lines that run through the Protestant state.137 How is that state to be best defended? Some argue for an insular, isolationist approach. Some argue for a limited engagement with their European neighbours mainly through trade. For those on the militant wing of opinion, Protestantism has to be asserted with martial vigour at home and abroad. The relationship between the Stuart monarchs and militant Protestant ideology is rarely a comfortable one. Many were concerned for example, by James VI and I’s plans during the early years of his reign for a pan-European ecumenical Church council with the Pope at 135

136

137

See Chloe Chard, Pleasure and Guilt on the Grand Tour: Travel Writing and Imaginative Geography, 1600–1830 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999), and Claydon, Europe and the Making of England, pp. 13–66. Milton, ‘A Qualified Intolerance’, pp. 91–95; Questier, Catholicism and Community; and Alexandra Walsham, Church Papists: Catholicism, Conformity and Confessional Polemic in Early Modern England (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1993). On irenic approaches to Roman Catholicism, see Alexandra Walsham, Charitable Hatred: Tolerance and Intolerance in England, 1500–1700 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006), pp. 228–299. The scholarly literature on the connections between early modern Protestantism and national identity is large. But see Richard Helgerson, Forms of Nationhood: The Elizabethan Writing of England (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994); Hadfield, Literature, Politics, and National Identity; Clare McEachern, The Poetics of English Nationhood, 1590–1612 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); Protestantism and National Identity: Britain and Ireland, c. 1650–c. 1850, ed. Tony Claydon and Ian McBride (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); Michael J. Braddick, State Formation in Early Modern England c. 1550–1700 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); David J. Baker, Between Nations: Shakespeare, Spenser, Marvell and the Question of Britain (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001); David. J. Baker and Willy Maley, British Identities and English Renaissance Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002); Cathy Shrank, Writing the Nation in Reformation England, 1530–1580 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004); Wormersley, Divinity and State; and Patrick Collinson, This England: Essays on the English Nation and Commonwealth in the Sixteenth Century (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2011).

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its head: martial opposition to Roman Catholicism is preferable.138 Charles I and his court are regularly criticised for perceived popish leanings and arbitrary rule, as is the regime of his son Charles II. The concern expressed at various points throughout the century that the Stuart monarchs are unwilling or unable to uphold the Protestant religion, or to guarantee the liberty of subjects, finds its mirror image in the claim that the Pope is a universal monarch who should be opposed. In the words of one text published in 1621: ‘the Pope commandeth Kings, curseth them, and killeth them; to that end he hath his triple Crowne, and claymeth soueraignty over the Church, and commandeth the treasure of the World: whereas Peter had neither gold, nor siluer’.139 The Roman Church has fallen from its apostolic purity and is engaged in anti-Christian subversion. Only those of the militant Protestant persuasion fully realise the implications of this fact and are primed to put it right through force of arms, so the argument goes. Order can be guaranteed and liberty upheld only when kings command Popes. Or if, as it was suggested by some radicals during the Civil Wars, the king cannot uphold liberties because his rule is too close to popish tyranny, then he should be resisted. Certainly, this kind of argument has more of the whiff of fantasy about it, one that encapsulates the paranoia of the conspiracy theorist throughout the ages. Scott’s claim that Britain found itself ‘thrust into the front line against the European counter-reformation advance’ overstates the degree to which the state was ever likely to be able to maintain this line. As Jason White has persuasively argued in his recent study of Jacobean militant Protestantism: ‘That there was a serious disjuncture between what many thought Britain should be – a Protestant and Continental power – and what it was in reality – formidable enough to avoid invasion but prone to neutrality and failure – created serious tensions between the early Stuart kings and a significant portion of the body politic.’140 This is a key point. As we will see throughout this book, the militant internationalist perspective defines debate throughout the seventeenth century, even when it is a fantasy position. Moreover, militant rhetoric addresses some of the period’s most intractable political problems, especially the relationship between imperial monarchical authority and military power. Militant Protestantism returns again and again to ideas of imperial renovatio through force of arms. 138

139 140

See W.B. Patterson, King James VI and the Reunion of Christendom (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 31–74. R.W., A Looking-Glasse for Papists . . . (London: TS for Nathanial Newberry, 1621), p. 11. Jason White, Militant Protestantism and British Identity, 1603–1642 (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2012), p. 1.

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Yet many polemicists also know that the Stuart claim to imperial monarchy is largely ideological, not material. An Empire is fuelled by the spoils of military conflict abroad: on this front, the Stuarts fall short. Militant calls to arms are made for many reasons, but one repeated theme is that a true imperial monarchy can be established only through the defeat of international Roman Catholicism. In examining how this and related problems are explored in the theatre, this book explores the sheer variety of opinion to which drama is capable of giving voice.

III It is no longer necessary to offer exhaustive defences of the claim that early modern drama is deeply implicated in the religious and political debates of the period. Scholarship over the past thirty-five years has definitively proved the case. Yet there is still more that can be said. Richard Helgerson pointed out a number of years ago that ‘Apocalyptic was radically inclusive. Ordinary craftsmen and labourers, even women, had a significant part in it.’141 We can make a similar argument about anti-Catholicism. In some hands, these religious languages can be fundamentally conservative, a polemical reinstatement of the status quo; modern criticism is good at identifying this phenomenon. Yet in other hands, this rhetoric can also be surprisingly flexible and fleet, a way of blurring the boundaries between competing ideologies; criticism is less good at explaining this fact. As Helgerson implies, this language may also pose a subversive threat to established power and privilege. In a passage in his sermon on 2 Thessalonians 2:3, the Oxford academic John Rainoldes draws a contrast between the violent establishment of temporal rule and the papacy: Wherefore as Princes when they haue subdued any people, to shew that they are their gouenours, are wont to change their customes, alter their state, abrogate their ancient laws & and appoint new at their pleasure: so the Pope herein sheweth himself as God, in that occupying the place in Gods church he taketh vpon him to establish and make new and strange ordinances at his good pleasure142

This is an argument by analogy, but it also shows that early modern monarchies of whatever religious stripe are often uncomfortable mirror images of each other. Though Rainoldes is no firebrand, there is a 141 142

Helgerson, Forms of Nationhood, p. 11. John Rainoldes, The Discovery of the Man of Sinne . . . (Oxford: Ioseph Barnes, 1614), p. 11. Rainoldes uses the language of reason of state, calling the Pope’s actions a kind of ’necessity.

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radical core to apocalypticism that is subversive of political authority and that, at various times throughout the century, is accessed by a number of people. In a society where temporal politics is organised hierarchically, and where for most subjects individual liberty is invariably circumscribed, the ‘promis’d end’ (V.iii.262), as Kent puts it in King Lear, is ultimately the promise of a transcendent new order that will reduce those temporal hierarchies to nothing. Some make more of this promise than others. Yet as Martin Luther pointed out at the inception of the Reformation, Christian liberty is a fundamentally nonhierarchical and horizontal thing, a gift that ushers in the levelling inheritance of grace.143 At the end of the world, the only true liberty is that extended to those who will be saved: ‘the happie renewing of the whole world shalbe, when Christ the redeemer of the electe shall once appeare’.144 Today we might view such thinking as a spiritual reinstatement of hierarchy, the very antithesis of what should properly be called freedom. Are the damned not like those temporal slaves who are deprived of their liberty? As the texts examined in this book make clear, this is not how most of our early modern forebears saw the matter. True liberty and freedom is a spiritual inheritance and will come only when the false church is defeated and when Christ comes to judge the quick and the dead. If such thinking paradoxically enables the halting emergence of more recognisably modern understandings of liberty, then our broader task here is to try to understand why it is that during the seventeenth century, the dramatic language of apocalypticism and antiCatholicism can inspire both stasis and revolution alike. 143

144

See Martin Luther, The Freedom of a Christian in Martin Luther’s Basic Theological Writings, ed. Timothy F. Lull (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1989). See too Quentin Skinner, Liberty before Liberalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). Fulke, Praelections, sig. S6v.

chapter 2

‘What News from Babylon?’ Marston’s The Dutch Courtesan (1605) and the Spanish Peace

I This chapter argues that John Marston’s comedy The Dutch Courtesan (1605) offers a subtle critique of foreign policy in the first years of James VI and I’s reign in England. First, I outline the contexts informing the peace Treaty of London signed with Spain in 1605 and explore what this means for Anglo-Dutch relations in a range of texts. In the final section of the chapter, I look at Marston’s use of sexual language, especially the play’s discussion of free will and determinism. I suggest that Freevill and Malhereux’s relationship with the eponymous Whore, Franceschina, reflects culturally conflicted attitudes towards ‘the Dutch’. Her depiction is informed by popular constructions of the Whore of Babylon but to nonpolemical ends. The play uses imagery associated with this biblical figure as part of the representation of character. Unlike Dekker’s Empress of Babylon, Franceschina is not an allegorical representation, nor is The Dutch Courtesan an allegorical play. Nevertheless, by strategically associating the Dutch Franceschina with the Whore of Babylon at various points, Marston suggests to his audience that aspects of her representation have a broader political significance. Critics have done good work on the play’s sexual, economic, and intertextual contexts. Jean Howard argues that the drama reflects contemporary anxieties about the presence of Dutch exiles and other foreigners in London and the dilution of national identity. Garrett Sullivan examines the close connection between economic and sexual trade in the play, Mark Burnett finds Marston dramatising a fluid social world through the figure of the prostitute, while Marjorie Rubright draws on political context to argue that national and ethic differences are blurred throughout the play. From a different perspective, David Pascoe explores the idea of ‘translation’, while Richard Scarr looks at how multiple puns and other

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rhetorical tricks are central to Marston’s theatrically knowing style.1 Some of this work touches productively on the political aspects of the drama. But in what follows, I reconsider the play’s political contexts, especially in relation to the Treaty of London. The Dutch Courtesan shows how playwrights use sexual, anti-Catholic, and apocalyptic rhetoric in a comedic and nondogmatic way to intervene in the public sphere.

II Following the peaceful accession of the new king in March 1603, attention turned to the state’s relationship with Spain. Would peace be sought with the Spanish? Or would James and his government continue the Elizabethan policy of opposition to the Hapsburg Empire?2 What might either outcome mean for the Dutch, who had suffered under the Spanish yoke for a number of years? Popular attitudes and tensions can be seen in these verses from a short poem written to celebrate the king’s accession: Be glad thou Scottish Ile, thy king A mightie Monarch is become, For faire Eliza now is dead, And he enioyes her Regall roome. The beames of his reflecting eye, Shall beate vpon thy Northren coast, And if at neede thou call his aide, Thy King will ride to thee in poast. Let Spaine spight England still, Infanta Fume, proud Pope with furie swell, Their boasting threates are windie wordes, Their deedes are bred in damned hell.

1

2

See Jean Howard, ‘Mastering Difference in The Dutch Courtesan’, Shakespeare Studies, 24, 1996, pp. 105–117; Garrett A. Sullivan, Jr., ‘“All things come into commerce”: Women, Household Labor, and the Spaces of Marston’s the Dutch Courtesan’, Renaissance Drama, 27, 1996, pp. 19–46; Mark Thornton Burnett, ‘Calling “Things by Their Right Names”: Troping Prostitution, Politics and The Dutch Courtesan’, in Renaissance Configurations: Voices/Bodies/Spaces, 1580–1690, ed. Gordon McMullan (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1998), pp. 171–188; Richard Scarr, ‘Insatiate Punning in Marston’s Courtesan Plays’, in The Drama of John Marston: Critical Re-Visions, ed. T.H. Wharton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 82–99; David Pascoe, ‘The Dutch Courtesan and the Profits of Translation’, in The Drama of John Marston: ed. Wharton, pp. 162–180; and Marjorie Rubright, ‘“Going Dutch in London City Comedy”: Economies of Sexual and Sacred Exchange in John Marston’s The Dutch Courtesan (1605)’, ELR, 40, 1, 2010, pp. 88–112. See Alexandra Gajda, ‘Debating War and Peace in Late Elizabethan England’, The Historical Journal, 54, 2, 2009, pp. 851–878.

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The hellish brood of damned crue, Whom Babel-Rome with poyson fed, Did often plot, (but God said no) To cut Elizaes vitall thred. But in despight of Pope and Spaine, Her houred glasse did all out runne, And she gan quietly fall on sleepe In peace, when her due time was come.3

The poem uses the language of Elizabethan militant Protestantism to argue that the Roman Catholic international must continue to be opposed.4 No one knew whether such rhetoric would still be heard under the new regime. James’ attitude towards the ‘British’ nations that he now governed, and to the European continent, was rather different to his predecessor. His pacific inclinations were well known. Indeed, the poem draws on Isaiah 9:6 by referring to the king as a ‘Prince of Peace’. While the sentiment expressed in the lines ‘Let frutefull peace, and plentie great, / In English, Scottish Ile be rife’ is probably an expression of relief that the accession has passed off smoothly, there is a palpable sense of a new political order being forged.5 Under the new king, England’s relationship with Scotland, Ireland, and Wales, and with its European neighbours, especially Spain the main Roman Catholic power, would be rethought.6 In order to understand why this is so, we need to return to some of the major political conflicts of early sixteenth-century Europe. This contextualisation is necessary not only for my discussion of Marston’s play but also for the subsequent chapters of this book. The roots of these conflicts lay in the imperial ambitions of Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor and King of Spain.7 Charles inherited large parts of the Low Countries in the second decade of the sixteenth century and he extended his empire rapidly throughout Europe and the Americas. England became ever more closely

3 4

5 6

7

Englands Wedding Garment . . . (London: Thomas Pavier, 1603), sigs. A4r–B1v. On the transition from Elizabeth to James and literary culture, see Curtis Perry, The Making of Jacobean Culture: James I and the Renegotiation of Elizabethan Literary Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). Englands Wedding Garment, sig. B3r. On James’ accession and the British archipelago, see John Kerrigan, Archipelagic English: Literature, History, and Politics 1603–1707 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). Charles also ruled Sicily and Naples. On the Spanish empire, see Geoffrey Parker, Success Is Never Final: Empire, War, and Faith in Early Modern Europe (New York: Basic Books, 2002). See too Jonathan I. Israel, The Dutch Republic: Its Rise, Greatness, and Fall 1477–1806 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), and Thomas James Dandelet, The Renaissance of Empire in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), pp. 74–198.

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involved in Hapsburg and Spanish politics throughout the sixteenth century and her sporadic colonial endeavours were one attempt to match Spanish supremacy.8 Henry VIII was both inspired and infuriated by Charles’ imperial expansion. Henry’s theory of sovereignty draws on similar neo-Roman, imperial justifications of authority to those of the Hapsburgs and is often described as ‘caesaro-papist’.9 Yet England’s split from Rome creates an abiding problem: how should Protestant imperial monarchical authority assert itself nationally and internationally in relation to the Roman Church? Can religious and political considerations always be reconciled, or should temporal considerations trump spiritual concerns? As confessional divisions harden throughout Europe in the aftermath of the Reformation, and as expressions of nationhood become ever more closely bound up with expressions of religious identity, these questions drive polemical disputation in England. Scholars have shown how polemical arguments for a Hapsburg ‘Universal monarchy’ are inspired by ideas of apocalyptic renovatio. Charles is associated with his namesake Charlemagne and is often depicted in literature, polemic, and art as the last world emperor.10 His son Philip’s ‘messianic vision’ is just as assertive. His marriage to Mary Tudor is part of that project, as is his subsequent marriage to Isabel, daughter of Henri II of France.11 Philip saw the Hapsburgs as the descendants of Christ and Aeneas and as the last world monarchy.12 Elizabeth I’s depictions as an imperial monarch are partly shaped in response to Philip.13 In popular English polemics against Spain the imperial idea is inverted. Spain is condemned as a usurping ‘universal monarchy’ and Philip’s messianic vision is undercut by associating him with biblical tyrants like Nimrod.14 Philip and Charles often found themselves in conflict with the papacy. 8

On Spain, England, empire, and mimesis, see Barbara Fuchs, The Poetics of Piracy: Emulating Spain in English Literature (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013), pp. 13–38. See also Eric Griffin, English Renaissance Drama and the Specter of Spain: Ethnopoetics and Empire (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009). 9 See John Guy, Tudor England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), pp. 121–122, 132–136, and David Armitage, ‘The Elizabethan Idea of Empire’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 14, 2004, p. 272. 10 See Marie Tanner, The Last Descendants of Aeneas: The Hapsburgs and the Mythic Image of the Emperor (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), pp. 119–145. 11 Frances Yates, Astraea: The Imperial Theme in the Sixteenth Century (London: Pimlico, 1993), pp. 1–28, and Parker, Success Is Never Final, pp. 29–33. See also Geoffrey Parker, Imprudent King: A New Life of Philip II (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2014), pp. 91–99. 12 Tanner, The Last Descendants, p. 145, and Dandelet, The Renaissance of Empire, pp. 138–198. 13 See Yates, Astraea, pp. 29–87; Guy, Tudor England, pp. 371–378; and Griffin, English Renaissance Drama, p. 18. 14 G.B., A Fig for the Spaniard . . . (London: Iohn Woolfe, 1591), sig. B1r–B2r.

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Paul III and Charles clashed over territorial claims in Italy and both he and Philip were excommunicated by the anti-Spanish Pope Paul IV in 1556 for similar reasons: this Pope even declared war on the emperor and monarch.15 Philip adopted a less belligerent policy towards the papacy hereafter, but he still periodically attempted to block the election of hostile papal candidates by the threat of force, economic sanctions, or bribery.16 Philip retained the right to dismiss papal decisions that he did not agree with and he tried to exclude papal envoys from his territories lest they interfere with his imperium.17 Although he was committed to the Roman Catholic faith, his main political aim was to maintain and extend his territories.18 Hapsburg monarchical and religious aims are thus often in tension, something that is well understood in early modern England.19 When Charles renounced his crowns in 1556, he passed control of his lands to Philip. However, Charles could not bequeath the title of Holy Roman Emperor.20 This position was elected and it went to Philip’s uncle Ferdinand. Somewhat paradoxically, Philip was an imperial monarch but not an emperor. The political implications of this shift were keenly felt: ‘For the rest of the sixteenth century, Ferdinand and his successors forbade the passage of Spanish troops through Germany in case it upset the delicate equilibrium between Catholics and Protestants there.’21 Philip not only had to find another route to his territories in the Low Countries. By the 1560s he also had to deal with the rebellion of the Protestant Dutch against their overlords. If Spain was oppressing Protestants in the Low Countries, then surely that was also a matter of concern for their co-religionists in England? This internationalist view of religion goes to the heart of early modern militant Protestantism.22 England’s dispute with Spain over the Protestant territories in the Low Countries during Elizabeth’s reign combines political self-assertion 15

16 17 19

20

21 22

Geoffrey Parker, The Grand Strategy of Philip II (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1998), p. 80. Ibid., pp. 80–81. See also Parker, Imprudent King, pp. 50–51, 91. 18 Parker, Imprudent King, pp. 90–91. Ibid., 32.33; p. 83. See, for example, A Fig for the Spaniard, sig. D1v-r, and Vasco Figueiro, The Spaniards Monarchie and Leaguers Olygarchie Layd Open . . . (London: Richard Field for Iohn Harison, 1592), esp. sig. B1v. On Elizabethan anti-Spanish writing, see Elizabeth Evenden-Kenyon, ‘Anglo-Portuguese Relations and Anti-Spanish Propaganda, c. 1570–1640’ (unpublished paper, 2014), pp. 15–23. On the relative political weakness of the early modern Holy Roman Empire, see Dandelet, The Renaissance of Empire, pp. 76–79. Geoffrey Parker, Empire, War and Faith in Early Modern Europe (London: Allen Lane, 2002), p. 128. Jason White, Militant Protestantism and British Identity, 1603–1642 (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2012), pp. 4–10.

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and defensiveness.23 As Blair Worden notes, ‘The Elizabethan regime was rarely free of a sense of precariousness and peril.’24 This problem comes into focus during the 1560s when the Dutch Protestants rebelled against their Hapsburg masters. There followed a brutal repression by Phillip II’s forces led by the Duke of Alva, ‘unswerving, even fanatical, in his detestation of Protestant heresy’.25 While many stayed to fight, thousands of Dutch Protestants went into exile. The early history of the Reformation seemed to be repeating itself. In Tudor England, the experience of religious diaspora and persecution contributed strongly to the development of religious identity. We need only think of Protestant exiles such as John Ponet, Christopher Goodman, John Knox, and John Aylmer, or of Roman Catholics such as Edmund Campion and Robert Southwell, all of whose lives are shaped by exile or martyrdom. After Elizabeth’s establishment of the Protestant Church in England in 1559, England became, in theory at least, a place of refuge for persecuted Protestants on the European continent. The Elizabethan Church is a national and an international institution, even if it is not always clear how best to maintain the balance between these two poles. Invariably there is compromise and tension as exiles from the Low Countries (and elsewhere) are accommodated in England during the latter half of the sixteenth century.26 Do Elizabeth’s responsibilities as imperial monarch extend beyond her borders to persecuted co-religionists? By granting Dutch refugees sanctuary and freedom of worship from the late 1560s, the English were de facto opposing Spanish policy in the Netherlands. The Northern Rebellion of 1569 showed the dangers that a Roman Catholic fifth column might pose. With Mary, Queen of Scots, as its titular head, backed by the Roman Catholic nobility and underpinned by the threat of French political and military support, this was potentially a potent force. Indeed, Dekker dramatises this very threat in The Whore of Babylon (1605/6). Many militant Protestants urged 23

24

25

26

See Wallace T. MacCaffrey, Elizabeth I: War and Politics 1588–1603 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992); Paul Hammer, Elizabeth’s Wars: War, Government and Society in Tudor England, 1544–1604 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003); and Tudor England and Its Neighbours, ed. Susan Doran and Glenn Richardson (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005). Blair Worden, The Sound of Virtue: Philip Sidney’s Arcadia and Elizabethan Politics (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1996), p. 71. For more on the political context of the 1570s, ’80s and ’90s, see pp. 71–124. Israel, The Dutch Republic, p. 155 – for an account of Alva’s treatment of the Dutch, see pp. 155–168. See too Geoffrey Parker, The Dutch Revolt (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1979). Alva is often mentioned in apocalyptic commentaries. See James (Giacopo) Brocardo, The Reuelation of Saint Iohn . . . trans. James Sanford, preface by Stephen Batman (London: Thomas Marsh, 1582), fol. 98a. Andrew Pettegree, Foreign Protestant Communities in Sixteenth-Century London (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986).

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a strong response to the Scottish threat.27 So when the Dutch rebellion was rejoined in the late 1570s under William of Orange, English support for the Dutch was as much a matter of religious self-preservation as it was national self-assertion.28 There was a degree of support for the Dutch amongst London congregations during this period.29 With the fall of Antwerp to the Duke of Parma in 1585, however, it became clear that this support was unlikely to result in the reestablishment of the Dutch republic.30 From the 1580s until the end of Elizabeth’s reign, the Protestant part of the Low Countries is the crucible within which the divergent aims of Roman Catholic and Protestant Europe are played out.31 Aside from a shared religious outlook, Elizabethan England also had a number of important trading links with the Low Countries. Many of the more militantly minded courtiers such as Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, and Sir Philip Sidney were economically invested in these links.32 They saw the conflict in the Netherlands as a chance to counter Hapsburg imperial power and to make money. The death of the Portuguese king Sebastian in 1578 and Philip’s annexation of that country in 1580 caused consternation in England. The activities of Francis Drake (who viewed Spain as the antichrist) and other English privateers and pirates during the 1580s, as well as the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots in 1587, provoked Philip into undertaking the 1588 Spanish Armada.33 For men like Drake and Leicester this was a battle against the great antichrist in Rome. Whatever the political understanding in England of differences in policy between Madrid and Rome, this religious imperative is even more powerful. In his commentary on Revelation published in 1582, Giacopo Brocardo sees the wars in the Low Countries as papal ambition backed by Spanish might. He calls the Pope an antichristian tyrant and is particularly scathing of the Inquisition, noting that ‘In Flaunders the Spanyshe Duke of Alua minister of the Inquisition hath left to the posterity a miserable history of extreme cruelty.’34 This sentiment is important since Brocardo’s commentary was 27 28

29 30 32

33

34

Worden, The Sound of Virtue, pp. 74–76. This outline of the conflict in the Low Countries is indebted to Diarmaid MacCulloch, Reformation: Europe’s House Divided, 1490–1700 (London and New York: Penguin, 2004), pp. 309–313, 367–370. Pettegree, Foreign Protestant Communities, p. 253; see more generally pp. 215–261. 31 Ibid., p. 260. Worden, The Sound of Virtue, pp. 77–82. See Aaron Kitch, Political Economy and the States of Literature in Early Modern England (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009), pp. 37–44. J.N. Hillgarth, The Mirror of Spain, 1500–1700: The Formation of a Myth (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000), pp. 379–383. See also Parker, Imprudent King, p. 280. Brocardo, The Reuelation, fol. 98a.

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translated by James Sandford and dedicated to the Earl of Leicester.35 Numerous Elizabethan poets explore the links between imperial monarchy, militant ideology, and apocalypticism, most notably Spenser.36 Many militants see their actions as contributing to the imminent fall of the popish antichrist and so fulfilling the prophecies that are central to the Reformation’s ideological modus operandi.37 Numerous plays written during the 1580s and ’90s refer to the Spanish, the Dutch, and the Portuguese.38 Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy (c. 1587–1592) and George Peele’s The Battle of Alcazar (1589), which deals with Sebastian, combine criticisms of Spanish imperial power towards Portugal with an apocalyptic rhetoric that taps into the tradition established by Bale, Foxe, and Jewel.39 However, more conciliatory views are also expressed.40 Although John Lyly’s Midas (c. 1589–1590) has Philip II in its sights, the play’s politics suggest reconciliation rather than conflict with Spain. In the final act, Midas listens to the Oracle and renounces his imperial ambition and warmongering: ‘Though my hand be gold, yet I must not think to span over the main ocean’ (V.iii.108–109). He says that his realm ‘shall be governed by gods, not men, lest the gods make beasts of men. So my council of war shall not make conquests in their own conceits, nor my counsellors in peace make me poor, to enrich themselves. So blessed be Apollo, quiet be Lesbos, happy be Midas!’ (V.iii.1127–1132).41 Although somewhat idealised, a more rounded view of Spain’s political position is 35

36

37

38

39

40 41

See Richard Baukham, Tudor Apocalypse: Sixteenth Century Apocalypticism, Millenarianism and the English Reformation: From John Bale to John Foxe and Thomas Brightman (Abingdon: Sutton Courtenay Press, 1978), pp. 218–221. Richard Bancroft preached a sermon in 1588 denouncing Brocardo and other ‘false prophets’ for speculating about the imminent end times: A Sermon Preached at Paules Crosse . . . (London: E.B. for Gregorie Seton, 1588), sig. B4r. Another influential apocalyptic text in the development of militant ideology is Jean Morel’s De Ecclesia Dei ab Antichristo liberanda (1589) – see Bauckham, Tudor Apocalypse, p. 176. See Norbrook, Poetry and Politics, especially chapters 3, 4, and 5, and Yates, Astraea, pp. 59–87. See also Worden, The Sound of Virtue. On militant Protestantism and theatre, see Julia Gasper, The Dragon and the Dove: The Plays of Thomas Dekker (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), pp. 2–10. On popular apocalypticism, see Alexandra Walsham, Providence in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 310–315. Paul Christianson, Reformers and Babylon: English Apocalyptic Visions from the Reformation to the Civil War (Toronto and London: University of Toronto Press, 1978), p. 5. See Griffin, English Renaissance Drama; his article ‘“Spain Is Portugal/And Portugal Is Spain”: Transnational Attraction in the Stukeley Plays and The Spanish Tragedy’, Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies, 10, 1, 2010, pp. 95–116; and Fuchs, The Poetics of Piracy. See Frank Ardolino, Thomas Kyd’s Mystery Play: Myth and Ritual in The Spanish Tragedy (New York and Bern: Peter Lang, 1985), and Nina Taunton, 1590s Drama and Militarism: Portrayals of War in Marlowe, Chapman and Shakespeare’s Henry V (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001). For more on Hispanophilia, see Griffin, English Renaissance Drama, pp. 17–19. John Lyly, Galathea and Midas, ed. Anne Begor Lancashire (London: Edward Arnold, 1970).

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offered here. Marston’s The Dutch Courtesan follows in this conciliatory vein but introduces a greater note of scepticism. The play clearly understands the militant and moderate positions. Through his depiction of the Dutch whore Franceschina, Marston suggests that any accommodation between militant and moderate positions is only ever likely to be temporary. By agreeing to send troops to the Netherlands under the command of Leicester in 1585, Elizabeth foregrounded the connection between foreign policy and religious ideology. For the militants, this link is crucial. Their brand of apocalypticism is rarely a narrowly nationalistic language, stressing instead an internationalist perspective on ecclesiology, eschatology, and politics.42 For more moderate shades of opinion, the link between politics and religion is more uneasy. Scepticism towards militarism tends to be expressed more obliquely during these years.43 In 1590 Thomas Fenne published a learned work containing a section entitled ‘the lamentable ruines which attend on Warre: also, what politique Stratagemes haue been vsed in times past: necessarie for these our dangerous daies’. Later on, Fenne argues that ‘Warre is not so incident to man, but that by wisedome it may easely be prevented.’44 Ironically enough, the Queen often seemed to agree with this sentiment. As one scholar writes of the English intervention in the Netherlands: ‘The expedition became a Protestant crusade; the queen nearly revoked Leicester’s appointment when she realised the radicalism of many of the followers he had chosen . . . [T]heir religious zeal [also] made them rather suspect to conservatives at home.’45 The fact that Elizabeth did not call Leicester back is revealing. It shows that Julia Gasper’s claim that ‘both Queen Elizabeth and King James distrusted militant Protestantism’ is too stark an assessment.46 In fact both monarchs

42

43

44 45

46

See, for example, Simon Harward, The Solace for the Soldier and Saylour . . . (London: Thomas Orwin, 1592), which uses anti-papal language to attack those at home who criticise soldiers fighting abroad in England’s service. Harward also calls Philip the Pope’s vassal yet shows a good understanding of the political pressures that he faces – sig. A3r–B2r; F1r–F2r. See too Roger Hackett’s pro-war, anti-papal, and anti-Spanish A Sermon Needful for Theese Times . . . (Oxford: Ioseph Barnes, 1591), and Stephen Gosson’s similar sermon The Trumpet of Warre . . . (London: V.S. for I.O., 1598). See Worden, The Sound of Virtue, p. 81. For a later view of war that draws on the sceptical tradition of Erasmus and More, see Fulke Greville, A Treatise of Warres, in Poems and Dramas of Fulke Greville First Lord Brooke, vol. 1, ed. Geoffrey Bullough (Edinburgh and London: Oliver and Boyd, 1938), pp. 214–230. Thomas Fenne, Fennes Fruits . . . (London: Richard Oliffe, 1590), title page, p. 54. Norbrook, Poetry and Politics, p. 96. See too Christopher Tyerman, England and the Crusades, 1095–1588 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988). Gasper, The Dragon and the Dove, p. 4.

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were capable of harnessing militant ideology when necessary, yet also of modifying that support when it suited their political ends. For instance Elizabeth was willing to encourage Essex at various points during the 1590s but also to withdraw her support when his actions damaged her political reputation or her exchequer.47 As her rule drew to a close, the queen was increasingly inclined towards peace with Spain but she was also clear that this should not preclude English support for the Dutch. Indeed, Robert Cecil wrote in March 1602 that ‘her Majesty meaneth not to abandon the assistance of the Low Countries’.48 During the last two decades of Elizabeth’s reign, support for militant Protestantism is especially strong among the urban merchant classes, the Puritans, and the courtly privateers who had a vested interest in challenging Spain’s maritime dominance. Paul Hammer calls the activities of some of these groups ‘Anti-Catholic piracy’ and shows how this ‘international community of Protestant adventurers not only constituted a lobby which had strong political influence in England, but also encouraged intrusions into the New World, which had been reserved exclusively for Spain and Portugal by papal treaty of 1494’.49 Trade to and from the Low Countries (and to Spain) involved all kinds of uncomfortable compromises. Leicester’s military failure in the Netherlands was a setback for the militants. Yet it did not prevent English troops fighting in the contested Low Countries well into the 1600s, nor English traders, scholars, or travellers going to Roman Catholic territories.50 Simon Harward’s The Solace for the Souldier and Saylor (1592) defends English militarism abroad and attacks Spanish policy: this monster of Spaine is neuer satisfied: Nauarre, Naples, the Indies, will not serue, but he must gripe in also the Low countries, and deuoure vp all their auncient liberties. The Lowe countries will not content him, but he must plucke in also Portugall. Portugall is nothing to him vnles he may also obtaine France, and then also he gapeth for England.51

47

48

49 50

51

See Paul E.J. Hammer, The Polarization of Elizabethan Politics: The Political Career of Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, 1585–1597 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). On the state, finance, and militarism, see Michael J. Braddick, State Formation in Early Modern England c. 1550–1700, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 177–258. Letters from Sir Robert Cecil to Sir George Carew, ed. John Maclean (London: Camden Society, 1864), p. 110. Hammer, The Polarization, p. 80. Griffin, ‘Spain Is Portugal’, p. 101. On trade and the Treaty of London, see Valentina Calderi, ‘The End of the Anglo-Spanish Match in Global Context, 1617–1624’, PhD thesis (University of Kent, 2015), pp. 48–50. Harward, The Solace, sig. E4r.

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To fight Spain on the continent is to oppose its monstrous imperial ambitions and, de facto, to defend Protestant liberty. Versions of this argument reappear throughout the seventeenth century. Like many other anti-Spanish polemics the text recognises the inextricability of Spanish and English political identities. The anonymous play A Larum for London, or the Siedge of Antwerpe (1602) is more downbeat about the difficulties of fighting in the Low Countries. It expresses anxieties about the conflict and articulates fears of the so-called Black Legend.52 This is reflected in English colonial policy towards Ireland, long seen as a staging point for a Spanish invasion. As one contemporary writer warns: ‘remember we may how the bloodie Spanyard hath fought at sundrie times by most dangerous conspiracies, to rent our nation asunder . . . Remember how iniuriously they sent to inuade her Maiesties Realme of Ireland ’.53 Successes such as the anti-Spanish Treaty of Greenwich signed in 1596 between England, France, and the Dutch; Essex’s sacking of Cadiz in 1597; and the failure of Philip II and III’s repeated invasion attempts during the 1590s are read providentially and help to bolster the militant argument: it cannot but be as noble to fight for the eschewing the Antichristian yoke of popish Idolatrie: for howsoeuer the Spaniard would seem to be a defendour of the Catholike faith, let his filthy Idolatry, his pestiferous heresies, his truce breaking, his greedy couetousnes, his swelling ambition, and his bloody cruelty be sufficient testimonies to vs that his fayth is not true and Catholike, but diuelish and Antichristian.54

Spanish claims to true ‘Catholicity’ are an antichristian ruse. Conversely, Essex’s disastrous tenure in Ireland, his rebellion and execution, the opening of tentative peace talks with the Spanish in 1600, and the signing of the Treaty of Vervins in 1600 are all grist to the mill of the more sceptical, moderate wing.55 52

53

54 55

A Larum for London, or the Siedge of Antwerpe . . . (London: William Ferbrand, 1602). On the ‘black legend’ of Spanish cruelty, see William S. Maltby, The Black Legend in England: The Development of Anti-Spanish Sentiment, 1558–1660 (Durham: Duke University Press, 1971); Rereading the Black Legend: The Discourses of Religious and Racial Difference in the Renaissance Empires, ed. Margaret R. Greer, Walter D. Mignolo, and Maureen Quilligan (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007); and Griffin, English Renaissance Drama. Harward, The Solace, sig. D2.v-r. On Anglo-Irish relations, see Nicholas Canny, Making Ireland British, 1580–1650 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001). Harward, The Solace, sig. F3v. On Spanish diplomacy during these years, see Paul C. Allen, Philip III and the Pax Hispanica, 1598–1621: The Failure of Grand Strategy (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2000). For a late-Elizabethan text that raises the possibility of a more pacific Spanish policy towards the Dutch, see A Copie of a Certaine Letter Written by a Person of Reputation, to a Prelate of Brabant, Being at Brussels (London: John Wolfe, 1599).

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So by the final years of Elizabeth’s reign, English foreign policy is defined by the interchange between militant and moderate views, a situation that James was to mould in his own way. A major factor in the Jacobean peace with Spain is a shift in policy towards Ireland. England’s failure to subdue the Irish meant that this country remained an ally and benefactor of Spanish power. Spain’s new King from 1598, Philip III, supported the claim of the Infanta, Isabella, to the throne of England at a time when the question of Elizabeth’s succession was still in the balance.56 Essex was followed in Ireland by the more competent Baron Mountjoy, who enjoyed a number of military successes against Spanish forces. The leader of the Irish rebellion, Hugh O’Neill, Earl of Tyrone, sued for peace in 1602, and an accord was signed by Mountjoy and Tyrone in 1603 just after the Queen’s death. In doing this, ‘Mountjoy broke the European deadlock, since with Tyrone’s submission all the necessary pre-conditions for negotiations with Spain were at last in place.’57 Philip III withdrew his support for the Infanta’s claim and peace negotiations began almost as soon as James acceded to the throne. Both monarchs faced divided opinion in their countries. Philip III’s main aim was to stop the English providing military and financial assistance to the Dutch so that he could reassert Spanish control over the region. He even explored with Rome the idea that James be forced to convert to Roman Catholicism.58 Many in the Spanish court resented their king’s willingness to do any kind of deal with heretics. Philip also had to contend with political interference from France. He knew that James and Henri IV were allies and that the French were trying to warn the English off any peace treaty by arguing that ‘the Spanish would achieve European hegemony once they were free from war with England’.59 James had to confront related problems. On 14 April 1603, the Venetian Ambassador in London, Giovanni Carlo Scaramelli, sent a dispatch to the Doge and the Senate: ‘The States of Holland promise themselves the same assistance from the king as they received from the Queen; for she left to her successor the injunction to maintain friendly relations with his neighbours 56

57

58

See Francis Bacon’s discussion of the Infanta’s claim and the suggestion that it was supported by the late Earl of Essex: A Declaration of the Practises & Treasons Attempted and Committed by Robert Late Earle of Essex and His Complices, against Her Maiestie and Her Kingdoms . . . (London: Robert Barker, 1601). Pauline Croft, ‘Rex Pacificus, Robert Cecil, and the 1604 Peace with Spain’, in The Accession of James I: Historical and Cultural Consequences, ed. Glenn Burgess, Rowland Wymer, and Jason Lawrence (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), p. 147. This chapter is indebted to Croft’s analysis of the Treaty. 59 See Hillgarth, The Mirror, pp. 402–403. Allen, Philip III, p. 116.

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and to continue the policy she had pursued.’60 As the careful phrasing makes clear, this ‘promise’ may have been wishful thinking on the part of the Dutch, who arrived in England the following month to lobby the court. James’ political reputation on the continent, and amongst his new subjects, was capable of contrary readings. He had been assiduous in maintaining good relations with the aging Virgin Queen and with key members of her Privy Council such as Robert Cecil and Henry Howard.61 James was no neophyte when it came to the political waters that he would have to chart in England. He understood well enough the importance of militant and moderate views on England’s role in Europe. He was also used to dealing with Rome as King of Scotland and had a good understanding of the tensions between the papacy and various Roman Catholic monarchies. Nevertheless, his attitude towards Spain and the Dutch was shaped by his very different experiences and decisions made in Scotland where he had not generally been at odds with either country. Although he shared an internationalist outlook with the militant Protestants, James preferred to stress religious and political unity and reconciliation whenever possible. He ‘believed that it was his vocation to extend the work of religious reconciliation not just to England but to the rest of Europe’.62 Still, James’ adherence to the Gospel motto beati pacifici did not mean that he would pursue peace at any cost. The year 1603 sees the republication of his 1588 commentary on the book of Revelation and his book of advice to his son Henry, Basilicon Doron.63 In the latter text, the king discusses peace as a moderate Humanist, drawing on authorities such as Isocrates, Polybius, Cicero, and Tacitus. He writes to his son: And as I haue counselled you to be slow in taking on a warre, so aduise I you to be slow in peace-making. Before ye agree, looke that the ground of your warres be satisfied in your peace; and that ye see a good suretie for you and your people: otherwaies a honourable and iust warre is more tolerable, then a dishonourable and dis-aduantageous peace.64 60

61

62

63 64

Calendar of State Papers and Manuscripts . . . in the Archives and Collections of Venice . . ., vol. X, 1603–1607, ed. Horatio F. Brown (London: HMSO, 1900), pp. 4–5. See Diana Newton, The Making of the Jacobean Regime: James VI and I and the Government of England, 1603–1605 (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2005), pp. 11–15. W.B. Patterson, King James VI and I and the Reunion of Christendom (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 30. James VI and I, A Fruitfull Meditation . . . (London: John Harrison, 1603). James VI and I, Basilicon Doron, in Political Writings, ed. Johann P. Somerville (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 33. See too Richard Tuck, The Rights of War and Peace: Political Thought and the International Order from Grotius to Kant (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999).

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If readers in 1603 were inclined to believe that theory should inform practice, then this passage may have reassured some that the new king would not pursue peace unthinkingly. That said, the commentary on Revelation is more militant in tone, showing the king working within the mainstream of Reformed apocalypticism. This includes the claim that the Roman Church maintains the ‘tiranny of the antichrist’.65 He also gives thanks for the defeat of the Spanish Armada. The strategic republication of these two texts in 1603 can be read as an attempt to steady the political balance, to persuade militants and moderates alike that James understands and can mediate between their views. More cynically, we might say that reason of state is being recast in a Jacobean form. As Arthur Dent argues in The Rvine of Rome (1603), one of the most popular commentaries of the seventeenth century, ‘tolleration’ for Roman Catholics is to be feared. In fact, he calls for all papists to be ‘rooted out . . . especially the Iesuits and seminary priests which are the diuels brokers, the popes agents, and the king of Spaines factors in all kingdoms’.66 Peace with Spain and Ireland may have been on the cards, but for many militants the war against papal power is never ending and so toleration is not an option. As is clear from Basilicon Doron, James sees his kingship as the ultimate source and guarantee of his subjects’ liberty and national identity. He views the union of the crowns, and his kingship more generally, in imperial terms.67 Under the Stuarts, the histories of ancient Rome and of the Reformation are brought into closer conversation as imperial rule is defined and debated. However, as John Cramsie notes, Jacobean imperial monarchy is an inherently fragile concept because it has to reconcile ‘religious plurality, ethnic diversity and competing cultures of authority within a claim to unitary temporal and spiritual imperium’.68 James inherits a realm where debates about how far England is a ‘mixed monarchy’ and whether or not parliament has the right to ‘limit’ kings are ongoing. His relationship with parliament throughout his reign shows the intractability of these questions. Moreover, although 65 66

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James VI and I, A Fruitfull Meditation, sig. B5v. Arthur Dent, The Rvine of Rome: Or an Exposition vpon the Whole Revelation . . . (London: Simon Waterson and Cuthbert Burby, 1603), pp. 253–254. George Downame makes a similar argument in A Treatise Concerning Anti-Christ . . . (London: Cuthbert Burbie, 1603), p. 191. James VI and I, The Trew Law, pp. 62–84. See also John Cramsie, ‘The Philosophy of Imperial Kingship and the Interpretation of James VI and I’, in James VI and I: Ideas, Authority and Government, ed. Ralph Houlbrooke (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), pp. 43–60. See also Dandelet, The Renaissance of Empire, pp. 259–274. Cramsie, ‘The Philosophy’, p. 59.

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he hoped to establish a more stable relationship with Europe through his pacific foreign policy, the difficulty was in containing the more expansive expressions of national identity that his flirtations with militant religious ideology might encourage. Jason White has argued that this tension is central to debates about the new political entity known as Britain: ‘For James Britain was an entity centred on loyalty to him: for militant Protestants it was an entity capable of protecting international Protestantism and defeating the papal Antichrist.’69 These tensions were to define the king’s reign. Writing of James’ accession, David Norbrook has pointed out that: An attentive observer of Dutch politics would also soon have realised that the political issues were far more complex than many Englishmen believed: while the Calvinists were ardent believers in continuing war against Antichrist, many members of the urban oligarchies were unsympathetic to Calvinist dogmatism and fanaticism; their Protestantism retained an Erasmian belief in free will. This group provided the basis for what became known as the ‘Arminian’ faction in the seventeenth-century; the Arminians tended to favour peace with Spain and disliked Calvinist predestinarianism.70

Norbrook is right that the more pacific shades of opinion had reason to feel optimistic at James’ accession. But the assumption that Calvinists are invariably religious and political extremists needs to be revised. I have noted elsewhere that it is perfectly possible in this period to be a Calvinist, to use apocalyptic language, but also to be sceptical of the more militant claims made about the popish antichrist.71 This argument draws on the work of Anthony Milton, who has shown that Jacobean apocalypticism is a nuanced political language capable of being used by moderates and militants alike.72 There is a wide range of Protestant opinion on how best to deal with Spain and the Low Countries. To favour peace with Spain in 1603–1605 is not necessarily to be a Hispanophile nor an unthinking supporter of the Dutch. Although they retained their romantic appeal for many, the days of Leicester and Sidney’s chivalric militarism were in the past. The Dutch Courtesan is thus written during a period when neither the militant nor the moderate wing has the upper hand. English engagement with the Dutch, whether in trade or war, involves various uncomfortable 69 71

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70 White, Militant Protestantism, p. 25. Norbrook, Poetry and Politics, p. 155. See Adrian Streete, ‘Francis Quarles’ Early Poetry and the Discourses of Jacobean Spenserianism’, Journal of the Northern Renaissance, 1, 1, 2009, pp. 88–108. Anthony Milton, Catholic and Reformed: The Roman and Protestant Churches in English Protestant Thought, 1600–1640 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 93–127.

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compromises for both sides. This is why the prostitute Franceschina is such a useful figure for Marston. Like the Dutch nation, she is commodity and commodified. As Freevill sceptically comments: ‘since all things have been sold – honour, justice, faith – nay, even God himself’, then ‘what base ignobleness is it / To sell the pleasure of a wanton bed?’ (I.i.128–129).73 In the first scene, Freevill alludes to the European conflicts when he speaks of the ‘captain’s wife’ whose ‘commander lies in open field abroad’ – as he asks: ‘may not she lie in civil arms at home?’ (I.i.104–106).74 English involvement in European wars may be necessary but does little for sexual continence back home. Freevill tells Malheureux that since his engagement to Beatrice and their impending marriage he hopes that the brothels stay open. When asked why, he replies: ‘Marry, lest my house should be made one. I would have married men love the stews as Englishmen love the Low Countries: wish war should be maintained there lest it should come home to their own doors’ (I.i.65–68). Jean Howard is one of the few critics to notice the significance of these lines.75 She argues that this kind of ‘Anglocentric’ discourse in The Dutch Courtesan sees the Dutch not as ‘fellow allies in a Protestant cause so much as inhabitants of a convenient buffer zone keeping Spanish troops from attacking England’.76 She also suggests that the subplot, especially the zany figure of Cocledemoy, undermines the English/ foreign binary set up in the main plot. Persuasive though these insights are, the main problem with this argument is that by 1605 the likelihood of Spanish troops attacking England had been significantly diminished by the Peace of London. The Treaty was ratified by the King of Spain on 15 June 1605; the play was entered into the Stationer’s Register on 26 June 1605.77 Freevill’s satirical words are open to multiple readings, yet in 1605 war is no longer, officially at least, being ‘maintained’ in the Low Countries. To wish that the conflict might be carried on so that Englishmen’s houses do not become brothels is a sly dig against the militants who would continue the conflict abroad despite the peace. ‘Low Countries’ is also a sexual euphemism for female genitalia: the sexual and martial energies of the state’s males are threatened by the king’s peace policy.

73

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76

In the sceptically informed work of the philosopher Justus Lipsius we find a similar connection between economic and political self-interest – see Richard Tuck, Philosophy and Government 1572–1651 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 61–63. John Marston, The Dutch Courtesan, ed. David Crane (London: A&C Black, 1997). Howard, ‘Mastering Difference’, 105–117. Howard’s argument has been developed by Marjorie Rubright but, like Howard, she does not mention the Peace of London. Rubright, ‘Going Dutch’, pp. 88–112. 77 Howard, ‘Mastering Difference’, p. 108. Marston, The Dutch Courtesan, xiii.

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Dramatic interest in economics, the Dutch, and the sex trade reaches a peak in a cluster of plays written at this time: The Family of Love (c. 1602–1604), The Honest Whore, Part I (1604), Westward Ho (1604), The Dutch Courtesan, and Northward Ho (1605). In the opening scene of Dekker and Webster’s Northward Ho, Luke Greenshield asks the Chamberlain why he has left Dunstable. He replies: ‘Faith Sir the towne droopt euer since the peace in Ireland, your captaines were wont to take their leaues of their London Polecats (their wenches I meane Sir) at Dunstable: the next morning when they had broke their fast together the wenches brought them to Hockly’ith hole, and so the one for London, the other for Westchester’ (I.i.20–25).78 Peace may be good for the king and government but the Chamberlain sees it more pragmatically. Dunstable’s profitable sex trade has now stopped. In the next scene the prostitute Doll discusses where in the city she is most likely to pick up men. She decides on Charing Cross for ‘if some Dutch-man would come from the States! Oh! these Flemings pay soundly for what they take’ (I.ii.58–60). The joke is multilayered. With the peace concluded in 1605, relations between the Dutch and England were at a low ebb. The suggestion that Dutch men might come to England when their countrymen were redoubling their efforts to fight Spain is an uneasy one. If anything, human traffic was going the other way.79 Second, the claim that the Dutch ‘pay soundly for what they take’ trades on stereotypes of that nation as lustful and voluble.80 When Leverpool suggests that Doll take up ‘a lodging West-ward’ (I.ii.61), she replies scornfully: ‘to bee cal’d a Lieutenants, or a Captaines wench! oh! I scorne to bee one of your Low-country commodities, I’ (I.ii.63–64). She refuses to go west to serve the military who are setting out for the Low Countries. The London authorities were already clamping down on brothels in the suburbs.81 As these examples show, war in the Low Countries is a useful pressure valve for England, keeping its men occupied with the Dutch. By analogy, brothels and the services they provide help to preserve the outward Christian sanctity of marriage for characters like Freevill. 78

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Thomas Dekker and John Webster, Westward Ho, in The Dramatic Works of Thomas Dekker, vol. 2, ed. Fredson Bowers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1955). See Calendar of State Papers, p. 234. See Vindice’s comment in act I, scene 3, of The Revenger’s Tragedy: ‘O, Dutch lust, fulsome lust! / Drunken procreation’ (I.iii.58–59). Thomas Middleton, The Revenger’s Tragedy, in Thomas Middleton: The Collected Works, ed. Gary Taylor and John Lavagnino (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2007). See also Rubright, ‘Going Dutch’. On prostitution and the suburbs, see Jonathan Dollimore, ‘Transgression and Surveillance in Measure for Measure’, in Political Shakespeares: Essays in Cultural Materialism, ed. Jonathan Dollimore and Alan Sinfield (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1994), pp. 72–87.

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The argument is misogynistic and self-interested, but it is insistently made in these plays: if men have no outlet for fighting or sex, then the state becomes unstable. In Dekker and Webster’s Westward Ho, Mistress Justianiano’s husband, trying to confirm his wife’s infidelity, complains of ‘sillie Husbands’ who ‘ha beene guld with Flemish mony’ (II.iii.57–58).82 As the puns on ‘guld’ (‘gulled’/ ‘guild’/‘guilder’) show, the Dutch problem allows writers to explore the trade in commodities and in women. The Honest Whore picks up on this connection more explicitly. Hippolito attacks Bellafront in sexualised language, saying that a ‘harlot is like Dunkirk, true to none, / Swallows both English, Spanish, fulsome Dutch, / Back-doored Italian, last of all the French’ (6:405–407).83 The Dunkirkers were Dutch privateers in the service of the Spanish whose regular attacks on shipping were notorious in England. One of the aims of the peace was to prevent them from attacking English shipping. Notice again the link between the Dutch and harlotry. Hippolito calls Bellafront an ‘idol’ on whom princes, earls, lords, knights and gentlemen of ‘several nations’ have wasted ‘Handfuls of gold’, and have received nothing but a diseased body in return (7:430–439). Dekker and Middleton suggest that the engagement of so many nations in the Dutch conflict is analogous to a whore with many clients.84 The sheer capacity of the Dutch conflict to suck all the great powers of Europe into its orbit is not just economically damaging to England’s national interests. To uncritically support the Dutch, especially if they do not ‘reform’, is a kind of whorish idolatry. England suffered a series of terrible harvests in the 1590s and early 1600s. The cost of maintaining war in Ireland was also crippling. Additionally, it seemed unlikely that the loans that Elizabeth had made to the Dutch would be paid back.85 England needed an economic recovery. The ‘urban oligarchies’, including large numbers of the Puritan traders and gentry, many of whom were Calvinists, argued for the restoration of Anglo-Dutch trade, for the opening of Spanish trade routes to English merchants, and 82

83

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Thomas Dekker and John Webster, Westward Ho, in The Dramatic Works of Thomas Dekker. See also Global Traffic: Discourses and Practices of Trade in English Literature and Culture from 1550 to 1700, ed. Barbara Sebek and Stephen Deng (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008). Thomas Dekker and Thomas Middleton, The Patient Man and the Honest Whore, in Thomas Middleton: The Collected Works. These stereotypes are part of the dramatic construction of foreigners on the early modern stage. See Rubright, ‘Going Dutch’, pp. 88–91. For the links between prostitution and the Dutch in early modern discourse, see Rubright, ‘Going Dutch’. Croft, ‘Rex Pacificus’, p. 143.

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for the cessation of piracy along these routes.86 This involved a trade-off between economic and religious expediency. In Marston’s play, the merchant class is represented by the ridiculous but economically important Mulligrubs, members of the Family of Love.87 While Norbrook implies that all ‘Calvinists’ uncritically supported the Dutch, in fact these plays reveal a wide range of urban opinion on this subject. A number of Calvinists supported peace with Spain whilst also expressing considerable hostility towards the Dutch. This point is crucial as it asks us to rethink the ideological work that anti-Catholic language might be doing in the years between 1602 and 1605. The assumption that Calvinism necessarily equates to knee-jerk anti-Catholic apocalypticism is problematic, and The Dutch Courtesan offers a good case in point as we will see. James expanded his Privy Council after his accession. Yet his desire for peace with Spain found him in the minority: ‘seven members of the Council, who support the king’s views . . . the remainder of the twenty four . . . who are of a contrary opinion, continue to support the policy of the late Queen, and to declare that any deviation from that policy means the ruin not only of England but of all the world’.88 The extreme sentiment expressed in the last clause here hints at the apocalyptically inflected argument of the king’s opponents: to appease Spain is to open the door to the papal antichrist. James plays his adversaries at a different game: The King is so well disposed towards this peace that he is thought to be resolved on it. When speaking of the States he uses the term rebels, and declares that such a bad example should not be encouraged, nor would it ever have occurred had not the States found support; he blames the King of France, who, in violation of his good faith and purity of spirit, . . . has fostered, not even secretly, the States in their rebellion, hence the irritation of the Kings of Spain.89

This view chimes with James’ political theology. He repeatedly notes that the act of rebellion is the worst crime that any subject can commit, not least because it recalls the rebellion of the Devil against God. He warns Prince Henry in Basilicon Doron: ‘Supplie not therefore, nor trust not other Princes rebels’ and speaks in the Trew Lawe of those ‘seditious preachers’ who ‘stir vp rebellion vnder cloake of religion’, a clear reference 86

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See Claire Jowett, The Culture of Piracy, 1580–1630: English Literature and Seaborne Crime (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010). The Family was commonly associated with the Low Countries. See Christopher Marsh, The Family of Love in English Society, 1550–1630 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). 89 Calendar of State Papers, p. 49. Ibid., pp. 41–42.

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to contemporary theories of resistance, Roman Catholic and Protestant.90 But as a Protestant monarch, James makes the strongest connection between popish power and rebellion. In a speech to parliament in March 1604 he rails against the ‘arrogant and ambitious Supremacie’ of the Pope in matters spiritual and temporal, criticising his presumed right in ‘dethroning and decrowning Princes’. He goes on to note the popish belief in a particularly worrying doctrine: the assassinates and murthers of Kings, thinking it no sinne, but rather a matter of saluation, to doe all actions of rebellion and hostilitie against their naturall Soueraigne Lord, if he be once cursed, his subiects discharged of their fidelitie, and his Kingdome giuen a prey by that three crowned Monarch, or rather Monster their Head.91

We will return to the claim that rebellion is a uniquely Roman Catholic phenomenon in the next chapter. States adhering to this religion, such as France, must condone it despite an otherwise ‘good faith and purity of spirit’. Moreover, rebellion allows for the ‘three crowned monarch’, the papal Whore of Babylon, to tyrannically usurp temporal authority. For James’ opponents in the council, the tyranny of the antichrist is exemplified not by the Dutch rebels but by Roman Catholic Spain. For James, all rebellion is antichristian. It is contradictory to turn a blind eye to the rebellion of the Dutch while also arguing that Roman Catholicism is a rebellious religion. From this perspective, to support the Dutch is to risk translating the vice of political rebellion into a theological virtue. In parliament, there was open dissention against the king’s policy. Figures such as Sir Walter Raleigh, Sir Robert Cotton, and Sir Edward Hoby opposed the peace.92 Tracts were circulated to those on the Privy Council thought to be sympathetic to their cause. Indeed, Hoby made a speech peppered with anti-Catholic language to parliament on the matter.93 He takes James’ central objection that the Dutch are rebels and points out that its logic is also applicable to the Spanish. The Dutch might be rebels but this is surely less important than the antichristian rebellion that the king’s pro-Spanish policies may foster: apocalypse trumps economics and politics. Nevertheless, Hoby is no Puritan firebrand but 90 92

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91 James VI and I, Political Writings, pp. 32, 71. Ibid., p. 140. Andrew Thrush, ‘The Parliamentary Opposition to Peace with Spain in 1604: A Speech of Sir Edward Hoby’, Parliamentary History, 23, 3, 2004, pp. 301–315. The article contains a transcript of Hoby’s speech. Hoby also translated a Spanish manual on the art of war published in 1597: Bernadinio de Mendoza, Therique and Practise of Warre . . . (Middelburg: Richard Schilders, 1597). Ibid., pp. 304–305.

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a ‘moderate Calvinist conformist’ whose use of anti-Catholic language would have seemed unremarkable to his peers.94 What was daring is his discussion of foreign policy. Like Elizabeth, James did not take kindly to the Commons debating matters of the royal prerogative. No more speeches were made on the subject after Hoby’s intervention.95 What, then, of views supporting the king’s policy? On 8 March 1604, Henry Hooke preached a sermon before James at Whitehall.96 This text can, I suggest, be read as a counterchallenge to the views of the antiSpanish lobby. It shows us how the Bible is read politically, something that Marston’s play also does. The title page of the sermon quotes Isaiah 62:1: ‘For Sions sake I will not hold my tongue, and for Ierusalems sake I will not rest, vntill the righteousnesse thereof breake foorth as the light, and saluation thereof as a burning lampe.’ Even though Zion and Jerusalem are synonymous, it quickly becomes clear that the auditors should typologically identify the former with the Dutch and the latter with London/England. By 1604, the political use of Jerusalem in preaching is a well-established trope.97 In the Geneva Bible, a marginal comment appended to this verse in Isaiah points out that here the ‘Prophet speaketh to encourage all other ministers to the setting forth of Gods mercies toward his Church.’ This challenge is corporate and collective. James’ strategy is one of moderation. It tries to bring disparate factions together. Does the use of this verse carry an implicit political warning to those who oppose the head of the Church? Any biblically literate member of the audience would also know the broader narrative trajectory of this verse, and could apply it to the contemporary situation of the Dutch. We are told at the conclusion of the verse that Zion will not be ‘Forsaken’ (62:4) because its ‘Sauiour commeth’ (62:11) and that its people ‘shalt be named, A citie sought out 94

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Louis A. Knafla, ‘Sir Edward Hoby (1560–1617)’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography Online (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004–2012), accessed 12 March 2013. Thrush notes that Hoby was otherwise close to James and that the King included him in the party that went to Brussels in 1605 to ratify the peace treaty – ‘The Parliamentary Opposition’, p. 311. Ibid., p. 305. Henry Hooke, A Sermon Preached before the King at White-hall, the Eight of May, 1604 . . . (London: Adam Islip, 1604). On the context of this sermon, see Peter McCullough, Sermons at Court: Politics and Religion in Elizabethan and Jacobean Preaching (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), pp. 92–93. On London as Jerusalem in early modern religious writing, see Patrick Collinson, The Birthpangs of Protestant England: Religious and Cultural Change in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1988), pp. 21–22, and for its uses in drama, see Beatrice Groves, ‘“They repented at the preaching of Ionas: and beholde, a greater then Ionas is here”: A Looking Glass for London and England, Hosea and the Destruction of Jerusalem’, in Early Modern Drama and the Bible: Contexts and Readings, 1570–1625, ed. Adrian Streete (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), pp. 139–155.

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and not forsaken’ (62:12). Whatever the king might do, Zion is elect and will not be abandoned. The king’s commitment to peace with Spain does not necessarily undermine the status of the Dutch as part of an elect, panEuropean, Protestant power bloc. Whether any supporters of the Dutch would have been convinced by this claim is another matter. A similar strategy is used in the preaching passage, Psalm 122:6: ‘Pray for the Peace of Ierusalem.’ Again, the commentary on this verse in the Geneva Bible stresses unity, drawing attention to the ‘concord and loue that was betweene the citizens’ of that city. Hooke notes, ‘The sweet benefit of peace is better knowne to many in the want, than in the vse of peace: therefore in wanting, they desire that, which in possessing they despise.’98 This could be read as a warning to the pro-Dutch party at Court not to dismiss the king’s offer of peace so quickly.99 Hooke stresses his point typologically by looking forward to Christ’s entry into Jerusalem: When the king of peace came meekly riding into Ierusalem, the streets are said to ring with sounds of ioy . . . yet Ierusalem is reprooued for not knowing those things which did belong vnto her peace: she did not louingly foster and nourish that peace, which desirous to be embraced, was refused: and therefore departed, leauing her to the furie of her enemies, who made her desolate.100

To reject peace is to forgo the political protection that a pacific ideology can offer. The Dutch and their allies should embrace the king’s peace policy. Not to do so is to open oneself to desolation, like those apostates who reject Christ. Hooke draws on the genre of the Jeremiad, fusing apocalyptic language with political lament to explain what a rejection of the king’s policy might mean.101 His sermon shows that it is not a paradox to discuss peace in apocalyptic terms; The Dutch Courtesan makes a comparable point, as we will see shortly. Hooke says that Zion should stand ‘under the protection of peace’ if ‘she depart out of Babilon, and separate her selfe from idols’. He subtly suggests that to value war or support any one state above all other considerations is, in itself, idolatrous. This passage ends on a 98 99

100 101

Hooke, A sermon, sig. C1v. The Dutch ambassadors arrived in England only eleven days after Hooke’s sermon was preached. Cf. Croft, ‘Rex pacificus’, p. 149. Hooke, A sermon, sig. C1r. On the Jeremiad, see Mary Morrissey, ‘Elect Nations and Prophetic Preaching: Types and Examples in the Paul’s Cross Jeremiad’, in The English Sermon Revised: Religion, Literature and History, 1600–1750, ed. Lori Anne Ferrell and Peter McCullough (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001), pp. 43–58.

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downbeat note with the preacher observing that Babylon, the Roman Catholic Church, is ‘a bastard child’ who will not ‘reforme’ and that, as such, she is ‘worthie to be destroyed’.102 There is a similarly muted discussion of punishment and whoredom at the end of Marston’s play. It is not just those on the martial side of the argument who have exclusive rights to apocalyptic tropes and anti-Catholic commonplaces. Hooke’s sermon is a serious effort not just to rebut the king’s political opponents. It is also an attempt to best them using their preferred religious rhetoric.103

III Mark Burnett rightly notes that ‘The Dutch Courtesan does not clearly communicate its political undercurrents. Whenever the play broaches a Jacobean issue, it does so obliquely, guardedly, in coded languages.’104 Marston had learnt guardedness the hard way. His early verse satires are amongst those texts publicly burnt in 1599 by order of the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London. His involvement in the 1606 play Eastward Ho led to his collaborators Ben Jonson and George Chapman being imprisoned and to Marston fleeing London.105 He knew that the political opacity demanded of the satirist was no protection against the censure of authority. The scabrous testing of authority is central to his literary identity. But as The Dutch Courtesan shows, he also knew how to explore political topics in more subtle, analogous terms. Two of the main characters, Freevill and Malhereux, either have had or want to have a sexual relationship with Franceschina. As his name suggests, Freevill is associated with freethinking and self-interest. His sexuality is expressed in an Epicurean sensuality and will to pleasure. He has enjoyed Franceschina and now he wants his friend to do the same. By contrast, the Puritanical Malhereux wants Franceschina but is horrified by his desire and tries to repress his sexual passions. These competing views of sexual ethics offer us a sideways glance at the Dutch conflict. I argue that Marston puts misogyny in the service of political critique. Just as Malhereux will

102 103

104 105

Hooke, A sermon, sig. D2v-r. For another example of the militant argument, see Barnabe Rich, A Soldiers Wishe to Britons Welfare . . . (London: Thomas Creede, 1604), p. 6. Burnett, ‘Calling “things by their right names”’, p. 177. See Janet Clare, ‘Marston: Censure, Censorship, and Free Speech’, in The Drama of John Marston, pp. 196–197, 206–209. For more on this scandal, see George Chapman, Ben Jonson, and John Marston, Eastward Ho, ed. R.W. Van Fossen (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1979), pp. 17–19.

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always struggle with sexual continence, so the idea that England can extricate itself from the Dutch conflict is a fantasy. The Puritan Malhereux has a restrictive understanding of sex and volition. Discussing women, he says that it is ‘no such sin to err, but to persever’ (I.i.137). His passions and his body are rigidly under control. The last word quoted alludes to the classic Calvinistic idea of the perseverance of the saints based on Ephesians 6:18.106 Free will, such as it is, is less important than grace, especially if it enables sexual continence. Sexual sin, on the other hand, is a constant danger. Freevill, as his name suggests, has a rather less deterministic conception of volition and less censorious view of sex than his friend. He enjoins the vinter Mulligrub to ‘repent, repent!’ (I.i.44), implying, perhaps ironically, that the will is adequate to the task. Later, he revels in the fact that he is ‘now going the way of all flesh’ (I.i.80–81). Freevill represents an unabashed sensuality, a daring joy in the pleasures of the flesh.107 Freevill also attacks the language of Puritan soteriology. This first emerges when he introduces Malheureux to the Dutch courtesan, and it marks a turning point in the action. Malhereux is taken aback by what he sees: ‘Now cold blood defend me. What a proportion afflicts me!’ (79–80). His passions and his penis have been moved. Freevill wittily plays on the sexual and religious implications of this fact: ‘how dost approve my sometimes elected?’ (I.ii.89). The pun on ‘elected/erected’ contrasts physical tumescence with spiritual perdition. Election can be, like an erection, a decidedly temporary thing. Despite his Puritanical beliefs, Malhereux might actually be one of the damned.108 Freevill is also not afraid to bend Scripture to his own ends. When he invites Malheureux to the brothel, he calls it ‘a house of salvation’ (I.i.144). Audience amusement is created by the twisted allusion to Scripture. In Luke 19:9, Zaccheus gives away his goods and Christ promises him, ‘This day is saluation come vnto this house.’ Freevill drolly redirects the sense of the biblical verse – we might be reminded here of Hooke’s sermon before James. Franceschina can only ever promise a fleshly deliverance. Freevill’s critique of his friend’s Calvinistic determinism takes on a ludic, even slightly demonic edge. In his world, salvation is sexual, not soteriological. The end of the world may 106

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On Calvinistic perseverance, see R.T. Kendall, Calvin and English Calvinism to 1649 (Carlisle: Paternoster Press, 1997). The fact that the play was performed by the Children of the Queen’s Revels in the private Blackfriars Theatre may have encouraged Marston to push the boundaries here: expressing eroticism through the boy actor would have seemed both thrilling and transgressive. On temporary election, see Kendall, Calvin and English, pp. 21–25, 67–75.

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come, but not yet. Freevill’s rhetoric is inherently comic, opposing his friend’s religious sententiousness. The imminent, even tragic cast, of Malhereux’s beliefs is contrasted with his inability to live up to the moral implications of his own views and his failure to control his body. The play pokes fun at Puritanical rigidity, moral and sexual. Desire for ‘the Dutch’ is an affliction that can never quite be shaken. The Dutch Courtesan intermingles, and in fact often opposes, the generic demands of comedy and tragedy to startling effect. In his book Arguing the Apocalypse: A Theory of Millennial Rhetoric, Stephen D. O’Leary explores the relationship between comic and tragic approaches to apocalypse: The comic reading of the Apocalypse addresses the topoi of time and evil by either postponing the End, or making its enactment a consequence of human choice and activity in the world, and conceiving of evil (to a limited extent) as something to be overcome by recognition, reform, and education. The tragic reading, in contrast, structures time by placing the End somewhere in the immediate future, and views this End as predestined and catastrophic; evil is depicted in demonic terms, and can only be overcome by divine intervention rather than human action.109

This distinction is also one that Marston understands. He uses the conflict between comic and tragic rhetoric, especially in relation to sex, as a source of theatrical tension. For Freevill, Franceschina is ‘a pretty-nimble-eyed Dutch Tannakin’ (I.i.148). Malheureux’s response is rather different: ‘I shall hate the whole sex to see her. The most odious spectacle the earth can present is an immodest, vulgar woman . . . The sight of vice augments the hate of sin’ (I.i.154–160). Freevill’s behaviour is impelled by the motile, affective impulses of verbal and physical activity. Malheureux spends the first two acts resolutely attempting to avoid both. He somewhat lugubriously tells his friend that ‘the strongest argument that speaks / Against the soul’s eternity is lust’ (I.i.87–88).110 To ‘grow wild in loose lasciviousness’ and to give oneself over to ‘heat and sensual appetite’ (I.i.90–91) is not merely a failure of self-regulation and a capitulation to Epicurean pleasure. It is also a sign of one’s damnation. Where Freevill is distinguished by motion, Malhereux is marked by stasis, intermittently shaken by the lusts of the flesh. 109

110

Stephen D. O’Leary, Arguing the Apocalypse: A Theory of Millennial Rhetoric (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), p. 85. Malheureux’s speech draws on James 4:4, ‘Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know yee not that the amitie of the worlde is the enemie of God? Whosoeuer therefore will be a friend of the world, maketh himselfe the enemie of God’, and 1 Peter 2:11, ‘absteine from fleshly lusts which fight against the soule’.

