CHAPTER EIGHT

Observation and Participation

Royal events such as coronations, progresses, entries and funerals, and popular activities that included civic pageants, bell ringing, fireworks, pope burning processions and petitioning, enlisted the literate and illiterate alike in political life. Celebrations marking particular events, some unique and others part of the annual calendar, expressed approbation or disapproval of politically significant persons and events. Public whipping or pillorying, trials and executions provided visual experience of the majesty of the law. Paintings, sculpture, architecture and medals, like royal coronations and entries, used a variety of English, biblical and Roman imperial images to underline political values or suggest parallels between present and past political virtues. While these are not genres in any traditional sense, they were channels through which many learned about political life. Some involve personal observation, some personal experience and some both.

Pageants and processions were organized by the Crown or civic authorities with the aim of confirming official ideologies. Some were less officially orchestrated and had a substantial popular component. The bell ringing, bonfires, gunshots and fireworks that marked many celebrations can, to some extent, be taken as demonstrations of spontaneous popular opinion and participation. Some events, such as the late-seventeenth-century Whig-orchestrated pope burning processions and the petitioning movements of the mid- and late seventeenth century, combined elite leadership with public participation.

RITUALS OF ROYALTY: CORONATIONS, ENTRIES AND FUNERALS

Like their medieval predecessors, Tudor and Stuart monarchs used ceremony and visual display to enhance their role as head of church and state. The most important of these were the accession and coronation ceremonies that began their reigns. These were amplified by the celebrations of royal birthdays, marriages and births. Rulers also created visual displays of themselves in opulent courts before courtiers and diplomats to express and enhance their separation from ordinary individuals. Some assumed special roles in masques and other court-centered events. The culture of the court, shaped by the personal inclinations, gender and financial condition of particular English monarchs, underlined the perceived power, authority and moral stature of the monarchy. The degree of accessibility of the monarch too had its effect, sometimes working to enhance, sometimes to diminish, perceptions of monarchical authority.

As a way of cementing loyalty and displaying power, English monarchs, to a greater or lesser extent, exhibited themselves to the populace during royal entries and through progresses that put them on public view. The royal entry into London was a medieval institution in which the lord mayor and London’s leading citizens greeted the monarch. It was a colorful ceremony with banners and the noise of trumpets and cheering crowds flocking to gain sight of mayor and monarch. The ritual, performed when the monarch approached the city, found the lord mayor, the alderman and other City officials all in ceremonial attire and arranged in hierarchical order, greeting the ruler. The monarch was often presented with a sword or scepter, which was then returned to the mayor, who expressed the loyalty of magistrates and citizenry. There was a good deal of noise: cheering, gun fire and bell ringing, as well as pushing and shoving to get a better view. The better off sat on balconies and in windows to view the ceremony.¹

Similar ceremonial events preceded the coronation of a new monarch and were part of the lord mayor’s show, the annual London event honoring the newly elected lord mayor and the monarch. Some rulers took advantage of every opportunity to display themselves, others avoided such contacts. Monarchs also used events such as royal birthdays and marriages to underline the importance of dynastic kingship and to cement allegiance to the Crown. “Touching for the king’s evil,” in which the royal touch was thought to cure certain diseases, attested to the special nature of kingship.

Always attuned to making the most of opportunities to display herself to the people, Elizabeth made good use of royal ceremonial opportunities and was well aware of their political potential. She said, “We princes are set on stages in the sight and view of all the world.”² On the day of her coronation the people were said to have assembled with the “prayer, wishes, welcomes, cryies, tender woordes, and other signes, which argue a wonderfull earnest love of the most obedient subjects toward their sovaraygne.”³ During the coronation entry, which took place the day before the coronation, the new queen “did not only show her most gracious love to her people in general, but also privately, if the baser personages had either offered her grace or any flowers or such like, . . . she most gently, to the common rejoicing of all the lookers-on . . . staid her Chariot, and heard their requests.”⁴ Elizabeth’s first major exposure with the public initiated a practice she would continue to follow, one of making contact with the people and encouraging a reciprocal relationship with her subjects. Precoronation festivities were publicized in The Queen’s Maiesties Passage through the city of London to Westminster the Day before her Coronation to ensure that non-London residents could participate vicariously. Elizabeth’s “Crownation Day,” November 17, would be celebrated annually both during her lifetime and long afterward.

Elizabeth made effective use of the entry. In 1585 when she entered London in an open chariot and said to the people, “God save my people,” the people, falling on their knees, answered, “God save her grace.” Shortly after the defeat of the Armada she made a royal entry into London riding in a Roman style chariot. The streets were decorated and stations along her way provided music. St. Paul’s Cathedral was adorned with banners of the defeated Spaniards. The Queen went to St. Paul’s, knelt on the ground before her subjects and offered thanks for the victory. Fifty clergymen accompanied her into St. Paul’s to hear a sermon.⁵

Elizabeth’s summer and fall progresses also offered opportunities to display herself and make contact with her subjects. Accompanied by a good portion of her court, progresses were fairly lengthy royal tours that visited aristocratic homes, towns, ports and military defenses. Elizabeth made majesty a vivid presence in her over four hundred progresses. The queen used these presentations of royalty with consummate ability. There was “no prince living . . . that was so great a courter of her people, yea of the commons, that stooped and descended lower in presenting her person to the public view as she passed in her perambulations and in the ejaculations of her prayers upon the people.”⁶ Her returns to London were marked by elaborate formal entries where she would again be greeted by large crowds.⁷

The queen’s funeral arrangements were elaborate. There was a lifelike effigy of Elizabeth arrayed in her parliamentary robes and accompanied by the crown, orb and scepter, the symbols of sovereignty. Her body was accompanied by a large train of nobility, counselors and members of the royal household. Although Elizabeth was not as popular at the end of her reign as at the beginning, there were reports of “general sighing and groning and weeping; and the like hath not been seene or known in the memory of man.”⁸

James I’s reign began with a magnificent coronation entry and ceremony. Subsequently, however, the new king exposed himself to the public as little as possible and dispensed with the kind of civic ceremonies that marked Elizabeth’s reign. He “did not love to be looked on, and those Formalities of State which set a Lustre upon Princes in the People’s Eyes, were so many Burthens to him”⁹ His coronation was marked by a new emphasis on antiquity and the ceremony presented him as a “priest king.” Though James earlier had advised his son of the importance of ceremony, neither James nor Charles took advantage of the political possibilities of royal entries.¹⁰ James did go into the street at the opening of parliaments, and there were pageants for Prince Henry’s investiture as Prince of Wales. A popular figure, especially with those who favored a more aggressive policy against the Spanish, Henry enjoyed public ceremony. James’s death was marked by an elaborate and extremely costly funeral in which Charles was the chief mourner. The procession included an effigy of James that for the previous month had been on public display in Somerset House. The magnificent, lengthy and somewhat disorderly funeral procession was thought to have been viewed by 50,000. The Laudian ceremony in Westminster Abbey was used to enhance hereditary divine right monarchy and the soon-to-be king, Charles I.¹¹

Charles I’s coronation was marked by the customary bell ringing, gunshots from the Tower and drums and horns in the streets. At least 355 bonfires between Whitehall and Temple Bar were reported. Like his father, Charles was reluctant to appear in public and like him dispensed with the triumphal entry into London at his accession. The City had been more than willing, but the new king gave instructions that the prepared pageants be removed. The coronation ceremony itself was rather private. Charles arrived by water, thus avoiding a street procession. Archbishop Laud drew up the coronation service to emphasize the sacred nature of kingship. The Roman Catholic queen refused to participate in the ceremonies.¹²

Public royal ceremonies became less frequent. The king remained unreceptive to City entries. By the 1630s the king had largely withdrawn from people’s view. Charles’s entry into London on his return from Scotland in 1641 was exceptional. On this occasion he was greeted by five hundred citizens and thousands of spectators. But even then his distaste for the populace was clear. “All those former tumults and disorders, have only risen from the meaner sort of people,” not from the better part of the City, whom he said “have ever beene loyall and affectionate to my person and government.”¹³ Charles preferred the more intimate atmosphere of the court, where the court masque highlighted the king’s conception of divine right monarchy. Malcolm Smuts suggests that Charles’s failure to appear in public weakened the royal charisma.¹⁴

The outbreak of the civil war was marked by considerable crowd activity but little orchestrated pageantry. The Commonwealth government did not entirely ignore the political potential of spectacle. It used banquets, state funerals and celebrations of Cromwell’s victories and sought appropriate ceremonies for the reception of foreign embassies.¹⁵

