Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-r5fsc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T23:50:41.527Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Publics and Participation in the Three Kingdoms: Was There Such a Thing as “British Public Opinion” in the Seventeenth Century?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 September 2017

Abstract

This article explores where the people fit in to British history and whether there was such a thing as British public opinion in the seventeenth century. It argues that given the nature of the Stuart multiple monarchy, and the way the power structures of that monarchy impinged upon Ireland, Scotland, and England, the Stuarts' political authority was at times publicly negotiated on a Britannic level. People across Britain were engaged with British affairs: there was public opinion about British politics, in other words, albeit not British public opinion, since the people were bitterly divided at this time. However, because the crisis that brought down Charles I had been a three-kingdoms crisis, which in turn had helped spark the growth of a more sophisticated British news culture, the Restoration monarchy became increasingly sensitive to the need to try to keep public opinion across the Britannic archipelago on its side. In response to the challenge of the Whigs during the Exclusion Crisis, Charles II and his Tory allies sought to rally public support across England, Scotland, and Ireland and thus to represent “British public opinion” as being in favor of the hereditary succession. It was a representation, however, that remained contested.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © The North American Conference on British Studies 2017 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Canny, Nicholas P., “Writing Early Modern History: Ireland, Britain, and the Wider World,” Historical Journal 46, no. 3 (September 2003): 723–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 723; Burgess, Glenn, ed., The New British History: Founding a Modern State, 1603–1715 (London, 1999)Google Scholar; Scott, David, preface to Leviathan: The Rise of Britain as a World Power (London, 2013)Google Scholar.

2 The late David Underdown once expressed this point to me at a meeting of the North American Conference on British Studies. Cf. Lake, Peter, “Review Article,” Huntington Library Quarterly 57, no. 2 (Spring 1994): 167–97CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 194.

3 Walter, John, Crowds and Popular Politics in Early Modern England (Manchester, 2006), 8 Google Scholar, 9.

4 Russell, Conrad, The Causes of the English Civil War (Oxford, 1990)Google Scholar.

5 Lake, Peter and Pincus, Steve, “Rethinking the Public Sphere in Early Modern England,” Journal of British Studies 45, no. 2 (April 2006): 270–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 286n64.

6 Colley, Linda, Britons: The Forging of the Nation, 1707–1837 (New Haven, 1992)Google Scholar.

7 “Atlantic archipelago” was John Pocock's term. Pocock, J. G. A., “British History: A Plea for a New Subject,” Journal of Modern History 47, no. 4 (December 1975): 601–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar. There were, of course, other archipelagoes in the Atlantic—the Azores and Cape Verde, for instance—which is why I prefer “Britannic archipelago” when referring to Britain and Ireland. I would argue, however, that it is still appropriate to talk about “British history” and “the British archipelago” for the seventeenth century. The island of Great Britain comprised England, Wales, and Scotland, while Ireland was ruled by a dynasty that hailed from Scotland and that ruled England in the interest of Britain and the Protestant British (English, Welsh, and Scottish) who lived in Ireland—a dynasty that often pursued a British (pan-Britannic) agenda for its multiple-kingdom inheritance. See Harris, Tim, Restoration: Charles II and His Kingdoms, 1660–1685 (London, 2005), xviixviii Google Scholar; and Glenn Burgess, “Introduction: The New British History,” in Burgess, New British History, 1–29, at 2–3.

8 As one contemporary observed in late 1639, discussing the troubles in Scotland, just as medical doctors took time to arrive at a name for a new disease, so too did doctors of state to describe new political developments: MS Add. 22, fol. 105, Cambridge University Library (hereafter CUL).

9 Vox Populi. In Plaine English [London, 1642] (although there are numerous pamphlets with vox populi in the title); Vox Angliae: Or, The Voice of the Kingdom (London, 1682)Google Scholar; Vox Patriae; Or, The Resentments and Indignation of the Free-born Subjects of England, against Popery (London, 1681)Google Scholar; Tyacke, Nicholas, “Introduction: Locating the ‘English Revolution,’” in The English Revolution, c. 1590–1720: Politics, Religion and Communities, ed. Tyacke, Nicholas (Manchester, 2007), 126 Google Scholar, at 18; Baldwin, Geoff, “The ‘Public’ as a Rhetorical Community in Early Modern England,” in Communities in Early Modern England: Networks, Place, Rhetoric, ed. Shepard, Alexandra and Withington, Phil (Manchester, 2000), 199216 Google Scholar; Harris, Tim, “Charles I and Public Opinion on the Eve of the English Civil War,” in The Nature of the English Revolution Revisited, ed. Tapsell, Grant and Taylor, Stephen (Woodbridge, 2013), 125 Google Scholar, at 4; Coast, David, “Rumor and ‘Common Fame’: The Impeachment of the Duke of Buckingham and Public Opinion in Early Stuart England,” Journal of British Studies 55, no. 2 (April 2016): 241–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 264.