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When arguing that the actions of antichrist are subject to providence, a number of commentators on the book of Revelation contrast Calvinist and Epicurean understandings of motion and affect. Bartholomew Traheron notes that ‘what soeuer is done in the world by Antichrist and his members, is not tossed at auenture by hap, but gouerned by the hand, and certayne prouidence of God. And it is right necessary for vs to knowe, that fortune and chance rule not the roste in mens matters . . . as Epicures Disciples thinke’.111 Freevill refuses to see human action in these Calvinistic terms. All his activities are ‘by hap’. Countering Malheureux’s view of prostitution, he presents a comic rereading of the Fall: ‘Alas, good creatures, what would you have them do? Would you have them get their living by the curse of man, the sweat of their brows? So they do’ (I.i.98–100). For Freevill, to ‘do’ sexually is the most important thing. The logic may well be self-serving, theologically dubious, and misogynistic. But it also reclaims an affective role for ‘pleasure’ (I.i.129) when it comes to sex.112 Malheureux’s words are based on an understanding of man’s place in the world where volition is never adequate and the impulses of the body are to be distrusted. Freevill’s will to pleasure offers the audience a wry, comedic understanding of eschatology where free will and sex are aspects of human activity that are not invariably condemned. After his meeting with Franceschina, Malheureux contrasts the determinism of the passions with his religious views. He asks ‘Can such a one be damned?’ His answer to this soteriological question is quasi-Ovidian: ‘O love and beauty, ye two eldest seeds / Of the vast chaos, what strong right you have / Even in things divine, our very souls!’ (I.ii.130–132). Sexual impulses are just as deterministic and hard to resist as God’s providential ordering of human life. But there is one crucial difference as we see in this encomium: O you happy beasts, In whom an inborn heat is not held sin, How far transcend you wretched, wretched man, Whom national custom, tyrannous respects Of slavish order, fetters, lames his power,

111

112

Bartholomew Traheron, An Exposition of the Fourth Chapter of S. Iohns Reuelation . . . (London: Thomas Dawson and Thomas Gardiner, 1577), sigs. A3r-A4v. See too William Fulke, Praelections Vpon the Sacred and Holy Reuelations of S. John, trans. George Gifford (London: Thomas Purfoote, 1573), sig. I6v. For more on pleasure and drama, see Gail Kern Paster, Humoring the Body: Emotions and the Shakespearean Stage (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2004), pp. 63–76. The locus classicus for discussions of pleasure is book 7 of Aristotle’s Ethics.

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Calling that sin in us which in all things else Is nature’s highest virtue! O miseri quorum gaudia crimen habent! (II.i.72–79)

It is religion, specifically its moral condemnation of sex and sin, that inhibits us from acting on those passions that we share with the beasts. Marston takes much of the argument of Act II, scene 1, from Michel de Montaigne’s essay ‘Upon Some Verses of Virgil’.113 Marston also draws on Lucretius’ Epicurean poem De Rerum Natura, a text quoted extensively by Montaigne in his essay.114 A central point in the essay is that nature has ‘fastned’ to man ‘the most noble, the most profitable, and the most sensually pleasing of all her functions’. Montaigne also notes that nature ‘suffreth us to accuse, to condemne and to shunne it, as insolent, as dishonest and as lewder to blush at it, and allow, yea and to commend abstinence’.115 Although he does not downplay the religious morality that governs the latter course, to follow this path wholeheartedly is folly. As Montaigne asks: ‘What monstrous beast is this that makes himself a horror to himself, whom his delights displease, who tyes himself unto misfortune?’116 In the case of love, though it is a cause of heat and ‘agitation’, it is also to be embraced since ‘it is only hurtful to fooles’.117 We should actively choose which passions to follow. For Montaigne, ‘the self could only be preserved by a kind of emotional horticulture, in which certain passions were allowed to blossom and others kept firmly under control’.118 This is a key point for reading the sexual ethics of The Dutch Courtesan.119 Malheureux’s identification of sensuality with sin is not surprising. We have already seen how the play satirically rethinks the link between sin, sex, and punishment established in Genesis. Lucretius is central here. The Roman poet was notorious for arguing that ‘Religion hath oft times in former times / Bred execrable facts, ungodly crimes.’120 It is only by rejecting the fear engendered by religion that one may live a life dedicated 113 114

115

116 119

120

This text is the source of the Latin tag quoted in the speech above. Given the importance of Montaigne for Marston, I read his engagement with Lucretius through Florio’s translation of Montaigne’s Essays. See William Hamlin, ‘Common Customers in Marston’s Dutch Counrtesan and Florio’s Montaigne’, SEL, 52, 2, 2012, pp. 407–424. Michel de Montaigne, ‘Upon Some verses of Virgil’, in The Essayes of Michael Lord of Montaigne, trans. John Florio, ed. Henry Morley (London: Routledge, 1886), p. 447. The essay also contains numerous quotations from Martial and Juvenal, underpinning its tone of satirical scorn. 117 118 Ibid. Ibid., p. 454. Tuck, Philosophy and Government, p. 62. Montaigne also draws on Lucretius to make this last point. Montaigne, ‘Upon Some verses of Virgil’, p. 431: ‘Who strives o’ermuch Venus to shunne, offends / Alike with him that wholly hir intends.’ Montaigne, ‘Upon Some verses of Virgil’, p. 265.

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to the proper end of human existence, pleasure, and the attainment of ataraxia. The play’s critique of religious attitudes to sex shares something of this Lucretian scepticism even if it shies away from its more radical conclusions.121 Lucretius’ attitude to sex might best be described as comically pragmatic. He stresses the ridiculousness of desire. In one famous passage, he describes a man overstimulated by the sight of a ‘lovely face and rosy cheeks’: ‘this excites the parts swelling with seed, / And so, as if the act were being performed, / They pour a great flood out and stain their clothes.’122 Pleasure is not without its perils. Indeed, the desire to avoid erection and premature ejaculation informs Malheureux’s wish to remain ‘cold’. Cocledemoy says as much in a typically lubricous comment: ‘Grace and mercy keep your syringe straight and your lotium unspoilt!’ (I.ii.74–75). When Malheureux is finally alone with Franceschina, he cries somewhat wretchedly: ‘Stay, let not my desire burst me. O, my impatient heat endures no resistance, no protraction! There is no being for me but your sudden enjoying’ (II.ii.162–164). An attitude to sex informed by Calvinism is, it seems, fundamentally incompatible with Lucretian sensuality or with the kind of Stoic self-possession that the new Humanists recommend.123 The difficulty that man has in controlling his bodily urges is a marker of either sin or ridicule.124 The synthesis between Epicurean and Christian ideas in Montaigne’s essay allows Freevill to get around this impasse. He urges his friend not to confuse sexual pleasure with love. With his marriage to Beatrice forthcoming, Freevill says: ‘The creature and I must grow off’ (II.i.99). He calls Franceschina an ‘arrant strumpet’ and ‘venomed gonorrhoea to man’ and (again drawing on Montaigne) speaks shockingly of those such as Pygmalion or Herod who ‘make use of a statue, a body without a soul, a carcass three months dead’ for sexual pleasure. He also teases Malheureux with the refrain ‘yet since thou art in love –’ (II.i.133–138).125 A closer reading of ‘Upon Some Verses of Virgil’ reveals the cynical undercurrent to Freevill’s words. According to Montaigne, while marriage is ‘a plaine but more generall delight’, it is also a perilous arrangement: ‘Few men have 121

122

123 124

125

On drama and skepticism, see William Hamlin, Tragedy and Scepticism in Shakespeare’s England (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005). Lucretius, On the Nature of the Universe, trans. Ronald Melville (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 129. Lucio plays a similar role in Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure to Cocledemoy in Marston’s play. The fact that it is also an argument for male sexual exploitation of women is not one that Lucretius, Montaigne, or Marston is interested in exploring. Montaigne, ‘Upon Some verses of Virgil’, p. 449.

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wedded their sweethearts, their paramours or mistresses, but have come home by weeping crosse, and ere long repented their bargaine . . . My selfe have seene in some good place love shamefully and dishonestly cured by marriage.’126 Relations between the sexes would be better if pleasure was the defining principle: Love melts in onely pleasure; and truly it hath it more ticklish, more lively, more quaint, and more sharpe, a pleasure inflamed by difficulty; there must be a kinde of stinging, tingling and smarting. It is no longer love, be it once without arrows or without fire. The liberalitie of ladies is too profuse in marriage, and blunts the edge of affection and desire.127

Montaigne satirically contrasts patriarchal Christian sexual ethics with the equally patriarchal excitement of an Epicurean will to pleasure. He suggests that while the former is (tediously) necessary, only in the latter can true fulfilment be found. Freevill may wish to marry for love. But his desire to see the brothels remain open and his quasi-pandering of his friend to Franceschina reveal his Montaignean ethics. As Malheureux says during his first proper encounter with Franceschina: ‘Passion, I am thy slave!’ (II.ii.112). When Franceschina hears about Freevill’s impending marriage she is furious and takes her anger out on the Bawd Mary Faugh: ‘God’s sacrament, ten tousand divels take you! You ha’ brought mine love, mine honour, mine body, all to noting!’ (II.ii.6–8).128 This line gives a good sense of the unconventional hybridity of Franceschina’s Anglo-Dutch speech and the scope that it gives Marston for linguistic play and punning.129 She is fallen Babel, a melting pot of languages. Mary counters her mistress in a comic proecthesis coloured by politics: I could not ha’ sold your maidenhead oft’ner than I ha’ done. I ha’ sworn for you, God forgive me! I have made you acquainted with the Spaniard, Don Skirtoll; with the Italian, Master Beieroane; with the Irish lord, Sir Patrick; with the Dutch merchant, Haunce Herkin Gluckin Skellam Flapdragon; and specially with the greatest French; and now lastly with this English . . . And am I now grown one of the accursed with you for my labour? (II.ii.11–20) 126 128

129

127 Ibid., p. 434. Ibid. Franchescina’s numerous references to the number 10,000 may be an allusion to Psalm 3:6 and Revelation 5:11. See Howard, ‘Mastering Difference’, pp. 111–112. On punning in Marston, see Scarr, ‘Insatiate Punning’, in The Drama of John Marston. The word ‘noting’ represents the different levels of Franceschina’s sexual commodification. It can signify nothingness, the emptiness of Franceschina’s prostituted body, as well as both vagina and virginity.

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From an English perspective, this is a comprehensive list of the political states involved in the Dutch dispute. This is not to ignore the national stereotypes that the speech draws on for its laughs. We have already seen how dramatists use the popular analogy between the prostitute, traded to men of all nations, and the Dutch.130 It is the place where the religious and political ambitions of the major European powers are played out at great cost. Like Franceschina, the Dutch are sold again and again. Mary’s ‘labour’ only confirms that she is one of the ‘accursed’ or damned for abetting this trade. These lines also contain a comically wry use of apocalyptic rhetoric. Chapters 17 and 18 of Revelation note that the Whore of Babylon ‘sitteth vpon many waters’ (17:1) and that ‘all nations haue drunken of the wine of the wrath of her fornication, and the kings of the earth haue committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth are waxed rich of the abundance of her pleasures’ (18:3).131 Like the Whore of Babylon, Franceschina’s sexual activities cross geographical and cultural boundaries. They bring together a range of nations who seek her sexual ‘abundance’. The whore and her clients are linked by trade and religion. Yet Marston does not go down the traditional Protestant exegetical route. Franceschina is no conventional Whore of Babylon, ‘the figure of new Rome and of Poperie’.132 The demands of genre, satire, and politics call for a different treatment.133 Instead, Franceschina states: ‘Mine body must turn Turk for twopence’ (II.ii.42). At one level, this line alludes to contemporary anxieties about conversion to Islam that we find in a range of plays and travel writing from the period.134 Yet given the religious contexts and allusions that I have been exploring, there is another reading. In a number of contemporary commentaries on Revelation, the military and trading power of the Ottoman Empire is folded into a narrative linking the power of Turk with the antichrist. Although this is not a new connection to make, the early seventeenth century sees the debate 130

131

132 133

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The trope is also used in plays written during the three English conflicts with the Dutch in the second half of the seventeenth century – see Aphra Behn’s The Dutch Lover (1673) and John Dryden’s Amboyna (1673). Franceschina is associated with water after her exposure in the final scene. Freevill likens her to a fish (or possibly the biblical Leviathan): ‘knowing that the hook was deeply fast, / I gave her line at will’ (V.iii.46–47). Heinrich Bullinger, A Hvndred Sermons vpon the Apocalypse . . . (London: Iohn Daye, 1573), p. 232. See Sarah Scott, ‘Discovering the Sins of the Cellar in The Dutch Courtesan: Turpe est difficiles habere nugas’, Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England, 26, 2013, pp. 60–74, who argues that the representation of Franceschina is not straightforwardly negative. See Daniel Vitkus, Turning Turk: English Theater in the Multicultural Mediterranean, 1570–1630 (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2003).

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rejoined.135 George Downame’s A Treatise Concerning Anti-Christ (1603) argues that because the Turk does not have his seat in Rome, he ‘is not Antichrist’.136 Conversely, Arthur Dent agrees with John Bale that Rome actively aids the rise of the Ottoman Empire: ‘they will haue the religion of Mahomet established, to poison and plague all the East parts of the world in their soules: and also they will haue the most huge, cruell, and sauage armies of the Turkes raised vp, to murder and massacre millions of men in their bodies, in the west parts of the world’.137 The difference between Bale and Dent is that the latter’s sceptical account of political power is indebted to new historiographical models drawn from Roman writers such as Tacitus and Suetonius.138 In fact, the argument for a European force against the Turks in the 1590s and early 1600s is often linked with ‘an analysis of politics in Tacitist or quasi-Tacitist terms’.139 Franceschina’s comment about turning Turk carries a frisson of religious and ethnic otherness. It also contains a sharp political message. Leaving the Dutch to the ministrations of Roman Catholic Spain, according to someone like Dent, threatens to open the door to the antichristian power of the Turk. The Turkish framework also helps us to understand the extreme violence that Franceschina directs against Freevill. We have already seen that she is a hybrid figure who melds languages and nations through her speech and profession. This informs her plans for revenge: ‘ick sall have the rogue troat cut; and his love, and his friend, and all his affinity sall smart, sall die, sall hang!’ (II.ii.43–45). Later she says of Beatrice: ‘God’s sacrament, ick could scratch out her eyes and suck the holes!’ (II.ii.82–83). Franceschina’s rage is primarily comedic, allowing the boy actor an opportunity to demonstrate his theatrical passions. Yet the words of the ‘punk rampant’ (II.ii.84) who wishes that ‘the world sall know the worst of evils’ (II.ii.201) brings together the threat of ‘Turkish’ violence identified by writers such as Dent and the ‘rampant’ nature of the Whore of Babylon described in apocalyptic commentaries.140 There is affective and physical danger in getting too close to ‘the Dutch’. 135 136

137

138 139 140

See Bauckham, Tudor Apocalypse, pp. 96–99. Downame, A Treatise Concerning Anti-Christ, p. 3. See also John Napier, A Plaine Discouery of the Whole Reuelation of Saint Iohn . . . (Edinburgh: Robert Waldegraue, 1593), pp. 3–6, 41. This argument is made earlier in the century by Andreas Osiander in The Coniectures of the Ende of the Worlde, trans. George Joye (London: n.p., 1548), sigs. G4v-r. Dent, The Rvine, p. 114. See also Hugh Broughton, A Concent of Scripture (London: Gabriel Simson and William White, 1590), sigs. H3v–H4v. Bullinger draws on Suetonius in his commentary on Revelation – see A Hvndred Sermons, p. 169. Tuck, Philosophy and Government, p. 62. See, for example, Sir William Herbert, A Letter Written by a True Christian Catholike, to a Romaine Pretended Catholike (London: Iohn Windet, 1586), sig. A2r.

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Before she will allow him to sleep with her, Franceschina urges Malheureux to kill Freevill. But Malheureux reveals her plot to his friend in a scene that returns to the imagery discussed earlier. First, he prefaces his disclosure by saying that ‘a mind courageously vicious may put on a desperate security, but can never be blessed with a firm enjoying and self-satisfaction’ (III.i.219–221). Freevill does not recognise this rhetoric – ‘What passion is this, my dear Lindabrides? (III.i.222) – seeing Malheureux in conventional romance terms. Remorse does not figure in Freevill’s ethical universe. Malheureux denies that his part in the plot to kill his friend was rationally conceived, claiming that ‘My lust, not I, before my reason would’ (III.i.238). He still wants to have Franceschina: ‘That I, a man of sense, should conceive endless pleasure in a body whose soul I know to be so hideously black!’ (III.i.239–240). The play’s patriarchal double standard is exposed here. Pursuit of sexual pleasure is more important than any high-minded religious or Humanist imperative. The play sees masculine sexual desire as a force that cannot be controlled whatever the consequences for women. Malheureux puts it this way: ‘I must malign my creation that I am subject to passion. I must enjoy her’ (III.i.245–246). The fact that Franceschina is a prostitute does not detract from the deep undercurrent of misogyny and sexual violence underlying this claim. Freevill’s rationalisation is, as ever, more blunt: ‘Virtue, let sleep thy passions; / What old times held as crimes are now but fashions’ (III.i.262–263), an epigraph taken from Montaingne’s ‘Of Repenting’. Freevill’s reappropriation of Montaigne shows how ethical propriety is self-interestedly overwritten by a misogynistic will to pleasure. When it comes to the passions and the contemporary sex trade, priapic masculinity trumps Stoic mastery. This scene also marks the beginning of a much closer connection between Franceschina and apocalyptic imagery. Freevill asks: ‘What news from Babylon? How does the woman of sin and natural conscupience?’ (III. i.213–214). The comic apocalypticism of these words is worth lingering on. As noted, for Protestant exegetes Babylon represents Rome and the power of a popish Church that assails the true ‘Catholic’ Church. It is intriguing that Freevill’s lover is called Beatrice. This name could have connoted Dante’s muse in the Vita Nuova and Paradiso. Marston’s Beatrice is a typically romantic figure. Her scenes with Freevill are filled with conventionally amorous neoPlatonic language in the vein of Dante and Petrarch, Sidney and Spenser. Yet for many commentators on Revelation, Dante is also one of a group of protoProtestant forerunners of the Reformation. These also include Bernard of Clairvaux, Joachim of Fiore, Petrarch, Wycliffe, Marsillius of Padua, Lorenzo Valla, Savonarola, Jan Hus, Jerome of Prague, and Sir John Oldcastle.

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These men, it is argued, criticised papal authority and identified the Roman Church as antichristian well before Luther’s ‘official’ Reformation. George Abbot notes that Dante wrote ‘a booke against the Pope, Concerning the Monarchie of the Emperour’ – one of the most important medieval articulations of imperial monarchy. John Jewel is even more forthright: ‘Dantes an Italian Poëte by expresse wordes calleth Rome the Whoore of Babylon.’141 Similar arguments are made about Petrarch.142 This coopting of Dante and Petrarch as critics of the papacy has a political agenda. Dante’s championing of the political rights of the Holy Roman Emperor in De Monarchia ‘completes the imperial counter-claim to the world-wide authority of the Papacy’.143 As the Reformers use this kind of political theology to justify the claim of English monarchs to imperial authority, so Dante and Petrarch are deployed against the Roman Church.144 We have seen how Franceschina’s violent fixation on Beatrice is connected with fierce ‘Turkish’ excess and the Whore of Babylon. As her plan for revenge develops, this connection becomes clearer. In act V, Freevill appears in disguise to Franceschina as Don Dubon and tricks her into believing that he is on her side. She says: sweet divil! dat Beatrice would but run mad, dat she would but run mad, den me would dance and sing. [to Freevill ] Mettre Don Dubon, me pray ye now go to Mestress Beatrice; tell her Freevill is sure dead, and dat he curse herself especially . . . say anything dat vill vex her . . . I pridee torment her. Ick cannot love her; she honest and virtuous, forsooth! (V.i.82–95)

The spectre of the revenging whore taking her vengeance on the ‘honest and virtuous’ Beatrice has parallels with the apocalyptic opposition of the true and false Church found in anti-Catholic thinking. The violence of Franceschina’s words recalls the cruelty and affective excess attributed by exegetes to the Whore of Babylon.145 It is also notable that Freevill speaks about ‘The prostituted impudence of things / Senseless like those by 141

142

143 144

145

George Abbot, The Reasons Which Doctovr Hill Hath Brought . . . (Oxford: Joseph Barnes, 1604), p. 56; John Jewel, The Defence of the Apologie of the Churche of Englande . . . (London: Henry Wykes, 1567), p. 460. Foxe makes a similar argument about the poet in his Acts and Monuments. See, for example, Abbot, The Reasons, p. 56; Downame, A Treatise, p. 14; Napier, A Plaine Discouery, p. 239; and Brocardo, The Reuelation, fols. 53a, 110b, 124a. Yates, Astraea, p. 39. See also Norbrook, Poetry and Politics, pp. 41–42. On Petrarch, Dante, renovatio, and imperial monarchy, see Dandalet, The Renaissance of Empire, pp. 18–26. The Whore of Babylon is often compared to transgressive classical females. Herbert notes the she ‘stormeth like another Iuno’, and Bullinger states: ‘that great Circes the most venomous witche & sorcerer, is not sprinkled, or imbrewed, or wette, but drunken with the bloud of Saints, I meane of holy Martyrs’. Herbert, A Letter, sig. A2r, and Bullinger, A Hvndred Sermons, p. 234.

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cataracts of Nile’ (V.i.74–75) and says that Franceschina is, like the crocodiles of that river, ‘tearless’ (V.i.99). Egypt is a common synonym for Rome in apocalyptic writing, and the Whore of Babylon is often compared to that country’s most famously excessive queen: ‘in riote she could compare with Cleopatra’.146 I want to stress that none of these connections is made explicit in the play. They are part of the comic language of apocalypticism that colours the text and, more specifically, the depiction of Franceschina. This shows the fluid and imaginative ways that apocalyptic imagery can be used not simply for polemical ends but as part of a larger work of dramatic art. The violence of Franceschina’s intentions towards Beatrice tips the play towards the tragic mode. It is only in the final act that the move towards death is halted by a series of comic revelations. Significantly, it is the two ‘Dutch’ characters, the whore Franceschina and the Familialist Master Mulligrub, who take the burden of punishment in the final scene. The mercantile activities of Mulligrub are condemned by the disguised Cocledemoy: ‘you have made us drink of the juice of the whore of Babylon. For whereas good ale, perries, braggets, ciders, and metheglins was the true ancient British and Troyan drinks, you ha’ brought in Popish wines, Spanish wines, French wines . . . to the subversion, staggering, and sometimes overthrow of many a good Christian’ (V.iii.103–110). This is a comically vinous translation of empire. The ‘Dutch’ Mulligrub’s trading activities subvert English national and imperial interests. His wines are analogous to those drunk by the Whore of Babylon and her followers. However, he is reprieved from death by Cocledemoy. There is a generic understanding that this comedy, like the divine comedy of creation, fall, and judgement, relies on the acknowledgement of sins and the possibility of forgiveness if not, perhaps, redemption. Mulligrub’s reprieve is dictated not only by the demands of the genre but by an understanding that his ‘Dutch’ mercantile activities cannot be completely given up. Just as Cocledemoy’s profession as a ‘flattering knave’ is seen as ‘a good thriving trade’ (V.iii.140–141), so English trade with the Dutch and with Roman Catholic states will continue, whatever the complications and compromises involved in so doing. As for Franceschina, the revelation of her crimes and her punishment take on a more sombre tone, closer to the tragic, biblical mode of Revelation. Malheureux is reprieved from the false accusation of having 146

Fulke, Praelections, sig. Q6r. See too Thomas Kirchmeyer [Naogeorgus], The Popish Kingdome, or Reigne of Antichrist, written in Latine verse . . ., trans. Barnabe Googe (London: Henrie Denham for Richard Watkins, 1570), p. 6.

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killed Freevill when the later reveals himself to the company. The ‘fair devil’ (V.iii.44) is unmasked. Yet Franceschina’s condemnation as a ‘comely damnation’ (V.iii.48) reveals a structural tension that the play cannot resolve. Just as it is almost impossible to imagine early modern sexual ethics without prostitution, so it is impossible to imagine English politics without some entanglement with the Dutch. Franceschina is carted off to prison and to a whipping, and Malheureux sententiously proclaims that ‘He that lust rules cannot be virtuous’ (V.iii.67). Neither of these states is likely to last. Franceschina might not be back but others of her trade will. So will the Dutch. The brilliance of The Dutch Courtesan is that it never insists on any one point of view. Instead it invites the audience to consider how political and personal self-interest interact through the figure of the prostitute. If the conclusion of the play is ultimately as imperfect as the peace broached between England and Spain, then this is probably a more realistic reflection of how many saw the political compromises of 1602–1605.

chapter 3

‘Mere Idolatry’? Resistance and Rome in Middleton’s The Lady’s Tragedy (1610)

I Thomas Middleton’s The Lady’s Tragedy (1610) begins and ends with political upheaval.1 At the start of the play, the rightful king Govianus is removed from power by a usurper known only as the Tyrant. And in the final scene, Govianus kills the Tyrant and rightful rule is restored. On discovering that he has been poisoned, the Tyrant tells Govianus, ‘I’ll doom thee with a death / Beyond the Frenchman’s tortures’ (V.ii.139–140). As a number of editors and scholars have pointed out, this is a likely reference to the regicide François Ravaillac, who stabbed the French king Henri IV to death in Paris on 14 May 1610.2 The Lady’s Tragedy is a play that features a necrophiliac usurper, a pandering father, a female heroine who kills herself and who returns both as a corpse and a ghost, death by cosmetics, and a sustained anti-Catholic critique of idolatry. Given such succulent material, starting this chapter with a reference to contemporary French politics may seem like a missed opportunity. Yet the political reference and the spectacular plot elements are very much part of the same ideological agenda. By reading these elements alongside the play’s 1

2

In her edition of the play for the recent Oxford Middleton, Julia Briggs renames the play The Lady’s Tragedy. See The Lady’s Tragedy, ed. Julia Briggs in Thomas Middleton: The Collected Works, ed. Gary Taylor and John Lavagnino (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). The title The Second Maiden’s Tragedy is a legacy of the censor Sir George Buc. I use Anne Lancashire’s edition of the play here because I have drawn on its extensive notes and commentary. This edition retains the older title: The Second Maiden’s Tragedy, ed. Anne Lancashire, Revels Plays (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1978). Ravaillac was a mentally unstable Roman Catholic who believed that Henri should forcibly convert all Protestants in his realm. The fact that Henri was a Roman Catholic convert from Calvinism gave the murder extra political piquancy. On Ravaillac, see p. 14 of the Revels edition, as well as Richard Dutton, Mastering the Revels: The Regulation and Censorship of English Renaissance Drama (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1991), pp. 197–198; Janet Clare, ‘Art Made Tongue-Tied by Authority’: Elizabethan and Jacobean Dramatic Censorship (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1999), pp. 158–165; Swapan Chakravorty, Society and Politics in the Plays of Thomas Middleton (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), pp. 79–81.

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historical production and critical reception, I argue that they offer a politicised response to some of the most pressing concerns facing the Jacobean state between 1609 and 1611. This play has attracted a fair amount of critical attention over the years. Anne Lancashire reads the drama in relation to the hagiographic and allegorical tradition of saint’s lives. Richard Dutton and Janet Clare have studied the play’s manuscript and censorship. Swapan Chakravorty suggests that contemporary scandals surrounding Arabella Stuart and Frances Howard inform the drama, and Rebecca Bushnell examines its attitude to tyrannicide. Kevin Crawford studies depictions of masculinity in the play, Farah Karim Cooper looks at how cosmetics are deployed as agents of punishment, Susan Zimmerman reads the drama as a critique of idolatry, and Christine Gottlieb focuses on the cultural and theatrical significance of the corpse.3 While much of this work illuminates important aspects of this text, in what follows I suggest that criticism has not fully appreciated the political significance of the drama. Although the apocalypticism and anti-Catholicism of The Lady’s Tragedy has been touched on in some of this work, I argue that Middleton’s use of this language has political implications that need to be explored further. The Lady’s Tragedy survives in one of the few extant manuscript copies of an early modern play with the annotations and licence of the Master of the Revels, Sir George Buc. Most of the anticourt satire in the play is either emended or cut. So is much of the religious imagery.4 The reference to Ravaillac is emended so that the corrected line now reads, ‘I’ll doom thee with a death / Beyond the extremest tortures.’5 The consensus among modern scholars is that the play was probably first performed at Blackfriars by the King’s Men in late 1610 or 1611 and that this and other cuts were probably made for a later court performance. Making so direct an allusion 3

4

5

See Anne Lancashire, ‘The Second Maiden’s Tragedy: A Jacobean Saint’s Life’, RES, 25, 99, 1974, pp. 267–279, and The Second Maiden’s Tragedy, ed. Lancashire; Dutton, Mastering the Revels; Clare, ‘Art Made Tongue-Tied by Authority’; Chakravorty, Society and Politics; Rebecca Bushnell, Tragedies of Tyrants: Political Thought and Theater in the English Renaissance (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1990); Kevin Crawford, ‘“All His Intents Are Contrary to Man”: Softened Masculinity and Staging in Middleton’s The Lady’s Tragedy’, Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England, 16, 2003, pp. 101–129; Farah Karim-Cooper, Cosmetics in Shakespearean and Renaissance Drama (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006); Susan Zimmerman, The Early Modern Corpse and Shakespeare’s Theatre (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2005); and Christine Gottlieb, ‘“Middleton’s Traffic in Dead Women”: Chaste Corpses as Property in The Revenger’s Tragedy and The Lady’s Tragedy’, ELR, 45, 2, 2015, pp. 255–274. The manuscript, MS Lansdowne 807, is held in the British Library. I am grateful to staff in the Rare Books Reading Room for allowing me to study the manuscript. The Second Maiden’s Tragedy, p. 14.

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to contemporary events at court would have been, to say the least, impolitic. Dutton characterises James’ reaction to Henri’s murder as one of ‘paranoid distress’.6 Clare concurs with this judgement, noting that the ‘assassination had left James fearful for his own life’ and had ‘resulted in the prohibition of any publication relating to the event.’7 Henri’s death was a major event in European politics, one that had considerable effects on domestic and foreign policy in Britain. The day before Ravaillac’s execution, one contemporary wrote that James ‘entered the city [London] surrounded by his bodyguards, a thing he has not been accustomed to do’.8 In a pamphlet published in 1610, the dreadful execution of ‘This paracide, Frances Rauilliack’ is illustrated with a title page woodcut showing him being pulled apart by four horses.9 Nevertheless, to read the censorship of Middleton’s play through the lens of James’ supposed ‘paranoia’ and ‘fear’ is more than a little limiting. There are three reasons for this claim. First, the use of such pejorative adjectives wrongly implies that James overreacted to Henri’s death.10 Given the general state of Protestant and Roman Catholic relations in England in 1610, the response of the Jacobean government was understandable and, broadly speaking, less extreme than many Roman Catholics had feared. The king was worried about the implications of the murder. But the political response to this event cannot be reduced to a reflection of his emotional state. As well as the national implications, James was concerned about a power vacuum in France. In the words of Maurice Lee, Jr.: ‘A recrudescence of religious and political turmoil in France would not be a helpful development . . . An impotent France would encourage Spain to contemplate a return to the policies of Philip II.’11 James wanted to keep Spain in check and avoid Protestants being persecuted in France again. Second, while publications relating to Henri’s death may have been banned, by any measure the prohibition did not work. There is a 6

Dutton, Mastering the Revels, p. 198. There is no contemporary record of the play being performed at either Blackfriars or the court. 7 Clare, Art Made Tongue-Tied by Authority, p. 162. 8 Report to the Doge and Senate by Marc’ Antonio Correr, 26th May 1610. Calendar of State Papers [Venetian], vol. XI, 1607–1610, ed. Horatio F. Brown (London: Mackie, 1904). 9 The Terrible and Deserued death of Francis Rauilliack . . . (London: R. Blower and E. Alde for William Barley, 1610), p. 2. 10 See Anthony Milton, Catholic and Reformed: The Roman and Protestant Churches in English Protestant Thought 1600–1640 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), and W.B. Patterson, King James VI and the Reunion of Christendom (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). 11 Maurice Lee, Jr., Great Britain’s Solomon: James VI and I in His Three Kingdoms (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1990), p. 264. See more generally Lee’s James I and Henri IV: An Essay in English Foreign Policy 1603–1610 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1970).

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variety of contemporary material that refers to the murder of Henri. These include Roman Catholic texts denying that Henri IV’s Jesuit confessor, Pierre Coton, had defended the murder of his master.12 James himself asked the great Huguenot Isaac Casaubon, in exile in England in the aftermath of the assassination, to write a response to Jesuit defences of Coton: the result was Ad Frontonem Ducaeum (1611).13 Moreover, the period saw the publication or republication of a fascinating cluster of texts, including John Jewel’s Apologie for the Church of England, John Foxe’s Acts and Monuments, John Speed’s Historie of Great Britaine, Edmund Spenser’s The Fairie Queene, and Augustine’s The City of God. Each of these texts is central to the apocalyptic and imperial account of English Protestant statehood. In an important sense these texts are also oppositional narratives. They all try to establish the religious truth of the true Church in the face of hostility or heresy. Politically, we can see why such books were republished in the aftermath of the assassination.14 Last, like many critics of the play, Dutton and Clare are overly concerned with what might have offended the court. This is understandable given that we can see what the censor excised. But even with the cuts, The Lady’s Tragedy remains a politically challenging text. As the textual and performance history of Shakespeare’s Richard II (c. 1595) shows, any early modern playwright who decided to bookend his play with two acts of deposition was treading on dangerous ground. In what follows, then, I examine the unexpurgated text in order to give as full a flavour as possible of the play’s suggestive language and imagery. More than just another bloody revenge tragedy, this is one of the most provocative plays of the Jacobean era. While censorship may have toned down the language of the play, it is designed to resonate with important sections of both a Blackfriars and a court audience. I also want to argue for an important and hitherto 12

13 14

In addition to the text quoted in note 9, see Pierre du Coignet, Anti-Cotton; Or A Refutation of Cottons Letter Declaratory . . . (London: TS for Richard Boyle, 1611); A Copie of a Late Decree of the Sorbonne (London: RB, 1610); Pierre Coton, The Hellish and horribble Councell, practised and vsed by the Iesuites . . . (London: John Windet for T. Bushell, 1610); Claude Morillon, The Fvnerall Pompe and Obseqvies of the Most Mighty and Puissant Henry the Forth . . . (London: Nicholas Okes, 1610); Thomas Owen, The Copie of a Letter Sent from Paris . . . (St Omer, 1611); Thomas Pelettier, A Lamentable Discourse . . . (London: John Windet for Edward Blunt and William Barret, 1610); Edmond Skory, The Copie of a Letter Written from Paris . . . (London: Robert Barker for John Budge, 1610); Michael Walpole, A Brief Admonition to All English Catholikes . . . (St Omer, 1610). See Isaac Casaubon, Ad Frontonem Ducaeum . . . (Londini: Ioannem Norton, 1611). See the texts listed in Peter Milward, Religious Controversies of the Jacobean Age (London: Scholar Press, 1978) and in chapter 6 of Donna B. Hamilton, Shakespeare and the Politics of Protestant England (New York and London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1992), which reads Shakespeare’s Cymbeline in relation to this controversy.

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unnoticed historical narrative that Middleton alludes to in the play and that should inform our reading of The Lady’s Tragedy.

II Since the time of his majority as king of Scotland, James advocated closer political and religious ties between the great powers of Europe as a means of achieving peace across the continent and at home.15 As we saw in Chapter 1, one of the first foreign policy acts of the Jacobean government was to sign the Treaty of London with Spain in 1604.16 As king of England, James was keen to develop alliances further with like-minded European rulers. While their relationship was not without tensions, the king and Henri were close associates. This was, amongst other things, an attempt to check Spanish imperial aggression, especially towards the Dutch.17 Philip III and his more bellicose advisers saw the Treaty of London as an imperfect agreement, especially on the subject of trade.18 The Anglo-Dutch defensive League signed in 1608 was an attempt to maintain a delicate balance between these two countries, as well as France and Spain. Instead of agreeing peace with the Dutch, Philip III signed the Truce of Antwerp in 1609: Spanish soldiers remained in the Low Countries.19 This put pressure on Henri, who wanted to oppose Hapsburg aggression here and in Italy but who needed Protestant alliances to do so.20 For some in England, the Anglo-French relationship was a stepping stone towards the greater pan-European unity favoured by both monarchs. For others, it was a strategic error. Henri may have been generally sympathetic to James and to England, but he was still a Roman Catholic and some thought that his religion left him susceptible to the influence of Spain and Rome.21

15

16

17 18

19 20

21

The classic study of Jacobean pacific policy is Patterson, King James VI and the Reunion. See also Jenny Wormald, Court, Kirk, and Community: Scotland 1470–1625 (London: Edward Arnold, 1981). See Diana Newton, The Making of the Jacobean Regime: James VI and I and the Government of England (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2005). Lee, James I, pp. 168–169. Ibid., pp. 97–117. Trade disputes and the payment of debts also caused friction between the English and French. Ibid., pp. 134–135. For a summation of Henri’s policy towards the other major European states, see Mark Greengrass, France in the Age of Henri IV (London and New York: Longman, 1995), pp. 236–250. For more on the French political context, see J.H.M. Salmon, ‘Catholic Resistance Theory, Ultramontism, and the Royalist Response, 1580–1620’, in The Cambridge History of Political Thought 1450–1700, ed. J.H. Burns (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 219–253.

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James and Henri had other aims in common. Five days after the murder, the Venetian Ambassador Marc’ Antonio Correr observed that many in James’ court were ‘grieved beyond all belief’ for the ‘hope that by aid of the Union they were going to secure a long peace and to add considerably to the prestige of Great Britain’.22 The ‘Union’ refers to Henri IV’s anti-Hapsburg coalition with the Netherlands and the German Union of Evangelical States formed in the aftermath of the Cleves-Jülich succession crisis.23 James joined in 1609, much to the delight of militant Protestants, who saw the chance to unite with Henri in a war against Spain. Only Henri’s death prevented James becoming embroiled in this war.24 Militant Protestants expressed concern at what would now follow. In a text entitled A Prophesie That Hath Lyen Hid of 1610, the anonymous author typologically interprets one section of the prophecies of Ezra as follows: the two Kingdomes of France and Spaine, whose vnhalowed leage the Prophet fore-seeing saith: they shuld be ioyned with this middle-head, and like three parts in one, accord and agree together, to humble themselues, their authoritie, and power before the Beast, and for their Idolshepheard should fight against the Highest, till by the breath of his mouth they be scattered, like the dust which the winde disperseth.25

Clearly for some the death of Henri presaged a worrying shift in European power relations. A translation of a French text trying to persuade James to support a crusade or ‘holy war’ against France’s enemies was published in 1611.26 One final reason for the two kings’ political proximity is their shared interest in conciliar theology. Indeed, at the start of James’ reign, he and Henri were involved in diplomatic discussions exploring the idea of a universal church council convened by the Pope and involving all temporal rulers of goodwill in order to bring peace to Europe.27 This idea 22

23 24

25 26

27

Report to the Doge and Senate by Marc’ Antonio Correr, 19th May 1610, Calendar of State Papers [Venetian], p. 485. Lee, James I, pp. 160–167. See Patterson, King James VI and the Reunion, pp. 155–156. See also David Norbrook, Poetry and Politics in the English Renaissance, rev. ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 179–180. A Prophesie That Hath Lyen Hid . . . (London: Edward Alde for Nathaniel Fosbrooke, 1610), p. 34. Jean Loiseau de Tourval, The French Herald . . . (London: E. Alde for Edward Lownes, 1611), pp. 38–49. James’ interest in concilliar theology did not preclude his adherence to divine right monarchy. But he saw a general Church council as offering a real chance for peace and argued that the similarly pacific Pope Clement VIII should convene the council. Moreover, he argued in Triplici Nodo that the oath of allegiance was not incompatible with concilliar authority. For a full account, see chapter 2 of Patterson, King James VI and the Reunion, pp. 31–74. See too James VI and I, Triplici Nodo, in Political Writings, ed. Johann P. Somerville (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 105–106.

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would continue to tantalise James for the rest of his reign. His engagement in various European Leagues, especially in the first half of his reign, can be seen in this moderate, pacific light. The discovery of the Gunpowder Plot was a setback for the more moderate articulation of Jacobean policy. Those who, in the aftermath of the Treaty of London, argued for Roman Catholic toleration now needed to tread carefully. The government passed a series of penal laws against papists, the most controversial of which was the Oath of Allegiance. This oath was intended to protect James from attack by Roman Catholics and required all subjects over the age of eighteen ‘to swear allegiance to the king as their temporal ruler and to swear that the pope did not possess a power to depose temporal rulers’.28 Polemical arguments drew heavily on the king’s assertion of his imperial monarchical authority.29 Pope Paul V forbade any Roman Catholic to take the oath, but many, including the English Arch-Priest George Blackwell, defied Rome and swore loyalty to the king. The Italian Cardinal and Jesuit political theorist Robert Bellarmine then entered the lists with a defence of a Roman Catholic’s right to refuse the oath. Bellarmine’s argument is ‘that though the Pope haue not meere temporal power ouer Kings, and kingdoms, directly; yet hath he supreame authoritie to dispose of the Temporalities of all Christians, as well Kings, as others, by an indirect prerogatiue, tending to the aduancement of the spirituall good’.30 This claim provoked an angry response from James in his Triplici Nodo (1607) and Apologie for the Oath of Allegiance (1609). There then followed a Europe-wide battle of the books.31 John Donne’s Pseudo-Martyr (1610) is perhaps the best known of these texts today. Protestant and Roman Catholic polemicists debated whether or not the Pope had any right to depose the king and the extent of James’ temporal and spiritual authority as head of the Church in England. Johann Sommerville explains the pith of the controversy concisely: ‘An act of papal deposition absolved subjects from their civil allegiance. A king

28 29 30

31

Hamilton, Shakespeare and the Politics, p. 131. The following section is indebted to Hamilton’s book. See Dandelet, The Renaissance of Empire, pp. 262–263. This is a paraphrase of Bellarmine’s argument taken from David Owen, Herod and Pilate Reconciled . . . (Cambridge: Cantrell Legge, 1610), sigs. }2v–3r. This debate has some interesting parallels with English polemicists during this period discussing the relationship between Spanish monarchical politics and Roman Catholicism – see for example the apocalyptic A Prophesie That Hath Lyen Hid, above These 2000 yeares . . . (London: Nathaniel Fosbrooke, 1610), esp. pp. 34–35, and A Copie of a Late Decree of the Sorbone . . . (London: R.B., 1610), which condemns a Spanish Jesuit defence of regicide that apparently inspired Ravaillac, esp. sigs. B3v-r and E3r.

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who continued to exercise power after deposition was nothing more than a usurping tyrant, and could be assassinated by anyone.’32 The murder of Henri gave fresh impetus to this debate. In 1610, parliament passed ‘An Act for Administering the Oath of Allegiance’. In addition to taking the oath, this act prohibited Roman Catholics from holding offices of state or any position of authority, forbade them from living within ten miles of London, and banished all priests from the realm.33 Once more James and his clerics engaged in polemical battle with Bellarmine and other Roman Catholic clerics. Notably, the religious observance of females was singled out as a matter of concern. The Oath Act of 1610 contains a section that addresses the ‘reformation of Married Woman Recusants.’ If a married female papist did not go to Church within three months of being convicted of recusancy, then she would be imprisoned until she conformed or ‘unless the husband of such a wife shall pay to the King’s Majesty . . . for every month ten pounds . . . or else the third part . . . of all his lands and tenements’.34 Throughout the subplot of The Lady’s Tragedy, the infidelity of the Wife and the duplicitous Leonella are associated with broken oaths and promises. When he agrees to a test of wifely fidelity, Anselmus says to Votarius: ‘For thy vow’s sake, I pardon thee. / Thy oath is now sufficient watch itself / Over thy actions’ (I.ii.144–145). The play exposes the patriarchal double standard that while a woman’s oath must be disbelieved and tested, a man’s oath is deemed to be ‘sufficient’ in and of itself. Votarius’ speech before the test is revealing: Man has some enemy still that keeps him back In all his fortunes, and his mind is his, And that’s a mighty adversary. I had rather Have twenty kings my enemies than that part; For let me be at war with earth and hell So that be friends with me! I ha’ sworn to make A trial of her faith; I must put on A courtier’s face and do’t; mine own will shame me. (I.ii.158–165)

32

33

34

Johann Sommerville, Politics and Ideology in England 1603–1640 (London and New York: Longman, 1995), p. 198. See ‘The Oaths Act, 1610’, in J.R. Tanner, Constitutional Documents of the Reign of James I A.D. 1603–1625 with an Historical Commentary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1960), pp. 105–109. See too Michael C. Questier, Catholicism and Community in Early Modern England: Politics, Aristocratic Patronage and Religion, c. 1550–1640 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 355–386. Tanner, Constitutional Documents, p. 109.

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For Votarius, the mind of a man is a place that no vow and, more contentiously, no king can claim dominion over. This may sound rather close to the Jesuit doctrine of equivocation. The Oath of Allegiance addressed this problem directly, specifically forbidding ‘any equivocation or mental evasion or secret reservation whatsoever’ when taking the vow.35 But it does not necessarily follow that Votarius should be associated with popery. Dissembling is as much a feature of mental life as it is court life. Votarius’ promise to make a ‘trial’ of the wife’s ‘faith’ has as much to do with a radical Protestant scepticism towards state-sanctioned oaths as it does contemporary misogyny and anti-Catholicism.36 Numerous English commentators frame the Oath debate as an example of Roman Catholic reason of state: With what deuilish spirit therefore is the Pope of Rome bewitched, that disswadeth subiects from obedience to their naturall and lawfull Kings: and that (like a bloudy Caine) stireth vp subiects to lay violent hands on their Kings, and by trechery to take away their liues: and canonize these murtherers for most holy saints and Martyrs.37

In 1610 James granted the charter for Chelsea College, an educational institution staffed by some of the leading lights of English Protestantism and founded to produce anti-Catholic polemic countering the Vatican and its apologists. In his book Of the Church, published in 1606 but reprinted after Henri’s murder, Richard Field outlines a number of objections to Bellarmine’s influential argument that the Pope has supreme authority to depose temporal monarchs. The most important of these are the claims that ‘the civil power that is in princes is not in the pope’, and so ‘it cannot be restrained, limited, or taken away by him’, and that ‘the pope cannot depose princes in ordine ad spiritualia’.38 For James, the imperial monarch legitimises the political and religious authority of the sovereign state. Most English polemicists held firmly to this line in the years that followed. They deny that the Pope has any authority in temporal affairs to depose kings, asserting the God-given authority of the monarch within his own realms. Many Roman Catholics, by contrast, continue to argue that the Pope has 35 36

37

38

Tanner, Constitutional Documents, p. 91. For an argument that Shakespeare was responsible for some manuscript revisions made to The Lady’s Tragedy, see Eric Rasmussen, ‘Shakespeare’s Hand in the Second Maiden’s Tragedy’, Shakespeare Quarterly, 40, 1, 1989, pp. 1–26. Thomas Williamson, The Sword of the Spirit to Smite in Pieces That Antichristian Goliah (London: Edward Griffin, 1613), p. 95. Richard Field, Of the Church, Five Books, vol. 3 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1847), pp. 497–501.

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indirect authority over the temporal realm and so can depose kings. They also argue that to force Roman Catholics to swear an oath denying the Pope’s deposing power is to deny his papal supremacy. In an important sense it is James’ pacific and conciliarist leanings that fan the flames of the controversy. As he asks in Triplici Nodo: could there be a more gracious part in a King . . . towards Subiects of a contrary Religion, then by making them to take this Oath, to publish their honest fidelitie in temporal things to me their Soueraigne, and thereby to wipe off that imputation and great slander which was laide vpon the whole professours of that Religion, by the furious enterprise of these Powder-men?39

The ‘slander’ is Bellarmine’s Jesuit-inspired argument that kings may be rightfully deposed in the temporal realm.40 The key assertion in this formulation, both here and elsewhere in James’ work, is that his Roman Catholic subjects only need bear him ‘honest fidelitie in temporal things’. So long as they obey him in matters temporal, Roman Catholics do not owe any direct spiritual allegiance to the king as head of the Church in England. W.B. Patterson has called this one of a ‘set of paradoxes’ in Jacobean policy towards Roman Catholics. He notes that while the controversy over the Oath ‘helped to forge a Protestant and anti-papal consensus in England’, it ‘also provided a spur to the development of a conciliar theology which . . . reserved a significant place for the pope in the reforming and reuniting of the universal Church’.41 In fact, it is James’ belief that the Pope might be persuaded to mediate between the European confessions that, paradoxically, allowed English papists a degree of creative ambiguity in relation to the penal laws. It also meant that conforming Roman Catholics were often treated less punitively than the legislation suggested. Field’s Of the Church, while containing a strong rebuttal of Bellarmine’s political theology, outlines the most influential early modern defence of conciliarism since Richard Hooker.42 Unsurprisingly, Roman Catholic writers make much of James’ conciliar leanings. As the English Jesuit Michael Walpole writes in 1610: ‘in my opinion his Maiesty can hardly come neerer to our religion, vnlesse he should actually 39 40

41 42

James VI and I, Triplici Nodo, p. 116. See Harro Höpfl, Jesuit Political Thought: The Society of Jesus and the State, c. 1540–1630 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 314–338. Patterson, King James VI and the Reunion, p. 123. See chapter 2 of Patterson, King James VI and the Reunion, as well as chapters 3 and 4 of Francis Oakley, The Conciliarist Tradition: Constitutionalism in the Catholic Church 1300–1870 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).

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imbrace it’.43 It would be wrong to see this kind of sentiment, often expressed in Roman Catholic writings of this period, as political mischief making. Post 1610, Jacobean policy towards Rome has to strike a complex and uneasy balance between defence and moderation. For some Roman Catholics, this offers them at least the hope of political accommodation. But for many Protestants, Jacobean moderation is papal appeasement in all but name. It was not only Roman Catholics who came under renewed scrutiny in the aftermath of the French regicide. Internal Protestant tensions can be seen too. Elizabethan and Jacobean governments had long been wary of more radical forms of Protestant resistance theory, associating them with Presbyterianism and the high Calvinist or Puritan wing of Protestantism.44 During the period of the Oath controversy and Henri’s death, Jesuit and Puritan defences of rebellion are increasingly equated. There are two difficulties with this connection. First, it gives Roman Catholic polemicists the chance to accuse their Protestant opponents of hypocrisy: did famous Protestants such as Knox and Goodman, Calvin and Beza not also defend the right to resist? Maintaining an anti-Catholic political argument against the right of Popes to depose involves some tenuous glossing of Protestant history and polemic. Although he sometimes drew parallels between Jesuit and radical Protestant theories of resistance, equally James also denies that Protestantism gives any grounds for rebellion. He calls the notorious Huguenot resistance tract Vindiciae contra tyrannos (1579) a popish forgery. He also says that since his tutor George Buchanan was a poet rather than a divine, no one should take his political views seriously.45 Second, the desire to argue that Roman Catholicism, not Protestantism, is the religion of rebellion leads a number of Protestant thinkers into some extremely fine distinctions that, in themselves, verge on the Jesuitical. How can the historical resistance of various European Protestant groups – for example the Dutch suffering under the yoke of Spanish imperialism – be explained? Given English support for the Dutch during Elizabeth’s reign, this is a common charge laid against English Protestantism. Many Protestants respond by suggesting that rebellion is not a religious but a temporal act. In those cases when European Protestants had rebelled, it happened ‘in types of polity in which resistance might be legitimate’.46 How convincing

43 45 46

44 Michael Walpole, A Briefe Admonition p. 5. See Milton, Catholic and Reformed, pp. 503–523. James VI and I, Basilicon Doron, in Political Writings, p. 46; Milton, Catholic and Reformed, p. 516. Milton, Catholic and Reformed, p. 517. Milton cites John Jewel, William Bedel, and Thomas Bilson as defending this kind of approach.

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this argument seems depends on the religious polity that is being defended. James’ repeated claim that his authority cannot be overthrown by any other temporal power is central to this debate.47 As has been noted, by making all forms of limited monarchy ‘essentially heretical’, this ‘left the political resistance of foreign Protestants open to the charge of religious heterodoxy, even if the foreign Protestants had asserted no religious right to resist’.48 Conforming Protestants of all hues have to defend Protestantism as a nonrebellious religion while also deciding whether specific examples of Protestant political resistance are religious or temporal acts. Significantly, this problem was exploited in England during the aftermath of Henri’s death by the ‘more vehemently anti-puritan avant-garde conformists’.49 This small group of anti-Calvinist, proto-Arminian clergymen close to senior clergy such as Lancelot Andrewes were strongly opposed to the idea that Protestants had either a religious or a temporal right to resist. In order to make this point, they reject all attempts to finesse the point. They simply insist that there is no political difference between Protestant theories of rebellion, from whatever source, and those of the Jesuits. In his book Herod and Pilate Reconciled, published in 1610, David Owen calls temporal and religious rebellion ‘this Puritan-popish manner of proceeding against Princes’.50 As might be expected, he singles out radical Protestant writers such as Goodman, Buchanan, Hotman, Junius, Daneau, and Cartwright for particular criticism. Unusually for a Protestant, though, Owen also goes after those pillars of orthodoxy, Calvin and Beza. He claims that Beza is regularly ‘consulted’ by Puritans on ‘whether inferiour officers’ may resist. He also argues that while Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion (1559) is a good book generally, it contains one ‘obscene’ and ‘doubtful’ section that excuses the ‘outrage of the Citizens against the prince, whom they had not many weekes before expelled’.51 In attacking the politics of orthodox and radical Protestantism alike, or as he addresses them in his epistle, ‘the loyall subiect, and Godly affected’, Owen goes after a range of contemporary opinion on the issue of rebellion. His book points to an important fault

47

48 50 51

Glenn Burgess argues that James is not an absolutist. He notes that discussions of the term commonly maintain that ‘an absolute power or authority was one not subject to appeal, a discretionary authority; but it was not a boundless authority. It existed within limits that were defined by law, limits the transgression of which could be policed by law.’ Glenn Burgess, Absolute Monarchy and the Stuart Constitution (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1996), p. 31. 49 Milton, Catholic and Reformed, p. 517. Ibid., p. 518. Owen, Herod and Pilate Reconciled, sig. }5v. Ibid., sig. }5v and p. 46. The Protestant defenders of resistance are discussed on pp. 46–53.

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line in the political defence of Protestantism that, by 1610–1611, becomes increasingly apparent. To defend Protestant resistance on religious grounds is uncomfortably close to Jesuit doctrine: to call this resistance temporal is de facto to deny Protestantism’s nonrebellious ethos. It is to admit what everyone involved in these religious controversies implicitly knows: that reason of state knows no confessional boundaries. The period in which The Lady’s Tragedy is written and performed, then, is one of keen religious and political tension. Should Roman Catholics swear the Oath of Allegiance and under what terms? Should Britain seek a closer union with European Protestantism or hold back? How should it engage with European Roman Catholicism? Is resistance, according to Roman Catholic and Protestant doctrine, essentially the same thing? Or are there legitimate distinctions to be made here? As I will argue in the second half of this chapter, these difficult questions help us to understand the political aims of Middleton’s play.

III In the deposition scene that opens the play, the Tyrant says that the league of Lords has ‘fixed our glories like unmoved stars / That know not what it is to fall or err’ (I.i.2–3). The absolutist language used here is ominous, as is the fact that the Lords have aided the Tyrant’s usurpation. Three of the nobility are named: Memphonius, Sophonirus, and Helvetius. Each of these names has ironic implications. The first two have decidedly Classical, even Hellenic names. Memphonius probably comes from ‘Memphian’, an Egyptian, a word commonly used in the period to denote ‘foreign’ or heretical belief. ‘Sophonirus’ may connote the verbal and moral sleight of hand associated with the Greek Sophists. But it is the last named Lord, Helvetius, who plays a particularly active political role. Anne Lancashire has shown that Helvetius is a common synonym in the period for a Protestant. It may also signify the Helvetic Confession of the Swiss Protestant Churches.52 If we accept this reading, then in an audacious opening move by Middleton, tyranny is effectively being propped up by a league that includes Protestants. The Tyrant banishes Govianus. He also wants to make Helvetius’ daughter, who is betrothed to the deposed Govianus, his Queen. Helvetius actively consents. Here is Govianus’ response:

52

Ibid., p. 87.

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The loss of her sits closer to my heart Than that of kingdom or the whorish pomp Of this world’s titles that with flattery swells us And makes us die like beasts fat for destruction. O, she’s a woman, and her eye will stand Upon advancement, never weary yonder; But when she turns her head by chance and sees The fortunes that are my companions, She’ll snatch her eyes off, and repent the looking. (I.i.59–67)

As we often see in Middleton’s plays, the misogynistic trope of women’s inconstancy and the dangerous fallibility of the eyes are aligned in a warning against false, idolatrous allegiance.53 This religious interpretation is supported by the use of loaded, even godly phrases such as ‘whorish pomp’ and ‘repent the looking’. Govianus’ words also draw on Leviticus 7 and God’s injunction to Moses and the newly monotheistic Israelites not to eat the ‘fat of the beast’. As the verse warns, the one who eats ‘shalbe cut off from his people’ (Leviticus 7:24–25). This is an identifiably godly register whose anti-idolatrous tone is unmistakable.54 Moreover, in this act of passive resistance, Govianus is figured as the antithesis of the Tyrant and the Lords, especially the ‘Protestant’ Helvetius. If this alignment mirrors the uncomfortable proximity of Roman Catholic and Protestant theories of resistance at this period, it may also have left audiences wondering how Middleton might differentiate between the two. When the Lady enters in a mourning dress of black, the Tyrant’s response is revealing: ‘Go, bring me her hither like an illustrious bride / With her best beams about her; let her jewels / Be worth ten cities’ (I.i.119–121).55 The city of Babylon, alternately arrayed in finery or crumbling in ruin, is a central image in the book of Revelation. In 18:23, after the Whore of Babylon is revealed, it is said of Babylon that ‘the light of a 53

54

55

As in Women Beware Women (1621) and The Changeling (1622). See too Coirle Anne Mooney, ‘Infected Vision in the Works of Thomas Middleton’, PhD thesis, University College, Cork, 2013. A number of scholars have argued that Middleton had Calvinist sympathies. See Margot Heinemann, Puritanism and Theatre: Thomas Middleton and Opposition Drama under the Early Stuarts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), pp. 264–282; John Stachniewski, ‘Calvinist Psychology in Middleton’s Tragedies’, in Three Jacobean Revenge Tragedies: A Casebook, ed. R.V. Holdsworth (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1990), pp. 226–247; and David Nicol, Middleton and Rowley: Forms of Collaboration in the Jacobean Playhouse (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012), pp. 42–65. For a counter to Heinemann’s association of Middleton with ‘opposition’ Puritanism, see N.W. Bawcutt, ‘Was Thomas Middleton a Puritan Dramatist?’, MLR, 94, 9, 1999, pp. 925–939. See Volpone’s speech to Celia on Lollia Paulina’s jewels at III.vii.191–201. Ben Jonson, The Alchemist and Other Plays, ed. Gordon Campbell (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995).

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candle shall shine no more in thee’. The usurper wishes to adorn and illuminate the Lady, to write over her sober and godly dress.56 In seeking to draw the Lady away from her ‘true’ love, the words of the Tyrant recall the sexualised affective rhetoric found in polemical constructions of the Roman Catholic Church. As William Barlow pointed out in 1601, whereas the true Protestant Church ‘admittes of no other, howsoeuer that Church, thus nick-named, the whore of Babylon, enamoured with strange louers, doth boast herselfe of traditions, and councels, and fathers.’57 Supported by his ‘councel’ of politically dubious Lords, the Tyrant plans to use the Lady for his sexual enjoyment. The Lady understands her religious objectification but rejects the Tyrant’s designs, saying, ‘I am not to be altered’ (I.i.122). She returns to Govianus with the words: ‘I come not hither / To please the eye of glory, but of goodness, / And that concerns not you, sir; you’re for greatness’ (I.i.127–129). This is highly stylised language, and the dramaturgy of this scene is similarly emblematic. When Babylon falls in Revelation, the merchants cry: ‘Alas, alas, that great citie, that was clothed in fine linnen and purple, and skarlet, and gilded with gold, and precious stones, and pearles. For in one houre so great riches are come to desolation’ (Revelation 18:16–17). The Lady rejects this construction as Whore of Babylon. A little later she notes: ’Tis not the reeling fortune of great state Or low condition that I cast mine eye at; It is the man I seek, the rest I loose As things unworthy to be kept or noted. Fortunes are but the outsides of true worth; It is the mind that sets his master forth. (I.i.173–178)

This language purposely mirrors Govianus’ rejection of the idolatrous eye and outward ceremony, a trope repeated throughout the play. As Alison Shell points out, ‘All Protestants who believed in idolatry thought that it was the distinguishing stain of Catholicism.’58 Although this ‘stain’ is much more luridly evoked in later acts, the opening scenes prefigure the 56

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See the description of the woman in Revelation 17:4–8. The ten horns of the beast refer to ‘ten kings, which yet haue not receiued a kingdome, but shall receuiue power, as Kings at one houre with the beast’. The commentary in the Geneva Bible notes that these kings arise ‘with their kingdoms out of the Romane beast: at such time as that politicall Empire began by the craft of the Popes greatly to fall’ (Commentary Notes on Revelation 17: 12). William Barlow, A Defence of the Articles of the Protestants Religion . . . (London: Iohn Wolfe, 1601), p. 186. Alison Shell, Catholicism, Controversy and the English Literary Imagination, 1558–1660 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 36.

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idolatrous disfigurement of the Lady in a kind of dramatic typology. Her denial of the Tyrant is similarly charged: he calls her ‘A woman to set light by sovereignty!’ (I.i.184). The stylised imagery and action of the opening scene establishes the opposition between plain and adorned language and affect. In their passive resistance of authority, the ‘reformed’ Lady and Govianus are pitted against an absolutist Tyrant with a penchant for idolatry. The combat for the Lady can be read as a symbolic battle between competing religious and political modes.59 It is significant that the Tyrant constantly aims to torment Govianus’ ‘soul’ or ‘spirit’ (I.i.104, 110, 201, 232). The distinction between worthless flesh and exalted spirit is stressed here and throughout the play. By attacking Govianus’ ‘soul’ the Tyrant gives his persecution a religious cast. The Tyrant decides not to banish but rather to imprison the lovers. His reason is political: ‘There is some combination betwixt thee [Govianus] / And foreign plots; thou hast some powers to raise’ (I.i.203–204). The Tyrant’s fears that Govianus might be affiliated with foreign, nonpassive resistance. Competing leagues and alliances inform the political landscape of the play. In the second act, Helvetius attempts to pander his own daughter to the Tyrant. He is opposed by Govianus and switches political allegiance. He says: ‘henceforward / My knee shall know no other earthly lord’ (II.i.162–163). Although this is an important turning point in the play, Helvetius’ fickle behaviour casts doubt on the stability of political leagues and those who form them. The Tyrant’s various attempts to win the Lady result in her suicide in the third act. Govianus’ words to the Lady before her death invoke apocalypse and Christian martyrdom: ‘Thou deserv’st death with speed, a quick dispatch, / The pain but of a twinkling, and so sleep’ (III.iii.128–129.60 By comparison, the Tyrant’s language is much earthier. He complains that he’s ‘lost the comfort of her sight forever’ (IV.ii.30) and has the Lady’s body exhumed from the grave. In language that echoes Romeo’s speech as he reveals Juliet’s body in act V of Shakespeare’s tragedy (not to mention echoes of Pygmalion), the Tyrant says: O, the moon rises! What reflection Is thrown about this sanctified building

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Such a structure contrasts the world of the flesh and the spirit, and ‘identified the earthly city with the corrupt Roman church, the heavenly city with the Invisible Church’ – Norbrook, Poetry and Politics, p. 34. See 1 Corinthians 15:52: ‘In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye at the last trumpet: for the trumpet shall blowe, and the dead shall be raised vp incorruptible, and we shall be changed.’

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This is a different kind of ‘twinkling’. Referring to the apocryphal story of Herod and Mariamne, he engages in a sexual relationship with the Lady’s corpse: ‘I’ll clasp the body for the spirit that dwelt in it’ (IV.iii.111). He then has the body dressed and venerated by the court: ‘we have caused her body to be decked / In all the glorious riches of our palace’ (V.ii.8–9). In case anyone had missed the point, this act is called ‘mere idolatry’ (V.ii.20) by a soldier. The language and imagery of these closing scenes notoriously and unswervingly connects perverted sexual desire, false Roman Catholic worship, and necrophilia. The Tyrant consistently mistakes flesh for spirit, the defining popish error. It is also significant that the Lady’s spirit appears at various stages to encourage Govianus to revenge, most memorably in the following stage direction: ‘On a sudden, in a kind of noise like a wind, the doors clattering, the tombstone flies open, and a great light appears in the midst of the tomb; his Lady, as went out, standing just before him all in white, stuck with jewels, and a great crucifix on her breast’ (IV.iv.SD). This appearance has been read by scholars in relation to Jesus rising from his tomb in the Gospels, or to hagiographic saint’s lives.62 This godly light shining from the Lady stands in contrast to the idolatrous beams mentioned by the Tyrant in act I. From another perspective, the Lady’s jewel-adorned appearance and crucifix may be difficult to reconcile with her earlier rejection of idolatrous popery couched in similar terms. As Susan Zimmerman has astutely asked, is the play able to ‘address the contentious issue of idolatry without seeming to conflate conflicting ideologies through its use of Catholic trappings’?63 The answer to this question lies in unearthing a significant historical narrative 61

62

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Compare Romeo’s speech at V.iii.84–120. William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, in The Norton Shakespeare, ed. Stephen Greenblatt et al. (New York and London: W.W. Norton, 1997). See Lancashire, ‘The Second Maiden’s Tragedy: A Jacobean Saint’s Life’. See also act III, scene 1, of John Marston’s Antonio’s Revenge (c. 1601). Zimmerman, The Early Modern Corpse, p. 100.

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that informs Middleton’s depiction of the Tyrant, Lady, and Govianus and this play’s broader political aims. The Revels editor of the play suggests that the name Govianus is Classical and may relate to Jove or Jupiter. She also notes that it is the surname of the Roman Emperor Diocletian, a link that implies Govianus’ ‘divine origin’.64 The difficulty with this association is that Diocletian was a notorious persecutor of Christians, hardly a model for the godly Govianus. In Dekker and Massinger’s play The Virgin Martyr (1620), for instance, he is a persecutor of the saintly Dorothea.65 Moreover, other than the names of the Lords and the hero, The Lady’s Tragedy is a play resolutely lacking in obvious or identifiable Classical references. I think that Julia Briggs is closer to the mark in her recent edition of the play in the complete Oxford edition of Middleton’s works where she notes that the name would have been pronounced in early modern English as ‘Jovianus’.66 This could confirm the link to Jove. Yet a reader in 1610 perusing those newly republished texts by John Foxe, John Speed, John Jewel, and Augustine would have noted that Jovianus was a post-Constantinian Roman Emperor who ruled for a short period in the fourth century AD. In and of itself, this is an unremarkable fact. It becomes much more intriguing when we consider that Jovianus was best known in the early modern period as a committed Christian who was persecuted by and eventually replaced the last pagan Emperor of the Empire, Julian the Apostate. As noted in an earlier chapter, early modern Protestants were encouraged to read the histories of the early Christian Church and its martyrs as a means of reflecting typologically on present-day politics.67 The most famous example is found in the first book of Foxe’s Acts and Monuments. As we also saw, texts such as Foxe’s draw on the powerful historiographical idea of translatio imperii, the translation of Empire.68 According to this theory, imperial power throughout history undergoes a gradual but defined westward shift, from Troy to Athens to Rome. During the sixteenth and 64 65

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The Second Maiden’s Tragedy, p. 87. See Julia Gasper, The Dragon and the Dove: The Plays of Thomas Dekker (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), p. 164. The Lady’s Tragedy, ed. Julia Briggs, in Thomas Middleton, ed. Taylor and Lavagnino, p. 839. For an early modern example, see Walter Lynne, A Most Necessarie Treatise, Declaring the Beginning and Ending of All Poperie . . . (London: I. Charlewood, 1588), sigs. B4r–C4r. See Heather James, Shakespeare’s Troy: Drama, Politics, and the Translation of Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997); and Arthur H. Williamson, ‘An Empire to End Empire: The Dynamic of Early Modern British Expansion’, in The Uses of History in Early Modern England, ed. Paulina Kewes (San Marino: Huntingdon Library, 2006), pp. 223–252.

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seventeenth centuries, the Reformers see their attack on Roman Catholicism through the lens of the translatio imperii: ‘For that which Babylon in the East was to the Jewes, the same is Rome, which is Babylon, the West to the Christians.’69 Just as the Roman Empire embarked on an irrevocable political decline during the fourth and fifth centuries, so by opposing the corrupt Roman Church the Reformation establishes new forms of religious observation and political authority in the present day. As John Kerrigan points out, late medieval and early modern monarchs ‘had declared their crowns imperial. By this they meant that their authority within their respective kingdoms was unqualified by that of rival monarchs or the Pope.’70 In early modern England, this meant that the political history of the martyrs was coopted for Church and state. Those martyrs persecuted under Roman tyranny, Classical and ecclesiastical, are now seen analogously. The Reformers read apocalyptic texts in relation to the intertwined history of the late Roman imperium and the early Christian Church. They know that the imperial title adopted by Julius Caesar, Pontifex Maximus, also became in time a designation of the Pope. Early modern Protestants find the end of the Roman Empire a particularly fruitful period where suggestive typological analogies might be drawn with the present. The martyrs, ancient and modern, share a common lineage. In The Ruine of Rome, Arthur Dent explains the significance of Constantine’s reign and what followed. In a passage interpreting the seven-headed beast in chapter 13 of Revelation, Dent says: wee shall find that a head of the beast was then wounded, when Constantine the Great slew Maxentius and Licinius, the two last persecuting Emperours, set vp true religion, and brought peace to the Churches . . . But it followeth, that his deadly wound was healed, to wit, by these wicked Emperours which succeeded Constantine, as Constantius, Iulianus, Valentius, and others, which afresh did set vp Idolatrie, and persecuted the Church. Nowe vppon the healing of this wound, it is said, that all the world wondred, and followed the beast: that is, manie nations, or the greatest part of the world did submit themselues to the Roman tyrannie. For sure it is, some kingdomes were neuer subiect to the Empire of Rome, as some part of Asia, and some part of Africa.71

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William Fulke, Praelections vpon the Sacred and Holy Reuelations of S. John, trans. George Gifford (London: Thomas Purfoote, 1573), sig. N3v. See also Thomas Thompson, Antichrist Arraigned . . . (London: William Stansby for Richard Meighen, 1618), p. 145. John Kerrigan, Archipelagic English: Literature, History, and Politics 1603–1707 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), p. 49. Arthur Dent, The Ruine of Rome . . . (London: T. Creede, 1603), p. 174.

