Encountering Political Texts at the NLS II

The exhibition poster. Image by Rachel Hammersley.

On 8th December 2023 the exhibition 'Encountering Political Texts 1640-1770' - the final event of the Experiencing Political Texts project - opened at the National Library of Scotland. I offered an appetiser for the exhibition in my last blogpost by discussing the various books bound by Thomas Hollis that were donated to the Advocates Library in Edinburgh, some of which appear in the exhibition. This month I offer a taste of some of the other items on display - focusing on the themes of materiality, genre and the debating of issues in print.

Materiality

Opening graphics on the wall of the exhibition. Image by Rachel Hammersley

The Hollis editions are interesting because of their elaborate bindings and handwritten marginalia, which reflect Hollis's own reading of the texts. Other items on display in the exhibition also reflect the importance of texts as material objects. At the other end of the spectrum from the lavish Hollis volumes are the examples of unbound pamphlets. Reading 'original' pamphlets today generally involves going to a Special Collections reading room and identifying the pamphlet within a volume of such material that was bound together in book form at a later point in time. This experience of encountering early modern pamphlets is very different from that of their original readers. Pamphlets would have been sold on the streets by hawkers. They will have varied in size and quality, but many will have consisted of just a few pages of text printed on flimsy paper, their ephemerality reflecting the fact that they were often interventions in specific (and sometimes fleeting) events - a bit like a social media post today. They were not really intended to last - and it is important that we remember this when reading them.

Other material from the seventeenth century takes a more elaborate physical form. A prime example here are the three volumes of Eikon Basilike that appear in the exhibition. This important work was published in the immediate aftermath of the execution of Charles I in January 1649. Said to be based on Charles's own thoughts and writings during his imprisonment, this was a powerful work which sought to transform the failed king, who had been executed by some of his subjects, into a martyr worthy of veneration. The frontispiece image reflects this aim in its depiction of Charles discarding his earthly crown and seeking instead the heavenly crown of martyrdom. (A more detailed analysis of the image is available here). I have seen at least one version of this image that has been hand-coloured, with the King's robe light pink and his sleeves a deeper maroon. (In fact, the striking pink colour scheme of our project - which is reflected in the NLS exhibition - was inspired by this). While the version of the image in our exhibition is in black and white, the title page of the work, which is also on display, includes red ink, which was more costly to produce and so again an indicator of quality. The NLS also holds a small version of Eikon Basilike which has an embroidered cover. Whereas the red type was the work of the printer, this cover was probably produced by the owner of the work, reflecting its importance and significance to them.

Infographic produced by Nifty Fox reflecting the reading group discussion on ‘Books as Physical Objects’ as displayed in the Encountering Political Texts exhibition. Image by Rachel Hammersley

This beautiful little book reminded me of the Reading Group session we held earlier in 2023, to which each member brought a book that was special to them. One participant bought along a book with a handmade cover, like the copy of Eikon Basilike on display. Others had marginalia or material pasted or tipped in by the owner - and again we have an example of this in the exhibition. One of several pamphlets on display that engages with the debate over the union between England and Scotland in 1707, Parainesis Pacifica; or, A perswasive to the union of Britain has a letter tipped in at the back.

Genres

Another theme of our project that is reflected in the exhibition is the variety of genres used to convey political ideas. While pamphlets that engaged directly with contemporary debates, and presented the argument or viewpoint of the author, were common at this time, political ideas could also be conveyed through texts originally intended for oral delivery, such as proclamations and sermons (which would be preached from the pulpit and then printed). We have a number of these relating to the Union debate on display in the exhibition. Fictional forms such as utopias, invented travel narratives, and imagined dialogues were also popular ways of conveying political ideas in the early modern period. In addition, humour could be deployed to convey an argument in a more forceful way, as in the case of The comical history of the mariage betwixt Fergusia and Heptarchus - a humorous take on the union debate - which is included in the exhibition.

For many years newspapers were a key vehicle for transmitting up-to-date political news and information. At the present time when these are shifting online and are at risk of being overshadowed as a news source by social media, it is interesting to look back to their origins. While newspapers as we know them are generally seen as emerging in the eighteenth century, the mid-seventeenth-century crisis in the British Isles prompted the publication of newsbooks which served a similar purpose. Like modern newspapers they took different political stances (there were both royalist and parliamentarian newsbooks) and often included an editorial as a preface to the account of current affairs. At the NLS exhibition there are examples of several seventeenth-century newsbooks including Mercurius Politicus, Mercurius Britanicus, and The Publick Intelligencer.