10 Harris, Tim, “Perceptions of the Crowd in Later-Stuart London,” in Imagining Early Modern London: Perceptions and Portrayals of the City from Stow to Strype, 1598–1720, ed. Merritt, J. F. (Cambridge, 2001), 250–72Google Scholar; Knights, Mark, Representation and Misrepresentation in Later Stuart Britain: Partisanship and Political Culture (Oxford, 2005), 65 Google Scholar.

11 Zaret, David, Origins of Democratic Culture: Printing, Petitions, and the Public Sphere in Early-Modern England (Princeton, 2000), 8 Google Scholar.

12 Nineteen Propositions Made by both Houses of Parliament to the Kings Majestie (London, 1642), 2 Google Scholar; Charles, I, His Majesties Answer to the Nineteen Propositions of both Houses of Parliament (Cambridge, 1642), 8 Google Scholar.

13 Charles, I, Declaration of the True Causes which moved … Him to Dissolve the Two last Meetings in Parliament (London, 1626), 23 Google Scholar. Cf. idem, His Majesties Declaration of all His Loving Subjects, Of the Causes which Moved Him to Dissolve the Last Parliament (London, 1628[/9]), 910 Google Scholar.

14 Walter, Crowds and Popular Politics, 9–10, 196–222; Braddick, Michael J. and Walter, John, “Introduction: Grids of Power; Order, Hierarchy and Subordination in Early Modern Society,” in Negotiating Power in Early Modern Society: Order, Hierarchy and Subordination in Britain and Ireland, ed. Braddick, Michael J. and Walter, John (Cambridge, 2001), 142 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 5–10, 14–16.

15 The framework outlined here, readers will recognize, conforms closely to what Lake and Pincus designated “the post-Reformation public sphere.” Medievalists might point out that many of the features of this style of public negotiation of political authority predated the Reformation: what clearly transforms the situation post-Reformation is the rise of religious contention and also the dramatic expansion of print culture.

16 My focus is on Ireland, Scotland, and England, in part because I am interested in the dynamics of the interactions between what were in theory separate kingdoms and in part because the complex case of Wales is addressed in this volume by Lloyd Bowen. Bowen, Lloyd, “Structuring Particularist Publics: Logistics, Language and Early Modern Wales,” Journal of British Studies 56, no. 4 (October 2017): 754–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also idem, Information, Language and Political Culture in Early Modern Wales,” Past and Present 228 (August 2015): 125–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17 Harris, Tim, “Understanding Popular Politics in Restoration Britain,” in A Nation Transformed: England after the Restoration, ed. Houston, Alan and Pincus, Steven C. A. (Cambridge, 2001), 125–53Google Scholar.

18 The relevant literature is now vast. I first addressed these issues in Harris, Tim, London Crowds in the Reign of Charles II: Propaganda and Politics from the Restoration until the Exclusion Crisis (Cambridge, 1987)Google Scholar. For a recent comprehensive overview of how the Tudor and Stuart monarchy sought to use the media to represent its authority to the people, see the trilogy by Kevin Sharpe: Sharpe, Kevin, Selling the Tudor Monarchy: Authority and Image in Sixteenth-Century England (London, 2009)Google Scholar; idem, Image Wars: Promoting Kings and Commonwealths in England, 1603–1660 (London, 2010)Google Scholar; and idem, Rebranding Rule: Images of Restoration and Revolution Monarchy, 1660–1714 (London, 2013)Google Scholar. For the impact of manuscript pamphlets on early Stuart political culture in England, see Millstone, Noah, Manuscript Circulation and the Invention of Politics in Early Stuart England (Cambridge, 2016)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 Peacey, Jason, Print and Public Politics in the English Revolution (Cambridge, 2013), 21 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 81.

20 S. F. Jones, ed., Mercurius Civicus: London's Intelligencer (n.p., 2013), 4–11 May 1643; Roger L'Estrange, The Observator in Dialogue (1684–1687), I, no. 1 (13 April 1681). Cf. Baron, Sabrina, “The Guises of Dissemination in Early Seventeenth-Century England: News in Manuscript and Print,” in The Politics of Information in Early Modern Europe, ed. Dooley, Brendan and Baron, Sabrina (London, 2001), 4556 Google Scholar, at 42.