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While the persecution of Christians under Emperors such as Julian is not as bad as it was under the Julio-Claudian and Flavian dynasties, the postConstantinian era is still a period of instability and tyranny. The fact that some withstand Roman power is part of the eschatological thrust in Dent’s text. He says that a translatio imperii away from Roman tyranny and towards Christian liberty will prevail: the holy Ghost pointeth at those manifolde heresies which sprung vp in the Church after the first three hundred yeares, especially after the death of Constantine the great, who procured peace to the Church, destroied Idolatrie, and set vp true religion in his daies. Now, after his raigne, and the raigne of Theodosius that good Emperour, Constantius, Iulianus, Arcadius, Honorius, and many other wicked Emperours succeeded; by whose meanes all thinges in the Church grew worse and worse: yet this one thing is to bee obserued, that all truth of religion was not vtterly extinct and put out, till the full loosing of Sathan, which was a thousand yeares after Christ, as wee shall plainely see.72

Even if Emperors like Julian do hold sway, their eventual defeat is part of a broader shift in political authority, one outlined in Revelation and that reaches its fulfilment with the Reformation. The post-Constantinian period when the Roman Emperors alternate between paganism and Christianity is more than a historical fact. For many readers, it prefigures the imminent triumph of Protestantism over Roman Catholicism.73 Martyrdom, central to Middleton’s play, is also vital to this idea. The historical Julian was a Hellenised Roman, born in Constantinople and a master of Greek language and philosophy. Yet for Christian apologists, his name becomes a byword for apostasy and for the end of an imperial lineage. John Ponet states that ‘when Iulian th[e] emperour and Apostata had long persecuted the churche’, his people repented, he ‘was slaine’, and ‘none of the familie of Constantine (whereof he came) after that was Emperour’.74 Other sources explain that Julian is notorious for first embracing Christianity and then renouncing it. As Richard Rainolde says in his A Chronicle of all the Noble Emperours of the Romaines (1571), 72 73

74

Ibid., p. 98. Writing of the seven heads of the beast in Revelation, James argues that each head corresponds to the different political systems used by the Roman Empire and that the seventh head represents ‘the Ecclesiastical Gouernment by Bishops, which was to come upon the translation of Empire from Rome to Constantinople; though their gouernment was in a maner substitute to the Emperors’. James I and VI, An Apologie for the Oath of Allegiance . . . Together with a Premonition (London: Robert Barker, 1609), p. 82. John Ponet, A Short Treatise of Politike Power . . . (Strasbourg: Printed by the heirs of W. Köpfel, 1556), sig. H7r–H8v.

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Julian is an ‘Idolatrer’ who is noted for persecuting Christians in an unusual fashion.75 When Julian first becomes Emperor: For hauinge intelligence that through tormentes of martyrdome, the Christian fayth was muche encreased, he resolued the woorke by the contrarie, who . . . did enduce them with giftes, promises, offices and dignityes to renownce their fayth, and to do sacrifice vnto their false & lyinge Idols . . . there were not a fewe of couetous and ambitious parsonnes, which to become riche, and to be exalted vnto honour and dignitye, denyed their true fayth76

The second half of this passage illuminates the political manoeuvres and expedient leaguing of Helvetius and the other Lords in the play: ambition and covetousness are a threat to true religion. Like Rainolde, William Perkins draws on the main early modern source of information about Julian’s life, The Ancient Ecclesiastical History (c. 325 CE) of Eusebius of Caesarea, for the story of a philosopher called Eccbolius. This individual once ‘professed Christian religion . . . yet afterward vnder Iulian, he fell from that religion vnto Gentilisme. But after Iulians death making meanes to be receiued into the Church againe, ouerwhelmed with the horror of his own conscience for his wicked reuolting, he cast himself down on the ground before the dores of the Church.’77 When Helvetius repents of trying to pander his daughter, Govianus tells him that ‘thou hadst more need kneel at an altar / Than to a chair of state’ (II.i.146–147). Helvetius responds by kneeling to Govianus and the Lady and stating: ‘With what fair faces / My sins would look on me! – but now truth shows ’em, / How loathsome and how monstrous are their forms! (II.i.159–161). If these two figures are associated with true, godly religion, then Helvetius’ repentance is justified. Eusebius also notes that although Julian ‘let passe the unsatiable tyranny practiced in the time of Diocletian’, he choses to persecute ‘such men as lead a quiet and peaceable life’ and banishes all Christians from court, including Jovianus.78 In the first act of the play, when Govianus asks why he is being banished instead of put to death, the Tyrant replies that 75

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Richard Rainolde, A Chronicle of All the Noble Emperours of the Romaines . . . (London: Thomas Marshe, 1571), fol. 112v. Ibid. William Perkins, A Treatise Tending unto a Declaration . . . (London: Thomas Orwin, 1591), pp. 3–4. For the original story of Eccbolius, see Eusebius of Caesarea, The Ancient Ecclesiastical Histories . . . (London: Richard Field, 1607), pp. 303–304. Eusebius, The Ancient Ecclesiastical Histories, p. 304. The section containing the lives of Julian and Jovianus is actually a post-Constantinian continuation of Eusebius’ history written by Socrates Scholasticus.

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‘the world would call our way to dignity / A path of blood, / It should be the first act in all our reign’ (I.i.73–75). Other writers such as John Speed claim that Julian did, in fact, have a number of Christians martyred during his reign. Patrick Simpson agrees, saying that Julian ‘enuyed the glorie of Christian Martyrs’ and details a number of grisly martyrdoms.79 Although the historical evidence is not clear, the Roman Catholic and orthodox Churches assign a number of early martyrs to Julian’s reign.80 Eusebius’ Ancient Ecclesiastical History opens the history of the early Christian martyrs under the Roman Empire to view. Indeed, Foxe models his Acts and Monuments on this text and Francis Junius quotes him frequently in his marginal commentary to Revelation in the Geneva Bible.81 Eusebius also stresses a providential and apocalyptic view of Christian history that is especially amenable to Protestants in their arguments that Roman Catholicism is a kind of tyrannous slavery. Christian persecution under pre-Constantinian Emperors such as Diocletian is a fairly straightforward matter of the pagan, Roman persecution of Christianity. The postConstantinian era is much more fluid and uncertain, a useful mirror in fact of the mid-Jacobean political landscape. While scholars of early modern drama have, understandably, concentrated on those plays set in ancient Greece and imperial Rome, much less critical attention has been paid to plays set in the post-Constantinian or Byzantine periods. There is a lost play from 1599 called Constantine. Fletcher’s 1614 tragedy Valentinian is set at the fifth-century court of Valentinian III, one of the last and certainly one of the most disastrous Roman Emperors. Philip Massinger’s 1631 tragicomedy The Emperor of the East deals with the Byzantine Emperor Theodosius II, who ruled at the same time as Valentinian. Two more plays, Alexius Imperator, probably dealing with the eleventh-century Byzantine Emperor Alexios I Komnenos, and the lost Phocas, concerning the early seventh-century Emperor of the same name who plays such a central part in Protestant commentaries on Revelation, were played in 1618 and 1619. The year 1664 sees a flurry of Byzantine tragedies or tragicomedies: Lodowick Carlell’s Heraclius, Emperor of the East, and another play about the same Emperor recorded by Pepys; an anonymous 79

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Patrick Simpson, A Short Compend of the Historie of the First Ten Persecvtions . . . (Edinburgh: Andro Hart, 1613), sig. C1r. See too sigs. C2v-r. John Speed, The Historie of Great Britaine . . . (London: Iohn Dawson, 1632), p. 168. See John N. King, Foxe’s Book of Martyrs and Early Modern Print Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), p. 16; and Christopher Toenjes, Islam, the Turks and the Making of the English Reformation: The History of the Ottoman Empire in John Foxe’s Acts and Monuments (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2015), pp. 1–2.

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play called Irena possibly based on the eighth-century Empress Irene of Athens; and John Wilson’s Andronicus Comnenius.82 In 1566 a play by Thomas Ashton, now lost, was given in Shrewsbury entitled Julian the Apostate. A drama dealing with early Christians during the reign of Julian exists in manuscript in the archives of the English College in Rome. And it is just possible that in 1596 the young Middleton stood at the Rose Theatre in Southwark and watched a performance of either a play by Ashton or a new version also called Julian the Apostate.83 As Eusebius relates, Julian becomes afraid of a Christian martyr and saint in Antioch and ‘commanded that the martyrs tomb should be removed thence with speed’. We might recall the Lady’s fate in the play and her association with martyrdom. Indeed, when the people of Antioch hear about Julian’s commandment, they move the body to safety and sing psalms ‘to the reprehension of the heathen gods, and of such as worshipped Idols and carved images’.84 Govianus plans to return the Lady’s body to the tomb, and his godly deesis, ‘O heav’n, put armour on my spirit!’ (IV.iv.88), recalls Ephesians 6:11. As we will see he also marks the defeat of the grave-robbing Tyrant with a speech based on a Psalm. Last, as Speed notes, when Julian attempts to reestablish the Jews’ temple, there are earthquakes and balls of fire from heaven, ‘by which miraculous sights many Iews were turned to the embracing of the Christian Faith, upon whose garments fell formed of Crosses, which shewed as the beames of the Sunne’.85 This description brings to mind the Lady’s ghostly appearance lit by heavenly light and with a cross on her dress. While this scene may utilise popish trappings, as Zimmerman suggests, it is surely more important that, like the Jews discussed by Speed, the supernatural appearance and

82

83 84 85

All information taken from Alfred Harbage, Annals of English Drama, 975–1700 . . ., rev. Samuel Schoenbaum (London: Methuen, 1964). Harbage, Annals of English Drama, pp. 38, 204, 62. Eusebius of Caesarea, The Ancient Ecclesiastical Histories, p. 308. Speed, The Historie of Great Britaine, p. 167. Speed may have taken this story from Stephen Batman’s The Doome Warning All Men to Iudgement . . . (London: Ralph Nubery, 1581), see p. 155. Batman also writes of Julian making a sacrifice and a ‘signe of the Crosse, enuironed with a Crowne, is sayde to haue appeared therein, which made them not a little afrayde that attended vpon him, suspecting that the power of Christ and our doctrine should last foreuer’ (pp. 155–156). In his A Plaine Discouery of the Whole Reuelation of Saint Iohn . . . (Edinburgh: Robert Waldegraue, 1593), John Napier tells the story of Julian reestablishing the temples of the Jews and the Gentiles, and his persecution of Christians, but without mentioning the crosses. For Napier, who quotes Eusebius approvingly throughout, Julian is a ‘blood-thirstie Apostate’ whose ‘detestible, idolatrous and magicall decrees’, and the eventual destruction of his temples, confirm the necessity of the second coming and the Christian defeat of Gentile and Jew (pp. 20–21).

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the cross mark a shift away from idolatrous abuse and back towards the true faith.86 Religious imagery used in a godly way is permissible. The story of Julian the Apostate and Jovianus is not some key that unlocks the hidden meaning of The Lady’s Tragedy. Nevertheless, the evidence presented here does suggest more than a coincidental thematic link between this narrative and the play. Given the strong identification of the Lady with Christian martyrdom and sainthood, I also think that The Lady’s Tragedy represents a fairly early example of a Protestant ‘saint’s play’, a subgenre that reaches its high mark in The Virgin Martyr.87 In Dekker and Massinger’s play, religion perverted leads to conversion and martyrdom. In The Lady’s Tragedy it leads to the political act of revenge. Govianus paints the Lady’s body with poisoned cosmetics and tricks the Tyrant into kissing it: O thou sacrilegious villain! Thou thief of rest, robber of monuments! Cannot the body after funeral Sleep in the grave, for thee? Must it be raised Only to please the wickedness of thine eye? (V.ii.128–132)

Once more, the Tyrant’s ungodly behaviour is shown as a form of ocular idolatry: this is an anti-apocalypse that raises bodies prematurely for evil ends. In response, the Tyrant promises Govianus a death like Ravaillac’s. But the Lady’s Ghost reappears. Govianus makes the properly eschatological promise that ‘Thy body shall return to rise again’ (V.ii.161). This act of regicide is framed apocalyptically. For the godly Govianus, the spiritual resurrection promised to the Lady justifies his use of her fleshly body in taking revenge. This helps to explain the peculiar nature of the Tyrant’s cosmetically aided demise. In anti-Catholic discourse, cosmetics are routinely associated with the deceit, corruption, and false magic of that religion. As Stuart Clark points out, demonological writers commonly call Julian a magician as well as ‘one of the Antichrist’s historical prefigurations’.88 Govianus uses the ‘magic’ of cosmetics against the apostate Tyrant, revealing the corruption that lurks beneath the 86

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The Lady may evoke the women of light mentioned in chapter 12 of Revelation, and often associated with the Primitive Church – see Patrick Forbes, An Exquisite Commentarie vpon the Reuelation of Saint Iohn . . . (London: W. Hall, 1613), p. 105. On Protestant saint’s plays, see Margot Heinemann, ‘Political Drama’, in The Cambridge Companion to English Renaissance Drama, ed. A.R. Braunmuller and Michael Hattaway (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), p. 196. Stuart Clark, Thinking with Demons: The Idea of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 333. See too Karim-Cooper, Cosmetics in Shakespearean.

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surface. Death by cosmetics is a poetically just, politically assertive, and eschatologically appropriate punishment. The Tyrant tries to have the Lords arraign the regicide but they refuse. Helvetius enters and acclaims Govianus. The Tyrant regrets trusting the Lords, stating that ‘my destruction was confirmed amongst ’em’ (V.ii.176). All proclaim Govianus ‘our virtuous king!’ (V.ii.178). These lines were, perhaps unsurprisingly, cut by Buc. The depiction of a politically volatile ‘league’ that shift allegiance and sanction rebellion casts an ill light on one of James’ preferred ways of forging political alliances. Also cut is Govianus’ thanks to his ‘honoured lords’ and his following song of praise: I’m like a man plucked up from many waters, That never looked for help, and am here placed Upon this cheerful mountain, where prosperity Shoots forth her richest beam. (V.ii.183–186)

As the Revels editor points out, this speech draws on Psalm 18 where David gives praise to God for his victory over his enemies. What the editor does not mention is that this text is part of a long sequence of Davidic psalms celebrating his escape from Saul’s persecution. The Saul and David story offers early modern writers a popular model for exploring the limits of political and religious rebellion. So too does the story of Julian the Apostate and Jovianus. This narrative is often singled out for discussion during the years of the Oath crisis. In his 1609 Premonition, James complains bitterly that Robert Bellarmine ‘hath compared and ranked me with Iulian the Apostate’.89 For Bellarmine, Julian’s insistence that Christians commit idolatry is an example of coerced faith, like those English Roman Catholics obliged to take the Oath. Faced with such a choice, they should be ‘so farre from taking an vnlawfull Oath’. Replying to this claim, James denies that the example of Julian can be used to justify even indirect resistance: ‘Iulians end was the ouerthrow of the Christians: my onely end is, to maintaine Christianitie in a peaceable gouernement. Iulians drift was to make them commit Idolatrie: my purpose is, to cause my Subiects to make open profession of their naturall Allegiance, and ciuill Obedience.’90 Bellarmine also argues that the only reason that the early Christians did not rise up against pagan Emperors was that ‘they wanted temporal forces’.91 Protestant writers such as Field and Owen argue 89

James I and VI, An Apologie, p. 19.

90

Triplici nodo, p. 117.

91

Field, Of the Church, p. 510.

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in response that ‘God hath forbidden Christian subjects to resist, though kings raigne as Tyrants’.92 There are, however, a group of Protestant writers who did use Julian and Jovianus in a defence of the direct, religious resistance of the people. John Ponet references Julian to argue that if a ruler asks a subject to do something contrary to the will of God, then ‘men ought not to obeie their superiors’.93 The author of Vindiciae contra tyrannos writes that ‘Herod condemned Christ Himself, as if He had aspired to the kingdom. Consequently, he perished wretchedly and lost his own kingdom. Julian deserted Christ for the pagans; but shortly afterwards he suffered from the avenging right arm of the same “Galilean”’. Later on, the text uses Julian to argue that the extreme wickedness of a king frees subjects ‘from their fealty and obligation to him’.94 Last, that most famous Protestant defender of regicide, John Milton, argues in his A Defence of the People of England (1658 ed.) that Julian is rightly resisted.95 Faced with a tyrannous, idolatrous ruler, a number of Protestants, including, I suggest, Middleton in The Lady’s Tragedy, are willing to sanction the kind of religiously inspired resistance, supported by the temporal nobility or magistrates, that Govianus takes. Rebecca Bushnell has criticised the end of the play, writing that ‘Both lovers look alike . . . embracing their dead Lady’s body.’96 While an understandable reading, it glosses over the broader political point that the play makes and the religious imagery with which Govianus and the Lady are associated. In imagining a sovereign state free from Roman Catholic political interference, some Jacobean Protestants were prepared to risk parallels being drawn with the theories of their Jesuit opponents in order to assert the radical ethos of Protestant political thought. Such a reading does not have to preclude an adherence to irenicism. John Foxe notes that Jovianus ‘restored peace to the church’, a sentiment echoed by Govianus when he releases the Lady in his final speech to the ‘house 92

93 94

95

96

Owen, Herod and Pilate Reconciled, p. 43. See Field, Of the Church, pp. 510–517. Thomas Hobbes also says that Julian was not opposed – see Leviathan, ed. Richard Tuck (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), p. 400. However, see Richard Tuck, Philosophy and Government 1572–1651 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 309–310, for a discussion of Hobbes’ complex attitude to resistance. Ponet, A Shorte Treatise, sig. D6r. Vindiciae Contra Tyrannos, ed. George Garnett (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 26, 136. John Milton, A Defence of the People of England, in Political Writings, ed. Martin Dzelzainis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 143–144. Bushnell, Tragedies of Tyrants, p. 156.

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of peace’ (V.ii.204).97 But although Julian is the last pagan Emperor of a Constantinian dynasty that gives Christianity its political legitimacy, and although the rule of the Christian Jovianus follows, his reign is remarkably short lived.98 Moreover, the histories of the Valentinian and Theodosian dynasties that follow him, although nominally Christian, are hardly an advert for non-tyrannical rule. This period, the late fourth to mid-fifth century, is historically the era of the Christian Church’s political ascendency in the West. It is also pinpointed by early modern Protestants as the period when the Church irrevocably departs from the true faith of the Church Fathers, saints, and martyrs, and when Popes started to reign as Emperors. In the words of Heinrich Bullinger: ‘the seven-headed and mighty old Empire of Rome being taken away, another beast shall arise . . . the Bishop of Rome, decked with his triple crown . . . to set up a New Empire, after the image and imitation of the old Roman Empire’.99 What follows Julian is, historically and typologically, only a temporary restoration of true Christian faith. It is soon eclipsed by a corrupt Roman Catholic Church and by the emergence of a Byzantine Empire whose eventual political failure enables the rise of the Ottoman Empire. Only with the Reformation can the Church begin a process of purgation, returning to its primitive glory. Even this is as a mere prelude to the second coming. The early modern dramatic interest in the postConstantinian and Byzantine periods can be read in this apocalyptic light. In this play Middleton shows that the boundary between political benignity and tyranny is a thin one, and the ruler is not always the best judge of that line. He may also have smiled at the numerous historical contradictions of James’ relentless self-identification with various Roman political models. The Lords who maintain both the Tyrant’s and Govianus’ political power show a worrying degree of political expediency. Leagues, while necessary, are also volatile things. Yet they are structurally vital for the maintenance of the state. Of course there are limits to Middleton’s radicalism. There is no hint in the play, for instance, that monarchy rests on popular assent. Better the Protestant monarch of a sovereign state protecting the liberty of subjects through the exercise of reason of state, underwritten by a politically powerful nobility and parliament, one can imagine Middleton thinking, than the imperial tyranny of a 97 98 99

John Foxe, Foxe’s Book of Martyrs (London: London Printing and Publishing, n.d.), p. 46. Jovianus ruled for less than eight months. Quoted in Richard Bauckham, Tudor Apocalypse: Sixteenth Century Apocalypticism, Millenarianism and the English Reformation: From John Bale to John Foxe and Thomas Brightman (Abingdon: Sutton Courtenay Press, 1978), p. 309.

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Pope. After all, tyrants temporal or spiritual can, in extreme circumstances, be removed. And anyway, the vicissitudes of individual rulers are less important than the imminent levelling of all temporal authority. Soon enough Christ would come again to separate the sheep from the goats: ‘Althoughe the falsehoods of Antichrist shalbe great, yet they shall not be able to seduce the electe to destruction, but to deceyue those onely which were not predestinate to eternall life, from the foundation of the world.’100 I suspect that for Middleton this kind of Calvinistic promise was, for most of the time at least, sufficient. 100

Fulke, Praelections, sig. P7r.

chapter 4

‘Occultus Rex’ Caroline Politics and Imperial Kingship in Massinger’s Believe as You List (1631)

I The claim that seventeenth-century Europe saw a ‘general crisis’ in politics, religion, and society has shaped scholarly debate for a number of years.1 There are different views on how that crisis unfolded, for what reasons, how long it lasted, and even if such a ‘crisis’ existed at all.2 Nevertheless, the problem of asserting the religious and political identity of the state whilst negotiating the increasing economic interdependence of the major European nations becomes more acute as the century progresses. War within and between states is the rule rather than the exception during this period.3 The often contradictory demands of politics, religion, and trade recur in a century marred by conflict, bloodshed, and famine.4 Similarly, the competing colonial interests of the major European states are driven by the militarisation caused by conflict. As Spanish power ebbs following the conclusion of the Thirty Years’ War and the Peace of Westphalia (1648), the period also sees the consolidation of state-funded navies and seaborne militias in France, the Netherlands and England designed for defensive and offensive purposes.5 1

2

3

4

5

See Hugh Trevor Roper, ‘The General Crisis of the Seventeenth Century’, Past and Present, 16, 1959, pp. 31–64; The General Crisis of the Seventeenth Century, ed. Geoffrey Parker and Leslie M. Smith (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978); Crisis in Europe 1560–1660, ed. Trevor Aston (London and New York: Routledge, 2011). For a counter to the ‘general crisis’ thesis, see Perez Zagorin, Rebels and Rulers 1500–1660, vol. 1: Society, States and Early Modern Revolution. Agrarian and Urban Revolutions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), pp. 128–139. See the special edition edited by Theodore Rabb entitled ‘The Crisis of the Seventeenth Century: Interdisciplinary Perspectives’, The Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 40, 2, 2009. Geoffrey Parker, ‘The Dutch Revolt and the Polarization of International Politics’, in The General Crisis, p. 57. See chapters 3 and 4 of Andrew Cunningham and Ole Peter Grell, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: Religion, War, Famine and Death in Reformation Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). Mark Kishlansky, A Monarchy Transformed: Britain 1603–1714 (London and New York: Penguin Books, 1997), pp. 22–23.

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Encouraged by apocalyptic historiography to see the rise and fall of empires as evidence of the second coming, it is small wonder that the midseventeenth century is a period of heightened messianic expectation. Seen in this retrospective light, James VI and I’s achievement in keeping Britain out of prolonged military involvement in major European conflicts during his reign seems all the more remarkable. Indeed, if James had earned a reputation as rex pacificus during his lifetime, anyone observing the early years of Charles I’s reign might well have concluded that he was set to be rex bellicus. The Palatinate crisis polarised the country in the final years of James’ reign. The king was reluctant to take the kind of political action abroad that the militants sought; he did not want a religious war in Europe. Following the failure of the Spanish Match and the rejoicing that greeted his return, Charles and his ally the Duke of Buckingham pressed for war with Spain during 1624 and 1625. Those who supported military intervention seized the opportunity. Many believed that a Roman Catholic match for Charles could open the door to Rome and the reconversion of the state. Writing from the Netherlands in 1624, the radical Protestant polemicist Thomas Scott conjures up a prophetic vision of popish assault: ‘I saw the generall combination of Roman Catholiques, both at home and abroad, against the Kings Children: and the forraine enemies violent and bloudie pursuit of all aduantages against them, and such as professe the Reformed Religion.’6 There were many who urged similar action at home.7 With a Spanish war seemingly imminent, Charles and Buckingham turned to France in the marriage stakes. This choice was nearly as unpopular as Spain. But at least it held open the possibility of a renewed AngloFrench alliance against Hapsburg power. Reluctantly in the final months of his reign, James supported his son’s ‘blessed revolution’. Once Charles ascended to the throne in 1625, England was on a war footing. Thomas Cogswell’s assessment captures well the political tensions at play during the early years of Charles’ reign: The policy of a ‘sharp edge’ would allow Charles to gain a martial reputation and Buckingham to expand his influence over the administration and 6 7

Thomas Scott, Vox Regis (Utrecht: A van Herwijck, 1624), p. 21. See Roger Lockyer, Buckingham: The Life and Political Career of George Villiers, First Duke of Buckingham, 1592–1628 (London and New York: Longman, 1981); Thomas Cogswell, The Blessed Revolution: English Politics and the Coming of War, 1621–1624 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989); L.J. Reeve, Charles I and the Road to Personal Rule (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989); Kevin Sharpe, The Personal Rule of Charles I (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1992); The Spanish Match: Prince Charles’ Journey to Madrid, 1623, ed. Alexander Samson (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006).

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In order to justify their policy, Charles and Buckingham tried to harness the enthusiasm of militant Protestantism.9 Both were motivated by reason of state rather than religious purity. Neither man was doctrinally sympathetic to this religious view. This militant grouping, which Cogswell has termed the ‘patriot coalition’, was a divergent group similarly driven by the tension between religious belief and political pragmatism.10 Nevertheless, a policy that might check Spanish advancement was popular in the country at large.11 Committed to the destruction of papal authority across Europe, this coalition saw themselves both as Englishmen and internationalists. In trying to get support from this wing, Charles and Buckingham assumed the mantle of Protestant patriots insofar as it suited their shifting political ambitions. It was not a pose that lasted. Political and religious pressures, not least the emergence of Arminianism, would see to that. In what follows, then, I look at the main political and religious tensions informing the first years of Charles’ reign. These contextualise my reading of Philip Massinger’s extraordinary 1631 drama, Believe as You List. By examining its censorship, its reworking of apocalyptic source texts, and the play itself, I argue that this is an acutely sensitive dramatic response to the conflicts marking the early Caroline regime. Though scholars have looked at this play from time to time, its general critical neglect is hard to fathom. Earlier work by Gardiner and Sisson argues that the play is a contemporary political allegory. Margot Heinemann situates the play as broadly ‘oppositional’ to the politics of the king and Buckingham, and Douglas Howard explores the conflict between honour, trust, and political expediency. More recently, Marina Hila has written persuasively on the play’s political context, arguing that a deterministic ‘belief’ in religion or politics is 8 9

10

11

Cogswell, The Blessed Revolution, p. 69. On parliamentary politics during this period, see Conrad Russell, Parliaments and English Politics, 1621–1629 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979). See too R. Malcolm Smuts, Court Culture and the Origins of a Royalist Tradition in Early Stuart England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1987), pp. 15–50. On ‘reason of state’ during the period of the Spanish Match, see Valentina Calderi, ‘The End of the Anglo-Spanish Match in Global Context, 1617–1624’, PhD thesis, University of Kent, 2015, pp. 21–24, 43–84. See Richard Cust, ‘Charles I and Popularity’, in Politics, Religion and Popularity: Early Stuart Essays in Honour of Conrad Russell, ed. Thomas Cogswell, Richard Cust, and Peter Lake (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), pp. 235–258.

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rejected in the play.12 Building on this work, and reexamining the play’s sources in particular, I offer a new reading of why Massinger dramatised this story when he did. I begin with the late-Jacobean context of the Spanish Match. The link between this well-known ‘moment of crisis’ in literary history and Believe as You List is the ongoing conflict over the Palatinate. Indeed, criticism on the play often notes the connections between the main character, Antiochus, and the exiled Frederick of Bohemia. I want to complicate conventional allegorical readings, however, by rethinking the ongoing Palatinate crisis alongside key developments in Caroline politics and religion. By placing Massinger’s achievement in Believe as You List within this broader interpretative framework, I show how the play uses anti-Catholic and apocalyptic sources and language in a moderate yet dramatically powerful way.

II In 1619, Frederick, the Elector Palatine, accepted the throne of Bohemia, reigniting apocalyptic hopes across Europe that he would confront Roman Catholic might. Writing that year, John Harrison observes that ‘it may be hoped rather these good beginnings make waie to the finall destruction of that man of sin, and desolation of that great City Babylon: according to that prophecie in the Revelation, which of necessitie must be fulfilled’.13 Dramatists often refer to the Palatinate crisis and the onset of the Thirty Years’ War during the late 1610s and early 1620s. This includes writers as politically diverse as Middleton, Drue, Dekker, and Massinger. Plays and masques such as Women Beware Women (1621), The Changeling (1622), The Bondman (c. 1624), A Game at Chess (1624), The Duchess of Suffolk (1624), and The Sun’s Darling (1624) draw in different ways on apocalyptic and anti-Catholic language.14 Theatrical commentary on current events 12

13

14

See ‘Introduction’ to Believe as You List, ed. C.J. Sisson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1927); S.R. Gardiner, ‘The Political Element in Massinger’, The Contemporary Review, 1876, 28, pp. 495–507; Margot Heinemann, Puritanism and Theatre: Thomas Middleton and Opposition Drama under the Early Stuarts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), pp. 218–220; Douglas Howard, ‘Massinger’s Political Tragedies’, in Philip Massinger: A Critical Reassessment, ed. Douglas Howard (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp. 117–137; and Marina Hila, ‘Massinger’s Believe as You List and the Politics of Necessity’, Cahiers Elisabethains, 81, Spring, 2012, pp. 25–35. John Harrison, A Short Relation of the Departure of the High and Mightie Prince Frederick . . . (Dort: George Waters, 1619), sig. A3r. On apocalypticism during the Thirty Years War, see Cunningham and Grell, The Four Horsemen, pp. 169–199. See Heinemann, Puritanism and Theatre; Jerzy Limon, Dangerous Matter: English Drama and Politics 1623/24 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986); Cogswell, The Blessed Revolution. Drue’s The Duchess of Suffolk was first printed in 1631 (it was probably first performed in 1624).

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is unusually sharp at this time. As Thomas Scott remarked: ‘We see some times Kings are content in Playes and Maskes to be admonished of diuers things.’15 Middleton’s A Game at Chess is well known for its allegorical depiction of contemporary figures such as James, Philip IV, Prince Charles, Buckingham, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and Count of Gondomar, the Spanish Ambassador.16 The play was banned after nine performances and the playwright went into hiding. Massinger’s The Bondman offers a pointed political critique especially in its discussion of ‘liberty’. It also draws in places on anti-Catholic imagery, even if its political aims are less radical than Middleton’s. Frederick’s actions provoked a Roman Catholic military response. In 1620 he was defeated by Maximilian of Bavaria at the Battle of White Mountain just outside Prague, supported by the Spanish. Frederick was exiled and his political ineptitude helped to fan the Thirty Years’ War. This conflict cost millions of lives and reshaped the political map of Europe. Could Britain afford to sit on the sidelines as Protestantism came under attack and as Europe burned? The failure of apocalyptic prophecies to materialise as promised does not invalidate their power in this period. If anything, it gives them more authority, especially when Charles assumed the throne and set his face against Spain. Although Frederick and Elizabeth were deposed and in exile, it was surely only a matter of time, so the logic of the militants went, before they were restored and the prophetic hopes invested in them came to pass. All the more reason, therefore, for Charles to assume the mantle of militant Protestant hero, fulfilling his role as God’s instrument.17 Given the amount of attention rightly paid to the Civil Wars and the final years of Charles’ rule, it is easy to overlook the fact that, in the first three decades of his life, he is intermittently the focus of such militant Protestant expectations.18 The aftermath of Prince Henry’s death sees Charles cast as a Protestant hero. During the Palatinate crisis these hopes are revisited. 15 16

17

18

Scott, Vox Regis, pp. 34–35. See T.H. Howard-Hill, Middleton’s ‘Vulgar Pasquin’: Essays on A Game at Chess (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1995). See also Gary Taylor’s essays on the various textual versions of the play in Gary Taylor and John Lavagnino, Thomas Middleton and Early Modern Textual Culture: A Companion to the Collected Works (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2007), pp. 712–991. See R. Malcolm Smuts, Court Culture and the Origins of a Royalist Tradition in Early Stuart England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1987), pp. 15–50; and Reid Barbour, Literature and Religious Culture in Seventeenth-Century England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 24–25. See Cogswell, The Blessed Revolution, p. 63, and Jason White, Militant Protestantism and British Identity, 1603–1642 (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2012), pp. 39–63.

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As he matured politically, Charles and his advisers become more adept at manipulating such hopes. In 1620, the Water Poet John Taylor encourages Charles by conjuring up a militantly jingoistic reading of England’s recent military history: Make your names fearful to your foes againe Like Talbot to the French, or Drake to Spaine: Thinke on braue valiant Essex, and Mountjoy, And Sidney, that did England’s foes destroy19

On the Prince’s return from Spain in 1623, Taylor writes in resounding terms that this represents ‘our Royall Charles his second birth’, a chance to cast off Spanish influence once and for all.20 Charles’ travels encourage such writers to revive the idea of the conquering hero who promises a general renovatio. In Chapter 2 I briefly discussed the historical and literary antecedents of the last world emperor and its connections to the medieval idea of imperial, reforming kingship. As scholars such as Marjorie Reeves and Norman Cohn have shown, the notion of a king who will return to purge corruption in state and Church is particularly associated with the prophetic writings of Joachim of Fiore. This imperial, apocalyptic idea is used by various European monarchies in the early modern period, most notably in Spain, France, and England.21 I mentioned earlier the association between Charles V and Charlemagne: at the start of his reign Charles I is viewed by some in similar terms. In 1625, William Hockham writes that ‘The King, the Queene, nay all the Grands in Spaine, / May count our Charles a second Charlemaine.’ In the same year, Hugh Holland refers to Charles as a ‘Young Charlemaine’ who ‘if vn-friends abroad our peace affrighten, / In armes so will he thunder’.22 Such language contains the hope that, after his return to England, Charles will use his European experience to take the fight to the enemy abroad. These ideas are also central to Massinger’s Believe as You List, although as we will see the playwright uses them in rather different ways. 19 20

21

22

John Taylor, An English-mans loue to Bohemia . . . (Dort: n.p., 1620), p. 4. John Taylor, Prince Charles His Welcome from Spaine . . . (London: G.E. for Iohn Wright, 1623), p. 5. See Norman Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millennium: Revolutionary Millenarians and Mystical Anarchists of the Middle Ages (Pimlico: London, 2004); Marjorie Reeves, The Influence of Prophecy in the Middle Ages: A Study of Joachinism (London and Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1993); Joachim of Fiore and the Prophetic Future: A Medieval Study in Historical Thinking (Stroud: Sutton, 1999); and Frances Yates, Astrea: The Imperial Theme in the Sixteenth Century (London and Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1975). William Hockham, Prince Charles His Welcome . . . (London: Edward Allde for Iohn Wright, 1625), p. 1; Hugh Holland, A Cyprus Garment . . . (London: Simon Waterson, 1625), sigs. B3r–B4v.

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Such expectations would always be difficult for any one individual to fulfil. To keep all shades of opinion onside would have required a ruler more politically deft than Charles. This is not to say that conflict with Spain was entered into lightly. The first five years of the reign see England at war with Spain, and then from 1627, with France. Had he lived, it is hard to imagine Prince Henry pursuing a different course. The difficulty for Charles lay in his religious policies, the competence of his advisers and supporters, and his dealings with the institution that was to define his reign, parliament.23 Charles needed parliament’s support to prosecute any war. He also needed to show that he and his advisers were militarily competent. Buckingham proved to be a disastrous military commander. He failed miserably and at great cost in his attempts (in concert with the Dutch) to subdue Cadiz, and later to relieve the Huguenots of La Rochelle. The Duke was clearly no Leicester or Essex redivivus. Indeed as Margot Heinemann has argued, Massinger may well criticise Buckingham’s incompetence in The Bondman.24 Though not all appreciated the point, the twin problems of arbitrary government and inflation had left the Elizabethan and Stuart monarchies financially incapable of prosecuting the kind of wars needed to take on Hapsburg power.25 Buckingham’s failures did not help matters. The bellicosity of the militant’s rhetoric and parliament’s increasing self-assertion are a response to the humiliation of the crown’s inability to wage war in an adequate fashion. Many militants believed that Frederick and Elizabeth should be restored to the Palatinate and, if possible, to the crown of Bohemia too. This was a matter of national pride and international standing. It meant opposing Roman Catholic power in Europe. But this argument was also a fantasy, a projection of military and political influence that at this stage England was in no position to fulfil.26 Although parliament largely supported the war effort, many MPs were far less convinced by Charles and Buckingham and resented their treatment of the institution. As L.J. Reeve notes, the king’s ‘relations with parliament were characterized from the beginning by misunderstanding and emerging mistrust’.27 Charles and Buckingham clashed repeatedly 23 25

26 27

24 See Smuts, Court Culture, pp. 37–42. Heinemann, Puritanism and Theatre, pp. 215–217 Jonathan Scott, England’s Troubles: Seventeenth-Century English Political Instability in European Context (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 31. See Limon, Dangerous Matter, p. 119. Reeve, Charles I, p. 11. In what follows I draw on Reeve’s much more detailed account of Charles’ early parliaments, as well as on Samuel Rawson Gardiner, The Personal Government of Charles I . . ., vol. 1 (London: Longmans, Green, 1887), p. 20 ff.

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with parliament over subsidies, both for the war and for the king’s own person and household. Charles’ highly developed sense of his monarchical authority meant that any attempt to encroach on his prerogative was taken as a personal affront. When parliament tried to impeach Buckingham in 1626, the king dissolved the institution and raised money for the war through nonparliamentary means. The so-called Forced Loan was extremely unpopular, not in terms of what it was intended to pay for, but in its implications for the liberties of parliament and subjects.28 Drama written during this period is especially concerned with the conflict between authority and justice. Act I, scene 2, of Massinger’s The Great Duke of Florence (1627) opens with three state councillors petitioning Duke Cosimo. He urges his petitioners not to kneel, as it is a ‘kinde of adoration’ that ‘the old Roman Emperors’ favoured. But although he agrees to consider their suggestion that he remarry, Cosimo also notes that he is not ‘bound to yield account to any / Why we doe this or that.’ This is a small example, but it captures the unease felt by many about Charles’ behaviour.29 A number of parliamentarians, including most famously Sir John Eliot, struck back. In 1628 the Petition of Right was published. It sought to safeguard parliament’s ‘rights and liberties according to the laws and statutes of this realm’ against what was seen as an increasingly arbitrary regime overreliant on claims to iure divino authority.30 After much wrangling over questions of parliamentary liberty, judicial authority, and monarchical power, the king approved the Petition. Yet Charles resented having to do so. He tried to prevent parliament printing the Petition and later disputed many of its claims.31 In a speech given at the end of the 1628 session, the king said that parliament’s behaviour did not ‘intrench upon my prerogative’ and that he had ‘granted no new, but only confirmed the ancient liberties of my subjects’.32 Charles’ appeal to the ‘ancient liberties’ of his subjects is an attempt to avoid the charge that he is an ‘innovator’ in politics or religion. More importantly, it is one of many efforts made during the latter 1620s to forestall any further encroachment on his prerogative and to reestablish his dominance over parliament. During 1627 and 1628, Buckingham was negotiating with Spain for peace. Kevin Sharpe observes: ‘Given the failure of the Protestant cause in 28 29 30

31 32

See Richard Cust, The Forced Loan and English Politics 1626–1628 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987). Philip Massinger, The Great Duke of Florence (London: John Marriot, 1636), sigs. C1r–C2v. ‘The Petition of Right’, in The Constitutional Documents of the Puritan Revolution, 1625–1660, ed. Samuel Rawson Gardiner (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1927), p. 69. Reeve, Charles I, p. 21; Gardiner, The Personal Government, pp. 121–123. ‘King’s Speech to Parliament at its Prorogation, 1628’, in The Constitutional Documents, p. 74.

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Germany, Spain appeared to offer the best hope for a diplomatic solution to the problem of the Palatinate.’33 This policy is linked to the king’s parliamentary difficulties. If the royal favourite could manoeuvre England out of conflicts with Spain and France, then the problem of obtaining parliamentary subsidies for those wars would be solved. However, these possibilities were thrown into confusion when Buckingham was assassinated that same year.34 Faced with the ongoing cost of two wars and a crippling lack of finance for his own person and court, Charles was forced to recall parliament again in 1629. In the absence of the favourite, the king became increasingly reliant on new councillors such as William Laud and the Lord Treasurer, Richard Weston. Both men were, for different reasons, sceptical of the war effort. They also encouraged Charles to rule without parliament.35 In Massinger’s 1629 play The Picture, the old councillor Eubulus rails against the ‘dung of peace’ and what it does to martial energy in society. He specifically criticises foolish soldiers who ‘To their owne ruine hatch this Cuckcow peace’ because they have forgotten how to fight.36 Although not directly critical of Charles’ new advisers, the fact that Massinger advances a criticism of peace through the mouth of an old councillor is suggestive. Many Protestants in parliament disliked Charles’ pro-Arminian policies. They were suspicious of the emergence of Laud, seeing in him and other Arminians the emergence of a popish fifth column opposed to the Protestant international. The king’s marriage to a Roman Catholic queen, Henrietta Maria, did not help matters. Criticism focused on the deficiencies of Charles’ advisers.37At the close of the 1628 parliament ‘the Remonstrance of the Commons had spoken bitterly of Laud and Neile, and had demanded the suppression of Arminianism in the Church’.38 Both prelates supported Charles’ strong view of imperial kingship to the derogation of parliamentary rights and privileges.39 By the time of the 1629 parliament, concern about the advance of Arminianism had reached a critical point. Charles and Buckingham’s policy was dangerous because it paid ‘lipservice to the Protestant cause while simultaneously undercutting it by

33 35 36

37

38 39

34 Sharpe, The Personal Rule, p. 43. On Buckingham, see Lockyer, Buckingham. Reeve, Charles I, pp. 80–85; Gardiner, The Personal Government, pp. 131, 157–158. Philip Massinger, The Picture . . . (London: IN for Thomas Walkley, 1630), sig. E3v-r. The play also features the heroic Mathias, who wins a martial victory against the Turks. Martin Butler, Theatre and Crisis 1632–1642 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), pp. 12–24. Gardiner, The Personal Government, p. 20. On Charles and imperial monarchy, see Dandelet, The Renaissance of Empire, pp. 268–274.

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promoting churchmen who preached obedience to the Stuart monarchy and denied connections to Continental Protestantism’.40 Religious tensions encouraged political polarisation. Modern scholarly debate on Arminianism has been defined by the work of Nicholas Tyacke. He argues that the emergence of this theology leads to the marginalisation of ‘mainstream’ Protestant doctrine throughout Charles’ reign. During these years many prominent Calvinists find themselves being squeezed out of important positions in the Church. Tyacke’s work has been principally opposed by Julian Davies. He argues that the Arminian/Calvinist divide is overstated in matters of ecclesiology, theology, and ideology.41 Yet despite Davies’ important work, the fear of Arminianism, real or imagined, is central to religious polemics at this time.42 Many of the more militantly apocalyptic voices commenting on Arminianism in the 1620s and ’30s are in exile on the continent. The trials of Puritans like William Prynne or the problems that someone like George Wither increasingly has in getting his work patronised and published show that militant Protestantism faces a more sceptical public sphere during the years of the personal rule. Much of this scepticism is linked to Arminianism’s attitude towards traditional Protestant apocalypticism. Roughly contemporaneous with Charles’ emergence as a political figure, some Arminians develop arguments first advanced by Richard Hooker against the Protestant identification of the Pope and the papacy as the antichrist. In Appello Caesarum (1625), Richard Montagu notes that the doctrine of the papal antichrist is obscure and criticises anyone who makes it ‘an Article of his faith’.43 He argues that while the Pope might be an antichrist, he is not necessarily the antichrist. This figure may still emerge in the future and may comprise the papacy and the Turk.44 Montagu is, of course, correct that the doctrine of the papal antichrist is not sanctioned by any synod or convocation of the Church, nor by parliament. He also knows that, since the Elizabethan settlement, the doctrine had been widely agreed 40 41

42

43 44

White, Militant Protestantism, p. 63. Nicholas Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists: The Rise of English Arminianism, c. 1590–1640 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990); and Julian Davies, The Caroline Captivity of the Church: Charles I and the Remoulding of Anglicanism, 1625–1641 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992). For a pro-Davies reading of this debate, see Kevin Sharpe, Remapping Early Modern England: The Culture of Seventeenth-Century Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 345–391. Richard Montagu, Appello Caesarum . . . (London: HL for Mathew Lownes, 1625), p. 144. See Anthony Milton, Catholic and Reformed: The Roman and Protestant Churches in English Protestant Thought 1600–1640 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 110–127.

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on by nearly every shade of conformist and nonconformist Protestantism. The doctrine is central to anti-papal discourse and the confessional identity of the state. An attack on the idea of the papal antichrist is thus an attack on the political dominance of Calvinism. More important, it is an attempt to render anti-popery an extremist doctrine. Montagu brilliantly rechristens all Calvinists as Puritans, a move that is both audacious and dangerous. He was arraigned by parliament and briefly imprisoned. However, by 1628 he was Bishop of Chichester. This restoration of fortune is a sign of shifting power structures in the Caroline Church. Anthony Milton explains: ‘Few writers had any doubt in the 1630s that the traditional identification of the Antichrist was frowned upon by Laud’s ecclesiastical establishment.’45 Here is a central explanation as to why there is not as much anti-Catholic and apocalyptic language in evidence in Caroline drama as there is in Elizabethan and Jacobean theatre.46 During the 1630s, to use these languages overtly in drama would mean swimming against the religious and political tide. Another context is Caroline censorship. The scholarship on this topic is large and there is considerable disagreement on how effective censorship actually is during this period.47 What does seem clear is that the expression of Calvinist doctrine is subject to considerable state pressure from the late 1620s. Discussion of predestination and the finer points of Calvinist soteriology are effectively banned.48 The government was worried about news corantos and other foreign books coming in to the country from the continent, reflected in the famous Star Chamber decree of 1637.49 The decree was also designed to counter religious polemic, especially by the Puritans. It prohibits ‘any Seditious, Schismatical, or offensive Books or Pamphlets, to the scandal of Religion, or the Church, or the Government’, and contains a list of ‘approved’ publishers recognised by the government 45

46

47

48

Ibid., p. 119. See too Alexandra Walsham, Providence in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 248–249. Although tragedies continued to be written, this is a period when comedy, tragi-comedy, pastoral, and the masque, predominate. Yet such genres do include religious critique – see my article ‘Moderation and Religious Criticism in William Cartwright’s The Ordinary (1635)’, The Seventeenth Century, 31, 1, 2016, pp. 17–36. See, for example, Annabel Patterson, Censorship and Interpretation: The Conditions of Reading and Writing in Early Modern England (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1984); Janet Clare, ‘Art Made Tongue-Tied by Authority’: Elizabethan and Jacobean Dramatic Censorship (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1990); The Control and Censorship of Caroline Drama: The Records of Sir Henry Herbert, Master of the Revels, 1623–73, ed. N.W. Bawcutt (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996); and Cyndia Susan Clegg, Press Censorship in Caroline England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008). 49 See Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists, pp. 181–188. See Sharpe, The Personal Rule, pp. 646–647.

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and bishops.50 In a poem written in 1634, William Cartwright castigates those Calvinists and Puritans who ‘do itch . . . to note / The chief distinction ’twixt the Sheep, and Goat’, who want to debate ‘the Absolute Decree’ and enjoy ‘venting Reprobation’ (35–40).51 Opposition to official state policy is undoubtedly a concern. Nevertheless, censorship is not absolute or total. Literature in particular provides an outlet for the expression of alternative views. Indeed the ‘political engagement of drama, poetry and indeed of histories – an engagement we have only just begun to appreciate – suggests perhaps that even in the 1630s the codes of censorship still embraced authorized modes of dissent’.52 Critique is still possible: in Caroline drama we need to decode its lineaments. Scholars such as Davies, Sharpe, and Reid Barbour argue that there is a degree of common ground between Calvinism and Arminianism. In Barbour’s words, Caroline writers ‘were less interested in articulating a core of doctrine than they were in exploring and testing the very conditions in which faith was imagined, situated, and lived’.53 Barbour sees the challenge as predominantly philosophical, asking us to see religious debate in a less binary way. Considering dominant Caroline attitudes towards apocalypticism, this is a fair point. As we have seen, the apocalyptic tradition is not monolithic and does not need to be used in a contentious way. Moreover, the antipathy of Laud’s Church to traditional forms of apocalypticism means that the more prophetic or speculative forms of apocalypticism are viewed with scepticism during this period, something that moderate Calvinists and Arminians alike could probably welcome.54 During the 1630s, the function of Protestant apocalypticism is rethought. Arminianism can also be viewed in a less polemical light. It is part of a broader intellectual attempt to refashion a new and plausible model of the ‘church heroic’, one that encompasses a range of enthusiasms and positions including, but not necessarily defined by, apocalypticism: In the Caroline search for the genuine church heroic, then, there are many strong contenders – old and new, courtly and anti-courtly, Laudian and Foxeian – fracturing the perceived Elizabethan and Jacobean consensus that 50

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‘A Decree of Star-Chamber concerning Printing, made the Eleventh Day of July last past, 1637’, from ‘The Star Chamber on printing, 1637’, Historical Collections of Private Passages of State: vol. 3: 1639–40, pp. 306–316. http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=74953. ‘To the same immediately’, in The Plays and Poems of William Cartwright, ed. G. Blakemore Evans (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1951). Sharpe, The Personal Rule, p. 654. Reid Barbour, Literature and Religious Culture in Seventeenth-Century England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. 1. See also Sharpe, The Personal Rule. Milton, Catholic and Reformed, pp. 124–125.

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Apocalypse and Anti-Catholicism in Seventeenth-Century protestant heroism demands violent and colonial opposition to the papal Antichrist . . . strenuous, elaborate efforts are made to reassemble synthetic archetypes for this heroism or to justify a heroism committed to abdication from and critique of the old myths.55

This sceptical turn tries to assimilate Classical philosophical theories as a way of refashioning religion and politics. At its best, it comes close to ‘the tolerant and reasonable faith that some philosophers were seeking in the minimal common notions of all religions’.56 The influence of thinkers such as Justus Lipsius and Hugo Grotius can be felt here and are part of literary debate during the period, especially amongst groups such as the Great Tew Circle.57 Nevertheless, if the dangers of an overly ‘oppositional’ model of religious change in the Caroline period are clear, there are also some problems with Barbour’s argument. We can see this by returning to Montagu. While his central argument is polemically brilliant, it also deliberately flattens out a complex body of religious opinion.58 Both moderate and militant Protestants alike draw on apocalyptic language, albeit in rather different ways. Montagu knows this, of course. But his arguments about the papal antichrist are primarily aimed at the militant end of the Protestant spectrum. He shares a broader concern that the ‘increasing radicalization of the apocalyptic tradition’ had got out of hand.59 His frequent appeals to moderation and toleration are part of this strategy. Yet by arguing that all Calvinists are Puritans, Montagu collapses the moderate side of Protestant opinion into the militant wing. By caricaturing all Protestant opinion in this way, he fatally overlooks the ideological importance of apocalypticism to the more moderate Protestant mainstream. The avant-garde ascendency follows Montagu’s lead. This is crucial because the idea of the papal antichrist was always valued for ‘its capacity to act as a bulwark against popery in the perceptions of moderate puritans, and thereby to assure them of the goodwill and Protestant credentials of an increasingly compromised episcopalian Calvinist position’.60 Protestant anti-Catholic 55 57

58

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56 Barbour, Literature and Religious Culture, p. 23. Ibid. See Richard Tuck, Philosophy and Government 1572–1651 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 45–64, 154–201. See too M.L. Donnelly, ‘“The Great Difference of Time”: The Great Tew Circle and the Emergence of the Neoclassical Mode’, in Literary Circles and Cultural Communities in Renaissance England, ed. Ted-Larry Pebworth and Claude J. Summers (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2000), pp. 187–209. For a fuller articulation of this argument, see my chapter ‘“Arminian is like a flying fish”: Region, Religion and Polemics in the Montagu Controversy, 1623–1626’, in Region, Religion and English Renaissance Literature, ed. David Coleman (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013), pp. 105–121. 60 Milton, Catholic and Reformed, p. 124. Ibid., p. 125.

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apocalypticism was never just about, in Barbour’s words, ‘violent and colonial opposition to the papal Antichrist’. Indeed, by the time it comes under attack in the 1620s and ’30s it is a strong ideological glue that binds many disparate positions together. It allows moderates and militants alike to express their opposition to Rome. No less important, it enables them to assure each other about their religious and political intentions and about those in power. It is this last point that, in their different ways, both Montagu and Barbour fail to properly appreciate. By the 1630s, this language is far too deeply woven into the fabric of early modern Protestantism to be so easily dismissed by its opponents. As we have seen, Ben Jonson is no fan of anti-Catholic or apocalyptic enthusiasm. But he also sees Arminianism as immoderate. In his 1632 play The Magnetick Lady one character jokes that the ‘Armenians [sic]’ are ‘worse than Papists!’61 Accusing Arminianism of crypto-popery is an attempt to connect this theology with a long line of opponents of Protestant ecclesial orthodoxy. We can see why polemicists such as Montagu want to attack the more zealous professors of anti-Catholic apocalypticism. Yet they underestimate the fact that a ‘genuine church heroic’ requires an outlet for moderate and militant expressions of this language. This is something that politically sensitive and religiously moderate figures such as Jonson and William Cartwright do understand.62 Caricaturing all forms of this rhetoric as ‘Puritan’ might make good polemical sense and, in Jonson’s case, makes for effective theatrical satire. It certainly tempers more militant expressions in England during the 1630s and on the stage. But it was not likely to be sustainable. As Charles’ troubles mount towards the end of this decade, the attack on anti-Catholic apocalypticism and the assertion of imperial monarchical rule by fiat proved a combustible combination. Religion informs the problem of the king’s right to claim tonnage and poundage on imports, a major source of income for the monarch. Traditionally this right was awarded to a king for life. But parliament granted Charles the right only for a year.63 The famous ‘Protestation of the House of Commons’ spoken as Charles entered the Palace of Westminster to

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Ben Jonson, The Magnetick Lady: Or Hvmors Reconcild , in The Workes of Benjamin Jonson . . . (London: Richard Meighen, 1640), sig. B4r. Mrs Polish also condemns the Puritans and the ‘LukeWarme Protestants’. Jonson was associated with the Great Tew Circle through Lucius Cary, Viscount Faulkland. This group disliked Laud and Arminian innovations in religion and politics – see Martin Butler, ‘Jonson in the Caroline Period’, in Ben Jonson in Context, ed. Julie Sanders (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), p. 33. See Streete, ‘Moderation and Religious Criticism’. See The Constitutional Documents, pp. 73–74.

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break up the 1629 parliament makes the religious aspect of the grievance clear. The first clause of ‘Protestation’ declares: ‘Whosoever shall bring in innovation of religion, or by favour or countenance seek to extend or introduce Popery or Arminianism . . . shall be reputed a capital enemy to this Kingdom and Commonwealth.’ The second clause says: ‘Whosoever shall counsel or advise the taking and levying of the subsidies of Tonnage and Poundage, not being granted by Parliament, or shall be an actor or instrument therein, shall be likewise reputed an innovator in the Government, and a capital enemy to the Kingdom and Commonwealth.’64 If the king cannot be trusted with the spiritual welfare of the state, then why should he be granted unconditional financial support? Larger disputes that mark later decades, such as whether the liberties of subjects are best protected by king or parliament, begin to be articulated during the late 1620s. This combustible mixture of insulted royal prerogative, financial necessity, warfare or peace, and religion caused the breakup of the 1629 parliament and led to Charles’ personal rule. The king’s parliamentary critics, led by Eliot, John Pym, and Nathanial Rich, and supported by nobles such as Pembroke and Warwick, deprecated the dissolution. Nevertheless, the king exercised his prerogative.65 Charles concluded the dissolution by jailing his main opponents amongst the MPs. The king and his supporters now had to rethink their foreign policy. The ‘Declaration’ of 1629 shows Charles trying to smooth the ground in this direction as well as shifting the blame to his parliamentary opponents. He says that he called the parliament in order to protect ‘the safety of our religion, for securing our kingdoms and subjects at home, and our friends and allies abroad’. He namechecks Christian IV, whose short-lived career as a potential Protestant hero had recently come to an ignominious end, as well as England’s traditional enemies, ‘the Pope, and the House of Austria, and their ancient confederates’.66 Charles’ use of anti-papal language is a nod towards the militant Protestants. In the case of the ‘Princes and States on our party’, such as Frederick and Elizabeth, the king says he had ‘propounded a speedy supply of treasure, answerable to the necessity of the cause’. Yet this course of action was ‘well resented by the House of Commons’, who were instead ‘diverted by a multitude of questions . . . touching their 64 65

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‘Protestation of the House of Commons’, in The Constitutional Documents, pp. 82–83. On the national and international dimensions of the Calvinist and Arminian wings, see Reeve, Charles I, pp. 76–77. ‘The King’s Declaration’, in The Constitutional Documents, pp. 83–84.

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liberties and freedoms’. As a result, ‘our foreign actions’ were ‘disgraced and ruined for want of timely help’.67 It is hard not to admire Charles’ chutzpah here. He would be the crusading Protestant hero that so many eagerly crave: the only thing holding him back is, ironically, parliament itself. He is careful to praise the ‘wise and moderate men of that House’, separating them from those in parliament whose intransigence over supply has, according to the king, scuppered any chance of going to the military aid of the oppressed Protestant international. Developing the logic of the ‘Declaration’ further, we can see an alternative position emerging. If the possibility of a war with the forces of Roman Catholicism is not viable because of a lack of parliamentary support, then by pursuing peace the king can claim to be respecting parliament’s own position. Charles’ reading of the political situation, and hence the logic of his claim, is highly selective. But it allowed him to rejoin peace talks with Spain. The question of the Palatine was at the forefront of negotiations. The king claimed that he wanted to aid Frederick and Elizabeth and restore them to their thrones. Frederick was involved in the negotiations and he expected his brother-in-law to include his restoration as a precondition of any peace treaty.68 Yet Charles had alienated the natural Protestant support base of the Palatines at home. While some were encouraged by the possibility that Frederick and Elizabeth could be restored, they also viewed the peace negotiations with suspicion. Sceptical of parliament, committed to Charles’ imperial monarchical prerogative, pro-Spanish, and generally less inclined to intervene in European politics, the Arminians offer a political counterwing to militant Protestantism. In militant writing of the period, we see a defensive note struck. The terms of the debate are now being dictated by their opponents. Writing from Strasbourg in 1628, John Russell’s didactic poem The Spy Discovering the Danger of Arminian Heresie and Spanish Treacherie begins by bemoaning the lack of Protestant heroes: ‘Where now is Essex, Norris, Rawleigh, Drake? / (At whose remembrance yet proud Spaine doth quake).’69 Lamenting a mythical Elizabethan past when England was (supposedly) at the forefront of European resistance to Spain marks texts like these. Russell goes on: Shall th’ Austrian brood Abroad be gorg’d, and glutted with the blood Of our allies and friends? nay shall they here 67 69

68 Ibid., p. 84. Reeve, Charles I, p. 242. John Russell, The Spy Discovering the Danger of Arminian Heresie and Spanish Treacherie (n.p.: Strasburgh, 1628), sig. A2v.

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Apocalypse and Anti-Catholicism in Seventeenth-Century At home a Babel of Confusion reare; And none speake to prevent it? is there not Unslaughtere’d, or vnpoyson’d left one Scot Dares tell the blindfold state it headlong reeles To Spanish thraldom vpon Spanish wheeles?70

Spanish imperial authority is rampant. The reference here to one ‘Scot’ left unslaughtered or unpoisoned may refer to Thomas Scott, the radical polemicist quoted earlier who was assassinated in Utrecht in 1626, or perhaps to the rumour that the Duke of Buckingham had poisoned King James on his deathbed.71 Invariably, popish politicking underlies the current crisis. Russell argues that ‘the plot was layd, / Before th’election of the Paltz-graue made, / How to defeate him.’72 Reflecting on the current European conflict, he says: We Germany at Austria’s foote haue layd Because Prince Fred’rick we refus’d to ayd. Spaines valour made th’ Imperiall greatnes rise Not halfe so much, as English Cowerdise.73

Because of previous failures to intervene decisively in the conflict, the power balance in Europe is now tilted against the interests of England and her allies. Frederick is ‘quite forsaken’ in the face of Spanish imperial power.74 Russell also attacks the Arminian ascendency in the English Church, arguing that Arminius was sent by the Pope to trick Protestants. He ‘Comes, like a protestant, in shew, before; / And vowes he hates the Antichristian whore.’ This use of apocalyptic language is just a ruse so that the Arminians can inveigle their way into positions of power. They take ‘the spirits sword from the orthodox’ and ‘falsely, that th’are Calvinists, report / Onely to make them odious in the court.’75 The narrative of Spanish and Arminian conspiracy comes together in the figure of Laud who, it is suggested, has promoted Arminianism so that he ‘in time, / To th’honour of a Cardinalls cap, may climb.’76 England is fatally in hock to Spanish, popish power, a shift enabled by the Trojan Horse of Arminianism.

70 71

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Ibid., sig. A2v. The time of the antichrist described in Revelation 11 is one when he will ‘triumphe ouer’ his enemies’ ‘dead bodies with barbarous crueltie’ – William Fulke, Praelections vpon the Sacred and Holy Reuelations of S. John, trans. George Gifford (London: Thomas Purfoote, 1573), sig. K4v. 73 74 75 Russell, The Spy, sig. B2r. Ibid., sig. D4r. Ibid., sig. F4r. Ibid., sigs. C2v-r. Ibid., sig. C4r.

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Russell’s defensive rhetoric of anti-Catholic conspiracy is not particularly attractive. It simplifies history and complex shifts in political authority.77 But it is politically challenging. Writing from exile, he can articulate the concerns of those at home who saw the king’s strategy as a capitulation to Spain. Those who remained had to speak more cautiously. Here is one of the doughtiest defenders of moderate political Calvinism, Bishop Joseph Hall, preaching at Westminster in 1628: who can but weepe and bleed to see these woefull calamities that are falne vpon the late famous and flourishing Churches of Reformed Christendome? Oh, for that Palatine Vine, late inoculated with a precious bud of our Royall Stemme; that Vine not long since rich in goodly clusters; now the insultation of Boares, and prey of Foxes; Oh for those poore distressed Christians in France, Boheme, Silesia, Morauia, Germanie, Austria, Valtoline, that grone vnder the tyrannous yoake of Antichristian oppression; how glad would they bee of the crummes of our Feasts; how rich would they esteeme themselues with the very gleanings of our plentiful crop of prosperitie; How do they looke vp at vs, as euen now Militantly triumphant, whiles they are miserably wallowing in dust and bloud; and wonder to see the Sun-shine vpon our hill, whiles they are drenched with storme and tempest in the Valley?78

Hall cannot reveal his cards as openly as Russell. The genre of biblical lament allows him to comment typologically on the political situation in Europe and to express concern for those suffering in the war. Still, there is no mistaking his allegiance with the Palatinate.79 The idea of the Protestant international, and all that this might imply for England’s commitment to ‘Reformed Christendome’, informs Hall’s thinking. To rail against the ‘tyrannous yoake of Antichristian oppression’ in a context where such rhetoric is increasingly questioned is, in itself, a significant act. Hall is no militant. As his sermon shows, moderate Protestantism can draw on apocalyptic rhetoric in order to make its point.80 Throughout the negotiations with Spain in 1629, Charles and his ambassadors assured Frederick that restitution would be a central to any 77

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See Barbour, Literature and Religious Culture, pp. 21–23. See also Sharpe, The Personal Rule, and His Criticism and Complaint: The Politics of Literature in the England of Charles I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987). Joseph Hall, One of the Sermons Preacht at Westminster . . . (London: Nathanial Buttes, 1628), pp. 47–48. On Hall and apocalypticism, see Peter McCullough, Sermons at Court: Politics and Religion in Elizabethan and Jacobean Preaching (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), pp. 188–194. For another contemporary use of apocalyptic and anti-Catholic language, see George Wither, Britain’s Remembrancer . . . (London: Iohn Grismond, 1628).

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treaty signed with Spain81 Many on the council, including Dorchester and Pembroke, opposed any kind of peace.82 This grouping, comprising moderate and militant Protestant opinion, reflected widespread dissatisfaction in the country at large. Arguably, Charles and his advisers could deal with such internal dissent. But, contra Sharpe, they were much less sure footed in the arena of international diplomacy. At the crucial moment, Charles lost his nerve. He made a pact with Spain, the so-called Cottington Treaty. He also kept the treaty secret from many of his councillors: ‘as the quid pro quo for restoring Frederick and Elizabeth, the king committed England to joining the Spanish in invading the Netherlands. It was a staggering turn around.’83 We do not know if Charles intended to honour the treaty. Nevertheless, Spanish backtracking and the emergence of the Swedish king Gustavus Adolphus as a creditable opponent of Spanish power left the king caught between two poles. Unwilling to recall parliament, wary of the French and the Dutch, and desperate for a resolution, the restitution of the Palatinate was fudged in the peace treaty.84 Charles ‘took the engagements of Spain as being worth far more than they really were’.85 When they found out, Frederick, Elizabeth and their supporters were furious, as were the Dutch. For some, Charles’ peace was a capitulation to Spanish power. For others, it was simply a pragmatic recognition of the new political order in Europe.86 The truth probably lies somewhere in between. Yet Charles’ policies placed England firmly within Spain’s political orbit. Politicians such as Weston and clerics such as Laud followed suit in opposing military engagement on the continent and the restoration of Frederick and Elizabeth. Given England’s military weakness, this may have been a sensible course of action. But while the Palatines remained in exile and while there were plausible figures of martial Protestantism such as Gustavus Adolphus walking the European stage, arguments for military engagement could still be made by militant figures such as Dorchester, Hamilton, Pembroke, and their supporters.87 Anti-popery was still a 81

82 84 85 86

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Sharpe, The Personal Rule, p. 90. Sharpe is broadly supportive of Charles’ strategy; other historians such as Gardiner and Reeve are less impressed. See Sharpe, The Personal Rule, p. 95; Gardiner, The Personal Government, pp. 208–213; Reeve, Charles I, pp. 241–244. See too Richard Cust, Charles I: A Political Life (Harlow: Longman, 2007). 83 Reeve, Charles I, p. 241. Cust, Charles I, p. 126. Reeve, Charles I, pp. 250–255. As Reeve points out, the treaty was never officially ratified (p. 258). Gardiner, The Personal Government, p. 216. For opposing views on the treaty, see Sharpe, The Personal Rule, pp. 94–97, and Reeve, Charles I, pp. 258–259. On Gustavus and Charles, see Gardiner, The Personal Government, pp. 214–232, 266–268.

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potent language even if it now had to be articulated more carefully. The growing division in the Church between Calvinism and Arminianism was shifting in favour of the latter as they undermined traditional Protestant anti-popery and apocalypticism. Yet Charles could not yet afford to dismiss the concerns of the militants absolutely, and he was not above adopting apocalyptic rhetoric and postures when it suited him. Should England invest its resources and hopes in the restoration of Frederick and Elizabeth? Or should she simply give up such a policy and its associated apocalyptic enthusiasms? More broadly, was it plausible to believe that an imperial figure would rise from amongst the European Protestant states and lead a crusade against papal power? Or were such ideas fast becoming the hopelessly outdated fantasies of a bygone age?88

III Philip Massinger’s Believe as You List was written at the end of 1629, submitted for performance early in 1630, and first performed in 1631. Its writing and production thus straddles the events discussed above. Sir Henry Herbert, the Master of the Revels, rejected the first version because ‘itt did contain dangerous matter, as the deposing of Sebastian king of Portugal, by Philip the [Second] and ther being a peace sworen twixte the kings of England and Spayne’.89 Clearly the play was considered too topical, too likely to offend England’s new Spanish allies in the aftermath of the peace treaty. It has also been suggested by critics such as Gardiner and Sisson that the story of a wandering pretender/king who is not supported in his claims by his allies can be linked to the fate of Frederick of Bohemia and to Charles’ recent political alignment with Spain.90 I agree that contemporary audiences could have made this connection. But I also want to suggest that any analogy is rather more 88

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On the persistence of crusading ideology in early modern England, see Christopher Tyerman, England and the Crusades, 1095–1588 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), pp. 343–370. The Plays and Poems of Philip Massinger, vol. III, ed. Philip Edwards and Colin Gibson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976), p. 293. All references are to this edition, and I follow the original spelling, capitalization, and bracketing, except when expanding contracted words. I have also consulted the Malone Society edition of the play: Believe as You List, ed. Sisson. Gardiner, ‘The Political Element’; Believe as You List, ed. Sisson, xviii. See also John Loftis, Renaissance Drama in England and Spain: Topical Allusion and History Plays (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987), pp. 145–150, 171–173. For a more sceptical view of Massinger’s political allusions, see Allen Gross, ‘Contemporary Politics in Massinger’, Studies in English Literature, 6, 2, 1966, pp. 279–290.