Debates in Print.

Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun, by Andrew Birrell, published by Robert Wilkinson, after William Aikman, line engraving, 1798. National Portrait Gallery NPG D30937. Produced under a Creative Commons Licence.

As well as conveying and spreading knowledge of recent events, print could also be the site for political debate. The Union debate in the early eighteenth century generated a huge amount of printed material. Various examples are on display in the exhibition (some of which have already been mentioned). Sometimes individual authors would produce multiple responses and counter-responses to each other in print. In the exhibition are pamphlets attributed to Andrew Fletcher and James Webster produced in 1706-7. The initial pamphlet attributed to Fletcher did not explicitly oppose the idea of union, but suggested that a more equal union would be secured if each nation retained its own Parliament. On the other side, Webster, a Presbyterian minister who had previously been imprisoned for his religious opinions, argued against union on any terms, largely because of the impact it would have on the Scottish Kirk. Reading all the pamphlets in the debate gives a sense of how it unfolded and the different views it generated. We have to be careful too about authorship. Recent scholarship, as reflected in the article on Fletcher in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, suggests that although the pamphlet State of the Controversy betwixt United and Separate Parliaments was attributed to Fletcher, it was probably not written by him (John Robertson, 'Fletcher, Andrew, of Saltoun (1653?-1716)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography).

While this exhibition is the final element of our Experiencing Political Texts project, this first blogpost of the year is an opportunity to look forward as well as backward. We are already planning to explore the themes of the exhibition with audiences in Edinburgh at two workshops linked to the exhibition that will be held on Tuesday 27 February and Tuesday 9 April 2024. It should be possible to sign up for these events via Eventbrite soon. In addition, we are already exploring how we can develop the ideas generated by the Experiencing Political Texts project in a new project focusing on Political Education. We are holding an initial exploratory workshop for this project in Newcastle on 17 January 2024. I hope to provide further updates as the year progresses.

Texts at an Exhibition

Ever since I volunteered, as an undergraduate, in the Coins and Medals Department of the British Museum, I have been interested in how complex ideas can be presented effectively to the general public. As a volunteer I sat in on an initial meeting to discuss plans for what would become the permanent Money Gallery. I remember the excitement of thinking about how to convey centuries of history accurately - but also accessibly - with a restricted number of objects and very little text. Though I ended up becoming an academic rather than a curator, that challenge has always appealed to me. For this reason, when applying for funding for the Experiencing Political Texts project, I was keen to include an exhibition as one of our outputs. In the end we decided to offer two - one at the Robinson Library at Newcastle University and another at the National Library of Scotland in Edinburgh. The former opens this month and in this blogpost I hope to encourage you to visit the exhibition by providing a taste of its content.

Encountering Political Texts

An unbound pamphlet The Last Newes from the North (London, 1646). Newcastle University, Robinson Library, Rare Books: RB 942.062 LAS.

How do we encounter political ideas and information? How did early modern people do so? And what do we make of their political texts? A work like Robert Filmer's Patriarcha, a daunting volume that argues the case for the divine right of kings on the basis that all kings are descended directly from Adam, is likely to feel very alien and inaccessible to a modern audience. The regular use of Latin phrases, the grounding in Biblical learning, the long unwieldy sentences, the use of the long 's' (which looks like an 'f') all conspire to put the modern reader off. Filmer's text is still read today (indeed it appears in Cambridge University Press's 'blue text' series in an edition produced by Johann Somerville in 1991) and it has been the subject of an important recent monograph by Cesare Cuttica. Yet its survival owes less to its relevance today than to the fact that it acted as a provocation to at least three important political texts of the 1680s: James Tyrell's Patriarcha non Monarcha (1681); John Locke's Two Treatises of Government (1690) and Algernon Sidney's Discourses Concerning Government (1699).

Of course, not all early modern political texts took the form of, often lengthy, books. During the turbulent period of the British Civil Wars politics was increasingly conveyed to a wider public via newsbooks (the forerunner of the modern newspaper), pamphlets (short cheap publications usually engaging with a specific political issue), broadsides (a single page that was designed to be posted up on a wall), and even ballads (political songs). There were, therefore, lots of opportunities for people - even those with limited literacy - to gain political knowledge and engage with current affairs.