21 Although Derek Hirst argued that perhaps between 27 percent and 40 percent of the adult male population had the right to vote in parliamentary elections on the eve of the civil war, general elections were rather infrequent over the course of the century as a whole, and elections were not always contested (although contests became more frequent as the century progressed). Hirst, Derek, The Representative of the People? Voters and Voting in England under the Early Stuarts (Cambridge, 1975), 105 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Kishlansky, Mark A., Parliamentary Selection: Social and Political Choice in Early Modern England (Cambridge, 1986)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

22 Goldie, Mark, “The Unacknowledged Republic: Office-Holding in Early Modern England,” in The Politics of the Excluded, c. 1500–1850, ed. Harris, Tim (Basingstoke, 2001), 153–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar (esp. 161). Goldie's essay should be read in conjunction with Steve Hindle's, which emphasizes that popular political participation was “nonetheless circumscribed” and that the “chief inhabitants” of the parish were “particularly aware of their own status.” Steve Hindle, “The Political Culture of the Middling Sort in English Rural Communities, c. 1550–1700,” in Harris, ed., Politics of the Excluded, 125–52, at 145, 147.

23 Morrill, John, “The Fashioning of Britain,” in Conquest and Union: Fashioning a British State, 1485–1725, ed. Ellis, Steven G. and Barber, Sarah (Harlow, 1995), 839 Google Scholar; Macinnes, Allan I., The British Revolution, 1629–1660 (Basingstoke, 2004)Google Scholar; Canny, Nicholas P., Making Ireland British, 1580–1650 (Oxford, 2001)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Raymond Gillespie, “Negotiating Order in Early Seventeenth-Century Ireland,” in Braddick and Walter, eds., Negotiating Power, 188–205, at 192. Gillespie discusses the part that print played in this process in Ireland. Gillespie, Raymond, Reading Ireland: Print, Reading and Social Change in Early Modern Ireland (Manchester, 2012), 101–30Google Scholar; and idem, Print Culture, 1550–1700,” in The Oxford History of the Irish Book, vol. 3, The Irish Book in English, 1550–1800, ed. Gillespie, Raymond and Hadfield, Andrew (Oxford, 2006), 1733 Google Scholar.

24 Canny, Making Ireland British; Harris, Rebellion, 141–85.

25 MacDonald, Alan R., The Jacobean Kirk, 1567–1625: Sovereignty, Polity and Liturgy (Aldershot, 1998)Google Scholar; Harris, Rebellion, 168–83.

26 Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon, The History of the Rebellion and the Civil Wars in England, ed. Dunn, W. Macray (Oxford, 1888), 2:145–46Google Scholar. One suspects that there was more interest in England in Irish affairs, given Ireland's status as a dependency of the English crown and the long history of Irish rebellions against English rule. Much political commentary about Ireland and the Irish was published in the English press in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, and the Irish were also represented on the Jacobean stage.

27 Moody, T. W., “The Irish Parliament under Elizabeth and James I: A General Survey,” Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy 45 (1939/40): 4181 Google Scholar, at 44, 53–54; Clarke, Aidan, “Pacification, Plantation, and the Catholic Question, 1603–23,” in A New History of Ireland, vol. 3, Early Modern Ireland, 1534–1691, ed. Moody, T. W., Martin, F. X., and Byrne, F. J. (Oxford, 1987), 187232 Google ScholarPubMed, at 213; Carroll, Stephen, “The Dublin Parliamentary Elections, 1613,” in Riotous Assemblies: Rebels, Riots and Revolts in Ireland, ed. Sheehan, William and Cronin, Maura (Cork, 2011), 5063 Google Scholar; Cruickshanks, Eveline, Handley, Stuart, and Hayton, D. W., eds., The House of Commons, 1690–1715, 5 vols. (Cambridge, 2002), 1:141–45Google Scholar; Rait, Robert S., The Parliaments of Scotland (Glasgow, 1924), 67 Google Scholar, 11–15, 165–66, 210–13, 232–33, 265–68, 272, 275; Ferguson, William, “The Electoral System in the Scottish Counties before 1832,” in Miscellany II, Stair Society no. 35, ed. Sellar, David (Edinburgh, 1984), 261–94Google Scholar; MacDonald, Alan, “Scottish Shire Elections: Preliminary Findings in the Sheriff Court Books,” Parliamentary History 34, no. 3 (October 2015): 279–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Brown, Keith Mark, “Toward Political Participation and Capacity: Elections, Voting, and Representation in Early Modern Scotland,” Journal of Modern History 88, no. 1 (March 2016): 133 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 8; MacIntosh, Gillian H., The Scottish Parliament under Charles II, 1660–1685 (Edinburgh, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

