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Provoking Disorder: The Politics of Speech in Protectorate Middlesex

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 November 2014

Caroline Boswell
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Abstract

This article explores the impact of the 1654 ordinance against challenges, duels, and provocations. Despite the Council of State's original intentions, this legislation offered non-elites the opportunity to prosecute threatening and abusive language as “provocations,” recasting interpersonal conflicts as dangerous to society rather than to an individual's “common fame.” Indeed, many of the cases prosecuted at the Middlesex sessions centered on “provocative” behavior that questioned normative social and gender relations, revealing how the Protectorate's anti-dueling legislation provided a new weapon in contests over social power. Comparing the creation and implementation of the 1654 ordinance, this article argues that the Protectorate's legislation exposed the connections between the regulation of social interactions and the preservation of the social and political order.

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Articles
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Journal of British Studies , Volume 53 , Issue 4 , October 2014 , pp. 885 - 908
Copyright
Copyright © The North American Conference on British Studies 2014 

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References

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2 Ibid.

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21 Ibid., emphasis added.

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24 Durston, “Failure of Cultural Revolution,” 213–14, 217–20.

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26 Durston, “Failure of Cultural Revolution,” 217–19.

27 Ibid., 168.

28 “House of Commons Journal Volume 5: 4 March 1648,” Journal of the House of Commons: Volume 5: 1646–1648, British History Online, http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=25316&stquery=duels; Perfect Occurrences of Every Daie Journall in Parliament, no. 62 (3–10 March 1648), 509.

29 A Perfect Diurnall of Some Passages in Parliament, no. 240 (28 Feb.–6 March 1648), 1936.

30 Capp, England's Culture Wars, 168–69.

31 Council of State Order Books, 13 May 1652, The National Archives (hereafter TNA), SP 25/67 f. 45; Capp, England's Culture Wars, 168.

32 “House of Commons Journal Volume 7: 13 May 1652,” Journal of the House of Commons volume 7: 1651–1660, British History Online, http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=23999%strquery=duels.

33 Cf. Council of State Order Books, June 1654, TNA, SP 25/75, ff. 354–56, 366, 400, 403–04; see also Capp, England's Culture Wars, 169.

34 Underdown, 98–100.

35 Ibid., 101–02; Council of State Order Books, June 1654, TNA, SP 25/75, ff. 358, 365.

36 Council of State Draft Order Books, 10 April 1654, TNA, SP 25/51 f. 11; A & O, 2:861; Durston, “Failure of Cultural Revolution,” 217; Capp, England's Culture Wars, 205.

37 TNA, SP 25/75, ff. 373–74.

38 TNA, SP 25/75, ff. 374–76; A & O, 2:580, 870–71.

39 TNA, SP 25/75 f. 413; Durston, “The Failure of Cultural Revolution,” 217; Capp, England's Culture Wars, 207–08.

40 TNA, SP 25/75, f. 419.

41 Goffman, “The Interaction Order,” 13.

42 Ingram, “Law, Litigants, and the Construction of ‘Honour,’” 135.

43 March, Actions for Slaunder (London, 1647)Google Scholar, 58; Sheppard, William, Action upon the Case of Slander (London, 1662)Google Scholar, 2; Cressy, Dangerous Talk, 26; Ingram, Church Courts, 295–97.

44 March, 10–11; Blackstone, 122–23; Craig Muldrew, The Economy of Obligation, chap. 2; Gowing, Domestic Dangers, 59–138; Ingram, 297–319; Shepard, The Meanings of Manhood, 154–57; Cressy, Dangerous Talk, 23.

45 Ingram, “Law, Litigants, and the Construction of ‘Honour,’” 140; Ingram, Church Courts, 298; Walker, 99; Shoemaker, 29.

46 March, 5; Sharpe, 3–4; Gowing, Domestic Dangers, 60; Ingram, “Law, Litigants, and the Construction of ‘Honour,’” 147–150; Walker, 99–100.

47 March, 4.

48 Previous to the ordinance, slander cases prosecuted at the quarter sessions had only resulted in fines payable to the king.

49 Squibb, G. D., The High Court of Chivalry: A Study of the Civil Law in England (Oxford, 1959), 63–67Google Scholar; Cust, Richard and Hopper, Andrew, “Introduction,” in Cases in the High Court of Chivalry, 1634–1640, ed. Cust, and Hopper, , Publications of the Harleian Society, new series, XVIII (2006), xxiv–xxviiGoogle Scholar.

