Cyndia Susan Clegg-Press Censorship in Jacobean England-Cambridge University Press (2001)

PRESS CENSORSHIP IN
JACOBEAN ENGLAND
CYNDIA SUSAN CLEGG
Cambridge University Press

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Press Censorship in Jacobean England examines the ways in which
books were produced, read, and received during the reign of
King James I. The book challenges prevailing attitudes that
press censorship in Jacobean England differed little from either
the ``whole machinery of control'' enacted by the Court of Star
Chamber under Elizabeth or the draconian campaign imple-
mented by Archbishop Laud during the reign of Charles I.
Cyndia Clegg, building on her earlier study Press Censorship in
Elizabethan England, contends that although the principal me-
chanisms for controlling the press altered little between 1558
and 1603, the actual practice of censorship under King James I
varied signi®cantly from Elizabethan practice. This was both
because the monarch took greater interest in the press and
because the law courts, the people, and parliament expressed in
print different views on the day's political and religious issues.
The book combines historical analysis of documents with
literary reading of censored texts. Each chapter sets the censor-
ship history of a different set of texts into the explanatory
context of the era's central political and religious interests.
Clegg thus considers the relationship of censorship to such
international matters as King James's defense of the Oath of
Allegiance, his promotion of the Synod of Dort, and the out-
break of the Thirty Years' War. The book exposes the kinds of
tension that really mattered in Jacobean culture and will be an
invaluable resource for literary scholars and historians alike.
c y n d i a s u s a n c l e g g is Distinguished Professor of English

Literature at Pepperdine University. She is the author of Press
Censorship in Elizabethan England (Cambridge, 1997) and The Peace-
able and Prosperous Reign of Our Blessed Queene Elizabeth (2001).
PRESS CENSORSHIP IN
JACOBEAN ENGLAND
CYNDIA SUSAN CLEGG

Pepperdine University, Malibu, California
         
The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge, United Kingdom
  

The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 2RU, UK
40 West 20th Street, New York, NY 10011-4211, USA
477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, VIC 3207, Australia
Ruiz de Alarcón 13, 28014 Madrid, Spain
Dock House, The Waterfront, Cape Town 8001, South Africa
http://www.cambridge.org
© Cyndia Susan Clegg 2004
First published in printed format 2001
ISBN 0-511-01771-5 eBook (netLibrary)

ISBN 0-521-78243-0 hardback
To honor my parents
Virginia and Wayne Clegg
Contents
Acknowledgments page viii

List of abbreviations x
Introduction Jacobean press censorship and the 1

`ùnsatisfying impasse'' in the historiography of Stuart
England
1 Authority, license, and law: the theory and practice of 20
censorship
2 Burning books as propaganda 68
3 The personal use of censorship in ``the wincy age'' 90
4 Censorship and the confrontation between prerogative 124
and privilege
5 The press and foreign policy, 1619±1624: `àll eies are 161
directed upon Bohemia''
6 Ecclesiastical faction, censorship, and the rhetoric of 197
silence
Afterword 224
Notes 230
Bibliography 269
Index 277
vii
Acknowledgments
This book has bene®ted in every way from the existence of the
Huntington Library in San Marino, California ± from its rich
collections in early printed books and manuscripts, from its staff, and
from the nurture it offers to the community of scholars who reside
and visit. I am especially grateful to Roy Ritchie, Director of
Research, and David Zeidler, Librarian, and to the curators of early
manuscripts and books, Mary Robertson, Alan Jutzi, and Steve
Tabor. My work has bene®ted enormously from the rich scholarly
exchange that occurs among members of the Huntington's Tudor
Stuart History Seminar, organized by Barbara Donagan. I am
grateful for the community of scholars and friends at the Huntington
who have generously shared their knowledge and resources,
especially Alan Nelson, Jean Brink, James Riddell, Gerald Toomer,
Dana Sutton, Louis Kna¯a, David Cressy, Thomas Cogswell, Kevin
Sharpe, David Kastan, and Winfred Schliener. I am indebted to Lori
Anne Ferrell and Douglas Brooks for commenting on various parts of
the written work, and to Johan P. Sommerville, who generously gave
me a digital copy of his edition of James VI and I's Political Writings.
During the summer of 1999 Andrew Had®eld organized a sym-
posium sponsored by the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, on
censorship in early modern England. Andrew and its members all
contributed in some way to this work. A version of chapter 2 of this
book appears in the proceedings of that symposium, entitled Literature
and Censorship in Renaissance England (Basingstoke, 2001), edited by
Andrew Had®eld.
The Huntington Library, the British Academy, and Pepperdine
University have generously provided ®nancial support for this
project. I wish especially to thank William Phillips, Dean of Inter-
national Programs, for extending me the opportunity to teach in
Pepperdine's London Program, which provided me with an of®ce,
viii
Acknowledgments ix
housing, and an extended visit in Britain that allowed for extensive
work at the British Library, Lambeth Palace Library, the Bodleian,
and the Public Record Of®ce. I also genuinely appreciate my
division chair, Constance Fulmer, for her encouragement, support,
and friendship.
It has been a privilege to work with Cambridge University Press
on this book. Sarah Stanton's enthusiasm and encouragement have
brought it to life. My special thanks go to Margaret Berrill, for all her
editorial assistance, and to Curtis Perry, who has thoughtfully read
and commented on the work. This study quotes extensively from
sixteenth- and seventeenth-century printed books and manuscripts. I
have not modernized their spelling although I have regularized
spelling that re¯ects printing-house font choices ± archaic contrac-
tions employing ~ and the interchange of the letters I and J and U
and V (both upper and lower case).
Finally, I cannot begin to express suf®cient gratitude to my
husband and daughter, Michael and Caitlin Wheeler, who have
contributed in so many ways to this book's fruition, so, simply, thank
you.
Abbreviations
APC Dascent, William Roche, ed. Acts of the Privy

Council. 46 vols. London, 1890±1964.
Arber Arber, Edward. A Transcript of the Registers of the
Company of Stationers of London. 5 vols.
Birmingham, 1875±94.
BL British Library
Chamberlain, Letters McClure, Norman Egbert, ed. The Letters of
John Chamberlain. 2 vols. Philadelphia: The
Philosophical Society, 1939.
Court Book B Greg, W. W. and E. Boswell, ed. Records of the
Court of the Stationers' Company 1576±1602.
London, 1930.
Court Book C Jackson, William, ed. Records of the Court of the
Stationers' Company 1602±1640. London, 1958.
CSPD Calendar of State Papers, Domestic for the Reign of
James I.
CSPS Calendar of State Papers Relating to Scotland,
1547±1603. 13 vols. Edinburgh, 1898±1969.
CSPV Calendar of State Papers and Manuscripts relating to
English Affairs, existing in the Archives and
collections of Venice. Vol. xi, 1607±10; vol. xii,
1610±13; vol. xiii, 1613±15, ed. Horatio F.
Brown. London: 1904, 1905, 1906. Vol. xiv,
1615±17; vol. xv, 1618; vol. xvi, 1619±21; vol.
xvii, 1621±23; vol. xviii, 1624±26, ed. Allen B.
Hinds. London, 1908, 1909, 1910, 1912.
DNB Dictionary of National Biography. Ed. Leslie
Stephen.
Greg, Companion Greg, W. W. Companion to Arber. Oxford, 1967.
HMC Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts
x
Abbreviations xi
Hughes and Larkin, Hughes, Peter L. and James F. Larkin, eds.
TRP Tudor Royal Proclamations. 3 vols. New Haven,
1969.
Larkin and Hughes, Larkin, James F. and Paul L. Hughes, eds.
SRP Stuart Royal Proclamations. 3 vols. Oxford, 1973.
PRO Public Record Of®ce, London.
STC The Short-Title Catalogue of Books Printed in
England, Scotland and Ireland, 1475±1640. 2nd
edition. Ed. W. Jackson, F. S. Ferguson, and
Katherine F. Pantzer. 3 vols. London, 1976.
introduction
Jacobean press censorship and the `ùnsatisfying

impasse'' in the historiography of Stuart England
Accounts of press censorship in Jacobean England generally partici-

pate in the larger narratives of early Stuart political culture that
engage the question of the English state's liberalization in the late
seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, an area of study that
Kevin Sharpe reminds us has produced some of the best historical
scholarship and attracted the lively interest even of general readers.1
The place of the English revolution of the 1640s has dominated this
historiography of the seventeenth century. Since the nineteenth
century, Whig historians have viewed England's history as a teleo-
logical progression toward a system of parliamentary government
interested in defending the values of Enlightenment liberalism. To
justify the rupture with hereditary monarchical rule, this historical
perspective necessitates if not the outright vili®cation of monarchy at
least the condemnation of the Stuart version of absolutist rule as
something foreign to England. Seen through the lens of Whig
historiography, principally the work of Christopher Hill and Fre-
derick Siebert, early modern press censorship functioned as a tool of
royal repression, and the English Revolution with its collapse of press
controls was the inevitable conclusion of a repressive system that
placed constraints upon free expression.2 According to Siebert,
Jacobean government regulated the principal avenues of communi-
cation by perpetuating the repressive mechanisms of control laid out
by Elizabeth: the Crown issued patents, the Stationers' Company
controlled all printing, and the Church dictated what could or could
not be printed through pre-print authorization and used the High
Commission to enforce its will ± all of which Hill simply refers to as
``the censorship.''3 While Siebert acknowledges strains and stresses
within this system as the early Stuart monarchs encountered oppo-
sition to their religious and political policies, he still maintains that
the government employed repressive measures when it failed to
1
2 Press censorship in Jacobean England
convince by exhortation and argument. Implicit in Siebert's account
is the assumption that censorship routed out oppositional discourse.
As Hill puts it, `Ìts object was to prevent the circulation of dangerous
ideas among the masses of the population.''4 But what kinds of ideas
were dangerous? From the perspectives of both Hill and Siebert,
such ideas appear to have been just about anything that did not
conform to orthodox religion and absolute monarchy. Neither James
I nor Charles I tolerated the theories and doctrines of either
Romanism or Calvinism or the opinions of parliament or the
common-law lawyers that the King was anything less than the
embodiment of all authority ± political and religious ± to which all
his domains were subject.
Beginning in the 1970s, a group of historians who have come to be
known as ``revisionists'' mounted a challenge to the Whig historio-
graphic hegemony in seventeenth-century studies. Their work,
which depends on archival manuscript materials rather than printed
parliamentary debates and collections, redirected discussion of early
Stuart political culture from earlier interest in oppositional crisis to
the court and to the person of the monarch.5 One signi®cant aspect
of this work is its attention to distinctive monarchical styles. Not only
may the court and politics of James I be divorced from those of his
successor but the character of Charles I's personal rule need not be
seen as the inevitable consequence of Jacobean political ideology.
From this perspective, consensus replaces con¯ict as the working
political model at court. One consequence of the shift in historio-
graphic interest has been that the clearly intentioned and ef®cient
picture of Stuart censorship promulgated by Hill and Siebert has
become subject to reconsideration. Richard Dutton's Mastering the
Revels revisits dramatic censorship and establishes that not only was
the Master of the Revels as interested in the revenues the of®ce
garnered from theatrical licensing as he was in imposing state
controls, but that the standards for public drama corresponded to
those that dictated expression at court.6 The recent work of Sheila
Lambert and Mark Bland, while not so comprehensive as Dutton's
study of the drama, has chipped away goodly parts of the edi®ce
Siebert and Hill constructed. Lambert argues that documents custo-
marily viewed as important evidence that the government sought to
control the press by regulating the Stationers' Company actually
represented government concessions to the Stationers in support of
their monopoly.7 Looking more generally at Stuart censorship,
Introduction 3
Lambert concedes that the governments of James and Charles ``did
have a concept of censorship and a means of exercising it, and that
the machinery did what it was expected to do,'' but she maintains
that ``what it was not expected to do was to suppress all expression of
opposition to the Crown.''8 According to Lambert, censorship
served the government's principal concerns of maintaining the
integrity of its foreign policy, preserving public order, and protecting
the monarch from libel.9 Authority for censorship, according to
Lambert, resided in the Bishop of London and the Archbishop of
Canterbury, who oversaw ecclesiastical authorization, and, after
1611, in the High Commission.10 By examining the practice of this
authority, Mark Bland argues that censorship was largely ineffectual
because Archbishops John Whitgift, Richard Bancroft, and George
Abbot effected ``sophisticated compromises when politically sensitive
issues were involved,'' exposing ``the controlling authority of those
who would license books as not simply a product of the power vested
in them but, more disturbingly, as an illusion.''11
The revisionist emphasis on political consensus in Jacobean and
Caroline politics has itself provoked a sharp response among a
younger generation of scholars, especially those who insist on the
ideological nature of seventeenth-century English politics. According
to Sharpe,
Acknowledging and accepting the revisionists' critique of teleology, and
imitating their methods ± the close study of speci®c historical moments ±
the anti- or post-revisionists (the latter is a better term) rejected the
revisionists' picture of contending factions in a world of shared values and
urged a more nuanced address to con¯ict ± religious and political ± and to
the relationships of con¯icts of values to civil war and revolution.12
The ``post-revisionists'' who have taken the greatest interest in
censorship are Thomas Cogswell and Anthony Milton. Cogswell's
The Blessed Revolution constructs an argument on the oppositional
political climate Jacobean policy created at the outbreak of the
Thirty Years' War from evidence of censorship, while Milton's work
tracks the interests and practices of Laud's ecclesiastical censors and
their Jacobean precursors.13 Although Cogswell provides the kind of
``nuanced address'' to the relationship between religious and political
values that Sharpe applauds, his understanding of censorship prac-
tices differs little from Hill's. Milton's work, which speci®cally rebuts
Sheila Lambert's diminution of Laud's interest in censorship, appro-
priately restores religious ideology to the discourse of the Revolution
but in doing so unfortunately relegates any discussion of press
control to the narrative of the English Revolution, slighting the
distinctive character of Jacobean censorship.
That so many historians have engaged with questions of censor-
ship in Stuart England may suggest that yet another study of Stuart
censorship is unwarranted. My review of existing work should
indicate, however, that historians' interest in censorship has been
somewhat limited. In essence it has pursued answers to three kinds of
questions: what its mechanisms were (Siebert, Lambert, Bland, and
Milton); whether or not it was repressive (Hill, Siebert, Lambert,
Milton); how it related to Stuart ideology and from it to the
Revolution (Hill, Lambert, Cogswell, and Milton). While these
studies have shown a marked interest in political culture as an
extension of either the institution of monarchy or the person of the
monarch, none suf®ciently distinguishes one Stuart from another.
Furthermore, ever since William Prynne's 1646 account of Arch-
bishop William Laud's trial, Canterburies Doome, identi®ed the repres-
siveness of Stuart monarchy with Laudian censorship, ``Stuart'' has
been indistinguishable from Laudian censorship. A study of Jacobean
press censorship is thus still warranted. Granted, both Sheila
Lambert and Mark Bland have done some very important work in
this area, and have established the degree to which censorship was a
local practice shaped by compromises made either to the Stationers'
Company or by individual archbishops; but by looking only at a
restricted number of instances, they leave their readers unsure of the
kinds of recurring patterns that mark and alter wider censorship
practices over time. A place still remains for a ``post-revisionist''
study of Jacobean censorship, one that looks to Anthony Milton's
method ± his reliance upon manuscripts and printed books from the
period, his attention to practice, his careful historicization of the
local event and of the event within the wider political culture ± but
on a fuller scale.
To proceed in another purely historical study of press censorship,
however, if we are to believe Kevin Sharpe, will be insuf®cient to
fully overcome the `ùnsatisfying impasse'' to which traditional,
revisionist, and post-revisionist debates about seventeenth-century
political culture have led. According to Sharpe, the choice required
between two historical readings ± between con¯ict and consensus ±
is a false one in a complex political culture: `Ìt may be that the
traditional unspoken historical approach does not easily accommo-
Introduction 5
date the ¯uidity of meanings possible and/or ìntended' in the
documents on which historians rely.''14 While Sharpe certainly
esteems (and practices) the historian's attention to documentary
evidence and the ``close situating and historicizing of texts and
events,'' he maintains that `ìnterdisciplinary and critical approaches
are essential to understanding a Renaissance culture in which
epistemology, interpretation, the exegesis of meaning had not frag-
mented into discrete disciplinary practices.''15 Sharpe believes that
postmodern semiotic, philosophical, and literary theory may enable
scholars and historians of early modern England to ``reimagine a
Renaissance culture that did not share the positivism or `the
organicist ideology of modernism'.''16 Postmodern theory, as Sharpe
understands it, has demonstrated the degree to which the discourses,
texts, and performances which a culture produces are the means by
which it constructs meaning and the only ``reality'' that can be
known by humans. Since these constructions are themselves the
subject of historical inquiry, Sharpe believes that historians can
bene®t by recognizing the degree to which any `èvent'' or ``docu-
ment'' is itself a construct rather than a transparent ``truth'':
A greater willingness by historians . . . to see systems of authority and order
as culturally constructed rather than, as it were, outside culture would
surely facilitate a more nuanced history of the performance of power: how
the relations between sovereigns and subjects functioned and shifted in the
early modern state. Once we take on board something of the argument that
authority and meaning are constituted through language and texts, we are
led to consider authority itself as more indeterminate, more open to
multiple meanings and interpretations than our traditional concept of the
sovereign utterance (commanding, as well as issued by one in command)
usually implies.17
Sharpe does not intend to suggest here that there has been no
interdisciplinary work in seventeenth-century studies, but rather that
historians might bene®t by expanding their sources of evidence to
include cultural practice and by engaging in a more nuanced reading
of these texts ± much in the way that literary critics identi®ed as New
Historicists have. Sharpe applauds New Historicist interest in
removing arbitrary categories of writing ± ®ctive, literature, and
history ± and in recognizing literature as a cultural text that, like
other cultural productions, encodes ``the structures of meaning, and
especially the arrangements of power, in the society and state that
produced them.''18 Sharpe envisions an alliance between the
methods of revisionist historians ± ``the close situating and histor-
icizing of texts and events'' ± and the interests of New Historicists in
reading cultural productions as a means to raising important ques-
tions as yet unasked about a society that was itself grounded in the
performativity of language ± a society `ìn which all who were
educated were trained in oratory, rhetoric, translation, language; in
which writers and readers of literature (a literature which included
what we would separate as philosophy, history and ®ction) were
sensitive to the genre, form and materiality of their texts.''19
Sharpe's desiderata hold particular relevance for a study of
Jacobean press censorship. As already shown, historical studies of
press censorship in the seventeenth century have inevitably engaged
in the wider historiographic narratives of con¯ict and consensus,
con®ning any understanding of censorship practices to a bipolar
model in which the king censors and the subject either resists or
complies. Historians have relied principally upon documents of
control ± statutes, proclamations, Star Chamber decrees, Stationers'
Company orders, publication records ± as evidence for censorship
without fully considering the documents themselves as rhetorical
productions with multivalent meanings. Literary scholars have re-
cognized censorship as a cultural phenomenon but have insuf®-
ciently historicized its practice. In this regard, Annabel Patterson's
Censorship and Interpretation has proved enormously in¯uential. Patter-
son's ``hermeneutics of censorship'' has taught a generation of
readers of early modern literature how to ``read between the lines,''
that is how to discern the complex construction of textual meaning
in a culture where agents of the monarch monitored what could be
said or read.20 While I concur with Sharpe that Patterson ranks
among the best of the literary scholars engaging in historicist studies
± those whose work is ``well researched in contemporary records and
historiography'' ± Censorship and Interpretation defers to the work of Hill
and Siebert for its understanding of censorship practice in early
modern England and in doing so perpetuates without question an
outmoded historical model of uni®ed and repressive state censorship.
Patterson's legacy has been both negative and positive. Unfortu-
nately, because Censorship and Interpretation was insuf®ciently histor-
icized, it has perpetuated among literary scholars the image of Stuart
political culture as authoritarian and abusive. On the other hand,
her work has been in¯uential in establishing the degree to which
reading and writing in early modern England were intimately bound
Introduction 7
up in and inseparable from political culture. To understand press
censorship in Jacobean England is to view it and the documents
evidencing its practice as cultural constructs that require nuanced
reading in a culture where politics mattered deeply.
In Reading Revolutions Sharpe calls for a historiographical approach
that ``reads'' culture and text with the nuances of literary studies and
attends to historical evidence ± documents both in manuscript and
print ± closely situating and historicizing their texts and events. I do
not wish to be so presumptuous as to say this study ful®lls Sharpe's
agenda, but it has proceeded from a similar concern about docu-
ments and texts. Constructing histories of press censorship only from
documents of control has inevitably distorted our understanding of
censorship. To study only documents of control, especially with a
purely transparent reading of their intention and meaning, ignores
the question of practice ± whether the regulation was implemented,
whether or not it met with compliance, whether compliance was
temporary or sustained. This says nothing about the document itself
± when it was produced in relationship to the publication of an
offending text or texts, what other concerns besides the text itself
may have led to its production, who wrote it, what rhetorical devices
it employed, what audience it sought, how it was read and received.
From the perspective of the ``record'' of censorship alone, this study
seeks to establish how censorship in Jacobean England was intended
to work and how those intentions were both implemented and
received. Chapter 1 establishes the conceptual framework of censor-
ship in Jacobean England from the perspective of the documents of
control ± royal patents, proclamations, court decrees ± and seeks to
elucidate through closely historicizing individual acts of control how
the practice of censorship proceeded in relation to these controls. It
discovers the degree to which cultural contingencies shaped the
practice of press censorship even when abstract sets of ®xed prin-
ciples existed.
The documents of control, even when ``read between the lines,''
tell only part of the story of press censorship. Press censorship is
more than the political practice it is usually seen to be. Because it
involved the printed text, it necessarily participated in a cultural
phenomenon that in early modern England was transformative.
Elizabeth Eisenstein's The Printing Press as an Agent of Change: Commu-
nications and Cultural Transformations in Early Modern Europe21 estab-
lished that the mere fact of the existence of printing altered cultural
practice. While this is not the place for a summary of the impact of
printing on early modern English culture, it is suf®cient to remember
that, when James came to the throne, the Book of Common Prayer
and English editions of the Bible had transformed English religion;
literary epics like Edmund Spenser's Faerie Queene and chronicle
histories like Holinshed's Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland had
helped construct an English national identity; and Crown and
subjects alike employed printed propaganda to popularize their
religious and political agendas ± all at a time when the Stationers'
Company's royal charter was less than ®fty years old!
The full implications of the ways in which printing transformed
English culture are beginning to receive the attention they deserve.
Eisenstein's contention that printing sustained its extraordinary
cultural impact because of its authority and durability has elicited
considerable scholarly response, most of which has been theoretically
innovative and imaginative. While I do not propose to offer a
sustained critique of theories of textual authority and their relation
to authorship and kingship, it is useful to recognize two dominant
strains in studies of textual authority. One group of theorists
associates the rise of authoritarian cultural practices ± monarchy and
patriarchy ± with the emergence of printing.22 Others, some of
whom are historians, have addressed printing's role in transforming
subject positions. Following the work of Michel Foucault and Jacques
Lacan, who identify the notion of the emergence in the seventeenth
century of the autonomous self as a repositioning of the historical
construction of the subject position, printing is seen as an agent of
transformation that enables alternative forms of agency. Language in
general, and printed language in particular, plays a fundamental role
in reconstituting the self and the subject, giving rise (in England, at
least) to alternative narratives of authority ± science, the ``public,''
the author.23
The historical assumptions underpinning studies of the relation-
ship of print to authority in early modern England are persistently
Whiggish, however. Despite the apparent differences among these
studies, they persistently return to the idea that print was the means
by which Tudor and Stuart authoritarianism fashioned and sustained
itself until alternative agencies discovered the mediating aspects of
print culture ± authorship, allusion, subversion, and contestation ±
adopted them, and undermined royal authority. Censorship occupies
an essential subtext of this narrative. According to Foucault, ``Texts,
Introduction 9
books, and discourses really began to have authors . . . to the extent
that authors became subject to punishment, that is, to the extent that
discourses could be transgressive.''24 Authorship ± what Foucault
refers to as the ``privileged moment of individuation'' 25 ± thus
becomes a transgressive act de®ned by its subjectivity to external
authority. From the perspective of seventeenth-century British histor-
iography, absolute authority is overthrown not once but twice (in
1642 and again in 1694), each time that parliament suspended
licensing (the Crown's tool of press control). The ultimate victory
here went to the individual author, who, with the 1709 Copyright
Act, received full rights in the product of his labor. 26 That Douglas A.
Brooks can observe that in the seventeenth century the authority of
the monarch's position in England moves on an inverse trajectory of
the author's is no accident of history, but is, instead, a consequence
of the hegemony the printed word achieved through the course of
the 1600s.27
Despite the considerable subtlety both literary theorists and
revisionist and post-revisionist historians have brought to the study
of seventeenth-century political culture, studies of the relations
between systems of government, models of subjectivity, and modes of
textual production retain a persistent polarity in their cultural
analyses. These analyses perpetuate a model of authoritarian poli-
tical culture organized on the binary of control and subversion even
though a generation of scholars has effectively demonstrated the
degree to which royal authority is a textually constituted ®ction open
to interpretation, imitation, and appropriation. That so many
theoretical constructions of the interrelationship of print to power
have begun with the ®gure of James I is not surprising ± James,
perhaps more than any other monarch, ®gured his political ideology
in print, especially notable in the 1617 publication of his Workes
(dated 1616).28 What is remarkable is that James's political writings
have not received the kind of critical attention that, for example,
Stephen Orgel has given to court masques ± that is, as a kind of
performance engaged in constructing the ®ction of royal authority.
Instead, they are generally viewed as a transparent expression of
James's ideology of kingship, open perhaps to some interpretation,
but ultimately non-negotiable. To properly theorize (and historicize)
the relationship between modes of authority, subjectivity, and print
in Jacobean England requires moving beyond the sustaining binary ±
which in historiographic studies of the period has produced the
con¯ict/consensus stalemate ± to a close reading of multiple dis-
courses in which authority, subjectivity, and printing participated.
Turning to one of the central tropes by which historians and
literary scholars alike have understood Jacobean culture ± the
patriarchal model of kingship ± illustrates the multiple negotiations
between competing authorities that arise in a culture married to
print. This model, of course, has been central both to theories of
print culture interested in the relationship between printing, auth-
ority, and gender, and to historical narratives concerned with
Jacobean political ideology. The text to which scholars repeatedly
return is The Trew Law of Free Monarchies, written before James
assumed the English throne. The ®rst edition of The Trew Law of Free
Monarchies was published in 1598 by Robert Waldegrave, the King's
Printer, and although it appeared anonymously, it was widely known
to have been written by the King.29 Although the patriarchal model
of royal authority recurs throughout his political writings, it is in
Trew Law that James most succinctly articulated ``the stile of Pater
Patriae,'' which describes the King's relation to his subjects as that of
a loving Father, and careful watchman, caring for them more then for
himselfe, knowing himselfe to be ordained for them, and they not for him;
and therefore countable to that great God, who placed him as his lieutenant
over them, upon the perill of his soule to procure the weale of both soules
and bodies, as farre as in him lieth, of all them that are committed to his
charge.30
While James readily admits that this is a common trope, a complex
series of historical negotiations engages with James's choice to
construct an ideology of monarchy based upon it, to express that
ideology in print, and to return repeatedly to this trope; none of
which sustains the kind of transparent reading of James's patriarchal
absolutism that it so often receives.
First of all, as J. P. Sommerville points out, James's political
ideology was constructed in response to his own education and to
conditions that he faced as King of Scotland. James's tutor, George
Buchanan, spoke strongly against royal absolutism, and, like John
Knox, subscribed to the idea that people may openly resist a ruler
who does not promote the true religion. James's own childhood and
early rule in Scotland saw repeated struggles with the Presbyterian
leaders like Andrew Melville, who maintained that the Church held
moral and religious authority over him. Furthermore, on the Con-
tinent similar arguments for the rights of subjects to resist ``heretical''
Introduction 11
rulers were made by Catholic radicals (many of whom were identi-
®ed with the cause of Mary, Queen of Scots).31 Competing discourses
and historical contingencies ± raids in Scotland, civil war in France,
Mary's execution ± prompted James's recourse to an authoritarian
model of monarchy.
James's ideology, so much a product of his personal experiences
and the historical moment, is less remarkable than his choice, as a
king, to write his authority, and then to have it printed. In Basilikon
Doron, a royal conduct book addressed to Prince Henry (four years
old at the time of the text's composition), James reveals the import-
ance he places on the performativity of royal authority. At the
beginning of Book iii, he says:
It is a trew old saying, That a King is as one set on a stage, whose smallest
actions and gestures, all the people gazingly doe behold: and therefore
although a King be never so prñcise in the discharging of his Of®ce, the
people, who seeth but the outward part, will ever judge of the substance, by
the circumstances; and according to the outward appearance, if his
behaviour bee light or dissolute, will conceive prñ-occupied conceits of the
Kings inward intention: which although with time (the trier of all trewth,) it
will evanish, by the evidence of the contrary effects, yet interim patitur iustus;
and prñiudged conceits will, in the meane time, breed contempt, the
mother of rebellion and disorder.32
Implicit in this, and in all James's writings about authority, is the
recognition that a king's smallest false gesture may be misread; that
even an unintentional lapse, misunderstood or misinterpreted, may
lead to contempt, rebellion, and disorder. This constitutes the King
as subject to interpretation ± if you will, as subject to his subjects.
Writing, especially a printed text, in James's eyes became the remedy.
Printing's durability was seen to preserve the transparent word of the
King's authority, as James articulated in his introduction to the 1603
edition of Basilikon Doron, where he explains that he had seven copies
printed and distributed among his ``trustiest Servants'' to preserve
them for his son `` . . . lest in case by the iniquitie, or wearing of
time, any of them might have been lose, yet some of them might have
remained after me.''33
Despite James's con®dence in the printed word's immutability,
print itself constituted another mediation of the King's patriarchal
authority. The ®rst editions of both Basilikon Doron and The Trew Law
appeared from the press of James's royal printer in Scotland. When
James became King of England, several London stationers rushed
these works into print. Waldegrave's right in his copy being null in
England, the King's books were fair game. The multiple editions of
Basilikon Doron that appeared led to a dispute among its printers that
ended up ®rst in the court of Assistants of the Stationers' Company
and ®nally in the court of High Commission.34 The King's printed
words were subject to his new English subjects' authority. However
effectively James could control Waldegrave's text in Scotland (he had
appointed Waldegrave as the King's printer), once the text came to
England, James's authority was subject to the precedents his pre-
decessors had set in conferring authority on the London Company of
Stationers.
Understanding how the King's word was thus historically condi-
tioned and mediated in these instances does not even take into
account the words the text contained, but these too were subject to
appropriation, transformation, and resistance. One part of the trope
itself, providing for his subjects' needs, did not exactly square with
the reality James had to face in English law that required the King to
appeal to parliament for revenues. As Sommerville points out, ``The
usual reason why James called parliaments was that he hoped they
would grant him taxes.''35 The course of James's relationships with
parliament did not always run smooth, and in the case of the 1610
Parliament, James found himself modifying his patriarchal trope for
a parliamentary audience, which, in imitating the King, was as-
serting its own authority in the matter of John Cowell's book, The
Interpreter.36 While James continued to insist upon his prerogative,
when he had his chief minister, Robert Cecil, the Earl of Salisbury,
meet with parliament, the King conceded their rights. Salisbury's
speech quali®ed the trope of the father±king, changing father±
provider into petitioner.
He is the father and head of the commonwealth and therefore helps,
supplies, and supports are due unto him, for which he holdeth himself
bound to give his people a real and royal satisfaction by protection and
defense; but that the King may take subsidies without the consent of his
people, he condemns the doctrines as absurd as him that maintains the
position.37
The King's position here carefully equivocates. Although he may
have not taken a ``subsidy'' without consent, since 1608 he had
collected `ìmpositions'' (extra-parliamentary levies) on exports and
imports, for which in 1614 the Commons openly criticized him.38
A further aspect of the patriarchal trope met with open resistance
Introduction 13
in another of England's ancient institutions. According to James's use
of the trope, the father is the source and originator of law, but the
trope fails to fully account for a competing trope of English
monarchy ± the King's two bodies. While English law indeed may
have found its origin in the eternal body of the King, the corporeal
body of James I had to contend with those legal precedents that had
evolved ``time out of mind'' in England ± the English common law.
Repeatedly throughout his reign in England, James had to vie with
the claims of competing authority ± most often made by his own
Chief Justice, Edward Coke.39
Patriarchal monarchy may have been a central trope for the King,
but he did not enjoy its exclusive use. As part of the linguistic coin of
the realm, tropes of patriarchal authority were widespread and could
be appropriated and transformed for other uses. Many conduct
books and marriage manuals, for example, employed the trope in
ways similar to William Whately's A bride-bush, which inverted the
King's trope. Instead of the kingdom being a family, marriage
becomes a ``little kingdom'':
Now a family must be governed as well as maintained . . . The man must
be taken for Gods immediate of®cer in the house, and as it were the King in
the family; the woman must account herselfe his deputy, an of®cer
substituted to him, not as equall, but as subordinate; and in this order they
must governe . . .40
The trope's widespread use and transformation exposed authority to

the vulnerability of interpretation. (What might it imply that
Whately had said ``they'' must govern, when Basilikon Doron said
queens should be beyond the political sphere?) 41 Political reality
could itself force the interpretative problem. How durable was the
bond between king and subject if the King himself could insist upon
the dissolution of the like bond between husband and wife? Not
surprisingly, James's insistence in 1613 on the divorce of Frances
Howard from Robert Devereux, third Earl of Essex, so that Lady
Essex would be free to marry the King's favorite, Robert Carr, met
with opposition. Those who opposed the divorce, like the Archbishop
of Canterbury, George Abbot, understood only too well the impli-
cations that such an assault on the institution of marriage held for
patriarchal authority.
These few examples, while not intended to be an exhaustive
examination of James I's rhetoric of authority, illustrate the multiple
negotiations to which a single metaphor became subject. In Jacobean
England this was only one metaphor among many. There were
others ± the body politic, the biblical kingdom, the physician±king,
paci®c emperor, suffering servant, actor (to name but a few) ± all of
which were subject to the same kind of interpretation, appropriation,
inversion, and contestation by a society of readers who were ``trained
in oratory, rhetoric, translation, language, . . . and were sensitive to
the genre, form and materiality of their texts,'' as Kevin Sharpe
reminds us.42 Paradoxically, by opting to employ the written and
printed word as tools of his authority, James I unwittingly empow-
ered his subjects as readers, interpreters, and imitators, giving rise to
alternative discourses of authority. Writing, printing, and reading
thus yielded a multiplication of agencies, subjectivities, and autho-
rities that learned the performativity of textuality from their King,
and like their King entrusted the narratives of their authority to
print. Writing and printing in Jacobean England were political acts
not only because they directly and indirectly represented and
embodied the structures of authority and hierarchy but also because
they altered, however minutely, those very structures.
The political character of writing and printing, however, derived
from more than their inherent structures; it derived as well from the
intentionality of the texts ± their ideology. Authors/authorities in
early modern England often wrote about issues in which they were
heavily invested ± their visions of the religious, moral, and cultural
world in which they lived, and in which they felt their fellow
Englishmen and women should live. Writers employed the training
they received in language, oratory, and rhetoric ± all fundamental
aspects of a humanist education ± to persuade others of the relative
merits (and limitations) of their particular visions for the world.
When we accept that the mechanisms of writing, printing, and
reading enabled multiple agencies in Jacobean England, it becomes
clear that political discourse necessarily extended beyond the bipolar
oppositional model posited by Whig historiography. Instead, the
marketplace of print was noisy, ®lled with judgments, opinions, and
agendas ± one not only where differences inevitably collided but also
where controversy itself represented an important genre of writing
(indeed, one readily embraced by King James.)
The political world of Jacobean England seen through the lens of
print culture was thus enormously complicated. On the one hand it
embraced tropes of patriarchal authority; on the other, it appro-
Introduction 15
priated those tropes and in doing so multiplied agencies and
discourses of authority. Thus any expression of authority, even the
King's, was fraught with anxiety that it would be met with some
challenge by competing agencies. Writers thus wrote anticipating
rebuttal and contention but desiring the establishment of order
through the universal acceptance of their particular ideology. The
stakes were high. One writer's prescription for a healthy common-
wealth (Church government, legal system, marriage) was inevitably
another's diagnosis of the commonwealth's ills. When the differences
became too great, or the diagnoses of disease too dire, the anxiety
that printed texts provoked escalated to the degree that words
themselves no longer looked suf®cient to remedy the dangers
proposed. At this point, whatever authority felt most threatened and
most anxious sought to go beyond words to actions that rather than
countering arguments would control the source of the words them-
selves ± the printed text. Censorship, like the slammed door in a
lover's quarrel, comes not when the agent/author's voice is most
sure, but when it is most anxious.
The story of censorship, then, can never be one of consensus,
cooperation, and cohesion. In Jacobean England efforts to control
the press and to suppress its products mark the points of difference ±
the ruptures ± in the Church, state, and society. The word ``rupture''
usually is taken to mean a breaking into two ± and this is the way the
likes of Hill and Siebert have viewed Jacobean censorship, as an
oppositional confrontation between the state and the people. That,
however, was not the way things broke in Jacobean England, where
wounds appeared on the body politic ± on different parts of the body
± and another part of the body diagnosed the ill and administered
censorship as a cure. An unscienti®c medicine, censorship lanced the
wounds, bled them, cauterized them, covered them, but rarely cured
them. This study of Jacobean press censorship necessarily considers
how the cures were administered, but no discussion of cure can
ignore the disease. From this perspective, censorship is not merely an
act of suppression or an authoritarian effort to control the printed
word engaging two parties ± the King and the subject (the censor
and the author) ± but like any cultural practice entails a complex
cultural negotiation. To the degree that it participates in authority, it
is as much a ®ction as royal authority ± one that may be made to
serve multiple cultural ends and that may be subjected to interpret-
ation, appropriation, and resistance. Since censorship concerns
printed texts, and print as a medium interposed multiple agencies
between author and authority ± publisher, compositor, printer, book-
seller, to say nothing of correctors, of®cial authorizers, and readers ±
censorship conferred authority on multiple agencies. Furthermore,
authors, publishers, readers were `ìndividuals'' upon whom the
mere fact of print conferred authority ± or in the language of recent
theory, a new ``subject'' status ± so to study censorship is to study
moments of individuation, moments that were historically con-
tingent, ideologically based, and mediated by other individuals.
A study of press censorship in Jacobean England thus cannot be
separated from a study of Jacobean political culture. Rather than the
symptom of an ill commonwealth that it is so often taken to be,
censorship itself provides an important means of diagnosing society's
ills, especially when we consider how Jacobeans sought to administer
it as a remedy to the ills they found in the body politic. While
chapter 1 describes the instruments that could be used to ``control''
the press, and those agencies that employed and appropriated these
instruments of control, ensuing chapters explore the wounds ± real
and perceived ± felt by members of the body politic, and the different
ways in which individuals and institutions sought to employ censor-
ship to attempt cures. Any analysis of a cure requires understanding
the ailments; so subsequent chapters devote considerable attention to
explaining the historical contexts, contingencies, and con¯icts that
prompted demands for cures. Chapters 2 and 3 show how in the
hands of King James censorship became either a public performative
act employed to ward off the demons of schism, regicide, resistance
theory, and heresy, or a private one fed by personal needs. Chapter 4
turns to the way in which censorship was used to salve the wounds
Church, Crown, parliament, and the common-law lawyers in¯icted
on each other in their persistent confrontation over privileges and
prerogatives. Chapter 5 shows how during the ``crisis'' years of the
1620s, Jacobean government attempted to raise an umbrella of
censorship to protect a body that often felt more wounded by royal
policy than by the threats the King saw in sermons and books. While
chapter 5 considers the ways in which international politics affected
domestic policies during the 1620s, chapter 6 looks at the crisis
through the lens of ecclesiastical faction ± a fracture deep in the bone
± one party regarding the word as the means to eternal peace, the
other seeking silence as a panacea for the Church's problems in the
world.
Introduction 17
While Whig studies of censorship that located all authority in the
monarch could easily diagnose disease in the body politic as anything
contrary to the royal will ± the theories and doctrines of either
Romanism or Calvinism, or the opinions of either parliament or the
common-law lawyers that the King was anything less than the
embodiment of all authority ± recognizing that multiple agencies
sought and employed censorship in Jacobean England means recog-
nizing that censorship operated at different times, in different ways,
and for different reasons. James I's investment in the printed word,
especially early in his reign when he was engaged in international
disputes about the nature of royal authority, led to the performative
use of censorship, that is, censorship as a propagandistic act that put
an exclamation point on a statement of royal opinion. To elevate the
Pope's authority over a monarch's, to claim Rome's supremacy over
the Church, to suggest any theological or moral taint in England's
monarchs, to allege that a monarch might be deposed, or to justify
his murder was seen by James I as an assault on the public honor of
England ± an insult to the body politic ± that could be countered by
censoring the offending text. The propagandistic use of censorship
was appropriated domestically by parliament, the common-law
lawyers, the civil lawyers (and, hence, the ecclesiastical courts), and
the ecclesiastical hierarchy when they felt the privileges and honor of
their institutions similarly derogated. The propagandistic use of
censorship reveals that the institutions of government in Jacobean
England ± including the ``nation'' itself ± were jealous of their image
and reputation. So were individuals, and when individuals had
recourse to the various agencies that could censor texts or imprison
their authors ± the King, members of the Privy Council, the High
Commission or its principal members (the Archbishop of Canterbury
and the Bishop of London), the Master and Wardens of the
Stationers' Company ± they could often ensure that a similar
statement of their displeasure could be made.
When censorship was employed propagandistically, the books
concerned often remained in circulation or were suppressed only
temporarily and returned to circulation when the political moment
passed. Some censorship sought to prevent certain texts from being
published or to remove published texts from circulation. While it
might be tempting to conclude that all texts censored in this way
were regarded as dangerous because they might foment disobedience
and rebellion, this was rarely the case. The audience with which the
King was most often concerned was less the reading ``public'' than
particular political allies, domestic and international, who might in
any way ®nd offense in a text, or who by misreading a text and
misusing a text might thwart James's political efforts.
Perhaps the most perplexing kind of censorship we encounter in
Jacobean England, and the one that is most often misunderstood, is
``licensing.'' As we shall see, licensing encompassed both the equiva-
lent of copyright that was controlled by the Stationers' Company,
and pre-publication review and allowance that, with only a few
exceptions, the ecclesiastical hierarchy controlled. While licensing is
most often viewed as the means by which the ``state'' assured its
hegemony, this can only be the case when the King and the clergy
were of a single mind, which was not the case in Jacobean England.
Not only could licensing be circumvented altogether, but authors
and printers were able to seek out authorizers who shared their
points of view. Furthermore, even the most radical writings could
®nd their way into circulation from `ìllegal'' or underground presses.
That so many different people and institutions had recourse to
censorship in Jacobean England reveals two important aspects of the
political society ± ®rst, that this was a society in which differences
resided, that had within it different visions of the nature of the state
and the Church; second, that while the King was genuinely
powerful, power also resided in other kinds of agencies. The bipolar
model of authority that studies of censorship most often have looked
to ± that which juxtaposes repressive government and individual
liberty ± grows out of post-Enlightenment thought, especially re-
sponses to twentieth-century totalitarian systems. From this perspec-
tive, censorship is a political evil that truly liberal states have
eschewed. Most liberal democracies self-con®dently assure them-
selves that while necessity of state ± armament and troop locations or
battle plans during a war, for example ± might justify a temporary
silence, people are free to write and print what they wish. In
contemporary America such a perspective ignores the extraordinary
authority commercial sponsors have over the content of television
shows, or that other economic interests have in the society. (In the
mid 1990s, after then President George Bush proclaimed his dislike
of broccoli, thirteen state legislatures passed so-called ``veggie libel
laws'' prohibiting making disparaging remarks about broccoli!) 43
The value of studying a culture's censorship is less to determine
where that society stands on a relative scale of freedom and repres-
Introduction 19
sion than to understand where power resides. When the United
States is engaged in a military action, power resides in the military.
But does the military still have the power to control the press when a
military action is not in progress? One measure of the power women
have amassed in contemporary America can be found in some
institutions like the workplace and the courts, where they have
gained restrictions on the kinds of language that can be used in
relation to them. Returning to Jacobean England, as this study will
demonstrate, power certainly resided in the King, but it also resided
in certain individuals within the King's government (Salisbury before
1612, Northampton, in 1613±15, Buckingham in the 1620s, the
Spanish ambassador), in parliament, and in the various law courts ±
civil and common law. The power to censor itself became a political
prize coveted by factions within the Church. Perhaps, most surpris-
ingly, the press itself, a kind of embryonic public sphere, amassed
authority and power of its own.
All this rightly suggests that censorship and control of the press
mattered in Jacobean England, but it is important to add one caveat.
However valued censorship was, and however useful it is to us as a
measure of both the loci of power and the important issues in
Jacobean England, it never occupied the Jacobeans as much as Hill's
term ``the censorship'' implies. Employing the most conservative
estimate of the number of books that issued from England's presses
between 1603 and 1625, fewer than 1 percent were in any way
involved with efforts to suppress them or punish their authors or
printers, and this includes those titles which received conditional
authorization but do not appear to have been printed. 44 Given this,
it is perhaps even more surprising that this study of press censorship
is a study of those issues that genuinely engaged Jacobean men and
women, which provoked their greatest interests ± and their greatest
anxieties.
chapter 1
Authority, license, and law: the theory and

practice of censorship
Understanding press censorship in Jacobean England requires recog-

nizing that however institutionally cohesive censorship or printing
trade practices may appear, varied and often contradictory and
competing interests shaped these practices in ways that over time
produced inherent contradictions. Censorship from this perspective
is local, and any act of censorship needs to seek its rationale in the
con¯uence of immediate contemporary economic, religious, and
political events. The events, for example, that prompted the Arch-
bishop of Canterbury, John Whitgift, and the Bishop of London,
Richard Bancroft, to ban and burn satires in 1599 differed markedly
from those that prompted Charles I to condemn Richard
Mountagu's Appello Caesarem and prohibit publications debating
predestination in 1626 and again in 1628. Indeed, censorship
practices during the reigns of Elizabeth and Charles I assumed
markedly different forms, and both are distinct from Jacobean press
censorship. Anthony Milton persuasively argues that, during the
1630s, pre-print licensing under the Archbishop of Canterbury,
William Laud, effectively sought to eliminate radical anti-papal
language and constrained the expression of radical Presbyterian
views.1 Furthermore, the Star Chamber trial of William Prynne for
writing Histriomastix and the repeated censorship by the court of
High Commission in the 1630s re¯ect censorship different in both
kind and degree from what I have found practiced during the reign
of Elizabeth, where censorship was principally political. Elizabeth's
government responded ad hoc; that is, written material would have
to attract the government's attention either by directly attacking
the government or by being associated with some event the govern-
ment perceived as threatening to its policies. The state's most
rigorous censorship efforts during the reign of Elizabeth were
directed ®rst at preventing the importation and dissemination of
20
License and law 21
those Catholic texts that ``treated of the State and the Queen's
majesty,'' and then at suppressing texts like the Marprelate tracts
written by radical Protestants seeking to dismantle the Elizabethan
Church settlement. During the reign of Elizabeth, a surprisingly
small number of texts written and printed in England provoked
censorship, and these locate press censorship during her reign in the
politics of personality, patronage, and national interest.2 Jacobean
censorship operated within the context of censorship practices
adopted during the reigns of his predecessors, but, as for his
predecessors, the peculiar interests that affected James's government
shaped censorship practices.
tudor press censorship: the jacobean inheritance

These differences in censorship's kind and degree may be understood
to rest in the ancient right of English monarchs to exercise authority
over printed texts that they considered favorable or detrimental to
their political and religious interests. Shifting religious and political
priorities dictated that the ends and practice of censorship be diverse
for each Tudor or Stuart monarch. Indeed, from the advent of
printing English monarchs, recognizing the printed word's extra-
ordinary power to achieve religious, political, and cultural ends,
engaged with the press at many levels. Henry VII and Henry VIII
promoted trade protection measures to encourage the development
of an English book trade. Tudor monarchs also patronized printing
through bestowing royal privileges on printers, booksellers, and
writers that ensured that certain books or classes of books would ®nd
their way into print. Such privileges, granting to their recipients the
right to enjoy the economic bene®ts derived from printing, prolifer-
ated during the reigns of both Henry VIII and Elizabeth but ceased
to be the principal means of protecting printers' rights to copy after
1557. In that year, Mary granted a charter to the Company of
Stationers of the City of London, which conferred on them the right
to operate and control the book trade.3 English monarchs sought not
only to promote the book trade but also to impose constraints on
publication. By their parliaments, proclamations, Privy Council
actions, and prerogative courts, they imposed censorship on printed
texts. Some measures required that printed materials receive licenses
for publication that were contingent upon of®cial approval (allow-
ance). Others designated as illegal certain categories of writing and
speech. Still others called for the suppression of given works that
transgressed the monarch's agenda.
Such a tradition of royal interest in the printed word may certainly
explain the kinds of difference apparent in censorship practices
under Elizabeth and Charles. Another explanation, however, lies in
institutional shifts in government that took place during the reigns of
Elizabeth and James I. Unlike Edward VI, Mary, and Elizabeth,
James I may actually be said to have inherited the government of his
predecessor ± indeed a government that existed for so long that its
practical innovations had become institutionalized. During the
course of Elizabeth's reign, such institutions as the House of
Commons, the courts of Star Chamber and High Commission, and
monopolies like the Stationers' Company became ®rmly entrenched
within the culture and adopted their own procedures and practices.
This was especially so in matters relating to the press where multiple
and often competing authorities affected the book trade. When
James assumed the throne, he was less content than Elizabeth to
allow his authority to devolve to other entities. Indeed, he was not
content to allow even the de®nition of his authority to come from
custom and practice but instead publicly and in print articulated the
theory of his rule. The history of the reign of James is one continuing
confrontation and negotiation among multiple entities of authority
that during Elizabeth's reign had been more comfortably subsumed
under the umbrella of the state, but which, during those long years,
had acquired distinctive characters and become entrenched. Since so
many of these institutions held some sway over the printed word,
during the reign of James confrontations and negotiations among
them inevitably impacted press control and censorship. Although
James engaged with the printed word and its control more exten-
sively than Elizabeth, censorship was no more the seamless garment
of state authority than it had been under Elizabeth. The texts
censored and the immediate conditions of their production and
control argue that press censorship between 1603 and 1625 mirrored
both the rivalries present in the Jacobean state and the competing
demands for and anxiety about power and authority. Censorship
under James was a playing card in a complex political game rather
than a strategic agenda to prevent the ``circulation of dangerous
ideas among the masses,'' as Christopher Hill suggested.
Central to this understanding of Jacobean censorship is the
recognition that the end of the sixteenth century saw the institution-
License and law 23
alization in the state of multiple agencies, a term purposely vague
since it variously includes of®cial arms of state like parliament,
formal practices like the royal prerogative, and informal entities like
factions and patronage. To understand the nature of these agencies
as they affected print control requires brie¯y reviewing the nature of
book production and its various institutional relationships to the
Tudor state, especially under Elizabeth.
The printed text's inherent nature ± its ease of production and
assured proliferation of copies ± combined with traditions in English
law to make the conception of unrestrained printing unthinkable in
Tudor England. On the one hand, since the Magna Carta an
essential focus of English law was ascertaining the right to property
and its transmission; on the other, early printed texts de®ed notions
of property ownership for several reasons. Authorship, unimportant
and often ignored in the medieval world, was an unstable concep-
tion, in part because so many of the earliest books printed ± law
books, missals, Bibles, miscellanies ± actually lacked authors, in part
because the early Protestant writers who used the press so extensively
often concealed their identities. Thus authorship, though it might be
identi®ed with agency as the latter case implies, provided no link to
material property. The printed book, however, possessed material
value. It represented both the costs of the publisher's investment in
his shop and all its material accoutrements ± press, letters, paper,
print, and labor ± and the means by which he could assure his
continued interest in this property. Under English law property was
something that could be held in an estate, but books had to be
disbursed ± sold ± to assure economic return. This condition, of
course, also existed for other material goods, but print's distinctive
feature, its ease of replication, allowed relatively inexpensive access
of one man to the product of another. If that product had commer-
cial value, he could himself reproduce it and obtain the return for
himself. A system that permitted such appropriation ± unrestricted
printing ± violated the principle of property. From the earliest days of
printing, printers recognized the necessity of identifying the material
object of the printed text as their ``real'' property. The earliest
practices in the book trade saw the printer's name and his printing-
house location imprinted on either the title page or colophon.
Without some form of enforcement, however, this was an insuf®cient
measure to assure the printer his sole right to the bene®t of his
investment and labor. Printers sought and received protection from
the Crown in the form of a royal privilege to print issued as a royal
proclamation or under the privy seal as a patent. Books so privileged
included imprints identifying the publisher's sole property right in
the text (or later cum privilegio regiae ad imprimendum solum), the violation
of which gave the privilege-holder protection in the royal courts. The
imprint cum privilegio has been misunderstood as indicative of of®cial
review and censorship, a condition speci®ed by some but not all
patents.4 Even so, that of®cial scrutiny ever existed as a condition for
economic protection accounts for the misconception that print
control is synonymous with censorship.
Another form of property protection sought by the book trade, the
chartering of the Company of Stationers of the City of London, has
been similarly misconstrued as a creature of royal authority con-
ceived to administer state surveillance of print. Although the lan-
guage Queen Mary employed in the 1557 patent for the charter
reveals her intention that the Company serve as a ``suitable remedy''
to the Protestant press,5 when Elizabeth con®rmed the charter in
1558, she ignored Mary's intentions altogether. Elizabeth let stand
the language of Mary's patent even though she would not have
shared Mary's interest in protecting ``Mother Church.'' The charter
itself conferred on the Company of Stationers privileges and prac-
tices common among the older guilds: rights of property ownership,
self-regulation, keeping apprentices, and engaging in searches to
protect the trade from ``foreigners'' (non-members) and poor work-
manship.6 It allowed the Stationers to petition the City for the right
to have a livery (granted in 1560), which assured the Company voting
rights in London and parliamentary elections, participation in
London governance, and status among London livery companies.
Further, the Charter provided for the Company's government by a
master and two wardens, who shared their authority with the
Company's court of Assistants, whose members were elected from
the liveried members.7 In these respects, the Stationers were no
different from other city companies. One unique bene®t the printers
of the Stationers' Company procured in their charter was the
exclusive practice of their trade of printing.8 In principle, this
monopoly, like those created by individual printing patents, provided
a means by which the right to print a text or have it printed could be
construed as a property right, although one to be conferred and
administered by the Company rather than the Crown.
During the latter half of the sixteenth century, the Stationers'
License and law 25
Company's principal task, besides admitting new members and
administering routine Company business, lay in recognizing and
protecting the integrity of its members' textual property rights. By
1562 the Company drafted ordinances requiring that members
secure their right in a text by obtaining from the wardens the
Company's license to print or have printed a given text and entering
the license in the Company's Register. The ordinance further
consolidated the court of Assistants' power over the membership,
which it exercised by bringing those members who violated another
member's property rights before the court of Assistants, deciding the
case's merit, and, where warranted, imposing ®nes.9 The register of
licenses, together with the register of ``fynes for defautes for
pryntynge withoute lycense,'' represents the earliest Company docu-
ments.10 The Company license, however, meant nothing unless the
Company maintained the integrity of its monopoly. Twice, once in
1566 and again in 1586, when challenges arose to its authority, the
court of Star Chamber issued decrees con®rming the monopoly.
The 1566 Ordinances were secured by the High Commission in
response to the in¯ux of continental Catholic books attacking
Elizabeth's religious settlement. These decrees prohibited printing,
binding, importing, or selling any books that violated either English
statute or royal patents and designated penalties for violating the
ordinances (book forfeitures, ®nes, imprisonment, and exclusion
from the trade).11 While this undeniably represents a government
intention to censor transgressive texts, by appealing to royal patents
as one of the standards that prohibited books violated, the decree
reaf®rmed the monopolies of both the Stationers and individual
privileged printers. That this is so becomes apparent in the language
of the cases brought before the court of Star Chamber during the
major challenge mounted by non-Company and un-patented print-
ers against printing monopolies in the 1580s. Beginning in 1577
Christopher Barker, the Queen's Printer, ®led complaints against
other members of the Company who were printing against his
patent.12 In 1582 John Day brought a bill of complaint in the court
of Star Chamber against Roger Ward and William Holmes for their
failure to comply with the 1566 Ordinances, which had af®rmed
both the Stationers' Company monopoly and printers' privileges
``sett forth by the Quenes most Excellent majestie[s] graunte.''13
Several other cases, all well documented in Edward Arber's tran-
scription of the Stationers' Company Registers, followed, and all of
them appealed to the precedent established by the 1566 Star
Chamber Ordinances.14
Cases on patent violations might have been decided on an
individual basis had discontents with the printing establishment not
spread to other venues. In 1577 and again in 1582, journeymen
printers complained to the Privy Council that the economic hard-
ships they were experiencing resulted from abuses by privileged
printers. Besides the journeymen's petitions, in 1581 John Wolfe, a
member of the Fishmongers' Company, led an all-out attack against
the Stationers' monopoly by setting up his printing business in
London and printing copies owned by Company members and royal
patentees.15 His actions emboldened other non-Company members
to do the same, which provoked the Privy Council to intervene.
Although they summoned Wolfe to appear, they arrived at the
solution of creating a commission on printing privileges to address
the cumulative problem over patents and the Stationers' monopoly.16
The commission's report and recommendations closely resemble the
1586 Star Chamber Decrees for order in printing.
The 1586 decrees ± commonly referred to as the ``1586 Star
Chamber Decree'' and viewed as having considerable impact on
printing and licensing practices well into the seventeenth century ±
set forth nine ordinances governing printing and placed their
execution in the hands of the `Àrchebysshop of CANTERBURY and
the righte honorable the lordes and others of her highenes pryvye
councell.''17 Of the nine items in this decree, eight seek to remedy
the problems that had arisen from a proliferation of printing presses,
many of which were being used to print not only unlicensed works
but works violating royal patents and Company licenses. The 1586
Decree sought to protect the printing establishment and placed the
administration of that protection in the hands of the Stationers'
Company. Item one required anyone involved in printing to register
with the Master and Wardens of the Stationers' Company, and items
six and seven designate that Stationers' Company's Wardens or their
deputies search for and seize illegal presses and books. One item,
item four that reiterated the 1566 Ordinances, reserved printing to
patentees and the Stationers, and called for pre-print censorship by
ecclesiastical of®cials.18
A genuine triumph for the Stationers' Company and the
privileged printers, the 1586 Decree was an extraordinarily conserva-
tive document in the sense that it reaf®rmed old practices. It
License and law 27
unequivocally upheld the rights and prerogatives of the Company
and the privileged printers in the face of recent challenges and
sought to insure both adequate work and adequate employment
within the Company. In doing so, it signi®cantly strengthened the
Stationers as an institution, giving them considerable weight when
they confronted members of the Drapers' Guild in the 1590s.
According to Gerald Johnson, relationships between the Stationers
and Drapers deteriorated in the 1580s and 1590s because an
increasing number of Drapers were publishing and selling books.
The Stationers responded by interfering in the Drapers' apprentice-
ship system, restricting their right to enter copies, and hindering the
Drapers in getting their copies printed. The con¯ict reached a crisis
in 1598, when the case between the Drapers and the Stationers went
to the Star Chamber, with the Drapers claiming the ``custom of the
city'' and the Stationers arguing the Drapers' violation of the 1586
Decree. The court found in favor of the Stationers.19 This case
effectively extended the Stationers' monopoly from printing to
selling books, so that by the time James came to the throne in 1603
the Stationers' Company was ®rmly entrenched in all aspects of the
trade and notions of textual property were clearly de®ned and
protected by the Company.
Another practice that became institutionalized as a consequence
of the 1586 Decree was ecclesiastical authorization. The mandate
that a text receive some form of of®cial approval prior to printing
was an old one. Indeed, the governments of Henry VIII, Edward VI,
and Mary had ordered either by statute, decrees, or royal proclama-
tions some form of ``licensing.''20 Elizabeth's licensing was born of
her religious settlement, and while printers were called upon to
uphold the licensing requirements, the pre-print authorization called
for by the government was distinct from the license granted by the
Stationers' Company that recognized the right to property. While
`àuthorization'' of every book seems to have been expected by the
state, entries in the Stationers' Registers indicate that the Stationers'
wardens could choose whether or not to insist upon ecclesiastical
authorization as a condition for the Company's license. This does
not mean, as W. W. Greg suggests, that the Company of®cials
themselves served as of®cial authorizers. Instead, the presence in
Company register books of the authorizer's name appears to be an
added documentary protection to the Company and its members;
i.e. should any question ever arise surrounding the of®cial legality of
a text, the presence of the authorizer's name in the entry would
displace any stigma of illegal printing from the Company or its
member.
The 1559 Act of Supremacy, which gave the Queen the authority
both to visit and reform the `ècclesiastical state,'' authorized the
Queen to employ royal letters patent to create an ecclesiastical
commission to administer this authority over the ecclesiastical
state.21 In 1559 Elizabeth created the London High Commission,
headed by the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London,
``to put in execution throughout the realm the Acts of Uniformity
and Supremacy and to INQUIRE touching all heretical opinions,
seditious books, contempts, false rumours and the like and hear and
determine the same.''22 The Queen's 1559 Injunctions, which set
forth to the clergy the form and substance of the Elizabethan
Church reform, included one item (Item 51) that required approval
of texts for print by the Ecclesiastical Commissioners.23 The injunc-
tion on printing ended with the Queen's commandment to `àl
manner her subjectes, and specially the wardens and company of
Stationers, to be obedyent.'' Securing that obedience fell to the High
Commission. Licensing would be as effective and inclusive as the
High Commission made it, and from all available evidence, although
the High Commission did on several occasions during the reign of
Elizabeth exercise its authority over printing, it never enforced
invasive and inclusive licensing of all printed matter. Over the years,
the jurisdiction over printing that had been conferred on the High
Commission came to be exercised by the Archbishop of Canterbury
and the Bishop of London. Whenever matters arose in the Privy
Council regarding printing, either the Archbishop or the Bishop
served as a liaison between the government and the Stationers.
Furthermore, their names appeared with those of several London
clerics in the records of of®cial authorizers. After 1586 the informal
governance of printing that these ecclesiastical leaders had assumed
was formalized: the 1586 Star Chamber Decree designated the
Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London as responsible
for pre-print authorization, and the Archbishop was given authority
to approve requests for establishing new printing presses.
Authorization for print was at its inception clearly ecclesiastical in
its administration and predominantly ecclesiastical in its intent. Even
the 1586 Star Chamber Decree's renewed mandate for ecclesiastical
authorization reiterated that it should be `àccording to her majesty's
License and law 29
injunctions.'' Subsequent to the Star Chamber Decree, the Arch-
bishop of Canterbury, John Whitgift, appointed a board of licensers
to regularly ``peruse and allow'' books for the Stationers. Whitgift's
board of authorizers gave to ecclesiastical licensing the kind of
bureaucratic ef®ciency that former licensing provisions had lacked.
Obtaining an authorization from three members of the Commission
for Ecclesiastical Causes or from six privy councilors as Elizabeth's
injunction on printing had speci®ed would have challenged any
printer's resourcefulness. Even the 1586 Decree's provision that all
books be perused and allowed by either the Archbishop of Canter-
bury or the Bishop of London would have been an administrative
nightmare for these two men with the hundreds of books issuing
from London presses in the late 1580s. To call upon one of eight
senior authorizers or two of four junior authorizers was far easier for
an author or printer.24 But even with this increased ef®ciency, the
1586 Star Chamber Decree and the 1588 panel of authorizers did not
achieve full ecclesiastical licensing of the English press, and although
each successive decade from 1586 through 1629 saw an increase in
the number of works entered in the Stationers' Register carrying
notice of outside authority, from 44 percent being authorized in the
1590s to 84 percent in the 1620s, the actual percentage of works
entered in the Register decreased from 60 percent in 1590±99, to 49
percent in 1620±29.25
By placing authority for permitting both new printing presses and
books in the Archbishop of Canterbury's hands, the Star Chamber
Decree formalized a drift in the High Commission's function that
had been occurring since its creation in 1559. To be sure, the
Archbishop of Canterbury led the High Commission, but now
authorizing books for print became of®cially distinct from those
responsibilities the High Commission had come to assume. This
achieved further the kind of proliferation of agency that marked
Elizabeth's administrative practice. The agency that resided in the
ecclesiastical licensing establishment became formally distinct from
the High Commission, even though in practice this distinction had
existed for several years. Elizabeth's 1559 Injunctions envision an
ecclesiastical commission: ``Her majesties commysioners, or iii of
them, as be appoynted in the citye of London to here, and determine
divers causes ecclesiasticall, tending to the execution of certyne
statutes, made the last parliament for unyformitye of order in
religion.''26 The parliamentary statute to which this refers is the 1559
Act of Supremacy which, among other things, gave to the Queen's
agents appointed by letters patent the jurisdiction to visit and reform
all `èrrours, heresies, schisms, abuses, offences, contempts and
enormities whatsoever which by any manner spiritual or ecclesi-
astical power, authority or jurisdiction can or may lawfully be
reformed . . . to the pleasure of Almighty God.'' 27 These commis-
sioners, who came to be known as the High Commission, were
appointed by letters patent issued in July 1559 that called upon
them, among several other things, to take action against ``heretical
opinions, seditious books, contempts, conspiracies'' and ``false
rumours.''28 According to Philip Tyler, the High Commission from
its inception was a properly constituted law court deriving its
procedure from the older church law courts.29 According to John
Guy, the High Commissions erected at Canterbury and York under
the authority of the Act of Supremacy combined judicial and
visitorial functions to deprive clergy who refused to take the oath to
Elizabeth's supremacy and conform to the Act of Uniformity and the
Queen's 1559 Injunctions.30 The High Commission was not only
distinct from the regular ecclesiastical courts, but the government
clearly distinguished the High Commission's jurisdiction over ecclesi-
astical matters from its own concern for matters of state, a distinction
that was more than theoretical. The Elizabethan Privy Council
regularly monitored both the High Commission's jurisdiction and its
procedures.31 While the High Commission at times may have abused
the limits of its jurisdiction, Elizabeth I's government clearly
intended that the High Commission should concern itself only with
ecclesiastical matters.
From its inception in 1559, the High Commission was clearly the
means by which Elizabeth's regime expected to control opposition to
the religious settlement ± including printed opposition. The Sta-
tioners were expected to seek approval `àccording to her Majesty's
Injunctions,'' but their authority over trade matters was distinct from
the High Commission's authority over conformity. Between 1559 and
1586 both the Stationers and the High Commissioners generally
functioned independently from one another, although on some
occasions each relied on the others' authority to serve some mutual
advantage. The relationship between the Stationers and the High
Commission was remarkably ¯uid, responding to changing political
and economic events. But so was the function of the High Commis-
sion. While in 1566 it had sought to control the in¯ux of continental
License and law 31
Catholic texts by requesting the Star Chamber to issue its ordi-
nances, the High Commission actually interfered infrequently with
the workings of the London Stationers, though they did concern
themselves with the printed word. Motivated by concerns about
heresy and sedition, various Archbishops of Canterbury acted to
suppress religious works, but these were printed abroad or by under-
ground presses.32 Similarly, it was not unusual for a Bishop of
London to investigate prospective heresy, as Edmund Grindal did in
ordering a search of the house of the chronicler John Stow for
suspected papist writings in 1568.33 Once the 1570 Papal Decree
(Bull) excommunicated Elizabeth and released her Catholic subjects
from obedience to her, Catholic matters became the object of
parliamentary and Privy Council control, leaving the High Commis-
sion to contend with radical Protestant opposition.
The Elizabethan High Commission served as the principal court
of inquiry into conformity among the English clergy. In both the
Vestiarian Controversy in the 1560s and the Admonition Controversy
in the early 1570s, clerical nonconformists put their opposition into
print, giving additional grounds on which to question and challenge
the dissenting ministers who authored and printed oppositional
texts.34 Radical Protestant opposition culminated in the late 1580s in
the Martin Marprelate pamphlets, which attacked members of the
ecclesiastical establishment personally and advocated dismantling
episcopal governance of the English Church. In this case the High
Commission was joined by the Crown, the Privy Council, and the
entire ecclesiastical establishment to discover Martin and his print-
ers. In their efforts to achieve conformity, the High Commission's
methods were abusive: they allowed their examinees to languish in
prison before their hearings; they administered the oath ex of®cio mero
before they read charges and indictments; they legally required
imprisonment to enforce conformity, and they called in and exam-
ined authors and printers of some of the most radical puritan
manifestos. Largely ineffectual against the continental Catholic
press, and constrained in their efforts to achieve conformity to
focusing their attention on the clergy, the High Commission played a
far smaller role in press censorship than their patent or the 1559
Injunctions envisioned. This is not to say, however, that as an
institution the High Commission was negligible ± quite the contrary.
During the 1580s and 1590s, the regularizing of its procedures and its
expansion as a Church court into matters besides nonconformity
constituted its establishment as an important legal venue in England,
one that could engage in censorship though it generally did not do
so.
Since the entities created to control the press, the Stationers'
Company and the High Commission, diverged from their intended
function as they evolved and became entrenched at the end of the
sixteenth century, it becomes necessary to look elsewhere for the
teeth in censorship. They can be found in the laws of the land and
the courts that enforced them. Two long-standing institutions,
parliament and the royal prerogative, proved to be Elizabethan
England's most useful means for effecting censorship. Parliament
enacted statutes that de®ned illegal writing and speci®ed penalties
for violating the law. Royal proclamations, while restrained by
common law in the kinds of penalty they could actually impose,
identi®ed books and classes of books which constituted transgressive
writing, and called for the punishment of their authors and
publishers.
The statutory grounds for press censorship are clear: writing or
printing texts denying the monarch's ecclesiastical and temporal
authority, advocating the rights of anyone else to that authority,
advocating rebellion, calling the monarch a heretic or usurper,
``compassing'' bodily harm to the Queen, or slandering or defaming
her ± that is, attacks on the Queen's authority ± came within the
compass of high treason. During Elizabeth's reign parliament passed
eleven statutes addressing treason and sedition that included in their
de®nitions of treason and sedition some form of the phrase ``by
Wryting Pryntinge Preachinge Speache expresse Wordes or
Sayinges.'' The 1571 statute, for example, made it treason to
``compas or imagyn'' bodily harm against the monarch, to stir
foreigners to invade England, or to declare in words or writing that
the monarch was a heretic, schismatic, tyrant, in®del, or usurper.
Furthermore, it mandated a year's imprisonment for writing about
the succession to the English Crown.35 Actual trials for treasonous
writing are few in Elizabethan England; possessing books which did
any of these things, however, often became part of the evidence
rather than the cause itself in treason trials. To be accused of high
treason during Elizabeth's reign was no small matter for, as John
Bellamy has demonstrated, it was in these matters that the govern-
ment often resorted to torture to secure either a confession or
information about conspirators.36 Trials for high treason (conspiracy
License and law 33
to overthrow the Queen or participating in actual rebellion) were
held before special commissions of oyer and terminer, called for the
express occasion. According to Bellamy ± and contrary to common
belief ± the evidence presented in these trials appears to have been
fairly accurate, though the government in its indictments and
evidence often took advantage of an excellent propaganda oppor-
tunity.37 Lesser treason cases were tried at the assizes. Furthermore,
writing, publishing, or printing texts with rumors, libels, or slanders
against the Queen ± that is, attacks on her dignity ± were felonies
that invoked increasingly more rigorous sanctions. In 1581 parlia-
ment replaced a statute mandating the loss of a hand for slandering
the Queen with one that invoked the death penalty for anyone found
guilty of ``devising, writing, printing, or setting forth'' or ``procuring
or publishing'' any text ``containing any false, seditious, and slan-
derous matter to the defamation of the Queenes Majesty, that now is,
or to the incouraging, stirring or moving of any insurrection or
rebellion.'' Besides the treason and slander statutes, parliament
passed no statutes between 1558 and 1603 with the express purpose
of controlling the English press. The majority of texts censored
between 1559 and 1603 were censored by eleven royal proclamations.
Taken together, these illustrate that government press censorship, for
the most part, proceeded ad hoc, responding to transgressive religious
and political discourses as they arose.
The effectiveness of royal proclamations as a tool of censorship
was limited by the nature of proclamations themselves. Royal
proclamations were restricted by English common law. Statute and
common law in Tudor England, according to G. R. Elton, held the
highest authority; proclamations were inferior:
They could not (and did not) touch life or member; though they might
create offences with penalties, they could not create felonies or treasons.
Nor could they touch common law rights of property . . . proclamations
covered administrative, social, and economic matters ± though they
included religion, as the sphere of the supreme head's personal action ± but
never matters that both the judges and parliament would regard as
belonging to law and statute.38
Proclamations held no force in the common-law courts and required
for their effective administration provisions within the proclamation
for their enactment. The royal proclamation was, in short, an
administrative tool as effective as its own provisions made it.
The real power in a royal proclamation lay in its value as
propaganda. Paul L. Hughes and James F. Larkin in Tudor Royal
Proclamations observe that the Tudor proclamation was `à literary
form psychologically gauged to elicit from the subject an obedient
response, favorable to the interests of the Crown.''39 As adminis-
trative tools, Elizabethan proclamations re¯ected the Crown's re-
sponse to particular events calling for immediate government action.
As propaganda, not only did they offer the government's version of
the events and the rationale for its actions, but they projected an
image of a uni®ed English commonwealth, its peace and stability
tended by the Queen and her good subjects. Censorship, from this
perspective, represented a dire action for dire circumstances that
endangered the commonwealth.
Of the eleven proclamations issued to censor printed texts during
the reign of Elizabeth I, six addressed Catholic texts issued from
continental presses, one a principally political work, and four related
to texts associated with radical Protestantism.40 Of these six relating
to Catholic texts, only the ®rst concerned itself with apologetics; the
remainder address texts clearly political in nature. The Catholic
political pamphlets' rhetoric prompted the polarized rhetoric of the
Elizabethan proclamations condemning/suppressing these conti-
nental texts. Texts on both sides relied upon a construction of
otherness using language of violent agent and oppressed subject,
with one side merely juxtaposing the other's oppressor and victim.
While the English Channel provided Elizabeth and her Privy
Council with a convenient line from which to mount their verbal
assault, the effectiveness of either the geographical boundary or the
censorship campaign to actually control the in¯ux of objectionable
Catholic texts is doubtful. On the one hand, in their lack of
speci®city, successive proclamations had a cumulative effect in
promulgating censorship. Each proclamation responded to a new
wave of texts, but all the proclamations, by not naming titles,
enabled the condemnation and suppression of all those texts that
previously had been condemned. On the other hand, such vagueness
could not have enabled effective suppression of speci®c texts,
particularly when the proclamations did not provide any means to
administer their admonitions. Undoubtedly possessing ``popish
books'' served to incriminate Jesuits, seminary priests, and recusants
otherwise suspected of subversive activities. The public of®cer's job
in suppressing unnamed texts in and of themselves, however, must
have been formidable. Furthermore, that the successive proclama-
License and law 35
tions employed inclusive language suggests that previous censorship
efforts had proven ineffective, as indeed they had. According to A.
C. Southern in English Recusant Prose, prior to 1580 somewhere near
20,000 Catholic books had been imported into England and sold,
and this continued throughout Elizabeth's reign.41
While the religious, political, and geographical divide had served
Elizabeth and her Privy Council well in constructing the Catholic
enemy, the lines between English Protestants were less clear. Even
members of Elizabeth's Privy Council aligned themselves differently
on the spectrum of religious reform. This kind of diversity in
Protestant allegiance and belief undoubtedly contributed to laxness
in licensing and authorizing puritan texts, many of which were
printed legally during the 1570s and 1580s. 42 Elizabeth and her Privy
Council acted four times to suppress texts associated with radical
Protestant reform and once to suppress a political book that could be
associated with the interests of the Protestant left. In the last case,
one proclamation, issued 27 September 1579, denouncing Stubbs's
The Discoverie of a Gaping Gulf, stands alone as a government act to
suppress an English book regarded as seditious on entirely political
grounds. Elizabeth's ®rst proclamation against any books of religious
reform (1573) ordered the surrender of the Admonition to the Parliament
and the pamphlets defending it.43 The Admonition having been
written and printed in three editions in 1572, this proclamation
represents a Crown response taken after other efforts to control the
controversy had failed. Like the earliest proclamations against
Catholic propaganda, the means prescribed to achieve the proclama-
tion's ends are ineffectual, charging only that owners of the books
turn them in to Church and government of®cials. 44 Public response
(or, rather, nonresponse) to the proclamation is notorious.45
Two other proclamations suppressing texts of religious reform
subordinated censorship to the larger interests of suppressing the
reform sects themselves. A proclamation on 3 October 1580 out-
lawed the Family of Love and the texts serving as the ``ground of
their sect.'' The proclamation calls upon ecclesiastical of®cials to
seek out members of the sect and proceed against them by both
ecclesiastical and temporal laws. The 30 June 1583 proclamation
declaring Brownist writings seditious and schismatic threatens those
who would further print or distribute Brownist writings46 with full
execution of laws against sedition; the proclamation's central remedy
is ``that all manner of persons whatsoever, who have any of the said
books . . . bring in and deliver up the same unto the ordinary of the
diocese.''47
The ®nal Elizabethan proclamation directed toward radical Prot-
estant writings appeared 13 February 1589 to order the destruction of
the Marprelate publications. The seven Marprelate pamphlets ap-
peared between October 1588 and September 1589, and despite
their illegality and the High Commission's zeal to discover their
perpetrators, a veil of secrecy protected the authors and printers.
Coming as it did in February 1589, the royal proclamation lent
authority to the High Commission's campaign against Martin. This
proclamation calls for the Marprelate tracts' suppression; the means
it provides for effecting this censorship are relatively benign. It
authorizes no searches; it declares no martial law. The government
may proceed against offenders ``by the law.'' The proclamation's real
value lay in its persuasive agenda: it declared the dangers to Church
and state of whatever radical reforms might be sought in the
parliament newly convened; it justi®ed the High Commission's
opposition to reform; and it provided for the High Commission a
visible means to assault the reformers. As for the Marprelate tracts
themselves, according to Collinson, all but a few puritan divines
joined in their censure.48 Although their printer, Robert Waldegrave,
was never discovered, Sir Richard Knightly, a Mr. Hales, and Sir
Wickstone and his wife were tried before the Star Chamber and
received the following sentences: Sir Richard was ®ned £2,000 for
allowing The Epitome to be printed in his house; Mr. Hales was ®ned
1,000 marks for allowing The Supplication to Parliament and Hay any
worke for a Cooper to be printed in his; Lady Wickstone was ®ned
£1,000 for allowing Martyn Senior and Martyn Junior to be printed in
her house, and her husband received a ®ne of 500 marks for not
disclosing the printing. Upon Whitgift's intercession on their behalf,
all were set at liberty and their ®nes were remitted. 49
Fredrick Siebert's assertion in Freedom of the Press in England,
1476±1776 that Elizabeth I's reign achieved a three-hundred-year
``high point of government control of printing'' as a consequence of
the number and variety of controls, mistakes for effectiveness a
proliferation of agency that actually diminished central authority.50
Most of the institutions that had any responsibility for monitoring
the press performed this action as secondary or tertiary to their
primary functions. As the practices of these institutions became
codi®ed and entrenched, their central focus became the administra-
License and law 37
tion of those matters for which they had been created. These
interests took precedence over press control. Rather than uni®ed
cultural practice, censorship came to be wielded as a strategic
weapon, mounted for weighty occasions. When James came to the
throne in 1603, he inherited something comparable to a bureaucracy.
And although no monarch in early modern England can truly be
said to `ìnherit'' the government of his predecessor, James was the
®rst in over a century not to enact a wholesale reform of Church or
state during his reign. James fashioned his monarchy from within the
context of existing institutions, seeking to impose on them his
singular vision of personal rule. Press control and censorship
between 1603 and 1625 participated in this pattern. Those practices
and of®ces that had become institutionalized under Elizabeth con-
tinued to exist for James to appropriate and mark as his own ± or to
resist his appropriation. When Siebert ®nds James less interested in
controlling the press than his predecessor, he looks to innovation
rather than appropriation.51 James, indeed, instituted no new press
controls, but he employed and changed, sometimes inadvertently,
existing ones in such a way that censorship became qualitatively
different over the course of his reign. The remainder of this chapter
recounts the institutional changes and their implications for under-
standing Jacobean censorship. The kinds or number of controls,
important as they are, offer only a partial image. The fuller image,
found in individual acts of censorship and their immediate contexts,
belongs to subsequent chapters.
the privy council and press control

