Mercurius Britanicus on Charles I: an Exercise in Civil War Journalism and High Politics, August 1643 to May 1646* Joyce Macadam Watford
Mercurius Britanicus on Charles I: an exercise in civil war journalism and high politics, August 1643 to May 1646* Joyce Macadam Watford
Abstract This article examines in detail the sustained campaign of character assassination run by Mercurius Britanicus against Charles I. It illustrates the substance, style and provenance of Britanicus’s arguments; it then assesses the newsbook’s attacks in their chronological context.The article argues that Britanicus worked closely with the parliamentary war party grandees to discredit Charles publicly, to divide royalist opinion by revealing his weaknesses and mistakes, and to pressurize him into making peace on the radicals’ terms. Although Britanicus stopped short of calling outright for Charles’s deposition, this was the logical conclusion to be drawn from the newsbook’s comments.
On Monday 4 August 1645, readers of the London newsbook Mercurius Britanicus were confronted with a remarkable opening passage: Where is King Charles? What’s become of him?...some say...heran away to his dearly beloved Ireland; yes, they say he ran away out of his own Kingdome very Majestically. Others will have him erecting a new Monarchy in the Isle of Anglesey. A third sort there are which say he hath hid himself...therefore (for the satisfaction of my Countrymen) it were best to send Hue and Cry after him.1 Having couched in terms of public rumour its preliminary accusations that the cowardly king had abandoned his people and was now consorting with their worst enemies, Britanicus came directly to the point: Charles was ‘a wilful King, which hath gone astray these four years from his Parliament, with a guilty conscience, bloody hands, a heart full of broken vows and protestations’. He had effectively abdicated his throne. This editorial was no isolated act of reckless bravado on the part of Britanicus’s editor at the time, Marchamont Nedham.2 The ‘Hue and Cry’ represented one episode in the newsbook’s extended character assassination of Charles I that was unique in civil war journalism. During the war, direct personal criticism of the king became a notable
* The author is grateful to Prof. Blair Worden and Dr. Jason Peacey for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this article. She also wishes to thank the anonymous referees for this journal for their helpful references, comments and suggestions. 1 Mercurius Britanicus, xcii, 4 Aug. 1645, 825. 2 Nedham became editor of Mercurius Britanicus in Sept. 1644 (Lords Journals, viii. 321). He awaits a full scholarly biography. Joseph Frank’s monograph Cromwell’s Press Agent: a Critical Biography of Marchamont Nedham, 1620–78 (Lanham, Md., 1980) has been superseded by recent research. B.Worden’s ‘“Wit in a Roundhead”: the dilemma of Marchamont Nedham’, in Political Culture and Cultural Politics in Early Modern England, ed. S. D. Amussen and M. A. Kishlansky (Manchester, 1995), pp. 301–37, provides a stimulating and nuanced account of Nedham’s career between 1643 and 1651.
Copyright © 2011 Institute of Historical Research DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-2281.2010.00561.x Historical Research, vol. 84, no. 225 (August 2011) Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA. Mercurius Britanicus on Charles I, 1643–6 471 feature of the London serial press.3 Nevertheless, no other newsbook could match Britanicus’s sustained, hard-hitting and subtly-paced campaign. It was an exceptional enterprise, and one that could not have been undertaken without encouragement or direction at the highest political level.4 Britanicus’s ‘Hue and Cry’ has been described as ‘perhaps the most famous journalistic episode of the mid seventeenth century’.5 It was so controversial that it was still being recalled and discussed in coffee shops twenty years later.6 It provoked an immediate response from the house of lords, the body ultimately responsible for press censorship in the sixteen-forties:7 the day after publication, the peers jailed the newsbook’s deputy licenser, Thomas Audley, and its printer, Robert White; editor Nedham received a reprimand and a printed apology was ordered.8 Sir Roger Burgoyne, the Presbyterian M.P. for Bedfordshire, hoped that Britanicus ‘may smart to purpose’ in jail for being ‘too saucy and uncivil with the king’.9 The response of the newsbook’s parliamentarian detractors was to engineer Audley’s dismissal from his post.10 Royalist propagandists delighted in the discomfiture of their leading antagonist among the London press.11 The editorial is an outstanding piece of civil war political journalism yet it has received relatively little detailed scholarly attention. Recent academic interest in the early modern serial press has focused on the expansion of print culture and on the
3 J. Frank, The Beginnings of the English Newspaper, 1620–60 (Cambridge, Mass., 1961), pp. 65, 80, 112–13. 4 Frank, Beginnings,p.60; Worden, ‘“Wit in a Roundhead”’, p. 306; J. Peacey, Politicians and Pamphleteers: Propaganda and Politics during the English Civil Wars and Interregnum (Aldershot, 2004), pp. 151–2.The terminology used to describe the parliamentary factions during the first civil war is problematic because of the chronic fluidity of the political situation. When referring to the period before 1645, the present author has used the terms ‘the war party’,‘the militants’ and ‘the parliamentary radicals’ to describe the group around Lord Saye and Sele among the peers, and Sir Henry Vane the younger and solicitor Oliver St. John in the Commons. After the Uxbridge negotiations of Feb. 1645, contemporaries used the religious terms ‘Independent’ and ‘Presbyterian’ to describe the militant and moderate political factions respectively.The author has followed this convention. The shifting political situation meant that a group or individual might be considered as ‘radical’ at one point but not at another. By 1647, e.g., St. John was not a ‘radical’ like the Levellers, the sectaries or the rogue republican Henry Marten M.P., but a parliamentary moderate, a ‘royal Independent’ (V. Pearl, ‘The “royal Independents” in the English civil war’, Trans. Royal Hist. Soc., 5th ser., xviii (1968), 69–96,atpp.73, 75–81). 5 J. Peacey, ‘The struggle for Mercurius Britanicus: factional politics and the parliamentarian press, 1643–6’, Huntington Libr. Quart., lxviii (2005), 517–44,atp.535. 6 Worden, ‘“Wit in a Roundhead”’, p. 315. 7 A Transcript of the Register of the Worshipful Company of Stationers, 1640–1708, ed. G. E. B. Eyre and G. R. Rivington (3 vols., 1913–14), i. 71–229, passim; Peacey, ‘Struggle’, passim. Following the collapse of the prerogative court machinery for implementing press censorship, parliament arranged for the Stationers’ Company to continue its regulation of the press through a series of ordinances passed in 1642 and 1643. However, the peers increasingly took it upon themselves to call erring printers and editors to the bar of the House, to issue reprimands and jail sentences when they deemed it necessary (Peacey, Politicians,pp.138–48; D. Freist, Governed by Opinion: Politics and Religion and the Dynamics of Communication in Stuart London, 1637–45 (1997), pp. 47, 55–7, 71–3; S. Lambert, ‘The beginning of printing for the house of commons, 1640–2’, The Library, 6th ser., iii (1981), 43–61,atpp.44–5, 47; for press censorship in the later 1640s, see J. McElligott, Royalism, Print and Censorship in Revolutionary England (Woodbridge, 2007)). 8 Lords Journals, vii. 525, 527–8; British Library, E.296.(10.), Mercurius Britanicus his apologie to all well-affected people, 11 Aug. 1645. 9 Historical Manuscripts Commission, 7th Report, vii. 454, Sir Roger Burgoyne to Sir Ralph Verney, 7 Aug. 1645. 10 Brit. Libr., E.269.(20.), Aulicus his Hue and Cry sent forth after Britanicus, 13 Aug. 1645; Peacey, ‘Struggle’, pp. 536–7. 11 Brit. Libr. E.294.(31.), Mercurius Anti-Britanicus (1645), pp. 4–5, 7; P.W.Thomas, Sir John Berkenhead, 1617–89: a Royalist Career in Politics (Oxford, 1969), pp. 117–18.
Historical Research, vol. 84, no. 225 (August 2011) Copyright © 2011 Institute of Historical Research 472 Mercurius Britanicus on Charles I, 1643–6 ways in which news and propaganda were disseminated.12 Many studies have taken a distinctly literary or sociological approach.13 Joad Raymond, for example, has noted the emergence of a ‘public sphere’ in England in the sixteen-forties. He has asserted, however, that this Habermasian model requires refinement for use in the context of the civil war period.14 In contrast, the intimate relationship between newsbooks and parliamentarian politicians has been a somewhat neglected topic, with the exception of studies by A. N. B. Cotton, and the more recent and extensive work of Jason Peacey.15 The present author aims to contribute to this particular area through an assessment of Britanicus’s attacks on Charles I. This article examines Britanicus’s campaign with regard to its substance, its distinctive style, and the provenance of its arguments. It proposes a number of reasons for the newsbook’s enterprise in terms of civil war journalism and politics. A contextual analysis of the newsbook’s most notable comments illustrates the mechanics and progress of the campaign, and the article concludes by considering the impact of Britanicus’s extraordinary undertaking. There were several striking aspects of the ‘Hue and Cry’ that contributed to its notoriety among contemporaries. Its language, which was notable for the economy of its style, was overtly offensive – it was clearly intended to strip Charles of his subjects’ respect and loyalty – while the bitterness of its attack was shocking and its mockery repulsive. In these respects, the ‘Hue and Cry’ was representative of the rest of Britanicus’s assaults on Charles; the outstanding feature of this editorial was its spectacular vehemence, and its strong intimation that Charles was a failed monarch. Admittedly, the essence of the ‘Hue and Cry’s’ allegations was hardly original. Within months of its first publication in late August 1643, Britanicus was accusing Charles of deserting his parliament, of favouring delinquents, Catholics and foreigners, of abandoning Ireland to the Confederate rebels, of allowing the queen to promote civil war, his nephew Prince Rupert to commit atrocities against his subjects, his
12 A selection includes F.J. Levy,‘How information spread among the gentry, 1550–1640’, Jour. British Studies, xxi (1982), 11–24; R. P. Cust, ‘News and politics in early 17th-century England’, Past & Present, cxii (1986), 60–90; A. Fox, ‘Rumour, news and popular political opinion in Elizabethan and early Stuart England’, Historical Jour.,xl(1997), 597–620; M. Frearson, ‘The distribution and readership of London corantos in the 1620s’, in Serials and their Readers, 1620–1914, ed. R. Myers and M. Harris (Winchester, 1993), pp. 1–25; C. J. Sommerville, The News Revolution in England: Cultural Dynamics of Daily Information (Oxford, 1996); J. Raymond, ‘Irrational, impractical and unprofitable: reading the news in 17th-century Britain’, in Reading, Society and Politics in Early Modern England, ed. K. Sharpe and S. Zwicker (Cambridge, 2003), pp. 185–212. 13 Thomas; J. Raymond, The Invention of the Newspaper: English Newsbooks, 1641–9 (Oxford, 1996); J. Raymond, News, Newspapers and Society in Early Modern Britain (1999); J. Raymond, Pamphlets and Pamphleteering in Early Modern Britain (Cambridge, 2003). 14 J. Raymond,‘Describing popularity in early modern England’, Huntington Libr. Quart., lxvii (2004), 101–29, at pp. 126–9; P. Lake and S. C. A. Pincus, ‘Rethinking the public sphere in early modern England’, Jour. British Studies, xlv (2006), 270–92; D. Randall,‘Epistolary rhetoric, the newspaper, and the public sphere’, Past & Present, cxcviii (2008), 3–32; J. Peacey, ‘Print and public politics in 17th century England’, History Compass,v(2006), 85–111. 15 A. N. B. Cotton, ‘London newsbooks in the civil war: their political attitudes and sources of information’ (unpublished University of Oxford D.Phil. thesis, 1971); A. N. B. Cotton, ‘Cromwell and the self-denying ordinance’, History, lxii (1977), 211–31; ‘John Dillingham, journalist of the Middle Group’, Eng. Hist. Rev., xciii (1978), 817–34; J. Peacey, ‘Henry Parker and parliamentary propaganda in the English civil wars’ (unpublished University of Cambridge Ph.D. thesis, 1994); J. Peacey,‘The exploitation of captured royal correspondence and Anglo-Scottish relations in the British civil wars, 1645–6’, Scottish Hist. Rev., lxxix (2000), 213–32; J. Peacey,‘John Lilburne and the Long Parliament’, Historical Jour., lxiii (2000), 625–46; J. Peacey, ‘“Fiery spirits” and political propaganda: uncovering a radical press campaign of 1642’, Publishing History,lv(2004), 5–36; Peacey, Politicians, p. 1; J. Peacey,‘The management of civil war newspapers: auteurs, entrepreneurs and editorial control’, Seventeenth Century, xxi (2006), 99–127; Peacey, ‘Print and public politics’, pp. 95, 101, 102.
