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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 June 2021
This article argues for a reconsideration of the origins of Restoration sexual politics through a detailed examination of the effusive sexual polemic of the English Revolution (1642–1660). During the early 1640s, unprecedented political upheaval and a novel public culture of participatory print combined to transform explicit sexual libel from a muted element of prewar English political culture into one of its preeminent features. In the process, political leaders at the highest levels of government—including Queen Henrietta Maria, Oliver Cromwell, and King Charles I—were confronted with extensive and graphic debates about their sexual histories in widely disseminated print polemic for the first time in English history. By the early 1650s, monarchical sexuality was a routine topic of scurrilous political commentary. Charles II was thus well acquainted with this novel polemical milieu by the time he assumed the throne in 1660, and his adoption of the “Merry Monarch” persona early in his reign represented a strategic attempt to turn mid-century sexual politics to his advantage, despite unprecedented levels of contemporary criticism. Restoration sexual culture was therefore largely the product of civil war polemical debate rather than the singular invention of a naturally libertine young king.
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4 Kevin Sharpe, “‘Thy Longing Country's Darling and Desire’: Aesthetics, Sex, and Politics in the England of Charles II,” in Politics, Transgression, and Representation at the Court of Charles II, ed. Julia Marciari Alexander and Catharine MacLeod (New Haven, 2007), 1–32, at 18.
5 W. C. Sellar and R. J. Yeatman, 1066 and All That (New York, 1931), 69–70.
6 Faramerz Dabhoiwala, The Origins of Sex: A History of the First Sexual Revolution (London, 2012).
7 David Foxon, Libertine Literature in England, 1660–1745 (New York, 1965); Lynn Hunt, “Obscenity and the Origins of Modernity, 1500–1800,” in The Invention of Pornography: Obscenity and the Origins of Modernity, 1500–1800, ed. Lynn Hunt (New York, 1993), 9–45, at 27–31.
8 H. N. Brailsford, The Levellers and the English Revolution (Stanford, 1961), 404.
9 Wiseman, Susan, “‘Adam, the Father of All Flesh’: Porno-Political Rhetoric and Political Theory in and after the English Civil War,” Prose Studies 14, no. 3 (1991): 134–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 135, 146; Sharon Achinstein, “Women on Top in the Pamphlet Literature of the English Revolution,” Women's Studies 24, nos. 1–2 (1994): 131–63; Joad Raymond, The Invention of the Newspaper: English Newsbooks, 1641–1649 (Oxford, 1996), 60, 180–82; Diane Purkiss, Literature, Gender and Politics during the English Civil War (Cambridge, 2005); Nigel Smith, Literature and Revolution in England, 1640–1660 (New Haven, 1997), 48, 84, 210; James Grantham Turner, Libertines and Radicals in Early Modern London: Sexuality, Politics, and Literary Culture, 1630–1685 (Cambridge, 2002).
10 Ann Hughes, “Gender and Politics in Leveller Literature,” in Political Culture and Cultural Politics in Early Modern Europe: Essays Presented to David Underdown, ed. Susan Dwyer Amussen and Mark A. Kishlansky (Manchester, 1995), 162–88, at 177.
11 David Underdown, A Freeborn People: Politics and the Nation in Seventeenth-Century England (Oxford, 1996); McElligott, Jason, “The Politics of Sexual Libel: Royalist Propaganda in the 1640s,” Huntington Library Quarterly 67, no. 1 (2004): 75–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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13 However, see the suggestive comments in Alastair Bellany, “Railing Rhymes Revisited: Libels, Scandals, and Early Stuart Politics,” History Compass 5, no. 4 (2007): 1136–79, at 1165–66; Sarah Toulalan, Imagining Sex: Pornography and Bodies in Seventeenth-Century England (Oxford, 2007), 37–42; Kevin Sharpe, Image Wars: Promoting Kings and Commonwealths in England, 1603–1660 (New Haven, 2010), 332–33; Purkiss, Literature, Gender and Politics, 141–42; Thompson, Unfit for Modest Ears, 13; Rachel Weil, “Sometimes a Scepter Is Only a Scepter: Pornography and Politics in Restoration England,” in Hunt, Invention of Pornography, 125–53, at 136–37. Wiseman, “‘Adam, the Father of All Flesh,’” makes this argument implicitly throughout.
14 See, for example, Erin Murphy, Familial Forms: Politics and Genealogy in Seventeenth-Century English Literature (Newark, 2011); Jason Peacey, Print and Public Politics in the English Revolution (Cambridge, 2013).
15 Alastair Bellany, “The Murder of John Lambe: Crowd Violence, Court Scandal and Popular Politics in Early Seventeenth-Century England,” Past and Present, no. 200 (2008): 37–76, at 46.
16 Underdown, Freeborn People, 113.
17 Pauline Croft, “The Reputation of Robert Cecil: Libels, Political Opinion and Popular Awareness in the Early Seventeenth Century,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, no. 1 (1991): 43–69; John Marshall, John Locke, Toleration and Early Enlightenment Culture: Religious Toleration and Arguments for Religious Toleration in Early Modern and Early Enlightenment Europe (Cambridge, 2006); Richard Cust, “Honour and Politics in Early Stuart England: The Case of Beaumont v. Hastings,” Past and Present, no. 149 (1995): 57–94; Laura Gowing, Domestic Dangers: Women, Words, and Sex in Early Modern London (Oxford, 1996); Shepard, Alexandra, “Manhood, Credit and Patriarchy in Early Modern England, c. 1580–1640,” Past and Present, no. 167 (2000): 75–106CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
18 Susan Dwyer Amussen, An Ordered Society: Gender and Class in Early Modern England (Oxford, 1988); Kevin Sharpe, Selling the Tudor Monarchy: Authority and Image in Sixteenth-Century England (New Haven, 2009); Sharpe, Image Wars.