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complicated than both Gardiner and Sisson suppose. After all, the original version of the play dramatises a well-known story from recent European history, one that casts Spain in a less than flattering light. If Antiochus is an allegory of Frederick as these earlier critics infer, then it is a remarkably compromised depiction. During the late 1570s, king Sebastian of Portugal was encouraged by Spain in his crusade against the Ottoman Empire. He was defeated at the battle of Alcazar in 1578 and presumed killed. This story quickly made its way onto the stage.91 It is dramatised by George Peele in his 1588–89 play The Battle of Alcazar, in the second half of the anonymous historical tragedy Thomas Stukeley (c. 1596), and alluded to in George Chapman’s Byron (1608). There is a lost play by Chettle and Dekker called King Sebastian of Portugal from 1601, and the story is later dramatised by John Dryden in Don Sebastian (1689) after the deposition of the Roman Catholic James II by the Protestants William and Mary.92 With Sebastian out the way, Philip II of Spain was now free to claim the throne of Portugal. In 1580 he united the Iberian thrones, a move that was unpopular in Portugal and with Spain’s enemies. The twist in the story comes during the 1590s when a number of men appear in Venice claiming to be Sebastian. Most of these figures were exposed as imposters and two were executed.93 However, one individual provoked the interest of some important figures. This Sebastian claimed that he had not died during the battle of Alcazar but instead went into exile and was now returning to reclaim his throne. Because Philip is frequently depicted as an imperial monarch with powers of renovatio, we can see why those who oppose the Hapsburgs are interested in ‘Sebastian’. He may be the ruler who returns to oppose Spanish imperial power. He tried to get support from a number of European states, including England, and was variously jailed and released, before being finally imprisoned and executed on the orders of Phillip III in 1602.94 One of the

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For more on Sebastianism and drama, see Bryan C. Lockey, ‘Elizabethan Cosmopolitan: Captain Thomas Stukeley in the Court of Dom Sebastian’, ELR, 40, 1, 2010, pp. 3–32; Hammood Khalid Obaid, Topicality and Representation: Islam and Muslims in Two Renaissance Plays (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2013), pp. 48–51, 72–138, 234–237; and Elizabeth EvendenKenyon, ‘Portuguese and Spanish History on the Early Modern English Stage: The Battle of Alcazar’ (https://elizabethevenden.wordpress.com/early-modern-drama/). There is also a Romantic opera on the subject by Gaetano Donizetti, Dom Sébastien, premiered in Paris in 1838. Jose Teixeira, The Strangest Adventure That Ever Happened . . . (London: Frances Henson, 1601), pp. 20–21. See too Gerolamo Franchi di Conestaggio, The Historie of the Uniting of the Kingdome of Portugall to the Crowne of Castill . . . (London: Ar. Hatfield for Edward Blount, 1600). Heinemann, Puritanism and Theatre, p. 218.

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earliest English writers to mention the return of Sebastian is Thomas Nashe in Lenten Stuffe (1599). He says that the former king ‘is raysed from the dead like Lazarus, and aliue to be seene at Venice’. Continuing in this mocking vein, Nashe mentions Sebastian in a passage about false messiahs who are ‘inspired wyth mutton and porridge’.95 A more credulous and extended narrative of Sebastian’s return appears in English in 1601, 1602, and 1603 in texts translated, probably by Anthony Munday, from the letters of a Dominican Jose Teixeira.96 These are the main source texts used by Massinger in Believe as You List. I want to argue that the religious and political significance of these sources, and the appeal of this story for Massinger in the late 1620s, has been almost completely ignored by literary historians.97 Faced with the censor’s objections, Massinger had to reset his play. He did this by drawing on the history of Antiochus III the Great, a Greek king of the third and second centuries BCE. He was also defeated in battle, went into exile, and later returned to reclaim his throne.98 This story offers a useful parallel with the dangerous Sebastian story, meaning that the plot did not have to be altered too drastically. The main changes are to the names of characters, places, and settings, although remnants of the Sebastian version can still be seen in the manuscript copy of the play and the surviving text.99 The play’s censor Henry Herbert was related to William and Philip Herbert, the powerful earls of Pembroke, well known for their adherence to Protestantism, parliament, and the Palatinate. Although Philip was close to Charles personally, nevertheless during the 1620s and ’30s the Pembrokes did intermittently contest the king’s policies at court.100 Massinger’s father worked for the Pembrokes and his son sought and was granted their patronage at various points throughout 95

96

97

98

99

100

Thomas Nashe, Lenten Stuffe, in The Works of Thomas Nashe, vol. 3, ed. R.B. McKerrow (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1966), pp. 212–213. The story of a pretender to the throne in the final years of Elizabeth’s reign was likely to have proved controversial. Munday is a frequent translator of Iberian material – see Elizabeth EvendenKenyon, ‘King Arthur in Iberia: English and Continental Responses to Arthurian History before and after the Reformation’ (unpublished paper, 2016), pp. 4–5, 20–24. But see Hila, ‘Massinger’s Believe as You List’, pp. 25–35. Hila offers a fine contextualisation of the play but she does not deal with the sources. See also Howard, ‘Massinger’s Political Tragedies’, pp. 117–137. Antiochus III the Great is the father of Antiochus IV Epiphanes, the tyrant referred to in the book of Daniel. The manuscript is held in the British Library and bears the marks of the revisions described above. See The Plays and Poems of Philip Massinger, pp. 293–294, as well as Sisson’s introduction to the Malone edition of the play, v–xxxiv. William Pembroke died in 1630. Philip lived to 1650 and sided with parliament during the Civil War. See Reeve, Charles I, pp. 38–40, 80–81, 192–193; Sharpe, The Personal Rule, pp. 161–163.

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his life.101 The Bondman, for instance, is dedicated to Philip. Massinger’s plays do not offer a straightforward mouthpiece for the views of the Pembrokes and their circle.102 The dramatist is more sympathetic to moderate forms of Protestantism. But that does not mean that he is supine or uninteresting. I suggest that Massinger’s works of the later 1620s and early 1630s mirror the political pragmatism that the Pembrokes adopted at this time. The earls had to find a balance between criticism and engagement. The alternative of political withdrawal was both unedifying and potentially dangerous. Although they were not always successful in achieving this via media, it remained the only way for them to promote the views of their Protestant allies. Massinger is interested in drama as dialectic, as a way of engaging with the views of the other side and of trying to find moderate common ground between competing factions.103 In another play from 1631, the tragicomedy The Emperor of the East, he draws on Roman Catholic and Protestant sources and imagery to comment on the clash between Calvinism and Arminianism, suggesting how the king might govern temperately without parliament.104 His moderate dramatic practice has its roots in the Christian Humanism of Erasmus and Montaigne. This helps to explain why Massinger increasingly uses both Protestant and Roman Catholic imagery in his plays written during the 1620s and ’30s. Rather than indicating a personal preference for one doctrine or another, it shows that in a climate of increasing religious polarisation, opponents need to find some common ground if political strife is to be overcome. In this respect, Margot Heinemann is correct to say that ‘The virtues most admired in the plays are essentially the aristocratic ones.’105 Yet 101

102

103

104 105

On Massinger and the Pembrokes, see Gardiner, ‘The Political Element in Massinger’; T.A. Dunne, Philip Massinger: The Man and the Playwright (Edinburgh and London: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1957), pp. 21–24; Heinemann, Puritanism and Theatre, pp. 166–169, 214; Limon, Dangerous Matter, p. 76; and Albert H. Tricomi, Anticourt Drama in England, 1603–1642 (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1989), pp. 153–164. See my ‘Passions, Politics and Subjectivity in Philip Massinger’s The Emperor of the East’, in Passions and Subjectivity in Early Modern Culture, ed. Brian Cummings and Freya Sierhuis (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013), pp. 217–235. See also Ira Clark, Professional Playwrights: Massinger, Ford, Shirley and Brome (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1992), pp. 39–46. On drama and politics in this period, see Butler, Theatre and Crisis; Clark, Professional Playwrights; Lisa Hopkins, John Ford’s Political Theatre (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1994); Susan Wiseman, Drama and Politics in the English Civil War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); Julie Sanders, Caroline Drama: The Plays of Massinger, Ford, Shirley and Brome (Plymouth: Northcote House, 1999); and Matthew Steggle, Richard Brome: Place and Politics on the Caroline Stage (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004). See Streete, ‘Passions, Politics and Subjectivity’. Heinemann, Puritanism and Theatre, p. 214.

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Massinger lived to 1640. He saw and understood the consequences of aristocratic political intransigence. In 1638, the year that the Scots signed the National Covenant, he wrote a play (now lost) called The King and the Subject that sharply criticised Charles for arbitrary taxation and drew a rebuke from the king.106 During the late 1620s and early 1630s, none of this could be predicted. Rather than railing against the system, Massinger works from within it. This moderate Protestant position is not without its difficulties though. Massinger is aware that political cynicism and religious dogmatism places limits on the utility of moderation. Generically, Believe as You List is hard to place. While much of its action is tragic, dealing as it does with the (re)emergence, suffering, and fall of Antiochus, it does not conclude with his death. It ends in a deliberately indeterminate fashion with Antiochus’ antagonist Flaminius exposed for his corruption and sent to prison. Antiochus is also condemned to the ‘Gyarae’ (V.ii.235), predicting that he has not long to live, although the manner of his death is, as he says, ‘vncertaine’ (V.ii.238). Given what we know about the historical fate of the pretender to Sebastian’s throne, we cannot call the play a tragicomedy either. Massinger deliberately locates the play in a generic space between tragedy and history. This allows him to comment on the various claims to historical ‘authenticity’ that Antiochus makes throughout the drama. As Douglas Howard has rightly observed, ‘Massinger wants us to recognize the choice between political stability and allegiance to the deposed king as a serious dilemma.’107 This consideration extends to the apocalyptic nature of the play’s source texts. Massinger uses apocalypticism in a measured, moderate way. He is aware of its political power, especially when aligned with imperial ideas of kingship. But he is also wary of this power: the play explores the thin line between imperial authority and tyranny. Indeed, Massinger subjects the imperial idea to an almost philosophical degree of scrutiny.

IV The first scene of the play shows Antiochus and his companion, an unnamed Stoic philosopher, conversing outside Carthage. It is described as a ‘greate Cittie / w[hi]ch in Her empires vastnesse rivalls Rome / at her prowde height’ (I.i.1–3). Antiochus recalls his fall and questions whether now, after so many years in exile and contemplation, he should try to reclaim his throne. The scene pits two political systems against each other. 106

Butler, Theatre and Crisis, p. 72.

107

Howard, ‘Massinger’s Political Tragedies’, p. 130.

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Whereas Antiochus stands for monarchical rule, his opponent Flaminius is a representative of ‘Romes republicque’ (I.ii.14). The Stoic urges his friend to reject the contemplative life: ‘you must now forget / the contemplations of a private man / and put in action that w[hi]ch may complie / with the maiestie of a monarch’ (I.i.7–10). This call to action is politically significant. By answering the ‘cries of your poore cuntrie’ (I.i.70), Antiochus will be able to oppose to Rome. Barbour has explored the dual legacy of neo-Stoicism in the Caroline period and how it can underwrite monarchical and courtly politics. In certain hands, it can also be used to threaten the stability and legitimacy of the state.108 In the opening scene, Barbour argues that the Stoic’s advice to Antiochus ‘supports the moral legitimacy of kings over the imperial drive of a republic’.109 There is a subversive edge to the Stoic’s words. Yet while Barbour’s analysis is persuasive, I think it misses a key political aspect of this opening scene. The scene is concerned with collective political power, particularly how Antiochus might build a coalition to support his claim to his throne. The contrast is drawn between his present situation and his behaviour before the battle that caused his exile. He vividly recounts how the ghosts of those ‘twelve thousand soules’ slaughtered ‘appeare to mee, exacting / a stricte accompte of my ambitious follye’ (I.i.39–41), and he laments his former political naivety: neither the counsaile of the Persian kinge prevaylinge with mee, nor the graue aduice of my wise enemie Marcus Scarius hindering my desparate enterprise to[o] late repented. (I.i.43–46)

It is precisely his ambitious desire to act unilaterally, his failure to heed advice, and his inability to build effective political coalitions that is lamented. This is a remarkably unsentimental portrayal. Antiochus is a ruler whose woes are, in no small part, self-inflicted.110 This failure colours his fear of taking action. He doubts that he will be able to successfully oppose Rome, saying that her ‘relligious authoritie’ (I.i.82) is now too strong. In language tinged with pastoral anti-Catholicism, he comments: 108

109 110

Reid Barbour, English Epicures and Stoics: Ancient Legacies in Early Stuart Culture (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1998), pp. 145–194. Ibid., p. 192. If this depiction also recalled for audiences their own autocratic monarch, then this is probably no mistake either.

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A Tigresse circlde with her famishd whelpes will sooner yeelde a lambe snatched from the flocke to the dumbe oratorie of the ewe then Rome restore one foote of earth that may diminishe her vast empire (I.i.86–90)

However, the Stoic again urges him to act, observing that not everyone is under the Roman imperium: the Asian princes warn’d by your example and yet vnconque’rd, never will consent that such a foule example of iniustice shall to the scandall of the present age hereafter bee recorded. they in this are equallie ingag’d with you, and must thowgh not in loue to iustice for their safetie in policie assist, garde and protecte you and you must rest assur’d neither the kinge of Parthia, the Gauls, nor big bonde Germans nor this greate Carthage growne already iealous of Romes incrochinge empire will crie aime to such an vsurpation, w[hi]ch must take from their owne securitie. (I.i.94–107)

This is hard-nosed advice. Although the ‘iniustice’ of his case will rouse potential allies, the Stoic says that they will act ‘for their safetie’. Only by supporting the returning king can they guarantee their ‘owne securitie’ and halt Rome’s ‘incrochinge empire’. It is also a pragmatic assessment. In 1631, the question of Roman ‘empery’ was a live one. On the European continent, Roman Catholic power was in the ascendant, and at home many saw the advance of Arminianism as crypto-Catholicism. Antiochus can no longer rely on the absolutist assertion that he was ‘borne, and bred vp a kinge, whose frowne, or smile / spake death, or life, my will a law’ (I.i.281–282). Massinger deliberately reduces the question of monarchy to its barest essentials. Antiochus is robbed and says: ‘can I in this weede / & without gold to fee an advocate / to pleade my royall title nourishe hope / of a recoverie?’ He must now proceed without the ‘outwarde glosse, and ceremonie’ of kingship (I.i.258–262).111 If he is to be restored to his crown, 111

As Shakespeare’s Henry V asks: ‘what have kings that privates have not too, / Save ceremony, save general ceremony? / And what art thou, thou idol ceremony?’ (IV.i.220–222). William Shakespeare, Henry V, in The Norton Shakespeare, ed. Stephen Greenblatt et al. (New York and London: W.W. Norton, 1997).

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then it will be by pragmatic politics and minimal means and by building a coalition to support his claim. The next scene stages a debate between the Flamen Berecinthius, and three Asian merchants. They complain about the lack of political recognition from ‘Rome’s legate’ (I.ii.31) Flaminius, a man ominously described as the ‘divell’ (I.ii.8). Berecinthius suggests to the merchants that he is best placed to appeal to Flaminius: as I am Cybeles flamen, whose most sacred image drawne thus in pompe I weare vpon my brest, I am priviledgde, nor is it in his power to doe mee wronge, and hee shall finde I can chant, and alowd to when I am not at her altar kneeling. (I.ii.20–26)

This is a complex speech. By depicting the corpulent Berecinthius dressed in the ‘pompe’ of religious robes replete with ‘sacred image’ and referencing altars, Massinger may draw on commonplaces of corrupt popish worship. Yet the Flamen puts himself in opposition to Rome and on the side of the merchants. It is more likely that Berecinthius allows Massinger to explore the political position of Arminianism in Caroline England.112 The Flamen is shown as a figure of ridicule and a serious political player. He aligns himself firmly with the economic concerns of the merchants. Although it is notoriously difficult to generalise about the relationship between religious allegiance and economic interests in this period, Tyacke has suggested that support for Arminianism increased in the 1620s and ’30s amongst merchants, investors, and landholders, just the kind of group that the Flamen seeks to represent.113 This is not to repeat Max Weber’s argument that the early modern merchant classes are

112

113

A number of Massinger’s plays are interested in Arminianism, including The Bondman, The Renegado, and The Emperor of the East. Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists, pp. 140–147. For an example of free trade arguments from an Arminian perspective, see the work of Edward Misselden: Free Trade. Or, The Meanes to Make Trade Flourish . . . (London: Iohn Legatt for Simon Waterson, 1622), and The Circle of Commerce. Or the Ballance of Trade, in Defence of Free Trade . . . (London: Iohn Dawson for Nicholas Bourne, 1623). On early modern trade, see Keith Wrightson, Earthly Necessities: Economic Lives in Early Modern Britain, 1470–1750 (London: Penguin, 2002), pp. 182–201. On the church and economics, see Christopher Hill, Economic Problems of the Church: From Archbishop Whitgift to the Long Parliament (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1956). On trade more generally, see Martha C. Howell, Commerce before Capitalism in Europe, 1300–1600 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010).

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invariably made up of Calvinists or Puritans.114 As Keith Wrightson has observed, ‘The godly were never more than a prominent minority among those engaged in industry and commerce.’115 However, seeing this figure standing up for the rights of the merchants may have caused some unease amongst those who were part of this ‘godly’ minority. In fact, Berecinthius comments that even though the Asian merchants are treated with ‘contempt, and scorne’ (I.ii.72) by their overlords, nevertheless ‘the legions with w[hi]ch you [i.e. Rome] fright the worlde / are from their labour pay’d’ (I.ii.77–78). The idea that ‘Asian’ trade is implicitly supporting the ambitions of ‘Rome’ is a discomforting one. Flaminius replies with a contemptuous use of epiplexis: ‘hath our familiar com[m]erce, and tradinge / almost as with our aequalls, tought you to / dispute our actions? . . . / shall vassalls capitulate with their lords?’ (I.ii.114–118). These are loaded questions. In 1629 – the year that the first version of the play was written – and in response to Charles’ treatment of parliament, English merchants had refused to trade.116 The years 1629–1631 saw a ‘trade slump’ in England, one that amounted to a ‘national economic crisis’.117 Charles’ Spanish peace was designed to address this problem. By opening up foreign trade, he could create a revenue stream that did not rely on parliament. Economically, both Calvinists and Arminians understood the benefits of this policy. Theologically, however, many Calvinists were sceptical. While trade was to be welcomed, was the peace not just another way of ensuring England’s religious vassalage to Roman Catholic power? As Flaminius sneeringly puts it: ‘doe not I knowe / how odious the lordlye Roman is to the despised Asian? . . . / to gaine your libertie you would pull downe / the altars of your Gods’ (I.ii.121–123). And as one of the merchants despairingly concludes, they are ‘made the anvile / on w[hi]ch Romes tyrannies, are shap’d’ (I.ii.159–160). This scene reflects well the uneasy amalgam of economic and religious interests stirred by Charles’ pro-Spanish policy. Massinger does not see this as a simple matter of Calvinist versus Arminian. Instead he dramatises mutual compromises on both sides.

114

115 116

117

Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, trans. Talcott Parsons (London and New York: Routledge, 2000), pp. 35–46. Wrightson, Earthly Necessities, p. 302. Reeve, Charles I, pp. 100–101. As Reeve notes, Charles’ ‘commitment to Laudianism and interest in a negotiated settlement with Spain, when combined with the essential dependence of the crown upon international trade, made the pro-Spanish neutrality of the personal rule a virtual necessity’ (p. 205). Ibid., p. 204.

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The act closes with Antiochus appearing to the Flamen and the merchants: what are you? the kinge Antiochus. or some deitie that hath assumde his shape. berecinthius: Hee only differs in the colour of his haire, and age. antiochus: consider what two and twentye years of miserie can worke vpon a wretch that longe time spent to vnder distant zeniths, and the change you looke on will not deserue your wonder. 1 marchant: His owne voice! 2 marchant: His verye countenance! his forhead! eies! 3 marchant: His nose! his German lippe! bereninthius: His stature! speech 1 marchant: His arme, hand, legge, and foote, on the lefte side shorter then on the right. 2 marchant: the moles vpon his face, and handes (I.ii.175–187)

berecinthius: antiochus: 1 marchant:

And so the identification by blazon continues. This passage draws closely on Massinger’s source texts. In fact the reference to Antiochus’ ‘German lippe’ is a textual survival from the first version of the play featuring Sebastian. In one of the source texts by Teixiera, we are told that he had ‘The lip of Austriche; like his grandfather Charles the fift Emperour’. It is impossible to know whether or not the playwright deliberately left in the detail of the famous Hapsburg lip. But it is an intriguing aspect all the same, one that may point up Sebastian’s connection with the most famous imperial monarch of the period Charles V. By politic contrast, Massinger declines to mention Sebastian’s ‘Gonorrhaea’.118 Antiochus’ appearance draws indirectly on Christ’s appearance to Mary Magdalene and the disciples in the Gospels.119 Antiochus says that he will ‘gieue stronger proofes then theis exterior markes when I appeare before the Carthaginian Senators’ (I.ii.197–199). In the sources this Christological parallel is even more explicit. Sebastian makes his men ‘put their fingers theirin, and to them shewed beside the other signes naturally caractered on 118 119

Teixeira, The Strangest, sig. K4r. Teixeira’s texts are pro-Dutch/anti-Spanish and pro-confederacy. See John 20:1–29.

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his bodie’.120 Antiochus not only reappears to his followers; he channels the religious power of the resurrection story, casting himself as Christ and his followers as doubting Thomases. His appropriation has a subversive political undertone. Antiochus is called a ‘deitie’ by one of the merchants. This alludes to a passage in the same source text where we are told that ‘the Portuguezes not only loued Don Sebastian as their king, but honoured him as if he had bene a God’. This is no mere hagiography. Teixiera goes on to say that if the Portuguese knew that Sebastian were alive, they would ‘immediately shake off the yoake of Castille, they would send him mony to supply his necessities, and would leauy an armie by sea’.121 The sources repeatedly make it clear that Sebastian’s return is politically dangerous for Spain. Teixeria says that he is called a traitor while in Rome for supporting Sebastian’s claim.122 The play also highlights the threat posed by Antiochus’ return. The Flamen calls on his fellows to make ‘a sacrifice for his safety’ and the merchants respond in kind: ‘may Rome sinke / & Asia once more flourish’ (I.ii.194–196). But it is Antiochus’ words that are the most pointed. He says that Carthage should shake off ‘th’ insultinge Roman bondage, and in mee / gayne, and inioy her pristine libertie’ (I.ii.209–210). Liberty – an increasingly resonant word in Caroline England – is once more invoked, this time by Rome’s selfproclaimed opponent. The passage that these words are derived from in the source text shows just how anti-Spanish this aspect of the Antiochus/ Sebastian narrative is: ‘The Portuguezes liue at this day, with an vnquenchable thirst of their libertie, so that they would gladly cast themselues from the tops of high mountains, to find redresse for their slauish bondage.’123 Antiochus has, depending on perspective, harnessed or reined in the power of the Flamen. He has also stated the value of liberty against the slavish ‘bondage’ of Rome by offering a viable monarchical alternative. By drawing on the subversive subtexts of his sources, Massinger ends the act with a political challenge to established imperial ‘Roman’ authority.124 Antiochus is betrayed to Rome by his former followers Chrysalus, Geta, and Syrus, who also robbed him in act I.125 When told of Antiochus’ appearance, Flaminius says: ‘how! is hee / rose from the dead?’ Chrysalus 120 122

123 124

125

121 Teixeira, The Strangest, sig. K1v. Ibid., sig. H2r. Jose Teixeira, A Continuation of the Lamentable and Admirable Adventures of Dom Sebastian King of Portugale . . . (London: Iames Shaw, 1603), pp. 14–15. Ibid., sig. H2r. On the language of ‘liberty’ in early modern England, see Quentin Skinner, Liberty before Liberalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). Their Judas-like behaviour is connoted by their desire for gold, and Geta’s wish that they could have made Antiochus ‘hange hymselfe’ (II.i.84) ironically recalls Judas’ fate.

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replies: ‘alas hee never died s[i]r’ (II.i.50–52). Not only does this draw on the biblical narrative of Lazarus and the resurrection, it also recalls Christ’s dealings with the Roman authorities. Flaminius asks, ‘How are you assur’d this is Antiochus / and not a counterfaite?’ (II.i.58–59), and then goes on to admit that the story he has been told ‘appeerd soe like to truth that I began / to feele and inclination to beleeue / what I must haue noe faith in’ (II.i.122–124). This moment of Roman pathos invokes the epistemological relativity of the play’s title. It may also have reminded some of Pilate’s infamous question to Christ at his trial, ‘What is trueth?’ (John 18:38).126 As John Calvin notes in his commentary on this passage, although ‘Pilate spoke in mockery’, nonetheless ‘he is forced to feel some inward pricking’.127 Massinger skilfully creates doubt in the spectators as to where the truth of the matter lies. Does Antiochus affectively move and persuade those to whom he appears, or not? Is he a monarch who possesses imperial power? By raising questions of knowledge and affective judgement, Massinger ensures that Antiochus’ first appearance before the authorities is similarly contested. On his entry, Flaminius attempts to cow the Carthaginians – ‘you are bound to serue not argue’ (II.ii.91) – and expresses his concern that the Asians are supporting Antiochus in order to achieve their ‘future libertie’ (II.ii.99). However, perhaps fortified by Amilcar’s words, the senators assert their ‘freedome’ (II.ii106), and Asdruball’s comment to the proconsul, ‘wee are not / lead by an implicite faith’, could be read as a jibe against the Roman imperium, or against ‘Romish’ religion. Antiochus enters, as an authorial stage direction notes, ‘Habited like a kinge’ by Berecinthius (II.ii.119).128 He expresses his unease with his attire, stating that ‘this shape that you haue put mee in suites ill / with the late austerenesse of my life’ (II.ii.120–121).129 Yet when he speaks to the assembled group, Antiochus quickly asserts his authority: Health to the senate wee doe suppose your duties done, sit still Titus flaminivs wee remember you as you are a publique minister from Rome you may sit cover’d.

126

127

128 129

The word ‘truth’ or its derivatives is mentioned four times in this short scene. Pilate is also invoked in the source texts – see Teixeria, The Strangest, sig. F4v. John Calvin, Commentary on John 11–21 and 1 John, trans. T.H.L. Parker (Grand Rapids: William Eerdmans, 1994), p. 168. This may also be intended to recall Christ before Pilate. The Flamen counters Antiochus’ preference for unadorned rhetorical plainness: ‘faire glosse / wrongs not the richest stuffe but sets it of’ (II.ii.121–122).

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flaminius: How! antiochus: but as wee are a potent kinge, in whose court you haue waited and sought our favour, you betray your pride, and the more then sawcie rudeness of your manners. a bended knee remembringe what wee are much better would become you. flaminius: Ha! antiochus: wee sayd it. but fall from our owne height to holde discourse with a thinge soe far beneath vs. (II.ii.124–133)

This is a double-edged portrayal. As a representation of a king returning to claim his rightful throne, the imperious tone is apt and striking. Is this imperial monarchy, mixed monarchy, or tyranny? The presentation of Antiochus is not meant to be straightforwardly sympathetic. It it meant to evoke a conflicted response. Would assent to Antiochus’ rule mean exchanging Roman tyranny for monarchical tyranny? Antiochus is also quick to establish his anti-Roman credentials through onedismus: call to memorie your trewe friend, and confaederate, whoe refused in his respect to you the profferd amitie of the Roman people. Hath this vile inchanter inviron’d mee with such thicke clowdes in your erroneous beleefe, from his report that I was long since dead, that beeinge present the beames of maiestie cannot breake throwgh the foggie mists raysde by his wicked charmes to lende you light to knowe mee? (II.ii.146–155)

This is an epistemological appeal to affective memory as well as a demand for the restoration of imperial political right. Though he grants that he may seem to be ‘some strange prodegie’ (II.ii.142), Antiochus portrays his opponent as a maleficent sorcerer, one tutored ‘by the divell’ (II.ii.180), a seducing ‘monster’ (II.ii.196). He is a ‘false man’ (II.ii.319) whose enchantments have engendered an ‘erroneous beleefe’ in the Carthaginians. Flaminius is a kind of antichrist who has blinded the affect of others.130 Antiochus continues: 130

See Revelation 19:20, which describes Christ’s defeat of the Beast: ‘But the beast was taken, and with him that false Prophet that wrought miracles before him, whereby he deceiued them that

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This language and imagery draws on the gendered anti-Catholic apocalypticism we have seen in previous chapters.131 It is thus significant that Flaminius counters Antiochus’ claims by using antistrephon: he is a ‘bold seductor’ (II.ii.201), an ‘imposter’ (II.ii.223), a ‘false pretender’ (II.ii.263). Perhaps most revealingly, Flaminius calls him ‘an Apostata Iewe’ (II.ii.325). As we have seen, in many commentaries on the book of Revelation the conversion of the Jews precedes the end of the world: ‘For that tyme must be the antechristes cease.’132 Yet before this conversion takes place, it is difficult to distinguish truth from falsehood: ‘The witchecraftes of the hypocrites they knowe by the euydent scriptures, yet wyl they not flee from them.’133 Is Antiochus an ‘Apostata Iewe’, an ‘artificiall’ pretender (II.ii.248) and ‘magitian’ (II.ii.328), as his opponent charges? Or is he, as he claims, ‘truth’ itself? When observing Antiochus and Flaminius, which is the just, and which the antichrist? Massinger brilliantly manipulates the affective response of the audience; with whom should they identify? This manipulation is part of the play’s deliberate troubling of political and religious oppositions. However, I want to draw attention here to the apocalyptic narrative that also runs through his various source texts. There can be little doubt that Massinger read this material as he perused his sources. While we will never know exactly what the playwright thought of the religious ideas advanced in this material, by reexamining it, a number of intriguing interpretative possibilities arise. Teixeria sees Sebastian as a prophetic and apocalyptic king who returns to purge corruption. These are ‘Auncient Prophecies, which we cannot more concieuably appropriate to any other, then to this selfe same Sebastian’.134 Various important prophetic figures are mentioned throughout, including Saint Cyril, Saint Isidore, Saint Methodius, Joachim of Fiore, Bishop

131

132 133

receiued the beasts marke, and them that worshipped his image. These both were aliue cast into a lake of fire burning with brimstone.’ See, for example, Jan Baptista van der Noot, A Theatre Wherein Be Represented as wel the Miseries & Calamities That Follow the Voluptuous Worldlings (London: Henry Bynneman, 1569), sig. K4r. John Bale, The Image of both Churches . . . (London: John Daye, 1550), sig. N5v. 134 Ibid., sig. S3r. Teixeria, The Strangest, sig. E1v.

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Theophilus, and the Sybil Erithraea. They are also imperial prophecies. As Teixeria says of Sebastian’s people: ‘they accounted him as another Caesar Augustus’.135 Antiochus’ refusal to be cowed by a mere Roman proconsul makes sense when read in this light. Each of the prophecies is different, but the following one gives a good idea of the kind of typological claims made for Sebastian: A hidden king [Occultus Rex] shall twice be holily giuen, he shall come into Spaine vpon a horse of wood (that is a shippe) whom many beholding, they will not beleeue that it is he. He shall subdue the proud: he shall purge the Spaniards of their filthinesse. He shall passe into Syria: he shall place the Ensigne of the Crucifixe vpon the holy Sepulcher: and shall be a Monarch.136

Another of the prophecies places Sebastian in Rome where he will appear, a ‘glorious shepheard’, and ‘recouer againe his lost kingdomes: shall subiugate the Souldan vnder his dominion, and restore the house of God into Christendome’.137 The return of the king is a mark of the imminent apocalypse. Indeed, the idea of an Occultus Rex who will return to purge corruption and restore righteous Christian rule, either at Rome or in the Holy Land, is drawn from the prophetic narrative of the last world emperor. Extremely popular in the medieval period, particularly during the era of Charlemagne and, later, during the Crusades, the emergence of this figure is of particular importance. As Marjorie Reeves notes, he ushers in: an age of peace and plenty in which a great triumph of Christianity would be consummated. The heathen would be converted or destroyed, the Jews converted, and finally Gog and Magog, with all their multitudes, would be annihilated. When his tasks were accomplished, the Emperor would go to Jerusalem, lay down his crown and robe on Golgotha and surrender his rule and care of Christendom to God. Only then would Antichrist appear in the final fury of evil to reign in the Temple at Jerusalem. Here human agencies would be of no avail: the Archangel Michael would appear to destroy him and, immediately after, history would be wound up at the Second Coming. Thus the glory of a Last World Emperor was combined with an orthodox pessimistic conclusion to history and this became a popular programme of Last Things. The emphasis could be placed either on the Emperor’s triumph or on his final surrender, and so the degree of optimism or pessimism varied at will.138

135 138

136 Ibid., sig. D4r. Ibid., sig. E1v. Reeves, The Influence, pp. 299–300.

137

Ibid., sig. E1r.

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This is heady material. As Reeves carefully points out, the role of the last world emperor is open to interpretation. In the case of the prophecies concerning Sebastian, they emphasise both optimism and pessimism. As Teixeria says, Sebastian may be an apocalyptic figure ushering in a new dawn by overturning false political rule. But he is also someone who ultimately fails, who has to renounce the title to which he lays claim. Such prophetic narratives, drawing as they do on nonbiblical traditions, are invariably less popular in the biblically driven culture of seventeenthcentury Protestantism. Yet they do not disappear altogether. Protestant apocalyptic commentators such as John Bale certainly draw on the imperial tradition of the last world emperor.139 The idea can be found in literary texts too. In an entertainment called The Misfortunes of Arthur, performed before Elizabeth I in the Armada year of 1588, Arthur concludes the play with words that predict both his death and his return: ‘yea, let my death / Be ay unknowen, so that in euery Coast / I still be feared, and lookt for euery houre.’140 The depiction of Arthur as an Occultus Rex is familiar from various medieval chronicles, romances, and ballads and informs the mythical king’s depiction in Spenser’s The Faerie Queene.141 The representation of Christopher Marlowe’s ‘Scythian shepherd’, Tamburlaine, may also allude to this narrative, as does a text more contemporaneous with Believe as You List, John Ford’s Perkin Warbeck (c. 1632–1634).142 This play features another notorious pretender. Like Antiochus, he is resolute in his claims to a throne, is initially supported by the some of the nobility,

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Joachim was sceptical of the idea of the last world emperor but his ideas were frequently conflated with this narrative in the period. Thomas Hughes, Certaine deu[is]es and shewes presented to her Maiestie by the gentlemen of GrayesInne at her Highnesse court in Greenewich . . . (London: Robert Robinson, 1587[88]), p. 44. See Curtis Perry, ‘“British Empire on the Eve of the Armada”: Revisiting The Misfortunes of Arthur’, Modern Philology, 108, 4, 2011, pp. 508–537, who argues that the play seeks to discredit militant Protestantism. See too Paul Whitfield White, ‘The Admiral’s Men, Shakespeare, and the Lost Arthurian Plays of Elizabethan England’, Arthuriana, 24, 4, 2014, pp. 33–47. See Evenden-Kenyon, ‘King Arthur in Iberia’, pp. 3, 10–13, 18. As the author notes, the Arthurian story is also popular in early modern Spain and Portugal although put to rather different confessional ends. In his twelfth-century Historia regnum Britanniae Geoffrey of Monmouth depicts Arthur in the line of British kings that runs from Brutus, legendary escapee from the Trojan Wars and mythical founder of the nation. Tamburlaine’s representation seems to construct him both as saviour and as antichrist. He lays low various imperial monarchs, conquers the kings of Jerusalem, and meets his fate in Babylon. When he first appears (I.ii), he casts off his shepherd’s clothes to reveal a suit of armour. This is strikingly similar to the appearance of antichrist in the twelfth-century Joachimite play Ludus de Antichristo: ‘Antichrist enters, dressed in a breastplate which is hidden under his other garments.’ The Play of Antichrist, trans. John Wright (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1967), p. 79.

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but is then abandoned and killed.143 There are sceptical references made in this play to the Spanish peace (III.iii, IV.iii) and to parliamentary subsidies (III.i), and Warbeck’s Portuguese connections are highlighted (I.iii). Perhaps most strikingly, Warbeck is, like Antiochus, accused of being a witch and ‘a Jew’ (V.iii.24).144 Throughout the Palatinate crisis, Joachim of Fiore is regularly invoked. In a jeremiad preached in 1618, Thomas Thompson references Joachim to prove that the Pope is the ‘Great Antichrist’.145 In Speculum belli sacri (1624), the militant Protestant radical Alexander Leighton argues for a holy war to support Frederick. He mentions a number of prophetic figures, including Joachim, to castigate the Pope and the Roman Catholic international. In making this case Leighton uses the narrative of the last world emperor who might be a ‘restorer of the Country’.146 A number of pro-Palatinate texts also make reference to Sebastian. Thomas Scott’s Sir Walter Rawleighs Ghost (1626) draws a direct line between Sebastian’s fall and the loss of the Palatinate. He argues that the ‘first streames from whence Spaine hath gathered the great Ocean of its Soueraigntie’ is the battle of Alcazar where the ‘too forward Don Sebastian . . . gaue occasion to Philip the second of Spaine, to enter and vsurpe vpon his kinsmans kingdomes’. This in turn leads to Spain’s conquest of the West and East Indies, and ‘Hence it came that his warre grewe violent vpon the Low Countries.’147 From here, it is only a short leap to the current Spanish-led aggression against Frederick: ‘Is there any thing in this age more lamentable . . . then the losse of the Palatinate?’148 The connection between Frederick and Sebastian is commonplace and apocalyptically inflected. We can see why Massinger was interested in dramatising this old story.

143

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146

147 148

See Philip Edwards, ‘The Royal Pretenders in Massinger and Ford’, ES, 27, 1974, pp. 18–36. Unsurprisingly, Perkin Warbeck is mentioned by Teixeria – The Strangest, sig. K3r. John Ford, Perkin Warbeck, in ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore and Other Plays, ed. Marion Lomax (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1995). The story of the returning king is not just the provenance of more oppositional writers. A later play by the royalist John Tatham called The Distracted State (c. 1641–1650) also draws interestingly on the narrative. The Portuguese under Spanish rule often saw themselves as the Jews in Babylonian captivity – Calderi, ‘The End of the Anglo-Spanish’, p. 134. Thomas Thompson, Antichrist Arraigned . . . (London: William Stansby for Richard Meighen, 1618), p. 162. Alexander Leighton, Speculum belli sacri: Or The Looking Glasse of the Holy War . . . (Amsterdam: Giles Thorp, 1624), p. 309. The reference to Joachim and the other prophetic figures is on p. 305. Thomas Scott, Sir Walter Rawleighs Ghost . . . (Vtricht: John Schellein, 1626), pp. 24–25. Ibid., p. 40. See too Peter Hay, An Advertisement to the Subiects of Scotland . . . (Aberdeen: Edward Raban, 1627), p. 35.

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This Protestant Joachimite tradition is both fascinating and largely overlooked by literary scholars today.149 Particularly noteworthy is the literary career of James Maxwell. Often ignored as a marginal figure or an ‘antiquarian’, Maxwell is one of the most intriguing prophetic figures in Jacobean and Caroline England.150 He is also attracted to the tradition of last world emperor. Maxwell first came to prominence in a series of texts published in the 1610s. Full of prophecies drawn from mystical, cabbalistic, and Paracelsian sources, and showing a remarkable evenhandedness in his use of Roman Catholic and Protestant material, his texts praise Joachim in particular. He is ‘highly extolled by diuers famous writers, which haue either written his life, or else made honourable mention of him in their writs, acknowledging him to haue beene extraordinarily inspired’.151 He takes from Joachim the idea of a Pastor Angelicus, or Angelical Pope, who will emerge, possibly from England, to carry out the ‘reformation of the Church of Rome’.152 Throughout his texts Maxwell emphasises England’s role in bringing reformation to the benighted: ‘the Rose of England beareth and bringeth the crosse of Christ to forraigne Lands’.153 There is even a suggestion that King James may fulfil this imperial role at the Castel Sant Angelo in Rome. With a resonantly anti-papal flourish, Maxwell says: ‘grant great Ioue that one day see I may / Great IAMES Empyryng, from S. Angels top / Reaching an Angell to the plagued Pope.’154 References to the ‘Rose’ and to the ‘lily’ are found throughout Maxwell’s work. They are part of the symbolism of Rosicrucianism, a movement that has important links with Frederick of Bohemia.155 Maxwell combines this imagery with the story of the last world emperor who will ‘beare dominion ouer the whole world, & shall be called the rest & peace of Christian people, and shall end his daies in Ierusalem vpon mount Oliuet’.156 While

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151 152 154

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I am indebted here to the work of Marjorie Reeves, whose chapter ‘Joachim and Protestantism’ discusses Joachimite work in early modern England and Maxwell. See Reeves, Joachim of Fiore, pp. 136–165. The reference to Maxwell as antiquarian comes from the brief discussion of his work in Bernard Capp, ‘The Political Dimension in Apocalyptic Thought’, in The Apocalypse in English Renaissance Thought and Literature, ed. C.A. Patrides and Joseph Wittreich (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984), pp. 102–103. James Maxwell, Admirable and Notable Prophecies . . . (London: Edward Alde, 1615), pp. 17–18. 153 Ibid., p. 84. Ibid., p. 87. James Maxwell, The Laudable Life, and Deplorable Death, of our late peerless Prince Henry . . . (London: Edward Alde for Thomas Pauier, 1612), sig. E1v. See Frances Yates, The Rosicrucian Enlightenment (London and New York: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1986), pp. 1–90. See too Reeves, Joachim of Fiore, pp. 149–150. Ibid., p. 45. See too the poem ‘Merlin’s Prophecy’ or ‘A Prince out of the North’ that depicts James in similar terms - http://www.earlystuartlibels.net/htdocs/spanish_match_section/Ni3.html

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the likelihood of James responding to such exhortations was slim, there were other candidates. Maxwell speaks of ‘a Rosen Crown, with the letter F seated seated or planted upon the same . . . By the which prediction, is imported that a certain English Prince whose name should begin with F, as for example, Fridericke, Francis, or Ferdinand shall hereafter performe matters of greatest moment for the good and glories of the Church and Empire.’157 After his marriage to Elizabeth in 1613, Frederick was indeed an ‘English Prince’, one whose imperial apocalyptic credentials were celebrated by many English writers. As Maxwell points out in a text mourning the death of Prince Henry and celebrating the marriage of his sister: ‘It is the common consent, and constant opinion, of Hystorians, and Genelogians, that the Palatine Princes are lineally descended from glorious Charlemaigne.’158 But Maxwell does not limit his imperial expectations to Frederick. After Henry’s death, the imperial Carolingian idea and its connections to Charles excite his interest. He writes of the marriage as ‘late Alliance’ from which will come a ‘Vnion of Northerne Princes’ who will defeat the enemies of Christendom ‘neere the Riuer of Rhine’.159 The new heir assumes a particular importance: this ‘most notable’ prophecy will be fulfilled by ‘a Prince of the name of Charles’.160 Maxwell says that, as the ‘old Prophecies’ predict, two great kings ‘combin’d shall drench / Constantinople in a foaming floud / Which shall be made of spilt Barbarian bloud.’161 He prays that Charles will ‘o’er-top France, Almanie, and Spaine / With Rome and Greece, and bringe the Turke to wracke; / Christ Iesus helpe Prince Charles his hopefull hand / To beare the Palme through out the holy-Land.’162 More than a reforming monarch, Charles is the imperial last world emperor who will restore godly rule before the end of the world. I have spent a little time examining Maxwell because he helps us to understand the broader tradition of Joachim of Fiore and the last world emperor, and how such ideas inform Believe as You List’s source texts. The link between Frederick and Sebastian is well known. But in the play, there is no straightforward connection between the two. Instead, Massinger offers a moderate Protestant reflection on what happens when imperial apocalyptic expectations are invested in flawed political figures.163 He is 157 158 159 160 161 163

Ibid., pp. 72–73. James Maxwell, A Monvument of Remembrance . . . (London: Nicholas Okes for Henry Bell, 1613), sig. F1r. Ibid., sig. A3v-r. Ibid. Maxwell also invests James with the symbolism of the last world emperor – see sigs. D4r, E1v. 162 Ibid., sig. Dr. Maxwell, The Laudable Life, sig. E2r. For an example of a Calvinistic text that draws on Joachimite ideas in order to argue against Arminianism, see Stephen Jerome, Englands iubilie . . . (Dublin: Society of Stationers, 1625), p. 179.

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aware of the dual political nature of the last emperor narrative as explained by Reeves: ‘The emphasis could be placed either on the Emperor’s triumph or on his final surrender, and so the degree of optimism or pessimism varied at will.’ This is why the play makes so much of the similarities and the contrasts between Antiochus and Flaminius. Although it is clear that the play’s sympathies tend towards the former, Massinger depicts both characters in such a way that we can never be confident that the one is a reforming ruler returned to his rightful position and the other is an antichristian figure. The play deliberately blurs the boundaries between the two. It gives both aspects of the other’s personality, forcing the audience to question where their political loyalties lie: ‘believe as you list’ indeed. Nonetheless, the last world emperor narrative is a potentially radical narrative. This is, after all, a figure that can reduce mighty temporal monarchs to dust and humble even the most powerful ecclesiastical institutions. This explains why Antiochus’ appeals to the power of his imperial title are so troublesome and why Flaminius is so relentless in his pursuit of his opponent. In act II, scene 2, Flaminius accuses Antiochus of having been ‘hir’d to it’ by the Asian merchants ‘to stirre vp a rebellion, w[hi]ch they call / deliverie or restoringe’ (II.ii.238–240, emphasis added). Antiochus is a political threat whose ‘restoringe’ must be stopped. The proconsul ends the scene by saying he will hear no more, leaving the Carthaginians to decide if they want to be Rome’s ‘friende or enemie’ (II.ii.354). Though Antiochus will fail, at this point in the play Massinger emphasises his political potential, the ‘optimistic’ strain of the last world emperor narrative. The Carthaginians state that Antiochus is not a ‘prisoner’, award him ‘full securitie’, and call themselves his ‘freindes’ (II.ii.369–371). As the act concludes, the merchants encourage him in imperial terms: ‘take courage in your libertie the worlde / lyes open to you’ (II.ii.372–373). The remaining acts recount Antiochus’ wanderings between various courts as he tries to win support for his claim. The warm welcome that he receives from ‘Prusias kinge of Bithinia’ (III.i.85) encourages the Flamen Berecinthius to adopt a familiar prophetic tone: first I will expel the Romans out of Asia. and soe breaking their reputation in the worlde, wee will renewe out league w[i]th Carthage. Then draw [in]to our partye, the Aegipian Ptolomee, and great Arsaces issue. I will bee the Generall, and marche to Rome, w[hi]ch taken

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Ile fill prowd Tiber with the carkases of men, woemen, & children. Doe not persuade mee Ille showe noe mercie. (III.ii.90–99)

This kind of imagery would not be out of place in a text written by James Maxwell. The Flamen makes full use of the triumphant imperialism associated with the last world emperor, even suggesting that when he is drawn ‘in trivmph to the Capitoll’, he will have Flaminius ‘lead like a dogge in a chaine / as I descende, or reascende in state / shall serue for my footestoole’ (III.ii.102–106). The irony is that it is the Flamen who makes this speech, not Antiochus. After his speech, Berecinthius jokingly ‘coniure[s]’ (III.ii.106) Flaminius. But when the proconsul actually appears to the Flamen’s surprise, he is quickly reduced to ‘iellie’ (III.ii.114) and fears what might follow. By ridiculing the Flamen in this way, Massinger subtly undermines the political power of this prophetic language. In the last two acts, the narrative of the last world emperor reverts to pessimistic mode. The Christ-like form of Antiochus’ punishment is described by Flaminius who orders that ‘the imposter / ridinge vpon an asse, his face turnd to / the hinder part, may in derision bee / brought through Calipolis’ (IV.iv.8–11).164 He is again condemned as a ‘cheatinge Iewe’ (IV.iii.26), but, significantly, we are told that the people watching his punishment see it as an ‘act of crueltie / and not of iustice. it drewe teares from all / the sad spectators’ (IV.iv.18–20). By skilfully invoking the affective response of the crowd through commiseratio, Massinger shows their desire to read Antiochus in a different way to his Roman oppressors. All they can do is weep for this would-be imperial figure. Even the man called on to perform the punishment concedes that ‘still there does appeare / a kinde of maiestie in hym’ (IV.iv.33–34). Similar to Christ, Antiochus is forced to appear in the mock habit of a king (cf. IV.iv.50–55) and to keep the ‘company of theeues, and murtherers’ (IV.iv.58). The fact that he continues to rail against ‘tyrannous Rome’ and will speak ‘noe other language’ (IV.iv.69; 72) is politically brave and theatrically effective. Another Roman proconsul, Metellus, is moved by Antiochus’ words: ‘I begin to melt’ (IV.iv.73). Although abjected and humiliated by his captors, Antiochus still retains that affective spark, the hint of an apocalyptic power that has the potential to confound his enemies and to renew the world. 164

The Christ-like details of Antiochus’ humiliation are drawn from Teixeria’s source texts. See Jose Teixeria, The True Historie . . . (London: Simon Stafford and Iames Shaw, 1602), sig. B1r.

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In the end, however, it is the raw expression of political power that does for Antiochus. The merchants ‘turne Apostatas’ (V.i.8) against him, fearing that the Romans will kill them. The rulers of Sicily, Marcellus, and Cornelia, where Antiochus makes his final appeal, are all too susceptible to Roman reason of state.165 Yet as we have seen, the narrative of the last world emperor is about an apocalyptic figure whose role it is to prefigure the final end, not to enact the end itself. Massinger uses this narrative limitation in a couple of ways. Antiochus says before his appearance: yf there bee a viall of affliction not pourde out yet vpon this sinfull head I am prepar’d and will looke on the clowde before it breake without astonishment. (V.ii.9–13)

He embraces here the pessimistic fate of the last world emperor. In Revelation, the seven angels of the apocalypse open seven vials upon the earth (Revelation 16). After the final vial is ‘powred out’, the Whore of Babylon and the antichrist emerge, before the appearance of Christ and the final judgement. In the narrative of the last world emperor, it is typologically necessary for him to be defeated so that the antichrist can then be put down by Christ. Antiochus asks Marcellus and Cornelia, ‘in what part doe I / appeare a monster?’ (V.ii.46), a rhetorical question that draws theatrical attention to the thin line between the righteous king and the antichrist. Indeed, Antiochus acknowledges this epistemological difficulty, asking despairingly whether he should ‘for your mirth sake’ attempt to ‘play the iugler, or more subtle gipsey’ (V.ii.72–73). In a culture where apocalyptic commitment is subject to an increasingly sceptical gaze, the narrative of the last world emperor must invariably be compromised. Antiochus proceeds to offer various proofs that he is who he says he is, leading the Moorish slave Zanthia to exclaim: ‘mine owne kinge! / o let me kisse your feete’ (V.ii.143–144). The Christological overtones of this action, recalling Christ and Mary Magdalene, are probably undercut for an early modern audience because they are spoken by a Moor. Antiochus’ final piece of incontrovertible proof is his recollection that his ‘hot blood’ (V.ii.152) once prompted him to attempt to rape Cornelia, a fact corroborated by her. Even when it seems most clear that Antiochus is who he says he is, Massinger pulls the rug from underneath the audience’s feet. Antiochus 165

On Sicily and the last world emperor, see Reeves, The Influence, pp. 40, 75, 317, and Yates, Astraea, pp. 69, 20–21.

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may well be the Occultus Rex of the prophecies. But he is also a fatally compromised figure. He is a ‘fallinge structure’ (V.ii.180) in his own words, a ‘sorcerer’ (V.ii.187) in the words of Flaminius. In fact, the theatrical brilliance of Massinger’s achievement is that Antiochus and Flaminius are both of these things. Marcellus releases Antiochus from Flaminius’ control: ‘I thus free you / out of this divells pawes’ (V.ii.210–211). The Roman is arraigned for bribery and the play ends on a deliberately pessimistic, undecided note. Antiochus is still under arrest, yet free from his tormentor. Aptly, he concludes with a ‘prophecie’ (V.ii.237) that he will not live long, an imperially inflected admonitio for temporal monarchs that his ‘storie / teach potentates humilitie, and instructe / prowde monarchs, though they governe humane things / a greater power does rayse, or pull downe kinges’ (V.ii.240–243). Moving past the concerns of temporal monarchy, a spiritual restoration may yet be imminent.

V Massinger’s Believe as You List is one of the most subtle examples of how seventeenth-century dramatists use religious ideology. Its main political message is that putting imperial apocalyptic hopes in temporal monarchs, last world emperors, or current rulers such as Charles and Frederick is understandable but futile. Massinger’s conclusion is not critical of those who make such typological investments, neither does he see this futility as merely temporal. By ending his play with a hint of the final judgement that will level all temporal power, he shows that the political efficacy of such apocalyptic narratives is far from exhausted. If such figures are to be given such weighty apocalyptic hopes, then it is incumbent on those who place them in that position to understand that they are always bound to fail. Indeed, failure is their main function, as the play so eloquently demonstrates. Only through temporal failure can ‘a greater power’ be ushered in, a spiritual figure who will render the political compromises of temporal monarchs as nothing. Some of Massinger’s contemporaries might have found this conclusion an orthodox, moderate cop-out. Others may have found its implications profound. Whatever the case, Antiochus, the Occultus Rex, is one of Massinger’s most theatrically complex and moving creations. Through him, the playwright shows that it is possible to draw intelligently and without demagoguery on complex apocalyptic traditions, and to interrogate their political place within a contemporary public sphere that is increasingly inclined to view such traditions with scepticism.

chapter 5

‘Purple Pride’ War, Episcopacy, and Shirley’s The Cardinal (1641)

I In 1648, a pamphlet called A Venice Looking Glasse was published in London. Supposedly the letter of a Venetian ‘Clarissimo’ to Cardinal Barbarini, the text surveys the ‘cruell and most couetous civill war’ and the devastation that it has caused.1 Later, the writer states: ‘it hath bin a talk a great while whether Anti-Christ be com to the world or no; I am sure Anti Jesus, which is worse, is among the people, for they hold all veneration, though voluntarily proceeding from the inward motions of a sweet devoted soule, and causing an outward genuflection, to be superstitious’.2 Turning the widespread apocalyptic enthusiasm of the independents and many of the parliamentarians on its head, the ‘Clarissimo’ says that their rejection of ‘superstitious’ Laudian ‘veneration’ and ‘genuflection’ is not an example of their zeal against the antichrist. Rather, it is contrary to the teachings of Christ. As A Venice Looking Glasse implies, the broader religious and political consequences of Laudianism go well beyond the Archbishop’s physical demise. William Laud was arraigned by parliament in 1640. He was executed five years later in 1645. The reasons for his downfall are varied. Key factors include the attempt to impose the Book of Common Prayer and the Oath of Allegiance on a mainly Presbyterian Scottish Church; the policy towards the Church in Ireland pursued by Thomas Wentworth, the Earl of Strafford and Lord Deputy of Ireland; and England’s problematic relationships with its European neighbours. The so-called Bishops’

1

2

A Venice Looking Glasse: Or, A Letter Written very lately from London to Rome, by a Venetian Clarissimo to Cardinal Barberino . . . (n.p., 1648). This text is probably translated by the royalist writer James Howell. Ibid., p. 22.

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Wars of 1639–40 were the first major engagements in the Civil Wars that would engulf the three kingdoms during the 1640s.3 In this chapter, I begin with the political context preceding the outbreak of war, considering how apocalyptic and anti-Catholic languages are used in the public sphere. This will inform my discussion of a number of dramatic texts written around the downfall of the Archbishop, including plays by Lewis Sharpe, Francis Quarles, and George Sandys.4 I then offer an extended reading of James Shirley’s The Cardinal (1641) as an acute response to the collapse of the Laudian regime. All of these plays can be called ‘oppositional’, but not all of them oppose in the same way. Martin Butler has noted that during the 1630s ‘the non-courtly “opposition” to Charles was not a uniform movement, but an alliance of opinion that cut broadly across the social spectrum and yoked many kinds of discontent; nor were these people all looking for the same solutions to their grievances’.5 More recent scholarship has developed on these observations, adding to our understanding of drama’s political complexity during these years.6 Sharpe, Quarles, Sandys, and Shirley constitute a different kind of ‘opposition’, one aligned with the values of constitutional royalism.7 Their critique is not rooted in the assertion of parliamentary sovereignty, is loyal to the king, and yet is acutely aware of his political shortcomings and wary of ‘courtly complacency’.8 It is an ideology closer to Massinger than to, say, Dekker or Middleton. The fact that Shirley – a writer probably 3

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5 6

7

8

See David Cressy, England on Edge: Crisis and Revolution 1640–1642 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006); Caroline M. Hibbard, Charles I and the Popish Plot (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1983); and Conrad Russell, The Fall of the British Monarchies 1637–1642 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995). For a good discussion of these anti-Laud texts, see Elizabeth Sauer, ‘Paper Contestations’ and Textual Communities in England, 1640–1675 (Toronto and London: University of Toronto Press, 2005), pp. 35–56. Martin Butler, Theatre and Crisis, 1632–1642 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), p. 6. Ira Clark, Professional Playwrights: Massinger, Ford, Shirley and Brome (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1992); Lisa Hopkins, John Ford’s Political Theatre (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1994); Susan Wiseman, Drama and Politics in the English Civil War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); Julie Sanders, Caroline Drama: The Plays of Massinger, Ford, Shirley and Brome (Plymouth: Northcote House, 1999); and Matthew Steggle, Richard Brome: Place and Politics on the Caroline Stage (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004). On ‘royalism’ as an ideology, see Robert Wilcher, The Writing of Royalism 1628–1660 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001); Lois Potter, Secret Rites and Secret Writing: Royalist Literature, 1641–1660 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989); Kevin Sharpe, Politics and Ideas in Early Stuart England (London and New York: Pinter, 1989); Conal Condren, The Language of Politics in Seventeenth Century England (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1994); Jerome De Groot, Royalist Identities (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004); and Royalism and Royalists during the English Civil Wars, ed. Jason McElligott and David L. Smith (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). Butler, Theatre and Crisis, p. 82.

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with Roman Catholic sympathies -– advances his critique in The Cardinal through the use of apocalyptic and anti-Catholic language mirrors crucial shifts in political power during these bloody years.9

II In 1640, Charles reluctantly recalled parliament for the first time in eleven years. The efforts of the king and his Archbishop to impose uniformity on the Scottish Church had backfired and the Scots rebelled to defend their Covenant.10 The king vacillated about recalling parliament. A recall would undermine the political capital invested in the personal rule, elections would have to be held, and it would offer an opportunity for those opposed to his policies to regroup and voice their discontent. As one scholar notes, ‘By 1639 it was clear that the Personal Rule had not been a spectacular success, at least from the viewpoint of the ruled . . . The longer the King delayed in summoning parliament in 1639 and 1640, the more irrational and arbitrary his government appeared, which raised criticisms that had not been heard since the 1620s.’11 When the first war against the Scots failed late in 1639, Charles dismissed a number of his military advisers, replacing them with Laud and Strafford. This was a perilous move. Laud in particular was known to be antipathetic towards parliament.12 The difficult situation was compounded by the fact that Charles was desperately short of funds. Nevertheless, the prospect of a first parliament in eleven years engendered ‘a widespread feeling of relief and even optimism’.13 Surely the king’s supporters in parliament could be mobilised to provide the regime with the support it needed? Such hopes were short lived. The Short Parliament was prepared to grant the king’s demands for war funding. It was less forthcoming when it came to the problem of Ship 9

10

11

12

13

The relationship between apocalypticism, politics, and Caroline drama is generally less examined in scholarship. Butler does allude to it in a number of places: see for instance Butler, Theatre and Crisis, pp. 41–42, 192–193. A more recent essay by Matthew Steggle also contains a brief discussion of apocalypticism in Thomas Jordan’s 1641 comedy The Walks of Islington and Hogsden: ‘Placing Caroline Politics on the Professional Comic Stage’, in The 1630s: Interdisciplinary Essays on Culture and Politics in the Caroline Era, ed. Ian Atherton and Julie Sanders (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2006), pp. 165–166. On Covenanter propaganda, see Jason White, Militant Protestantism and British Identity, 1603–1642 (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2012), pp. 87–111. Mark Charles Fissel, The Bishops’ Wars: Charles I’s Campaigns against Scotland 1638–1640 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 8–9. Reeve, Charles I, pp. 12–13. On Strafford, see The Political World of Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford, 1621–1641, ed. J.F. Merritt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). Wilcher, The Writing of Royalism, p. 35.

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Money. This was an unpopular revenue and a perennial sticking point for the king.14 A petition of 1641 presented to parliament about the transportation of leather complains of ‘The insupportable burthen of shipmoney’.15 In return for giving up his rights to this revenue source, Charles asked for a large grant from parliament. When this was refused, the king dissolved the body. If Charles was to prosecute the war in Scotland, then he would have to do so without financial support from parliament. The consequences of the Short Parliament’s collapse were far-reaching. It made Charles’s predicament in 1640 much worse than in 1639 in three ways. First, the elections raised political consciousness throughout the kingdom. Second, the enunciation of grievances at Westminster brought political issues into sharper focus. Inchoate local grievances became defined national issues. Third, the break-down of the Parliament mirrored the rift between governors and governed. It made for a most inauspicious start to the Second Bishop’s War.16

The unpopularity of Charles two closest political allies, Laud and Strafford, was never greater. Additionally, the king’s negotiators were considering Spain and France as possible sources of financial support. If successful, this would avoid a return to parliament. For many of the king’s opponents, however, this plan fanned fears of a popish conspiracy.17 One pro-parliamentary pamphlet of 1641 warns that the Scottish wars are a cover for a Spanish invasion: ‘Within these two years, the last Summer save one, the English Army (consisting of 30000 horse and foot) was marching toward Scotland, at the same time the Spanish Elect (that formidable Armado) was intended for England.’18 Despite the dubiety of these claims (and there were many who made them), they feed into a narrative that, as we saw in the last chapter, it was all too easy for Charles’ opponents to make. This is a treacherous king, wedded to suspect Laudian innovations, presiding over a crypto-papist court that, in his absence, is ruled by a Roman Catholic queen.19 Such accusations are encoded in earlier drama, for example, in Nathaniel Richards’ play Messalina (c. 1635).20 By the 1640s, they are much more overtly expressed. 14 15

16 18 19

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Fissel, The Bishops’ Wars, p. 130. A Humble Petition and Remonstrance . . . (London, 1641), p. 2. See also William Prynne, An Hvmble Remonstrance to His Maiesty, against the Tax of Ship-Money . . . (London, 1641). 17 Fissel, The Bishops’ Wars, p. 39. Hibbard, Charles I, p. 126. J.L., Englands Doxologie . . . (London: Barnard Alsop, 1641), p. 4. On Henrietta Maria during this period, see Michelle Anne White, Henrietta Maria and the English Civil Wars (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006). See Butler, Theatre and Crisis, p. 193.

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A pamphlet published in 1641 accuses Henrietta Maria of soliciting Roman Catholic military and financial support for her husband’s wars against the Scots in 1639.21 Most famously, a translation of George Buchanan’s play Baptistes called Tyrannical Government Anatomized was published in 1642 by order of parliament. In this text, Herod’s queen is fully conversant with reason of state. She asks her husband, ‘If private Conventicles you permit, how can you sleep secure?,’ advises that it is better ‘an enemy to destroy’, and scorns John the Baptist as ‘that high Reformer’.22 The representation of a female monarch meddling in state affairs pitches Herod’s queen squarely against the forces of reformation and parliamentary authority. Even those voices supporting the king and his policy reveal anxieties. A case in point is Lewis Sharpe’s 1640 royalist play The Noble Stranger. Performed by the Queen’s Men at Salisbury Court, it is no forgotten masterpiece. But the drama does tell us something important about political tensions during these years. In the Prologue, Sharpe refers to the first Bishops’ War as a way of criticising those English Puritan supporters of the Scots: Our Author does beleeve there will not want Some to subscribe the Factious Covenant Of your prescitian wits, if such there are, Proclaime ’hem Rebells, and bid open warre.23

Seen in this light, the various digs at the Puritans dotted throughout the play take on a more political tone. Are they and the Scots not all members of the ‘Factious Covenant’? The play opens with the king of Naples returning from a successful military campaign: ‘on his head a wreath of Bayes, as from a conquest’.24 In 1640 the image of a conquering king returning in triumph is loaded with (perhaps unintentional) irony. He asks his daughter the Princess how she has Brook’d the long absence of our tedious warre, Wherewith we have in blood drown’d those Rebells 21

22

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See A Coppy of the Letter sent by the Queenes Majesty concerning the collection of the Recusants Mony for the Scottish Warre . . . (London in the year of the discovery of Plots, 1641). George Buchanan, Tyrannicall-Government Anatomized . . . (London: John Field, 1642), pp. 9–10. Buchanan is most well known in early modern England for his defence of tyrannicide in De jure regni apud Scotos (1579). See Roger A. Mason, ‘George Buchanan, James VI and the Presbyterians’, in Scots and Britons: Scottish Political Thought and the Union of 1603, ed. Roger A. Mason (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 117–120. Lewis Sharpe, The Noble Stranger (London: I.O. for James Becket, 1640), sig. B1v. Ibid., sig. B1r.

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That sought the downfall of our Peace and State, And now return’d, crown’d with victorious Laurell?25

Charles’ prosecution of the first Bishops’ War was rather less triumphant. Similarly, the theatrical king’s largesse to his soldiers is fulsome but problematic. The Princess encourages him to reward the ‘Common Soldiers’: ‘let your / Bountie flow in Gold as largies for their / Well spent labours’. The soldiers respond: ‘Heavens crown our King with peace.’26 Whether we see this as royalist idealism or propaganda, the representation bears scant relation to what was actually happening: ‘The situation of the English army, which numbered around 15,000 men, was a grim disappointment. The troops were mostly untrained, pay scarce, and morale low.’27 Dramatists are not, of course, obliged to depict contemporary reality ‘as it is’. Perhaps for Sharpe this is a projection of a desired outcome: royalist theatre as an act of political fantasy? Surely, though, even the most ardent royalist would have found this scene somewhat far-fetched. The trickiest feature of the play’s politics is the attempt to justify military support for the king. We are told that Honario, the eponymous noble stranger, is the main reason for the military victory. The king says: When our Quarrell, almost desperate with The enemie had like to be overthrowne For want of present aid, this most noble Deserver of the stile of valour, not Onely in person, but with a flowing Measure of Coyne and Servants came unto Our aide, by which we wonne the day.28

This is an aristocratic vision of noblesse oblige. Generally, but especially in times of war, the king should be furnished spontaneously with what he needs as a matter of ‘honour’ and ‘duty’, a sentiment close to Charles’ own view on the matter.29 The possibility of the king seeking other sources of support, for instance from parliament, is not discussed.30 Sharpe does try to put some distance between himself and the court. When Honario 25

26 29

30

Ibid. This king is arbitrary in the Caroline mode: ‘And now the rugged brow of Warre is / (By that power which protects, Kings sacred persons, / And their rights) made fare and smooth agen’ (sig. B2v.). 27 28 Ibid., sig. B2v. Fissel, The Bishops’ Wars, p. 24. Sharpe, The Noble Stranger, sig. B2r. See Cressy, England on Edge, pp. 68–73, and Elizabeth Skerpan, The Rhetoric of Politics in the English Revolution 1642–1660 (Columbia and London: University of Missouri Press, 1992), pp. 67–80. The only time that parliament is mentioned is in a derogatory comment by the ridiculous would-be courtier Pupilus: ‘I have committed myself to the Inns of Chancery, for the better grace; but feeding ith’ Commons agrees not with my stomacke’ (sig. C1r.).

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attempts to woo the Princess, he likens it to ‘when the holy / Priest, bowes at the Altar of incensed / Deities’. Read alongside the Princess’ response, ‘So late a Soldier, and so soon a Courtier’, this may tap into popular anticourt critique of Arminian ceremonialism.31 Yet the play concludes with the king attempting to force his daughter to marry the Prince of Portugal against her will. He believes that an alliance with ‘forraigne nations’ will ensure the ‘peace’ of his country.32 The king is depicted as inflexible and virtually tyrannical: ‘Let me rip out that heart, the Cabinet / Of rebellious thoughts.’33 Interestingly, in 1640 the possibility that Charles and Henrietta Maria’s eldest daughter, Mary, would marry a son of Philip IV of Spain was still being discussed, much to the discomfort of the king’s opponents.34 Sharpe gets round the problem not by offering a political justification for reason of state, but by resorting to theatricality. Honorio is revealed to have been the Prince of Portugal all along, and he and the Princess, and Portugal and Naples, are reconciled. In a period when many were concerned about Charles calling on foreign Roman Catholic aid, Sharpe’s defence of the king’s policy may have appeared loyal to some. To those more critical of the king’s war conduct and treatment of parliament, The Noble Stranger must have seemed little more than a piece of craven royalist propaganda. Charles probably could have tolerated the discontent of his critics had the second attempt to subdue the Scots not gone so disastrously. In the words of Conrad Russell, what the king attempted ‘was the one thing he could not do: to restore his Scottish authority on his own terms and by force’.35 With the Scots now occupying the north of England and demanding a rejection of Laudianism, the king had no choice but to recall parliament. Charles faced the Long Parliament as a significantly weakened figure. A wider sense of public frustration and anger with government policies, especially those of Laud and Strafford, is now heard. Early in 1640 the government ‘intensified its crackdown on unauthorized texts’.36 It also tried to impose an oath compelling allegiance to episcopacy.37 But with the failure of the king’s strategy in the 31 34

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32 33 Ibid., sig. C3v. Ibid., sig. I1v-r. Ibid., sig. I3v. Princess Mary eventually married William of Orange in 1641. In a book published in 1641, William Prynne has a long section explaining why the medieval English King John was wrong to form an alliance with King Philip of France, one that could be read as a coded warning to Charles against dangerous foreign and Roman Catholic alliances. See William Prynne, The Antipathie of the English Lordly Prelacie, Both to Regall Monarchy, and Civill Unity . . . (London: Michael Sparke, 1641), pp. 30–38. 36 Russell, The Fall, p. 157. Cressy, England on Edge, p. 289. On the et cetera oath, see Russell, The Fall, pp. 138–139.