Copyright © 2011 Institute of Historical Research Historical Research, vol. 84, no. 225 (August 2011) Mercurius Britanicus on Charles I, 1643–6 473 bishops to bring in popery, and his evil counsellors to introduce tyranny.16 Neither was Britanicus the only publication to make such allegations against the king. In February 1643, the Kingdomes Weekly Intelligencer’s protests about the influence of Catholics and evil counsellors at court reflected badly on Charles himself when peace negotiations were in the offing.17 In May 1644, the tract A souldier’s catechisme listed Charles’s evil counsellors, his withdrawal from parliament, his untrustworthiness, and the malevolent role of the prelates and the Jesuits as factors that had contributed to the conflict.18 The view that Charles was untrustworthy was prevalent among his allies and enemies alike.19 Moreover, it was an opinion that was being voiced in public: a month before the ‘Hue and Cry’, the London journal Mercurius Civicus claimed that reconciling Charles’s public utterances with his private resolutions was like ‘matching light with dark’.20 Nevertheless, the ‘Hue and Cry’ was unusual for a newsbook editorial in its intimation that Charles should be held to account for his refusal to behave in a manner appropriate to a king of England. It followed that if the king failed to return to his duties to rule in an acceptable manner, he should renounce the throne. Some might conclude that he should be deposed. This was dangerous ground for an organ of the emerging serial press. The basic intention behind Britanicus’s character assassination of the king was to prove that Charles was a failed monarch. The attacks took a variety of forms. Often they criticized Charles indirectly, through the queen, or members of his inner circle, like George, Lord Digby.21 The bishops of the Church of England, as advisers to Charles in both the religious and secular spheres, became cat’s paws with which to swipe at the king.22 Royalist generals’ allegedly bloodthirsty behaviour on the battlefield reflected badly on their commander-in-chief.23 Britanicus’s most telling assaults, however, were those aimed at Charles himself. After the collapse of the peace negotiations at Uxbridge in February 1645, the newsbook was in despair:‘I hope all is wel in the Cranium and that he [Charles] remembers who he is; and that he meanes still to be our Soveraigne: yet I see but small Signes of it; for was there ever such adoe in this world to get a Prince into his Throne?’24 For Britanicus, Charles was tainted with the blood of his subjects.25 He was responsible for the financial ruin of his realm, had sunk so low as to pawn the crown jewels, and was a dissembler who could not be trusted to abide by any settlement agreed with him.26
16 Mercurius Britanicus,xv,7 Dec. 1643, 113–14. 17 Kingdomes Weekly Intelligencer, vii, 14 Feb. 1643, 54; viii, 21 Feb. 1643, 90 (mispag.). 18 Brit. Libr., E.1186.(1.), Robert Ram, A souldier’s catechisme (1644), pp. 2, 3, 4, 5, 14, 15. 19 Kingdomes Weekly Intellgencer, lxxxiii, 3 Dec. 1644, 664, 665, 666; Cardinal Rinuccini, Memoir, March 1646, repr. in S. R. Gardiner, History of the Great Civil War, 1642–9 (4 vols., 1987), iii. 55; Capt. Anthony Mildmay to his brother, Henry, 22 March 1648, repr. in William Clarke, The Clarke Papers, ed. C. H. Firth (2 vols., 1992), ii. 267–8. 20 Mercurius Civicus, cxi, 10 July 1645, 984. 21 Mercurius Britanicus, xcvi, 8 Sept. 1645, 858; cxxvii, 27 Apr. 1646, 1090, 1092; xxv, 6 March 1644, 192–3;l, 9 Sept. 1644, 391. 22 Mercurius Britanicus, xxii, 12 Feb. 1644, 171; lxxiii, 10 March 1645, 584. 23 Mercurius Britanicus, lxxvii, 7 Apr. 1645, 707; cxx, 2 March 1646, 1050; I. Roy, ‘Royalist reputations: the cavalier ideal and the reality’, in Royalists and Royalism during the English Civil Wars’, ed. J. McElligott and D. L. Smith (Cambridge, 2007), pp. 89–111,atpp.102, 110–11. 24 Mercurius Britanicus, lxxii, 3 March 1645, 575. 25 Mercurius Britanicus, lxvii, 27 Jan. 1645, 534. See P. Crawford, ‘“Charles Stuart, that Man of Blood”’, Jour. British Studies, xvi (1977), 41–61. 26 Mercurius Britanicus, lxviii, 3 Feb. 1645, 540; cxxv, 13 March 1646, 1095;xc,21 July 1645, 812, 813; xciv, 25 Aug. 1645, 844–5. See also Kingdomes Weekly Intelligencer, lxxxiii, 3 Dec. 1644, 664, 665, 666.
Historical Research, vol. 84, no. 225 (August 2011) Copyright © 2011 Institute of Historical Research 474 Mercurius Britanicus on Charles I, 1643–6
Ultimately, the king had lost his honour: his word was not worth thruppence.27 The loss of honour in a king was a grave allegation, for without it there could be no authority.28 Charles had behaved like a tyrant; he had abandoned his people: The King we know He is a rambling abroad, ruining the people in such a manner, that no man would beleeve them to be His Subjects . . . that he doth protect them [his subjects]...noman will be so mad to imagine, as long as He excludes His Parliament, the Representative Body of his Kingdome.29 Through its portrayal of the king as a weak human being, Britanicus was demystifying the office of sovereign and reducing Charles to the level of a political operator who was guilty of ineptitude and deceit. It was the antithesis of the king’s view of his government.30 It was also a reversal of the personal cult of the monarch that had been exploited by Charles through the court paintings of van Dyck and the Whitehall masques of the sixteen-thirties.31 For Britanicus, Charles as a ruler and as a man was a dismal failure. He was not indispensable: the prince of Wales and the king’s nephew, the elector palatine, were, the newsbook hinted darkly, possible alternatives. Britanicus was working within a purely secular, rational paradigm.While the political nation grappled with the dichotomy of the reign of the Lord’s anointed that was producing mayhem and disaster, the newsbook was assuming a version of kingship similar to that of the arch-exponent of deposition, George Buchanan, namely that of ‘a republican magistrate in fancy dress’.32 For Britanicus, the concept of the king-in- parliament was paramount:‘Charles is abroad, but his Majesty [is] really and eminently in the throne at Westminster.’ 33 And, according to leading Presbyterian apologist and lawyer William Prynne, parliament held the power of deposition.34 Britanicus’s campaign against Charles displayed several distinctive characteristics in terms of tactics and style. Some of these appeared in the ‘Hue and Cry’, thereby contributing to the editorial’s striking individuality. The journal’s targeting of a readership that was socially and intellectually inclusive dictated its choice of tactics:
27 Mercurius Britanicus, lxxv, 24 March 1645, 601. 28 M. E. James, ‘English politics and the concept of honour, 1485–1642’, Past & Present Supplement, iii (1978), 31, 35, 58. 29 Mercurius Britanicus, xix, 4 Jan. 1644, 152; xl, 24 June 1644, 318; quotation at Mercurius Britanicus, xxxv, 2 June 1645, 769–70. 30 See Brit. Libr., 8122.c.26, His Maiesties declaration to all his louing subjects...ofthecauses which moued him to dissolve the last parliament (1628), pp. 9, 12, 42–4. 31 K. M. Sharpe, ‘“So hard a text”: images of Charles I, 1612–1700’, Historical Jour., xliii (2000), 383–406,at pp. 385, 387, 389. 32 G. Burgess, ‘Scottish or British: politics and political thought in Scotland, c.1500–1707’, Historical Jour., xli (1998), 579–90,atp.584,n.15; A. H. Williamson, ‘Scotland and the rise of civic culture, c.1550–1650’, History Compass,iv(2006), 91–123,atpp.96, 110. 33 Mercurius Britanicus, lxxxv, 2 June 1645, 770 (original emphasis; Britanicus tended to use italics indiscriminately, and these have been kept in all quotations). 34 William Prynne, The soveraigne power of parliaments and kingdoms (1643), pt. i (Short-Title Catalogue...1641– 1700, comp. D.Wing (New York, 1945–57; 1994) (hereafter Wing), no. P 4087A), pp. 12, 38, 39, 43, 45, 80, 86, 93, 104–5); see also Brit. Libr., E.154.(51.), [Thomas May], A discourse concerning the success of former parliaments (1642), pp. 5–7, 11–12; Brit. Libr., E.119.(4.), Peter Bland, Resolved upon the Question (1642), pp. 15, 16. Bland swiftly retracted this view (A royall position whereby ’tis proved that ’tis against the Common laws of England to Depose a King (1642) (Wing, no. B 3163)). The fates of Edward II and Richard II could be interpreted as precedents for parliament’s deposing Charles I. However, neither of the bodies involved on those occasions were legally constituted parliaments (M. H. Keen, England in the Later Middle Ages: a Political History (1973), pp. 77, 298, 301; B.Wilkinson,‘The deposition of Richard II and the accession of Henry IV’, Eng. Hist. Rev.,liv(1939), 215–39). Henry Parker, arguably the most radical parliamentary polemicist of the early 1640s, denied that parliament had ever deposed a king of England but did not appear to rule out such action in the future ([Henry Parker], Brit. Libr., E.153.(26.), Observations upon some of his Majestie’s late answers and expresses (1642), p. 32).