The Physical Book

A central theme of the Experiencing Political Texts project has been the idea that books are physical objects and that their materiality can contribute directly to their argument. Paying attention to features such as the the size, paper quality, typeface, and ink can contribute to our understanding of the message the author was seeking to convey and how it might have been received by readers. Moreover, changes in these features in different editions of a particular work can transform the reading experience and how the work is interpreted and understood. In the exhibition we explore these issues by displaying alongside each other several different versions of James Harrington's The Commonwealth of Oceana.

The Imagery of Politics

Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (London, 1651), frontispiece. Newcastle University Special Collections and Archives, Bainbrigg: BAI 1651 HOB.

Authors can use images as well as words to convey their ideas to readers. Some early modern books (especially expensive volumes) began with a frontispiece illustration that conveyed the argument of the book in visual form. The exhibition includes two early examples of this: Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan and the Eikon Basilike. It also considers what authors did to present their argument succinctly when they could not afford a fancy illustration.

Editing Political Ideas

The Author’s Preface to John Milton, A Defence of the People of England, ed. Joseph Washington (Amsterdam, 1692). Newcastle University, Robinson Library, Bainbrigg: BAI 1692 MIL.

Important political texts tend to survive beyond their immediate context and might be reissued multiple times. Though the text itself usually remains relatively stable, editors will adapt the size, quality, and design to suit their intended audience and may also add paratextual material to make the text accessible to contemporary readers or to demonstrate the relevance of the ideas to the times. The exhibition uses editions of John Milton's prose text Pro populo anglicano defensio (A Defence of the People of England) to demonstrate just how an editor can influence how a text might be approached and read.

Editing Ancient Politics

Of course, early modern editors also produced their own editions of older texts, especially those from ancient Greece and Rome, which were viewed as providing important insights on political matters. As with editions of contemporary texts, decisions about design and production were used to direct the work to particular audiences and to influence how it was read. In particular, there is a distinction to be drawn between works aimed specifically at learned readers and those intended for wider consumption.

Politics in Periodicals

Periodical publications were one of the success stories of the eighteenth century. The number of titles expanded rapidly and their format and relatively low cost made them accessible for those beyond the political élite, including artisans and women. While part of their aim was to entertain, many also included a philosophical, moral, or political dimension, prompting us to ask whether these count as 'political' texts.

Thomas Spence’s periodical Pigs’ Meat, or Lessons for the Swinish Multitude (London, 1793-1795). Newcastle University, Robinson Library, Rare Books: RB 331.04 PIG.

Conversations in Print

Some periodicals also encouraged debate - inviting readers to respond to articles via letters or essays of their own. This idea of print as a forum for debate was also reflected in the 'pamphlet wars' of the early modern period in which two or more authors debated a particular issue or issues. The exhibition provides examples of both exchanges that occurred quickly, within a matter of weeks, and those that occurred over a longer period of time.

Experiencing Political Texts

Ultimately our aim is to encourage visitors to think more deeply about the nature of political texts. What makes a text political? How does its physical form contribute to that characterisation? We might even ask what constitutes a text? We are also keen to encourage people to think about how the form in which they read a work affects the reading experience. The experience of reading a text digitally on a screen is different from reading the same text in hard copy. But equally, reading an original edition of an early modern text is a different experience from reading a modern edition. It is even the case that reading an original edition today is different from the experience of reading it when it was initially produced. Finally, does this lead us to think differently about how we engage with politics today?

The Materiality of Early Modern Political Texts - 2

In my last blogpost, I noted the point made by one participant at our Experiencing Political Texts workshop in York, that the correspondence of early modern men and women has been viewed differently. Whereas that of men who participated in politics has been read as a political text, that of women (even powerful and influential women) is often dismissed as gossip. That observation led me to ponder what makes a text political. Katie East addressed this point explicitly in her paper at the second part of our workshop on the materiality of texts, which took place on 28 March 2023. This is one of three themes that I want to explore here that arose out of the papers delivered on that day. The other two are the methods used by early modern authors to control or delimit the meaning of their text, and the survival of ephemeral texts.

Painting of Cicero denouncing Catiline and his conspiracy. Taken from Wikimedia Commons.

As Katie made clear, the political nature of a text is determined by several factors. Conventionally emphasis is placed on the content of the work and the intention of the author as well as the interventions of editors, commentators, or translators. Yet, as she explained, two other factors also play a critical role. First, the context(s) in which the work is written, printed, and read, and secondly the materiality of the text itself. Both Katie's paper and those that followed offered several illustrations of how context and materiality can enhance a text's political character.