19 Anna Bryson, From Courtesy to Civility: Changing Codes of Conduct in Early Modern England (Oxford, 1998), 161–62.
20 Hamburger, Philip, “The Development of the Law of Seditious Libel and the Control of the Press,” Stanford Law Review 37, no. 3 (1985): 661–765CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bellany, Alastair, “A Poem on the Archbishop's Hearse: Puritanism, Libel, and Sedition after the Hampton Court Conference,” Journal of British Studies 34, no. 2 (1995): 137–64CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ian Frederick Moulton, Before Pornography: Erotic Writing in Early Modern England (Oxford, 2000); Deborah Shuger, Censorship and Cultural Sensibility: The Regulation of Language in Tudor-Stuart England (Philadelphia, 2006).
21 Adam Fox, “Ballads, Libels, and Popular Ridicule in Jacobean England,” Past and Present, no. 145 (1994): 47–83; Andy Wood, “The Queen Is ‘a Goggyll Eyed Hoore’: Gender and Seditious Speech in Early Modern England,” in The English Revolution c. 1590–1720: Politics, Religion and Communities, ed. Nicholas Tyacke (Manchester, 2007), 81–94; David Cressy, Dangerous Talk: Scandalous, Seditious, and Treasonable Speech in Pre-modern England (Oxford, 2010).
22 Noah Millstone, Manuscript Circulation and the Invention of Politics in Early Stuart England (Cambridge, 2016), 3. See also Alastair Bellany, “‘Raylinge Rymes and Vaunting Verse’: Libellous Politics in Early Stuart England, 1603–1628,” in Culture and Politics in Early Stuart England, ed. Kevin Sharpe and Peter Lake (Stanford, 1993), 285–310; Thomas Cogswell, “Underground Verse and the Transformation of Early Stuart Political Culture,” in Amussen and Kishlansky, Political Culture and Cultural Politics, 277–300; Croft, Pauline, “Libels, Popular Literacy and Public Opinion in Early Modern England,” Historical Research 68, no. 167 (1995): 266–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
23 See, for example, Sharpe, Selling the Tudor Monarchy, 52; Carole Levin, The Heart and Stomach of a King: Elizabeth I and the Politics of Sex and Power, 2nd ed. (Philadelphia, 2013), 3. See also the references in note 24 below.
24 Bellany, “Raylinge Rymes”; James Knowles, “To ‘Scourge the Arse / Jove's Marrow So Had Wasted’: Scurrility and the Subversion of Sodomy,” in Subversion and Scurrility: Popular Discourse in Europe from 1500 to the Present, ed. Dermot Cavanagh and Tim Kirk (Aldershot, 2000), 74–92; Michael B. Young, King James and the History of Homosexuality (New York, 2000).
25 Cogswell, Thomas and Lake, Peter, “Buckingham Does the Globe: Henry VIII and the Politics of Popularity in the 1620s,” Shakespeare Quarterly 60, no. 3 (2009): 253–78Google Scholar; Gianoutsos, Jamie, “Criticizing Kings: Gender, Classical History, and Subversive Writing in Seventeenth-Century England,” Renaissance Quarterly 70, no. 4 (2017): 1366–96CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
26 Kevin Sharpe, The Personal Rule of Charles I (New Haven, 1992), 190. See also Richard Cust, Charles I: A Political Life (Harlow, 2005), 148, 156.
27 Kevin Sharpe, “The Image of Virtue: The Court and Household of Charles I, 1625–1642,” in The English Court: From the War of the Roses to the Civil War, ed. David Starkey (London, 1987), 226–60, at 235–36. See also Karen Britland, Drama at the Courts of Henrietta Maria (Cambridge, 2006), 9.
28 Alastair Bellany, The Politics of Court Scandal in Early Modern England: News Culture and the Overbury Affair, 1603–1660 (Cambridge, 2002), 262. See also Cynthia B. Herrup, A House in Gross Disorder: Sex, Law, and the 2nd Earl of Castlehaven (Oxford, 2001).
29 Ann Baynes Coiro, “‘A Ball of Strife’: Caroline Poetry and Royal Marriage,” in The Royal Image: Representations of Charles I, ed. Thomas N. Corns (Cambridge, 1999), 26–46, at 27.
30 Laura Lunger Knoppers, Politicizing Domesticity from Henrietta Maria to Milton's Eve (Cambridge, 2011), 18, 23, 37.
31 William Prynne, Histrio-mastix (1633), sig. Rrrrrr4r (index reference to pp. 162, 214, 215, 1002, 1003). Contemporary pamphlet titles have been shortened for space; place of publication is London unless indicated otherwise. Wherever possible, I have referenced the texts held in the British Library's Thomason Collection of civil war pamphlets to make use of George Thomason's obsessive habit of annotating his pamphlets with the dates on which he purchased them. Bracketed dates in the relevant citations thus represent the day on which Thomason acquired the pamphlet in question. The collection is catalogued in G. K. Fortescue, ed., Catalogue of the pamphlets, books, newspapers and manuscripts relating to the Civil War, the Commonwealth, and Restoration collected by George Thomason, 1640–1661, 2 vols. (London, 1908).