Copyright © 2011 Institute of Historical Research Historical Research, vol. 84, no. 225 (August 2011) Mercurius Britanicus on Charles I, 1643–6 475 humour, ridicule, the graphic image and shock tactics (such as the dramatic accusation) had potentially universal impact.35 The idea of Charles bouncing round his kingdom like a tennis ball, for example, could generate amusement across the social, if not the political, spectrum.36 In contrast, with the king facing inevitable defeat in January 1646, Britanicus recalled the legend of the White King with a reminder to its readers of Charles’s fateful decision to wear white robes for his coronation; those robes were now spattered crimson and scarlet with his people’s blood.37 There was something here that all readers could understand: Charles as king was a lost cause. The ‘Hue and Cry’ conformed to this modus operandi. Having exposed the king’s allegedly pusillanimous character, the piece proceeded to make crude references to his stammer.38 Charles had been the butt of derogatory remarks and insinuations in the past: early in the reign, evidence of antipathy towards the king and his policies had emerged from insulting material that had circulated in manuscript form, and from legal cases against miscreants who had publicized their low opinion of him and the possibility of replacing him.39 Nevertheless, the scale on which Britanicus indulged in the unremitting public insulting of Charles I was unique. The newsbook’s economical style was carefully honed to generate mass appeal.40 Typical was the ambiguous, loaded phrase. In December 1643, with the offensive against Charles already under way, the journal attacked the king through one of his leading courtiers, and close associate of Queen Henrietta Maria, Henry Jermyn. Britanicus styled him ‘Jermyn the Mortimer’.41 This simple statement, if taken at face value, hinted that he was one of Charles’s evil counsellors, who misled the king and undermined his authority.A more subversive reading cast Charles as a cuckold who, in exposing himself to public scorn, raised doubts about his fitness to rule. If Jermyn’s was the role of a Mortimer, the inference was that Charles’s was that of Edward II, another failed monarch who, by coincidence, had suffered humiliating defeat at the hands of the Scots. On this level, the newsbook was aiming at readers familiar with precedent and history, as well as the lower orders whose appreciation of the reference was likely to centre on Charles being made to look ridiculous. Conceivably Britanicus was also insinuating that Charles, like Edward II, might face deposition. The manner in which the newsbook conducted its attack on Charles relied heavily on its serial format. With an appreciation that familiarity was essential for successful
35 J. Macadam, ‘Mercurius Britanicus: journalism and politics in the English civil war’ (2 vols., unpublished University of Sussex D.Phil. thesis, 2006), i. 23–5. 36 Mercurius Britanicus, lvi, 4 Nov. 1644, 446; cxx, 2 March 1646, 1049. The ‘tennis’ paradigm was already familiar through the masque The World Tossed at Tennis by Thomas Middleton and William Rowley, first performed and published in 1620. 37 Mercurius Britanicus,civ,19 Jan. 1646, 1004. See also L. G.Wickham Legg, English Coronation Records (1901), p. 245; H. Rusche, ‘Prophecies and propaganda, 1641–51’, Eng. Hist. Rev., lxxxiv (1969), 752–70; Brit. Libr., E.4.(27.),William Lilly, A Prophesy of the White King: and dreadfull dead-man explaned (1644), pp. 6–22; Mr.William Lilly’s History of his Life and Times,(2nd edn., 1715), p. 45.The prophesy of the White King may date from the reign of King Stephen in the 12th century. It held that a king who wore white robes for his coronation would be doomed. Lilly was apparently identifying the White King with Charles I. The author is grateful to her reviewer for this information. 38 Mercurius Britanicus, xcii, 4 Aug. 1645, 825. 39 The National Archives of the U.K.: Public Record Office, SP 16/142/92, 93, 102;SP16/395/40; Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, 1629–31,p.17; Cal. S.P.Dom. 1640–1,pp.10, 53; Calendar of State Papers,Venetian, 1640–2, pp. 130, 136, 200;T. Coggeswell, ‘Underground verse and the transformation of early Stuart political culture’, in Amussen and Kishlansky, pp. 277–300,atp.285. 40 Macadam, ‘Mercurius Britanicus’, i. 29–33. 41 Mercurius Britanicus, xvii, 21 Dec. 1643, 131. Lord Mortimer, the lover of Edward II’s queen, Isabella, was instrumental in that monarch’s deposition.
Historical Research, vol. 84, no. 225 (August 2011) Copyright © 2011 Institute of Historical Research 476 Mercurius Britanicus on Charles I, 1643–6 propaganda, the journal strove to educate the uninitiated through frequent repetition of its fundamental arguments. On three consecutive weeks in November 1644, then again in March and June 1645, Britanicus blamed Charles directly for the miseries that had befallen him.42 Over the final winter of the war, a recurring theme was that of the blood the king had spilt.43 The most conspicuous example, however, of Britanicus’s exploitation of its serial structure was its publication, over a period of eight weeks, of Charles’s cabinet papers, captured at Naseby: I will shew you more Tricks here, than ever Hocus-Pocus did...atBartholomew Faire...itwill yield us at least a Moneths sport; and I mean to anatomize every Paper, week after week, till I have gone quite through; keeping still to my old Motto, ‘For the better Information of the People’.44 The result was a devastating critique of the king, supported by irrefutable evidence from Charles himself. The provenance of many of Britanicus’s arguments against Charles I is surprising for a publication that is generally classified as ephemeral. For example, the allusions to the king’s two bodies, justified resistance, the right of conquest, salus populi and singulis major, universis minor, which contributed significantly to the newsbook’s offensive against Charles, are noteworthy and require explanation.45 A simplistic view of the newsbook’s forays into the abstract is that they represented the ostentatious intellectual ambition of Marchamont Nedham. A graduate of All Souls College, Oxford, Nedham flaunted his academic background and talent for political comment and analysis in the pages of his first publication.46 A more subtle interpretation suggests that Britanicus’s exploitation of classical, legal, political and historical sources was a means of appealing to the educated elite: it was unusual for a newsbook to cite Aristotle, Lipsius, Bodin, Tacitus, George Buchanan or John Selden, to insult civil lawyers as ‘the excrement of Justinian’, or to compare the various royalist theatres of command with the Anglo-Saxon Heptarchy.47 The complexity of the Jermyn reference should warn us against interpreting Britanicus’s content on the most basic level, and demonstrates that the newsbook was working hard to attract an inclusive audience. Nevertheless, Britanicus’s scholarly references were presented in a manner that was clearly accessible to those who hitherto had been largely ignorant of such erudite topics. For example, the newsbook’s adoption of a familiar catechizing format of ‘Doubts’ and ‘Satisfactions’ enabled it to exploit a vehicle through which it could deliver its arguments in a succinct, and often forceful, manner. Edition twenty-six, for example, posed the fundamental question: ‘What kinde of Government is this Kingdom?’ The answer was characteristically concise: ‘A mixed Government, of Monarchy, Aristocracy, and Democracy, for if the two last had no share or co-ordination in the Government but consultive, it were purely tyrannicall, and arbitrary in one who might do and undoe at pleasure.’48 Such comments represented
42 Mercurius Britanicus, lvi, 4 Nov. 1644, 446; lvii, 11 Nov. 1644, 454; lviii, 18 Nov. 1644, 462; lxxiii, 10 March 1645, 586; lxxxviii, 30 June 1645, 796. 43 Mercurius Britanicus, cx, 22 Dec. 1645, 969; cxiv, 19 Jan. 1646, 1004; cxvi, 2 Feb. 1646, 1018, 1023. 44 Mercurius Britanicus,xc,21 July 1645, 809. 45 Mercurius Britanicus, lxxxv, 2 June 1645, 769–70; xix, 4 Jan. 1644, 152; cxvi, 2 Feb. 1646, 1024; lxxiv, 17 March 1645, 594; cxiv, 19 Jan. 1646, 1007. 46 Mercurius Britanicus, ciii, 3 Nov. 1645, 913; cvii, 1 Dec. 1645, 945; cxxiii, 30 March 1646, 1073. 47 Mercurius Britanicus, xxvii, 18 March 1644, 208; cxxx, 18 May 1646, 1111; lxxx, 28 Apr. 1645, 731; xxii, 12 Feb. 1644, 174; xxx, 8 Apr. 1644, 234. 48 Mercurius Britanicus, xxv, 6 March 1644, 198.
Copyright © 2011 Institute of Historical Research Historical Research, vol. 84, no. 225 (August 2011) Mercurius Britanicus on Charles I, 1643–6 477 an integral part of Britanicus’s offensive against the king.The newsbook’s use of these themes, whether the conscious applications of ideas from the intellectual sphere or merely the repetition of standard tropes from the contemporary polemical scene, developed from Britanicus’s intention, unlike that of most other London newsbooks, to prioritize propaganda over news. Several of Britanicus’s essential criticisms of Charles’s rule, especially those relating to alleged royal absolutism, were common to many opposition tracts of the early sixteen-forties.49 Some, however, enjoyed a much older pedigree, notably those concerning the failed monarchs Edward II, Richard II and, to a lesser extent, Henry III.50 The close similarities between many of Britanicus’s themes, those of Henry Parker, the parliamentary militants’ leading polemicist of the first civil war, and those of Samuel Rutherford, the foremost intellectual voice of the Scottish Covenanters, are particularly noticeable. Parker’s uncompromising Observations upon some of his Majestie’s late answers and expresses touched on the origin of political power in the people, the king’s subordination to the law, the ‘conditionate and fidiciary’ power of the monarchy, contract theory, the usurping of parliament’s traditional role by ‘evil counsellors’, the king’s two bodies, self-preservation and the Houses’ defence of the people against arbitrary tyranny.51 Rutherford’s Lex, Rex cited salus populi, the legitimacy of self-preservation, the force of the law of nature, parliament’s authority in the absence, and without the consent, of the king, and the origins of political power in the people.52 Britanicus’s exploitation of the same principles against Charles I arose, as we shall see, from its particular political associations.53
What were the aims of Britanicus’s exercise against Charles I? The newsbook’s role as counter-propaganda to Oxford’s Mercurius Aulicus is well documented.54 Furthermore, the journal’s name, together with its political affiliations, indicates that it was initially intended to promote the Solemn League and Covenant.55 As ever, Britanicus’s performance should be considered on several different levels.Taken at face value, the newsbook’s polemic was intended to sustain and encourage public morale.56 Military victory required sufficient popular enthusiasm for the cause to meet the constant demands for men and materiel, to acquiesce in spiralling levels of taxation, and to tolerate the disruption to trade and the economic, social and physical hardships
49 J. Raymond, ‘Popular representations of Charles I’, in The Royal Image: Representations of Charles I, ed. T.W. Corns (Cambridge, 1999), pp. 47–73,atpp.51–7. 50 Brit. Libr., E.122.(23.), Anon., Certain Observations touching the two great Offices of the Senechalsey or High-Stewardship and High-Constableship of England (1642); E.155.(15.),A Well-wisher to the common-wealth, The life and death of King Richard II (1642); E.38.(11.), The troublesome life and raigne of King Henry the Third (attrib. by George Thomason to Sir Robert Cotton, 1642); Keen, pp. 51–2, 79; J. S. A. Adamson, ‘The baronial context of the English civil war’, Trans. Royal Hist. Soc., 5th ser., xl (1990), 93–120,atp.104. The author is grateful to Dr. Peacey for the reference on Richard II. 51 [Henry Parker], Observations,pp.1, 2, 4, 25, 27, 30, 32, 44, 47. 52 Brit. Libr., E.11.(5.), Samuel Rutherford, Lex, Rex: the Law and the Prince (1644), pp. 150, 218, 219, 221, 227, 270, 326–7, 377, 417, 421. 53 Mercurius Britanicus, lx, 9 Dec. 1644, 478; lxxiv, 17 March 1645, 594; lxxvii, 7 Apr. 1645, 707; cxviii, 16 Feb. 1646, 1036; cxx, 2 March 1646, 1052. 54 Thomas, pp. 17–18, 31, 37–9, 238–44; Frank, Beginnings,pp.48–51, 58–9, 75–7; Peacey, Politicians,pp.189–90. 55 Macadam, ‘Mercurius Britanicus’, ii. 4–11. 56 See M. Braddick, ‘Mobilisation, anxiety and creativity in England during the 1640s’, in Liberty, Authority, Formality: Political Ideas and Culture, 1600–1900, ed. J. Morrow and J. Scott (Exeter, 2008), pp. 175–94,atpp.175–6, 182, 193.