The Cromwellian era saw more frequent but still modest display. Cromwell’s installation as lord protector lacked the elaborate pageantry, triumphal arches and tableaus prepared for the coronation of kings but did include the traditional greetings by ceremonially garbed City dignitaries. The occasion was more like Charles’s 1641 entry than a coronation entry. The Recorder’s speech pointedly noted that, unlike other nations, neither the titles Caesar nor emperor or triumphal arches were employed. Cromwell appeared in a coach rather than on horseback. Reaction to the ceremony was mixed. Mercurius Politicus reported “great acclamations and shoutings”; the Venetian ambassador a large crowd but little applause. Another report indicated that the crowd offered curses and threw dirty pieces of cloth and leather; still another that Cromwell had “lost much of the affection of the people, since he tooke the government upon himself,” and that the people “publiquely laughed and derided him.” Republicans and Royalists were hostile.¹⁶

There was a second installation ceremony for Cromwell in 1657. This essentially civil ceremony, celebrating the new state as much as the lord protector, dispensed with royal robes, anointing, coronation, sermon and communion and took place in Westminster Hall rather than Westminster Abbey. Cromwell’s funeral, on the other hand, had the pomp and magnificence of a royal funeral. Adapted from the funeral rites for James I, it featured a life-size effigy of Cromwell lying in state for public viewing wearing a robe of state with a scepter, globe and crown.¹⁷

The first taste of the Restoration’s revival of royal pageantry was Charles II’s progress from Dover to London, which concluded with a grand flower-bedecked processional entry into London. People lined the streets and situated themselves in windows and on balconies along the route. Bell ringing lasted for three nights. John Evelyn reported “shouting of unexpressible joy.”¹⁸

The coronation, which took place a few months later, was preceded by a lavish civic entry of the traditional variety in which Charles encountered a series of Roman triumphal arches and speeches alluding to him as Augustus. Pageants portrayed triumph over rebellion, the new sense of peace and pride in the nation’s navy. The four eighty-foot-high triumphal arches were decorated with scenery and living figures. The spectacle, like the now defunct court masque, combined architectural backgrounds, music, dance, sculpture and verse to glorify the recently restored divine right monarchy. Musicians, singers and dancers performed all around London. The militia and trained bands, horsemen and footmen lined the streets.¹⁹ Pepys felt that one was “never to see the like again in this world.” Another spectator reported that it was “the gravest, stateliest and most majestic sight that every I saw.” Clarendon thought it was the “most glorious in the Order and Expense, that had ever been seen in England.”²⁰

The coronation ceremony in Westminster Abbey was very different. Charles was consecrated and crowned by the Archbishop of Canterbury in a ceremony almost identical to that of his father. The coronation sermon reminded the audience that it should reflect on “our past sufferings and the causes of them,” mentioning the factious men who had “pretended to serve God.” Monarchy was divinely instituted, the best and most natural form of government as well as “the most just and reasonable.” When sovereignty was usurped and then shared the result was tyranny, it being “monstrous for the body politic to have more than one head.” Now “the Ancient Legal and Essential Constitution” was restored and the nation might return to peace, prosperity and security.²¹ Pepys, who estimated that 10,000 people stood outside the abbey, emphasized the magnificence of the occasion and remarked on hearing a “great shout” when the crown was placed on the king’s head. Bonfires blazed for two nights, and souvenir coronation mugs were distributed for the first time.²²

Clarendon had hoped that royal pageantry would help discredit “the Novelties and new Inventions, with which the Kingdom had been so much intoxicated for so many Years together.”²³ There were, however, few such ceremonies during the following years, although Charles provided a spectacle for the arrival of the queen in 1662. Charles II disliked formalities and generally appeared in public rather casually, being more comfortable at the horse races than in royal ceremony. In any event it would have been difficult to make him an iconic figure of divine right kingship or monarchical dignity and decorum, given his reputation for sexual promiscuity and a dissolute life. Nor would Charles’s self-presentation as the “first gentleman” of the nation provide support for notions of a divinely instituted authority, however much the doctrine would be preached in the pulpit. The mystique of monarchy had been broken, first by a period of nonmonarchical governance, and then by a monarch who was not inclined to preserve or enhance that mystique.

From the first moments of Charles’s return there were efforts to restore the visible symbols of royalty. Even before his arrival the statue of Charles I was replaced in Guildhall yard. Symbols of the previous government were to be “taken down in all the courts of justice, and other publick places . . . and all the king’s arms set up in their room.” The king’s arms were again placed over the speaker’s chair in Parliament and throughout the kingdom.²⁴

Although the king did not make much use of ceremony and pageantry, the Duke of Monmouth, his illegitimate son who was treated by the Whigs as a possible successor, made use of the progress to support his political ambitions. Progresses of the “Protestant Duke,” organized by local Whigs, attracted many observers who were said to shout, “Let Monmouth reign.” The king urged Tories “not to show any respect nor have any commerce with him in this ramble.”²⁵ Entries were arranged when Monmouth arrived in provincial towns. His entry into Oxford was greeted with cries of “God bless the Protestant Duke.” Monmouth’s 1680 return to London met with “ringing of Bells and Making Bonfires for Joy,” the festivities probably arranged by Shaftesbury. The Duke of York engaged in a countercampaign, making progresses into Scotland.²⁶ Both Monmouth and York attempted to make use of opportunities for courting public support.

Despite fears of what a Roman Catholic monarch might bring, the accession of James II was greeted with widespread celebration. Although in some locales “some people” were reported to have “hung their heads” at the announcement at James’s succession, “most received it with great joy, and all at present are in a quiet temper.”²⁷ The secretaries of state ensured appropriate celebrations, sending proclamations to local authorities instructing them to fire guns. Londoners were provided with wine to toast the new king, and celebrations were sponsored by the now remodeled, Tory-dominated City government. In Oxford there were bells and bonfires. James was cheered with “great shouts and acclamations”; Whigs were “condemn’d and slighted.”²⁸ Several observers commented on how rapidly public opinion had changed. Anthony Wood contrasted the hostility toward James during the last years of his brother’s reign with the “great applause” when he came to the throne.²⁹ James Welwood similarly remarked that the earlier “Heats and Animosities against him . . . seem’d to be now quite forgot, amidst the loud Acclamations of the People at his accession.”³⁰

James dispensed with the precoronation civic procession but was deeply involved in planning an elaborate and costly coronation ceremony that was celebrated with the traditional bell ringing, bonfires, feasting and music. The coronation was unusual in that a Roman Catholic king was crowned by a Protestant archbishop. The king’s failure to take the sacrament, traditionally part of the coronation ceremony, was reported to cause “great sorrow of the People.” Despite the many expressions of popular support, about half the nobility excused themselves from attending. The coronation was well publicized in the royally commissioned The History of the Coronation of the Most High Most Mighty and Most Excellent Monarch, James II (1687). The coronation sermon featured divine right, hereditary monarchy and passive obedience, a critique of elective monarchy and an allusion to “that abominable Excluding Bill.”³¹ James was not unaware of the possibilities of courting public opinion. In 1686 he visited the West country, and used royal healing powers during the tour. He also made several progresses after Parliament was dissolved in 1687, hoping to garner support for his policy of religious toleration.

THE LORD MAYOR’S SHOWS AND POPE BURNING PROCESSIONS

The annual civic pageants of medieval origin honoring the newly elected lord mayor of London were politically significant events. These elaborate shows provided an opportunity for Londoners to hear the self-congratulation of the merchant community. Speeches and visually pleasing processions and tableaus announced the unity and harmony between the English commercial community and the monarchy. Paid for by the guild or livery company of the incoming mayor, the pageants consisted of a procession of City officials through several parts of London, along with tableaus vivant, some of which took place on barges on the Thames and at several specially built triumphal arches. The reigning monarch often participated in the ceremonies or observed them from a nearby balcony.³² Printed descriptions provided vicarious experience for those who did not witness them; and well established poets and dramatists such as Thomas Dekker, Thomas Heywood and Thomas Middleton were commissioned to write and plan the annual fall shows. These shows provided entertainment for the entire city, the rich observing from balconies, the rest of London from the streets. They provided an occasion for panegyric praising the commercial wealth of London and the reigning monarch.