Katie's paper focused on accounts of the Catiline conspiracy in ancient Rome that were published during the early modern period. She demonstrated how that story was given a new political edge: both during the Jacobite uprisings of the early eighteenth century, and in the chaos generated by the financial collapse of the South Sea Company. In her paper, Alex Plane showed how works that might be deemed apolitical in one context, could take on a political meaning in another. This was the case with the works on duelling held in the library of James VI and I. James was keen to establish his reputation as a peacemaker, yet this was undermined if members of the nobility were killing each other in duels rather than settling their issues via formal legal means. Duelling became a political matter, therefore, so too did the possession of books about it.

Sketch of Thomas Spence’s profile. Taken from the Hedley Papers at the Newcastle Literary and Philosophical Society. Reproduced with the permission of the Society.

Explicitly political works could also have their political edge heightened by being read in new contexts. Harriet Gray demonstrated this with reference to Thomas Spence's political works. Though Spence died in 1814, members of the Newcastle Literary and Philosophical Society felt the need to distance themselves from his ideas in 1817 due to both the campaign against the Society of Spencean Philanthropists in London and the activities of their own librarian John Marshall, who showed marked sympathy for Spencean ideas.

Titlepage from Thomas Gordon’s edition of Sallust. Taken from Eighteenth-Century Collections Online.

Perhaps more surprising are the ways in which the materiality of a text could render it more or less political. Katie showed how even just the title page could emphasise or de-emphasise the political nature of Cicero's speeches on the Catiline conspiracy - or be used to encourage a particular reading of them. The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries witnessed various accounts of the conspiracy, including both those that used it to call for loyalty to the existing (monarchical) regime and those that adopted a republican reading. The addition of paratextual material such as dedications and, in the case of Thomas Gordon's translation of Sallust's historical account, overtly 'political' discourses on the text, could further heighten its political character and/or a specific interpretation. Even the layout of the text on the page could contribute to this. Gordon deliberately adopted a clean, classical, layout to push his political message. This was in contrast to the busier appearance of scholarly editions which encouraged a more contemplative reading.

Page from John Spittlehouse’s pamphlet The Royall Advocate which includes the marginal note ‘Jesus Christ was no Quaker’. Taken from Early English Books Online.

Leanne Smith furthered our consideration of page layout by showing how the Fifth Monarchist John Spittlehouse deliberately used the white space at the edges of a page to draw the attention of his readers to key passages and to direct their understanding. His pointed comments in the margin alongside his account of Oliver Cromwell's speech to Parliament on 4 September 1654 encouraged readers to question Cromwell's actions and motives. While comments in the margin of The Royall Advocate such as 'Jesus Christ was no Quaker' sought to turn his readers against that radical sect.

The page from The True Patriot’s Speech at Rome which gives the false imprint. Taken from Early English Books Online.

Finally, Joe Hone showed us how even something as apparently innocuous as the imprint could enhance the political character of a text. His paper focused on the short pamphlet The True Patriot's Speech to the People of Rome. Though printed in London in 1708, the imprint read 'Amsterdam, 1656'. Joe argued that 'Amsterdam' was used repeatedly around this time as shorthand to indicate the republican or anti-monarchical content or implications of certain texts. In this sense it was not a way of avoiding censorship (as might be thought) but rather a declaration of allegiance. Similarly, dating the pamphlet '1656' suggested its relevance to the period of the English republic, and encouraged the audience to read it as a counterpart to key republican texts such as James Harrington's The Commonwealth of Oceana and Marchamont Nedham's The Excellencie of a Free State, both of which appeared that year.

Ben Jonson’s poem ‘To Groom Idiot’ taken from https://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/jonson/groomidiot.htm

We have already seen, with reference to Leanne's paper, how the materiality of the text could be used to encourage a particular political reading of it. This point was explored from a different perspective in Ruth Connolly's discussion. Ruth showed how Ben Jonson made careful use of punctuation to contain and control the meaning of his works. First, he made clear his expectation of readers in his poem 'To Groom Idiot', which criticises the eponymous recipient of the poem for failing to understand the punctuation of his works and for laughing in the wrong places. By this means Jonson created expectations as to how his works should be read. Secondly, Ruth used several specific examples to illustrate how a subtle change in punctuation - for example from a colon to a question mark - could alter the meaning of the text - and even how in a letter to Cecil from 1605 a colon was used to imply a meaning that was not explicit in the written words. Despite being very different kinds of writers, both Jonson and Spittlehouse used technical features of their texts to direct the reader's response. This is, of course, something we also see being used much more systematically in the elaborate bindings produced by Thomas Hollis for the works he disseminated, and in the marginal notes he added to those texts, which I explored in a previous blogpost.