Historical Research, vol. 84, no. 225 (August 2011) Copyright © 2011 Institute of Historical Research 478 Mercurius Britanicus on Charles I, 1643–6 that the war entailed. Specifically, the issue of army morale was crucial: desertion remained a major problem for both sides and editor Nedham for one was well aware of the dangers of a bored and disenchanted soldiery. Commenting on a recent ordinance recalling parliamentary troops to their colours, Britanicus’s editor declared, ‘a discontented souldier lurking at home, is worse than an open enemy abroad’.57 In propaganda terms, the situation called for a scapegoat for the nation’s suffering. The king was the obvious candidate. Apart from his official role, and despite his deep sense of duty and belief in the justice of his cause, Charles suffered from feelings of personal inadequacy and a lack of confidence in his own judgement.58 He was, moreover, acutely image-conscious.These factors combined to render him a promising target for black propaganda of a highly personal nature. As well as providing entertainment for parliament’s supporters and, it was hoped, for those who were uncommitted to either side, Britanicus’s denigration of the king’s performance and revelations of behaviour unbecoming in a monarch were designed to spread disillusionment among royalists, and to persuade potential waverers to come over to parliament.59 A basic consideration for any civil war editor was the never-ending requirement to fill eight pages of print every week.After the battle of Langport in July 1645, there was little military action to cover: the mopping-up operations that continued well into the following year did not make for stimulating reportage.There was little to record on the political front either, as Charles declined to surrender unconditionally and parliament rejected his peace overtures. With no end in sight to the nation’s travails, Britanicus relied increasingly on its verbal offensive against Charles in an attempt to bolster waning public interest, to counter the prevailing desire for peace at almost any price, and, incidentally, to exploit a subject that it hoped would provide arresting copy on a weekly basis. There was, furthermore, a political dimension to the campaign. Britanicus’s association with the Westminster war party was a crucial factor in the newsbook’s survival: its editors relied on the patronage of that faction’s leadership for protection against the moderates in the house of lords who sought either to control or to shut down the journal.60 In the case of the ‘Hue and Cry’, Britanicus’s punishment was extremely light: the newsbook lost only one edition. Less favoured journals, like the Spie, were marginalized to the point of extinction; less politically astute publications, like the Parliament Scout, were closed down permanently with considerably less justification.61 Britanicus enjoyed more positive benefits from the relationship with the Independent grandees. Its exclusive serial publication of selections from the cabinets of the king and Lord Digby highlighted its privileged position regarding information from the parliamentary executive, the committee of both kingdoms. The former haul provided
57 Mercurius Britanicus, lxxx, 28 Apr. 1645, 736. 58 C. S. Russell, The Causes of the English Civil War (Oxford, 1990), pp. 196, 204–5. 59 Mercurius Britanicus, xx, 11 Apr. 1644, 159 (mispag.); xlix, 2 Sept. 1644, 384. 60 Mercurius Britanicus’s demise coincided with the parliamentary radical leadership’s loss of their majority in the house of lords on 18 May 1646. It was closed down by order of the House (Lords Journals, viii. 319, 321, 325, 341). 61 Lords Journals, vii. 525, 527–8, 539; Mercurius Britanicus, xxiii, 19 Feb. 1644, 175–6 on its rival, the Spie, which closed in May 1644; Frank, Beginnings,pp.61–2;Thomas, p. 251. Parliament Scout closed in Feb. 1645, immediately before the Uxbridge negotiations (Lords Journals, vii. 164); Mercurius Britanicus, lxviii, 3 Feb. 1645, 539.
Copyright © 2011 Institute of Historical Research Historical Research, vol. 84, no. 225 (August 2011) Mercurius Britanicus on Charles I, 1643–6 479 the factual basis for the allegations contained in the ‘Hue and Cry’.62 For their part, Britanicus’s patrons had at their disposal an organ of the serial press that could advocate their policies, such as the Solemn League and Covenant, to an audience that was broad in both social and geographical terms.63 The grandees in question were the group in the Commons around John Pym, his successors Sir Henry Vane the younger and Oliver St. John, and among the peers, Lord Saye and Sele. The connections between Britanicus, Marchamont Nedham and Lord Saye have already been established. The links between Vane and St. John, the intelligence experts on the committee of both kingdoms, and Britanicus under its first editor, and later deputy licenser, Thomas Audley, have also been explored.64 Pym, St. John and Saye had been prominent figures in the parliamentary opposition to Charles since the late sixteen-twenties. Their resistance to the forced loan, the dissolution of parliament in 1629 and ship money had involved them in the dissemination of opposition material, mostly in manuscript form, a process at which they became adept.65 Vane, who had established a reputation for radicalism during his governorship of Massachusetts in the mid sixteen-thirties, joined this faction in the Long Parliament.66 From 1640, these ‘fiery spirits’ became proficient in manipulating the press to generate opposition to Charles outside parliament. The printing of the Grand Remonstrance in November 1641, and a series of radical pamphlets published between July and December 1642 that included Parker’s Observations, demonstrated their skill in this area.67 These pamphlets were published by the printing house of Robert White and George Bishop that later produced Britanicus and its closest associates on the London scene, the Kingdomes Weekly Intelligencer and the Parliament Scout; they aimed to undermine the king by attacking him personally, by condemning his choice of
62 Brit. Libr. E.297.(17.), Mercurius Anti-Britanicus (1645), pp. 25, 30; Mercurius Britanicus,xc,21 July 1645, 809; xc–xcvii, 15 Sept. 1645, passim; cxxiv–cxxx, 6 Apr.–18 May 1646, passim. Other newsbooks largely eschewed Charles’s correspondence (Perfect Diurnall,c,30 June 1645, 792–3; Kingdomes Weekly Intelligencer,cv,24 June 1645, 845). Mercurius Britanicus and Kingdomes Weekly Intelligencer appear to have operated a pact whereby the former concentrated on propaganda while recommending the Intelligencer to its readers for detailed, accurate, factual reporting (Mercurius Britanicus, xxii, 12 Feb. 1644, 175; xxiii, 19 Feb. 1644, 180). 63 In Jan. 1644, Mercurius Britanicus changed its usual day of publication from Tuesday to Monday; this move enabled its publishers to catch the Tuesday post to the provinces. 64 Mercurius Anti-Britanicus, 11 Aug. 1645,p.9; Frank, Beginnings,pp.60–1; Cotton, ‘Newsbooks’, p. 22; Peacey, Politicians,pp.190–1; Macadam, ‘Mercurius Britanicus’, i. 45, 74–5, 103–5; ii. 4, 9–11, 15–16, 23, 24–5, 36, 43, 47–8, 53–4, 70–2.The precise mechanics of the political patronage under which Britanicus operated are impossible to determine. Despite its obvious usefulness, the politicians regarded any public association with an organ of the press as demeaning. Likewise, it was unacceptable for a newsbook to appear to be ‘in the pocket’ of a politician or a faction (Parliament Scout, lii, 20 June 1644, 418–19; Spie, xxi, 20 June 1644, 165; Cotton,‘Dillingham’, pp. 819, 821). Nevertheless, Britanicus undoubtedly possessed special privileges that were essential to its enterprise, and these related directly to its contacts at Westminster. 65 R. Cust, The Forced Loan and English Politics, 1626–8 (Oxford, 1987), p. 334; Cust,‘News’, p. 189. See also the relevant entries in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004)
Historical Research, vol. 84, no. 225 (August 2011) Copyright © 2011 Institute of Historical Research 480 Mercurius Britanicus on Charles I, 1643–6 advisers, the episcopate, and his alleged abuse of the prerogative.The exploitation and guidance of a serial publication were a logical extension of these activities. Britanicus was the ideal vehicle. Britanicus’s patrons could also benefit from the experience of other radical elements within the underground press that was operating in London in 1640. David Como has revealed the connection between a secret publishing operation and the broadcasting of pro-Scottish literature in England during the Bishops’ Wars.68 One Englishman involved in the distribution of such material was Britanicus’s future editor, Thomas Audley.69 Throughout the Bishops’ Wars, the Scots Covenanters had conducted an expert propaganda campaign through the efforts of writers and organizers of the calibre of Alexander Henderson and Johnston of Wariston, ‘the Covenanters’ spin doctor’ and a future member of the committee of both kingdoms.70 The English parliamentary radicals had cultivated contacts with the Scots Covenanters during the conflict. Their military alliance with the Scots through the Solemn League and Covenant of August 1643, which Britanicus was launched in part to promote, emerged from these earlier exchanges.71 It would appear, therefore, that the striking similarities already noted between the polemic of Britanicus, Parker’s Observations and Rutherford’s Lex, Rex were unlikely to have been purely coincidental. Parker was Saye’s nephew and client, while Wariston sponsored Lex, Rex; it was published as Nedham assumed Britanicus’s editorship in the early autumn of 1644.72 These complex relationships are crucial to an understanding of Britanicus’s treatment of the king. Parliamentary doubts about reaching a binding settlement with Charles plagued attempts at negotiations. The revelations of the king’s cabinet over the Uxbridge treaty demonstrated that such suspicions were amply justified. For the parliamentary radicals, the potential for a newsbook to undermine Charles’s position through adverse publicity rendered it a useful, if unconventional, weapon on the diplomatic front. Britanicus’s performance therefore stood to reinforce war party efforts to force Charles to come to terms. From the autumn of 1645, the Independents were aware of the king’s resignation to martyrdom.73 They were also alert to the danger of being
68 T.N.A.: P.R.O., SP 16/456/43; D. R. Como,‘Secret printing, the crisis of 1640, and the origins of civil war radicalism’, Past & Present, cxcvi (2007), 37–82,atpp.46, 55–9; Raymond, Pamphlets,pp.171–92; C. S. Russell, The Fall of the British Monarchies (Oxford, 1991), pp. 68–70. 69 Mercurius Academicus, iii, 3 Jan. 1646, 30–1. 70 J. Coffey, ‘Johnston, Sir Archibald, Lord Wariston (bap. 1611,d.1663)’, O.D.N.B.