Although the shows of the Stuart era are well known, those of the Elizabethan era are not. We do know that the last extant show of Elizabeth’s reign, George Peele’s Descensus Astraea (1591), reaffirmed the City’s loyalty to the queen and emphasized the mutual benefits of the monarchy and the merchant community. Shows became more elaborate in the early seventeenth century as they borrowed thematic elements and lavishness from the masque. The first show of James’s reign, Triumphes of Re-United Britannia, praised the proposed Union of England and Scotland, the Jacobean peace and concord between the sponsoring company and the Crown. Courtly styles of grandeur characterized Thomas Middleton’s The Triumph of Truth, which increased the focus on London, perhaps because the king was not very interested in displaying himself to his subjects. The 1617 crowd expressed anti-Spanish sentiment.³³

The shows of Charles I’s reign continued to underline themes of royal and City harmony. Jus Honorarium of 1631 delivered the message “Every magistrate is a minister under God, appointed by the divine ordinance to that calling, to be a protector of the Church, a preserver of discipline and Peace.” The shows were largely in abeyance during the civil war era, though one in 1643 pointed to the need for political order and obedience to magistrates. They were revived in 1655, and in 1657 London’s Triumph again extolled trade and stressed its advantage to the state.³⁴

Lord mayor’s shows were enthusiastically staged during the Restoration. The Crown became actively concerned in their production and often participated in the festivities. Charles II frequently attended, viewing several of the pageants from a Cheapside balcony and then dining with the newly elected magistrates at the Guildhall. Restoration-era shows were frequently attended by foreign ambassadors, members of the Privy Council, officers of state, the archbishop and bishops present in London, judges and sergeants at law. Like their predecessors, the shows were designed to appeal to both elite and popular audiences. Augustan themes were prominent, and goddess figures representing justice, temperance, prudence and other virtues were often portrayed, accompanied by speeches appropriate to each. The pageants continued to provide visual displays portraying the prosperity of English trade and manufacture and their contribution to the nation as well as harmony between trade and Crown.

Like most Restoration-era genres, the pageants of the Restoration became more overtly political. The 1660 pageant celebrating the return of the monarchy contained a speech that referred to England’s God-like monarchy “Derivative from Heaven” and the “right of succession at the hands of Heaven.”³⁵ The next year, when the lord mayor’s pageant could not be separated from the coronation entry, the king rode in a procession that highlighted the contrast between monarchy and the past confusion and turmoil. The king also participated in the pageants of 1662 and 1664.³⁶ Charles seems at least to have heeded the advice of the Duke of Newcastle, who had urged that the king “to show your Selfe Gloriously, to your people; like a God, for the Holy writt sayes, well have Call’d you Gods.”³⁷ A hiatus of several years resulting from the fire ended in the 1670s, when the pageants again sometimes promoted government propaganda.³⁸ Thomas Jordan, an ardent Royalist, provided the shows between 1671 and 1683. His London’s Resurrection to Joy and Triumph (1671) emphasized the rebuilding of London, the return of prosperity and the importance of “Concord and Consent.” It included a figure, Oliver Faction, who loves “to sow the seeds of Strife” and says of himself, “I put all nations in a Flame” and “a Cov’nant’ I made to further my trade.” The Oliver figure referred to his villainy of 1646, “when writing and fighting” killed many.³⁹

London’s Triumph (1672), attended by the king, the dukes of York and Monmouth and many officers of state, proclaimed, “May no Rebellious seeds men to Discord/ Twixt Whitehall Scepter, and Guildhall Sword/ May Peace, Truth, Trade, Plenty, and Content/ Make all men Bless’d under your Government.” A song referred to “42,” to “Ordinance Laws” that “beat down the kings,” illiterates in the pulpit who scattered the “seeds of division” and to Cromwell and the Protectorate.⁴⁰ The Triumph of London (1675) ridiculed coffee houses and attacked Shaftesbury for making “Conscience a Cloak for his knavery.”⁴¹ During the divisive Popish Plot and Exclusion era and the development of Whig and Tory ideologies, the pageants become increasingly unruly. In 1679 we hear of a “tumultuous Torrent of crowding People” in the streets.⁴²

The increasingly Tory messages of the lord mayor shows were countered by Whig-sponsored burning processions made to coincide with commemorations of Elizabeth’s accession or “Crownation” day on November 17, a day traditionally associated with expression of anti–Roman Catholic sentiment. The purpose of the processions was to emphasize the dangers of Roman Catholicism and to put pressure on court and king to call Parliament. They were carefully planned to excite the London crowd with bell ringing, bonfires and cries of “No Popery.” The Whigs hoped to solidify a connection between the Protestant Elizabeth and their own program. The procession of 1679 featured both a statue of Queen Elizabeth “decked up with a magna carta and the protestant religion” and the devil, accompanied by “four boys in surplices . . . six Jesuits, four bishops, four archbishops . . . besides Franciscans, black and grey friars in all habits” and “a great crucifix, wax candles and a bell.” Spectators were asked to remember Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey, widely rumored to have been killed by Catholics, whose figure appeared on horseback. The pageant, which featured effigies of the pope that were burned in spectacular bonfires, drew huge crowds.⁴³ Streets, windows and balconies were filled with noisy spectators. Viewing the spectacle, the French ambassador expressed surprise that “no manner of mischief was done, not so much as a head broke.” “The streets were all quiet” within several hours.⁴⁴

The Whig playwright Elkanah Settle devised and managed the lavish pope burning procession of 1680 that Roger L’Estrange blamed on the Green Ribbon Club. The Whig processions of 1680 and 1681 ridiculed L’Estrange, who was represented in the form of a little dog sitting in the pope’s lap. The procession, which also included displays of Godfrey and Sir George Wakeman, a recent Catholic plotter, concluded with a huge bonfire at which the crowd cried, “No Popery” and “God bless the King, Protestant Religion, the Church and Dissenting Protestants.” Their cries were said to be rewarded with “Wine and other Liquors.”⁴⁵ Although the pope burning processions were primarily a London affair, they were also held at Salisbury and Taunton. The festivities were expensive; the procession of 1679 was thought to have cost £2,000. Broadsides were sold during the parades for the enjoyment and edification of spectators and for non-Londoners, much as printed descriptions were circulated of the lord mayor’s shows.⁴⁶ There were no more pope burning processions or bonfires after Tories gained control over the City corporation.

Similar, though less elaborate, public displays were used by the Tories to associate the Whigs with rebellion and dissent. In 1681 they burned an effigy of Jack Presbyter carrying the Solemn League and Covenant and exhibited a display of Shaftesbury’s ignoramus verdict. In 1685 they publicly burned a copy of the Exclusion bill in Oxford and elsewhere, along with the pamphlet The Character of a Popish Successor. The bill of Exclusion was burned in Newcastle-under-Lyme together with other symbols “which smelled of disloyaltie.”⁴⁷

The Whig-sponsored pope burning processions took place during the period in which the Crown interfered in City elections. The politics of the City, and especially the changing composition of the Common Council and the political affiliation of the mayors, were reflected in the lord mayor’s shows. Court and City factions fought bitterly over the sheriff elections because those officials appointed the jurors and grandjurors that would determine politically divisive cases. London’s Glory, the lord mayor’s show of 1680 honoring the newly elected Whig lord mayor, Sir Patience Ward, reflected Whig concern for French and popish threats. The king refused to attend. Ward, who favored Exclusion and promoted an accord between the Church of England and the dissenters, was attended by the Duke of Monmouth, who dined with him at the Guildhall banquet following the show. London crowds followed Monmouth, shouting and tossing up hats and caps, “crying God bless his Majesty and the Duke of Monmouth.”⁴⁸ During Ward’s mayoralty dissenters were admitted to the electorate without taking the required oath. The City’s four members of Parliament were Whigs who supported exclusion.

Ward, however, would soon be replaced by a series of Tory lord mayors whose views were more in keeping with that of the court. The king intervened in the fiercely contested election in behalf of Sir John Moore and attended the ceremonies that year. Both the election and the 1681 Tory show took place amid a flurry of pamphlets about the disputed election. The 1682 show, also fraught with controversial City politics, resulted in a Whig boycott. There were no pageants, and some guilds refused to march in the procession.⁴⁹

After London’s charter was revoked, the mayor and other City officials were appointed by the Crown. Judge Jeffreys, now a leading figure in London’s governance, confidently declared, “The King of England is likewise King of London.”⁵⁰ The City government and the lord mayor’s shows remained Tory for the remainder of the reign. Pageants presented the civil war and Interregnum eras as times of poverty, confusion and tyranny and attacked religious dissent. The shows had become another venue for disseminating Tory ideology.