32 Corona Regia, ed. and trans. Tyler Fyotek and Winfried Schleiner (Geneva, 2010), 24.
33 Joad Raymond, Pamphlets and Pamphleteering in Early Modern Britain (Cambridge, 2003), chap. 5; Joseph Black, “‘Pikes and Protestations’: Scottish Texts in England, 1639–40,” Publishing History, no. 42 (1997): 5–19; Sarah Waurechen, “Covenanter Propaganda and Conceptualizations of the Public during the Bishops’ Wars, 1638–1640,” Historical Journal 52, no. 1 (2009): 63–86; David Como, “Secret Printing, the Crisis of 1640, and the Origins of Civil War Radicalism,” Past and Present, no. 196 (2007): 37–82.
34 Michael J. Braddick, “Prayer Book and Protestation: Anti-Popery, Anti-Puritanism and the Outbreak of the English Civil War,” in England's Wars of Religion, Revisited, ed. Charles W. A. Prior and Glenn Burgess (Farnham, 2011), 125–45; Cressy, England on Edge, chaps. 12–15; Hughes, Gender and the English Revolution, 90–96.
35 Sharon Achinstein, Milton and the Revolutionary Reader (Princeton, 1994); David Zaret, The Origins of Democratic Culture: Printing, Petitions, and the Public Sphere in Early-Modern England (Princeton, 2000); Peacey, Print and Public Politics. On mobilization, see Leng, Tom, “‘Citizens at the Door’: Mobilising against the Enemy in Civil War London,” Journal of Historical Sociology 28, no. 1 (2015): 26–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar; John Walter, Covenanting Citizens: The Protestation Oath and Popular Political Culture in the English Revolution (Oxford, 2016).
36 Valerie Traub, Thinking Sex with the Early Moderns (Philadelphia, 2016), 116.
37 “To my Lord Marques of Buckingam [sic],” Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, Osborn MS fb57, 15–21; Millstone, Manuscript Circulation, 133; Cressy, Dangerous Talk, 155–56. On Catholic sexuality, see Peter Lake, “Anti-Popery: The Structure of a Prejudice,” in Conflict in Early Stuart England: Studies in Religion and Politics, 1603–1642, ed. Richard Cust and Ann Hughes (London, 1989), 72–106.
38 But see Jennifer Francis Cobley, “The Construction and Use of Gender in the Pamphlet Literature of the English Civil War, 1642–1646” (PhD diss., University of Southampton, 2010), 90–114 (I am grateful to Mark Stoyle for this reference); Michelle Anne White, Henrietta Maria and the English Civil Wars (Aldershot, 2006), 141–48; Frances E. Dolan, Whores of Babylon: Catholicism, Gender, and Seventeenth-Century Print Culture (Ithaca, 1999), 97, 122, 127–34.
39 Dolan, Whores, 127; Hughes, Gender and the English Revolution, 61; Purkiss, Literature, Gender, and Politics, 71–72; White, Henrietta Maria, 58–60, 97, 169, 178, 188.
40 White, Henrietta Maria, 146.
41 “Advertisements out of Scotland,” 23 July 1640, The National Archives, SP 16/460, fol. 208r. See also Middlesex Quarter Sessions rolls, 18 March 1641/2, London Metropolitan Archives, MJ/SR/906/123.
42 John Goodwin, Anti-Cavalierisme, E.123[25] ([21 October] 1642), 32.
43 [Henry Parker], The contra-replicant, E.87[5] ([31 January] 1643), 15.
44 House of Lords Main Papers, Parliamentary Archives, HL/PO/JO/10/3/180/29.
45 Michael J. Braddick, “History, Liberty, Reformation and the Cause: Parliamentarian Military and Ideological Escalation in 1643,” in The Experience of Revolution in Stuart Britain and Ireland, ed. Michael J. Braddick and David L. Smith (Cambridge, 2011), 117–34.
46 The English Pope, E.56[13] ([1 July] 1643), 7.
47 William Prynne, The Popish royall favourite, E.251[9] (17 November 1643), 59.
48 William Prynne, Romes master-peece, E.249[32] ([8 August] 1643), 32.
49 Britanicus, no. 39, E.51[8] (10–17 June 1644), 307.
50 The great eclipse of the sun, E.7[30] (August 30, 1644), 3. See also White, Henrietta Maria, 136.
51 Anthony R. J. S. Adolph, s.v. “Jermyn, Henry,” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/14780.
52 Seventh Report of the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts (London, 1879), I, 244; The Poems of Thomas Carew, ed. Rhodes Dunlap (Oxford, 1949), xxxv; Scott Nixon, s.v. “Carew, Thomas,” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/4639.
53 Calendar of State Papers Relating to English Affairs in the Archives of Venice, 1640–1642 (London, 1924), 149–50. See also White, Henrietta Maria, 49–50.
54 Britanicus, no. 4, E.67[26] (12–19 September 1643), 25.
55 Britanicus, no. 5, E.68[5] (19–26 September 1643), 34. See also Peacey, Jason, “The Struggle for Mercurius Britanicus: Factional Politics and the Parliamentarian Press, 1643–1646,” Huntington Library Quarterly 68, no. 3 (2005): 517–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
56 Britanicus, no. 17, E.79[2] (14–21 December 1643), 131. See also no. 18, E.79[20] (21–28 December 1643), 140; Joyce Macadam, “Mercurius Britanicus on Charles I: An Exercise in Civil War Journalism and High Politics, August 1643 to May 1646,” Historical Research 84, no. 225 (2011): 470–92, at 475.