28 Lynch, Michael, ed., The Early Modern Town in Scotland (London, 1987)Google Scholar; Stewart, Laura A. M., Urban Politics and the British Civil Wars: Edinburgh, 1617–53 (Leiden, 2006)Google Scholar; eadem, Politics and Government in the Scottish Burghs, 1603–1638,” in Sixteenth-Century Scotland: Essays in Honour of Michael Lynch, ed. Goodare, Julian and MacDonald, Alasdair (Leiden, 2008), 427–50Google Scholar; Brown, “Toward Political Participation,” 16–26, at 26; Todd, Margo, The Culture of Protestantism in Early Modern Scotland (New Haven, 2002), 813 Google Scholar, 362–74; Stewart, Laura A. M., “Authority, Agency and the Reception of the Scottish National Covenant of 1638,” in Insular Christianity: Alternative Models of the Church in Britain and Ireland, c. 1570–c. 1700, ed. Armstrong, Robert and hAnnracháin, Tadhg Ó (Manchester, 2013), 88106 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 91–93.

29 Sir George Rawdon, order for the enforcement of the laws against robbery, 7 January 1668/9, HA 15655 (for the hue and cry in Ireland), and Sir George Rawdon, warrant to the constables, 22 December 1673 (for the night watch), HA 15662, Huntington Library, San Marino (hereafter HEH); Gillespie, “Negotiating Order,” 196, 200.

30 Clodagh Tait, “Riots, Rescues and ‘Grene Bowes’: Catholic Popular Protestant in Ireland, 1570–1640,” in Armstrong and Ó hAnnracháin, eds., Insular Christianity, 66–87, at 81; George Wild, Bishop of Derry, to John Bramhall, Archbishop of Armagh, 10 January [1661/2], HA 15999, HEH; Wild to Bramhall, Derry, 7 March 1661[/2], HA 16003, HEH.

31 Harris, Tim, Revolution: The Great Crisis of the British Monarchy, 1685–1720 (London, 2006), 128 Google Scholar.

32 McElligott, Jason, “The Book Trade, Licensing, and Censorship,” in The Oxford Handbook of Literature and the English Revolution, ed. Knoppers, Laura Lunger (Oxford, 2012), 135–52Google Scholar, at 137; Gillespie, “Circulation of Print,” 37; Colm Lennon, “The Print Trade, 1550–1700,” in Gillespie and Hadfield, eds., Oxford History, 3:61–73, at 66, 68; Ohlmeyer, Jane H., “Ireland,” in The Oxford History of Popular Print Culture, vol. 1, Cheap Print in Britain and Ireland to 1660, ed. Raymond, Joad (Oxford, 2011), 3949 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 41; Sessions, William, The First Printers in Waterford: Cork and Kilkenny Pre-1700 (York, 1990)Google Scholar; Gillespie, “Print Culture, 1550–1700,” 24; Munter, Robert, The History of the Irish Newspaper, 1685–1760 (Cambridge, 1967), 5 Google Scholar.

33 Gillespie, “Circulation of Print,” 31, 41, 42–44; idem, Reading Ireland, 105–6, 111–15; idem, “Print Culture,” 27; idem, Irish Printing in the Early Seventeenth Century,” Irish Economic and Social History 15 (1988): 8188 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

34 Hamish Mathison, “Scotland,” in Raymond, ed., Oxford History, 1:30–38, at 36–37; Mann, Alastair J., The Scottish Book Trade, 1500–1700: Print Commerce and Print Control in Early Modern Scotland (East Linton, 2000)Google Scholar; Stevenson, Jane, “Reading, Writing and Gender in Early Modern Scotland,” Seventeenth Century 27, no. 3 (Autumn 2012): 335–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 342; Harris, Restoration, 17; Stewart, Laura A. M., Rethinking the Scottish Revolution: Covenanted Scotland, 1637–1651 (Oxford, 2016), 3337 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 70–76.