During the reign of Elizabeth, the Privy Council frequently em-
ployed pursuivants to search for illegal Catholic writing, sometimes
for illegal presses but more often for books and religious articles that
might provide evidence of illegal Catholic worship. Twice during the
reign of James, in 1605 and in 1613, unnamed Catholic books were
burned at Paul's Cross. Diligent monitoring of Catholic writing
belongs to the early years of James I's reign, especially as Robert
Cecil supervised it. Between 1605 and 1610 Cecil frequently received
letters notifying him that a press had been found or that books had
been seized, often presumably by customs of®cials.
Even before the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot in November
1605, Cecil was seeking intelligence on Jesuits who might be in
hiding by identifying Catholic writing and discovering printers who
might, then, have information on them. On one such occasion, one
Udall (a frequent employee of Cecil) was sought out to discover a
Jesuit. An 18 March 1605 letter to Cecil reports:
Udall being referred unto me by my Lord chief Justice at his going forth of
the town for some services wherewith your lordship was made acquainted
did yesternight bring this pamphlet unto me, wherein under the name of a
puritan, a seminary priest persuades toleration both for puritans and
papists, though in all the tenor of the discourse he wrote for papists only. I
have read it cursorily over and ®nd the arguments to be fetched ®rst from
rule of Scripture and then from policy of no great depth but un®t to be
current, both for the subject and something in the latter end concerning the
noble prince Cecill. The Jesuit is the author of the treatise and they are
printed here. I have wished Udall to pay as much he can the venting of
them, until the printer may be taken, whose name he knows.52
The government's principal concern here has as much to do with

identifying and detaining the printer as restraining the circulation of
a writing that was simply `ùn®t to be current.'' The press was
subsequently seized, but the printer was released shortly after to
serve other ends.53 Two months later, another of Cecil's agents
employed Henry Tailor, a printer who had formerly been arrested.
Tailor, apparently willing to advertise the Privy Council `òf the
resort of many seminary priests that are harboured near,'' was to set
up his press, renew ``familiar acquaintance,'' and then provide
intelligence that would enable the Council to apprehend the priests.
The plan went awry when word was out among imprisoned printers
that Tailor had been freed from jail and rewarded with his presses
and prints: `` By which we fear Tailor can do no such service as has
been promised or is expected, and we also dought that ou[r] late
searches for the presses have made the priests as yet refuse their
former accustome abodes.''54 Although Tailor may have been an
ineffectual agent, Cecil found others, especially through Udall's
efforts. Several times between 1606 and 1607, Udall reported
Catholic activities in Worcestershire, Staffordshire and Warwick-
shire, almost always with some account of illegal writing or seized
presses. (Printing especially prompted Udall's interest since he was
rewarded with the revenues brought by the sale of any con®scated
presses and letters.) Although the Privy Council continued to take
an interest in any writing that elicited the government's attention,
the kind of close scrutiny of Catholic writing and printing appears to
License and law 39
have subsided a few years after the Gunpowder Plot ± probably
because the Oath of Allegiance proved a more effective tool than
Cecil's intelligence-gathering for monitoring dangerous Catholic
activities.
the stationers' company and privileged printing,

1603 ± 1625
When James I came to the throne in 1603, he rescinded all Eliza-
bethan patents by a royal proclamation on 7 May 1603. Although
James's 1603 proclamation denounced monopolies and patents, it
ended only those Elizabeth had granted, which enabled James to
continue an economy of privilege ± but to his own patentees. On 29
October 1603 James issued letters patent in favor of the Stationers'
Company that granted it in perpetuity the privilege to print primers,
Psalters, psalms in meter, the ABC with the little Catechism, and
almanacs and prognostications. This grant represented three of the
most lucrative of the Elizabethan patents that had belonged to James
Roberts, William and Richard Seres, and John Day. Among these
titles were Thomas aÁ Kempis's Imitation of Christ, St. Augustine's Prayers,
and Nowell's Catechism. The patent provided that the Master,
Wardens, and commonalty of the Stationers held the license to print
these works, that the court of Assistants was empowered to make
rules for the patent's execution and to impose ``paynes, punyshments
and penaltys'' for those infringing it, and that the patent's admin-
istration should stay entirely in the hands of the Master, Wardens,
and Assistants. This patent laid the groundwork for perhaps the most
signi®cant change in the Stationers' Company in the seventeenth
century ± the emergence of the Company as a capitalist venture.
Combined with the titles privileged printers had conveyed to the
Company in 1584, this grant created the center of what came to be
known as the English Stock. The Stationers' Company was now in
the business of publishing. The initial holdings were expanded to
include law books (including Coke's Reports, Crompton's Justice of the
Peace, Lombard's Justice of the Peace, and Yearbooks from the reigns of
Edward IV, Henry IV, Henry V, Henry VI, Henry VII, and Henry
VIII), some schoolbooks (including Cicero's Of®ces, Epistles, and
Sententiñ, ásop's Fables, Erasmus's Epitome, and the works of Virgil
and Terence), Foxe's Acts and Monuments, and Samuel Daniel's
Chronicle. For a time during the seventeenth century, the Stock
partners engaged in subsidiary enterprises including a Bible Stock,
an Irish Stock, and a Latin Stock (books printed on the Continent).
The Company administered its ownership of Stock copies by
selling shares to the commonality of the Company. Any member of
the Stationers was entitled to purchase a share in the English Stock,
from which he drew dividends. The initial division consisted of
®fteen shares for Assistants at £200 each, thirty shares for Liverymen
at £100 each and sixty shares for members of the Yeomanry at £50
each. Shares in the Stock could not be assigned, but a partner's
widow might inherit her husband's share or part in a share. When
she died or remarried, her part was reassigned by the court of
Assistants and the heirs were repaid the original purchase money.
The Stock initially paid a dividend quarterly, and later, annually.
The dividend paid on 4 July 1606 was 10 percent, and in December
1619, 621 percent. Cyprian Blagden estimates that dividends averaged
20 to 25 percent annually, and notes that in the second half of the
century investors were disgruntled when dividends fell below 1221
percent.55 The Stock itself was managed by Stock-keepers and a
Treasurer elected by the partners. The Stock-keepers quite literally
kept the keys to the warehouses. The full committee assumed
responsibility for publishing ± deciding what printers would print
which titles, ordering and delivering paper, receiving printed sheets
into the warehouses ± and for authorizing payments. The Treasurer
maintained lists provided by the Stock-keepers and committee, ®lled
orders, kept the accounts and made all payments. Despite this
structure, according to Blagden, ``the business of the English Stock
and the business of the Company were dif®cult if not impossible to
keep separate,'' particularly since, after 1603, the court of Assistants
often withheld dividends of disobedient Company members.56
The Stationers ostensibly sought the 1603 patent that formed the
English Stock to enable the Company to employ its poorer printers.
Instead, although the Stock did create some employment, economic
conditions persisted that perpetuated demands for restrictive mea-
sures. According to Sheila Lambert the central problem faced by
Stationers in the early seventeenth century was over-capacity within
the trade in a period of economic recession. Lambert observes that
in response to this, ``leading printers strove hard to obtain a
reduction in the number of presses, the journeymen sought to restrict
entry to the trade and to insist on restrictive practices to spread the
available work.''57 Furthermore, to protect their claim to available
License and law 41
work, printers and publishers, both independently and through the
Stock, sought new monopolies. While the printers were fairly
effective at holding down the number of presses, until 1628 at least,
monopolies continued to create problems in the trade. While the
Stock may have provided for a few printers, large printing syndicates
were often the major bene®ciaries. Unemployed printers resorted to
piracy of the Stock Company's popular and lucrative titles. Even
prominent printers resorted to continental printing of Stock and
other privileged titles, as well as a considerable number of books that
were not piracies.
One measure of the complex problems created by monopolies can
be seen in three patents in particular, those granted by King James to
George Wither, George Wood, and Marin BoisloreÂ. In each of these
instances the King extended a patent that infringed upon the
Stationers and provoked resistance from the Company. The quarrels,
which found their way into parliament, the High Commission, the
Privy Council, and print without satisfactory resolution for the
parties involved, point to the further institutionalization the multiple
agencies having authority over printing experienced during the reign
of James. Efforts to negotiate the quarrels that James's patents
incited reveal the emerging independence and rising polarization of
multiple authorities over print. Their effort to contain and control
quarrels over property rights can sometimes look like an effort to
control ± to censor ± the property itself. At other times, the efforts
show concern for neither property nor right, and display instead the
unmitigated challenges of one authority to another.
The patents James extended generally differed from Elizabethan
printing patents. Elizabethan patents which conferred exclusive
ownership of whole classes of titles ± schoolbooks, chronicle histories,
law books ± primarily went to printers who were members of the
Stationers' Company. Although the Company lost licensing and
entry fees of patented titles, Elizabethan patents generally enriched
Company members and provided work to the trade. James's patents
either paid little regard to the Stationers or created circumstances
that openly challenged their authority, probably because he was
more interested in patents as a means to enrich royal coffers than as
mechanisms of propaganda. Patents themselves functioned as com-
modities that were bought, sold, and assigned, and while not all book
and printing patents were procured for a fee, the Crown derived
economic bene®ts from many of them. According to Arnold Hunt,
since patentees generally received some form of revenue from their
privileges, the Crown used patents to settle debts at no cost to the
Exchequer.58 Edward Parker, tenth Baron Morley, must have antici-
pated considerable revenues for the patent he procured in exchange
for the Marshalship of Ireland for printing and uttering God and King,
a book containing an exposition on the Oath of Allegiance desig-
nated to be taught in `Àll Schooles in England and Ireland as a
meanes . . . most requisite to preserve and season yonge mindes
against the pestilent Doctrines of the Jesuites,'' especially since `à
commaunde to all Archbishops Bishops and other Ecclesiastical
of®cers to cause the same to be taught in Schooles'' was part of the
patent's execution clause.59 Some debts, however, were simply debts
of favor; such as the one James I extended in 1618 to Thomas
Middleton for writing The Peace-maker or Great Brittain's Blessing.60
Privileges like these, and numerous others that James extended to
authors, printers, and booksellers who either employed Stationers'
Company printers or were themselves Company members, are
unproblematic. William Stalling, for example, assigned his 1607
patent for `Ìnstructions for the Planting, and Increase of Mulberry
Trees'' to Company members Richard Sergier and Christopher
Pursset, who employed Stationer Felix Kingston as printer.61 In 1608
Melchisedech Bradwood, a Stationer and printer, obtained a patent
for John Jewell's Defence of the Apology for the Church of England and his
book of Articles. John Sudbury and George Humble employed the
Stationer William Hall to print John Speed's Theatre of the Empire of
Great Britain, privileged to George Humble.
The problems arose when royal patents disregarded either privi-
leges held by the Stationers' Company or licenses extended by the
Company to its members. The struggle between the printer John Bill
and Mrs. Ogden over William Fulke's Confutation of the Rhemish New
Testament illustrates not only how complex textual property rights
were in the seventeenth century, but how indeterminate of®cial
decisions could be in protecting competing claims. Mrs. Ogden
secured a patent from James for The Confutation of the Rhemish Testament
with a Defence of the English Translation of the Bible, written by her father,
William Fulke, which, although licensed to Ralph Newberry and
George Bishop, had been printed by the Queen's Printer, Christo-
pher Barker.62 In 1601 Barker's son, Robert, issued a new edition,
but the Stationers' Register indicates that Newberry's share was
assigned to Thomas Adams (4 December 1604) and that George
License and law 43
Bishop's went to John Bill (14 March 1611). Sometime after this,
James, unacquainted with the chain of ownership, granted Mrs.
Ogden her patent, which Bill successfully appealed to the Arch-
bishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London to rescind. Mrs.
Ogden then prevailed upon an appeal to Lord Chancellor Francis
Bacon and Secretary Robert Naunton to uphold her patent, after
which she claimed her right not only to the title but to all extant
copies of the book. The examination of John Bill ± which must have
been taken before the 1617 edition of the book appeared since Bill
says there that he has not reprinted the book ± apparently belongs to
a further effort by Bill against Ogden's patent since he claims that
she has raised signi®cant sums to print her father's book ``to the
detriment'' of Bill and his partner, Bonham Norton. Since no edition
appeared from Ogden or her assignees, Bill must have succeeded in
his efforts against Ogden's patent. In 1617 an edition of Fulke's work
appeared with two title-page variants: one indicated the work was
printed for Bill, the other for Thomas Adams.63 Bill and Ogden's
struggle derived from two distinct notions of property right ± the
Stationers' Company license and the royal patent. In this case, two
distinct agencies supported each principle of property right; ecclesi-
astical authorities (indeed, the heads of the High Commission)
supported the Company right; court of®cials supported the royal
prerogative over the Church of®cials. If, as the bibliographical
evidence suggests, Bill did indeed prevail, his acquisition of a royal
patent of his own ± as one of the King's Printers ± may have been the
ground for his success.
James may have been merely uninformed when it came to the
Ogden±Bill matter. In the case of the patents he conferred on Marin
BoisloreÂ, Roger Wood, and Thomas Symcock, however, he appears
to have been unconcerned. In 1618 the Frenchman, Marin de
BoisloreÂ, a squire of King James's bodyguard, requested a patent for
all things printed on one side only, an extremely wide category that
included classes of works like playbills, briefs for casualties, and
apprentices' indentures, all of which belonged through Register entry
to individual Stationers. The patent, which was granted to Thomas
Symcock and Roger Wood rather than directly to BoisloreÂ and
bene®ted the King with annual revenue of £10, met with protests
from the Stationers. The King turned the matter over to the Arch-
bishop of Canterbury, Secretary Naunton, and Sir Edward Coke ± in
effect, a triumvirate representing Church, Crown, and the common
law. In addition, the Stationers petitioned parliament, and while
parliament appears to have favored them, the Lord Chief Justice of
the King's Bench supported the patentees. The legal struggle over
the BoisloreÂ patent, well documented in William A. Jackson's
introduction to Records of the court of the Stationers' Company, 1602±1640,
ended after more than ten years with most of the Stationers' rights
upheld.64 The Chancery court order that ended the matter, however,
did call upon the Bishop of London to ``sett a course for the
disposeing the Printinge for the good of the poore sorte of the said
Companie and for the appointinge such ®tting addicion of Wages for
the said poore Workmen as shalbee ®tt.''65 This represents an
extension of ecclesiastical authority over the Stationers beyond what
the 1586 Star Chamber Decree had established.
Arnold Hunt likens the proliferation of non-Stationer patents
under James to the challenge unprivileged printers posed to the
Company in the late 1570s and 1580s.66 While the efforts of John Bill
and the Stationers' Company to protect their interests against royal
patentees escalated into legal warfare, few Jacobean patents appear
to have been procured with an intent to assault the Company's
monopoly in the same way that non-Company printers did during
Elizabeth's reign. Symcock and Wood would have employed trade
printers except that the Company forbade their journeymen from
working for them, and in doing so, promoted the gravitation of
disaffected printers toward Symcock and Wood.67 Two patents,
however, apparently intended to circumvent both the Stationers'
monopoly on printing and their control of book trade practices ±
those procured by George Wood in 1619 and George Wither in 1623.
In 1619 George Wood, a journeyman printer, obtained a twenty-
one-year patent for the exclusive bene®t of anything he printed with
an invention for printing on linen cloth. King James received an
annual revenue of £10 from this grant. Besides causing a consider-
able furor in the cloth industry, Wood provoked the Stationers by
printing primers and almanacs belonging to the English Stock.
Under the terms of the 1586 Star Chamber Decree, the Stationers
seized his press and brought charges against him in the High
Commission. Wood proceeded to set up illegal presses on four
different occasions, and the Stationers proceeded against him every
time. The record of the Stationers' challenge to Wood appears in
orders from the High Commission extant in the Company's Letter
Book, which reveal the degree to which, by 1621, the High Commis-
License and law 45
sion had become the court of law in which the Stationers could seek
recourse against infringement of their monopoly. In the 1621 case
against Wood, the Stationers were ``the of®ce who moved the court
and desired that the Cause might goe to report upon the Defen-
dants.'' Their objection against Wood, that he was printing without
being ``lawfully appointed or authorised . . . Contrary to the Decree
in Starchamber,'' underscores how important they perceived the
decree to be as a measure of their economic protection.68 The
matter concluded in 1622 when the Archbishop of Canterbury, `ìn
the name of the whole courte,'' `àdmonished'' Wood and his
workmen not to set up a press or print against the Decree.69 The
Archbishop emphasized that although Wood may have had a patent
to print linen cloth, printing books was a clear abuse not only of
the King's privilege but also of the Stationers'. A series of petitions
and responses followed between Wood, the Archbishop, and the
Stationers, which show the Archbishop and the Stationers seeking
an amiable resolution to what the record clearly shows was a trade
matter.70 The Archbishop offered Wood a place as a master printer
in exchange for his compliance, but Wood continued to operate a
series of illegal presses and was ultimately excluded from the
Company.71
Wood's professional demise came in September 1624 when the
press he set up near Holborn Bridge was seized because he was
printing an unlicensed work, George Wither's Schollers purgatory. The
Stationers might have relented in their struggle with Wood had he
not been printing Wither's book, which, besides being a book that
attacked the Stationers, represented a continuing collaboration
between Wither and Wood against the Stationers. The larger matter
here was that Wood also printed Wither's Hymnes and Songs of the
Church, a work with a patent from King James that assured the book's
wide dissemination along with the usual economic privilege.72 The
1623 patent required that Wither's work be bound with every edition
of the Metrical Psalms, an English Stock title that from 1603 had
appeared in eighty editions by the time Wither sought his patent.
Fully implemented the patent would have meant a prospective
87,000 copies to Wither.73 Jackson believes the Stationers interpreted
Wither's patent as a direct infringement upon their monopoly; ®rst,
because its requirement that it be bound with a Stock book would
increase in size and price the Company's book size and hence
decrease their sales, and, second, because the right it extended to
Wither to search for and seize copies of the Metrical Psalms not bound
with his book intruded on a Company prerogative.74 Jackson
neglects other salient factors: ®rst, that Wither employed a non-
Company printer to exercise his patent ± and a renegade at that ±
second, that Wither sought the patent, knowing that he had already
sold his right to part of the Hymnes and Songs to a Company member
who had printed it early in 1622. Wither's patent represented more
than a valiant appeal for the rights of authors; it violated contempo-
rary notions of textual property and sought the authority of the
Crown and the Church to do so.
In 1622 Augustine Matthews entered in the Stationers' Register as
his copy ``Cantica Sacra or the holy Psalmes'' translated by ``master
Wither.'' The Register indicates that this copy consisted of ten songs
and that Thomas Goad, one of Archbishop Abbot's chaplains,
approved the text. Matthews's 1622 edition of Cantica Sacra appeared
containing forty-one songs, forty of which appear with four others in
the ®rst part of the book printed under Wither's patent. 75 Wither
applied for his patent 23 January 1623 and received it a month later.
Wither could not have been ignorant of the circumstances of
Matthews's text since he devotes considerable attention to the book's
licensing in Schollers purgatory, written in response to Stationers'
accusations that the Church objected to Wither's Songs. In Schollers
purgatory Wither acknowledges a trial printing of his ``Canonical
Hymnes'' (`ìmprinted as an assay''). The Bishop of London, he says,
allowed these, and four years before, he had given the Archbishop of
Canterbury a copy. He offers as evidence of Archbishop Abbot's
approbation the fact that the 1622 edition passed ``without contra-
diction'' in `à full impression.''76 The ``full impression'' here is as
important as the of®cial approval. Matthews's book, published in
1622, must have been quite successful for Wither to seek out a patent
of his own so soon after Matthews's publication of 1,200 copies.77
Such popularity may be attributed to two rather contradictory
aspects of Wither's text. The songs in Cantica Sacra and the ®rst part
of Hymnes and Songs of the Church include songs of praise, including ten
songs from the Song of Solomon, culled from the Old and New
Testaments. Since Calvinists took exception to singing in worship
any songs that did not come from the Bible, Wither's canonical
hymns arguably offered a complement to the Sternhold and Hopkins
metrical psalms. The selections from the Song of Solomon, however,
apparently provoked a different kind of interest. Wither goes to
License and law 47
considerable lengths to defend them from charges that they were
unacceptable for Church singing because of their carnality and
potentially corrupting in¯uence on children.78 The licensing history
suggests that, despite Wither's claims to the contrary, his Hymnes and
Songs of the Church may not have been accorded quite the ecclesiastical
approbation he claims. Wither did present Abbot with his sacred
songs, which Abbot probably passed to Thomas Goad, his chaplain,
for an imprimatur. Goad, however, approved only ten songs ±
probably the ®rst ten, and either one or possibly none of the
controversial Songs of Solomon.
The matter of clerical support for (and opposition to) Wither's
patent project goes beyond the ecclesiastical authorization of what
became Matthews's edition. According to Wither ``some of the
Clergy'' invited his project, which he pursued as `à meanes of
increasing christian unity and devotion.'' Withers intended that his
sacred songs would stir `òbedience and reverence'' which Christians
`òught to expresse towardes the pious ordinances of the Church.''79
Wither's account speci®es that his project was appreciated par-
ticularly because he composed certain hymns and songs `àppro-
priated to the ordynary publike occasions of our Congregations and
those tymes observable by commaund of the Church.''80 These
songs comprise part II of the patented Hymnes and Songs, the ®rst
thirty-one of which were composed for important feast days and fast
days of the liturgical calendar (i.e., Advent, Christmas, Good Friday,
Easter, Ascension Day), twenty for saints' days, and three for national
holidays like St. George's Day and Accession Day. Certain members
of the Stationers' Company may well have taken umbrage at the
theological implications of Wither's book. They could quite justi®-
ably expect that editions of the Metrical Songs with Wither's Hymnes
and Songs bound in would meet with the disdain of their Calvinist
book buyers. While no scrupulous Calvinist would have welcomed
the addition of Wither's own compositions to biblical songs, he
would have found intolerable the entire premise of the liturgical
celebration of saints' days ± with or without songs. Selling such a
book would have represented only part of the problem. The rest was
individual conscience, since there existed within the Stationers'
Company a solid core of members whose publishing enterprises
pursued an actively pro-Calvinist agenda. The offense Wither takes
in Schollers purgatory to the Stationers' criticisms that his hymns ``for
the observable tymes'' furthered ``popery and superstition'' looks
disingenuous, particularly when his own rhetoric marks his own
strong anti-Calvinist sensibilities. 81 Wither, of course, was no papist,
but Calvinists viewed saints' days as papal relics. Wither, on the
other hand, exposes himself as an `ànti-Calvinist'' ®rst, in the way
he employs the polarity between papists and schismatics, and
second, in his appreciation for liturgical ceremonialism. Wither
maintains that the impetus for Hymnes and Songs of the Church derived
from his interest in increasing ``Christian unity and devotion'' by
offering instruction ``to the great multitudes of wel affected people,
easie to be led aside'' by those who unjustly upbraid the Church of
England for ``popish and superstitious observations.''82 He com-
posed the hymns and songs for the ``tymes observable'' that ``God
might bee glory®ed in every Solempnity.''83 This subtle allusion to
liturgical ceremonialism is magni®ed in the songs themselves, par-
ticularly those composed for the Eucharist.
In Government by Polemic, Lori Anne Ferrell demonstrates the degree
to which, by the end of his reign, King James's court preachers
employed rhetoric that characterized what had been the conforming
Calvinist mainstream as schismatic ``puritans.'' They also increas-
ingly extolled the ``beauty of holiness'' in Eucharistic practices.84
The strategy of turning Calvinists into puritans also marked the
highly controversial works, A gagg for the new gospell? No: a new gagg for
an old goose (1624) and Appello Caesarem (1625) by Richard Mountagu, a
royal chaplain and canon of Windsor. Both re¯ected the rising tide of
Arminianism within the English Church that by 1624 had gained the
King's interest and support.85 A new gagg for an old goose made the
point that Calvinist positions perpetuated Catholic attacks on the
Church of England and deterred efforts toward effecting the peace
in Christ's Church that was so dear to James's ecclesiastical vision.86
Tailored as it was to the King's interests, it is not surprising that A
new gagg for an old goose should have been published by King James's
warrant, or that James personally assisted Mountagu in obtaining an
ecclesiastical license for Appello Caesarem, with both the warrant and
license effectively bypassing the ecclesiastical licensing establishment
of Calvinist Archbishop of Canterbury, George Abbot.87 James's
patent for the Hymnes and Songs hardly represents the idle indulgence
of a persistent suitor that Norman E. Carlson suggests, but rather an
intentional effort to further an agenda for worship in the Church of
England embraced by a growing anti-Calvinist faction among the
clergy.88 In Schollers purgatory Wither several times alludes to his
License and law 49
friends among the clergy and their encouragement for his work.
While Wither makes no mention of who his friends are, it is unlikely
that the Calvinist licensing establishment would have been among
them. Instead, men like Richard Mountagu and Richard Neile, men
who held considerable sway with James in 1624, saw Wither's work
as a means of furthering their cause and thus not only supported
Wither's appeal to James, but encouraged the `ùnreasonable
proviso'' to bind the Hymnes and Songs with the Metrical Songs, which
exceeded Wither's request. Wither's patent protected a liturgical
Trojan horse that cached ceremonialism inside scripture.
The extent of Wither's complicity in all this is dif®cult to judge.
Reading between the lines of Schollers purgatory discovers the culpable
self-interest Wither displayed in skirting both ecclesiastical licensing
and Stationers' notions of property rights, but his outrage at the
Stationers' refusal to honor the King's patent, something he un-
doubtedly had been encouraged by his clerical supporter to obtain,
rings true. The scenario for the entire affair probably looks a bit
more like this. In 1621 Withers Motto, which went through seven
editions (some pirated), lined a few Stationers' pockets. The ¯ap that
arose over its lack of license brought to Wither's attention the
necessity of obtaining of®cial approval for a work to be printed, so he
gave his ten songs of the Church to the Archbishop of Canterbury to
be licensed. A year later, he ®nished the book, and sold it to
Augustine Matthews, who showed the authorized copy of the ten
songs to the Stationers when he entered his Company license ±
perhaps even after he had already printed the edition containing
forty-one songs. Matthews's edition was so popular that Wither
decided to seek the right to publish the work himself along with the
songs he had written for the liturgical year, which had received the
encouragement of his friends among the clergy. Wither applied to
James for the patent that would assure him not only the pro®t of his
labors but the assurance that the second part would be spared
perusal by the Calvinist ecclesiastical licensers. Instead of the simple
patent he sought, he received a Trojan horse. The Stationers' real
objection was not to Wither's patent to publish his book ± even
though that objection would have been legitimate given Matthews's
copyright. They objected most vehemently to the binding clause,
which they attempted to negotiate with Wither. Wither's reluctance
to respond to the Company's overtures in this matter derived from
his certainty that he had the King's support and that he was carrying
out the King's wishes. When negotiations with Wither failed, and the
Stationers petitioned the King to revoke his patent, the King's
refusal had nothing to do with Company rights or trade customs but
rather re¯ected his own interest in appeasing his favorites by
granting Wither's patent. Next, the Stationers' Company's book-
binders petitioned parliament to condemn the patent. When this also
failed, booksellers simply refused to bind Wither's book with the
Psalter, and the Stationers not only boycotted the book altogether,
but challenged Wither's quali®cations in divinity, attacked his
excerpt from the Song of Solomon as obscene, and declared his
hymns for Anglican saints' days popish. 89 Wither responded with the
Schollers purgatory, a ®erce denunciation of the Stationers' Company.
Despite Wither's claim to the High Commission, it is unlikely that
Wither would have sought a Company license for the latter book ±
whose lack of license gave the Stationers ground to seize Woods's
press.90 Despite the Stationers' efforts at court and in parliament to
challenge the monopoly, in 1627 the Privy Council issued an order
supporting Wither's patent, and when that brought only minor
compliance, Wither petitioned them again in 1634. In 1635 Wither
sold the right to his patent. Rather than expend further effort to
secure the protection of his patent, he settled for ``yearly great sums
of money.''91
The fray over Wither's patent should not be read as it has been,
solely as illustrative of either an author's challenge to prevailing
notions of textual property or the weakening authority of the
Stationers' Company. Schollers purgatory admittedly points to abuses
that existed in the printing trade, especially with regard to authors'
rights, but it also vehemently opposes the Stationers as ``the principal
dispersers of heresyes; and the prime disturbers of unity in the
Church.''92 Wither appears to have invested heavily in the anti-
Calvinist position that puritans were responsible for England's
ecclesiastical unrest. The Stationers' appeals to parliament and the
Privy Council, indeed the King's patent itself, mark the same kind of
institutional entrenchment and rivalry that existed in so many parts
of the English state in the early seventeenth century, an entrench-
ment that also appeared in the struggle over BoisloreÂ's patent.
Furthermore, the patent struggles show the degree to which the
High Commission had become the regular venue for hearing and
deciding challenges to the Stationers' printing monopoly and
matters related to irregularities in the printing trade.
License and law 51
the court of high commission

During the latter years of Elizabeth's reign the High Commission
drew considerable criticism, both for its efforts to procure conformity
and for the extension of its authority as an ecclesiastical court of
appeal into judicial matters that arguably belonged within the
jurisdiction of the common law. Attacks on the High Commission
came from two sides. The common-law judges and lawyers viewed
the Commission's exercise of its authority, loosely de®ned by its
letters patent, as an unrestrained infringement on the customary
precedence of parliamentary statute and the common law.93 The
puritans objected to the High Commission's procedures, especially
its practice of imprisoning perceived offenders until their trials, its
use of the oath ex of®cio mero, and its trial without a jury.94 Beginning
in the 1590s, common-law judges sought to restrain the High
Commission by issuing prohibitions. 95 The puritans waited until
James came to the throne and then voiced their concerns about the
High Commission at the Hampton Court Conference. While James
heard these concerns, he took no immediate action to reform the
High Commission, in part because his Archbishop of Canterbury,
Richard Bancroft, led a campaign of resistance against the practices
of the common-law judges. Finally, in 1611 James issued new letters
patent for the High Commission de®ning its venue and prescribing
its procedures, bringing an end to the confrontation.96
By issuing prohibitions, the common-law judges managed to
restrict the jurisdiction of the High Commission to ecclesiastical
matters, but this did not restrain its effort against nonconforming
Calvinist clergy during Richard Bancroft's tenure as Archbishop of
Canterbury (1604±10). Bancroft, who had persecuted nonconfor-
mists with considerable zeal during Elizabeth's reign, devised the ex
animo form of subscription soon after his con®rmation as Archbishop.
This required clergy to give their full approval to the Book of
Common Prayer and their unreserved compliance to its liturgical
prescriptions. Bancroft was adamant in his expectations. According
to Kenneth Fincham, while the exact number of ministers ejected for
nonconformity between 1604 and 1609 has produced considerable
controversy, he concludes that between seventy-three and eighty-
three ministers were deprived of their bene®ces. 97 This renewed
effort to impose conformity constituted most of the Commission's
work during these years.98 When Archbishop Abbot, a conforming
Calvinist, became Archbishop in 1611, the Commission's agenda
shifted from clerical conformity to clerical conduct. Newly empow-
ered by the King's letters patent, and further strengthened by the
abolition in 1610 of the southern diocesan commission, the High
Commission under Abbot became a vital institution. According to
Fincham, literary and archival evidence indicate that the Commis-
sion bore Abbot's particular stamp. A more ``rigorous disciplinarian''
than Bancroft, Abbot was quick to deprive clergy of their livings for
corruption or negligence.99 The one instance when Abbot ordered a
text suppressed re¯ects his personal interest in morality rather than
conformity: an entry in the Stationers' Register for 22 March 1620
indicates that he prevented the publication of Boccaccio's notor-
iously bawdy Decameron, even though it had been licensed.100
With regard to press control, the High Commission's jurisdiction
was of two kinds: that conferred by letters patent and that derived
from the 1586 Star Chamber decrees for order in printing. The ®rst
kind, spelled out speci®cally in the 1611 letters patent, involved
theological and political surveillance; the latter concerned arbi-
trating printing-trade practices. Besides granting full authority to the
High Commission to inquire into `àpostacies,'' ``heresies,'' and
``great errors'' and into books that wrote `àgainst the doctrine of
religion, the Book of Common Prayer, or [the] ecclesiastical state,''
the letters patent called upon the High Commission to `ìnquire and
search for . . . all heretical, schismatical and seditious books, libels
and writings,'' together with their ``makers,'' ``devisers,'' printers and
publishers. The Commission was charged to seize the presses and
apprehend and imprison the offenders.101 This authority extended
beyond that conferred by earlier letters patent, which had designated
the High Commissioners' roles as pre-print authorizers. In practice,
the kind of surveillance of books, authors, and printed texts set forth
in the 1611 patent had previously devolved to the Privy Council but
without the distinct de®nition of a transgressive text the patent
provided.
Although the High Commission received considerable power from
its 1611 patent to censor books, authors, and printers, existing
evidence suggests that this constituted only a fraction of its business,
especially during the reign of James I. The commissioners would
have initiated any action within this purview. Between 1611 and 1640
only 5 percent of the cases came from commissioners while private
litigants brought 95 per cent ± many seeking to remove immoral or
License and law 53
eccentric clergymen. Only a few documented cases of censorship
exist. On 30 April 1611 the High Commission issued instructions to
Rich Bratie and Walter Salter, Messengers of the King's Chamber, to
search for and seize papists, Jesuits, and seminary priests, and popish
books and relics. In 1621 the High Commission questioned the
minister, William Whately, regarding his book A bride-bush, which
had appeared in 1617 as a wedding sermon, and again in 1619 in an
expanded version. Whately submitted to the High Commission,
recanting his published views that desertion and adultery dissolve the
bonds of matrimony. The text of the book reprinted in 1623 is
identical to the 1619 edition, except that the printer appended
Whately's `Àn Advertisement of the Author to the Reader'' con-
taining the reasons for the doctrinal errors of the earlier texts and
this submission. The High Commission here appears to have taken a
rather singular interest in a doctrinal matter, although a more likely
explanation is the book's political overtones, which are considered
fully in chapter 5.
The High Commission's authority over the printing trade that
derived from the 1586 Star Chamber Decree has often been viewed
as interested in the kind of surveillance the 1611 letters patent
intended. From this perspective, the 1586 Decree af®rmed the
Stationers' Company's right to search for and seize illegal books and
presses. The Decree, however, de®ned illegality differently from
what is commonly understood; it de®ned as illegal, books printed by
a printer who violated either a royal patent or the Stationers'
Company's monopoly, books unlicensed by the Stationers' Company,
books that did not receive ecclesiastical authorization `àccording to
her Majesties injunctions,'' and books that violated the statutes of the
realm ± which meant the treason statutes. Had the Star Chamber
Decree addressed the kinds of violation the 1611 letters patent
envisioned, the latter would have been unnecessary. As it was
practiced, the exercise of this other arm of the High Commission's
authority revealed that its foremost responsibility was upholding the
provisions of the 1586 Star Chamber Decree (also ``the decrees of the
courte of Starrechamber'' and ``the orders made in the high court of
Starchamber'') for regulating trade practices. The Commissioners
regularly adjudicated matters relating to the Stationers' monopoly.
Only occasionally did their actions in such matters entail per se
imprisoning a printer or author for promulgating a work that was
heretical, schismatical, or seditious, or that declaimed `àgainst the
doctrine of religion, the Book of Common Prayer, or [the] ecclesi-
astical state.'' Three instances illustrate the High Commission's
practices in matters of this sort. Revisiting its practice in the patent
struggles discussed above and exploring its treatment of two very
different kinds of work ± King James's Basilikon Doron and Votivae
Angliae, a book opposing James's foreign policy in the 1620s ± reveal
that the High Commission's authority over the printing trade was
distinct from the role of censor intended by letters patent.
On 28 March 1603, only four days after James was proclaimed
King, the Master, Senior and Junior Wardens, and three members of
the Stationers' Company entered as their copy in the Stationers'
Register, James I's Basilikon Doron.102 Felix Kyngston, one of the
license holders, proceeded to print two editions, according to the
title page, for John Norton, another license holder. Richard Field
printed a third for Norton. The title page indicates that these were
printed `àccording to the Copie printed at Edinburgh.'' In 1599
Robert Waldegrave, Printer to James VI of Scotland, had printed the
®rst edition of James's letter to his son, Prince Henry, purportedly in
only seven copies. In 1603 a second Scottish edition, revised with an
introduction by King James, appeared from Waldegrave's press. At
the same time that Kyngston and Field were printing their licensed
edition, Edward Aldee and other Company members printed
another edition. The printing of the King's book must have
proceeded quickly, since the court of Assistants met on 13 April to
sanction all the printers for violating Company regulations. It
recognized the license of Norton and his partners as `à Lawfull and
Orderly Entrance'' ± even though there is no indication that they
received ecclesiastical authorization for their copy ± but ®ned them
for selling their copies at a price above that appointed by the
Company.103 The court found that Edward Aldee and his partners
had printed their copy ``without Aucthoritie license or entrance''
contrary to the `Òrder for lycensinge and entrance of Copies,'' for
which offense the court called in remaining copies and ®ned Aldee
and his partners for those already sold.104 Clearly, there was
considerable demand for the King's book, so much so that Stanley
Rypins estimates that the several 1603 editions of the book comprised
10,000 copies.105 The ®nes imposed on Aldee and his partners did
not deter them from printing a second edition sometime between 13
April and the end of May. This time the matter went to the High
Commission, which issued a bond for Aldee and his partner Edward
License and law 55
White and on 30 May sent an order to the Stationers' Company
Master and Wardens that they should proceed ``to execute the
decree of the hon'able court of Star Chamber against Edward aldee
for his presse and letters.'' The High Commission convented Aldee,
and he signed a voluntary submission to them that promised never
again to violate the Decree and ordinances in return for leniency in
imposing the penalty speci®ed in the Star Chamber Decree for
disorderly printing ± imprisonment, having his press destroyed, and
forfeiting printed books.106
The court of Star Chamber, as we have seen, had issued its 1586
Decree in part to reinforce the Stationers' Company's regulations
protecting textual property. The Decree designated sanctions to
printers who ``printed disorderly,'' that is, without a Company
license for their copy, in violation of another Company member's
license, or without a licensed press. The Company also had its own
orders requiring license and entry. For Aldee's ®rst violation, the
court of Assistants invoked its own orders for ``lycensinge and
entrance of copies,'' but when this sanction proved an ineffectual
deterrent, the matter went to the High Commission ± probably
preferred there by the Company itself. The High Commission's only
role in this was to enforce the principles of textual property
articulated by the 1586 Decree and not its requirement for ecclesi-
astical authorization ± or some obscure notion that one edition
rather than another had its author's blessing.
In the matter of challenges to royal patents, the High Commission
performed a related although not entirely identical role. When
George Wood used the press permitted by his patent for printing
linen cloth to print books, the Stationers objected to the High
Commission. The Commission recognized the validity of the royal
patent, but held forth the Star Chamber Decree as a ground to
support the Stationers' objections against Wood printing books.
Similarly when the Commission preferred articles against Wither in
1624 in the matter of Schollers purgatory, Wither's responses emphasize
that he is being questioned with regard to transgressing the 1586
Decree. He was asked if he knew of its existence; he answered that
he had not himself set up a press; and he maintained that any
irregularity in licensing and printing this or any other work rested
with the printer.107 Both with Wood and Wither, the High Commis-
sion upheld the provisos of the 1586 Decree to protect the Stationers'
monopoly. In other instances, individual patentees protested against
violations of their printing patents to the High Commission, and the
Commission upheld their patents. Such was the case in 1616 when
the High Commission ®ned Thomas Dawson, the Master of the
Stationers' Company, for the Company's infringement of the patent
of Robert Barker, the King's Printer.108 The High Commission's
jurisdiction in this matter extended to any violation of orderly
printing as speci®ed in the decree, and one of those speci®cations
was printing against royal patents.
While these occasions did not entail printing censorable texts,
occasions did exist where upholding the Star Chamber Decree
meant imposing sanctions against oppositional texts. One such
occurrence can be seen in the High Commission's action against the
``poor man'' who printed Votivae Angliae, a pamphlet appealing to
King James to aid Prince Frederick in his effort to regain the
Palatinate. This and another pamphlet, Vox coeli, displeased King
James `èxceedingly.''109 The High Commission imprisoned Votivae
Angliae's printer, who had surreptitiously imprinted the work in
London with the imprint `Ùtrecht,'' clearly without authorization,
license, or entrance. While the High Commission may have been
prepared to be lenient with the printer and give him his liberty, King
James intervened. Having learned the printer had gained £1,000 by
selling the pamphlet, the King demanded the man be returned to
prison and pay £1,000 ®ne. Apparently James also sent an emissary
to France to have these pamphlets' author, the merchant John
Reynolds, discovered and returned to England. Upon his return,
Reynolds ``for his wellcome was clapt into close prison.''110 Even
though the High Commission did not participate in sanctions against
the author, its action against the printer displays the convergence of
the two kinds of authority exercised by the High Commission ± the
control of transgressive writing and the control of disorderly printing
± and how in some instances, although not all, these coincided. It is
probably no coincidence that most of the occasions when surveil-
lance and trade arbitration combined came when pamphleteering
exploded in response to interest in foreign affairs. The printers
Nathaniel Butter and William Stansby both got into trouble for the
unlicensed printing of corantos about affairs in Bohemia that
offended the King.111 Paradoxically, Sheila Lambert views those
times, especially between 1621 and 1625, which saw the High
Commission conjoining censorship and arbitration as a period of lax
censorship.112 This suggests that although the 1611 letters patent
License and law 57
enjoined the High Commission to suppress seditious and heretical
writing, the Commission acted only when called upon to do so.
Indeed, at a time when King James's policies toward Spain and the
Palatinate met with widespread opposition, members of the High
Commission exercised a standard for seditious writing that may not
have corresponded to the King's. Political rivalries during the later
years of James's reign expose the degree to which various entities of
authority ± even ones born of the royal prerogative ± pursued their
own agendas.113
ecclesiastical authorization, 1603 ± 1625

King James envisioned pre-print authorization differently from the
view taken in Elizabeth's Injunctions. Robert Cecil's 1604 draft of a
letter to Stationers' Company of®cials expresses the King's concern
for a host of abuses ranging beyond maintaining the religious state.
His Majesty, who hath been informed of the manifold abuses which more
and more ariseth by indiscreet publishing in print of divers book containing
and divulging matters of much offense . . . some which tend to the
corruption of manners some to the spreading of rumors and lying and some
to the seducing of people by proposition of novel inventions and defamation
of persons and the commonwelth . . . so directed letters the same therein to
me and to my L. of Canterbury to provide agaynst such dishonour in
setting forth treatises of divinity or other books or discourses . . .114
While Elizabethan pre-print authorization was ecclesiastical in its
administration and intent, James expected it to be moral, cultural,
and political as well. To achieve this, Cecil goes on to explain, the
King's letters appoint three of®cials, `È.F. T.W. and C.'' to peruse
and allow all books for the press except those ``belonging to anie of
the principall professions of divinity, law or physick.''115 Although
the Stationers' Register does not identify any of®cial authorizers
possessing these initials, entries do occasionally credit authorization
to members of the court. Whether or not this derives from the
Stationers' Company having actually received a ®nal draft of Cecil's
letter is unclear, but one signi®cant change does occur around this
time. In 1606 George Buc's name ®rst appears as the of®cial press
authorizer for dramatic texts.116
One indicator that the Stationers likely received Cecil's letter is
their register book increasingly noted the names of of®cial author-
izers. Cecil's draft had ordered the Stationers' Company Wardens
that `èach printer, bookbinder or bookseller'' be prohibited from
publishing anything `ìn anie form'' unless ``the same be ®rst over-
looked, allowed and permitted.''117 The number of Stationers'
Register entries identifying of®cial authorizers rose by 20 percent
between 1605 and 1606, from 64 to 84 percent, and throughout
James's reign notice of authorization maintained a much higher level
than existed during Elizabeth's reign, even in the years immediately
following the 1586 Star Chamber decree. In 1585 only 13 percent of
register entries identi®ed authorizers. This rose to 45 percent in 1586
but declined in 1587 to 22 percent. In the ®nal two years of
Elizabeth's reign fewer than 60 percent of the entries evidenced
authorization.118 During James's reign an average of 80 percent of
entries note the authorizer, and in only two years does this drop
below 80 percent. Particularly notable are the high authorization
rates in the 1620s, a period when James issued a series of proclama-
tions restricting speech in matters of state and reiterating demands
that anything printed be allowed by of®cial authority. In 1623 and
1624, years in which royal proclamations prohibited unauthorized
printing, evidence of compliance appeared in 98 and 94 percent of
entries respectively.
These royal proclamations that appeared in 1623 and 1624, like
the draft of Cecil's letter, offer further evidence of the kind of interest
James took in controlling the printed word. Although Cecil's letter
had indicated a general interest in surveillance that, indeed, may not
have been fully implemented, by 1623 James's predilection for press
control responded speci®cally to eroding public support for his
foreign policy. When the Thirty Years' War broke out, James's
pursuit of peace through a marriage alliance with Spain in lieu of
military support for his son-in-law, Frederick, not only fueled strong
anti-Spanish sentiment among his subjects but also provoked out-
spoken opposition to the King's policies. In a 1620 proclamation
James responded by commanding his subjects, `èvery of them, from
the highest to the lowest, to take heede, how they intermeddle by
Penne, or Speech, with causes of State and secrets of Empire, either
at home, or abroad.''119 When neither this nor a similar procla-
mation issued seven months later succeeded in quelling opposition,
James turned to of®cial authorization. In 1621 Francis Cottington
was appointed to peruse and approve any printed news on inter-
national affairs, and between 1621 and 1624, his name appears as the
authorizer on eighty-nine entries, most for newsbooks. It was not
License and law 59
enough, however, to appoint a government authorizer; the institution
itself required bolstering. In September 1623 the King issued a
proclamation requiring that the 1586 Star Chamber Decree ``be
from hencefoorth strictly observed.'' Although Sheila Lambert main-
tains that this proclamation was sought by the Stationers to protect
the trade from a recent rise in piracy, James used the proclamation to
express his own concern about ``seditious, schismaticall, or other
scandalous Bookes, or Pamphlets'' and to charge the Stationers'
Company of®cials to search for, seize, and suppress such works.120
This proclamation suggests the degree to which James viewed the
1586 Star Chamber Decree as a measure of censorship even if the
Stationers regarded it as an instrument for protecting their mono-
poly. Aside from complying with the demand that books be ®rst
allowed, the Stationers do not appear to have carried out the King's
charge to enforce the censorship that he understood as the 1586
Decree's purpose.
James's ®nal effort to increase of®cial authorization of printed
books came in response to a parliamentary effort to suppress
Catholic writing. In a 1624 anti-Jesuit pamphlet, The Foot out of the
Snare, John Gee included a list of 150 Catholic books that had been
``vented'' by priests and their agents in the two previous years. The
Commons employed this list as the basis of their 28 May grievance
against recusant books to the King. A Proclamation was drawn up to
prevent the publication of such books by requiring all books
``concerning matters of Religion, Church government, or the State''
to be ``perused, corrected, and allowed'' by the Archbishop of either
Canterbury or York, the Bishop of London, or the Vice-Chancellor
of either Oxford or Cambridge. James refused to sign the procla-
mation, however, unless it also included ``Puritanicall'' books and
pamphlets as equally ``scandalous.''
James's letters and proclamations attest to a faith in pre-print
censorship beyond what the institution warranted. Paradoxically, the
more effective orders, regulations, and proclamations were at
securing pre-print authorization compliance, the less effective
authorization was in preventing transgressive discourse. This derived
from faults in the institution itself as well as practices in the book
trade. First, neither Stationers nor authorizers appear to have
maintained a consistently rigorous surveillance, but even when they
did, there was no assurance that the authorizers' views coincided
with the King's. Second, although the Stationers' Company could
make their own license contingent upon of®cial approval, as the 1586
Decree required, they had no control over the books and pamphlets
printed on the Continent or surreptitiously or illegally in England.
Finally, although James appealed to ``Justices of the Peace, Mayors,
Sheriffes, Bayliffes, Constables, and Headboroughes'' to `àid and
assist'' in assuring his wishes regarding censorship be carried out,
of®cials apparently lacked the will to launch the full-scale attack that
would have been required to eliminate unauthorized printing.
One measure of ineffective ± or inef®cient ± surveillance can be
found in the discrepancy between the number of texts printed and
the number entered in the Stationers' Register. Between 1605 and
1625 an average of only 41 percent of books and pamphlets printed in
England, not including those printed at Oxford and Cambridge,
were entered in the Stationers' Register. This meant that only about
35 percent received of®cial scrutiny.121 The failure to enter texts does
not necessarily re¯ect an effort to escape of®cial scrutiny, however.
Works printed in multiple editions did not require subsequent
entrance, and works issuing from the King's Printer or printed under
royal patent generally were not entered in the Stationers' Register.
Furthermore, some books may have received a Company ``license''
but were not entered in the Stationers' Register. Peter Blayney offers
the most credible explanation for these omissions from the Stationers'
Register: omission, he argues, was motivated by the desire to save
money. A Stationer could pay the six pence fee for entering his
license with the Company, but he could save the four pence fee paid
to the Company clerk for recording the license's entrance in the
Register.122 While one might conclude that avoiding entrance and
authorization was done to avoid censorship, in most instances this
seems highly unlikely. In the Short-Title Catalogue unentered titles
appear along with entered titles in the record of works by most
seventeenth-century authors (with the exception of those authors
who were working from underground presses). In my work corre-
lating Register entries with the Short-Title Catalogue, I could ®nd no
consistent rationale for unentered works, aside from works printed on
the Continent or by presses concealing their identity by using a
continental imprint. Some groups of works, civic pageants or
masques for example, are less likely to be entered than plays ± though
some plays are not entered and some pageants and masques are.
Most, but not all, sermons are entered, but all the sermons by one
preacher may not be entered. Foreign newsbooks largely are entered,
License and law 61
local news may not be. Some poetry is entered, some not. A more
consistent pattern appears for books entered but not authorized. The
Masters and Wardens apparently felt comfortable issuing the Com-
pany's license for educational books on such topics as writing,
cooking, and husbandry without requiring of®cial authorization.
While Stationers' Company of®cials may have overlooked author-
ization requirements for some books, their refusal to license others
unless ``suf®cient'' authorization was secured affords some insights
into the kinds of texts that were perceived as potentially provocative
or transgressive. Between 1603 and 1625, the Stationers issued their
license 129 times contingent upon the licensee securing of®cial
approval. Seventy-four of these were for titles certainly printed,
while no record exists for ®fty-®ve of them. The categories of books
conditionally licensed were consistent whether or not the book was
ultimately printed, but whether or not a book was printed had little
to do with its category. The Stationers' Company of®cials were
reluctant to enter without notice of authorization anything political ±
news, pageants, poems, or literature ± or any continental religious
writings. Forty-®ve percent of texts that received conditional licenses
were political, and 16 percent address international religious matters.
They were particularly sensitive about writings that either concerned
Jesuits or addressed matters raised in the King's controversy about
the Oath of Allegiance. Interestingly, all the controversial materials
received approval for print, while those on Jesuits clearly depended
on their content, with only half being eventually printed. A book on
the history of the papacy was printed; one on the history of the
Church was not. Nine percent of the conditional licenses show
Company of®cials displaying sensitivity on domestic religious
matters as well. Two books of biblical commentary received
approval; a synopsis of the doctrine of the Bible did not. One sermon
was printed; another one not. A catechism by a Calvinist went into
print, but a treatise favoring divorce did not. A book offering
instructions on receiving Communion did not. Of the ®ve histories
whose licenses were conditional, four were printed; the one that
was not bore the curious title ``The history of the Three heroical sons
of the Three kinges of England Fraunce and Scotland. wherein
the Aucthors ®ction agreinge with one of Merlines prophecies'' ± a
title which invites speculation on whether this may not have been
more political than historical. Conditional licenses also considered
Stationers' proprietary interests in titles at least eight times. Four
more, issued for printed plays, may simply have been concerned
with matters of licensing protocol: John Marston's plays, The Dutch
courtesan and The Fawne, and Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida were
entered in the Register with the requirement that they receive
``suf®cient'' authority, presumably permission from the acting
company that owned the play. A like condition attached to John
Webster and Thomas Dekker's Westward Hoe, however, may have
derived from a consciousness of the furor a play with a similar title
had provoked in 1605. A performance of Eastward Hoe brought its
authors to the attention of James's Privy Council.
The presence of these conditional entries suggests a more ef®cient
censorship system than probably existed. While the Company may
have issued conditional licenses for twelve religious treatises and
sermons, it licensed over one hundred sermons and treatises without
of®cial approval. Denying a conditional license did not necessarily
prevent publication. In 1621 in response to a conditional license, the
Archbishop of Canterbury's chaplain, Daniel Featly, issued an
`èxpresse order'' to the Stationers that the book entered as Declara-
tions des Eglises ReformeÂes de France et Soverainte de Beaune de l'injuste
persecution qui leur est facte par les ennemies de l'estate et de leur Religion was
not to be printed. The same year, Edward Aldee, a Company
member, printed two surreptitious editions of A declaration set forth by
the protestants in France; shewing the lamentable distress that they of Bearn are
fallen to bearing the imprint ``Rochell.'' And sometimes ``suf®cient''
authority was not suf®cient at all. Publishing Withers Motto, for
example, a book conditionally licensed that was later entered with
notice of proper authority, led to the author's imprisonment.
Whatever diligence Stationers' Company of®cials exercised to
assure that works printed by Company members received appro-
priate approval, the institutionalization of ecclesiastical authoriza-
tion together with the idiosyncrasies of its practice contributed to
considerably greater freedom of expression than the 80 percent
authorization rate might imply. While the 1586 Star Chamber
Decree had placed ecclesiastical licensing in the hands of the Arch-
bishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London, the delegation of
authority begun by Archbishop Whitgift created a separate bureauc-
racy that over time re¯ected the interests and priorities of the
licensing establishment rather than any `òf®cial'' government
agenda. Even though the Bishop of London and the Archbishop of
Canterbury exercised considerable control over this establishment
License and law 63
through their appointments, entries in the Stationers' Register
suggest that a ``shadow'' agency emerged that accounted for texts
being printed that the current licensing establishment might not
necessarily approve.
Whitgift began the bureaucratization of ecclesiastical licensing
when he appointed his 1588 panel of authorizers. When Whitgift
died in 1603, the idea of a ``panel'' of authorizers appears to have
disappeared, and chaplains to the Archbishop of Canterbury and the
Bishop of London and prebendaries of St. Paul's Cathedral assumed
much of the responsibility for approving texts for print. This
concentration of responsibility for licensing, however, did not pre-
clude other clerics issuing their imprimatur. In 1605, for example, 36
percent of the authorizations came from outside the immediate circle
of London and Canterbury. In 1608 and 1609 Richard Etkins, the
vicar of St. Mary Abbott's, Kensington, licensed more books than
members of either the Archbishop of Canterbury's or the Bishop of
London's households. The record also suggests that once anyone
served as an ecclesiastical authorizer inside of the Archbishop's or
Bishop's household, he would often continue to do so, even though
the episcopal of®ce holder had changed. Gabriel Powell, chaplain to
Bishop Vaughan of London who died in 1607, continued to license
books until 1623. Between 1604 and 1610, when the principal
responsibility for authorization rested with the Archbishop of Can-
terbury, Richard Bancroft, the names of an average of ®fteen
different licensers appear in the Stationers' Register. When George
Abbot succeeded Bancroft in 1610, although he did not personally
license books for the press, he concentrated authority for licensing in
his own household and that of John King, Bishop of London. In 1611
the households of Abbot and King accounted for half the authoriza-
tion, and in 1612 two thirds.
One indication that there existed some intentional interest in
controlling licensing may be seen in the high number of conditional
licenses the Stationers' Company issued in 1611±12. Seventeen
percent of the licenses the Stationers issued with notice of authoriza-
tion were conditional. The Stationers appear to have been cautious
about a change, a change we can now identify as a concentration of
licensing authority in the hands of two men well known for their
Calvinist interests. While such caution may have been warranted,
the impact of Abbot's Calvinism was not to be felt until after the
Synod of Dort in 1618, which brought to the forefront of religious
discussion the differences between Calvinists and Arminians. Prior
to 1616 the Bishop of London's chaplains licensed nearly half of the
books. Beginning in 1617 Abbot's chaplains licensed half, and until
Cottington assumed responsibility for licensing newsbooks in 1622,
the chaplains of King and Abbot together accounted for well over 80
percent of the authorizations noted in the Stationers' Register.
Abbot's chaplains, Daniel Featly, Richard Mocket, and Thomas
Goad, assumed the principal responsibility for reviewing books and
pamphlets that were either religious or political. Daniel Featly and
Thomas Goad together gave their imprimatur to 539 works between
November 1615 and January 1625, of which 406 were religious. Their
authorizations represented 37 percent of all works entered in the
Stationers' Register between November 1615 and January 1625, and
they licensed 56 percent of the religious works entered during these
years. Included among titles they approved were the posthumous
works of the outspoken puritans Paul Baynes and Daniel Dyke, as
well as the works of such well-known Calvinists as George Carleton,
Thomas Gataker, and Edward Elton.123 Both Goad and Featly
authorized works that subsequently received government censure ±
in Goad's case, Mocket's Doctrina et Politia de Ecclesiae Anglicanae; in
Featly's, Edward Elton's God's Holy Mind and William Crompton's
Saint Austin's Religion.124 John Taverner, secretary to Bishop King and
professor of music at Gresham College, authorized literary, educa-
tional, and moral writing, and while he occasionally reviewed
political writing, he gave his imprimatur for only one religious book.
In 1622 and 1623 with the burgeoning interest in international affairs
created by the Thirty Years' War the government created a licensing
agency of its own. While Sheila Lambert suggests that this may have
resulted from the increasing demand that the proliferation of news-
books placed on the ecclesiastical licensers, the motivation may have
been ideological as well.125 Abbot was outspoken in his support of
Princess Elizabeth and her husband, the Elector Palatine and King
of Bohemia, who were the object of the war effort supported by the
Spanish. Many of the newsbooks not only shared Abbot's sympathies
but also expressed views in direct opposition to those of King James.
The appointment of Cottington enabled circumvention of Abbot's
hold on licensing.
Even when Abbot and King held the reins of their authority on
the press the tightest, the presence in the records of other author-
izers' names allowed some give and take in the process of authoriza-
License and law 65
tion. In practice, throughout most of James's reign publishers and
printers were free to seek out the approval of an authorizer whom
they knew to be sympathetic either to their project or to themselves.
In addition to particular printers and publishers seeking out par-
ticular authorizers (Robert Milbourne's work is regularly entered
under Daniel Featly's hand), authorizers seem to have been specia-
lizing. John Sanford, a ``poet and grammarian'' who accompanied
John Digby on his embassy to Spain to arrange the Spanish
marriage, authorized notable literary and some political works,
including John Harrington's Epigrams, Chapman's translation of
Homer's Odyssey, and John Selden's Titles of Honour. Richard Etkins,
who authorized Sir Robert Sherley's Entertainment in Cracovia, authorized
several political works including William Biddulph's Travels of English-
men to Thracia (1608) and Barnaby Riche's Survey of Ireland discovering
disobedience (1609). Both Etkins and Richard Cluet set their hands to
religious and political works defending the Church of England's
theology and hierarchy. Richard Mocket, a Calvinist, authorized
works by such outspoken Calvinists as Stephen Dennison, George
Downham, and Peter du Moulin.
Only a few records exist that tell us about how authorization
proceeded and how individual authorizers worked. The relationships
between publishers and authorizers suggest that the arrangements
for obtaining authorization were made by publishers and printers. A
Stationers' court entry on 1 March 1602 supports this.
It is orderd the master waterson shall pay xs unto Tho Pavier for his clayme
to the Irish newes. And that Jo hardy shall stand discharged from Tho
pavier of the xs which the said Tho Pavier delyvered to hym to procure the
Aucthorisinge of the said copy.126
Instances also existed when authors obtained authorization. Daniel

Featly in Cygnea Cantio says that ``the general good report of M. Elton
. . . moved me to grati®e him so farre, being my neighbour, as at his
request to peruse that his book, and if I thought it ®t, commend it to
the Press.''127 The words ``commend it to the Press'' imply that, in
addition to of®cial scrutiny, authorization also entailed an authorizer
helping an author ®nd a publisher, which can be seen as a form of
patronage. Certainly the kinds of specializations and doctrinal
allegiances we have seen among the authorizers suggest that author-
ization may sometimes have been directed more to promoting the
printing of certain works than preventing the printing of others.
Such promotional ends appear in some manuscripts that survive
with imprimaturs. Thomas Goad's imprimatur for Eliza Jocelin's
``The Mothers Legacie to her unborne child'' takes the form of a
lengthy introduction that includes the following,
In this legacy left In prosusus whereout whosoever taketh yet leaveth no whit
the lesse for others. In remainder wherefore upon the very ®rst view I
willingly not only subscribed my approbate for the registry this will among
the most publique monuments the rather worthy because proceeding: from
the weaker sex but also as bound to doe right unto knowne vertue
undertooke the care of thee publication thereof.128
Before Daniel Featly set his imprimatur to the manuscript for
``Panegyrique a Tresgrand et trespuissant Prince Charles Prince de
Galles,'' William Alexander ®rst wrote, `Ì have read over this book
by direction from his Majestie and doe conceave that it is worthie to
be published.''129 This is followed in another hand by
the Judgment of Sir William Alexander to whome this booke hath bin
referred deserves to give it approbation. I have suddainely (at the request of
the Author) looked over the heade and doe ®nd nothing to give
improvement to the publishing of it; And therefore doe humbly recommend
it to my Lorde Grace of Canterbury's examination and priferenc. [signed]
C L W CVNMY.''130
In Cygnea Cantio Featly says, ``The ®rst thing to my remembrance
questioned touching M. Cromptons booke, was a clause in my written
defence, that I was rather induced to license the booke out of a
respect to my Lord D. his Grace, to whom the book is dedicated.''
While some ecclesiastical authorization took the form of patron-
age, some was apparently altogether careless. Thomas Worrall, who
authorized 119 works during the last three years of the reign of
James and continued licensing during the reign of Charles, was
reputed to have been very casual. Andrew Marvell in The Rehearsal-
Transposed (1672) observed that ``Doctor Woral, the Bishop of Lon-
don's Chaplain, Scholar good enough, but a free fellow-like man,
and of no very tender Conscience,'' was apt to approve and subscribe
his name ``hand over head'' to any copy submitted to him.131 The
practice of individual authorizers, as much as the bishops and
archbishops who oversaw them, thus could give to `òf®cial'' licensing
a peculiarly unof®cial tenor ± or at least an of®cial tenor that was
multivocalic.132
This chapter has considered how those press controls, which had
been established during the reign of Elizabeth ± occasionally with
License and law 67
contradictory and competing interests ± during the reign of James
became further institutionalized. In the course of this institutionali-
zation, these agencies committed themselves more and more to their
own institutional agendas. The outlines for hegemony exist, but the
competing interests of these institutions during the reign of James
prevented the emergence of hegemonic censorship. James strength-
ened the High Commission, and the High Commission supported
the King's patents, but it also supported the Stationers' Company's
monopoly. Abbot as Archbishop of Canterbury ran a strengthened
High Commission and a tight authorization establishment, but
Abbot the man was often at odds with King James. It was in Abbot's
own interest to turn a blind eye to political and religious perspectives
he approved that might not fully have pleased the King. The net
effect this had was that personality often shaped censorship and its
practice. In the hands of James and Abbot, potentially repressive
institutions engaged in fairly mild practices. The Stationers'
Company exercised its monopoly. Ecclesiastical authorizers ensured
that books that shared their perspectives were printed, exercising
what Anthony Milton has described as ``benign'' censorship that
looks more like ``tactful editing.''133 The King pursued the reuni®ca-
tion of the Church universal and, once the Thirty Years' War broke
out in Europe, its peaceful solution, using both the press and
censorship to achieve his ends. Censorship, benign or not, was
employed by multiple agencies to reinforce individual agendas. This
chapter has explored the instruments that could be used to ``control''
the press. The next one explores how by employing censorship as a
tool of royal propaganda, King James conferred on censorship a kind
of performativity that enabled its appropriation by the multiple kinds
of agency this chapter has examined.
chapter 2
Burning books as propaganda
Saint Pauls Crosse is drawne at large, and a number of men,

partly running away that they might not see such a spectacle,
partly weeping, and wiping their eies to see a booke so full (as
they conceived) of heavenly zeale and holy ®re, sacri®ced in
earthly and unhallowed ¯ames.
Daniel Featly, Cygnea Cantio, 1629
King James, a king more astute in his personal use of the press than
perhaps any other English monarch, remains curiously absent from
the accounts of press control in the early seventeenth century despite
the fact that historians acknowledge his `ìndomitable faith in the
signi®cance of the printed word.''1 James VI and I was, as Kevin
Sharpe reminds us, ``probably the most literate and learned king to
have occupied the English throne: a monarch who not only read all
the classical texts of statecraft but one who believed the school
master's life closest to that of kingship.''2 For a learned king who
possessed such faith in print to take a personal interest in censorship
is unremarkable. That James in 1604 would write to the Stationers
telling them of personally choosing three individuals to peruse and
allow all books, except those relating to law, divinity, and medicine, is
as consistent with his conception of print as his extension of the
authority of the High Commission in 1611 ``to enquire and search for
all heretical, schismatical and seditious books'' and to seize the
presses that printed them. Although these actions perhaps expressed
a more lively personal interest in the printed word than had been
taken by his immediate predecessor, as demonstrated in chapter 1,
they were well within the legal precedents that had been established
for press control. James, however, did engage in some acts of
personal censorship that were extraordinary ± in particular, publicly
burning books at Paul's Cross and public squares at Oxford and
Cambridge. This chapter argues that King James's use of public
68
Burning books as propaganda 69
book-burning as a tool of personal propaganda established censor-
ship as a performative act that registered in the public imagination.
the political and religious ideology of james i