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second Bishops’ War all too clear, official censorship effectively broke down. In parliament, the religio-political tone shifted: Reformers believed that the hierarchy of the Established Church, or its leading members, nearly succeeded in an attempt to bring England back under the yoke of the popish anti-christ. This interpretation represented the consensus view in parliamentary fast sermons. Its more radical variations and corollaries gained widespread circulation in the press.38

By early 1641 ‘the King had lost control of the prerogative of dissolution’ and the army was no longer under his direct command.39 Ireland was now in open revolt, and Charles was forced to concede ground on a range of fronts. He withdrew his support for Laud and of Strafford, both of whom were arraigned by parliament and imprisoned. Parliament expressed a range of grievances on matters of state and religion, some real, some imaginary, others somewhere in between.40 One text lists the achievements of the parliament: ‘They have quelled all the Canterburian faction . . . They have damned Ship-money . . . They have taxed Monopolists and Patentees . . . They have voted against Non-residents . . . They have decided Controversies, sentenced Romish Ceremonies, Abolished Antichristian Superstitions, extirpated innovations.’41 To the king’s supporters this may have looked like gloating. Yet as Christopher Hill pointed out a number of years ago, criticism of the king was underpinned by a transformation in economic power relations driven by parliamentary antagonism and its merchant and landholding supporters.42 If the king was no longer in charge of the army, why should he seek to influence economic production? The possibility that the king might be persuaded to intervene in the Palatinate was raised again, but it was short lived.43 The way was now open for the Scots not just to make their demands but to strengthen alliances with the opposition in the English parliament. A central figure here is John Pym. His accusations in parliament of a popish plot and arbitrary government implicated the queen.44 He also accused Strafford of plotting with the Irish to lead an army in the king’s 38

39 41

42 43 44

Paul Christianson, Reformers and Babylon: English Apocalyptic Visions from the Reformation to the Eve of the Civil War (Toronto and London: University of Toronto Press, 1978), p. 184. 40 Ibid., p. 164. On the Long Parliament, see Russell, The Fall, pp. 206–236. Englands Doxologie, p. 2. For another example of the criticisms levelled at parliament, see John Milton, A Discourse Shewing in what state the Three Kingdomes Are at this present (London, 1641). See Christopher Hill, The Century of Revolution 1603–1714 (London: Cardinal, 1974), pp. 131–144. See Hibbard, Charles I, pp. 207–210. See Wilcher, The Writing of Royalism, pp. 40–42. See too Russell, The Fall, pp. 418–421, and William MacDonald, The Making of an English Revolutionary: The Early Parliamentary Career of John Pym (London: Associated University Presses, 1982).

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defence.45 In May 1641, Pym made a new series of claims, causing ‘fears of a coup d’état by English, French, and Dutch troops, all financed by a papal loan. London was in great disorder as mobs attacked the Spanish and Portuguese embassies, where armed Catholics were said to be gathering.’46 As John Morrill has pointed out, this kind of anti-Catholicism is not simply ‘a form of ‘white noise’. Rather, it reflects the passionate belief that is the ground of action, that England was in the process of being subjected to the forces of Antichrist, that the prospects were of anarchy, chaos, the dissolution of government and liberties; and the equally passionate belief that disobedience to the king, carried to the point of violent resistance, could only lead to chaos and anarchy; and to the conviction of most men that both dangers were equally real, a conviction which led to panic and a yearning for settlement.47

During this period, anti-Catholicism is used by radicals, by those looking to find an accommodation with the king, as well as by those offering royalist defences of the monarch. Opposing the government and the bishops, John Milton asks in a 1641 pamphlet: ‘If the fundamentall Lawes bee quite overthrowne, Religion altered, the Nobility taken away by counsels of warre . . . the meaner sort used as Pryn, Burton & Bastwick; the propriety of goods taken away from the subject: an Army force and Arbitrary way of government, and justice bought & sold; what misery will follow?’48 Milton namechecks the Puritan militants infamously punished by Laud earlier in the personal rule. His reference to arbitrary government and invocation of economic grievances is a self-conscious prosopopoeia of the voice of popular opposition.49 It draws on well-known tropes of religious nonconformity developed during the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods. As he concludes, parliament is right to ‘clip the wings of the Clergy’ since, unchecked, they have ‘introduced some Babilonian ceremonies, and made a bridge unto the Church by the Arminian opinion, to passe over to Popery’.50 For Milton, the link between Arminianism, Roman Catholicism, and political subversion is all too clear.

45 47

48 49 50

46 Wilcher, The Writing of Royalism, p. 55. White, Henrietta Maria, p. 49. John Morrill, The Nature of the English Revolution (London and New York: Longman, 1993), pp. 63–64. Milton, A Discourse Shewing in what state . . ., sig. A3v. On Prynne, Burton, and Bastwick, see Christianson, Reformers and Babylon, pp. 132–165. Ibid., sig. A4v. On Milton and anti-Catholicism during the 1640s, see Sharon Achinstein, Milton and the Revolutionary Reader (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), pp. 34–35, 63–64.

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Another text published the same year, Englands Doxologie, goes a step further. It begins by invoking historical providence: ‘Did not God graciously deliver this Kingdome from the very jawes of death; in miraculously preserving us from that paine of matchless stratagems, the Spanish Invasion in 88 and the Hellish Gun-powder Treason in 1605?’51 England was a covenanted state, providentially protected by God, Elizabeth, and James from invasion by her antichristian enemies. A desire for the ‘happinesse of peace’ rather than the ‘misery of warre’ harks back to these days of relative tranquillity.52 This kind of argument is increasingly used at points of political tension in the later seventeenth century. David Smith calls this a ‘Jacobethan’ rhetoric. It represents a cultural nostalgia for the reigns of Elizabethan and James, celebrating their perceived via media in politics and religion while criticising the present settlement.53 The text depicts the Scottish wars in explicitly dramatic terms: ‘A sad Tragedy was begun, the Sceane was the North, the Actors were the subjects of both Kingdomes, but (magnified for ever be Gods mercy), ’tis inverted to a Comedy, is come to a joy full Catastrophe.’54 Despite this positive note, the writer sees the external danger posed by Charles’ Scottish wars: ‘That fatall warre (without Gods mercy) might have prov’d the Trojan horse, to bring in an Army of bloud-loving enemies to invade us; in the mid’st where of we might have bin surprised by a forrain Adversary. This great mystery of iniquity is now discovered.’55 The politics of the war are articulated in a religious light: the last line refers to 2 Thessalonians 2:7. This chapter describes the antichrist as ‘that manne of sinne . . . the sonne of perdition’ who ‘doth sit as God in the Temple of God’ (2 Thessalonians 2:3–4). In keeping with the general tenor of criticism during this period, ‘malignant & malevolent Statesmen’, rather than the king himself, are to blame.56 The Long Parliament’s success in reasserting Protestant orthodoxy is also praised. Most of all, parliament has dealt with Laud, ‘the little Arch-bishop [who] was the greatest Adversary and Cankerworme to the Church and State, that ever these latter times produc’d’.57 Such directly expressed hostility towards Laud is unexceptional. From 1640, anti-Laudian texts pour from the presses.58 Some of this material is official and authoritative. Some of it is cheap and scurrilous. Much of it is self-consciously ‘literary’. Petitions, complaints, and arraignments are 51 53

54 58

52 Englands Doxologie, p. 2. Ibid., p. 2. David Smith, Constitutional Royalism and the Search for Settlement, c. 1640–1649 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 24–25. 55 56 57 Englands Doxologie, p. 5. Ibid., pp. 4–5. Ibid., p. 7. Ibid., p. 11. On the decline of Caroline censorship in this period, see Cressy, England on Edge, pp. 281–309.

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another important way that urban and country interests are articulated, and many of these texts were published. One example is the Archbishop’s arraignment published late in 1640. The first charge notes that he ‘endeavoured to subvert the fundamentall Lawes of this Kingdome, by giving his Majesty advice both privately, and at the Councell table, high Commission, and other places . . . the King might at his own pleasure take what he pleased without Law, being warranted by Gods law.’59 Notably, the text does not attack the king’s person. The charge is careful to position Laud as the archetypal wicked councillor and, by implication, to place blame for the king’s seeming disregard for law onto the prelate. Laud’s bad advice is a synecdoche for the failings of the king. While it is easy to criticise Laud’s policies and personality, he did become something of a scapegoat during 1640–1641 for a diverse range of grievances, not all of which could be legitimately pinned to him. A text published by the pamphleteer Thomas Herbert attempts to defend Laud from his accusers. It criticises the apocalyptic Mercuries Message (1641) for claiming that Laud’s name is a numerical anagram of 666, the number of the beast in Revelation.60 Herbert knows that his is a thankless undertaking, exemplified by his use of praemunitio: ‘Each railing line I doe not now intend / To answere, lest they crie me the Popes friend.’ He says that the author of Mercuries Message must be ‘some Poet to the short hair’d crew’.61 He also accuses his opponents of hypocrisy, stating that the punishment intended for the Archbishop does not fit his crimes: ‘Suppose that he bowed vainly to the Altar, / For that must he be hangd with Inkie halter?’62 Adopting an aptly textual metaphor, scurrilous print will lead Laud to the hangman’s noose. The publication of this kind of defence shows that not all in parliament or country opposed the Archbishop. Indeed, it has been observed that ‘In 1641 religious issues polarized the House of Commons into those who stood by the pre-Laudian Church and those who were acting de facto to replace it.’63 David Smith’s work has explored the desire to find a ‘constitutionalist’ agreement between parliament and the monarch, right up to 1649.64 Yet by 1641 the anti-Laudians had the upper hand. As the 59 60 61

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Articles Exhibited in Parliament against William Archbishop of Canterbury, 1640 (n.p., 1640), pp. 1–2. See Mercuries Message, Or The Copy of a Letter sent to William Laud . . . (London, 1641), sig. A2v. Thomas Herbert, An Answer to the most Envious, Scandalous, and Libellous Pamphlet, Entitled, Mercuries Message . . . (London, 1641), pp. 1–3. There were some defences of Laud published after his death. See, for example, Peter Heylyn, A briefe relation of the death and sufferings of the Most Reverend and renowned prelate, the L. Archbishop of Canterbury (Oxford, 1644 [i.e. 1645]), and An elegie on the most reverend father in God VVilliam lord Arch-bishop of Canterbury . . . (Oxford: L. Litchfield, 1644 [i.e. 1645]). 63 64 Herbert, An Answer, p. 2. Morrill, The Nature, p. 72. Smith, Constitutional Royalism.

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second charge states, the Archbishop ‘countenanced bookes maintaining his unlimited and absolute power, wherein the power of Parliaments were denied’, and has ‘exercised his authority very tyrannically’.65 This last accusation is particularly concerning. According to the political logic of anti-Catholicism, when the head of the Church in England behaves as a tyrant it can only be because he wants ‘to reconcile us to the Church of Rome’.66 Libels accusing Laud of assuming a quasi-papal authority are commonplace. Other petitions followed on the heels of the arraignment in what seemed to be an organised campaign.67 The Root and Branch Petition presented to the Long Parliament at the end of 1640 contains a variety of complaints about Arminian innovations, attacks on episcopacy, and complaints about taxation and economic inequalities.68 Decidedly antiCatholic in tone, it addresses Arminianism’s attitude to popular Protestant apocalypticism as explained in the previous chapter. In the words of one article: ‘the Prelates here in England by themselves or their Disciples plead and maintain that the Pope is not Antichrist, and that the Church of Rome is a true Church’.69 Some in parliament did not want to accept the petition. To do so might be seen to legitimise popular dissent despite the supposed signatures of 15,000 citizens. The petition also shows that, despite Arminian attempts to counter this language during the late 1620s and 1630s, Protestant apocalypticism and anti-Catholicism remained popular. The Scottish Commissioners published their charges against Laud and Strafford in 1641. They list the various grievances against the religious innovations imposed on them, stating that ‘we challenge the Prelate of Canterbury, as the prime cause on earth’.70 Laud is a warmonger and a seditious religious innovator aided and abetted by Strafford – ‘if the Pope himself had beene in his place, he could not have beene more Popish’, a mere step away from ‘Tyranny in Government’.71 The Petition of the Planters in Antrim, Down, and Tyrone contains similar charges, once more stressing that government policies are a sop to ‘jurisdiction from Forraine power’.72 Last, 65 67 68 69

70

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66 Articles, pp. 2–3. Articles, p. 4. See Russell, The Fall, pp. 188–190, and Cressy, England on Edge, pp. 183–186. On the Root and Branch Petition, see Russell, The Fall, pp. 180–182. The First and Large Petition of the City of London . . . For a reformation in Church-government, as also for the abolishment of Episcopacy (n.p., 1641), p. 7. The Charge of the Scottish Commissioners against Canterburie and the Lievtenant of Ireland . . . (London: Nathaniel Butter, 1641), p. 1. Ibid., p. 19. The Humble Petition of the Protestant Inhabitants of the Counties of Antrim, Downe, Tyrone . . . (London, 1641), p. 3.

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a Petition from the ‘Gentle-women, & Trades men wives’ takes aim at ‘Popish Lords, & superstitious Bishops’. It complains specifically about Laud, ‘that Arch-enemy of our prosperitie and Reformation [who] lyeth in the Tower yet not receiving his deserved punishment’.73 Mobilising the popular voice against Laud and the prelacy in petitions and complaints legitimises dissent from below. A striking feature of the Root and Branch Petition is its disdain for the literary realm. One article expresses concern about the ‘swarming of lascivious, idle, and unprofitable Books and Pamphlets, Play-bookes, and Ballads . . . in disgrace of Religion, to the increase of all vice, and withdrawing of people from reading, studying, and hearing the word of God’.74 The unease about literary texts undermining religion is no surprise and may remind us of the anti-theatrical writing of William Prynne.75 As we saw earlier, many saw the godly and the literary realms as antithetical. Despite the decline in official modes of censorship during these years, ‘free speech’ is still a relative term. The literary realm – long accused of dealing in political matters above its concern – attracts particular censure. The theatres are closed in 1642. Yet this is a period where literary comment on politics remains vibrant. In an anti-episcopal text published in 1641, the anti-Laudian Prynne quotes ‘Verses written by our renowned Poet, Sir Geffry Chaucer many years ago’ and authorised to be printed by parliament in the reign of Henry VIII: The Emperor yafe the Pope some time, So high Lordship him about, That at last the sely Ryme, The proud Pope put him out.76

Prynne’s text offers a good example of how ‘literature’ may still be used to promote radical ideas. There are also numerous more moderate literary writers offering comment on the religious and political situation. In 73

74 75

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A Trve Copy of the Petition of the Gentle-women, & Trades-men wives in, and about the City of London Delivered . . . in Parliament (London: J. Wright, 1642), p. 1. The First and Large Petition, pp. 5–6. See William Prynne, Histrio-mastix. The Players Scourge, Or, Actors Tragedie . . . (London: E.A. and W.I. for Michael Sparke, 1633). William Prynne, A Terrible Out-Cry against the Loytering Exalted Prelates . . . (London: Richard Smethrust, 1641), p. 5. Milton does something similar with Chaucer in his Of Reformation in England (1641). See too the anti-Catholic text attributed to Chaucer, The Plough-mans Tale. Shewing by the doctrine and liues of the Romish Clergie, that the Pope is Antichrist . . . (London: G.E. for Samuell Macham and Mathew Cooke, 1606). On the apocalyptic associations of Chaucer’s work in Protestantism, see David Norbrook, Poetry and Politics in the English Renaissance, rev. ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 37–39.

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1642 the royalist John Taylor published A Delicate, Dainty, Damnable Dialogue between the Devil and a Jesuite. This texts puts the blame for England’s troubles squarely on Roman Catholic shoulders. Like his more militant brethren, Taylor is concerned that a foreign popish force might use the Irish uprising to stage an invasion: ‘I strike at England, quite through Irelands side.’77 The Jesuit asks the Devil: Could you make England like to Germany, A field of blood, a Land of misery, A grizly Golgotha of Dead Mens Bones, An Empire wasted, full of sighs and groanes78

The language here recalls the imagery of the ‘bloody man’ in act I, scene 2, of Macbeth. The state’s imperial power is no more. More generally, the connection between England’s civil strife and the religious war on the continent is commonly made.79 Unlike militant writers who rail against the antichristian practices of the English Church under the Laudian yoke, Taylor does something else. The Jesuit says: Yet though (like Kings) we rule and Raigne, The King of Brittaine we shall never gaine, He tearmes us vassals to the Romish Whore, And scornes us, as his Father did before.80

While these sentiments may be wishful thinking, Taylor skilfully redeploys the rhetoric of Jacobethan anti-Catholicism to represent Charles as a moderate defender of the Protestant Church against the papal antichrist. By reclaiming this rhetoric for the king’s cause, Taylor shows us how such language is contested by moderate and militant alike.

III The examples from the Root and Branch and John Taylor show that calls for ‘reformation’ in the Church can be combined with a more moderate, urban hostility towards the newfound ‘freedom’ of the press. David Cressy offers a good summation of the prevailing situation: 77

78 79

80

John Taylor, A Delicate, Dainty, Damnable Dialogue between the Devil and a Jesuite (London: I.H. for Thomas Banks, 1642), sig. A4v. Ibid. See Jonathan Scott, England’s Troubles: Seventeenth-Century English Political Instability in European Context (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 150–152. Taylor, A Delicate, sig. A4v-r. A number of royalists satirise the radicals’ use of apocalyptic and anti-Catholic language.

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Apocalypse and Anti-Catholicism in Seventeenth-Century Throughout 1641 and into 1642, in the year and [a] half before the start of civil war, a chorus of complaint demanded that the press be restored to discipline. Some of this may have been stimulated by the Stationers’ Company, who sought the reinstatement of their ‘immunities and privileges’. But it was also driven by a politics of censure and recrimination, in an increasingly fractious political culture. Parliamentarians could be just as offended as Laudian councillors at unregulated commentary and opinion, but they were never as successful at stemming the tide. The crucial mechanisms of control had been surrendered, and the Commons never had the weapons or authority of the Privy Council and the prerogative courts.81

This is a fluid and contested period, one where ‘literary’ comment on political and religious matters is possible but also potentially dangerous. When we turn to dramatic representations from this period, we see a similar scene. As I argued in the discussion of Sharpe’s The Noble Stranger, support for the king’s policies can be found on the stage. But there is also increasing dissent, part of a broader theatrical turn against the religious policies of the Archbishop. A comedy written by Francis Quarles called The Virgin Widow, privately staged in late 1640 at the house of Sir Thomas Barrington, contains some sharp satire on the Laudian regime. The virtuous Kettreena is traduced in the first act as ‘A courtly whore’, ‘An ignominious whore’, and ‘A prostrate whore’ for her relationship with the king. Religion is tarnished and it needs to be reformed. Courtly critique is not stinted either. Cavaliers are mocked and the general accusation that ‘The Court is grown so vain, that it beholds / All in extreams, and it ownes nothing good / But what it censures evill’ sums up the prevailing attitude.82 The prosecution of the Bishops’ War comes in for the sharpest attack. Act V opens with the doctor Artesino attending to the ailments of two patients, Lady Albion and Lady Temple, by studying their urine. The allegory of taking the health of state and church is not drawn with particular subtlety. Quarles’ political affiliations are fairly clear. Artesino asks whether Albion has seen any other doctors, and his boy replies: ‘Yes Sir, she took advice of a Scottish Doctor, but she is not much the better for him.’ In fact, ‘when the Fit takes her, she speaks never a word of sense: she talks of nothing but Bishops, and Petitions, and I can’t tell what, and her tongue runs so wildly’.83 The patriarchal image of the voluble female is apt for a state convulsed by 81 82

83

Cressy, England on Edge, p. 303. See also Potter, Secret Rites and Secret Writing, pp. 1–7. Francis Quarles, The Virgin Widow, in Francis Quarles: The Complete Works in Prose and Verse, vol. 3, ed. Alexander B. Grosart (Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1971), pp. 292–293. Ibid., p. 308.

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episcopacy and the Scottish wars: we will encounter this trope again later. There may even be a slight here on urban female involvement in signing and organising anti-Episcopal ‘Petitions’ in London. The doctor diagnoses ‘bad blood’ and recommends a course of treatment: ‘Let her . . . be very careful of her Temples: Let her forbeare Salt and Usquebagh . . . And for the relieving of her drooping spirits, let her recreate her self now and then with a game at Irish.’84 The problem with the Scots is pressing. But it is more important to have a settlement in Ireland, especially after the rebellion.85 As I have argued elsewhere, Quarles is a moderate Protestant but is not afraid to criticise civil and ecclesiastical abuse where he sees it.86 The Virgin Widow, and his choice of patron, can be seen in this context. As Robert Wilcher notes: Sir Thomas Barrington was to become an active ally of Pym and Oliver St John in the Long Parliament. Perhaps, in the closing months of 1640, he shared Quarles’ hope that the removal of Laud’s influence and the curbing of the power of the Arminian bishops would bring about the more satisfactory relationship between church and monarch87

This position is seen in the allegorical ‘treatment’ of Lady Temple’s disordered affections: ‘She took a tedious journey to Canterbury, where she conceives she took a surfeit with too much Duck, which hath laine very heavy upon her Ladyship’s stomach ever since.’88 Arthur Duck was one of Laud’s chief administrators.89 But he abandoned his support for Laud once he was arraigned by parliament, a fact mocked by John Taylor in his anti-Episcopal pamphlet of 1642 The Decoy Duck.90 We are also told that Lady Temple is 84 85

86

87 89

90

Ibid., p. 308. See Russell, The Fall, pp. 378–399. News of the rebellion, and of the atrocities committed in Ireland against the Protestant planters, poured from the presses during this period. See, for example, G.S., A Briefe of the Barbarous and inhumane dealings of the Northerne Irish Rebells . . . (London: A.N. for Abel Roper, 1641), and Joseph Watson, The Last and Best Newes from Ireland (London: F. Coules and P. Bates, 1641). See Adrian Streete, ‘Francis Quarles’ Early Poetry and the Discourses of Jacobean Spenserianism’, Journal of the Northern Renaissance, 1, 1, 2009, pp. 88–108. 88 Wilcher, The Writing, p. 47. Quarles, The Virgin Widow, p. 308. See Charles Carlton, Archbishop William Laud (London and New York: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1987), pp. 106–107, 210. See also Cressy, England on Edge, pp. 334–335. The ‘proud Arch-Duck’ (i.e. Laud) is asked if he wants anyone to ‘bayle him’ and asks for ‘Doctor Duck’. But he claims that he is unable to come because ‘hee was sicke of the Gout’ and ‘besides it was cold weather’ (sig. A4v). The pamphlet also features a dialogue poem between two ‘Zealots’, prefaced by a woodcut of the seven-headed beast from Revelation, and mocking their attempts to get around the Bishop’s et cetera oath: ‘Thou art the Curled locke of Antichrist: / Rubbish of Babell for who will not say / Tongues are confounded in Et Caetera’ (sig. A5v). John Taylor, The Decoy Duck: Together with the Discovery of the Knot in the Dragons Tayle Called &c (London: F. Couls, T. Bates, I. Wright and T. Banks, 1642).

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‘sometimes as cold as Charity, sometimes as hot as Zeale’ and that ‘the common people think she is troubled with a Liturgie’, both jibes at the unpopular attempts by the Laudian establishment to enforce orthodoxy, mocked as a ‘Chronical disease’.91 If only the Bishops could be similarly diagnosed and purged, then ‘health’ would be restored. The play ends with a nod to comoedia apocalyptica. The wicked queen Augusta and her associates are killed by ‘a flash of fire from the Oracle’. Augusta is ‘found dead in her Chaire of State, her Crown struck off, convey’d upon Kettreena’s head’.92 Kettreena is revealed in the final scene as the ‘lawfull Queene’. She restores the king to ‘this Crowne Imperiall’, and both celebrate with a ‘publique mirth’.93 Although the generic commands of comedy dictate this happy ending, the restoration of Kettreena is achieved by supernatural intervention. The Church is unlikely to be reformed through human institutions alone. A more thoroughgoing spiritual ‘reformation’ is also, it would appear, required. Another play worth mentioning briefly is Christ’s Passion, a closet verse drama written by the great Dutch scholar Hugo Grotius. It was translated and published in 1640 by the moderate royalist George Sandys, a member of the Great Tew group. Dale Randall has called this ‘a dignified, formal, potent play’, a fair characterisation of its tone and broadly pro-monarchical stance.94 Nevertheless, this group were not unthinking supporters of the state: ‘Although loyal to the crown, the leaders of Great Tew were dismayed by Archbishop Laud’s persecution of religious dissent.’95 We can see this dismay reflected in Sandys’ translation of Christ’s Passion. It contains a depiction of the persecuting high priest Caiaphas complaining to Caesar, the ‘Great Guardian of the Romane Peace’, about Christ attacking the church’s ‘holy Rites’.96 This passage could be read as a criticism of those seeking to bring down ‘Romane’ Arminianism. Yet the criticism is double edged. Caiaphas is rarely given a good press in early modern treatments of the crucifixion and he is often mentioned in antiEpiscopal pamphlets of this period. One tract says that those who ‘ensnare the people with rites and ordinances devised for their owne profit, and thus fulfil their tyranny, doe not sit in the chaire of the Gospell, but in the chaire of Simon Magus and Caiphas’.97 Caiaphas’ claims may be justified 91 94 95

96 97

92 93 Quarles, The Virgin Widow, pp. 308–309. Ibid., p. 309. Ibid., pp. 311–312. Randall, Winter Fruit, p. 210. James Ellison, ‘George Sandys (1578–1644)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography Online (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004–2012) (accessed 4 December 2014). George Sandys, Christs Passion. A Tragedie with Annotations (London: John Legat, 1640), p. 20. See, for example, Englands Glory in Her Royal King, and Honorable Assembly in the High Court of Parliament, Above Her Former Usurped Lordly Bishops Synod . . . (London: n.p., 1641), sig. B3v.

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but his methods are not. Moreover, the argument that the people’s belief in Christ’s ‘wicked Spels’ will lead to civil unrest – ‘we by the sword must fall, / Our City sinke in flames, our Countrey lye / Depopulated’ – is more than a little ironic when viewed in the context of the Bishops’ War.98 The prelacy are well able to bring destruction on the state themselves. Anyone arguing against the ministry of Christ in such terms must be a suspect figure. Perhaps most interestingly, the play ends with Mary’s account of her son’s apocalyptic final return to earth. The full passage reads as follows: Subjected Death thy Triumph now attends, While thou from thy demolish’d Tombe ascends. Nor shalt thou long be seene by mortall eies, But in perfection mount above the Skies; Propitious ever, from that height shalt give Peace to the World, instructed how to live. A thousand Languages shall thee adore: Thy Empire know no bounds. The farthest Shore Washt by the Ocean, those who Dayes bright Flame Scarce warmes, shall heare the thunder of thy Name. Licentious sword, nor hostill Fury, shall Prevaile against thee: thou, the Lord of all. Those Tyrants, whom the vanquisht Worlds obay, Before thy feete shall Caesars Scepter lay. The Time draws on, in which it selfe must end, When thou shalt in a Throne of Clouds descend To judge the Earth. In that reformed World, Those by their sins infected, shall be hurl’d Downe under one perpetuall Night; while they Whom thou hast cleans’d, injoy perpetuall Day.99

In this spiritual vision of imperial power, ‘Caesars Scepter’ shall be laid at Christ’s feet by those persecuting tyrants who wrongly prefer temporal power. War gives way to ‘Peace’, a new and everlasting ‘Empire’ is established, the sinful are cast down to hell, and the ‘cleans’d’ prevail. Orthodox and moderately expressed as this vision is, this promise of a ‘reformed World’ instituted at the second coming is clearly important for Sandys. Apocalyptic transcendence offers a welcome release from the ‘Licentious sword’ and ‘hostill Fury’ provoked by the present regime’s imperial overreaching.

98

Sandys, Christs Passion, pp. 22–23.

99

Ibid., pp. 72–73.

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On the public stage, a lost play called The Cardinal’s Conspiracy was staged by the Red Bull Company at the Fortune in 1639, and the actors were arrested because the play satirised the ‘bishops and church ritual’.100 The Red Bull company staged another lost play the same year called The Valiant Scot criticising the king’s prosecution of the Scottish wars. Furthermore, as Martin Butler has shown, Richard Brome’s The Court Beggar, which contains ‘a wholesale attack on the Scottish war and on the court’, was put on without a license by Beeston’s Boys in 1640.101 Middleton and Dekker’s The Bloody Banquet was published in 1639 and Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi republished in 1640. While not displacing the popular Caroline pastoral mode, dramatic Italianate settings regain their popularity from around 1639. There is a lost play by Henry Glapthorne, The Duchess of Fernandina (1639), probably set in Italy; Thomas Nabbes’ The Unfortunate Mother (1639) is a bloody revenge tragedy set in Ferrara; James Shirley’s The Gentleman of Venice (1639) and Samuel Harding’s Sicily and Naples, or The Fatal Union (1640) are set in the Italian cites mentioned in their titles; Lewis Sharpe’s The Noble Stranger (1640) discussed above is set in Naples; and John Tatham’s The Distracted State (1641?) is set in Sicily.102 Some of these plays can be classified as ‘oppositional’; some of them are not. All are concerned with political flux and how the state might best be reformed.103 Harding’s Sicily and Naples opens with war between the two realms, the king departed from Naples, and the city under military command, for instance. From the Elizabethan period onwards, ‘Italy’ is useful shorthand for dramatising political and religious intrigue. It is striking that from 1639 until the close of the theatres in 1642, a number of Caroline dramatists self-consciously revive this older tradition of critique. Italianate tragedy is the obvious genre to explore a state ill at ease with its religious and political direction. A good case in point is James Shirley’s The Cardinal. Licensed in November 1641 and played by the King’s Men, it is set in Navarre. In almost every other respect it is an Italianate revenge tragedy of a similar stripe to the plays discussed above. Shirley is broadly royalist in politics and may have been a Roman Catholic in religion, at least at certain points 100

101 102

103

Susan Wiseman, Drama and Politics in the English Civil War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 3. Butler, Theatre and Crisis, p. 135. Alfred Harbage, Annals of English Drama, 975–1700 . . ., rev. Samuel Schoenbaum (London: Methuen, 1964), pp. 138–143. On drama and playlets from this period as oppositional or radical, see Butler, Theatre and Crisis, pp. 84–99, 129–140, and Wiseman, Drama and Politics, pp. 37–39, 59–61.

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in his life. He writes mainly for a courtly and gentry audience and is patronised by the Queen. However, as Butler and Susan Wiseman have observed, ‘such associations do not imply total personal identification with Charles’s policies’, a point made throughout The Cardinal.104 It is a play with a defined political edge. Shirley is also deeply concerned with religion, as befits someone who had once been a Minister. The drama features the eponymous Cardinal, a Machiavellian villain whose political machinations and revenge against Duchess Rosaura are staged. As Charles Forker has argued, the Cardinal is probably intended to remind audiences of the newly jailed Laud.105 However, by examining the use of anti-Catholic and apocalyptic language in the play, I suggest that there is more to this understudied play’s politics than straightforward analogy. From 1636 to 1640, Shirley resided in Ireland in the employ of Thomas Wentworth, writing plays for the Dublin theatre.106 Charles recalled Wentworth to London late in 1639 and by May 1641, he was dead. By the time The Cardinal was first performed late in 1641, the political climate had turned against Strafford and his supporters. Many were now openly critical of the Laud/Strafford power nexus and fearful of the Irish threat. Texts published in 1641 explicitly call the prelate and the soldier ‘associates’. As well as demonstrating an ill-disguised glee at both men’s downfall, a number of these texts subversively personify the main political protagonists. In a Senecan dramatic dialogue published in 1641 entitled A Description of the Passage of Thomas Late Earl of Strafford, over the River of Styx, Charon states that Strafford is a warmonger who ‘hath devour’d three kingdomes’.107 Strafford’s ghost likens the imprisoned Laud to Antony after the Battle of Actium without Cleopatra, who now ‘Stoopes to his Idoll, greatnesse’.108 Another dialogue between Strafford and Laud published ‘in the yeare, of our Prelates feare, 1641’, has the former saying: 104

105

106 107

108

Wiseman, Drama and Politics, p. 115. On Shirley and Catholicism, see Eva Griffith, ‘“Till the state fangs catch you”: James Shirley the Catholic: (Why it does not matter (and why it really does)’, TLS, 2 April, 2010, pp. 14–15. This article sees Shirley’s bowing as a minister as evidence of Roman leanings: this action could equally have implied Arminian ceremonialism. The evidence of Shirley’s name in recusancy roles from 1642 and 1646 is more compelling, although nonattendance at Church does not necessarily imply an adherence to Roman Catholicism as the author rightly notes. See Charles Forker, ‘Bishop Laud and Shirley’s The Cardinal’, Transactions of the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters, 47, 1958, pp. 241–251. Forker does not fully explore the religious language of the play. See also Butler, Theatre and Crisis, p. 236. See Clark, Professional Playwrights, pp. 115–116. A Description of the Passage of Thomas Late Earl of Strafford, over the River of Styx (n.p., 1641), sig. A3v. This text shows an awareness of newsprint, especially the Mercurius titles that proliferated during this period. Ibid., sig. A4r.

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Apocalypse and Anti-Catholicism in Seventeenth-Century Our Counsels were together knit So close, so even they did goe To worke the Common-weale its woe, We cannot well our selues define What plot was yours, or which was mine109

This tone of thwarted Machiavellianism is commonplace in writing against the prelate and the soldier. A pamphlet published after Laud’s execution spells out what this ‘knitting’ means. While he is busily engaged in the ‘subversion of our true Protestant Religion, and introducing of Popery’, Strafford is ‘wrought on by the Prince of Darknesse, and quickened by the Spirit of Romish Antichrist, to have enslaved the three Nations, by destroying the Lawes and Liberties, and reducing all to an Arbitrary Tyrannical Government’.110 The Laud/Strafford relationship is not just politically dangerous; it is antichristian. Shirley’s play does not go as far as this text. But given the volatile political climate and his possible Roman Catholicism, we can see why he might want to distance himself from his former patron. Indeed, if there is any truth in the apocryphal story that the young Shirley was a favourite of Laud at Oxford, then there may also be a personal aspect to the playwright’s disassociation from the Laudian regime.111

IV The Cardinal begins with a state at war. The enemies of Navarre have broken ‘their confederate oath and league, / Are now in arms; they have not yet marched towards us, / But ’tis not safe to expect, if we may timely / Prevent invasion’ (I.i.57–60).112 As Shirley was putting the finishing touches to his play in November 1641, there was an uneasy truce in Scotland. News of the rebellion in Ireland reached London at the start of the month. Fears of a Roman Catholic–led invasion from Ireland were rife. Terms such as ‘confederate oath’, ‘league’, and ‘invasion’ are clearly 109

110

111

112

The Discontented Conference Betwixt the Two Great Associates, Thomas Late Earl of Strafford, and William Arch-Bishop of Canterbury (London: n.p., 1641), p. 1. See also A Reasonable Motion . . . Together with the Conference betwixt the two great Associates, William Arch-bishop of Canterbury, and Thomas late Earle of Strafford (London: n.p., 1641), which has Strafford admitting that his and Laud’s plans were designed ‘To bring us all in service to the Pope’, sig. A3r. Straffords Plot Discovered and the Parliament Vindicated . . . (London: Ruth Raworth for John Dallam, 1646), sigs. A2r–A3v. See Ira Clark, ‘James Shirley (1596–1666)’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography Online (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004–2012). See also Forker, ‘Bishop Laud’, p. 250. James Shirley, The Cardinal, ed. E.M. Yearling (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1986).

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topical, and questions of political allegiance and loyalty are debated. The claim that ‘There’s treason in some hearts, whose faces are / Smooth to the state’ (I.i.71–72) reflects the political volatility of the moment. Two unnamed Lords are disgusted that ‘the Cardinal holds intelligence / With every bird i’th’air’ (I.i.20), and they condemn the scope of his authority: ‘Death on his purple pride, / He governs all’ (I.i.20–21). The reference to purple, a colour often associated with imperial Roman and Roman Catholic authority, is probably deliberate and may be a way of obliquely critiquing the Caroline regime’s overweening imperial authority.113 Many of the texts circulating about Laud contain rumours of his dealings with the Roman Catholic Church and stories about him being offered a Cardinal’s hat.114 One pamphlet even likens him to Cardinal Wolsey: ‘They both favoured the Sea of Rome and respected his Holinesse in it. The Cardinal did professe it publickly, the Arch-Bishop did reverence it privately.’115 The Duchess’ young husband has died, leaving her a widow. The Cardinal wishes her to marry his nephew Columbo, ‘The darling of the war’ (I.i.23), even though she favours the Count D’Alvarez. Discussion of the impending nuptials highlights the link between civil and personal strife: antonio: Madam, I have news, ’Tis now arrived the court, we shall have wars. duchess: I find an army here of killing thoughts. (I.ii.71–73)

These lines emerge from a public sphere where, as scholars such as Nigel Smith and Joad Raymond have shown, the production and circulation of ‘news’ is a direct consequence of civic discord.116 Columbo goes off to lead the army with a promise that he and the Duchess will not ‘use the priest’

113

114 115

116

In a text published in 1640, the independent Henry Burton draws an explicit parallel between the practices of the Laudian and Roman Catholic Churches contextualising Shirley’s reference to the Cardinal’s ‘purple pride’: ‘One and the Same in your Episcopall Robes and vestments, both rare and rich, as purple, and scarlet, and fine linnen, as it were the livery whereby you are known to be of one and the same house, or family, with that Woman (Rev. 17.) aliâs, the Great Whore of Babilon, with whom you claim Sister-hood’. Henry Burton, A Replie to a Relation, of the Conference betweene William Laude and Mr. Fisher the Jesuite (Amsterdam: Cloppenburg Press, 1640), p. 66. See, for example, Mercuries Message, sig. A3r. A true Description Or Rather a Parallel between Cardinall Wolsey, Arch-Bishop of York, and William Laud, Arch-Bishop of Canterbury (London: n.p., 1641), p. 7. See Forker, ‘Bishop Laud’, p. 245. See Nigel Smith, Literature and Revolution in England 1640–1660 (New Haven and New York, 1994), pp. 54–70, and Joad Raymond, The Invention of the Newspaper: English Newsbooks, 1641–1649 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996).

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until he has won honour ‘in the purple field of glory’ (I.ii.115–117), words whose imagery links the military leader with the Cardinal.117 When the Duchess is left alone with Alvarez she states that their love transcends any other commands. Alvarez replies that, despite his aristocratic status, he is merely her ‘servant’: Preserve your greatness and forget a trifle, That shall at best, when you have drawn me up, But hang about you like a cloud, and dim The glories you are born to. Duchess: Misery Of birth and state! That I could shift into A meaner blood, or find some art to purge That part which makes my veins unequal (I.ii.196–202)

The evocation of Webster’s Duchess of Malfi and her wooing of Antonio at the end of act I draws self-consciously on that transgressive sexual union in the earlier tragedy. The Duchess displays a similar attitude towards rank as her Jacobean predecessor: Those nice distinctions have no place in us, There’s but a shadow difference, a title, Thy stock partakes as much of noble sap As that which feeds the root of kings, and he That writes a lord hath all the essence of Nobility. (I.ii.203–208)

While this kind of social levelling is a stock in trade of romantic love in early modern drama, it may also draw on the theological assumption expressed in Mary’s speech at the end of Sandys’ Christ’s Passion.118 Commentators on Revelation commonly explain that at the second coming all temporal authority will be exposed as mere material image or shadow: ‘And the magnificence and pomp of all the potentates of the earth shall here bee laide downe.’119 The only people raised will be the elect. 117

118

119

The Cardinal is later called a ‘purple gownman’ (II.iii.13). Moreover, the king also seems to affirm dubious ecclesiastical practices: when he enters, he blithely states, ‘Your marriage shall receive triumphant ceremonies’ (I.ii.131), a sentiment that may nod towards Laudian ceremonialism as well as the recent marriage of the King’s daughter Mary, which, given the difficult political situation was, ironically, conducted without great ceremony. See White, Henrietta Maria, p. 48. See Frank Whigham, Seizures of the Will in Early Modern English Drama (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 206–211. Arthur Dent, The Rvine of Rome: Or an Exposition Vpon the Whole Revelation . . . (London: Simon Waterson and Cuthbert Burby, 1603), pp. 295–296.

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Such arguments are easy to find in 1641. In a prophecy addressed to parliament that year, Lady Eleanor Davies notes the fall of all temporal empires and predicts the collapse of various political states. She says that God will shorten time ‘in behalf of His Electe’ so that the end will come more quickly.120 The Duchess’ lines express her dangerous sexual passion for D’Alvarez. Nevertheless, her talk of class distinction as mere shadow, and of levelling rank, is coloured by apocalyptic rhetoric. This last point is not insisted on by Shirley. Indeed, the Duchess imagines a scenario where Columbo ‘in his hot thirst of honour’ (I.ii.224) dies in battle, leaving her to ‘My own election’ (I.ii.228). For the Duchess, the volatility of war is an erotically enabling force. This is a dangerous fantasy. The analogy between love and religious ‘election’ is also problematic, as we see in Protestant poetry by Sidney, Spencer, Herbert, and Greville. Yet it shows the Duchess as a forceful figure, prepared to manipulate the political situation for her own ends. Alvarez concludes their meeting saying that there can ‘Be nothing left to crown me with new blessing; / But I dream thus of heaven, and wake to find / My amorous soul a mockery’ (I.ii.230–232). This mock apocalyptic vision picks up on the erotic tone of the Duchess’ words. While it is not to be taken entirely seriously, it does connect eros and religio. The second act opens with Columbo and other military leaders at a council of war. The army is represented as self-determining – ‘the men are forward in their arms’ (II.i.34), comments one. Although loyal to the king, this allegiance does not preclude the army’s independence. Columbo states: ‘Bear these letters to the king, / It speaks my resolution before / Another sun decline, to charge the enemy’ (II.i.61–63). As we have seen, the Long Parliament deprived Charles of direct command of the army. Yet this did not stop the king plotting twice in 1641, first in May and the second time in November, the month The Cardinal was licensed, to reestablish his authority over the army.121 Given this context, it is significant that Shirley is careful not to make too much of his fictional king’s involvement in the affairs of the army. As he says of Columbo later on,

120

121

Lady Eleanor Davies, The Lady Eleanor, Her Appeale to the High Court of Parliament (London, 1641), p. 15. For more on Davies and female prophecy, see Esther S. Cope, Handmaid of the Holy Spirit: Dame Eleanor Davies, Never Soe Mad a Ladie (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993), and Phyllis Mack, Visionary Women: Ecstatic Prophecy in Seventeenth-Century England (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), esp. pp. 15–18. See Russell, The Fall, pp. 291–294, 350–355. For neo-Roman/republican debates on whether the king or parliament should control the army, see Quentin Skinner, Liberty before Liberalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 68–77.

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‘The war is left to him’ (II.iii.1). The playwright is equally careful to ensure that his depiction of an independent army is undercut in a couple of ways. First, the soldiers comment on the death of the Duchess’ first husband: 1 Colonel: ’Twas the king’s act to match two rabbit-suckers. 2 Colonel: A common trick of state; The little great man marries, travels then Till both grow up, and dies when he should do The feat; these things are still unlucky On the male side. (II.i.145–150)

The language here is derogatory, both politically and sexually, casting the officers in a less than glowing light. The reference to the ‘little great man’ may allude to the heir to the throne, the eleven-year-old Prince Charles. Fears were raised in parliament about a Roman Catholic match for the heir, as were concerns about the influence of his mother.122 The scene expresses the volatility of the hereditary principle in a time of war. However, the disparaging tone of the Colonels’ comments about the king’s actions as a ‘trick of state’ may have been seen by others in the audience as impertinent. Surely it is the duty of the army to be commanded, to do the bidding of the state? The scene contains no outright condemnation of the army’s behaviour. In fact it ends with the Colonels described as ‘all noble’ (II.i.137).123 The tone of this scene is thus uncertain. It reflects a volatile political context and an author trying to hedge his bets. Shirley treads an uneasy line between praise and critique of the army. He also asks difficult questions about who is ultimately in charge of the military, the king or the colonels? In this, he was doubtless speaking to anxieties felt by many in his audience. The neoRoman/republican argument that the army is representative of the people is important here because the monarchical alternative, which offers ‘a standing threat to the liberties of subjects’, is not voiced in Shirley’s play.124 122 123

124

Russell, The Fall, pp. 413–414. In act III, the Cardinal assumes the authority to command the soldier Hernando: ‘Go teach the postures of the pike and musket, / Then drill your myrmidons into a ditch, / Where starve, and stink in pickle’ (III.i.70–72). The contemptuous tone adopted here is revealing. In May 1640, Laud’s palace at Lambeth was attacked by a group led by the soldier Thomas Bensted, who was later hung, drawn, and quartered. A 1641 pamphlet depicts the ghost of Bensted appearing to Laud, who at first fails to recognise him: ‘I am Drum-Major Benstead, that with my gallant Myrmidons come thus in Arms the second time.’ The reference to Achilles’ warriors is a commonplace one used in a variety of contexts, and so it would be wrong to suggest a direct link here. But the example helps to frame the Cardinal’s haughty treatment of the military and the problems of mixing spiritual and temporal authority when it comes to the command of the military. See Carlton, Archbishop William Laud, p. 221, and Canterbvries Ghost . . . (London: F. Coules, 1641), p. 3. Skinner, Liberty before Liberalism, pp. 72–73.

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The Cardinal says he will visit the Duchess ‘daily’ (II.ii.1) in Columbo’s absence, a promise that she reflects on alone: Do not I walk upon the teeth of serpents; And, as I had a charm against their poison, Play with their stings? The Cardinal is subtle, Whom ’tis not wisdom to incense, till I Hear to what destiny Columbo leaves me (II.ii.18–22)

Aside from the homophonic pun on ‘incense’, these lines draw on biblical language. In Luke 10:18, Jesus recalls seeing Satan fall from heaven and gives his disciples the ‘power to tread on Serpents, and Scorpions, and ouer all the power of the enemie, and nothing shall hurt you’. The Duchess’ words twist this biblical promise. They make her question more equivocal, showing how precarious her political position is at this point. She manages to persuade the king that Columbo has renounced his rights to her hand and that Alvarez’ suit should now be preferred. This provokes the Cardinal. He says that Columbo ‘Exchanged religious farewell to return / But with more triumph to be yours’ (II.iii.88–89), accuses Alvarez of ‘effeminacy’ (II.iii.113), and warns the Duchess of the ‘common murmur’ (II.iii.115). The Duchess turns this last accusation back on the Cardinal, stating that if he were less false, ‘The people would not talk and curse so loud’ (II.iii.137). This is a world where the business of prelates is a public matter. She then itemises her opponent’s crimes in an accusatio: How gross your avarice, eating up whole families! How vast are your corruptions and abuse Of the king’s ear! At which you hang a pendant, Not to adorn, but ulcerate, while the honest Nobility, like pictures in the arras, Speak only for court-ornament; if they speak, ’Tis when you set their tongues, which you wind up Like clocks, to strike at the hour you please; Leave, leave, my lord, these usurpations, And be what you were meant, a man to cure, Not let in agues to religion; Look on the church’s wounds. (II.iii.143–155)

This is a strong complaint against the corruption of the church. The Cardinal abuses the affections of those around him. We have already seen the importance of female petitions to parliament and the emergence of female prophets such as Eleanor Davies, many of whom criticised the

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Laudian church.125 While it would be going too far to align the Duchess with Davies, the theatrical expression of such stringent ecclesiastical criticisms does mirror the political participation of women in the public sphere. Virtually all of the accusations made against the Cardinal by the Duchess are also made against episcopacy more generally. A pamphlet called Englands Glory in Her Royal King (1641) accuses the bishops of following not the word of God but the ‘corrupt customes of their owne Courts’.126 Shirley carries no candle for parliamentary sovereignty in this play. Yet he is concerned about an over-mighty prelacy. The Duchess’ accusation that the Cardinal has usurped rightful authority over the people and the state speaks to the argument that ‘The Prelates have combined together for themselves, and contrived for their own sinister ends and usurpation, though to great dispersion of divisions both in Church and State, moving of warre, and afflicting of the people of God.’127 Another pamphlet has Laud directly inviting readers to consider how he began ‘my antichristian reign, imposing absolute Tyranny on the souls and wills of the people’.128 If the Duchess’ expression of female will against the Cardinal was seen by some as unruly and impertinent, others would have seen it as a long overdue assertion of political right. As both the pamphlet and play make clear, only by preventing the ‘abuse’ of the king can righteousness and liberty be restored. Shirley is always careful not to let his king stray too far from the side of the godly. In a later scene, for example, he says that the Cardinal ‘must be reconciled to providence’ (III.i.48). But even though the play casts a sceptical eye on the king’s vacillation and weakness, it does not make the monarch directly complicit in the crimes of the Cardinal. Shirley’s is a moderate constitutional position that retains the right to advance critique. Englands Glory details the Archbishop’s treatment of the king in apocalyptic terms: ‘I had so cunningly interlaced the Image of the Beast, with His Majesties Pourtrait . . . that the Crown could not flourish on the Kings head, without the Fellowship of a Miter.’129 The Duchess further charges the Cardinal with damaging the Church by his ‘Ambition and scarlet sins that rob / Her alter of the glory, and leave wounds / Upon her brow . . . and shroud her holy blushes / Within your reverend purples’ (II.iii.158–163). Such language would not be out of place in a play by Dekker or Middleton. The Whore of Babylon is, of course, ‘arrayed in 125

126 128

Davies has previously criticised Laud in a prophecy of 1633, but not published until 1645: see Lady Eleanor Davies, To the Kings most excellent majestie. The humble petition of the Lady Eleanor (London, 1645). 127 Englands Glory, sig. B2r. Ibid. 129 The Recantation of the Prelate of Canterbury . . . (London: n.p., 1641), p. 5. Ibid., p. 7.

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purple and scarlet, and gilded with gold’ (Revelation 17:4). Many antiLaudian tracts make a similar identification. One calls Laud a ‘Laborious Pander to the Whore of Rome’.130 The image of a Church tarnished by false, even theatrical, rites is also common in these tracts. Englands Glory concludes with a dialogue between an Arminian Bishop and John Calvin. Calvin lambasts the former who ‘vaunt themselves in their gewgawes’, who ‘play a pageant’ with their ‘blessing of Altars’ when ‘they are glorious in their masking attire’.131 The Duchess’ condemnations of the Cardinal’s ecclesiastical apparel are contextualised by such contemporary expressions. Nevertheless, the Duchess’ language is generally more temperate than the pamphlets. Though powerfully expressed, she does not go as far as some anti-Episcopal writers. She hopes that her words will act as a ‘true glass’ in which the Cardinal will ‘cure’ himself ‘before the short-haired men / Do crowd and call for justice’ (II.iii.167–168), a phrase that reminds us of Thomas Herbert’s defence of Laud quoted earlier. The Duchess aims for reformation, not condemnation. Those watching the play late in 1641 would have known that, in the case of Laud, her warning had come true. The Puritans had indeed brought their man to a kind of ‘justice’. This adds a further layer of political irony to the scene. The Duchess uses the language of contemporary Presbyterian opposition against the Cardinal. Yet she locates the ultimate political expression of that opposition not with herself but with the ‘short-haired men’. In this way, the Duchess (and by implication Shirley) can distance herself from the more extreme expressions of the anti-Episcopal wing. David Smith has defined the kind of constitutional royalism that I argue Shirley broadly favours as follows: Its basic premises were that royal powers and constitutional government were inherently compatible; that Charles I could be trusted to rule legally and to abide by the safeguards against non-parliamentary government erected in 1640–1; that limitations on his power to choose advisors and military commanders were antithetical to monarchy; and that the existing structures of the Church of England were an intrinsic part of the constitution which should be preserved from ‘root and branch’ reform.132

Where Shirley parts company from this position is in the last clause. As the play argues ecclesiastical reform is very much required. When Alvarez is murdered by Columbo at a masque in front of the king, the Duchess turns her fire on the monarch:

130 132

131 The Recantation, p. 21. Englands Glory, sigs. A2r, A4v. Smith, Constitutional Royalism, p. 7.

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This is a widely expressed concern. If the king is not the guarantor of justice and liberty, then surely anarchy will follow? As the Long Parliament wrung more and more concessions from Charles, his authority was weakening to such a point that it could no longer be politically effective.133 These anxieties are also articulated in Columbo’s defence of his murder. Claiming that the Duchess has betrayed their original compact with ‘juggling witchcraft’ (III.ii135), he also states: I can excuse this deed and call it justice, An act your honours and your office, sir, Is bound to build a law upon, for others To imitate (III.ii.124–127)

Politically this is a dubious claim. The representative of the army, a body supported by many important parliamentarians and independents, attempts to justify an inexcusable act in the name of the king’s ‘justice’. Columbo’s words offer a working definition of arbitrary rule. Shirley suggests that while the arbitrary power of monarch and prelates is dangerous, investing similar authority in the army is no less hazardous, and the monarch should not rely on it. Such a warning would prove prescient during the republic but it does not engender any real political stability in the play. Instead, we see a state subject, especially in the person of the king, to a worrying degree of volatility. When the Duchess is accused of ‘apostasy’ (III.ii.161), the king steps in and says he is also ‘guilty’ (III.ii.182) since it ‘did exceed the office of a king / To exercise dominion over hearts’ (III.ii.185–186). These words, amorously conventional as they are, do suggest that the monarch’s authority has certain limits. But this is a statement about affairs of the heart, not affairs of state. The subject matter undercuts the tempering of arbitrary authority that the king’s words might otherwise imply. When he turns to the issue of Columbo’s ‘pardon’ (III.ii.198), he seems vacillating and unsure. As one of the Lords comments, ‘Ha, will he turn again?’ (III.ii.200). The king says he should punish Columbo’s crime ‘Or be no king’ (III.ii.205). 133

Russell, The Fall, p. 300.

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Columbo mounts a strong defence, asking where is the ‘gratitude of kings, when they forget / Whose hand secured their greatness?’ (III.ii.221–222). A monarch overreliant on the army dilutes the power of liberty and justice. Columbo is not taken to prison immediately. In fact, he is allowed to make a long speech in his defence and refuses to bow to the king. This is a monarch whose political authority is gravely diminished. As the Duchess wryly concludes the act: ‘This shows like justice’ (III.ii.248, emphasis added). Act IV opens with yet another political alteration. Two Lords proclaim ‘the age of wonders’ (IV.i.1) and ask: ‘Hath heaven forsook us quite?’ (IV. i.5). The benign providentialism associated earlier with the king has given way to a time of signs and portents. Columbo is now ‘at large’ (IV.i.5) and although ‘not pardoned’ (IV.i.6), still ‘the murder done had been a dream / Vanished to memory, he’s courted as preserver of his country’, a sentiment that many of Strafford’s opponents would recognise. The Lord goes on to ask: ‘with what chains / Of magic does this Cardinal hold the king?’ (IV.i.8–11). This state is governed by a weak king dominated by a powerful and dangerous military and an overweening prelacy. In such times religion must be compromised. The Duchess’ plight and supposed sexual malefaction with Alvarez is framed in loaded terms: ‘no woman can be saved, nor is’t / Fit, indeed, any should pretend to heaven / After one such impiety in their sex’ (IV.i.15–17). The possibility of salvation is compromised by sexual sin. Perhaps in such circumstances religious neutrality or atheism is best. In the words of Hernando, ‘my faith has been so staggered since / The king restored Columbo, I’ll be now / Of no religion’ (IV.i.18–20). Hernando offers his services as an avenger to the Duchess. To take on this task requires someone prepared to challenge conventional religious ethics. Laodicean, lukewarm religious commitment opens the door to temporal crime. The Duchess expresses her contempt for any reconcilement with Columbo, stating that ‘his soul / Is purpled o’er, and reeks with innocent blood’ (IV.ii.45–46). He now gives full vent to his irreligious cruelty, saying: Live, but never presume again to marry, I’ll kill the next at th’altar, and quench all The smiling tapers with his blood; if after You dare provoke the priest and heaven so much, To take another, in thy bed I’ll cut him from Thy warm embrace, and throw his heart to ravens. (IV.ii.68–73)

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Representing himself as a Senecan revenger, Columbo also parodies the language of the Mass and the ‘sacrifice’ performed during that ritual. This is religion abused as the references to the altar and the taper imply. More important, it is Columbo’s unfettered militarism that allows him to make such bloodthirsty threats. Conversely, when Hernando encourages the Duchess to avenge Alvarez it is to oppose Columbo’s ‘Tyranny’ (IV.ii.186). He assures the Duchess that ‘Your cause is so religious you need / Not strengthen it with your prayers’ (IV.ii.199). If the Duchess is to have vengeance, then it will be on ‘religious’ terms. The Cardinal tells her that the king’s ‘pardon to Colombo cannot be / So much against his justice, as your erring / Faith would persuade your anger’ (IV.ii.219–221). He claims to ‘speak the king’s own language’ (IV.ii.234), an aptly Laudian sentiment. Justice can reside only in the person of the king. The Duchess responds by questioning the role of justice in a state at war. As she says, if murder is allowed simply because a man ‘has done brave / Things in a war’ (IV.ii.240–241), then it will ‘teach those that deserve well / To sin with greater license’ (IV.ii.243–244). She accuses the king and the Cardinal of ‘tyranny’ (IV.258) in refusing to stop Columbo, the militaristic antithesis of properly constituted justice. The Cardinal claims that his kinsman’s ‘black deed / . . . doth make me shudder’ (IV.ii.264–265) and that if he had known about the murder, then ‘a whirlwind / Snatch me to endless flames’ (IV.ii.287–288). The imagery shows the Cardinal’s willingness to invoke the torment of the damned after the last judgement to manipulate the Duchess. She cannot contemplate opposing such apparently serious sentiments, replying, ‘I must believe, / And ask your grace’s pardon’ (IV.ii.288–289). The hypocrisy of the Cardinal here is echoed in the anti-Laudian pamphlets. One even likens the Archbishop to ‘Ananias’, a biblical disciple as well as the name of Ben Jonson’s hypocritical Puritan in The Alchemist.134 Significantly, the Duchess calls their reconcilement ‘this fair remonstrance’ (IV.ii.303). This phrase has an important contemporary resonance. The Cardinal was entered in the Stationer’s Register on 25 November 1641. On 8 November, Pym and other members of the opposition in parliament made the Grand Remonstrance public and it was passed by a narrow margin on 22 November. The Remonstrance details various anti-Episcopal grievances. It demands that proper Protestant religion be restored to the state and offers support to the army.135 Some were 134 135

Roger the Canterburian . . . (London: William Lamar, 1642), p. 1. See Russell, The Fall, pp. 424–429. Charles returned to London from Scotland on the same day that Shirley’s play was entered in the Stationer’s Register.

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confident that the Remonstrance would enable lasting reform and perhaps peace. Others remained doubtful. We can place Shirley in the latter camp. Once alone, the Duchess drops the mask against the ‘better peace’ (IV.ii.309) concluded with her enemy, calling him ‘this cozening statesman’ who looks to ‘bribe my faith’ (IV.ii.310). Just as the Duchess pays lip service to the ‘fair remonstrance’ between her and the Cardinal, so ‘justice’ (IV.ii.308) must be achieved by other means. Shirley does this through the theatrical agency of ‘revenge’ (IV.ii.324). The revenger is generally a solitary figure. The scene does not present the revenging Duchess as a preferable alternative to the ‘remonstrance’ just concluded. Rather, it expresses doubt as to whether, in such a divided society, collective, reforming action towards the common good can ever be undertaken. The Duchess proposes an aristocratic solution to her problems. Revenge may well be the behaviour of a person in extremis and is, no doubt, an ethically dubious course of action. But it also shows that Shirley prefers to place his political faith in the authority of the singular aristocrat rather than in the ‘fair remonstrance’ of the collective. In the final act, the Duchess feigns madness in order to have her revenge on the Cardinal. Although assigned to her guardianship, he is not fooled by her act. There are a number of religious barbs directed at the Cardinal. Hernando likens the guardianship to ‘A lamb given up to a tiger’ (V.ii.67).136 And when Antonio asks ‘where is / The Cardinal’s grace’ (V.ii.91–92), Hernando replies in an aside, ‘That will never be answered’ (V.ii.92), a small but resonant theological pun on the operative nature of grace, a key point of controversy between Calvinists and Arminians. The Duchess enters weeping for Alvarez. Asked to stop, she says, ‘I wo’ not shed a tear more / Till I meet Alvarez, then I’ll weep for joy’ (V.iii.2–3), a comment that presages both death and judgement, as does the following speech:137 I shall but die, and meet my dear-loved lord, Whom when I have kissed, I’ll come again, and work A bracelet of my hair for you to carry him, When you are going to heaven (V.iii.34–37)

Hernando’s speech urging himself to revenge develops the implications of the Duchess’ words: I do not think Ever to see the day again; the wings Of night spread o’er me like a sable hearse-cloth, 136

In Revelation, Christ is depicted as the Lamb throughout – see 17:14.

137

See Revelation 21:1–4.

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Apocalypse and Anti-Catholicism in Seventeenth-Century The stars are all close mourners too; but I Must not alone to the cold, silent grave, I must not; if thou cans’t, Alvarez, open That ebon curtain, and behold the man, When the world’s justice fails shall right thy ashes, And feed thy thirst with blood; thy Duchess is Almost a ghost already, and doth wear Her body like a useless upper garment, The trim and fashion of it lost. (V.iii.72–83)

This speech plays on the division of flesh and spirit completed at the last judgement. Michael Neil calls this the ‘trope of death as apocalyptic unveiling.’138 The Duchess has almost passed beyond the prison-house of the flesh and into the realm of spirit, a fact that spurs Hernando on. Moreover, Alvarez’s ghost is invited to open the ‘ebon curtain’ that will reveal Hernando as a Christ-like figure who will ‘right thy ashes’ when earthly ‘justice’ fails. This is an anticipation of apocalyptic resurrection. Yet a closer look at the language and imagery here reveals some intriguing tensions. This action is undertaken in order to ‘feed’ Alvarez’s ‘thirst with blood’. This may be figurative language, but it will soon be made literal. The fleshly aim of the revenger stands at odds with the spiritual righteousness of the last judgement. Hernando also uses the phrase ‘behold the man’ to describe his unveiling. These words recall Pilate’s at Jesus’ trial: ‘Then came Iesus foorth wearing a crowne of thornes, and a purple garment. And Pilate said vnto them, Behold the man’ (John 19:5). At one level the speech associates Hernando and Alvarez’s ghost with spiritual justice. Yet the reference to Pilate’s words may align Hernando with the Roman antithesis of the justice to which he otherwise aspires. In this way, Shirley puts a fresh twist on the perennial problem of whether a revenger can ever align moral and spiritual justice. If Hernando’s actions do presage a ‘revelation’, then it is probably not one sanctioned by heaven. In the final scene, the Cardinal attempts to rape the Duchess. But his ‘cloven foot’ (V.iii.164) is exposed and his devilish adherence to fleshly values uncovered.139 He is stabbed by Hernando, who, in the best tradition of Italianate revenge tragedy, is wounded in the ensuing scuffle and dies. 138

139

Michael Neill, Issues of Death: Mortality and Identity in English Renaissance Tragedy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), p. 367. See Deborah G. Burks, ‘“This Sight Doth Shake All That Is Man within Me”: Sexual Violation and the Rhetoric of Dissent in The Cardinal’, Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 26, 1, 1996, pp. 153–190.

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The Duchess claims that ‘Alvarez’ blood / Is now revenged’ (V.iii.195–196) and the Cardinal speaks what all presume to be a final excusatio to the king: I have deserved you should turn from me, sir, My life hath been prodigiously wicked, My blood is now the kingdom’s balm; O sir, I have abused your ear, your trust, your people, And my own sacred office, my conscience Feels now the sting (V.iii.198–203)

Sentiments like this are common in the anti-Laudian tracts. Many of them have Laud confessing his sins on waking from a nightmare, speaking to the ghosts of dead allies, or on his deathbed. The Recantation of the Prelate of Canterbury has him admitting: ‘That I might appear a great Church-man of vast desires and designes, being radically resolved to set up a Tyrannical Power in the Persons of Prelates, over the worship of God, over the consciences, liberties, and goods of the people, It cannot be denied.’140 Poetic justice meets the rhetoric of contemporary independent censure in the Cardinal’s speech. In another text, Laud complains: ‘another night me thinks I see my dire oppressions, presented in a hellish Maske, each act that I have done is laid before me in my sleep’.141 This dream is an inversion of the prophetic, millennial dream that, as Nigel Smith has noted, is popular with Puritan prophets during this period. Such dreams are seen as ‘genuine intimations of the proximity of the divine’, a fact that underscores the hellish terror felt by ‘Laud’ in the pamphlets.142 The audience learn that the Cardinal’s villainy is not quite spent and he tricks the Duchess into drinking poison. She dies with the words ‘I come, I come, Alvarez!’ (V.iii.291). The Duchess’ translation from the flesh to the spirit may recall the end of Revelation.143 More certain is the political message that concludes the play. The king calls for the bodies to be buried and says: How much are kings abused by those they take To royal grace! Whom, when they cherish most By nice indulgence, they do often arm Against themselves; from whence this maxim springs, None have more need of perspectives than kings. (V.iii.293–297) 140 142

143

141 The Recantation, p. 4. Canterbvries Amazement . . . (London: F. Coules, 1641), p. 3. Nigel Smith, Perfection Proclaimed: Language and Literature in English Radical Religion 1640–1660 (Clarendon Press: Oxford: 1989), p. 102. See Revelation 22:20: ‘Surely I come quickly, Amen. Euen so, come Lord Iesus.’

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Stating the political moral of the story, the king reclaims the prerogative of monarchical authority. However, it is clearly an authority under rebuke. Forker argues that throughout The Cardinal ‘no opportunity to approve of the Stuart theory of divine right is let pass’.144 I think we can see now that this argument does a disservice to what is actually a much more politically complex play. Shirley follows the conventionally moderate line that the monarch has been abused by wicked council. But the use of the word ‘indulgence’ in the king’s speech, a term with courtly, popish, and morally dubious overtones, reminds us of his culpability. And the idea that those closest to the monarch ‘do often arm / Against themselves’ is a timely reminder of the military conflict that can follow when ‘royal grace’ is misplaced. Shirley’s use of apocalyptic and anti-Catholic language is politically sophisticated and sustained. As I have argued, the play offers a moderate critique of Laudianim and Episcopalianism, one that goes further than the constitutional royalists in it ecclesiastical censure. By 1641, with Laud in prison and politically neutered, such criticism was always going to be retrospective. Given this fact, we could accuse Shirley of jumping on a popular bandwagon in his presentation of the Cardinal. What saves him from this charge is the equally sharp criticism of an ineffectual and vacillating king. This theatrical monarch allows himself to be manipulated into a position of political weakness. As a consequence he is unable to protect common liberty and justice and to uphold the privileges of rank. For a moderate royalist like Shirley these are serious charges. The Cardinal offers its critique more in sorrow than in glee. It is no apology for the unfettered claims of divine right. While Shirley does not share the apocalyptic enthusiasm of the more militant parliamentarians and independents, nevertheless his play finds common ground with such groupings, most memorably in his presentation of the Cardinal’s ‘purple pride’. 144

Forker, ‘Bishop Laud’, p. 246.

chapter 6

‘Rebellion Orthodox’ Arbitrary Rule and Liberty in Dryden and Lee’s The Duke of Guise (1682)

I On the evening of 21 October 1679, James, Duke of York, attended an entertainment at the Merchant Taylor’s Hall in London. Hosted by the Artillery Company of whom York was Captain, the evening was not quite the success that some had anticipated: some hundreds of other Citizens of this Company had paid the usual Ticket-money (which is 2s. 6d.) and taken Tickets for admittance; but not being willing to give the countenance of their presence to that Entertainment when they understood the D. was there, some made no use of their Tickets, some tore them in pieces, some gave them to the Porters, or other mean men, that they appear’d in their Holiday Cloaths might be admitted to the feast with the D. But others sold them for 12 d. or 6 d. apiece, as they could meet with persons whose curiosity led them to behold the manner of that Assembly, and take part of their Cheer . . . Thus indeed the Entertainment might be great, because the Company was little.1

The behaviour of the audience – ripping up their tickets, selling them to ‘mean men’, wearing holiday dress – is self-conscious in its theatrical agency. It is a carnivalesque attack on York’s authority and status. By denying James a properly constituted audience, the crowd can send a message that their political agency is not to be taken for granted. Indeed, as the account goes on to explain: ‘This Entertainment was (I doubt not) design’d to retrieve a little in the Eye of the Nation, the Reputation of the York-Interest lost in the late Choice of Parliament-men’.2 The Duke may well have been Charles II’s brother, an experienced military commander, and the heir to the throne. But he was also a Roman Catholic and 1

2

True Account of the Invitation and Entertainment of the D. of Y. at Merchant-Taylors Hall, by the Artillery-Men, on Tuesday October 21th 1679 (London, 1679), p. 1. Ibid., p. 2.

199

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unpopular with many in the country, especially the Whigs.3 They feared that his accession would mean a return to Roman Catholicism, possibly by force, and to a derogation of the Protestant rights and liberties guaranteed by parliament. The period between 1678 and 1681 is most commonly known as the ‘exclusion crisis’. I have deliberately avoided this description in this chapter. As recent historical work has shown, this period is better understood as a crisis about succession with interlocking national and international dimensions.4 The emergence of the language of ‘party’ during these years, especially ‘Whig’ and ‘Tory’, is also well known.5 Modern scholars are cautious of ‘party’ as a concept. This is especially so when dealing with the 1670s: ‘Whether it is justifiable to refer to ‘parties’ at all before 1679 is open to debate.’6 Others have gone further. Jonathan Scott has argued that the language of ‘party’ is an eighteenth-century preoccupation projected back onto the late seventeenth century. It does not allow for the ‘fluidity of the crisis’ during these years.7 In the major modern study of this period, Mark Knights has written: Before 1681, contemporaries used the term party to describe the political situation rather than to explain it, and the labels Whig and Tory only become common usage in 1681, after the dissolution of the Oxford Parliament. In other words, a Whig-Tory structure imposed on the years before 1681 is not only premature in its chronology, but oversimplifies the situation by blinding us to important shifts in opinion, and in the expression of opinion, that occurred during the period. Some fluidity must be reinjected into the discussion.8

In a period where ideological allegiances are shifting, there is no simple division of public discourse into neatly opposing ‘party’ positions. Nevertheless, even if 3

4

5

6 8

For more on James’ reception by the London crowds, see Tim Harris, London Crowds in the Reign of Charles II: Propaganda and Politics from the Restoration until the Exclusion Crisis (Cambridge: Cambridge: University Press, 1987), pp. 83–4, 157–158, 169–171. Mark Knights, Politics and Opinion in Crisis, 1678–81 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), and Jonathan Scott, Algernon Sidney and the Restoration Crisis, 1677–1683 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994) and England’s Troubles: Seventeenth-Century English Political Instability in European Context (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). On the concept of ‘party’, see J.R. Jones, The First Whigs: The Politics of the Exclusion Crisis, 1678–1683 (London and New York: Oxford University Press, 1961), pp. 1–4, 9–19; K.H.D. Haley, The First Earl of Shaftesbury (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968), pp. 348–371; Harris, London Crowds, pp. 212–223; Knights, Politics and Opinion, pp. 5–15, 107–145, 238–242, 248–368; Susan Owen, Restoration Theatre and Crisis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. xi, 110–111, 121–123; Geoffrey Holmes, The Making of a Great Power: Late Stuart and Early Georgian Britain (Longman: Harlow, 1995), pp. 133–141; and Scott, Algernon Sidney, pp. 11–17, 21–25. 7 Holmes, The Making, p. 133. Scott, Algernon Sidney, p. 23. Knights, Politics and Opinion, p. 111.