During the brief reign of James II the shows exhibited themes of loyalty and obedience. In 1686 there were anti–Roman Catholic riots that the mayor found difficult to subdue. The following year, when the king replaced the Tory Anglicans who had dominated City government with former Whigs and nonconformists, City officials thanked James, the “most Discerning Prince in the World,” for his Declaration of Indulgence. The incoming lord mayor, an Anabaptist, was reminded that he owed his “advancement” to the “Praetorial Chair” “to the favor of the monarch.” A pageant figure, “Liberty Triumphant,” held the king’s banner in one hand and a shield inscribed “Liberty of Conscience” in the other. The London Gazette reported that the king was thanked for “the many Advantages of that liberty which His Majesty has been pleased so Graciously to indulge all His Subjects though of Different Persuasions.” There had nevertheless been sufficient worry about possible disorder to lead to a search of the Guildhall cellar and a prohibition of “the throwing of squibs and serpents.” The presence of the papal nuncio was upsetting and surprising.⁵¹

The lord mayor’s show, which had begun as a tribute to the harmony of the City and monarch, became deeply enmeshed in partisan politics after the Restoration. The monarchs were active participants, except on those occasions when Whigs controlled the City government. Shows continued after the Glorious Revolution, although with diminishing enthusiasm, and ended in 1702.

PETITIONING

In order to understand the full range of political expression and activity, some attention must be given to petitioning, an important legal means of arousing public sentiment as well as influencing government action and parliamentary lawmaking. Petitioning was treated as an indisputable right that allowed individuals and groups a legitimate means of bringing discontents and grievances to an appropriate official or institution. Typically couched in respectful language emphasizing the humility of the petitioners, petitions might originate in local grand juries, Parliament or individuals and were addressed to mayors, the king, the Privy Council or Parliament. Although recognized as legitimate expressions of discontent, petitioning became worrisome to governmental authorities when delivery was tumultuous or when petitions appeared to demand rather than request.

Not all petitions were politically significant, but those that were served as an important means of expressing political views in a way that would receive public attention. Many were initiated and support for them orchestrated in ways that made it impossible to be certain of a petition’s source or the extent of its support. Samples from successive reigns will suggest the range of ideas expressed and the changing role of petitions in political life.

During Elizabeth’s reign the House of Commons petitioned the queen to allow the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots, declaring that the petition communicated the universal desire “of the whole people of all degrees.”⁵² Archbishop Whitgift denounced the petitioning efforts of the Puritans. During the Jacobean era local petitioners were advised to vary their language, “to avoid the suspicion of conspiracy.”⁵³ In 1610 a House of Commons petition sought to affirm its right to “debate freely of all things that shall concern any of the subjects in particular, or the commonwealth in general.” Petitions complained about high commission, the church courts, excessive use of proclamations and impositions. One insisted that taxation required Parliament’s consent and asserted that the “Law of Property” was “virginally and carefully preserved by the common law[s] of this realm, which are as ancient as the kingdom itself.”⁵⁴ There were Puritan petitions addressed to the House of Commons as well as petitions directed against individuals and particular publications such as Richard Montague’s Appello Caesarem. There were also petitions defending episcopal government and those attacking Puritans, whose petitions were thought to be exciting disobedience to the established form of government. A petition of Parliament reminded the king of its former petitions relating to religion and complained of papal aims at temporal monarchy. Complaints about the Crown’s Spanish policy indicate that the petition format had become a vehicle for attacking royal foreign policy. Indeed, James thought Parliament’s petition on the Spanish match an insolent act. Petitions were clearly a means of communicating and advertising disapproval of current policies.

Parliament’s 1628 Petition of Right, though couched in the language of humility, summed up long-standing grievances, including condemnation of benevolences, the royal power to tax, arbitrary imprisonment, the billeting of soldiers and improper use of martial law. It urged that doctrines of “necessity” and “the public good” not be used to undermine law or infringe the liberty of subjects. Though the petition had considerable support, some members thought it infringed upon the royal prerogative. Sir Edward Coke, one of the petition’s composers, countered, “I know that prerogative is part of the law, but ‘sovereign power’ is no parliamentary word. . . . [It] weakens Magna Charta and all our statutes.”⁵⁵

Petitions played a central role in political life in 1640 and during the years that followed. Hundreds were sent to the Long Parliament from town governments, grand juries and later the army. Many were now printed, an innovation that provided opportunities both for larger numbers of individuals to become involved and for disseminating knowledge of public affairs to a much wider public. Petitions had become a means of shaping public opinion. Some required considerable organization to obtain signatures. Others were presented in such large numbers that they worried even members of Parliament. In 1641 Lord Digby queried apprehensively, “What can there bee of greater presumption, then for Petitioners . . . to prescribe to Parliament, what, and how it shall doe?”⁵⁶

Petitions to the Short Parliament focused on extra-parliamentary taxation and Arminian innovations. Their dismissal was followed by petitions for a new Parliament. Both king and the Long Parliament faced a barrage of petitions. Among them was the Root and Branch Petition allegedly signed by 150,000 and ostentatiously carried to the House of Commons by well over a thousand. A crowd of perhaps 15,000 petitioned for justice to be executed upon the Earl of Strafford. That petition was said to have 20,000 to 30,000 signatures.⁵⁷ The Grand Remonstrance, a printed petition from the House of Commons to the king, though retaining the language of “humble and faithful subjects,” lambasted the king’s evil counselors, the bishops, Jesuit-inspired papists and the “malignant and pernicious design of subverting the fundamental laws and principles of government.” Writing many years later Clarendon said:

It contained a very bitter representation of all the illegal things which had been done from the first hour of the King’s coming to the crown to that minute, with all those sharp reflections which could be made upon the King . . . the Queen, and Council: and published all the unreasonable jealousies of the present government . . . and all other particulars which might disturb the minds of the people, which were enough discomposed.⁵⁸

Petitions of all kinds poured in from the countryside. Nehemiah Wallington claimed to have collected 103 petitions.⁵⁹ Milton reported that “the meanest artisans and labourours, women and young servants assembled with their complaints.”⁶⁰ Petitions and counter petitions streamed in from Kent and other counties, many of which were printed. Petitions, together with the increasing stream of pamphlets and newsbooks, had become a way of mobilizing those who had rarely if ever before directly entered the political arena. A transformation of the political process had taken place within the space of two years. Often reported in the now burgeoning news-books, petitions were discussed and signatures collected in churches, taverns, town councils and at quarter sessions and the assizes. Those directed at Parliament were often presented by processions of people or a parade of coaches.

Unsurprisingly, the outpouring of petitions displeased the king, but Charles himself was angered by Parliament’s refusal to receive Royalist petitions. Royalists now claimed that petitioning was “the birthright of the subject,” which, once lost, would result in “slavery and tyranny.”⁶¹ Though many members of Parliament were active in petitioning campaigns, they were hostile to receiving petitions from Royalists and radicals. Once established as useful political tools, they could be and were employed by anyone. Petitions became so numerous and contentious that Parliament issued an order against “all tumultuous meetings under pretense of petitions.” When the New Model Army and Parliament came into conflict, there was an attack on the right of soldiers to petition Parliament.

The Levellers were particularly adept in their use of petitioning. Parliament, however, was reluctant to accept them, and the first Leveller petition was ordered to be burned by the common hangman. Their “Large Petition,” printed to facilitate gathering signatures, was deemed “scandalous and seditious.”⁶² Their Remonstrance of many thousands of the Freeborn people of England claimed 98,000 signatures. Leveller petitions emphasized the need for law reform, a vastly expanded franchise, elimination of tithes and religious toleration. Petitioning provided an opportunity for some women to express their political views.⁶³

There were fewer petitions during the 1650s. In 1653 The Faithful Post indicated that it was “saddened . . . to see your undoubted Right of Petitioning withheld from us . . . . [It] is the known duty of Parliament to receive Petitions: and it is ours and the nations undoubted right to petition, although an Act of parliament were made against it.”⁶⁴ The recall of the Rump, nevertheless, was facilitated by a petitioning campaign.

Legislation of 1661 again forbade mass petitioning that created “tumults and disorders upon pretence of preparing or present public petitions or other addresses to King or Parliament.” Petitions might be presented by no more than ten persons and contain no more than twenty signatures unless approved by justices of the peace or the county grand jury.⁶⁵ Petitioning nevertheless played a major role both in the campaign to secure new elections in 1679 and 1680 and in efforts to exclude the Duke of York from the succession. In May 1679 there was a petition designed to convince Parliament that Londoners favored Exclusion and aid for Protestant dissenters. Lord Danby feared that petitioning presaged popular unrest. There were petitions for a new Parliament, including one presented by Shaftesbury and fifteen peers while the king was en route to chapel. According to one Whig newspaper a “monster petition,” allegedly signed by 60,000, was a hundred yards long. Newspapers provided progress reports on petitioning in the countryside. The Wilshire petition alone was said to have 30,000 signatures. A Tory paper reported that “Tables, Pen, Ink and Petitions have been placed upon the Royal Exchange at Change time, and People invited to subscribe to them.”⁶⁶ The king made scathing remarks about several provincial petitions and dismissed officeholders engaged in petitioning. To many it appeared that the mass politics of the 1640s had returned.