35 Houston, Rab, “The Literacy Myth? Illiteracy in Scotland, 1630–1760,” Past and Present 96 (August 1982): 81102 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Houston, R. A., Scottish Literacy and the Scottish Identity: Illiteracy and Society in Scotland and Northern England, 1600–1800 (Cambridge, 1985)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Stevenson, “Reading, Writing and Gender”; Cressy, David, Literacy and the Social Order: Reading and Writing in Tudor and Stuart England (Cambridge, 1980)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Barry, Jonathan, “Literacy and Literature in Popular Culture,” in Popular Culture in England, c. 1500–1850, ed. Harris, Tim (Basingstoke, 1995), 6994 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hubbard, Eleanor, “Reading, Writing, and Initialing: Female Literacy in Early Modern London,” Journal of British Studies 54, no. 3 (July 2015): 553–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

36 Coolahan, Marie-Louise, “‘And This Deponent Further Sayeth’: Orality, Print and the 1641 Depositions,” in Oral and Print Cultures in Ireland, 1600–1900, ed. Caball, Marc and Carpenter, Andrew (Dublin, 2010), 6984 Google Scholar, at 72–73; Gillespie, Reading Ireland, 40–41, 43; Gillespie, “Circulation of Print,” 32–33; Gillespie, “Print Culture,” 26; Barnard, Toby, “Learning, the Learned and Literacy in Ireland, c. 1660–1760,” in “A Miracle of Learning”: Studies in Manuscript and Irish Learning: Essays in Honour of William O'Sullivan, ed. Barnard, Toby, Cróinín, Dáibhí Ó, and Simms, Katharine (Aldershot, 1998), 209–35Google Scholar, at 220–21.

37 Coast, David, News and Rumour in Jacobean England: Information, Court Politics and Diplomacy, 1618–25 (Manchester, 2014), 86 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. This was still the case in the late 1640s. Reece, Henry, The Army in Cromwellian England, 1649–1660 (Oxford, 2013), 61 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

38 Bowen, “Information.”

39 Gillespie, Reading Ireland, 55–74; Ohlmeyer, “Ireland,” 42.

40 Bowen, “Information,” 129.

41 Ibid.

42 Raymond, Joad, The Invention of the Newspaper: English Newsbooks, 1641–1649 (Oxford, 1996), 80126 Google Scholar; Boys, Jayne E. E., London's News Press and the Thirty Years War (Woodbridge, 2011)Google Scholar; O'Hara, David A., “English Newsbooks and the Outbreak of the Irish Rebellion of 1641,” Media History 9, no. 3 (2003): 179–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 181, 185; O'Hara, David A., English Newsbooks and the Irish Rebellion of 1641–1649 (Dublin, 2006)Google Scholar.

43 Love, Harold, Scribal Publication in Seventeenth-Century England (Oxford, 1993)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Atherton, Ian, “The Itch Grown a Disease: The Manuscript Transmission of News in the Seventeenth Century,” in News, Newspapers, and Society in Early Modern Britain, ed. Raymond, Joad (London, 1999), 3965 Google Scholar, at 52–56; King, Rachael Scarborough, “The Manuscript Newsletter and the Rise of the Newspaper, 1665–1715,” Huntington Library Quarterly 79, no. 3 (Autumn 2016): 411437 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

44 Add. MSS. 15672, British Library (hereafter BL); Add. MSS 22084, BL; Mm. I, ff. 243–64, CUL; Holmes, Clive, ed., The Suffolk Committees for Scandalous Ministers, 1644–1646 (Ipswich, 1970)Google Scholar. See also McCall, Fiona, Baal's Priests: The Loyalist Clergy and the English Revolution (Farnham, 2013), 117–18Google Scholar, 129; and Bowen, Lloyd, “Royalism, Print and the Clergy in Britain, 1639–1640 and 1642,” Historical Journal 56, no. 2 (June 2013): 297319 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

45 Lord Deputy Grandison, 26 February 1617/18, interrogatories ministered to Richard Dillon, of Prowdston, County Meath, HA 15016, HEH.

46 Examination of Richard Dillon, 27 February 1617/18, HA 15017, HEH; Richard Dillon, of Prowdston, County Meath, esquire, answer to interrogatories, [26?] February 1617/18, HA 14634, HEH; Examination of Nicholas Hollywood the younger, 3 March 1617/18, HA 14976, HEH.

47 George Wild, Bishop of Derry, to John Bramhall, Archbishop of Armagh, 13 May 1662, HA 16008, HEH. Cf. George Morley, Bishop of Winchester, to Bramhall, London, 14 May [1662], HA 15382, HEH.