Exploring the personal censorship of James I necessarily leads onto
the rough sea of Jacobean historiography and biography ± one
unsettled by the crossing currents of Whigs, revisionists, political
philosophers, and New Historicists. The two versions of James most
useful for understanding the book-burnings at Paul's Cross ± those of
New Historicist Jonathan Goldberg and ecclesiastical historians
Kenneth Fincham and Peter Lake ± stand in curious polarity to each
other. Jonathan Goldberg discovers in James's writings, primarily
Basilikon Doron and Trew Lawe of Free Monarchies, a ruler who
embraced, on the one hand, the trope of himself as an actor
transparently displayed, and on the other, that of the arcana imperii,
`à rhetoric of power that covers the secret pleasures and shrouds the
body in the image of the state.''3 The arcana, according to Goldberg,
became to James
an illusionary but comforting idealization that allowed him simultaneously
to display authority and withdraw from monarchy's public demands.
James's inability to heed the demands of his times, his refusal to pay
attention to details of his administration, his loathing of public appearances,
and his retirement to the country . . . are parts of this pattern. 4
Alternatively, Kenneth Fincham and Peter Lake identify ``personal
contact and management'' as ``central'' to James's monarchic style.
Until the outbreak of the Thirty Years' War, in both the domestic
and international arenas, James managed what Fincham and Lake
identify as a ``consistent ecclesiastical policy'' through his ``detailed
grasp of abstract theory'' and ``native political shrewdness.''5 He
accomplished this domestically by ``defusing `radical' Puritanism and
rabid anti-popery through the incorporation of evangelical Cal-
vinism into the Jacobean establishment'' which counted several
``cryptopapists'' among its members.6 Outside Britain's borders,
James sought the reuni®cation of Christendom through an `ìrenic
rhetoric'' that emphasized a common profession of faith in the
Trinity and the Incarnation, ``played down'' other doctrinal differ-
ences, and criticized ``papal pretensions to supremacy and the power
to depose secular rulers.''7
While these two versions of James differ markedly in their assess-
ment of what today would be called his ``management style,'' both
draw attention to the self-consciousness with which James stepped to
center stage in his use of the printed word. James's intent, from
Goldberg's perspective, was to speak ``verbum dei.''8 While Goldberg
may see James ascending the dais to speak `ìn the style of Gods,''
Fincham and Lake remind us that James used the printed word as a
means to exercise his royal responsibility to defend the faith. In 1609
James wrote, ``my care for the Lord's spiritual kingdom is so well
known, both at home and abroad, as well as by my daily actions as
by my printed books.''9 Since James's attitudes toward the printed
word and his care for the Lord's kingdom inform the Paul's Cross
book-burnings, both deserve here a fuller consideration.
The King's preface to Basilikon Doron's 1603 edition tells a curious
story about the printing of its ®rst edition. According to James, this
had been a private affair. He had written the book to `èxercise . . .
[his] . . . owne ingyne'' and instruct his son, Prince Henry. ``For the
more secret and close keeping of them,'' he had `ònely permitted
seven of them to be printed, the Printer being ®rst sworne for
secrecie.''10 These seven he distributed among his ``trustiest Servants
. . . lest in case by the iniquitie, or wearing of time, any of them
might have been lose, yet some of them might have remained after
me, as witnesses to my Sonne . . .''11 To have a printer engage in the
labor of preparing a book for the press ± casting off copy, setting
type, locking formes ± and then have him print only seven copies
demonstrates the King's conviction that words and writing, even his,
are ensured a legacy only in print.12 A Remonstrance for the Right of Kings
reiterates James's faith in print's longevity when he consoles himself
that although the tract might not affect current affairs in France, `àt
least many millions of children and people yet unborne, shall beare
me witnesse, that in these dangers of the highest nature and straine, I
have not been defective: and that neither the subversions of States,
nor the murthers of Kings, which may unhappily betide hereafter,
shall have so free passage in the world for want of timely advertise-
ment before.''13
This last passage betrays the subtext present in so many of James's
published writings ± that the printed word may vindicate its speaker
in a way that other language does not. James repeatedly returns in
his writing to the ``golden sentence, which Christ our Savior uttered
to his Apostle'' that opens the preface to Basilikon Doron: ``that ther is
nothing so covered, that shall not be revealed, neither so hidde, that
shall not be knowen and whatsoever they have spoken in darknesse,
should be herd in the light.''14 This transparency became the raison
d'eÃtre for James's proli®c publication, where it was rarely divorced
from the concomitant purpose of ``clearing these mists and cloudes
of calumnies, which were unjustly heaped up on me.''15
In his consideration of Basilikon Doron, Goldberg contends that
monarchy's public stage produced in James a ``fear of being mis-
understood'' ± a fear that his `ìnward intention'' could not be read
rightly ± and this, in turn, provoked his retreat behind the rhetoric of
the arcana imperii.16 While this may be true of Basilikon Doron and Trew
Lawe (the texts most often sounded for James's political theory), A
Premonition to all Most Mightie Monarches, Kings, Free Princes, and States of
Christendome; A Remonstrance for the Right of Kings, and the Independance of
their Crownes; and A Declaration concerning the Proceedings with the States
Generall of the United Provinces of the Low Countreys, In the cause of D.
Conradus Vorstius reveal a man prominently and con®dently mounting
the enduring stage of the printed word to offer his self-defense as a
beacon of truth. Neither the zeal with which he approached this task
nor his personal presence in these works went unnoticed by his
contemporaries. In December 1607, the Venetian Ambassador, Zorzi
Giustinian, reported to the Doge and Senate in Venice that James,
with ``the plea of the chase'' was living `ìn almost absolute retire-
ment in the company of one man, a Dean, very learned'' to prepare
an answer to Catholic objections to the Oath of Allegiance.17 A few
years later, Isaac Casaubon, the great classical scholar whom James
sought out for his ecumenical interests, wrote in a letter that James,
``great and learned as he is, is now so entirely taken up with one sort
of book, that he keeps his own mind and the mind of all about him
occupied exclusively on the one topic.''18
James, of course, recruited some of the ®nest minds of his time to
his polemical pursuits. Besides Casaubon, James Mountague, Lan-
celot Andrewes, John Donne, John Barclay, Thomas Preston, and
Marcus Antonius de Dominis (the Archbishop of Spalato), the King
called upon the talents of a host of lesser-known writers and
theologians.19 Given the scale of this literary assistance and the
seriousness of their enterprise, James's personal presence in these
texts, uncloaked, as it were, in the arcana imperii, seems extraordinary.
His personal voice in A Premonition did not escape the Venetian
ambassador, who wrote,
In it the King complains of being nine times insulted, accused and given the
lie, and seven times charged with falsehood by Cardinal Bellarmine in his
reply . . . The King is biting and free in speech and makes frequent use of
jokes. He declares that he had great cause to write the `Àpology'' in
defense of the oath of Allegiance in reply to numerous Ponti®cal Breves and
to save his life from the machinations of the Catholics.20
One part of A Premonition in particular, James's religious credo,
displays the characteristic ``biting'' and ``free'' style the Venetian
ambassador noted. Indeed, the King is so outspoken in the passage
that he makes himself vulnerable to subsequent ad hominem attacks. In
this he af®rms his faith in the tenets of the Church universal, but he
also attacks Roman practices he ®nds objectionable. Of one of these
practices in particular, the veneration of the true cross, James speaks
with remarkable candor by describing the ``worship of a piece of
stick'':
Except then they could ®rst proove that CHRIST had resolved to blesse
that tree of the Crosse whereupon hee was nailed; they can never prove
that his touching it could give it any vertue. And put the case it had a vertue
of doing miracles, as Peters shadow had; yet doeth it not follow, that it is
lawful to worship it . . . Surely the Prophets that in so many places curse
those that worship Images, that have eyes and see not, that have eares and
heare not, would much more have cursed them that worship a piece of a
sticke, that hath not so much as any resemblance or representacion of eyes
or eares.21
Another passage in A Premonition ± this time in response to Cardinal
Bellarmine's defense of purgatory ± re¯ects how truly ``free'' James
could be: `Ònely I would pray him to tell me; If that faire greene
Meadow that is in Purgatorie, have a brooke running thorow it; that
in case I come there, I may have hawking upon it.''22 While all
James's writing is not so derisive as this, the prevailing use of the
personal `Ì'' rather than the royal ``we'' in so many of his treatises
underscores his con®dence in print as an enduring and transparent
vehicle for his personal ecumenical vision.
The theology that grounded this vision has often proved par-
ticularly perplexing, in part, I believe, because the Arminian current
of Caroline Anglicanism (Archbishop William Laud's ``Catholic''
ceremonialism) has been associated with James's distrust of ``pur-
itans.'' To identify James with Arminianism is to see James as anti-
puritan, and hence as anti-Calvinist. (Similarly to see James as anti-
puritan, is to make him a pro-Catholic Arminian.)23 The English
Church under James acknowledged the monarch's role as nurturer
and governor of the Church but clearly distinguished this from
power to minister God's word or sacraments. It recognized a
monarchy and an episcopacy, both of which governed de jure divino.24
The mainstream of this episcopacy was Calvinist. According to
Patrick Collinson, ``Calvinism can be regarded as the theological
cement of the Jacobean Church, in Tyacke's phrase à common and
ameliorating bond' uniting conformists and moderate puritans.''25
James's domestic ecclesiastical policy, begun at the 1604 Hampton
Court Conference, as Fincham and Lake demonstrate, was to
``detach the moderate from the radical Puritans'' and to bring
moderate puritans into the Church's mainstream. This was accom-
plished, in part, by appointing Calvinist bishops. 26 The mark of the
radical ``puritan,'' then, became opposition to the King's govern-
ment of the Church and adherence to separatism rather than
Calvinism. Given this de®nition, ``puritanism,'' according to
Fincham and Lake, largely disappeared during the middle years of
James's reign.27 It is important to remember, however, that although
the mainstream may have been Calvinist, James also brought into his
via media divines whose views differed from the majority. Most of
these have been identi®ed as `Àrminians,'' which, according to
Nicholas Tyacke, were recognizable in the Jacobean Church because
of their views on grace rather than the kind of Laudian ceremoni-
alism that marked later Arminians.28
James's policy toward English Catholics corresponded to his
treatment of puritans. To English Catholics, James offered tolerance
rather than toleration. Those Catholics who were prepared to
conform received royal preferments, but even those who could not
conform but could demonstrate their loyalty by signing the Oath of
Allegiance received a measure of ``de facto tolerance.'' Catholics
who subscribed to the deposing power of the Pope ± in short, who
adhered to the views of the Jesuits, the ``puritan-papists'' ± were
subject to the harshest sanctions of English recusancy laws.29
James's commitment to peace in the Church beyond Britain's
borders is well known. Throughout his reign, he repeatedly
appealed to the Pope for a council to mend the tears in the
Church's body. James's appeal to his fellow rulers at the end of A
Premonition, to commit to ``spreading of the trew worship of God,
according to his revealed will . . . and not following the vaine,
corrupt and changeable traditions of men,''30 springs from this
ecumenical interest. Furthermore, his support for the Synod of
Dort in 1618 to heal differences in the Dutch Church derived from
the same motivation. James's ecumenicism conjoined with his
domestic religious policy ± appointing Calvinist bishops and prefer-
ring conforming Catholics ± seems to suggest that James simultane-
ously embraced three radically contradictory theological
perspectives ± Roman Catholicism, Calvinism, and a more mod-
erate Protestantism. This explains why, when considered out of
context, accounts of James's religious views often appear contra-
dictory. If, however, one turns to James's statement of personal
belief in A Premonition, a clearer and more consistent rationale for
his ecumenicism emerges.
James defends himself in A Premonition as `à Catholike Christian,
as beleeveth the three Creeds.''31 This af®rms his belief in the Holy
Trinity; the Incarnation; Jesus's cruci®xion, death, and resurrection;
the apostles' establishment of the Church; and baptism. These
essential tenets for James were the bonds between Christians ±
Romanists, Lutherans, and Calvinists alike ± by which he could forge
reuni®cation of the Church. The word ``Catholike,'' as it is used
here, refers to the universal Church established by the apostles,
which he also refers to as ``the Primitive Church.'' In doing so, he
aligns himself with the language of Calvinism. While he here claims
kinship with both the Church of Rome and fellow Protestants, he
clearly discriminates between those practices which belong to the
Primitive Church acceptable to Protestants, and those Romanist
practices (``Novelties'') added since ``Primitive'' times that Protes-
tants disdain: prayers to saints, transubstantiation, works of super-
erogation, the veneration of saints' relics and images. Of his rejection
of these, James remarks: `Ìf my faith bee weake in these, I confesse I
had rather beleeve too little then too much: And yet since I beleeve
as much as the Scriptures doe warrant, the Creeds doe perswade,
and the ancient Councels decreed: I may well be a Schismatike from
Rome, but I am sure I am no Heretike.''32 James regarded these
differences with Rome over matters indifferent to salvation as
secondary to creedal Christianity ± arguable, yes, but not worth the
price of the Church's broken body.
The stumbling block to James's plan was what he regarded as the
biggest novelty of all ± papal supremacy and the Roman Church's
claim ``that the Pope may lawfully depose Hereticall Princes and free
their Subjects from yeelding obedience unto them.'' In June 1606
James con®ded in the Venetian Ambassador Zorzi Giustinian his
chagrin with the Pope:
This Pope holds me and my crown for the most abominable thing in the
world; but I claim to be a better servant of God then he is. To his Divine
Majesty and before mankind I protest that I have no greater desire than to
see the Church of God reformed of those abuses introduced by the Church
of Rome. There is nothing I am more desirous of than the convocation of a
legitimate Counsel.33
Giustinian reported to the Venetian Council that the `ùsurpation of
supreme and absolute power by the Pope'' upset James enormously
and prompted his considerable interest in what Cardinal Robert
Bellarmine had written about Venice's con¯ict with the papacy in
this matter. The Gunpowder Plot had served to reify the matter in
James's mind, and the Oath of Allegiance that followed was the
means James devised to protect his royal authority from the Pope's
efforts to assert his `àbsolute power.'' That James took such interest
in Venice and Bellarmine before he wrote in defense of the Oath
helps to explain why James's assault on papal authority continued so
long after he wrote The Apology. From its inception, James's confronta-
tion with the Pope was as much about James's ecumenical vision as it
was about the Pope's assault on James's authority. James accepted
the Pope's contempt for his Crown as an invitation to lead a
challenge that could build international political solidarity that
could, in turn, pave the way for ecclesiastical reuni®cation.
James's comments to the Venetian ambassador epitomize the
manner in which he proceeded in all of his ecclesiastical policy ±
they underscore the self-consciousness of his leadership and the
vulnerability of that ``self '' to opposition and criticism. In a sense,
this con®rms what Goldberg discovered in the Basilikon Doron ±
James envisioned himself as always on a stage, and he was always
anxious about how others regarded him. James's writings participate
in a relentless effort to assure that both his position and his words are
clearly and correctly received. Publicly burning books, as we shall
see, essentially extended this effort.
public book-burning
Burning books in England, of course, was nothing new. Deriving
from Roman canon law's prescribed mode of execution for the
con®rmed heretic, Henrician statutory law extended from the here-
tical body to the heretical book the sentence that it ``be utterlie
abolished, extinguished and forbidden to be kept.''34 In June 1555 a
Marian proclamation consigned to the ®res prepared for Protestant
martyrs `àny works by any protestants,'' and required bishops and
local civic of®cials to `ènter into the house or houses, closets, and
secret places of every person whatsoever degree'' to discover these
writings.35 The accounts of burning heretical books in Foxe's Book of
Martyrs largely identify book-burning as a ``Popish'' practice. While
Henry VIII and Mary burned books to `ùtterlie'' abolish their false
religious doctrines, under Elizabeth, the few books that were burned
were perceived to endanger the exercise of civil authority ± indeed
Elizabethan propaganda consistently argued that the state's enemies
were not those who disagreed with England's religion but those who
opposed Elizabeth's rule.36 The books burned at Paul's Cross and
the university's public squares during the reign of James bear as little
resemblance to those burned by his predecessors as the public means
of their destruction bear to the earlier acts of utter annihilation.
In 1609 Marc Antonio Correr, the Venetian Ambassador,
described to the Doge and Senate the burning of Prurit-anus, a
scurrilous book that had offended James by its use of scripture to
attack Henry VIII and Elizabeth for usurping papal authority.
Correr reported that following the Sunday sermon at Paul's Cross ±
a sermon in which the ``preacher inveighed against the author, who,
not content with insulting the King, had blasphemed the Deity and
shamefully treated the meaning of Scriptures'' ± the books were
``publicly burned.''37 On 25 November 1613, John Chamberlain
wrote that `Òn Sonday divers positions of Jesuites (specially SuaÂrez
the Spaniard) were read and discussed at Paules Crosse, very
derogatorie to the authoritie of Princes, and after the Sermon a
goode number of his bookes were there publikely burnt.'' 38 In June
1622 similar ceremonies surrounded the burning of David Pareus'
Ad divinam romanii, not only at Paul's Cross but also at public squares
in Oxford and Cambridge, following a declaration by the Arch-
bishop of Canterbury and twelve other bishops, made at the King's
request, that Pareus' book was ``contrary to Scripture and the
Church of England.''39 Chamberlain describes the Paul's Cross
occasion:
On the ®rst Sonday of this terme the Bishop of London preached at Paules
Crosse, where there was a great assemblie but a small auditorie, for his
voyce was so low that I thincke scant the third part was within hearing. The
chiefe points of his sermon were touching the benevolence . . . another part
was about the repayring of Paules, and the largest in confuting Paraeus
opinions touching the peoples authorities in some cases over unruly and
tirannicall Princes, for which heresie of state his bookes were publickely
burnt there toward the end of the sermon.40
Other books joined these ± the works of the Dutch Arminian,

Conrad Vorstius, in 1611; Caspar Schoppe's Ecclesiasticus and the
Racovian Catechism, probably in 1613; and Edward Elton's Gods holy
minde, in 1625. Unidenti®ed ``popish'' books were twice burned at
Paul's Cross, in 1605 and again in 1620.41
Regarding the motive for these con¯agrations, C. R. Gillett
observes, ``there does not seem to be a single thread upon which the
story of the books burned during the reign of James can be strung.'' 42
Considering content alone, especially the diverse religious perspec-
tives of these books, Gillett's remark seems apt. Contemporary
accounts of the ®res at Paul's Cross, however, tell a common story.
Books were brought before one of the most public audiences in
London, their contents described and refuted, and then they were
burned. One remark about Francisco SuaÂrez's book ± a book by a
Jesuit that argued that the Pope possessed the authority to depose
monarchs and that was condemned in both France and England ± is
particularly telling: only a ``goode number'' were burned. The Paul's
Cross book-burnings functioned as ceremonies designed to call
public attention to a book's status as of®cially censured ± as
condemned by King James. The impetus for this derives more from
contemporary French practice than from the historic canon-law
sentence for heretics that in¯uenced Henrician and Marian censor-
ship. In 1610, when the Parlement of Paris condemned Cardinal
Bellarmine's book, Tractatus de potestate Summi Ponti®cis in rebus tempor-
alibus (1610), it decided that, to avoid public uproar, it would simply
prohibit it rather than treat it as they had Juan de Mariana's book on
papal authority. Following the assassination of Henry IV, Mariana's
De rege et regis institutione, libri tres (1599), which justi®ed killing
monarchs, was sent ``round the town in the car of infamy'' and then
burned ``by the hands of the common executioner.''43 James's
principal motivation for burning a given book or group of books at
Paul's Cross at a particular time was publicly to align himself with or
to oppose a given ideological perspective and by doing so, enhance
his own reputation.
books and the oath of allegiance

The focus of James's concern about his reputation and public image
relates directly to those enterprises he undertook that related to the
Oath of Allegiance and its defense: reunifying the Church universal
by identifying in creedal Christianity the common ground among
Protestants and Papists and opposing papal claims to temporal
supremacy. To keep the high ground in this effort required that he
always be perceived as `à catholike Christian'' tied to the primitive
church and untainted by latter-day heresies. Furthermore, the
position of self-appointed spokesman for all Christian princes
required undaunted armor of personal moral authority. When Rome
opposed James's ecumenical efforts and instead focused its response
on the Oath of Allegiance and England's treatment of her Catholic
citizens, James appears to have been totally unprepared for what he
perceived as a personal attack. In describing the letters and breves by
Bellarmine and the Pope that opposed the Oath, the Venetian
Ambassador, Guistinian, observed that they contained ``many pas-
sages which touch the King's amour propre ( propria essistemazione) and
he is deeply affected''.44 Jesuit reaction to James's defense of the
Oath affected him even more. Where James anticipated ideological
and theological debate, the Jesuits engaged in personal attack.
According to the English ambassador, in answers to the Apology, ``His
Majesty is styled àpostate,' `heretic,' `persecutor,' '' which ``greatly
disturbed the King because of the defamations and calumnies in
which they abounded.''45 Papal response to James's Premonition
proved even less favorable. Taking a personal interest in the book,
the Pope had a list prepared of James's heretical positions, and then
gave it to ambassadors at the Vatican, encouraging them to seek the
book's suppression in their states.46 Papal nuncios were sent ®rst to
Paris and Venice and then throughout Christendom to appeal to
rulers to refuse James's gift and cause their names to be removed
from the book's frontispiece.47 In August 1609 when the Venetian
ambassador in Rome met with the Pope to report that Venice would
not permit the book to be ``seen, circulated or published,'' the Pope
responded that this did not go far enough. According to the Pope,
``The book . . . was really full of most vicious heresies and it must be
admitted that it was the work of a grand heretic'' and so should have
been ``prohibited.''48 A few days later, the Pope told the ambassador
that ``he thought it not only right but necessary that it should be
prohibited in such a way that everyone should know it.''49 By
October, the Inquisition had issued orders to all booksellers not to
sell the book.50 The sentence for violating orders like these, in Rome
at least, was excommunication, and, in some cases death. 51
Suppression was not Rome's only response; beginning in 1609
numerous books that opposed King James's positions made their way
to England from the Continent. Some of them, like Bellarmine's
Apologia Roberto Bellarmino pro responsione sua ad librum Jacobi Magnae
Brittanniae (1610), seriously engaged the controversy; others libeled
James. The libels ranged from mere ``contempt and derision''52 to
``lies and impudent slanders,'' such as the one that ``stated that from
his earliest days the King ate frogs and that he was accomplice in his
mother's death,'' and further, that the Republic of Venice was `à
corpse and the King of england a crow that settled on it.''53 In his
reports to the Doge and Senate, the Venetian ambassador chronicles
James's growing indignation. What started as annoyance grew to
rage:
After this last book, printed in Prussia (Pruscia), came into the King's
hands, and after the death of the King of France, his Majesty is so furious
against the Catholics that, contrary to his habit, he is considering how to
abase and annihilate them if possible in this Kingdom. He has had several
conferences with members of Parliament on this matter and displayed such
heat that people marvel to see him so intent upon this point while he is
embarked on other important affairs . . .54
Despite James's anger at these responses, the two books burned at

Paul's Cross during these years were only tangential to the contro-
versy. Prurit-anus, burned in July 1609, disputed the English reforma-
tion's legitimacy, called Henry VIII (``the one who usurped ponti®cal
authority'') `Ànti-Christ,'' and attacked Elizabeth I and James.55
Prurit-anus appeared in print at precisely the time that James's
ambassadors were presenting to the crown princes of Europe gift
copies of King James's A Premonition bound in crimson velvet. The
writings of Conrad Vorstius, burned in 1611, articulated positions on
the nature of God that challenged orthodox Trinitarian theology, a
perspective consistent with what the Church regarded as the Pela-
gian and Arian heresies. By burning Prurit-anus and the writings of
Conrad Vorstius, James demonstrated his utter contempt for two
central positions taken by his Catholic opponents ± that the English
Church was the innovation of two heretics and not the reformed
version of the ancient church James claimed, and that James himself
supported heretical teachings.
On 23 August 1609, barely a month after the English ambassador
had presented the Doge with James's velvet-bound gift edition of
A Premonition, he reappeared with his story of Prurit-anus. Henry
Wooton's account re¯ects how anxious King James felt about
maintaining a positive reputation among his Venetian allies:
I am ordered by his Majesty to give your Excellencies an account of this
affair. A certain book under an assumed name was written, published and
brought to England. A copy came into the King's hands and seeing that it
was full of blasphemies and tended only to render his Majesty odious he
caused inquiry to be made as to who was selling it. Your Excellencies must
know that no book is prohibited in England even if it touch on controversy
with Rome ± the works of Cardinal Bellarmine are better known in
England than in Italy; provided books do not endeavour to destroy loyalty
they are not prohibited. But this book, as I have said, has no other tendency
than to render his Majesty's name odious . . . The object of the devilish
author is to hold up to hatred, not merely the present King, but the
memory of deceased Sovereigns. His method is the most hideous, horrid,
infamous that was ever invented, it consists in taking passages of the
Scriptures and wresting them into phrases of defamation, derision and
vilipending of their Majesties. I have marked some passages to read to your
Excellencies.56
By drawing attention to the obnoxious passages, Wooton seeks to
build a bridge of shared contempt between the Venetians and King
James, and thereby strengthen the ties between England and Venice,
a strategy not unlike that the King used in bestowing copies of A
Premonition. According to one observer in the Cabinet at Venice:
The Ambassador then read the passages marked, which in substance were
as follows: talking of Queen Elizabeth, who styled herself Head of the
Anglican Church and Virgin, the writer accuses her of immodesty, of
having given birth to sons and daughters, of having prostituted her body to
many different nationalities, of having slept with blackamoors; of Henry
VIII. that he gave out that Anna Boleyn was his wife whereas she was his
daughter. Laughing at the reigning King he is styled `à foreigner,'' hailing
from a ``barbarous land'' . . . `Àll,'' said the Ambassador, ``for the purpose
of rendering the name of his Majesty odious.'' 57
When the preacher `ìnveighed against the author, who, not content
with insulting the King, had blasphemed the Deity and shamefully
treated the meaning of Scriptures'' before the book was burned at
Paul's Cross, he employed a strategy similar to Ambassador Henry
Wooton's in conveying James's righteous indignation. Countering
the King's vile detractor, both the preacher and the English ambas-
sador glori®ed James as a most Christian king.
the taint of heresy, religious and political

The interest James took in the affairs of the Dutch theologian,
Conrad Vorstius, derived from his desire for a uni®ed Protestant
front for facing the Pope as well as his interest in self-representation.
In A Declaration concerning the Proceedings with the States Generall of the
United Provinces of the Low Countreys, In the cause of D. Conradus Vorstius,
James tells of the ``horrour and detestation'' he felt upon receiving
Vorstius' books, Tractatus Theologicus de Deo (1610) and Exegesis Apol-
ogetica (1611), both of which were so ®lled with ``monstrous blas-
phemie, and horrible Atheisme'' that they were ``worthy to be
burnt'' and ``the Author himselfe to be most severely punished.''58 In
response to this, he sought to have Vorstius barred from his
professorship in theology at Leiden, but before he received a
response from the Dutch, another book came into his hands, De
Apostasia Sanctorum by `òne Bertius, a scholler of the late Arminius
(who was the ®rst in our age that infected Leyden with Heresie).''
Along with his book, Petrus Bertius sent a letter to the Archbishop of
Canterbury, maintaining, ``that the doctrine conteined in his Booke,
was agreeable with the doctrine of the Church of England.'' 59
Bertius' connection of his own Arminianism with English theology
helps to explain why James opposed Vorstius' professorship so
persistently and burned his books. James feared not only that
Arminian ideas would infect the English Church but also that the
Pope might construe his failure to oppose a theological perspective
that could be identi®ed with the ancient heresies as his own assent to
them. James's declaration on the Vorstius affair explicitly expresses
his fear of contamination.
Let the Church of Christ then judge, whether it was not high time for us to
bestir our selves, when as this Gangrene had not only taken hold amongst
our neerest neighbours; so as Non SoluÁm paries proximus iam ardebat: not onely
the next house was on ®re, but did also begin to creepe into the bowels
of our owne Kingdom; For which cause having ®rst given order, that
the said bookes of Vorstius should be publikely burnt, as well in Paules
Church-yard, as in bothe the Universities of this Kingdome, we thought
good to renew our former request unto the States, for the banishment of
Vorstius . . .60
The link between James and heresy was forged, according to
Frederick Shriver, by the Jesuit controversialist, Martin Becanus,
whose works linking James to Vorstius and Vorstius to ancient
heresies appeared throughout Europe. In the Refutatio Apologiae
(1610), Becanus cited Vorstius when he argued that James's position
in A Premonition ± that the Holy Spirit rather than the Pope was the
vicar of Christ ± took the same view of the nature of God as the
Arian and Pelagian heresies (and Vorstius). (The Arian and Pelagian
heresies maintained the independence rather than the consubstanti-
ality of the persons of the Trinity.) In Examen Plagae Regiae, Becanus
listed the heretical and atheistic teachings found in Vorstius and
implied that James shared them.61 James's conversations with the
Venetian ambassador re¯ect the degree to which his attack on
Vorstius represented an effort to clear himself from charges of heresy.
In March 1612 Foscarini reported that the King said
that he was doing all that lay in him to imitate the primitive Church, and
complained of being called heretical . . . He blamed Jesuit interference in
matters of State, and then turning to the discourse he had recently
published against Vorstius, he said that he had defended therein the faith
this is called Roman quite as much as any other creed of Christians . . .62
James's effort to distance himself from Arianism extended beyond
seeking to unseat Vorstius at Leiden and the ceremonial burning of
Vorstius' books. In 1612 the King insisted on the execution of
Bartholomew Legate for heresy, ``for the position of this man is very
similar to that of Vorstius.''63 James continued his opposition to
Arminianism by appointing Calvinists to represent England at the
synod of reformed churches that met at Dort in 1618±19 to resolve
and ®nally renounce the challenge to united Protestantism the
Arminian party (the Remonstrants) posed in Holland. Immediately
after Dort, James is recorded as denouncing the Remonstrants as
``mere Pelagians.''64 As late as 1625, James still expressed offense at
being in any way identi®ed with Arianism. In Cygnea Cantio, Daniel
Featly, the Archbishop's chaplain who licensed books for the press,
tells of his meeting with James to discuss the licensing of William
Crompton's St. Austins Religion:
The ®rst thing to my remembrance questioned touching M. Cromptons
booke, was a clause in my written defence, that I was rather induced to
licence the booke out of a respect to my Lord D. his Grace, to whome the
booke is dedicated by his Chaplaine. What a reason is this (said his
Majestie?) Is it an honour to my Lord D. to bee a patron of errors? Is it any
honour to me that the Arians in Polonia have dedicated one of their books
to me, containing damnable heresies? I account it rather a dishonour, and
cannot with patience looke upon their dedication to mee.65
Associations with Arianism did not mark the only limits to the
King's ``patience'' that led to the ®res at Paul's Cross. The other
intolerable position, whether from Jesuit or Protestant writers, was
that kings might be deposed for religion. While the Jesuit response
to James's writings on the Oath from the beginning assumed this
resistance theory, the matter became more than hypothetical when
Henry IV was assassinated in 1610. What followed was a movement
of both France and Spain toward James's position on papal
authority. On 8 June 1610 the Parlement of Paris burned Juan de
Mariana's book, De rege et regis institutione, libri tres. When the
General of the Jesuits attempted to exonerate the Society to the
French ambassador by promising that Jesuits would neither speak
nor write further about the persons of sovereigns, the Spanish were
displeased and told the Jesuits that ``the King of Spain was at
present engaged in expelling the Moriscoes, but that when he had
done he would turn his attention to expelling the Jesuits.''66 In
September 1610, the University of Paris published a remonstrance
addressed to the Queen Regent and the Council. Citing the
Gunpowder Plot, it condemned the assassination of sovereigns
`ùnder the plea of piety,'' and repudiated the ``Jesuit doctrine of
Papal authority.''67 In 1612, an ArreÃt of the French Parlement
dictated that Ecclesiasticus by Caspar Schoppe be burned by the
public executioner because it contained passages which attacked
the King of England and the memory of Henry IV.68 It is against
this backdrop that James ordered the burning of SuaÂrez's book at
Paul's Cross in 1613.69 Just as he employed the destruction of Prurit-
anus to reinforce ties with the Venetians, James displayed solidarity
with France and Spain by burning SuaÂrez's books. Conveniently,
burning both books allowed him to show his contempt for texts
that attacked him personally.
James shows a kind of dogged determination in his public stance.
Once he publicly adopted a position, James would not relent
regardless of the inconsistencies into which this might lead him. The
consequences of this can be seen in what Fincham and Lake, among
many other historians, have identi®ed as the perilous foreign policy
James adopted at the outbreak of the Thirty Years' War in 1618.
When war broke out between the Catholic Archduke Ferdinand, and
James's Protestant son-in-law, Frederick, over Frederick's acceptance
of the throne of Bohemia, James delayed lending support to
Frederick. James feared that the political confrontation between
them would lead to a religious war, which would impinge upon his
hopes for unifying the Church. Furthermore, supporting Frederick's
succession to the crown of Bohemia involved the kind of deposition
of a monarch that James's writings had so vehemently protested. In
1619 the Venetian ambassador, Girlamo Lando, described James as
proceeding ``with great prudence in this affair,'' but that he could
not ``countenance the practice of deposing kings'' and ``has main-
tained with weighty arguments how damnable are such doctrines
supported more particularly by the Jesuits . . .''70 One reason the
ambassador gave for James refusing to enter into Frederick's war and
pursuing instead the diplomatic solution of a Spanish marriage
alliance was because it would allow him ``to make an example of his
son-in-law'' and ``keep under the spirits he hates so thoroughly, who
want to make targets of crowns and depose kings.''71 Such consistent
adherence to his publicly articulated principles led James to what P.
G. Lake describes as a ``failure of royal policy'' that was perceived by
English Protestants as England's refusal to `àlign itself on the side of
the godly in the international struggle with Antichrist and Spain.''72
James's policy provoked the antipathy and censure of the English
people. Amidst this climate of criticism, James enacted his most
deliberate and sustained campaign of censorship, directed not only
at the press but also at parliament and the pulpit. In December 1620
and in July 1621 James issued proclamations against ``the excesse of
lavish and licentious speech of matters of state'' which cautioned his
subjects ``to take heede, how they intermeddle by Penne, or Speech,
with causes of state, and secrets of Empire, either at home or
abroad.''73 In December 1620 the King ordered the Bishop of
London to summon the clergy ``to charge them from the King not to
meddle in their sermons with the Spanish match nor any other
matter of State.''74 And while Fincham and Lake have concluded
that these efforts had little effect,75 several preachers were arrested.
Furthermore, several members of parliament were detained, osten-
sibly for their support of Southampton, who opposed Buckingham.
More was probably at stake than parliamentary faction, however,
for, as the Venetian ambassador observed, members of the impri-
soned party happened ``to be also the supporters of the King of
Bohemia and those most zealous for the honour, safety and religion
of this kingdom, in fact they maintain these alone while they favour
the interests of friendly princes.''76
While chapter 5 fully considers the relationship between Jacobean
censorship and the war that broke out in Bohemia, one act of
censorship in this troubled time stands out for its propagandistic
value. In April 1622, well after James's efforts to curtail outspoken
opposition to his foreign policy were under way, John Knight
committed the folly of preaching a sermon at Oxford that not only
alluded to current political events but, according to Chamberlain,
went ``so far as to say that yf kings grow unruly and tirannical they
may be corrected and brought into order by their subjects, which
doctrine is so extravagant that the King thretens to have the copie of
yt publikely burnt by the hangman as hereticall.''77 Rather than
Knight's sermon being burned, however, he was summoned to court,
where he was questioned and subsequently imprisoned. The King
then called upon a council of twelve bishops to confer and render
judgment on the source of Knight's teachings ± a book by David
Pareus, a German Protestant theologian. The bishops decided that
``the doctrine in the book of David Pareus on the Epistle to the
Romans, that subordinate magistrates may rise against their Prince if
he interfere with religion, is most dangerous and seditious.'' 78 While
Chamberlain concluded that he knew ``not what good yt can do to
burne a few bookes here when they are current in all Christen-
dome,''79 copies of Pareus' book were burned at Paul's Cross at the
end of the sermon for their ``heresie of state.'' Public con¯agrations
were likewise held in public squares at Oxford and Cambridge, and
young scholars were warned not to meddle with the ``heretical
doctrines of both Jesuits and Puritans,'' but instead `àpply them-
selves to the study of divinity, by reading the Scriptures, the General
Councils, and the ancient Fathers and Schoolmen, and excluding the
heretical doctrines of both Jesuits and Puritans.''80 By burning
Pareus' book James afforded himself the opportunity to underscore
his objections to doctrines of resistance generally, and more par-
ticularly to rationalize his failure to intervene on Frederick's behalf
in Bohemia.
These ®nal years of James's reign, marked as they were by
dissolution of the consensus James had built between Calvinists and
``crypto-Catholics,'' saw an increase in writings by both Catholic and
Calvinist controversialists. In 1624 Richard Mountagu sought to
quiet these outspoken voices by writing A gagg for the new gospell? No: a
new gagg for an old goose, in which he defended the catholicity James
envisioned in the English Church. The point of departure for this
was its branding of Calvinist views of grace, free will, and predesti-
nation as ``puritan'' and therefore schismatic. A year later Mounta-
gu's Appello Caesarem engaged in more explicitly abrasive anti-
puritanism and anti-Calvinism. According to Fincham and Lake,
Mountagu offered James a rationale for opposing ``puritans'' that
would allow him to sustain his own rhetoric of catholicity. The
further proliferation of anti-Catholic, anti-Spanish writings in 1624
provided James with the opportunity to exercise this rhetoric. In
1624 John Gee's A foot out of the Snare, an anti-Jesuit work that listed
150 objectionable papist writings that had been sold in England
during the two previous years, led to an `Àddress of Grievances''
from the parliament to James calling for him to suppress Catholic
writing.81 James agreed to issue a proclamation against ``Seditious''
and ``Popish'' books but insisted that it also be directed against
``Puritanicall Bookes and Pamphlets.'' In the ®nal Paul's Cross book-
burning of his reign, James could once again reaf®rm the unity of
Christianity, aligning himself with true ``catholicism'' by repudiating
schism ± only this time the schismatics were the puritans and the
book, Edward Elton's Gods holy minde.
God's holy minde Touching Matters Morall, which himselfe uttered in Tenne
Words, or Tenne Commandements. Also Christs holy Mind touching Prayer,
delivered in that most holy Prayer, which himselfe taught unto his Disciples
contains a compendium of moral teaching based on the Ten
Commandments and the Lord's Prayer that ten years before would
have been regarded as well within the mainstream of Calvinist
thought. Its author was a conforming clergyman within the English
Church. Even so, the book was condemned because it was ``not
conformable to the discipline of the Church of England.''82We know
more about its licensing history than we do of most books because its
authorizer, Daniel Featly, who was called before the King for
licensing it once the book was condemned, wrote about it a few years
later in Cygnea Cantio. According to Featly, he helped Elton edit and
revise the book while he was alive but once the author died, he ``left
off intermedling in such a work wherein I could not suffer all things
to passe as they were in that copy . . . yet the booke tooke the libertie
to ¯ie out of the Presse without licence.''83 Although Featly's book
paints a complimentary picture of James and seeks his own vindica-
tion in the matter of licensing, he was clearly unhappy about the
condemnation of Elton's book. He seems particularly skeptical about
the nature of the authority that caused the books to be condemned
when he writes, ``Before the burning of the Bookes, the Preacher at
the Crosse declared divers erroneous assertions therein, condemned
(as he said) by Authoritie.''84 A document, that Anthony Milton says
`àppears to be a royal proclamation,'' lists eight alleged errors in the
book, including its sabbatarianism, objections to marriage with
papists, and objectionable views on the sacraments.85 The procla-
mation was not published, and Featly's caveat, `às he said,'' added to
the preacher's statement that the book was condemned by authority
suggests that objections to the book were not widely shared by the
traditional authorities ± those members of Archbishop Abbot's
household who licensed books. Elton's book, as Milton suggests, fell
victim to the polarized atmosphere that by 1625 had developed in
the Church. The attack on Elton's book ± and its licenser Featly ±
had been ``deliberately orchestrated'' by the anti-Calvinist, John
Cosin.86
Cygnea Cantio illustrates how polarized this atmosphere had
become. After describing the burning of Elton's book at Paul's Cross
on Sunday, 13 February 1625 as ``the greatest holocaust that hath
been offered in this kinde in our memorie,'' Featly described how the
event was inscribed in the popular imagination: ``Whereupon the
wits of the Citie (which usually will be working upon such occasions)
have made a conceited Pageant'' and produced an emblem to
accompany it. Featly described this in Cygnea Cantio, ``because the
Embleme and Motto devised upon this occasion discovereth the
affections of many that were there present'':
Saint Pauls Crosse is drawne at large, and a number of men, partly running
away that they might not see such a spectacle, partly weeping, and wiping
their eies to see a booke so full (as they conceived) of heavenly zeale and
holy ®re, sacri®ced in earthly and unhallowed ¯ames: their Motto was
Ardebant sancti scelaratis ignibus ignes,
Et mist a est ¯amma ¯amma profana pie.
[Their holy ®res burned in sinful ®res
and profane ¯ame was mixed with pious ¯ame.]
In the middest of the area there is described a huge pile of bookes burning,
and on the one side the Author casting his bookes into the ®re, with this
Motto:
Sancte (ned invideo) sine me liber ibis in igne.
[Holy book, go into the ®re without me, nor do I envy you.]
And on the other side a Popish shaveling Priest answering him with this
moot in the next verse:
Hei mihi quod domino non licet ire tuo.
[Woe is me that it is not allowed for you to go with your master.]87
The emblem, which recalls woodcuts of Marian book-burnings in
Foxe's Book of Martyrs, represents the intense religious opposition
that re-emerged between Calvinists (now ``Puritans'') and papists at
the end of James's reign. The fact that the events at Paul's Cross
were ``made'' into a pageant underscores the degree to which the
culture had absorbed the performativity of the Paul's Cross book-
burnings. As for Elton's book ± it is singularly indistinguishable in its
doctrine from countless books that had come before ± indeed, books
that had been licensed for the press by the Calvinist, Daniel Featly.
The doctrines had not changed, but the politics had. 88
not to ``blase abroad'' by punishment

In conclusion, I would like to turn to what might be deemed a
``puzzling incident of non-censorship,''89 if you will, that offers
negative evidence for the ceremonial and propagandistic purpose of
burning books at Paul's Cross. No record exists to suggest that Corona
Regia (1615), a book whose suppression James relentlessly sought
throughout Europe, was burned. This book offers a stinging mock
encomium of James, not only for his pretensions to wisdom and
devoutness but for his sexual prowess with members of both sexes,
especially the young male favorites he showered with honors. James's
agents relentlessly sought to discover the book's author and printer
across northern Europe, and once they were found, James demanded
that the Belgian Archduke punish the book's makers. The Arch-
duke's refusal reportedly led to an international incident when an
English ship seized one of the Archduke's. One observer noted that
some were `ìnclined to suspect that this is His Majesty's way of
showing his resentment at the reluctance of the Archduke to punish
the authors and printers of Corona Regia.''90
James's motivation for not burning this incredibly offensive libel
can be found in two parallel events. In 1610 when Wooton discussed
with the Venetian cabinet the libel that had referred to Venice as a
``corpse'' and James as `à crow that settled on it,'' he told them that
he did not wish the book suppressed ``so as not to give it importance
or cause it to be sought.''91 In 1621 parliament sentenced an obscure
lawyer named Edward Floyd to ``ride with his face to the horsetale''
and then stand in the stocks ``for lewde and contemptuous words
against the King and Quene of Bohemia and their children spoken
in the Fleet where he was prisoner.'' The received opinion why
James commuted the sentence was that ``the King thincks it better to
suppresse such scandalous speaches then by his punishment to blase
them further abroade.''92 These two incidents inform the Paul's
Cross book-burnings, where, when James burned books, he did so
not to control public access to the ideas censored writers expressed,
but to attract attention to how distant their ideas were from his own.
These public book-burnings, which participated as much in the
construction of the King's public persona as the works he published,
af®rmed the monarchical sovereignty of James and other princes,
denied papal claims to temporal superiority, con®rmed the conti-
nuity of Protestantism with the primitive Church, and vindicated
James from charges of apostasy. Burning books was for James an act
of personal propaganda.
Not all Jacobean censorship, however, was so public as the Paul's
Cross book-burnings. The next chapter explores those acts of
censorship in which the King and peers of his realm engaged that
were not only motivated by private and personal concerns but also
executed without much public notice.
chapter 3
The personal use of censorship in ``the wincy age''
Censorship in early modern England inevitably has been linked to

public punishment. Authors bear their offense's marks on their
bodies; books burn in public squares.1 Not all censorship under
James, however, was so public, or its motivation so well understood.
Authorization was withheld from some titles; sales of some books
were stayed. Still others were reportedly burned, but without public
notice or ceremony. This kind of censorship ± unexplained, arbitrary,
and extra-judicial ± feeds our sense that some kind of ruthless
hegemony operated in Jacobean England. At its whim, the state
could deprive a printer of his livelihood or imprison a poet. Even
though remarkably few instances of such apparently arbitrary
censorship actually occurred ± and those that did may be placed in a
context that dispels their mystery ± the King's personal involvement
in so many of these acts of censorship can mislead us. We mistake
something that is merely secretive for something authoritarian. In
1612, Thomas, Earl of Arundel, reminded Secretary Ralph Winwood
that the state might without explanation discharge a man accused of
possessing a dangerous book because `ìn matters of State proofs are
not ever pregnant to be produced.''2 Arundel employs this to argue
that the state need not explain its actions, but, as we shall see, an
unexplained action where the king or his councilors was concerned
did not necessarily deem the action a matter of state.
That James jealously protected the royal prerogative further
complicates the question of censorship. James understood it to be
within his right to exercise his royal authority without recourse to
statute or legal precedent ± a position that often brought him into
confrontation with both parliament and the common-law lawyers.
Even so, acts James took to suppress books may be mistaken as
representative of all state censorship during his reign. Even though
James was king, and things that concerned the king inevitably had
90
The personal use of censorship in ``the wincy age'' 91
political rami®cations, James on several occasions censored books
because they affected him personally. James's acts of personal
censorship may be discriminated from his public acts of censorship
by not only the means employed to effect the book's suppression but
also the ends the censorship sought to achieve. Unlike the performa-
tive acts of censorship considered in chapter 2 that drew public
attention to the King's stance on a given issue but did little to remove
books from circulation, personal censorship sought to remove books,
or parts of books, from the public domain without offering any kind
of rationale that might stir interest in the objectionable text.
Although the latter part of this strategy was not entirely successful ±
gossip being what it was ± a number of acts of censorship during
James's English kingship repeat two patterns present when, as King
of Scotland, he had sought the suppression of two English texts, the
1587 edition of Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles of England, Scotland, and
Ireland and the 1596 edition of Edmund Spenser's Faerie Queene.
James's effort to extend the arm of his censorship into England in
these instances exhibited his considerable sensitivity to perceived
affronts to his personal honor and the honor of his family and
Scotland. This attitude did not diminish once he came to the English
throne, where, for similar reasons, he sought the censorship of
Edward Ayscue's A historie contayning the warres, treatises, marriages,
betweene England and Scotland (1607), Sir Walter Ralegh's The History of
the World (1614), William Martyn's The history and lives of twentie kings of
England (1615), and William Camden's Annales (1615).3 The other
pattern that may be discerned in James VI's efforts to in¯uence
English publications likewise relates to his sensitivity ± but here to
representations of his rule appearing abroad. James was especially
concerned that his governance of the Church should not be mis-
represented or misunderstood. This concern had motivated his effort
to secure a recall of Holinshed's Chronicles when King of Scotland,
and it surfaced again when as King of England he sought to assure
that a synod would resolve the differences between the Arminians
and Calvinists in Holland. This time James suppressed Richard
Mocket's Doctrina et Politia Ecclesiae Anglicanae (1616) and sought Dutch
restraint of a pamphlet entitled Weeg-Schael (1617). He also refused
license to John Selden's Mare Clausum, a treatise on trade, because of
his concern about relations with the Dutch.
Since the King offered no rationale for his actions on any of these
occasions, their appearance, cloaked in the arcana imperii, would seem
to suggest censorship as Siebert and Hill understand it ± that is, as
the effort of authority to sustain itself by arbitrarily routing out
dangerous opposition. While the efforts to suppress these texts
effectively sought to remove them from circulation, some for only a
while, none of the books was truly oppositional, as we shall see. They
did, however, contain material that at particular historic moments
touched sensitive personal and political nerves. Jacobean England
was, as its popular poet John Taylor declaimed, a ``wincy age'' with
an endemic sensitivity to any perceived affront to a person's honor.4
While the sensitivity of monarchs and their ministers may have
looked like raison d'eÂtat, such sensitivity among commoners appeared
as concern for personal reputation. Throughout the seventeenth
century, libel continued as the principal cause of action preferred in
Church courts. Two well-known efforts to suppress printed books,
George Wither's Abuses Stript and Whipt (1613) and Lady Mary
Wroth's Urania (1621), grew out of perceived personal affronts.
Similarly, the High Commission's suppression of A relation of the State
of Religion proved an enormous personal convenience to its author,
Edwin Sandys, who may have sought its censorship for private ends.
This chapter considers the relationship between censorship and
personal interest during the ``wincy age.''
James VI displayed his presumption that censorship in England
operated the same way that it did in Scotland when he attempted to
have his cousin, Elizabeth I, suppress books printed in England that
he found objectionable. In Scotland the authority for licensing books
resided entirely in the King. In 1599 Scotland had enacted a law that
prohibited printing and publishing any book ``without the King's
license'' and which required, in particular, that the King's secretary
issue the imprimatur ``for any book concerning the present state or a
history of time past or [the] present age.''5 That James presumed
censorship was the same in England and Scotland may be seen in his
effort to have Holinshed's Chronicles censored in 1590. Working
through Elizabeth's ambassador in Scotland, Robert Bowes, James
sought to have the 1587 edition of the Chronicles suppressed for
including matters on religious affairs in Scotland that proved
embarrassing for the King. The Chronicles had reprinted a declara-
tion, much hated by Scottish Presbyterians, which supported royal
supremacy and episcopacy in Scotland. In 1589 Richard Bancroft
preached a sermon at Paul's Cross that portrayed the Scottish
monarchy as being under the tyranny of the Presbyterians and cited
the declaration, purportedly ``given out'' by James, as evidence both
of his real wishes and his dissimulation in conceding to the Presbyter-
ians.6 In 1590 Bowes wrote to Elizabeth through her secretary
indicating James's displeasure. Elizabeth apparently expressed her
desire to see the Chronicles called in, even though her secretary
assured her that since the book had been so long in circulation and
had been licensed, it could not be withdrawn.7 Bowes ultimately
persuaded James to withdraw his demand. Although the 1587
Chronicles had met with censorship at the time of their publication,
they were not called in again.8 It is not altogether clear which
offended James more, Bancroft's sermon or the Chronicles. From the
English point of view ± and that is all that really mattered since the
Scots did not hear the sermon and James could have the Chronicles
suppressed easily in Scotland ± neither one really painted him in an
unfavorable light. The most likely reason for James's desire to see the
book censored in England was that in 1590 he had his eye on the
English throne, and he was especially sensitive about anything that
Elizabeth might construe as criticism of his policies.
In 1596 another English publication upset the Scottish King. The
second edition of Edmund Spenser's Faerie Queene appeared with its
last three books. James took such offense at Spenser's work that he
expressed his desire to prevent the sale of any that might come to
Scotland and to have English justice punish the author, who, James
believed, wrote and published under the Queen's authority.9 A letter
from the English ambassador in Scotland, Robert Bowes, to Lord
Burghley reveals the Scottish King's concern that the ninth chapter
of the second part10 (Book v, canto ix) ``contained some dishonour-
able effects (as the King deems thereof ) against himself and his
mother deceased.''11 The ®fth book of The Faerie Queene allegorizes
justice through characters and events that can be read as repre-
senting international politics in the sixteenth century. Canto ix
describes Mercilla's justice generally but focuses on the treason trial
of Duessa to illustrate to Arthur and Artegal the distinctions between
justice, mercy, and clemency. Spenser's attention to historical detail
makes it virtually impossible to read this as anything other than the
trial of Mary, Queen of Scots. The representation of Duessa,
Spenser's Mary ®gure, is suf®ciently negative to warrant James's
objections. James took particular exception to the book because he
believed it was written and published under the Queen's authority.
For him to have conceived this to be true shows that James was
extending his understanding of Scotland's licensing to England. He
assumed that any license to print derived from the Queen and
constituted a royal ``privilege.'' Even though the English ambassador
explained to the King that the book had not been published under
the royal privilege, James still desired ``that Edward [sic] Spenser for
this fault may be duly tried and punished,'' a wish he saw
unful®lled.12 The objections James expressed to Bowes imply that
James believed that licensing was a tool to effect the monarch's
pleasure. The Faerie Queene's dedication to Elizabeth and thinly veiled
allegory of her rule explain why James may have believed she
`àuthorized'' the text. James, however, also expected authorization
to close the doors on those books that failed to please.
In the cases of Holinshed and Spenser, James's wishes amounted to
little more in England than a diplomatic scuf¯e, but his efforts to see
these particular books suppressed point to attitudes that mark several
acts of personal censorship he performed as the King of England.
Most obviously, as we have seen, they display his attitude about the
function of censorship. Even though James accommodated differ-
ences in English printing and licensing once he came to England, on
some occasions he offered no more rationale for suppressing a book
than his wish to see it done. The efforts to suppress Holinshed and
Spenser, however, provide a rationale where the King did not. They
exhibit his Achilles' heel ± his sensitivity about his mother, Scotland,
and his own security. These concerns mark most of the acts of
personal censorship he performed as King of England.
The affront to personal and family honor James found most biting
appeared in Edward Ayscue's A historie containing the warres, treaties,
marriages, betweene England and Scotland, 1607. In October 1607, James
called upon Viscount Fenton to convey his wishes regarding the book
to Salisbury. The King singled out Fenton for the task on the grounds
that he was `à Scots man, and a Scots body has most wrong in this
matter.'' TheKing wished it known that
in this as in all books that come to my reading I have accidentally found no
good part in it, if it be not the very worst of all; and thinking it to touch her
so nearly to whom I do owe so great a duty, besides the blemish it gives
myself, I must repress it, and specially by not suffering the book to go forth;
and if that be already past remedy, that they may be recalled.13
In his letter to Salisbury, Fenton insists on the ``great wrong'' the
King felt done to both himself and his mother. It was the King's
wish, Fenton told Salisbury, that the author be discovered and that
Salisbury ``should think upon the ®ttest way to make him know his
terror.''14
Although the book's authorship was quickly discovered, the matter
of its recall and the author's punishment proved more dif®cult. At
the end of November, Salisbury received another message from the
King, this time through Thomas Lake, telling him to
signi®e to my Lord of Canterbury that his majesty, being so carefull of the
Church and of his reputation expects from him the like care of his honour
in this matter concerning Askew, of whom his Majesty marvelest why the
proceeding is thus delayed and cannot understand he sayest the reason
thereof.15
Lake added the King's threat that if the man who had written the
book lacked suf®cient respect for the authority of the Church or the
High Commission, the King wished the Council to intervene.16
Apparently one reason for delay in the matter concerned the book's
ecclesiastical license; the Archbishop's chaplain, Zachariah Pas®eld,
had approved it for the press. Furthermore, its author was dead.
Even so, the Archbishop arrested the author's son, who subsequently
submitted himself to Salisbury, praying to obtain the King's pardon
and his liberty.17 Despite his initial anger, the King relented.
The King's precise objections to Ayscue's book appear quite
clearly in the historical record ± rare for acts of personal censorship.
Fenton sent a copy of the offending book along with his letter to
Salisbury that told that the book was ``marked with long scores'' and
that Salisbury would ®nd ``that whereof he [the King] is offended in
the last leaf of the book.'' The last leaf of Ayscue's history contains an
account of the trial of Mary, Queen of Scots, and her son's
response.18 According to this account, following Mary's death,
efforts were made (it does not say by whom) to provoke James to take
recourse against his mother's ``lamentable end.'' According to
Ayscue's account, James refused both because he saw the justice of
her death and because pursuing such a course of action held
potentially negative consequences for him.
For though good nature might worke in his majestie a due commiseration
over the Queene his mother her lamentable end: yet wel weighing the
quality and measure of her offence, the lawful and orderly proceeding
against her . . . and considering how much her life afterwards would
prejudice not only the safety of two royal persons, but withal the quiet
estate of the whole Island: the most prudent King wel ore-saw, what wrong
he might have enough unto himselfe by entering into any violent course.19
James's objection to Ayscue's book is understandable: Ayscue char-
acterizes Mary as traitorous and her son as self-serving.
However justi®ed James's animosity toward Ayscue may have
been, history has looked less kindly on his condemnation of Sir
Walter Ralegh's The History of the World, usually because Ralegh has
been regarded as a martyr to Stuart absolutism. Although Ralegh's
politics ± his support of Robert Devereux, the second Earl of Essex,
rather than any genuine complicity in the Main and Bye plots ± did
lead to his arrest for treason at the beginning of James's reign
(probably prompted by Robert Cecil), and James's effort to placate
Spain ultimately brought Ralegh's execution, the censorship of
Ralegh's history derived more from the King's personal anxieties
than from Ralegh's politics. John Chamberlain's 22 December 1614
letter to Dudley Carleton telling him that Ralegh's book had been
called in actually reports two occasions of censorship, the recall of
Ralegh's History of the World and the imprisonment of Edmund
Peacham for writing a seditious though unnamed manuscript.
According to Chamberlain,
there is now one Pecham a minister of Somersetshire in the Towre for that
and a worse quarrell, having written seditious discourses, under colour of
petitions to the last parliament, and presenting some of them at that time to
Sir Maurice Barklay and Mawster Pawlet that were knights for that
shire . . .20
A sentence or two later he concludes the letter,
Sir Walter Raleghs booke is called in by the Kinges commaundment, for
divers exceptions, but specially for beeing too sawcie in censuring princes. I
heare he takes it much to hart, for he thought he had wonne his spurres and
pleased the King extraordinarilie.21
History's abiding interest in Ralegh has assured retelling, embel-
lishing, and even fabricating accounts of this act of suppression while
Chamberlain's comment about the relatively obscure clergyman has
attracted only marginal notation and minimal speculation outside
the annals of jurisprudence ± even though, at the time, the King took
far greater interest in Peacham than he did in Ralegh.22 No one has
suggested the possibility that the two could have been linked in the
King's mind, as I believe they were. Events in 1614 suggest why.
In 1614 James had summoned parliament to gain a subsidy.
Parliament's response was especially rancorous, and the House of
Commons openly criticized him for his use of extra-parliamentary
levies, called `ìmpositions.'' One member even uttered a vehement
condemnation of the Scots.23 James quickly dissolved the parliament,
and was forced to look elsewhere for revenues. He turned to the
clergy. In the months before Chamberlain wrote to Carleton about
Ralegh, several clergymen had been arrested for protesting against
contributing the benevolences the Church was soliciting to shore up
James's insolvent estate. Peacham was almost certainly one of them.
He was tried twice for libel, once before the High Commission for
speaking libelous words, and later before the assizes for writing
seditious libel. According to S. R. Gardiner, Peacham ®rst got into
trouble with Church authorities for objecting to practices in his
diocesan court of Bath and Wells ± undoubtedly paying the bene-
volence.24 The High Commission's sentence of deprivation for libel
suggests that the attack was more against persons than procedures.25
Sometime during the course of the High Commission's case, papers
were procured from Peacham's study, and according to Gardiner,
laid before the Privy Council.26 On 9 December 1614 Peacham was
transferred from ecclesiastical custody to the Tower. On 18 January
1615 the Privy Council wrote to a host of government of®cials,
calling upon them to further interrogate Peacham, who up until then
had refused ``to declare the truthe in those pointes whereof hee hath
been interrogated.'' According to the Privy Council, Peacham was
accused of ``the writing of a booke or pamphlett conteining matters
treasonable (as is conceaved)'' which ``doth concerne his Majestie's
sacred person and gouvernment, and doth highly concerne his
service . . .''27 Peacham, subsequently tried and convicted of treason,
died in prison.28
Ralegh's History of the World, encouraged by his patron, the late
Prince Henry, appeared in print in March 1613. On 22 December
1614, upon the King's `èxpress direction,'' Archbishop Abbot wrote
to the Master and Wardens of the Stationers' Company requiring
them to ``repaire unto the printer of the said booke as also unto all
other stationers, and bookesellers which have any of them in their
Custodie, and . . . take them in.'' He requested that the books be
brought to him or to the Bishop of London ``with all Convenient
Speed.''29 The knowledge that Ralegh's book had been published
with an ecclesiastical imprimatur, that it was censored nearly nine
months after it appeared in print, and that it reappeared in 1617 has
given rise to extraordinary speculation, some of which John Racin,
Jr. puts to rest.30 Racin engages with these usual ``facts of the story,''
which were, he says, `èstablished mainly by Brush®eld and accepted
by Sir Charles Firth and a host of modern biographers.'' They may
be, he says, ``simply summarized'':
Ralegh, condemned to the Tower in 1603 under the sentence of death,
began his universal history in about 1607. The work was entered in the
Stationers' Register April 15, 1611, but did not appear until March, 1614. Its
popularity was immediate. Having roused James's anger, however, it was
suppressed by George Abbot, the Archbishop of Canterbury, December 22,
1614. James was especially incensed by the fact that Ralegh, a man ``civially
dead,'' had the `ìmpudence'' (to use Firth's term) to have his portrait
engraved on the title-page. However, a compromise was soon reached. The
government rescinded the suppression order with the stipulation that the
title-page be removed to render the work anonymous. The ®rst edition
(STC 20637), printed by William Stansby for Walter Burre, was then re-
issued, possibly three times. The second edition (STC 20637) was also
printed by Stansby for Burre, and appeared in 1614 with all of the errata of
the ®rst edition corrected. In 1617 two more editions were printed . . .31
Relying on bibliographical evidence, Racin dispenses with the
possibility that the government could have rescinded its censorship
order based on the title page and maintains that in Ralegh's lifetime
the book appeared in only three editions, the 1614, and two in 1617
that reprinted the 1614 text.32
At the same time that Racin corrects many former errors, he
creates a new mythology of Ralegh's History of the World.
The causes of James's anger and the suppression are not dif®cult to surmise.
Ralegh lived only through the ``mercy'' of James. In this precarious position
to pass ®erce judgments on the crimes of monarchs . . . to provide examples
of the overthrow of tyrannies, . . . to speak of monarchy in terms suggestive
of constitutional limitations . . . and to lament the monarch's ungrateful
treatment of England's patriot soldiers, carefully excepting James, but the
inference was plain . . . all this quite understandably irritated the in¯exible
champion of divine right . . . 33
Following this indictment, Racin alleges it improbable ``that James
`compromised' with a man he feared and rescinded his suppression
order with the stipulation that the printed title-page be removed.''
He concludes that ``the suppression order most likely remained in
force until Ralegh's conditional release from the Tower in 1616.'' 34
Despite the justice of Racin's bibliographical account of the History
of the World, his inference that Ralegh implicitly but intentionally
attacked the King does not square with the degree of Ralegh's
disappointment that registered with Chamberlain. No novice to
court politics, Ralegh surely would not have expected to have
``wonne his spurres and pleased the King extraordinarilie'' by
making a veiled attack on his policies. The entire preface, as Racin
points out, makes ®erce judgments on monarchy's crimes, but does so
as a prologue to a panegyric to James that concludes ``yet may it bee
better spoken of His Majesty, than of any King that ever England
had; who as well in Divine, as Humane understanding, hath exceeded
all that fore-went him, by many degrees.''35 Where other monarchs
had seized the throne, James rules not ``by breech, nor by bloud; but
by the Ordinary gate, which his owne right set open; and into which,
by a generall love and Obedience, Hee was received. He possesses a
latitude of knowledge, he is liberal, and he hath made more compas-
sion of other mens necessities, than of his own Coffers.''36
Although Ralegh's historical method, especially his providential
view of history, has received considerable scholarly attention, his
peculiar perspective on providence, which is what I believe discom-
®ted King James, has gone unremarked. Ralegh's preface repeatedly
returns to exempla that support the Old Testament version of justice
that the sins of the fathers are visited on their sons ± whether or not
the sons are themselves guilty. This passage on Charles V of Spain
typi®es Ralegh's method:
This wise and politique King, who sold Heaven and his owne Honour, to
make his sonne, the Prince of Spaine, the greatest Monarch of the world:
saw him die in the ¯ower of his yeares: and his wife great with child, with
her untimely birth, at once and together buried. His eldest daughter
married unto Don Alphonso Prince of Portugall, beheld her ®rst husband
break his neck in her presence; and being with child by her second, died
with it . . . The second Daughter of Ferdinand, married to the Arch-Duke
Philip, turned foole; and died mad and deprived. His third daughter,
bestowed on King Henry the eight, Hee saw cast off by the King . . . and
the mother of a Daughter, that in her unhappy zeale shed a world of
innocent bloud . . . and died heart-broken without increase.37
King James may have found one example particularly unpleasant. In
his condemnation of Henry VIII, Ralegh asks,
What causelesse and cruell warres did he make upon his owne Nephew
King James the ®rst? What Lawes and Wills did he devise, to establish
Kingdome in his owne issues? using his sharpest weapons to cut off, and cut
downe those branches, which spring from the same roote that him-selfe did.
And in the end. . . it pleased GOD to take away all his owne, without
increase; though, for themselves in their severall kindes, all Princes of
eminent vertue . . .38
Since accounts of Providence belonged to a long tradition of
historiography, the chaos tyrants released would have surprised
neither James nor the rest of Ralegh's audience. Ralegh's particular
vehicle of dead children and sudden unexpected deaths, however,
may have resonated badly with a King who was always sensitive
about death and had only in April received the delivery of a
treasonable prognostication.
James possessed a fear of death that G. P. V. Akrigg describes as
``neurotic,''39 perhaps because he had suffered considerable mis-
fortune with his children's deaths. His daughter Mary, born in 1605,
died in 1607 from lung disease. Sophia, born 22 June 1609, lived one
day. And, of course, Prince Henry had died only two years before on
6 November 1612. James's most recent brush with death, a serious
fall from his horse at the end of November, surely heightened his
sensitivity on the subject. Furthermore, the previous April a manu-
script of ``Balaam's Asse,'' a book linking the apocalypse to con-
temporary England and James to the Antichrist, had been
discovered at Whitehall.
When the manuscript of ``Balaam's Asse'' appeared in a parcel in
the palace hall, James immediately issued a proclamation that
charged his of®cials with apprehending one John Cotton of War-
blington and called upon all of his subjects (whose love ``never failed
Us, in any case that concerned Our safetie'') to exercise ``particular
diligence, care, and industrie'' in assisting the justices and of®cers.40
Apprehended and imprisoned in the Tower, Cotton and everyone
with whom he was associated received rigorous examination from
the Archbishop of Canterbury, his chaplains, and members of the
Privy Council. Among seemingly interminable questioning about the
timing of his April visit to London, his habitations, his associations,
and whether or not he was alone long enough on 28 April to allow
opportunity to place his parcel in Whitehall, Cotton was asked if he
had `ìn his foresight or contemplating on any punishment or strong
judgment that was to fall upon the King's Majesty's person or this
land.''41 Archbishop Abbot's notes on the matter suggest that
although evidence placed Cotton in London on 28 April and
scriveners testi®ed that Cotton's known handwriting and that in
``Balaam's Asse were the same,'' some uncertainty about the nature
of the crime may have persisted. Abbot ultimately concluded
``Balaam's Asse'' to be the work of a ``lay-Papist,'' containing
expositions of Revelation and other places in scripture ``which are
rather forced out of wit than gathered by reading.'' Since Abbot
determined that ``Balaam's Asse'' was a piece of controversialist
literature ± `àn intended refutation of the King's book'' (the
``Monitory Preface'') ± if Cotton did write it, he was guilty of nothing
worse than provoking the anxieties of a King overly anxious about
prophecy and prognostication.42
Edmund Peacham, however, was charged with treason for com-
passing the King's death in his manuscripts. Peacham's prediction
that the King would meet a violent death reportedly so upset James
that every night he barricaded himself in his room with feather
beds.43 When members of the Privy Council examined Peacham in
the Tower, they followed a set of interrogatories, some of which
suggest important parallels between Ralegh's history and Peacham's
offense. The sixth interrogatory asked why Peacham wrote and
gathered together ``such a mass of slanders against the King, his
posterity, and the whole state.'' The seventh queried Peacham more
explicitly, asking why he had written the words ``The king might be
stricken with death on the sudden, or within eight days, as Ananias
or Nabal?'' The tenth asked if Peacham knew of any plot against the
prince that would justify prophesying, ``The getting of the crown
land again would cost blood, and bring men to say, `This is the heir,
let us kill him'?'' The eighth interrogatory appears to implicate
Ralegh. It stated, ``You have confessed that these things were applied
to the King; and that, after the example of preachers and chroniclers,
kings' in®rmities are to be laid open.''44 History does not record
whether or not Peacham confessed speci®cally to having read the
History of the World, but Chamberlain and Abbot leave little doubt
that Ralegh was in trouble for having ``laid open'' kings' in®rmities,
and we know from the preface to History of the World that Ralegh
envisioned the deaths of kings and their heirs as divine retribution.
Chamberlain was right after all: Ralegh's History of the World was
called in ``for beeing too sawcie in censuring princes,'' but it was also
called in because in the King's mind Ralegh's book became linked
with Peacham's treason. A letter from Archbishop Abbot to the
diplomat William Trumbull shows these motives. Writing to Trum-
bull to dispel rumors that the Spanish ambassador had caused
Ralegh's book to be suppressed, Abbot assured Trumbull that ``The
Kinge himselfe was offended at it, partly because in the preface
thereof the authour doth bitterly tax and reproche many of the best
kinges that ever raigned in this kingdom, which liberty his Majesty
could not indure.'' Abbot's own concern, however, was that Ralegh
was in prison for treason:
it doth not stand with the wisdome of our State that a condemned man,
who lyeth in prison for his faulte, and that no lesse then of treason, should
publish bookes to the worlde, as it were mire gradiam with the foolish
multitude or to moove commiseration, which reason of state will not
permitt to be shewed unto him.45
The issue here does not appear to be that Ralegh was ``legally dead'';
Abbot appears more concerned that condoning Ralegh's book might
be construed as leniency toward a man convicted of treason ± and
Peacham's case had brought treason to the forefront. Moreover,
Abbot expresses particular concern that Ralegh's book might affect
the ``foolish multitude'' ± as perhaps it had Peacham ± or prompt
public compassion for traitors. Ralegh's error, however, was not
endemic; rather it was tied to the King's particular sensitivities in
1614±15. The book was reprinted in 1617, when Ralegh's well-
publicized trip to Guiana stirred popular sentiment and created a
new market for the book.46
The association between Peacham's writings and chronicles about
kings elicited of®cial concern about two other histories besides
Ralegh's: William Martyn's The history and lives of twentie kings of
England and William Camden's Annales. On 26 February 1615, the day
after Peacham was sent to Somerset to stand trial for his treasonous
writings, the Privy Council summoned William Martyn, the Re-
corder of Exeter, to appear before them. Martyn came before the
Council on 14 March 1615.47 The Attorney-General charged Martyn
with writing a history of England, ``wherein were many passages so
inaptly inserted, as might justly have drawne some heavy and severe
censure upon him.'' On this occasion, since Martyn submitted and
acknowledged his fault, the council mediated the matter with the
King and the charges against Martyn were dismissed.48 Martyn's
book, The history and lives of twentie kings of England, bearing the imprint
1615, appeared from the press only shortly after Ralegh's book was
called in and while Peacham was being examined in the Tower.
Martyn's history, extending through the reign of Henry VIII,
consciously sought neither to praise kings nor ``dispraise'' them.49
Consequently imagining how it may have offended the King ±
beyond merely being another chronicle that by its very subject
inevitably laid open the King's faults ± is dif®cult. The only passage
that conceivably could have offended James told of Scottish border
raids during the reign of Henry VIIII. Martyn indiscriminately
characterized Scots' ri¯ing, spoiling, and burning of English villages
during the reign of Henry VIII as acts `òbserving their old
culture.''50 This is so trivial that had Peacham not implicated
chronicles, James might have ignored Martyn altogether.
Whether or not James would have ignored William Camden is less
certain. As Mark Bland points out, James had read the manuscript of
Camden's Annales by August 1612. The book's printing in March 1615
was under the King's license. If Stationers were nervous about
publishing histories at that time, such express permission from the
King would have allayed any anxieties.51 The 1615 Annales was only
partial; a seventy-®ve-sheet section treating Jacobean history did not
appear in print until 1627, after the deaths of both Camden and
King James. Censorship extended beyond placing restraints on the
publication of passages on the contemporary history to canceling
two leaves, 3b4 and 3c1, both containing passages on Scottish affairs
and ®nances.52 Camden's treatment of Scottish affairs touched the
same nerve that had provoked the King to seek action against
Holinshed, Spenser, and possibly Martyn.
That histories appear often in early modern England as objects of
suppression has led to the conclusions both that writing histories was
a dangerous enterprise and that, in the interest of the state, govern-
ments monitored histories more carefully than other texts. In the
instances considered here, history writing per se was not suspected as
treasonous; Peacham's alleged treasons made the histories by
Ralegh, Martyn, and Camden suspect. Envisioning the King's death,
as Peacham allegedly had, fell under the treason statutes; writing
histories of dead monarchs did not. History was not the general
problem, but these particular histories, because they touched on
matters to which James was especially sensitive between December
1614 and May 1615, personally offended the King. Had Camden's
and Ralegh's books gone to press two years earlier, Camden's might
have appeared complete and Ralegh might have ``wonne his
spurres.''
Ralegh's, Martyn's, and Camden's histories attracted the King's
attention because they spoke to his personal anxieties. In 1617
Richard Mocket's Doctrina et Politia Ecclesiae Anglicanae, a compendium
in Latin of John Jewel's Apology, Alexander Nowell's Catechism, the
Book of Common Prayer, the Church of England's Thirty-Nine Articles
with abstracts of the Homilies, and Mocket's own Disciplina et Politia
was burned. Although subsequent accounts credit this to James's
``wrath'' and ``vengeance'' and make the con¯agration public, the
historical record is remarkably silent on the event.53 The earliest
evidence of the book's destruction appears over Archbishop Abbot's
signature in his copy of the 1617 issue: ``This last Treatise called
Politia ecclesiae Anglicanae [was condemned by authority and
ordered to bee burnt.]'' The words bracketed here, however, were
blotted out.54 Two seventeenth-century historians con®rm that
Mocket's book indeed was burned. The earliest, Thomas Fuller's The
Church-History of great Britain, from the birth of Jesus Christ until 1648
(1655), offers an account of the book's negative reception and
concludes, ``Hereupon Doctor Mocket his Book was censured to be
burned, which was done accordingly.''55 In his 1668 biography of
Archbishop William Laud, Cyprianus Anglicus, Peter Heylyn writes of
the burning of Mocket's book, relying upon and further embellishing
Fuller but offering no account of the authority by which it was
burned. He describes Mocket's book as
A Collection which the good man published in pious zeal, for gaining
Honour to the Church among Forrein Nations: But then this Zeal of his
was accompanied with so little Knowledge in the Constitution of this
Church, or so much biased toward those of Calvin's Plat-form, that it was
thought ®t not only to call it in but to expiate the Errors of it in a publick
Flame.56
In his introduction to a facsimile edition of Doctrina et Politia, M. A.
Screech scrupulously combs accounts of the censorship of Mocket's
book for ways subsequent authors perpetuate and embellish the
rationales Fuller and Heylyn offer for the suppression. Screech
concedes that ``There appear to be no closely contemporary docu-
ments extant providing any reasons for James's action nor any
account of it,'' even while he perpetuates the myth of royal offense
and indignation.57
If Heylyn's account is true, suggesting as he does the propagan-
distic use of censorship ``to expiate the Errors,'' one would expect
the kind of contemporary accounts that Chamberlain and the
Venetian ambassadors offer for other public book-burnings. Similarly,
if the book was indeed ``called in,'' Stationers' Company records
should show the usual order to stay the book's sale. The absence of
these kinds of document does not necessarily mean that the book was
not burned ``by authority,'' but it does suggest that the con¯agration
was a private affair, more like the 1599 burning of the second edition
of John Hayward's The ®rst part of the life and raigne of king Henrie the IIII
at the Bishop of London's house.58 Burning books in this manner
quietly and effectively removed them from the public domain
without calling attention to why the book might be objectionable.
Richard Mocket's book, ®rst published in 1616, was carefully revised
for a second edition that appeared in 1617. Both editions appeared
from the press of the King's Printer and bore the imprint ``Cum
Privilegio,'' that is, printed under the royal privilege. Issuing as it did
from his own printing house, James surely knew that this book was
being produced, as it was, to give an account to a continental
audience of the Church of England ± an enterprise whose success
both Fuller and Heylyn noted.59 Furthermore, that the book was
printed under royal privilege means that it is unlikely that any
authority outside the King's ± the High Commission's, a bishop's or
archbishop's, the Privy Council's, or parliament's ± would on its own
condemn a book so privileged to the ¯ames, so we can be reasonably
sure that James's was the `àuthority'' which burned the book.
The question, I believe, that needs to be asked is not, ``What in the
book aroused James's ire?'' but ``What would make James quietly
burn a book that Archbishop Abbot patronized and whose printing
the King had effectively subsidized over a year before?'' Given the
fact that the book's principal audience was continental ± and that it
was written in Latin ± what in the book could prove embarrassing to
the English Church in 1617 that was not embarrassing in 1616?
Answering these questions requires looking more closely at the
historical circumstances in 1617 and revisiting the two earliest
accounts of Mocket's book and its censorship.
Both Fuller and Heylyn concur that Mocket's book suffered
because Mocket's patron was Archbishop Abbot, against whom,
Fuller reports, ``many Bishops began to combine.'' 60 Although
neither Fuller nor Heylyn entirely admits the validity of accounts
that carping went on among the bishops, together they report the
following objections: that Mocket lacked the King's express commis-
sion for the project; that James Mountague, Bishop of Winchester,
took exception to the ``marshalling'' of bishops; that Mocket allowed
the Archbishop of Canterbury too much power in saying he could
con®rm the election of bishops (`Ìf any be made a Bishop without
the consent of his Metropolitan, he ought not to be a Bishop''); 61 and
that Mocket's extracts from the homilies and treatment of fast days
bore too strong a mark of Calvinism. In addition, Heylyn offers his
own estimation that the real cause the book was condemned was that
Mocket omitted part of Article 20 in the Thirty-Nine Articles, ``By
means whereof, the Article apparently falsi®ed the Churches Auth-
ority disavowed, and consequently a wide gap opened to dispute her
Power in all her Canons and Determinations of what sort soever.''62
Screech dismisses both Fuller and Heylyn as offering insuf®cient
cause for burning the book since any of the `èrrors'' they reported
could easily have been corrected by revising the 1617 text in much
the same way as the 1616 one had been revised.63 James, however,
may have burned the book less for the errors it contained than as a
means of silencing the clamors at court, especially at a time when the
tensions splitting apart the Dutch Church were beginning to be felt
in the English court. To understand that this might have been the
case requires looking more closely at the conditions that gave rise to
Fuller's and Heylyn's reports.
For most of 1617 the bishops `àt court'' were Archbishop Abbot
and Bishop Lancelot Andrewes of Ely, both of whom sat on the Privy
Council. Richard Neile, Bishop of Lincoln, served as Clerk of the
Closet, and James Mountague, Bishop of Winchester, was Dean of
the Chapel Royal, both positions in the royal household. Peter
McCullough points out the degree to which Mountague and Neile
represented and served distinctively different interests within the
Church of England. Mountague sympathized with nonconformist
ministers and sought preferment for evangelical Calvinists. Neile, on
the other hand, opposed Calvinism and patronized men who shared
his views.64 Lancelot Andrewes shared Neile's views, and as early as
1614 preached a sermon espousing the liturgical ceremonialism that
marked his anti-Calvinism.65 Although he supported all of his
bishops, Archbishop Abbot stood ®rmly with the Calvinists,
especially in his support of evangelical preaching and his contempt
for the Pope. Competition existed between these two parties both in
seeking ecclesiastical appointments and in in¯uencing the King's
appointments when bishoprics became vacant. In 1617 much was at
stake. During the course of the year, six of England's twenty-®ve
bishoprics became open, three by death and three by translation. On
12 May 1617, William Jones's death left the prestigious see of
Durham vacant, which Richard Neile ®lled, leaving Lincoln vacant.
Bristol had been left vacant by the translation of John Thornborough
to Worcester on 25 January 1617. On 12 October, Hereford was
vacated by the death of Robert Bennet. Hereford went to Francis
Godwin, whose translation vacated Llandaff. Furthermore, men
aged over sixty occupied six sees, including the archdiocese of
York.66 For either Mountague or Neile to in¯uence these appoint-
ments would signi®cantly affect his own prestige and power. Further-
more, as Abbot's chaplain, Richard Mocket would have been a
serious contender for one of these episcopal appointments. Given
these conditions, the intense rivalry Fuller and Heylyn reported
appears more understandable.
Both Fuller and Heylyn give the date for the book's censorship as
1617; both, however, use old-style dating in their histories, so the
book was censored sometime between late March 1617 and late
March 1618. Given that in 1617 the King was on progress to Scotland
from the end of March until nearly the middle of September, the
suppression more likely belongs to the fall of 1617 or the winter of
1618. Fuller says that Mocket took the censure ``so tenderly'' that he
ended his days ``soon after.'' Mocket died 6 July 1618, suggesting that
the book's censure probably occurred early in 1618. Complaints
about the book, however, had probably begun much earlier.
If Fuller's account of Mountague's concern over the order of
bishops bears any weight, we can be reasonably certain that his
complaints came well before the book met with censorship. Mounta-
gue's quarrel, however, could not have been with Abbot ± the
Archbishop of Canterbury always took precedence over all other
bishops. As Heylyn points out in Examen Historicum, a parliamentary
statute (31 Henry VIII, ca. 10) established the order of bishops:
Canterbury, York, London, Durham, Winchester, and the remaining
bishops by order of their consecration, with the proviso that if the
King's chief secretary were a bishop, he would hold precedence over
all other bishops.67 By Mocket's account, the order of precedence
follows the statute except for the quali®cation, ``nisi quod post
Episcopum Dunelmensem primun locumi, teneant qui Regi fuerent
a secretoribus Consiliis;'' that is, that the position after Durham
(before Winchester) would be held by whomever the King appointed
as council secretary or possibly Privy Councilor (the language is
ambiguous).68 According to Kenneth Fincham, within months of
James's accession, James Mountague became one of the King's
favorites and an `ìnseparable companion and theological secretary,
as he attended him at the chase as well as in London.'' 69 Mountague
well may have felt that Mocket's Latin slighted the importance he
had always enjoyed with the King ± which only recently had been
formalized by his preferment from Bath and Wells to the more
prestigious see of Winchester in 1616 (his con®rmation came in
October). As James's secretary, he would have enjoyed his prece-
dence, but if Mocket's passage were understood to mean `àny bishop
who was a privy councilor,'' he would have had to defer to Lancelot
Andrewes. Mountague's voice may well have joined the complaints
about Mocket's book but certainly did not cause its censorship. A
roster of Privy Councilors dated 1 April 1617 bears Mountague's
name, and on 30 September 1617 Mountague was ``sworned one of
his Majestie's Privie Councell,'' and at the King's commandment
``sat at his Boord and signed letters.''70 However Mocket's book was
understood, James ensured that his favorite would receive the full
prestige due him as Bishop of Winchester, the King's secretary, a
Privy Councilor, and a secretary on the Privy Council.
Aside from Mountague, most of the objections Fuller and Heylyn
reported would have come from Abbot's rivals, especially those that
found Mocket's translations as favoring too strongly the ``Calvinian''
perspective. As Screech has demonstrated, Mocket made editorial
choices which privileged a version of the Thirty-Nine Articles and
Homilies that described the Church of England's views on idolatry
and the Church's authority to decide rites and ceremonies as being
more consistent with continental reformers than with court anti-
Calvinists.71 Complaints about these matters could well have gained
the King's attention during the fall of 1617. James had intended his
recently concluded progress to Scotland to build bridges between the
Scottish Kirk and the Church of England. On 9 June 1617 Colonel
R. Henderson wrote to Dudley Carleton that the mission was not
going as well as the King had hoped, and that ``the people like the
doctrines of the English Bishops and Deans, but not their cere-
monies.''72 While the Scottish Kirk might have been far more
receptive to overtures from the Church of England if its Thirty-Nine
Articles did not maintain the Church's authority over rites and
ceremonies, Bishops Neile and Andrewes would have found such a
concession intolerable. Nor would Neile and Andrewes have been
pleased at Mocket's reduction of saints' days to include only those of
biblical saints.
The highest stakes for Abbot's foes, however, had less to do with
ceremony and practice than with the matter of ecclesiastical prefer-
ment in general, and Neile's preferment in particular. Discrediting
Mocket would have eliminated one of Abbot's contenders for the
vacant bishoprics and cast a pall on the Archbishop's in¯uence with
the King, shifting the balance among the court bishops to favor Neile
and Andrewes, both of whom were highly effective in obtaining
preferments. Besides whatever anxiety Neile and Andrewes may
have felt about their own in¯uence, the construction Mocket's book
put on the Archbishop of Canterbury's authority to con®rm bishops
would have impinged on Neile's sense of his own importance. Fuller
was convinced that Mocket's greatest error was in allowing the
Archbishop the privilege of con®rming the election of bishops since
``K. JAMES justly jealous of his own Prerogative approuved not such
a con®rming power in the Archbishop, which might imply a
Negative Voice in case he disliked such Elects as the KING should
recommend.''73 Fuller was probably correct that there existed some
jealousy and concern about the con®rming power, but I suspect it
was not the King who was jealous. James would have known all too
well that the procedure of appointing bishops consisting of election,
royal assent, and arch-episcopal con®rmation had been set by
statute, 25 Henry VIII, ca. 20, and while the King reserved to the
royal prerogative the right of selecting the candidate for election,
con®rmation rested with the Archbishop. Once the Archbishop ®xed
the time of con®rmation, he published a citation in his own name
indicating the date of con®rmation and setting a hearing for any who
would oppose the election or person elected.74 Richard Neile had
been elected to the Bishopric of Durham and received the royal
assent on 30 June 1617 while he was accompanying the King on the
progress to Scotland. Some question, however, may have arisen
regarding the Archbishop of Canterbury's role in his particular
con®rmation ± not about the con®rmation per se. Mocket's text
speci®ed that bishops required the con®rmation of their provincial.
Technically, the provincial for Durham was the Archbishop of York,
whose permission Neile was required to receive in order to be
con®rmed within the province of Canterbury. Either some problem
may have existed for Neile in securing his provincial's approval, or
he may have feared some objections to his selection within his own
archdiocese. (The most recent Bishops of Durham had received
preferment within the see of York prior to their elevation to
Durham.)
Given these personalities and politics, Mocket's book must have
provoked complaints from many of the court bishops. Even Heylyn,
however, did not really believe that this was enough to justify the
book's censure, so he turned to Mocket's omission of a clause from
Article 20 in the Thirty-Nine Articles. Screech takes Heylyn to task
for dwelling on this in the wake of the troubles Laud had for
`ìntroducing'' the clause, saying the association is understandable
but ``not good history.''75 Screech also takes exception to Mocket's
scholarship and to his slighting the authority of Queen Elizabeth by
neglecting to obtain the correct Latin version of the Articles, two of
which had been introduced in Convocation, but only one approved
by the Queen.76 Article 20 speci®es the extents and limits of the
Church's authority. The Latin version that Mocket included re-
strained the Church from instituting practices contrary to scripture
and omitted a clause that gave the Church authority to decree rites
and decide controversies in matters of faith. The English version of
the omitted clause speci®ed, ``The Church hath power to decree
Rites and Ceremonies, and authority in controversies of faith,''
although the Latin version omits mention of ``Ceremonies.'' 77 Since
``ceremonies'' were the sticking point between traditionalists and
reformers in the Church of England, Mocket's ``Calvinian'' char-
acter in omitting the clause has fed later rationales for the book's
censorship, placing James in opposition to Mocket and Abbot ±
incidentally making him an anti-Calvinist. While this ®ts nicely with
Heylyn's version of history, such an interpretation does not square
with events of 1617, when James was strongly opposing the Remons-
trants (Arminians) in Holland.
By 1616 the controversy that had begun as a theological difference
between the followers of Arminius and the established Dutch
Church spilled over into politics, threatening the Prince of Orange's
government. Matters were of such concern to James in 1616 that he
sent Dudley Carleton to Holland. A letter dated 11 March 1616/17
from Carleton describes the conditions and indicates James's vision
for a solution: ``But in case these speculations of Vorstius, Arminius,
and ther sectaries have taken such root in this state, that they cannot
be removed without a determinate decision . . . that ther his majesty
adviseth them to refer the matter to the decisions of a synod lawfully
called . . .''78 Secretary Lake wrote to Carleton in June that he heard
the controversies were multiplying and that he feared they would
``slip over into England.''79 By July it became clear to Carleton that
the sectaries had indeed taken root and presented an intractable
situation: if the Prince interfered, he would be viewed as intruding, if
he did not, sectarianism would proliferate. A church council, or
synod, looked like the best solution because it would preserve the
magistrate's authority.80 The summer of 1617 passed with the
Remonstrants (Arminians) resisting though not actually declining
efforts to bring about a council, but by October the crisis England
had feared appeared.
Armies were being raised at the very moment that articles were
being drafted for a synod.81 By the end of October James had
received copies of the articles, and Buckingham wrote to Carleton
about the King's objection. One of the articles speci®ed that the
means the synod would employ to reach a decision in the religious
controversy would be to ``search the word of God.'' The King felt
that this could only strengthen division, and he proposed the
following clause: ``That they shall diligently search the word of God,
and in the case they differ upon the interpretation, that they shall
have recourse unto the interpretation given thereunto by the general
consent of the ancient church and councils . . .'' 82 James's argument
here maintains the precedence of the authority of the Church,
especially as exercised in councils, over scripture in deciding con-
troversies of faith. James's proposed addition directly relates to the
issues Article 20 raised.
Article 20's full version gave the Church authority `ìn controver-
sies of faith'': ``Habet Ecclesia Ritus statuendi jus, et in ®dei
controversiis autoritatem.''83 According to Article 21 that authority
resides in general councils summoned by the power and will of
princes. Mocket's version of the Thirty-Nine Articles, which with the
rest of the De Doctrina et Politia Ecclesia Anglicanae had been written for
a continental audience to demonstrate the Church of England's
orthodoxy, denied the King's position for the Dutch synod. First of
all, it gave the Church no speci®c authority to decide controversies of
faith, and further, whatever authority might be granted to a general
council, it was restricted by the rule of scripture. To allow Mocket's
book to circulate on the Continent could easily fuel the Remons-
trants' opposition to a council. At the very least, it would offer
council planners a way of opposing James's proposed addition to the
council articles on the grounds that he was arguing against the
theology of his own Church.
The Remonstrants had already attempted to use King James's
own words to discredit him by circulating rumors about letters he
had written regarding a council.84 On 22 November 1617 Carleton
reported to Lake about a book circulating traducing England, the
reformed religions, and ``his Majesty's action in the church govern-
ment of his kingdoms.''85 The book, Jacob Taurinius' Weeg-Schaal (in
English, ``scale'' or ``balance''), maintained that at Hampton Court
James had dictated religious practice rather than abide by a Church
council. Carleton made a formal complaint to The Hague regarding
this book, and Secretary Lake followed with a letter to Carleton
assuring him that the English ``proceedings in matters of the church''
was a ``matter misreported'' among the Dutch and that he could
expect `ìnstruction'' from the Archbishop of Canterbury to be sent
to him ``for a ground, out of which you may reply to all calumnia-
tion.''86 On 23 December 1617 Lake wrote to Carleton that the
Archbishop had been ordered to ``set down in writing the course of
his majesty's proceeding, and the authority his majesty assumed in
church matters, having referred his grace to take his light thereof
from my lord of Ely's book.''87
The ``writing'' Lake refers to here is not apparent, but that Abbot
would be directed to a text on Church discipline by a member of the
opposing party when Mocket's book had been intended to clarify
abroad the practices of the Church of England points to the success
Neile and Andrewes had in discrediting Doctrina et Politia. Assuredly
both Fuller and Heylyn were correct in ®nding the rivalries of the
court bishops as the source of objections to Mocket's book. That
James made other efforts to placate the bishops, however, suggests
that censorship was not the immediate recourse. When a book
appeared on the Continent condemning James's role in church
affairs and suggesting that he failed to support the very authority he
sought in promoting a council to decide controversies of faith, James,
however, would have looked at Mocket's book quite differently. Here
was a book, printed under the King's privilege, which ignored the
Church's authority to decide controversies of faith. What the court
bishops began, the Remonstrants ®nished. James would not have
wanted Mocket's book to be fuel for any ®re other than the one
which would quite literally destroy it.
James's interest in suppressing negative accounts of his government
of the Church of England extended abroad. Carleton's complaints to
the States General about Taurinius' book led to their issuance of a
placart on 8 December 1617 condemning the book and offering a
reward for the discovery of its author (with pardon to the printer).88
Carleton sought to mend any damage the book had done in a series
of letters to the States General assuring them that King James was non
caput ecclesiae but referred matters of doctrine to the learned doctors
except when a schism threatened and then he sought a synod.89
James's interest in Dutch affairs was not restricted to religion.
Carleton's embassage extended to matters of trade as well, and not
surprisingly, James appears to have quietly prevented the publication
of a book that he felt might in some way disadvantage him with both
the Dutch and the King of Denmark. The Dutch claimed the right to
the herring-®shery, even in British coastal waters. In 1618 Hugo
Grotius' treatise, Mare liberum, asserted the Dutch claim as a matter
of common right.90 In the same year John Selden's Mare Clausum
responded, defending the English King's dominion over British
seas.91 By Selden's own account, he presented his work to the King
in 1618 with Buckingham's encouragement. James passed the treatise
to Sir Henry Martyn, judge of the Admiralty court, who, although
prepared to approve the book for the press, deferred to the King.
According to Selden, ``his Majesty was about signing it when he
stopt suddenly; saying, he remembered something in the book about
the northern sea, which might perhaps displease his brother of
Denmark, which he would not willingly do, since he owed him a
large sum of money already, and must desire to lend more shortly.'' 92
Although Selden revised the offending passage, he was unable to
gain further audience with the King in the matter and later received
reports that publication was prevented as much by court politics as
international interests. Apparently, ``some creatures of the Admiral's
had insinuated'' that Selden ``had in this book said something in
diminution of the jurisdiction of the Admiralty,'' and Buckingham,
now Lord Admiral, cooled to its publication.93
John Selden felt he had been ill used by Buckingham and court
politics; indeed, the entire incident gave him the resolve to `àbstain''
from the court.94 However unpalatable Selden's experience of
personality politics, the offense he suffered over Mare Clausum was far
less renowned or personally damaging than that George Wither
experienced at the hands of Northampton. In 1614 Wither spent four
months in the Marshalsea prison for writing Abuses Stript and Whipt,
published in 1613 with ecclesiastical authorization. In The Shepheard's
Hunting Wither protested that neither innocence nor denial served
him in his trial. Allan Pritchard points out that Wither offers the
satirist's conventional defense that his satire is general, but while
most satirists used this ruse to protect themselves from accusations of
libel, Wither's satire actually is general. Wither's Abuses engages less
in satiric invective than in moralizing on human passions and
weaknesses.95 Even so, Wither struck home enough that thirty years
later John Taylor remembered that Wither ``wast in Jayle for
scandalling some Peeres.''96 Pritchard argues that the particular peer
whom Wither offended was Henry Howard, the Earl of North-
ampton, who with other members of the Privy Council signed the
warrant for Wither's imprisonment in the Marshalsea. 97 North-
ampton, himself a secret pensioner of Spain and probably a crypto-
Catholic, favored a Spanish marriage alliance. David Norbrook links
Wither's March arrest to the impending parliament, which began
business on 8 April 1614.98 According to Norbrook, Northampton
opposed summoning parliament in case `ìt led to demonstrations of
hostility to pro-Spanish courtiers who had been directly attacked in
Wither's poem.''99 Although Norbrook overstates Wither's satire as a
``direct attack'' on Northampton's party, Wither's praise for North-
ampton's opponents, coupled, as it was, with a mistrust of a Spanish
truce so intense that it approaches a call to arms, may have been
seen as provocative.
Northampton's anxiety in this respect may have been legitimate,
or if not legitimate, a useful political tool. Although the principal
reason for summoning parliament in 1614 was the deteriorating
condition of James's ®nances, the King's agenda included, besides
impositions, anti-Catholic legislation, and con®rmation of the place
of the Princess Elizabeth's children in the succession.100 North-
ampton was ®rst among several powerful courtiers who discouraged
the King from summoning parliament, and when he did, took
determined action to assure the parliamentary session's failure.101
The success of parliament, according to Theodore Rabb, ``became a
pawn in the factional battle for James's favor,'' which Northampton
could claim when his prediction of parliamentary failure came
true.102 Imprisoning Wither for the danger he posed to parliament's
success would be a useful reverse strategy in sounding alarms to the
King. Parliament might be distracted by Wither's kind of opposition,
which would jeopardize the ends the King sought in calling parlia-
ment. Putting Wither in prison also would have allowed North-
ampton a neat revenge against a popular poet of the opposing party.
Northampton's alarm would not have fallen on deaf ears. A year
before James had suffered some discom®ture over an anti-Spanish
poem. On 22 March 1613 Foscarini, the Venetian ambassador,
reported to the Doge and Senate the circulation of some Latin verses
± ``sold freely and publicly'' ± that alleged the prince's marriage
negotiation fraudulent and railed against Spain: `` `Let them,' it says,
`prepare an armada against this kingdom; let them spread ther wiles;
but remember the Armada of '88'.''103 A week later the Spanish
ambassador complained to the King, who called upon Chancellor
Egerton ``to remove the verses and to punish the author.'' Even
though the Spanish ambassador received a copy of the King's
request, the book continued to be sold without any alteration, a
situation that so offended the Spanish ambassador that he told the
Venetian ambassador ``that when he saw the King he would lodge a
complaint, as he could not pass over so grave an offence so publicly
given.''104 Except for the fact that the 1613 verses were in Latin, it
would not have proved dif®cult to associate Wither's Abuses with this.
Envisioning Wither as a political pawn lends weight not only to his
claims of innocence but to the wide perception of injustice that
resonated among his fellow poets, many of whom shared both his
interest in a similar kind of Spenserian pastoral satire and his
objections to courtly excess.105 They justi®ably blamed the ``wincy''
age for attributing to them unjusti®ed wrongs. In Philomythie, Thomas
Scot complains,
This is a wondrous witty age, that sees
Beyond the truth of things, forty degrees.
Each Riddle now hath poyson in 't; each Rime
On the blanck Almanack, points at guilty time.
If Spencer now were living, to report
His Mother Hubberts tale, there would be sport:
To see him on a blanket tost, and mounted
Up to the Starrs, and yet no Starre accounted.
I dare not for my life in my tale,
Use any English Bird, Beaste, Worme, or Snaile.106
Although no evidence exists to suggest that like Wither, Thomas
Scot, John Taylor, Richard Brathwait, or William Goddard suffered
arrest or imprisonment, their writings revile courtiers' abuse of
authority and applaud Wither. In such a vein William Goddard
warns the King:
greate ones open maie your mercyes doore
...
Injustly wronging poore-poore underlings
For pettie crimes: when under your owne wings
Far fowler acts within themselves they nurrish.107
John Taylor says, `Ì have seene Abuses whipt and strip / In such rare
fashion, that the wincy age, / Hath kick'd and ¯ung, with uncon-
trouled rage.''108 In characterizing the work of these latter-day
``Spenserian'' poets, Norbrook observes that one of the complaints to
which they returned in their litanies of abuses was that ``great men
burnt books in which their faults were listed.''109 What Wither's
punishment seems to have inspired, however, was less an indignant
response to censorship per se than to the presumption and ``rampant
excess'' members of the nobility displayed in abusing ``honest
subjects.''110
Complaints like these from Wither's contemporaries contribute to
the culture of censorship described by Richard Burt, but they do not
necessarily con®rm a pervasive practice. Norbrook sees the publi-
cation at Dort of Goddard's 1616 Satyricall Dialogue as evidence of a
repressive system of controls. Yet Scot's Philomythie, Christopher
Brooke's The Ghost of Richard III, and Taylor's Nipping or Stripping of
Abuses all were printed in England, having received ecclesiastical
authorization before being entered in the Stationers' Register. The
poets, it would appear, employed the idea of censorship as a tool to
serve their ulterior motives as effectively as Northampton had in his
imprisonment of Wither. As Northampton used Wither to illustrate
the danger a meeting of parliament could pose, so the poets could
use the trope of censorship to illustrate courtiers' presumptions.
The imprint for Goddard's book may have contributed as well to
the use of the trope. The title page, bearing no date, says only that
the book was printed `ìn the Lowcountryes for all such gentle
women as are not altogether Idle.'' It has long been assumed that
this book was printed at Dort because Goddard's A Neaste of Waspes
lately found in the Low Countreys bears the imprint, `Àt Dort Printed in
the Low-countreys 1616.'' These books are usually linked to the
printing house of George Waters, but I can ®nd no bibliographical
features that compare with two books known to be printed by Waters
in 1615.111 The use of a comic or false imprint had long been a
practice among English printers, especially for satires. If an English
printer used one for Goddard's book, it would call attention to its
``dangerous'' contents and heighten its marketability.
Literary assaults on courtiers were not restricted to the popular
press ± nor were aristocratic efforts to seek censorship to protect
personal honor. As Josephine Roberts has demonstrated in her
studies of Lady Mary Wroth's prose romance, The Countess of
Mountgomery's Urania (1621), Wroth drew upon her contemporaries for
characterization and was even so bold as to offer a thinly disguised
account of the scandal created by Frances Howard, Robert Carr
(Somerset), and Thomas Overbury.112 Shortly after the book's
publication, Edward Denny, Baron of Waltham, wrote two letters
attacking Wroth's work accompanied by a vengeful poem in which
he characterizes Wroth as a ``monster'' whose ``wrathful spite
conceived an Idell book.''113 Denny, feeling himself to have been
made ``the only chosen fool for a May game before all the world, and
especially before a wise King and Prince, with all the nobility,'' took
measures that the ``King's ear'' should hear his protestations.114
Although Wroth returned Denny's poetic invective with some of her
own, the threat of Denny's in¯uence with the King led her to seek
the help of both William Fielding, Earl of Denbigh, and the Duke of
Buckingham to in¯uence James on her behalf. In her December 1621
letter to Buckingham, Wroth said of the books that she had ``caused
the sale of them to be forbidden,'' and she asked the Duke to secure
the King's warrant so that she might ``gett in'' those already
`àbroad.''115 James appears to have taken no notice of either
Denny's or Wroth's appeals, and nothing in the Stationers'
Company records indicates that the books were either called in or
their sales stayed.
Personal efforts like Denny's to secure the suppression of printed
books perceived as attacking personal or familial honor relate closely
to the principles underlying the libel laws. In a 1604 Star Chamber
trial over a Puritan libel that touched Archbishop Whitgift, Edward
Coke and the other judges had argued that because the society was
grounded in personal honor, libeling someone threatened the very
thing that stabilized political and social relationships, and libeling
the King's minister was like libeling the King.116 While the Star
Chamber became an important tool in Stuart England for prosecut-
ing libel, none of the instances of personal censorship considered in
this chapter went that far. This, in part, may derive from the fact that
the offending passages in the works considered here engaged in
veiled rather than direct and veri®able assaults. It may derive as well
from the degree to which the Star Chamber was a visible and public
venue, which, like Paul's Cross, would draw attention to the offenses,
causing further dishonor. James's book-burning at Paul's Cross had
made any public act of censorship into such a performative act that
its effectiveness as a tool to remove dangerous writings from
circulation was impeded. The most effective alternative to eliminate
offending texts was the quiet order to the Stationers, without
explanation or fanfare, or an unpublicized con¯agration. To the
modern observer, these acts appear the most threatening. They carry
with them all the marks of arbitrary authority that democratic
societies associate with monarchy. The more invisible and unmoti-
vated such acts appear, the more likely we are to suspect that they
pervade the culture. In Jacobean England, however, the efforts of
individuals to secure suppression of texts argue against a single
abusive authoritarian system.
One book that was quietly burned in 1605, probably for personal
reasons, was Edwin Sandys's A Relation of the State of Religion: and with
what Hopes and Policies it hath beene framed. Chamberlain reports that
the High Commission with the author's approval burned the
book.117 Sandys's biographer, Theodore Rabb, dismisses Chamber-
lain's report of Sandys's complicity as uncon®rmable rumor.118
Sandys's book, written in 1599, appeared in two editions in 1605,
both published by Simon Waterson, one printed by George and
Lionel Snowdon, the other by Valentine Simmes. Allegations in a
1629 edition generally have been taken as evidence that the 1605
book was not `àuthorized'' by Sandys, and Catholics seeking to
embarrass Sandys and the government initiated its `ìllegal'' print-
ing.119 The 1629 title page claims that the book was ``Never before
till now published according to the Authors Originall Copie,'' and
its preface maintains that the 1605 edition was so corrupted it
wronged the author, who ``caused it . . . to be prohibited by
Authoritie.''120 Rabb has repeatedly maintained that Sandys did
wish the book published, and his claim of approving the book's
burning was made to save face. According to Rabb, the 1605 editions
were
hardly so de®cient as to justify the hyperbole in the 1629 preface about a
spurious, stolen, epitomized, ampli®ed, and falsi®ed text . . . he was not
averse to having the book known: he was circulating manuscript copies; he
himself corrected the mistakes in one of these editions; another 1605 copy is
the only one that the Sandys family has kept, from generation to generation
to this day; and a third copy was owned by Sir Edwin's cousin and son-in-
law Sir Thomas Wilford. Nor is it likely that a publisher of the standing of
Waterson would have been involved in so shady a venture.121
The reason Rabb offers for Sandys wishing the book published was
that its publication was consistent with Sandys's rising political
career: ``He was making a new name for himself in every sense, and
the exposure for general consumption of the book he had ®nished a
few years before was absolutely in keeping with this sudden wave of
public activity.''122 In the parliamentary session of 1604 Sandys had
moved to the forefront as a leader of the emerging opposition in the
Commons. Sandys had spoken eloquently and persuasively against
the King's pet project of unifying England and Scotland. Rabb
speculates that the same `òbstreperous behavior'' that catapulted
him into parliamentary leadership may have encouraged of®cial
hostility. Or else, that the book's ``tolerant remarks about Catholics
gave the Anglican hierarchy pause.''123
Rabb's assertion that Sandys wished A Relation of the State of Religion
published in 1605 seems credible, especially because the book
appeared in two editions between its publication and its November
suppression. Its ®rst appearance was probably in late June since it
was entered in the Stationers' Register on 21 June under Zachariah
Pas®eld's imprimatur. The imprimatur by a prebendary of St. Paul's
argues that the book probably did not offend the Anglican hierarchy,
nor did its author suffer at their hands for his `àntipredestinarian''
views, as Nicholas Tyacke suggested.124 Admittedly books with an
ecclesiastical imprimatur sometimes later provoked a furor, but
attitudes within the Church and its hierarchy did not change much
in 1605 between late June and early November.
Rabb noted the proximity of the 3 November censorship to the 5
November Gunpowder Plot's discovery as somehow suggestive that
the authorities might have found the book's tolerant attitude toward
Catholics objectionable in a way it had not been earlier. Members of
the Privy Council had been alerted to Catholic threats after 26
October 1605, when Lord Monteagle received a warning to stay
away from parliament. No action, however, was taken until the
afternoon of 4 November.125 Since rumors of plotting by French
Jesuits had been circulating since the summer before, and since anti-
Catholic sentiment was hardly new, a relationship between the
Gunpowder Plot and Sandys's book seems unlikely. A common
denominator, however, exists between the two events ± the opening
of parliament. The 1605 Parliament was scheduled to open on 5
November. Although summoning parliament had seemed inevitable
the summer before, the exact date had not been set at the time that
Sandys's book appeared. Its publication may well have been initiated
as a means of increasing Sandys's public pro®le prior to the
anticipated parliament. Events during the summer however inter-
fered; a series of riots had broken out among recusants, which were
reportedly serious.126 This combined with a rising tide of anti-
Catholicism to make the most important issue on parliament's
agenda, besides the King's appeal for revenues, strengthening laws
against recusants. The King would have to concede to the
Commons' demand for these measures in order to ensure their
support for his revenue initiatives. With his increased leadership in
the Commons, Sandys would have been expected to share the
prevailing sentiment against Catholics.
When Sandys returned to London in early November, even before
the Gunpowder Plot was exposed, he must have recognized his
book might prove a liability. Its sins were more those of omission
than commission. Repeatedly throughout the book, Sandys leaves
unsaid ± as too well known ± those objections against Catholics that
were fueling contemporary parliamentary issues. On the second
page, for example, he says he ``must omit an endlesse multitude of
their superstitions and ceremonies, for they are enough to take up a
great part of a mans life to peruse.''127 And at the end, in his
discussion of the ``ranke of the Roman policies, arranged against
their professed & feared enemies, whereby they do seeke to re-enter
where they have been disrooted,'' he says he will not, `Èxempli®e
upon things manifest and ordinary, being high saies, so plaine that a
guide were needlesse; their persecutions, con®scations, tortures,
burnings, secret murthers, general massacares, exciting of inward
seditions & outward hostility against their adversaries . . . are things
whereof they were none of the inventors.''128 Instead, Sandys looks
at the Jesuit efforts as controversialists and educators, and while he
hardly praises them, he recognizes their authority and in¯uence.
An attitude like this would have run counter to the current
sentiment that regarded Jesuits and seminarians as the source of
unrest among the recusants. While it is by no means certain that
Sandys sought the High Commissioners' censorship of his book,
their action and his voiced approval of it could be held out to
anyone who might wish to misread the Relation as evidence of the
distance between Sandys and any appearance of approving Catholic
policy.
One indication that the 1605 edition may have been viewed as
insuf®ciently anti-Catholic comes from the 1629 edition. Its title page
reads:
EVROPAE SPECVLUM
OR
A VIEW OR SVRVEY
OF THE STATE OF RELIGION
in the Westerne parts of the World.
Wherein the Romane
Religion, and the pregnant policies of the
Church of Rome to support the same,
Are notably displayed . . .
This compares with the 1605 title page:
A
RELATION
OF THE STATE OF
Religion: and with what Hopes and
Policies it hath been framed, and is maintai-
ned in the severall states of these westerne
parts of the world.
The latter title page explicitly states the book's focus to be on the
Church of Rome and its ``policies.'' Although Rabb notes the 1629
edition's false imprint of ``The Hague,'' he does not extend to its
printer the same kind of attention that he does to the 1605's
publisher, whose credibility he employs as evidence of the earlier
edition's legitimacy.
Michael Sparke, whose reputation as a puritan later would bring
him into con¯ict with the Archbishop of Canterbury, William Laud,
published the 1629 edition. While the status of Sparke's edition of
Sandys's book as a ``piracy'' would certainly explain his decision to
falsely imprint ``The Hague'' as the place of the book's publication,
the emerging con¯ict between puritans and the established Church
also dictated Sparke's choice. Simon Waterson, the publisher of the
1605 editions, held the Stationers' Company's license for Sandys's
book, so Sparke's 1629 edition violated Waterson's right to the copy.
Sparke's edition was thus illegal, which explains why the preface
went to such lengths to claim major differences between his and
Waterson's texts. If this were an entirely new edition, indeed the
different book its changed title implies, Sparke could argue that he
was not infringing Waterson's license.
Why would Sparke risk pirating Waterson's copy? Sandy's Relation,
as Rabb points out, had been an immensely popular book ± two
editions in less than six months was unusual.129 Sparke's motivation
may have been simply economic, but its preliminaries and authoriza-
tion suggest something more. His title page's emphasis on telling the
truth about the Church of Rome appeals to an audience more
hostile to the Catholic Church than either Tyacke or Rabb has
allowed. The type fonts also call attention to an anti-Romanist bias.
By 1629 Calvinists had been largely disenfranchised in the Church
of England, and Charles I had issued a proclamation making it
illegal to print anything in the controversy surrounding Richard
Mountagu's Appello Caesarem.130 Furthermore, the kind of anti-
popery that had marked mainstream English Calvinism for over a
generation was under attack.131 Although more moderate than
earlier anti-Catholic diatribes, Sandys's book still views Catholic
religious practices as superstitious, precisely the view of Catholicism
that Laudians saw as threatening to their ceremonial and liturgical
emphasis.132 Given this climate, Sparke could not be certain how his
edition would be received, so the false imprint afforded him a double
measure of safety. On 10 February 1630 Sparke entered his license
for Europae Speculum in the Stationers' Register with the ecclesiastical
authorization of Thomas Buckner, chaplain to Archbishop Abbot.
(Buckner's licensing career ended after 1633 when the Star Chamber
®ned him for authorizing William Prynne's Histriomastix.)133 That
Sparke sought a sympathetic authorizer from Abbot's rather than
Durham House's party speaks to a clear sense that by 1629 Sandys's
book was perceived as offering a discourse resistant to what had
become the new ceremonial orthodoxy. The ``state of religion'' in
England had shifted radically between 1605 and 1629, and Sandys's
anti-popery, which in 1605 had been insuf®ciently strident, had by
1629 become a discourse resistant enough to warrant surreptitious
publication.
Even though James was king, and things that concerned the King
inevitably had political rami®cations, James on several occasions
censored books because either they affected him personally or he
feared they might re¯ect negatively upon his person or family. As we
have seen, such concerns were not restricted to the King, and private
individuals sought the suppression of texts for similar reasons. The
secrecy surrounding the acts of censorship this chapter has consid-
ered frequently prompts the conclusion that the absence of ``preg-
nant proof offered'' evidences some reason of state. This chapter has
surveyed several occasions where both public and private individuals
served their own interests by using or seeking to use established
means for censoring texts. Rather than providing evidence of an
arbitrary and authoritarian state, these occasions demonstrate how
individuals could appropriate established institutions in an arbitrary
and seemingly authoritarian way to protect personal interests. A
similar practice appears among Stuart institutions. Several times in
Jacobean England, institutions within the state ± the common-law
courts, the High Commission, and parliament ± censored texts they
judged contrary to their institutional interests. Those books, as the
next chapter will show, posed no greater threat to ``the state'' than
Sandys's Relation of the State of Religion, Wroth's Urania, or Ralegh's
History of the World.
chapter 4
Censorship and the confrontation between prerogative