Copyright © 2011 Institute of Historical Research Historical Research, vol. 84, no. 225 (August 2011) Mercurius Britanicus on Charles I, 1643–6 481 outflanked by the Scots in their attempts to negotiate privately with Charles.74 In November, the radicals secretly presented him with generous terms which they hoped he would accept, particularly if he were convinced of the possibility of deposition in favour of a more malleable candidate.75 At this juncture, as we shall see, Britanicus was acting as a public ‘stick’ to match the private ‘carrot’ of the Independent propositions.76 As well as pressurizing Charles, Britanicus worked to exacerbate the factionalism that bedevilled the enemy camp and to prise the king away from the more extreme elements within his inner circle.77 If Charles refused to ‘come in to parliament’ of his own volition, there were moderate counsellors, including Lords Hertford, Richmond, Southampton and Dorset, who believed that the military option was not viable and that peace talks, in some shape or form, were essential. After Naseby and his own surrender of Bristol, Prince Rupert became ‘much inclined to a happy peace’.78 Some, among them Lords Wilmot and Savile, tried unsuccessfully to bypass the king to make contact with the parliamentarians and were duly punished for their pains.79 In November 1645, Hertford, Dorset, Southampton and Lindsey, exasperated by Charles’s rejection of the Independents’ proposals, approached Westminster with an offer to surrender the king in return for the restoration of their property.Their action goaded Charles into writing to parliament himself, with a request for a personal treaty.80 There was scope here for Britanicus to attempt to undermine the loyalty of Charles’s supporters by damaging his credibility, and to encourage those royalists who genuinely sought a mutually acceptable accommodation.81 Throughout this process, the newsbook was in a position to benefit from its connections with the war party grandees to gain information about royalist political circles:Vane’s name has been linked with a number of plots involving undercover contacts with royalist elements that would have proved instructive about the state of Oxford politics, and Saye is known to have undertaken secret negotiations in May 1645 to secure the early surrender of Oxford.82 Was the ‘Hue and Cry’ specifically, and Britanicus’s campaign in general, hinting at Charles’s deposition, or was the newsbook suggesting something more subtle, the removal from the king of the monarchy’s extensive prerogative powers that lay beyond parliament’s remit? It would be naive to suppose that deposition was not the subject of occasional private conversations in the backroom at Britanicus. Moreover, it is inconceivable that the newsbook’s authors were not fully aware of the implications of their public remarks about Charles’s disastrous rule and his personal unsuitability for the role of monarch.Was the newsbook being encouraged in this course by theWestminster
74 Gardiner, iii. 3–4, 12, 15–16; Montreuil, i. 22, 59; D. A. Scott, Politics and War in the Three Stuart Kingdoms, 1637–49 (Basingstoke, 2004), pp. 104–6. 75 Mercurius Britanicus, cviii, 8 Dec. 1645, 955; Montreuil, i. 68, 106, 109, 125.On7 Dec. Charles ordered the prince of Wales to leave England (Gardiner, iii. 18). 76 Mercurius Britanicus, cix, 15 Dec. 1645, 966. 77 Mercurius Britanicus, cviii, 8 Dec. 1645, 955. 78 Col. John Butler to Sir William Waller, 15 Sept. 1645,repr.inThe Nicholas Papers: Correspondence of Sir Edward Nicholas, Secretary of State,i:1641–52, ed. Sir G. F.Warner (Camden Soc., 2nd ser., xl, 1886), p. 65. The author owes this reference to Dr. Ian Roy. Mercurius Britanicus, xcix, 29 Sept. 1645, 882; cviii, 8 Dec. 1645, 955. 79 Diary of the Marches of the Royal Army during the Great Civil War, kept by Richard Symonds, ed. C. E. Long (Camden Soc., old ser., lxxiv, 1859), pp. 108–9; Brit. Libr., E.7.(27.), The Accusation Given by his Majestie (1644); Mercurius Britanicus,l,9 Sept. 1644, 392–5; Parliament Scout, lxxxiv, 30 Jan. 1645, 676; Gardiner, ii. 114, 181, 212; M. Mahoney,‘The Savile affair and the politics of the Long Parliament’, Parliamentary Hist., vii (1988), 212–27. 80 Smith, pp. 126–7; Gardiner, iii. 16–17. 81 Mercurius Britanicus, lxxxix, 7 July 1645, 801;xc,21 July 1645, 812. 82 Rowe, pp. 42–5; Mahoney, pp. 213, 218–20;V. Pearl, ‘London puritans and Scotch fifth columnists: a mid 17th-century phenomenon’, in Studies in London History, ed. A. E. J. Hollaender and W.Kellaway (1969), 317–31, at pp. 318, 319.
Historical Research, vol. 84, no. 225 (August 2011) Copyright © 2011 Institute of Historical Research 482 Mercurius Britanicus on Charles I, 1643–6 grandees? Those experienced political operatorsVane and Saye would undoubtedly have considered the possibility of actual deposition, if only to dismiss it as impractical.Were they,nevertheless, prepared to use Britanicus to make public threats about the possible loss of his crown in order to concentrate Charles’s mind on making peace? The answers to these questions lie in the nature and variety of Britanicus’s attacks on Charles, and the political, diplomatic and military contexts in which those attacks were launched. The pacing of the campaign was dictated partly by the turn of events, the supply of information from Westminster, and the fortunes of the parliamentarian war party.At the outset, a major influence on its content was the radical-sponsored Solemn League and Covenant: Britanicus’s first edition coincided with the arrival in London of the document that Vane had been instrumental in negotiating in Edinburgh. Article III of the treaty bound ‘engagers’ to ‘preserve and defend the King’s Majesty’s person and authority, in the preservation and defence of the true religion and liberties of the kingdoms’. There were ‘no thoughts or intentions to diminish his Majesty’s just power and greatness’. These phrases provided guidelines within which Britanicus could operate, while offering sufficient latitude for penetrating comment for, as the republican Thomas Chaloner was to remind the Scots in 1646: ‘The Covenant ties you to maintaine in the first place the Rights of Parliament and the liberties of the Kingdome; and in the second place the Kings [sic] Person and Authority; and that onely in defence of the former, and not otherwise.’83 The Scottish alliance, with its overtones of strict Presbytery and treasonable political associations, was a difficult subject to promote against Oxford propaganda.84 However, royalist embarrassment over the near-simultaneous Irish Cessation, which caused irrevocable damage to Charles’s reputation, gave the parliamentarians a welcome opportunity to counter-attack. Henceforth, while Britanicus regularly targeted the queen and the king’s ‘evil counsellors’, it also alleged that the misuse of the prerogative, the arming of papists, the preference for the Irish rebels over the English parliament, the outbreak of war and the growth of tyranny had all occurred on Charles’s watch. The king was ultimately responsible. His subjects, represented by parliament, had lawfully resorted to arms to defend themselves.85 From the outset, then, although Britanicus operated originally within the existing framework of English and Scottish polemic against Charles, its tone placed it firmly at the uncompromising end of the parliamentary spectrum.86 By mid January 1644, the main elements of the offensive against Charles I were in place. At this juncture, however, the hitherto regular Britanicus disappeared from the streets for nearly three weeks. There are several possible explanations for this gap. Nedham’s services were required elsewhere before the publication of his Check to the Checker of Britannicus, a public defence of Nathaniel Fiennes over his surrender of Bristol the previous summer.87 Britanicus’s belligerent attitude to the king had already attracted attention and some of the hostility generated was coming from parliamentary ranks.88 The silence may have been a discreet one.A more likely explanation lies in the
83 Brit. Libr., E.361.(7.), Thomas Chaloner, An Answer to the Scotch Papers, 10 Nov. 1646,p.14. See also Mercurius Britanicus, xlvi, 5 Aug. 1644, 366. 84 Mercurius Aulicus, 7 Sept. 1643,pp.495–6; 10 Sept. 1643,pp.504–5; 3 Oct. 1643,p.558; 26 Oct. 1643, pp. 609–10, 611; 9 Nov. 1643,p.640. 85 Mercurius Britanicus, ix, 26 Oct. 1643, 71, 72;xv,7 Dec. 1643, 113–14; xvii, 21 Dec. 1643, 129–30; xviii, 28 Dec. 1643, 144; xix, 4 Jan. 1644, 152. 86 Brit. Libr., E.241 and E.243, An Exact Collect of the Remonstrances, ed. Edward Husbands (1643). 87 Brit. Libr., E.34.(18.) [Marchamont Nedham], A Check to the Checker of Britannicus (1644). 88 See below, n. 107.
Copyright © 2011 Institute of Historical Research Historical Research, vol. 84, no. 225 (August 2011) Mercurius Britanicus on Charles I, 1643–6 483 existing diplomatic situation: January 1644 saw a series of developments known as the Ogle, Brooke and Lovelace plots. At such a sensitive time, it is conceivable that Vane, whose name emerged in association with the Lovelace undertaking, insisted that Britanicus withdraw publication to avoid complications.89 Similar gestures occurred in December 1644, when Charles allegedly silenced Aulicus temporarily to improve the diplomatic atmosphere;90 in February 1645, when the Kingdomes Weekly Intelligencer ceased publication during the Uxbridge treaty;91 in June 1645, when Britanicus missed a week following Saye’s involvement with the royalist renegade peer, Lord Savile; and again in March 1646, when Vane was in contact with the king through Secretary Nicholas. Equally significant was the date of Britanicus’s first reincarnation: on 5 February, the newsbook’s reappearance on the bookstalls coincided with the ordinance for universal subscription to the Covenant, followed within a fortnight by the institution of the committee of both kingdoms. Both these radical measures would benefit greatly from a renewed onslaught on the king, the first to encourage engagement to the oath, the second to justify parliament’s new executive machinery to administer the government in the king’s absence. Britanicus’s services were once again in demand. The revamping of the newsbook also coincided with some kind of palace revolution at the printing house of George Bishop and Robert White. Perhaps antagonized by the increasingly extremist tone of the firm’s newsbooks, the Intelligencer, the Parliament Scout and Britanicus, the Presbyterian Bishop broke with White to establish his own business. A week later, responsibility for licensing Britanicus was removed from the Stationers’ Company licenser, Henry Walley; instead, the newsbook was to be licensed ‘by order of the Lord General’, the earl of Essex. Walley’s demotion marked the beginning of a power struggle that was to last throughout the newsbook’s run between the leaders of the war party and their moderate rivals, led by the earl of Essex.92 The lord general’s action was undoubtedly occasioned by Britanicus’s belligerency and in particular by its attitude towards the king. His move was one in a series undertaken in the early months of 1644 by Essex on the one hand, and Vane and St. John on the other, over such issues as the lord general’s uninspiring military leadership, and the parliamentary radicals’ unofficial dealings with the royalists.93 While Britanicus was being caught up in internal parliamentary politics, its main concern remained the propaganda war with the royalists. The summoning of the Oxford parliament in January 1644 had prompted the newsbook to attack the supposedly aggressive, deceitful king.94 During the following month, however, the prospect of possible negotiations on an official level forced the resurrected Britanicus to divert its attention away from Charles personally, as there was little to be gained and much to lose by alienating moderate opinion on both sides of the political divide. The newsbook therefore redirected its offensive towards the king’s evil
89 Commons Journals, iii. 358; Mercurius Britanicus, xx, 11 Jan. 1644, 159 (mispag.); Gardiner, i. 266, 268, 269, 274, 275. 90 Mercurius Britanicus, lx, 9 Dec. 1644, 471; Kingdomes Weekly Intelligencer, lxxxiii, 3 Dec. 1644, 666; Mercurius Civicus, lxxix, 12 Dec. 1644, 747. 91 The Kingdomes Weekly Intelligencer lost production between 28 Jan. and 11 March 1645. 92 Peacey, ‘Struggle’, passim. 93 W. G. Palmer, ‘Oliver St. John and the “Middle Group” in the Long Parliament, 1643–5: a reappraisal’, Albion,xiv(1982), 20–6 at pp. 23–6; Pearl, ‘St. John’, pp. 504–5, 507, 508, 511–12. 94 Mercurius Britanicus, xix, 4 Jan. 1644, 152; xx, 11 Jan. 1644, 160 (mispag.).