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their implications differ from modern understandings, late seventeenthcentury writers do use the terms ‘Whig’, ‘Tory’, and ‘Party’. As Scott has usefully noted: ‘When the words “whig” and “tory” appeared, they were coined to identify not “parties” but polarities of belief.’9 My adoption of these terms throughout this chapter reflects this reality. It is as useful (or as flawed) a way as any of dealing with the major debates of the period. Throughout I try to recognise that such labels are not fixed, especially before 1681. I show the diversity of opinion that exists even amongst writers who claim to hold similar views. Debate during these years is characterised by intense public engagement. As Lake and Pincus write: ‘In later seventeenthcentury England the public discussion of political economy had emerged as a distinguishing characteristic of the public sphere.’10 The question of the succession is central to this discussion in drama. Three parliaments were held between 1678 and 1681. All debated the succession and argued that James’ right to succeed be overturned.11 None of the bills of exclusion passed. This was either because they were rejected by the Lords or because the king prorogued parliament, thus stopping the bills from becoming law. The king’s opponents were worried about a ‘popish’ successor supported by the French. Despite three recent wars against the Dutch, the last in support of the French, many believed that the old Dutch alliance should be rejoined to counter France. The crisis reached its peak between 1678 and 1680. It was in part provoked by the controversy stirred up by the Popish Plot. Broadly speaking, the Whigs supported the exclusion of James from the throne. The Tories defended York’s right to succeed his brother. Polemically, Whig texts tend to make more use of anti-Catholic and apocalyptic rhetoric, although, of course, Tory writing also draws from this well.12 The Whigs sponsored Popeburning processions in London.13 In the words of one of the texts written for a procession in 1680: ‘The main Motive of our exposing of this MockProcession of the Pope in all his Toyish Jollility, is to undeceive the Rational, or even the weaker sort of Papists and the Favourers thereof, and to fetch to them whom the ridiculeries of this Foppish Religion they 9 10

11 12

13

Scott, Algernon Sidney, p. 15. Peter Lake and Steven Pincus, ‘Rethinking the Public Sphere in Early Modern England’, in The Politics of the Public Sphere in Early Modern England, ed. Peter Lake and Steven Pincus (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007), p. 12. The following account draws on the texts listed in note 5. See Warren Johnston, Revelation Restored: The Apocalypse in Later Seventeenth-Century England (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2011). Joseph Monteyne, The Printed Image in Early Modern London: Urban Space, Visual Representation, and Social Exchange (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), pp. 155–214.

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would be at.’14 The Pope is often shown in league with the devil, and mock pre-execution speeches purporting to offer the ‘confession’ of the Whore of Babylon in the plot are widely printed. One of these opens with the Whore acknowledging enmity against Roman Catholicism as an English birthright: ‘May it please your Young Wits, to hearken to me one word or two before you make me a Sacrifice to your popular Fury . . . Alas! Good Boys, I am afraid you have suckt in your Enmity against Me, with your Mothers Milk!’15 This period also sees the largest concentration of anti-Catholic plays written during the seventeenth century. Examples include Nathaniel Lee’s The Massacre of Paris (1679) and Caesar Borgia (1679), William Bedloe’s thinly disguised allegory of the Popish Plot The Excommunicated Prince (1679), Thomas Shadwell’s The Lancashire Witches, and Tegue O’ Divelly the Irish Priest (1681), Thomas Jordan’s London in Luster (1679), and more demotic fare such as Elkanah Settle’s Pope Joan play The Female Prelate (1680), the anonymous Rome’s Follies (1681), and The Coronation of Queen Elizabeth, performed at Bartholomew Fair in 1680.16 There are also a number of Tory plays written, such as Aphra Behn’s The Young King (1679), The Feign’d Curtizans (1679), and The Roundheads (1681) and Thomas D’Urfey’s Sir Barnaby Whigg (1681), which deplore ‘this cursed plotting Age’ and pour scorn on the apocalyptic enthusiasms of the Popish Plot: ‘A pox upon the Whore of Babylon.’17 The country’s political divisions are thus fully animated on stage. Both factions lay claim to the language of ‘loyalty’. However, they have different conceptions of where loyalty resides in the body politic and how it is best expressed.18 Tories tend to defend the institution of monarchy above all else, stressing obedience and loyalty to the crown. While many Whigs are monarchists, the most radical end of this ideology invests the

14

15

16

17

18

The Solemn Mock-Procession: Or The Tryal & Execution of the Pope and his Ministers . . . (London: Nath. Ponder and others, 1680), p. 2. The Last Speech, And Confession of the Whore of Babylon . . . (London: Printed for K.B., 1678), p. 1. For an earlier example of Whore of Babylon burnings, see The Burning of the Whore of Babylon, As it was Acted, with great Applause, in the Poultry, London, on Wednesday Night, being the Fifth of November . . . (London: R.C., 1673). This is not a comprehensive list. For more on these plays and other produced at this period, see Owen, Restoration Theatre, pp. 110–156. On Pope burning processions, see John Miller, Popery and Politics in England 1660–1688 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), pp. 183–188. ‘Prologue’ to Aphra Behn, The Feign’d Curtizans, Or, A Night’s Intrigue (London: Jacob Tonson, 1679), sigs. A4r–A5v. The title page of Behn’s play advertises that it has been licensed by Sir Roger L’Estrange. On the difficulties of political terminology in this period, see Jacqueline Rose, Godly Kingship in Restoration England: The Politics of the Royal Supremacy, 1660–1688 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), pp. 10–24. On ‘loyalty’, see Knights, Politics and Opinion, pp. 114–115.

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people with a political liberty that is not only autonomous from the king, but which may actively oppose him should he assume arbitrary or tyrannous powers. By the time of the 1681 parliament, held not in London but in Oxford, the tide was turning against the Whigs. This year saw a Tory revival, reasserting the king’s authority and his brother’s rights. Nevertheless, these debates continue well after 1681.19 In the last part of this chapter, I focus on a play jointly written by Nathaniel Lee and John Dryden, The Duke of Guise (1682). I consider its engagement with current debates about liberty, Roman Catholicism, and arbitrary rule. Contrary to much criticism on the collaboration, I do not see this play as predominantly ‘Tory’ and so straightforwardly pro-monarchy.20 I argue instead for a rather a more politically ambiguous, fluid text. I also look at how the play attempts a careful, if ultimately futile, revision of the dominant political associations of anti-Catholic and apocalyptic rhetoric.

II In May 1679, parliament first mooted that James either might be barred from the throne or that severe limitations be put on him if and when he should succeed. This included a guarantee in law that the Protestant religion would not be overturned.21 Some of the Duke’s opponents doubted that limitations would work. In the words of one text: ‘I say it cannot be imagin’d but a Jesuited Papist will prove an excellent Defender of the Religion of the Church of England establish’d by Law; since all Members of our Church are every year solemnly condemn’d for Hereticks by the Pope.’22 Why would a popish king be obliged to uphold laws passed by his predecessor? As another tract put it: ‘a King that is an Idolater makes his people like himself’.23 A Roman Catholic monarch will ‘contaminate’ his people’s affections. Many Whigs dislike the implications of limitations for monarchy. The king would no longer be allowed to appoint bishops and councillors. Limitations are thus ‘republican’.24 This is an important point. All but the most radical republican Whig writers are still monarchists.

19

20

21 23 24

See Matthew Jenkinson, Culture and Politics at the Court of Charles II (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2010), pp. 181–211. See, for example, John Loftis, The Politics of Drama in Augustan England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963), pp. 17–18. 22 Knights, Politics and Opinion, pp. 29–54. True Account, p. 2. An Abstract of the Contents of Several Letters . . . (London, 1679), p. 2. Mark Goldie, ‘Danby, the Bishops and the Whigs’, in The Politics of Religion in Restoration England, ed. Tim Harris, Paul Seaward, and Mark Goldie (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990), p. 89.

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But they have a very different understanding from their Tory opponents of how monarchical authority is constituted.25 Two more parliaments followed, both of which debate the same issues. Writers imagine what England might look like under a Roman Catholic king: is it not too notoriously known, that the D. hates our Parliaments with an implacable hatred . . . therefore, if he Succeed, adieu to all Parliaments: must you not expect to be Ruled by Force; if you submit not to that, will he not call in Force enough from France, with whom he hath had such a strict League, and who would be glad of such an opportunity to Assist him; so that you must expect nothing but a French Slavery at best.26

Roman Catholicism is associated with the neo-Roman language of slavery. For the Whigs, the survival of the Protestant religion and state is at stake. The Tories, of course, reject the attempt to bar James from his birthright: ‘Are not these kind of Attempts, to disturb the Succession in the Right Line and Course, a sort of acting, that seems to justifie the Actions of the late eternally infamous Regicides. For God’s sake, is the Cry of Law and Justice, Liberty and Property, intended so particularly for the People, that the King must have no share?’27 When the king is denied his rights, the kind of anarchy seen during the Civil Wars will follow. The last thing needed is an upsurge of republican ideology. This debate is driven by fundamental disagreements about liberty, parliamentary right, religion, and monarchical authority. The emergence of the Popish Plot can be seen in this light.28 ‘Discovered’ by Titus Oates and his confederates in 1678, the Plot claimed to reveal a Jesuit conspiracy to murder the king, place James on the throne, and restore the Roman Catholic faith by force, supported by France and the Papacy.29 The Plot was taken seriously at first and popular revulsion was widespread. It is regularly mentioned in the Pope-burning processions 25

26 27 28

29

On the Whigs and republicanism, see Richard Ashcraft, Revolutionary Politics and Locke’s Two Treatises of Government (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), pp. 29–30, 212–214, 240–242, 249–250, 393–394, 411–412, and Scott, Algernon Sidney, pp. 110–113, 165–173, 184–197, and chapters 10 and 11. A Most Serious Expostulation . . . (London, 1680), p. 4. A Letter on the Subject of the Succession (London, 1679), pp. 3–4. See Jonathan Scott, ‘England’s Troubles: Exhuming the Popish Plot’, in The Politics of Religion, pp. 107–131. See J.P. Kenyon, The Popish Plot (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972); John Gibney, Ireland and the Popish Plot (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008); and Peter Hinds, ‘The Horrid Popish Plot’: Roger L’Estrange and the Circulation of Political Discourse in Late Seventeenth-Century London (Oxford: The British Academy/Oxford University Press, 2010). See also Anna Battigelli, ‘“Two Dramas of the Return of the Repressed”: Dryden and Lee’s Oedipus and the Popish Plot’, Huntington Library Quarterly, 75, 1, 2012, pp. 1–25.

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and popular pamphlets. As the refrain of one ballad puts it: ‘For God doth hate such bloody things / As Massacres, and killing Kings.’30 Even after the Plot was discredited, the idea lingers on in the cultural imagination and the suspicion that there was some truth in the allegations was hard to shake. The language used during the Plot offers a rerun of familiar tropes. In one text Oates claims that ‘a way was also made for the French King landing an Army in Ireland, and further that the Irish Catholicks were ready to rise in order’.31 Unsurprisingly too, many of the Plot narratives have an apocalyptic tone. Oates refers to ‘this war that I have vowed to make against the Whore and Dragon of Rome, and all her votaries, as long as I have a day to live’.32 The language of militant Protestant prophecy discussed in earlier chapters is resurrected. This example comes from a collection of prophetic materials entitled The Northern Star: The British Monarchy: Or The Northern the Fourth Universal Monarchy, written in 1680 by one of Oates’ more colourful collaborators, Israel Tonge. He notes: These Prophecies were Collected in season, when it was expected, that according to our Interest, we might have headed the Protestant Party with the then newly raised Forces, and therewith have covered the Roman Empire it self . . . They were first thrown together as it were in Jest, to oppose those Prophecies wherewith the French vainly did tickle and swell their Ambition with the vast expectations of an unjust, usurped, absolute Tyranny over the free People of Europe33

The threat of a new imperial Roman force is discussed in a tone that oscillates between anxiety and satire. At the end of this idiosyncratic text the king and government are offered direct political advice: this is not the first time that Flanders hath been offered to the Protection of the English, nor will it need to fulfil this Prophecie that the English should unjustly detain as Enemies, what they now protect from the French as Friends. If they can hold the United Provinces in security under the Prince of Orange so nearly Allied to the British Crown, it is enough, and that I think cannot be denied to be fairly promised in these Predictions.34

30

31 32

33

34

The Papists Lamentation . . . (London, 1680), p. 1. This ballad was to be sung to the tune of ‘A Fig for France’, a popular tune in anti-French ballads of the period. For a Pope-burning procession that refers to the Plot, see The Solemn Mock Procession, p. 3. Titus Oates, The Discovery of the Popish Plot . . . (London, 1679), p. 5. Titus Oates, The Popes Ware-house, or The Merchandise of the Whore of Rome (London: Thomas Parkhurst, Dorman Newman, Thomas Cockerill and Thomas Simmons, 1679), sig. A2v. Israel Tonge, The Northern Star: The British Monarchy: Or The Northern the Fourth Universal Monarchy . . . (London: JD, 1680), sig. C2v. Ibid., p. 25.

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The idea of a glorious, imperial Elizabethan past when the state was engaged with the Protestant international underscores this prophecy. We see similar claims made in the Pope-burning processions. One refers to ‘that Glorious Princess Queen Elizabeth’ who ‘dispelled those thicke Clouds of Egyptian Popish Darkness, which had so long over-spread these Kingdoms’.35 As in 1588, 1605, and 1641, the state once more faces an eschatological conflict.36 The Popish Plot is a symptom of broader problems that the Restoration settlement failed to address. While hysteria and bigotry play their part in the Plot, it is one of what Scott calls the three major ‘crises’ of popery and arbitrary government (1637–1642, 1678–1683, and 1687–169) faced by the Stuarts during the seventeenth century.37 In each case, it appeared that a popish or crypto-popish king was trying to subvert Church and state by returning it to Rome. Whether or not this was true was less important than the possibility that it could be true. During the seventeenth century, absolute assurance rarely drives a crisis as well as possible contingents. In Astrea Redux (1660), Dryden writes of the restored Charles in Virgilian terms. He is a new Augustus, an imperial world monarch, no less (296–323).38 Charles promised religious toleration in the Declaration of Breda and Declaration of Indulgence.39 In practice, religious harmony was hard to find. It seemed to be Protestant dissenters, rather than Roman Catholics, who were at the sharp edge of a persecutory state denying them the freedom of conscience that should properly belong to all subjects.40 The king’s efforts to extend toleration to his Roman Catholic subjects were also unpopular. Twenty years after Astraea Redux, many viewed the king’s religious policy with scepticism and hostility. 35 36

37 38

39

40

An Account of the Burning the Pope at Temple-Bar in London, November 17. 1679 (London, 1679), p. 1. On Whig ideology and eschatology, see Mark Goldie, ‘Priestcraft and the Birth of Whiggism’, in Political Discourse in Early Modern Britain, ed. Nicholas Phillipson and Quentin Skinner (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), pp. 209–231. Scott, Algernon Sidney, p. 3. John Dryden, Astraea Redux, in The Poems of John Dryden, ed. John Sargeaunt (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1910). On Charles II’s use of imperial imagery, see Kevin Sharpe, Rebranding Rule: The Restoration and Revolution Monarchy 1660–1714 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2013), pp. 9–193. See also Thomas James Dandelet, The Renaissance of Empire in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), pp. 274–281. Charles II’s crown is still styled as imperial and is discussed in these terms. During the succession crisis, debate focuses on absolute, arbitrary, and limited conceptions of monarchy – see Tim Harris, Restoration: Charles II and His Kingdoms (London: Penguin, 2005), pp. 420–421. On critiques of imperial monarchy in this period, see John Robertson, ‘“Universal Monarchy and the Liberties of Europe”: David Hume’s Critique of an English Whig Doctrine’, in Political Discourse in Early Modern Britain, pp. 349–373. Knights, Politics and Opinion, pp. 12–13, 17–25.

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Views differed on what this ‘Jesuit conspiracy’ meant. As one pamphlet of 1679 argued, during the Civil Wars and the Restoration the Jesuits tried to achieve [a] reconciliation between the Episcopal Party and the moderate NonConformists, endeavoured by the King’s Majesty, and desired by the whole Nation . . . they represented Conformity as the most intolerable Burthen . . . and our Religion of the Church of England the nearest in affinity to Popery, full of superstition, if not of Idolatry . . . they would exclaim against the wickedness and dangers of Conventicles and Non-Conformity. They represented all the Reformed Churches beyond the Seas, as incouragers of our dissentions by their Examples, and Government without Bishops: Calvin and all his Calvinists were Traitors, Schismaticks, Hereticks, Enemies of the Publick Peace, promoters of Rebellion.41

The state can conform either to a form of English popery or to rebellious Calvinism. Whigs and those who supported some tolerance for nonconformists had to counter such claims. A pamphlet on toleration written by the Tory polemicist and licenser of the press Sir Roger L’Estrange argues that Presbyterians can never be accommodated: ‘a Jesuits Cloak sits exceedingly well upon the Shoulders of a Prebyterian’.42 The reason is as follows: The Person of the Magistrate ought to be Subject to the Kirk, Spiritually, and in Ecclesiastical Government: Submitting himself to the Discipline of the Kirk, if he Transgress in Matters of Conscience, and Religion. Beza, Buchanan (and in truth, the whole Brotherhood) are for the Excommunication of Princes. So that there’s Prebyterial Excommunication you see, as well as Papal. And in Case of Superstition, and Idolatry, the Presbyter can Depose too, as well as the Pope43

The consequences of this system are chilling indeed: ‘As to the Jesuits Doctrine of King Killing; We are able not only to Match, but to Out-doe it.’44 These examples are part of broader Restoration debates about conformity and toleration. If the Whigs want to argue for the liberties of subjects, then they have to counter the charge that they are ‘Traitors, Schismaticks, Hereticks, Enemies of the Publick Peace, promoters of Rebellion’.

41 42

43

44

A Seasonable Advice to All True Protestants . . . (London: T. Fox, 1679), p. 7. For more on L’Estrange, see Roger L’Estrange and the Making of Restoration Culture, ed. Anne Duncan-Page and Beth Lynch (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), and Hinds, ‘The Horrid Popish Plot’. Sir Roger L’Estrange, Toleration Discuss’d in Two Dialogues . . . (London: EC and AC for Henry Brome, 1679), p. 309. Ibid., p. 310.

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The difficulty is to formulate what Jacqueline Rose calls ‘that rarest of early modern languages, a rhetoric of loyal opposition’.45 We see this problem in one of the most controversial tracts of the 1670s, Andrew Marvell’s An Account of the General Growth of Popery and Arbitrary Government in England (1677). It is a text that, in many respects, sets the parameters of religious and political debate in England for the next thirty years. Marvell begins in uncompromising style: There has now for diverse Years, a design been carried on, to change the Lawfull Government of England into an Absolute Tyranny, and to convert the established Protestant Religion into down-right Popery: than both which, nothing can be more destructive or contrary to the Interest and Happinesse, to the Constitution and Being of the King and Kingdom.46

This is an attack on popery and on Charles. If there is a conspiracy, then the king must be complicit in it. Marvell is almost incredulous when he speaks about Roman Catholicism: ‘Popery is such a thing as cannot, but for want of a word to express it, be called a Religion: nor is it to be mentioned with that civility which is otherwise decent to be used, in speaking of the differences of humane opinion about Divine Matters.’47 Roman Catholicism is at best a kind of empty trickery and at worst a religious cover for reason of state and political sedition.48 Marvell’s incredulity stems from his belief that the English monarchy, legislature, and people are hard-wired so that the admission of popery should be virtually impossible. England’s polis is different from its European neighbours: For if we first consider the State, the Kings of England Rule not upon the same terms with those of our neighbour Nations, who, having by force or by addresse usurped that due share which their People had in the Government, are now for some Ages in possession of an Arbitrary Power (which yet no Prescription can make Legall) and exercise it over their persons and estates in a most Tyrannical manner. But here the Subjects retain their 45 46

47 48

Rose, Godly Kingship, p. 17. Andrew Marvell, An Account of the General Growth of Popery and Arbitrary Government in England . . . (Amsterdam, 1677), p. 3. Ibid., p. 5. This kind of logic, familiar from Protestant commentaries on Revelation and years of anti-Catholic polemic, is rejoined during the Popish Plot. See the title of one of Titus Oates’ tracts printed in 1679: The Popes Ware-house, or The Merchandise of the Whore of Rome. As Tuck notes, Hobbes and Locke do not jettison the language of reason of state altogether, but they prefer ‘the language of natural law and natural rights’ (xiv) where self-preservation, contract, and the legal basis of property rights are emphasised – Richard Tuck, Philosophy and Government 1572–1651 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 279–345.

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proportion in the Legislature; the very meanest Commoner of England is represented in Parliament, and is a party to these Laws by which the Prince is sworn to Govern himself and his people. No Mony is to be levied but by the common consent. No man is for Life, Limb, Goods, or Liberty at the Soveraigns discretion: but we have the same Right (modestly understood) in our Propriety that the Prince hath in his Regality.49

This passage could have been written during the late 1630s or 1640s. This is deliberate. The claim that ‘41 is come again’ resounds through the polemical literature of the period, and, like Milton, Marvell sees imperial monarchical rule as deeply suspect.50 The monarch’s power is tempered by parliament because it derives from that institution. Political power is not about the expression of the sovereign’s will but rather the protection of the people’s liberties: ‘His very Prerogative is no more then what the Law has determined.’51 In this respect, people and prince are equal in their ‘Propriety’. This need not diminish sovereign authority: ‘the Kings of England are in nothing inferiour to other Princes, save in being more abridged from injuring their own subjects’.52 So long as the king does not act contrary to liberty, then the contract between him and his people will be strong.53 The antithesis of Marvell’s tempered king, protecting the liberty of his subjects is, of course, the Pope.54 We are told that ‘his Power is Absolute, and his Decrees Infallible’, and that his political threat to English sovereignty persists: ‘he is still Monarch of this World . . . he can dispose of Kingdoms and Empires as he pleases’.55 This is imperial monarchy writ large. Indeed, the Pope treats political agreements with contempt. He ‘annuls Contracts betwixt man and man, dissolves Oaths between Princes, or betwixt them and their People, and gives allowances in cases which God and nature prohibits’.56 Marvell’s interest in contracts is significant. In one passage he argues that popery has ‘little hopes to seduce’ the English because: the Protestant Religion being so interwoven as it is with their Secular Interest. For the Lands that were formally given to superstitious uses, 49 51 53

54

55

50 Marvell, An Account, pp. 3–4. Ibid., p. 63; p. 130. Scott, Algernon Sidney, pp. 3–25. 52 Marvell, An Account, p. 4. Ibid., p. 5. For a complimentary discussion of Marvell’s tract, see Arthur Marotti, Religious Ideology and Cultural Fantasy: Catholic and Anti-Catholic Discourses in Early Modern England (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005), pp. 160–169. This antithesis is, of course, a central feature of early modern anti-Catholicism. See Bernard McGinn, Anti-Christ: Two Thousand Years of the Human Fascination with Evil (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), pp. 181–187, 201–208. 56 Marvel, An Account, p. 8. Ibid., p. 8.

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Apocalypse and Anti-Catholicism in Seventeenth-Century having first been applyed to the Publick Revenue, and afterwards by severall Alienations and Contracts distributed into private possession, the alteration of Religion would necessarily introduce a change of Property.57

These kinds of arguments are also made in the 1640s. But by the late 1670s the idea that legal property rights guarantee reformed religious liberty becomes a key plank of Whig thinking. As John Locke explains in his Second Treatise of Government (c. 1679–1683): The Reason why Men enter into Society, is the preservation of their Property; and the end why they chuse and authorize a Legislative is, that there may be Laws made, and Rules set as Guards and Fences to the Properties of all the Members of the Society, to limit the Power, and moderate the Dominion of every Part and Member of the Society.58

The social contract is a means of self-preservation expressed in the legal protection of property.59 The expropriation of lands during the Reformation that were formerly owned by the Roman Catholic Church is recast as the contractual inheritance of all English subjects. The contract guarantees property rights against the threat of Roman Catholic impropriation. One contemporary pamphlet writer puts it in more demotic terms: ‘any one knows, if Popery gets once the upper hand, all the lands taken from the Church in H. 8. time will be restored again’.60 Both examples underpin a Whig conception of natural law. As Richard Ashcraft explains: ‘(1) the Law of Nature was given by God to mankind in order to preserve the common good; (2) natural law requires the keeping of agreements and contracts; and, (3) the community and (secondarily) individuals have a right to preserve themselves against the unauthorized use of force’.61 Even if the third point is only really implied in Marvell’s tract, it is developed by later Whig writers. The emphasis on liberty, property, and contracts is seen in those works written during the late 1670s and ’80s when the threat of popery and arbitrary government is keenly felt. Some of these discussions are found in important formal works of political theory, such as Locke’s Two Treatises of Government 57 58

59

60

61

Ibid., p. 13. John Locke, The Second Treatise of Government, in Two Treatises of Government, ed. Peter Laslett (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 412. For more on the social contract in Whig ideology, see Ashcraft, Revolutionary Politics, pp. 560–563, 570–571. A Coffee-House Dialogue (London, 1679), p. 2. The development of contractarian ideas in the later seventeenth century can also be understood in relation to the Civil Wars when land passed from republican to royalist, and the Restoration effort to restore lands to their pre-Republic owners. Ashcraft, Revolutionary Politics, p. 190.

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(c. 1678–1683), Henry Neville’s Plato Redivivus (1680), and Algernon Sidney’s Discourses Concerning Government (1681–1683). As Ashcraft has comprehensively shown, they are also seen in the popular pamphlet literature of the crisis. These texts offer a fascinating combination of philosophical theory and polemical assertion. An anti-Yorkist tract of 1679 bases its argument for exclusion on a very Lockean account of how civic society is established. Society is Ordained by God for the common good of mankind . . . Ordained and Diversified by the particular positive Laws of every Country, and are not Establish’d either by Law Natural or Divine, but left by God unto every Nation and Country, to pitch upon what Form of Government they shall think most proper to promote the common good of the whole.62

A similar point is made in a pamphlet from the same year called The Case of Succession to the Crown of England Stated. Mankind exists in the ‘Law of Nature’, a state where there are ‘no publick Laws to distinguish and defend properties’. Then self-interest takes over: man ‘can never attain unto his desires, so long as Men lives without Laws, which would restrain the strongest from invading the weaker. Therefore they enter into a Confederate State of Society’.63 Laws must tend towards the general public good. The writer also shows his indebtedness to Thomas Hobbes: ‘When passion stireth up Contention, the stronger compelling the weaker to obedience, and thus you see the Nature of Civil Government appear, and the Laws of Man to be established.’64 Having set up this framework, the author concludes: ‘Monarchy is far from being de Jure Divino, or by the Law of Nature, but ariseth by consent; so that the succession is transferable, when the publick safety requires it.’65 To make an attack on a iure divino concept of monarchy and the major arguments for succession in eight pages is quite an achievement. But The Case of Succession manages to do so, translating abstract philosophical theory for a popular pamphlet readership. As we have seen throughout this book, terms such as ‘Jesuit’, ‘Papist’, and ‘Popery’ are often used as synonyms for an imperial Roman Catholic power bloc on the European continent. Marvell’s tract is no exception. In the second half of the seventeenth century, the menace in English eyes is no longer Spain but France.66 Louis XIV and his government pursued an expansionist foreign policy, especially towards the Dutch. The first and second Anglo-Dutch wars, fought between 1652–1654 and 1665–1667, are 62 63 65

A Word without Doors Concerning the Bill for Succession (London, 1679), p. 1. 64 The Case of Succession to the Crown of England Stated . . . (London, 1679), p. 6. Ibid., p. 7. 66 Ibid., p. 8. What follows draws on Knights, Politics and Opinion, pp. 17–22, 57–60.

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an attempt by the English to counter Dutch colonial expansion. Neither conflict could be counted a complete success, especially the second, which, as Marvell notes, bankrupted the king.67 By the time of the third AngloDutch war (1672–1674), Charles was obliged by the terms of a secret treaty to assist Louis.68 Damaged by French trade tariffs on English exports, the king’s pro-French policy was unpopular with many merchants and MPs.69 Despite the first two wars, the English still saw the Dutch as natural allies. By the late 1670s, Louis wanted to prevent England from interfering in his wars with the Low Countries. The Dutch were led by William of Orange, the new Stadtholder of the republic and, from 1677, Charles’ son-in-law. Many Whigs could not understand why the king refused to counter French aggression and worried that it might be a prelude to an invasion of England. Louis becomes a popular target in the pamphlet literature. One text argues that he is ‘the fittest instrument to carry on the Popish Designs in Europe: and in England, and able to suppress the Protestant Religion every where. This was the French aim in the last Dutch War.’70 Popish agents in the service of France are seen at work throughout the state. The fact that parliament made it illegal ‘to say that the King is a Papist or an Introducer of Popery’ is, for Marvell, the most concerning fact of all. This is as close as he gets to directly accusing Charles II of actively subverting state and Church.71 He suggests that ‘there are those men among us, who have undertaken to make it their business, under so Legal and perfect a Government, to introduce a French slavery, and instead of so pure a Religion, to establish the Roman Idolatry’.72 We have encountered this rhetoric of slavery before in the neo-Roman language of republican writers such as Milton.73 It also features in Whig writing of this period.74 This is important because the ‘essence of what it means to be a slave, and hence to lack personal liberty, is thus to be in potestate, within the power of someone else’.75 To lack liberty is to become someone else’s property. This understanding of slavery informs criticism of those rulers who try to coerce the state.76 For Whig writers, the state 67 69 71 73

74 75 76

68 Marvell, An Account, pp. 30–31. See Scott, Algernon Sidney, pp. 30–35. 70 See Knights, Politics and Opinion, pp. 20–25. A Seasonable Advice, p. 10. 72 Marvell, An Account, p. 15. Ibid., p. 14. See the discussion of slavery and liberty in chapter 3 of A Defence of the People of England, in John Milton, Political Writings, ed. Martin Dzelzainis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 105–128. See The Case of Succession, p. 3. Quentin Skinner, Liberty before Liberalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 41. Ibid., pp. 50–57.

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was formed to guarantee men’s property and, by extension, their liberty. It is represented by the collective body of parliament. To agree to a popish king is to voluntarily expropriate power from the court of Westminster to the court of Rome. England and her subjects would become the ‘property’ of Rome. The political distinction between slavery, defined as popish and French, and liberty, defined as English and Protestant, can be maintained only by excluding the Roman Catholic successor. Charles can only be an imperial monarch if he is first a reformed monarch: any derogation of religion opens the door to the Roman imperium. The crisis moved into its most serious phase in December 1678. The former English ambassador to France, Ralph Montagu, revealed in parliament that opponents of exclusion such as Danby, the Lord Treasurer, were in receipt of French pensions. Most shockingly, he showed that the king was in the pay of France.77 Danby was cited for impeachment, and the Earl of Shaftesbury reemerged as a major political force.78 Defences of the king’s policy assert his prerogative rights. They claim that his secret concord with Louis is ‘the only means to Save Holland, and the Interest of the Prince of Orange there’.79 Somewhat ironically, though not widely known at the time, Montagu was also acting in French interests. It has been suggested that his ‘designs had been encouraged by Barrillon, the French ambassador, in order to secure the disbandment of Charles’ army, and in order to create enough unrest in England to diminish England’s capacity to act in Europe’.80 This army was formed a few years earlier when Charles was considering defending the Dutch from the French. The fact that the army had not been disbanded was taken as evidence that the king, or his successor, would use the army to impose Roman Catholic religion on the state. This fear was raised by Marvell (‘the dark hovering of that Army’) and was later repeated by Oates and other pamphleteers.81 Indeed, the account of the Duke of York that I began the chapter with is a collective riposte to the notion of a standing army.82 Even after the entertainment concludes, the crowd assert their authority. This is the description of the Duke’s return:

77 78 79

80 81 82

Knights, Politics and Opinion, pp. 19, 27–28. See Haley, The First Earl, pp. 453–551. See too Goldie, ‘Danby, the Bishops and the Whigs’. Thomas Osborne, An Explanation of the Lord Treasurer’s Letter to Mr. Montagu . . . (London, 1679), p. 3. Knights, Politics and Opinion, p. 27. Marvell, An Account, p. 46. See Titus Oates, The Discovery, p. 27. See Harris, London Crowds, pp. 1–35.

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Apocalypse and Anti-Catholicism in Seventeenth-Century in passing through the many hundreds of Beholders, a Cry arose, No Pope, no Pope; No Papist, no papist; this attended him up into Cheapside; as in the Morning at his coming within the Temple-barre, the People began to Hiss, and utter their distaste. You may see by this how little they gain’d by their project of a publick Entertainment . . . another happy demonstration of the constant Affection of the Citizens to their Religion and Government, and Aversation to Popery.83

So long as ‘the Citizens’ can mobilise in defence of ‘their Religion and Government’, then Popery might be opposed. In 1679 Charles Blount, a free-thinking member of the Whig Green Ribbon Club and the first English translator of Baruch Spinoza, wrote a tract called An Appeal from the Gentry to the City.84 The text was published pseudonymously under the name Junius Brutus by the radical Whig publisher Richard Baldwin.85 The name of the founder of the Roman republic was also taken as the pseudonym of the writer of the Huguenot resistance tract Vindiciae contra tyrannos, last printed in England in 1648. In 1680, Nathaniel Lee wrote a politically controversial play called Junius Brutus that daringly combines anti-Catholic and republican ideology. By laying claim to this appellation, Blount proclaims the radical heritage of his text. Whig writers see the crisis as part of a broader European conflict, one that ‘linked the French wars of religion with the English: and the political language of the Reformation and that of the Counter-Reformation’.86 This explains the renewed interest in the political works of Beza and Buchanan, and Huguenot writers such as Hotman and Mornay. Sixteenth-century theories of resistance find a ready audience in England during the late 1670s and ’80s. Some Frenchmen were, it seems, worth listening to. Blount makes an audacious attack on the king. Writing of his French exile during the republic, he says, ‘I cannot but ascribe great part of our present Calamities, to his Highnesses Education in that Arbitrary and Popish Government.’87 Another pamphlet published in 1680 claims that the king’s weakness for all things French allows his court and his person to be inveigled by Jesuits: ‘These are our Egyptian Frogs which crawl, not 83 84

85

86 87

True Account, p. 2. For more on Blount, see Justin Champion, The Pillars of Priestcraft Shaken: The Church of England and Its Enemies 1660–1730 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 133–166, and Dario Pfanner, ‘Charles Blount, (1654–1693)’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography Online, http://www.oxforddnb.com.queens.ezp1.qub.ac.uk/view/article/2684?docPos=3. The publisher of this tract, Benjamin Harris, specialised in radical Whig material; he was prosecuted and pilloried for publishing this pamphlet. See Harris, London Crowds, p. 130. Scott, Algernon Sidney, p. 16. Charles Blount, An Appeal from the Country to the City . . . (London, 1679), p. 10.

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onely into private Houses, but into the Palaces of Nobles and Princes, nay, dare to croak in the Bed-Chambers, nay, in the Beds of Kings.’88 Charles’ subjects were willing to tolerate his Francophile proclivities in art, literature, music, and, to a degree, mistresses. However, when it came to liberties, there were limits. Blount is concerned with the ability of parliament to achieve political change: ‘We in the Country have done our parts, in choosing for the generality good Members to serve in Parliament; but if (as our two last Parliaments were) they must be dissolv’d or prorogu’d whenever they come to redress the Grievances of the Subject, we may be pitied, but not blam’d.’89 Although the right to prorogue was a feature of Charles’ prerogative, it was increasingly seen as an arbitrary power that could lead to tyranny.90 Indeed, as Blount says with a Marvellian flourish: ‘if any men (who have Estates in Abby-Lands) desire to beg their Bread, and relinquish their Habitations and Fortunes to some old greasie bald-pated Abbot, Monk, or Friar, then let them Vote for a Popish Successor and Popery’.91 The threat of a French invasion is mentioned throughout. Blount conjures up lurid accounts of massacres, including ‘of the poor Protestants at Paris’, as a way of supporting exclusion. He also asks what else might happen should James accede: ‘for when he (as all other Popish Kings do) governs by an Army, what will all your Laws signifie? You will not then have Parliaments to appeal to; He and his Council will levy his arbitrary Taxes, and his Army shall gather them for him.’92 Such an outcome is, for Blount, little more than slavery. The urban context of this text is central to its rhetoric. It is addressed to the London bourgeoisie whose property, it is claimed, is under threat. Given this danger, resistance is the only option left. Blount imagines what will follow the king’s murder by the papists: ‘and the first hour wherein you hear of the King’s untimely and, let no other noise be heard among you but Arm, Arm, to revenge your Sovereign’s Death’. He warns that Roman Catholics will try to burn London to the ground ‘because it is the only united Force able to withstand Arbitrary Government’.93 This shows how seriously some Whigs took the power of the people’s resistance. 88

89 90

91

A Seasonable Warning to Protestants; From the Cruelty and Tragedy of the Parisian Massacre . . . (London: Benjamin Alsop, 1680), p. 38. Blount, An Appeal, p. 3. Israel Tonge claims that one of Charles’ ‘illegal Prorogations’ saved his life in 1675 as it prevented Jesuit assassins from being exposed by parliament. Israel Tonge, Dr Tonge’s Relation of the General Massacre, Intended and Plotted by the Papists . . . (London, 1679), p. 4. 92 93 Blount, An Appeal, p. 29. Ibid., pp. 2–3; see also 4–5. Ibid., p. 24.

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The intellectual milieu of Locke’s Two Treatises of Government is not far away here.94 As he famously argues in the second of those tracts: whenever the Legislators endeavour to take away, and destroy the Property of the People, or to reduce them to Slavery under Arbitrary Power, they put themselves into a state of War with the People, who are thereupon absolved from any farther Obedience, and are left to the common Refuge, which God hath provided for all Men, against Force and Violence.95

Like Locke, Blount imagines what might happen in a civic ‘state of War’. Yet he does not go quite as far as Locke. He argues that the people need a leader to coordinate their resistance to French imperial ambitions, and he has a specific candidate in mind: ‘some eminent and interessed person, whom you may trust to Lead you up against a French and Popish Army. . . the Duke of Monmouth, as well for quality, courage and conduct, as for that his Life and Fortune depends upon the same bottom with yours: he will stand by you, therefore ought you to stand by him’.96 Illegitimate son of Charles II, Monmouth had two main advantages over James: he was popular and he was a Protestant. Some Whigs saw him as a plausible successor to the king.97 More ominously, if he were to lead a rebellion against James, then this could mean a new civil war. As Blount’s endorsement makes clear, this was not beyond the realms of possibility.98 Blount’s tract was quickly opposed in a pamphlet written by the Tory propagandist Sir Roger L’Estrange. He adopts well-known Whiggish concerns and tropes, turning them against his opponent. He says of the city that ‘it is as much their Interest as their Duty . . . to support the Government. For by a War they must of necessity suffer doubly: And not only in the loss or abatement of their Trade, but in the deep proportion of their Taxes toward the publique Charge.’99 The suggestion that his opponents’ economic self-interest will be damaged by the very policies they claim 94 96 97

98

99

95 See Ashcraft, Revolutionary Politics, pp. 181–227. Locke, The Second Treatise, p. 412. Blount, An Appeal, p. 25. This ‘solution’ would require the married king legitimising the union with Monmouth’s mother. A passage in the first part of Dryden’s Absalom and Achitophel depicts Monmouth – with perhaps not complete irony – as a messianic figure (lines 230–302). See Knights, Politics and Opinion, pp. 3–4, 101–102, 204–206, 239–241, 246–247. For proMonmouth texts, see A Congratulatory Poem . . . (London: Nat. Thompson, 1679); Englands Darling, or Great Brittains Joy and Hope on That Noble Prince James Duke of Monmouth (London: J. Wright, J. Clark, W. Thackery and T. Passenger, c. 1679–82); and A New Ballad to the praise of James D. of Monmouth . . . (London: J. Grantham, 1682). Sir Roger L’Estrange, An Answer to the Appeal from the Country to the City (London: MC for Henry Brome, 1679), p. 2.

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to support is a key feature of L’Estrange’s polemical method.100 Other objections are more predictable. The author of the Appeal is trying to ‘inflame the Multitude’; the Popish Plot is believed only because ‘it squares with the Principles and Interests of the Party’; and the king is not answerable to mere subjects on every decision he makes: ‘as if his Majesty were bound to give an Account to every Libeller, why he Prorogues or Dissolves his Parliament (which is a Priviledge inseparable from the Supreme Power)’.101 Both charges could easily have been drawn from that Bible of late seventeenth-century Toryism, Robert Filmer’s Patriarcha (reprinted in 1680). Indeed, it is notable that L’Estrange accuses his opponent of materialism. Blount ‘runs us back again into Mr. Hobbs Original State of War’.102 For all their talk of contracts, the attack in Whig ideology on sovereignty is little more than a return to a Hobbesian state of nature.103 Locke, who was influenced by Hobbes, argues that anarchy need not follow in such a case since the original social contract stems from the agreement of individuals to establish a legislature that will ‘provide for their safety and security’, especially of property.104 Self-interest will triumph anarchy. The question of whether or not the passions of the rebellious people can be so rationally oriented is central to this debate. L’Estrange reserves his sharpest words for Blount’s call to resistance. As he says: Here is First, an Exhortation to a Rebellion. For the Prince here in question, against whom the sword is to be drawn, can be no other, upon his supposition, than actually the King. And let him take his choice now whether it shall be intended of his present Majesty, or of his Successour . . . Secondly, it is not only a simple Rebellion, but (to the scandal of the Reformation, and particularly of the Church of England) a Rebellion founded upon the Doctrine of the Protestant Religion: Thirdly, It is no other than (as he himself has worded it) the Hellish Tenet of Murthering Kings, in a disguise: only a Jesuitical Principle in Masquerade. It is, Fourthly, a Condemnation of the practices and submissions of the Primitive Christians, and the whole story of our Protestant Martyrology.105 100

101 102

103

104

On L’Estrange’s use of satire and irony, see Hinds, ‘The Horrid Popish Plot’, pp. 65–66, 193–194, 269–270. L’Estrange, An Answer, pp. 9, 33. Ibid., p. 31. On Hobbes’ reception in the Restoration, see Rose, Godly Kingship, pp. 203–228, and Jon Parkin, ‘The Reception of Hobbes’s Leviathan’, in The Cambridge Companion to Hobbes, ed. Patricia Springborg (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 441–459. It is also the anarchy described in the state of war. For the state of war and its relationship to the state of nature, see Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. Richard Tuck (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 88–91, 140. 105 Locke, The Second Treatise, pp. 412–413. L’Estrange, An Answer, p. 37.

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Like other Tory writers, L’Estrange associates the doctrine of king killing with the Jesuits.106 He prefers to forget that the Roman Catholic and Protestant traditions both have well-developed doctrines of king killing. This is a recurring weak point in Tory rebuttals of Whig resistance. L’Estrange understands the radical implications of Blount’s invocation of Vindiciae contra tyrannos.107 Early Protestant resistance theorists such as Goodman, Ponet, and Knox argue that, while the magistrate and nobility might resist on behalf of the populace, it was permissible in certain cases for the people to overthrow a wicked ruler. Yet the writings of later Huguenot theorists such as Hotman and Mornay (probable author of the Vindiciae) retreat from the radical idea that the people might resist. They prefer a ‘limited, constitutional and essentially defensive . . . call to arms’ that would protect monarchy.108 After the St Bartholomew’s Day massacre of 1572, Huguenots largely gave up trying to square popular resistance with a defence of monarchy. Blount articulates his theory of resistance according to this Huguenot model. He does not go as far as Locke in saying that ‘the People’ have the ultimate authority when faced with a tyrant to ‘resume their original Liberty.’109 This is not an argument against the institution of monarchy per se. Blount’s emphasis on law and the right of parliament to check monarchy, his invocation of the massacre and the French wars of religion, and his use of ‘Junius Brutus’ give a constitutionalist, ‘Huguenot’ cast to his tract.110 Nathaniel Lee’s 1679 play The Massacre of Paris takes a similar position. Banned at the instigation of Barrillon, the French ambassador, the play was not acted until 1689. As we will see below, parts of it are reused in Dryden and Lee’s collaborative play The Duke of Guise.111 Lee is careful never to valorise ‘the people’ as the locus of Protestant resistance. This is in stark contrast to the behaviour of the popish mob responsible for the massacre. Instead, he associates resistance with the figure of Admiral Coligny, who, as readers of Christopher Marlowe’s The Massacre at Paris (c. 1593) would know, is something of a hero in early modern Protestant polemics on the See, for example, The King-Killing Doctrine of the Jesuits . . . (London: W. Crooke and T. Dring, 1679): ‘what is more contrary to the Christian Faith, than to leave to the power of the People to judge of the good or evil Government of their Prince?’ (p. 15). 107 L’Estrange accuses Blount of quoting directly from the Vindiciae. 108 See Quentin Skinner, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, vol. 2: The Age of Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), p. 306. See more generally pp. 302–348. 109 Locke, The Second Treatise, p. 412. 110 This posture of ‘Huguenot’ opposition is also apt in view of Blount’s characterisation of Charles as a Frenchified monarch. 111 Owen, Restoration Theatre, pp. 243–249. 106

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French wars of religion.112 Coligny is sceptical of the court throughout the play and says he has fought to protect ‘Liberty of Conscience and Religion’.113 He is unapologetic about his martial record. He says that it was he ‘who sow’d / Those glowing grains which shot up to a War, / Who blew the coals of Calvin’s kindled Doctrine’ when fighting against the Roman Catholics during the civil wars.114 For this, however, he is dragged in effigy ‘through the streets of Paris’ and deprived of all his goods.115 Despite this treatment, Coligny states that he took up arms ‘not for a private grudge’ but to oppose ‘that Religion that would rend the World; / That sticks not at the slaughter of whole States, / Blowing up Senates, nor at murdering Kings.’116 Coligny is a good Protestant Whig hero who opposes popish imperial tyranny to the detriment of his property and liberty. Crucially, he is also an aristocratic figure, one who leads rather than incites the people. Later on, the Duke of Guise accuses Coligny of having murdered his father at the instigation of Beza and calls on the king to punish ‘this Sect of Villains’. The Admiral responds by saying that ‘’tis not the Protestant way / To stab, and beat the brains out in the dark’, suggesting his opponent ‘go to the Vatican’ to seek out ‘Politick Discourses’ that justify such killing. Guise responds in fury, but Coligny reminds him what it means to rely on monarchical justice for vengeance: If that a great man’s breath can puff away On every Pet the Lives of Free-born People; What need that awful General Convocation, Th’ Assembly of the States? nay, let me urge, If thus you threat the Venerable Beza, What may the rest expect?117

By placing the discussion of resistance within a constitutionalist framework, Coligny contrasts his behaviour with his Roman Catholic opponents. He articulates a loyal Whig defence of resistance that protects the legal rights of ‘our People’.118 In the final act, Coligny’s death is framed as a kind of martyrdom, and he pointedly calls on God to ‘revenge thy people’s Blood’.119 If the play is an assertion of ‘militant’ Protestantism, as Susan Owen suggests, then it is surely a tempered, constitutionalist, and godly kind of militancy.120 112 113 114 117

118

Coligny was in fact a direct ancestor of William of Orange. Nathaniel Lee, The Massacre of Paris (London: R. Bentley and M. Magnes, 1690), p. 12. 115 116 Ibid., p. 10. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., p. 36. In Dryden and Lee’s later collaboration The Duke of Guise, Guise is given Coligny’s words. 119 120 Ibid., p. 37. Ibid., p. 50. Owen, Restoration Theatre, p. 249.

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The succession crisis provoked complex debates about arbitrary rule, popery, France, liberty, and the resistance of the people. The fear that the Stuart family were abusing their imperial authority, leading an unwilling Protestant state back towards Rome against the will of parliament, again dominates public debate. Scott’s contention that what seventeenthcentury English people feared was not so much popery as the ‘growth of popery’ is important here.121 Even if they disagree on how far it had advanced, both Whig and Tory are united in their desire to prevent popery gaining a further foothold in England. This is a period of ideological fluidity because each ‘side’ accuses the other of adopting views that would open the door to Rome. ‘Liberty’ for the Whig is a refusal of ‘obedience’ for the Tory, and vice versa. Yet both see their ideology as the best way of countering Roman Catholicism. Both lay claim to the rhetoric of loyalty and law. Where these ‘sides’ do part company is, as I have suggested, in attitudes towards political resistance. It is hard to imagine a Tory writer countenancing resistance led by a magistrate or aristocratic figure, and even less the rebellion of the people. And yet such arguments are the heritage of Roman Catholics and Protestants alike. Moreover, to deny the sovereignty of the people is one thing. To try to curtail the people’s claim to natural liberty becomes, after the Whig onslaught, a source of tension for a number of Tory writers. After all, is the denial of the people’s claim to liberty not in itself another version of tyranny?

III The Duke of Guise is a controversial collaboration between the Tory John Dryden and the Whig Nathaniel Lee. Critics usually argue that this 1682 play is a product of the Tory ‘reaction’ after the Oxford parliament of 1681.122 The collaboration represents a political surrender by Lee to Dryden, one that mirrors the capitulation of the Whig party in the aftermath of the Popish Plot.123 The play elicited a number of responses from the Whigs as well as a lengthy defence by Dryden. It was banned in 121 122

123

Scott, Algernon Sidney, p. 28. On Dryden’s politics, see Phillip Harth, Pen for a Party: Dryden’s Tory Propaganda in Its Contexts (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), esp. pp. 138–205. See Owen, Restoration Theatre, pp. 147–149. The collaboration is discussed in Paulina Kewes, Authority and Appropriation: Writing for the Stage in England, 1660–1710 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), pp. 162–176. Dryden’s Absalom and Achitophel (1681) mercilessly lampoons Oates as a dangerous liar.

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July 1682 before it could be performed, a fact that is discussed in the newspapers. The ban was revoked in October and the play was finally performed on 28 November 1682.124 Certainly there is a Tory revival in the period leading up to and following the 1681 parliament. Despite the king’s intransigence, the inability of parliament to exclude James fed disillusionment. The Tory argument that parliament and MPs are a danger to the king’s prerogative and to liberties is effective. In the aftermath of Charles’ Declaration to all his Loving Subjects in April 1681, there is a clampdown on Whig writing and publishing. The Tories gain the upper hand in the polemical battle by using Whig language against their opponents.125 However, this is not a total capitulation by the Whigs. While the dominant ideological position that they had enjoyed since 1678 was no longer secure, the struggle to establish clear divisions between Whig and Tory is ongoing.126 Dryden and Lee’s 1682 collaboration is best viewed in this context. For the average theatregoer in the seventeenth century, a play on the 1572 massacre of the Huguenots in Paris meant the staging of an infamous Roman Catholic outrage against Protestants. As we saw in the discussion of Lee’s banned The Massacre of Paris, the audience might expect to see examples of heroic Protestant resistance like the proto-martyr Coligny, xenophobic abuse of the French, discussion of resistance and the political agency of the people, and some anti-Catholic sentiment. All of these things feature prominently in accounts of the massacre published during this period.127 In short, the massacre is broadly understood as a Protestant and ‘Whig’ topic. So for a writer so closely associated with the Tories as Dryden to put his name to a play on this subject was bound to attract attention. There are good polemical reasons for him to do so, most obviously the freedom to make Tory arguments on traditional Whig ground. Yet while Tories and Whigs lay claim to the same contested political language, divisions between the two parties remain fluid. I argue that Dryden and Lee’s collaboration is an attempt to negotiate key differences between Whig and Tory ideologies. The tensions that characterise the play, especially on resistance, are a marker of that negotiation. In short, we need to rethink The Duke of Guise as a straightforward expression of Tory ideology. 124 126 127

125 Kewes, Authority and Appropriation, pp. 162–163. Knights, Politics and Opinion, p. 316. The discovery of the Rye House Plot in 1683 is arguably a more serious moment for Whig ideology. See, for example, A Seasonable Warning to Protestants; From the Cruelty and Treachery of the Parisian Massacre . . . (London: Benjamin Alsop, 1680). Historical texts such as The Conquest of France, with the Life, and Glorious Actions of Edward the Black Prince . . . (London: AM for Charles Bates, 1680) also attempt to cash in on popular anti-French sentiment.

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The play is dedicated to Lawrence Hyde, the Earl of Rochester. A supporter of the Duke of York and an opponent of exclusion, he is also central to the Tory prosecution of Shaftesbury for treason after the Oxford Parliament.128 Shaftesbury was acquitted in a famous Ignoramus verdict by a sympathetic jury.129 His release on 28 November 1681 was marked by Whig celebrations across London. Dryden complains in his Prologue to the Guise that the Whigs intend to ‘Make London independant[sic] of the Crown’ and states: ‘Let Ignoramus Juries find no Traytors’ (41, 43).130 There are evident limits to the Tory ‘ascendency’ after Oxford. In their dedicatory epistle, Dryden and Lee claim that their play ‘was almost made a Martyr for the Royal Cause’ and they mention the controversy prior to performance: ‘having stood two Tryals from its Enemies, one before it was Acted, another in the Representation, and having been in both acquitted, ’tis now to stand the Publick Censure in the reading’. The tone is defensive. The authors hope that the play will have the ‘greater-Number’ of friends ‘of the more Honest and Loyal Party’. ‘More Honest’ rather than ‘most Honest’ – absolute political honestas is hard to find. Mention is made of the ‘Members of the Rebellious League, against the Lawful Sovereign Authority’ who have previously ‘attack’d the Government’. Dryden and Lee include themselves that group. However, they now realise the ‘weakness’ of that ‘Faction’ and proclaim their loyalty.131 This admission of political error is notable. The play will be loyal but not craven; not so much a recantation of previously held views as a modification of those beliefs in a changing political context. After this qualified language, the writers strikingly use peristrophe in discussing the politics of the theatre and the subject of the play: To what Topique will they have recourse, when they are manifestly beaten from their chief Post, which has always been Popularity, and Majority of Voices? They will tell us, That the Voices of a People are not to be gather’d in a Play-House; and yet even there, the Enemies as well as Friends have free Admission; but while our Argument was serviceable to their Interests, they cou’d boast that the Theatres were True Protestant, and came insulting to the Plays, where their own Triumphs were represented. But let them now assure themselves, that they can make the major part of no Assembly,

128 130

131

129 See Haley, The First Earl, pp. 653, 669. See Harth, Pen for a Party, pp. 138–161. ‘Prologue’ to John Dryden and Nathanial Lee, The Duke of Guise, in The Works of John Dryden, vol. xiv, ed. Vinton A. Dearing and Alan Roper (Berkeley and London: University of California Press, 1992), p. 211. ‘Dedicatory Epistle’ to The Duke of Guise, p. 207.

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except it be a Meeting-House. Their Tyde of Popularity is spent, and the natural Current of Obedience is in spight of then, at last prevalent.132

The Whigs are no longer in the ascendency. Their preferred ‘popular’ topics such as the massacre of Paris, which enable discussion of the ‘Majority of Voices’, are now appropriated by others. The claim that the ‘Voices of a People’ should not be permitted in the theatre is dismissed as the bleating of defeated opponents who were more than willing to exploit the vox populi when the political wind blew their way. And yet, despite this partisan point scoring, the authors still allow that ‘Enemies as well as Friends have free Admission’ in the theatre. If it is to debate political matters, drama must take account of all sides. Dryden and Lee have no time for the ‘malice of false Patriots, and the madness of a headstrong Rabble’. But they also acknowledge that ‘’tis no time to raise Trophies, while the Victory is in dispute’.133 The rhetoric of partisanship sits uneasily alongside efforts at political bridge building throughout the dedication. When it comes to Dryden’s Prologue, however, conciliation is all but forgotten and the tone is notably bitter. First, the audience are told how the play should be interpreted: Our Play’s a Parallel: The Holy League Begot our Cov’nant: Guisards got the Whigg: Whate’er our hot-brain’d Sheriffs did advance, Was, like our Fashions, first produc’d in France: And, when worn out, well scourg’d, and banish’d there, Sent over, like their godly Beggars here. Cou’d the same Trick, twice play’d, our Nation gull?134

Dramatic Prologues in this period often give audiences a political framework for interpreting the play. Yet Dryden’s statement that the Guise represents the rebellious Whigs and the Holy League the ‘covenanters’ or 132

133

134

Ibid., pp. 207–208. Dryden makes similar arguments in his defence of the play, The Vindication: Or The Parallel of the French Holy-League and the English League and Covenant . . . (London: Jacob Tonson, 1683), p. 19. Ibid., p. 208. See also Dryden’s comment in his Vindication: ‘But what Rabble was it to provoke? Are the Audience of a Play-house (which are generally Persons of Honour, Noblemen and Ladies, or at worst, as one of your Authors calls his Gallants, Men of Wit and Pleasure about the Town) are these the Rabble of Mr. Hunt? I have seen a Rabble at Sir Edmundberry Godfreys Night, and have heard of such a name, at true Protestant Meeting-houses; but a Rabble is not to be provoked, when it never comes.’ Dryden, The Vindication, p. 14. Ibid., p. 210. The reference to French godly beggars may allude to a contemporary story about two one-thousand-year-old ‘apostles’ who appeared in Toulouse to preach the end of the papacy and of the world. See A Relation of the Two Pretended Apostles, That Came Invisibly into the Great City of Tholouse in France, from Damascus in Galilea, Aged above a Thousand years (London: R. Janeway, 1680).

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nonconformist dissenters is an admission that these parallels are not necessarily obvious. As one Whig pamphlet critical of the play notes, Paris during Henri III’s reign is the ‘most tumultuous, seditious, rebellious City, flesh’d in Murthers and Massacres, Destruction of Protestants Root and Branch’.135 Another expresses surprise that the Duke of Guise, a figure who usually represents the ‘most detestable Villainy’, is a sympathetic figure in the play.136 This shows what Dryden is up against. A play called The Duke of Guise would be expected to toe a Whiggish line. The rest of the Prologue builds on Dryden’s ‘rival interpretation’ of the massacre. Yet signs of ideological struggle are evident.137 In act I, scene 1, the Catholic League meet to discuss a rising against the king. Polin notes that ‘the whole Sixteen / That sway the Crowd of Paris, guide their Votes, / manage their Purses, Persons, Fortunes, Lives, / To mount the Guise’ (I.i.4–6). From the start, the relationship between civic political authority and the rights of the people is made explicit. Historically, the League were Roman Catholics whose aim under the Guise was to rid France of Protestantism. However, as the Prologue noted, these ‘Catholics’ are in fact intended to represent the London ‘Covenanters’. This connects the civic Whig governors with the nonconformist Protestant heirs of the radicals during the Civil Wars. For the Tories in the audience, this would have meant one thing: rebellion. As we have seen throughout this book, seventeenth-century polemicists often make a link between the extreme wings of ‘Puritan’ and ‘Jesuit’ belief: this period was no exception. As one poem of 1682 puts it: ‘But Whigs with Reservation Speak and Write, / And far out-do the greatest Jesuite.’138 This explains the otherwise odd moment when the ‘Catholic’ Curate of St Eustace produces a book by ‘A Calvinist Minister of Orelans’, one written to justifie the Admiral For taking Arms against the King deceas’d: Wherein he proves that irreligious Kings May justly be depos’d, and put to death. (I.i.18–22)

135

136

137

138

Thomas Shadwell (?), Some Reflections upon the Pretended Parallel in the Play Called The Duke of Guise . . . (London: Francis Smith, 1683), p. 3. Thomas Hunt, A Defence of the Charter, and Municipal Rights of the City of London . . . (London: Richard Baldwin, 1683), pp. 25, 27. The reference to the ‘hot-brain’d Sherrifs’ alludes to the controversial contested municipal elections in 1681 and 1682 in London. See Haley, The First Earl, pp. 684–704. An Answer to the Whiggish Poem on the Loyal Apprentices Feast (London: Allen Banks, 1682), p. 1.

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This is a reference to Coligny, Protestant hero of Lee’s The Massacre of Paris, who resisted Charles IX. The allusion is probably intended to make the point that there is no real difference between radical Protestant and Roman Catholic defences of resistance. Yet the authors are oddly reluctant to make this claim outright. Alternative arguments are also bandied about. Bussy says, ‘To borrow Arguments from Heretick Books / Methinks was not so prudent,’ and the Curate replies that he would borrow from the Devil ‘if it would help our Cause’ (I.i.23–25).139 The council are unsure which version of reason of state to support. Another example comes with Polin’s intervention noting that ‘one prime Article of our Holy League, / Is to preserve the King, his Pow’r and Person’ (I.i.28–29). This constitutional defence of monarchical authority is contrasted with the Curate’s claim that ‘The Conscience of the People is their Power’ (I.i.35). This is not an outright condemnation of the ‘League’ so much as a ventilation of different Whig arguments about the proper locus of political authority. The debate between a radical and a more tempered version of Whig resistance continues. The members examine the role of the king: buss. pol. cur.

buss. cur.

’Tis a plain Case; the King’s included in the Punishment, In case he rebell against the People. But how can he rebell? I’ll make it out; Rebellion is an Insurrection against the Government; but they that have the Power are actually the Government: Therefore if the People have the Power, the Rebellion is in the King. A most convincing Argument for Faction. For Arming, if you please; but not for Faction. For still the Faction is the fewest number; So, what they call the Lawful Government, Is now the Faction; for the most are ours. (I.i.46–58)

By locating political authority with parliament and the people, the League says that the king is a rebel who can be rightly opposed. Not all members agree. The Curate’s claim that this is an argument for arming, not faction, is taken up in the second half of the debate: pol.

139

Since we are prov’d to be above the King; I wou’d gladly understand whom we are to obey; or whether we are to be all

The Devil makes appearances throughout this play to Malicorne. These are by far the least convincing scenes in the play and the elision of maleficent intervention and rebellion is oddly mechanical.

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Apocalypse and Anti-Catholicism in Seventeenth-Century Kings together? Are you a Member of the League, and ask that Question? There’s an Article that, I may say, is as necessary as any in the Creed. Namely, that we, the said Associates, are sworn to yield ready Obedience, and Faithful Service, to that head which shall be deputed. buss. ’Tis most manifest, that by virtue of our Oath we are all Subjects to the Duke of Guise. The King’s an Officer that has betray’d his Trust; and therefore we have turn’d him out of Service. Omnes. Agreed, agreed. (I.i.59–71) cur.

The group agree a tempered, constitutionalist, Huguenot form of resistance. Ultimate political authority is vested not in the people but in the League of ‘Associates’ with Guise at its head.140 As we saw in the discussion of Charles Blount, this is a far-reaching political conclusion. Yet it does not go as far as some radical Whig ideology. Dryden and Lee could simply have condemned the League outright, naming them as villainous rebels, and associating them with the rabble. Instead, they represent some of the League with a degree of sympathy and as participants in a contested political landscape. When Guise enters, he is nonplussed at what has been decided: ‘I’m what you please to call me: Any thing, / Lieutenant General, Chief, or Constable, / Good Decent Names, that only mean your Slave’ (I.i.79–81). He does not want to become the ‘property’ of the league, slave to a collective ideology bound by articles and oaths. Nevertheless, he agrees to honour the decision of the collective. Even though Guise has ‘rescu’d France from Hereticks and Strangers’, Aumale complains that ‘Our Offices are lost’ (I.i.83–85). The civic nature of the League’s complaint is made even more apparent by Bussy: ‘Our charters will go next: Because we Sheriffs / Permit no Justice to be done on those / The Court calls Rebels, but we call them Saints’ (I.i.88–90).141 This is an allusion to the recently contested London elections for Sheriffs. It may also glance towards the acquittal of Shaftesbury. The key word here is ‘charters’. After the acquittal Charles sought to punish London’s Whigs and the nonconformists who supported them. As Haley notes, ‘the King had ordered the AttorneyGeneral to investigate whether the sheriffs’ failure to suppress the disorders 140 141

See Dryden, The Vindication, p. 7. See too Harth, Pen for a Party, pp. 138–153. The ‘new’ sheriffs, clearly associated with the Tories and gerrymandered into place, are dismissed later in the Act as ‘Arbitrary’ and supporters of the Guise’s enemy, Navarre.

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during and after the trial did not constitute a ground for action against them’. London’s charter was under threat, and if it were defeated ‘the City would lose all its privileges, not least that of electing its sheriffs’.142 The issue divided Tories and Whigs, and not always along predictable ‘party lines’.143 Despite the authors’ intentions, and despite Guise’s claim that the League’s defence of the charter makes then ‘Traitours’ (I.i.93), audience reaction to Aumerle’s invocation of the charter controversy is likely to have been mixed. In 1683, the London lawyer and Whig Thomas Hunt published a book entitled A Defence of the Charter, and Municipal Rights of the City of London. Despite its unprepossessing title, the author explains why the matter is so controversial. For Hunt, the political independence of the city comes from the right of the people ‘to choose their own Officers and Magistrates, and to govern themselves by their own Laws, so that their Laws were not contrary to the publick Laws of the Sovereign Authority’.144 London’s charter and parliament offer the best means of protecting that legal right and of guaranteeing trade. By contrast, ‘Governors appointed by the Court were ordinarily Oppressors, sought not the Peoples good but their own gain and advantage’.145As we might expect, Hunt sees the king’s policy in a broader political context: ‘it will be in the Power of a Popish Successor, to put the Government of all corporate Towns in England into the hands of Papists . . . so certain, and infallible a course to extirpate the reformed Religion established by Law’.146 Most significantly, Hunt turns his fire on The Duke of Guise. He claims that the play is part of a concerted Tory attack on the city authorities. Specifically, it aims to ‘provoke the rabble into tumults and disorder’, thus making it easier for the king to remove the charter.147 This is an effective, perhaps even justified charge. Another attack on the play notes: ‘They will assert the lawfulness of using Force upon Elections, that have been heretofore always free, and even

142 143

144 147

Haley, The First Earl, p. 688. The large pamphlet literature on the charter controversy demonstrates considerable political differences. See, for example, The Charter; A Comicall Satyr (London: Alex. Banks, 1682); The City of Londons Plea . . . (London: Randall Taylor, 1682); The City of London’s Rejoinder . . . (London: L. Curtiss, 1682); An Account of the Proceedings to Judgement against the Charter of the City of London (London: Langley Curtis, 1683); The Case of the Charter of London Stated (London: John Kidgell, 1683); The Citizens Loss . . . (London, 1683); The Last Will and Testament of the Charter of London (London: John Owsley, 1683); London’s Lamentation . . . (London: A. Banks, 1683); The Whigs in Mourning for the Loss of Their Charter . . . (London: Patrick True, 1683); and Roger L’Estrange, The Lawyer Outlaw’d . . . (London: NT, 1683). 145 146 Hunt, A Defence of the Charter, p. 1. Ibid., p. 2. Ibid., p. 5. Ibid., p. 24. See more generally pp. 24–30 for Hunt’s criticism of the play.

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ought to be so. They will justify the carrying those Elections by the Minority, or by bringing in False, and excluding True Electors.’148 In the context of these civic disputes with the king, the question of ‘Force’ can be argued both ways. Such counterclaims show the difficulty that Dryden and Lee have in associating resistance solely with the Whiggish League. On this particular ground, it is hard to make distinctions that stick. It is easy for opponents such as Hunt to accuse the playwrights of fermenting sedition. Indeed, in his Vindication of the play, Dryden is at his least convincing and most evasive on the issue of the charter: ‘I have not Law enough to state that question, much less decide it; let the Charter shift for it self in Westminster Hall, the Government is somewhat wiser, than to imploy my ignorance on such a Subject.’149 ‘Shift’ is the operative verb in this apoplanesis. Naturally Dryden offers a general denial that he intended to provoke the rabble. Yet his evasion of the charge that the play supports the king and the Tories’ attack on the charter opens him up to accusations of abetting arbitrary rule. Moreover, the play shies away from associating the League with outright rebellion. Bussy says that ‘Our City Bands, are twenty thousand strong; / Well Disciplin’d, well Arm’d, well season’d Traitors’ (I.i.113–114). Yet Guise refuses to sanction the king’s ‘dispatch’, arguing that it is better to use the army to ‘starve him into Reason, / Till he exclude his Brother of Navarre, / And graft Succession on a worthier Choice’ (I.i.129–131).150 If the king is to be brought to heel, then it will be done strategically and without recourse to violence. Throughout most of play the king, Henri III, is not exactly pictured in a flattering light. He is weak, vacillating, and overawed by the Queen Mother. Although not as Machiavellian as she is in Lee’s The Massacre of Paris, the Queen Mother wields considerable power. When the League discuss attacking the king, it is said that ‘He goes unguarded, mix’d with whipping Fryars’ (I.i.124), and when the Queen Mother is discussing this plot, she pictures the monarch ‘in Penitential Weeds, / Among the Friars’ and observes the League’s plan to ‘shut him in a Monastery’ (II.i.15–18). Such anti-Catholic details could have been drawn from popular histories of the period. They are also picked up by Dryden’s opponents. One Whig account is as much an attack on Charles as it is a record of Henri III: he goes ‘publickly in the Streets with Processions, and Penitents, and revelling with all manner of Luxury and Effeminacy at home, equally 148 150

149 Shadwell (?), Some Reflections, p. 1. Dryden, The Vindication, p. 15. Hunt complains that this argument is historically inaccurate – Hunt, A Defence, p. 13.