The copy of Thomas Spence’s lecture held among the Hedley Papers at the Newcastle Literary and Philosophical Society. Reproduced with the permission of the Society.

Finally, having been prompted by the papers delivered at York to think about the ephemerality versus the durability of early modern texts, I was interested to hear in the final panel about examples of ephemeral texts surviving under what might seem strange circumstances. Alex Plane explained that there is in James VI and I's Library an edict against duelling issued by Louis XIII of France in 1613. This is exceptionally rare - indeed it appears to be the only surviving copy. Its presence in James's library is probably due to Henry Howard, who was commissioned by James to write a work for him that was critical of duelling. To prepare for this task, Howard produced a common place book on the subject, and probably collected the edict as part of an information gathering trip to France. In her paper Harriet Gray reported that ephemeral material relating to Thomas Spence and John Marshall (including the only extant copy of Spence's original lecture 'Property in Land Everyone's Right' and Marshall's Newcastle Swineheard's Proclamation) can be found among the papers of the Newcastle Literary and Philosophical Society. Their survival is due to the concern among members to distance the Society from both Spence and Marshall, it is even possible that placing the texts in the collection was more about hiding them than preserving them (or at least about controlling the context in which they were read). They were not easy to locate or access  - as reflected in the fact that the Spence pamphlet was only discovered in 2005.

In my reflections on the first part of our workshop, I suggested that it had enhanced my understanding of how political works were produced and read in the early modern period. The second part deepened this, not least in encouraging me to think more about early modern cultures of reading and writing. Both Jonson and Spittlehouse took great care to guide their readers. Alex's description of James taking his courtiers on what were effectively writing retreats and having them surround him at dinner to discuss recently published pamphlets and draft responses to them, suggests a different kind of reading and writing culture from the image of an author sitting at a desk scribbling in the margins. Do we also, then, need to think again about our own cultures of reading and writing? What do readers need to know in order to properly to understand modern political texts?

The Materiality of Early Modern Political Texts

Advances in digital technology have distanced twenty-first century scholars from the materiality of texts and the practical realities of printing and book production. I now access most of the texts I study via a screen. There are obvious benefits to this, virtually all the early modern printed texts I need are available via resources like EEBO (Early English Books Online) and ECCO (Eighteenth-Century Collections Online), so I no longer have to travel to specialist libraries to read them. Yet, being of an age that I can remember life before EEBO, I am also conscious of what is lost as a result of the shift to digital consumption. The orange dust on my clothes from carrying a pile of old books to my desk at the British Library is something I can live without, but the wealth of information that could be gleaned from handling the book as a physical object - its size, weight, quality, appearance - is much harder to intuit through a screen.

Our second Experiencing Political Texts workshop was designed to explore these issues by focusing on the materiality of early modern texts. Practicalities meant that we were also confronted with the pros and cons of the digital in our own experience of the workshop. Owing to the threatened UCU strikes, Part 1 took place in person in York on 24 February, while Part 2 (which I will discuss in my next blogpost) was broadcast via Zoom on 28 March. While there are definite advantages to being able to hold a workshop digitally, the engagement with participants - just like that with texts - is richer and more satisfying in person.

I left York buzzing with ideas, but will restrict myself here to just three: the experience of texts by non-readers; ephemerality versus durability and the role of text in securing longevity; and the notion of hidden texts - and more especially hidden political messages within texts.

The title page of John Lilburne’s pamphlet Regall Tyrannie Discovered (EEBO).

It was Sophie Smith who raised the point that texts are experienced by those who do not read them as well as by those who do. This idea was especially resonant because Sophie's paper followed Rachel Foxley's on Leveller and Republican texts, which had already led me to reflect on the information conveyed on title pages - which would have been accessible in booksellers shops or on barrows to people who did not buy or read the full work. Rachel focused on John Lilburne's Regall Tyrannie Discovered, the title page of which is particularly striking. It consists of dense, closely printed, type which sets out the argument and structure of the work. In this regard, it reminded me of the frontispieces to works like Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan and the Eikon Basilike, which convey the argument of the text in visual form. On the surface, these images are more engaging and might seem more appealing than dense type, and yet they require careful reading and interpretation. Lilburne also offered a textual equivalent of the author portrait that prefaced many early modern texts, listing his other works and offering a summary of the key events of his life.