Petitioning, however, was not exclusively a Whig political tool. In 1681 Tory apprentices in London presented a petition with 18,000 signatures to the king which in turn elicited a Whig counterpetition with 20,000 signatures. The Gazette printed a royal proclamation against tumultuous petitioning and expressed disapproval of the petition forms being sent to the country for signatures. Tory “loyal addresses” expressing “abhorrence” of Whig petitions soon followed, many to be printed in the Gazette. The Tory The Loyal Protestant Intelligence characterized Whig petitions as “misrepresentatives, and not Vox Populi.”⁶⁷ Civil war–era petitions were reprinted “to precaution the ill-meaning Zealots of this age” and remind readers of the “Libellous Petitions, then secretly set on Foot both against Church and State.”⁶⁸ A Tory Association objected to the “Printed Forms of Petitions . . . lately dispersed up and down the Kingdom, . . . tending to the raising of Sedition and Treason,” its members subscribing to a document witnessing their “detestation” of the Whig petitions.⁶⁹ A Hereford petition accused the Whigs of wishing to introduce “their beloved Tyrannick Republick.”⁷⁰ Petitions and counterpetitions made it clear that Restoration England was a bitterly divided community. Like the newspaper, petitioning declined with the defeat of the Whigs. Tory petitions and popular demonstrations were encouraged by the Crown, which realized that it too could recruit popular support using demonstrations and addresses. By 1681 it would be difficult to separate Tory demonstrations from those sponsored by the government.

Petitioning, enshrined as an ancient, constitutional practice, offered a means for large numbers of people to express their views, either through their signatures or their presence when the petitions were delivered. On some occasions this meant that very large numbers of people were mobilized to denounce existing policies and practices and to agitate for new ones. Petitioning was often well planned and well organized. Though the crowds that accompanied delivery were to be found largely in London and Westminster, several campaigns reached into the countryside. Especially from 1640 on, petitions offered large numbers of people an opportunity to participate in political life. It offered an opportunity to put pressure on king and Parliament and gave groups like the Levellers an opportunity to publicize their views. Petitions and counterpetitions of the Restoration era sharpened and made obvious the competing Whig and Tory agendas. Mass petitioning also raised fears of riot or other kinds of destructive mob behavior. Like the printed media, crowd activity was difficult to control. Yet Restoration-era governments, as well as those who used petitioning and crowd action to oppose governmental policies, were willing to make use of them when it was in their interest to do so.

NATIONAL HOLIDAYS AND CELEBRATIONS

Although numerous religious holidays disappeared with the Reformation, celebrations remained part of early modern cultural experience. New holidays were created, some of which became part of the annual national calendar. Royal birthdays, births and marriages were celebrated with bell ringing and occasionally with fireworks. Few celebrations of particular monarchs were continued after their death. Among the exceptions were May 29, Royal Oak Day, which celebrated both the Restoration and Charles II’s birthday, and November 17, the date of Elizabeth’s accession. The celebrations of most national political importance were Elizabeth’s “Crownation Day,” Gunpowder Treason Day and January 30, the anniversary of Charles I’s execution. Others commemorative occasions marked events of national importance but were not repeated.

ELIZABETH’S ACCESSION DAY

Elizabeth’s accession day became a day of national rejoicing throughout her lifetime and during those of her Stuart successors. From its inception it testified to the Protestant nature of the English Crown and nation. Accession Day festivities praised Elizabeth’s rule and her many virtues. Celebrations became more elaborate over time, fueled by public sentiment following the Northern Rebellion in 1569, plots against the queen’s life and the papal bull of excommunication. Bell ringing was used for a nonreligious holiday for the first time. Lambeth rang bells as early as 1569, and London and the home counties soon followed. In 1576 Archbishop Grindal ordered a special form of prayer, enlarged in 1578, the same year that the city of Norwich instituted torch-lit processions. By the 1580s celebrations had become widespread throughout the country. Accession Day tributes typically mentioned God’s selection of Elizabeth and the blessings of her rule. Many also employed Golden Age and Roman imperial themes.⁷¹

Accession Day observance included sermons, many of which were published. These sermons often referred to Elizabeth as the English Deborah, Esther, or Solomon. In 1583 Whitgift preached on the nation’s delivery from “the cruelties and tyranny of the Bishop of Rome” and pointed out the similarity of Elizabeth’s role in the church to those of Constantine and Justinian. When the Bishop of London preached at Paul’s Cross on November 17, 1595, trumpets and cornets sounded from the cathedral roof, its steeple ablaze with lights. Gunfire sounded from the Tower along with bell ringing and bonfires. “Her day,” wrote John Chamberlain in 1602, “passed with . . . [the] solemnity of preaching, singing, shooting, ringing and running.”⁷²

Celebration of Elizabeth’s accession day was not encouraged during the early part of James’s reign but did not cease. In 1612 William Leigh compared Queen Elizabeth to heroic biblical figures, this time David, Joshua and Hezekiah. He characterized the pope as antichrist “who treads on the necks of kings” and “kicks crowns from their heads.”⁷³ Celebration, which revived as enthusiasm for James diminished and anti-Spanish sentiment increased, was enlivened more by popular interest than government pressure. Elizabeth’s “Crownation Day” provided an outlet for anti-Spanish and anti–Roman Catholic expression. In 1620 John Chamberlain declared that November 17 was “the happiest day that ever England had to my remembrance.”⁷⁴ Celebrations waxed and waned along with periods of anti-Catholic fears and sentiment. Although Laudians disapproved of the celebrations during the 1630s, one anniversary sermon given before Parliament during that decade urged members to “make this another blessed seventeenth of November.”⁷⁵

Elizabeth’s accession day gained national importance again at the time of the Whig-sponsored pope burning processions scheduled to coincide with November 5 and November 17. It was now associated with efforts to exclude the Duke of York from the succession. The coronation day of that “never to be forgotten Prince, Queen Elizabeth” was described by Elkanah Settle in London’s Defiance to Rome (1679). Celebration receded with the defeat of the Whigs and largely disappeared during the reign of James II, who feared the occasion would be turned “into riots and tumults.”⁷⁶

GUNPOWDER TREASON CELEBRATIONS, NOVEMBER 5

The longest lasting holiday in the English national calendar was Gunpowder Day, memorializing the failure of the Gunpowder Plot of November 5, 1605. The plot’s failure fueled anti-Catholic and antipapal sentiment for generations and was proclaimed as a national holiday celebrating England’s deliverance. Special prayers and sermons as well as bell ringing and bonfires marked the annual observance. Special sermons preached before the king began in 1606 and hailed November 5 as a day when “God delivered this land” from “the popish conspiracy,” “the quintessence of all impiety and confection of all villainy.” Bells rang throughout the country paid for by local parishes without the prompting of government officials. Although conceived as a day of prayer and thanksgiving, the distribution of wine and beer in some locales meant that Gunpowder Day became a festive, boisterous occasion.⁷⁷

For some years November 5 was a unifying day on which Protestants of all religious persuasions joined together to denounce Roman Catholic and papal villainy. By the 1630s, however, it had lost its unifying character. Puritans put greater emphasis on the dangers of popery and the need for further reformation, churchmen on dangers to the church. The burning of popish effigies became increasingly associated with Puritanism, and there were fewer sermons at court celebrating the occasion. Archbishop Laud ignored it, not surprising given that Puritans used the occasion to denounce what they thought were popish ceremonies in the English church as well as popery itself.

Fear of growing Roman Catholic influences at court and Roman Catholic plotting intensified anti-Catholic sentiment. On the first November 5th meeting of the Long Parliament, the speaker of the House of Commons underlined the importance of the date, stressing the current need to root out popery and all things popish. Supporters of the king, on the other hand, used the day to defend the king and the established religion. London parishes continued to pay bell ringers throughout the civil war era for their services on November 5. Celebration became more intense with the parliamentary victories over the king. In 1647 the day was marked by a sermon delivered before Parliament and a spectacular fireworks display at Lincoln’s Inn Fields in the presence of Parliament and London’s militia. Celebration was less lively during the 1650s, although anniversary sermons and bell ringing continued. In 1651 the sermon preached to Parliament used the occasion to suggest that Presbyterians constituted a more serious danger than papists.⁷⁸

Restoration commemorations often linked November 5 and May 29, the day honoring the Restoration of the Crown, as days of royal deliverances. Loyalists sometimes used the occasion to link popish and Presbyterian dangers. Bells were rung regularly until the Great Fire destroyed the majority of London’s churches and their bells. It would be many years before the bells pealed out again on November 5.