Historical Research, vol. 84, no. 225 (August 2011) Copyright © 2011 Institute of Historical Research 484 Mercurius Britanicus on Charles I, 1643–6 counsellors, including the Oxford assembly, the prelates who had so abused the royal prerogative, and the papists, while stoutly maintaining the Westminster parliament’s fulfilment of its duty to defend the people and ‘keep the nation from confusion’.95 Such support for the Houses’ constitutional role sought to justify their new executive, the committee of both kingdoms, and its readiness to take whatever measures it considered necessary, should Charles fail to return to parliament, ‘for the present and future Preservation of Religion and of the Kingdom’.96 The king, however, remained Britanicus’s prime target. The journal’s assaults on Charles’s advisers simply emphasized the king’s refusal to take good counsel, and his failure to exert his authority over his court and command where factionalism was becoming endemic: ‘Was ever King so abused, and plaid with? To the very dishonour and contempt of that Majesty which we reverence and admire.’97 The known hostility of a number of leading royalists such as Lords Wilmot and Digby towards Rupert, whom Charles had appointed president of Wales in February, and his younger brother Maurice, encouraged Britanicus to imply that Charles’s throne was in danger, not from parliament, but from ambitious, over-mighty subjects.98 Nevertheless, the newsbook’s puff in late April for the German princes’ elder brother, the elector palatine, who had recently signalled his sympathy for the parliamentarian cause, was a signal to the king that there were alternative candidates for the throne.99 The military situation that preceded the battle of Marston Moor in July 1644 produced a discernible hardening of Britanicus’s already brazen attitude towards Charles. As the prospect grew of a significant action involving the joint forces of the League, the newsbook’s comments about Charles’s alleged popish sympathies and tyrannical behaviour recalled the first successful Calvinist revolution of a covenanted people against another ‘idolatrous tyrant’, Charles’s grandmother, Mary Queen of Scots.100 Did Mary’s imprisonment by her Scottish subjects foreshadow a similar fate for her grandson? In recalling the recent jailing of one Colonel King, Britanicus indulged in one of its favourite literary games to demand,‘What will they say at Oxford when we imprison a King as well as a Colonell’.101 Here, for the first time, Britanicus was making an open threat against both the authority and the personal welfare of the king. The timing was significant.Vane had just returned from a prolonged visit to the Leaguer headquarters outside York.The precise purpose of his journey remains controversial. Some historians have been unwilling to give credence to rumours reported by Venetian and French envoys that Vane had discussed Charles’s deposition in favour of a republic with the Leaguer
95 Mercurius Britanicus, xxi, 5 Feb. 1644, 167–8; xxii, 12 Feb. 1644, 169, 176; xxv, 6 March 1644, 192, 193, 198. 96 Commons Journals, iii. 419; Mercurius Britanicus, xxvi, 12 March 1644, 206.The relevant clause, from the draft of parliament’s reply of 9 March to Charles’s letter of 3 March, was withdrawn following objections from the Scots commissioners. Gardiner has interpreted the clause as an early indication that parliament would be prepared to consider Charles’s deposition (Gardiner, i. 307, 328). 97 Mercurius Britanicus, xxx, 8 Apr. 1644, 234. 98 Mercurius Britanicus, xxx, 8 Apr. 1644, 234; xxxi, 15 Apr. 1644, 240. 99 Mercurius Britanicus, xxxiii, 29 Apr. 1644, 262. The elector’s name had been appearing during idle gossip since the late 1620s as a possible alternative to Charles I (Rowe, p. 54,n.1; Cal. S.P.Ven., 1640–2,p.200). See also Sir Cheney Culpeper to Samuel Hartlib, 22 July 1645, in ‘Letters of Sir Cheney Culpeper, 1641–57’, ed. M. J. Braddick and M. Greengrass (Camden Soc., 5th ser., vii, 1996) (hereafter ‘Culpeper Letters’), pp. 105–402, at p. 230. Britanicus apparently considered a mention sufficiently worthwhile to provoke disquiet among royalists. 100 Mercurius Britanicus, xxxix, 17 June 1644, 303, 307, 308, 310; xl, 24 June 1644, 318. Macadam, ‘Mercurius Britanicus’, i. 87–8. 101 Mercurius Britanicus, xli, 31 June 1644 (misdated), 319.
Copyright © 2011 Institute of Historical Research Historical Research, vol. 84, no. 225 (August 2011) Mercurius Britanicus on Charles I, 1643–6 485 commanders.102 Nevertheless, 1644 saw interest among M.P.s in the ‘tempered aristocracy’ of Venice, a potentially suitable model for a revised English constitution with the powers of the monarchy substantially curtailed.103 Whatever the thinking in the parliamentary camp, there is clear evidence of considerable disquiet within the king’s inner circle about the safety of Charles’s crown. In his famous letter to Rupert before Marston Moor, Charles wrote of his fears that the fall of York would imperil his throne.104 Although this letter reached Rupert, others expressing similar sentiments fell into enemy hands, to the delight of the London press.105 The extent of royalist factionalism and division over the issue of peace was now known at Westminster.106 Britanicus’s performance at this time undoubtedly generated anger among parliamentary moderates. On 5 July 1644, there appeared in print a private letter protesting at the newsbook’s disrespectful treatment of the Lord’s anointed, that had been written the previous December by Nathaniel Rogers, a Presbyterian minister and antagonist of Vane during his governorship of Massachusetts.107 Britanicus’s response was to renew its offensive with typical vitality, an indication of support in high places.108 Freed from the restraints of Essex’s licensing (since early June Britanicus’s licensing had been taken over by John Rushworth, kinsman of, and secretary to, Sir Thomas Fairfax), the newsbook exploited events to give variety and pace to its enterprise. In early September, the journal claimed that Wilmot, captain of the king’s ‘old horse’, had been charged with planning to depose Charles in favour of the prince of Wales.109 Britanicus took advantage of this information to denigrate the hardliners Francis Cottington and Digby, and to spread antagonism and suspicion between the king’s military and civilian advisers.110 These attacks on lesser targets served, incidentally, to highlight Charles’s lack of self-confidence, and consequently his propensity to rely on the judgement of others.111 To quote Lord Saye, ‘[Charles] was a private man misled by the evil counsels of sycophants’.112 The Wilmot episode presented Britanicus with a timely opportunity to refresh readers’ memories not only about the prince of Wales as successor to the throne but
102 Cal. S.P.Ven., 1643–7,pp.110, 112–13; Brit. Libr., Additional MS. 5460 fo. 217, Sabran to Brienne; see also fos. 232, 232v, 234; L. Kaplan, ‘The “plot” to depose Charles I in 1644’, Bull. Inst. Hist. Research, xliv (1971), 216–23; Politics and Religion during the English Revolution (New York, 1976), pp. 55–6; L. Mulligan, ‘Peace negotiations, politics and the committee of both kingdoms, 1644–6’, Historical Jour., xii (1969), 3–22,atpp.8–9; Rowe, pp. 52–3, 54, but see Gardiner, i. 368. 103 Cal. S.P. Ven., 1643–7,p.77; B. Worden, ‘Marchamont Nedham and the beginnings of English republicanism, 1649–56’, in Republicanism, Liberty and Commercial Society, 1649–1776, ed. D. Wootton (Stamford, 1994), 45–81,atp.53. The author is grateful to Dr. Stefano Villani for discussions on English parliamentary interest in the government of Venice. 104 Victoria and Albert Museum, Forster Collection, F48.G.24. 105 Parliament Scout,liv,4 July 1644, 433; J. Macadam, ‘Soldiers, statesmen and scribblers: London newsbook reporting of the Marston Moor campaign, 1644’, Hist. Research, lxxxii (2009), 93–113,atp.107. 106 I. Roy and J. Macadam,‘Why did Prince Rupert fight at Marston Moor?’, Jour. Soc. for Army Hist. Research, lxxxvi (2008), 236–57,atpp.244–5, 246, 249. 107 Brit. Libr., E.53.(20.), Nathaniel Rogers, A Letter Discovering the Cause of God’s Continuing Wrath against the Nation, to a Worthy Member of the Honourable House of Commons, 17 Dec. 1643 (imprimatur, Edmund Calamy), 5 July 1644,p.9. The author is grateful to Dr. Peacey for this reference. 108 Mercurius Britanicus, xlvi, 5 Aug. 1644, 359–62, 365. 109 Mercurius Britanicus,l,9 Sept. 1644, 393. 110 Mercurius Britanicus,l,9 Sept. 1644, 391; li, 30 Sept. 1644, 400. 111 Clarendon, iv. 2, 4. 112 Brit. Libr. E.811.(2.), Vindiciae Veritatis (1654), p. 34. Although Thomason’s copy attributes the Vindiciae to Nathaniel Fiennes, it has been shown to be the work of his father, Lord Saye (J. S. A. Adamson, ‘The Vindiciae Veritatis and the political creed of Viscount Saye and Sele’, Hist. Research,lx(1987), 45–63).
Historical Research, vol. 84, no. 225 (August 2011) Copyright © 2011 Institute of Historical Research 486 Mercurius Britanicus on Charles I, 1643–6 about that other potential candidate, his cousin, the recently arrived, and newly covenanted, elector palatine.113 Following its reference to Charles Lewis, whose appearance in Whitehall created some embarrassment for the Houses, and for the radical leadership in particular, Britanicus went silent for three weeks between 9 and 30 September.114 It is impossible to confirm whether the newsbook’s absence was directly connected with the grandees’ difficulties regarding the elector. Nevertheless, Britanicus’s re-emergence at the beginning of October marked its second reincarnation, this time with the appointment of Nedham as editor.115 This development did not involve any change of overall direction in terms of the newsbook’s policy. However, Nedham brought greater sharpness, wit, consistency and intellectual gravitas to Britanicus’s content. The new editor’s raising of the tempo against Charles was aided by external circumstances as well as developments peculiar to the journal. The war party’s reservations about the prospect of official negotiations, specifically the Uxbridge treaty of February 1645, reduced the necessity for Britanicus to rein in its offensive against the king: with its political patrons’ tacit support, and a sympathetic licenser, John Rushworth, in place, the newsbook made plain its view that the responsibility for any failure of the approaching talks would lie with Charles.116 The subsequent collapse of the Uxbridge treaty reinforced the Independents’ belief that decisive victory in the field was essential for a resolution of the national crisis. Their determination to achieve that victory was reflected in the formation of the New Model Army in March 1645 and the implementation of the Self-Denying Ordinance in early April. Of particular significance as far as Britanicus’s campaign was concerned was the wording of Sir Thomas Fairfax’s commission as commander of the New Model. In contrast to the appointment of Essex as lord general, Fairfax’s commission omitted any mention of protecting the king’s person.117 Parliament thereby signalled its rejection of any obligation on its part to safeguard Charles’s physical wellbeing.118 From this point, the separation of the king’s office from his person, as enshrined in the doctrine of the king’s two bodies, a staple of parliamentary polemic, increasingly informed Britanicus’s assaults on the hapless Charles:‘till He come and re-possess it [the title of His Majesty]...Ishall forbeare it, and call him henceforth The King’.119 Until mid 1645, Britanicus’s character assassination of Charles I had been an innovative exercise in terms of its extended character, a function of the newsbook format, in addition to its boldness, acerbic wit and clarity of expression. However, although Britanicus had typically indulged in exaggerated and confrontational posturing when discussing the king, its content had reflected themes already present throughout much of parliament’s polemic. Moreover, the majority of the newsbook’s attacks had been expressions of opinion rather than statements of fact. The capture of Charles’s papers at Naseby therefore marked a watershed in Britanicus’s mission, for Nedham acquired privileged access to a store of
113 Mercurius Britanicus, xlix, 2 Sept. 1644, 385;l,9 Sept. 1644, 396. 114 Gardiner, ii. 27–8. 115 Lords Journals, viii. 325. 116 Mercurius Britanicus, lviii, 18 Nov. 1644, 462; lx, 9 Dec. 1644, 478; lxvii, 27 Jan. 1645, 534. 117 I. Gentles, The New Model Army in England, Ireland and Scotland, 1645–53 (Oxford, 1992), pp. 21–2. 118 Mercurius Britanicus, lxxxi, 5 May 1645, 738–9. 119 Mercurius Britanicus, lxxxv, 2 June 1645, 769–70; cxx, 2 March 1646, 1051; Rutherford, pp. 267–70; Bland, p. 7; Vindiciae Veritatis, ‘To the Reader’, p. 2; E. Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies: a Study in Medieval Political Theory (New Jersey, 1981); Russell, Causes,pp.23–4.