57 Britanicus, no. 32, E.43[19] (15–22 April 1644), 325.
58 Britanicus, no. 45, E.3[20] (22–29 July 1644), 358. See also no. 15, E.77[34] (30 November–7 December 1643), 118; no. 21, E.31[14] (29 January–5 February 1644), 164–65; no. 27, E.37[28] (12–18 March 1644), 211; no. 28, E.39[4] (18–25 March 1644), 219; no. 34, E.45[11] (29 April–6 May 1644), 265; no. 52, E.13[10] (30 September–7 October 1644), 407; no. 57, E.16[25] (4-–11 November 1644), 447.
59 See, for example, Britanicus, no. 47, E.6[26] (12–19 August 1644), 368.
60 Britanicus, no. 53, E.12[19] (7–14 October 1644), 422.
61 Britanicus, no. 63, E.22[19] (23–30 December 1644), 498.
62 Britanicus, no. 70, E.269[25] (10–17 February 1645), 552. See also no. 26, E.37[2] (5–12 March 1644), 295; no. 82, E.283[1] (5–12 May 1645), 752.
63 Britanicus, no. 25, E. 35[28] (26 February–6 March 1644), 191.
64 Britanicus, no. 77, E.276[19] (31 March–7 April 1645), 706–7. See also no. 44, E.2[31] (15–22 June 1644), 345.
65 Britanicus, no. 78, E.278[3] (7–14 April 1645), 715.
66 A continvation of certaine speciall and remarkable passages, no. 4, E.4[1] (24 July–1 August 1644), 4.
67 “A Satire in Verse on King James I and King Charles I,” Thomason MS E.276[2] (1645?).
68 [John Booker], A rope treble-twisted, E.10[14] (27 September 1644), 6, 8. See also Cobley, “Gender,” 102–5; The Court Mercurie, no. 3, E.2[25] (10–20 July 1644), sig. C3v; no. 7, E.6[30] (10–20 August 1644), sig. G4r; Counter-votes, E.42[6] ([10 April] 1644), 2; A nest of perfidious vipers, E.9[9] (21 September 1644), 8; Newes from Smith the Oxford jaylor, E.27[13] ([5 February] 1645), 4–5.
69 Britanicus, no. 129, E.337[9] (4–11 May 1646), 1104.
70 Britanicus, no. 118, E.322[28] (9–16 February 1646), 1037.
71 Edward Symmons, A vindication of King Charles, E.414[17] ([November] 1647), 98.
72 Mercurius Britanicus his welcome to Hell, E.378[5] ([25 February] 1647), 2.
73 The sea-gull, E.54[4] ([8 July] 1644), 1.
74 Mercurius Psitacus, no. 1, E.449[8] (14–21 June 1645), 1. See also Mercurius Anti-Britannicus, E.296[9] ([11 August] 1645), 15.
75 Edward Nicholas to William Savile and Richard Hutton, 11 June 1642, The National Archives, ASSI 45/1/4/54-8. See also Cressy, England on Edge, 370.
76 Examination of James Losh, 22 October 1646, The National Archives, ASSI 45/1/5/15.
77 Middlesex Quarter Sessions rolls, 10 December 1647, London Metropolitan Archives, MJ/SR/1006/11.
78 Middlesex Quarter Sessions rolls, 24 August 1648, London Metropolitan Archives, MJ/SR/1015/26. See also Wood, “The Queen Is ‘a Goggyll Eyed Hoore.’”
79 On Charles's troubling uxoriousness, see Hughes, Gender and the English Revolution, 61; Achinstein, “Women on Top,” 143; Dolan, Whores of Babylon.
80 Britanicus, no. 88, E.290[13] (23–30 June 1645), 794.
81 Elizabeth A. Foyster, Manhood in Early Modern England: Honour, Sex and Marriage (London, 1999), 195–98.
82 Caroline M. Hibbard, Charles I and the Popish Plot (Chapel Hill, 1983).
83 [Mercurius] Pragmaticus, no. 17, E.422[17] (4–11 January 1648), sig. R4r.
84 Laura Lunger Knoppers, Constructing Cromwell: Ceremony, Portrait, and Print, 1645–1661 (Cambridge, 2000), 26, 39, 49, 53, 166; Purkiss, Literature, Gender and Politics, 133–49. See also McElligott, “Politics of Sexual Libel,” 83; Underdown, Freeborn People, 101; Hughes, Gender and the English Revolution, 124.
85 See, for example, Melancholicus, no. 34, E.436[23] (17–24 April 1648), 199–200.
86 Mercurius Clericus, no. 1, E.408[21] (25 September 1647), 2. See also Pragmaticus, no. 13, E.419[22] (7–14 December 1647), sig. N3v; no. 5, E.411[8] (12–19 October 1647), 39; Samuel Fullerton, “‘A Warre of the Pen’: The Force on Parliament and English Polemic, 1646–48,” Huntington Library Quarterly 82, no. 2 (2019): 221–47, at 238–44.
87 Purkiss, Literature, Gender and Politics, 131–37.
88 Mercurius Aulicus, no. 1, E.425[8] (25 January–3 February 1648), sig. Av.
89 The Parliaments X. commandements, 669.f.11[121] ([5 January] 1648).
90 Pragmaticus, no. 12, E.448[17] (13–20 June 1648), sigs. M2v, M3v.
91 Melancholicus, no. 36, E.441[5] (1–8 May 1648), 216. See also Melancholicus, no. 28, E.431[24] (6–13 March 1648), 164; Elencticus, no. 45, E.465[33] (27 September–4 October 1648), sig. Xx2v; Pragmaticus, no. 31, E.469[10] (24–31 October 1648), sig. Xx4r. The “family of separation” was a reference to the Family of Love: Christopher W. Marsh, The Family of Love in English Society, 1550–1630 (Cambridge, 2005).