Growing anti-Catholic fears in the 1670s reinvigorated celebrations. Commemorations became more boisterous and aggressive, with less emphasis on past deliverance and more on current dangers. Revelation of a Popish Plot to kill the king and apprehension of a Catholic successor inspired Whig pope burning processions and huge bonfires on November 5 and November 17. There were Exclusion sentiments such as the yelling of “No York” and pro-Monmouth slogans. Papist windows were broken and roving crowds sought out anti-Whig figures such as Roger L’Estrange. Healths were drunk to the Duke of Monmouth as well as the king. Such activities sometimes led to conflict with the trained bands. In 1682 there were both bonfires and efforts to douse their flames. After the Whigs had been vanquished, Gunpowder Day celebrations became quieter.⁷⁹

Gunpowder Day festivities were discouraged during the reign of James II. The lord mayor was ordered to forbid bonfires and fireworks, though candle-lit parades were still permitted. The fortuitous arrival of William of Orange in England on November 5 meant that his arrival and the failure of the Gunpowder treason could be celebrated simultaneously as great deliverances.

JANUARY 30

The Restoration in 1660 made it possible for the nation publicly to mourn the death of Charles I. The date of his death, January 30, soon became part of the national calendar, with sermons preached before the king, before Parliament and in parish churches throughout the country. These sermons typically used the occasion to praise the martyred king, condemn those responsible for his death and warn against future rebellion. They were also used to instill belief in divine right kingship and passive obedience. January 30, like November 5, became a divisive rather than a healing day.

OCCASIONAL CELEBRATIONS

There were also celebrations marking important political events that did not become part of the national calendar. Some were government sponsored, some were spontaneous and some combined government and public initiative. The defeat of the Turks at the battle of Lepanto during Elizabeth’s reign was celebrated with bells and bonfires ordered by the Privy Council. Similar festivities took place when the Babington plotters were apprehended and when Mary Queen of Scots was executed. The defeat of the Armada in 1588 was celebrated wildly. A national day of thanksgiving was proclaimed and sermons preached giving thanks for England’s providential rescue. Shortly after the English victory, a procession that included Elizabeth, the Privy Council, the nobility and officials commemorated the occasion. Although the Armada’s defeat did not become a national holiday, it was frequently cited as a “deliverance.”

James’s reign was marked by bell ringing and fireworks at the birth of the royal children and the investiture of Henry as Prince of Wales. There was a huge public response and mourning for the death of Prince Henry. The marriage of the king’s daughter Elizabeth to the Elector Palatine was celebrated by London crowds. The occasion, which emphasized Protestant solidarity, was marked with fireworks and a court masque.

Anti-Spanish and anti–Roman Catholic sentiment exploded in the joyous public response to the failure of Prince Charles’s Spanish match in 1623. There was a chorus of bell ringing in London, and all its citizens “irrespective of rank” were, according to the Venetian ambassador, “filled with boundlesse joy,” immediately lighting “large and numerous bonfires.” Shops closed, and wine was dispensed in the streets. Again the next night “All London rang with bells and flared with bonfires, and resounded all over with such shouts as it is not well possible to express.”⁸⁰ One contemporary estimated some 335 bonfires. “Such a concourse of people collected at Buckingham’s house” that “his coach could hardly pass through the street and seemed to be carried on men’s shoulders.” Laud’s diary noted that the collapse of the marriage engendered “the greatest expression of joy by all sorts of people that ever I saw.”⁸¹ Several chapels were dedicated to commemorate the failure of the match. Although this celebration did not become an annual holiday, the bells at St. Margaret’s, Westminster, rang on the anniversary until the civil war. ⁸² The English closely followed the fortunes of the Protestant armies on the Continent, celebrating the victories of Gustavus Adolphus and mourning his death.

King Charles I’s acceptance of the Petition of Right in 1628 was thought by some to have occasioned as much celebration as Charles’s return from Spain. There were also festivities following the release of Burton, Bastwick and Prynne from prison. The freed men, who had been harshly punished for libeling prelacy, were followed and cheered by huge crowds in London. Royal assent to the triennial bill was celebrated with bonfires, as was the day “that the bishops were put down.” Parliamentary victories were marked with bell ringing and bonfires, as was the 1654 victory over the Dutch.

The Restoration was celebrated with church bells ringing everywhere, maypoles and a good deal of drinking and feasting at public expense. The downfall of the Rump Parliament was marked by ceremonial roasting of rumps. In 1660 Pepys reported, “Boys do now cry ‘Kiss my Parliament’” instead of “Kiss my arse.”⁸³ Rump burning and bonfires with effigies of Cromwell and other rebels were staged simultaneously with the celebrations of those rejoicing at the return of the Stuarts. The Covenant and pictures of Cromwell were thrown into the fires, and Cromwell’s monument in Westminster Abbey was destroyed. The bodies of Cromwell, Bradshaw and Henry Ireton were disinterred, hanged and their remains left hanging for public viewing. Several years later there were celebrations of England’s 1666 victories over the Dutch. Less pleasing to the king were the bonfires of 1681 celebrating the grand jury’s ignoramus verdict in the case of the Earl of Shaftesbury.

James II’s reign saw celebrations commemorating the defeat of Monmouth’s rebellion. Orders for thanksgiving were proclaimed thanking God for “absolute and signal Victories” over the rebels. Not only were there desecrations of the effigies of rebel leaders, but the hanged bodies of many participants were displayed. When the Prince of Wales was born, the Crown orchestrated thanksgivings and special church services, ordered bonfires and gunfire. Waterworks and fireworks over the Thames reportedly were watched by more than 100,000 people. Later in the reign, the acquittal of the Seven Bishops, which occurred shortly before James fled the country, was an occasion of spontaneous public rejoicing.

LOCAL GOVERNMENT

Politics can be learned in all kinds of ways. Particularly in an age of less than universal literacy, seeing, hearing and participating in spectacles and parades and signing petitions can both create political thinking and make concrete the political sentiments of even the otherwise politically inarticulate. Early modern England was replete with such manifestations of political culture.

Earlier we noted the role of jury service in educating both those who served and those who observed jury trials. Jury service, however, was not the only venue for participation in local affairs. A great many persons of middling status were integrated into the political world when they participated in the myriad self-governing organizations that existed all across England. Those who served in corporate bodies, such as town governments, guilds, parish vestries, business and colonial ventures, as well as schools and colleges, experienced elections and self-government, following an established set of rules and requiring a degree of civility. Such participation in corporate life socialized men to a kind of political life on a small scale. We are familiar with the transformation of several American colonial business ventures into forms of self-government. Like most other forms of political expression, however, these modes of self-government were not completely autonomous. Typically the organizations owed their existence to a royal charter. If, and when, such entities came into conflict with the goals of centralized authority, they might be dissolved or reconstituted.⁸⁴

PAINTINGS AND PRINTS

Monarchs attempted to shape their image in paintings as well as in ceremonial events. Royal portraits, which in the early portion of the era were typically accompanied by emblems of monarchical rule, became more informal over time. By the Elizabethan age portraits of monarchs and their families had become common among European courts. Rulers often exchanged portraits, and ambassadors presented pictures of their sovereigns to those they attended. Miniatures, popular from the time of Henry VIII, were frequently exchanged between monarch and courtiers.

During the Elizabethan era the government was anxious to project and shape a positive royal image. The queen became personally involved in preventing “errors and deformities,” ordering some of her depictions destroyed and attempting to prevent the destruction of others. In 1596 unofficial images of the queen were collected and destroyed. Portraits of the queen, like literary depictions of her, invoked the goddess Diana or the Virgin Queen.⁸⁵ Especially when they included representation of monarchs or the symbols of royalty, all sorts of images were subject to government supervision. It was forbidden to deface or destroy images of any English king or prince, past or present. Making figures of Elizabeth for nativities, prophesying or conjuration was a serious offense. Defacing the royal arms and destroying symbols of the Crown were interpreted as an attack on monarchy itself.