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dividing his Time between Ladys and Minions’.151 Though Dryden and Lee do not go this far, by associating the king so directly with Friars and suspicious popish practices, they suggest that this monarch is not to be trusted. If Hunt is correct that The Duke of Guise ‘puts the King [Charles II] under the person of H.3d.’, then this shows that even a play sympathetic to Tory ideology can draw on anti-Catholic tropes to criticise the king.152 The royal family debate how to oppose Guise. The Queen Mother and the Abbot Delbene resolve to ‘fix him’ (II.i.40). As with the League’s discussion, there is disagreement on this course of action. Most of this is caused by the king’s vacillation: ‘Oh Mother, but I cannot make it way; / Chaos and Shades, ’tis huddled up in Night’ (II.i.69–70). It falls to the Queen Mother to try and persuade her son to act decisively: king. You would Embark me in a Sea of Blood. q.m. You see the Plot directly on your Person; But give it ore, I did but state the Case. Take Guise into your Heart, and drive your Friends, Let Knaves in Shops prescribe you how to sway, And when they read your Acts with their vile Breath, Proclaim aloud, they like not this or that, Then in a drove come Lowing to the Louvre, And cry they’l have it mended, that they will; Or you shall be no King. king. ’Tis true, the People Ne’re know a Mean, when once they get the Power; But O, if the Design we lay should fail, Better the Traytors never should be touch’d, If Execution cries not out ’tis done. (II.i.75–87)

The Queen Mother’s patrician distain for the vox populi and civic political expression is resonantly done. These lines are taken directly from Lee’s The Massacre of Paris. Here the political context is one of unambiguous popish villainy. By 1682, the words serve rather different political ends. The speech is now a defence of Tory attitudes towards the city and a deprecation of popular politics: the words have not changed but the context has. For instance, the first verse of a Tory ballad mocking the Whigs for their adherence to the charter says: You Free-Men, and Masters, and Prentices mourn, For now You are left with your Charter forlorn: 151

Shadwell (?), Some Reflections, p. 11.

152

Hunt, A Defence, p. 25.

230

Apocalypse and Anti-Catholicism in Seventeenth-Century Since London was London, I dare boldly say, For your Ryots you never so dearly did pay; In Westminster-Hall, Your Dagon did fall, That caus’d You to Ryot and Mutiny all: Oh London! Oh London! Thou’dst better had None, Than thus with the Thy Charter to vie with the Throne.153

What would an audience have made of such Tory sentiments being voiced by none other than Catherine de Medici? Her contemporary reputation in Protestant England was, to put it mildly, poor. A 1680 text describes her modus operandi: The Queen, like Nero’s Nurse, Trained up her Young Pupil to Blood, and he, though Young, being subtle beyond his Years, drunk in her Instructions as readily as she could infuse them, for she being Originally an Italian, had in her Constitution Cruelty and Treachery, to serve her own Occasions, and spare enough for her Son.154

The playwrights knew this kind of material (Lee clearly did). Phillip Harth has suggested that there are convincing parallels between this period in the French wars of religion and the Exclusion Crisis. His argument that the depiction of Catherine contrasts ‘French’ political villainy with superior English values is fair, but it does not address the queen’s pro-Whig sentiments here.155 Any parallel in this scene relies on the audience ‘translating’ a figure who is a byword for Catholic villainy into a Tory spokesperson. By wrenching a Tory argument from overwhelmingly Whig material, the political representation of Catherine is decidedly double-edged.156 Act III stages a confrontation between the Sheriffs and the people, and the king’s agent Grillon, ‘The Blunderbuss o’th’ Court’ (III.i.30). This scene has no parallel in Lee’s The Massacre of Paris, and it brings together political controversy and the theatre. Grillon says that the Sheriffs are political upstarts: ‘mark me, Slaves, / Did you not Ages past consign your Lives, / Liberties, Fortunes, to Imperial hands?’ (III.i.50–52). Whig complaints against imperial monarchy are compromised by an appeal to history.157 Grillon also states that 153 154 155

156 157

Londons Lamentation: Or, An Excellent New Song . . . (London: NT, 1683), p. 1. A Seasonable Warning, p. 10. See Harth, Pen for a Party, pp. 192–194, 202. He also suggests a parallel between the Holy League and the Whig Association. Dryden does not attempt to defend her in his Vindication either. Whig texts often argue that capitulation to the French is a restoration of popish imperial authority – see David Clarkson, The Case of Protestants in England under a Popish Prince, If Any Shall Happen to Wear the Imperial Crown (London: Richard Janeway, 1681).

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the aim is to ‘wrest the Scepter’ from the king’s hands (III.i.55). Such material did not go down well with Dryden and Lee’s critics: ‘But the Eschevins, who were Rebels must be compar’d to our Loyal Sheriffs, and must be abused and kick’d about the Stage by Bully Grillon.’158 The claim that the Sheriffs are rebels is rejected and the historical comparison is criticised. Grillon’s line ‘You shall as soon be sav’d for packing Juries’ also attracted rebuke: ‘These Eschevins must be call’d Packers of Juries too by this ignorant Fellow, who it seems does not know that Juries were not used in Paris, no more than he and his Party would have them here.’159 Dryden responds to these objections by saying that ‘the Play was wholly written a month or two before the Election of the Sheriffs’. He claims that he does not remember writing these lines, but also says that whoever did obviously intended a parallel with the present: ‘if they had not Juries in Paris, we had them from the Normans, who were French-men: and as you manag’d them, we had as good have had none in London’.160 This argument is equivocatory at best. It dodges the specific historical charge, making it more likely that this scene was indeed intended to undermine the election of Whig sheriffs. Notably, the candidates who were deprived of electoral victory in June as the play was being written were French. The Whigs ‘had selected as their candidates Papillon and Dubois, the two Huguenot merchants who had served on Shaftesbury’s jury’.161 Grillon’s accusation that the Sheriffs ‘scent out Royal Murder’ is thus a fairly blatant attempt to use the theatre to smear these French Protestant officials by associating them with the doctrine of king killing.162 Guise shows the strength of his support by taking the city, despite (like Monmouth) having been banished. He then submits to the king.163 He defends his actions in familiar Whiggish terms: I had been told There were in agitation here at Court, Things of the highest note against Religion, Against the common Properties of Subjects, And Lives of honest well affected men. (IV.i.37–41)

158 161 163

159 160 Shadwell (?), Some Reflections, p. 5. Ibid. Dryden, The Vindication, p. 45. 162 Haley, The First Earl, p. 699. Dryden and Lee, The Duke of Guise, p. 23. On the parallel between Guise and Monmouth, see Marmoutire’s speech at pp. 8–9 of Dryden and Lee, The Duke of Guise. See too Harth, Pen for a Party, pp. 189–195. On Monmouth, see Harris, London Crowds, pp. 130, 157–161, 165, 179, 186–188; Knights, Politics and Opinion, pp. 35–37, 51–59, 136–137.

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The king criticises him for planning to lead the ‘Factious Crowd’ (IV.i.45) and resolves to kill his opponent – ‘Come what may come, he dies’ (IV.i.52). He is halted by the Queen Mother, who notes that ‘The whole Parisian Herd is at your Gates’ and that ‘A Crowd’s a Name too small, they are a Nation, / Numberless, arm’d, enrag’d, one Soul informs ’em’, namely Guise (IV.i.57–59). The king’s dismissal of the people as a ‘Rabble’ (IV.i.61) cannot disguise the deeply felt Tory anxiety about the political power of the people. The king bemoans his inability to deal with Guise as a ‘Womanish tameness’, a political effeminacy that breeds stasis in the court and galvanises the ‘Ungrateful, perjur’d, and Disloyal Town’ (IV.i.80, 92). The only way to counter Guise is to draw on his mother’s villainy: ‘Th’ Italian Soul shall teach me how to sooth’ (IV.i.131). Italianate effeminacy is turned into a dubious assertion of reason of state. As Guise informs his confederates, the king is impotent: ‘Inviron’d with his Guards he durst not touch me; / But aw’d and craven’d as he had been spell’d, / Would have pronounc’d, Go kill the Guise, and durst not’ (IV.iii.7–9). However, the gathering is told that the king has assembled a mercenary army who have entered the city to oppose the League.164 The Archbishop views this from the perspective of the citizens: ‘The Crowd stood gaping heartless, and amaz’d, / Shrunk to their shops, and left the passage free’ (IV.iii.20–21). But Guise argues that the entrance of the army will promote fear of violence and rape, and so ‘harden their soft City Courages: / Cold Burgers must be struck, and struck like Flints, / Ere their hid Fire will sparkle’ (IV.iii.25–27). The prelate agrees that their resistance ‘Will make this Rising pass for just defence’ (IV.iii.33). The Guise’s ability to harness the power of the people is central to these scenes. When the rebellion does take place, it is led by the devil Melanax. In a throwback to older anti-Catholic drama, he assumes the guise of a preacher. As one of the citizens says: ‘We have all profited by godly Sermons that promote sedition’ (IV.iv.8). This is good anti-Whig knockabout. Malinax states that he has ‘led the Rabble in all Ages’ (IV.iv.13). He offers a political justification for the uprising: ‘That the Rabble may depose their Prince has in all Times, and in all Countries, been accounted lawful’ (IV.iv.24–25). This is a striking claim indeed, one that draws on the most radical end of Whig ideology. Dryden’s opponent Hunt puts it in more 164

This may be intended to evoke Whig fears about Charles II’s use of a standing army against his people, as discussed earlier. Interestingly, in his 1698 defence of the monarch’s right to a standing army, Daniel Defoe refers to the election of Dubois and Papillon. See Daniel Defoe, An Argument Shewing, That a Standing Army, with Consent of Parliament, Is Not Inconsistent with a Free Government (London: E. Whitlock, 1698), pp. 22–23.

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measured terms: ‘When our Preachers exhort to obedience, they ought not to be heard if they press us beyond the terms of obedience, that the Government hath established . . . When they exhort us to Christian patience, they should not forget to tell the People, that they are not bound to suffer.’165 Whereas for Hunt the people are always held in check by the civic authorities guaranteed by the charter, for a time Melanax stands at the head of a genuine popular rebellion. Yet Dryden and Lee do not pursue the political consequences of this fact. Instead they stage a raucous, carnivalesque depiction of the uprising. The political upper hand oscillates between the citizens (depicted as emasculated cowards who scarcely deserve their victory) and Grillon, the head of the king’s forces (depicted as blustering and incompetent). More significant is Guise’s intervention. He warns his followers to ‘stain your Triumph with no Christian blood’ (IV.iv.120) and rejects the Archbishop’s advice that he ‘make advantage of this Popular Rage’ (IV.iv.161). He also dismisses Malicorn’s assertion that ‘the People must be flesh’d in Blood’ (IV.iv.134) and his prophetic encouragements. Guise explains what he intends for the king: I’le seize him first, then make him a led Monarch; I’le be declar’d Lieutenant General Amidst the Three Estates that represent The glorious, full, majestick Face of France, Which in his own despight the King shall call: So let him reign my Tenant during life, His Brother of Navar shut out for ever, Branded with Heresie, and barr’d from Sway, That when Valois consum’d in Ashes lies, The Phoenix Race of Charlemain may rise. (IV.iv.169–178)

This is a constitutionalist tempering of monarchical power. It is achieved through a popular rising, yet is headed by Guise. The anarchic potential of the rabble has been curtailed. Henri will not be overthrown but subjected to the will of the people’s representatives. His brother will also be excluded from the succession, and a leader with imperial powers of renovatio like Charlemagne will arise.166

165 166

Hunt, A Defence, p. 45. See also the prophecy attributed to Titus Oates: A Prophecy of England’s future Happiness . . . (London: Thomas Dawks, 1680), single sheet.

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This passage criticises the Whig argument against James’ succession and the constitutional curtailing of the prerogative. There is little doubt that many would have seen it in precisely those terms. Yet once again the authors cannot fully gloss over the ideological gaps in their argument and historical material. Dryden’s opponents found this parallel between Navarre, later Henri IV, and the Duke of York to be particularly odd. Hunt writes that the playwright ‘hath put him under a most dismal and unfortunate Character of a Successor, excluded from the Crown by an Act of State for his Religion, and dyed by the hand of a Roman Assassinate’.167 The moral of this historical parallel would seem to be: be careful of what you wish for. While their histories of religious conversion might be a point in common, James would not have appreciated being reminded of how Henri IV died. By drawing attention to the play’s dubious use of French history – a matter that Dryden tries to contend à la Sidney: ‘Am I ty’d in Poetry, to the strict rules of History?’ – Hunt points out the political limitations of the play’s contemporary parallels. Moreover, as we saw in Chapter 3, Henri IV was generally well regarded in seventeenth-century England. One of Dryden’s opponents refers to ‘the vast Perfections of this Heroe’.168 Henri IV’s reign saw the proclamation of the Edict of Nantes in 1598, which gave state protection to France’s Protestants. By 1682 the Edict was under threat from Louis XIV. Under the influence of Gallicanism, he was working to assert his political independence from the papacy.169 Concerns about Louis’ imperial ambitions were common. One pamphlet points out that ‘By abrogating the Convention of Estates, that King has spoyled the people of that power and share in Government, which they have originally had in all the mixt Monarchies of Europe, and made himself absolute.’170 Related fears attend the possibility of James’ accession. Guise is not simply offering an alternative to the Tory monarchical model. His speech also reflects Whig concerns about Louis’ rule as arbitrary, and the fear that James would import a similar system, or worse, to England. No doubt some in the audience condemned the speech. But there must have been some who preferred its political vision to what seemed to be on the horizon. Given too that the Act ends with the king surrounded by ‘Fifteen thousand men’ (IV.v.30) and fleeing from the Louvre to Blois, the play pays more than lip service to the ideology that it seemingly opposes.

167 169 170

168 Hunt, A Defence, p. 28. Shadwell (?), Some Reflections, p. 14. See Geoffrey Treasure, Louis XIV (Harlow: Pearson, 2001), pp. 84–88. The Conquest of France, p. 2. See also Popery and Tyranny, pp. 1–7.

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With the king removed from Paris, he decides to call a parliament.171 Grillon explains the reasoning: Because no Barricado’s have been made at Blois: This Blois is a very little Town, and the King can draw it after him. But Paris is a damn’d, unweildy[sic] Bulk, and when the Preachers draw against the King, a Parson in a Pulpit is a devilish Forehorse. Besides, I found in that Insurrection, what dangerous Beasts these Townsmen are; I tell you, Colonel, a Man had better deal with ten of their Wives, than with one zealous Citizen (V.i.18–25)

The king and his supporters are forced to change location. However, because they are able to contain Blois, they now have a power base from which to oppose the ‘old Commonwealth designs’ (V.i.46) of their opponents. Even though the League are pleased at the king’s reversal to parliamentary government and submit to his authority, the king still complains that ‘I’m pliant, and they mould me as they please’ (V.i.100). He tries to find ways to counter Guise. When he discloses his thinking to Marmoutier, she recoils: ‘you would murder Guise’. The king responds: ‘Murder! what Murder! use a softer word, / And call it Sovereign Justice’ (V.i.116–118). At best, this is rhetorical sophistry. When Marmoutier advises that ‘Justice bears the Godlike shape of the Law’ (V.i.119), the king’s response is wonderfully slippery: Yes, when th’ Offender can be judg’d by Laws, But when his Greatness overturns the Scales, Then Kings are Justice in the last Appeal: And forc’d by strong Necessity may strike, In which indeed th’y assert the Publick Good, And, like sworn Surgeons, lop the gangren’d Limb: Unpleasant wholsom work. (V.i.122–128)

If the king and the law are to remain contiguous, then the monarch must invoke necessity in order to maintain the integrity of the state: ‘Unpleasant wholsom work’ indeed. This Machiavellian sentiment reminds us of what Giorgio Agamben calls ‘the state of exception’, the moment when law is suspended and the sovereign is permitted to enact violence against the enemy in ‘a zone of indistinction between sacrifice and homicide’.172 According to the Tories, the positive expression of this power is best understood as the monarch’s right to his prerogative powers. According 171 172

Mirroring the strategy adopted by Charles when he called the Oxford parliament in 1681. Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer, trans. Daniel Heller-Roazen (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988), p. 83.

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to their Whig opponents, such power can only be arbitrary, even tyrannous, and an affront to the rights of the people to hold the monarch to legal account. Perhaps most strikingly, the king is swayed by Marmoutier’s argument and decides to allow Guise one last chance to ‘repent’ (V.i.157). By showing the king as vacillating and weak, the playwrights avoid sanctioning fully the dangerous ‘zone of indistinction’ that a negative reading of the Tory argument would imply. The king meets with the deputies of the states to find that ‘The Commons will decree to exclude Navar / From the Succession of the Realm of France’ because he ‘stands suspected . . . of Heresie’ (V.i.185–195). The king’s statement ‘What is’t those Gods the Commons do not know’ (V.i.198) is worth lingering on.173 For Whig critics of the play, such language is intolerable. Hunt argues that ‘our best Kings have always had a high Regard to their Parliaments’, and another writer deplores ‘this Mercenary Varlet’s intended Abuse of our House of Commons . . . chosen by the Suffrage of every one who has any considerable Inheritance or Interest in England, which I believe the Poet and most of his Party have not’.174 The allegation that parliament is deified by its apologists had been made against various radical groups throughout the early modern period. But during the late 1670s and early 1680s the Whigs successfully manage to cement their defence of parliament to the assertion of fundamental liberties enjoyed by subjects. This proves one of the hardest connections for the Tories to counter. Falling back on a patriarchal defence of monarchical prerogative is one way of making the case. Another is to argue that the liberties enjoyed by the subject are always legally tempered. As L’Estrange writes, ‘it is the Law that marques out the Metes and Bounds both of King and People: that shews how far we are to Go, and where to Stop; and teaches us to distinguish betwixt Liberty and Sedition’.175 For the Whig, this Tory conception of liberty fails to acknowledge the originary sovereignty of the subject. Liberty may well be tempered too for the Whig, but this should never be at the whim of any one individual. Rather liberty is found in parliament, which the people have consented to act on their behalf, and which exists to guarantee the rights of all subjects. In an important sense, these are two positions that can never be properly reconciled. The play reflects this impasse.

173 174 175

The parallel with the three ‘exclusion parliaments’ is clear. Hunt, A Defence, p. 6; Shadwell (?), Some Reflections, p. 6. L’Estrange, The Free-born, p. 2. See p. 1 of this tract for his definition of a free born subject.

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The Cardinal urges the king to agree to the exclusion, stating ‘Religion must not suffer for a Claim’ (V.i.212). The king reacts in horrified but familiar terms: If Kings must be excluded, or depos’d, When e’re you cry Rebellion to the Crowd, That Doctrine makes Rebellion Orthodox, And subjects must be Traytors to be sav’d Archb. Then Heresy’s entail’d upon the Throne. (V.i.213–217)

Like the play by this point in the action, this is a culture reduced to obsessively raking over the same questions, trying and failing to find different answers. A tone of futility can be heard when the Archbishop says, ‘Sir, we have many arguments to urge’ and the king replies ‘And I have more to answer’ (V.i.235–236). The representatives of the states are resolute that Navarre will be excluded and Guise declared Lieutenant General. Once more the king’s decision to kill his opponent is thwarted. He tries to persuade Grillon to do the deed, this time claiming, ‘Sovereign Justice in self-defence’ (V.i.287), but Grillon refuses: ‘I am your Soldier, Sir, not your Hangman’ (V.i.284). The king and the playwrights have to deal with Guise somehow. For his own part, he seems oddly ambivalent about his fate: ‘I have provok’d my Sovereign past a Pardon, / It but remains to doubt if he dare kill me’ (V.iii.10–11). The rest of the act ambles on, with an inconclusive scene between Guise and Marmoutier that adds little to the exposition. It is as if the playwrights have run out of answers to the political problems posed, writing on in the hope that a solution might present itself. In the final scene Guise enters the council chamber, swooning for love of Marmoutier, and agrees to go in to see the king. He is then stabbed by eight assailants, only one of whom, Logniac, is named. The king takes control of the cabinet, ordering the Cardinal and the ‘Factious Leaders’ to be executed (V.vi.7). In the end, then, the king’s ‘sovereign justice’ wins out. He has killed ‘The King of Paris’ (V.vi.12) and finally asserts his authority with ruthlessness. It is a perfunctory conclusion. The play ends with the king’s warning: Beware my Sword, which if I once unsheathe, By all the Reverence due to Thrones and Crowns, Nought shall atone the vows of speedy Justice, Till Fate to Ruine every Traytor brings, That dares the Vengeance of indulgent Kings. (V.vi.25–29)

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Some would have found this a resonant assertion of monarchical authority and the prerogative. Others would have seen it as a hollow victory purchased by an arbitrary assault on liberty.176 For one of Dryden’s opponents, his king is not authoritative but rather ‘Fearful, Weak, Wicked, Bloody, Perfidious, and Hypocritical, even to fawning’.177 The only real recourse that Dryden has is to insist once more that his intention was ‘to reduce men to Loyalty, by shewing the pernicious consequences of Rebellion’ and to show that ‘the People cannot incapacitate the King, because he derives not his Right from them, but from God only’.178 The play does not so much conclude as come to a dead end. The fact that, as I have argued, these positions are largely unchanged at the end of the play should not be taken as a criticism of the playwrights’ dramatic competence. This is a politically complex play that tries to address serious questions. It is the product of a culture searching for definitive political dividing lines and finding instead blurred boundaries. Dryden and Lee aim for an ideological division that they cannot quite manage. It is notable that in the Epilogue Dryden calls for more clarity between Whig and Tory. He reserves particular scorn for those ‘Trimmers’, ‘Damn’d Neuters’ who are ‘A Twilight Animal; true to neither Cause, / With Tory Wings, but Whiggish Teeth and Claws.’179 The play tries to clarify those divisions. But as I have demonstrated, and as the virulent responses to the play proves, it can be counted only a partial success. We might even argue that the Epilogue protests too much. Dryden and Lee’s collaboration has given rise to a monstrous hybrid ‘With Tory Wings, but Whiggish Teeth and Claws.’ No one would expect a play, particularly one with a genesis as complex as this one, to have all the political answers. Nor is it useful to see The Duke of Guise as simply an ‘outrageous case of Tory propaganda’.180 The play and the controversies that it speaks to are much more unsettled than this designation allows. The questions raised by Dryden and Lee continued to provoke the state, often in the most violent of ways.181 All Protestants, Whig and Tory alike, could agree that the liberty of subjects is fundamentally important. But there is little consensus on how that 176

177 179 181

For Hunt, the parallel between Guise and Monmouth means that the execution at the end of the play is, de facto, an attack on ‘an innocent and gentle Prince’. Hunt, A Defence, p. 27. 178 Shadwell (?), Some Reflections, p. 9. Dryden, The Vindication, pp. 14, 53. 180 Epilogue to The Duke of Guise, p. 213. Kewes, Authorship and Appropriation, p. 176. I refer here to the Rye House Plot and the Duke of Monmouth’s unsuccessful rebellion in 1685. See Tim Harris, Revolution: The Great Crisis of the British Monarchy, 1685–1720 (London and New York: Penguin, 2007), pp. 66–100.

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liberty should be best constituted and disbursed. In such circumstances, we can understand why some were content to remain ‘Damned neuters’. The ascension of an unambiguously Roman Catholic monarch in 1685 was to sharpen these political distinctions further still. Subjects now had to decide whether liberty was best served by Tory wings, or by Whig teeth and claws.

Conclusion Drama and the Legacies of Anti-Catholicism

Six months after his coronation as James VII and II in February 1685, an entertainment called The Whore of Babylon, the Devil, and the Pope was performed at Bartholomew Fair.1 Though now lost, this is a play in which apocalyptic and anti-Catholic imagery would likely have featured prominently. It probably also contained some criticism of the new regime. I mention this text because, considering the short reign of James, it is something of an anomaly. What little dramatic opposition there is to the Roman Catholic monarch between 1685 and 1688 is decidedly muted. Most of the plays written during James’ reign, such as John Crowne’s Sir Courtly Nice (1685), Nahum Tate’s Cuckold’s Haven (1685), Thomas D’Urfey’s The Banditti (1686), and Francis Fane’s The Sacrifice (1686), are broadly pro-Jacobite and anti-Whig. This is unsurprising. James’ reign is characterised by a sober, devout kind of Roman Catholicism.2 Although many of the king’s Protestant subjects disapproved of his religion, during the first couple of years they were at least willing to tolerate it.3 Monmouth’s rebellion of 1685 was summarily crushed as was the Scottish uprising, and the king’s position seemed secure. James was determined to extend toleration and parity of liberty with Protestants to his Roman Catholic subjects. Yet he and his regime were not successful propagandists. In the broader public sphere anti-papal polemic retained a popular hold.4 1

2

3 4

Alfred Harbage, rev. Samuel Schoenbaum, Annals of English Drama 975–1700 . . . (London: Methuen, 1964), p. 184. What follows draws on the following works: Tony Claydon, William III and the Godly Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); Julian Hoppit, A Land of Liberty? England 1689–1727 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000); Tim Harris, Revolution: The Great Crisis of the British Monarchy, 1685–1720 (London and New York: Penguin, 2007); Tony Claydon, Europe and the Making of England 1660–1760 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007); and Steve Pincus, 1688: The First Modern Revolution (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2009). Harris, Revolution, pp. 6–8; pp. 39–46. See Stephen Taylor, ‘Afterword: State Formation, Political Stability and the Revolution of 1688’, in The Final Crisis of the Stuart Monarchy: The Revolutions of 1688–91 in their British, Atlantic and European Contexts, ed. Tim Harris and Stephen Taylor (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2013), p. 299.

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The Romanisation of the court and key political offices (seen, of course, as covert popish infiltration), his pro-French policies, and the collapse in English trade all contributed to the king’s downfall. By November 1688 the king faced a massive enemy army, intrigue and desertions in both army and navy, the almost total neutralism of those who should have been his natural allies, violent anti-Catholicism in the capital, and the rejection of his own daughters, especially Anne . . . Whatever the rhetoric of divine ordination, events now showed clearly that all power, even monarchical power, was fundamentally consensual at base.5

After William of Orange’s invasion of 1688 and the passing of the Toleration Act in 1689, which recognised the rights of Protestant dissenters to practice their religion within certain limits (though not Roman Catholics), no one could be in any doubt that England’s political and religious balance had fundamentally shifted.6 Yet it was a balance still prone to fluctuation. William and his supporters worked hard to supply ideological justifications for the new regime. Although the king enjoyed broad support, his political security was by no means guaranteed during the late 1680s and 1690s. Almost invariably, there was a proliferation of anti-Catholic writing in the aftermath of 1688. Scott Sowerby has called this language ‘pivotal to the success of the Revolution’.7 This rhetoric remains as powerful as ever as the century moves to its close. However, it would be a mistake to see literary culture in the early years of William and Mary’s reign as necessarily reflecting a pro-Whig, anti-Catholic triumphalism. As Steven Zwicker writes: The events of 1688/89 might well be read as a revolution of compromise and collusion. Rather than a trumpeting of high ideals – the provision of a new social and political order – protection and retrenchment were its aims. This was a moment in the political culture when wary hesitation and cool distance marked much of the behaviour of the political nation.8

Although they ended in defeat, James’ campaigns in Ireland from 1689 to 1691 reminded the populace that the erstwhile king was still a credible 5 6

7 8

Hoppit, A Land of Liberty, p. 18. On the Toleration Act of 1689, see Scott Sowerby, Making Toleration: The Repealers and the Glorious Revolution (Harvard: Harvard University Press, 2013). Ibid., p. 220. Steven N. Zwicker, Lines of Authority: Politics and English Literary Culture, 1649–1689 (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1993), p. 182.

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political force not without support. Backed by the French, James made a series of later attempts during the 1690s at raising an invading force. He also supported a series of plots against the new regime.9 His alliance with the French propelled England into a different kind of European conflict. William’s invasion of England may have been seen by some as a providentially inspired effort to defend the Protestant religion and English liberties. Wiser heads better understood that the invasion was part of a broader European power struggle, one that pitched William and his German and Hapsburg allies against the French. Indeed this conflict ‘took Britain into the heart of Europe in ways that had been unimaginable even in the glory days of the Hundred Years War’.10 The so-called Nine Years’ War was unpopular with William’s new subjects. The cost of the conflict was debated in parliament and the country, suspicion of Dutch imperialism was rife, and party divisions hardened during these years, regularly inhibiting monarchical intent.11 William’s effort to counterbalance French military power is the dominant political motif of the last decade of the century as the king fought on the continent.12 In 1688, James’ wife Mary of Modena gave birth to James Francis Stuart. The new heir ensured that, in the first half of the eighteenth century at least, the Stuarts remained a plausible alternative to a variety of indigenous and imported monarchs. The Hanoverian endorsement of Whig ideology after 1714 and the construction of a dominant Whig historiography after 1745 could not necessarily have been foreseen in the 1690s, despite the political efforts of writers such as Daniel Defoe.13 As scholars have shown, literary opposition to the Williamite regime takes shape during the 1690s in the work of Dryden and others. The political rhetoric of this Jacobite opposition is then most notably developed in the first four decades of the eighteenth century by Dryden’s great successor, Alexander Pope, a Roman Catholic by birth.14 Indeed, the existence of a potential king ‘over 9 10 11

12 13

14

See Hoppit, A Land of Liberty, pp. 93–106, and Pincus, 1699, pp. 446–450. Hoppit, A Land of Liberty, p. 89. See Redefining William III: The Impact of the King-Stadholder in International Context, ed. Esther Mijers and David Onnekink (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007). On the Nine Years War, see Hoppit, A Land of Liberty, pp. 90–106, and Pincus, 1688, pp. 305–307. See Abigail Williams, Poetry and the Creation of a Whig Literary Culture 1681–1714 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005). See Howard Erskine-Hill, The Poetry of Opposition and Revolution: Dryden to Wordsworth (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996); Murray Pittock, Poetry and Jacobite Politics in Eighteenth Century Britain and Ireland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 94–119; and Pat Rogers, Pope and the Destiny of the Stuarts: History, Politics and Mythology in the Age of Queen Anne (Oxford University Press, 2005). See too Paul Kleber Monod, Jacobitism and the English People, 1688–1788 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989).

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the water’ inspired Jacobite ideology well into the nineteenth century and often draws on the prophetic imagery of messianic renovatio.15 Debates about whether William’s landing was a revolution, invasion, or rebellion abounded.16 There was understandable uncertainty about questions of loyalty and allegiance. Are oaths sworn to the old king null and void, for example? If the new king is recognised, what should his powers be? Should he rule de iure or de facto? There is also a concern that, despite William’s Calvinist credentials, an illegitimate, foreign king now sits on the throne with his English queen.17 This is, after all, a country where the threat of ‘foreign’, popish usurpation is a dominant fear. William’s accession could seem an odd sort of political compromise, especially to the Jacobites, a Protestant mirror image of the thing most dreaded. Indeed the ‘notion that political resistance had always been and would always be illegitimate was central to the Jacobite cause’.18 This cultural ambivalence is reflected in the drama of the period. Dryden’s Don Sebastian (1689), a play on the same topic as Massinger’s Believe as You List, offers a sceptical response to the revolution, not least on the question of legitimate monarchical authority.19 Dryden converted to Roman Catholicism around 1685 and his pro-Jacobite sympathies were well known, even if they are extremely carefully expressed. Crowne’s use of anti-Catholicism in his 1690 play The English Friar is more representative of an ascendant Whig ideology. Yet it can also be explained as an expedient rhetoric by a political chameleon. The Whig Thomas Shadwell, who replaced Dryden as poet laureate in 1688, finds space in his comedy Bury Fair (1689) to criticise the Tories for their doctrine of passive resistance. Yet it would not be accurate to call this play politically triumphalist.20 Indeed, the most overtly anti-Catholic play of this period, Lee’s The Massacre of Paris, printed in 1689 and given its first performance before the new Queen Mary that year, is the product of an earlier era.21 15 16

17

18 19

20 21

Pittock, Poetry and Jacobite Politics, pp. 38, 65–66, 84. For an account of William’s political problems, see Claydon, William III, pp. 9–18. For literary responses to William’s reign, see Williams, Poetry and the Creation, pp. 56–134. William’s accession appeared to some to represent a triumph of dissenting Puritanism. See Nicholas Tyacke, ‘The “Rise of Puritanism” and the Legalising of Dissent, 1571–1719’, in Nicholas Tyacke, Aspects of English Protestantism c. 1530–1700 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001), p. 76. Pincus, 1688, p. 446. Dryden’s Prologue to a revival of Beaumont and Fletcher’s The Prophetess was much more openly critical of William and was banned. See James Anderson Winn, John Dryden and His World (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1987), pp. 442–444. On the play, see Erskine-Hill, The Poetry of Opposition and Revolution, pp. 17–54. See the ‘Dedicatory Epistle’ to Thomas Shadwell, Bury Fair (London: James Knapton, 1689), sig. A3v-r. Paulina Kewes, Authority and Appropriation: Writing for the Stage in England, 1660–1710 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), p. 175.

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Another play called The Late Revolution is worth looking at in more detail. Written by ‘A Person of Quality’, it is the first of three plays that include The Royal Voyage and The Royal Flight. These texts are published in 1690 by the radical Whig printer Richard Baldwin, whom we encountered in the last chapter. They offer a popular, demotic history of the revolution, covering William’s invasion and James’ campaign and eventual defeat in Ireland. The Royal Voyage says that the drama was acted in 1689 and 1690. It seems more likely that these texts were written in a dramatic form, similar to some of the anti-Laudian texts examined in Chapter 5, perhaps for closet or private performance. All draw on apocalyptic and antiCatholic language, especially The Late Revolution. Yet in what is otherwise a pro-Williamite, Whig text, this play also displays political tensions.22 The Epistle Dedicatory is ‘To all true Englishmen’ and it offers a patriotic, Whig account of James’ deposition: Loss of our Shipping, deadness of Trade, heaviness of Taxes, are no doubt things grievous to be born, and may justly make us very uneasie and very angry; but then let not this Anger be misplaced, let it be aimed at a right Object; and not vented on Friends but Enemies: Who is the cause of the Loss of our Shipping, but those who suffered the French Tyrant to grow so strong at Sea, on purpose to ruine the Protestant Interest, and assist in the enslaving of England23

The charges made here are familiar. James failed to support the commercial activities underpinning the ‘Protestant Interest’. Given their state of slavish abjection, the people had no other option but to oppose their king. This anti-Catholicism has a national and internationalist perspective. As the Epistle balefully states: ‘Kings never lose their Thrones unless they have first lost their Peoples Hearts; seldom unless they’ve also lost their own: The late King has neither left, ours both.’24 William possesses the people’s hearts and his own: the implication here that sovereignty rests in the will of the people will be picked up again later. The play opens with a Protestant nightmare of false popish worship at the heart of the state: Scene opens. Discovers a Popish Chappel, adorn’d with Altar, Crucifix, Images, &c. Among which that of the Virgin Mary, and before it on their Knees, The Nuntio, Father Peters, Labourne, a Popish Lord and Lady, and 22

23

The Prologue calls it ‘A Williamitish Piece all thro” and has a jab at Dryden’s Don Sebastian, saying it is a play full of ‘Innuendo’s thick’ written ‘In praise of Abdicated Kings’. A Person of Quality, The Late Revolution: Or, the Happy Change . . . (London: Richard Baldwin, 1690), pp. 58–59. 24 Ibid., sig. A1r. Ibid.

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other Three Apostolical Vicars, Obadiah Walker, and other Priests, with several Choristers, who sing this Hymn (containing some of their most noted Blasphemies) to the Image of the Virgin.25

A number of the figures mentioned here, including the academic Obadiah Walker and the priest Sir Edward Petre, were well-known Roman Catholics and supporters of James.26 Not only is the scene designed to provoke anti-Catholic sentiment through indignatio, it is a direct political attack on prominent members of the old regime. The group plot against the state with the Papal Nuncio stating: ‘We must deceive, and if we’d ought enjoy / Must them divide before we can destroy.’ The king’s son James Francis is mentioned by Peters: ‘A Royal Prince has grac’d the Royal Womb, / The Dread and Scourge of Hereticks to come.’27 The sentiment may be anti-Jacobite. But by reminding readers of the existence of an alternative Roman Catholic line of monarchical legitimacy, the play’s villain touches on a sore point for William’s supporters, one regularly emphasised by Jacobite polemicists. Still, the Nuncio speaks of bad omens, volatile crowds, and an approaching judgement. As one Lord notes: ‘’Tis whisper’d mighty Preparation’s made, / And Orange will with speed the Land Invade.’28 William’s invasion – in keeping with his party ideology – must be providential. A later scene focusing on the complaints of the London merchants has a Whiggish tone. They note that business is down and rail against the religious constitution of the new court: ‘they have left of their expensive sins, and all o’th’ sudden grown wondrous Godly in the Devils name, and are resolved to damn cheaper and formally . . . ’Tis worth the while to see how gravely and devout every thing looks about Whitehall and St. James.’29 It is not really the Roman Catholicism of the court that is the problem. Rather, the puritanical brand of counterreformation piety practiced at Whitehall and St James is incompatible with commerce. Better the libertine court of Charles II, sinning and buying excessively, than the selfconsciously devout cheapness of James’ regime. The interweaving of economic and religious ideologies shows us that doctrinal scruples can be managed so long as they do not interfere with more pragmatic, material considerations.30 Another problem is the sheer variety of religious practices 25 26

27 30

Ibid., p. 1. For more on these figures, see Pincus, 1688, pp. 126–128, 174, 260. Compare the text for the Popeburning procession held in Aberdeen in 1689: Robert Reid, The Account of the Popes Procession at Aberdene (Aberdeen: J. Forbes, 1689). 28 29 The Late Revolution, p. 2. Ibid., p. 3. Ibid., p. 4. On trade during the period, see Hoppit, A Land of Liberty, pp. 318–323, and Pincus, 1688, pp. 83–90.

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permitted at court: ‘There’s Religions of all sorts and sizes, complexions and humours.’31 Lack of religious uniformity is bad for business and affects the ‘humour’ of the state at large. This is a common theme in drama of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. We do see more conventional, apocalyptic language used to decry England’s enemies, especially by the allegorically named Protestant Lords Misopappas and Philanglius: ‘For Hell and Romes broke loose, / And sent a Deluge of their Locusts hither.’32 The Lords also rail against the rebellious Irish.33 In another scene the citizens meet at the Royal Exchange to discuss the abuse of the city of London’s charter under James: ‘We once had Liberties, and were Englishmen.’34 Philanglius exhorts the citizens to action once William arrives: ‘Get your Arms ready if there should be need, / Nor have you yet, ’tis hoped, forgot to use ’em.’35 The latent political authority of the people is never far from the surface in this text even if that power is also a source of tension. With William safely stationed in Exeter, the mob enter St James’ and drive Peters and the Nuncio out: ‘Follow, follow, follow – this way the Rogues went, limb ’em, tear ’em, pull down their Houses, fire their Timber, and broil ’em upon their own Gridirons.’36 The Protestant Lords are aghast at this assertion of mob rule. Philanglius says: This savage rudeness is not like a Protestant Nor English man – nor does it please the Prince, Who call’d by th’ Votes of all that’s great in England, Comes here to take the Government upon him, And will secure in Properties and Rights Who e’re lives peaceably – therefore retire If you’d be pardon’d what’s already done.37

This is a fascinating speech. While the Whig aristocracy are happy to benefit from the behaviour of the crowd when it suits their ends, they shy away from granting it full political legitimacy. There are good reasons for doing so. Not only would such a sanction undermine the new king’s claim to authority. It could open him to the charge of being a de facto rebel, something that the Williamites vehemently denied.38 The Lords instead 31 33

34 38

32 The Late Revolution, p. 17. Ibid., p. 7. On the Irish context, see Hoppit, A Land of Liberty, pp. 93–97, 258–262, and Pincus, 1688, pp. 231–232, 268–273. 35 36 37 The Late Revolution, p. 9. Ibid., p. 12. Ibid., p. 58. Ibid. See Mark Goldie, ‘Priestcraft and the Birth of Whiggism’, and Lois Schwoerer, ‘The Right to Resist: Whig Resistance Theory, 1688 to 1694’, both in Political Discourse in Early Modern Britain, ed. Nicholas Phillipson and Quentin Skinner (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), pp. 209–252.

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fall back on a limited conception of parliamentary democracy. This will secure ‘Properties and Rights’ but only for those who are ‘great’, namely the property-owning classes. Even under a regime broadly supportive of the Whigs, the radical end of their ideology still needs to be treated with care. Liberty granted is also, as Hobbes understood, liberty circumscribed. As The Late Revolution shows, no one could know for sure in 1690 how robust William’s new political order would be. Peters’ discussion of the options open to the regime is worth quoting as it gives us a good sense of what is at stake: either they’ll propose a Regency, A weak, unsettled, tottering, dangerous State, Or else make Orange King – which last will leave us Sufficient Game to play – we’ll set all Parties Whom now their common Injuries have joyn’d, Upon a new Ferment – exclaim against The Government as Traiterous and illegal.39

By taking the second route, the new regime could hardly avoid Jacobite accusations that it was an illegal government. The critical word here is ‘Parties’. Peters argues that the parties have united expediently, sanctioning a ruler who can heal their ‘common Injuries’. The downside is clear: it allows William’s enemies to sow faction. Roman Catholics and Protestants alike are never entirely on solid political ground. While the play presents Peters’ words as a new popish plot against the English, the ‘Ferment’ of political faction or party is related to other shifts in political power. For one, the authority of the court declines gradually in the second half of the seventeenth century. As Tony Claydon notes, ‘parliament in the 1690s became a still more permanent and regular element of the English polity. As a result, elites concentrated upon it ever more closely, and made alliances and conducted campaigns in its chambers rather than in palace rooms.’40 Gradually the politics of parliamentary party come to dominate public debate. The settlement agreed to in the Bill of Rights (1689), with its complicated attempt to align providential monarchism and constitutional rights, especially for Protestant dissenters, should also be mentioned here. Henceforth, monarchy would have to find new ways of engaging with party politicians, a more autonomous 39 40

The Late Revolution, p. 57. Claydon, William III, p. 76. See also the essays collected in Protestantism and National Identity: Britain and Ireland, c. 1650–c. 1850, ed. Tony Claydon and Ian McBride (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).

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parliament, and an ever-expanding, bourgeois public sphere.41 William and his supporters do draw on de iure notions of divine right to bolster their arguments at times of political stress. Yet by the time of Queen Anne’s reign and the establishment of Great Britain as a political entity in 1707, such ideas are beginning to lose their lustre. A consensual, constitutional monarchy with circumscribed prerogative rights, and an increasingly assertive public sphere driven by expansionist colonialism and commerce, underpins the political order in the new century. The Bill of Rights and the Act of Succession of 1701 writes anti-Catholicism into the British legal constitution by barring a Roman Catholic from ever acceding to the throne. Drama, that uniquely public literary form, plays a central role in these developments. At the start of the seventeenth century, prologues and epilogues in drama written for the public theatres are relatively unusual. When they do appear, they rarely touch directly on political or religious controversy. But by the end of the seventeenth century, it is almost impossible to imagine a play being published without a prologue and an epilogue. More often than not, these offer the audience a direct political analysis of current events, or else a framework within which to interpret what is depicted in the play. If most early seventeenth-century drama is covertly political, a genre that explores politics through religious analogy, by the end of the century that politicisation is overt. Later seventeenthcentury drama helps to shape, and is shaped by, a more permanent public sphere of debate. These important developments in authority operate alongside some very old ways of doing religious and political business. As scholars have shown, the cultural use of anti-Catholic and apocalyptic language continues well into the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.42 While a full exploration of 41

42

See Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, trans. Thomas Burger with Frederick Lawrence (Cambridge: Polity, 1989). There are numerous critiques of the view that a recognisable public sphere properly emerges in the eighteenth century. See David Norbrook, Writing the English Republic: Poetry, Rhetoric and Politics, 1627–1660 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 13–15. See too Sharon Achinstein, Milton and the Revolutionary Reader (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994); David Norbrook, ‘Areopagitica, Censorship, and the Early Modern Public Sphere’, in The Administration of Aesthetics: Censorship, Political Criticism, and the Public Sphere, ed. Richard Burt (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994), pp. 3–33; and The Politics of the Public Sphere in Early Modern England, ed. Peter Lake and Steven Pincus (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007). Claydon, William III, pp. 43–52; Colin Haydon, Anti-Catholicism in Eighteenth Century England, c. 1714–80 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1993); Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation 1707–1837 (London: Pimlico, 1994), pp. 11–54; Colin Haydon, ‘“I love my King and my Country, but a Roman Catholic I hate”: Anti-Catholicism, Xenophobia and National Identity in Eighteenth-Century England’, in Protestantism and National Identity, pp. 33–52, and Jeremy

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this phenomenon is beyond the scope of this book, I want to offer a brief sketch of how later drama uses this rhetoric. As noted, the birth of James II’s son James Francis gave hope, despite rumours of the child’s illegitimacy, to the Jacobites. As James Francis moved into his maturity, his claim to the throne was supported by Louis XIV. This did not go down well in Britain. Earlier attempts at an invasion backed by the French were unsuccessful. Despite suggestions in the final years of Queen Anne’s reign that James Francis convert to Protestantism, the Pretender maintained his Roman Catholic faith. The argument that prominent members of Anne’s government support James Francis’ claim is often heard in the last years of her reign.43 Indeed, the Peace of Utrecht in 1713 revived anxieties – fanned by the Whigs – that a Jacobite restoration was imminent.44 Following Anne’s death in 1714, the Tory government collapsed. Prominent Tories such as Bolingbroke went into exile, and the new Hanoverian king, George I, supported a Whig administration that included rising stars such as Robert Walpole. In 1715, encouraged by a Scottish Jacobite rebellion, James Francis landed in that country and was recognised as king.45 Although initially well received, the Pretender was not supported militarily as he had hoped by the French. Another attempt to raise support for the Stuart cause came to similar grief in 1719. The discovery of the Atterbury Plot in 1722 was a more serious setback, but the Jacobite threat refused to fade away.46 The prospect of a Roman Catholic monarch ruling Great Britain continued to haunt the political and literary imagination.47 In Nicholas Rowe’s 1715 play The Tragedy of the Lady Jane Gray, the history of an earlier Protestant figure, ‘A Heroine, a Martyr, and a Queen’ as the Prologue has it, enables its author (and editor of Shakespeare) to explore the dangers of Roman Catholic power.48 Like many Whig plays of this period, the Prologue namechecks English ‘Liberty’ and invites the audience to read the play as a typological parallel of contemporary history: ‘WILLIAM’S Great Hand was doom’d to break that Chain, / And end

43 44

45

46

47 48

Black, ‘Confessional State or Elect Nation? Religion and Identity in Eighteenth-Century England’, in Protestantism and National Identity, pp. 53–74. See Hoppit, A Land of Liberty, pp. 308–309. See Maynard Mack, Alexander Pope: A Literary Life (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1985), pp. 61–62, and Rogers, Pope and the Destiny. See Daniel Szechi, 1715: The Great Jacobite Rebellion (New Haven and London: Yale University Press 2006). See Eveline Cruickshanks and Howard Erskine-Hill, The Atterbury Plot (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2004). See Haydon, Anti-Catholicism, pp. 76–116. Nicholas Rowe, The Tragedy of the Lady Jane Gray (Dublin: Edwin Sandys for George Grierson, 1715), sig. A4v.

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the Hopes of Rome’s Tyrannick Reign.’49 Indeed, the entire text warns the state not to turn its back on William’s Protestant revolution and allow popery in by the back door. The play opens with the Protestant Edward VI on his deathbed. Various Protestant Lords express fear at the possible ascension of a Roman Catholic monarch: Doubt not, your Graces, but the Pope Will at this Juncture urge their utmost Force. All, on the Princess Mary, turn their Eyes, Well hoping she shall build again their Altars, And bring back their Idol-Worship back in Triumph.50

The use of the word ‘Force’ is notable here especially in light of the Pretender’s arrival in Scotland that year. Though we cannot discount an appeal to localised popular anti-Catholic sentiment, this kind of speech speaks to a wider cultural insecurity about the robustness of English ‘liberties’ within the state. These are not simply the paranoid warnings of an anti-Catholic fantasist who sees plots at every turn. They are the product of a political culture where the hegemony of the Protestant polis is anything but secure. Mary is referred to as ‘a blinded Zealot’ who is Nurtur’d by proud pressuring Romish Priests’, and Lady Jane reports Edward’s dying imprecatio: ‘Preserve thy holy Altars undefil’d, / Protect this Land from bloody Men and Idols, / Save my poor People from the Yoak of Rome.’51 Mary represents James Francis and the childless Edward represents Anne. The language used by both monarchs is very similar to anti-Jacobite pamphlets debating the succession and the claim of the Pretender.52 Indeed, the play’s anti-Catholic rhetoric is fairly inexorable throughout. Like a good Whig, Jane tries to harness the ‘Voice of a Consenting People’ in her efforts to take power and ‘To save this Land from Tyranny and Rome’ but her cause is irrevocably damaged by backsliding supporters.53 Her final words on the scaffold are politically significant: ‘In thy due Season let the Hero come, / To save thy Altars from the Rage of Rome.’54 There is more than a hint of apocalyptic renovatio and redemption here. Yet the central message is more prosaic 49 52

53

50 51 Ibid. Ibid., p. 2. Ibid. Anti-Jacobite texts making this kind of claim are numerous, but see Advice to Protestants . . . (Dublin: Elizabeth Dickson, 1714); John Asgill, The Succession of the House of Hanover Vindicated . . . (London: J. Roberts, 1714); John Dunton, The Hereditary Bastard . . . (London: S. Keymer and others, 1714); William King, An Answer to All That Has Ever Been Said, or Insinuated, in Favour of a Popish Pretender . . . (London: A. Baldwin, 1713); and The Protestant Chevalier a Papist in Masquerade . . . (London: E. Smith, 1714). 54 Rowe, The Tragedy, p. 40; p. 42. Ibid., p. 72.

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and pro-Hanoverian. If an indigenous Protestant monarch cannot be found then one should be imported. Other plays plough a similar furrow. Colley Cibber’s 1717 adaptation of Molière’s Tartuffe called The Non-Juror aims its fire at those members of the nonjuring party who refuse to swear allegiance to William.55 Their continued defiance was seen by many as a sop to papal sedition. The play comes complete with expository notes offering the reader a specific interpretation of the action. We might say that plays like this reduce drama solely to polemic, and there is some justification in this claim. Nevertheless, the fact that Cibber and others like him are able to write such texts at all shows drama’s more emboldened political voice in the public sphere. In one scene, two characters discuss which church a third character attends. The pith of the matter is found in the notes. They explain that the particular establishment referred to represents the ‘Intoxication’ of the nonjuring party who ‘believe Loyalty to King George is pernicious, and the Church (which they purposely conspire to destroy by bringing in a Popish Pretender) to be in Danger’.56 The play is concerned about the volatility of the populace, worrying about ‘the Mob, whom, the NonJurors, Jacobites, and Papists [are] poisoning with factious and seditious Principles’. The ominously named Dr Wolf claims that ‘a Protestant Church can never be secure, till it has a Popish Prince to defend it’.57 This is both a satirical exaggeration of the nonjurist position and an expression of cultural insecurity. Sedition is to be found within and without the state. It is simply the identity of the villains that has changed: ‘Nonjuring Parsons, who being for the most part popish Priests, act their Villainy in Masquerade’.58 Such claims raise a question that is fundamental to eighteenth-century religious and political debate. Can the Protestant public sphere accommodate dissent or should it be eradicated? Arguments for the former position become increasingly prominent. But there are those who continue to argue that dissenters are a dangerous aberration. Charles Beckingham’s The Tragedy of King Henry IV of France, performed at Lincoln’s Inn Fields in 1719, returns to the assassination of this king in 1610. Even though Henry IV was a Roman Catholic at the time of his death, throughout this play he is an upholder of liberty and a tragic victim of factional popish politicking. Indeed, he asks at one point whether 55

56 57

For his account of the play’s political aims, see Colley Cibber, An Apology for the Life of Mr. Colley Cibber . . . (London: John Watts, 1740), pp. 427–432. Colley Cibber, The Comedy Call’d the Non-Juror . . . (London: JL, 1718), p. 6. 58 Ibid., p. 13; p. 15. Ibid. p. 16.

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he should be ‘Dependent on a Tribe of saucy Priests?’59 It is worth noting Henry’s assertion that there are ‘Two Factions discontented with my Reign, / Both Huguenots and Catholicks my Foes.’60 It is the lack of a moderate accommodation between these two poles that causes political strife in the state. The papal Nuncio, Bishops, and priests openly plot against the king. They hand-pick Ravaillac and even, in the case of the Nuncio, hand him the fatal dagger. The play’s political message is not subtle. The suggestion that the assassin will be rewarded as a martyr draws on the old charge that Roman Catholicism is a religious front for the political assassination of kings.61 Whether it is seen as a Whiggish defence of liberty or an expression of bigotry, the play tries to find a middle ground between these two positions. On this count it cannot be judged a success. Beckingham’s play is aware that ‘public opinion’ is a many-headed beast. Yet anti-Catholicism is a useful way of glossing over those tensions and divisions, offering a unitary position against a perceived common foe. Other plays address prominent political figures in the anti-Jacobite movement. Susannah Centlivre’s 1717 play The Cruel Gift is dedicated to the controversial Whig politician Eustace Budgell. Her Epistle praises Whig opposition to the Pretender with this encomium: ‘I cannot but congratulate my Country for breeding such gallant free Spirits, who like your Self, have rose up in Opposition to the two most implacable Powers that can be let loose upon Mankind, Tyranny and Popery.’62 Ambrose Philips’ 1723 play Humfrey, Duke of Gloucester is based on the second part of Shakespeare’s Henry VI and is dedicated to William Pulteney, the Earl of Bath. A Whig, Pulteney was appointed to examine the Jacobite conspiracy in the aftermath of the Atterbury Plot, the same year that Humfrey appeared. It seems that the play was intended to support Pulteney’s activities. Certainly the text is given the gloss of anti-papal historiography. We are told that Humfrey was ‘a great Opposer of the oppressive Usurpations of the Sea of Rome; a generous Favourer of the, then, poor and distrest Commons’.63 And as the reference to parliament implies, the play is implacable in its assertion of Whig ideology: ‘Liberty and Property are become universal, in Great Britain.’64 Nevertheless, the dedication raises concerns that the aristocratic wing of the Whig party are not to be trusted 59

60 62 63 64

Charles Beckingham, The Tragedy of King Henry IV of France (London: E. Curll and others, 1720), p. 12. 61 Ibid., p. 48. Ibid., p. 61. Susanna Centlivre, The Cruel Gift . . . (London: E. Curl and A. Bettesworth, 1717), sigs. A4r–A5v. Ambrose Philips, Humfrey, Duke of Gloucester . . . (London: J. Roberts, 1723), sig. A1r. Ibid., sig. A2v.

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on the question of the Pretender: ‘It is a great Satisfaction to All, who know the Value of a Free Government, to see, at the Head of a Committee appointed to enquire into the present Conspiracy, a Commoner, who is placed above all Hopes and Fears, but those, which regard his Country.’65 Here the more populist and demotic wing of Whig ideology can be glimpsed, the Lockean contract that locates political authority with the common people endowed with freedom by God. The play’s exploration of various aristocratic concessions to papal power only serves to confirm this point. The political unity offered by anti-Catholic rhetoric is in danger of being undermined by party faction and aristocratic self-interest. A further flurry of anti-Catholic drama emerges in 1745 when James Francis’ son, Charles Edward Stuart, popularly known as Bonnie Prince Charlie, stages his rebellion against George II.66 Once more, Shakespeare is pressed into political service. Colley Cibber enters the lists with a revision of King John entitled Papal Tyranny in the Reign of King John (1745). The dedication offers an interesting early discussion of whether or not Shakespeare was a Roman Catholic. Cibber offers the salutary conclusion that ‘Had Shakespear been a Romanist, he would scare have let his King John have taken the following Liberty with his Holiness, where he contemns the credulity of Philip the French King that can submit to – Purchase corrupted Pardon of a Man, / Who, in that Sale, sells Pardon from himself.’67 The idea that the Bard might be a papist is suspect and undermines national Protestant unity. Papal Tyranny’s warnings about a weak monarch under Roman authority found a ready audience in a London shaken by the recent Jacobite advance into the north of England. Charles Macklin’s King Henry VII, or The Popish Imposter (1745) returns to the chronicle histories and an earlier pretender, Perkin Warbeck, in order to denounce the Roman Catholic pretender. John Cutts’ Rebellion Defeated, or The Fall of Desmond (1745) deals with the Elizabethan wars in Ireland and Jesuit subversion. The dedication ‘To FREE-BORN ENGLISHMEN, Friends to Liberty; AND Especially to those Gentlemen in the Association, established for the Defence of their Country’ uses the language of the Whig political theory and the Bill of Rights, both ubiquitous in anti-Jacobite

65 66

67

Ibid. See Jonathan D. Oates, The Jacobite Campaigns: The British State at War (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2011). Colley Cibber, Papal Tyranny in the Reign of King John . . . (London: J. Watts, 1745), sig. A4v. On reworkings of Shakespeare during this period, see Michael Dobson, The Making of the National Poet: Shakespeare, Adaptation, and Authorship 1660–1769 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992).

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texts of this period.68 Lord Grey celebrates the defeat of the rebels with words in praise of neo-Roman liberty: To serve in the Defence of Liberty, Is more exalted than to reign o’er Slaves: – Despite their painted face of Tyranny!69

Even in 1745, appeal can still be made to a ‘Jacobethan’ rhetoric of antiCatholicism. More demotic expressions of this ideology can also be found in anti-papal, even anti-religious pantomimes and squibs such as Rex et Pontifex (1745), The Mission from Rome into Great-Britain (1745), and Harlequin Incendiary, or Columbine Cameron (1746).70 Anti-Catholic and apocalyptic language remains an important feature of debate in the public sphere throughout the eighteenth century. As in the preceding century, its usage is not uniform and it is deployed for a variety of ends. Dramatists continue to use it because an anti-Catholic interpretation of history, and of contemporary events, underwrites what is by now a dominant Whig historiography eager to trace the emergence of a collective British national identity as a form of political revelation supported by colonialism and commerce. In the words of Colin Haydon, antiCatholicism is ‘an ideology which promoted national cohesion, countering, though not submerging, the kingdom’s political divisions and social tensions. It showed what it was – despite these – to be English by emphasising what it was to be “unEnglish”.’71 It also offers a means of defining and defending the concept of liberty and legal rights, although, as we have seen, this is far from being a straightforward matter. After the defeat of Charles Edward Stuart, Britain enters a different phase in its political and intellectual history. Enlightenment values of reason, rationality, and religious toleration come to dominate intellectual debate as Britain consolidates its place as a major commercial and colonial power on the global stage. Sometimes that toleration is extended to Roman Catholics. During the passage of the Quebec Act in 1774 for the establishment of new English colonies, the right of Roman Catholics to own land is found in legislation.72 Yet anti-Catholicism still retains a tenacious hold in the popular, literary, and intellectual imagination, rearing 68 69 70

71

John Cutts, Rebellion Defeated: Or, The Fall of Desmond. A Tragedy (London, 1745), sig. A2r. Ibid., p. 51. Rex et Pontifex: Being an Attempt to introduce upon the Stage a New Species of Pantomime (London: M. Cooper, 1745); The Mission from Rome into Great-Britain . . . (London, 1745); Harlequin Incendiary: Or, Columbine Cameron (London: M. Cooper, 1746). 72 Haydon, ‘I love my king’, p. 49. Haydon, Anti-Catholicism, pp. 170–172

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its head at moments like the Gordon Riots of 1780 against Roman Catholic toleration, as well as in any number of more local ways.73 Anti-Catholicism is too effective an ideological glue to be completely discarded, even in the age of reason.74 The process of toleration and confessionalisation in early modern England is thus, to adopt Alexandra Walsham’s words, ‘double-edged’.75 AntiCatholic sectarianism and violence can still be found in an Enlightenment culture that might otherwise prefer to stress, for instance, the comparative study of religions, the ideology of sentiment and politeness, and philosophical reason. In eighteenth-century drama, the expression of a recognisable early modern anti-Catholic ideology that would have been understood by its Elizabethan and Jacobean forebears probably passes with the defeat of the Young Pretender.76 Literary anti-popery in the later eighteenth and nineteenth century operates in relation to other pressures as it adapts older rhetorical and artistic forms. Morton Paley has shown how Romanticism draws on apocalypticism and, to a lesser degree, antiCatholicism.77 We see examples of this rhetoric in later Romantic drama. Anti-Catholic sentiment is expressed in plays written during the period of the French revolution, like John St John’s Mary, Queen of Scots (1789) or James Hurdis’ Sir Thomas More (1792).78 But perhaps the most tenacious literary legacy of anti-Catholicism can be found in the sensational genre of the Gothic. In plays such as Horace Walpole’s The Mysterious Mother (1768), Henry Siddon’s The Sicilian Romance (1794), James Boaden’s The Italian Monk (1797, based on Anne Radcliffe’s novel The Italian), and Matthew Lewis’ The Castle Spectre (1797), and in numerous novels and poems, French or Italian settings, scheming prelates, and ghostly apparitions draw on a well-established link between Roman Catholicism and

73

74

75

76 77

78

On the Gordon Riots, see The Gordon Riots: Politics, Culture and Insurrection in Late EighteenthCentury Britain, ed. Ian Haywood and John Seed (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012). As Claydon says of the eighteenth century, ‘the need to oppose a heartless, torturing popery blunted the internal conflicts of reformed Christianity’ – Europe and the Making of England, pp. 167–168. See too Colley, Britons, pp. 20–43. Alexandra Walsham, Charitable Hatred: Tolerance and Intolerance in England, 1500–1700 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006), p. 317. See also Tyacke, ‘The “Rise of Puritanism” and the Legalising of Dissent, 1571–1719’, pp. 61–89, and more generally Benjamin J. Kaplan, Divided by Faith: Religion Conflict and the Practice of Toleration in Early Modern Europe (London and Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2009). See Claydon, Europe and the Making of England, pp. 354–363. See Morton D. Paley, The Apocalyptic Sublime (Yale: Yale University Press, 1998), and Apocalypse and Millennium in English Romantic Poetry (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). John St John, Mary, Queen of Scots, a Tragedy (London: J. Debrett, 1789), and James Hurdis, Sir Thomas More: A Tragedy (London: J. Johnson, 1792)

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villainy, and on a range of early modern literary precedents.79 Gothic antiCatholicism takes on a variety of modes.80 It can still be topically political and reflect personal religious conviction. Yet as the early modern period gradually becomes the object of cultural nostalgia, literary anti-Catholicism also takes on a more antiquarian or comparative slant. A good case in point is Radcliffe’s The Italian. This novel undercuts conventional cultural depictions of Roman Catholicism in two main ways: first, in the realisation of the villainous monk Schedoni that he is in fact the father of the persecuted heroine Ellena, and second in the contrast between the order of nuns who persecute Ellena and a different, more enlightened order who, later in the novel, offer Ellena and her friend Olivia sanctuary.81 Another example is Walter Scott’s Waverley (1814), which draws at various points on anti-Catholic language. The most sustained use of this rhetoric comes from the mouth of the Presbyterian Gilfillan, who accompanies Waverley to jail in Stirling.82 This is Scott in antiquarian mode. But this example may also have some personal resonance. Although from a Presbyterian background, Scott uses anti-Catholic sentiment to critique a branch of Protestantism that, as an adult, he rejected.

II This book has argued for the political centrality and flexibility of apocalyptic and anti-Catholic language in seventeenth-century English drama. Playwrights from a wide range of perspectives use this rhetoric to intervene in a number of public spheres. Much early modern drama displays a beatby-beat sensitivity to the political moods of the state. It is a genre where 79

80

81 82

Horace Walpole, The Mysterious Mother: A Tragedy (London: J. Dodsley, 1781); Henry Sidons, The Sicilian Romance: Or, The Apparition of the Cliffs (London: J. Barker, 1794); James Boaden, The Italian Monk (London: G.G. and J. Robinson, 1797); and Matthew Lewis, The Castle Spectre (Dublin: G. Folingsey, 1798). See Gothic Shakespeares, ed. John Drakakis and Dale Townshend (London and New York: Routledge, 2008). The literature on anti-Catholicism and the Gothic in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries is extensive. But see E.R. Norman, Anti-Catholicism in Victorian England (London: Allen and Unwin, 1968); Susan M. Griffin, Anti-Catholicism and Nineteenth-Century Fiction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004); Maria Purves, The Gothic and Catholicism: Religion, Cultural Exchange and the Popular Novel, 1785–1829 (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2009); and Diane Long Hoeveler, The Gothic Ideology: Religious Hysteria and Anti-Catholicism in British Popular Fiction, 1780–1880 (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2014). Examples of the influence of anti-Catholicism in Victorian literature might include Robert Browning’s Italianate dramatic monologues ‘Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister’ and ‘My Last Duchess’ (1842), Charlotte Brontë’s, Villette (1853), and Bram Stoker’s, Dracula (1897). Ann Radcliffe, The Italian, ed. Frederick Garber (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998). Sir Walter Scott, Waverley, ed. P.D. Garside (London: Penguin, 2011), pp. 175–189.

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competing views are articulated and critiqued. I have also argued that the use of this rhetoric helps us to better understand the relationship between national and international politics. Whether considering the apocalyptic tradition, the historiography of the Reformation, imperial monarchy, reason of state, doctrines of resistance and rebellion, the civil wars, political party, liberty, or confessionalisation, drama allows English men and women to debate the constitution, authority, and limitations of the state. Anti-Catholicism is not a particularly pleasant phenomenon. And, of course, it still has its adherents today.83 In Northern Ireland the long tail of anti-Catholic prejudice continues to wag intermittently in the twenty-first century.84 Despite revisions to the 1701 Act of Succession made by the UK Coalition Government in 2011, a Roman Catholic monarch of Great Britain is still prohibited by law at the present time of writing (2017). In a national referendum held in June 2016, 51.9 percent voted in favour of the UK leaving the European Union. The ‘Brexit’ vote shows that the mythology of a domineering European superpower interfering in the affairs of the British state still persists. It is not difficult to find modern examples of the apocalyptic interpretation of world history either.85 Versions of this narrative underlie some of the wilder conspiracy theories operating on the margins of Western society. Scholars such as John Gray have pointed out the links between apocalyptic ideology and some presentday forms of Islamic extremism.86 And the imperial idea of the strong leader who will purge society of its ills has been appropriated by demagogues throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, often with devastating consequences. Nevertheless, it is dangerous to draw too direct a line between these modern instances and the seventeenth-century ideas 83

84

85

86

See, for example,` Mark S. Massa, SJ, Anti-Catholicism in America: The Last Acceptable Prejudice (New York: Crossroad Publishing, 2003), and Phillip Jenkins, The New Anti-Catholicism: The Last Acceptable Prejudice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). See John D. Brewer and Gareth I. Higgins, Anti-Catholicism in Northern Ireland, 1600–1998: The Mote and the Beam (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 1998). The literature on modern apocalypticism is large, but see Millennium, Messiahs and Mayhem: Contemporary Apocalyptic Movements, ed. Thomas Robbins and Susan J. Palmer (New York and London: Routledge, 1997); John Gray, Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia (London and New York: Penguin, 2008); John R. Hall, Apocalypse: From Antiquity to the Empire of Modernity (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2009); Crawford Gribben, Evangelical Millennialism in the Transatlantic World, 1500–2000 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011); and Slavoj Zizek, Living in the End Times, rev. ed. (London and New York: Verso, 2011). See Peter Knight, Conspiracy Culture: From Kennedy to the X Files (London: Routledge, 2000); Michael Barkun, A Culture of Conspiracy: Apocalyptic Visions in Contemporary America (Berkeley and London: University of California Press, 2003); Gray, Black Mass; and Kathryn S. Olmstead, Real Enemies: Conspiracy Theories and American Democracy, World War I to 9/11 (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2010).

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examined in this book. There is as much discontinuity here as there is continuity.87 I have attempted, as far as possible, to understand the language of anti-Catholicism and apocalypticism on its own early modern terms. I have also tried to avoid making value judgements on what were major ideological preoccupations and explanatory methods favoured by our early modern forebears. This is an ideology that we might now tend to see as encoding bigotry and prejudice. Some in the period did so too. But for many early modern Protestants, this language is a rational expression of religious and political good sense. Indeed, its historical persistence shows that it continued to make ‘good sense’ to many, albeit in different contexts, long after the Enlightenment supposedly reshaped our political and ethical systems for the better. This last point raises the complicated relationship between apocalypse, anti-Catholicism, and the emergence of the modern nation-state.88 A number of the dramatists discussed in this book are working towards a conception of Protestant state autonomy and self-definition based on the rejection of Roman Catholic tyranny and universal monarchy. It is all too easy to dismiss such a conception as prejudiced and Whiggish. But this downplays the important early modern belief that the end of history results in the triumph not of the state, but of God. Even the advent of Cartesian dualism, mechanistic rationality, and freethinking does not displace this language altogether. Many of the philosophers and natural scientists of the later seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, most famously Sir Isaac Newton, are influenced by apocalypticism and anti-popery.89 Moreover, as Tony Claydon has rightly noted, ‘the apparently secular point that nations must be free from one-power hegemony actually expressed faith in a Christian moral order of relations between states’.90 Although they viewed it at times with sceptical weariness, the idea of the Protestant international as a counter to Roman Catholic power is recognised and understood by most of the dramatists discussed in this book. One of the reasons that so many of these writers 87

88

89

90

Witness the historically selective accounts of 1688/89 and the ‘Glorious’ Revolution still popular in sections of modern Northern Irish society. See Jennifer Waldron, Reformations of the Body: Idolatry, Sacrifice, and Early Modern Theater (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), pp. 1–2, 7–14. See too Anthony Dawson, ‘The Secular Theatre’, in Shakespeare and Religious Change, ed. Kenneth J.E. Graham and Philip D. Collington (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), pp. 238–260. On Newton’s anti-Catholicism, see Richard Westfall, The Life of Isaac Newton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 125–130. On his apocalypticism, see Michael Murrin, ‘Newton’s Apocalypse’, in Newton and Religion: Context, Nature and Influence, ed. James E. Force and Richard H. Popkin (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic, 1999), pp. 203–220. Claydon, Europe and the Making of England, p. 218.

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are concerned with war, trade, and reason of state is that commerce with co-religionists abroad is a way of asserting and defending the Protestant international. Certainly these values are not always consistently held to, as for example during the three Anglo-Dutch wars of the mid-seventeenth century.91 But the idea of the Protestant international does not go away. Instead it is subjected to a different set of geopolitical pressures and is reshaped for the purposes of what we now call the ‘Age of Empire’. Indeed, thinkers such as Montesquieu and Hume debate whether or not the commercial and colonial activities of the British Empire are sufficient to neutralise the political and religious threat of imperial Roman Catholic power.92 In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, economic expansionism continues to be underwritten by anti-Catholic sentiment but to rather different ends.93 In the words of David Armitage, Protestantism provided Englishness, Britishness and the British Empire with a common chronology and a history stretching from the English and Scottish Reformations, through the attempted religious unification of the Stuart monarchies during the seventeenth century, across the Anglo-Scottish Parliamentary Union of 1707 and on to the United Kingdom of Great Britain that sat at the heart of the expanding British empire-state of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. That chronology was hardly seamless and uninterrupted; nonetheless, Protestantism was the only thread joining these three mutually constitutive processes from state-formation to empire building.94

This book is a contribution to the first part of the disrupted chronology outlined here. In their diverse ways, the plays studied here participate in the difficult process of British state-formation. Yet the varied and continued uses of apocalyptic and anti-Catholic language during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and into the modern era is an important reminder that this is indeed anything but a ‘seamless’ process. There can be no easy political progression towards incipient secularity and tolerance when this ideology continues to underpin the constitution of the modern 91

92

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See Steven Pincus, Protestantism and Patriotism: Ideologies and the Making of English Foreign Policy, 1650–1688 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). See John Robertson, ‘“Universal Monarchy and the Liberties of Europe”: David Hume’s Critique of an English Whig Doctrine’, in Political Discourse in Early Modern Britain, pp. 349–373. See Claydon, Europe and the Making of England; David Armitage, The Ideological Origins of the British Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); and Jonathan Israel, Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity 1650–1750 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002). Armitage, The Ideological Origins, p. 62.