92 Pragmaticus, no. 19, E.423[21] (18–25 January 1648), sig. T2r.
93 Ad populum, E.49[2] ([20 May] 1644), 16. For a 1620s scribal precedent, see “The King and his wyfe the Parliament,” in “Early Stuart Libels: An Edition of Poetry from Manuscript Sources,” ed. Alastair Bellany and Andrew McRae, Early Modern Literary Studies Text Series I (2005), http://www.earlystuartlibels.net/htdocs/buckingham_at_war_section/Oi10.html.
94 Mistris Parliament brought to bed, E.437[24] ([29 April] 1648), 4.
95 Mistris Parliament brought to bed, 4.
96 Mistris Parliament presented in her bed, E.441[21] ([10 May] 1648), title page. See also Mistris Parliament her gossipping, E.443[28] ([22 May] 1648); Mrs. Parliament her invitation, E.446[7] ([6 June] 1648); Melancholicus, no. 45, E.450[24] (26 June–3 July 1648), 271; Lois Potter, “The Mistress Parliament Political Dialogues,” Analytical and Enumerative Bibliography 1, no. 3 (1987): 101–70; Purkiss, Literature, Gender and Politics, 179–85.
97 The cuckoo's-nest a[t] Westminster, E.447[19] ([15 June] 1648), 5–6.
98 Ivan Roots, The Great Rebellion: 1642–1660 (Stroud, 1995), 143; Ann Hughes, “Men, the ‘Public’ and the ‘Private’ in the English Revolution,” in The Politics of the Public Sphere in Early Modern England, ed. Peter Lake and Steven Pincus (Manchester, 2007), 191–205; Hughes, Gender and the English Revolution, 139–43.
99 Mercurius Aulicus, no. 4, E.461[5] (21–28 August 1648), 30. For the allegation that Cromwell “love[d] a Bum-Well,” see The second part to the same tune, 669.f.11[96] (13 [November] 1647). See also [Mercurius] Elencticus, no. 31, E.450[2] (21–28 June 1648), sig. Gg4v; and no. 17, E.433[14] (15–22 March 1648), 131.
100 [Mercurius] Pragmaticus (for King Charles II), no. 2, E.552[15] (24 April–1 May 1649), sig. B2r.
101 Pragmaticus (for King Charles II), no. 12, E.563[12] (3–10 July 1649), sig. Mv.
102 The Man in the Moon, no. 12, E.562[27] (27 June–4 July 1649), 102.
103 Elencticus, no. 10, E.562[18] (25 June–2 July 1649), 74.
104 The last will and testament of Richard Brandon, E.561[12] ([25 June 1649), 5. See also Pragmaticus (for King Charles II), no. 13, E.565[9] (10–17 July 1649), sigs. Nr-v; Mercurius Carolinus, no. 1, E.566[6] (19–26 July 1649), sig. A2r; Cromwell's recall, E.566[22] ([4 August] 1649), 5.
105 Mercurius Philo-Monarchicus, E.555[34] (14–21 May 1649), sig. B4r.
106 Pragmaticus, no. 42, E.540[15] (16–30 January 1649), sig. Hhh4r.
107 Pragmaticus (for King Charles II), no. 3, E.554[12] (1–8 May 1649), sig. C3v; Pragmaticus, no. 46, E.545[16] (20–27 February 1649), sig. Mmm4r.
108 The right picture of King Oliure [sic], E.587[9] ([2 January] 1650), 2.
109 See, for example, Melancholicus, no. 30, E.433[23] (20–27 March 1648), 176; Mercurius Philo-Monarchicus, no. 1, E.550[27] (10–17 April 1649), 6; The Man in the Moon, no. 4, E.554[4] (30 April–7 May 1649), 26; Pragmaticus (for King Charles II), no. 4, E.555[13] (8–15 May 1649), sig. Dr; The disease of the House, E.571[12] ([21 August] 1649), 5; Purkiss, Literature, Gender and Politics, 137–42; Hughes, Gender and the English Revolution, 124. See also Toulalan, Imagining Sex, 224.
110 A Bartholmevv Fairing, E.572[7] ([30 August] 1649), 2.
111 The Man in the Moon, no. 28, E.578[9] (31 October–7 November 1649), 227, 229.
112 Pragmaticus (for King Charles II), no. 15, E.566[15] (24–31 July 1649), sig. Pv.
113 Melancholicus, no. 34, 199–200. For an earlier (unrelated) usage of this language, see A paradox, E.135[30] (1642), 4.
114 The Man in the Moon, no. 27, E.576[7] (24–31 October 1649), 221.
115 The right picture, 4.
116 A new bull-bayting, E.568[6] ([7 August] 1649), 5.
117 The Man in the Moon, no. 3, E.552[8] (23–30 April 1649), 20.
118 A new bull-bayting, 5. See also The Man in the Moon, no. 10, E.560[21] (13–20 June 1649), 86; A hue and crie after Cromwell, E.565[24] (24 July 1649), 3; A curse against Parliament-ale, E.575[33] ([25 October] 1649), 8.
119 Antonia Fraser, Cromwell: Our Chief of Men (London, 2004), 601–3.
120 Elencticus, no. 42, E.463[6] (6–13 September 1648), 341–42.
121 Pragmaticus (for King Charles II), no. 11, E.562[21] (26 June–3 July 1649), sig. L3r.
122 The famous tragedie of King Charles I (1649), 32.
123 Balaams asse, E.564[7] ([13 July] 1649), 2. See also A most learned, conscientious, and devout-exercise, E.561[10] ([25 June] 1649), 4–5; Purkiss, Literature, Gender and Politics, 140–42; David Farr, John Lambert, Parliamentary Soldier and Cromwellian Major-General, 1619–1684 (Woodbridge, 2003), 151; Hughes, Gender and the English Revolution, 124.