Although there were fewer royal portraits painted during the reign of James I, his conception of divine right kingship was displayed in Rubens’s apotheosis of the king painted on the ceiling of the new banqueting house. The Caroline era was rich in royal imagery. Charles I had a highly developed taste in the arts and commissioned a substantial number of paintings, including the famous Van Dyck painting of the king on horseback. It has been estimated that there were some forty portraits of Charles I and thirty of Henrietta Maria.⁸⁶

There were paintings of Cromwell and leading parliamentary generals, among them a picture of Cromwell’s victory after the Battle of Nasby. Cromwell preferred to appear in his portraits in plain dress without the symbols of office, authority or power. During the Restoration royal portraits became less emblematic or decorated with the symbols of royalty than those of the Elizabeth age. A portrait of James II “with John Calvin under his feet” was presented to the papacy.⁸⁷ Obviously portraits commissioned by monarchs conveyed how they wished to be viewed, but these representations were seen by few outside court circles.

Although paintings were not readily available for public viewing, there was a lively trade in prints. Prints were technically subject to censorship but few appear to have been registered. There were expensive, high-quality engravings sold to affluent buyers as well as inexpensive woodcuts that could be purchased in the streets or from country peddlers. Royal portraits were popular, especially those of Queen Elizabeth, as were depictions of the Armada defeat. One broadside portraying deliverance from Spain led to objections from the Spanish ambassador.

Engravings of rulers and other important personages could be found in the frontispieces of a variety of books. The image of Elizabeth appeared on the frontispiece of an edition of the Bishop’s Bible. A woodcut depicting Elizabeth as the Emperor Constantine carrying the sword of justice with the defeated pope under her feet appeared in the 1563 edition of Foxe’s Actes and Monuments, a work to be found in most parish churches.⁸⁸ Other images of Elizabeth were to be found in prayer books. A collection of royal portraits appeared in 1618.⁸⁹ Gunpowder Plot prints were popular, one showing the pope in council flanked by cardinal and devil. There were prints of James I in the Parliament of 1604. Another, calling for Parliament in 1621, led the puzzled French ambassador to remark that cartoons and other media exhibited hatred of the king. A double portrait of the king and queen and woodcuts of the Elector Palatine and his wife appeared. More partisan images, such as that of the monopolist Giles Mompesson, began to appear during the 1620s. Sir Edward Coke’s Reports mentions prints hostile to monopolists and the Spanish match. There were prints of the Duke of Buckingham, prints of the king sitting in state in the House of Lords and of Charles I on horseback.⁹⁰

A sharp increase in the number of prints, especially hostile satirical prints, occurred in 1640. A substantial number depicted High Commission and prelates. In one, a ship labeled High Commission containing Archbishop Laud and Bishop Wren sails toward the mouth of Hell; in another, Laud dreams of a cardinal’s hat. One satirical print depicts Laud vomiting the new canons; another eating the ears of his enemies, no doubt a comment on the mutilation of Burton, Bastwick and Prynne. Laud complained of “base pictures” showing him in a cage, fastened to a post by a chain.⁹¹ In another print Judge Berkeley, recently impeached for his role in ship money cases, is shown with Laud and the monopolists. There were woodcuts of Strafford, portrayed as the enemy of justice and the laws. In one he is depicted being welcomed to Hell by Attorney General Noy. Prints of hated bishops and royal ministers provided an effective channel for the presentation of hostile commentary on the royal government.

Visual caricatures of other religious and political partisans soon followed, some directed against ranting Puritan preachers, others against popish cavaliers. Stereotypes of Roundheads and Cavaliers became common, as did unflattering images of Presbyterians, Independents and sectaries.⁹² Similar views were expressed in the hostile prose “characters” appearing during the same years. Royalist prints became less available as the king and his supporters lost access to printing presses, while those supporting the Parliament became more common. Whoever controlled London and its environs, controlled most of the country’s presses. A typical print favoring Parliament portrayed the Royalist commander Prince Rupert as a ravening wolf. Others depicted Royalist atrocities. The execution of the king was portrayed in several visual formats, the best known and the mostly widely copied being the plate in Eikon Basilike, which showed Charles wearing the crown of martyrdom. Visual material, both positive and negative, had become a widely utilized form for the communication of partisan views. Kevin Sharpe, however, has suggested that the Commonwealth government’s failure to commission woodcuts and engravings was damaging to the short-lived regime because it failed to provide positive visual representations of the new government.⁹³

During the Restoration there were pictorial invectives directed against the Rump, the regicides and Oliver Cromwell. Mass-produced printed portraits of Charles II adorned with royal symbols were displayed in homes and shops.⁹⁴ The political broadside, combining textual and pictorial material, also became a common means of political commentary during the Restoration. Anti-Dutch sentiment, for example, was expressed in a broadside characterizing the Dutch as “descended from a Horse T . . . D” and showing the Dutch enclosed in a Butterbox along with Admiral Van Tromp and Pensionary De Witt. During the second Dutch war the frontispiece to an anti-Dutch propaganda piece showed English subjects being tortured by the Dutch at Amboyna.

Antipapal sentiment at the time of the Popish Plot and Exclusion was expressed visually as well as in pamphlets, sermons, and ballads. There were pictorial representations of Whig pope burning processions. The Duke of York was depicted as a half-Jesuit, half-papist devil attempting to burn London. News media reported the mutilation of the Duke’s portrait and advertised a reward for the culprit’s discovery. Whig and Tory broadsides, often illustrated, were part and parcel of party polemics. Engravings of Sir Edmundberry Godfrey portrayed him as “the Kingdom’s martyr” in 1679. Roger L’Estrange, the Tory propagandist, was repeatedly portrayed as the dog “Towser” in prints and ballads. Stephen Colledge was executed for the Raree Show, a print depicting the king as an arbitrary half-Protestant, half-papist monarch. A Tory print of 1683 portrayed the Commonwealth as a dragon excreting monthly assessments, the excise and other monetary exactions and about to devour the laws, episcopacy, the monarchy and Magna Carta.⁹⁵ From 1640 to 1688, prints were an important channel for the distribution of highly partisan, highly charged political messages.

SCULPTURE AND ARCHITECTURE

Sculpture was not a highly developed art in England and was, like painting, to be found largely in court or wealthy private settings. Just as with paintings, then, it tells us more about the way the monarchs who commissioned them wished to be portrayed than their impact on the public. Though there were relatively few sculptures commissioned, images from imperial Rome were sometimes used to depict English monarchs. Charles I commissioned several busts of himself by Hubert Le Sueur and Bernini. Laud commissioned a statue of the king and queen for display at St. Johns College. Such visible images of the Crown were fraught with political meaning. The king’s statue at the Old Exchange was beheaded and removed during the Commonwealth, others removed from St. Paul’s, Covent Garden and Greenwich, and still another demolished and replaced with the statement “Exit tyrannus Regum ultimas.” The royal arms were removed from all public places, London churches and Commonwealth ships.⁹⁶ Such symbolic gestures were reversed when the monarchy was restored in 1660.

Although English aristocrats often commissioned funeral monuments as tributes to themselves and their families, neither Elizabeth nor the Stuarts commissioned grand tombs. There would be no monuments erected to honor James I or Charles I, although the Anglican-loyalists who dominated the House of Commons in 1678 voted a tax for one of Charles I and commissioned Christopher Wren to execute it. Plans for the monument featured Charles as Martyr.⁹⁷

A monument to commemorate the Great Fire of London was erected by the City government between 1671 and 1677. The fire was attributed to the “horrid plot to extirpate the Protestant Religion and English Liberties” to “the treachery and malice of the popish faction.” Tory Roger L’Estrange rejected this view of the fire and associated the inscription with the “boldest of the Common-Street pamphlets.” The inscription was defaced in 1684 and plastered over at James II’s accession. Well aware of the political potential of such public monuments, L’Estrange suggested the erection of another monument with an inscription denouncing the Rye House Plot.⁹⁸

Nor were English monarchs devoted to large-scale building projects that would provide visual proof of their power. English kings did little building, especially when compared with the lavish projects of French monarchs or even the opulent homes built by English aristocrats. Several royal palaces were improved during James I’s reign to provide for the queen and the Prince of Wales, and a new queen’s house was built. Whitehall Palace was substantially refurbished, and there were plans for a new Star Chamber building in 1617. When the banqueting house burned in 1619, it was rebuilt in magnificent fashion by Inigo Jones in Roman basilica style. It contained an apse in which the king could sit in godlike majesty. Charles I considered rebuilding parts of Somerset house, but nothing came of the project. There were drawings for an unrealized gate at Temple Bar, the boundary between London and Westminster, in the form of a great triumphal arch of the type honoring Roman emperors. It was to be topped with an equestrian figure of Charles similar to that of Marcus Aurelius. Under Cromwell, Whitehall was somewhat refurbished, and became the center of the Protectorate court. Like his royal predecessor, Cromwell used the magnificent Banqueting House to meet foreign ambassadors. Charles II had plans for a new palace at Greenwich, which later became the Royal Hospital, as well as plans for a grandiose palace at Winchester remote from the hustle and bustle of the London crowds that he disliked.⁹⁹ The relative poverty of English rulers meant that aristocratic building outdistanced that of the Crown. The great prodigy houses of the Elizabethan and Jacobean aristocracy and elite government officials suggest both the desire and the financial ability of the wealthiest Englishmen to proclaim their importance.¹⁰⁰