An example of the Hugo Grotius medal from the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. Taken from Wikimedia Commons.

Of course, the reputation of an author - and an understanding of their main arguments - was often accessible to those who had never read that author's works. Niccolò Machiavelli was a case in point for the early modern period. Sophie showed that John Case's Sphaera civitatis was partly inspired by his concern that early modern citizens might derive their understanding of politics from Machiavelli (whether or not they had read him). By updating Aristotle's account of politics, Case's aim was to convince them to abandon Machiavelli as their guide. Charlotte McCallum's close reading of 'Nicholas Machiavel's Letter to Zanobius Bundelmontius' which appeared in the 1675 edition of his works, explored how Machiavelli could be drawn upon to advance arguments specific to English politics in the 1670s. Machiavelli was not the only figure whose reputation extended to audiences far beyond those who actually read his works. Ed Jones Corredera reminded us that the same is true of Hugo Grotius whose image was used to advertise air travel in the twentieth century and to celebrate individuals committed to advancing peace - via the Grotius medals, one of which was awarded to Winston Churchill in 1949.

Holy Trinity Church, York. As well as these surviving examples of early modern box pews, this church also has many tombstone inscriptions, not all of which are still visible. Image Rachel Hammersley.

The second theme I drew from the papers concerned the ephemerality versus the longevity of texts. This idea was brought into focus by Katherine Hunt's paper which began with the line from George Herbert that writing in brass is more weighty, durable, and permanent than writing with pen and ink. As Katherine's paper demonstrated, the reality is that writing in brass could be just as ephemeral as print. As anyone who has wandered around a church will know, inscriptions on tomb stones can become worn over time. On the other hand, there are plenty of examples of supposedly ephemeral texts (broadsheets, chapbooks, pamphlets) that have survived since the early modern era. Sometimes this occurs as a result of them appearing in a Sammelband collection (a group of pamphlets bound together because they all relate to a particular issue or affair). Jason McElligott discussed a couple of Sammelband volumes held at the Marsh Library in Dublin. He demonstrated why such collections are so valuable to scholars, owing to their ability to reveal how particular works were read and understood at the time.

Rachel Foxley and Marcus Nevitt also touched on the contrast between ephemeral and more durable texts. In analysing Regall Tyrannie Discovered, Rachel was forced to confront the distinction between pamphlets and books. Lilburne usually produced pamphlets, but with Regall Tyrannie Discovered he was clearly aiming (not entirely successfully) to produce something more akin to a book. As Rachel noted, ephemerality versus longevity is one of several scales on which we can contrast these two formats. Though there are of course plenty of examples of pamphlets that have transcended their supposedly ephemeral status. Marcus noted the contrast between the ephemerality of a play performance and the more durable form of a printed play text - including its dedication - which could extend the life of plays and enhance the reputation of their authors.

The contents page of the 1675 edition of Machiavelli’s works - with the letter at the bottom. (EEBO).

Closely related to the theme of longevity versus durability is that of visibility versus obscurity, and a number of papers also touched on the idea of hidden texts. This was again brought into focus by Katherine's paper on brass inscriptions. I was intrigued by the pro-monarchy sentiments that were inscribed inside bells produced in 1641 and 1650. Was this a case of communities expressing their sympathy and support for Charles I in a way that was safe, precisely because the words could not easily be read? Other papers explored the notion of hidden texts - or hidden ideas within texts - in different ways. This might be a matter of the positioning of a particular text within a volume. Charlotte McCallum noted that in the 1675 edition of Machiavelli's works the spoof letter from 'Machiavel' was placed at the end of the volume (a fact that was reflected on the contents page). In some later editions it appeared earlier in the volume, and in some a manuscript note was added drawing attention to the controversial nature of the ideas contained in the letter. The letter, then, was made more or less obscure through the materiality of the volume - its positioning within it and the addition or removal of other paratextual material. This reminded me of the practice within the Encyclopédie of hiding controversial topics in obscure places. The life and thought of the English republican James Harrington, for example, is discussed in the entry for Rutland; the English county with which the Harrington family was associated.