48 Morgan, Hiram, Tyrone's Rebellion: The Outbreak of the Nine Years War in Tudor Ireland (Woodbridge, 1993), 4Google Scholar; Morgan, Hiram, “Faith and Fatherland in Sixteenth-Century Ireland,” History Ireland 3, no. 2 (Summer 1995): 1320 Google Scholar; Craith, Mícheál Mac, “The Gaelic Reaction to the Reformation,” in Conquest and Union. Fashioning a British State, 1485–1725, ed. Ellis, S. G. and Barber, Sarah (London, 1995), 139–61Google Scholar, at 144–48; Alan Ford, ‘Firm Catholics’ or ‘Loyal Subjects’? Religious and Political Allegiance in Early Seventeenth-Century Ireland,” in Political Discourse in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Ireland, ed. Boyce, David, Eccleshall, Robert, and Geoghegan, Vincent (Basingstoke, 2001), 131 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 5–6; Connolly, S. J., Contested Island: Ireland, 1460–1630 (Oxford, 2007), 246–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ohlmeyer, “Ireland,” 43–44; Morgan, Hiram, “Hugh O'Neill and the Nine Years' War in Tudor Ireland,” Historical Journal 36, no. 1 (March 1993): 2137 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

49 [Comerford, Patrick], The Inquisition of a Sermon Preached in the Cathedrall Church of the City of Waterford (Waterford, 1644), 18Google Scholar, 28, 29 (quote on 28); Calendar of the Carew Manuscripts Preserved in the Archiepiscopal Library at Lambeth, ed. Brewer, J. S. and Bullen, William (London, 1867–1873), 712 Google Scholar, at 10; MS 12,813/1, fols. 13–16, at 15, National Library of Ireland (hereafter NLI); Sheehan, Anthony, “The Recusancy Revolt of 1603: A Reinterpretation,” Archivium Hibernicum 38 (1983): 313 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Tait, “Riots, Rescues,” 74–75; Harris, Rebellion, 145–46.

50 For the mandates policy, see McCavitt, John, “Lord Deputy Chichester and the English Government's ‘Mandates Policy’ in Ireland, 1605–7,” Recusant History 20, no. 3 (May 1991): 320–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Fitzpatrick, Brendan, Seventeenth-Century Ireland (Dublin, 1998), 817 Google Scholar; Canny, Making Ireland British, 172–75; Pawlisch, Hans, Sir John Davies and the Conquest of Ireland: A Study in Legal Imperialism (Cambridge, 1985), 103–21CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Harris, Rebellion, 148–54.

51 MS 852, fol. 96v, Trinity College, Dublin (hereafter TC); Crawford, Jon G., A Star Chamber Court in Ireland: The Court of Castle Chamber, 1571–1641 (Dublin, 2005), 145–46Google Scholar, 150, 295, 300–1, 491–92; Calendar of the State Papers Relating to Ireland, of the Reign of James I, 1603–25: Preserved in Her Majesty's Public Record Office, and Elsewhere, ed. Russell, C. W. and Prendergast, John P., 5 vols. (London, 1872–80)Google Scholar (hereafter CSPIre), 1606–8, 15.

52 Fitzsimon, Henry, Words of Comfort to Persecuted Catholics, ed. Hogan, Edmund (Dublin, 1881), 124 Google Scholar, 125, 155.

53 CSPIre, 1603–6, 544; Fitzsimon, Words of Comfort, 156.

54 MS 672, fols. 22–23, TC; CSPIre, 1603–6, 348–49, 353–54, 355–58, 370.

55 Gillespie, “Negotiating Order,” 193; Cunningham, Bernadette, “Seventeenth-Century Interpretations of the Past: The Case of Geoffrey Keating,” Irish Historical Studies 25, no. 98 (November 1986): 116–28CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 122; Siochrú, Micheál O, Confederate Ireland, 1642–1649: A Constitutional and Political Analysis (Dublin, 1999)Google Scholar; Harris, Rebellion, 159, 167, 185; Leerssen, Joseph T., Mere Irish and Fíor-Ghael: Studies in the Idea of Irish Nationality, Its Development and Literary Expression Prior to the Nineteenth Century (Amsterdam, 1986), 295 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The emergence of a sense of “a Catholic nation” of Ireland that transcended ethnic difference was a long process, still far from complete by the late seventeenth century. Kidd, Colin, British Identities before Nationalism: Ethnicity and Nationhood in the Atlantic World, 1600–1800 (Cambridge, 1999), 153 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Creighton, Anne, “The Remonstrance of December 1661 and Catholic Politics in Restoration Ireland,” Irish Historical Studies 34, no. 133 (May 2004): 1641 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 38.

56 Canny, Making Ireland British, 461–550; Siochrú, Micheál Ó, “Atrocity, Codes of Conduct and the Irish in the British Civil Wars, 1641–1653,” Past and Present 195 (May 2007): 5586 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 61; Siochrú, Micheál Ó, God's Executioner: Oliver Cromwell and the Conquest of Ireland (London, 2008), 2526 Google Scholar; Harris, Rebellion, 159, 163–64, 215–16, 347, 357–60, 429, 433.