and privilege
The historical interpretation of Jacobean politics has undergone

considerable revison over time. King James has himself gone from
being esteemed lazy, wasteful, and lascivious, to being regarded as
authoritarian but inept, to being seen as the person and principle
whose ideology, theology, intellect, and political acumen dictated not
merely the immediate world of the court but the entire construction
of Jacobean culture. Revisionist historians, having carefully scruti-
nized the ``Whig'' narrative of Stuart politics as the ideological
opposition of Anglicans and Puritans, court and country, Crown and
parliament (what Peter Lake and Kevin Sharpe describe as ``prin-
ciple-centered'' politics), recentered Stuart historiography in the
monarch and the court.1 Their version of politics is grounded in a
view of Jacobean society as ``deeply hierarchical and deferential,''
where politics worked from the top down and anxiety about order
and hierarchy ``left little room for the development of justi®ed
challenges to authority.''2 Even though the revisionist enterprise has
met some resistance, recentering the discourse of Jacobean politics in
the court has produced illuminating investigations of patronage,
place, and person.3 The last chapter's investigation of personal
censorship, centered most often in the practices of the King and his
peers, lends substantial support to the revisionist cultural vision.
Although James and his ministers did not successfully ensure cultural
hegemony by diligently surveying the press, their own personal
interests infringed on books by Ralegh, Camden, Wither, and Wroth.
Turning as this chapter does to politics proper ± monarchy, law, and
parliament ± the consensus revisionist historians envision strains
under the weight of institutional demands. The acts of censorship by
different arms of Jacobean administration employed to suppress
`òppositional'' discourses, however, have nothing to do with cultural
124
Prerogative vs. privilege 125
hegemony and everything to do with bolstering institutional auth-
ority and salvaging reputations.
When James I wrote to the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1607
asking him to suppress Ayscue's history of Scotland and punish the
author, he reminded the Archbishop that he would be returning the
favor that he, James, had extended in the matter of Nicholas Fuller,
who had written an attack on the High Commission. Censorship
proceeded not only from persons jealous of their honor and authority
but from institutions. Between 1603 and 1625, parliament, the
Church, and the High Commission all sought to suppress books they
perceived as infringing upon their special privileges and prerogatives.
The reactions to John Cowell's The Interpreter of both James I and
members of parliament display the complex interactions of political
and institutional rivalries. Although James suppressed the book by
proclamation, the entrenched issues of parliamentary privilege, the
common law's status, and royal prerogative received only temporary
resolution. In some respects the objections to Cowell's book grew out
of an earlier confrontation over rival judicial jurisdictions that was
not fully resolved. In 1607 Nicholas Fuller and his book entitled The
Argument of Master Nicholas Fuller, in the case of Thomas Lad, and Richard
Maunsell, his Clients became the center of a battle between the
common-law courts and the High Commission over the jurisdiction
and procedures of the High Commission. This was only the ®rst
skirmish in an ongoing struggle between the Crown, the common-
law lawyers and the civil lawyers that personal rivalries kept alive.
Both in its early and late stages, texts played an important role: early,
with Fuller, and later, with manuscripts written by Edward Coke, the
common law's strident defender. John Selden's History of Tithes,
suppressed by the High Commission in 1618, likewise participated in
a related struggle, this time over whether the common law or the
Church exercised authority over revenues from tithes. In each of
these instances an institution's authority over a book and its author
became representative of the larger question of the institution's
overall power and authority.
Central to understanding Jacobean political institutions is, of
course, the King's own eloquent articulation and defense of his own
role. James's The Trew Law of Free Monarchies argues from scriptural
authority that kings ``sit upon God his Throne in the earth, and have
the count of their administration to give unto him.'' 4 While James
stresses the duties incumbent upon the King, the subject's responsi-
bility is to submit to the King's unquestioned authority:
. . . the duetie, and alleageance of the people to their lawfull King, their
obedience, I say, ought to be to him, as to Gods Lieutenant in earth,
obeying his commands in all things, . . . acknowledging him a Judge set by
God over them, having power to judge them, but to be judged onely by
God, whom to onely hee must give count of his judgement . . .5
James returned several times during his monarchy to the central
themes set forth in the Trew Law. In speeches to parliament, at the
opening of Star Chamber, and in personal meditations, James
reiterated that while kings abide by law, the King is accountable only
to God. Subjects might think ill of their monarch, or object to his
tyranny, but challenging his authority or disputing his prerogative,
from James's perspective, constituted treason.6
Johann P. Sommerville and Glenn Burgess differ on whether
James's elevated conceptions of monarchy actually constituted poli-
tical absolutism. Sommerville maintains that King James, who was
one of the most important British theoreticians of absolutism,
believed in absolute monarchy, which he said was sanctioned by
scripture, reason, and history. Glenn Burgess maintains that while
James was among the Stuart advocates of absolutism, the common
law effectively imposed restraints on royal prerogative.7 As Louis
Kna¯a, however, points out, ``James Stuart's idea of Kingship ± that
it was indefeasible and held by hereditary divine right ± posed a
formidable problem to the administrators of Jacobean England.''8
Even in Stuart England, the King's version of monarchy met with
decidedly different responses, both theoretically and practically.
While James accepted practically that he governed in partnership
with the Privy Council, parliament and the courts of law, his
outspoken elevation of the principle of his monarchy invited if not
resistance per se, at least some expression of difference. Edward Coke,
who led the efforts of common-law judges and lawyers to constrain
royal prerogative within the practice of customary and statutory law,
often found himself disagreeing directly with the King. In 1615, for
example, Coke upheld the principle of judicial independence when
he refused to tell the King his opinion of Edmund Peacham's guilt or
innocence prior to his judgment. Nor was parliament any more
willing than the common-law lawyers to grant James the unquali®ed
exaltation of his prerogative at their expense. Not only did the
subject of parliamentary privileges occupy the Commons in nearly
every Jacobean session, parliamentarians vehemently opposed the
way in which John Cowell's Interpreter de®ned royal prerogative at
their expense.
civil law versus the common law

Coke and Cowell themselves represent a deeper ®ssure in Jacobean
administrative practice than merely conceptual differences on pre-
rogative ± the difference between the civil and common lawyers and,
in turn, between the jurisdiction and practice of ecclesiastical and
secular law. As the case of Nicholas Fuller and the censorship of the
book about the case illustrate, the Church of England felt its very
authority at stake in the challenge common-law judges were posing
to ecclesiastical law.
These well-ingrained institutional rivalries have provided the sum
and substance of political histories of Stuart England. The judgment
that the Civil War's motives stem from deep-seated ideological
differences tidily locates these differences within the opposition
between parliament and the Crown, aligning the common-law
judges and lawyers with the former, and the Church with the latter.
The sixteenth- and seventeenth-century men who wrote of these
institutional differences and questions of jurisdiction, however,
thought locally. Both the advocates of the common law and the civil
law (ecclesiastical and Admiralty law) maintained their particular
legal interest as under the King's dignity, yet each argued judicial
precedence in certain matters. Even within one ®eld of law, not all its
practitioners were always of a single mind. As Brian Levack points
out, many members of the common-law bench were stout royalists. 9
Nor did all bishops concur with each other or with the King in all
matters where they exercised their authority, although supporting
the King's divine right arguments certainly served the jus divinum
argument for their authority. All bishops did not take the same
positions in parliament, as demonstrated by comparing the rebuke
parliament gave to Richard Neile for so stridently condemning them
for their differences with King James with the leadership George
Abbot offered parliament in opposing James's pro-Spanish policies.10
Finally, although James and his parliaments often saw matters
differently, the opposition that emerged was less an assault on the
other's authority than each institution's jealous protection of its own
jurisdiction and reputation.
One means employed to lay claim to both authority and reputa-
tion was the press. Edward Coke's Reports, the compendium of
cases that essentially de®ned English common law, appeared from
the press in eleven volumes between 1600 and 1615, most in multiple
editions.11 While their prefaces show an intended audience of law
students, Coke's interpretations and commentary join the prefaces
to offer an articulate defense of the common law. Nowhere is this
more apparent than in the preface to the Ninth Report, where he
writes:
In this book in effect appeareth the whole frame of the ancient common
laws of this realm . . . This grave and learned author will show as in this
Mirror the great antiquity of the said courts of the common law, and
particularly the High Court of parliament ever since the time of King
Arthur who reigned about the year of our Lord 516.12
The civil and ecclesiastical law likewise had its advocates, not the
least of which was John Cowell, whose book, The Interpreter (1607),
zealously upheld the civil law. Thomas Ridley's A View of the Civile and
Ecclesiastical Law (1607), which he dedicated to King James, describes
the civil and canon law as ``so full of wisdome, so full of varietie, so
well serving for every moment and State of the Common wealth in
peace or in war.''13 Francis Mason's The authoritie of the church in making
canons and constitutions (1607) also defended canon law. When argu-
ments on canon law and authority became centered in discussions on
tithes, at least six books supported the Church's legal stance. And, of
course, James's writings repeatedly return to the supremacy of his
prerogative.
Although one might concur generally with revisionist historians
that Whig accounts of Stuart history have overplayed the incipient
political divisions emerging in Jacobean England and speci®cally
with Brian Levack's assessment that ``too much has been made of the
civilians' hostility toward the common law and common lawyers,'' 14
the strong reactions that books on these subjects produced suggest
deep-seated differences and anxieties. Flourishing institutions and
unchallenged authority rarely seek to silence opposition. Nicholas
Fuller's book on the High Commission's authority, Cowell's on the
civil law, Coke's on the common law, and Selden's on tithes all
touched a nerve but signi®cantly not the same nerve and not a single
oppositional difference that can be understood to have caused the
Civil War.
In most respects the mounting institutional tensions in Jacobean
England were less a cause than a consequence. Jacobean parliaments
repeatedly returned to the matter of their privilege because questions
of privilege that had arisen in Elizabethan parliaments had gone
unresolved, even though parliament's prestige and responsibility had
grown under the Tudors. Likewise, the expansion of litigation in late
Elizabethan England had put extraordinary pressures on the law
courts and created considerable jurisdictional chaos. As courts
expanded to meet the growing demand, they competed with each
other for business, and fought to secure jurisdictions. The court of
High Commission had extended its jurisdiction from clerical con-
formity to becoming an ecclesiastical court of appeals. Although in
1592 common-law judges in Caudry's case had ruled favorably on
the High Commission's legitimacy as a court of law, widespread
opposition to its procedures, including the oath ex of®cio continued.
Finally, the escalation of litigation at the end of the sixteenth century
in all courts occurred at a time when the distinctions between secular
and religious society were blurring. Whatever theoretical jurisdic-
tions may have existed among the various law courts, litigants
brought cases where they felt they could be best served. Since cases
in Star Chamber, for example, proceeded in a more timely fashion
than those in Chancery, litigants and their lawyers stretched the
causes in their cases in some way to meet the ancient criterion of
``riot'' as de®ning Star Chamber's jurisdiction. Cross-suiting ±
entertaining separate or counter-suits in the same or different courts
± became such common practice in the sixteenth century that
actions con®ned to a single suit in a single court were exceptions.15
Finally, the common law was itself badly in need of reform by the
beginning of the seventeenth century. For more than three centuries
it had operated without any comprehensive or systematic treatise
that described it. Over time, written pleading had largely replaced
oral, but the common law still represented a body of orally trans-
mitted knowledge rather than a practice or a method. The written
case law was unsystematic and unwieldy.16
The lines between legal jurisdictions proved particularly problem-
atic when it came to property, the ground of the common law. Since
testamentary matters were governed by canon law, a will was proved
before a diocesan court. But if the common law imposed constraints,
on the divisibility of lands, for example, the ultimate decision on a
legacy could require a common-law judgment. Similarly, while the
Admiralty court's jurisdiction included contracts upon the seas, the
common law could claim that once a ship disembarked, any further
proceedings taking place on terra ®rma between merchants should be
governed by common law. No problem, however, was more problem-
atic than tithes, the tenth of a man's goods due to the Church for the
clergy's maintenance. Laws regulating tithes were part of canon law,
but parliament had a long-established precedent of intervening when
differences arose between the Crown and the Church. Tithes were
attached to speci®c lands and their revenues and remained when a
property's title was transferred, and while the ancient canon law had
provided for the vagaries of this, Henry VIII's sale of con®scated
Church lands introduced a major area where the common law could
claim jurisdiction.17
Two views have dominated historical accounts of the origin of the
rivalry between common-law and civil lawyers and of that rivalry's
relevance to understanding Jacobean government. Charles McIll-
wain believed that the civil lawyers, with the King's sympathy,
engaged in a ``conscious and determined effort'' to weaken the
common-law courts to assure reception of Roman law principles and
procedures that would strengthen the King's authority.18 J. P.
Kenyon sees Edward Coke and his fellow judges in the common-law
courts as engaging in an active campaign to elevate the status of the
common law.19 Although Kenyon recognizes that common-law
judges employed writs of prohibition (orders from a common-law
court to an ecclesiastical or Admiralty court to cease a proceeding) to
restrict the `èncroachments of High Commission, the court of
Requests, the Council of the North and the Council of the Marches
and Wales,'' he sees Coke's appointment to the position of Chief
Justice of the Common Pleas in 1606, and the defense of the High
Commission by Richard Bancroft, the Archbishop of Canterbury, as
precipitative to open confrontation.20 While from Kenyon's perspec-
tive, Coke and the common law may have won some battles in their
assault on absolutism, ultimately the common-law judges acquiesced
to Charles I's demands and became part of ``the breakdown.''21
Kenyon's stance implies, in particular, that the High Commission
played the villain in the piece, which inevitably subsumes the
confrontation between ecclesiastical and common law into an ideolo-
gical confrontation between prelates and puritans, and ultimately,
between King and parliament. More recently the dichotomous
understanding of common law/parliament vs. civil law/King has
given way to a recognition that Jacobean Englishmen engaged in a
multi-vocal conversation about the commonwealth's proper govern-
ance that appealed to English common law, continental civil law,
theology, and natural law. 22
the civil law and the common law: the censorship of

``the argument of master nicholas fuller''
Perhaps the best-known confrontation between the ecclesiastical and
common-law lawyers occurred in the case of Nicholas Fuller, an MP
and lawyer for the common law. Fuller's case has long been
recognized as important evidence of the tensions between civil and
common-law lawyers, but it also offers an important illustration of
how one powerful institution of Jacobean government employed
censorship against a rival as a means of preserving its own authority
and esteem. As a member of the House of Commons, Nicholas
Fuller strongly favored the causes of religious radicals and parlia-
mentary privilege.23 One of his targets was the court of High
Commission, whose tactics against nonconforming ministers were
often regarded as abusive. On 23 June 1607, Fuller presented a bill to
the Commons seeking to reform the statute 1 Elizabeth, ca. 1 (The
Act of Uniformity) that empowered the monarch to create ecclesi-
astical commissions by letters patent. Fuller maintained that with
successive renewals, the High Commission had amassed more and
more power, and that the power to impose restraints resided in
parliament.24 Fuller's bill proposed that restraint by revising the
Elizabethan parliamentary Act to repeal the monarch's right to issue
letters patent for the High Commission. Besides his parliamentary
assault on the High Commission, Fuller sought writs of prohibition,
praemunire, and habeas corpus in the common-law courts to secure his
clients' removal from the High Commission's jurisdiction.
In August of 1607, Nicholas Fuller procured a writ of habeas corpus
at the King's Bench to override the High Commission's imprison-
ment of Thomas Ladd and Richard Maunsell for refusing to take the
oath ex of®cio. The merchant, Thomas Ladd, was accused of having
participated in a conventicle; Richard Maunsell, a cleric, was
``charged to have been a partaker in a Petition exhibited to the
Nether house of the parliament.''25 Rather than make an evidentiary
argument before the King's Bench on the insuf®ciency of proof for
the cause of Ladd's and Maunsell's commitment (the subject of
which would have been their refusal to take the oath), Fuller argued
that only the common-law courts could ®ne and imprison, unless
parliament provided otherwise. In short, while the High Commission
may have been founded by parliament in the ®rst year of Elizabeth's
reign, that parliament did not give ``life or strength'' to those parts of
the Commission that ``concerned imprisonment of subjectes, ®ning
them, or forcing them to accuse themselves.''26
The King's Bench adjourned the case to allow for all twelve
judges to hear the arguments. Before the judges reconvened, Fuller
was called before the High Commission and accused of making
scandalous statements, encouraging schism, and maligning the
King's ecclesiastical authority.27 The Commissioners ®ned Fuller
£200 and committed him to the Fleet, but Fuller obtained his
freedom on a prohibition. In mid-September Fuller was again in
custody, this time in the house of the Dean of St. Paul's. The Privy
Council ordered this detention, but the appearance in print of The
Argument of Master Nicholas Fuller, in the case of Thomas Lad, and Richard
Maunsell, his Clients. Wherein it is plainely proved, that the Ecclesiastical
Commissioners have no power, by vertue of their Commission, to Imprison, to
put the Oath Ex Of®cio, or to ®ne any of his Majesties Subjects compounded
the offense Fuller's words had given the High Commissioners.28 On
16 September Dudley Carleton reported that King James had
personally visited the Archbishop of Canterbury at Lambeth ``to
hearten him in his con¯ict with Nick Fuller.''29 The King regarded
his own efforts in the matter of Fuller as personally protecting the
reputation of the Archbishop and guarding the Church.30 This time
Fuller applied for a writ of habeas corpus, but it took unusually long
for the matter to be heard since in mid-October James's secretary
wrote to Robert Cecil, the Earl of Salisbury, that the King ``mar-
velled he heard not of Fuller's case.''31 Two days later James wrote
to Salisbury:
I pray you to forget not Fuller's matter, that the Ecclesiastical Commission
may not be suffered to sink, besides the evil deserts of the villain. For this far
dare I prophesy unto you, that whenever the ecclesiastical dignity together
with the King's government thereof shall be turned in contempt and begin
to evanish in this kingdom, the Kings therof shall not long after prosper in
their government and the monarchy shall fall to ruin . . .32
The matter did not come before the King's Bench until the end of
November.
The publication of The Argument of Master Nicholas Fuller, in the case of
Thomas Lad, and Richard Maunsell, his Clients contributed to the delay.
Fuller was said to have written down the arguments he had used in
Maunsell's and Ladd's case, reportedly ``with intent only to utter it at
the bar and not to print it, and being imprisoned, he delivered it to
his client on condition that he should deliver it to the counsel
assigned and none others.''33 Fuller claimed to be distressed at the
book's publication and expressed his fear that the book might have
been printed in order to return him to prison. He accordingly wrote
to both the ``Master of the Company of Bookbinders'' and the
Archbishop of Canterbury and requested that the books be sup-
pressed.34 Despite this, at the King's request, Attorney-General
Hobart initiated proceedings in Star Chamber against Fuller and
The Argument's publisher.35 When Fuller, now imprisoned in the
Tower, was questioned about the book, he maintained that he had
no knowledge of the book's publication, apparently to the satisfaction
of Attorney-General Henry Hobart. Hobart reported to Salisbury
that he had found ``nothing proof against Mr. Fuller, neither out of
himself nor any other that may prove his consent or knowledge of
the printing before it was done, nor the publishing of any the books.''
Hobart's of®cers expended considerable effort trying to identify who
printed the books, who distributed them, and who possessed them,
but to no avail.36
Fuller ®nally appeared before the King's Bench on two separate
days. On the ®rst day, 24 November 1607, unaccompanied by
counsel, Fuller took exception to the return ``because he did not say
the words wherewith it charged him; secondly, if he did, it was by
way of argument speaking for his client.''37 The attorney repre-
senting the High Commission pointed out that Fuller's claims were
immaterial, and that the High Commission having obtained a
consultation, ``had set down some particulars in their warrant for his
commitment; whereby it might appear they sought to preserve right
without encroachment.''38 Hence the High Commission had juris-
diction and could give sentence. The judges responded that ``they
never made question whether he was to be punished or no,
concluded with a direct condemnation of his fact, and so remanded
him back again.''39 Fuller then asked for a new hearing since he was
there without counsel. Granting the new hearing, set for November
26, the judges expressed wonder ``that he would add one fault to
another.''40 What particular element in the High Commission's
warrant for Fuller's commitment prompted the King's Bench to set
aside its prohibition is not mentioned, nor does it specify what
``fault'' Fuller added to the ®rst. Coke's report of the King's Bench's
®nal ruling in the case, however, suggests that the publication of The
Argument of Master Nicholas Fuller in¯uenced the judges.
On 26 October the lawyers for the Commission argued before the
King's Bench that their actions against Fuller were justi®ed by the
King's letters patent and that Fuller's exceptions were ``frivolous,''
since ``Fuller and all the world might know what was contained in
letters patent under the Great Seal; adding that in these exorbitant
cases upon schismatical words, there need be no more doubt of
commitment.''41
The judges responded that upon ``this return'' they had nothing
to do with Fuller. They did, however, uphold their authority over the
Ecclesiastical Commission, and in the course of their judgment,
expounded the virtue of the common law. According to one
observer,
the judges found a way to `ìnterlace something for themselves'': that they
were one of the King's strong arms: that as they knew how much they
ought to respect the dignity of that Commission, and did at no time suspect
that the Bishops or principal Commissioners would or had ever allowed of
any encroachment to the blemish of the temporal dignity, so they would
wish that such inferior Commissioners as might err often oft of ignorance,
and all other such men that spoke by tradition and out of their element,
some in pulpits, and some in other places, to the disgrace of their authority
or the execution of it, might understand that the temporal courts both
might grant prohibitions, and had granted them duly: and would continue
to do so . . .42
Coke likewise remembers this case as a triumph for the common
law ± but with unfortunate consequences for Fuller.
It was resolved, that if a Counsellor at law, in his argument shall scandal the
King or his government, temporal or ecclesiastical, this is a misdemeanor
and contempt to the court; for this he is to be indicted, ®ned, and
imprisoned, but not in court-Christian; but if he publish any heresy, schism,
or erroneous opinion in religion, he may be for this convened before the
ecclesiastical Judges, and there corrected according to the ecclesiastical
law.43
Since the King's Bench judges chose to return Fuller to the High
Commission's authority, under which he was subsequently ®ned and
imprisoned, Fuller's words against the High Commission during
Ladd and Maunsell's trial must not have been the offense for which
he was punished.44 Coke's Reports suggest that the more likely cause
for which Fuller was returned to the High Commission's authority
was that he ``published'' schismatical views.
The letters patent that had created the High Commission gave it
express authority over schismatical books, and Fuller's schismatical
words and the High Commission's authority in this regard was
precisely the argument the High Commission's counsel had pre-
sented to King's Bench. Having been returned to the High Commis-
sion's jurisdiction, Fuller prepared his submission to the Archbishop
of Canterbury, apologizing for his offense, and, at the end of
December, paid his ®ne. His wife appealed to the King to intervene
on Fuller's behalf, which the King did, and on 5 January 1608 Fuller
was freed from prison.45
Even though Fuller maintained he had no knowledge of the book's
publication, the account of his innocence in the matter contradicts
the book itself. Fuller reportedly wrote to the ``Master of the
Company of Bookbinders'' and to the Archbishop of Canterbury to
have the book suppressed. If indeed this was the case, Fuller appears
to have known that the book was published in London. The book
itself pretends to have been printed abroad. The ``Printer to the
Reader'' opens, ``Christian Reader, there came to my hands by the
good providence of God, this Argument of M. Fullers.'' The printer
takes the stance that he, who `ìs on this side the Seas,'' is printing
this book for the good of his countrymen, whose good he desires
though he is `ìn a part farre remote from them.''46 The title page
imprints the date ``1607'' but has no place or publisher's name. The
Short-Title Catalogue identi®es William Jones as the printer.47 Between
1604 and 1609 William Jones surreptitiously printed sixteen books
that directly or indirectly addressed the cause of ministers deprived
for nonconformity in James's campaign against puritans ± the same
cause for which Fuller displayed such zeal in both parliament and his
law practice.
Fuller and Jones's activities on behalf of the deprived ministers
were not coincidental, nor was either man part of a ``fringe'' group.
A freeman of the Stationers' Company, Jones had a shop at the Sign
of the Ship in Redcross Street, where he practiced his principal trade
as a bookseller. Jones became actively engaged on the deprived
ministers' behalf in 1604, when he personally presented the Speaker
of the House of Commons with a draft bill of attainder against the
Bishop of London, Richard Bancroft, charging him with conspiring
with papists by allowing them to print books detrimental to the
safety of the realm. The information assembled for this had been
gathered from a wide range of sources. Jones's action, which itself
went nowhere, participated in a spectrum of efforts puritans were
making to present their cause.48 The deprived ministers petitioned
parliament, and Jones's publication of their petition was only one of
the several articles of propaganda he printed. In parliament, Fuller
supported efforts to petition the King on the ministers' behalf. Like
the output of Jones's press, Fuller's efforts were clearly calculated to
advance the puritan cause.
James's considerable interest in Fuller's case undoubtedly
stemmed from both the visibility the publication of The Argument of
Master Nicholas Fuller gave to ®ssures in state authority and the degree
to which the case itself intensi®ed those very rivalries. Fuller's cases
before the King's Bench, both his own and that on his clients' behalf,
successfully championed the common law over ecclesiastical law.
The printed case attacked the High Commission by claiming
parliament's precedence. The High Commission, vulnerable in both
regards, understandably appealed to the King for his support on the
grounds that a strike against them was a strike against him. James
left the practical implementation of his interests in the matter to
Salisbury.
Salisbury's estimation of this task's dif®culty appears in his report
to Sir Thomas Lake at the close of Fuller's ®rst hearing on 24
November. Salisbury felt that
. . . the chiefest work we had in hand as councillors was to provide for some
such circumstances in the carriage of this as might take away the conceit of
passion in either of the parties, and might [extinguish any hope of lack of
power in either of,] [struck out] keep afoot any gross opinions that each place
had not a powerful jurisdiction.49
The two parties here were of course the High Commission and the
King's Bench. Whether or not Salisbury speci®cally engineered the
verdict Coke reported, he certainly received credit with the King for
successfully managing the entire matter.
The difference between the Archbishop of Canterbury and the
press was not so easily resolved. A year later his of®cers were still
unsuccessful in ®nding the printer of The Argument. It was not until
1609 that William Jones was accused in the court of Star Chamber of
publishing ``scandalous, factious, and seditious bookes and pamph-
letts,'' and even then the case against him appears to have been
unsuccessful.50
parliament and the royal prerogative: the

censorship of cowell's the interpreter
While Fuller's experience with censorship did little to discredit him
personally or injure his position as a leader in the House of
Commons, the civil lawyer, John Cowell, did not fare as well when
his book provoked parliament's ire. John Cowell's book, The Inter-
preter, was censored by royal proclamation in 1610. Actually a
dictionary of legal terms, the book appeared in 1607 with a dedica-
tion to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Richard Bancroft. Its author,
John Cowell, Regius Professor of Civil Law at Cambridge and a civil
lawyer with a large London practice, wrote The Interpreter and
Institutiones Juris Anglicani in response to appeals within the legal
community for developing some ``method'' for common-law prac-
tice. Cowell maintained that in his Institutiones (1605) he digested the
laws of England in a structure that reproduced all the book and title
headings of Justinian's Institutes word for word in their original order.
Cowell took on this task as an outsider whose attitude toward the
common law was less than sympathetic. Cowell helped Richard
Bancroft draft the Articuli Cleri, a formal protest to the King against
the common-law courts' practice of restraining ecclesiastical courts
through writs of prohibitions, which argued the superiority of the
jurisdiction of the ecclesiastical courts because their authority
derived from the crown.51 These articles became themselves a battle-
ground between the civil and common law when Edward Coke
responded, challenging Bancroft's position that the King was above
the law and arguing instead the supremacy of parliament. Cowell's
The Interpreter included among its vast catalog of legal terms, sections
on ``Parliament,'' ``Prerogative,'' and ``Subsidy'' that conformed to
Articuli Cleri's vision of government and jurisdiction.
When the 1610 Parliament opened and the Commons turned to its
own agenda of calling upon the King to address grievances, Cowell's
book became a convenient target. On 23 February 1610, John Hoskins
brought Cowell's book to the Commons' attention, and a committee
was formed to consider its offenses. They then appealed to the Lords
for a conference. The Commons objected to slights given both to the
common law and to parliament. The Lords asked the Commons to
explain how the book had offended, to which they replied that the
book derogated parliament's authority, and that they wished to see
the offender punished and not to engage with him in debate:
We think the parts of the book are dangerous and offensive to infuse into
the readers, that though the King and his progenitors have admitted both
the Houses to give their votes, yet it is only a politic mercy or merciful
policy; but we will not dispute this question, for then should we arm him
with an answer, who we desire rather to see punished; for this man bringeth
and offereth a presumptuous novelty, wherupon dependeth a dangerous
consequent, for to remove this lapis angularis we think was never presumed
to be undertaken. To dispute of things in these we disallow not, for so is the
manner of disputants in the universities; but to dispute of kingdoms and
states in hypothesis, rebus sic stantibut, is most dangerous . . . This offense
not in a word or a word by chance, but imprinted, not as though it had
strayed forth by chance, but reiterated in 4 or 5 places.52
The offending passages appeared under four titles. The ®rst was
under the heading `` `Subsidy,' which is granted that the King may
make laws more freely of himself ''; the second under `` `King', that
he is above the law and not subject to law, for the King is always
taken to be at full age, and that his politic body never dieth''; the
third, under ``Parliament,'' de®ned its authority only as ``collocutio
or colloquium'' incapable of subordinating an absolute monarch to
its power; and the fourth, ``Prerogative,'' gave to the King's will the
highest force and power of law.53 Perhaps the most telling aspect of
the Commons' objection was not that these positions were taken but
that they were `ìmprinted'' and reiterated ± that they would `ìnfuse
into the readers'' that though parliament might vote, its very
existence was `ònly a politic mercy or merciful policy.''54 The Lords
responded that they wished to consult precedents to determine what
course of action should be taken.
Before either house could proceed in the matter, the King
intervened. When James ®rst heard of the matter, he was inclined to
ignore it altogether, but when he learned that Cowell's book touched
his authority, the King summoned Cowell before him and expressed
his dissatisfaction.55 Following this, Salisbury reported to the Lords
that the King took `èxception'' to Cowell's book. Salisbury told the
Lords that the King found,
That in this his book called The Interpreter, he is too bold with the common
law, which being the law he enjoyeth, he and all other ought to reverence
that law under which government he breatheth, and that he mistaketh the
dignity of parliament and over-curiously write in that subject, which is out
of his proper element. Although by the law of Latin nations and the law of
this realm, he hath an absolute power as ever any monarch in this kingdom,
therefore for this matter to treat of his power and prerogative, he holdeth
not ®t to be called into probleÁme, knowing very well that the Pope looketh
into business of this kind and that now he would be glad to see his power set
down and limited, who never meaneth to pass his bounds but always
anteponere salutatem populi ante voluntatem.56
Salisbury's remarks to the Lords led to a conversation about the
book's licensing, with the Archbishop of Canterbury denying any
responsibility, but maintaining that Cowell did not deserve punish-
ment. Bancroft, however, was quick to add the caveat, `Ì do think
that there had need to be great care taken to punish both the books
of the Romanists and of the formalists as Buchanan, De Jure
Magistratus, and that we be careful to maintain the King's authority
both in temporal and spiritual government.''57 Salisbury concurred:
`Ì shall like Cambridge the worse whilst I live for suffering it to pass;
but yet seeing it is passed, I hold it ®t not to be disputed of.'' 58
This conversation in the House of Lords points to the complex
issues that informed this act of censorship. On the one hand, the
King here expressed his own anxiety that anything that ®xed his
power and clearly de®ned the parameters of England's government
could potentially be employed against him in his confrontation with
the Pope. Bancroft would censor only those books that denied the
King's authority ± temporal or spiritual. Salisbury was reluctant to
engage in a course of action that would disparage the university.
When Salisbury carried the King's message to Commons, it was
clear that James was as concerned about his legacy as about current
opinion. In his speech, Salisbury emphasized to the Commons the
King's respect for parliament and concern for the common law, as
well as his desire that nothing like Cowell's book, which suggested
the contrary, should become part of the historical record. According
to Salisbury, the King believed that
Books are voces temporum, and that therefore he minds no such voice
shall be left to succeeding times as shall say that the King can make laws
without the estates or that subsidies are due to him because he is a King.
He is the father and head of the commonwealth and therefore helps,
supplies, and supports are due unto him, for which he holdeth himself
bound to give his people a real and royal satisfaction by protection and
defense; but that the King may take subsidies without the consent of his
people, he condemns the doctrine as absurd as him that that maintains the
position. The marriage between law and prerogative is inseparable and like
twins they must joy and mourn together, live and die together, the
separation of the one is the ruin of the other. That his Majesty is resolved
that this book shall be suppressed and our thoughts cleared by suppressing
thereof when they hear it; that his principal ambition is to leave to such an
offspring such a form that they descend from such an ancestor as was ever
a preserver of the common laws of this realm from violence or change; that
he is not so enamored on this law that he thinks nothing therein could be
amended, experience and the daily making new statutes to supply or form
the defects of the law sheweth the contrary, yet doth he love it as the apple
of his eye and holdeth it in the general wise, as just and safe a law as any in
the world . . .59
In some respects Salisbury's speech to the Commons supports

Johann P. Sommerville's contention that ``the King intervened in
order to prevent parliament from wasting on Cowell's case precious
time which could be better devoted to debating ®nancial measures,
and in particular the Great Contract.''60 Salisbury was quick to
emphasize both the King's respect for parliament's role in granting
subsidy and his right to expect it. Likewise Sommerville correctly
appraises the King's desire to limit public discussion of his preroga-
tive. In this circumstance, however, the King is less concerned about
a conversation about the prerogative per se (as Sommerville indicates)
than his reputation and legacy ± features that marked James's
propagandistic use of censorship seen in chapter 2. Indeed, as the
censorship proclamation reveals, James censored Cowell's book to
achieve his own political purposes ± which included deferring to the
interests of the common-law lawyers and distancing himself from
Cowell's restrictive de®nitions.
The proclamation ± which prohibits ``buying, uttering, or reading
of the Books'' and commands people to relinquish any copies to the
custody of the authorities, and promises to create a commission to
look into licensing ± demonizes Cowell far beyond his deserts, as a
man who has gone out of his element to ``meddle with things above
his capacity'' to ``not onely goe astray, and stumble in darknesse, but
. . . mislead also divers other with themselves into many mistakings
and errours.''61 This is hardly what the Regius Professor of Civil
Law would expect! The proclamation proceeds to describe Cowell as
`ònely a Civilian by profession, and upon that large ground of a
kinde of Dictionary . . . having all purposes belonging to Govern-
ment and monarchie in his way, by medling in matters above his
reach, he hath fallen in many things to mistake and deceive
himselfe.''62 The errors the proclamation recites portray the King's
desire to preserve not only his own authority but that of both
parliament and the common law. The book, the proclamation says,
may receive doubtfull interpretations: yea in some poynts very derogatory
to the supreme power of this Crowne: In other cases mistaking the true
state of the Parliament of this Kingdome, and the fundamentall Constitu-
tions and privileges thereof: And in some other points speaking unrever-
ently of the Common Law of England, and of the works of some of the most
famous and ancient Judges therein.63
The most interesting aspect here is the remark that in ``some

poynts'' Cowell's book is ``derogatory to the supreme power of this
Crowne.'' Since the book gives the King enormous power, this
statement appears to be made to mislead the Pope's representatives.
The concern for the common law and parliament, however, appears
to be genuine since it mirrors the speech James made to the
parliament on 21 March 1610.
James's speech responded directly to the concerns Cowell's book
had provoked in parliament. Cowell had said that the King was
`Àbove the Law by his absolute power,'' and his book gave rise to
rumors that the King disliked the common law. But before he would
speak of this, James told parliament to expect his edict censuring the
book, and then continued to rehearse his original positions on
government: ``The State of MONARCHIE is the supremest thing
upon earth: For Kings are not onely GODS Lieutenants upon earth,
and sit upon GODS throne, but even by GOD himselfe they are
called Gods.''64 After explaining the King's likeness to God, to
fathers, and to the body's head, James modi®ed this important
position that he had taken on patriarchal government in Trew Law;
instead he says, ``But now in these times we are to distinguish
betweene the state of Kings in their ®rst originall, and betweene the
state of setled Kings and Monarches, that doe at this time gouverne
in civill Kingdomes.''65 When kingdoms become settled, kings
govern by laws: `Ànd therefore a King Governing in a setled
Kingdom, leaves to be a King, and degenerates into a Tyrant, assone
as he leaves off to rule according to his Lawes.''66 Paul Christianson
views this speech as marking James's accommodation to the claims
English common law made upon his earlier view of monarchy:
``Clearly echoing one side of the medieval common law legacy, the
branch that stressed the creative initiatives of the King, James
fashioned a case for `constitutional monarchy created by King.' ''67
Important as this speech may be in assessing James's political views,
it is equally signi®cant for the way in which James casts himself as
the mediator between the civil and common law.
Before proposing a means to end the ongoing dispute, James paid
his fullest respects to the common law: ``First, as a King, I have least
cause of any man to dislike the Common Law: For no Law can bee
more favourable and advantagious for a King, and extende further
his Prerogative, then it does: And for a King of England to despise
the Common Law, it is to neglect his owne Crowne.''68 He then
expressed his esteem for the civil law, especially for its usefulness in
international affairs, but acknowledged that it operated within
``those limits of Jurisdiction, which the Common Law it selfe does
allow it.''69 What those precise limits are is clear:
My meaning therefore is not to preferre the Civill Law before the Common
Law; but onely that it should not be extinguished, and yet so bounded (I
meane to such courts and Causes) as have beene in ancient use; As the
Ecclesiastical courts, court of Admiraltie, court of Requests, and such like,
reserving ever to the Common Law to meddle with the fundamentall Lawes
of this Kingdome, either concerning the Kings Prerogative, or the
possessions of Subjects, in any questions, either betweene the King, and any
of them, or amongst themselves, in the points of Meum & tuum.70
James used the occasion to call upon parliament to perfect English
law, which he praises as the law he would prefer `èven before the
Judiciall Law of Moyses.''71
Before he treated the sticky matter of prohibitions, James called
for four rational changes in legal procedure: for English to be the
language of law, for parliament to ``set down'' the expositions of the
laws, for the Statutes and Reports to be reconciled, and for the penal
statutes to be reformed. In the matter of prohibitions, James, the true
mediator, broke with both the civil and the common lawyers. He
repudiated the position Bancroft had taken in Articuli Cleri against
any prohibitions, and acknowledged that if a jurisdiction were
exceeded, prohibitions might be justi®ed. On the other hand, he
condemned their ``superabounding abuse.'' Seeing it his duty to
assure that the courts contain themselves within their own limits,
James gave admonitions:
To the other courts, that they should be carefull hereafter every of them, to
conteine themselves within the bounds of their owne Jurisdictions: and to
the courts of Common Law, that they should not bee so forward, and
prodigall in multiplying their Prohibitions. Two cautions I willed them to
observe in graunting their Prohibitions: First, that they should be graunted
in a right and lawful forme: And next, that they should not grant them, but
upon a just and reasonable cause.72
James's call for legal reform never became the pressing issue of this
parliamentary session, whose principal concern was the Great
Contract, Salisbury's plan to make the royal treasury solvent.
Indeed, the pressing matter of royal ®nances casts an unreal light on
the King's remarks on the law. The Commons' furor over Cowell's
book afforded the King an extraordinary opportunity to be
especially conciliatory to a body of men dominated by common-law
lawyers whose support he required. Censoring Cowell's book
deferred to parliament's interest in its prestige and privileges at little
cost to the King. Cowell suffered a loss of face, but his book almost
certainly remained in circulation and was reprinted in 1637 in two
editions.
the king and the common law: the censorship of

coke's reports
The 1610 Parliament may not have proceeded on the King's wish to
see the common law reformed, but the common-law lawyers were
themselves pursuing the matter ± although in a manner quite their
own. Perhaps the greatest reformer of the common law in the
seventeenth century, Edward Coke, was himself somewhat skeptical
about legal reform. Although Coke's Reports, Booke of Entries, and
Institutes represented the single most signi®cant effort to impose order
on the common law, Coke was not a devotee of the kind of
``method'' that interested Cowell.73 Instead, recognizing that the
common law was becoming increasingly complex, Coke believed
that the common law's relevance and richness could be revealed
through attention to its own rational principles.74 For Coke, legal
doctrine derived from the growth of precedents. The lawyer con-
structed a cogent argument from relevant precedents, and the judge
based his decision on the relationship of facts to the precedents.75
Coke served the common law by compiling case-law precedents in
both his Book of Entries and his Reports. Coke began his Reports
because current common-law practice needed if not a prescribed
method certainly a common ground:
I have often observed, that for want of a true and certain report, the case
that hath been adjudged standing upon the rack of many running reports
. . . hath been so diversely drawn out, as many times the true parts of the
case have been disordered and disjointed, and most commonly the right
reason and rule of the Judges utterly mistaken.76
Coke believed that publishing his Reports contributed to ``the common
good'' by offering his `òrderly observation in writing'' as a substitute
for the current practice of using ``such variety of opinions.''77
The impact of Coke's Reports was enormous. According to Louis
Kna¯a, ``Coke's Reports, published in the years 1600±15, are one of
the most important collections of law reports in the early modern
period.''78 Despite this, they were not without critics both among
fellow lawyers and at court. Kna¯a locates controversy surrounding
Coke as much in his person as his principles. Coke's zealous
advocacy for the common law provoked animosity among rivals at
court, and his forcefulness as a judge and advocate led fellow jurists
and lawyers to disagree with him.79 Even though Coke's efforts to
establish the common law's hegemony often brought him into
confrontation with other judges and members of James's govern-
ment, indeed even with the King himself, Coke clearly enjoyed the
King's respect and favor. His appointment in 1606 as Chief Justice of
the Common Pleas left Coke well situated to advance the common
law's cause. The most famous confrontation during these years came
in 1608 when advocates for the civil and ecclesiastical law persuaded
the King that as the highest source of justice in the land, he could
hear any case. Coke so angered the King by denying this that James
labeled Coke's words treasonable. Even such confrontations as these
did little to diminish Coke. In 1613 he became Chief Justice of the
King's Bench and a Privy Councilor, but three years later his
enemies succeeded in discrediting him, in part because of his own
legal proceedings, in part because of his Reports. 80
Between 1615 and 1616, Coke openly opposed James on at least
three occasions. Anxious about securing an indictment in Peacham's
case in 1615, James interviewed the judges on their predilections.
Coke contended that this was contrary to law and that the judges
should only be consulted as a body. In the matter of Peacham itself,
Coke countered the King's opinion and contended that words
written in personal notes to a sermon never printed did not represent
treason. Furthermore, Coke opposed the power and jurisdiction of
Chancery to intervene when a decision had been rendered in the
court of King's Bench. A year later, Coke directly opposed the King's
prerogative when a case arose challenging the right of the Bishop of
Lich®eld, Richard Neile, to hold two bene®ces in commendams, and
the King intervened on Neile's behalf to stay the proceedings. Coke
refused, maintaining that the letter he had received from Francis
Bacon in the matter was contrary to law. Sommerville sees Coke's
actions, ``symptomatic of deep-rooted differences of opinion between
the judge and James,'' as the principal cause of Coke's downfall in
1616.81 Undeniably Coke's decisions in 1615 and 1616 repeatedly
circumscribed the King's authority within the common law but no
more so than earlier opinions had. In 1616 the balance of power
shifted against Coke. Prior to that time, as Kna¯a points out, Coke
and Thomas Egerton, Lord Chancellor Ellesmere, had shared their
regard for justice and the rule of law, even though Ellesmere
consistently privileged the Church and the King's prerogative more
highly than did Coke.82 In a sense Ellesmere mediated the differ-
ences between Coke and Bacon. Although the alteration in Elles-
mere's attitude toward Coke may have been as motivated by his
altruistic concern for the King's prerogative as Kna¯a suggests,
Coke's assault on Chancery surely must have given Ellesmere pause.
In 1616 Ellesmere joined with Bacon against Coke, using his Reports
as their cause.
Coke's Reports, however, were not the ®rst line of ®re. Initially, the
Privy Council summoned Coke and his fellow judges to answer for
their conduct against Chancery and against the King in proceeding
against his will in Neile's commendams case.83 Coke failed to join with
his fellow judges in making a submission, and on 26 June 1616, the
Privy Council called upon him to answer charges that as Attorney
General he had supported Lord Chancellor Hatton in withholding a
debt owed the Crown, that he had given too much support to the
cause of praemunires against Chancery, and that he had ``taken
exception'' before the King to the King's Attorney (Bacon). Coke
defended himself and waited four days for the King's decision in the
matter. Although Bacon and Ellesmere absented themselves from the
26 June Privy Council meeting, they clearly in¯uenced the meeting
at Whitehall on 30 June, when James gave Coke his decision.
Dissatis®ed with Coke's answers at the 26 June meeting, James
suspended Coke from the Privy Council and released him from
riding the summer circuit as Justice. The King ordered Coke instead
to spend his summer considering and reviewing his books of reports.
The King's objections included Coke styling himself ``Lord Chief
Justice of England'' on a printed title page. 84 James also demanded
that Bacon and Ellesmere look into the Reports `ànd into other
novelties introduced into the government.''85
According to Kna¯a, Coke's reports had been an object of
Ellesmere's scrutiny since 1613.86 In 1615 Ellesmere had drawn
up his own `Òbservations upon the Lord Cooke's Reportes,''
which chronicled the cases that addressed the Church's rights, the
King's prerogative, the jurisdictions of courts, and the interests of
subjects. Ellesmere's `Òbservations'' opens with a summary of his
conclusions:
It is to be observed throughout all his bookes, That he hath as it were
purposely Laboured to derogate much from the Rights of the Church and
the dignitye of churchmen, and to disesteeme and weaken the power of the
King in the ancient use of his Prerogative. To traduce or else cutt short the
Jurisdiccion of all other courts but of that court wherein himselve doth sitt,
and in the Cases of subject.87
In a 6 October 1616 letter to the King, Ellesmere and Bacon
recounted the ends James sought in calling upon Coke to review and
expurgate his Reports:
The one, to see, if upon so fair an occasion, he would make any expiation of
his former faults, and also shew himself sensible of those things in his
reporte, which he could not but know, were the likeliest to be offensive to
your Majesty. The other, to perform de vero this right to your Crown and
Successor, and your people also; that those Errors and novelties, ought not
run on, and aucthorize by tyme: but might be taken away, whether he
consented to it or noe.88
The matters outlined here occupy such a distance from the 26 June
1616 charges against Coke in the Privy Council ± and such proximity
to Ellesmere's own judgment on the Reports ± that seeing Bacon and
Ellesmere's hand in Coke's fall seems inescapable.
Although Coke retired to review and expurgate his Reports, the
response he provided failed to satisfy his detractors. On 2 October
1616 Coke gave Bacon and Ellesmere a list of ®ve errors he had
found ± none substantive, and certainly none addressing such issues
of concern to Ellesmere as the Church, the prerogative, or judicial
jurisdictions. Ellesmere and Bacon's 6 October letter to the King
mulls over the options Coke's response leaves them. They assert that
Coke's recent ``probation, added to former matters'' may be suf®-
cient to warrant his removal from the King's service ± but this, they
say, neglects ``the actual Expurgation or Animadversions of the
bookes.'' If, on the other hand, Coke is to be ``charged'' in the
matter of the books, ``Justice requireth that he be heard and called to
his answere,'' which would raise a host of issues. The King must then
consider:
Before whome he shalbe charged; whither before the body of your Counsell
(as formerly he was); or some selected Commission (fore we conceave your
Majesty will not think it convenient he should be before us two onely); also
the manner of his charge is considerable; whether it shall be verball, by
your learned Counsell (as it was last); or whether in respect of the
multiplicity of matters, he shall not have the Collections we have made in
writing delivered to him; Also the matter of his charge is likewise
considerable; whether any of those poynts of novelty which by your
Majestys commandment we collected, shalbe made part of his charge; or
onely the faultes of his bookes, and the prohibitions ad Habeas Corpus,
collected by my L. of Canterbury, In all which cours we foresee length of
time.89
Bacon and Ellesmere envisioned that Coke himself would be a
primary cause of delay in any proceeding against him because he
doubtless would require time ``to peruse his own bookes and to see
whether the collections be trewe and that he be justly charged and
then to produce his proofes that those things which he shallbe
charged with, were not Conceits or singularities of his own, but the
Actes of court.''90
This letter suggests that the King was contemplating prosecuting
Coke for what he had written in his Reports. Had Ellesmere and
Bacon not prevailed, the trial that ensued would have put Chief
Justice Coke in the company of the handful of men, like John Stubbs
and William Prynne, who were actually prosecuted for seditious
writing in Elizabethan and Stuart England. Instead, the King
removed Coke from his of®ce as Chief Justice of the King's Bench.
Considering the nature of Bacon and Ellesmere's objections to
Coke's conduct and writing, the time spent out of favor was
extraordinarily brief; Coke was recalled to the Privy Council in
September 1617.
Perhaps the most lasting consequence of this confrontation was
that Coke withheld from the press the last two parts of his reports
containing such volatile cases as Peacham's and Fuller's. The parts
already printed, however, were unaffected, even though parts ten
and eleven contained controversial matter. In 1618 parts two, four,
and ten were reprinted; in 1619 parts one and three; in 1620 parts
®ve, seven, eight, ten, and eleven; and in 1621 part six. The title
pages of the 1618 edition of part ten and the 1619 editions still
identify Coke as the Chief Justice of England.
the church and the common law: the censorship of