Papers by Marie-Louise Coulahan and Lizzie Scott-Baumann offered a gender dimension to this idea of hidden texts. Marie-Louise presented her RECIRC project to us. One of the findings of this project is that while women rarely wrote overtly political texts, that does not mean that they did not engage in politics. Rather they had to find suitable vehicles for doing so. Petitions (such as that of the Mariners' Wives and the Gentlewomen's Petition) and prophetic writings were often used to make political statements. Similarly, both Lucy Hutchinson and Margaret Cavendish wrote about their husbands as a way of expressing their own political views. It was noted too that correspondence by women is often undervalued as a political text. Where the correspondence of men is seen as important, that by women is often dismissed as mere 'gossip'. Lizzie took this notion of hidden ideas to a deeper level, exploring how the language used by Lucy Hutchinson and Anne Wharton in their poems addressed to Edmund Waller, served to subtly critique his behaviour and actions.

Image by Rachel Hammersley. Taken during the workshop with the Thin Ice Press.

Our workshop ended with us addressing the materiality of texts from a different direction. Helen Smith led a workshop with the Thin Ice Press. We were given the opportunity to type set a short sentence (which proved to be a very fiddly process) and then to print a poster of our own. This gave us all a new appreciation for the work done by early modern printers. It became apparent just what a monumental task printing a text was at that time, and it made the typographical errors that are common in early modern texts much more understandable. While I will continue to use resources such as EEBO and ECCO to read early modern texts, I left York knowing that the distance between my understanding and the practical realities of the production and consumption of early modern political texts had narrowed perceptibly as a result of the workshop.

Image by Rachel Hammersley. Taken during the workshop with the Thin Ice Press.

'Ut Spargam' and other Hollis Marginalia

An example of the smoke printed symbol of the pilius or liberty cap taken from Henry Neville, Plato Redivivus, or a dialogue concerning government (London, 1763). This copy, which was donated by Hollis to the Advocates Library in Edinburgh, is now held at the National Library of Scotland: ([Ad]. 7/1.8). It is reproduced here under a Creative Commons License with permission from the Library.

In last month's blogpost I noted that social media platforms have now taken over as the dominant source of news and political information for younger citizens in the UK. One of the main concerns about this shift in news consumption habits is the notion that such platforms tend to generate echo chambers. This results in individuals rarely being confronted by - and therefore required to engage with - views that differ significantly from their own. It can produce a polarisation of positions and a tendency to demonise - rather than seeking to understand - alternative viewpoints. The political dissemination campaigns of the late eighteenth century that were the focus of my last blogpost could be seen as leading to a similar outcome, with campaigners voicing particular viewpoints (such as the benefits of political reform), and dismissing alternative views. Yet in the case of Thomas Hollis, the picture is more complex.

I have touched on Hollis and his campaign several times in previous blogposts, so will not go into great detail here. Suffice to say that he sent a huge number of books to university and public libraries in Britain, continental Europe, and North America. Harvard College in Massachusetts was the recipient of the largest collection of donations, with around 3,000 volumes being sent over several years. Part of Hollis's aim in sending works to university libraries was to influence the education of the rising generation.

An example of the embossed symbol of the wise owl again taken from the National Library of Scotland’s copy of Neville’s Plato Redivivus: ([Ad].7/1.8). Reproduced under a Creative Commons License with permission from the Library.

As well as sending the works free of charge, Hollis also manipulated the physical appearance of the volumes he sent in order to shape how they were read and understood. One technique he deployed was to add symbols or emblematic tools to the works (either smoke printed into the text or embossed onto the binding) which served as a shorthand for the content. A pilius or liberty bonnet indicated that the work advocated liberty, a sword was associated with the right to overthrow tyrants, the cock symbolised alertness or vigilance, and an owl showed that the work was wise (unless it appeared upside down in which case it had the opposite meaning). More details on the emblematic tools Hollis used are provided in William Bond's lecture, 'Thomas Hollis: His Bookbinders and Book binding', which can be accessed here.

Another method Hollis used was to add handwritten comments to the texts expressing his views on them or pointing readers towards related works in the collection. Most of these comments were specific to the text itself (and I discussed some of these in a previous blogpost) but there were at least three phrases that can be found repeatedly in works that form part of the Harvard collection.

An example of Hollis’s handwritten marginalia. This comes from an edition of John Milton’s Works, ed. Richard Baron (London, 1753). Reproduced with permission from the Harvard Library copy.