57 The Humble Petition of the Protestant Inhabitants of the Counties of Antrim, Downe, Tyrone, etc., Part of the Province of Ulster (London, 1641)Google Scholar; Armstrong, Robert, “Ireland's Puritan Revolution? The Emergence of Ulster Presbyterianism Reconsidered,” English Historical Review 121, no. 493 (September 2006): 1048–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 1051–53.

58 Harris, Restoration, 390–95, 403–5.

59 Macinnes, Allan I., Charles I and the Making of the Covenanting Movement, 1625–1641 (Edinburgh, 2003), 155–82Google Scholar; Stevenson, David, The Scottish Revolution, 1637–1644: The Triumph of the Covenanters (new ed., Edinburgh, 2003), 5687 Google Scholar; Stewart, Rethinking the Scottish Revolution, 29–121; Stewart, “Authority, Agency,” 94–102; Stewart, Laura A. M., “The Political Repercussions of the Five Articles of Perth: A Reassessment of James VI and I's Religious Policies in Scotland,” Sixteenth Century Journal 38, no. 4 (Winter 2007): 1013–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Stewart, Laura A. M., “‘Brothers in Treuth’: Propaganda, Public Opinion and the Perth Articles Debate in Scotland,” in James VI and I: Ideas, Authority, and Government, ed. Houlbrooke, Ralph (Aldershot, 2006), 151–68Google Scholar.

60 An Information to all Good Christians (Edinburgh, 1639), 45 Google Scholar.

61 Robertson, Barry, Royalists at War in Scotland and Ireland, 1638–1650 (Farnham, 2014), 2552 Google Scholar; Stewart, Rethinking the Scottish Revolution, 76–86, 141–43.

62 Harris, Revolution, 376–78, 389–90.

63 Helmers, Helmer J., The Royalist Republic: Literature, Politics, and Religion in the Anglo-Dutch Public Sphere, 1639–1660 (Cambridge, 2015), 33 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

64 The Beast is Wounded [Amsterdam?, 1638].

65 Waurechen, Sarah, “Covenanter Propaganda and Conceptualizations of the Public during the Bishops' Wars, 1638–1640,” Historical Journal 52, no. 1 (March 2009): 6386 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Harris, Rebellion, 379, 387–98; Harris, “Charles I,” 8–13; Perceval-Maxwell, Michael, “Strafford, the Ulster Scots and the Covenanters,” Irish Historical Studies 18, no. 72 (September 1973): 524–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 536–43; McCafferty, John, “When Reformations Collide,” in The Stuart Kingdoms in the Seventeenth Century, ed. Macinnes, Allan I. and Ohlmeyer, Jane H. (Dublin, 2002), 186203 Google Scholar, at 189, 199, 202.

66 Lennon, “Print Trade,” 68–69, 73; Gillespie, “Print Culture,” 24–25; Kerrigan, John, Archipelagic English: Literature, History, and Politics, 1603–1707 (Oxford, 2008), 76 Google Scholar.

67 Laura Lunger Knoppers, “Introduction: Critical Framework and Issues,” in Knoppers, ed., Oxford Handbook, 1–17, at 12; Eamon Darcy, “Three Kingdoms,” in Knoppers, ed., Oxford Handbook, 44–64, at 55; Pincus, Steve, “‘Coffee Politicians Does Make’: Coffeehouses and Restoration Political Culture,” Journal of Modern History 67, no. 4 (December 1995): 807–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gillespie, “Circulation of Print,” 53; Gillespie, Reading Ireland, 106; Barnard, “Learning, the Learned and Literacy in Ireland,” 218–19; Fox, Adam, Oral and Literate Culture in England, 1500–1700 (Oxford, 2000), 375 Google Scholar; Joad Raymond, “The Newspaper, Public Opinion, and the Public Sphere in the Seventeenth Century,” in Raymond, News, Newspapers, and Society, 109–40, at 117; Atherton, “Itch Grown a Disease,” 53; Kerrigan, Archipelagic English, 71–72; Dibden, W. G. Stitt, The Post Office, 1635–1720 (Bath, 1960)Google Scholar.

68 Lake and Pincus, “Rethinking the Public Sphere,” 279–81, 290 (quotes on 280, 281).

69 Harris, Tim, “The Restoration in Britain and Ireland,” in The Oxford Handbook of the English Revolution, ed. Braddick, Michael J. (Oxford, 2015), 204–19Google Scholar; idem, The British Dimension, Religion, and the Shaping of Political Identities during the Reign of Charles II,” in Protestantism and National Identity: Britain and Ireland, c. 1650–c. 1850, ed. Claydon, Tony and McBride, Ian (Cambridge, 1998), 131–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem, Restoration. The first Irish newspaper—An Account of the Chief Occurrences of Ireland, Together with Some Particulars of England—appeared in February–March 1660 as part of a campaign to build support in Ireland for the restoration of Charles II. Munter, History, 7.