selden's history of tithes
Although Coke regained his in¯uence, and the success of his Reports
contributed to the prestige of the common law, the differences
between the ecclesiastical and the common-law lawyers continued.
In 1618 tithes proved to be another fertile ground for con¯ict. Once
again, the High Commission intervened in printed controversy to
bolster the reputation of the canon law ± this time by censoring John
Selden's History of Tithes. Selden's book has garnered more interest as
a landmark in the transformation of historiographic method than as
a defense of the common law. Paul Christianson regards Selden's
sophisticated historical narrative and his critical use of sources as
hallmarks of the seventeenth century's practice of writing history in
the manner of Tacitus.91 He places Selden's book within the context
of an ecclesiastical campaign to enforce the payment of tithes and
reclaim advowsons and appropriations by which laity received tithe
revenues.92 Viewing Selden's work as responding to a polemical
tradition seeking to bolster the Church's authority to levy tithes,
while certainly correct, tells only part of the story. Seeing Selden as a
common-law lawyer contributing to standardizing the common law
on tithes tells the rest.
Although the legitimacy and nature of tithes had been a subject of
debate throughout Europe from the beginning of the Reformation,
in early Jacobean England the subject was rarely treated outside of a
general discussion of the law. George Carleton's Tithes Examined and
proved to bee due to the Clergie by a divine right (1606), dedicated to the
Archbishop of Canterbury, represents what the author regards as a
singular and strange appeal, which he had written some time earlier.
The substance of Carleton's argument is that the moral law of God
requires tithes to support ministers even though he admits it unlikely
that much might be done presently to enact his appeal. While
Carleton's fundamentally biblical argument articulates the principle
of jus divinum, his dedication refers to the contemporary challenge
posed in the common-law courts to tithes:
your Graces wisdome and courage, for the advancement of the Churches
oppressed estate, doth incourage mee also to thinke that by your graces
care the oppressions of the Church may be molli®ed, if not removed: that
the malice of injurious customes and prescriptions against the Church may
be abated: that the use of impropriating may now at least be staied from
proceeding to any further greavance of the Church.93
Those customs and prescriptions to which Carleton merely alludes
form the substance of two other early seventeenth-century discus-
sions of tithes: William Fulbecke's Conference of the Civill Law, the Canon
Law, and the Common Law (1602) and Thomas Ridley's A View of the
Civile and Ecclesiastical Law (1607).
William Fulbecke's two-part Conference of the Civill Law, the Canon
Law, and the Common Law (1601, 1602), presents the con¯icts and
correlations between the three legal forms fairly objectively. The
discussion of tithes is deferred to the second part, where it is
incorporated into the question of overlapping jurisdictions, prohibi-
tions, and consultations. Fulbecke's argument on the origins of tithes
follows the usual biblical and historical arguments, but he also
acknowledges feudal tithes and the jurisdiction of common law in
certain circumstances. The distinction that the common law may
grant prohibitions when suits involve lands and tenements or when
statutes intervene receives fair treatment. Fulbecke achieves this kind
of double vision by employing the rhetorical device of a four-way
conversation, with ``Canonologus'' and `Ànglonomopus'' repre-
senting the canon and common laws respectively. Fulbecke's two
editions of the Conference demonstrate and attempt to clarify the
complex quagmire of English law without participating in the
rancorous rivalry that emerged during the reign of James.
Written only ®ve years after Fulbecke's second Conference, Ridley's
A View of the Civile and Ecclesiastical Law: and wherein the practice of them is
streitned, and may be relieved within this Land rehearses the con¯icts
between the two legal traditions and appeals to King James to
``relieve'' the civil and ecclesiastical law. Ridley lacks Fulbecke's
con®dence that the civil and common law could comfortably coexist:
`` . . . for now as things are, neither Jurisdiction knows their owne
bounds, but one snatcheth from the other, in a maner as in batable
ground lying betweene two Kingdoms . . .''94
The ®rst half of Ridley's book presents the history and merits of
Roman and canon law, while the other half laments the common
law's encroachments on civil law. The second part begins, ``now it
followeth to shew whereby the exercise of that Jurisdiction which is
granted to be of the Civile and Ecclesiasticall cognizance, is defeated
& impeached by the Common Law of this Land.''95 After explaining
writs of praemunire and prohibitions (the common law's means of
wresting authority from the civil law), A View turns brie¯y to
Admiralty and testamentary laws (civil jurisdictions he sees as being
usurped), and then to a lengthy section on tithes, which occupies the
remainder of the book. For Ridley the matter of tithes represents if
not the most important ecclesiastical jurisdiction, at least the one
most useful for making his argument:
Of all matters that appertain to the Ecclesiastical courts, ther is no one
thing that the Princes of this land have made more carefull provision for . . .
than that all maner of Tythes due by the word of God should be fully &
truely paid unto the Parish Churches where they grew, & if they were
denied should be recovered by the Law of holy Church. 96
Ridley approaches tithes not from the stance of biblical legitima-
tion ± though his argument is grounded in jus divinum ± but from the
perspective of ecclesiastical practice and precedence in England. His
justi®cation of tithing depends on what he views as the distinctive
character of English monarchy, from which he maintains the legiti-
macy of the ecclesiastical jurisdiction over tithes. As the English
monarch had always been the Church's protector and the state's
protector, so had there always been two legal jurisdictions. With only
a few exceptions, these jurisdictions, according to Ridley, should be
mutually exclusive:
. . . It is a mightie disorder in a common wealth, thus to jumble one
Jurisdiction with another, & the very confusion as well of the one law as the
other; for as kingdoms are preserved in knowing their bounds, and keeping
their limits, so also Jurisdictions are maintained and upheld by containing
themselves within the lifts or banks of their authorities.97
Since both the ``secular'' and the ecclesiastical laws derive their
authority from the King, both should operate unrestrained in the
commonwealth to the King's honor.98
The eleven years intervening beween Ridley's treatise on civil and
ecclesiastical law and Selden's A History of Tithes makes a connection
between the two seem unlikely. To be sure, between 1607 and 1618
other books appeared that addressed tithes. 1610 saw the publication
of a printed tithing table, which like Ridley treated tithes as a matter
of canon law's jurisdiction, and a new edition of George Carleton's
Tithes Examined. This edition's dedication to the new Archbishop of
Canterbury, George Abbot, gives no indication of any heated current
controversy over tithes but rather points to Abbot's elevation as the
occasion for republishing the book. Carleton repeats the preface to
the ®rst edition's account of the history of his book ± that it had been
written some time before but had gone unpublished for fear of
censure, and adds,
But ®nding afterward that this book found some place by the countenance
of the reverend L. Archbishop; of late memorie: I am in good hope that
under your Graces protection it may ®nde as good favor, as it hath done
before: and thereupon am become thus bolde to present it to your Grace, as
a pledge of my duetie.99
In 1613 the university press at Cambridge published The Revenue of
the Gospel is Tythes, by the theologian Foulke Robartes. This pursues
Carleton's theological strategies in justifying tithes but also addresses,
if not exactly controversy, theological disputation in the matter.
According to Robartes, relying on means other than tithing for
ministerial support derived from the `àpostacie of Poperie,'' but
reformers failed to adequately restore tithing.
Yet worthy men of clearer understanding, and purer sinceritie, have since
received this bewitching illusion instead of soundnesse, not that they
wanted either will, or abilitie to seeke and ®nd so cleare a truth, but
because they were so continually and wholly taken up with the chiefer
points of religion, defending the true meaning of the substantiall Articles,
against the peevish underminings, and violent intrusions of popish heresies:
therefore they have the lesse intended those outward things and smaller
matters; so that supposing tythes to have expired with the priesthood of
Levi, they have been content to acknowledge the maintenance of the
ministerie to be at the appointment of the governours, and so pleaded for
no other then this supposed competencie in generall tearmes. 100
After locating Calvin's treatment of tithes in the levitical law alone,
Robartes establishes that the task he has set for himself is to remedy
the Protestant reformers' omissions by considering this ``smaller
matter.''101 The ®nal intervening book on tithes, likewise from the
Cambridge University press, Roger Gostwick's Anatomie of Ananias
(1616) sermonizes that failing to pay tithes to ministers constitutes the
sin of desecration.
Although the styles of Robartes and Gostwick are considerably
more strident than earlier works, none of the ``conversation'' that
intervened between Ridley and Selden takes the customary form of
controversy. When real controversy was afoot in Tudor and Stuart
England, books ¯ew from presses two or three in a year, and each
side repeated and answered the other side's arguments. It is a
mistake, then, to construe Selden's History of Tithes as `ànswering''
earlier arguments in the controversialist's manner. Selden's is the
scholar's mind, a little like Robartes's, but rather than compensating
for omissions in reformers' theological considerations, he compen-
sates for insuf®cient legal scholarship.
Selden's exercise in historiography resembles his earlier Titles of
Honor in a very interesting way that suggests a mind more interested
in learning than in disputation ± both books implicitly respond to
Ridley's A View of the Civile and Ecclesiastical Law. After locating
monarchy's divine origins, nine pages in Ridley's book rehearse the
``very honorable tytles'' and their precedence given by civil law.102
Selden's formidable scholarly work, Titles of Honor, follows the same
form; beginning with the origins of monarchy, he traces the titles of
honor through time. Selden replaces the civil law's simple prescrip-
tions which Ridley had employed with an exhaustive history of the
precedents that in¯uenced precedence in titles as well as the changes
in practice across time and nation. Selden's History of Tithes bears a
similar relationship to Ridley's discussion of tithes. Ridley uses
medieval English canon law's prescriptions to show the primacy of
ecclesiastical jurisdiction in litigating cases on tithes. While Selden
provides a formidable account of the theory and practice of tithing
throughout Europe, his work, like Ridley's, centers on English
practice in the Middle Ages. Here, while not repudiating canon law,
he demonstrates that through time and practice, custom transformed
canon law's dictates and many aspects of tithe law thus came within
common-law jurisdiction. The relationship Selden's work bears to
Ridley's summons an image of Selden, a few years into his study of
law at the Inner Temple, poring over Ridley and making notes in his
chapbook of matters to which he would one day return ± to study
and to test this civil lawyer's con®dent allegations.103
If Selden has any quarrel, it is not with the likes of Carleton,
Robartes, or Gostwick over the jus divinum of tithes. In his intro-
duction, Selden clearly states that his book is not written ``to prove
that tithes are not due by the Law of God; not written to prove that
the Laitie may detaine them, not to prove that Lay hands may still
enjoy Appropriations; in summe, not at all against the maintenance
of the Clergie.''104 Christianson sympathizes with Selden's con-
temporary critics who found this disingenuous, but the book's
emphasis throughout on practice and customary law insists that
Selden's primary interest is, indeed, not in the legitimacy of tithing,
but in the jurisdictions of laws governing tithes and the legal theory
upon which they were grounded. His argument is with the manner
in which civil lawyers like Ridley construct their arguments re-
garding tithes and not with the principle of jus divinum per se: ``To
argue . . . from af®rmative Canons only to Practice, is equal in not a
few things . . . to the proving of the Practice of a custom from some
consonant Law of Plato's common wealth.''105 Selden insists that
any discussion of tithes must take the common law into account:
He that talks of Tithes without reference to such positive Law, makes the
object of his discourse rather what he would have should be, then any thing
that indeed is at all . . . And the truth is that divers of them that writ, with
more will then judgment, for Tithes, fall often from their Jus Divinum,
before they are aware, and talke of them as supposed due also by Human
positive Law of Practice.106
The substance of Selden's argument ± if his formidable history
may be said to have an argument ± is that tithing practice in the
Judeo-Christian world, across time and nations, gives the common
law jurisdiction over some matters of tithing.
For the two chief parts of it (that is, Practice of payment and the Laws of
Tithing, that either are in force or ever were receivd touching them in any
State) were always and are part of the proper Object of his [the common
lawyer's] Studies. and what ever Divines or Canonists conclude them; it is
the Secular or Common Laws only that according to Customs, and various
Ordinances permit or restraine the canons in legall exaction of them . . .
for howsoever it be af®rmd by some . . . that the Clergie every where in the
Western Church, being scarce a hundreth part of the People, are inricht
with whole Tithes of Fruits of the Earth and Cattell; yet it is certain that in
no State of that Church, whole Tithes are universally paid. But frequently
Customs, not only of a Modus but de non decimando are by force of secular
Law practiced.107
In this, Selden does not dispute the divine mandate for tithing but
asserts that practice has modi®ed the legal jurisdiction.
But Although by this Opinion and that of the Canonists, Tithes be generally
due by the divine Law, and not so subject (if with them you take it for the
divine morrall or naturall Law) to Civill Exceptions as Customes and
Prescriptions, or discharges or of payment of lesse, or such more . . . yet the
practiced Common Law (for by that name, as common is distinguished
from sacred, are the Civill or Municipall Laws of all Nations to be stiled)
hath never given way herein to the Canons. but hath allowd customes, and
made them subject to all civill titles, Infeodations, discharges, compositions,
and the like.108
Furthermore, Selden does not dispute all ecclesiastical jurisdiction
over tithes. It is clear, he argues, that ``the practiced common Law,
both of this day as also of the ancientest times'' gives the Ecclesi-
astical court ``the jurisdiction of spiritual Tithes (that is, of the direct
and originall question of their right).''109 Not only that, but ``the
later Statuts that have given remedie for Tithes infeodated from the
Crown after the Dissolution, leave also the ancient right of Jurisdic-
tion of Tithes to the Ecclesiastique courts.''110 The common-law
jurisdiction arose in ®ve particular areas because of proceedings in
tithing matters that were brought to the temporal courts.
The determination of the right and payment of Tithes hath been subject to
the temporall courts, by divers kinds of originall proceeding, which for
orders sake may be all comprehended in these Five. i. By Prohibitions
touching the modus or Customs of Tithing, or other matter concerning the
King's right, triable only in his own court, or the like. ii. The writ of
Advowson of Tithes, whereto you must annex the writ of Indicanit, that is
but a special prohibition making way for the Writ of Advowson. iii. By
Scire facias111 iv. By bare process of command of Payment. v. By the
actions upon the late Statuts of 32.Hen.8 and 2Ed.6.112
A passage like this captures the essence of Selden's argument and
strategy. Like any good lawyer arguing before a common-law judge,
he makes a historical argument where precedence, not precept,
de®nes what is right.
While Selden wrote A History of Tithes in the spirit more of
disputation than controversy, the book provoked a volatile response ±
even before it appeared in a fully printed version. The book actually
has a rather unusual publishing history. Its initial circulation took the
form of a book part printed and part manuscript.113 It was then
printed with a dedication to John Cotton dated 4 April 1618.114 A
``Review'' is added to the later text in which Selden answers criticisms
of the earlier ``book'' that had been circulated. The ``Review'' is
printed in a tiny font with the remark that: ``the printed sheets could
not be encreased, or altered.''115 In January 1618, when the book
was ®rst at the press, the Bishop of London entered the printing
house and seized the type and however many half-printed sheets ``he
could ®nd.'' By March, through the aid of a chaplain in the Bishop's
household, the book was again at the press.116 The book ± half
manuscript, half printed ± that circulated between January and April
must have consisted of those sheets the Bishop could not ®nd with
manuscript additions of what remained unprinted. The ®rst version
of the book apparently was widely circulated since Selden's remarks
in the appended ``Review'' indicate a range of responses to the ®rst
text.
The reason that Selden's book attracted so much attention was
less because of its stance in an ongoing ``controversy'' about tithes
than its immediate timeliness. An important case on tithes was
currently before Chancery. On 19 January 1618, Chancellor Elles-
mere communicated to Attorney-General Henry Yelverton that the
King desired that any judicial decision on `à great Cause of Tithes
concerning the Bene®ces of London'' be postponed until a commis-
sion could be formed to consider the matter. 117 On 8 April 1618 a
commission was issued to the Archbishop of Canterbury and others
to address the payment of tithes in London.118 Selden must have
recognized the immediate relevance of his work's interest in the
boundaries between secular and ecclesiastical jurisdiction and so
circulated the mixed-media book at the same time that he was
pressing for the printing to be completed.
Both Selden's preface to the printed text and the appended
``Review'' indicate the kinds of objection the book met. While Selden
®nds among his detractors the malicious, the ignorant, and the
jealous, his response suggests that the principal nay-sayers were
clerics with a vested interest in the clergy's right to be maintained by
tithes, and the necessity of the jus divinum argument to their position.
The preface to the April edition indicates that some members of the
clergy felt his book attacked tithes altogether. The following objec-
tions were also raised: it omitted some matters relevant to tithes; it
was a sterile antiquarian exercise; Selden plagiarized; and, perhaps
worst of all, as a mere common-law lawyer, Selden was unquali®ed
to meddle with a subject reserved to civilians and divines.
But neither is the Worke alone taxt by mistaking of the subject, but also in
regard of the Autor. what [sic] hath a Common Lawyer to do (so they
murmer) with writing of Tithes. for [sic] by that name it please them to stile
me. and I confesse, I have long labourd to make my selfe worthy of it. But I
would their discretions also would designe out to whom it belongs more to
write the Historie of Tithes, then to a Common Lawyer. I expect not such a
sottishnesse, as that they should so much as dream it to bee more proper to
any of the other single professions of this Kingdome; except to a Divine, or
a Civilian; under which name, because those which practice the Canon
Laws here (according as the Common Laws permit) take their Degrees, in
the Civill Law, I comprehend also the Canonist. and use hath here made
the name of Civill Law, to denote both Civill and Canon. For the Divine;
what is there in the course of his Study restraind to his profession, that can
neer enough instruct him in the Laws and Practice, especially of the
Christian times. Nor is the Practice or Laws of Tithes among the Jews, as
they are delivered & interpreted by their Doctors, more indeed restraind to
the cours of Divinite, then of Law and Historie. But should a Civilian
rather have dealt with it? if hee; then either (according to what we
understand by that name in England) as a Civilian, or as a Canonist. if as a
Civilian; hee should then have made that proper to himselfe touching
which, in the whole body of his Law . . . not the least mention is found of
Tithes belonging to the Church . . .. But should the Civilian as Canonist
have done it? What in all his Decrees, Decretals, and Extravagants, though
hee joyne many armies of his Doctores, directs him to the Practice of the
Jews, Gentiles or Christians? where shall the Canonist or the Civilian, or
the Divine, in the courses of their proper studie, ®nd the many Secular
Laws made in behalfe of the Clergie for Tithes?119
Selden offered the newly printed book as his defense: `Ì know not
how otherwise to con®rm these protestations then by sending him,
that believes me not here, to the view of the whole.''120
Selden's book met with enormous interest, appearing in four
editions in 1618. His preface and ``Review,'' however, failed to
satisfy his detractors, and he was called before the High Commission
to answer for his assault on the Church's authority. Some measure
of the degree to which Selden's book incensed the Church can be
found in the prefaces to two books that answered his history:
Richard Tillesley's Animadversions upon M. Seldens History of Tythes, and
His Review Thereof (1619) and Richard Mountagu's Diatribe upon the
®rst part of the late History of Tithes (1621).121 Tillesley's general
appraisal of Selden's book as ``much perused for the rarenesse of the
argument, too much commended for the variety of the language,
and overmuch admired for the diligence of Antique Collections''122
only thinly conceals that his real objection is that Selden's book
works ``to the generall prejudice of the Church, both in pro®t and
learning.''123 Mountagu, far less generous, believes that Selden
wrote to
justi®e the Sacrilege of Intruders upon the Lords Inheritance: jest at the
Persons of their Advocates and Councell: delude, and elude their plainest
witnesses that speake home, discrediting their voices, by empairing their
credits, and calling their Honestie into question: jumble and justle God and
Caesar together, as if the right of the one could not stand with the Royalties
of the other: inforce us to contest, by induction of all consequence, that all
the Christian world, for many hundreds of yeeres, hath been at a losse in
point of Sacriledge, and all of them sans Mercy gone to Hell for ever, as
guilty of such execrable sinne, as is the defrauding, and robbing of God
Almighty, in his Portion, Inheritance, and Claime.124
Selden is, according to Mountagu, the ``most pernicious underminer
of the Church, and of Religion in the Church, that the Prince of
darknes hath set on worke to do mischiefe many yeeres.''125 Even so,
Mountagu, more than most of Selden's detractors, understood quite
well the book's purposes regarding legal jurisdiction; he simply
disagreed.
But the truth is, I conceive I thinke not amisse, two things occasioned or
brought unto the view of the world, these so many, so obstruse, and rare
Collections of yours concerning the point of use and Practice of Tithing.
The ®rst, a main motive, and an especial cause with you . . . Affectation,
and desire to seeme unto the world, to have seene, read, and knowne much;
more than the most, or indeed any man beside . . . A second cause was,
that in point of Tithing, all might bee reduced unto humane Constitutions,
& civill courts to be decided by Temporall Lawes, that Jus Divinum being,
by consent universal, put to silence, Custome, Modus decimandi, Prescrip-
tion, prohibition, hoc genus omne, might, without stop, impeachment, or
any contradiction, carry all as a maine ¯ood.126
Mountagu understood the implications of Selden's strategy, perhaps
better than Selden.
He aimed at nothing but to make Tithes, of Lay cognisance, and voluntary
conveyance: and hence that beating upon Jus positivum. For if the Right of
Tithes be from Jus Divinum, then due they are eternally, and must be paid
indispensably, to the Church . . . But if Humane Lawes have perpetually,
without contrary claime, practice, pretence, or opposition, ruled all in this
point, as ®tting at the Helme in case of Tithing, and Jus Divinum never
interposed, nor consulted with, then is Jus Divinum at best, but . . . a name
and no more without Substance.127
Mountagu's attack on Selden followed the High Commission's
actions by two years but certainly expresses well the kind of motiva-
tions that would have prompted the ecclesiastical reaction.
A complaint made to the King initiated the proceedings against
Selden. In mid-December the King summoned Selden to appear
before him at Theobalds, where Selden stayed three days, and,
. . . his Majesty, among other things, objecting to an incidental passage in
his book upon Christmas day, wherein he had intimated, that the 25th of
December was not the true birth-day of our Saviour, as had been asserted
in the Apostolical Constitutions; and being apprehensive, that the
Presbyterians might make an ill use of it against the observation of that
festival, desired Selden to write something further upon it. In obedience to
his Majesty's request, he drew up his piece upon Christ's birth-day, and
presented it to the King in a month's time.128
Although Selden seemed to feel he had paci®ed the King, he had

not satis®ed the High Commission. At the end of the month Selden
was called before the High Commission. He submitted, acknowl-
edging his error in publishing his History of Tithes. The particular
errors he admitted were ``by shewing any interpretation of holy
Scriptures, by meddling with Councils, Fathers, or Canons, or by
what else soever occures in it, offered any occasion of argument
against any right of maintenance, jus divino, of the ministers of the
Gospell.'' The High Commission prohibited the book's sale, and
shortly afterwards, Richard Mountagu set to work to answer Selden's
book. To protect Mountagu's reply, the King reportedly told Selden,
`Ìf thou presumest, either thy self, or by any of the friends, to write
any answer to that book, I will throw thee into prison.''
Selden, feeling greatly abused by the events, wrote to Dr. Tillesley,
He tells you I made a submission in the court of High Commission. That I
was ever present in that court, or called thither, as I live, it is more than I
know; but I wonder not that the doctor should begin with playing false with
you, it is common with him through the whole. I confess that I did most
willingly acknowlege, not only before some Lords of the High Commission
(not in the High Commission court) but also to the Lords of his Majestie's
Privy Council, that I was most sorry for the publishing of that history,
because it had offended; and his Majestie's most gracious favour toward
me, received that satisfaction of the fault in so untimely printing it; and I
profess still to all the world, that I am sorry for it; and so should have been,
if I had published a most orthodox catechism that had offended; but what is
that to the doctrinal consequences of it, which the doctor talks of. Is there a
syllable of it of less truth, because I was sorry for the publishing of it?
Indeed, perhaps, by the doctor's logic, there is; and just so might he prove
that there is more truth in his animadversions, because he was glad of the
printing them, and because he hopes, as he says, that my submission hath
cleared my judgment, touching the right of tithes. What dream made him
hope so? There is not a word of tithes in that submission more than in
mentioning the title; neither was my judgment at all in question, but my
publishing it, and this the doctor knows too, as I am assured; for the
submission, he talks of, was through the favour of some of the Lords (to
whose noble regard toward me I owe all service) given by me in writing in
some six lines, least by misreports of some such as the doctor is, I might be
injured, by false relations of what I should speak only, and copies of it I
dispersed into many hands; and I know the doctor hath seen one. In sum, I
was and am sorry that I published it; and that I so gave occasion to others
to abuse my history, by their false application of some arguments; but there
is not a passage in it, but that I ever did think and do now think to be most
constant truth, as I have there deliverd it.129
Selden's impassioned defense would look merely like whining if his
work were seen as being something other than the contribution to
common law that he envisioned it to be. Selden followed Coke in his
understanding that the common law was primarily a learned en-
deavor that looked to historical precedents for its logic and method.
Like Coke's Reports, Selden's Book of Tithes pursued the truth of
historical precedents without regard for how that truth might re¯ect
upon contemporary institutional reality ± and rivalries.
These efforts taken by the Crown, the High Commission, Privy
Councilors, and parliament to employ censorship to shore up their
own authority expose the serious anxieties these institutions experi-
enced in Jacobean England at the same time that they re¯ect
distinctive arenas of authority. No single authority consistently
exercised control, however, nor did any alliances remain consistent
enough to re¯ect a pattern. Even though the King and the High
Commission worked together against Fuller, the common law over-
rode the civil law when parliament garnered the King's support
against Cowell. When it came to taking action against Coke, the
King ultimately overrode the judgment of Bacon and Ellesmere.
Although the King found Selden's work unobjectionable, the High
Commission required Selden's submission. Selden's and Cowell's
books were both sacri®ced to institutional rivalries even though both
men enjoyed strong support from within the government.
The picture of government practice and censorship that emerges
here argues in a curious way against the views of both Whig and
revisionist historians. Although the books that were censored ex-
pressed strong ideological viewpoints that led institutions with
opposing views to seek their suppression, the opposing parties are
not so clearly aligned in the oppositional camps of country/court or
parliament/King as Whig historiography would have it. Further-
more, when institutions cooperate, the consensus is not as univocal
as revisionists would have it. The historical conditions that led both
to the publications by Fuller, Cowell, Coke, and Selden and the
efforts to suppress them reveal the faultlines in the structure of
authority that operated in Jacobean England. The acts of censorship
this chapter has considered represent small dislocations in the
political structure ± places where stresses were created and relieved
by shifting political alliances. This system might have gone on
correcting itself inde®nitely had a powerful external force ± the
outbreak in Bohemia of the Thirty Years' War ± not intervened. The
next chapter considers the war of words in England that resulted
from continental warfare, along with King James's strident effort to
silence what began to look like ``the opposition.''
chapter 5
The press and foreign policy, 1619±1624: `àll eies

are directed upon Bohemia'' 1
The 1619 outbreak of continental war between Frederick, the newly

elected King of Bohemia, and his Protestant supporters on one side
and the Habsburg Emperor, Ferdinand II, on the other, excited
extraordinary public interest in international affairs. That King
James's daughter, Elizabeth, and his son-in-law, Frederick, repre-
sented to many of James's subjects the ideals of English Protestant
nationalism accounted for the overwhelming interest exhibited in
parliament, the press, and the pulpit. They found James's reluctance
to take action supporting the Protestant cause in the Palatinate (or
``procrastination'' as the ambassador from Venice, Girolamo Lando,
put it) inexplicable. To the Venetian ambassador's experienced eye
the King's stance derived from his resolute commitment to peace
and his ideological opposition to Frederick's election to the throne of
Bohemia. Lando reported to the Venetian Doge and Senate that,
His Majesty, though he listens to everything, does not yet seem persuaded
by any single argument or by all together, but shows an inclination to live
without vexation, not to desire what belongs to others, but for every one to
enjoy his own, rest contented and not claim the possessions of others. Being
naturally inclined to peace he tried every means to secure its continuation.
He lets it be understood that he cannot countenance the practice of
deposing kings, and risings and tumults among the people displease him
more than anything, as his published books clearly show.2
To the Venetian senators who heard this and its ambassadors' other
regular reports, England must have appeared a curious place during
the latter years of James's reign. Beginning with the outbreak of war,
a deepening chasm emerged between the King and his people that
climaxed with the trip of Prince Charles and the Duke of Buck-
ingham to Spain in 1623, ostensibly to secure an end to the
negotiations for a marriage alliance with Spain. From the ambassa-
dor's perspective, at least, James's refusal to enter into war to support
161
his son-in-law combined with his pursuit of a Spanish marriage
alliance to smite ``his people to the heart about their religion.''3 This
chapter seeks to establish the degree to which a nascent public
sphere emerged in England in response to events in Bohemia and
the ways in which King James employed censorship to control it. It
seeks ®rst to establish what precisely James's ``people'' understood
about the war and England's efforts for its diplomatic resolution. It
then considers the press's role in fomenting a ``crisis'' over the war
and the Spanish marriage and the measures King James took to
control public opinion. Finally, it assesses censorship's effectiveness.
``the people who are deeply infected '' 4

The Venetian ambassadorial reports during this troubled time
provide valuable insights into popular perceptions of the King and
his policies. Although the ambassadors (two served successively
between 1619 and 1625) had access to information beyond what
rumor circulated, they attended carefully to popular sentiment. In
the early years of the crisis, Lando viewed James's interest in an
alliance with Spain as a means to Charles's safety and England's
peace but regarded this course as not entirely judicious: ``His
Majesty moreover is especially infatuated by his desire for a marriage
with Spain.''5 By 1622, James's infatuation had become policy, and
popular interest turned to public outcry. According to Lando, even
the preachers who ``daily exhort the people to obedience'' joined in
expressing ``seditious and most dangerous opinions, offering the
strongest opposition to the Spanish marriage, both privately and
publicly, with supplication, advice, and prediction.'' 6 Lando marvel-
ed that the people did not actually revolt. Without condemning
James, Lando's cynicism about Spanish maneuvers at court implies
that he viewed the King as naõÈve for permitting what he called the
Spanish `àscendancy'': `Àlthough the populace generally detest the
union, a large portion desire it greatly, namely the Catholics and the
poor courtiers especially, who hope for future of®ces . . . of which the
Spanish ambassador has already ®lled more than can ever exist.''7
By 1623 when the marriage article negotiations were well underway
and Spain was demanding enormous concessions for Catholics,
James appeared simply willful: ``but now the King holds his realm
practically despotically and does what he pleases without taking
counsel of any one, all remaining quiet.''8
The press and foreign policy 163
With the turn of events in 1624 ± Charles and Buckingham having
exposed Spain's pretenses in the marriage negotiations and joined
the demand for war against Spain ± the ambassador described James
as somewhat pathetic and still strangely subject to the Spanish
ambassador. The King had become ``restive,'' his only stability his
attachment to Spain, as his censorship of a court masque illustrated:
``. . . the usual verses written for the masque containing some rather
free remarks against the Spaniards . . . were altered by his
command, and while in others this might be the result of prudence,
in him it is nothing but the fear of offending the Spaniards.'' 9
Diplomatic channels reported that despite the revelations about the
per®dious Spanish the Prince's trip to Spain had brought, James still
garnered Spanish support and sought to resume marriage negotia-
tions against the wishes of his entire kingdom. James's people gave
up on him: `Èvery hope rests upon the prince,'' the ambassador
reported, `Òn him depends a complete breach with the Spaniards
and good results from the parliament.''10 No wonder, then, that the
ambassador concluded, ``No man living knows what is really passing
in the King's mind, he is sagacious, deep, and impenetrable.''11
Given the Venetian ambassador's contempt for Spain, it is dif®cult
to judge his assessment that in May 1624 James planned Buck-
ingham's fall, having read the Spanish ambassador's charge that
Buckingham planned to depose James and crown the prince. His
assessment, however, of James's frame of mind shows the personal
price he paid for his pro-Spanish policy:
. . . he considers himself practically deprived of the scepter . . . his mind is
ulcerated and full of poison, disposing him to ruin not only others but
possibly his own son . . . Such, I believe, are his secret objects and his
poisonous thoughts, but I should not like to say whether he really means to
bite. Certainly he has many enemies, few con®dants and no party. The
Catholics recognize that he is old and failing and that they cannot rely
upon him without involving their utter ruin when he dies in the near future.
The prince has drawn all the popularity to himself and as against the royal
authority, which the English reverence above all else, he can in this case
adduce the cause and argument of his own succession. 12
From this account, ``popular'' sentiment triumphed, and Prince
Charles exploited it to usher in his own authority.
The Venetian ambassadors' reports might be dismissed as merely
the opinions of two men (Girolamo Lando before July 1622 and Avise
Valeresso after June 1622). As Peter Lake reminds us, ``The way in
which men perceive events may well differ from the `real' nature of
those events as analysed by the historian.''13 In the case of ambassa-
dors, Lake's point is especially well taken; the court targeted foreign
ambassadors with `ìnformation.'' Such information, indeed, may
have been the ground for identifying James's reluctance to intrude
on Frederick's behalf with his ideological commitment to the sanctity
of monarchical authority ± Frederick having assumed the throne of a
deposed monarch. Undoubtedly, too, Valeresso misread Buck-
ingham's ``coup'' in 1624. Skilled as they were at astute political
observation, Lando's and Valeresso's reports of the King's demeanor
and the temper of the times, however, appear sound. The affairs of
the King's dear daughter, her beleaguered husband, and the Prot-
estant cause were the staple of parliament, pulpit, and press. No
ambassador ± or King ± could help but hear the clamor.
The King summoned the Parliaments of both 1621 and 1624 in
response to the Thirty Years' War. By the fall of 1620, Frederick had
been driven from Bohemia into exile in The Hague. GaÂbor Bethlen,
the newly elected King of Hungary, joined the Protestant alliance
against the Habsburg Emperor, Ferdinand II ± in part to strengthen
his own campaign for religious and political independence from the
Empire. At the end of August 1621, Ambroglio Spinola unexpectedly
led imperial invasion forces into the Palatinate. Both the Privy Council
and the Archbishop of Canterbury urged war on Frederick's behalf.
Publicly James issued a declaration pledging war the following spring if
diplomacy failed; he then called parliament.14 According to Theodore
Rabb, ``To mollify the outrage of his subjects, to counter the impres-
sion that all of Protestantism was in danger, and to lend plausibility to
his diplomacy against the Habsburgs, James had to threaten a military
response, which meant that he needed to raise funds.''15
A broadside poem, ``The Subjects Joy, For the Parliament'' by the
popular poet, John Taylor, shows how intently James's subjects
watched their government's response to events in the Palatinate.
Taylor opens with a deferential nod to James's political philosophy
that to assure political order, ``God doth a King command, / That
he his Lawes should read and understand,'' and then praises James
as a ``Defendor of the Faith Apostolicke'' that brings greatness to
England ``When other Nations blindly live in Error.'' Although
Taylor does not precisely delineate what ``neglected seedes . . .
growne unpro®table weedes'' constitute the ``breach of Lawes'' that
warrant the King's summoning of a ``Royal Parliament,'' his prayer
for parliament elucidates his expectation that parliament will destroy
the Catholic threat at home and internationally advance the Prot-
estant cause against Catholic imperialism.
Guide thou the Reverend Bishops, and the Peers,
The Judges, and elected Knights, of Shires,
And Burgesses of Townes within this Land,
Doe thou (O God) amidst their Counsell stand.
Let all their Consultations, still depend
To beate down Vice, and Vertue to defend:
Thy Gospell to increase and propagate,
And for the Good of Common-wealth and State,
The Pride of Haman, farre from them expel,
Counfound the Counscell of Ahitophell:
Plucke Heresies up by the very Roote,
And tread proude Antichrist quite under foote,
...
Protect the King with thy Almighty Armes,
Save him from Forraine and Domesticke harmes:
...
Preserve for evermore, our gracious Prince,
And strength him, his and thy Foes to convince,
The Prince and Princess Palatines high Grace,
With all the Royal and the hopefull Race:
Defend them Against all that them oppose,
And ®ght their Battels still against their Foes.16
Such sentiments in a broadside by a popular poet argue that Taylor

envisioned a wide audience that shared his interest. Texts in such a
format were likely to be circulated, read, and posted on tavern walls
and to be read aloud.
Parliament convened in February 1621, but in an otherwise busy
session its only effort regarding Bohemia was to seek the punish-
ment of the Catholic lawyer, Edward Floyd, who maligned Elizabeth
and Frederick.17 James called the summer recess as he dispatched Sir
John Digby to Vienna to negotiate the restitution of the Lower
Palatinate. Digby returned at the end of October to report to the
King and Council that war was the only recourse. The day follow-
ing Digby's report, parliament was ordered back into session.18
Digby recounted the failed negotiations to parliament and asked
them to set aside all other matters ± including their own grievances ±
to vote a subsidy to fund the mercenary army defending the Lower
Palatinate. In the debate that ensued, anti-Catholic, anti-Spanish
sentiment held sway; parliament approved the principal of support-
ing the King's declaration but disagreed on how and against whom
war should be waged.19 In response to the King's request for subsidy,
the Commons attacked Spain, Catholics, and the marriage alliance
with Spain and petitioned the King to enforce the recusancy laws
and renounce the Spanish match. The Commons' petition brought
the King's rebuke, and the Commons then retorted with a formal
protestation. The issue, however, had shifted from the war in
Bohemia and the Palatinate to parliamentary privilege and royal
prerogative. Faced with this challenge to his authority, James dis-
solved parliament at the end of December 1621, leaving Spain as the
only alternative means for supporting his ®nancial needs. 20 The
deep chord of dissatisfaction this struck did not escape Lando. `Àll
these things,'' he wrote, ``constitute a strain of no small moment
upon the loyalty of the people who are deeply infected.''21
Although James had promised in 1621 never again to call parlia-
ment, circumstances had changed in 1624, even though the affairs of
Frederick and Elizabeth were still foremost. In mid-October 1623,
shortly after Prince Charles and Buckingham returned from Spain,
rumors spread that when the Palatinate was restored, the Spanish
marriage would proceed. John Chamberlain's letters during the late
fall and early winter re¯ect how impressions of the events shifted; at
one point he reported the Spanish blamed Buckingham for hin-
dering the match, only to report a month later that the match was
on.22 James summoned parliament, which opened on 19 February
1624, purportedly to seek its counsel on how to proceed with
negotiations with Spain, but by the opening of parliament, Buck-
ingham and Charles had so effectively assembled what Thomas
Cogswell calls a ``patriot coalition'' that parliament's demand for
war was a foregone conclusion.23 Buckingham spoke to the newly
assembled parliament in a clever address characterizing Charles as
`à prince constant to the true religion in the face of repeated popish
threats and blandishments.''24 While Buckingham maintained that
negotiations with Spain were merely stalled, many MPs understood
Buckingham's speech as an assurance that Spain intended neither
the marriage nor the restoration of the Palatinate.25 When Buck-
ingham closed his speech by questioning whether James could ``with
anie safetie'' trust Spanish promises of ``the reliefe of his onelie
daughter,'' little was left for the Commons other than to make a
resolution to dissolve the treaties with Spain.26 Although the
Commons understood war as a likely consequence to their resolu-
tion, anxieties about Spain soon shifted inward, and considerable
interest turned to the ``Catholic problem'' at home. The ®nal
wording of the Commons' resolution re¯ected both national and
international anti-Catholic concerns. King James responded to the
Commons' resolution that linked breach of the treaties with renewed
anti-Catholic efforts at home by saying that he might consider a
breach of the treaties if he received ®rm ®nancial support. After
considerable parliamentary debate and negotiation between the
Crown and parliament, parliament granted the King subsidies, and
James agreed to wage the war ``likely to ensue'' and promised to
consult parliament regarding any peace negotiations.27 On 29 May
1624, when parliament was prorogued until early November, pre-
parations for actual military proceedings were left to a council of
war. Despite the King's concessions, rumors circulated that the King
still inclined toward Spain, even while recent events fanned strong
anti-Catholic and anti-Spanish sentiments.
pulpits and press: holding it `òut to the utmost''

Although the 1621 and 1624 Parliaments ended differently, proceed-
ings in both mark the breach between the King and his subjects over
the Palatinate and the degree to which ``popular'' sentiment affected
the King, even if it did not always alter his policies. Cogswell
maintains that Englishmen in the seventeenth century actually
``knew'' little about their government compared to their continental
neighbors.28 Although English people may have lacked of®cial
knowledge, the unof®cial and often unsanctioned news was proli®c.
The area around St. Paul's provided early seventeenth-century
Londoners with their news of the Palatinate and Bohemia. The
Paul's Cross bookstalls carried pamphlets and newsbooks ± legal and
illegal, printed and manuscript. Gallants met in Paul's walk to
exchange ``the whole discipline designes, projects, and exploits'' of
foreign states.29 And preachers returned again and again to matters
of state. The efforts of the Calvinist clergy in support of Frederick
and the international Protestant cause have been likened to a
``campaign of propaganda'' that was ``persistent, often shrewd, and
clearly in¯uential.''30 Although for many years historians regarded
these actions as evidence of an emergent ``Puritan'' opposition, Peter
Lake has demonstrated the degree to which through most of James's
reign an `ìdeological consensus'' existed within the Church of
England's conforming Calvinist mainstream that was both anti-
popish and anti-Spanish and which saw the Spanish match and
its attendant diplomacy as genuinely threatening to international
Protestantism.31 Archbishop Abbot's views, according to Fincham
and Lake, typify the consensus. To Abbot the confrontation in the
Palatinate between the Emperor and Frederick was the ®nal struggle
between the forces of Antichrist and those of good: ``That by piece
and piece, the Kings of the Earth that gave their power unto the
Beast (all the work of God must be ful®lled) shall now tear the whore,
and make her desolate, as St. John in his revelation hath foretold.''
Abbot saw no other alternative for England as a Protestant nation
than to support Frederick.32
Not all the clergy who shared this perspective spoke freely of it
from the pulpit, but enough did to warrant the Venetian ambassador
likening the pulpit's oppositional out¯ow to a ``torrent.'' So persistent
was John Everard in his political sermons that he was imprisoned
several times, although apparently never for long. His posthumous
editor, Rapha Harford, recounts Everard's efforts in a 1653 collection
of his sermons.
And the couragiousness of his Spirit was such, when he was but a bare,
litteral, University Preacher (as he afterward still called himself ) that he was
the onely man that opposed, preached against, and held it out to the
utmost, against the late Kings matching with the Infanta of Spain, when
others durst but whisper their consciences and thoughts: he chose Texts on
purpose, to shew the unlawfulness, and the great sin of matching with
Idolaters, being often committed to prison for it, when he was Preacher at
Martins in the Fields; and then by the next Sabboth day one Lord or other
would beg his liberty of the King, and presently, no sooner out, but he
would go on and manage the same thing more fully, notwithstanding the
power of the Bishops, being committed again and again; being, as I heard
him say, six or seven times in Prison; insomuch, they coming so oft to King
James about him, he began to take more notice of him, asking, what is this
Dr. Ever-out? his name (saith he) shall be Dr. Never-out.33
Despite Harford's hagiography of Everard as the lone outspoken
opponent, other preachers spoke out as well.34 In 1621 the minister
of St. Mary Staines and a lecturer at St. Paul's, Samuel Phillips, drew
rebuke for a sermon he preached at St. Paul's against marriages
between Protestants and papists, ``whether Princes or subjects.''
When he was examined, he denied any knowledge of a marriage
treaty between England and Spain.35 In 1622 Thomas Young,
Thomas Winniffe, Mr. Clayton, and Richard Randes all received
reprimands for speaking about Spain or the Palatinate from the
pulpit.36 Harford's comments on Everard are particularly useful,
however, in ®xing the climate in which this preaching operated.
In¯uential members of the aristocracy, `òne Lord or other'' sympa-
thetic enough with Everard's views, repeatedly secured his release
from prison ± and obviously within a very short time period, ``by the
next Sabboth day.'' Furthermore, Everard chose texts `òn purpose,''
and he ``held it out to the utmost.'' While those who voiced such
outspoken opposition may have been relatively few in number,
countless others must have selected texts that allowed them to veil
their concerns in the coded language of Calvinist discourse that John
Taylor employed in his ``Subjects Joy.''
The outcry from the pulpit provoked a royal response. In August
1622 at the King's behest, the Archbishops of Canterbury and York
issued a directive to preachers limiting afternoon sermons and
ordering that morning sermons refrain altogether from preaching
either about matters of state or predestination or from employing
``bitter invectives and indecent railing speeches'' against the Catholic
Church.37 These directions followed closely upon John Knight's
Oxford sermon that led to the public burning of the study of
Romans by David Pareus, the Palatinate divine.38 By referring to
Pareus' view that monarchs might justly be deposed, Knight pro-
vided James a link ± albeit an illogical one ± between the Palatinate,
resistance theory, and dangerous preaching suf®cient to warrant
silencing such preaching.
Historians' opinions vary on the success of James's effort to quell
clerical opposition. Thomas Cogswell views the directions on
preaching as a ``tactical success.''39 Fincham and Lake say they
``may have dampened, but they did not still, discussion of foreign
policy in the pulpit.''40 The directions caused enough consternation
and resistance among the clergy that the King felt his actions
required if not justi®cation, at least explanation. On 15 September
1622, John Donne, the Dean of St. Paul's, preached a sermon at
Paul's Cross ``to certi®e the Kings goode intention in the late orders
concerning preachers and preaching, and of his constancie in the
true reformed religion, which the people (as shold seeme) began to
suspect needed defending.''41 It appears that the clerical directions
prompted concern that James was turning away from the Calvinist
mission of the word truly preached. Donne's words, however, ``gave
no great satisfaction,'' and even he may have had some reservations
about the restraints.42 We know from his subsequent pastoral letters
that even though Archbishop Abbot may have sympathized with his
preaching clergy, he outwardly supported the King.
Although history may regard the directions as only moderately
successful, in the memory of at least one contemporary critic of
Jacobean policy they combined with other measures to lead him to
exercise self-censorship. In his preface to Vox Coeli (1624), an out-
spoken pamphlet against any alliance or cooperation with Spain,
John Reynolds says that he had written the piece following the 1621
Parliament and resolved to publish it then but in the `ìniquity of the
time,'' he ``hushed up'' his ``said Consultation in silence.''
I contrary to my expectation (but not to my feares,) saw my hopes nipt in
their blossomes, and my desires sti¯ed in their birthes, because the Seas of
our Kings affection to Spaine went so lofty, and the windes were so
tempestuous, that it could not possibly be permitted to pass the Pikes of the
Presse: When albeit my zeale and ®delity againe and againe infused new
audacity and courage in my resolutions, to see it salute the light, yet it was
impossible for me or it, to be made so happy, because I saw Allureds honest
Letter, Scots loyall Vox Popoli, D. Whiting, D. Everard, & Claytons zealous
Sermons, and others, suppress'd and silenced.43
Reynolds's remarks lend some support to viewing 1622±3 as, in
Cogswell's words, ``The evill time,'' but `èvill'' as the times may have
been, the silencing was not deafening.
In this purportedly quiet time London's printing presses fed public
interest for information about affairs on the Continent. The prin-
cipal vehicle for this was the newsbook or coranto, usually published
in a one-sheet quarto that went unbound. Public interest in inter-
national news was nothing new. As Fritz Levy points out, throughout
the reign of Elizabeth news pamphlets reported revolts, battles, and
royal decrees ``from whatever country was currently of interest.''44
English interest in a war that spread from Bohemia to the Palatinate
and Hungary joined with nationalistic concerns about both Princess
Elizabeth's safety and Prince Charles's marriage to a Catholic
princess to create a market for news persistent enough to warrant
reports that came ®rst with intermittent regularity and then, later, on
a weekly basis. The ®rst news that appeared with any regularity
came in ``corantos'' (``currents'' of news) from the Netherlands
between 2 December 1620 and 2 August 1621. The English printer
Nathaniel Butter followed these in 1621 with a short series of English
corantos. A few unnumbered newsbooks appeared in 1621, followed
in 1622 with a plethora of further unnumbered ones. The Short-Title
Catalogue lists ®fty unnumbered newsbooks in 1623, which suggests a
fairly regular, perhaps even weekly publication. The publication of
numbered ± and thus truly ``periodical'' ± newsbooks began in a
meaningful way in 1623. The Short-Title Catalogue lists forty-®ve
editions in that year, but only nine for 1622. 45 1623, then, saw the
emergence of the news periodical.
Gauging the full output of newsbooks is dif®cult. Because the very
nature of ``news'' suggests a medium that is inherently disposable
and because most extant editions of newsbooks and corantos survive
in single copies, scholars presume an even greater rate of publication
than extant copies would suggest. Estimates of production vary
widely. Gaps in the number sequences in extant seventeenth-century
corantos have led to the conclusion that extant copies represent half
of those published.46 In Nathaniel Butter's ®rst series of ®fty
numbered newsbooks in 1623, however, only two are missing, which
would give a survival rate of 97 percent. D. C. Collins's estimate of a
58 percent survival between 1590 and 1610 is misleading because it
includes ballads as well as newsbooks. By correlating The Short-Title
Catalogue's record of extant copies with my own count of news
pamphlets and newsbooks entered in the Stationers' Register between
1603 and 1625, I estimate a survival rate of close to 80 percent.47
This suggests that newsbook production peaked in 1622 at approxi-
mately seventy-two publications, declined in 1623 to ®fty-six, and fell
again signi®cantly to twenty-®ve in 1624. Of the sixty-eight extant
1621±2 newsbooks, thirty-®ve focused on Frederick and efforts on his
behalf.48 Knowing that James intensi®ed efforts to impose censorship
in 1623 may invite the conclusion that censorship led to the decline
in continental news after 1623. It is more likely, as Theodore Rabb
has suggested, that as the forces ®ghting on Frederick's behalf met
with successive defeats and his cause faltered, news became `à vain
cry in a lost situation.''49
In addition to those quartos classi®ed as ``newsbooks,'' other
quarto publications also reported events in Bohemia in considerable
detail and provided all kinds of documentary evidence of of®cial
events. Beginning late in 1619, pamphlets recount Frederick's elec-
tion to the Crown of Bohemia and offer rationales both for his
acceptance and Bohemia's rejection of Ferdinand.50 A later
pamphlet entitled A short relation of the departure of the high and mightie
Prince Frederick Elect of Bohemia contains both ``The Departure of the
High and Mighty Prince of Bohemia,'' and the British diplomat,
John Harrison's ``meditation coming downe the Rhyne'' on the
departure sermon which he wished could have been preached at
Paul's Cross.51 As Theodore Rabb points out, discussions of law
dominate many of the quartos that appeared on Frederick's position:
``the central issue of the average reader of these works appears to
have been the formal rights and wrongs of Frederick's claim to the
Bohemian crown.''52 The ®rst of this kind, Newes from Bohemia. An
Apologie Made by the States of the Kingdom of Bohemia, shewing the Reasons
why those of the Reformed Religion were moved to take Armes (London, 1619),
justi®es the revolt by delineating the agreements and rights,
especially religious toleration, that the Emperor violated. A later
one, The Reasons which compelled the State of Bohemia to reject the Archduke
Ferdinand etc. and inforced them to Elect a new King (Dort, [1619]), argued
that Frederick's election should proceed quickly and justi®ed it by
reviewing the precedents for succession to the Bohemian throne by
election rather than inheritance. When the Emperor claimed the
right to serve as the judge of Frederick's conduct in an imperial court
of law, a host of pamphlets appeared on imperial legal procedures
and precedents. Characteristic of these was An Answere to the Question:
whether the Emperour that now is, can bee Judge in the Bohemian Controversie
or no ([London], 1620) which refuted the Emperor's right either to
serve as judge in a case in which he was involved or to militarily
attack Frederick without a trial.53 A handful of impassioned pamph-
lets joined those that focused on rational legal argument. One in
particular, A plaine demonstration of the unlawful succession of Ferdinand the
second, because of the incestuous marriage of his parents (at the Hage, 1620
[i.e. London, William Stansby for Nathaniel Butter, 1620?]), em-
ployed what had become the customary legal argument but clearly,
as its title suggests, engaged in moral sensationalism at Ferdinand's
expense. Nor was Frederick spared assault. The Manifest or Declaration
of his Sacred Imperiall Majesty (1620) attacked Frederick and his claims
in a manner Rabb describes as `ìmpassioned, violent, disrespectful
and dogmatic.''54
Although Rabb ®nds a majority of the Bohemia pamphlets to be
remarkably sober and mild, especially given their appearance in a
``vituperative age,'' he fails to emphasize the degree to which they
re¯ect what might best be described as Protestant patriotism ± a
devout commitment to Frederick and Elizabeth as representatives of
the Protestant cause in the struggle of the true Church against the
agents of Catholic imperialism. While the Bohemia pamphlets of the
1620s may be notable for their rational legalism, books and pamph-
lets that warned against any English alliance with Catholic countries
and advocated English military intervention ®rst to aid Frederick in
Bohemia and later to restore the Palatinate followed. Most notable
among these are the writings of Thomas Scott.
The ®rst of Scott's pamphlets, Vox Populi (1620), which exposed
Spanish efforts to exert control on English domestic and foreign
policy, pretended to be a conversation between Spanish ministers
and Count Gondomar on the state of England.55 1620 saw the
publication of seven editions of Vox Populi, which suggests the degree
to which Scott's anti-Catholic, anti-papal views resonated with the
English people who were closely monitoring the war between
Protestants and Catholics in Bohemia. Scott produced four more
books in 1621 and 1622, ®ve in 1623, and ten in 1624.56 In these
works Scott rejected the label of ``Puritan'' as the product of papists
attempting to divide English Protestantism, and identi®ed those
being accused of puritanism with all his fellow Protestants ± at home
and abroad ± who offered England its best defense against Spain and
Rome. Scott advocated a strong political alliance with the Nether-
lands as the best defense against Spanish imperialism and likewise
supported all Protestant military efforts against imperial Catholic
forces and Spain. His opposition to a diplomatic solution for the
Palatinate derived from his distrust of Spain, which, according to
Lake, he identi®ed with the papacy ± both equally scheming and
duplicitous.
For Scott Spain was simply the secular equivalent of the papacy.
Its claims to temporal dominion precisely paralleled those of the
Pope in the spiritual sphere. Scott's picture of the ambition, duplicity,
and corruption of the Spanish stemmed directly from his equally
lurid picture of Rome. This correlation allowed Scott to characterize
all papists as covert agents of Spain. The Jesuits were taken to be
particularly active in this role. Together with other popish priests,
their followers, and favorers, they formed a vast underground
intelligence network and army for the King of Spain.57 In Vox Populi,
Scott expresses his belief that a vast conspiracy between Spain and
the papacy was working in the English court to produce domestic
leniency toward Catholics and an international alliance with Spain.
Scott's pamphlets that appeared in 1623 and 1624, while still
markedly anti-Spanish and anti-papal, exhibited less criticism of
James and the English court. The turn of events, marked by the
return of Charles and Buckingham, elicited Scott's unrestrained
praise. The second part of Vox Populi, still a cautionary tale of Spanish
scheming, represented Charles and Buckingham as threats to Spain's
English ambitions. Vox Dei celebrates the 1624 Parliament's coura-
geous shift of policy led by Charles and Buckingham, and Vox Regis
provided its readers with an account of that ``happiest Parliament
that ever was,'' complete with resolutions, addresses, and commen-
tary. According to Lake, the turn of King, court, and parliament
toward a ``full-scale anti-Spanish war'' vindicated Scott's earlier
views. By 1624 only Gondomar merited Scott's scorn; he alone was
the ``sole cause of the grievances of the commonwealth from sheep
rot and slack husbandry to the corruption of the court and the
(temporary) negligence of the nobility.''58
John Reynolds's 1624 pamphlets, Votivae Angliae and Votivae Coeli,
lacked Scott's moderation toward the court. Directed to parliament,
both books sought to motivate a full-scale war effort, as Votivae
Angliae's full title shows:
Votivae Angliae or the Desires and Wishes of England. Contayned in a
Patheticall Discourse, presented to the KING on New-yeares Day last.
Wherein are unfolded and represented, manie strong Reasons, and true
solide Motives, to perswade his Majestie to drawe his Royall Sword, for the
restoring of the Pallatynat, and Electorat, to his Sonne in Lawe Prince
Fredericke, to his onlie Daughter the Ladie Elizabeth, and theyr Princelie
Issue.59
Its dedication to Prince Charles recounts the author's earlier gift of
the book in manuscript to the King. He wrote then, he says, `ìn
favour of the neglected Estate, and dejected, and deplorable For-
tunes, of the most Excellent Princess.'' This time he sends his books
to the Prince ± and the public by putting it in print ± ``that (next
under God) you (resembling your selfe) will please to lend your best
assistance and give your best furtherance, to drawe foorth the King
your Fathers Sword for the happie restitution and reconquering
thereof.''60 He proceeds to call for war, rail against the King of Spain
and the House of Austria, and express hope that Charles, Buck-
ingham, and parliament have ®nally educated the `ìncredulous''
King to the Catholic Empire's dangers. Votivae Angliae repeatedly
points an accusing ®nger at King James for his failure to assure
justice toward his daughter and son-in-law as seen here:
For if your Majestie, whoe is a potent and mightie Monarcke, permit this
Illustrious (though poore) Prince your Sonne in Law to bee deprived of his
Pallatynate, and Electorate . . . you have farre more reason to rest con®dent
then incredulous; . . . soe you will likewise infalliblie make your selfe the
laughture of all the rest of the Princes of Christendom.61
Unlike Scott, who blamed Gondomar entirely for the current state of
affairs, Reynolds blames the King:
hath it not beene your too much connivencie in relying uppon the
deceiptfull ¯atteries of the Emperour, and your too excessive con®dence in
trusting the temporizing promises of the King of Spayne which hath
occasioned it; For by their Ambassadours and Letters, have they not
depaynted you the restitution of the Pallatynat soe easie, as in assurance
therof, you became passionatly resolute that you had farre lesse reason to
doubt then to believe it.62
Although Reynolds acknowledges that the Spanish ambassadors
employed ``velvet words and silken protestations and vowes,'' he
demands that James should see ``without perspective or spectacles''
that Spain fully intends to keep the Palatinate and achieve the
Spanish match.
Vox Coeli, which quickly followed Votivae Angliae, addressed parlia-
ment `ànd no other,'' this time to call for a speedy execution of the
war that the King had declared. Reynolds says that he had actually
written this book, which presents a ``consultation'' between the
Tudor monarchs and Queen Anne, during the Parliament of 1621,
but had withheld it from the press for fear of censure. The
consultation's principal theme is Spain's ambition and treachery
throughout Europe for the past hundred years. This work is no more
complimentary to James than the earlier one; this time James is
vulnerable to Spanish machinations less for his incredulity than his
greed. Although Reynolds calls parliament ``the re-presentative body
of England, and the Epitomie and Compendium of this great
Volume of our Estate,'' he implicitly places parliament above the
Crown, for it is to parliament that God looks for his Glory, that the
King looks for ``honour and safety,'' and that the Church and
Commonweal look for ``their ¯ourishing welfare and prosperity.''63
He urges parliament, indeed ``requests'' and ``conjures'' it, ``To tell
our King that it is nothing for his Majestie to have made a brave and
generous Declaration of Warres against Spaine, except he speedily
second it with execution.''64
As the writings of Scott and Reynolds suggest, the press's formid-
able production between 1619 and 1624 on continental affairs did
more than feed a benign English curiosity about faraway places or a
thirst for a fashionable ``staple of news.'' Whether reasoned in their
arguments or impassioned in their pleas, the majority of these
printed texts on continental matters expressed sympathy to the
international Protestant cause and to Frederick and Elizabeth, its
potential martyrs. Historians, who frequently return to these
troubled years, are no more successful than the Venetian ambassa-
dors were in constructing a narrative that accounts for both the
government's power and the apparent in¯uence of a powerless
populace. Censorship represents the inevitable sticking point.
Between December 1619 and 1624 James repeatedly sought to silence
opposition through one form of royal edict or another. Even so,
opposition continued unabated.
censorship and the unraveling of state hegemony