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British state.95 Understood in this light, the language of apocalypse and anti-popery is not an embarrassing early modern hangover that postmodernity would prefer to disavow. It reminds us that the British state is imperfectly modern precisely because it continues to be shaped by these early modern Protestant polemics and their preoccupations. The roots of what we presently call the United Kingdom emerge from this decidedly troublesome religious soil. 95

On the difficulties of the so-called secularisation thesis, see Brian Cummings, Mortal Thoughts: Religion, Secularity and Identity in Shakespeare and Early Modern Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), pp. 1–18.

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A Trve Copy of the Petition of the Gentle-Women, & Trades-Men Wives in, and about the City of London Delivered . . . in Parliament (London: J. Wright, 1642). A True Description Or Rather a Parallel between Cardinall Wolsey, Arch-Bishop of York, And William Laud, Arch-Bishop of Canterbury (London: n.p., 1641). Augustine of Hippo, The City of God . . ., trans. J.H. (London: George Eld, 1610). A Venice Looking Glasse: Or, a Letter Written Very Lately from London to Rome, by a Venetian Clarissimo to Cardinal Barberino . . . (n.p., 1648). A Word without Doors Concerning the Bill for Succession (London, 1679). Bacon, Francis, A Declaration of the Practises & Treasons Attempted and Committed by Robert late Earle of Essex and His Complices, against Her Maiestie and Her Kingdoms . . . (London: Robert Barker, 1601). Bancroft, Richard, A Sermon Preached at Paules Crosse . . . (London: E.B. for Gregorie Seton, 1588). Barlow, William, A Defence of the Articles of the Protestants Religion . . . (London: Iohn Wolfe, 1601). Barnes, Barnabe, The Devil’s Charter, ed. R.B. McKerrow (London: Nutt, 1904). Bates, William, The Divinity of the Christian Religion . . . (London: J.D. for Brabazon Aylmer, 1677). Batman, Stephen, The Doome Warning All Men to Iudgement . . . (London: Ralph Nubery, 1581). Beaumont, Francis, The Knight of the Burning Pestle, ed. Sheldon P. Zitner (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004). Beckingham, Charles, The Tragedy of King Henry IV of France (London: E. Curll and others, 1720). Behn, Aphra, The Feign’d Curtizans, or, A Night’s Intrigue (London: Jacob Tonson, 1679). The Bible: That Is, the Holy Scriptures . . . (London: Christopher Barker, 1599). Blount, Charles, An Appeal from the Country to the City . . . (London, 1679). Brightman, Thomas, A Revelation of the Apocalypse . . . (Amsterdam: Iudocus Hondius and Hendrick Laurenss, 1611). Brocardo, James, The Reuelation of Saint Iohn . . ., trans. James Sanford (London: Thomas Marsh, 1582). Broughton, Hugh, A Concent of Scripture (London: Gabriel Simson and William White, 1590). A Revelation of the Holy Apocalyps . . . (Middleburg: Richard Schilders, 1610). Buchanan, George, Tyrannicall-Government Anatomized . . . (London: John Field, 1642). Bullinger, Heinrich, A Confutation of the Popes Bull . . . (London: John Day, 1572). A Hvndred Sermons vpon the Apocalypse . . . (London: Iohn Daye, 1573). The Burning of the Whore of Babylon, as It Was Acted, with Great Applause, in the Poultry, London, on Wednesday Night, Being the Fifth of November . . . (London: R.C., 1673). Burton, Henry, A Replie to a Relation, of the Conference betweene William Laude and Mr. Fisher the Jesuite (Amsterdam: Cloppenburg Press, 1640).

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Calendar of State Papers and Manuscripts . . . in the Archives and Collections of Venice . . ., vol. X, 1603–1607, ed. Horatio F. Brown (London: HMSO, 1900). Calendar of State Papers [Venetian], vol. XI, 1607–1610, ed. Horatio F. Brown (London: Mackie, 1904). Calvin, John, Commentary on John 11–21 and 1 John, trans. T.H.L. Parker (Grand Rapids: William Eerdmans, 1994). Canterbvries Amazement . . . (London: F. Coules, 1641). Canterbvries Ghost . . . (London: F. Coules, 1641). Cartwright, William, The Plays and Poems of William Cartwright, ed. G. Blakemore Evans (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1951). The Case of Succession to the Crown of England Stated . . . (London, 1679). Casaubon, Issac, Ad Frontonem Ducaeum . . . (Londini: Ioannem Norton, 1611). Centlivre, Susanna, The Cruel Gift . . . (London: E. Curl and A. Bettesworth, 1717). The Charge of the Scottish Commissioners against Canterburie and the Lievtenant of Ireland . . . (London: Nathaniel Butter, 1641). Chillingworth, William, The Religion of Protestants . . . (Oxford: Leonard Lichfield, 1638). Cibber, Colley, The Comedy Call’d the Non-Juror . . . (London: JL, 1718). Papal Tyranny in the Reign of King John . . . (London: J. Watts, 1745). di Conestaggio, Gerolamo Franchi, The Historie of the Uniting of the Kingdome of Portugall to the Crowne of Castill . . . (London: Ar. Hatfield for Edward Blount, 1600). Crowley, Robert, Preface to The Vision of Pierce Plowman . . . (London: Robert Crowley, 1550). Cudworth, Ralph, The True Intellectual System of the Universe . . . (London: Richard Royston, 1678). Cutts, John, Rebellion Defeated: Or, The Fall of Desmond. A Tragedy (London, 1745). Davies, Lady Eleanor, The Lady Eleanor, Her Appeale to the High Court of Parliament (London, 1641). To the Kings Most Excellent Majestie: The Humble Petition of the Lady Eleanor (London, 1645). Dekker, Thomas, The Dramatic Works of Thomas Dekker, ed. Fredson Bowers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1955). Dent, Arthur, The Ruine of Rome . . . (London: Simon Waterson, 1603). The Discontented Conference betwixt the Two Great Associates, Thomas Late Earl of Strafford, and William Arch-Bishop of Canterbury (London: n.p., 1641). Dove, John A Confutation of Atheism . . . (London: Edward Allde, 1605). Downame, George, A Treatise Concerning Anti-Christ . . . (London: Cuthbert Burbie, 1603). Dryden, John, The Vindication: Or The Parallel of the French Holy-League and the English League and Covenant . . . (London: Jacob Tonson, 1683). The Poems of John Dryden, ed. John Sargeaunt (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1910).

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The Works of John Dryden, vol. XIV, ed. Vinton A. Dearing and Alan Roper (Berkeley and London: University of California Press, 1992). Englands Glory in Her Royal King, and Honorable Assembly in the High Court of Parliament, above Her Former Usurped Lordly Bishops Synod . . . (London, np, 1641). Englands Wedding Garment . . . (London: Thomas Pavier, 1603). Erasmus, Desiderius, An Exhortation to the Diligent Studye of Scripture . . . (Antwerp: J. Hoochstraten, 1529). L’Estrange, Sir Roger, An Answer to the Appeal from the Country to the City (London: MC for Henry Brome, 1679). Toleration Discuss’d in Two Dialogues . . . (London: EC and AC for Henry Brome, 1679). Eusebius of Caesarea, The Ancient Ecclesiastical Histories . . . (London: Richard Field, 1607). Fenne, Thomas, Fennes Fruits . . . (London: Richard Oliffe, 1590). Field, Richard, Of the Church, Five Books, vol. 3 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1847). Figueiro, Vasco, The Spaniards monarchie and Leaguers Olygarchie layd open . . . (London: Richard Field for Iohn Harison, 1592). The First and Large Petition of the City of London . . . For a Reformation in ChurchGovernment, as also for the Abolishment of Episcopacy (n.p., 1641). Forbes, Patrick, An Exquisite Commentarie vpon the Reuelation of Saint Iohn . . . (London: W. Hall, 1613). Ford, John, Tis Pity She’s a Whore and Other Plays, ed. Marion Lomax (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1995). Foxe, John, The First Volume of the Ecclesiasticall History Contaynyng the Actes and Monumentes . . . (London: Iohn Daye, 1570). The First Volume of . . . Actes and Monumentes . . . (London: Iohn Daye, 1576). Two Latin Comedies by John Foxe the Martyrologist: Titus et Gesippus. Christus Triumphans, ed. and trans. John Hazel Smith (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press for the Renaissance Society of America, 1973). Foxe’s Book of Martyrs (London: London Printing and Publishing, n.d.). Fulke, William, Praelections vpon the Sacred and Holy Reuelations of S. John, trans. George Gifford (London: Thomas Purfoote, 1573). G.S., A Fig for the Spaniard . . . (London: Iohn Woolfe, 1591). Gosson, Stephen, The Trumpet of Warre . . . (London: V.S. for I.O., 1598). Hackett, Roger, A Sermon Needful for Theese Times . . . (Oxford: Ioseph Barnes, 1591). Hall, Joseph, One of the Sermons Preacht at Westminster . . . (London: Nathanial Buttes, 1628). Harbage, Alfred, Annals of English Drama, 975–1700 . . ., rev. Samuel Schoenbaum (London: Methuen, 1964). Harrison, John, A Short Relation of the Departure of the High and Mightie Prince Frederick . . . (Dort: George Waters, 1619).

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Harward, Simon, The Solace for the Soldier and Saylour . . . (London: Thomas Orwin, 1592). Herbert, Thomas, An Answer to the Most Envious, Scandalous, and Libellous Pamphlet, Entitled, Mercuries Message . . . (London, 1641). Herbert, Sir William, A Letter Written by a True Christian Catholike, to a Romaine Pretended Catholike (London: Iohn Windet, 1586). Hobbes, Thomas, Leviathan, ed. Richard Tuck (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). Hockham, William, Prince Charles His Welcome . . . (London: Edward Allde for Iohn Wright, 1625). Holland, Hugh, A Cyprus Garment . . . (London: Simon Waterson, 1625). Hooke, Henry, A Sermon Preached before the King at White-Hall, the Eight of May, 1604 . . . (London: Adam Islip, 1604). Hughes, Thomas, Certaine deu[is]es and Shewes Presented to Her Maiestie by the Gentlemen of Grayes-Inne at her Highnesse court in Greenewich . . . (London: Robert Robinson, 1587[88]). The Humble Petition of the Protestant Inhabitants of the Counties of Antrim, Downe, Tyrone . . . (London, 1641). Hunt, Thomas, A Defence of the Charter, and Municipal Rights of the City of London . . . (London: Richard Baldwin, 1683). J.L., Englands Doxologie . . . (London: Barnard Alsop, 1641). Jackson, Thomas, The Works of the Reverend and Learned Divine Thomas Jackson D.D. . . ., 3 vols. (London: Andrew Clarke for John Martyn, Richard Chiswell and Joseph Clark, 1673). James VI and I, A Fruitfull Meditation . . . (London: John Harrison, 1603). An Apologie for the Oath of Allegiance . . . Together with a Premonition (London: Robert Barker, 1609). Political Writings, ed. Johann P. Somerville (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). Jewel, John, The Defence of the Apologie of the Churche of Englande . . . (London: Henry Wykes, 1567). A View of a Seditious Bul (London: R. Newberrie and H. Bynneman, 1582). Jonson, Ben, The Workes of Benjamin Jonson . . . (London: Richard Meighen, 1640). The Alchemist and Other Plays, ed. Gordon Campbell (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995). Junius, Francis, ‘Commentary on Revelation’, in The Bible That Is, the Holy Scriptures . . . (London: Christopher Barker, 1599). Kethe, William, A Ballet Declaringe the Fal of the Whore of Babylone (London: W. Hill, c. 1548). The King-Killing Doctrine of the Jesuits . . . (London: W. Crooke and T. Dring, 1679). Langland, William, The Vision of Piers Plowman: A Complete Edition of the B-Text, ed. A.V.C. Schmidt (London: J.M. Dent, 1993). The Last Speech, and Confession of the Whore of Babylon . . . (London: Printed for K.B., 1678).

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The Late Revolution: Or, The Happy Change . . . (London: Richard Baldwin, 1690). Lee, Nathaniel, The Massacre of Paris (London: R. Bentley and M. Magnes, 1690). Leighton, Alexander, Speculum Belli Sacri: Or The Looking Glasse of the Holy War . . . (Amsterdam: Giles Thorp, 1624). Letters from Sir Robert Cecil to Sir George Carew, ed. John Maclean (London: Camden Society, 1864). Locke, John, The Second Treatise of Government, in Two Treatises of Government, ed. Peter Laslett (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988). Loiseau de Tourval, Jean, The French Herald . . . (London: E. Alde for Edward Lownes, 1611). Londons Lamentation: Or, An Excellent New Song . . . (London: NT, 1683). Lucan, Pharsalia, trans. J.D. Duff, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1977). Lucretius, On the Nature of the Universe, trans. Ronald Melville (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999). Lupton, Thomas, A Persuasion from Papistrie . . . (London: Henry Bynneman, 1581). Luther, Martin, Martin Luther’s Basic Theological Writings, ed. Timothy F. Lull (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1989). Lyly, John, Galathea and Midas, ed. Anne Begor Lancashire (London: Edward Arnold, 1970). Lynne, Walter, The Beginning and Ending of All Poperie Being Taken Oute of Certaine Old Prophets . . . (London: John Herforde, 1548). The Thre Bokes of Cronicles . . . (London: S. Mierdman for Gwalter Lynne, 1550). Marlorat, Augustine, A Catholike and Ecclesiasticall Exposition of the Holy Gospell after S. Iohn, trans. Thomas Timme (London: Thomas Marshe, 1575). Marston, John, The Dutch Courtesan, ed. David Crane (London: A&C Black, 1997). Marvell, Andrew, An Account of the General Growth of Popery and Arbitrary Government in England . . . (Amsterdam, 1677). Massinger, Philip, The Picture . . . (London: IN for Thomas Walkley, 1630). The Great Duke of Florence (London: John Marriot, 1636). Believe as You List, ed. C.J. Sisson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1927). The Plays and Poems of Philip Massinger, vol. III, ed. Philip Edwards and Colin Gibson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976). Maxwell, James, The Laudable Life, and Deplorable Death, of Our Late Peerless Prince Henry . . . (London: Edward Alde for Thomas Pauier, 1612). A Monvument of Remembrance . . . (London: Nicholas Okes for Henry Bell, 1613). Admirable and Notable Prophecies . . . (London: Edward Alde, 1615). Mercuries Message, or The Copy of a Letter Sent to William Laud . . . (London: 1641). Middleton, Thomas, The Second Maiden’s Tragedy, ed. Anne Lancashire, Revels Plays (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1978).

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Thomas Middleton: The Collected Works, ed. Gary Taylor and John Lavagnino (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2007). Middleton, William, Papisto-Mastix, or The Protestants Religion defended . . . (London: T.P., 1606). Milton, John, A Discourse Shewing in What State the Three Kingdomes Are in at This Present (n.p., 1641). Milton: Poems, ed. B.A. Wright (London: J.M. Dent, 1969). Political Writings, ed. Martin Dzelzainis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991). Montagu, Richard, Appello Caesarum . . . (London: HL for Mathew Lownes, 1625). Montaigne, Michel de, ‘Upon Some verses of Virgil’, in The Essayes of Michael Lord of Montaigne, trans. John Florio, ed. Henry Morley (London: Routledge, 1886). Naogeorgus, Thomas, The Popish Kingdome . . ., trans. Barnabe Googe (London: Henrie Denham for Richard Watkins, 1570). Napier, John, A Plaine Discouery . . . (Edinburgh: Robert Waldegraue, 1593). Nashe, Thomas, The Works of Thomas Nashe, vol. 3, ed. R.B. McKerrow (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1966). Oates, Titus, The Discovery of the Popish Plot . . . (London, 1679). The Popes Ware-house, or The Merchandise of the Whore of Rome (London: Thomas Parkhurst, Dorman Newman, Thomas Cockerill and Thomas Simmons, 1679). Oxford Dictionary of National Biography Online (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004–2012). Osborne, Thomas, An Explanation of the Lord Treasurer’s Letter to Mr. Montagu . . . (London, 1679). Osiander, Andreas, The Coniectures of the Ende of the Worlde . . . (Antwerp: S. Mierdman, 1548). Ovid’s Metamorphoses: The Arthur Golding Translation 1567, ed. John Frederick Nims (New York and London: Macmillan, 1965). Owen, David, Herod and Pilate Reconciled . . . (Cambridge: Cantrell Legge, 1610). Oxford English Dictionary Online (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013). The Papists Lamentation . . . (London, 1680). Pareus, David, A Commentary upon the Divine Revelation . . . (Amsterdam: C.P., 1644). Perkins, William, A Treatise Tending unto a Declaration . . . (London Thomas Orwin, 1591). A reformed Catholike . . . (London: I Legat, 1597). A Treatise of Gods Free Grace, and Mans Free Will (Cambridge: Iohn Legat, 1601). Lectvres vpon the Three First Chapters of Revelation . . . (London: Richard Field for Cuthbert Burbie, 1604). Philips, Ambrose, Humfrey, Duke of Gloucester . . . (London: J. Roberts, 1723). The Play of Anti-Christ, ed. and trans. J. Wright (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1967).

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Ponet, John, A Short Treatise of Politike Power . . . (Strasbourg: Printed by the heirs of W. Köpfel, 1556). Prynne, William, A Terrible Out-Cry against the Loytering Exalted Prelates . . . (London: Richard Smethrust, 1641). Quarles, Francis, The Complete Works in Prose and Verse, vol. 3, ed. Alexander B. Grosart (Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1971). R.W., A Looking-Glasse for Papists . . . (London: TS for Nathanial Newberry, 1621). Radcliffe, Ann, The Italian, ed. Frederick Garber (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998). Rainolde, Richard, A Chronicle of all the Noble Emperours of the Romaines . . . (London: Thomas Marshe, 1571). Rainoldes, John, The Discovery of the Man of Sinne . . . (Oxford: Ioseph Barnes, 1614). The Recantation of the Prelate of Canterbury . . . (London, np, 1641). Rich, Barnabe, A Soldiers Wishe to Britons Welfare . . . (London: Thomas Creede, 1604). Roger the Canterburian . . . (London: William Lamar, 1642). Rowe, Nicholas, The Tragedy of the Lady Jane Gray (Dublin: Edwin Sandys for George Grierson, 1715). Russell, John, The Spy Discovering the Danger of Arminian Heresie and Spanish Treacherie (n.p.: Strasburgh, 1628). Sandys, George, Christs Passion: A Tragedie with Annotations (London: John Legat, 1640). Scott, Thomas, Vox Regis (Utrecht: A van Herwijck, 1624). Sir Walter Rawleighs Ghost . . . (Vtricht: John Schellein, 1626). Scott, Sir Walter, Waverley, ed. P.D. Garside (London: Penguin, 2011). Seneca His Tenne Tragedies Translated into English Edited by Thomas Newton, intro. T.S. Eliot, vol. 1 (London: Constable, 1927). Shadwell, Thomas (?), Some Reflections upon the Pretended Parallel in the Play Called The Duke of Guise . . . (London: Francis Smith, 1683). Bury Fair (London: James Knapton, 1689). Shakespeare, William, The Norton Shakespeare, ed. Stephen Greenblatt et al. (New York and London: W.W. Norton, 1997). Sharpe, Lewis, The Noble Stranger (London: I.O. for James Becket, 1640). Shirley, James, The Cardinal, ed. E.M. Yearling (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1986). Sidney, Sir Philip, A Defence of Poetry, in English Renaissance Literary Criticism, ed. Brian Vickers (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2003). Simpson, Patrick, A Short Compend of the Historie of the First Ten Persecvtions . . . (Edinburgh: Andro Hart, 1613). Sleidanus, Johannes, A Briefe Chronicle of the Four Principall Empyres: To Witte, of Babilon, Persia, Grecia, and Rome . . . (London: Rouland Hall, 1563). The Solemn Mock Procession of the Pope . . . (London: Nathaniel Ponder, Jonathan Wilkins and Samuel Lee, 1680).

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Lake, Peter, ‘Anti-Popery: The Structure of a Prejudice’, in Conflict in Early Stuart England: Studies in Religion and Politics, ed. Richard Cust and Ann Hughes (London and New York, 1989). Lake, Peter, and Steven Pincus, eds., The Politics of the Public Sphere in Early Modern England (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007). Lancashire, Anne, ‘The Second Maiden’s Tragedy: A Jacobean Saint’s Life’, RES, 25, 99, 1974, pp. 267–279. Lee, Maurice Jr., James I and Henri IV: An Essay in English Foreign Policy 1603–1610 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1970). Great Britain’s Solomon: James VI and I in His Three Kingdoms (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1990). Limon, Jerzy, Dangerous Matter: English Drama and Politics 1623/24 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986). Lockyer, Roger, Buckingham: The Life and Political Career of George Villiers, First Duke of Buckingham, 1592–1628 (London and New York: Longman 1981). MacCulloch, Diarmaid, Reformation: Europe’s House Divided, 1490–1700 (London and New York: Penguin, 2004). McGinn, Bernard, Anti-Christ: Two Thousand Years of the Human Fascination with Evil (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000). Marotti, Arthur, Religious Ideology and Cultural Fantasy: Catholic and AntiCatholic Discourses in Early Modern England (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005). Miller, John, Popery and Politics in England 1660–1688 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011). Milton, Anthony, ‘A Qualified Intolerance: The Limits and Ambiguities of Early Stuart Anti-Catholicism’, in Catholicism and Anti-Catholicism in Early Modern English Texts, ed. Arthur F. Marotti (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1999). Catholic and Reformed: The Roman and Protestant Churches in English Protestant Thought, 1600–1640 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). Morrill, John, The Nature of the English Revolution (London and New York: Longman, 1993). ‘Thinking about the New British History’, in British Political Thought in History, Literature and Theory, 1500–1800, ed. David Armitage (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006). Neill, Michael, Issues of Death: Mortality and Identity in English Renaissance Tragedy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998). Newton, Diana, The Making of the Jacobean Regime: James VI and I and the Government of England (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2005). Norbrook, David, Writing the English Republic: Poetry, Rhetoric and Politics, 1627–1660 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). Poetry and Politics in the English Renaissance, rev. ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002). O’Leary, Stephen D., Arguing the Apocalypse: A Theory of Millennial Rhetoric (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994). Owen, Susan, Restoration Theatre and Crisis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996).

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Paley, Morton D., Apocalypse and Millennium in English Romantic Poetry (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). Parker, Geoffrey, The Grand Strategy of Philip II (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1998). Empire, War and Faith in Early Modern Europe (London: Allen Lane, 2002). Imprudent King: A New Life of Philip II (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2014). Parker, John, The Aesthetics of the Antichrist: From Christian Drama to Christopher Marlowe (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2007). Patrides, C.A., and Joseph Wittreich, eds., The Apocalypse in English Renaissance Thought and Literature (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984). Patterson, W.B., King James VI and the Reunion of Christendom (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). Pendergast, John S., Religion, Allegory and Literacy in Early Modern England 1560–1640: The Control of the Word (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006). Pettegree, Andrew, Foreign Protestant Communities in Sixteenth-Century London (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986). Pettegree, Jane, Foreign and Native on the English Stage, 1588–1611: Metaphor and National Identity (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011). Phillipson, Nicholas, and Quentin Skinner, eds., Political Discourse in Early Modern Britain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011). Pincus, Steven, Protestantism and Patriotism: Ideologies and the Making of English Foreign Policy, 1650–1688 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). 1688: The First Modern Revolution (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2009). Pittock, Murray, Poetry and Jacobite Politics in Eighteenth Century Britain and Ireland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). Questier, Michael C., Catholicism and Community in Early Modern England: Politics, Aristocratic Patronage and Religion, c. 1550–1640 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006). Reeve, L.J., Charles I and the Road to Personal Rule (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989). Reeves, Marjorie, The Influence of Prophecy in the Middle Ages: A Study of Joachimism (London and Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1993). Joachim of Fiore and the Prophetic Future: A Medieval Study in Historical Thinking (Stroud: Sutton, 1999). Rose, Jacqueline, Godly Kingship in Restoration England: The Politics of the Royal Supremacy, 1660–1688 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011). Rubright, Marjorie, ‘“Going Dutch in London City Comedy”: Economies of Sexual and Sacred Exchange in John Marston’s The Dutch Courtesan (1605)’, ELR, 40, 1, pp. 88–112. Russell, Conrad, The Fall of the British Monarchies 1637–1642 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995).

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Schmitt, Charles B., Quentin Skinner, Eckhard Kessler, and Jill Kraye, eds., The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988). Scott, Jonathan, Algernon Sidney and the Restoration Crisis, 1677–1683 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). England’s Troubles: Seventeenth-Century English Political Instability in European Context (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). Shagan, Ethan H., The Rule of Moderation: Violence, Religion and the Politics of Restraint in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011). Sharpe, Kevin, The Personal Rule of Charles I (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1992). Reading Revolutions: The Politics of Reading in Early Modern England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000). Remapping Early Modern England: The Culture of Seventeenth-Century Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). Shell, Alison, Catholicism, Controversy and the English Literary Imagination, 1558–1660 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). Simpson, James, Reform and Cultural Revolution: The Oxford English Literary History, vol. 2 (1350–1547), gen. ed. Jonathan Bate (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002). Skinner, Quentin, Liberty before Liberalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, vols. 1 and 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). Smith, David, Constitutional Royalism and the Search for Settlement, c. 1640–1649 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). Smith, Nigel, Perfection Proclaimed: Language and Literature in English Radical Religion 1640–1660 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989). Literature and Revolution in England 1640–1660 (New Haven and New York, 1994). Smuts, R. Malcolm, Court Culture and the Origins of a Royalist Tradition in Early Stuart England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1987). Sommerville, Johann, Politics and Ideology in England 1603–1640 (London and New York: Longman, 1995). Sowerby, Scott, Making Toleration: The Repealers and the Glorious Revolution (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2013). Streete, Adrian, ed., Early Modern Drama and the Bible: Contexts and Readings, 1570–1625 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012). Sullivan, Garrett A. Jr., ‘“All things come into commerce”: Women, Household Labor, and the Spaces of Marston’s The Dutch Courtesan’, Renaissance Drama, 27, 1996, pp. 19–46. Tanner, Marie, The Last Descendants of Aeneas: The Hapsburgs and the Mythic Image of the Emperor (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993).

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Thrush, Andrew, ‘The Parliamentary Opposition to Peace with Spain in 1604: A Speech of Sir Edward Hoby’, Parliamentary History, 23, 3, 2004, pp. 301–315. Toenjes, Christopher, Islam, the Turks and the Making of the English Reformation: The History of the Ottoman Empire in John Foxe’s Acts and Monuments (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2015). Tuck, Richard, Philosophy and Government 1572–1651 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993). Tyacke, Nicholas, Anti-Calvinists: The Rise of English Arminianism, c. 1590–1640 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990). Aspects of English Protestantism c. 1530–1700 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001). Vitkus, Daniel, Turning Turk: English Theatre and the Multicultural Mediterranean (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008). Walsham, Alexandra, Providence in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). Weber, Max, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, trans. Talcott Parsons (London and New York: Routledge, 2000). Wharton, T.H., ed., The Drama of John Marston: Critical Re-Visions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). White, Jason, Militant Protestantism and British Identity, 1603–1642 (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2012). Wilcher, Robert, The Writing of Royalism 1628–1660 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001). Wiseman, Susan, Drama and Politics in the English Civil War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). Womersley, David, Divinity and State (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010). Worden, Blair, The Sound of Virtue: Philip Sidney’s Arcadia and Elizabethan Politics (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1996). Wrightson, Keith, Earthly Necessities: Economic Lives in Early Modern Britain, 1470–1750 (London: Penguin, 2002). Yates, Frances, The Rosicrucian Enlightenment (London and New York: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1986). Astraea: The Imperial Theme in the Sixteenth Century (London: Pimlico, 1993). Zimmerman, Susan, The Early Modern Corpse and Shakespeare’s Theatre (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2005). Zwicker, Steven N., Lines of Authority: Politics and English Literary Culture, 1649–1689 (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1993).

Index

Abbot, George, Archbishop of Canterbury, 91 Absolutism, 105–6, 208 Accession of King James in 1603, 60 Act of Succession, 1701, 248, 257 Aeneas, 62 Affect, 12, 152–3, 161, 211, 246 and determinism, 84 and language, 109 and motion, Calvinist and Epicurean contrasted, 84 and polemic, 12 and religion, 82 Agamben, Giorgio, 235 Alexios I Komnenos, Byzantine Emperor, 115 Alighieri, Dante, 28, 90 Allegory, 3, 5–6, 32, 42, 44, 49, 59, 95, 125, 142, 178–9, 202, 246 and drama, 44–6 and historical representation in drama, 45 Alva, Fernando Alvarez de Toledo, Duke of, 64–5 Ambach, Melchior, On the End of the World, 36 Americas, 19, 61, 68 Analogy, 5, 88, 141, 248 Ancient Rome, 17, 27, 33, 47, 72, 111 Andrewes, Lancelot, 105 Angelical Pope, 158 Anglo-Dutch politics, 98 under Elizabeth I, 63–9 under James I, 240–8 Anglo-Dutch speech, 87 Anglo-Dutch trade, 148–9 Anglo-French politics, 98–101, 123, 199–239 Anglo-Irish politics under Elizabeth and James, 70 Anglo-Spanish relations under Elizabeth I, 61–9 under James I, 240–8 Anne I, 248–50 Anti-Catholic drama under Charles II, 202 Anti-Catholic imagery on stage, 4

Anti-Catholicism definition, 4 and crisis, 20 and European politics, 52–5 and fantasy, 56 and inconsistent, 55 and visual culture, 48–52 and wolfishness, 49 Antichrist, 3, 5, 8–9, 12, 15, 38, 43, 69, 72–3, 84, 121, 135, 139, 153–5, 162, 164, 171–2, 175, 177, 184 Anti-clericism, 29 Antioch, 116 Antiochus III the Great of Greece, 143 Anti-papalism, 28 Anti-popery, 9, 15, 28, 47 Antiquarianism, 256 Anti-theatricalism, 13 Apocalypse and Arminianism, 131–2 and classical Literature, 26–8 and comedy, 81–93 and comedy and tragedy, 83, 145 definition, 4–5, 11 and history, 40 and laughter, 41 and Ottoman Empire, 88–9 and peace, 80 and politics, 37, 44, 154, 205–6 and scatology, 43 and scepticism, 46 and trade, 148–9 and translation of empire, 205–6 and wedding trope, 44 Apocalyptic historiography, 40, 123 Apocalyptic writing, 40–1 Apostasy, 113, 192 Apostolic purity, 56 Arbitrary rule, 128, 192, 203, 206, 208, 210, 215 Archangel Michael, 155 Ardolino, Frank, 27

279

280

Index

Aristotle, 25 Arminianism, 8, 54, 105, 124, 131–2, 138, 148, 170, 175, 179–80, 195 Arminianism and Richard Montagu, 131–2 Armitage, David, 259 Army, 169, 173, 185, 187–8, 192, 232 Ashcraft, Richard, 210 Ashton, Thomas, Julian the Apostate, 116 Asia, 149, 151–2, 160 Ataraxia, 86 Atheism, 193 Athens, 111 Atterbury Plot, 1722, 249, 252 Augustine of Hippo, 29, 35, 38, 97, 111 Augustine of Hippo, De Civitate Dei, 33 Augustine of Hippo, theories of history, 33 Austria, 136–7 Aylmer, John, 64 Baldwin, Richard, 214, 244 Bale, John, 4, 13, 36, 38, 66, 89, 156 Bale, John, King Johan, 42 Bale, John, The Image of Both Churches, 36 Bale, John, The Pageant of Popes, 36 Barbarini, Cardinal Francesco, 164 Barbarosa, Frederick I, Holy Roman Emperor, 41 Barbour, Reid, 133–5, 146 Barlow, William, 108 Barrillon, Paul, French Ambassador, 213, 218 Barrington, Sir Thomas, 178–9 Barnes, Barnabe, The Devil’s Charter, 14–16, 49 Bartholomew Fair, 240 Batman, Stephen, 30 Battle of Alcazar, 1578, 142–3, 157 Battle of White Mountain, 1620, 126 Bauckham, Richard, 37 Beaumont, Francis, The Knight of the Burning Pestle, 47 Beckingham, Charles, The Tragedy of King Henry IV of France, 251–2 Bedloe, William, The Excommunicated Prince, 46, 202 Behn, Aphra, The Feign’d Curtizans, 202 Behn, Aphra, The Roundheads, 202 Behn, Aphra, The Young King, 202 Bellarmine, Robert, 18, 100–2, 118 Bernard of Clairvaux, 90 Beza, Theodore, 104–5, 207, 214, 219 Bible Babylon, 44, 48, 80, 90, 107–8, 112, 125, 172 Caiaphas, 180 Cain, 102 Daniel, 6, 35 David, 6, 118 Ephesians, 82, 116

Epistles of John, 6 Epistles to the Thessalonians, 6 Ezekiel, 6 Ezra, 99 Genesis, 85 Isaiah, 6, 61, 79 Jeremiah, 6 Jesus Christ, 6, 14, 33, 42, 62, 110, 119, 150, 159, 161, 181, 196 John the Baptist, 168 Lamentations, 6 Lazarus, 143, 152 Leviticus, 107 Luke, 189 Matthew, 6, 14 Moses, 107 New Jerusalem, 3, 8, 39 New Testament, 6, 12 Old Testament, 6 Paul the Apostle, 41 Pilate, 152, 196 Psalms, 80, 116, 118 Revelation, 88, 92, 107, 112, 125, 154, 162, 186, 197 Revelation, beasts from the sea and earth, 3 Revelation – definition, 5 Revelation and exegesis, 7 Revelation and Four horseman of the apocalypse, 3, 38 Revelation, Gog and Magog, 3, 155 Revelation, number of the beast, 174 Revelation, seven angels of the apocalypse, 162 Revelation, seven seals and vials, 3, 162 Revelation and Tragedy, 1, 41 Saul, 118 Song of Songs, 6 2 Thessalonians, 57, 173 Timothy and Peter’s Epistles, 6 Whore of Babylon, 3–5, 38, 48, 59, 78, 88–9, 91, 107, 162, 190, 202, 205 and drunkenness, 4 Zachariah, 6 Zion, 79 apocrypha, 2 Esdras, 6 dramatic uses of, 82 literalism, 6 manipulation of, 14 political readings, 82 Biblical allusion, 21 Bigotry, 2, 9, 258 definition of, 2 Bill of Rights, 1689, 247, 253 Bills of Exclusion, 201 Bishop Theophilus, 155 Bishops’ Wars, 1639–40, 165, 168, 178, 181

Index Black Legend, 69 Blackfriars, 95 Blackwell, George, Arch Priest, 100 Blasphemy, 14 Blazon, 150 ‘Blessed Revolution’, 123 Blount, Charles, 226 Blount, Charles, An Appeal from the Gentry, 214 Blount, Charles, 8th Baron Mountjoy, 70 Boaden, James, The Italian Monk, 255 Bohemia, 125 Book of Common Prayer, 164 Borgia Family, 14 Bourbons, 28 Braudel, Fernand, 16 Brexit, 257 Briggs, Julia, 111 British Empire, 19 British nation and anti-Catholicism, 52–5, 254–60 Brocardo, Giacopo, 65 Brome, Richard, The Court Beggar, 182 Broughton, Hugh, 25, 27, 47 Broughton, Hugh, A Concent of Scripture, 48–9 Buc, Sir George, 95 Buchanan, George, 104–5, 207, 214 Buchanan, George, Baptistes, 168 Budgell, Eustace, 252 Bullinger, Heinrich, 34, 36, 120 Burnett, Mark Thornton, 59, 81 Bushnell, Rebecca, 95, 119 Butler, Martin, 165, 182–3 Byzantine Empire, 120 Cabbala, 158 Cadiz, 128 Caesar, 27 Caesar Augustus, Roman Emperor, 155, 206 Caesaro-papist monarchy, Henry VIII, 62 Calvin, John, 104–5, 152, 191, 207, 219 Calvinism, 8, 82, 86, 104, 121, 132, 138, 149, 195, 243 and censorship, 132–3 and moderation, 73, 79 Campion, Edmund, 64 Carelton, Dudley, 1st Viscount Dorchester, 140 Carion, Johann, Chronicle, 36 Carlell, Lodowick, Heraclius, 115 Carnivalesque, 199, 233 Carthage, 145, 160 Cartwright, Thomas, 105 Cartwright, William, 133, 135 Casaubon, Isaac, 97 Castille, 151

281

‘Catholic’ Church and Reformation, 7 Catholic League, 224 Cecil, Robert, 68, 71 Censorship, 118, 132–3, 176 and The Lady’s Tragedy, 132–3 Centlivre, Susannah, The Cruel Gift, 252 Chakravorty, Swapan, 95 Chaos, 24, 84 Chapman, George, 81 Chapman, George, Byron, 142 Charlemagne, Holy Roman Emperor, 62, 127, 155, 159, 233 Charles I, 22, 54, 56, 164–84 Arminianism, 164–84 Civil Wars, 164–84 militant protestantism, 139 parliament, 164–84 personal rule, 136, 166–7 prerogative, 129 tonnage and poundage, 135 as militant protestant hero, 164–84 as rex bellicus., 123 Charles II, 19, 22, 56, 199, 228 Charles II, Declaration to all his Loving Subjects, 221 Charles V of Spain, and Holy Roman Emperor, 35, 40, 45, 61, 127, 150 Chaucer, Geoffrey, 28, 43, 176 Cheke, Henry, Free Will, 44 Chelsea College, 102 Chettle, Henry and Thomas Dekker, King Sebastian of Portugal, 142 Chillingworth, William, 9 Christian IV of Denmark, 136 Christology, 161, 180–1 Cibber, Colley, Papal Tyranny in the Reign of King John, 253 Cibber, Colley, The Non Juror, 251 Cicero, 71 Circe, 43, 91 Civil Wars, 35, 56, 126, 175–6, 204, 224 and news culture, 185 and Scotland, 166–71 army, 187–8 petitions, 175–6 trade and economics, 171, 175–6 Clare, Janet, 95, 97 Claydon, Tony, 247, 258 Cleopatra, 15, 92, 183 Cogswell, Thomas, 123 Cohn, Norman, 127 Coligny, Gaspard II de, 219 Colley, Linda, 9 Colonialism, 19, 122, 212, 248, 254, 259 Comedy, 173, 178, 180

282

Index

Comic and tragic rhetoric, 83 Comoedia apocalyptica, 43–4, 180 Conciliarism, 55, 98–101, 103 Conciliation, 4 Confessionalisation, 255 Constantine the Great, Roman Emperor, 39, 112–13 Constantinople, 113, 159 Constitutional royalism, 165, 174, 190–1, 198 Constitutionalism, 218–19, 226, 233, 247 Contracts and Contractualism, 209–11, 217, 253 Conventicles, 168, 207 Conversion, 88, 117, 154 Cooper, Anthony-Ashley, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury, 213, 222 Cooper, Farah Karim, 95 Coronation of Queen Elizabeth, The, 202 Corpse, 95 Correr, Marc’ Antonio, Venetian Ambassador, 99 Cosmetics, 15, 94, 117–18 Cosmology, 25 Cottington Treaty, 1631, 140 Coton, Pierre, 97 Cotton, Sir Robert, 78 Counter-Reformation, 214, 245 Covenant theology, 41 Cramsie, John, 72 Crawford, Kevin, 95 Creation and the Matter of the Universe, 24–6 Cressy, David, 177 Crowd, agency of, 199, 246 Crowley, Robert, 31 Crowne, John, Sir Courtly Nice, 240 Crowne, John, The English Friar, 243 Crusades, 141–2, 155 Cudworth, Ralph, 25 Cummings, Brian, 32 Cutts, John, Rebellion Defeated., 253 Damnation, 82, 84, 194 Dandelet, Thomas James, 17 Daneau, Lambert, 105 Davies, Lady Eleanor, 187, 189 Davies, Julian, 131, 133 Defoe, Daniel, 242 Declaration of Breda, 1660, 206 Declaration of Indulgence, 1672, 206 Dekker, Thomas, 125, 165 Dekker, Thomas, The Whore of Babylon, 46, 48–9, 64 Dekker, Thomas, and John Webster, Northward Ho, 75

Dekker, Thomas, and John Webster, Westward Ho, 76 Dekker, Thomas, and Philip Massinger, The Virgin Martyr, 111 Demonology, 117 Dent, Arthur, 1, 37, 89 The Ruine of Rome, 72, 112 Deposition, 100, 102, 106 Devereux, Robert, 2nd Earl of Essex, 65, 68–9 Devil, 14–15, 49, 77, 148, 177, 202, 225, 232 Diocletian, Roman Emperor, 111 Dissenters, 206 Divine comedy, 92 Divine right, 198 Dolan, Frances, 11 Donne, John, Pseudo- Martyr, 100 Dove, John, 25 Downame, George, 89 Drake, Sir Francis, 65 Drayton, Michael, 31 Drue, Thomas, 125 Dryden, John, 19, 22, 203, 220–39, 242 Dryden, John, Astrea Redux, 206 Dryden, John, Don Sebastian, 142, 243 Dryden John, and Nathaniel Lee, The Duke of Guise, 239 Duck, Arthur, 179 Dudley, Robert, 1st Earl of Leicester, 65–7, 73 Dürer, Albrecht, 48 D’Urfey, Thomas, Sir Barnaby Whigg, 202 D’Urfey, Thomas, The Banditti, 240 Dutton, Richard, 95, 97 Ecclesiastical apparel, 191 Economics and trade, 245, 259 Edict of Nantes, 1598, 234 Edward VI, 250 De Meretrice Babylonica, 42 Effeminacy, 232 Egypt, 92, 106, 160, 214 Election, 8, 45, 47, 82, 187 Elections and Charter Controversy, 226–8 Eliot, Sir John, 129, 136 Elizabeth I, 19, 31, 62, 67, 156, 173, 206 as imperial monarch, 39 Elizabethan Church as national and international institution, 64 Empire, 259 and apocalypse, 27, 259 End of the world, 3, 8, 24, 35 Enlightenment, 254, 258 Epicureanism, 83, 86–7 Episcopacy, 170, 175–6, 179–80, 190, 194, 207 Epistemology, 162 Equivocation, 102

Index Erasmianism, 73 Erasmus, Desiderius, 12, 144 Erythraean Sibyl, 33 Eschatology, 6, 34, 40, 42, 84, 113, 117 Euripides, 41 Eusebius of Caesarea, The Ancient Ecclesiastical History, 114–15 Evenden-Kenyon, Elizabeth, 17 Exclusion crisis, 200 Exegesis, 6, 11, 36, 45 and drama, 44 fourfold method of, 7 Fall, 84 Family of Love, 92 Fane, Francis, The Sacrifice, 240 Farnese, Alexander, Duke of Parma, 65 Fenne, Thomas, 67 Ferdinand I, Holy Roman Emperor, 63 Field, Richard, Of the Church, 102–3, 118 Fifth Monarchists, 35 Filmer, Robert, Patriarcha, 217 Firth, Katherine, 9 Flanders, 10, 65, 205 Fletcher, John, and Philip Massinger, Sir John van Olden Barnavelt, 54 Fletcher, John, Valentinian, 115 Forced Loan, 1626, 129 Ford, John, Perkin Warbeck, 156 Forker, Charles, 183, 198 Foxe, John, 7, 36, 39, 66, 97, 111, 119 Acts and Monuments, 7, 36, 49, 111 Christus Triumphans, 42–4, 49 France, 10, 18, 28, 52, 64, 78, 87, 122, 127–8, 130, 159, 167, 172, 201, 204, 211, 242–3, 249 Frederick V, Elector Palatine and King of Bohemia, 125–6, 137, 157–8 Free Will, 82 French Wars of religion, 230 Fuchs, Barbara, 17, 19 Fulke, William, 10, 12, 27, 112 Gallicanism, 234 Gardiner, S.R., 124, 141 Gasper, Julia, 67 ‘General Crisis’ of the Seventeenth-Century, 122–3 Geneva Bible, 27, 36, 79–80 George I, 249 George II, 253 German Union of Evangelical States, 99 Germany, 10, 63, 130, 138, 159 Girard, René, 52 Glapthorne, Henry, The Duchess of Fernandina, 182

283

‘Glorious’ Revolution, 1688, 10, 16, 241 Golden Age, 33 Golding, Arthur, 24 Gondomar, Diego Sarmiento de Acuña, Count of, Spanish Ambassador, 126 Goodman, Christopher, 64, 104–5, 218 Gordon Riots, 1780, 255 Gothic and anti-Catholicism, 255–6 Gottlieb, Christine, 95 Grace, 58, 195 Grand Remonstrance, 1641, 194 Grand Tour, 55 Gray, Lady Jane, 250 Gray, John, 257 Great Fire of London, 2, 52, 54 Great Tew Circle, 8, 134, 180 Greece, 159 Green Ribbon Club, 214 Gregory of Nanzianus, 41 Griffin, Eric, 17 Grotius, Hugo, 134, 180 Gunpowder Plot, 2, 14–15, 48, 52, 54, 100, 173 Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, 140 Hagiography, 95, 151 Hall, Joseph, 139 Hammer, Paul, 68 Hapsburg Universal monarchy, 62 Hapsburgs, 28, 60, 62, 98, 123, 128, 142, 150, 242 Harding, Samuel, Sicily and Naples, or The Fatal Union, 182 Harrison, John, 125 Harth, Phillip, 230 Harward, Simon, 68 Haydon, Colin, 254 Hazel Smith, John, 42 Heinemann, Margot, 124, 128, 144 Helgerson, Richard, 57 Helvetic Confession, 106 Henri III of France, 224, 228 Henri IV of France, 18, 22, 70, 94, 98, 234, 251 Henry VIII, 62, 210 Herbert, Sir Henry, 141, 143 Herbert, Philip, 4th Earl of Pembroke, 143 Herbert, Thomas, 174 Herbert, William, 3rd Earl of Pembroke, 136, 140, 143 Heresy, 97, 105–6, 226, 245 Herod, 41, 86, 110, 119, 168 Hildegard of Bingen, 29 Hill, Christopher, 9, 171 Hila, Marina, 124 Hobbes, Thomas, 9, 211, 217, 247 Hoby, Sir Edward, 78–9 Hockham, William, 127

284

Index

Holland, 52, 87, 104, 122, 140, 172, 201 Exile of Dutch Protestants to England under Elizabeth I, 64 First, second, and third Anglo-Dutch Wars, 211–12 Holland, Hugh, 127 Holy Land, 155 Holy war, 99 Hooke, Henry, 79–81 Hooker, Richard, 103, 131 Hotman, François, 105, 214, 218 Howard, Douglas, 124, 145 Howard, Frances, 95 Howard, Henry, 1st Earl of Northampton, 71 Howard, Jean, 59, 74 Huguenots, 128, 214, 218, 221, 226, 231, 252 Humanism, 24 Hunt, Thomas, 236 Hunt, Thomas, A Defence of the Charter, 231 Hume, David, 259 Hurdis, James, Sir Thomas More, 255 Huss, Jan, 90 Hyde, Lawrence, 1st Earl of Rochester, 222 Iconophilia, 49 Iconophobia, 48–9 Idolatry, 76, 80, 94, 99, 107, 109–11, 114, 116–18, 203, 207, 212 Illyricus, Matthais Flacius, Magdeburg Centuries, 36 Catalogus testium veritatis, 36 Imitatio, 44, 52 Imperial monarchy, 17, 32, 49, 127, 130, 135, 142, 145, 150, 154–61, 163, 181, 185, 206, 209, 230, 234 and James VI and I, 72 Spanish and English, 154–60 Imperial politics, 14, 27–8, 31, 33, 41, 57, 91–2, 97, 138, 147, 152, 154–60, 177, 205, 216, 257 Imperial theme, 47 Independents, 164, 197 Inflation, 128 Intellectual history, 21 International politics, 17, 54, 61, 124, 137, 139, 142–3, 200, 211, 214, 242, 244, 258 Ireland, 61, 69, 75–6, 87, 171, 177, 179, 184, 205, 241, 253 Irenicism, 55 Irish Rebellion, 1641, 54 Isabella Clara Eugenia, Infanta of Spain, 70 Isocrates, 71 Israelites, 107 Italy, 87, 98, 182 Jure divino authority, 129, 211, 243 ‘Jacobethan’ rhetoric, 173, 177, 254

Jacobite Rebellion, 1715, 22 Jacobite Rebellion, 1745, 22 Jacobites, 249–55 James II, 142 James VI and I, 1, 16, 31, 49, 55, 96, 118, 120, 123, 126, 158, 173 James VI and I and militant protestantism, 71 Apologie for the Oath of Allegiance, 100 Basilicon Doron, 71–2, 77 A Fruitful Meditation, 71 and pacific ideology, 61 and peace, 71, 98 poisoned, 138 and religious leagues, 99–100 as rex pacificus, 123 Trew Lawe, 77 Triplici nodo, 100, 103 James VII and II, 240–9 James, Duke of York, later James II, 22, 199, 213, 221–2, 234 and Limitations, 204 Jeremiad, 80 Jerome of Prague, 90 Jerusalem, 79, 155 Jesuits, 52, 102, 104, 119, 177, 203, 207, 217, 224, 253 Jewel, John, 39, 66, 91, 97, 111 Jews, 112, 116, 154–5, 157, 161 Joachim of Fiore, 29, 35, 90, 127, 155, 157–60 Joachimite ideas, 158–60 Jokes and laughter, 5, 81–93 Jonson, Ben, 43, 47, 81, 135 Jonson, Ben, Bartholomew Fair, 47 Jonson, Ben, The Alchemist, 47, 194 Jonson, Ben, The Magnetick Lady, 135 Jonson, Ben, Volpone, 47 Jordan, Thomas, London in Luster, 202 Jove, 111, 158 Jovianus, Roman Emperor, 111–20 Julian the Apostate, Roman Emperor, 111–20 Julius Caesar, Roman Emperor, 112 Junius, Francis, 27, 36, 105 Junius Brutus, 214, 218 Juno, 91 Jupiter, 111 Juvenal, 47 Kerrigan, John, 112 Kermode, Frank, 40 Kess, Alexandra, 36 Killeen, Kevin, 7 King Arthur, 156 King’s Men, 14, 95 Kirchmeyer, Thomas, Pammachius, 42 Knights, Mark, 200

Index Knox, John, 64, 104, 218 Kyd, Thomas, The Spanish Tragedy, 27, 46, 66 Lake, Peter, 9, 15, 201 Lamentation, 139 Lancashire, Anne, 95, 106 Langland, William, 28 Piers Plowman, 30 Laud, William, Archbishop of Canterbury, 22, 130, 132, 164–98 and Civil Wars, 184 opposition to, 174 support for, 174 Last Judgement, 3, 196 Last World Emperor, 29, 35, 62, 127, 154–61 Late Revolution, The, 244–7 Lee Jr, Maurice, 96 Lee, Nathaniel, 4, 19, 22, 203, 220–39 Lee, Nathaniel, Caesar Borgia, 202 Lee, Nathaniel, Junius Brutus, 214 Lee, Nathaniel, The Massacre at Paris, 202, 218, 229, 243 Leighton, Alexander, 157 L’Estrange, Sir Roger, 207, 216, 236 Lewis, Matthew, The Castle Spectre, 255 Liberty, 58, 113, 120, 129, 137, 149, 151–2, 160, 184, 188, 190, 192, 198, 200, 203–4, 209, 212–13, 219, 230, 236, 239–40, 247, 249, 251–2 Lipsius, Justus, 134 Locke, John, 218, 253 Locke, John, Two Treatises of Government, 210, 215 Lollardy, 30 Long Parliament, 170, 173, 175, 179, 187 Longue durée as methodology, 16–17 Louis XIV of France, 18–19, 211–14, 234, 249 Low Countries, 61, 63, 68, 73, 79, 88, 98, 104, 157, 212 Loyola, Ignatius, 49 Lucan, Pharsalia, 27 Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, 25, 85 Ludus de Antichristo, 41 Luther, Martin, 3, 28, 35, 40, 58, 91 Lyly, John, Midas, 66 Macklin, Charles, King Henry VII, or The Popish Imposter, 253 Magus, Simon, 180 Marvell, Andrew, 213 An Account of the General Growth of Popery, 208–10 Mariamne, 110 Marlorat, Augustine, 8 Marlowe, Christopher, 4 Marlowe, Christopher, Doctor Faustus, 42, 45

285

Marlowe, Christopher, Tamburlaine, 156 Marlowe, Christopher, The Massacre at Paris, 218 Marotti, Arthur, 11 Marsillius of Padua, 90 Martyrdom, 39, 49, 109, 111–12, 115, 219, 222, 249 Mary I, 62, 250 Mary II, 241–2 Mary Magdalene, 150, 162 Mary, Queen of Scots, 10, 32, 64–5 Marston, John, 5, 19, 21 Marston, John, The Dutch Courtesan, 81–93 Masculinity, 95 Massinger, Philip, 19, 22, 124, 165 Massinger, Philip, Believe As You List, 141–63, 243 Massinger, Philip The Emperor of the East, 115 Massinger, Philip, The Bondman, 126 Massinger, Philip, The Emperor of the East, 144 Massinger, Philip, The Great Duke of Florence, 129 Massinger, Philip, The King and the Subject, 145 Massinger, Philip, The Picture, 130 Matter, 24 Maximilian I, Elector of Bavaria, 126 Maxwell, James, 161, 240–8 Medici, Catherine de, 230 Medieval anti-papalism, 28 Medieval sources of apocalyptic and antiCatholic ideas, 28–32 Menstruation, 15 Messianism, 123 Middleton, Thomas, 19, 22, 125, 165 Middleton, Thomas, A Game at Chess, 46, 49, 54 Middleton, Thomas, The Lady’s Tragedy, 106–21 Middleton, Thomas, and Thomas Dekker, The Bloody Banquet, 182 Militant Protestantism, 35, 43, 61, 137–9, 205, 219 and internationalism, 67 under Elizabeth I, 69 under James VI and I, 98–106 under Charles I, 123–41 Militarism, 169 Millenarianism, 5, 41 Milton, Anthony, 4, 9, 132 Milton, John, 9, 172, 209, 212 Milton, John, A Defence of the People of England, 119 Milton, John, Samson Agonistes, 41 Miracle Plays, 5 Misogyny, 90, 102, 107 and pleasure, 84 as political critique, 81 Misfortunes of Arthur, The, 156 Moderation, 9, 100, 104, 125, 134, 145, 177, 198 and drama, 144 Monmouth, James Scott, 1st Duke of, 216, 231, 240

286

Index

Monstrosity, 14, 68, 85, 114 Montagu, Ralph, 213 Montagu, Richard, Appello Caesarum, 131–2, 134 Montaigne, Michel de, 47, 85–6, 90, 144 Montesquieu, Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de, 259 Mornay, Phillipe de, 214, 218 Morrill, John, 52, 172 Munday, Anthony, 143 Mysticism, 158 Nabbes, Thomas, The Unfortunate Mother, 182 Napier, John, 25 Napier John, A Plaine Discouery, 37 Naples, 170, 182 Nashe, Thomas, Lenten Stuffe, 143 National Covenant, 1638, 145 National identity, 10 Natural science, 25 Necessity, 18 Necromancy, 49 Necrophilia, 94 and Roman Catholicism, 110 Neo-Platonism, 90 Neile, Richard, Cleric and Archbishop of York, 130 Neville, Henry, Plato Redivivus, 211 New British history, 52 Newton, Sir Isaac, 258 Nimrod, 62 Nine Years War, 242 Non-Conformity, 132, 172, 207, 224 Non-Jurors, 251 Norbrook, David, 37, 73, 77 Northern Ireland and anti-Catholicism, 257 Northern Rebellion, 64 Oates, Titus, 204, 213 Oath of Allegiance, 18, 22, 118–19, 164 and Women Recusants, 118–19 Ochino, Bernadino, A Tragoedie, 42 Old and New Comedy, 43 Oldcastle, Sir John, 90 O’Neill, Hugh, Earl of Tyrone, 70 Origen, 39 Osborne, Thomas, 1st Duke of Leeds, Lord Danby, 213 Osiander, Andreas, Conjectures of the Ende of the Worlde, 36 Ottoman Empire, 38, 89, 120, 131, 142, 159 Ovid, Metamorphoses, 24 Owen, David, 105, 118 Owen, Susan, 219 Oxford Parliament, 1681, 200, 220, 222

Palatinate, 137, 159, 171 Palatinate Crisis, 123, 125, 131, 157 Paley, Morton, 255 Papal conclave, 15 Papal supremacy, 103 Paracelsianism, 158 Paraeus, David, 41 Parker, John, 40 Parliament, 128, 157, 164–84, 204, 209, 213, 215, 218, 235–6, 247 and Civil Wars, 164–84 and grievances, 171 Party, 205, 247 concept of, 200–1 Pascoe, David, 59 Pastoral, 146 Patriarchy, 101, 178 Patterson, W.B., 103 Pax Romana., 33 Peace, 80, 127, 130, 136, 169, 181 Peace of London, 1604, 74 Peace of Utrecht, 1713, 249 Peace of Westphalia, 1648, 122 Peele, George, The Battle of Alcazar, 66, 142 Penal laws, 100, 103 Pendergast, John, 45 Pepin, King of the Franks, 36 Periodisation, medieval and early modern, 32–4 Perkins, William, 27, 114 Petition of Right, 1628, 129 Petitions, 167, 173, 175–6, 179 Petrarch, Francesco, 90 Petre, Sir Edward, 245 Pettegree, Jane, 17 Pheraerus, Alexander, 13 Philips, Ambrose, Humfrey, Duke of Gloucester, 252 Philip II of Spain, 18–19, 66, 69, 141, 157 papal relations, 62–3 Philip III of Spain, 18, 69–70, 98, 142 Philip IV of Spain, 18, 126, 170 Phocas, Byzantine Emperor 38 Pincus, Steven, 201 Piracy, 68, 76 Pleasure, Epicurean and Christian, 84–7 Polemic, 2, 6, 15, 18, 23, 32, 43, 49, 54, 57, 62, 69, 100, 102, 108, 123, 131–4, 201, 218, 224, 240, 251 –definition of, 2 Political leagues, 109, 118, 120 Pollution, 15 Polybius, 71 Pompey, 27 Ponet, John, 64, 113, 119, 218 Pope, Alexander, 242

Index

287

Pope Alexander VI, 14 Pope Boniface III, 38 Pope Paul III, 63 Pope Paul IV, 63 Pope Paul V, 100 Pope as a universal monarch, 56 Pope Burning Processions, 201–2, 204 Popish Plot, 2, 22, 52, 54, 171, 201, 204–7, 220 Portugal, 27, 46, 68, 170, 172 Prague, 126 Predestination, 46, 132 Prefiguration, 162 Prerogative, 79, 221, 234 Presbyterianism, 104, 164, 191, 207, 256 Print culture, 48 Privy Council under James VI and I, 77 Prologues and epilogues in drama, 248 Property, 204, 209–11, 219, 247, 252 theory of, 209–11 Prophecy, 4, 33, 40, 99, 125–6, 154, 160, 163, 187, 197, 205–6, 233 and Empire, 26, 205–6 and history, 28 and poetry, 31 Prophecy of Elias, 35 Prostitution, 93 commodification, 74 in early Jacobean Drama, 75–7 Protestant commentary tradition, 40 Providence, 4, 25, 69, 115, 173, 247 Prynne, William, 131, 176 Public sphere, 20, 60, 163, 165, 190, 201, 248, 251, 256 Puritan soteriology, 82 Puritanism, 47, 76, 82, 104, 132, 135, 149, 168, 224 Pygmalion, 86, 109 Pym, John, 136, 171, 179

Reeve, L.J., 128 Reeves, Marjorie, 127, 155 Reformation, 28, 32, 35, 39, 113, 210, 214, 259 Reformed culture and images, 49 Reformed historiography, 34 Regicide, 117 Regnans in Excelsis, 1570, 54 Religious hysteria, 9 Renovatio, 29, 33, 56, 62, 127, 142, 233, 243, 250 Reprobation, 46, 133 Republicanism, 18, 146, 188, 203, 212, 214–19 Resistance theory, 107, 109, 221, 224–6, 243 Restoration, 206 Resurrection, 151, 196 Revealed truth, 6 Revenge, 89, 91, 97, 117, 182, 195 Revisionism, 9, 17 Rhetoric, and rhetorical figures, 3, 14, 43, 84, 87, 144, 149, 153, 154, 161, 163, 172, 174, 189, 197, 222, 228, 245 Rich, Robert, 2nd Earl of Warwick, 136 Richards, Nathaniel, Messalina, 167 Roman Catholic Church as anti-Church, 4 Roman Catholicism and apocalypse, 4 toleration of, 72 Roman Empire, 33, 115 Romance, 90 Rome’s Follies, 202 Root and Branch Petition, 1640, 175–7 Rose, Jacqueline, 208 Rosicrucianism, 158 Rowe, Nicholas, The Tragedy of the Lady Jane Gray, 249–51 Royalism, 22, 169–70 Rubright, Marjorie, 59 Russell, Conrad, 170 Russell, John, 137

Quarles, Francis, 165 Quarles, Francis, The Virgin Widow, 178–80 Quebec Act, 1774, 254 Queen’s Men, 168

Sacking of Cadiz, 1597, 69 Saint Cyril, 154 Saint Isidore, 155 Saint Methodius, 155 Saint’s lives, 95 Saint’s play, 117 Sandford, James, 66 Sandys, George, 165 Sandys, George, Christ’s Passion, 180–1, 186 Satan, 43, 47 Satire, 15, 47, 81, 88, 95, 135, 205 Savonarola, Girolamo, 90 Scapegoat, 52 Scaramelli, Giovanni Carlo, Venetian Ambassador, 70 Scarr, Richard, 59 Scepticism, 8, 18, 47, 86, 102

Radcliffe, Anne, The Italian, 255–6 Rainolde, Richard, 113 Rainoldes, John, 57 Raleigh, Sir Walter, 78 Randall, Dale, 180 Rank, 186–7 Ravaillac, François, 94–7, 252 Raymond, Joad, 185 Reason of State, 14, 18, 72, 102, 162, 225, 259 –definition, 18–19 Rebellion, 207, 224–6, 232–3, 237, 243 Red Bull Company, 182

288

Index

Scott, Jonathan, 17, 54, 200–1, 220 Scott, Thomas, 123, 126, 138, 157 Scott, Sir Walter, Waverley, 256 Scotland, 61, 166–71, 173, 184, 250 Sebastian I of Portugal, 65, 141–63 Second Coming., 3, 43, 155, 181 Secularism, 259 Self-preservation, 18 Seneca, 26, 183, 194 Seneca, Thyestes, 26 Sensuality and sin, 85 Settle, Elkanah, The Female Prelate, 202 Seven Deadly Sins, 46 Sexuality, 14 Shadwell, Thomas, Bury Fair, 243 Shadwell, Thomas, Tegue O’ Divelly The Irish Priest, 202 Shadwell, Thomas, The Lancashire Witches, 202 Shakespeare, William, 15, 19, 43 Shakespeare, William, 1 Henry IV, 46 Shakespeare, William, 1 Henry VI, 46 Shakespeare, William, Antony and Cleopatra, 47 Shakespeare, William, King John, 49 Shakespeare, William, King Lear, 25, 58 Shakespeare, William, Macbeth, 47 Shakespeare, William, Measure for Measure, 42 Shakespeare, William, Richard II, 97 Shakespeare, William, The Winter’s Tale, 46 Sharpe, Kevin, 9, 129, 133, 140 Sharpe, Lewis, The Noble Stranger, 165, 168–70 Shell, Alison, 4, 108 Sheriffs, 226 Shirley, James, 19, 22 Shirley, James, and Ireland, 183 Shirley, James, and Roman Catholicism, 182–3 Shirley, James, The Cardinal, 182–98 Shirley, James, The Gentleman of Venice, 182 Short Parliament, 166 Sibylline oracles, 33 Sidney, Algernon, Discourses Concerning Government, 211 Sidney, Sir Philip, 13, 65, 73, 90, 234 Sisson, C.J. 124, 141 Siddon, Henry, The Sicilian Romance, 255 Simpson, James, 32 Simpson, Patrick, 115 Slavery, 115, 151, 204, 212–13, 226, 244 Sleidan, John, 35 Smith, David, 173, 191 Smith, Nigel, 185 Socinianism, 9 Sommerville, Johann, 100 Sophists, 106 Soteriology, 82, 84, 132 Southwell, Robert, 64

Sowerby, Scott, 241 Spain, 10, 18, 27–8, 38, 46, 52, 60, 87, 99, 104, 123, 126–9, 137, 142–3, 149, 155, 159, 167, 172 Spanish Armada, 1588, 37, 65, 156, 173 and drama, 67 Spanish Match, 123, 125 Speed, John, 97, 111, 115–16 Speed, John, The Historie of Great Britaine, 34 Spenser, Edmund, 31, 66, 90, 97, 156 Spenser, Edmund, The Faerie Queene, 31 Spinoza, Baruch, 214 St Bartholomew Day Massacre, 1572, 218 St John, Henry, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke, 249 St John, John, Mary, Queen of Scots, 255 St John, Oliver, 179 Star Chamber, 132 Stoicism, 18, 86, 90, 145–6 Stuart, Arabella, 95 Stuart, Charles, later Charles II, 188 Stuart, Charles Edward, 253–4 Stuart, Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia, 126, 137, 159 Stuart, Henrietta Maria, Queen Consort, 130, 168, 170 Stuart, Prince Henry, 71, 77, 126, 128, 159 Stuart, James Francis, 242, 245, 249–50 Stuart, Princess Mary, 170 Stuart Dynasty, 18–19, 55, 72, 220, 242, 249, 259 Suetonius, 34, 89 Suicide, 109 Sullivan, Garrett, 59 Sybil Erithraea, 155 Syria, 155 Tacitus, 34, 71, 89 Tate, Nahum, Cuckold’s Haven, 240 Tatham, John, The Distracted State, 182 Taxation, 145 Taylor, John, 127, 177, 179 Temporal and spiritual history, 3, 6, 29, 32, 35–6, 42, 44 Temporal and spiritual politics, 40, 62, 100, 104 Temporal and spiritual realms, 17, 19, 37, 46, 102–4, 163, 196 Tertullian, 39 Teixeira, Jose, 143, 150–1, 156 Theodosius II, Byzantine Emperor, 115 Thirty Years War, 122, 125–6 Thompson, Thomas, 157 Toenjes, Christopher, 3 Tolerance, 259 Toleration, 11, 100, 134, 207, 255 Toleration Act, 1689, 241 Tonge, Israel, The Northern Star, 205

Index Tory, 22, 220–1 Trade, 148–9, 227, 244, 259 Trade and religion, 148–9 Traheron, Bartholomew, 84 Transcendence, 6 Translation of Empire, 35, 44, 92, 108, 111–13, 123 Treaty of Greenwich, 1596, 69 Treaty of London, 1604, 60, 70–81, 98 Treaty of Vervins, 1600, 69 Troy, 111 Truce of Antwerp, 1609, 98 Tuck, Richard, 18 Two Churches, doctrine of, 8, 38 Tyacke, Nicholas, 131, 148 Tyndale, William, 12 Typology, 6–8, 45, 109 and drama, 45–6 and the Bible, 45–6 Tyrannicide, 95 Tyranny, 106, 112, 114, 119–20, 145, 153, 170, 175, 181, 190, 194, 197, 203, 208, 220, 236, 250, 258 Underworld in Classical Literature, 26 Universal monarchy, 62 Valla, Lorenzo, 90 Venice, 142, 164 Villiers, George, 1st Duke of Buckingham, 123–41 Vindiciae Contra Tyrannos, 104, 119, 214, 218 Virgil, 27–8, 33, 35, 86, 206 Virgil, Aeneid, 26 Virgil, Eclogues, 33–4 Virgil, Georgics, 27, 34, 36 Virgin Mary, 181 Viroli, Maurizio, 18 Vitkus, Daniel, 17 Wager, Lewis, The Life and Repentance of Mary Magdalene, 44 Wager, Lewis and William, 13 Wager, William, Enough Is as Good as a Feast, 44 Wager, William, The Longer Thou Livest the More Fool Thou Art, 44 Wales, 61

289

Walker, Obadiah, 245 Walpole, Horace, The Mysterious Mother, 255 Walpole, Michael, 103 Walpole, Robert, 249 War, 99, 122, 128, 130, 136, 146, 167–8, 173, 184, 194, 259 Walsham, Alexandra, 255 Weber, Max, 148 Webster, John, 4 Webster, John, The Duchess of Malfi, 49, 182, 186 Wentworth, Thomas, 1st Earl of Strafford and Lord Deputy of Ireland, 164, 183 Weston, Richard, 1st Lord of Portland and Lord Treasurer, 130 Whig, 22, 220–1, 240, 245, 249–50, 252 Whig historiography, 10, 16 concept of natural law, 210 concept of slavery and liberty, 220–1 political theory, 220–1 White, Jason, 56, 73 Whore of Babylon, the Devil, and the Pope, The, 240 Wicked council, 174 Wilcher, Robert, 179 William I, Prince of Orange, 65 William III, 241–8 William of Orange, later William III, 22, 212 Wimbledon, Thomas, 29 Wilson John Andronicus Comnenius., 116 Wiseman, Susan, 183 Wither, George, 31, 131 Wolsey, Cardinal Thomas, 185 Woodes, Nathaniel, 13 Woodes, Nathaniel, The Conflict of Conscience, 44 Worden, Blair, 64 Wrightson, Keith, 149 Wycliffe, John, 28, 90 Wycliffe, John, De Pontificum Romanorum Schismate, 30 York and Chester Cycles, 41 Zimmerman, Susan, 95, 116 Zwicker, Steven, 241