70 See the trilogy by Richard Greaves: Greaves, Richard, Deliver Us from Evil: The Radical Underground in Britain, 1660–1663 (Oxford, 1986)Google Scholar; idem, Enemies under His Feet: Radicals and Nonconformists in Britain, 1664–1677 (Stanford, 1990)Google Scholar; and idem, Secrets of the Kingdom: British Radicals from the Popish Plot to the Revolution of 1688–89 (Stanford, 1992)Google Scholar.

71 George Wild, Bishop of Derry, to John Bramhall, Archbishop of Armagh, Derry, 10 March 1662/3, HA 16017, HEH.

72 Wodrow MSS, Quarto XXX, NLI; Stewart, Laura A. M., “Introduction: Publics and Participation in Early Modern Britain,” Journal of British History 56, no. 4 (October 2017): 709–30Google Scholar.

73 The Entring Book of Roger Morrice, 1677–1691, ed. Goldie, Mark, 7 vols. (Woodbridge, 2007)Google Scholar; Newsletters of Richard Bulstrode: From the Harry Ransome Humanities Center at Austin, Texas (Marlborough, 2002)Google Scholar.

74 Harris, “British Dimension,” 143–48; Harris, Tim, “England's ‘Little Sisters without Breasts': Shaftesbury and Scotland and Ireland,” in Anthony Ashley Cooper, The First Earl of Shaftesbury 1621–1683, ed. Spurr, John (Farnham, 2011), 183205 Google Scholar; Gibney, John, Ireland and the Popish Plot (Basingstoke, 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gillespie, Reading Ireland, 114.

75 Roger L'Estrange, Observator 3, nos. 151 (6 March 1685/6), 201 (18 August 1686), and 206 (4 September 1686).

76 Harris, Restoration, 333–35, 338–41.

77 Ibid., 187–88.

78 Knights, Mark, Politics and Opinion in Crisis, 1678–81 (Cambridge, 1994), 329–45Google Scholar; Harris, Restoration, 263–92, 317–22; Vallance, Ted, “‘From the Hearts of the People’: Loyalty, Addresses and the Public Sphere in the Exclusion Crisis,” in Religion, Culture and National Community in the 1670s, ed. Claydon, Tony and Corns, Thomas N. (Cardiff, 2011), 127–47Google Scholar.

79 MS 11,960, pp. 85–223, NLI; London Gazette, nos. 1714 (20–24 April 1682), 1751 (28–31 August 1682), 1867 (8–11 October 1683); Historical Manuscripts Commission, Calendar of the Manuscripts of the Marquess of Ormonde, K. P., Preserved at Kilkenny Castle, New Series, ed. Falkiner, C. Litton and Ball, F. Elrington, 8 vols. (London, 1902–20), 6:57 Google Scholar, 62; HMC, Ormonde, N.S. VII, 86–7, 110; The Council Book of the Corporation of Youghall, from 1610 … to 1800, ed. Caulfield, Richard (Guildford, 1878), 361 Google Scholar; [Earl of Conway] to Sir George Rawdon, 6 May 1682, HA 14570, HEH; Harris, Restoration, 390–95, 403–5.

80 Harris, Revolution, 49–54; Pincus, Steve, 1688: The First Modern Revolution (New Haven, 2009), 9799 Google Scholar. For the address from the Catholic clergy of Ireland, see Lansdowne 1152A, fol. 404, BL.

81 Harris, Restoration, 260–328; Harris, Revolution, 73–94; Clifton, Robin, The Last Popular Rebellion: The Western Rising of 1685 (London, 1984)Google Scholar; Greaves, Secrets of the Kingdom, 253–89; Pincus, 1688, 104–16.

82 What has been described here is no longer Lake and Pincus's post-Reformation public sphere. Yet it is not quite their postrevolutionary public sphere either, although Lake and Pincus themselves saw the Restoration as a transitional period, acknowledging that a full-fledged postrevolutionary public sphere did not emerge until after the Glorious Revolution. Lake and Pincus, “Rethinking the Public Sphere,” 284. Alasdair Raffe, however, has questioned whether Lake and Pincus's postrevolutionary public sphere emerged in Scotland, preferring instead to talk in terms of a “culture of controversy.” Raffe, Alasdair, The Culture of Controversy: Religious Arguments in Scotland, 1660–1714 (Woodbridge, 2012)Google Scholar.

83 Harris, Revolution, 376–78, 389–90, 419–20.