In some respects, Louis B. Wright found the task of explaining the
proliferation of both repressive measures and press output less
daunting in 1949, a time when Whig historiography held sway. For
Wright, the ``whole body of the Protestant clergy'' represented an
oppositional force suf®cient not only to wage a propaganda war
against the King's pro-Spanish policy, but, by their sheer numbers,
to defeat any of the King's efforts to silence their opposition.65 By
1624, according to Wright, the theatre (Thomas Middleton's A Game
at Chess) and ``thousands of honest citizens'' both con®rmed and
shared the preachers' discontent with Spain's Catholic in¯uence, and
Protestant pamphleteers like Thomas Scott provided a model for his
Civil War successors.66
Seeking to mediate between the Whig historiography upon which
Wright's interpretation rests and that of revisionist historians who
insist that hegemony precluded opposition, Cogswell's The Blessed
Revolution offers persuasive evidence that a ``loose coalition of
`Patriots' '' dedicated to war on behalf of the Palatinate worked
together in a parliament that `òusted'' Spanish domination.67 While
Cogswell revises revisionism to re-confer power on oppositional
politics ± although this time working from within in an alliance
between court and parliament ± his narrative depends upon repres-
sive measures taken by the Crown between 1621 and 1623. Here,
when Cogswell turns to popular response to James's diplomatic
efforts, he invokes Privy Council and Star Chamber efforts to protect
the arcana imperii. Cogswell con®dently assures his readers that during
the `èvill time'' danger resided in speaking out on matters of state.
Not only did James issue proclamations against licentious speech on
matters of state that cautioned subjects ``from the highest to the
lowest, to take heede, how they intermeddle by Penne, or Speech,''
he silenced preaching, issued orders against disorderly printing, and
ordered the gentry to leave London.68 Furthermore, according to
Cogswell, ineligible for of®cial licenses, `òvertly political tracts on
controversial subjects could not hope to be published.''69 According
to Cogswell, ``Few authors slipped such direct criticism into print in
1623. Yet the government's particularly tight control of the press in
this period did not forestall similar efforts; it simply forced them into
the channels that newsletter-writers had developed for circulating
their manuscripts.''70 Without espousing a fully Whiggish historical
analysis, Cogswell subscribes to an understanding of the monarch's
control of expression remarkably similar to Christopher Hill's. From
Cogswell's perspective, James feared dissent and took repeated
measures to censor free speech in matters of foreign policy. For
Cogswell, the rise of scurrilous libels in manuscripts proves the
effectiveness of efforts to censor the press.
Sheila Lambert disputes the generally pervasive idea that news
was strictly controlled in England in the early seventeenth century
and speci®cally counters Cogswell's picture of the `èvill time.''
According to Lambert, the 1620±1 proclamations that generally have
been regarded as marking an intensi®cation of censorship `ìn the
face of the upsurge of interest in foreign news'' had nothing to do
with printing and were instead directed at verbal attacks on the
Spanish ambassador, Gondomar:
The proclamation of Christmas Eve 1620 against licentious speech on
matters of state made no mention of printing, nor did its reissue the
following July. The inwardness of this proclamation is shown by another of
8 April 1621, for suppressing `ìnsolent abuses committed by base people
against persons of quality,'' especially ambassadors and public ministers.
The proclamation was hedged about in verbiage to conceal any idea that
the Spanish ambassador was the special object of hatred; there can be little
doubt that they were all intended as sops to the ambassador.71
The 1623 proclamation against disorderly printing ``was a private
proclamation on behalf of the Stationers' Company which they had
been seeking since February 1622 in an attempt to cope with the
piracy of English Stock books.''72 Furthermore, Lambert maintains
that there was ``no regular licensing of ephemera in the 1620s,'' and
the appearance of Francis Cottington as an of®cial government
authorizer of newsbooks between 1621 and 1624 was more likely a
response to the market ± ``the regular clerical licensers being unable
to cope with the unusual demand for licenses from cautious news-
book printers'' ± than an effort to control the publication of news.
Lambert regards the two known repressive actions taken against
newsbook publishers and printers as having little to do with news
publication in general and everything to do with King James's ®rm
belief that `ìnternational law required action to preserve foreign
monarchs from indignity.''73
Lambert's emphasis on the market forces under which the Sta-
tioners operated, especially with regard to the ways in which they
sought government protection for their monopoly and their use of
company licensing as an important source of revenue, represents an
important corrective to misunderstandings about government print
control. She rightly dispels the notion that the Crown issued
privileges to control newsbook publication. Her ®rm assertion that
there was ``no regular licensing of ephemera in the 1620s,'' sug-
gesting as it does that the government was unconcerned about the
burgeoning news industry, is, however, somewhat misleading. Not
only were many newsbooks `ìllegally'' printed, but also evidence
indicates that James, sensitive to criticism of his proceedings, made
several efforts to suppress objectionable texts. His own manuscript
poem composed in response to a ``Libell let fall in court'' shows both
his indignation that criticism provoked and his desire that his
subjects should restrain their criticism of his policies.74
The nature and practice of ``licensing'' lie at the center of the
contrasting views of censorship Cogswell and Lambert embrace.
Like many Tudor±Stuart historians, Cogswell assumes that the
Stationers operated under a strict government order ± the 1586 Star
Chamber Decree ± that any text printed must ®rst receive the
approval of an of®cial authorizer. From this perspective, ``disorderly''
or `ìllegal'' refer to texts printed without receiving an of®cial
`àuthorizer's'' ± often called ``licenser's'' ± approval. Even though
the language of ``license'' becomes confounded even within the
Stationers' Register, the Stationers distinguished between of®cial
authorization and their own license entered in the Company register
book. As we have seen, the Company required that members pay a
fee for the Company's license, which protected copy ownership.
``Disorderly'' or `ìllegal'' printed texts, from the Company's perspec-
tive, were those that were printed without the Company's license.
The two kinds of licensing, however, were not entirely unrelated;
authorization was usually, although not always, a condition for
``license.'' The perplexing problem, however, is how numerous
books escaped Company licensing ± among these many of the news
pamphlets on Bohemia. From both the Company's and the govern-
ment's perspective these should have been `ìllegal,'' and if they were,
subject to sanctions. Not wishing to concede that many of the
newsbooks and news pamphlets of the early 1620s were `ìllegal,''
Lambert turns to the concept of ``private printing.'' `Ìt is possible,''
she suggests, ``that those [newsbooks on Bohemian affairs] published
with only the year date in place of the imprint appeared in that
manner because they were not intended for speculative sale, but
were commissioned by the interests involved.''75 Although some
evidence exists to suggest that the practice of private printing did
exist ± that is, that texts were printed for private distribution rather
than for sale ± the publishing history of the newsbooks and pamph-
lets on Bohemia makes this unlikely.
Of the twenty-four titles related to Bohemia that appeared in
1619±20, three were entered in the Stationers' Register, all in 1619.
None of the Bohemian pamphlets printed in 1620 was entered in the
Register. The Short-Title Catalogue provisionally assigns ten of the titles
printed in 1620 to William Jones or William Stansby. Throughout his
career William Jones dedicated his efforts to publishing books that
re¯ected strong puritan interests, and he was certainly not above
printing books that did not identify printer or place of publication.76
Nor was Stansby, as Mark Bland points out.77 While it is not
inconceivable that Frederick's agents may have ®nanced the
pamphlet campaign as Lambert suggests, a small private printing of
such valuable propaganda is inconsistent with Jones's other activities.
Furthermore, Jones or Stansby printed these pamphlets with false
place and publisher imprints and made no effort to enter the titles in
the Stationers' Register. (Edward Aldee, by contrast, employed a
false imprint on one of the pamphlets he printed in 1619 but entered
it in the Register.) From the Company's perspective, at least, most of
the Bohemian pamphlets in 1619±20 were ``disorderly'' printed. The
question remains of whether or not the Stationers or the government
cared.
The Stationers clearly felt some anxiety about granting their
license to books or pamphlets that treated matters of state, especially
concerning foreign governments. In 1610, as Lambert reminds us,
the government issued an order to prevent Stationers from printing
anything about the assassination of Henry IV of France by the
Catholic fanatic FrancËois Ravaillac `ùntil things may be further
considered and allowed by such as shall be appointed for that
business.''78 While Lambert rightfully maintains that this order was
exceptional, the Masters and Wardens hesitated on more than one
occasion to issue the Company's license without requiring ``suf®cient
authority.'' As we have seen, the Registers enter the Company's
license conditionally 135 times during the reign of James. Other than
the ten of these conditional entries that appear to relate to title
rights, over half of the conditional entries are for works that treat
foreign news or members of the English royal family. While most of
the remaining conditional entries are for books on religion, many of
those are translations of continental authors or treat continental
religious events or issues. The issue here is not simply that the
Stationers' Company of®cials were requiring of®cial authorization ±
books were regularly entered without this ± but that they were
cautious about granting the Company's license for political and
religious texts that had not been allowed. Also, sometimes Company
of®cials clearly expressed concern that a text should receive the right
kind of authorization. For example, the 25 September 1619 entry for
one newsbook, Mercurius Gallobelgicus, indicated that it had received
the approval of the ecclesiastical authorizer but required further
approval.
In practice, licensing ± both of®cial and Company ± provided a
means to control printing when the government chose to do so. On
21 February 1620 the Venetian ambassador reported that Secretary
Naunton had told him that a printer was imprisoned and severely
punished for printing a book about the Duke of Savoy ``without
license.'' The problem, of course, was not merely that the book was
printed without license but that having reported an incident in
Geneva where the Duke in¯icted an unjust death on two Protestants,
it was `àgainst'' the Duke.79 Lando's assessment of the government's
action was that it would ``give other printers no stomach to venture
to commit such an offence for a great while.''80 The failure of the
printers to procure a license in this instance provided the govern-
ment grounds on which to punish them. This particular occasion
especially piqued the ambassador's interest because he was con-
cerned that something was about to be printed on Donato ± whether
it was Leonardo or Nicolo, both Venetian Doges, is unclear. Lando
must have expressed his concern to Naunton, because two weeks
later he reported home that measures were being taken to restrict
printing on matters of state.
The Secretary Naunton told me that he had orders from his Majesty to
send orders, in connection with what I had said to him and to the Secretary
Calvert, to all printers of this city, not to print anything whatsoever
concerning the interests of princes or mentioning them or any matter of
state without ®rst submitting it to the secretaries and receiving express
license.81
While Naunton may have been seeking to placate Lando, in 1621
Calvert twice gave his `èxpress license'' for two political texts that
addressed princes: Patrick Scot's Table Book for a Prince and A true copy
of the Latine oration of the excellent lord George Ossolinski, which the
Stationers' Register entry describes as the ``Polonian Ambassador's
oration to His Majesty.'' These were entered in the Register respec-
tively on 31 March 1621 and 5 April 1621. A little over one month
later, 16 May 1621, Francis Cottington's name makes its ®rst appear-
ance in the Stationers' Register as what would become a regular
government licenser of newsbooks and other predominantly political
texts.82
Cottington's appointment as an authorizer marks an important
shift in press licensing. Although government edicts from the time of
Henry VIII at one time or another had called for approval by the
monarch or members of his council, names of state of®cials appear
infrequently in the Stationers' Register as authorizers. During the
reign of James, Secretary Calvert's name appears four times, Secre-
tary Conway's once, Earl Marshal Arundel's twice, and Sir Thomas
Smith's eight times. (Since all the entries that name Smith are for
publications about the Virginia Company, of which Smith was an
of®cer, these look like self-authorizations.) The appearance of Cot-
tington's name as authorizer ninety-two times between 1621 and
1623 (and once in 1624) represents the government's ®rst major effort
to ``license'' printing. Furthermore, Cottington's credentials suggest
that his role as a regular authorizer derived from something more
than ``the regular clerical licensers being unable to cope with the
unusual demand for licenses from cautious newsbook printers.''83
Francis Cottington, a career diplomat, was appointed English
consul of Seville in 1612. While serving in this capacity, the Spanish
party of the Privy Council employed him to urge Gondomar to
support a Spanish marriage. In 1616 Cottington replaced John Digby
as the English ambassador in Spain, where he worked for a
negotiated settlement to the crisis in Bohemia. Cottington's expertise
in Spanish affairs meant that he was the ®rst person consulted when
Prince Charles and Buckingham decided to go to Spain, and he
accompanied them on the mission. When they returned from Spain,
Cottington lost favor with the Prince and Buckingham, and he was
deprived of his of®ces and denied the court.84 Cottington's service as
a press authorizer coincided with James's pro-Spanish policies. The
only alternative to seeing his service as a government effort to
control news is to view it as a gesture to conciliate Gondomar ± in
which case, it still represents an exercise in press control, though
more narrowly, to prevent the publication of news containing
anything against Spain.
One measure of whether or not Stationers regarded Cottington's
service as an effort to control news can be found in the high licensing
conformity in 1622±3 and in the differences between the unlicensed
1620±1 news pamphlets and those newsbooks that received Cotting-
ton's imprimatur. Of the 133 news pamphlets and corantos entered
in the Stationers' Register between 1619 and 1625, all but two were
entered with notice of authorization. The approved pamphlets were
markedly different from those that were neither entered nor ap-
proved. The 1621 pamphlet, A briefe description of the Ban made against the
King of Bohemia, which led to the imprisonment of Stationers Edward
Aldee and Thomas Archer, is as focused on law and legal reasoning
as the 1620 pamphlets had been. This one, however, frequently
returns to Spain's role against Frederick. Spinola's army, it says, was
``raised and payed by the King of Spain,'' and the sentence against
Frederick was `èxtorted and procured by the importunate solicita-
tion of the Spanish Ambassador.''85 The pamphlet concludes that
the ban against Frederick was ``no other but to introduce a Spanish
servitude.''86 After Cottington began authorizing newsbooks, the
news itself changed little, but the tone did. News continued to appear
on the Palatinate and on the progresses and failures of Mans®eld's
army, supporting Frederick against the Empire cause, but the
approved reports contain nothing that casts a negative light on Spain
or resorts to attacks on the Catholic Church.
Furthermore, at least one ecclesiastical licenser cautioned an
author that references in his work to Spain could prove dangerous.
Robert Jenison wrote to his friend, Dr. Samuel Ward, that ``Mr
Sibbs,'' presumably Richard Sibbes, delayed his book's publication
because of his ``timoursness'' over his own former approval of
certain passages:
Mr Sibbs . . . after his owne perusal, after examination and approbation,
yea after printing, hath bethought himselfe of some passages in the treatise
which, yf they be published before the booke be corrected, may, as he sayth,
prove dangerous to me and to my friends (himselfe) who had a hand in the
printing of it.87
Sibbes was concerned about passages on Spanish cruelty and
``forbidden marriages with women popishly affected.''88
Cottington's presence and his effect on the press disputes Lam-
bert's claim that ``no regular licensing of ephemera in the 1620s''
existed. It does not, however, support Cogswell's view that books
ineligible for licenses could not hope to be published. In the closely
monitored area of newsbooks alone only half of the extant titles
listed in the Short-Title Catalogue dated 1622 and 1623 were entered in
the Stationers' Register. Publishers readily risked publishing copy
unprotected by entry to cater to their readers' taste for the most
recent news. Furthermore, Company of®cials appear to have been
lax in enforcing both their own rules for licensing and entry and
those of the government. Some laxity may have derived from
Company members' own religious and political sympathy for Eliza-
beth and Frederick. Some, however, may have derived from a clearer
sense of what the government judged to be objectionable based upon
decisions made by the government authorizer. Cottington's surveil-
lance ± both his approbation and rejections ± may have clari®ed for
printers what kind of copy was dangerous, leaving them with the
knowledge that certain kinds of news could be published without
risk.
Besides the news, English readers had access to books printed
without either license or approval from the Continent. One measure
of the degree to which domestic printing received increased surveil-
lance between 1620 and 1624 may be seen in the increase in titles
being printed on the Continent. For the ®ve years prior to 1621,
continental imprints average thirty-one per year. In 1621 this nearly
doubles to ®fty-nine, and then averages forty-six for the next three
years, and drops off signi®cantly after 1625. 1620 saw the number of
books printed in the Netherlands double what had been printed in
1618, and in 1622 and 1623 the number tripled.89 Not all of these, of
course, represented books that could not be printed in England, but
it is worth noting that Thomas Scott's books printed in the Nether-
lands with false London imprints were printed for the English
market. Critical as they were of Spain and James's pro-Spanish
policy, these books could not have been legally printed in England.
While both in 1621 and again in 1624 English printers were willing to
risk publishing Scott underground, in 1622 and 1623 the risk must
have been perceived as greater than usual. Returning to Lando's
comment in 1620 on making an example of printers may suggest why.
The word evidently was abroad in 1620 that two printers had been
severely punished to ``give other printers no stomach to venture to
commit such an offence for a great while.''90 This, however, was not
a singular event. Between 1620 and 1624 a steady stream of authors
and publishers found themselves in trouble with the government.
Thomas Scott ¯ed to the Netherlands when the printer informed
government of®cials that it was Scott who had authored Vox Populi,
the book that so outraged the Spanish ambassador that a formal
apology to Spain was required. In August 1621, as we have seen,
Secretary Calvert ordered Allde and Archer to prison and their
presses destroyed because their book on the ban against Frederick
was `òf noe value or worth, and therefore not to be respected.''91
Sometime that same year, William Stansby and Nathaniel Butter
found themselves in prison and their presses broken for publishing
the intemperate pamphlet arguing that Ferdinand's illegitimate birth
barred him from the throne of Bohemia.92 In 1621 the `ùnlicensed''
publication of George Wither's Motto landed its author in the
Marshalsea prison, with, according to Reverend Joseph Mead, ``the
King threatening to pare his whelp's claws.''93 Although Wither
may, indeed, have offended the King, the ground of objections to the
book was the status of its licensing, suggesting that the Stationers'
Company was more closely monitoring both ecclesiastical authoriza-
tion and its own license. Wither said in his examination that John
Taverner, Bishop King's chaplain, had refused to approve the book,
but he had sold it anyway to interested Stationers. He maintained
that before its printing he had shown it to several other men and was
convinced that there was nothing in the book contrary to the
``proclamation restraining writing on matters of government.''94
When the Stationers involved with the book were examined, one of
them, John Grismond, maintained that Taverner had approved the
second edition after striking out offensive passages, and he believed
that Withers Motto was questioned because it was printed without the
Stationers' Company's license.95 The Stationers brought John Mar-
riott before the Archbishop of Canterbury, who ®ned him for selling
the unlicensed book. In May 1622 the Venetian ambassador reported
that `À book entitled `The French Harald' has been prohibited,
dealing with the ascendancy of the house of Austria and bitterly
attacking the King here.''96 Its translator, William Phillips, was
imprisoned in the Gatehouse for this offense, although its publisher
seems not to have suffered the consequence for the action even
though, according to Phillips, Nathan Newberry ``contrarie to his
dutie, and without authoretie, caused the same to be printed and
openly published.''97 On 9 October 1623, Secretary Calvert stayed
the sales of Mercurius Gallo-Belgicus because it contained a passage full
of ``falsehoods and indignities'' against the King. Even though
Calvert says the author was poorly esteemed, he continues to say
that he ``thinks it not well for such discourses to be in the hands of
subjects.''98 In 1624 John Reynolds was imprisoned for writing
Votivae Angliae and Vox Coeli, and the printer was summoned before
the High Commission.99
Except for this last instance, the particularly troubling character of
these acts of censorship is the degree to which they appear to be
performed outside of the regular venues we associate with sanc-
tioning illegal printing ± the Star Chamber and the High Commis-
sion. A letter from Secretary Calvert staying the sales of a book is
one thing, but ordering men imprisoned and their presses destroyed
because they wrote, translated, or printed something objectionable
contrasts markedly with former procedures, where the government
followed at least the outward form of due process.
These exceptional actions suggest that the government regarded
writing about foreign princes and matters of state as violating law.
What that law was can be understood in part by stepping away from
the issue of censorship to larger matters of Jacobean government. As
we have seen, a point of contention throughout James's reign
between the King and the common-law lawyers had been the nature
of the royal prerogative. James held that his prerogative was the
highest law and that proclamations were the tool by which the king
exercised his prerogative.100 If proclamations represented positive
law, then violating a proclamation was a criminal act. Whether or
not we view James's 1620 and 1621 proclamations against licentious
speech in matters of state as legally restraining printing, some
contemporaries did. When the printer Stansby appealed to Calvert
for his release, he assured the Secretary that he had not printed
anything on matters of state since the King's late proclamation. 101
Withers maintained that his Motto did not violate the late procla-
mation against writing about government. Some confusion may have
existed among printers about the degree to which the loosely worded
proclamation applied to them, but the December proclamation did
follow close on the heels of the embarrassment that a printed text,
Scott's Vox Populi, caused James. Furthermore, the actions taken
against Butter, Stansby, Aldee, Archer, and other Stationers are
entirely consistent with the 1620 proclamation's own warning: `Ànd
let no man thinke, after this Our forewarning, to passe away with
impunitie, in respect of the multitude and generalitie of Offenders of
this kinde; but knowe, that it will light upon some of the ®rst, or
forwardest of them, to be severely punished, for example to
others.''102 Although James did not direct this 1620 proclamation
expressly toward printing, writers and printers of texts on politics
seem to have been included among ``the multitude and generalities
of Offenders.''103
While the 1620 and 1621 proclamations, the examples made of a
relatively small number of writers and printers, and court inter-
vention in licensing newsbooks created a heightened awareness of
government censorship between 1620 and 1625, the actual practice
of controlling the press was nowhere near as effective as Cogswell
surmises. Although printing could be and was restricted, apparently
no effort was made to restrain the circulation of illegal or offensive
texts. An anonymous letter to Secretary Calvert in 1623 describes the
conditions in London:
Althoughe such bookes as vox populi, and other suche as daylie toe
audaciouslie are dispersed, are forbidden and ought by noe good subject be
intertained or openly divulged, yet (as I am lykewayes crediblie given to
understand) ther be dyvers stationers soe soone as they heeare of anie such
bookes, as have noe publicke authoritie they indevor upon whatsoever
condicoÄn to gett them in theire hands and hopes some younge Fellowes to
transcribe them, & sells them to suche Neuefangle persons as will not spare
anie charges for acquiringe such trashe as infatuats the foolishe vulgar with
a misprision of lest actions . . .104
Stationers clearly were willing to take risks, and while forbidden
books may not have been openly displayed, the Stationers saw and
responded to an existing market for books on current political
affairs. When printing them became too risky, Stationers employed
other means to meet the demand. According to Calvert's informant,
copyists provided the means to meet the market:
I did inquire of a younge Fellowe a scriviner whoe dwelleth neere to a
Stationer who (as I heare) is a man of good meanes whether he had
transcribed anie of the bookes called vox populi to his neighbor the
stationer, he did tell me he had agreeth with him for a dusson, but ®ndinge
that he would not wryte them soe cheape as in an other place he could have
them, he had onlie written one of them, and soe he had taken backe the
Copie and putt them out of some other.105
This practice continued throughout the early 1620s. In 1624, after
the Privy Council stayed the performance of A Game at Chesse, the
stunning attack on Spain and James's pro-Spanish policy, the play
found an after-life in manuscript publication before it appeared in
1625 in print.
Circumstances surrounding A Game at Chesse offer an unusual
glimpse into book trade practices in the 1620s. The play's unprece-
dented popularity and subsequent suppression undoubtedly sug-
gested a market whose potential would merit whatever risks a printer
might incur. The King's Men's 1624 performances of Thomas
Middleton's A Game at Chesse, an anti-Catholic, anti-Spanish play, ran
for an unprecedented nine days from 6 to 17 August, to what
contemporary reports described as ``very great enjoyment'' and the
``great applause of the people.'' While the play provoked no riot
among its London audiences, it offended the Spanish ambassador,
Don Carlos de Coloma, who complained to James I that ``his
players'' had performed a play in which ``his Majesty the King of
Spain, Count Gondomar, and the Archbishop of Spalato'' were
``personi®ed.''106 A 12 August letter from the King's secretary,
Edward Conway, to the Privy Council called upon them to cite the
author and performers of the play before the Council, to examine
the comedy, imprison those most at fault, and see that means be
taken for the ``severe punishment'' of the offenders.107 The play's
performance was suspended, and Middleton and the players were
summoned before the Council, and though the ``poet . . . shifted out
of the way,'' the players submitted their play book with the Master of
the Revels's license, and were prohibited from playing until the King
allowed it. The King's reluctance ``to punish the innocent, or utterly
to ruin the Company''108 led to the Company's timely vindication,
though performance of A Game at Chesse was prohibited.109 On 20
August when news was abroad that ``Middleton the Poet'' was being
sought for writing A Game, the Venetian ambassador, Avise Valeresso,
wrote that the Spaniards having been ``touched from their tricks
being discovered . . . the Spanish ambassador has made a
remonstrance, and it is thought that they will at least punish the
author.''110
Shortly after the play's performance was stayed, Middleton
engaged in what Howard-Hill describes as `à premeditated course of
preparing texts of the play for sale, for presentation to patrons . . .
and for surreptitious publication.''111 The six extant manuscripts,
the earliest of which is dated 13 August 1624 and the latest New
Year's Day 1625, and at least thirteen copies that must have existed
between the extant states, attest to the efforts of Middleton to
capitalize on the enormous theatrical success (and notoriety) of A
Game at Chesse. Middleton was closely involved in the multiplication
of texts of his play after performances were stopped since his
handwriting is seen in three of the six surviving manuscripts, one of
which is entirely in his hand. Janet Clare has misread Middleton's
engagement with the manuscript production of A Game at Chesse as
representative of a prohibition upon circulation.112 That the play
was printed ``surreptitiously,'' probably after James I's death, would
appear to lend credence to Clare's understanding, except that
documentary evidence does not show that any effort was made to
prevent the production and circulation of manuscripts.
The matter of printing is a bit more complex. The three quartos of
the play, unlicensed by the Stationers' Company, and hence not
reviewed by of®cial authorizers, were printed in London without
notice of the play's publisher, printer, place of imprint, date, or
author. The lack of these attributes has been misread as evidence of
continental printing, but Adrian Weiss's recent work on the quartos
has established that members of the London printing establishment,
Augustine Matthews, Edward Aldee, and Nicholas Oakes, printed all
three in London.113 While the government's reaction to the play's
performance would certainly have suggested to Chess's publishers
that the play would not receive of®cial authorization for print, no
evidence exists to suggest that the government engaged in increased
surveillance of scribes and printers after the August clamor the
performance provoked. For Matthews, Aldee, and Oakes, printing
the texts of A Game at Chesse represents an instance of Company
printers employing legal presses to print for pro®t texts technically
`ìllegal'' by Company standards (unlicensed and unentered). Should
the printers have been discovered, the risks were twofold: the
Company could have imposed ®nes for unlicensed printing, and the
government could have suppressed the work and ordered the
destruction of unsold copies and imprisonment of the printers and
author. That the government did not suppress the printed texts of A
Game at Chesse and punish the printers points either to a certain
degree of government disinterest or to an ineffectual mechanism for
detecting and suppressing literature perceived as transgressive ± or
both. The Stationers' Company here clearly was not a mechanism
for censorship. A Game at Chesse was not printed by the kind of
`ùnderground'' presses that had printed the Marprelate tracts in the
1580s, and Oakes, Aldee, and Matthews were Company members
who received no Company sanctions. Indeed, a few fellow Stationers
must have known of the printing and seen it as somewhat routine (if
we are to believe Calvert's informer). There even may have been
some sort of unexpressed compact among Stationers to turn a blind
eye to the secret publication of books that expressed political views
many of them shared. Such a compact need not have extended
throughout the trade, but almost certainly other Stationers must
have known of the actions of the printers of A Game at Chesse and
chosen not to reveal them.
The kind of relationships among printers and publishers described
here goes a long way toward explaining why even the more rigorous
censorship that James's government would perhaps like to have
effected in the 1620s failed to achieve the pervasive control Cogswell
envisions. The other part of the problem is that it is dif®cult to speak
of state authority in any kind of uni®ed way during these years.
However authoritarian James may have been in his own vision of
government, multiple entities, as we have seen, shared in its admin-
istration. With regard to controlling the press one particular institu-
tion was especially important for administering royal policy ± the
High Commission. We have already encountered one instance of the
High Commission enacting censorship in these years; the High
Commission sanctioned the printer of Votivae Angliae. The interesting
part of that story was that the High Commission, which had initially
imprisoned the printer, was prepared to release him without further
consequence, except that the King intervened. According to Thomas
Locke, there was
a poore man in much trouble for printing of a booke called Votive Anglia
the King hath bin told that he hath gotten 1000li by the sale of them, the
Comission court had committed him for it & were about to have sett him at
libertie againe when word was brought from the K. that he would have him
pay 1000li for his ®ne & lye in prison, whereupon he was returned to prison
many of those bookes are divulged & it is likely that some of them are come
into these parts . . .114
While the High Commission would not have crossed the King, under
Archbishop Abbot it appeared to be less interested in controlling the
press than in monitoring clerical morality. Indeed, Abbot's sympa-
thies lay with exactly those voices that the King wished to silence.
One particular instance, where we know that the High Commission
intervened with a writer, illustrates how ineffective a tool for
censorship it could choose to be.
In 1621 the High Commission called upon the Calvinist minister,
William Whately, to correct the text of a popular marriage manual,
A bride-bush, because it permitted divorce. This looks like an effort by
Church authorities to intervene in a doctrinal matter that par-
ticularly concerned Archbishop Abbot, who, when he was called
upon to support the Essex divorce in 1613, had objected on the
grounds that `àny man who is discontented with his wife and every
women discontented with her husband . . . will repair to me for like
nullities. If I yield unto them, here will be strange violation of
marriages.''115 The book's publishing history and text, however,
confound this.
Whately's book ®rst appeared in 1617, having been licensed for the
press by Gervase Nidd, D.D., fellow of Trinity, and rector of South-
church, Essex, 1611±15, and Sundridge, Kent, 1615, 1629. Since both
were bene®ces within Archbishop Abbot's immediate control, it is
likely that Nidd shared Abbot's theological views. Between 1611 and
1616 Nidd authorized 143 books for the press, including poetry by
Richard Brathwaite, George Wither, and John Drayton. Of the sixty-
two religious works he approved, many were by Calvinists and a few
were by nonconformists like John Dod, Robert Cleaver, and John
Sprint. His sympathies here parallel Abbot's. Kenneth Fincham has
observed that privately Abbot himself ``saw any challenge from
Puritan nonconformity as of negligible signi®cance,'' although pub-
licly he had to ``toe the of®cial line.''116 It is unlikely, then, that in
approving Whately's book in 1616, Nidd was performing a par-
ticularly radical act. Whately's views were consistent with those of
continental reformers, who, for the most part, saw marriage as a
human institution subject to civil authority rather than a sacramental
one.117 The 1617 edition of A bride-bush experienced an untroubled
birth ± no fanfare or furor here.
According to the second edition of A bride-bush, the ®rst had been
published without Whately's permission. In the dedication to his
father-in-law, George Hunt (the son of a Marian martyr), Whately
discloses that though he had given a friend a copy of the sermon
delivered eleven years before, he found it ``last yeere published
without my privity.'' This prompted him to ``peruse certaine larger
notes'' and ``custome [now] hath brought this inkie and paperie
thankfulnesse into practise.''118 The 1619 text clearly drew upon the
``larger notes,'' its length nearly double that of the earlier book.
Through schematic analyses, extensive illustrations, and an extended
analogy between marriage and government, the second edition
extends his initial argument that violation of marriage's conjugal
bond dissolves the marriage. His use of the trope of marriage as a
``little kingdom'' is so pervasive that the treatise looks as much like a
political tract as a conduct book: ``Now a family must be governed as
well as maintained . . . The man must be taken for Gods immediate
of®cer in the house, and as it were the King in the family; the woman
must account herselfe his deputy, an of®cer substituted to him, not
as equall, but as subordinate; and in this order they must
governe . . .''119 Employing the common hierarchy God, king, man,
wife ± hardly surprising in itself ± becomes a curious thing in
Whately's hands. In¯uenced as he is by Protestant views of com-
panionate marriage, his argument strains under the imposed hier-
archy. Whately counsels reciprocal love in the couples; just, wise, and
gentle authority in the husband; and submission and obedience in
the wife. The prescription, however, becomes problematic on three
counts: ®rst, in its parallels between the husband's rule and the
King's; second, in arguments for God's absolute authority; third, in
maintaining grounds on which the marriage bond can be dissolved.
In its counsels of justice, wisdom, and gentleness to the husband,
A bride-bush offers examples where a king must be just, wise, and
gentle. In doing so, it develops a model of monarchy that could easily
be read as a critique of existing government. When Whately tells a
husband that he will succeed far better if he pleases his wife, he
underscores his argument by adding: ``. . . for it was a King that had
that advice from the wise old men, and they were subjects . . . If
thou please them, they will serve.''120 When he argues the bene®t a
wife derives from her husband's rule, Whately's vision of government
looks like an oblique criticism of absolute monarchy:
So all governours have their power from God, rather for the bene®t of them
whom they governe, than for their owne ease, pleasure, pro®t, or for the
ful®lling of their owne desires . . . The King ruleth, that the people may
enjoy more happiness by his scepter, than they could without it . . .121
When he counsels wisdom and mildness in a ruler, he condemns
abusive government:
Wisdom is the eye of government . . . Mildness is the health and good
constitution of government, without which it is like a big body, full of
diseases; unjust government is tyranny, unwise government is folly, unmild
government is cruelty; but just, wise and mild government is government
indeed.122
As problematic as the model of ideal government is that emerges
in Whately's counsel, his discussion of the limitations of authority
comes remarkably close to resistance theory. Whately's entire argu-
ment depends upon the absolute authority of God and the prece-
dence that authority takes in any model of government. From this
perspective an absolute limit is placed on what any governor might
command: ``Justice . . . must looke, ®rst, that no unlawfull thing be
commanded.'' Moreover, ``What God commandeth'' a governor
may not forbid, and ``what God forbiddeth, he must not
command.''123 This has remarkable implications for a religio-
political state like England when illustrated, as A bride-bush is, with
examples of religious practice:
It is tyranny and usurpation for any governour to be ignorant of, or to
transgresse the limits or bonds of his own place: for a man to command his
wife to lye to his advantage, to breake the Sabbath for his gain, to
participate in his fraud, or the like: nothing is more abhorrent for equitie.
Where Princes have commanded their subjects to worship images or
commit other iniquities, they have brought upon themselves the odious
name of tyrants; and the not yeelding to ther sinfull commandments, hath
been a high praise unto their subjects.124
The idea that forcing subjects to participate in what was clearly an
image of ``popish'' worship constituted tyranny was not entirely
inconsistent with King James's writings. The idea that subjects be
praised for not yielding, however, is antithetical to the way the King
had used the analogy of governments and families in his writings,
which said that children never have the right to resist bad parents,
nor subjects bad kings. God visits people with tyrannical princes to
punish and correct them. To condone not only passive resistance but
also outright disobedience, as Whately does when he says that to
disobey a tyrant is ``the best obedience,''125 openly challenged King
James's patriarchal notion of rule.
More radical even than condoning resistance to a tyrant's sinful
commandments is Whately's view of conscience. According to
Whately, a Christian's conscience is sovereign; it is ``Gods immediate
of®cer, and . . . must yet bee obeyed, and over-weigh the authoritie
of all other commanders . . .''126 In a marriage, even when a wife's
conscience errs, the husband must ``forbeare the urging of his
authoritie'': ``What she upon some reason (to her thinking, though
not indeed as truth) grounded upon the Word of God, doth account
a sin, that the husband ought not to force her unto.''127 Although
Whately does not go so far as to carry this to a fully developed
analogy with civil government, he leaves little to the magistrate
where religious scruples are concerned: ``conscience is the supream-
ist commander of man next under God, and hath the highest and
most soveraigne authoritie over mens actions.''128 Given the ex-
tended metaphor of monarchy, it requires little of the reader to see
this as an assault on the King's authority over the individual subject
in matters of religion.
Not only does Whately's counsel to the husband subvert argu-
ments for absolute patriarchal/monarchical authority, his advice to
wives to submit to their husbands contains exceptions that counter
prevailing views of patriarchal authority. In counseling wives to
endure the limits of husbands' authority, even to the point of
submitting to physical abuse, Whately quali®es his argument with a
strange contradiction:
You will say (perhaps), that then a wives case is most miserable: I answer,
that so it is indeed: but yet no more miserable than of a godly child, being
under the roofe of a tyrannical and sicken father . . . and of Christian
subjects being under the yoke of an unchristian and persecuting tyrant,
which yet must none of them save themselves by rebellion, nor some of
them by ¯ight. It is yielded, that a woman herein . . . may crave the aide of
the Magistrate.129
The suffering wife may neither rebel nor ¯ee, but, strangely, may
®nd recourse in law. By implication, tyrannical husbands (and kings)
must subordinate their authority to law. This looks like Whately
taking a position on disputes current throughout James's reign on the
King's prerogative. Whately seconds the position of Edward Coke
and the common-law lawyers that statutory law, and hence parlia-
ment, constituted the highest law in the land.
Despite the radical tenor of Whately's text, it circulated for nearly
four years, two before Whately was called before the High Commis-
sion and another two before a ``corrected'' version replaced the one
in circulation. We know about the book's censorship from the
correction that was appended to the 1623 text. Dated 4 September
1623, Whately writes that he was ``forced to acknowledge'' his
opinions on divorce to be false and therefore ordered that they be
omitted from the 1623 reprinting, but the printer apparently lost the
paper ``wherein they were corrected.'' The 1623 edition is exactly the
same as the 1619 except that it appends the correction identifying
both the passages where Whately erred and the scriptural basis for
the correction. He adds, ``wherefore I was willing to give thee this
advertisement, which may serve better to keepe thee from mistaking
with me, then if the former points had beene onely left out, or
altered.'' The entire 1623 text, then, as printed, both contains and
repudiates the doctrine of divorce, leaving the reader to weigh the
evidence and judge the argument on its own merits.
The 1623 text with its retraction raises other issues as well. Why
was a book that had received ecclesiastical approbation prior to its
publication in 1617 and met with no objections in 1619 suddenly
censorable in 1621? Both earlier editions shared the view that
in®delity and desertion dissolved the marriage bond, and neither
had been censored. The answer lies in the change in the political
environment in England that this chapter has been considering. 1621
represented the high-water mark in government efforts to contain
criticism of James's foreign policy. In such a climate of anxiety,
Whately's text must have been read differently from the way it had
been read before. The question also remains of why the censorship
of Whately's book was con®ned only to the section on divorce if the
book was perceived to be oppositional. The answer, I believe, lies in
the lack of unanimity on religious and political differences that
existed among the clergy. As Kenneth Fincham points out, Arch-
bishop Abbot, who headed the High Commission and zealously
employed the Commission to discipline scandalous clergy, 130 was
himself strongly aligned with the zealous English Protestants who
advocated going to war in Bohemia. In spring 1621 Abbot partici-
pated in both the remonstrance the Palatinate ambassador issued to
James protesting his inaction and an effort to press for a French
rather than a Spanish marriage. In short, Abbot's open criticism of
James's foreign policy coincided with the King's efforts to sti¯e
public criticism; for this, he was con®ned to Lambeth Palace, and
ultimately lost his in¯uence at court.131 At precisely this moment,
the matter of Whately's book came before the High Commission. It
is important to remember that the High Commission was a court
that followed set procedures. In a matter like this, charges would
have been preferred to the Commission, and probably not been part
of the Commission's own agenda, especially given Abbot's own
political views and the fact that Nidd had authorized the ®rst edition.
In the anxious political climate of 1621, the threat Whately's book
posed to patriarchal authority and control could easily have been
misread by some cleric sympathetic to the King's agenda as ``danger-
ous and seditious'' ± which, by the way, was the character of writing
the High Commission's charter called upon it to control.132 That the
High Commission did not suppress the book outright re¯ects the
degree to which its head, Abbot, shared Whately's criticisms of
abusive patriarchal authority and subscribed to the precedence of
religious conscience. Abbot, as Fincham observes, was no stranger to
subterfuge.133 For the High Commission to require of Whately only
his submission that he was convinced by the ``reasons alleged in the
High Commission'' of the falsehood of his views that adultery or
desertion dissolved the matrimonial bond constituted a remarkably
lenient sanction in a climate charged with anxious patriarchy.
The third edition of A bride-bush, with its appended recantation,
re¯ects the lax authority that the High Commission actually could
exercise over the Stationers. This edition was initially printed with
none of the High Commission's requisite revisions. The printer,
purportedly having lost the papers, failed to enact the castration
Whately had obediently ordered of his own text. Whately then called
upon the printer to append to the already printed text the statement
containing his submissions and outlining the passages that the High
Commission found objectionable. This effectively produced a text
that rather than suppressing the objectionable ideas presented both
sides of the argument. The third edition was not printed until 1623,
two years after the High Commission's directive. Furthermore, no
apparent effort had been made to remove the 1619 edition from
circulation. (The printer probably waited until his stock was depleted
before he set more type.) By the time he got around to printing the
new edition, he may have lost the paper detailing the changes that
Whately had asked him to make.
The High Commission's censorship and subsequent failure actu-
ally to suppress Whately's book point to the lack of unanimity ± even
within what is generally regarded as a ``state'' institution ± in the will
to silence criticism of Jacobean politics. The cases of the pamphlets
on Bohemia and Spanish politics and A Game at Chesse demonstrate
that even when the will was there, popular appetite for political texts
turned the Stationers into an uncontrollable body. The dif®culty
Cogswell and, to some degree, Lambert and most discussions of
Jacobean censorship in the 1620s encounter in explaining press
control in these years comes from centering the discussion on
whether or not the state had the will to censor in the interpretation
of documents like proclamations and orders. Lambert moves in the
right direction when she sees censorship as a response to pressure
from Spain. She does not, however, go so far as to recognize the
practice of censorship as a response to other kinds of domestic
pressures ± not the least of which was the market, as illustrated by
the public hunger for newsbooks, pamphlets, plays ± even marriage
manuals ± that engaged contemporary politics. The King's inability
to control his subjects' assault on the arcana imperii re¯ects no lack of
royal will, but rather that the early 1620s saw the simple juxtaposition
of Crown to subject replaced by a complex pattern of political
demands and personal responses that exposed differences at court, in
parliament, within the Church, and among the people. The unra-
veling of state hegemony that international politics exposed between
1619 and 1624 can also be seen in 1624 and 1625 in reactions to the
writings of Richard Mountagu, the subject of the next chapter.
chapter 6
Ecclesiastical faction, censorship, and the rhetoric

of silence
At the end of James I's reign, the publication and censorship of

Richard Mountagu's A gagg for the new gospell? No: a new gagg for an old
goose (1624) and Appello Caesarem (1625) and the furor they provoked
mark for many historians a watershed in both politics and the
Church in early Stuart England.1 Peter Lake and Kenneth Fincham
credit Mountagu with helping to defeat King James's conciliatory
ecclesiastical policy by doctrinally discrediting the Church of Eng-
land's conforming Calvinist mainstream, identifying them as subver-
sive puritans. In doing so Mountagu participated in laying the
ground for the English Church's change of direction during the reign
of Charles I.2 For Nicholas Tyacke, the support Bishop Richard
Neile garnered for Mountagu from within the highest levels of both
court and Church marks the ascendancy of Arminianism that had
been gathering strength since the Synod of Dort in 1618. Indeed, for
Tyacke support for and opposition to Mountagu in court and
parliament serves as a litmus test for Arminianism and puritanism
between 1624 and 1629.3 While Lake, Fincham, and Tyacke circum-
scribe Mountagu's relevance to the ecclesiastical and theological
spheres, John Morrill ®nds considerable political importance in
parliament's engagement with the matter. According to Morrill, with
parliament's concern over Mountagu and what he represented,
religion returned as `à major and increasingly bitter issue'' that
would ultimately defeat Charles I. To his parliamentary opponents,
Mountagu and his supporters threatened to subvert the Church of
England with dangerous innovation and a departure from the widely
held ``spectrum of liberal Protestant beliefs.'' Charles failed politi-
cally by aligning himself with a ``faction'' whose aims were at odds
with ``the greater part of his subjects.''4 By considering the circum-
stances surrounding the publication and censorship of Mountagu's
books, as well as their rhetorical strategies, this chapter discovers a
197
deeply entrenched division within the Church of England that was as
personal as it was theological (a division which King James well may
have been able to accommodate had he not pursued the pro-Spanish
foreign policy) and which transformed theological and personal
differences into oppositional politics.
mountagu's books and contemporary reaction

In 1624 Richard Mountagu's A gagg for the new gospell? No: a new gagg for
an old goose replied to a Catholic treatise that outlined the doctrinal
errors of the Church of England. Rather than attack the Romanist
position, Mountagu denied the presence of the ``pretended errors'' in
the English Church, and maintained instead that only puritans
embraced those doctrines. The Calvinist establishment in the
English Church took considerable offense at Mountagu's A new gagg
for an old goose, and a petition was presented to a committee in the
House of Commons that was investigating another somewhat related
matter.5 On 13 May 1624 John Pym read to the Commons a petition
®nding Mountagu's book to be ``full fraught with dangerous Opi-
nions of Arminians quite contrary to the Articles established.'' The
Commons then passed a resolution that Archbishop Abbot should be
acquainted with the petition and the book, and appointed a dele-
gation consisting of Dudley Diggs, Robert Hatton, Peter Hayman,
James Perrot, and John Pym from the House to the Archbishop.6 On
19 May Perrot reported back the Archbishop's thanks and resolve to
``give this House Satisfaction.''7 King James effected a meeting
between Mountagu and Abbot, where, according to Mountagu, the
Archbishop advised, not enjoined him, that `ìf ever my booke were
printed again, to explicate those places that did offend,'' which
Mountagu proceeded to do.8
While revising A new gagg, Mountagu also wrote an answer to the
men he believed to have accused him to the Commons, John Yates
and Samuel Ward. By fall of 1624 he sent this response to John
Williams, Bishop of Lincoln and Keeper of the Privy Seal.9 When
Williams, apparently too busy, returned Mountagu the manuscript of
what was to become Appello Caesarem, Mountagu proposed to John
Cosin, chaplain to Richard Neile, Bishop of Durham, that Neile
might show the work to the King.10 Mountagu told Cosin that his
manuscript contained direct attacks on his adversaries, especially
Daniel Featly, Dr. Prideaux, and Archbishop Abbot, which he wished
Ecclesiastical faction 199
the King to see but that he would excise if the work could be
printed.11 The King sent the manuscript to Francis White, the Dean
of Carlisle, who returned it to Mountagu with recommendations for
changes. By early January 1625 it was ready for the press, and on 18
February 1625 the title was entered in the Stationers' Register to
Humphrey Lownes, with the notice that it had been authorized by
Dr. Worrall, the Bishop of London's chaplain, and Dr. White, the
Dean of Carlisle.12 The printer requested that Mountagu write a
dedication to the King, which he forwarded to Cosin for his review
on 29 February 1625. On 21 March 1625 Cosin and Mountagu were
still correcting copy for the press, so it is unlikely the book was
actually printed before James's death.13 Between the time that White
approved Appello Caesarem and its publication in 1625, Mountagu
received a ``schedule'' of puritan collections against him protesting
his views as contrary to the Articles and Homilies. Mountagu
surmised that Daniel Featly was its author, which was con®rmed
when he learned that Featly also prepared objections against
Mountagu for parliamentary presentation. 14 Thus, by the time that
Appello Caesarem appeared, Mountagu's opponents had a ready case
against him, which the book fueled. By 23 May 1625 Mountagu
wrote Cosin that `Àtt Oxford they are all on ®re'' and that he daily
expected missives and pursuivants having learned that Dr. Prideaux
threatened that ``the ®rst thing the Parleament doth shalbe . . . to
burne my booke.''15
Although Prideaux did not succeed in his immediate goal, the next
three parliaments repeatedly returned to Mountagu, his books, and
the dangers of Arminianism. In Charles I's ®rst parliament, the
Commons committee appointed expressly to consider Mountagu
found A new gagg objectionable for its doctrine but judged Appello
Caesarem not only `à factious and seditious Book, tending manifestly
to the Dishonour of our late King, and to the Disturbance of our
Church and State'' but a work composed in contempt of parlia-
ment.16 Edward Coke, however, urged caution, reminding his fellow
MPs that adjudging Mountagu's tenets belonged to the Lords
``where the Bishops are,'' and the only case they had against
Mountagu was for contempt.17 Although summoned, Mountagu
replied that he was too ill to travel, and the matter went unresolved.
The 1626 Parliament took up the matter, and once again, the
Commons summoned Mountagu to answer; only this time, the King
responded both that Mountagu was his ``servant'' and need not
answer, and that the objectionable material in his writings was a
matter for convocation. The Commons proceeded anyway, and
although they found Mountagu guilty of publishing matter contrary
to Church of England doctrine and voted to complain to the Lords,
time ran out before they could fully prepare their case. Meanwhile,
on 14 June 1626, Charles I issued a proclamation that sought to quell
controversy by prohibiting ``publishing or maintaining any new
inventions or opinions concerning Religion than such as were clearly
grounded and warranted by the Doctrine and Discipline of the
Church of England.'' In 1628, while Mountagu and his books still
provoked considerable concern, the Commons' greater fear was the
rise of Arminianism itself, which by 1629 led them to seek a series of
measures to strengthen Calvinism.18 Their fears were not entirely
unwarranted ± in 1628 Mountagu was preferred to the see of
Chichester, and on 27 January 1628 King Charles issued a declara-
tion that not only suppressed Appello Caesarem but silenced its
opponents.
ecclesiastical faction: durham house and

lambeth palace
While the debate on the status of Arminianism in the Church of
England, indeed even on whether or not Mountagu held Arminian
beliefs, has been considerable, circumstances surrounding the publi-
cation of Mountagu's books and efforts to suppress them and censure
their author certainly re¯ect a deeply divisive factionalism within the
Church of England that James's ecclesiastical policy had failed to
quell. Regardless of the names given to the sides, faction's presence is
the common thread in scholarly assessment of the importance of
Mountagu's books. There, however, agreement ends. Comparing the
accounts exposes several unresolved questions. It is not altogether
clear whether the publication of Mountagu's books represented the
commencement or the culmination of an effort to dislodge the
Church of England's Calvinist majority. Nor is it clear whether
Mountagu was complicit in this effort or unwittingly carried out the
Durham House agenda. And, of course, the question has been raised
whether or not the Dutch debate on Arminian and Calvinist views of
predestination holds any relevance at all for understanding the
Church of England in the 1620s.19 Whether the books constituted a
beginning or an ending, or their author was unwitting or complicit,
Mountagu and his books are generally treated as anomalous. I would
suggest, instead, that they participate in a complex interrelationship
of discourses and practices that expose deep rifts developing in
Stuart culture. The most obvious, of course, is the emergence within
the Church of England of rival parties ± the one at Durham House
centered around Bishop Richard Neile and the other at Lambeth
surrounding the Archbishop of Canterbury, George Abbot ± each
with a different vision for established church discipline. Were this
merely theological, as Tyacke and White have suggested, the rever-
berations would not have been so great. Instead the differences
spilled over into the politics of in¯uence against a backdrop of both
national and international political turbulence. The outbreak of the
Thirty Years' War, an open con¯ict between Catholic and Protestant
in Bohemia, affected English allegiances. As we have seen, James's
resolute refusal to enter into war in support of Frederick and his
concomitant effort to seek peace through an alliance with Spain cut
deeply into the fabric of English Protestant nationalism. Strong and
vocal constituencies within parliament, the Church, and even the
court advocated war abroad and a strong anti-Catholic policy at
home. Abbot's outspoken alignment with this constituency, as
Kenneth Fincham has pointed out, eroded his in¯uence at court.
However much James might approve the strongly anti-Catholic
stance in domestic affairs embraced by Abbot and other Calvinists,
the King had always pursued an international irenic stance. Abbot's
disfavor combined with the death of Lord Chancellor Ellesmere to
provide a vacuum at court, one Neile readily ®lled with his proteÂ geÂs.
These men, embracing a rhetoric of silence on their own theological
positions, appealed to the King's interest in peace ± peace in the
Church, peace in England, and peace on the Continent.
Outside the court, however, Abbot continued to exercise consider-
able in¯uence. He led the High Commission, controlled press
licensing, and worked with considerable effectiveness in parliament,
and in the early 1620s all of these institutions spoke Abbot's Calvinist
anti-Catholic language whose confrontational rhetoric was anything
but irenic. The presence of these two clearly de®ned rival parties and
the emergence of their distinctive arenas of power form the backdrop
against which the furor over Mountagu's books arose. Mountagu
intentionally used his books to seek his party's ascendancy by
discrediting his rivals. Mountagu and his party, his fellows in
``Durham College,'' ®nessed their ascendancy over a circle of men
who were in communication with and shared Archbishop George
Abbot's views, especially his near-pathological fear of popery and his
emphasis on the primacy of preaching and the sanctity of the
sabbath.20 Employing a rhetorical assault on controversy, Mountagu
sought to expose the Abbot circle as controversialists who not only
intended to disturb the peace of the English Church but whose
control over ecclesiastical licensing authorized controversy.
Mountagu's party, the circle attendant upon Richard Neile, the
Bishop of Durham, was ®rst identi®ed as ``Durham College'' in Peter
Heylyn's seventeenth-century biography of William Laud; it was
comprised of the ``learned men'' who came ``from time to time to
attend upon'' Richard Neile at his palace in the Strand, Durham
House. Besides Laud, Heylyn identi®es John Buckeridge, Bishop of
Rochester, and Augustine Lindsell as members.21 John Cosin, Neile's
chaplain, also resided at Durham House, and he brought into the
circle his friend, Richard Mountagu. John Howson, who became
Bishop of Oxford in 1619, was also associated with them, as was the
controversialist Thomas Jackson. Although Tyacke cites Neile's 1617
appointment as Bishop of Durham as the point of his ascendancy, 22
both Neile and Howson exercised considerable in¯uence in the court
of James I. Howson served as a royal chaplain, and from 1603 to
1632 Richard Neile served as Clerk of the Closet, an of®ce that
placed Neile `òn the King's doorstep'' between the Presence and
Privy Chambers and entailed overseeing divine service celebration in
the Closet. According to Peter McCullough, the Clerkship gave
Neile considerable personal in¯uence with the King, which he
exercised not only by censoring court sermons but also by displaying
a jocular demeanor with the King during sermons by godly minis-
ters:23 ``Sitting in his privileged place next to the King in the chapel
close, Neile, `when any man preached that had the Renown of Piety,'
would èntertain the King with a merry Tale . . . which the King
would after laugh at, and tel those near him, he could not hear the
Preacher for the old Bishop.' ''24 By 1609, as the Dean of Westminster
and the Bishop of Rochester, Neile had the authority to bestow
preferments in the Church, and as early as 1611 Neile exercised his
in¯uence with the King by securing a royal chaplaincy for William
Laud.25 Having responsibility for the preaching rota, Neile would
have not only known Richard Mountagu, a royal chaplain and
canon of Windsor who preached before the King, but almost
certainly appointed his sermons.26
Durham College's theology has not been so easily conceded as the
fact of its existence. While Kenneth Fincham, Peter Lake, Nicholas
Tyacke, and Patrick Collinson, among others, readily view it as the
center of if not Arminianism per se, at least an agenda of opposition
to English Calvinism. Julian Davies, White and Sharpe have been
reluctant to acknowledge its views as anything other than orthodox
Anglicanism. Even so, the party's coherent identity is rather more
certain than that of the party they were seeking to unseat. Tyacke
identi®es a ``Calvinist triumvirate'' consisting of the Archbishop of
Canterbury, George Abbot, and the Bishops of London and Win-
chester, John King and James Mountague respectively, as ``counter-
weights to Neile.''27 Similarly Kenneth Fincham ®nds in John King,
Miles Smith of Gloucester, and Robert Abbot of Salisbury `à
Calvinist counterpart to the more famous Durham House set.''28
While these men certainly constituted the center of Calvinist auth-
ority, they cannot be seen as a ``party'' by 1624. Robert Abbot died in
1617, Mountague in 1618, and King in 1621. Although historians
usually mention a Calvinist faction only in passing, Richard Moun-
tagu and his contemporaries certainly envisioned one. In the course
of assuring that the King would see the manuscript of Appello
Caesarem, Mountagu on several occasions identi®ed his opponents,
the `Àllobrogogicall dormise,'' as Dr. John Prideaux, Archbishop
Abbot, and Abbot's chaplains, Thomas Goad and Daniel Featly.29
The correspondence of Daniel Featly and Samuel Ward, Master of
Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, con®rms such a circle of Calvin-
ist divines anxious over the position of the English Church. Other
names that appear there with some regularity are Arthur Lake,
Bishop of Bath and Wells, and Thomas Morton, Bishop of Chester. 30
Besides their attachment to certain tenets of Calvinist teaching, these
men shared with Archbishop Abbot contempt for popery and an
evangelical vision of the English Church that enthusiastically em-
braced a preaching ministry.31
The theological divide between Durham House and the Abbot
circle has received notable attention but remarkably little has been
said of the personal rivalry of their principals, Richard Neile and
George Abbot. Instead, any mention of rivalry has looked to the
confrontation between Abbot and Laud made legendary by Heylyn.
Abbot's actions toward Laud actually participated in a much larger
game whose strategies and stakes became apparent to Abbot as early
as 1613 ± long before Arminianism and Dort became a compelling
issue. In that year, Abbot became involved in a confrontation with
King James over the Essex divorce, which the King supported, so
that Lady Essex, Frances Howard, would be free to marry his
favorite, Robert Carr.
For Frances Howard and Robert Devereux, third Earl of Essex,
little more than children when they married, to have sought an
annulment would have been far simpler had Essex not been anxious
about his masculine honor.32 The initial goal had been to secure
both a separation and the Earl's honor. The matter was heard before
a commission consisting of Archbishop Abbot; Lancelot Andrewes,
Bishop of Ely; John King, Bishop of London; Richard Neile, Bishop
of Coventry and Lich®eld; Sir Thomas Parry, Sir Julius Caesar, and
four doctors of law. Lady Essex maintained that, wanting a child, she
lay naked with the Earl `ìn the way that married people do,'' and
nothing happened.33 The commission expected that Lady Essex
would charge disability; what came instead, a request to grant the
annulment on the grounds of impotentia versus haut with an article that
the lady was virgo incorrupta, led to a lengthy hearing of the matter
with considerable contradictory and embarrassing argument. Abbot
recognized that not to grant the annulment would disgrace both
Frances and the Howard family, but he had considerable dif®culty
with the Earl's position that although he had ``no Motions to know
his Lady carnally,'' his sexual potency was otherwise uncompro-
mised.34 Other members of the commission who shared Abbot's
scruples were pressed by the King to relent, but Abbot held his
ground. To concede in this matter, for him, would set a precedent:
``for as soon as this cause is sentenced any man who is discontented
with his wife and every woman discontented with her husband . . .
will repair to me for like nullities.''35 Besides, ®nding the arguments
for the Earl's inability unpersuasive, Abbot was convinced ``he was
Non posunt for lack of Love and not for want of ability.''36 When
pressure mounted on Abbot to relent so that he would spare
everyone concerned disgrace, he replied, ``Must I to save any man
from disgrace send my Soul into Hell, to give a sentence whereof I
saw no ground, I will never do it.''37 Knowing his position both
prevented a decision and provoked the King, Abbot asked to be
removed from the commission; instead the matter was deferred and
two additional bishops appointed to the commission (Thomas
Bilson, Bishop of Winchester, and John Buckeridge, Bishop of
Rochester).
Not only was Abbot acutely aware of these appointments' impli-
cations but also his account of the second phase of the proceedings
points to their political nature. Abbot suspected that the knowledge
that Bilson begrudged him the Archbishopric led to his appointment,
and further that Bilson's reputation for ``gravity and learning'' was
so great that should he, Abbot, not be won over, disgrace would fall
his way. As for Buckeridge, he had spoken to the King in favor of the
nullity long before the commission was appointed, knowing well that
``thus was a way to make himself well esteemed, and to arise high in
preferment.''38
The reconstituted commission heard a new argument that evil
forces caused the Earl's inability ± male®ciam versus hanc. Abbot wrote
a learned judgment to the King arguing that neither scripture nor
the classics supported this, and that he had heard no evidence of the
couple's recourse to piety and prayer, the usual means of dislodging
the devil.39 Experiencing the King's favor at court and hearing the
promise of a bishopric for his brother, Abbot had no reason to expect
a rebuff from the King. Abbot also had reason to believe that other
commissioners shared his scruples. Neile assured Abbot that unless
the Archbishop consented to the separation, he would not. It was not
until the eve before the day set for judgment that the King's written
response strongly rebutting Abbot and calling for his compliance
arrived. Abbot was distraught. To comply meant his own disgrace:
``Papists would storm at it.'' Furthermore, it would compromise the
commissioners and his ``friends'' who shared his views, and probably
jeopardize the position of the Bishop of London, who ``had wife and
children which might all be overthrown at one blow.''40 On the other
side, Abbot faced his conscience. When the time for decision ®nally
came, Abbot expected to win some commissioners to his reasoned
arguments, but was sorely surprised when the commission `ìn a
factious course went wholly together'' in a such a way that he might
`ìmagyne it was a set play.''41 Andrewes, Bilson, Buckeridge, and
Neile all voted against Abbot for the nullity. Immediately following
the sentence the King declared the Bishop of Winchester ``the
worthiest man in the Kingdom.'' It was rumored that Abbot would
have no further say over Church livings `ànd principally it must be
provided that Dr. Abbot must never be preferred.'' 42
While time and the ultimate fall of Somerset restored Abbot's
relationship with the King and brought his brother elevation to
Lincoln in 1615, the kind of factionalism the Archbishop experienced
during the nullity proceedings widened the divide between his
``friends'' and those under the ``protection'' of Neile. During the
proceedings Abbot had learned only too well the advantages that
might be gained and lost by appeasing or opposing the King. More-
over, he had learned precisely how astutely Neile could manage a
situation to his own advantage. Neile became the go-between for
James with Abbot, and apparently withheld James's response to
Abbot's reasons until the night before the decision was to be made.43
After the vote Neile procured Abbot's further disfavor with the King,
by misreporting a conversation regarding publishing the banns for
the marriage of Frances Howard to Robert Carr. Once again, Abbot
was in a dilemma. If he granted a license for the banns it would
counter his conscience in the nullity; if he did not it would anger the
King. Abbot proposed that the banns should be asked `àccording to
the custom used in the Chappel,'' whose Dean should issue the
licence. While Neile had been conciliatory toward Abbot when he
approached him about the license for the banns, when he told the
King about the conversation, Neile was said to have ``reported all
the speech about the license in a spiteful way, said it was absolutely
denyed, [and] that the Archbishop gave out that the Earl of Essex
was potent.''44 Neile immediately reaped his rewards; he was
translated to Lincoln (the living promised to Robert Abbot) and John
Overall became Bishop of Coventry and Lich®eld. Neile appointed
William Laud as a prebendary of Lincoln in 1614.
When Abbot described the commission's ®nal actions as ``fac-
tious,'' his context indicates that he regarded faction as the unwitting
following of a party's prescribed course and not as argument or
dissent. This working together in concert as well as the political
maneuvers Neile employed prompted Abbot's wariness. In the
aftermath of the nullity and banns Abbot concluded that ``he who
had done him all the wrong was the Bishop of Lich®eld [Neile], from
whom he resolved afterwards to be very wary how he trusted him.''45
Abbot's wariness stood him in good stead, allowing him to partici-
pate in the Jacobean ecclesiastical compromise described by
Fincham and Lake. Both he and Neile used their in¯uence with the
King to secure bishoprics for their ``friends.'' Both preferred their
friends to livings under their control, and both used whatever means
they could to prevent the success of the other side. As Clerk of the
Closet, Neile could readily ``®ll the ears of King James with
discontents.''46 As a member of the Privy Council and head of the
High Commission, Abbot labored more directly. In 1615, for
example, Abbot saw that Laud and John Howson were brought
before the King on charges of doctrinal deviance, but Neile used his
in¯uence to secure their acquittal.47 In 1623 Abbot blocked Laud's
appointment to the High Commission.
Fincham and Lake credit the crisis over the Spanish match and
war in the Palatinate with the collapse of James's policy of ecclesi-
astical compromise. This also, according to Fincham, caused Abbot's
eclipse as an in¯uential court politician. Amidst the furor of public
dissent, Abbot rebuked James for refusing to support the Protestant
cause in the Palatinate and advancing the Spanish marriage.
Although Abbot was spared the punishments other outspoken
opponents incurred, from Fincham's perspective he did so `àt the
cost of surrendering his active role in confessional politics.'' 48
While Abbot's opposition to the King's policies undoubtedly
compromised his in¯uence at court, his increasing isolation may not
have been entirely the consequence of his own surrender. Neile
employed his position as Clerk of the Closet to assure that at least
some of the sermons preached at court subscribed to his own
agenda. During the years of ecclesiastical compromise James Moun-
tague, as Dean of the Chapel, had provided a balance to Neile.49
When Mountague died in 1618, Lancelot Andrewes, ``the Moses of
English anti-Calvinism,'' succeeded him.50 With Neile and Andrewes
occupying these positions, it is not surprising that the 1620s saw a
radical shift in the rhetoric of court sermons. As Lori Anne Ferrell
has demonstrated, while court sermons throughout James's reign
appealed to the King's mistrust of religious radicalism ± papists and
puritans ± in the 1620s they increasingly characterized even mod-
erate Calvinism as puritanism, `à dangerous schism biding its
time.''51 Such rhetoric not only exploited the ®gure of James as
Constantine ± an ecumenical emperor seeking peace in the Church ±
but also in itself assumed an anti-controversialist stance. This does
not mean that the anti-Calvinists shrunk from controversy but rather
that they cast the Calvinists as controversialists whose preference for
preaching combined with tenacious denunciation of ceremonies to
foment disunity. The `àmbiguously articulated common orthodoxy''
with which they countered the Calvinists employed irenic language
of unity. According to Stephen Foster, ``They alone (ironically
enough in the event) could claim to possess a soteriology largely free
of divisive polemic, dangerous speculation, and unwanted political
implications.''52 ``Silence,'' Foster concludes, ``was the language of
Arminianism.''53
catholic conversion and controversialist response:

mountagu's contexts
Within this increasingly polarized environment in the Church of
England, a curious practice emerged ± a series of conferences
between Jesuits and English clergy were convened to convince
English individuals wavering in their conviction on the truth of the
English Church. Prospects of a Spanish alliance seem to have made
conversion to Catholicism fashionable at court.54 In 1622 James
sponsored three conferences between the Jesuit John Fisher and
English clerics, Francis White and William Laud, to persuade Mary
Villiers, the mother of James's favorite, the Marquis of Buckingham,
of the truth and legitimacy of the Church of England. For this
conference James drew up nine articles that he required the Jesuits to
answer since, according to White,
His Majestie, in his owne Judgement and Experience, knew most certainly,
That Romists are not able to con®rme their Faith, either by sacred
Scripture, or by antient Tradition. And therefore their manner is, when
they dispute with Protestants viva voce, to avoid other Controversies, and to
set up their rest upon the Questions of the Visibilitie and Authoritie of the
Church.55
A year later, on 27 June 1623, another conference took place at the
house of Humphrey Lynde, this time between Jesuits Fisher and
Sweet and English clerics Francis White and Daniel Featly, in order
to allay the doubts of Edward Bugges. Bugges had been ``solicited by
some Papists then about him, to forsake the Protestant faith: telling
him, there was no salvation without the Church; there was no
Catholique Church but theirs.'' The subject of this conference was
the very thing that James had cautioned White and Laud would be
the Jesuit recourse in their conference, the visibility and authority of
the Church. Hearing of the conference on the behalf of Bugges,
James directed Abbot to have Featly present him with an account.
Featly accordingly drew up an account of the conference for the
King. Some part of this document, coming into the hands of ``some
person of quality,'' found its way into print as The Fisher Caught in his
Own Net, a title repudiated by Featly but judged provocative by his
adversaries, who responded with a series of publications, White dyed
black, The Gagg of the new Religion, or of the reformed Gospel, and The dolefull
knell of Thomas Bell. Furthermore, the Jesuit response to The Fisher
Caught proclaimed ``such a victory as never was heard; much like the
wonderfull conjunction of the superior Planets, which was never
seene.''56 The victory was indeed heard, and as far as St. Omer,
where it was reported that `àt a Conference between Father Fisher
and Sweet, Jesuites, and two Protestant Ministers in London, the
Jesuites had quitted themselves so well, and the Catholique faith
prevailed so farre, that two Earles, and an hundred other of the
Auditory were gained to the Church of Rome by this Encounter.''57
In 1623 a press at St. Omer produced A gag of the reformed gospel, a
revised and expanded edition of The gagg of the new gospel, which had
appeared from a secret press in England earlier that year and which
Mountagu would respond to in 1624.
In 1624 three books appeared to give the lie to the Jesuits' claims of
victory: two of them were detailed reports to the conferences held in
1622 and 1623, Francis White's A Replie to Jesuit Fishers answere to certain
questions propounded by his most gratious Majestie to which was appended
William Laud's account of his conference with Fisher,58 Daniel
Featly's The Romish Fisher Caught and Held in His Owne Net, and Richard
Mountagu's A gagg for the new gospell? No: A new gagg for an old goose.59
These publications, born of the claims of rival churches to the souls
of English women and men, laid open the rift between the claims of
rival factions to the heart and soul of the Church of England. Featly's
account of his conference, dedicated to Archbishop Abbot, draws on
``the Chronicles of the Reformed Churches'' and Protestant theo-
logical treatises to argue that the true Church of the Protestants
always existed in the world though it was not always visible, hidden
as it was `ùnder the chaffe of Popery.''60 Laud, on the other hand,
granted that the Church of Rome was `à true church'' and with the
English Church was a part of the true Church universal, which was
torn apart as much by the abuses of Rome as the objections of
Protestants.61 Given his own preferences, Laud would have remained
silent, keeping the conference as private as it had been intended to
be. The King's call to publish his account met with Laud's chagrined
confession to his diary that he was ``no controvertist,''62 so it is not
surprising that it was hidden away at the end of White's Replie, a
monumental small folio text dedicated to King James, the protector
of `Òrthodoxall Veritie, and Religion.'' 63 In A new gagg, like Laud,
Mountagu appealed to the King's desire for a uni®ed Christendom,
but just as court preachers had, based his appeal for Church peace in
the vilifying of both papists and Calvinists as factious, while he
maintained silence on divisive theological matters. The Calvinist
reaction to Mountagu came both from the highly charged atmo-
sphere Fisher's writings had produced and from the deeply
entrenched rift between Lambeth and Durham House. It is hardly
coincidental that it was Daniel Featly, Abbot's chaplain, who both
drew up charges against Mountagu for parliamentary presentation
and later would write a response to Appello Caesarem. In Appello
Caesarem Mountagu attacked Featly and his other detractors but not
their theology. Mountagu couched any quasi-theological discussion
in ambiguous articulation. In response to the efforts of querulous
Calvinists like Featly, who ``controverted'' Rome with a barrage of
words to win the war of religion, Mountagu joined his fellows at
Durham House in a campaign of silence ± and silencing.
theological silence and silencing protestant

controversy
The ostensible old goose that Mountagu's A new gagg sought to
silence was, of course, the Catholic controversialist, but in the course
of the book Mountagu makes equally clear his desire to silence the
puritans who make the Church of England liable to attack for their
``meere opinion, private fancies, peculiar propositions of private
men.''64 In his preface, Mountagu tells of his resolve to write, though
he has better things to do, because the Gagger made such a fool of
himself in his ``prating.'' Mountagu characterizes his opponents
throughout by their abusive use of language; they are men ``pro-
jected, prostituted, and given over, unto lying, calumniating, tradu-
cing of all that concurre not with them.'' 65 Besides papists, he
includes among immoderate men, those in the Church of England
who ``clamor without rate'' and ``delight to set the Peace of the
Church on burres, onely for faction, and some private sinister
indirect ends of their owne.''66
In contrast to the abuse of speech that he identi®es with his
opponents, Mountagu's use of the rhetoric of silence in theological
matters can be seen in his treatment of predestination:
Predestination, is much debated in your owne Schooles. Intricate Disputes
are hereupon inferred: Questions almost inextricable . . . And the wisdome
of the Church hath not ventured farre, to put a tye of Obedience upon
mens beliefe, in points of inextricable obscurity almost, of the concordance
in working of Grace, and Predestination with Free will. Moderate spirits
would well and wisely sit them downe by temperate courses, and not
clamor without rate, where is no cause.67
Here he both approves and counsels silence in relegating discussion
of predestination to `ìnextricable obscurity.'' He regards the ques-
tion of free will and choosing evil ± a point of contention between
Calvinism and Arminianism ± as `À Question of obscurity, which
better might have been over-passed in silence, ®tting rather Schooles,
then popular eares.''68
The strategy of silence on theological opinions did not originate at
Durham House with Mountagu. Notably silent himself, Richard
Neile had long counseled silence as the means to preferment to his
proteÂgeÂ, William Laud. Laud had learned the price of being out-
spoken on theological matters when at Oxford Robert Abbot had
suspended him for his views on the Geneva Bible.69 When Laud
complained to his patron, Neile, Neile advised Laud to be patient
and silent.70 And certainly, as already noted, Laud himself was
reluctant to have the account of his conference with Fisher printed.
In print, even White and Mountagu had maintained a modicum of
silence: Mountagu's A new gagg and White's Answere both report
events that had taken place two years before. Then, within a ®ve-
month period between December 1623 and April 1624, Featly's Fisher
Caught and Held, George Abbot's Treatise of the perpetuall visibilitie, and
succession of the true church, and White's A replie with Laud's Answere to
Mr Fisher were all licensed for the press and entered in the Stationers'
Register.71
The changing political conditions in England called for the silence
to be broken. Even though fear of the Spanish marriage had been
dispelled by the return of Charles and Buckingham late in 1623, anti-
Catholic sentiment continued unabated and animosity toward Spain
was increasing. Although the common enemy to Lambeth and
Durham alike was the Pope and his Jesuit disputants, men associated
with Durham House feared the effect that strident Calvinists would
have on their efforts against the enemy. White expressed this
judiciously in his preface:
And I rest assured . . . that the Adversarie . . . is de®cient of Divine proofe
in every Article, and farre more specious in eluding our Arguments, than
happie in con®rming his owne . . . Lastly, I entreat all, of our part, to
prayse God for the bene®t of true Religion, maintained in our Church, to
avoid Contention among themselfes; for in all Ages the same hath proved
pernicious and scandalous.72
Speaking privately in a letter to John Cosin, Mountagu is far less
restrained in expressing a similar opinion. Of the `Àllobrogogicall
dormise'' who spread contention, Mountagu says,
This riff-raff rascalls make us layble to the lash unto our other adversaries
of the Church of Rome, who impute the frantick ®tts and froth of every
Puritan parosysme to the received doctrine of the Church, as this beboone
doth with whome I have lately to do, Sr. Goose the Gagger.73
Durham House opted to shift from a strategy of silence to a
rhetoric of silence for two reasons. First, men like Laud, who had
become Buckingham's eyes and ears at court during his sojourn to
Spain, perceived a strengthened sense of protection. Second, Calvi-
nists like Abbot and Featly, articulate and outspoken in the alignment
of their views with continental reformers, claimed the Spanish
marriage's demise as a triumph for their side. Furthermore, they
were enjoying considerable esteem in parliament. Featly expressed
both of these sentiments in the dedication to Abbot of The Romish
Fisher Caught and Held:
What should I speake of the most happie and joyfull newes of our thrice-
noble Prince's returne out of Spaine: whereof your Grace was the ®rst silver
Trumpet to the City? And (God bee blessed for it) the Trumpet gave not an
uncertaine sound . . . As the Roman State, after many disasters, ®rst began
to cheered up againe at Marcellus his victory at Nola, and afterwards much
good fortune followed: so, after much sorrow and more feare, the happy
Returne of our Prince ®rst cheere up our drooping spirits; and, after that,
many happie things have followed: whereof, under his Majestie, your Grace
have been, and are, together with your noble Associates in this high court
of parliament, the principall Instruments. Ride on, in the Lords march
prosperously, with your honour, because of truth and righteousnesse, and
your right hands shall teach your terrible things; terrible things to the
Whore of Babylon, but comfortable to Christs af¯icted Spouse.74
The attack Mountagu mounted in A new gagg risked little for either
himself or Durham House. It ostensibly joined his voice to the
chorus of vindications of the Church of England against Rome. If its
assault on the Calvinists went unnoticed, nothing was lost. If, as
surely he suspected, it provoked their response, then their response
only proved his point that divisive elements in the Church of
England were as dangerous as Rome, the real enemy. Although
Mountagu had anticipated a Calvinist rebuttal, he had probably not
expected that the presses would be silent, and his opponents would
instead inform on him to parliament.
In Appello Caesarem A JUST APPEALE from Two Unjust Informers,
Mountagu defends himself against the charges of popery and
Arminianism made to parliament by two informers. Although he
charges his informers with misunderstanding, misreporting, and
distorting his words, the principal theme of his defense is his own
silence. Those positions his detractors view as evidence of popery
and Arminianism were not his opinions at all; he was merely
reporting them. Mountagu's strategy with regard to any doctrinal
position by which he could be labeled an Arminian is to invoke
silence. On the doctrine of Final Perseverance, he says, `Ì took not
upon me to Touch it, much lesse to Determine it at all.''75 On the
question of whether or not faith can be lost, he writes,
And then, for my owne opinion, I conclude thus: I D E T E R M I N E
nothing in this question P O S I T I V E L Y that is, neither for
T O T A L L Y and F I N A L L Y nor T O T A L L Y and F I N A L L Y
nor, nor T O T A L L Y nor F I N A L L Y not with reference unto
G O D . . .76
The only positive doctrinal statements he presents are direct quota-
tions from the Thirty-Nine Articles and the liturgies. By doing so, he
can safely conclude,
In my judgement this is the doctrine of the Church of England, not
delivered according unto private opinions in ordinary Tracts and Lectures
but delivered publickly, positively, and declaratorily in Authenticall
Records.77
For his exposing his opponents positions ± ``the Fancies many of
them of Factious men'' ± his justi®cation was that his was ``direct
dealing herein . . . so reasonable, so necessary.''78 Once again, his
opponents have abused language; they are ``Classicall Puritans, who
were wont to passe all ther Strange Determinations, Sabbatarian
Paradoxes, and Apocalypticall Frensies under the Name and Covert
of The True Professors of Protestant Doctrine.''79 They accused him
in ``Clamors . . . impetuous'' with ``Slanders and false Surmises unto
the world.''80 Mountagu concludes his appeal with a vehement
condemnation of the noise made by the Puritans:
Thus farre these Zealous Ones have uncharitably informed; and have made
a great noise, and hubbub in the Church and State, of Errors, Dangerous
Errors, God knoweth how farre, or wherein; Arminianisme, Popery, taught,
and deliverd by M. MOUNTAGU. Much suspected, nothing yet proved.
Great clamors and outcries of I know not what, or wherefore . . . So the
Beacons are ®red by certaine franticke fellowes that are frighted with
Pannick feares, and by them the neighbouring countries are disturbed
without cause . . . I goe no farther, but leave you to your selves; and if it bee
possible, unto more charitable conceits of those that deserve no other
imputation but, THEY ARE NO PURITANS: which GOD in goodnes
keep out of theis Church and State, as dangerous as Popery, for any thing I
am able to discerne: the onely difference being, POPERY is for Tyranny,
Puritanisme for Anarchy: POPERIE is originall of Superstition;
PURITANISME, the high-way unto Prophanenesse; both alike enemies
unto Piety . . . whatsoever I have said, or done, or shall heereafter doe any
way . . . I will referre and submit, and in most lowly, devoted, humble sort,
prostrate upon bended knees, unto this CHURCH of England, and the true
DEFENDER thereof, his MOST SACRED MAIESTIE, humbly craving
that Royall Protection.81
The subject of `àuthority'' occupies an interesting subtext to

Mountagu's appeal. In the opening dedication to King James,
Mountagu says that he would have ``suffered all'' without the
support of `àuthority.'' This refers both to his earlier book and to the
present one, whose licensing by Francis White, Dean of Carlisle, he
describes in the dedication. One of the quibbling points Mountagu
has with his informers is ``that all particulars so designed by Them,
and said to have been delivered by Him, were Published by warrant of
Authority.''82 He turns their objection that his books were published
by authority into a condemnation of the entire system of authoriza-
tion. He calls authority the `Ìdoll of our Godly Brethren'':
But for Publication by Authoritie, it may touch them neerer than they are
aware of. It is not unknowne unto Authoritie, that Puritanicall Selfe-
conceit, and Presumption, will square Law and Gospell too, according unto
that untoward Lesbian rule of their own Private Spirit, and speciall Opinion;
and dare challenge any Authoritie, old or new, for Errors; preaching,
publishing maintaining Errors; viz. whatsoever does not consort, or run
with the Tide of their Private Spirit's motion.83
In its convoluted language and syntax, this passage appears to be

saying that authority (the Church or the King) knows that these
puritans use their authority (which squares law and gospel according
to their private interpretation) to challenge alternate authorities as
being erroneous for publishing and preaching anything counter to
their puritan views. Not surprisingly, the passage immediately shifts
its focus to Mountagu's accusers ± ``two Grandees of the faction, as
great, and turbulent, as most be in the Diocesse of Norwich (which is
not improbably thought to have of that Sect, mo than enough.)''84
The two puritan grandees to whom he refers are his accusers,
Thomas Goad and Daniel Featly, Abbot's ecclesiastical press author-
izers. Knowing this, the next sentence ± ``They hold Authoritie
interessed (as farre at least, as connivencie goeth) both for points of
Popery and Arminianisme'' ± makes more sense.85 Their acts of
authority not only approve but give ``life and living to these
dangerous Errors'' which his writing has challenged, that is, Calvin-
ism. Authority, then, is culpable for its failure to silence the
dangerous clamors of the ``Puritans.''
controlling ecclesiastical licensing

The fellows at Durham House shared Mountagu's interest in
silencing. Reading between the lines of Peter Heylyn's Examen
Historicum reveals that members of Durham House took interest in
silencing the untoward opinions of their opponents as early as 1617
when Richard Mocket's De Doctrina et Politia Anglicanae met with their
opposition. Heylyn shows particular interest in the degree to which
the censorship of Mocket's book represented a ``discountenancing''
of the puritans at home ± and this at a time when James's interests
were highly invested in discrediting the Arminians at Dort.86 As we
have seen, the question of the precedence of bishops was of some
interest to Neile. Equally unusual are the circumstances surrounding
William Whately's submission to the High Commission in 1621 for
A bride-bush, which met with far gentler censorship than its text
warranted in 1621's charged political climate. William Laud endorsed
Whately's submission, indicating that it was received at Durham
House, probably by Neile, who sat on the High Commission. This
may be coincidental, or it may indicate that Neile and Laud initiated
proceedings against Whately. More certainly, William Laud's hand
stirred the tempest at Oxford in 1622 over David Pareus' book on
Romans. Heylyn reports that Laud became involved because as the
newly appointed Bishop of St. David's, Laud was ``the only Oxford
Bishop then about the King, to make his Majesty acquainted with
it.''87 John Howson, the Bishop of Oxford, was sympathetic to
Laud's anti-Calvinist views and shared his interest in unseating
Calvinism at the universities. Letters from Oxford's Vice-Chancellor
reported Knight's sermon to Laud, and Laud in turn informed the
King, who summoned Knight to court. Upon interviewing Knight
and learning that he had drawn upon Pareus, `ìt pleased the King of
his speciall goodness to remit the errour of the Preacher.''88 The
subsequent dramatic condemnation and con¯agration of Pareus'
book de¯ected concern from English ``Puritans'' to continental
Protestants ± probably not a strategy which the initial information
through Laud to the King was intended to accomplish.
Shortly after Mountagu's public exposeÂ of querulous Calvinism in
A new gagg, fellows of Durham House extended their efforts from
discrediting conforming Calvinist writers to directly assaulting the
licensing establishment. In 1625 Neile and Laud complained to the
King about a book by William Crompton that joined in the chorus of
the refutations of Jesuit tracts on the true nature of the Church.
According to Neile and Laud, Crompton was `à dangerous young
man, who if he were not an Heretick, yet certainly was a Schisma-
tick, no friend to the Church of England, but disaffected to her
Government.''89 Accused as well was the book's ecclesiastical
licenser, Daniel Featly. Cygnea Cantio, Daniel Featly's well-known
account of King James's subsequent interview with Crompton and
Featly, offers both a detailed account of the theological points at issue
in this meeting and an interesting window on licensing practices.90 It
does not, however, reveal the degree to which Laud and Neile
participated, as they did, in the conference and therein sought to
discredit Featly.91 According to Featly's own account, the meeting's
initial focus was on his approbation of Edward Elton's Gods Holy
Mind: ``First, his Majestie questioned me for licensing M. Elton his
booke, and hee seemed very much displeased that any should be
permitted to print books in the Church of England, who were not
conformable to the discipline of the Church of England.''92 Although
Featly makes every effort in his account to be conciliatory, especially
toward King James, his record embeds both his animosity to his
accusers and the stir that the entire matter provoked.
But because M. Elton himselfe hath now made his account before the
supreame Judge of all, I will ampli®e no longer upon this or any other error
rehearsed out of those bookes published after his death, nor enter anie
action of unkindenesse against any concerning that businesse; but burie all
in his grave: because though some of them perhaps intended much evil
against me, yet God (through his Majesties grace and goodnesse) hath
turned it to good.
Pliny writeth of a marble Image of Diana set up in Chios, the face
whereof was so drawne by Art, that the Goddess seemed to look sad upon
her worshippers as they entred into her Temple, but smiled upon them as
they came out. This Statue presenteth to mee a copie of his Majesties
countenance in this business, which was sad and dreadfull at my comming
to him, but cheerfull and comfortable at my departing. It is well knowne
what a bitter storme fell at my ®rst appearance before his Majestie, which
yet the day following, through Gods mercie, in whose hands the hearts of
kings are, turned to golden shower; which fell . . . literally upon
M. Crompton, and allegorically upon me.93
Although Fincham and Lake view the consequence of this interview

as dismaying to Neile and Laud, who had instigated the entire
matter to discredit Abbot, Featly does not appear to have been
dismissed as favorably as they suggest.94 In 1625 he lost his prefer-
ment at Lambeth. Although he continued to license occasional
Calvinist works, including his own book of sermons, his licensing
responsibilities were largely curtailed.
Cygnea Cantio itself occupies an interesting position in the confron-
tational politics of Lambeth and Durham House. The book appeared
in 1629, four years after it was written and licensed for the press. In
its preliminaries and its account of James's learned disputation on
the theology of both Crompton and Elton, the book demonstrates
that James's theological position remained to the end securely
Protestant; in it ``that religious King; who shewed his constancie in
the true Religion established, and his Zeale for it, was well against
the Papists, as other Heterodox Opiners even to the death.''95 James
is here curiously aligned with those faithful onlookers to the burning
of Elton's book reported in Featly's account of the ``pageant'' made,
weeping as the ``shaveling priests'' renew the ®res ignited to destroy
the books of Calvinist martyrs. By 1629 the theological position of
James had become a litmus test of orthodoxy on both sides.
Mountagu's Appello Caesarem had claimed King James for his side,
while Featly's swan song securely claims James for the Calvinist side.
Cygnea Cantio also re¯ects the degree to which Featly had absorbed
the rhetoric of silence employed by Mountagu. Rather than attack
his detractors, he offers a display of the degree to which the King
upheld Crompton's (and hence Featly's) theological views in all but
the most radical matters. Like Mountagu's book, Featly's has royal
support:
courteous Reader, this Relation inclosed in a Letter to the D. of W. was
shewed to King James our late Soveraigne of blessed memorie and order
was given by his Majesty for the present printing thereof: it was licensed for
the Presse, and entred for my Copie, Jan 19. 1625 with an Epistle
Dedicatory pre®xed to his most excellent Majestie that now is, shortly after
his Coronation.96
Why Featly's book had not been published in 1625 is not entirely
clear. Its publisher indicated that he let it lie, ``the Author not urging
the printing thereof.''97 The books Mylbourne printed instead that
at that time were ``more sought after'' included the scores of books
leveled at Mountagu, Mylbourne being the most prominent printer
of Calvinist writing. Featly was himself well occupied in this, and
perhaps judged that Cygnea Cantio, with its thematization of censor-
ship, would best be set aside at a time when Lambeth actively was
seeking the suppression of Appello Caesarem and the condemnation of
its author.
For Featly's book to come out in 1629 underscores the degree to
which by then censorship had become a compelling issue ± but one
now removed from the hands of the godly. In 1626 King Charles
issued the proclamation that outlawed Appello Caesarem and in 1628
his declaration sought an end to debate on either side of what had by
then become the Arminian±Puritan controversy. Not coincidentally,
in 1627 Archbishop Abbot had suffered disgrace with King Charles
for refusing to approve a sermon by Robert Sibthorpe, which
advanced as a duty the doctrine of absolute disobedience. Also in
1627, Charles had appointed both Laud and Neile to the Privy
Council. In 1629 Featly's book looks like a swan song lamenting the
loss both of King James and of the in¯uence and power Abbot and
his circle had exercised in James's court and in parliament during the
years immediately following James's death. At every level Cygnea
Cantio reminds its audience that censorship's ®res were ignited not by
the godly and ``their'' goodly King but by those in opposition ± the
shaveling priest in the pageant and those ``who so persecuted m.
Elton.'' By 1629, as Mylbourne makes clear, the tables have turned.
His loss from the burning of Elton's book had been ``the greatest
losse (in that kinde) that ever any Stationer received,'' and the
continuing climate of surveillance impinged upon his recovery:
And though I have since beene beholding to my good friends for some good
Copies, that would have helped to make me whole againe (if they might
have passed freely without checke or rap) yet I found, to my great
disadvantage, that the informer, who so persecuted m. Elton after his death,
held on his course to calumniate the writing of my friends living, and to
procure them either to be altogether suppressed, or to be so gelded and
mangeld, that the sale of them thereby was very much hindred: Neither was
hee content to doe me and my friends this wrong while he hovered here
about London for such preyes, but since his ¯ight into the North, he
triumphed and boasted at the table of a great personage, that he had
procured Pelagius Redivivus to be called in, and utterly suppressed; and that
300. of them were taken from the Printer.98
With its 1629 publication, Cygnea Cantio offers a prelude to the view of
censorship that William Prynne would embrace in the 1630s, which,
Sheila Lambert observes, was the ®rst advancing that ``Calvinism was
orthodoxy and that the Arminians were few and contemptible.''99
licensing laud? the consequences of durham house's

strategies
Matters with Mountagu, of course, had a curious end. King Charles
suppressed his books and rewarded him with a bishopric. The King's
declaration against writings on predestination has provoked un-
ceasing controversy, as Anthony Milton reminds us in ``Licensing,
Censorship, and Religious Orthodoxy in Early Stuart England.''100
Multiple issues are at stake in this debate. The ®rst issue, of course, is
not only the question of the degree to which a controversy existed
between Calvinism and Arminianism, but whether Arminianism
even existed in the English Church. The second issue is the degree to
which these religious divides informed the English Revolution, if,
indeed, one actually occurred. A ®nal issue is whether or not
anything truly meaningful can be said about press censorship during
the 1630s that can account for the chasm between the overarchingly
repressive controls posited by Christopher Hill and the relatively
bene®cent licensing practices identi®ed by Sheila Lambert. This
chapter's consideration of Mountagu supports Milton's conclusion
that our `òbsession with proving or denying'' censorship is, indeed,
``something of a red herring,'' and that censorship is less a govern-
ment instrument enacted against an alienated opposition than a
``weapon'' used in the controversies of the period by different groups
within the establishment against others also within it.101
Annabel Patterson's Censorship and Interpretation has contributed
signi®cantly to shaping critical understanding of the interrelationship
between literature and censorship in Stuart England. Patterson's
hermeneutics of censorship depends upon Christopher Hill's histor-
ical premise that a crippling, ell-embracing censorship sti¯ed the
expression of radical opinions. More recently, historians have argued
that the government lacked both the power and the will to suppress
all criticism, and any censorship that existed intended to forestall not
criticism but disorder and subversion. The historical linchpin in all
this is the Archbishop of Canterbury, William Laud, whose assaults
on the Puritan press were made a cause ceÂleÁbre in the Long Parliament
by the very men he had seen prosecuted in the Star Chamber and
High Commission. Sheila Lambert and Peter White have maintained
that there was no real attempt to control the expression of Calvinist
opinion in the 1630s and that Laud's efforts were directed toward
genuine subversion. Anthony Milton has conceded the need to reject
a simple attempt to view censorship as the control exerted by a
monolithic government over `òppositionist'' writers, and has argued,
instead, that competing religious groups manipulated printing con-
trols ± ecclesiastical licensing ± to assure that printed texts con-
formed to their own criteria of religious orthodoxy. From this
perspective, Milton ®nds the Laudians to be both `àggressive and
effective combatants.''102
Milton's position on censorship depends upon the common under-
standing of ``licensing'' in the seventeenth century. The 1586 Decree
in the Star Chamber for order in printing mandated that all printed
materials receive the approval of an ecclesiastical authorizer before
the Stationers' Company could grant the Company license, which
was essentially a copyright. Based on my studies of notices of
authorization in the Company register books and my correlation of
titles licensed and printed, I have argued elsewhere that the Star
Chamber Decree's order for licensing was essentially ecclesiastical in
both its intent and practice. During the reigns of Elizabeth and
James never more than half the books printed received ecclesiastical
review. This effectively counters Christopher Hill's model of remor-
seless censorship, but lends support to Milton's position that ecclesi-
astical review became a weapon in the struggle between Calvinists
and Arminians to establish orthodoxy. Milton likens the efforts of the
Calvinist chaplains of the Archbishop of Canterbury, George Abbot,
to temper Arminian divines with a more Protestant perspective to
the efforts of the Laudian censors who sought to restrain the
expression of Calvinism, which by the 1630s had become ``Puri-
tanism.'' According to Milton, ``The (perhaps rather obvious) point
to make about all the divisions of the 1620s is that both sides were
seeking to silence their opponents.''103
Furthermore, the 1620s represent a rather more special case than
Milton has admitted. Between 1620 and 1626, as we have seen,
effectively two rival licensing systems were operative. In theory,
licensing authority resided in the Archbishop of Canterbury and the
Bishop of London, and their chaplains effectively served as of®cial
authorizers. In practice, publishers and printers were free to seek out
the approval of an authorizer whom they knew to be sympathetic
either to their project or themselves. Between 1615 and 1625, for
example, the Archbishop of Canterbury's Calvinist chaplains li-
censed 56 percent of religious texts and 37 percent of all approved
texts. While they certainly could dominate licensing, they did not
monopolize it. When Richard Mountagu completed his vehemently
anti-Calvinist A new gagg, his friend and fellow at Durham House,
John Cosin, counseled him to be certain he found a sympathetic
licenser. During the reign of James, at least, Calvinists and Arminians
both found their way into print, with neither side effectively silencing
the other. Milton, however, is correct in his observation that two
genuinely oppositional licensing systems developed after Laud
became the Bishop of London.
The differences between Abbot's and Laud's licensers, however,
were more than doctrinal; their actions derived from nearly anti-
thetical epistemologies. One dif®culty historians have had in asses-
sing the impact of Calvinist/Arminian factionalism has derived from
the practice of locating differences in predestinarian theology. While
attitudes toward predestination serve as a convenient marker, they
often confuse the matter. The case may be easily made, as it has been
by Peter White and Kevin Sharpe, that Arminianism is a misnomer.
Laud and his followers merely sought to reestablish Anglican
orthodoxy. Predestination aside, the ``Laudians'' embraced both
sacramentalism and ceremonialism. The Anglican catechism de®nes
a sacrament as an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual
grace. The essence of Laudianism was the unseen and invisible ± the
silent spiritual center. It is no wonder, then, as Milton correctly
observes, ``Laudians did not seek actively to promote distinctively
Arminian doctrine, and were probably not preoccupied with Calvin-
ist predestinarianism except in so far as it threatened to be a
hindrance to the realization of their own sacerdotalist ambitions.''104
Calvinism, on the other hand, de®ned its very existence in ``the
word.'' The Calvinist standard was ``preaching the word truly.''
Every treatise, sermon, and ceremony was tested against scripture;
that which failed the test was answered, usually in print. Disputation
and controversy were the Calvinist way. When the Arminians and
Calvinists met head-on between 1624 and 1628 ± over two books by
Arminian Richard Mountagu ± the issue was silence and silencing.
Something Milton does not remark but which we also have seen:
in the 1630s Laud inherited not only a predilection for silence and
silencing, but an institutional tradition that had been strengthened
by Jacobean government. One component was an empowered High
Commission that had been strengthened by Archbishop Abbot, even
though Abbot used it differently. Abbot's efforts had also strength-
ened the ecclesiastical courts and enhanced the stature of the civil
lawyers. On the other side, parliament and the common law had
become accustomed to asserting their privileges. In 1625 England
was a country where different groups spoke with some conviction
that theirs was the vision of the country: England was not a polarized
country but one rife with multiple factions and visions, governed by
a king whose preference for silence barely contained the voices
clamoring to be heard. King Charles's efforts to restrain the noise
combined with the predilections of Laud and Neile to turn the
rhetoric of silence into a policy of silencing. Whether or not
contemporary historiography wishes to admit the impact of these
measures, Peter Heylyn recognized their signi®cance. He views
Laudian censorship as responsive to ``wicked breakers of proclama-
tions.'' The prosecutions of Puritan writers and printers in the 1630s
sought to silence the Puritans who ignored the King's desire to
silence religious debate. Heylyn's remarks indicate the debt the
Laudian censors of the 1630s owed to the events of 1624±5, indeed,
of 1613 onward.
This chapter has shown the degree to which both Durham House
and Lambeth engaged in a serious rivalry that embraced strategies of
silence and silencing. Exposing the Arminians' rhetoric of silence
suggests why some historians may have mistaken the ecclesiastical
division as lacking theological difference ± the Arminians employed
the Thirty-Nine Articles as the ground of their theology at the same
time that they attacked their opponents as schismatic. By adopting
the rhetoric of silence as government policy, as Charles did in the
1626 proclamation and the 1628 declaration, those differences that
during the reign of James could be relegated to ``party'' politics
became deeply entrenched within the established Church and state.
What began with the court preachers and Mountagu as a rhetoric of
silence designed to discredit the Church Calvinists became a state
practice directed at what by the 1630s had become the Puritan
opposition. The issue here may not be so much whether or not
censorship under Charles I was or was not the repressive system
Christopher Hill discovered but that the discursive practices of the
Laudians and the Calvinists-cum-Puritans so diametrically opposed
each other that the people of the word and the people of silence
could never become reconciled.
Afterword
This study began by stating the premise that understanding press