50 For an in-depth discussion of the influence of the legal process on court narratives, see Bound, “‘An Angry and Malicious Mind?,’” 60, 67–68.

51 See Session files, 10 October 1653–20 June 1654, London Metropolitan Archives (hereafter LMA), MJ/SR/1112-1126. All subsequent LMA records refer to the Session Files. Recognizance records are noted as R. and Indictment records are noted as I.

52 See LMA, August 1654–September 1655, MJ/SR/1127–1141. A further eight cases that did not contain “provoking” or “provocative” employed the terms “challenge” or “challenging” while another three used “disgraceful.”

53 See, for example, LMA, MJ/SR/1129 R. 72 (25 August 1654); MJ/SR/1127 R. 212 (10 August 1654); MJ/SR/1127 I. 373 (3 July 1654); MJ/SR/1129 R. 72 (25 August 1654).

54 For a discussion of the integration of sexual offenses into the common law courts, see Ingram, “Law, Litigants, and the Construction of ‘Honour’,” 149; Morrill, J. S. and Walter, J. D., “Order and Disorder in the English Revolution,” in Order and Disorder in Early Modern England, ed. Fletcher, Anthony and Stevenson, John (Cambridge, 1987), 137–65Google Scholar.

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56 LMA, MJ/SR/1127 I. 372 (30 July 1654).

57 LMA, MJ/SR/1127 R. 212 (10 Aug. 1654).

58 LMA, MJ/SR/1127 R. 218 (13 July 1654).

59 LMA, MJ/SR/1127 I. 373 (3 July 1654).

60 Griffiths, Paul, “Punishing Words: Insults and Injuries, 1525–1700,” in The Extraordinary and the Everyday in Early Modern England, ed. McShane, Angela and Walker, Garthine (Basingstoke, 2010)Google Scholar, 68.

61 LMA, MJ/SR/1156 R. 317 (27 Sept. 1656). By the seventeenth century, the term “quean” largely denoted a woman of loose morals or a prostitute. See “quean, n.”. OED Online. June 2013. Oxford University Press. http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/156192?redirectedFrom=quean.

62 LMA, MJ/SJ/1136 I. 462 (17 April 1655).

63 Keith Thomas, “Introduction,” in A Cultural History of Gesture, 6.

64 Gowing, Domestic Dangers, 72.

65 LMA, MJ/SR/1136 I. 449 (1 April 1655).

66 LMA, MJ/SR/1141 R. 276 (6 Aug. 1655).

67 Braddick, “The Politics of Gesture,” 28.

68 LMA, MJ/SR/1140 I. 459 (1 May 1655).

69 LMA, MJ/SR/1156 R. 258 (11 Oct. 1656).

70 LMA, MJ/SR/1172 R. 85 (29 June 1657); MJ/SR/1187 R. 333 (21 Aug. 1658).

71 LMA, MJ/SR/1144 R. 110 (14 Nov. 1655).

72 Shoemaker, Prosecution and Punishment, 29; Ingram, “Litigants,” 139–40; Ingram, Church Courts, 315; Walker, 8, 99.

73 Braddick and Walter, “Introduction: Grids of Power,” 1–5.

74 Walker, 99; Gowing, Domestic Dangers, 61; Wood, 1549 Rebellions, 120–22; Hughes, Ann, Gender and the English Revolution (New York, 2012), 16–20Google Scholar.

75 LMA, MJ/SR/1127–MJ/SR/1141 (August 1654–September 1655).

76 Gowing, Domestic Dangers, 35–37.

77 Shoemaker, Prosecution and Punishment, 213.

78 LMA, MJ/SR/1140 R. 78 (18 July 1655); Gowing, Domestic Dangers, 101-02; Hughes, Gender and the English Revolution, 20.

79 LMA, MJ/SR/1156 I. 443 (29 Sept. 1656).

80 LMA, MJ/SR/1185 R. 175 (30 July 1658).

81 See, for instance, LMA, MJ/SR/1134 R. 103 (27 March 1655); MJ/SR/1139 R. 114, 131 (May 1655); 1143 I. 371 (10 Oct. 1655).