COINS, SEALS AND MEDALS

Coins, the most common visual reminder of monarchical government, typically had a portrait of the monarch on one side and a monarchical symbol on the reverse. James I issued a new coin showing him as monarch of both England and Scotland, while several issued by Charles I were designed to heighten Roman imperial associations. During the Protectorate Cromwell sometimes appeared on medals and coins as a Roman emperor with laurel wreath or on horseback.¹⁰¹

The Great Seal provided another visual symbol of governmental power and authority. In 1642 the seal, traditionally needed to validate royal orders, was destroyed and a new one struck in which the figure of the monarch was replaced by a depiction of Parliament on one side and the arms of England and Ireland on the other. The Commonwealth seal showed the House of Commons on one side and a map of England on reverse. In 1688 King James II threw the Great Seal into the Thames as he fled the country.

Medals were cast both to honor English monarchs and to mark victorious battles, though Continental countries were far more active in casting medals. English medals typically bore the face of the king on one side and an image of a particular event or concept on the other. Medals issued at coronation time were frequently distributed as gifts. Ar the time of his accession James I issued a medal depicting him as “Emperor of the Whole Island of Britain,” an announcement of his ill-fated plan for a union of England and Scotland. He also commissioned medals to celebrate the 1604 peace with Spain. Charles I, both a collector and issuer of medals, commissioned a medal to honor his marriage to Henrietta Maria, and another showing the king on one side and English domination of the sea on the reverse. During the civil war he issued a medal showing crossed swords and an olive branch. The king’s execution was marked by numerous medals in the Netherlands and Germany, as well as in England, one of which was inscribed with the words “Divius” and “Pius.” Both Commonwealth and Protectorate governments issued medals. In 1650 a medal commemorating Cromwell’s victory at Dunbar featured Cromwell on one side, Parliament on the reverse. Another marked his installation as lord protector. Several more memorialized the Dutch war. ¹⁰²

Medals were also produced to honor nonroyal and nongovernmental individuals and events. A medal of John Lilburne was struck in 1649. One of the most famous was struck by jubilant Whigs when their leader, Lord Shaftesbury, was released from the Tower. It prompted considerable comment, including John Dryden’s Tory satirical poem “The Medal,” which provided another indication of the interaction between different forms of political expression. Another Whig medal honored Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey, “murthered by the Papists”; still another commemorated the acquittal of the Seven Bishops in 1688.

John Evelyn complained that the English issued far too few medals or “vocal monuments” that would, he felt, last far longer than paper recorded history. Reflecting a change in English cultural values, Evelyn felt that national pride would be enhanced if medals honored those who “found out New Worlds,” planted colonies and “enlarg’d the British Empire” and those who improved the liberal arts and mechanics.¹⁰³ Evelyn’s plea suggests that national pride could no longer be satisfied by rulers and successful military exploits alone.

CLOTHING, FLAGS, RIBBONS AND PLAYING CARDS

Clothing provided still another way of communicating social and political identity. The elaborate and costly clothing of the courtier was often contrasted with the plainer dress of the yeoman and country gentleman. The Puritan was stereotyped by his enemies as glum, attired in dark, plain clothing, the Cavalier as ostentatiously dressed and languorously posed. During the civil war Roundhead and Cavalier stereotypes were employed in visual as well as written forms, one reinforcing the other.

Flags and colored ribbons were employed for political self-identification. Although the military had long employed flags and pennants to identify regiments, such identifications became even more important when they distinguished between Royalist and parliamentarian regiments fighting on English soil.¹⁰⁴ The wearing of colored ribbons to exhibit political affiliation became common during the Restoration. Green was associated with the Whigs, blue with the Duke of Monmouth and red with the Tories and the Duke of York. In Durham citizens wore red ribbons to celebrate the king’s birthday. When Monmouth toured the Northwest hoping to bolster his political reputation, baskets of blue ribbons were distributed to his supporters. The Whig Green Ribbon Club organized petitions and pope burning processions. In 1682, when Shaftesbury’s effigy was burned by Tories, green ribbons accompanied it in the flames. Both Whigs and Tories sometimes decorated their hats, the former with the Whig slogan “No Popery, No slavery” woven into the ribbons. There are references to wearing of green and scarlet ribbons in Aphra Behn, Prologue to Romulus.¹⁰⁵

Political sentiments were also communicated in playing cards. Clad in royal robes and regalia, Elizabeth was the first English ruler to be depicted on playing cards. Political affiliation was frequently represented during the Restoration. Anti-Rump figures were one trend. Some years later a Tory deck of cards depicted the regicide Bagshawe and other members of “Oliver’s Slaughter House,” while a Whig deck displayed a series of popish dangers from the Armada and Gunpowder Plot to the Popish Plot. Tory cards deployed images of the Rye House plotters, Monmouth’s execution and the hanged bodies of his associates.¹⁰⁶

Even drinking preferences had political overtones. Parliamentarians associated excessive wine drinking with cavaliers and mocked their toasting the king, while Cromwell’s alleged family background of brewers was ridiculed by his opponents. From about 1680 claret became the drink of prosperous Tories, port the drink of their Whig counterparts.¹⁰⁷ Toasts in favor of the Duke of Monmouth, thought of by many as seditious, were made publicly in alehouses.¹⁰⁸ The places where individuals ate and drank too might have social and political implications. Alehouses, regulated by the government, were places where lower-class persons congregated; taverns where the more elite gathered to discuss news and other matters. The more sober coffee houses were considered to be places for the gathering of the news-hungry and for Whig plotting.

CONCLUSION

The venues, practices and objects discussed in this chapter indicate that there were a variety of activities of political import that might be observed or experienced and suggest that while some of these were limited to the small publics such as the court, others were purveyed very broadly. A variety of media were employed by monarchs to communicate their venerated status and their central role in the political structure of the nation. Some English monarchs utilized royal entries, coronations and other opportunities for public display more effectively than others. Elizabeth was most adept in this area. It is also clear that the same media could be adopted by both monarchs and critics to promote the values and goals of particular groups and to underline their importance to the nation. Representations of Queen Elizabeth were politically valuable both during her lifetime and for later generations in highlighting England as a Protestant nation. She could be contrasted with less admired English monarchs and the anniversary of her accession appropriated during the pope burning processions of 1679–80. Petitioning and pope burning processions brought large numbers of the politically aware into the streets, some to participate, others to observe. Visual media, like the nonvisual, displayed the continuing impact of anti-Catholicism. Anti-Catholic feeling was expressed in public response to plots against Elizabeth and the Jacobean Gunpowder Plot. Street demonstrations also were used to brand Laudian innovations as papist and to raise fears about Catholicism in the Caroline court. November was a month in which anti-Catholic sentiment was particularly pronounced. Antipapal themes dominated the celebrations of November 5 and November 17. Popular anti-Catholic sentiment emerged whenever the English felt threatened by foreign or domestic Catholicism.

Our discussion of various media has highlighted the role of petitioning especially during the 1640s and again as the intensity of Whig vs. Tory sentiment increased during the latter part of Charles II’s reign. It has also underlined the importance of London as a site of events freighted with political meaning. London and its environs were the sites of coronations, royal entries, lord mayor’s shows, pope burning processions and large crowds accompanying petitioners, as well as the locale of bell ringing and an enormous number of bonfires. While other locales often celebrated the same events, it was London crowds that most often witnessed and engaged in boisterous celebration. The London presses also produced most of the prints and engravings of the period, and Londoners purchased an enormous number of prints. Prints and engravings aimed at large audiences, while paintings and sculpture were viewed by much smaller ones. Coins were a more or less mass medium, medals much less so. People identified themselves and others by visual stereotypes and colored ribbons. Visual media and practices that might be experienced and observed were a significant means of disseminating and confirming political values, programs and allegiances. They are part of the ways in which the English learned about and experienced political life.