124 Alexandra Shepard, Meanings of Manhood in Early Modern England (Oxford, 2003), 27–28; Cynthia Herrup, “The King's Two Genders,” Journal of British Studies 45, no. 3 (2006): 493–510, at 499.
125 Peter Gaunt, s.v. “Cromwell, Elizabeth,” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/65778.
126 The Man in the Moon, no. 51, E.601[5] (10–26 April 1650), 390–91.
127 Pragmaticus (for King Charles II), no. 52, E.600[6] (30 April–7 May 1650), sig. Fffv.
128 The right picture, 3.
129 The Man in the Moon, no. 21, E.573[14] (5–12 September 1649), 172.
130 The Man in the Moon, no. 14, E.565[26] (11–25 July 1649), 119. See also Elencticus, no. 1, E.552[14] (24 April–1 May 1649), 5; A tragi-comedy called New-Market fayre, E.560[9] ([15 June] 1649), 5; The second part of [. . .] New-Market-Fayre, E.565[6] (1649), 2, 7, 9.
131 Fraser, Cromwell, 603; Information of Roger Harrison and Thomas Knowles, 12 February 1649/50, The National Archives, ASSI 45/3/2/98A.
132 The Man in the Moon, no. 9, E.560[2] (5–13 June 1649), 75.
133 A new bull-bayting, 6–7. See also Purkiss, Literature, Gender and Politics, 140–42. I have found no evidence to verify the accusations against Cromwell's ancestors.
134 Anthony Fletcher, The Outbreak of the English Civil War (New York, 1981), 43–57.
135 See, for example, information of Nicholas Lodge, undated, Bodleian Library, MS Bankes 18/19, fol. 45r; Dagmar Freist, Governed by Opinion: Politics, Religion, and the Dynamics of Communication in Stuart London, 1637–1645 (London, 1997), 186–91; David R. Como, Radical Parliamentarians and the English Civil War (Oxford, 2018), 257; Macadam, “Mercurius Britanicus on Charles I.”
136 Francis Quarles, The loyall convert, E.40[35] ([9 April] 1644), 18–19. For the royalist emphasis on patriarchal kingship, see The Soveraignty of kings, E.244[17] ([21 December] 1642), sigs. A2r-v.
137 Lucy Hutchinson, Memoirs of the Life of Colonel Hutchinson (London, 1806), 65.
138 The Moderate, no. 26, E.537[26] (2–9 January 1649), 248; Peacey, “‘Hot and Eager in Courtship,” 35.
139 Poynting, “Deciphering the King.”
140 Kelsey, Sean, “King Charls His Case: The Intended Prosecution of Charles I,” Journal of Legal History 39, no. 1 (2018): 58–87CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kelsey, Sean, “Instrumenting the Trial of Charles I,” Historical Research 92, no. 255 (2019): 118–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 135–38.
141 Sharpe, Image Wars, 542. See for example Alastair Bellany and Thomas Cogswell, The Murder of King James I (New Haven, 2015), 479–88; Bellany, Politics of Court Scandal, 262–74; Peacey, “‘Hot and Eager in Courtship.’” See also Thomas Cogswell, “An Accursed Family: The Scottish Crisis and the Creation of the Black Legend of the House of Stuart, 1650–52” (forthcoming). I thank Professor Cogswell for sharing this piece with me prior to publication.
142 Eikōn Basilikē: Or, The King's Book, ed. Edward Almack (London, 1904). For the context, see Sean Kelsey, Inventing a Republic: The Political Culture of the English Commonwealth, 1649–1653 (Stanford, 1997); Bernard Capp, England's Culture Wars: Puritan Reformation and Its Enemies in the Interregnum, 1649–1660 (Oxford, 2012).
143 John Milton, Eikonoklastes, E.578[5] ([6 October] 1649), 8, 15, 25, 97.
144 Milton, Eikonoklastes, 112. See also Su Fang Ng, Literature and the Politics of Family in Seventeenth-Century England (Cambridge, 2007), 59.
145 A declaration of the Parliament of England, E.548[12] ([22 March] 1649), 6–7, 13.
146 John Milton, The tenure of kings and magistrates, E.542[12] ([13 February] 1649), 17.
147 Henry Parker, The true portraiture, E.609[2] (1650), 36.
148 A disingag'd survey, E.592[6] ([7 February] 1650), 22.
149 The life and reign of King Charls, E.1338[2] (1651), sig. A5v; George Walker, Anglo-tyrannus, E.619[1] ([3 December] 1650), 35; Parker, The true portraiture, 15.
150 Thomas Paget, A religious scrutiny, E.560[8] ([14 June] 1649), 38; The life and reign of King Charls, sig. 5r.
151 Rudolph, Julia, “Rape and Resistance: Women and Consent in Seventeenth-Century English Legal and Political Thought,” Journal of British Studies 39, no. 2 (2000): 157–84, at 159–64CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
152 Elizabeth Poole, An alarum of war, E.555[23] ([17 May] 1649), 3.
153 Walker, Anglo-tyrannus, 49.
154 John Goodwin, Hybristodikai, E.557[2] ([30 May] 1649), 31.
155 Sydenham Cuthbert, The false brother, E.620[13] ([27 December] 1650), 40.
156 John Cooke, Monarchy no creature of Gods making, E.1238[1] ([26 February] 1652), 35, 101.
157 Marchamont Nedham, The case of the Common-Wealth of England, E.600[7] (1650), 42.
158 Anthony Ascham, The bounds & bonds of publique obedience, E.571[26] ([27 August] 1649), 20.
159 See, for example, The five years of King Iames, E.101[14] ([10 May] 1643).
160 Cogswell, “An Accursed Family.”
161 A cat may look upon a king, E.1408[2] ([10 January] 1652), 86.
162 The court and character of King James, E.1338[1] ([10 October] 1650), 8, 94, 103, 112.
163 Arthur Wilson, The history of Great Britain (1653), 162. See also Michael Sparke, The narrative history of King James (1651); Bellany, Politics of Court Scandal, 274.