censorship in Jacobean England requires recognizing that however
institutionally cohesive censorship or printing-trade practices may
appear, varied and often contradictory and competing interests
shaped these practices in ways that over time produced inherent
contradictions. This study has sought to discover the con¯uence of
immediate contemporary economic, religious, and political events
that inform multiple local acts of censorship during the reign of
James. In doing so, it has discovered that during the reign of James I
the ``state'' rarely functioned as the kind of cohesive entity that
prevailing understandings of press censorship imply. Neither did the
court, parliament, the Church, or the courts speak with a single
voice, nor was there unanimity within any given institution. Only the
King may be seen as speaking with a single voice, and even that
changed with time and circumstances. Censorship in Jacobean
England was a tool that could be employed by multiple agencies to
achieve diverse ends. Except for a very short period of time in the
early 1620s when ``matters of state'' were publicly (and rather
ambiguously) declared off limits, beyond the statutory restraints on
treasonous and seditious discourse, writers and printers could not be
altogether certain what `àuthority'' they might offend or how their
texts would be read and judged. While individual acts of censorship
did occur in Jacobean England, the absence of a common thread
among all of them argues against the notion of ``state'' censorship,
large or small.
What this study has argued, however, is that while state censorship
did not dominate Jacobean England, censorship existed as a practice
that could be appropriated by different entities for different pur-
poses. Stationers sought the suppression of texts that they perceived
to be in violation of their monopoly. King James publicly burned
224
Afterword 225
books less to remove them from circulation than to use the act of
censorship to take an ideological position, while, on the other hand,
he privately had books removed from circulation that discom®ted
him personally. Private men and women, as well as ``public'' institu-
tions, appropriated censorship to protect their honor and reputation
or assault their enemies.
Such a widespread `ùse'' of censorship should not, however, be
mistaken as an argument that censorship in Jacobean England was
powerful and effective. It was not. Institutions existed to control the
press ± primarily ecclesiastical licensing and the High Commission ±
but men who served as authorizers and High Commissioners did not
always agree on the ends that these institutions should serve.
Although the King might issue proclamations to express his desire to
control certain kinds of discourse, the means to enforce his will
beyond the usual machinery of the law courts was meager. And while
`ìllegally'' printing a book ± that is, without the Stationers' Com-
pany's license or at some times without authorization by the Church
or government ± might provide a ground for suppressing a text and
punishing its printers, as well as a means to do so, the Stationers'
Company was not itself a mechanism for censorship. Furthermore,
although the Stationers' Company's license may have imposed some
restraints on transgressive text, individual men who were Stationers
± printers like William Jones, William Stansby, and Nicholas Okes,
and publishers like Richard Mylbourne ± were intent enough on
assuring that certain kinds of texts were printed, that they ``risked''
surreptitious publication. Even when censorship was employed, it
could be made rather benign because certain ecclesiastical author-
izers, members of the High Commission, or even the Archbishop of
Canterbury, sought to assure the publication of favored ideological
stances.
Press censorship in Jacobean England, disparate as it was in
practice, administration, and intent, tells us some important things
about Jacobean political culture. First, for most of the reign of James
I, it argues in favor of the kind of consensual politics in Church and
state found by revisionist historians. King James, however, emerges
as far less absolute and his government far less hegemonic than some
revisionists have seen him. However resolutely James embraced the
rhetorical images of absolute monarchy, political realities demanded
that he constantly negotiate the image of his authority and power ±
with parliament, with the common-law lawyers, with his own
ecclesiastical authorities, and with the people. These negotiations
were made necessary because parliament, the common law, the
ecclesiastical hierarchy, the press, and, to some degree, a liminal
``public'' had acquired suf®cient senses of their own identity and
authority to make demands upon each other and upon the King.
The model here, however, is not the bipolar one envisioned by Whig
and new-Whig historiography. Each of these entities had things to
say, and used the press to say them. By the same token, when the
words published by one group infringed too greatly upon the
ideology of another, a ready remedy could be sought in killing the
messenger, that is, in censoring the text ± a course of action that was
not always available or effective.
Such an assessment of Jacobean culture should not be taken as
evidence to support a new-Whig historiography. Jacobean England
was not a society ``divided''; it was a world of emerging differences,
which, for most of his reign, King James negotiated fairly well. The
one ``divide,'' however, to which nearly every chapter in this study
returns is the factionalism that existed within the Church of
England. Whether we call it Durham House vs. Lambeth, anti-
Calvinist vs. Calvinist, or Arminian vs. Puritan, two parties existed
within the Church of England that envisioned orthodoxy differently.
One party sought a ceremonial center for the English Church; the
other sought an evangelical Church grounded in preaching the
word. One held an irenic stance with Rome; the other sought
controversy. Besides each party's theological differences, the personal
opposition between two men ± Richard Neile and George Abbot ±
set a course that has had an enormous impact on our understanding
of the history of press censorship in England. Both parties regarded
controlling ecclesiastical licensing and the High Commission as
fundamental to securing their power-base at court and within the
Church. Durham House effectively sought to discredit Lambeth
Palace's licensing establishment at the same time that it used court
preaching and the writings of Richard Mountagu to transform the
other party into the `òpposition,'' turning conforming Calvinists
into ``Puritans.'' Whenever the story of Stuart censorship is told, it
repeatedly returns to the Archbishop of Canterbury, the High
Commission, the Star Chamber, and to a confrontational ``Puritan
press.'' What these institutions became in the 1630s differed from
what they were in Jacobean England because of the fundamental
differences between the two kinds of orthodoxy. The ascendancy of
Afterword 227
Durham House at court and in the ecclesiastical establishment in the
1620s ± a triumph that derived from circumstances as diverse as
individual personalities and international politics ± made Calvinists
into Puritans, privileged peace over controversy, and preferred
silence to the word. What this means to an historical assessment of
the early Stuarts can best be understood by revisiting synchronically
censorship practices approached diachronically in this study ± to
turn to the months before James I's death in 1625.
In 1625 the Stationers' Company was in the midst of attempting to
overturn George Wither's patent that not only assured Wither the
economic bene®ts from his Hymnes and Songs of the Church but assured
its wide dissemination by requiring that it be bound with copies of
the Metrical Psalms, a work privileged to the Stationers' Company's
monopoly and accepted by Calvinists for liturgical use. This same
year Edward Elton's God's Holy Mind met with the Paul's Cross ®res,
described by Daniel Featly as ``the greatest holocaust that hath been
offered in this kinde in our memorie.'' This event's performativity
registered in Featly's account of the ``pageant'' and its accompanying
`èmblem'' as a return to Marian censorship that subjected godly
writers to ``shaveling'' priests. It was also in 1625 that parliament
turned to the practical realities of funding the war against Spain that
they had so enthusiastically approved in the conciliatory spirit of the
``Blessed Revolution'' led by Charles and Buckingham and a ``patriot
coalition.'' Even though the Commons' enthusiasm for war abated
in the face of ®scal reality, the patriot coalition had succeeded in part
by playing on strong anti-Catholic, anti-Spanish sentiments, which
persisted in parliament in 1625. It was the parliamentary sessions of
1624 and 1625 that saw objections raised to Richard Mountagu's
books, A new gagg for an old goose and Appello Caesarem. The word
`Àrminian'' appeared in the chorus of objections.
In these events of 1625 we can see a distillation of differences that
had long inhered in Jacobean England ± a distillation that held
considerable consequences for understanding `èarly-Stuart'' censor-
ship ± and government. Contrary to James I's conciliatory inter-
national policies of the 1620s, the movement toward war in 1624 had
been accomplished by the concerted effort of Charles and Buck-
ingham to ally themselves with anti-Spanish elements in parliament.
Not accidentally, anti-Catholic and pro-Protestant ideology usually
accompanied anti-Spanish attitudes among MPs, so Charles and
Buckingham's efforts in 1624 served to strengthen an anti-Catholic
party in parliament, where Archbishop Abbot, Calvinist in his
sympathies, held considerable sway. At court, however, the group of
court bishops led by Richard Neile were in favor with James, less, I
believe, for their theology than because they embraced an irenic
agenda ± one that sought to play down differences between Catholics
and Protestants and that urged quelling anti-Catholic rhetoric as a
means of doing so. During the 1620s through sermons at court,
through writings like Mountagu's, and almost certainly though
personal in¯uence, Neile's faction managed to identify opposition to
James's conciliatory international policies with any Protestant con-
troversialist stance and cast them both as ``Puritan.'' Even in the
®nal years of his reign, James was neither `Àrminian'' nor ``pro-
Catholic,'' nor had he abandoned his irenic vision of the Church and
a preference for diplomacy over war. It was to this predilection that
Durham House could appeal, to urge James's support for Wither's
Hymnes and Songs and Mountagu's books and to provoke anxiety
about Abbot's licensing establishment, which approved for print
books by those same ``Puritans'' who were enemies to James's irenic
vision. The 1625 burning of Elton's God's Holy Mind at Paul's Cross,
perhaps no more than a symbolic gesture of concession to Durham
House, occurred at the same time that opposition to Mountagu's
books was mounting in parliament. These two efforts to censor texts
reveal the seeds of difference ± between court and parliament,
between `Àrminian'' and ``Puritan,'' between censors and writers ±
that may be seen as ultimately giving rise to the English Revolution.
`Ùltimately,'' however, is not `ìnevitably.'' The difference, I believe,
lies in the character of James I that this study of censorship has
discovered.
James I ruled more by a rhetoric of authority than by the exercise
of sheer absolute power that his rhetoric embraced. His practical
politics traded favors and employed negotiation, concession, and
compromise, as well as resolute demands. Even though on some
occasions James sought to remove from circulation books that
personally discom®ted him, he was usually more interested in
employing censorship as a rhetorical tool, which, like his rhetoric of
divine right absolute monarchy, fashioned his outward political
persona. When the persona met political reality, James I's censorship
became but one political tool among many. He used it to stand his
ground and to bolster his ideology, but he also used it to gain political
concessions and produce alliances. (Had he lived longer, James even
Afterword 229
might have demanded something from Bishop Neile in return for
burning Elton's book ± something that might have diffused the
differences brought to light by Mountagu's books.) James was largely
effective in building if not actual consensus within his government, at
least a climate that could negotiate a modicum of difference.
Certainly events in England surrounding the Spanish marriage and
the Thirty Years' War represent a crisis in James's ability to
accommodate difference. Unfortunately, James's death in 1625 does
not allow us to know whether or not he ultimately would have
overcome that crisis and been able to reconstruct the kind of stability
that previously existed. James's death left unresolved at their most
pronounced point in his reign the differences between anti-Catholics
and anti-Calvinists in the Church, in the court, in parliament, and in
the nascent public sphere. The question of the `ìnevitability'' of the
English Revolution must look for its answer in the choices Charles
made in accommodating or exacerbating this difference.
Notes
introduction
1 Kevin Sharpe, Reading Revolutions: The Politics of Reading in Early Modern
England (New Haven, 2000), p. 3. Sharpe here offers a useful account of
recent trends in scholarship of early modern England to which I am
indebted in this introduction.
2 Sheila Lambert offers a perceptive analysis of the impact the work of
Hill and Siebert have had on the historical understanding of censorship
in early modern England in ``State Control of the Press in Theory and
Practice: the Role of the Stationers' Company before 1640,'' in Censor-
ship and the Control of Print in England and France 1600±1910, Robin Myers
and Michael Harris, eds. (Winchester, 1992), pp. 1±32.
3 Frederick S. Siebert, Freedom of the Press in England 1476±1776 (Urbana,
1952), p. 54. Christopher Hill, ``Censorship and English Literature,''
The Collected Essays of Christopher Hill vol. i, Writing and the Revolution
(Brighton, 1985), p. 34.
4 Hill, ``Censorship and English Literature,'' p. 33.
5 See, for example, Linda Levy Peck's Northampton: Patronage and Policy at
the Court of James I (London, 1982); Louis Kna¯a's study of Lord
Chancellor Ellesmere, Law and Politics in Jacobean England (Cambridge,
1977); Kevin Sharpe and Peter Lake, eds., Culture and Politics in Early
Stuart England (Stanford, 1993); David Starkey et al., The English Court
from the War of the Roses to the Civil War (New York and London, 1987);
Malcolm Smuts, Court Culture and the Origins of a Royalist Tradition in Early
Stuart England (Philadelphia, 1987).
6 Richard Dutton, Mastering the Revels: The Regulation and Censorship of
English Renaissance Drama (London, 1991).
7 Sheila Lambert, ``The Printers and the Government, 1604±1637,'' in
Aspects of Printing from 1600, Robin Myers, ed. (London, 1987), pp. 1±28
and ``Coranto Printing in England: the First Newsbooks,'' Journal of
Newspaper and Periodical History 8 (1992), 1±33.
8 Lambert, ``State Control of the Press,'' p. 7.
9 Ibid., p. 8.
10 Statutes of the Realm, 9 vols. (London, 1810±22), vol. iv (1), pp. 350±2.
230
Notes to pages 3±9 231
11 Mark Bland, `` Ìnvisible Dangers': Censorship and the Subversion of
Authority in Early Modern England,'' Papers of the Bibliographical Society of
America 90 (1996), 151±93: p. 193.
12 Sharpe, Reading Revolutions, p. 5.
13 Thomas Cogswell, The Blessed Revolution: English Politics and the Coming of
War 1621±1624 (Cambridge, 1989). Anthony Milton, Catholic and Re-
formed: The Roman and Protestant Churches in English Protestant Thought
(Cambridge, 1995); and ``Licensing, Censorship, and Religious Ortho-
doxy in Early Stuart England,'' The Historical Journal 41 (1998), 625±51:
p. 639.
15 Ibid., pp. 9, 10.
16 Ibid., p. 16.
17 Ibid., p. 17.
18 Ibid., p. 22.
19 Ibid., p. 26.
20 Annabel Patterson, Censorship and Interpretation: The Conditions of Writing
and Reading in Early Modern England (Madison, 1984).
21 Elizabeth Eisenstein, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change: Communication
and Cultural Transformations in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, 1979).
22 See, for example, Margreta de Grazia, `Ìmprints: Shakespeare, Guten-
berg and Descartes,'' Alternative Shakespeares, vol. ii, Terence Hawkes, ed.
(New York, 1996), pp. 63±94; Jeffrey Masten, Textual Intercourse: Colla-
boration, Authorship, and Sexualities in Renaissance Drama (Cambridge, 1997);
and Wendy Wall, The Imprint of Gender: Authorship and Publication in the
English Renaissance (Ithaca, 1993).
23 Sharon Achinstein, Milton and the Revolutionary Reader (Princeton, 1994);
Douglas A. Brooks, From Playhouse to Printing House: Drama and Authorship
in Early Modern England (Cambridge, 2000); Adrian Johns, The Nature of
the Book: Print and Knowledge in the Making (Chicago, 1998); Tim Harris,
London Crowds in the Reign of Charles II: Propaganda and Politics from the
Restoration to the Exclusion Crisis (Cambridge, 1987); Tessa Watt, Cheap
Print and Popular Piety, 1550±1640 (Cambridge, 1991).
24 Michel Foucault, ``What is an Author?'' trans. Catherine Porter in The
Foucault Reader, Paul Rabinow, ed. (New York, 1984), p. 101.
25 Ibid.
26 For the relation between copyright and authorship, see Mark Rose,
Authors and Owners: The Invention of Copyright (Cambridge, MA, 1993).
27 Brooks, From Playhouse to Printing House, pp. 96±7. For an account of the
role that the emergence of science and scienti®c publishing played in
ultimately establishing textual authority in the Enlightenment and
conferring authority on the author, see Johns, The Nature of the Book.
28 According to J. P. Sommerville, ``the Workes of 1616 is frequently
mentioned; it is dated 1616 on the title-page, but was actually
published early in 1617'' ( Johann P. Sommerville, ed., King James VI
232 Notes to pages 10±19
and I, Political Writings [Cambridge, 1994], p. xi; hereafter cited as King
James's Political Writings). I am indebted to Professor Sommerville for
providing me with an electronic edition of this in a computer-
searchable format.
29 Ibid., p. xviii.
30 The Trew Law of Free Monarchies, in James Mountague, ed. The Workes of
James . . . King of Great Britaine (1616 [1617]), p. 195. Unless otherwise
stated, citations from the writings of James I are from this edition.
Citation will be by individual titles and page numbers in the Mountague
edition.
31 Sommerville, ed., King James's Political Writings, pp. xvi±ii.
32 Mountague, ed., Basilikon Doron, p. 180.
33 Ibid., p. 142.
34 For a full discussion of the dispute among Basilikon Doron's printers, see
chapter 1, pp. 54±5.
35 Sommerville, ed., King James's Political Writings, p. xxiv.
36 See below, chapter 4, pp. 54±5.
37 Elizabeth Read Foster, Proceedings in Parliament, 1610 (New Haven and
London, 1966), vol. i, p. 30.
38 Sommerville, ed., King James's Political Writings, p. xxviii.
39 For a consideration of Coke, see below, chapter 4, pp. 143±7.
40 William Whately, A bride-bush (1619), p. 89.
41 Whately's version of marital discipline differs signi®cantly from that of
James I in Basilikon Doron: `Ànd for your behaviour to your Wife, the
Scripture can best give you counsell therein: Treat her as your owne
¯esh, command her as her Lord, cherish her as your helper, rule her as
your pupill, and please her in all things reasonable; but teach her not to
be curious in things that belong her not: Ye are the head, shee is your
body; It is your of®ce to command, and hers to obey; but yet with such a
sweet harmonie, as shee should be as ready to obey, as ye to command;
as willing to follow, as ye to go before; your love being wholly knit unto
her, and all her affections lovingly bent to follow your will . . . And to
conclude, keepe specially three rules with your Wife: ®rst, suffer her
never to meddle with the Politicke government of the Commonweale,
but holde her at the Oeconomicke rule of the house; and yet all to be
subject to your direction'' (Mountague, ed., p. 173).
43 Martha Groves, ``Push Grows for Laws on `Veggie Libel','' Los Angeles
Times, 20 August 1997, Section A. HTTP://www.latimes.com.
44 My estimates here derive from correlating my database of the Sta-
tioners' Register to the on-line English Short-Title Catalogue. This omits
many Latin texts and some titles published in English outside of
England. I have added to my count from the Stationers' Register those
titles that appeared from the King's Printer that ordinarily were not
entered.
1 authority, license, and law: the theory and

practice of censorship
1 Anthony Milton, Catholic and Reformed:The Roman and Protestant Churches in
English Protestant Thought (Cambridge, 1995), p. 66, and ``Licensing,
Censorship, and Religious Orthodoxy in Early Stuart England,'' The
Historical Journal 41 (1998), 625±51: p. 639.
2 See Cyndia Susan Clegg, Press Censorship in Elizabethan England (Cam-
bridge, 1997).
3 The Stationers' Company Charter was itself a grant of royal privilege
by Queen Mary ± a privilege that was af®rmed by Elizabeth when she
came to the throne.
4 Some of this confusion derives from the 16 November 1538 Henrician
proclamation that called for of®cial licensing and directed ``not to put
these words cum privilegio regali, without adding ad imprimendum
solum, and that the whole copy.'' This addition discriminated books
issued under Henry's privilege from objectionable texts ``set forth with
privilege, containing annotations and additions in the margins, pro-
logues, and calendars, imagined and invented as wel by the makers,
devisers and printers of the same books, as by sundry strange personals
called Anabaptists and Sacramentaries'' (Hughes and Larkin, TRP, vol.
i, p. 270). For a discussion of the particular events out of which this
proclamation was born, see Edmund G. Hamann, ``The Clari®cation of
Some Obscurities Surrounding the Imprisonment of Richard Grafton
in 1541 and 1543,'' Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America 52 (1958),
262±82.
5 Further, Mary's charter to the Company included in its allowance of
searches to enforce the Company's regulations the right ``to seize, take,
hold, burn . . . all and several those books and things which are or shall
be printed contrary to the form of any statute, act, or proclamation.'' In
Arber, vol. i, pp. xxviii±xxxii.
6 Some insight can be gained into the importance of a trade being
formally recognized as a guild or company, if we remember that for
anyone not of the nobility or a nobleman's household to be a citizen of
London, city ordinances required that he be either free of a London
company or an apprentice.
7 Cyprian Blagden gives a fuller description of the Company and its
composition in The Stationers' Company: A History 1403±1959 (London,
1960), chapter 2. For an interpretative account, see also Adrian Johns,
The Nature of the Book: Print and Knowledge in the Making (Chicago, 1998),
chapter 3. Johns reliably accounts for the court of Assistants' practices,
but curiously models his description of the Company on continental
guilds and largely neglects the sixteenth century.
8 The custom of the city allowed men free of one company to engage in
the trade of another.
9 While no copy of these ordinances is extant, the records of the court of
Assistants indicate that outside of matters of guild life, the principal
business of the Company was protecting members' rights to copy.
According to Blagden these ordinances ``were approved by the Lord
Treasurer and the two Chief Justices in 1562. These were written into
what was known as the Red Book and were added to from time to time;
though the Red Book disappeared, probably during the confusion of the
Civil War, it is possible to piece together, from references to their being
invoked, some plan of the ground the ordinances covered'' (Stationers'
Company, p. 39).
10 Arber, vol. i, pp. 100±1.
11 A facsimile is reprinted on Plate xii included in Cyprian Blagden's
``Book Trade Control in 1566,'' The Library, 5th ser., 13 (1958),
287±92.
12 APC, vol. vii, pp. 188±9, 277±8.
13 Arber, vol. ii, p. 753.
14 None of these cases concerns itself with government suppression of
religiously or politically unacceptable printed materials ± that is, with
materials traditionally considered likely candidates for censorship. Since
the court of Star Chamber was the regular venue for printing disputes,
it was not at all unusual that it should have heard a number of printing
cases between 1577 and 1586 that arose from a challenge posed not only
to the Stationers' Company's powers but to the printing privileges
extended by the Queen.
15 Wolfe, a member of the Fishmongers' Company, served as an apprentice
to a Stationers' Company member, John Day, between 1562 and 1572,
though he did not complete his apprenticeship. For a full account of this
assault, see Harry R. Hopp, ``John Wolfe, Printer and Publisher,
1579±1601,'' The Library, 4th ser., xiv (1933), 241±74. For further
information about Wolfe's position in the London book trade, see
Clifford Chalmers Huffman, Elizabethan Impressions: John Wolfe and his
Press (New York, 1988).
16 Later on, Wolfe made further demands of Barker, insisting upon work, a
loan, and an allowance of apprentices beyond the Stationers' Compa-
ny's usual allotment of one to three, and while Barker agreed to help
Wolfe, they still didn't reach an agreement.
17 Arber prints the copy of the Star Chamber Decree contained in the SP
12/190 art. 48, PRO. Other copies exist in SP 12/171 art. 48, PRO and
Lansdowne 280, BL.
18 Arber, vol. ii, p. 810.
19 Gerald D. Johnson, ``The Stationers Versus the Drapers: Control of the
Press in the Late Sixteenth Century,'' The Library, 6th ser., 10 (1988),
1±17: p. 6.
20 Earlier Tudor monarchs had established pre-print authorization by
their proclamations, which became null at their deaths, and by statutes
that were subsequently rescinded by their heirs. See Clegg, Press
Censorship in Elizabethan England, chapter 1.
21 Statutes of the Realm (1810), vol. iv (part 1) Eliz, ca. 1, pp. 350±2.
22 Calendar of the Patent Rolls, Elizabeth I, vol. i (London, 1939), p. 118.
23 Alternatively, permission to print might be sought from the Queen (in
writing), by six Privy Councilors, or the chancellors of the universities.
24 An entry on 3 June 1588 in the Stationers' Court Book reads: ``The
names of certen Preachers [and others] whome the Archbishop of
Canterbury hathe made Choyse of to have the p[er]usinge and alowing
of Copies. Any one of these settinge his hand to copie, to be suffycient
Warrant for thalowance of the same to entringe into the hall books and
so to be proceded with all to printinge.''
Whitgift's panel of correctors included: ``Doctor Cosin, Doctor
Stallard, Doctor Wood, Mr. Hartwell, Mr. Gravet, Mr. Crowley, Mr.
Cotten, Mr. Hutchenson'' as senior members and ``Mr. Judson, Mr.
Trippe, Mr. Cole, Mr. Dickens'' as juniors (Court Book B, pp. 28±9.)
According to W. W. Greg, the distinction between junior and senior
licensers was not observed (Licensers for the Press, &c. to 1640 [Oxford,
1962] p. 2).
25 Because licensing requirements for ballads were highly irregular, and
because so few ballads and broadsheets are extant, I have excluded
them from my statistical analysis. Furthermore, I have excluded assign-
ments unless the assigned work was reprinted as a new edition. I have
done so, in part, to enable comparison to the total number of printed
texts extant in any given year as reported by the on-line database that
includes Wing and the STC, the English Short-Title Catalogue (ESTC ).
While entries exist in the Register for works not printed, I estimate
``ghosts'' at around 10 percent.
26 Injunctions geven by the queens majestie (1559), diir.
27 G. H. Elton, The Tudor Constitution (Cambridge, 1960), p. 365.
28 Ibid., p. 222.
29 Roland Usher, The Rise and Fall of the High Commission, with a new
introduction by Philip Tyler (Oxford, 1968), `Ìntroduction,'' pp. xxviii±
xxix. ``Criminal'' distinguishes a court where the government served as
the plaintiff and the accused as the defendant rather than a court in
which one subject could bring a suit against another.
30 John Guy, Tudor England (Oxford, 1988), pp. 292±3.
31 John Aylmer to Lord Burghley, 15 December 1581, Lansdowne Ms. 33,
f. 27, BL. See also the Privy Council's letter to the London High
Commission, 9 May 1594, APC, vol. viii, pp. 235±6.
32 Besides the well-known censorship campaign against the Martin
Marprelate tracts in 1588, works suppressed by the Church include:
A Commission sent to the Pope and Convenres of freres by Sathen (suppressed
27 February 1587); John Knox's The First booke of the history of the reformation
of religion within the realm of Scotland (suppressed 1587); `òne barrell and ii
®rkers of books of Alexander Humes' Doing'' (``by a warrant of his
grace and other high commissioners'' dated 2 December 1594). (Alex-
ander Hume was a Scottish poet and an `àrdent'' puritan.).
33 In 1568 Stow was the object of a search by Thomas Watt, probably
initiated by Edmund Grindal, the Bishop of London. Watt reported to
Grindal (and Grindal in turn to the Privy Council) on unlawful books
belonging to Stow. In his letter to Grindal, Watt concluded of Stow that
``his bokes declare him to be a great fauv[oure]r of of [sic] papistrye''
(Arber, vol. i, pp. 393±4).
34 It is important to distinguish between oppositional reform texts, which
were often (though not always) suppressed, and ``puritan'' writing,
which was rarely suppressed. See Clegg, Press Censorship in Elizabethan
England, chapter 8, for a full discussion of the ``puritan press.''
35 The parliamentary statute, 13 Eliz, ca. 1, made it treason to print, bind,
sell or otherwise publish books or scrolls declaring that anyone other
than Elizabeth `ìs or ought to be the right Heire and Successor'' (Statutes
of the Realm, vol. iv [ part 1], p. 526).
36 John Gilbert Bellamy, Tudor Law of Treason (Toronto, 1979), pp. 110±25.
37 Ibid., p. 129. See particularly the discussion in Clegg, Press Censorship in
Elizabethan England, chapter 4, of Burghley's Execution of Justice and
William Allen's A True, Sincere and Modest Defence of English Catholiques, and
in chapter 7, the discussion of Campion's trial.
38 Elton, Tudor Constitution, p. 22.
39 Hughes and Larkin, TRP, vol. i, p. xxvi.
40 I rely on Hughes and Larkin, TRP, for dating, sources, and texts of the
proclamations.
41 A. C. Southern, Elizabethan Recusant Prose, 1559±1582 (London, 1949).
42 See Clegg, Press Censorship in Elizabethan England, chapter 8.
43 Hughes and Larkin, TRP, vol. ii, pp. 375±6.
44 Hughes and Larkin, TRP, vol. iii, p. 376.
45 Patrick Collinson, Elizabethan Puritan Movement (Berkeley and Los
Angeles, 1967), p. 149.
46 The offending texts go unidenti®ed; they are simply those ``set forthe by
Robert Browne and Richard [Robert] Harrison ¯ed out of the realm as
seditious persons.'' Brown and Harrison opposed the episcopacy and
royal ecclesiastical supremacy, but their most dangerous position lay in
privileging individual conscience over royal and parliamentary auth-
ority in religious matters (Hughes and Larkin, TRP, vol. ii, p. 501, n. 1).
47 Hughes and Larkin, TRP, vol. ii, p. 502.
48 Collinson, Elizabethan Puritan Movement, p. 393.
49 William Henry Hart, Index Expurgatorius Anglicanus, vol. i (London, 1872),
pp. 18±19.
50 Siebert, Freedom of the Press in England, 1476±1776 (Urbana, 1952), p. 2.
51 Ibid., p. 2.
52 HMC, Calendar of the Manuscripts of the Marquis of Salisbury at Hat®eld House
(London, 1883±1976), vol. xvii, p. 101. Hereafter cited as HMC, Salis-
bury.
53 HMC, Salisbury, vol. xvii, p. 216.
54 Ibid., p. 328.
55 Blagden, The Stationers' Company, pp. 92±6.
56 Ibid., pp. 97±100.
57 Lambert, ``The Printers and the Government 1604±1637,'' in Aspects of
Printing from 1600, Robin Myers, ed. (London, 1987), p. 15.
58 Arnold Hunt, ``Book Trade Patents, 1603±1640,'' in The Book Trade and
its Customers, 1450±1900, ed. Arnold Hunt, Giles Mandelbrote, and
Alison Shell (Winchester, 1997), p. 30.
59 The patent was issued to William Jorden and Nicholas Hooker (Greg,
Companion to Arber [Oxford, 1967], p. 158), but subsequent actions by the
Privy Council indicate that Lord Morley, in partnership with Lord
Eure, employed Stationers John Beale, William Jaggard, Thomas
Snodham, and Edward Grif®n to print the book. The printers com-
plained to the Privy Council in February 1614 that Morley and Eure
had not paid them for costs and labor. They must have received some
measure of satisfaction, since the book went into twelve editions, most
printed by them or their assigns. (See APC, vol. xxxv, pp. 145, 159.)
60 Middleton obtained this patent for William Alley, who then had the
book printed by the Stationers Thomas Purfoot and John Beale.
61 Oliver de Serres, The perfect use of silk-wormes, and their bene®t (1607). This
title was entered by Sergier in the Stationers' Register on 2 May 1607.
62 Greg maintains that Barker printed this because the of®ce of Queen's
Printer reserved to him all Bible printing, and this text contained parts
of the Bishop's Bible (Companion, p. 58). Actually, Greg does not go quite
far enough; Fulke's book contains all of the New Testament in both the
version known as the Rhemish New Testament (a Catholic translation)
and that from the Bishop's Bible set in a parallel two-column format.
Following each chapter, Fulke presents and refutes notes on the
Rhemish text.
63 In the examination of Bill in the matter of Mrs. Ogden's patent, Bill
says that they did not print the book, but the Short-Title Catalogue shows
otherwise (Greg, Companion, p. 58; STC, vol. i, p. 125.) This suggests that
Bill's statement, which is undated, may be miscalendared or mis®led,
and that it actually dates from earlier than 1619. Greg assigns the
statement the date of 22 June 1619, but this is unsupported by its
calendaring in the Domestic State Papers (CSPD [London, 1858], p. 55).
Furthermore, Greg maintains that Bill's claim against Mrs. Ogden
derived from his share in the of®ce of Printer to the King, which he had
purchased for £1,000. Bill's claim against Mrs. Ogden derives both
from his rights in Bishop's titles and the of®ce (SP 14/109, art. 106,
PRO).
64 Court Book C, pp. vi±xxii.
65 Ibid., p. xxii.
66 Arnold Hunt, ``Book Trade Patents,'' pp. 28±30.
67 Court Book C, p. xx.
68 Ibid., p. 375.
69 Ibid., pp. 376±7.
70 Ibid., pp. 376±80.
71 Ibid., p. xvi.
72 The STC incorrectly identi®es John Bill as the printer for Hymnes and
Songs of the Church, probably because the title page bears the imprint
``Cum privilegio Regis Regali.'' While the King's Printer certainly did
have the right to employ this imprint, so did any other royal patentee.
In Wither's examination before the High Commission, he made it very
clear that he believed he might ``by vertue of his maties grant erect a
presse or presses either by himself or his Assignes'' to print his book and
further that ``by vertue of the foresayd Graunt he assigned on George
Woode a Printer and free Stacioner to be one of his Assignes to imprint
the sayde Hymnes and Songes, adding that yf he the sayde George
Woode hath vnder color of such his Assignment any way transgressed
against the lawes of this Realme or those Ordinances which he knewe
hmselfe bounde to observe he this examinat leaveth him to make
aunsweare for himselfe'' (``The answer of Wither to the High Commis-
sion'' in Greg, Companion, pp. 230±3).
73 Norman E. Carlson, ``Wither and the Stationers,'' Studies in Bibiliography
55 (1966), 210±15: p. 211.
74 Ibid., p. 212.
75 The STC assigns 1623 to Matthews's edition, but in 1624 in Schollers
purgatory, Wither says he gave a copy of his ``Canonical Hymnes'' to the
Archbishop of Canterbury four years before and two years after that
they were printed (Schollers purgatory [1624], p. 46).
76 Wither, Schollers purgatory, p. 46.
77 Current bibliographical wisdom supports this success. Whereas it used
to be widely believed that an abundance of extant copies argued the
success of a publication, we now know that the most popular books
survive in only a few copies or not at all because they were literally used
up. One copy of Matthews's edition is extant ± at St. Paul's Cathedral
library.
79 Ibid., pp. 13±14.
80 Ibid., p. 15.
81 Ibid., p. 63. A sustained debate exists about Calvinism, anti-Calvinism,
and Arminianism in the Church of England in the late sixteenth and
early seventeenth centuries. Perhaps the most helpful approach for
making the subtle discriminations requisite for this discussion is
Milton's Catholic and Reformed. In using `ànti-Calvinist,'' I am deferring
to Nicholas Tyacke's Anti-Calvinists: The Rise of English Arminianism
c. 1599±1640 (Oxford, 1987). I consider these distinctions fully in
chapter 6, below.
82 Wither, Schollers Purgatory, p. 14.
83 Ibid., p. 14.
84 Lori Anne Ferrell, Government by Polemic: James I, the King's Preachers, and
the Rhetorics of Conformity, 1603±1625 (Stanford, 1998).
85 Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists, pp. 103±5. See also, below, chapter 2 and
chapter 6.
86 See Kenneth Fincham and Peter Lake, ``The Ecclesiastical Policy of
King James I,'' Journal of British Studies 24 (1985), 169±207: p. 203.
87 S. R. Gardiner, Debates in the House of Commons, 1625 (London, 1873),
p. 46; the Correspondence of John Cosin, ed. G. Ornsby (Surtees Society,
52, 1868), vol. i, p. 33.
88 Carlson, ``Wither and the Stationers,'' p. 211.
89 Allan Pritchard, ``George Wither's Quarrel with the Stationers: an
Anonymous Reply to the Schollers Purgatory,'' Studies in Bibliography 16
(1963), 27±42: p. 29.
90 Court Book C, p. 169.
91 Calendar of State Papers for the Reign of Charles I, 1635±1636, p. 80, quoted
in Carlson, ``Wither and the Stationers,'' p. 214.
93 Brian P. Levack, The Civil Lawyers in England 1603±1641 (Oxford, 1973),
p. 84.
94 Philip Tyler maintains that the High Commission derived its pro-
cedures from older-established ecclesiastical courts: evidence was
written; the ex of®cio oath obliged the accused to answer in open court a
libel of articles that he had not previously seen; the service of neither
advocate nor proctor was necessarily granted; and judgment was
summary (Tyler, `Ìntroduction,'' The Rise and Fall of the High Commission,
pp. xxviii±xxix).
95 Levack, Civil Lawyers in England, p. 73. Common-law judges issued
prohibitions, orders to the judges of the civil-law or prerogative courts
not to hear a case, when they perceived a violation of common-law
jurisdiction. Judges from both sides would then confer and determine
the jurisdiction.
96 The struggle over the High Commission between the common-law
lawyers and the King/Church alliance was but one act in the dramatic
confrontation between rival authorities that played out during James's
reign. For a more detailed assessment of the rivalries that emerged
between the common-law lawyers, parliament, and the alliance of
Church and Crown, see chapter 4 below.
97 Kenneth Fincham, Prelate as Pastor (Oxford, 1990), p. 323.
98 Ibid., pp. 315±26.
99 Ibid., p. 50.
100 Arber, vol. iii, p. 677.
101 J. P. Kenyon, The Stuart Constitution, 1603±1688 (Cambridge, 1966),
pp. 181±5; ``. . . we . . do by these letters patent under our Great Seal
of England give and grant full, free and lawful power and authority
unto you . . . to inquire as well by examination of witnesses or
presentment as also by examination of the parties accused themselves
upon their oath . . . of all and singular apostacies, heresies, great errors
in matters of faith and religion . . . and also of all blasphemous and
impious acts and speeches, scandalous books, libels and writings
against the doctrine of religion, the Book of Common Prayer, or
ecclesiastical state or government now established in the Church of
England . . . And also owe . . . do give . . . authority unto you . . . to
inquire and search for . . . all heretical, schismatical and seditious
books, libels and writings, and all makers, devisers, printers and wilful
dispersers of any such . . . books . . . [etc.], and their procurers,
counsellors and abettor, and the same books . . . [etc.] and the printing
presses themselves likewise to seize, and slow to take, apprehend and
imprison . . . the offenders in that behalf '' (pp. 182±3).
102 Arber, vol. iii, p. 230.
103 Company regulations speci®ed wholesale prices on a per-sheet basis.
104 Court Book C, pp. 2±3.
105 Stanley Rypins, ``The Printing of BasilikoÁn DoÃron, 1603,'' Papers of the
Bibliographical Society of America 64 (1970), 393±417: p. 400.
106 Court Book C, pp. 3, 5.
107 Greg, Companion, p. 232.
108 Ibid., p. 55.
109 SP 14/159, art. 41, PRO. Printed in Greg, Companion, p. 226.
110 Ibid., p. 226.
111 SP 14/130, art. 132; SP 14/157, arts. 40±1, PRO.
112 Lambert, ``Coranto Printing in England: the First Newsbooks,'' Journal
of Newspaper and Periodical History 8 (1992), 1±33: p. 11.
113 Chapter 5 below discusses this in detail.
114 Salisbury Ms., 190.1, Hat®eld House. A summary of the letter is
published in HMC, Salisbury, vol. xvi, p. 427.
published in HMC, Salisbury, vol. xvi, p. 427. My candidates for E.F.
and T.W. would be Edward Fenner, a judge of the King's Bench, and
Thomas Wilson, keeper of the records and a friend of Robert Cecil.
116 Prior to Buc's appointment, as Peter Blayney points out, plays were
`ùsually allowed for printing by the same ecclesiastical authorities who
allowed books of all kinds.'' Although Buc had secured the reversion
for the mastership of the Revels in 1603, his of®ce as dramatic licenser
appears to have been distinct, even though he continued licensing
plays for print after he assumed the mastership. After 1613 ecclesiastical
authorities started allowing plays again (Peter Blayney, `Èxeunt
Pirates,'' March 1993 version, unpublished Ms., pp. 6±7).
published in HMC, Salisbury, vol. xvi, p. 427.
118 In calculating this, I have omitted ballad entries, since both entry and
authorization were highly irregular. Also since so few ballads survived,
and so many were printed, their presence distorts statistical evidence.
119 Larkin and Hughes, SRP, vol. i, p. 497.
120 Lambert, ``Coranto Printing,'' p. 7.
121 These percentages are calculated based on surviving books recorded in
the ESTC, June 1999. My count excludes broadsides and ballads but
does not adjust for the number of books that may have been printed
and have not survived or for those that may have been entered in the
Stationers' Register and not printed.
122 Blayney, `Èxeunt Pirates,'' p. 9.
123 I employ the distinction between Calvinist and puritan used by Tyacke
in Anti-Calvinists, namely that Calvinist predestination theology was
part of the established religion of the Church of England under
Elizabeth and James; ``puritan'' until the 1620s was used to describe
``those members of the English Church who wanted further Protestant
reforms in liturgy and organization'' (p. 8).
124 The censorship of Mocket's Doctrina et Politia receives consideration in
chapter 3 below, Elton's God's Holy Mind in chapters 2 and 6, and
Crompton's Saint Austin's Religion in chapter 6.
125 See chapter 5 for a full treatment of Lambert's position.
126 Court Book B, p. 85. It might seem from this that payment was made
to the authorizer. While this is possible, such a fee is not included in
Archbishop Whitgift's 1597 book specifying the fees that could be
charged for ecclesiastical services (Ms. 1138, Lambeth Palace Library).
This book is otherwise extraordinarily thorough. Whitgift's fee book
also gives some indication of how Elizabethans assigned and recorded
fees. For many of the services two fees are speci®ed ± one for
performing the service and one for entering a record of the service
performed in the ecclesiastical registers. This practice affords an
interesting analogy to the Stationers' Registers ± one which lends
credence to Blayney's idea of bipartite licensing (`Èxeunt Pirates,''
p. 6).
127 Daniel Featly, Cygnea Cantio (1629), p. 4.
128 Add. Ms. 4378 f. 1v, BL.
129 Add. Ms. 27,936 f. 62, BL.
130 Add. Ms. 27,936 f. 64, BL.
131 Andrew Marvell, The Rehearsal-Transposed (1672), quoted in Greg,
Licensers for the Press, p. 101.
132 The multiple interests that affected ``licensing'' during the reign of
James clearly created a system ± if it may even be called a system ± that
operated very differently than that described by Siebert. According to
Siebert, ``Founded on the King's prerogative power, administered by
the Archbishop and his subordinates, and operated with the assistance
of the Stationers' Company, the licensing system continued as the basic
printing regulation during the early Stuart period'' (Freedom of the Press,
p. 141).
133 Anthony Milton, ``Licensing, Censorship, and Religious Orthodoxy,''
pp. 630±1.
2 burning books as propaganda

1 T. A. Birrell, English Monarchs and their Books (London, 1986), p. 30.
2 Kevin Sharpe, ``The King's Writ: Royal Authors and Royal Authority
in Early Modern England,'' in Culture and Politics in Early Stuart England,
Kevin Sharpe and Peter Lake, eds. (Stanford, 1993), pp. 117±38, quota-
tion, p. 123.
3 Jonathan Goldberg, James I and the Politics of Literature (Baltimore, 1983),
p. 84.
4 Ibid., p. 140.
5 Kenneth Fincham and Peter Lake, ``The Ecclesiastical Policy of King
James I,'' Journal of British Studies 24 (1985), 169±207: p. 206.
6 Ibid., p. 207.
7 Ibid., p. 183.
8 Goldberg, James I and the Politics of Literature, p. 260.
9 James I, `Àn humble supplication for toleration and libertie to enjoy
and observe the ordinance of Christ Jesus in th'administation of his
churches in lieu of humane constitutions'' (1609), quoted in Fincham
and Lake, `Ècclesiastical Policy of James I,'' pp. 169±70.
11 Ibid., p. 142.
12 Actually, the account appears rather incredible to me!
13 Mountague, ed., A Remonstrance for the Right of Kings, p. 382.
15 Mountague, ed., An Apology for the Oath of Allegiance, p. 286.
16 Goldberg, James I and the Politics of Literature, pp. 115±16.
17 CSPV, vol. xi, no. 131, p. 174.
18 To Charles Labbe, quoted in Mark Pattison, Isaac Casaubon (Oxford,
1892), p. 286.
19 See Davis Harris Willson, ``James I's Literary Assistants,'' Huntington
Library Quarterly 8 (1944±5), 35±57.
20 CSPV, vol. xi, no. 484, pp. 263±4.
21 Mountague, ed., A Premonition, pp. 304±5.
22 Ibid., p. 305.
23 The nature and historical signi®cance of differences between Arminians
(anti-Calvinists, Durham House) and Calvinists (conforming Calvinists,
Puritans) remains in dispute. Nicholas Tyacke's Anti-Calvinists: The Rise of
English Arminianism c. 1599±1640 (Oxford, 1987), Patrick Collinson's The
Religion of Protestants: The Church in English Society 1559±1625 (Oxford,
1982), Peter White's Predestination, Policy and Polemic: Con¯ict and Consensus
in the English Church from the Reformation to the Civil War (Cambridge, 1992),
and Kevin Sharpe's The Personal Rule of Charles I (New Haven, 1992),
chapter 6, de®ne the terms of the debate. Chapter 6 below considers the
question in some detail.
24 Collinson, Religion of Protestants, pp. 10±19.
25 Ibid., p. 82.
26 Ibid., p. 188.
27 Fincham and Lake, `Ècclesiastical Policy of James I,'' p. 182.
28 What those who during the reign of James became identi®ed with
Arminianism shared was opposition to the Calvinist position that grace
was available only to those members of the elect God predestined to
salvation.
30 Mountague, ed., A Premonition, p. 342.
31 Ibid., p. 302.
32 Ibid., p. 303.
33 CSPV, x, no. 532, pp. 359±60.
34 Statutes of the Realm, vol. iii (London, 1810), 31 Henry VIII, ca. 14, p. 723
and 34, 35 Henry VIII, ca. 1, p. 894. It is important to note that these
statutes followed the fall of the Cromwellian reformation and re¯ected a
return to dogmatic Catholic orthodoxy.
35 Hughes and Larkin, TRP, vol. ii, p. 59.
36 Under Elizabeth, the Archbishop of Canterbury, John Whitgift, ordered
burnt in Stationers' Hall A Commission sent to the Pope and Convenres of freres
by Sathen in 1587; ®ve foreign books containing doctrines of Catholic
resistance in 1595. Among these were ``Thesaurus Principium,'' ``Minis-
tromachia'' [Cardinal Stanislaus Rescius, Cologne, 1592], ``Rosseus de
republica'' [William Rainolds, De just Republicae Chrestianae, Douay, 1590;
Antwerp, 1592], ``Little French bookes in 8 and Surius Chronicle''
[Laurentius Surius, probably his hagiographical history, Cologne, 1572]
(Arber, ii, p. 40). Religio-political interests probably motivated this
censorship since Rosseus' book addressed the English succession.
Whitgift also burned seven books of epigrams and satires (®ve in 1599
and two in 1600). (See Clegg, Press Censorship in Elizabethan England
[Cambridge, 1997], chapter 7, for a detailed discussion of the censorship
of Holinshed's Chronicles, and chapter 9 for a discussion of Henry IV, and
the satires). Additionally, the Bishop of London, Richard Bancroft,
burned at his house the second edition of John Hayward's The ®rst parte
of the raign of King Henry IIII.
37 CSPV, vol. xi, no. 588, p. 319.
38 Chamberlain, Letters, vol. i, p. 488.
39 SP, 14/130 art. 106, PRO.
40 Chamberlain, Letters, vol. i, pp. 442±3.
41 Ibid., vol. i, p. 205; vol. ii, p. 313.
42 C. R. Gillett, Burned Books, vol. i (New York, 1933), p. 242.
43 CSPV, vol. xii, no. 127, p. 87.
44 CSPV, vol. xi, no. 340, p. 178.
45 CSPV, vol. xi, no. 562, pp. 303±4.
46 CSPV, vol. xi, no. 549, p. 297.
47 CSPV, vol. xi, no. 560, p. 302.
48 CSPV, vol. xi, no. 566, p. 309.
49 CSPV, vol. xi, no. 577, pp. 314±15.
50 CSPV, vol. xi, no. 659, p. 366.
51 When Roger Widdrington's book opposing the Pope's temporal auth-
ority appeared in Rome in 1614, it was prohibited and those who read it
were excommunicated. The same year a man was executed for posses-
sing a similar work, Homenovus. (CSPV, vol. xii, no. 378, p. 183).
52 CSPV, vol. xi, no. 588, pp. 319±20.
53 Ibid., no. 907, pp. 489±90.
54 Ibid., no. 937, p. 504.
55 Ibid., no. 536, pp. 287±8.
56 CSPV, vol. xii, no. 592, pp. 322±3.
57 Ibid.
58 Mountague, ed., A. Declaration . . . in the cause of D. Conrad Vorstius, p. 350.
59 Ibid., p. 354.
60 Ibid.
61 Frederick Shriver, ``James I and the Vorstius Affair,'' English Historical
Review, 85 (1970), 449±75: p. 455.
62 CSPV, vol. xii, no. 453, p. 305.
65 Featly, Cygnea Cantio, pp. 10±11. James is here referring to the dedication
of the Racovian Catechism to him in the 1614 edition (dated 1609).
66 CSPV, vol. xii, no. 20, p. 16.
67 Ibid., no. 62, pp. 46±7.
68 Ibid., no. 715, p. 420.
69 When Chamberlain describes the burning of Francisco SuaÂrez's books,
he mentions the burning of works of other Jesuits. It is likely that Caspar
Schoppe's Ecclesiasticus was also burned at this time.
70 CSPV, vol. xvi, no. 161, p. 93.
71 Ibid., no. 603, p. 445.
72 P. G. Lake, ``Constitutional Consensus and the Puritan Opposition in
the 1620s: Thomas Scott and the Spanish Match,'' The Historical Journal
25 (1982), 805±25: p. 813.
73 Larkin and Hughes, SRP, vol. i, pp. 497, 520.
74 Chamberlain, Letters, vol. ii, p. 330.
76 CSPV, vol. xvii, no. 84, p. 75. Among those submitted to custody or
questioned were Lord Scroop, Earl of Oxford, Sir John Leedes, and Sir
Christopher Nevil.
77 Chamberlain, Letters, vol. ii, 434.
78 SP 14/130 art. 106, PRO.
80 The King to the University of Oxford, 24 April 1622, SP 14/129 art. 58,
PRO.
81 SP 14/165 art. 53, PRO.
82 Featly, Cygnea Cantio, p. 3.
83 Ibid., pp. 4±5.
84 Ibid., p. 7.
85 Milton, ``Licensing, Censorship and Religious Orthodoxy in Early
Stuart England,'' The Historical Journal 41 (1988), 625±51: p. 629, n. 9.
Featly takes issue with Elton's objections to administering the Lord's
Supper to a dying person.
86 Milton, ``Licensing, Censorship, and Religious Orthodoxy,'' pp. 633±4.
87 Featly, Cygnea Cantio, p. 5. I am indebted to Dana Sutton for his
assistance with the translation.
88 In 1625 in an attempt to embarrass Calvinist Archbishop George
Abbot, Richard Neile, a strong opponent of Calvinism, informed King
James that Featly, Abbot's chaplain, had licensed a ``schismatic'' book.
By publicly burning the book, James could both placate Neile and show
his vigilance for carrying out the spirit of his proclamation. (In private,
James admonished Featly to take greater care in licensing theological
tracts.) See Fincham and Lake, ``The Ecclesiastical Policy of James I,''
p. 197.
89 Annabel Patterson, Censorship and Interpretation: The Conditions of Writing
and Reading in Early Modern England (Madison, 1984), p. 17.
90 Quoted in Winfred Schliener, `` À Plott to Have His Nose and Ears Cutt
Of ': Schoppe as Seen by the Archbishop of Canterbury,'' Renaissance and
Reformation 19 (1995), 69±86: p. 183.
91 CSPV, vol. xi, no. 909, pp. 489±90.
92 SP 14/121 art. 252, PRO.
3 the personal use of censorship in ``the wincy age''

1 Richard Burt, Licensed by Authority (Ithaca, NY, 1995).
2 Thomas, Earl of Arundel, to Secretary Winwood, 3 April 1612, HMC,
Buccleuch Manuscripts at Montagu House, vol. i, p. 193.
3 Although the DNB repeats the report in a continental religious tract,
Gisbert Voet, Selectarum Disputationum Theologicarum, that James ordered
Reginald Scot's A dicoverie of Witchcraft burned when he came to the
English throne, the report is unsubstantiated, and its source, ideo-
logically interested as it is, questionable (DNB, vol. xvii, p. 1002).
Furthermore, it is unlikely that many copies of this book that had been
printed nearly twenty years earlier remained in circulation in 1603.
4 John Taylor, The Nipping or Snipping of Abuses, 1614, b2.
5 Calendar of State Papers Relating to Scotland, 1547±1603 (Edinburgh,
1898±1969), vol. xiii, p. 582. Hereafter cited as CSPS.
6 For a full discussion of the events, see Elizabeth Story Donno, ``Some
Aspects of Shakespeare's Holinshed,'' Huntington Library Quarterly 50
(1987), 234±7. Donno, however, is incorrect in her conclusion that the
Chronicles were called in in 1590.
7 SP 12/235, art. 3, f. 5. PRO: ``Whereas it appearith that the declaration
mentioned in Mr Bowes letter be annexed to Mr Hollyngsheds
Chronicle, her Majesty marvelleth that such a thing could escape to be
supresed And howsoever commanded that chronicle to be called in.
Whereunto I answered that the which could not be called in, the same
being printed w[ith] licence and having [had] so long tyme recorse. But
the declaration might be. Howbeit her majestie still insisteth upon the
calling in both of the one and the other for she vehemently inveigheth
against the Chronicle to be fondly sett out. And so in these kynd of
matters her magesty wold have that they should remove any offense to
the King of Scotland.''
8 For a full discussion of the censorship of Holinshed's Chronicles, see
Cyndia Susan Clegg, Press Censorship in Elizabethan England (Cambridge,
1997), chapter 7.
9 Roger Aston to Robert Bowes (endorsed 31 October 1596), CSPS, vol. xii,
p. 354: ``Robert Stuartt has been here to have obtained a warrant for the
books that were called in as escheat. There is nothing done further than
a warrant to one of the `beles' to take an inventory of all those books and
thereafter there should be order taken. His majesty has commanded me
to certify you that so many as are there of the second part of the `Ferry
Quene' he will not have sold here and further he will complain to her
Majesty of the author as you will understand at more length by himself.
From Linlithgow the last of October, signed Roger Aston.''
10 Presumably Book v, Canto ix.
11 CSPS, vol. xii, p. 359.
12 Ibid.
13 22 October 1607, Viscount Fenton to Salisbury, Salisbury Mss. 122, f. 49,
Hat®eld House.
14 Ibid., Salisbury Mss. 122 f. 9, Hat®eld House.
15 Thomas Lake to Salisbury, 24 November 1607, Salisbury Mss. 123, f. 8,
Hat®eld House.
16 Ibid., Salisbury Mss. 123 f. 48, Hat®eld House.
17 William Ayscue to Salisbury nd, Salisbury Mss. 19, f. 492, Hat®eld
House.
18 Viscount Fenton to Salisbury, 22 October 1607, Salisbury Mss. 122, f. 49,
Hat®eld House.
19 Edward Ayscue, A historie containing the warres, treaties, marriages, betweene
England and Scotland, 1607, p. 393.
20 Chamberlain, Letters, vol. i, p. 566 .
21 Ibid.
22 Studies in jurisprudence have taken an interest in Peacham's treason
trial. See n. 28 below.
23 Sommerville, ed., King James's Political Writings, p. xxviii.
24 S. R. Gardiner, History of England from the Accession of James I to the Outbreak
of the Civil War (London, 1884), vol. ii, p. 272.
26 Gardiner, History of England, vol. ii, p. 272.
27 APC, vol. xxxiv, p. 18.
28 Peacham's trial caused some consternation. The King was so intent on
securing a conviction, he polled the judges, much to Edward Coke's
chagrin. For this aspect of Peacham's case, see pp. 126, 144.
29 Court Book C, pp. 355±6.
30 John Racin, Jr., ``The Early Editions of Sir Walter Ralegh's `The
History of the World,' '' Studies in Bibliography 17 (1964), 199±209. For a
correction of the book's publishing history, see Bland, `` Ìnvisible
Dangers': Censorship and the Subversion of Authority in Early Modern
England,'' Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America 90 (1996),
pp. 151±93.
31 Racin, `Èarly Editions of Ralegh,'' pp. 199±200.
32 Ibid., p. 209.
33 Ibid.
34 Ibid.
35 Walter Ralegh, History of the World, 1614, b2v.
36 Ibid.
37 Ibid., b4r±v.
38 Ibid., b2.
39 G. P. V. Akrigg, Jacobean Pageant of the Court of King James (London, 1962),
p. 135.
40 Larkin and Hughes, SRP, vol. i, pp. 291±3. Larkin and Hughes call this
an `ùn-named book,'' and disagree with Spedding that it could have
been ``Balaam's Asse,'' on the grounds that: ``that work, referring to
events three years later than this proclamation, was written by John
Williams, a recusant barrister, who was tried, convicted, and executed
for treason in May 1619 (Chamberlain, Letters, vol. ii, p. 235). Another
title mentioned in Williams' trial, `Speculum Regale' (which has not
been found), is probably the work in question (T. B. Howell, A Complete
Collection of State Trials, [1816], vol. ii, p. 1085).'' Based on an account in
the Ancaster papers, Cotton was certainly questioned for writing
``Balaam's Asse'' (HMC, Report on the manuscripts of the Earl of Ancaster
preserved at Grimsthorpe [Dublin, 1907], pp. 359±81. Hereafter cited as
HMC, Ancaster).
41 Examination of John Cotton, 28 June? 1613, HMC, Ancaster, pp. 365±6.
42 `Àrchbishop Abbot's Notes on Balaam's Asse,'' HMC, Ancaster,
pp. 384±5. This was not the end of ``Balaam's Asse.'' In May 1619 a
man named Williams, who claimed himself a Catholic, was executed for
writing a libelous book entitled ``Balaam's Ass.'' An account of this
appears in the SP 14/109 art. 14, PRO. This may possibly be the same
text.
43 John Hostettler, Sir Edward Coke: A Force for Freedom (Chichester, 1997),
p. 84.
44 J. W. Willis-Bund, A Selection of Cases from the State Trials, vol. i
(Cambridge, 1879), p. 410.
45 George Abbot to William Trumbull, 25 May 1615, in HMC, Papers of
William Trumbull the elder September 1614±August 1616: Report on the Manu-
scripts of the Most Honourable The Marquess of Downshire, vol. v (London,
1988), p. 222.
46 Re¯ecting typical prejudices regarding authorial control of copy, Racin
referred to the 1618 publication as `ùnauthorized'' (`Èarly Editions of
Ralegh,'' p. 209). Having obtained the Company's license for the book's
®rst edition, William Stansby's 1617 edition was in no way irregular. The
1621 reprint of the 1617 edition, which retained the 1617 title page, led to
some disputes among the partners, Stansby, William Jaggard, and
Nicholas Oakes, but was still legitimate (Court Book C, p. 134).
47 APC, vol. xxiv, p. 62.
48 Ibid., p. 100.
49 William Martyn, The history and lives of twentie kings of England, 1615,
} 3r±v.
50 Ibid., p. 419.
51 Bland, ``Censorship and the Subversion of Authority,'' pp. 156±8.
Bland refers to the Stationers' Register entry of the King's license as
``highly unusual,'' and although this is an apt assessment for the
Register, James's interest in licensing or promoting a particular book
was not.
52 Ibid., p. 157.
53 Gillett, Burned Books (New York, 1933), vol. i, pp. 103±4; M. A. Screech,
ed., Doctrina et Politia Ecclesiae Anglicanae: An Anglican Summa Facsimile, with
Variants, of the text of 1616, Leiden, New York, Cologne, 1995, p. xlviii.
54 Screech, `Ìntroduction,'' Doctrina et Politia Ecclesiae Anglicanae,
pp. xlvii±xlviii.
55 Thomas Fuller, The Church-History of great Britain, from the birth of Jesus
Christ until 1648 (1655), Book x, p. 72.
56 Peter Heylyn, Cyprianus Anglicus, 1668, p. 71.
57 Screech, `Ìntroduction,'' Doctrina et Politia Ecclesiae Anglicanae, p. xxviii.
58 July 1600, SP 12/275 art. 28, PRO.
59 Fuller, Church History, Book x, p. 71; Heylyn, Cyprianus Anglicus, p. 75.
60 Fuller, Church History, Book x, p. 71.
61 Ibid., p. 72.
62 Heylyn, Cyprianus Anglicus, p. 76.
63 Screech, `Ìntroduction,'' Doctrina et Politia Ecclesiae Anglicanae, p. xli.
Screech offers instead a detailed examination of Mocket's sins of
omission, and while he persuasively exhibits the degree to which
Mocket may have manipulated his Latin text through his conscious
selection of copy for inclusion, he ®nally returns to the ways in which
the text may have been seen as slighting the King's authority.
64 Peter McCullough, Sermons at Court: Politics and Religion in Elizabethan and
Jacobean Preaching (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 112±13.
65 Ibid., p. 114.
66 Bishops and archbishops over sixty years of age included: William
Cotton, Exeter; Miles Smith, Gloucester; John Jegon, Norwich; John
Bridges, Oxford; John Thornborough, Worcester; Tobias Mathew,
York; John Philips, Sodor and Man. Additionally, James Mountague
(Winchester) was ®fty-nine and John King (London) was ®fty-seven.
67 Peter Heylyn, Examen Historicum, 1659, pp. 185±6.
68 Richard Mocket, Doctrina et Politia Ecclesiae Anglicanae, 1617, p. 313.
69 Fincham, Prelate as Pastor, p. 38.
70 APC, vol. xxxv, pp. 216, 335.
71 Screech, `Ìntroduction,'' Doctrina et Politia Ecclesiae Anglicanae,
pp. l±lviii.
72 R. Henderson to Dudley Carleton, 9 June 1617, SP 14/92 art. 64.
73 Fuller, Church History, Book x, p. 72.
74 Robert Phillimore, The Ecclesiastical Law of the Church of England (London,
1873), vol. i, pp. 44±5.
75 Screech, `Ìntroduction,'' Doctrina et Politia Ecclesiae Anglicanae, p. xlix.
76 Ibid., pp. li±liv.
77 Ibid., p. xlix.
78 Letters from and to Sir Dudley Carleton, Knt. during his Embassy in Holland from
January 1615/16 to December 1620 (London, 1757), p. 112. Hereafter cited
as Carleton, Correspondence.
79 Carleton, Correspondence, p. 121.
80 Ibid., p. 138.
81 Ibid., p. 190.
82 Ibid., p. 199.
83 E. C. S. Gibson, The Thirty-Nine Articles (London, 1898), p. 511.
84 Carleton, Correspondence, p. 121.
85 Ibid., p. 207.
86 Ibid., p. 221.
87 Ibid., p. 234.
88 Ibid., p. 211. A copy of the Dutch placart is in the holdings of the British
Library.
89 Ibid., p. 235.
90 The 1618 edition extended the argument made in the 1609 edition.
91 The book was ®nally published in 1636.
92 John Selden, Vindiciae, London, 1653, p. 13 ff.; summarized in Biographia
Britannica, The Lives of the Most Eminent Persons, vol. vi, (London, 1763),
p. 615. I am indebted to Gerald Toomer for providing this reference
and for being so generous with his knowledge of Selden, which he
shared in conversations at the Huntington Library.
93 Selden, Vindiciae, pp. 13 ff.
94 Ibid.
95 Allan Pritchard, `Àbuses Stript and Whipt and Wither's Imprisonment,''
Review of English Studies 14 NS (1963), 337±45: p. 338.
96 John Taylor, Aqua-Musae [1645], p. 7; quoted in Pritchard, `Àbuses Stript
and Whipt,'' p. 339.
97 Pritchard, `Àbuses Stript and Whipt,'' n. 3, p. 340. According to Pritchard
six of the ten Councilors belonged to the Howard Faction, and only
one to the opposition.
98 David Norbrook, Poetry and Politics in the English Renaissance (London,
1984), p. 210. Actually Norbrook says the imprisonment was in antici-
pation of a summer parliament. The earlier date does not really
diminish the argument that Northampton objected to Wither.
99 Ibid., p. 210.
100 Theodore K. Rabb, Jacobean Gentleman: Sir Edwin Sandys, 1561±1629
(Princeton, 1998), p. 181.
101 HMC, Calendar of the Manuscripts of the Marquis of Bath (Whitehall, 1907),
vol. ii, p. 63. See also, Rabb, Jacobean Gentleman, pp. 179±80.
102 Rabb, Jacobean Gentleman, p. 174.
103 CSPV, vol. xii, no. 796, pp. 512±13.
104 Ibid., no. 801, p. 514.
105 See Norbrook, Poetry and Politics, pp. 209±12.
106 Thomas Scot, Philomythie, 1616.
107 William Goddard, `À Morall Satire Intitled the Owles araygnement,''
printed at the end of A Satyricall Dialogue [1615], f3r.
108 Taylor, The Nipping or Snipping of Abuses, b2.
109 Norbrook, Poetry and Politics, p. 213.
110 Scot, Philomythie (1616), } 3; William Goddard, `À Morall Satire Intitled
the Owles araygnement,'' f3. Wither's imprisonment provided only
one example of how a courtier might employ the law to vindicate
himself at another man's expense. Also in 1613, Northampton had
Thomas Gooderick brought before the court of Star Chamber for
libel, charging that Gooderick ``had spoken and published of the earl
of Northampton, one of the grandees and peers of the realm . . . divers
false and horrible scandals, scil. that more Jesuits, Papists, and c. have
come into England, since the earl of Northampton was guardian of the
Cinque-ports, than before,'' and that Gooderick had told another man
that the Archbishop of Canterbury had certi®ed to the King the Earl's
correspondence with Bellarmine. When Gooderick was examined it
became clear that he was merely passing on gossip. Even though the
case caused dissent among the lawyers, they resolved that publishing
false rumors concerning the King or the high grandees was punishable
by common law, and Gooderick and his fellow rumor-mongers were
®ned and imprisoned (T. B. Howell, A Complete Collection of State Trials,
vol. ii [London, 1816], pp. 861±6).
111 Penardo and Laissa and The History of Robert the Bruce, both by Patrick
Gordon.
112 See Josephine A. Roberts, The Poems of Lady Mary Wroth (Baton Rouge,
1983), 31±7; and ``Lady Mary Wroth's Urania: A Response to Jacobean
Censorship,'' in New Ways of Looking at Old Texts, Papers of the Renaissance
English Text Society, 1985±1991, W. Speed Hill, ed. (Binghamton, NY,
1993), 125±9.
113 Roberts, Poems of Lady Mary Wroth, p. 32.
114 Lord Denny to [Lady Mary Wroth], 26 February 1621. Salisbury mss.
130, f. 118 and f. 121, Hat®eld House.
115 Roberts, Poems of Lady Mary Wroth, p. 236.
116 Alastair Bellamy, `` `Raylinge Ryme and Vaunting Verse': Libellous
Politics in Early Stuart England,'' in Culture and Politics in Early
Stuart England, Kevin Sharpe and Peter Lake, eds. (Stamford, 1993),
p. 293.
119 Theodore K. Rabb, ``The Editions of Sir Edwin Sandys's Relation of the
State of Religion,'' The Huntington Library Quarterly 26 (1963), 323±36.
120 Edwin Sandys, Europae Speculum, or, A View or Survey of the State of Religion
in the Westerne parts of the World, 1629, }1.
122 Ibid., p. 41.
123 Ibid.
124 Ibid.
125 Mark Nicholls, Investigating Gunpowder Plot (Manchester, 1991), pp. 6±8.
126 John Bennet, Bishop of Hereford to the Earl of Salisbury, 1 June 1605,
HMC Salisbury, vol. xvii, p. 235; same 9 August 1605, HMC Salisbury,
vol. xvii, p. 360.
127 Edwin Sandys, A Relation of the State of Religion, 1605, a3v.
128 Ibid., g3.
130 See below, chapter 6.
131 Anthony Milton, Catholic and Reformed: The Roman and Protestant Churches
in English Protestant Thought (Cambridge, 1995), p. 62.
132 Anthony Milton, ``Licensing, Censorship and Religious Orthodoxy in
Early Stuart England,'' The Historical Journal 41 (1998), 625±51:
p. 646.
133 W. W. Greg, Licensers for the Press, &c. to 1640 (Oxford, 1962), pp. 15±16.
4 censorship and the confrontation between

prerogative and privilege
1 Kevin Sharpe and Peter Lake, eds., Culture and Politics in Early Stuart
England (Stanford, 1993), p. 1.
2 Ann Hughes, The Causes of the English Civil War (London, 1991), pp. 63,
65.
3 See, for example, Linda Levy Peck's Northampton: Patronage and Policy at
the Court of James I (London, 1982); Louis Kna¯a's study of Lord
Chancellor Ellesmere, Law and Politics in Jacobean England (Cambridge,
1977); David Starkey et al., eds., The English Court from the War of the Roses
to the Civil War (New York and London, 1987); Malcolm Smuts, Court
Culture and the Origins of a Royalist Tradition In Early Stuart England
(Philadelphia, 1987). For an overview of the resistance to revisionist
history, see Richard Cust and Ann Hughes, eds., Con¯ict in Early Stuart
England, Studies in Religion and Politics 1603±1642 (New York and London,
1989) and Hughes, The Causes of the English Civil War. Theodore Rabb's
Jacobean Gentleman: Sir Edwin Sandys, 1561±1629 (Princeton, 1998) reinvi-
gorates the notion of a parliamentary opposition through a biography of
Edwin Sandys.
4 Sommerville, ed., King James's Political Writings, p. 64.
5 Ibid., p. 72.
6 Ibid., p. xxvi.
7 Glenn Burgess, Absolute Monarchy and the Stuart Constitution (New Haven
and London, 1996); Sommerville, ed., King James's Political Writings,
p. xxviii. Furthermore, in Politics and Ideology in England 1603±1640 (New
York, 1986), Sommerville argues that the Stuart ideology of absolutism
combined with the assaults early Stuart monarchs made on subjects'
fundamental property rights to create an ideological ground for the
Civil War.
8 Kna¯a, Law and Politics in Jacobean England, p. 65.
9 Brian Levack, The Civil Lawyers in England 1603±1641 (Oxford, 1973),
p. 2.
10 See chapter 6 for the differences between Neile and Abbot.
11 At least thirty-eight editions appeared during the reign of James I.
12 Edward Coke, La neufeme Report (1620), preface.
13 Thomas Ridley, A View of the Civile and Ecclesiastical Law: and wherein the
practise of them is streitned, and may be relieved within this Land, 1607, p. 78.
14 Levack, Civil Lawyers, p. 126.
15 Tim Stretton, Women Waging Law in Elizabethan England (Cambridge,
1998), p. 12.
16 David J. Seipp, ``The Structure of English Common Law in the
Seventeenth Century,'' in Legal History in the Making: Proceedings of the
Ninth British Legal History Conference, Glasgow 1989, W. M. Gordon and
T. D. Fergus, eds. (London, 1991), pp. 61±2.
17 Ridley, A View of the Civile and Ecclesiastical Law, pp. 115±28.
18 Charles McIllwain, Political Works of James I (Cambridge, MA, 1918),
pp. xl±xli.
19 J. P. Kenyon, The Stuart Constitution, 1603±1688 (Cambridge, 1966),
pp. 90±1.
20 Ibid., p. 91.
21 Ibid., pp. 102±5.
22 See, for example, Glenn Burgess, The Politics of the Ancient Constitution: An
Introduction to English Political Thought, 1603±1642 (London, 1992); Paul
Christianson, ``Political Thought in Early Stuart England,'' Historical
Journal 30 (1987), 955±70; Paul Christianson, ``Royal and Parliamentary
Voices on the Ancient Constitution, ca. 1610±1618,'' in The Mental World
of the Jacobean Court, Linda Levy Peck, ed. (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 71±95;
Sommerville, Politics and Ideology.
24 David Harris Willson, The Parliamentary Diary of Robert Bowyer 1606±1607
(Minneapolis, 1931), pp. 344±9.
25 The Argument of Master Nicholas Fuller, in the case of Thomas Lad, and Richard
Maunsell, his Clients (1607).
26 Ibid., pp. 2±4.
27 On 27 August 1607 Dudley Carleton wrote John Chamberlain that
``Nick Fuller hath been . . . trounced by the High Commission and
cannot yet wind himself out of the briars, but the more he struggles the
more he is entangled'' (Dudley Carleton to John Chamberlain, 1603±1624:
Jacobean Letters, ed. Maurice Lee, Jr. [New Brunswick, 1972], p. 98).
28 On 16 September 1616, Dudley Carleton wrote John Chamberlain that
``poor Nick is nicked as before'' (Lee, ed., Carleton to Chamberlain, p. 100).
``Nick'' is here used in the slang sense of being taken, especially to be
put in jail (Oxford English Dictionary, vol. x, p. 392).
29 Lee, ed., Carleton to Chamberlain, p. 100.
30 Sir Thomas Lake to the Earl of Salisbury. Salisbury Ms. 123, f. 48,
Hat®eld House. On 16 September 1607 Dudley Carleton wrote John
Chamberlain that the King ``went also to Lambeth, to encourage the
Archbishop to proceed against Nicholas Fuller'' (Dudley Carleton to
John Chamberlain, 16 September 1607, SP 14/28 art. 51, PRO).
31 Sir Roger Wilbraham to Salisbury, 17 October 1607, Salisbury Ms. 122,
f. 136, Hat®eld House.
32 James I, King, to Salisbury, 19 October 1607, Salisbury Ms. 134, f. 126,
Hat®eld House.
33 HMC, Salisbury, vol. xix, p. 349.
34 According to an anonymous report, Fuller's book was printed while he
was in the Fleet, and ``Being much troubled thereat and not knowing
whether some scandalous thing had been printed in his name to detain
him in prison, he wrote to the Archbishop of Canterbury to suppress
the books, and has laboured to the same purpose with him. Yet he is a
second time for this cause imprisoned by the Council at the house of the
Dean of Pauls, where he now remains'' (HMC, Salisbury, vol. xix,
p. 349.) Fuller's freedom led Samuel Gardiner to place this second
problem for Fuller in 1608 after he was freed, but since Coke refers to
``publication'' when he reports Fuller's case and Salisbury mentions a
second offense in his account of the proceedings against Fuller, events
surrounding the book must have preceded Fuller's 24 November 1607
appearance before the King's Bench.
35 Sir Thomas Lake to Salisbury, 17 November 1607, SP 14/49, art. 36,
PRO. Attorney-General vs. Nicholas Fuller et al., Star Chamber
Proceedings 8/19 f. 7, PRO.
36 They examined one Annesley, apparently a bookseller, who said the
twelve books he had were brought to him, but he refused to say to
whom he sent them ``because he will not bring them into trouble''
(HMC Salisbury, vol. xix, p. 437). I can ®nd no reference for `Ànnesley,''
but there were booksellers in London at this time named Astley and
Aspley.
37 HMC Salisbury, vol. xix, pp. 463±4.
38 Ibid.
39 Ibid.
40 Ibid.
41 Earl of Salisbury to the King, 28 November 1607, Salisbury Ms. 123,
f. 59, Hat®eld House.
42 Ibid.
43 The Reports of Sir Edward Coke, ed. George Wilson (London, 1776), The
Twelfth Part of the Reports, p. 41.
44 John Chamberlain wrote to Dudley Carleton on 30 December 1607,
``Mr. Fuller has paid his ®ne, but submissions are expected which he
cannot digest'' (SP 14/28 art. 128, PRO). Fuller expressed his penitence
in a submission to the Archbishop of Canterbury (HMC Salisbury, vol.
xix, p. 360) and on 5 January 1608, Chamberlain wrote Carleton,
``Fuller, the puritan, freed'' (SP 14/31 art. 2, PRO).
45 HMC Salisbury, vol. xix, pp. 360, 388.
46 The Argument of Nicholas Fuller [no. sig.]. The STC identi®es William Jones
as the printer.
47 STC, vol. 1, p. 506.
48 For a full account of Jones's activities and press, see Mark H. Curtis,
``William Jones: Puritan Printer and Propagandist,'' The Library, 5th
series, 19 (1964), 38±66.
49 HMC, Salisbury, vol. xix, p. 643.
50 Star Chamber Proceedings, 8/11/18, f. 1, PRO, quoted in Curtis,
``William Jones,'' p. 38. Since Jones was publishing again in 1610, he
must not have been successfully prosecuted.
51 Seipp, ``The Structure of English Common Law in the Seventeenth
Century,'' pp. 66±7.
52 Elizabeth Read Foster, Proceedings in Parliament, 1610 (New Haven and
London, 1966), vol. i, pp. 24±5.
53 Ibid.
54 Ibid., p. 24.
55 Ibid., p. 189 n. Edmondes reported to Trumbull on March 15 that the
King disliked Cowell's book but desired not proceeding against it.
When it was shown that some passages involved the King, Cowell was
called in before him again and committed to an alderman's house.
56 Foster, Proceedings in Parliament, vol. i, p. 29.
57 Ibid., p. 30.
58 Ibid.
59 Ibid.
60 Sommerville, Politics and Ideology, p. 126.
62 Ibid.
63 Ibid.
64 Sommerville, ed., King James's Political Writings, p. 181.
65 Ibid., p. 183.
66 Ibid.
67 Christianson, ``Royal and Parliamentary Voices,'' p. 76.
68 Sommerville, ed., King James's Political Writings, pp. 184±5.
69 Ibid.
70 Ibid., pp. 185±6.
71 Ibid.
72 Ibid., p. 188.
73 Seipp, ``The Structure of English Common Law,'' p. 64.
75 Ibid., p. 124.
76 Coke, The First Part of The Reports of Sir Edward Coke, ed. Wilson, a5.
77 Ibid., a6v.
79 Ibid., pp. 126±8.
80 Francis Bacon, Coke's ®ercest rival, claims to have sought this appoint-
ment for Coke to diminish his in¯uence in the law courts ( James
Spedding, ed., The Letters and the Life of Francis Bacon [London, 1861±74],
vol. iii, p. 3).
81 Sommerville, Politics and Ideology, pp. 87±8.
83 For a full account of the matter, see Bacon's ``Memorial,'' drawn up to
orchestrate the Privy Council interrogation. Spedding, Letters and Life of
Bacon, vol. v, pp. 349±54.
84 Catherine Drinker Bowen, The Lion and the Throne: The Life and Times of
Sir Edward Coke (Boston, 1957), pp. 370±90.
85 Bacon and Ellesmere to the King, 6 October 1616. Lambeth Palace
Library, ms. 956, f. 52.
87 Ibid., p. 287. The `Òbservations'' in Kna¯a prints BL, Hargrave Ms.
254, ff. 32r±50v.
88 Ellesmere and Bacon to the King, 6 October 1616, Lambeth Palace
Library, Ms. 936, f. 52.
89 Ibid.
90 Ibid.
91 Paul Christianson, Discourse on History, Law, and Governance in the Public
Career of John Selden, 1610±1635 (Toronto, 1996), pp. 63±4.
92 Ibid., p. 64. See also Edith Bershadsky, ``Controlling the Terms of the
Debate: John Selden and the Tithes Controversy,'' Law, Literature, and
the Settlement of Regimes (Washington, DC, 1990), pp. 187±220. As
Bershadsky's title suggests, this article views Selden as a ``controversi-
alist'' in the matter of tithes.
93 George Carleton, Tithes Examined and proved to bee due to the Clergie by a
divine right (1606), a3v.
94 Thomas Ridley, A View of the Civile and Ecclesiastical Law (1607), *3.
95 Ibid., p3.
96 Ibid., r2v±r3.
97 Ibid., s3.
98 Ibid., gg3.
99 George Carleton, Tithes Examined and proved to bee due to the Clergie by a
divine right (1610), §§r±v.
100 Foulke Robartes, The Revenue of the Gospel is Tythes, Due to the Ministerie of
the word, by that word (Cambridge, 1613), p. 7.
101 Ibid., p. 14.
102 Ridley, A View of the Civile and Ecclesiastical Law, n2v±3v.
103 The Huntington Library's copy of Ridley's A View ± dog-eared,
inscribed with names, heavily pen-lined, and ®lled with marginalia and
doodles ± testi®es to its status as a textbook.
104 John Selden, ``Preface,'' A History of Tithes (1618), a3v [case sensitive].
105 Ibid., b2v. [common wealth sic].
106 Ibid., c2±c3.
107 Ibid., d1v±d2. Punctuation throughout the 1618 edition repeats the use
of periods without capitalizing the subsequent sentence's initial letter.
108 Selden, A History of Tithes, y4v±z.
109 Ibid., fff2.
110 Ibid., fff2.
111 A special writ granted in common-law court to men to answer in
Chancery for their tithes.
112 Selden, A History of Tithes, ggg3v.
113 Selden, `À Review,'' appended to A History of Tithes, f4.
114 Ibid., a1.
115 Ibid.
116 Mark Bland, `Ìnvisible Dangers: Censorship and the Subversion of
Authority in early Modern England,'' Papers of the Bibliographical Society
of America 90 (1996), 151±93: pp. 172±3.
117 Ellesmere to Henry Yelverton, 19 January 1617/18, Lambeth Palace
Library, Ms. 936, f. 90.
118 SP 14/97 art. 9, PRO.
119 Selden, ``Preface,'' A History of Tithes, c4r±v.
120 Ibid., a4v.
121 Richard Mountagu's name is variously spelled ``Mountagu,'' ``Moun-
tague,'' and ``Montagu.'' I am using the ®rst, since that is what appears
on the title pages of the ®rst editions of his works. This also con-
veniently distinguishes him from James Mountague.
122 Richard Tillesleys Animadversions upon M. Seldens History of Tythes, and His
Review Thereof (1619), b1.
123 Ibid.
124 Richard Mountagu, Diatribe upon the ®rst part of the late History of Tithes
(1621), p. 20.
125 Ibid.
126 Ibid., pp. 76±7.
127 Ibid., p. 79.
128 Biographia Britannica, The Lives of the Most Eminent Persons, vol. vi
(London, 1763), pp. 3606±7. Selden's gift to the King was not printed
till after his death, under the title of God made Man: proving the Nativity of
our Saviour to be on the 25th of December.
129 Biographia Britannica, 1763, vol. vi, pp. 3608±9.
5 the press and foreign policy, 1619 ± 1624:

`àll eies are directed upon bohemia''
1 Letters and Dispatches from Sir Henry Wotton (London, 1850), p. 45.
2 27 December 1619, CSPV, vol. xvi, no. 161, p. 91.
3 21 September 1622, CSPV, vol. xvii, no. 603, p. 443.
5 27 December 1619, CSPV, vol. xvi, no. 161, p. 93.
7 Ibid.
8 1 September 1623, CSPV, vol. xviii, p. 103.
9 19 January 1624, CSPV, vol. xviii, p. 196.
10 Ibid.
11 23 February 1624, CSPV, vol. xviii, p. 220.
12 17 May 1624, CSPV, vol. xviii, p. 309.
13 Peter Lake, ``Constitutional Consensus and the Puritan Opposition in
the 1620s: Thomas Scott and the Spanish Match,'' The Historical Journal
25 (1982), 805±25: p. 825.
14 Robert Zaller, The Parliament of 1621: A Study in Constitutional Con¯ict
(Berkeley, Los Angeles, London, 1971), pp. 6±17.
15 Theodore Rabb, Jacobean Gentleman: Sir Edwin Sandys, 1561±1629
(Princeton, 1998),, p. 211.
16 John Taylor, ``The Subjects Joy, For the Parliament,'' (London, 1621).
The sole copy of this is held by the Society of Antiquaries, Lemon 177.
17 See chapter 2.
18 Zaller, The Parliament of 1621, p. 144.
19 Ibid., pp. 148±9.
20 Ibid., pp. 152±76.
21 CSPV, vol. xvii, no. 271, p. 199.
22 SP 14/155 art. 21; 14/158 art. 33, PRO.
23 Thomas Cogswell's The Blessed Revolution: English Politics and the Coming of
War 1621±1624 (Cambridge, 1989), considers in considerable detail the
entire question of court and parliamentary politics and the Spanish
match.
24 Ibid., p. 171.
25 Ibid., pp. 172±3.
26 Ibid., pp. 176±7.
27 Ibid., p. 216.
28 Ibid., p. 172.
29 Ibid., pp. 22±3.
30 Louis B. Wright, ``Propaganda against James I's Àppeasement' of
Spain,'' Huntington Library Quarterly 6 (1943), 149±92: p. 150.
31 Lake, ``Thomas Scott and the Spanish Match,'' pp. 806±7.
James I,'' Journal of British Studies 24 (1985), 169±207: p. 198.
33 John Everard, Some Gospel-Treasures Opened, 1653, a2v.
34 CSPV, vol. vii, p. 411.
35 Examination of Sam. Phillips, 13 November 1621, SP 14/123 art. 105,
PRO.
36 Cogswell, Blessed Revolution, p. 27.
37 Edward Cardwell, Documentary Annals of the Reformed Church of England
(Oxford, 1839), vol. ii, pp. 146±54.
38 While historians appropriately regard James's action as a response to
clerical opposition to foreign policy, they have not adequately consid-
ered the degree to which the growing in¯uence of Durham House
prompted this action, which I consider in the next chapter.
39 Cogswell, The Blessed Revolution, p. 33.
42 Ibid.
43 John Reynolds, Vox Coeli (1624), a4v.
44 Fritz Levy, ``The Decorum of News,'' in News, Newspapers and Society in
Early Modern Britain, Raymond Joad, ed. (London and Portland, OR,
1999), p. 17.
45 STC, vol. ii, pp. 178±81.
Notes to page 171 259
46 Sheila Lambert, ``Coranto Printing in England: the ®rst Newsbooks,''
Journal of Newspaper and Periodical History 8 (1992), 1±33: p. 3.
47 I have identi®ed Stationers' Register entries for extant newsbooks that are
not mentioned in the STC.
48 All corantos and newsbooks are listed in the STC as number 18507, with
numbers following the period after `7' listing individual issues. Not all
corantos have titles, but I have identi®ed the contents, wherever
possible, following the STC number. The corantos from the Netherlands
printed by P. Keerius are numbered 1±17 (1620±1) (two identify
Bohemia as their subject). Dutch corantos by Jansz are numbered
18±25 (1621); ®ve mention Hungary. All of Nathaniel Butter's London
corantos (numbered 29±35) mention Germany. The following unnum-
bered newsbooks (35a±81) are concerned with Bohemia, and those
marked with an asterisk received of®cial licenses: 37 is on the Palatinate,
printed in ``the Hage'' [London, E. Allde]; 38 [London?]; 40 Good newes
for the King of Bohemia [B. Alsop], 1622; 41±4 are on Bohemia and
Palatinate, 1622; *47 Battles in the Palatinate, Allde f. Bourne and Archer,
1622; *49 Palatinate. Butter, 1622; *51 Palatinate. Archer, 1622; *51a
Palatinate. Butter, 1622; *55 Letters from Palatinate. Archer, 1622; *56a
Letters relating to Palatinate. J. Bartlet, 1622; *63 Warres in Palatinate,
N. Newberry, 1622; *65 Surprisal of two imperial townes by Count Mans®eld,
Archer, 1622; *66 on the Palatinate, Archer, 1622; *71 Entertainment of
Count Mans®eld, Archer, 1622; *73 Mans®eld's Arrival, Archer, 1622; *74
Two battles, Archer, 1622; *76 Mans®eld proceedings, Archer, 1622.
49 Theodore Rabb, `Ènglish Readers and the Revolt in Bohemia,'' Aharon
M. K. Rabinowitz Jubilee Volume ( Jerusalem, 1996), p. 162.
50 The following items on Bohemia, Frederick, and Ferdinand show their
STC numbers, titles and publication information. This list represents
extant copies and publication information: 3205 Bohemica jura defensa.
The Bohemian lawes, tr. out of Latin by J.H. ([W. Jones a. W. Stansby?]
1620); 3206 Bohemiae regnum electivum ([W. Jones?] 1620); 3207 Gallants to
Bohemiah, ballad (G. E[ld], 1620): 3208 The last newes from Bohemia
([ J. Bill?] 1620); 3210 A true relation of the late proceedings in Bohemia (Dort
[London? W. Jones? W Stansby?]1620); *3211 Newes from Bohemia. An
apologie made by the states of Bohemia, shewing why those of the reformed religion
were moved to take armes (Purslowe f. Rounthwaite, 1619); 3212 The reasons
which compelled the states of Bohemia to reject the Archduke Ferdinand (Dort,
G. Waters [1619]); *3212.5 Another edition (Dort, G. Waters [i.e.
London, E. Allde?]); 3213 Troubles in Bohemia (W. Jaggard f. J. Pyper,
1619); 3214 The true copies of sundrie letters concerning the affaires in Bohemia
([W. Jones? or W. Stansby?] 1620); 3215 Two letters or embassies. The one sent
by the states of Bohemia . . . the other from the Popes holiness to the emperour
(Amsterdam [i.e. London? L. Jones? or W. Stansby?] 1620); 10810 Answer
to the question: whether the emperor that now is, can be judge in the Bohemian
question ([W. Jones? or W. Stansby] 1620); 10811 A cleare demonstration, that
Ferdinand is by his owne demerits fallen from the Kingdome of Bohemia (Dort,
G. Waters, [1619]); 10812 A letter written by a French gent: concerning the
emperour Ferdinand his embassage into France (Flushing [i.e. London], 1620);
10814 A plaine demonstration of the unlawful succession of Ferdinand the second,
because of the incestuous marriage of his parents (at the Hage, 1620 [i.e.
London, W. Stansby f. N. Butter, 1620?]) [Butter and Stansby punished
for this.]; 10815 The present state of the affaires betwixt the emperor and king of
Bohemia, 2 editions ([E. Allde, 1620]); 10816 A relation containing the manner
of the solemnities at the election and coronation of Ferdinand (R. Mylbourne,
1620); 11349 Articles of Declaration the league, made betweene Fredericke, king of
Bohemia. And Gabriel, prince of Hungaria ([W. Jones? or W. Stansby] 1620);
11350 The declaration and information of the King of Bohemia, against the unjust
mandates of the emperour (W. Jones? [or W. Stansby] 1620); 11351 A
declaration des causes pour lesquelles nous Frideric avons accepteÁ la Coronne Boheme
([London?] 1619); 11351 A declaration of the causes, for the which, wee Frederick,
have accepted of the crowne of Bohemia, two editions (Middleburg, A Schilders
[i.e. London, W. Jones? or Stansby?] 1620); 11352 A Proclamation made by
the high and mighty Fredericke king of Bohemia. Commanding all subjects now in
the service of enemies, to repaire home (Prague [i.e. London, E. Allde], 1620);
11353 A briefe description of the reasons that make the declaration of the ban against
the King of Bohemia (the Hayf [sic], A. Meuris [i.e. London, E. Allde f.
T. Archer?] 1621). [On 13 Aug 1621 Allde and Archer were ordered
imprisoned for printing this.]; 11256 The late successe and victory, of the King
of Bohemia's forces . . . Also the articles of agreement, between the King and
Bethlem Gaber (Middleburg, A Schilders [i.e. London W. Jones? or
Stansby?] 1620); 11360.3 The most illustrious prince Fredericke, . . . And of
Elizabeth his queene ([woodcut w. letter press verses] E. All-de f.
H. Gosson, [1622?]).
51 A short relation of the departure of the high and mightie Prince Frederick Elect of
Bohemia (Dort, 1620) (STC 12859), ``To the reader,'' no signature.
52 Rabb, `Ènglish Readers,'' p. 156.
53 Rabb describes the pamphlets on law in considerable detail in `Ènglish
Readers,'' pp. 156±63.
54 Ibid., p. 161.
55 For a full analysis of Scott's tracts and their signi®cance see Lake,
``Thomas Scott and the Spanish Match,'' and Wright, ``Propaganda
against James's Àppeasement' of Spain,'' pp. 149±92.
56 STC lists the following 1620s titles for Thomas Scott: 22065 Aphorismes of
state (Utrech [London], 1624); 22069 The Belgicke Pismire (London
[Holland], 1622); 22071 The Belgicke Souldier ([London], 1624); 22073
Certaine reasons and arguments of policie, why the King of England should enter into
warre with the Spainiard ([London], 1624); 22075 Dignitus Dei ([Holland,
1623]); 22076 Englands joy, for suppressing the papists, and banishing the priests
and jesuites ([N.Okes?], 1624); 22077 An experimentall discoverie of Spanish
practises or the counsel of a well-wishing souldier ([Anon. By H. Hexham?
London], 1623); 22078.5 A second part of Spanish practises ([Anon. Probably
not by Scott. N. Okes], 1624); 22079 The high-waies of God and the King
(London [Holland], 1623); 22080 Newes from Pernassus (Helicon
[Holland], 1622); 22081 The projector (London [Holland], 1620); 22083 A
relation of some speciall points concerning the state of Holland. Shewing, why for the
security of the united Provinces warre is better then peace (The Hage, A. Puris
[London, E. Allde], 1621); 22084 Robert earle of Essex his ghost (Paradise
[London, J. Beale?], 1624); 22085 Sir Walter Rawleighs ghost (Utrecht,
J. Schellem [London?], 1626); 22086 The Spaniards perpetuall designes to an
universall monarchie ([London], 1624); 22086.5 A speech made in the lower
house of parliament, anno 1621. By sir Edward Cicil ([Holland? 1621]); 22089
Symmachiea: or, a true-loves knot. Tyed, betwixt Great Britaine and the United
Provinces ([Holland, 1624]); 22098 Vox Populi ([London, 1620]); 22103 The
second part of Vox populi, or Gondomar appearing in the likenes of Matchiavell in a
Spanish parliament (Goricom, J. Janss [London, Nicholas Okes a. John
Dawson], 1624); 22105 Vox regis ([Utrecht, A. van Herwijck, 1624]).
57 Lake, ``Thomas Scott and the Spanish Match,'' p. 813.
58 Ibid., p. 821.
59 John Reynolds, Votivae Angliae (1624).
60 Ibid., *1v±*2.
61 Ibid., a2v.
62 Ibid., b2.
63 Reynolds, Vox Coeli, a3.
64 Ibid., } 4.
65 Wright, ``Propaganda Against James I,'' p. 154.
66 Ibid., pp. 171±2.
68 The proclamations against licentious speech in matters of state were
issued on 24 December 1620 and 26 July 1621 (Larkin and Hughes, SRP,
vol. i, pp. 495, 419); the directive on preaching, August 1622; the
proclamation against disorderly printing, 25 September 1623 (Larkin
and Hughes, SRP, vol. i, p. 583); and the proclamations ordering
``persons of quality'' to the country on 20 November 1622 and 26 March
1623 (Larkin and Hughes, SRP, vol. i, pp. 561, 572).
70 Ibid., p. 45. According to Cogswell, ``the most scurrilous exchanges
over the Spanish match took place in poetry not prose . . . As the poems
became more abusive, so too their focus narrowed on Buckingham . . .
These and other quips clearly stung, for late in 1622 the favorite offered
a £1,000 reward for information on the author of one `song' '' (p. 46).
71 Sheila Lambert, ``Coranto Printing,'' p. 7.
72 Ibid., p. 11.
73 Ibid., p. 7.
74 James I, ``The Wiper of the peoples Teares,'' in The Poems of James VI of
Scotland, ed. James Craigie, vol. ii (Edinburgh and London, 1958), p. 183.
76 Mark H. Curtis, ``William Jones: Puritan Printer and Propagandist,''
The Library, 5th series, 19 (1964), 38±66.
77 Mark Bland, ``Censorship and the Subversion of Authority in Early
Modern England,'' Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America 90 (1996),
151±93: p. 179. Although Bland does not fully develop the argument, his
identi®cation of ornaments and fonts in some of the pamphlets on
Bohemia with those in John Selden's History of Tithes, known to be
printed by Stansby, establish Stansby as the printer.
78 Lambert, ``Coranto Printing,'' pp. 6±7.
79 No 1620 book exists on this topic. In 1590 John Wolfe printed A true
discourse. Of the most horrible murthers committed by the troupes of the duke of
Savoye, upon the inhabitants of Gev [Geneva]. In 1603 Robert Waldegrave
printed The true discoverie of the duke of Savoy his enterprise upon the cittie of
Geneve. Waldegrave, who had printed several of the Marprelate tracts
and other radical Protestant pamphlets, printed this, as he had other
notorious publications, without publisher's name or place. This event
evidently had considerable propaganda value.
80 CSPV, vol. xvi, no. 258, p. 180.
81 Ibid., no. 274, p. 191.
82 The Stationers' Register identi®es Cottington as the authorizer of
ninety-three titles between May 1621 and January 1624.
84 DNB, vol. xii, p. 293.
85 A briefe description of the Ban made against the King of Bohemia (1621), pp. 4, 6.
86 Ibid., p. 12.
87 Robert Jenison to Samuel Ward, Newcastle, 26 May 1621, Tanner 72,
f. 29, Bodleian Library.
88 Tanner 73, f. 29, Bodleian Library. Bland also refers to this in
``Censorship and the Subversion of Authority,'' and identi®es Jenison's
treatise as The Height of Israels Heathenish Idolatrie (1621), printed by
George Eld for Robert Mylbourne.
89 My statistics rely on the work of Maureen Bell and John Barnard,
``Provisional Count of STC Titles 1475±1640,'' Publishing History 31
(1992), 46±66.
90 CSPV, vol. xvi, no. 258, p. 180.
91 Court Book C, p. 137.
92 The Calendar of State Papers assigns the petitions of Butter and
Stansby to Secretary Calvert for release from prison to 1622, but in his
petition Stansby indicates that he agreed to print the tract for Butter
because ``many tractes concerning the affaires of Forraine Princes have
byn permitted this last yeare to be publiquely sold without anie
contradiction'' (CSPD, 1623±5 [London, 1872], p. 141; full document
printed in Greg, Companion, p. 210). Stansby made no entries in the
Stationers' Register between May and September 1621, so he could
have been either in prison or without a press at that time. Butter
regularly published and entered works in the Register throughout
1622, and there is a hiatus in Register entries with his name between
May and December 1621.
93 Rev. Joseph Mead to Sir Martin Stuteville in Thomas Birch, The Court
and Times of James I (London, 1848), vol. ii, p. 266.
94 Examination of George Wither, 27 June 1621, SP 14/121 art. 132.
95 Examination of John Marriott, 10 July 1621, SP 14/122, art. 12;
Examination of John Grismond, 10 July 1621, SP 14/ 122, art. 13;
Examination of Nicholas Okes, 12 July 1621, SP 14/122, art. 18, PRO.
96 CSPV, vol. xvii no. 454, p. 319. This would be The French Herald sent to
the Princes of Christendom according to the French copy (1622).
97 SP 14/157 art. 36, PRO.
98 SP14/153 art. 75, PRO.
99 Letter from Thomas Locke, 11 July 1624, SP 14/159 art. 41, PRO.
101 Lambert interprets Stansby's comment as evidence that the December
1620 proclamation had nothing to do with printing because Stansby
couldn't have been printing because he was in jail (``Coranto Printing,''
p. 8), but there is no evidence that Stansby was in jail in December
1620.
103 The 1621 proclamation against lascivious speech seems less likely to be
related to printed texts. This time the `àudacious Tongues'' appear to
have belonged to members of parliament. The Earl of Southampton
and other members of parliament, Lord Scroop, Sir John Leedes, and
Sir Christopher Nevil, had been imprisoned for allegedly holding
meetings to develop a plan to divert a subsidy directly to Frederick.
The Earl of Oxford was imprisoned for speaking against the Spanish
match, and Edwin Sandys was imprisoned for speaking unfavorably
about loyalty to the King. Besides the court rivalries that prompted
these arrests, the Venetian ambassador astutely observes, ``They
happed to be also the supporters of the King of Bohemia and those
most zealous for the honour, safety and religion of this kingdom''(CSPV,
vol. xvii, no. 83, p. 75).
104 SP 14/118 art. 102, PRO.
105 Ibid.
106 Secretary Conway to the Council, 12 August 1624, SP 14/171 art. 39,
PRO.
107 Ibid.
108 Secretary Conway to the Council, 27 August 1624, SP 14/171 art. 75,
PRO.
109 Dutton, Mastering the Revels, pp. 245±6.
110 CSPV, vol. xviii, p. 425.
111 T. H. Howard-Hill, ``The Author as Scribe or Reviser? Middleton's
Intentions in A Game At Chess,'' TEXT, 3 (1987), 305±18: p. 306.
112 Janet Clare, Àrt Made Tongue-Tied by Authority': Elizabethan and Jacobean
Censorship (Manchester, 1990), p. 197.
113 Adrian Weiss, personal correspondence, 15 July 1998.
114 Letter from Thomas Locke, 11 July 1624, SP 14/159 art. 41, PRO.
115 Sloane Ms. 3828, f. 10v, BL.
117 John Witte, Jr., ``The Transformation of Marriage Law in the Lutheran
Reformation,'' in The Weightier Matters of the Law: Essays on Law and
Religion, J. Witte, Jr., and F. Alexander, eds. (Atlanta, 1988), pp. 71±2.
118 William Whately, A bride-bush, 1619, a1.
119 Ibid., 1619, p. 89.
120 Ibid., p. 60.
121 Ibid., p. 109.
122 Ibid., p. 113.
123 Ibid., pp. 113±14.
124 Ibid., p. 115.
125 Ibid., p. 116.
126 Ibid., p. 117.
127 Ibid.
128 Ibid., pp. 116±17.
129 Ibid., pp. 213±14.
130 Fincham, Prelate as Pastor, pp. 50±1.
131 Kenneth Fincham, ``Prelacy and Politics: Archbishop Abbot's Defence
of Protestant Orthodoxy,'' Historical Research 61 (1988), 36±69: p. 52.
132 Who this might have been is suggested by the fact that William Laud, a
member of Bishop Richard Neile's household at Durham House,
acknowledged receipt of Whately's submission to the High Commis-
sion. The next chapter considers the importance censorship assumed
in Durham House's political strategies.
133 Fincham, ``Prelacy and Politics,'' p. 58.
6 ecclesiastical faction, censorship, and the

rhetoric of silence
1 Richard Mountagu's name is variously spelled ``Mountagu,'' ``Moun-
tague,'' and ``Montagu.'' I am using the ®rst, since that is what appears
on the title pages of the ®rst editions of his works. This also conveniently
distinguishes him from James Mountague, Bishop of Bath and Wells.
James I,'' Journal of British Studies 24 (1985), 169±207: pp. 205±6.
3 Nicholas Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists: The Rise of English Arminianism c.
1599±1640 (Oxford, 1987), chapter 6.
4 John Morrill, The Nature of the English Revolution (London and New York,
1993), pp. 69±71. Fincham and Lake, `Ècclesiastical Policy of James I,''
pp. 205±6. Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists, chapter 6.
5 The committee was meeting on the offenses of Dr. Anian and other
schoolmasters and college masters. There is some question about who
exactly preferred the petition to the Commons. According to Kenneth
Fincham, Thomas Goad and Daniel Featly, two of Archbishop Abbot's
chaplains, provided the information against Mountagu (Kenneth
Fincham, ``Prelacy and Politics: Archbishop Abbot's Defence of Prot-
estant Orthodoxy,'' Historical Research 61 [1988], 36±69: p. 57). Mounta-
gu's own response, Appello Caesarem, identi®es John Yates and Samuel
Ward as his informers, and the Commons concur in their reference to
`à Petition preferred by Yates and Ward to this House'' (Commons
Reports, vol. i, p. 805).
6 Journal of the House of Commons (London, 1803), vol. i, p. 788. Hereafter
cited as Commons Journal.
7 Commons Journal, vol. i, p. 790.
8 Richard Mountagu, Appello Caesarem (1625), p. 3. See also Cosin,
Correspondence, vol. i (London, 1869), p. 78.
9 Cosin, Correspondence, vol. i, pp. 22±3.
10 Ibid., pp. 24±7.
11 Ibid., pp. 29, 34.
12 Ibid., p. 51. Arber, vol. iv, p. 136.
13 Cosin, Correspondence, vol. i, pp. 67±8.
14 Ibid., pp. 50±2.
15 Ibid., pp. 69, 71.
16 Commons Journal, p. 808.
17 Ibid., pp. 805±6.
18 Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists, pp. 152±62..
19 Peter White, ``The Rise of Arminianism Reconsidered,'' Past and Present
101 (November 1983), 34±54; Sharpe, The Personal Rule of Charles I (New
Haven, 1992), chapter 6.
20 For a discussion of Abbot, see Fincham, ``Prelacy and Politics.''
21 Heylyn, Cyprianus Anglicanus, p. 69.
22 Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists, p. 113.
23 McCullough, Sermons at Court: Politics and Religion in Elizabethan and
Jacobean Preaching (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 111, 113.
24 Arthur Wilson, The History of great Britain, Being the Life and Reign of King
James the First (1653), p. 152, quoted in McCullough, Sermons at Court,
p. 113. Neile's in¯uence was not exclusive; he shared it with the Dean of
the Closet, James Mountague, a Calvinist (McCullough, Sermons at Court,
pp. 107±8).
25 McCullough, Sermons at Court, p. 113.
27 Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists, p. 109.
29 Cosin, Correspondence, vol. i, pp. 32, 34, 40.
30 Correspondence of Daniel Featly, Ms. Rawlinson d.47, Bodleian
Library. Samuel Ward's correspondence is included in Ms. Tanner
72±4, Bodleian Library.
32 Devereux was fourteen and Frances thirteen when they married in
1606. Following the marriage Frances returned to her father's house and
the Earl went abroad.
33 Ms. Titus cvii, ff. 99±100, BL.
34 Ms. Sloane 3826, f. 7v, BL.
35 Ms. Sloane 3828, f. 10v, BL.
36 Ibid., f. 11v.
37 Ibid., f. 12r.
38 Ibid., ff. 14v±15.
39 Ms. Titus cviii, f. 100v, BL.
40 Ms. Sloane 3828, f. 7v, BL.
41 Ibid., ff. 17, 19v, 21, BL.
42 Ibid., f. 24.
43 Ibid., f. 16v.
44 Ibid., f. 34v.
45 Ibid., f. 34v.
46 Archbishop Abbot, quoted in Fincham, ``Prelacy and Politics,'' p. 54.
47 Fincham, ``Prelacy and Politics,'' pp. 54±5.
48 Ibid., p. 52.
49 McCullough, Sermons at Court, pp. 107±9.
50 Ibid., p. 114.
51 Lori Anne Ferrell, Government by Polemic: James I, the King's Preachers, and
the Rhetoric of Conformity (Stanford, 1998), p. 132.
52 Stephen Foster, The Long Argument: English Puritanism and the Shaping of New
England Culture, 1570±1700 (Chapel Hill and London, 1991), p. 126.
53 Ibid., p. 134.
54 Michael C. Questier, ``John Gee, Archbishop Abbot, and the Use of
Converts from Rome in Jacobean Anti-Catholicism,'' Recusant History
21.3 (1993), 347±60.
55 Francis White, A Replie to Jesuit Fishers answere to certain questions propounded
by his most gratious Majestie King James, London, 1624, b3v.
56 Daniel Featly, The Romish Fisher Caught and Held In His Owne Net, London,
1624, *3v±*4r.
57 Ibid., *4r.
58 The long title for the section with Laud's account is An Answere to Mr
Fishers Relation of a Third Conference between a certaine B. (as he stiles him) and
himselfe. The Conference was very private, till Mr Fisher spread certaine Papers of
it, which in many respects deserved an Answer.
59 Richard Mountagu's A gagg for the new gospel? No: a new gagg for an old goose
(1624) is generally regarded as responding to the English publication,
but the timing of Mountagu's book suggests that he probably knew the
full scope of the controversy, including the continental publication.
60 Featly, The Romish Fisher Caught and Held, p. 173.
61 William Laud, An Answere to Mr Fishers Relation, 1624, pp. 38±40..
62 William Laud, Works (London, 1924), vol. iii, 147.
63 White, Replie to Jesuit Fishers answere, c1r.
64 Mountagu, A new gagg for an old goose, 1624, *3v.
65 Ibid., *3v±4r.
66 Ibid., p. 110.
67 Ibid., pp. 108±9.
68 Ibid., p. 107.
70 Ibid., p. 68.
71 Featly's on 20 January 1624, Abbot's on 17 December 1623, and White's
on 14 April 1624, all licensed by Featly.
72 White, A Replie, b5v.
73 12 Dec [1624], Cosin, Correspondence, vol. i, p. 32.
74 Featly, The Romish Fisher Caught and Held, *1v±*2v.
75 Richard Mountagu, Appello Caesarem, 1625, p. 13.
76 Ibid., p. 26.
77 Ibid., p. 26.
78 Ibid., a2r±v.
79 Ibid., a2v.
80 Ibid., a3r±v.
81 Ibid., pp. 320±1.
82 Ibid., p. 1.
83 Ibid., pp. 2±3.
84 Ibid., p. 3.
85 Ibid., p. 4.
86 Peter Heylyn, Examen Historicum, 1659, p. 176.
88 Ibid., p. 95.
89 Doctor Williams' Library, Records of Non-Conformity, Ms. 38.34.
ff. 188±9.
90 See Sheila Lambert, ``Richard Mountagu, Arminianism, and Censor-
ship,'' Past and Present 124 (1989), 36±68: p. 65, n. 106; Milton, ``Licen-
sing, Censorship, and Religious Orthodoxy in Early Stuart England,''
The Historical Journal 41 (1998), 625±51: pp. 629±30.
91 Doctor Williams' Library, Records of Non-Conformity, Ms. 38:34,
f. 190.
92 Featly, Cygnea Cantio, 1629, p. 3.
93 Ibid., pp. 9±10.
95 Richard Mylbourne, ``Printer to the Reader,'' Cygnea Cantio, p. 40.
96 Featly, Cygnea Cantio, p. 39.
97 Mylbourne, ``Printer to the Reader,'' Cygnea Cantio, p. 39. In ``Richard
Mountagu, Arminianism, and Censorship,'' Sheila Lambert concludes
from Mylbourne's comments that Calvinist reluctance to publish had
as much to do with the economics of publishing as it did with
theological differences (p. 65).
98 Featly, Cygnea Cantio, p. 30. Mylbourne goes on to say that this action
ultimately made the book more popular, and in doing so identi®es his
opponent as John Cosin, the ``cousener cousened.''
99 Lambert, ``Richard Mountagu, Arminianism, and Censorship,'' p. 61.
100 Milton, ``Licensing, Censorship, and Religious Orthodoxy,''
pp. 625±51.
101 Ibid., p. 650.
102 Ibid., p. 636.
103 Ibid., p. 634.
104 Ibid., p. 637.
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Index
A briefe description of the Ban made against the King Anti-Spanish writing, 86, 114 ± 15, 163, 173 ±6,
of Bohemia, 182 182 ±4, 187 ± 9
Abbot, George, Archbishop of Canterbury, 3, Apologia Roberto Bellarmino, 61
43 ±5, 47, 48, 67, 105, 106, 108, 110 112, Apology for the Oath of Allegiance, 72, 75, 78 ±9
150, 155, 190, 198, 201, 203, 208, 209 Appello Caesarem (Mountagu), 86, 122, 197 ± 9,
censorship, 52, 76, 97, 98, 100 ±2, 104, 203, 210, 213 ±15, 217, 218, 227
169 ± 70, 185, 198 historical signi®cance, 197
con¯ict with James I, 67, 201, 204 ±6 licensing of, 198± 9
eclipse at court, 201, 207, 218 arcana imperii, 69, 71, 91, 177, 196
in¯uence at court, 105 ± 6, 109 Archbishop of Canterbury
in¯uence in parliament, 127, 201, 212, 228 authority over printing, 3, 20, 28, 29, 62,
licensing authority, 63, 64, 228 63, 125, 135, 185, 221, 226
personal rivalry with Richard Neile, con®rmation of bishops, 109
203± 7, 217, 226 see also, Abbot, Bancroft, Whitgift
political views, 64, 164, 168, 194 ±5 Archer, Thomas, printer, 182, 184, 186
views on divorce, 190, 204 The Argument of Master Nicholas Fuller, 125,
theology of, 63, 106, 202, 203 131 ±6
Abbot, Robert, Bishop of Salisbury, 203, 206, Arian heresy, 79
211 Arminian, theology, 72± 3, 200, 203, 213± 14,
Abuses Stript and Whipt (Wither), 92, 113 ± 16 222
Ad divinam romanii (Pareus), 76, 85, 169, 215 Arminianism and heresy, 79, 81 ±3
Adams, Thomas, printer, 42, 43 Arminianism, Dutch, 77, 81 ±2, 91, 110 ±13,
Admiralty law, 150 200
Admiralty, court of, 113, 127, 129, 130 threat to England, 81, 82
Admonition Controversy, 31, 35 Arminianism, English, 48, 72, 73, 197, 200,
Akrigg, G. P. V., 100 219 ± 23
Aldee, Edward, printer, 54, 55, 62, 179, 182, debate on nature of , 203, 207, 215, 221, 38,
186, 188, 189 n.81, 242, n.23
Anatomie of Ananias (Gostwick), 151 Articuli Cleri, 137, 142
Andrewes, Lancelot, Bishop of Ely, Bishop of authority
Winchester, 71, 106, 109, 112, 204, 205, 207 competing claims to, 13, 14, 16, 22, 41,
Anglicanism, 203, 221 124 ± 59
Animadversions upon, History of Tithes (Tillesley), ecclesiastical, 28, 44, 106± 11, 54, 131± 6,
156 148, 156± 9, 208, 209
Annales (Camden) , 91, 103 royal, views of, 2, 5, 8± 14, 17, 22, 69, 90,
Answer to Mr Fishers Relation (Laud), 266, n.58 126, 139, 164, 191 ±4, 228
Anti-calvinism, see Arminianism, English see also prerogative
277
278 Index
authorization, ecclesiastical, 3, 27 ±9, 47, 53, Bishop of London, see Bancroft, King, Laud
54, 55, 57 ±66, 90, 94, 113, 116, 121± 2, bishops at court, 106, 109, 112
178, 179, 180 rivalry of, 105, 108, 112, 203, 228
conditional, 19 1599 bishops' ban, 20
rival systems, 41, 63± 4, 221 bishops, election of, 105, 109
rivalry over, 63, 90, 214, 226, 228 bishops, precedence of, 105, 107, 215
authorization, non-ecclesiastical, 181 Blagden, Cyprian, 40
see also licensing Bland, Mark, 2, 3, 4, 103, 179, 248, n.51, 262,
authorizers, ecclesiastical, 63± 5 n.77, 247, n.30, 248, n.51, 262, n.77
Whitgift's panel of, 235, n. 24 Blayney, Peter, 60, 240, n.116, 241, n.126
authorizers, non-ecclesiastical, 58, 64, 178, The Blessed Revolution (Cogswell), 176± 7
181 ±3 Bohemia, pamphlets and newsbooks on,
authors and authority, 8 ±9, 14, 15, 16, 18 170 ± 3
authors and copyright, 9 Bohemia, 56, 64, 84, 85, 89, 160, 161 ±96, 201
authorship, 23 see also Thirty Years' War
Ayscue, Edward, 91, 94 ± 6, 125 BoisloreÂ, Marin, patent of, 41, 43, 44, 50
Book-burning
Bacon, Francis, 43, 145 ±7, 159 continental, 77, 83
Balaam's Asse, 247, n. 40, 248, n.42 Elizabethan, 76, 243, n.36
ballads, 235, n.25 history of, 75 ±6
Bancroft, Richard, Archbishop of Jacobean private, 103 ±13, 116, 118 ±22
Canterbury, 3, 20, 51, 52, 63, 92 ±3, 95, Jacobean public, 37, 68 ±89, 169, 217± 8,
125, 130, 132 ±6, 137, 139, 142, 151 228 ±9
Bancroft, Richard, Bishop of London Marian, 76, 88, 217
Barclay, John, 71 Book of Common Prayer, see Church of
Barker, Christopher, printer to Queen England
Elizabeth, 25, 42 Book of Martyrs (Foxe), 88, 217
Barker, Robert, printer to King James, 42, book prices, 240, n.103
237, n. 62 Bowes, Robert, English ambassador to
Barnard, John, 262, n.89 Scotland, 92, 93, 94
Basilikon Doron ( James VI and I), 11, 13, Braithwait, Richard, poet, 115, 190
69 ± 71 A bride-bush (Whately), 13, 53, 190 ±96, 215
printing of, 11±12, 54 ±5, 70 Brooke, Christopher, poet, 116
Becanus, Martin, Jesuit controversialist, 82 Brooks, Douglas A., 9
Bell, Maureen, 262, n.89 Brownists, 236, n.46
Bellamy John, 32 ± 3 Buc, George, 57
Bellarmine, Robert, Cardinal, 72, 75, 77, 78, Buchanan, George, 10, 139
79, 80 Buckeridge, John, Bishop of Rochester, 202,
benevolences, 77, 97 204, 205
Bershadsky, Edith, 256, n.92 Buckingham, see Villiers, George
Bible, 8, 23, 46, 61 Buckner, Thomas, chaplain to Archbishop
Geneva, 211 Abbot, 122
Bible Stock, 40 Bugges, Edward, 208
Bill, John, printer to King James, 42, 43, 44, Burgess, Glenn, 126
238, n. 72 Burre, Walter, publisher, 98
patent as King's Printer, 237, n. 63 Burt, Richard, 116
Bilson, Thomas, Bishop of Winchester, 204, Butter, Nathaniel, printer, 263, n.92
205
Bishop of London, authority over printing, Calvert, George, secretary to James I, 181,
44, 59, 62, 63, 64, 97, 154, 221 184, 185, 186, 187, 189
Index 279
Calvinism, 2, 17, 46 ±7, 48, 69, 73, 74, 86, 108, Church of England
169, 219, 222 Book of Common Prayer, 8, 51, 52, 54, 103
anti-Calvinist vili®cation of, 48, 86, 207, Calvinism of, 48, 73 ±4, 86, 88, 122, 168,
210, 212 200, 223
Calvinist faction, see Lambeth circle ceremonialism, 48± 9, 72, 73, 106, 108, 122,
Calvinists, 51, 63, 64, 65, 82, 105, 167, 190, 221, 226
218 Homilies, 103, 105, 108, 199
Cambridge, University of, 68, 76, 85, 137, saints' days, 47 ±8, 50, 108
139 Thirty-Nine Articles, 103, 106, 108, 110 ±11,
printing at, 59, 60, 151 199, 213, 222
Camden, William, 91, 102, 103 Church-History of great Britain (Fuller), 104 ± 9,
canon law, 75, 77, 128, 129, 130, 148 ±58 112
see also civil law Civil Law, 144, 152, 153, 159
Cantica Sacra (Wither), 46 controversy with Commom Law, 51, 125,
Carleton, Dudley, 96 ±7, 108, 111, 112, 132 127 ±36, 141± 2
embassage to Holland, 110 ±11, 113 institutional interests of, 144, 149 ±50, 222
Carleton, George, 148 ±51 Clare, Janet, 188
Carlson, Norman, 48 Cluet, Richard, cleric, 65, 258, n.23, 261, n.70
Carr, Robert, Duke of Somerset, 13, 117, 204, Cogswell, Thomas, 3, 166 ±7, 169, 170, 176 ±8,
206 183, 186, 189, 196
Casaubon, Isaac, 71 Coke, Edward, Chief Justice, Common Pleas
Catholic books, 31, 35 and King's Bench, 43, 117, 126, 130, 137
searches for, 37 ±8, 38 attack on, 145 ±7
suppression, 21, 25, 31, 34, 59, 86 Coke's Reports, 39, 125, 128, 134, 136, 143 ±7,
catholicity, see ecumenicism 148, 159, 199
Catholics, English, 31, 78, 79, 86, 162 Collinson, Patrick, 36, 73, 203
anti-Catholic sentiment toward, 120, 122, common law, 13, 16, 17, 32 ± 3, 194, 222, 225,
165, 166 ±7, 173, 201, 211, 227 226
tolerance toward, 73, 74, 119 controversy with Civilians, 51, 127 ± 36, 141,
Caudry's case, 129 148 ±58
Cecil, Robert, Earl of Salisbury, 96, 12, 19, institutional interests of, 51, 125, 126
138, 139 ± 40, 143 jurisdiction, 51, 90, 152 ±8
relation to censorship, 37 ±9, 57, 94 ± 5, reform of, 129, 137, 142, 159
132 ±36 Commons, see House of Commons
Censorship and Interpretation (Patterson), 6, 219 Conference of the Civill Law (Fulbecke), 149
censorship, papal, 244, n.51 conferences between Jesuits and English
trope of, 115 ±16 clergy, 208 ±9, 211
Chamberlain, John, 76, 85, 96, 97, 98, 101, conferences, 137, 209
104, 118, 166 see also, Hampton Court Conference
Chancery, court of, 44, 129, 144, 145, 155 conformity, 30, 31, 48, 73, 86, 129, 168, 197,
Charles (Prince), visit to Spain, 161 ±3, 166, 216
174, 182, 211 see also non-conformity
Charles I, 2, 20, 22, 66, 122, 130, 197, 199, Confutation of the Rhemish New Testament, patent,
200, 218, 219, 222, 223, 229 42
proclamations, 122, 200, 218, 222 conscience, 47, 168, 193, 195, 205 ±6
Christianity, primitive, 74, 78, 82, 89 conspiracy, Catholic, 137 ±9, 173
Christianson, Paul, 141, 148, 152 controversialist literature, 14, 31, 48, 86, 122,
Church councils, 73, 85, 111± 12 150, 151, 200, 202, 207 ±15
church courts, see civil-law courts, High controversialist literature, Catholic, 61, 79,
Commission 80, 82, 101, 208 ±9
280 Index
Conway, Edward, secretary to James I, 181, 187 Durham House, 122, 200 ± 3
Corona Regia (Schoppe), 88 rivalry with Lambeth, 108 ±9, 206, 210 ±12,
Correr, Marc Antonio, Venetian ambassador, 215 ± 17
76 Dutch ®shing rights, 113
Cosin, John, chaplain to Bishop Neile, 87, see also Selden and Grotius
198, 199, 202, 212, 221, 268, n.98 Dutton, Richard, 2
Cottington, Francis, 58, 64, 178, 181 ±2, 183
Cotton, John, of Warblington, 100 ± 1 ecclesiastical preferment, 106, 108 ±9, 202,
Countess of Mountgomery's Urania (Wroth), 92, 205, 206, 211, 217
117, 123 Ecclesiasticus (Schoppe), 77, 83, 244, n.69
Cowell, John, 12, 125, 127, 128, 137 ± 43, 159 ecumenicism, 71, 207, 226, 228
criminal court, de®nition of, 235, n.29 Edward VI, 22, 27, 39
Crompton, William, cleric, 64, 66, 82, Egerton, Thomas, Lord Chancellor
216 ±17 Ellesmere, 115, 145 ±7, 155, 159, 201
Cum privilegio ad imprimendum solum, 105, 233, Eisenstein, Elizabeth, 7, 8
n.4, 238, n.72 Elizabeth I, 1, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24 ±36, 51, 76,
Curtis, Mark H., 254, n.48 79, 92± 4
Cust, Richard, 252, n.3 proclamations, 33± 6
Cygnea Cantio (Featly), 65, 66, 68, 82, 86, Elizabeth, Princess, 64, 114, 161, 165, 166,
87 ±8, 216 ±19 170, 172, 174, 176, 183
Cyprianus Anglicus (Heylyn), 104, 105, 202 Elton, Edward, cleric, 64, 65, 77, 86 ±8,
216 ±18, 227, 228, 229
Day, John, printer, patent, 25 Elton, G. R., 33
De Apostasia Sanctorum (Bertius), 81 English Stock, 39 ±40, 45, 178
de Coloma, Don Carlos, Spanish episcopacy, de jure divino, 73
ambassador, 187 Essex, Earls of, see Devereux
de Dominis, Marcus Antonius, Archbishop of Essex divorce, 13, 190, 204 ± 5
Spalato, 71, 187 Etkins, Richard, cleric, 63, 65
de Mariana, Juan, 77, 83 Everard, John, cleric, 168± 9
De rege et regis institutione (Mariana), 77, 83 Examen Historicum (Heylyn), 107, 215, 222
Decameron (Boccaccio), 52 Exegesis Apologetica (Vorstius), 81
Declaration In the cause of D Conrad Vorstius, 71,
81 ±2 faction, court, 23, 114, 105
Denny, Edward, Baron of Waltham, 117 faction, ecclesiastical, 19, 48, 103 ± 13,
Devereux, Robert, second Earl of Essex, 96 197± 229
Devereux, Robert, third Earl of Essex, 13, see also Durham House, Lambeth circle
204, 206 faction, parliamentary, 84
Diatribe upon the, History of Tithes (Mountagu), Faerie Queene (Spenser), 246, n. 9
156 ±7 false imprints, 56, 60, 62, 116, 121, 122, 135,
Digby, John, diplomat, 65, 165, 182 179, 184, 188
A discoverie of Witchcraft (Scot, Reginald), 245, Featly, Daniel, chaplain to Archbishop
n. 3 Abbot, 62, 64, 65, 66, 68, 82, 86± 8, 198,
divine right kingship, 98, 126, 127, 228 199, 203, 208, 209, 210, 211, 212, 215,
divorce, 13, 61, 190, 194 216 ±18, 227
see also Essex divorce Ferrell, Lori Anne, 48, 207
Doctrina et Politia Ecclesiae Anglicanae (Mocket), Fielding, William, Earl of Denbigh, 117, 265,
64, 91, 103± 13, 215 n.5
Donne, John, Dean of St. Paul's, 71, 169 ± 70 Fincham, Kenneth, 51, 69, 70, 73, 83, 84, 86,
Donno, Elizabeth Story, 246, n.6 107, 168, 169, 190, 194, 195, 197, 201,
Draper's Guild, 27 203, 206, 207, 217
Index 281
The First part of the life and raigne of Henry IIII Guiana, Ralegh's trip to, 102
(Hayward), 105 Gunpowder Plot, 37, 39, 75, 83, 119 ±20
The Fisher Caught in his Own Net, 208, 209 Guy, John, 30
Fisher, John, Jesuit, 208, 209, 210, 211
Fleet prison, 89, 132 Hampton Court Conference, 51, 73, 112
Floyd, Edward, 89, 165 Harford, Rapha, 168, 169
The Foot out of the Snare (Gee), 59, 86 Hayward, John, 105
Foscarini, Antonio, Venetian ambassador, 82, Henry IV of France, 77, 83, 180
114 Henry VII, 21
Foster, Stephen, 207, 208 Henry VIII, 21, 27, 76, 76, 79, 80, 99, 102,
Foucault, Michel, 8, 9 103, 130
Foxe, John, 39, 76, 88 Henry, Prince, 11, 54, 70, 97, 100
France, 11, 56, 70, 77, 83 heresy, 16, 31, 50, 81 ±2, 134
Frederick, Elector Palatine, King of Heylyn, Peter, 104, 105, 106, 107, 110, 112,
Bohemia, 56, 58, 84 ± 5, 161, 164 ± 8, 202, 203, 215, 222
171± 3, 182 ±3, 201 High Commission, 1, 20, 29 ±32, 36, 50 ± 7,
The French Harald, 185 67, 118, 120, 159, 196, 201, 207
Fulbecke, William, 149 attacks on, 125, 131 ±6
Fuller, Nicholas, 125, 127, 128, 131± 6 authority of, 17, 28, 30 ±2, 51 ±7, 68, 105
imprisonment of, 253, n.34 cases in, 12, 41, 42± 9, 54, 92, 97, 125,
Fuller, Thomas, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 131± 6, 148, 156 ±9, 185, 189, 190 ±5,
112 215, 220, 222, 225, 226
Elizabethan patent, 28, 30
The gagg of the new gospel, 209 institutional interests of, 22, 123, 125
A gagg for the new gospell? No: a new gagg for an old Jacobean patent, 51, 68, 240, n.101
goose (Mountagu), 48, 86, 197 ± 9, 209 ± 12, jurisdiction, 3, 28, 29, 51, 190
216, 221, 227 procedures, 31, 51, 129, 195, 239, n.94
A Game at Chesse (Middleton), 176, 187± 9, 196 Hill, Christopher, 230, n.2
A Gaping Gulf (Stubbs), 35 A historie containing the warres, treaties, marriages,
Gardiner, S. R., 97 betweene England and Scotland (Ayscue),
Gatehouse prison, 185 94 ±5
Gee, John, 59, 86 historiography
Ghost of Richard III (Brooke), 116 censorship of, 94 ±103
Gillett, C. R., 77 New Whig, 3± 4
Giustinian, Zorzi, Venetian ambassador, 71, on Stuart England, 1± 7, 124, 230, n.1, 252,
75 n.3
Goad, Thomas, chaplain to Archbishop revisionist, 2 ±3, 230, n.5
Abbot, 46, 47, 64, 66, 203, 215 History and lives of twentie kings of England
God and King, patent for, 42 (Martyn), 91, 102± 3
Goddard, William, poet, 115, 116 history of the book, 231, n.22, n.23
Gods Holy Mind (Elton), 64, 65, 77, 86± 8, History of the World (Ralegh) 123, 96 ±102
216± 18, 227, 228, 229 The History of Tithes (Selden), 125, 128, 148± 59
Goldberg, Jonathan, 69 ±71, 75 Histriomastix (Prynne), 20, 122
Gondomar, see Sarmiento Hobart, Henry, Attorney General, 133
Gostwick, Roger, 151, 152 Holinshed's Chronicles, James's effort to
Great Contract, 140, 143 censor, 92± 3
Greg, W. W., 27 Holland, see Netherlands
Grindal, Edmund, Archbishop of Homenovus, 244, n.51
Canterbury, 31 Homilies, see Church of England
Grotius, Hugh, 113 Hopp, Harry R., 234, n.15
282 Index
House of Commons, 12, 22, 59, 96, 119 ± 20, Remonstrance, Trew Law of Free
126, 131, 135, 137 ±40, 143, 166 ±7, 198, Monarchies
199 ±200, 227 Jesuits, 34, 37 ±8, 42, 53, 61, 73, 76± 8, 82,
House of Lords, 137 ±9, 199, 200 83 ±4, 119 ± 20, 173, 208± 9, 211
Howard, Frances, 13, 117, 204, 206 Johns, Adrian, 231, n.27, 233, n.7
Howard, Henry, Earl of Northampton, 19, Johnson, Gerald, 27
113 ±16, 250, n.98, n.105, n.110 Jones, William, charges in Star Chamber
Howson, John, Bishop of Oxford, 202, 215 against, 136
charges against, 207 Jones, William, printer, 135 ±6, 179, 225
Huffman, Clifford Chalmers, 234, n.15
Hughes, Anne, 252, n.3 Kenyon, J. P., 130
Hunt, Arnold, 41, 44 King, John, Bishop of London, 63, 64, 203,
Hymnes and Songs of the Church (Wither), 45 ± 50, 205
227, 228 King's Bench, court of, 44, 131±5, 136, 144, 147
printing of, 238, n.72 Kingston, Felix, printer, 42
Kna¯a, Louis, 126, 144, 145, 252, n.3
impositions, 12, 97, 114 Knight, John, preacher, 85, 169, 216
in commendams, Coke's opposition to, 144 ± 5 see also Pareus
Inquisition, 79
Institutiones Juris Anglicani (Cowell), 137 Ladd, Thomas, merchant, 131
The Interpreter, (Cowell), 137 ± 43 Lake, Arthur, Bishop of Bath and Wells, 203
Irish Stock, 40 Lake, Peter, 69, 70, 73, 83, 84, 86, 124, 163± 4,
167, 168, 169, 173, 174, 197, 203, 206,
James I 207, 217, 260, n.55
attitudes toward print, 9, 10, 11, 17, 70 ± 2 Lake, Thomas, secretary, 95, 110, 111, 112, 136
Catholic attacks on, 72, 78± 9, 83, 119 ± 20 Lambert, Sheila, 2, 3, 4, 40, 56, 59, 64, 177 ±8,
consensus politics, 2, 3, 4, 10, 85, 124, 229 179, 180, 183, 196, 219, 220
court politics, 2, 99, 113, 124, 162± 4, 173, Lambeth circle, 200 ±8, 212, 215 ±19
176, 197, 202, 205, 218, 226 ±7 members of, 203, 268, n.97
ecclesiastical policy, 69, 73 ±4, 75, 198, 200, Lando, Girlamo, Venetian ambassador, 84,
207 161, 162, 163, 164, 166, 180, 181, 184
favoritism of, 13, 42, 50, 88, 107 ±9, 114, Latin Stock, 40
144, 147, 204 ±5, 208, 228 Laud, William, Bishop of St. Davids, Bishop
irenicism, 69, 72± 8, 161, 201, 207, 228 of London, Archbishop of Canterbury,
monarchic style, 2, 69 ±71 4, 72, 104, 110, 121, 202, 203, 206, 207,
patents issued by, 7, 39, 40, 41± 50 208± 9, 212, 215 ±17, 218
personal vulnerability, 12, 70 ±1, 78, 81 ±3, charges against, 4, 207, 211
94 ± 102, 112 ±13, 163 Laudian censorship, 3, 4, 20, 220 ±3
poetry of, 178, 261, n.74 Legate, Bartholomew, 82
pro-Spanish policy of, 57, 58, 96, 127, letters patent, see patents and privileges
161± 96, 198, 201, 207 Levack, Brian, 127, 128
proclamations, 39, 58 ±9, 84, 86, 87, 100, Levy, Fritz, 170
125, 137, 140, 177 ±8, 184, 186 libel, 3, 33, 52, 79, 88, 92, 97, 113, 117, 177 ±8,
progress to Scotland, 107, 108, 109 250, n.110
self-representation of, 9 ±12, 78 ±86 libel, ``veggie,'' 18
theological views of, 74 ±5 licenses, see patents and privileges
writing style of, 72 licensing, 9, 18, 20, 21, 25 ± 6, 27 ±8, 42 ±3, 46,
writings, 9 ±12, 70 ± 2, 78 ±83 49, 55, 60 ± 6, 121 ±2, 178 ±9, 180 ± 6
see also Apology, Basilikon Doron, Declaration conditional, 61± 2, 63, 180
in the Case of D. Conrad Vorstius, see also authorization
Index 283
licensing, theatrical, 2, 187, 240, n.116 A Neaste of Waspes (Goddard), 116
Lindsell, Augustine, 202 Neile, Richard, Bishop of Lich®eld, Bishop of
London, 155, 167, 170, 177, 186, 187, 209 Durham, 108, 109, 112, 127, 198, 201± 2,
Lownes, Humphrey, printer, 199 211, 215 ± 17, 218, 229
Lynde, Humphrey, 208 in¯uence at court, 49, 144 ± 5,197, 202, 228
personal rivalry with George Abbot, 106,
Main and Bye plots, 96 107, 109, 204 ± 7
manuscript publication, 118, 154, 167, 174, Netherlands, 80 ±1, 110 ±13, 173, 184
177, 187 ± 8, 203 printing in, 116, 170, 183, 184
Mare Clausum (Selden), 91, 113 New Historicism, 5 ±6, 69
Mare liberum (Grotius), 113 Newberry, Nathan, publisher, 185
Marprelate tracts, 21, 31, 36, 189 newsbooks, 58, 60, 64, 167, 170 ±1, 177 ±84
marriage alliance Nidd, Gervase, cleric, 190, 195
with France, 195 Nipping or Stripping of Abuses (Taylor), 116
with Spain, 58, 65, 84, 114, 162, 166, 182, 229 non-conformity, 51, 106, 131, 135, 190
with Spain, opposition to, 161± 9, 207, 212 Norbrook, David, 114, 116
marriage, views of, 13, 183, 190 ±3, 232, n.41 Northampton, Earl of, see Howard, Henry
Marshalsea prison, 113, 114, 184 Norton, Bonham, printer, 43
Martyn, Henry, judge of the Admiralty court,
113 Oakes, Nicholas, printer, 188
Martyn, William, 91, 102 ±3 oath ex of®cio mero, 31, 51, 129, 131, 132
Mary I, 21, 22, 24, 27, 76 Oath of Allegiance, 39, 42, 61, 71± 5
proclamations, 76 controversy, 78± 81
Mary, Queen of Scots, 11, 93, 95 ± 6 Ogden, Mrs., patent of, 42 ±3
Matthews, Augustine, printer, 46± 7, 49, 188, Orange, Prince of, 110
189 orders suppressing preaching on foreign
Maunsell, Richard, cleric, 131 affairs, 84, 169 ±70
McCullough, Peter, 202 Overall, John, Bishop of Coventry and
McIllwain, Charles, 130 Lich®eld, 206
Mercurius Gallo-Belgicus, 180, 185 Overbury, Thomas, 117
Middleton, Thomas, 42, 176, 187± 8 Oxford University, 68, 76, 85, 169, 199, 211,
patent of, 42 215 ±16
Milton, Anthony, 3, 4, 20, 67, 87, 219 ± 20, printing at, 59, 60
221, 222
Mocket, Richard, chaplain to Archbishop Palatinate, 56, 57, 161, 164 ± 9, 173, 175, 176,
Abbot, 64, 65, 91, 103 ±13, 212, 215 182, 194
monopolies, 22, 24, 25, 27, 39, 41, 67, 178 see also Frederick
see also patents and privileges papacy, 61, 69, 74, 75, 78
Morrill, John, 197 authority of, 17, 75, 76, 77, 78, 83, 89
Morton, Thomas, Bishop of Chester, 203 Pareus, David, 76, 85, 169, 215 ±16
Mountagu, Richard, canon of Windsor, Parker, Edward, patents of, 42
Bishop of Chicester, 20, 48, 86, 122, Parlement, France, 77, 83
156 ±7, 158, 197± 203, 210 ±15, 216, 219, Parliament, 1, 2, 12, 44, 50, 84, 89, 124, 127,
221± 2, 226± 9 132, 175, 226, 227, 228
Mountague, James, Bishop of Winchester, 71, efforts at press control, 17, 19, 41, 59, 86,
105, 106± 8 125, 137 ± 43, 197, 199
Mylbourne, Richard, publisher, 218, 215 Elizabethan, 29, 32 ± 3
institutional interests of, 132, 136, 137±43, 159
Naunton, Robert, secretary to James I, 43, see also House of Commons, House of
180, 181 Lords
284 Index
Parliament of 1605, 119 ±20 Pro-Spanish policy, see James I
Parliament of 1610, 12, 137 Protestantism, international, 74, 78, 81, 82,
Parliament of 1614, 12, 96, 114 ± 16 161, 164, 165, 167, 173, 176
Parliament of 1621, 164 ±6, 170, 175 Prurit-anus, 76, 79, 80 ±1
Parliament of 1624, 163, 164, 166± 7, 174 Prynne, Wiliam, 4, 20, 122, 147, 219
parliamentary privilege, 51, 125, 126, 129 ± 30, public sphere, 8, 19, 162, 196, 226, 229
131, 138 puritanism, denunciation of, 72, 86, 173, 212,
Pas®eld, Zachariah, prebendary St. Paul's, 214 ± 15, 228, 241, n.123
chaplain to Archbishop Abbot, 95, 119 puritan-papists, 73
patents and privileges, printing, 1, 24, 24, puritans, 73, 136, 179, 190, 199, 220, 222, 223
25 ±6, 39, 41± 50, 55, 56, 60, 232, n.41 Pym, John, 198
Patterson, Annabel, 6, 219, 220
Paul's Cross, 117, 167 Rabb, Theodore K., 114, 118, 119, 121, 122,
book-burning at, 37, 68, 70, 76 ±7, 79, 80, 164, 171 ±2
83, 85, 86 ±8, 227 ±8 Racin, John, 252, n.3
Peacham, Edmund, 96, 97± 102, 103, 147 Racovian Catechism, 77, 83
dispute between Coke and James over, 126, Ralegh, Sir Walter, 91, 96 ±102, 123, 244, n.65
144 Ravaillac, FrancËois, assassin of Henry IV, 180
interrogation of, 126, 144 recusancy, laws against, 73, 176
Pelagian heresy, 79 recusants, Catholic, 120
Pelagius Redivius (Featly), 252, n.3 A Relation of the State of Religion (Sandys),
Phillips, Samuel, cleric, 168 118 ±22
Phillips, William, translator, 185 A Remonstrance for the Right of Kings, 70, 71
Philomythie (Scot), 115, 116 Remonstrants, see Arminianism, Dutch
political absolutism, 2, 9, 10 ±11, 125 ±6, 130, Replie to Jesuit Fishers answer (White), 209
138, 141, 191, 225 resistance theory, 16, 74 ±5, 77, 83
Powell, Gabriel, chaplain to Bishop of see also Buchanan, Pareus
London, 63 The Revenue of the Gospel is Tythes (Robartes), 151
Preaching Reynolds, John, 56, 170 ± 5, 185
at court, 48, 202, 207, 223, 228, 252, n.7 Ridley, Thomas, 128, 149 ± 50, 152, 153
Calvinist interest in, 106, 170, 202, 203, rivalry
207, 222 ecclesiastical, 48± 50, 72± 3, 86 ±8, 106 ±10,
predestination, doctrine of, 20, 86, 169, 200, 197 ± 229
210 ±11, 219, 221 institutional, 124 ±60
A Premonition, 71 ±2, 73, 74, 78 ±9, 80, 82, 101 personal, 145 ± 7, 203 ±7
prerogative, royal, 12, 23, 43, 90, 109, 126 ±7, Robartes, Foulke, 151, 152
128, 137 ±42, 144 ± 6, 185 Roberts, Josephine, 116
Presbyterians, 20, 92 ±3, 157, 243, n.28 Roman law, see civil law
Preston, Thomas, 71 Romish Fisher Caught and Held in his Owne Net
Prideaux, John, 198, 199, 203 (Featly), 209
Printing Press as an Agent of Change (Eisenstein), 7 Rypins, Stanley, 54
printing privileges, see patents and privileges
Pritchard, Allan, 113, 114 Saint Austin's religion (Crompton), 64, 82
Privy Council, 26, 30, 97, 100 ± 1, 106± 8, 119, Sandys, Edwin, 118± 22
126, 145, 164, 177 Sarmiento, Diego de Acuna, conde de
press control and censorship, 17, 21, 28, 29, Gondomar, 19, 101, 115, 162, 163, 173,
31, 37 ± 9, 52, 62, 95, 102, 114, 132, 146, 175, 177, 182
187 satire, 20, 113, 115 ±16
proclamations, 6, 27, 32, 185, 225 Satyricall Dialogue (Goddard), 116
prohibitions, see writs Schoppe, Caspar, 77, 83
Index 285
Scot, Thomas, poet, 115 ± 16, 245, n. 3 Stow, John, 31, 236, n.33
Scotland, 11, 91 Stubbs, John, 35, 147
censorship practices, 92± 4 Suarez, Francisco, 76, 77, 83
Scott, Thomas, 173 ±4, 184, 176 The Subjects Joy, For Parliament (Taylor), 164 ±5
Screech, M. A., 104, 106, 108, 110 subsidies, 12, 39, 96, 137, 138, 139, 140, 165,
searches 166, 167
government, 31, 37, 52, 53 surreptitious publication, 56, 60, 62, 122, 135,
Stationers' Company, 26, 53, 59 188
sedition, 31, 32, 35 see also false imprints
Selden, John, 65, 91, 113, 125, 128, 148 ±59 Sutton, Dana, 245, n.87
seminary priests, 34, 38, 53 Symcock, Thomas, 43 ±4
sermons, 53, 85, 93, 106, 144, 168 ±70, 191, Synod of Dort, 1618, 63, 74, 82, 111, 197
207, 216, 222 opposition to, 111 ±3
authorization of, 60 ±1, 62, 218
court, see preaching, court Tailor, Henry, printer, 38
Paul's Cross, 76, 80, 83, 85, 92, 169 ±70, 172 Taverner, John, chaplain to Bishop King of
restraints on, 169, 202 London, 64, 184
Sharpe, Kevin, 1, 3± 7, 14, 68, 124, 203, 221 Taylor, John, poet, 92, 114, 115, 116, 164 ±5,
Shepherd's Hunting (Wither), 113, 230, n.1 169
Shriver, Frederick, 82 Thirty Years' War, 3, 58, 64, 67, 69, 84, 160,
Sibbes, Richard, 183 164, 201, 229
Siebert, Frederick, 1, 2, 4, 6, 15, 36, 37, 92 see also Bohemia, Palatinate
silence and silencing Tillesley, Richard, 156, 158
anti-Calvinist strategy of, 16, 210, 211, 212, tithes, 125, 128, 130, 148 ±56
230, n.2, 241, n.132 jus divinum argument for, 148 ±9, 150, 152
rhetoric of, 201, 207 ±8, 210 ±15, 217, 222, Tithes Examined and proved to be due (Carleton),
223 148, 150
Smith, Miles, Bishop of Gloucester, 203 Titles of Honor (Selden), 65, 152
Somerset, Duke of, see Carr, Robert Toomer, Gerald, 250, n.92
Sommerville, Johann P., 10, 12, 126, 140, 145 Tower of London, 97, 98, 100, 101, 102, 133
Southampton, 3rd Earl of, see Wriothsley Tractatus de poteste Summi Ponti®cis (Bellarmine),
Southern, A. C., 35 77
Spain, 83, 99, 114 Tractatus Theologicus de Deo (Vorstius), 81
Prince Charles and Buckingham's trip to, treason, 32 ±3, 53, 93, 96, 97 ±102, 103, 126,
161, 163, 166, 182, 212 144
war against, 166± 7, 227 The Trew Law of Free Monarchies ( James VI
Sparke, Michael, puritan printer, 121 ±2 and I), 10, 11, 69, 71, 125 ± 6, 141
Stansby, William, printer, 98, 172, 179, 184, Treatise of the perpetuall visibilite of the true church
186, 225, 262, n.77, 262, n.92 (Abbot), 211
Star Chamber Trumbull, William, diplomat, 101
1586 Decree, 26 ±8, 29, 44, 52, 53, 55, 56, Tyacke, Nicholas, 73, 119, 122, 197, 201, 202,
58, 59, 62, 178, 185 203
court of, 20, 22, 25, 31, 55, 117, 122, 129, Tyler, Philip, 239, n.94
133, 136, 220
Stationers' Company, 1, 2, 4, 17, 18, 24 ±8, Union between England and Scotland, 119
39 ± 50
charter, 8, 21, 24 Venice
court of Assistants, 12, 24 ±5, 39, 40, 54, 55 ambassador's reports to, 71± 2, 75 ±6, 78,
Statutes, 6, 25, 27, 29, 32 ±3, 51, 90, 103, 107, 84 ±5, 114, 115, 161 ±76, 180 ± 1, 185,
109, 131 188
286 Index
Venice (cont.) Whitgift, John, Archbishop of Canterbury, 3,
Doge, 80 ±1, 181 20, 29, 36, 62, 63, 117
A View of the Civile and Ecclesiastical Law Williams John, Bishop of Lincoln, 198, 244,
(Ridley), 128, 149 ± 50, 152 n.51
Villiers, George, Duke of Buckingham, 19, 84, Winwood, Ralph, secretary to James I, 90
111, 113, 117, 163 ±4, 166 ±7, 174, 212, 227 Wither, George, poet, 45 ± 50, 55, 92, 113 ±16,
visit to Spain, 161 ±3, 166, 174, 182, 211 184, 190
Villiers, Mary, 208 patent of, 41, 44, 45 ±7, 50, 227, 228
Vorstius, Conrad, 79, 81± 2 Withers Motto, 184
Votivae Anglicae (Reynolds), 54, 56, 174 ±5, 185, Wolfe, John, printer, 26
189 ± 90 Wood, George, printer, 44 ± 6, 55
Votivae Coeli (Reynolds), 56, 170, 175 patent of, 41, 44
Vox Dei (Scott), 174 Wood, Roger, 43, 44
Vox Populi (Scott), 170, 173, 184, 186, 187 Wooton, Henry, 80 ± 1, 88
Vox Regis (Scott), 174 Works, James I, dating of, 231, n.28
Worrall, Thomas, chaplain to Bishop of
Waldegrave, Robert, printer to James VI of London, 66, 199
Scotland, 10, 11, 12, 36, 54 Wright, Louis B., 176
Ward, Roger printer, 25 Wriothsley, Henry, 3rd Earl of Southampton,
Ward, Samuel, Master of Sidney Sussex 84, 231, n.28, 252, n.7
College, Cambridge University, 183, writs
198, 203 habeas corpus, 131, 132, 147
Waters, George, printer at Dort, 116 praemunire, 131, 145, 150
Weiss, Adrian, 188 prohibition, 51, 130, 131, 132, 133, 134, 137,
Whately, William, 13, 53, 190 ±6, 215 142, 147, 149, 150, 154, 239, n.95
White, Edward, printer, 54 Wroth, Lady Mary, 92, 116± 18, 123, 124
White, Francis, Dean of Carlisle, 199, 208,
209, 211 ±12, 214 Yates, John, 198
White, Peter, 201, 203, 220, 221 Yelverton, Henry, Attorney-General, 155

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PRESS CENSORSHIP IN

CYNDIA SUSAN CLEGG

Cambridge University Press

c y n d i a s u s a n c l e g g is Distinguished Professor of English

CYNDIA SUSAN CLEGG

  

© Cyndia Susan Clegg 2004

First published in printed format 2001

ISBN 0-511-01771-5 eBook (netLibrary)

Acknowledgments page viii

Introduction Jacobean press censorship and the 1

APC Dascent, William Roche, ed. Acts of the Privy

Jacobean press censorship and the ``unsatisfying

Accounts of press censorship in Jacobean England generally partici-

The trope's widespread use and transformation exposed authority to

Authority, license, and law: the theory and

Understanding press censorship in Jacobean England requires recog-

tudor press censorship: the jacobean inheritance

the privy council and press control

The government's principal concern here has as much to do with

the stationers' company and privileged printing,

the court of high commission

ecclesiastical authorization, 1603 ± 1625

Instances also existed when authors obtained authorization. Daniel

Burning books as propaganda

Saint Pauls Crosse is drawne at large, and a number of men,

the political and religious ideology of james i

Other books joined these ± the works of the Dutch Arminian,

books and the oath of allegiance

Despite James's anger at these responses, the two books burned at

the taint of heresy, religious and political

not to ``blase abroad'' by punishment

The personal use of censorship in ``the wincy age''

Censorship in early modern England inevitably has been linked to

Censorship and the confrontation between prerogative

The historical interpretation of Jacobean politics has undergone

civil law versus the common law

the civil law and the common law: the censorship of

parliament and the royal prerogative: the

In some respects Salisbury's speech to the Commons supports

The most interesting aspect here is the remark that in ``some

the king and the common law: the censorship of

the church and the common law: the censorship of

Although Selden seemed to feel he had paci®ed the King, he had

The press and foreign policy, 1619±1624: ``all eies

The 1619 outbreak of continental war between Frederick, the newly

``the people who are deeply infected '' 4

Such sentiments in a broadside by a popular poet argue that Taylor

pulpits and press: holding it ``out to the utmost''

censorship and the unraveling of state hegemony

Ecclesiastical faction, censorship, and the rhetoric

At the end of James I's reign, the publication and censorship of

mountagu's books and contemporary reaction

ecclesiastical faction: durham house and

catholic conversion and controversialist response:

theological silence and silencing protestant

The subject of ``authority'' occupies an interesting subtext to

In its convoluted language and syntax, this passage appears to be

controlling ecclesiastical licensing

Although Fincham and Lake view the consequence of this interview

licensing laud? the consequences of durham house's

This study began by stating the premise that understanding press

1 authority, license, and law: the theory and

2 burning books as propaganda