Copyright © 2011 Institute of Historical Research Historical Research, vol. 84, no. 225 (August 2011) Mercurius Britanicus on Charles I, 1643–6 487 incontrovertible evidence to substantiate his newsbook’s accusations against the king.120 In a single edition, number ninety, he produced evidence of the extent of Charles’s bad faith over the Uxbridge treaty: his intransigence and insincerity over the bishops, the militia and the recognition of parliament, his plotting to continue the war with the assistance of foreign troops, and his leniency towards papists, as well as his antipathy towards moderate royalists and his subservience to the queen.121 The accusations and complaints against Charles that had reinforced Britanicus’s campaign to date were, on this intelligence, thoroughly vindicated. It was in this context that the newsbook felt sufficiently confident to launch its ‘Hue and Cry’ after the king. In the same edition, number ninety-two, Britanicus scrutinized Charles’s correspondence with Lord Ormond, his representative in Ireland.122 The king’s orders to Ormond, sent during the peace negotiations, had included an instruction to renew the Cessation with the rebel Confederate forces in the event of diplomatic breakdown.123 Nervous English Protestants could be forgiven for concluding that Charles was preparing to bring over Irish Catholic troops to pitch against his English opponents, hence Britanicus’s jibe that the king had run away ‘to his beloved Ireland’. After the ‘Hue and Cry’, the newsbook’s Apologie ostentatiously neglected to retract this particular accusation.124 The failure of the Uxbridge treaty illustrated the almost insurmountable difficulties involved in reaching a lasting peace through official negotiations, and the New Model’s victory at Naseby signalled overall defeat for the royalists on the military front. Although he was convinced that the parliamentary radicals were intent on his destruction, Charles nevertheless refused to accept defeat. It was against this background that the Independents began their covert discussions with the royalists in the autumn of 1645. Over the period from September to December 1645, when the diplomatic situation was in flux, Britanicus followed a pattern of applying pressure, then adopting a tactical silence as circumstances demanded. In September, as Fairfax exchanged diplomatic pleasantries with the prince of Wales, the newsbook attempted to intimidate the king by launching a broad offensive against his ‘dishonour’ and his style of monarchy with its inflated prerogative and ‘evil counsellors’.125 Then, at the beginning of October, Britanicus suddenly changed tack. It missed an edition on 13 October and when it reappeared its tone was noticeably more moderate. References to the king were kept
120 A selection of the captured correspondence was put on public view in the Common Hall in the City of London on or after 3 July.A printed collection, edited by Henry Parker, John Sadler and Thomas May, appeared on 14 July (Brit. Libr. E.292.(27)). Control of the papers, and their selective release, was exercised by the Independent faction led byVane, St. John and Saye (J. Peacey,‘The exploitation of captured royal correspondence and Anglo-Scottish relations in the British civil wars, 1645–6’, Scottish Hist. Rev., lxxix (2000), 213–32,at pp. 215–17). Internal evidence from Britanicus suggests that the newsbook had access to the correspondence before the end of June (Mercurius Britanicus, lxxxviii, 30 June 1645, 793, 794).This valuable haul appears to have been eschewed by other newsbooks, a fact that reinforces Britanicus’s favoured position regarding its publication (Perfect Diurnall,c,30 June 1645, 792–3; Kingdomes Weekly Intelligencer,cv,24 June 1645, 845). 121 Mercurius Britanicus,xc,21 July 1645, 810–11. 122 Mercurius Britanicus, xcii, 4 Aug. 1645, 827–31. 123 Charles to Ormond, 16 Feb. 1645,repr.inMercurius Britanicus, xcii, 4 Aug. 1645, 830; Lords Journals, vii. 188–9. 124 Mercurius Britanicus his apologie,pp.3–5. 125 Lords Journals, vii. 600; Joshua Sprigge, Anglia Rediviva (1647) (Wing, no. S 5070), pp. 97–9; Gardiner, ii. 338; Mercurius Britanicus, xciv,Aug. 1645, 842, 845, 846; xcv, 1 Sept. 1645, 850; xcvii, 15 Sept. 1645, 868; xcix, 29 Sept. 1645, 888.
Historical Research, vol. 84, no. 225 (August 2011) Copyright © 2011 Institute of Historical Research 488 Mercurius Britanicus on Charles I, 1643–6 to a minimum, and for the next three weeks Britanicus confined itself to lesser targets such as Digby and Rupert, war news and religious arrangements.126 At the end of November, however, as the Independents’ secret diplomatic offensive stalled, the newsbook reverted to its earlier pleas to the prince of Wales ‘to achieve his greatest glory through the love of his people’.As the king attempted to open negotiations with the Houses, Britanicus invited Prince Charles to come in to parliament. Simultaneously, the newsbook made much of the elector palatine’s appointment as a freeman of the Merchant Taylors’ Company, thereby becoming a citizen of the City of London.127 The newsbook’s inference was clear: Charles I’s approach to government was unacceptable. He had relied on advisers, including the bishops, ‘the inhauncers of the Prerogative’, and had exploited mechanisms such as the prerogative courts that lay beyond the control of parliament.128 He had thereby endangered the safety of the state by breeching the limits of mixed monarchy as it was widely understood, certainly on the parliamentary side. As Saye was later to assert, ‘We need not, we will not, to gain a peace, be without a King, no not without this King...only he himself hath brought this necessity upon us, not to trust him with that power whereby he may do us and himself hurt’.129 By early December 1645, it had become apparent that Charles was not prepared to accept the Independents’ terms as already presented to him. He was, according to Britanicus,‘determined on a ruinous course’; he must be made to understand that there could be no return to the ‘late encroaching Prerogative of England’ and that there were other suitable forms of government, ancient and modern, that provided alternatives.130 Nevertheless, by the middle of the month, the newsbook was persuaded by awareness of disaffection among royalist moderates, Charles’s appeal to parliament for a personal treaty, and some residual hopes of mediation through the prince of Wales, to adopt a more conciliatory tone: ‘it would adde much to the dying hopes of this Nation, and be for the immortall honour of the Prince [of Wales], if by a seasonable return he should be the means to call home his Father, to imbrace the true Interest of his Crown and Kingdome.’ 131 By the end of 1645, however, both sides’ diplomatic initiatives had failed to achieve significant progress. Thereafter it is possible to trace a precise correlation between the timing of Charles’s communications to parliament requesting negotiations and the force of Britanicus’s personal attacks on the king.132 While the Independents remained hopeful that Charles would eventually respond positively to their private proposals, in public they adopted an uncompromising stance: it was to their advantage that the king should be demonized publicly, or coerced privately, into a settlement to avoid a worse fate.133 Britanicus duly obliged by devoting the greater part of its remaining run to
126 Mercurius Britanicus, cii, 27 Oct. 1645, 905, 907–8, 911; ciii, 3 Nov. 1645, 914, 915, 918;civ,10 Nov. 1645, 922, 925, 926. 127 Mercurius Britanicus, cvii, 1 Dec. 1645, 948–9. 128 Mercurius Britanicus, xciv, 25 Aug. 1645, 845. 129 [Saye], Vindiciae,p.6; Scott, pp. 110–11. 130 Mercurius Britanicus, cviii, 8 Dec. 1645, 953, 954. 131 Mercurius Britanicus, cix, 15 Dec. 1645, 965, 966; Scott, p. 104. 132 Commons Journals,iv.369, 379, 392; Lords Journals, viii. 30, 46, 72, 73; Mercurius Britanicus, cix, 15 Dec. 1645, 961, 963, 966; cx, 29 Dec. 1645, 969–71; Lords Journals, viii. 103; Mercurius Britanicus, cxiv, 19 Jan. 1646, 1004; Commons Journals,iv.419; Lords Journals, viii. 132; Mercurius Britanicus, cxvi, 2 Feb. 1646, 1023; cxviii, 16 Dec. 1646, 1035–6; cxvix, 23 Feb. 1646, 1042–3, 1045. 133 Edmund Ludlow, Memoirs of Edmund Ludlow, ed. C. H. Firth (2 vols., Oxford, 1894), i. 154.
Copyright © 2011 Institute of Historical Research Historical Research, vol. 84, no. 225 (August 2011) Mercurius Britanicus on Charles I, 1643–6 489 vilifying him.134 There could be no personal treaty.135 The only course of action left to Charles was to surrender unconditionally to parliament.136 Mid January 1646 marked a crucial period in parliamentary politics.The republican Henry Marten had, throughVane’s good offices, returned to the Commons after nearly three years’ absence. Britanicus accorded him a warm welcome.137 On Tuesday 13 January,the House appointed a committee of M.P.s to prepare a message for the prince of Wales, demanding that he disband his armies. The following Friday, the Commons received reports from the committee of both kingdoms concerning the Glamorgan mission to Ireland, an undertaking that revealed Charles at his most incompetent and devious.138 Meanwhile, developments were taking place behind the scenes. On 22 January, the French diplomat Jean de Montreuil, who was working to broker a deal between the Scots, the parliamentary moderates and the royalists, informed Cardinal Mazarin that on the same day as the Glamorgan revelations, Friday 16 January, the leaders of the Independents had met to discuss Charles’s deposition. They planned to declare the prince of Wales an enemy of the state and to call the duke of York to submit to parliament. Should he refuse, they would put the six-year-old duke of Gloucester on the throne with the earl of Northumberland, parliament’s guardian of the king’s younger children, as lord protector.139 It would be unwise to rely unquestioningly on a foreign diplomat’s report, given that it may have been based on unsubstantiated rumour. However, Britanicus’s edition of 19 January suggests that behind Westminster’s closed doors, the Independents were prepared to discuss a range of options concerning the future of the state. The newsbook declared that a monarch’s majesty consisted ‘in love and union with the people’, yet Charles’s royal robes were stained with the blood of his subjects.140 ‘He does not know what a Loyall Subject is.’What was to be done? Britanicus fell short of an outright declaration that Charles should lose his crown. Instead, Nedham turned to the formula cited by Henry Parker in his Observations, that of singulis major, universis minor: the king was subject to the law of the commonwealth.141 It was an indirect assertion that Charles was subject to parliament, the highest court in the land, and to the people represented therein.142 The implication of these remarks, that his subjects could decide the king’s fate, was as powerful as that of the ‘Hue and Cry’. On this occasion, however, there were no immediate adverse repercussions for the newsbook, a measure of how Westminster opinion had hardened against Charles over the previous six months. By January 1646, even the peers were prepared to acknowledge the king’s blood guilt.143 With Charles apparently bent on conquest, Britanicus called on parliament to do likewise, to reject
134 Mercurius Britanicus, cx, 22 Dec. 1645, 969; cxiii, 12 Jan. 1646, 995; cxiv, 19 Dec. 1646, 1004; cxvi, 2 Feb. 1646, 1023; cxxvii, 27 Apr. 1646, 1090; cxxviii, 4 May 1646, 1099. 135 Mercurius Britanicus, cxi, 29 Dec. 1645, 979; cxxi, 16 March 1646, 1063. 136 Mercurius Britanicus, cx, 22 Dec. 1545, 971; cxxi, 16 March 1646, 1058; cxxiii, 30 March 1646, 1073. 137 Mercurius Britanicus, cxiii, 12 Jan. 1646, 1000. 138 Commons Journals,iv.405, 408. 139 Montreuil, i. 117.Amerigo Salvetti, the Tuscan resident in London, had reported a similar scheme regarding the duke of Gloucester in March 1645 (Brit. Libr., Add. MS. 27,962,K,fo.417, quoted in Gardiner, ii. 189). 140 Mercurius Britanicus, cxiv, 19 Jan. 1646, 1004. 141 [Henry Parker], Observations,p.2. 142 Mercurius Britanicus, cxiv, 19 Jan. 1646, 1007. 143 Lords Journals, viii. 82.