164 George Buchanan, A detection of the actions of Mary Queen of Scots, E.1383[2] ([12 February] 1651), sig. *5v. See also John Hall, The grounds & reasons of monarchy considered (1650), 109–13.
165 An examination of the Seasonable and necessarie warning, E.608[13] ([25 July] 1650), 31–32.
166 Milton, Eikonoklastes, 12–13, 50, 64.
167 A declaration of the Parliament, 13.
168 [Claudius Salmasius], Defensio regia, pro Carolo I, E.1386[1] ([11 May] 1649 [1650?]). Thomason's notation appears to indicate that he acquired Salmasius's book in May 1649, but considering that the text may not have appeared in England until later that year, the correct date is possibly May 1650. Further evidence comes from the republican regime itself, which did not take notice of the Defensio Regia until November 1649 and only first learned of copies arriving in England from Holland in February 1650: Gordon Campbell and Thomas N. Corns, John Milton: Life, Work, and Thought (Oxford, 2008), 229.
169 John Milton, “A Second Defense of the English People,” trans. Helen North, in Complete Prose Works of John Milton, vol. 4, 1650–1655, ed. Don M. Wolfe (New Haven, 1966), 548–686, at 628.
170 Crawford, Patricia, “‘Charles Stuart, That Man of Blood,’” Journal of British Studies 16, no. 2 (1977): 41–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bellany and Cogswell, Murder of King James I.
171 Mercurius Militaris, no. 1, E.467[34] (10 October 1648), 5.
172 Mercurius Anti-Britannicus, E.297[17] (1–31 August 1645), 30.
173 John Milton, “A Defense of the People of England,” trans. Donald C. MacKenzie, in Wolfe, Complete Prose Works, 4:300–546, at 408–9.
174 Eikon alethine, E.569[16] ([16 August] 1649), 40.
175 Parker, The true portraiture, 15.
176 [John Hall], The none-such Charles, E.1345[2] ([6 January] 1651), 20–21.
177 William Lilly, Monarchy or no monarchy, E.638[17] (1651), 79.
178 Edward Peyton, The divine catastrophe of the kingly family of the house of Stuarts, E.1291[1] ([24 April] 1652), 5, 45, 56. See also Richard L. Greaves, s.v. “Peyton, Sir Edward,” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/22077; Cogswell, “An Accursed Family.”
179 Peyton, Divine catastrophe, 27, 47, 56–57, 70, 121.
180 RB Case F 455 .66, no. 4, Newberry Library, Chicago.
181 Mellon Alchemical 100, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.
182 Middlesex Quarter Sessions rolls, 7 May 1649, London Metropolitan Archives, MJ/SR/1027/46.
183 Diary of Thomas Wyatt, entry ca. January 1649, Bodleian Library, MS Top. Oxon. C. 378, 241. See also Kevin Sharpe, “‘An Image Doting Rabble’: The Failure of Republican Culture in Seventeenth-Century England,” in Refiguring Revolutions: Aesthetics and Politics from the English Revolution to the Romantic Revolution, ed. Kevin Sharpe and Steven N. Zwicker (Berkeley, 1998), 25–56.
184 The right picture, 6.
185 An Elegie on the meekest of men, E.553[1] ([4 May] 1649), 8.
186 The tablet or Moderation, of Charles the First (The Hague, 1650), 13, 18, 22, 23 (quoted).
187 [Joseph Jane], Eikon aklastos (1651), 4. See also A deep groane, E.555[19] ([16 May] 1649), 5; Royall meditations for Easter (1650), 5; [John Berkenhead], Loyalties tears flowing, E.1244[4] ([30 January] 1650), 9; Stipendariae lacrymae, E.745[23] (The Hague, [14 July] 1654), 9, 25; Andrew Lacey, The Cult of King Charles the Martyr (Woodbridge, 2003), 29, 50, 107, 124.
188 Wilson, The history of Great Britain, sigs. A2r-v, A3v.
189 David Norbrook, Writing the English Republic: Poetry, Rhetoric and Politics, 1627–1660 (Cambridge, 1999), 309–10; Knoppers, Constructing Cromwell, 136–46.
190 Timothy Raylor, Cavaliers, Clubs, and Literary Culture: Sir John Mennes, James Smith, and the Order of the Fancy (Newark, 1994); Adam Smyth, “Profit and Delight”: Printed Miscellanies in England, 1640–1682 (Detroit, 2004), 136–39; Capp, Culture Wars, 79–80.
191 Charles II to Viscount Taaffe, 5 March 1659, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, OSB MSS 5, box 1:20. See also Woodford, Benjamin, “From Tyrant to Unfit Monarch: Marchamont Nedham's Representation of Charles Stuart and Royalists during the Interregnum,” History 100, no. 339 (2015): 1–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Eva Scott, The King in Exile (New York, 1905), 482.