82 LMA, MJ/SR/1129 R. 134 (21 Sept. 1654).

83 LMA, MJ/SR/1172 I. 227 (6 Oct. 1657).

84 LMA, MJ/SR/1143 R., 371 (10 Oct. 1655).

85 Gowing, Domestic Dangers, 63–72; Shepard, “Manhood, Credit and Patriarchy,” 84–85.

86 Bound, “‘An Angry and Malicious Mind?’,” 70.

87 LMA, MJ/SR/1131 R. 44 (14 Dec. 1654).

88 LMA, MJ/SR1172 R. 88 (27 May 1657).

89 LMA, MJ/SR/1172 R. 75 (24 July 1657).

90 See Walker, chap. 3, especially 99–100.

91 LMA, MJ/SR/1141 R. 49 (28 July 1655).

92 LMA, MJ/SR/1163 R. 98 (7 March 1657).

93 LMA, MJ/SR/1134, R. 210 (17 Feb. 1655).

94 LMA, MJ/SR/1141 R. 264 (21 Aug. 1654); See also MJ/SR/1187 R. 352 (10 Sept. 1658).

95 LMA, MJ/SR/1187 R. 352 (10 Sept. 1658); MJ/SR/1202 R. 283 (20 Aug. 1659). For other cases of women “provoking” local officials, see, for instance, MJ/SR /1136 R. 131 (2 April 1655); MJ/SR/1156 R. 176 (21 Aug. 1656).

96 LMA, MJ/SR/1187 R. 346 (21 Sept. 1658); See also MJ/SR/1156 R. 192 (15 Sept. 1656).

97 LMA, MJ/SR/1156 R. 176 (21 Aug. 1656); MJ/SR/1136 R. 165 (9 March 1654/5).

98 LMA, MJ/SR/1134 R. 208 (8 Feb. 1654/5).

99 John Lassiter cites one case from 1657 in his study of defamation of peers. Another case in which a grocer alleged the Lord Mayor John Ireton sold out the Common Council was prosecuted at the Middlesex Bench in September 1659. See Lassiter, 223; LMA MJ/SR/1202 R. 299 (11 Sept. 1659).

100 Spierenburg, Peter, “Masculinity, Violence and Honor: An Introduction,” in Men and Violence: Gender, Honor, and Rituals in Early Modern Europe, ed. Spierenburg, , (Columbus, OH, 1998), 7–8Google Scholar; Peltonen, Markku, The Duel in Early Modern England (Cambridge, UK, 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lassiter, 218; See p.1 in the above for narrative.

101 For cases between social elites, for instance, LMA, MJ/SR/1187 I. 414-5, 418 (1658); MJ/SR/1140 I. 458 (5 July 1655).

102 A & O, 2:448.

103 LMA, MJ/SR/1143 R. 303; MJ/SR/1140 R. 331-2; MJ/SR/1187 R. 333; MJ/SR/1136 R. 187; MJ/SR/1141 R. 189; MJ/SR/1156 R. 86.

104 LMA, MJ/SR/1144 I. 347 (1 Dec. 1655) and I. 449 (29 Oct. 1655).

105 Wood, The 1549 Rebellions, 109, 119–22.

106 LMA, MJ/SR/1156 I. 454 (14 April 1656).

107 LMA, MJ/SR/1141 R. 415 (5 Sept. 1655).

108 Squibb, The High Court of Chivalry, 63–67.

109 LMA, MJ/SR/1187 R. 154 (21 Aug. 1658).

110 LMA, MJ/SR/1156 R. 296 (26 Sept. 1656); MJ/SR/1144 I. 429 (11 Sept. 1655).

111 Orr, D. Alan, Treason and the State: Law, Politics, and Ideology in the English Civil War (Cambridge, UK, 2002), 18–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cressy, Dangerous Words, 49–54.

112 A & O, 2:831; See also Orr, Treason and the State, 56–57.

113 Orr, Treason and the State, 201.

114 A & O, 2:937–39.

115 See, for example, LMA, MJ/SR/1144 R. 41 (29 Nov. 1655); MJ/SR/1169 R. 29 (29 June 1657); MJ/SR/1181 R. 198 (12 May 1658); MJ/SR/1187 R. 273 (4 Oct. 1658).

116 Session files, City of London Record Office, November-December 1656, SF 134.

117 LMA, MJ/SR/1136 R. 392 (13 April 1655).

118 LMA, MJ/SR/1136 R. 105 (5 March 1655); MJ/SR/1172 R. 70 (2 Oct. 1657).

119 LMA, MJ/SR/1193 R. 42 (22 Feb. 1658).

120 Cressy, Dangerous Talk, x–xiii.