Historical Research, vol. 84, no. 225 (August 2011) Copyright © 2011 Institute of Historical Research 490 Mercurius Britanicus on Charles I, 1643–6
Charles’s offers of personal treaties and to fight its defensive war until final victory.144 Once that had been secured, those responsible for the ‘blood of all the saints’ should be held to account,‘be they never so great’.145 In the light of these comments, Charles had every reason to fear for his future. The king’s unexpected arrival with the Scots at the beginning of May concentrated the Houses’ focus on what was to be done about him. Furthermore, these circumstances demanded a clarification of parliament’s relationship with the Scots, for Charles had frequently worked to divide and rule his enemies: English parliamentarians against Scots Covenanters, Independents against Presbyterians.146 In seeking to address these issues, Britanicus’s last edition commended George Buchanan, that apologist for deposition, condemned prerogative government as an instrument of tyranny, emphasized the Covenant’s oath to preserve the rights and privileges of parliament, and declared that the king’s fate must lie with the Commons at Westminster.147 What was Charles’s fate to be? In its final edition, published on 18 May 1646, Britanicus assured its readers that no change of government was intended, yet it was apparent from the newsbook’s attacks on Charles, and the views of the Westminster radicals, that the pre-1642 monarchy was a thing of the past.148 At this juncture, however, it remained unclear whether Charles could be persuaded to accept change, or whether he would have to be removed from the throne. It would be a choice between ‘virtual deposition’ and ‘actual deposition’, a case of accepting a role similar, for example, to that of the Venetian doge, or losing his crown altogether.149 In order to persuade Charles that it was in the national interest to accept such a reduced monarchy, the threat of deposition had to appear a realistic one. Britanicus’s campaign of character assassination, combined with its tactical references to potential successors, the prince of Wales or the elector palatine, stood to play a very public part in this process.150 Although the politicians were too astute to leave material evidence of any such alliance with the press, Britanicus’s campaign, examined in close context, provides strong circumstantial evidence that the radicals worked with, and through, the newsbook to persuade the king to accept their propositions for constitutional reform and a lasting settlement. Despite its dubious legality, deposition was the ultimate unspoken sanction available to the king’s opponents, whether or not they were prepared to countenance it at this juncture.151
The effectiveness of Mercurius Britanicus’s campaign against Charles I must remain a matter for conjecture. It is impossible to make a definitive evaluation of the newsbook’s influence on public opinion because of the absence of substantial evidence from its readership. There are isolated indications that members of the elite, even those sympathetic to the parliamentary radical cause, were unlikely to take Britanicus, while the Presbyterian Robert Baillie dismissed it, along with its Oxford
144 Mercurius Britanicus, cxii, 5 Jan. 1646, 992; cxvi, 2 Feb. 1646, 1024; cxvii, 9 Feb. 1646, 1029; cxviii, 16 Feb. 1646, 1035; cxx, 2 March 1646, 1052. 145 Mercurius Britanicus, cxxix, 11 May 1646, 1109. 146 Charles I to Henrietta Maria, 29 Dec. 1645,inBruce,p.6; Mercurius Britanicus, cxxx, 18 May 1646, 1112. 147 Mercurius Britanicus, cxxx, 11–18 May 1646, 1111, 1115, 1117; Commons Journals,iv.548, 550. 148 Mercurius Britanicus, cxxx, 11–18 May 1646, 1113. 149 Sir Cheney Culpeper to Samuel Hartlib, 11 Feb. 1646, in ‘Culpeper Letters’, p. 260. 150 Such a plan would bear some similarity to an alleged attempt to browbeat Charles in 1641, in which Saye and Nathaniel Fiennes were involved (Russell, Fall,pp.364–5). 151 See above, n. 34.
Copyright © 2011 Institute of Historical Research Historical Research, vol. 84, no. 225 (August 2011) Mercurius Britanicus on Charles I, 1643–6 491 rival Aulicus, as ‘not worth the reading’.152 We are reliant on isolated comments and on the reactions to the ‘Hue and Cry’ already noted: the anger generated among parliamentary moderates and elements of the royalist press, and the piece’s notoriety. We may surmise from opposition sources, however, that Britanicus’s message met with approval among those members of its audience who, in line with tradition, had hitherto been excluded from the political process.153 The newsbook’s popularity towards the lower end of the social spectrum where, literally, the foot soldiers of the cause were to be found, indicates that there was fertile ground for the ideas that its editors sought to disseminate. Such appeal was significant, as the politicization of the New Model Army that became apparent from the mid sixteen-forties was to demonstrate.154 Britanicus’s catechizing format indicates that it was designed to be read aloud: the practice whereby officers read newsbooks to their men provided a means of transmitting the journal’s ideas throughout the ranks.155 Moreover, many of the arguments set out in the army Remonstrance of November 1648 were the same as those that Britanicus had already publicized on an unprecedented scale: salus populi, the dangers of personal treaties with Charles, the king’s perpetual disregard for the public interest, his tyranny and opposition to parliament, his war guilt and its associated treasons, and his untrustworthiness.156 These striking coincidences suggest, but cannot confirm, that Britanicus helped shape opinion within the New Model about Charles’s failure as a ruler and the wisdom of calling him to account. Likewise, we may strongly suspect, but cannot conclude with certainty, that Britanicus’s offensive against Charles and his policies contributed to the very grave concerns in the royalist camp during the first civil war about parliamentary intentions towards the king.157 By its own admission, the newsbook targeted opinion at court.158 We may also be confident that Britanicus was read by those responsible for producing its Oxford rival Aulicus, including editor John Berkenhead, Lord Digby and Secretary Nicholas.159 It seems inevitable, therefore, that Charles himself was aware of the main thrust, if not the detail, of Britanicus’s comments. Nevertheless, we cannot, on these assumptions, judge the extent of the newsbook’s responsibility for royalist fears. The paucity of satisfactory evidence regarding the reception of Britanicus’s message indicates that an examination of its content, as undertaken in this article, offers a more productive line of enquiry.160 The war party grandees’ choice of a serial publication to expose Charles’s personal failings and his misconceived policies points to their belief
152 Culpeper to Hartlib, 18 Dec. 1644, in ‘Culpeper Letters’, p. 206: Sir Cheney would only countenance the Kingdomes Weekly Intelligencer and the Parliament Scout; Robert Baillie, Letters and Journals, ed. D. Laing (3 vols., 1841), ii. 165. 153 Brit. Libr., E.74.(23.), Britanicus Vapulans, 4 Nov. 1643,p.2; Anthony Wood, Athenae Oxonienses (2 vols., Oxford, 1691), i. 626. 154 Clarendon, iv. 479–81. 155 Mercurius Britanicus, xli, 31 June 1644 (misdated), 321; B. Capp, The World of John Taylor the Water-Poet, 1578–1653 (Oxford, 1994), p. 72. 156 Brit. Libr., E.473.(11.), A Remonstrance of his Excellency Thomas, Lord Fairfax Lord General of all the parliaments forces, 16 Nov. 1648,pp.4, 13, 16, 17, 22, 23, 24, 25, 30, 41. The Remonstrance called for the king’s trial but did not pre-empt the verdict or the sentence (S. Kelsey, ‘The trial of Charles I’, Eng. Hist. Rev., cxviii (2003), 583–616,atp.599). See also Brit. Libr., E.468.(18.), The petition from Commissary General Ireton’s regiment, 19 Oct. 1648,p.4, for Charles’s betrayal of trust, his blood guilt and his incapacity for government. D. Underdown, Pride’s Purge: Politics in the Puritan Revolution (Oxford 1971; 1985), pp. 120, 123–7. See above, n. 25. 157 See above, nn. 101, 102; and see Oxford, Bodleian Library, Clarendon MS. 27 fo. 112v, for Sir John Berkeley’s fears that the Independents planned to depose Charles in favour of the prince of Wales. 158 Mercurius Britanicus, xlvi, 5 Aug. 1644, 361. 159 Thomas, pp. 42–3. 160 See McElligott, pp. 35–6, for similar difficulties with assessing the impact on readers of royalist newsbooks.
Historical Research, vol. 84, no. 225 (August 2011) Copyright © 2011 Institute of Historical Research 492 Mercurius Britanicus on Charles I, 1643–6 that these topics bore repetition over a prolonged period. Their sustained loyalty to Britanicus in difficult circumstances illustrates their faith in the newsbook’s ability to convey these themes effectively. For their part, Audley and Nedham were confident in the potential of using Charles as a scapegoat for the nation’s ills as a means of generating and retaining public support for parliament’s war effort.They also believed in the viability of weakening royalist cohesion through open expressions of sympathy for moderates like Lord Hertford, whose policy of accommodation was eschewed by the king and his more extreme advisers.161 It was Britanicus’s aim to exert public pressure on the king so that he would come to an agreement with the Independents for a lasting peace. Should Charles reject their proposals, the newsbook would at least have aired the possibility of replacing him with a more amenable candidate. Britanicus’s tenacity in pursuing such policies emphasizes the support and guidance that the newsbook received from its powerful backers, for these were undoubtedly high-risk strategies: the friction that Britanicus’s activities created among parliamentarians could well have encouraged Charles’s personal predilection for working to exacerbate the divisions among his enemies, with potentially disastrous results for the newsbook’s mentors.162 Nevertheless, Britanicus’s editors and their patrons evidently believed that the journalistic, polemical and political value of achieving their various goals outweighed the dangers inherent in the enterprise.163 Mercurius Britanicus played a distinctive part in English civil war journalism. Its campaign of character assassination against Charles I was both a feature, and a product, of that distinctiveness. While other journals were prepared to criticize the king, none compared with Britanicus for the vehemence or crudity of its content, its skill in terms of insinuation and potential persuasiveness, its pacing or, crucially, its appreciation of the political environment.164 Although we may not be able to quantify the newsbook’s contribution to the political situation, or its effect on public opinion, we should acknowledge the adroitness with which Britanicus tapped into concerns about Charles I, whom many believed had precipitated the crisis facing the nation, and about the constitutional means, or lack of them, to rectify that situation. Furthermore, we may reasonably suggest that significant aspects of this newsbook’s crusading campaign were to exert considerable influence over political journalism in England in the following decade. Many of the hallmarks of Mercurius Britanicus were to characterize Nedham’s Mercurius Politicus. Politicus was to employ in the service of the republic and the protectorate the wit, the astute analysis, the pointed comment, the exploitation of political ideas for propaganda purposes, and the benefits that derived from collaboration between editor and highly placed political sources that Britanicus had brought to bear against Charles I between August 1643 and May 1646.165
161 Mercurius Britanicus, lxxxix, 7 July 1645, 801. 162 Mercurius Britanicus, cxxx, 18 May 1646, 1112. 163 Brit. Libr. E.1179.(5.), David Buchanan, Truth its Manifest (1645), p. 127. 164 Kingdomes Weekly Intelligencer, lix, 18 June 1644, 476; Perfect Diurnall, xciii, 12 May 1645, 739. 165 Nedham’s prospectus for Politicus is reproduced in J. M. French, The Life Records of John Milton (5 vols., New Brunswick, N.J., 1949–58), ii. 310ff.; he plagiarized his tract, The Case of the Common-wealth of England, stated (1650) (Brit. Libr. E.600.(7.)), for editorials in Mercurius Politicus, editions xvi–lxix, Sept. 1650–Oct. 1651, passim; The Case of the Commonwealth of England, Stated, ed. P. A. Knachel (Charlottesville, Va., 1969), ‘Introduction’, ix–xlii, at pp. xxiv, xxxv–xl; J. Raymond,‘“A Mercury with a Winged Conscience”: Marchamont Nedham, monopoly and censorship’, Media History,iv(1998), 7–18; B. Worden, Literature and Politics in Cromwellian England (Oxford, 2007), pp. 19–23, 26–7, 33, 37, 77, 134–5, 181.
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