192 Peter Gaunt, s.v. “Cromwell, Richard,” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/6768.
193 Mark S. R. Jenner, “The Roasting of the Rump: Scatology and the Body Politic in Restoration England,” Past and Present, no 177 (2002): 84–120; Angela McShane and Mark S. R. Jenner, “Debate: The Roasting of the Rump: Scatology and the Body Politic in Restoration England [with Reply],” Past and Present, no. 196 (2007): 253–86.
194 The hang-mans last will and testament, 669.f.22[72] ([17 January] 1660). See also The history of the second death of the Rump, 669.f.24[5] ([7 March] 1660); John Tatham, The rump, or, the mirrour of the late times a comedy (1660); The Rump roughly but righteously handled, 669.f.22[63] ([11 January] 1660); [James Heath], Flagellum [. . .] (1663), 133.
195 Dale B. J. Randall, Winter Fruit: English Drama, 1642–1660 (Lexington, 1995), 108.
196 Sharpe, “‘Thy Longing Country's Darling and Desire,’” 27.
197 Weil, “Sometimes a Scepter,” 137. See also Harold M. Weber, Paper Bullets: Print and Kingship under Charles II (Lexington, 1996), 88–127.
198 Erin Keating, “In the Bedroom of the King: Affective Politics in the Restoration Secret History,” Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies 15, no. 2 (2015): 58–82. See also Victoria Kahn, “‘The Duty to Love’: Passion and Obligation in Early Modern Political Theory,” Representations, no. 68 (1999): 84–107.
199 [Alexander Brome], Rump, or, An exact collection of the choycest poems and songs relating to the late times (1662), sig. A3v-4r.
200 Weil, “Sometimes a Scepter,” 128, 143. See also Tim Harris, “‘There is None that Loves Him but Drunk Whores and Whoremongers’: Popular Criticisms of the Restoration Court,” in Alexander and MacLeod, Politics, Transgression, and Representation, 35–58; Harris, Tim, “The Bawdy House Riots of 1668,” Historical Journal 29, no. 3 (1986): 537–56Google Scholar; Stephen N. Zwicker, “Virgins and Whores: The Politics of Sexual Misconduct in the 1660s,” in The Political Identity of Andrew Marvell, ed. Conal Condren and Anthony D. Cousins (Aldershot, 1990), 85–110, at 90–91; Paul Hammond, “The King's Two Bodies: Representations of Charles II,” in Culture, Politics and Society in Britain, 1660–1800, ed. Jeremy Black and Jeremy Gregory (Manchester, 1991), 13–48, at 24–25.
201 Edward Legon, Revolution Remembered: Seditious Memories after the British Civil Wars (Manchester, 2019), 50–55; Harold Love, English Clandestine Satire, 1660–1702 (Oxford, 2004), 21–24.
202 Love, English Clandestine Satire, 261–64.
203 Tim Harris, London Crowds in the Reign of Charles II: Propaganda and Politics from the Restoration until the Exclusion Crisis (Cambridge, 1987), 28; Steve Pincus, “‘Coffee Politicians Does Create’: Coffeehouses and Restoration Political Culture,” Journal of Modern History 67, no. 4 (1995): 807–34; Mark Knights, Representation and Misrepresentation in Later Stuart Britain: Partisanship and Political Culture (Oxford, 2005).
204 The Diary of Samuel Pepys, ed. Robert Latham and William Matthews, 11 vols. (Berkeley, 1970–83), 4:136–38. For Charles's mistresses, see 3:24, 82, 139, 175–76.
205 Kevin Sharpe, Rebranding Rule: The Restoration and Revolution Monarchy, 1660–1714 (New Haven, 2013), 99–100.
206 The character of that glorious martyred King Charles I (1660), 2.
207 The faithful, yet imperfect, character, E.1799[1] (1660), 48–50. See also Lois Potter, “The Royal Martyr in the Restoration: National Grief and National Sin,” in Corns, Royal Image, 240–62, at 250–51.
208 A proclamation for [. . .] suppressing of two books, 669.f.25[70] (1660).
209 Sharpe, Rebranding Rule, 349, 393–95; Lacey, King Charles the Martyr, 129. See, for example, [John Phillips?], The secret history of K. James I and K. Charles I [. . .] (1690).
210 Matthew Neufeld, The Civil Wars after 1660: Public Remembering in Late Stuart England (Woodbridge, 2013), 146. For exceptions, see [Stephen Colledge], A ra-ree show [. . .] (1681); D. J., King Charles I, no such saint [. . .] (1698), 3–5; and the 1692 translation of Milton's First Defense: A defence of the people of England [. . .] (1692).
211 Mark Noble, Memoirs of the Protectoral-House of Cromwell, 2 vols. (London, 1787), 1:126–27. See also J. B. Williams, “Cromwell's Illegitimate Daughter, Mrs. Hartrop,” Notes and Queries series 11, vol. 9 (1914), 29, 452; Fraser, Cromwell, 603.
212 Blair Worden, Roundhead Reputations: The English Civil Wars and the Passions of Posterity (London, 2002); Potter, “Royal Martyr,” 244.
213 See for example D. H. Willson, King James VI and I (London, 1956). See also Richard Cust and Ann Hughes, eds., introduction to Conflict in Early Stuart England, 1–46; Lake, Peter, “From Revisionist to Royalist History; or, Was Charles I the First Whig Historian,” Huntington Library Quarterly 78, no. 4 (2015): 657–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar; David Cressy, Charles I and the People of England (Oxford, 2015).
214 Traub, Thinking Sex, 116. On “public transcripts,” see James C. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven, 1990).
215 Marilyn Morris, Sex, Money and Personal Character in Eighteenth-Century British Politics (New Haven, 2014).
216 Commonplace book of Francis Willughby, 54.