One of these is the phrase 'Ut Spargam', which translates roughly as 'that we may scatter them', 'spargo' being the Latin verb meaning to scatter, strew, or sprinkle. Hollis added this phrase by hand to more than twenty of the volumes he sent to Harvard College. For the most part these are works that set out and celebrate the rights and liberties of the people in politics and religion. They include: several works from the French monarchomach tradition, written by Huguenots in the late sixteenth century, opposing absolute monarchy and justifying tyrannicide; several collections of speeches, acts, or declarations by the English parliament of the 1640s during its confrontation with Charles I; English republican texts such as James Harrington's The Commonwealth of Oceana and Catharine Macaulay's History of England; and several works that deal explicitly with the rights of the people, including Benjamin Hoadly's The common rights of subjects, defended, William Petyt's, The antient right of the Commons of England, and a 1658 work called simply The rights of the people. The point of the Latin phrase was presumably to indicate that these works should be disseminated so that people around the world would come to know their rights.

A box commemorating the repeal of the Stamp Act. From the National Museum of American History. Reproduced from Wikimedia Commons under a Creative Commons License.

There were, of course, particular reasons why this message was pertinent to the American colonists in the 1760s (when Hollis sent most of these works to Harvard). This was a period during which the conflict between the colonists and the British government was escalating. The imposition of the Sugar Act in April 1764 and of the Stamp Act in March 1765 had led the colonists to fear that the British were seeking to exploit and oppress them - imposing taxes without according them representation, thereby infringing their rights as British subjects. The second of these acts provoked the Stamp Act Congress in October 1765 - an early example of co-ordinated action on the part of the colonists. Yet despite securing the repeal of the Stamp Act the following year, the exercise of British control continued. The repeal was deliberately accompanied by the Declaratory Act, which asserted Parliament's right to control the colonies. In June 1767 further customs duties were imposed, and the following year British troops moved into Massachusetts, which had been the focus of the colonial protests. It is not difficult to read off from Hollis's gifts to Harvard his attitude towards the crisis and the fact that he saw it as crucial in this context to remind young American citizens of their rights and the threats posed by overbearing power.

The second phrase Hollis adds to multiple volumes is 'Felicity is Freedom and Freedom is Magnanimity'. It appears in seven works, most of which are recognisably republican texts and two of which also bear the 'Ut Spargam' tag (Harrington's Oceana and Macaulay's History). Interestingly it also appears in A short narrative of the horrid massacre, which described the Boston Massacre of 1770 when British troops fired on protestors. A direct connection is, therefore, drawn between the events of mid-seventeenth-century England and recent colonial affairs. In fact there is a third strand to the parallel, since Hollis attributes the phrase 'Felicity is Freedom and Freedom is Magnanimity' to Thucydides. In Book 2 of The History of the Peloponnesian War Thucydides praises the bravery of the Athenians who died in that war, sacrificing themselves for their country, and he urges their successors to follow their example:

For heroes have the whole earth for their tomb; and in lands far from their own,

where the column with its epitaph declares it, there is enshrined in every breast a

record unwritten with no tablet to preserve it, except that of the heart. These take as

your model and, judging happiness to be the fruit of freedom and freedom of

valour, never decline the dangers of war.

(http://classics.mit.edu/Thucydides/pelopwar.2.second.html)

Like the ancient Athenians and the republicans of seventeenth-century England, the American colonists were displaying a spirit of patriotism that led them to put the good of their country ahead of their own personal interests. The 'Felicity is Freedom' tag endorsed their willingness to fight - even to the death - to defend their rights.

Yet Hollis's strategy was not simply to present his readers with one side of the story. One of the works to which he added the phrase 'Ut Spargam' was Henry Sacheverell's account of his trial. Sacheverell was an Anglican clergyman and popular preacher. In a sermon delivered in November 1709, which he subsequently printed illegally, he attacked Catholics and Protestant Dissenters, comparing the Gunpowder Plot to the execution of Charles I. At his trial, which opened in February 1710 and was accompanied by rioting, Sacheverell was found guilty. As a strong advocate of the Dissenting cause, Hollis will not have shared Sacheverell's views and the parallel drawn between Catholics and Dissenters will have been an affront to Hollis's staunch anti-Catholicism. Yet he still believed that Sacheverell's own account of his trial should be widely disseminated.

Moreover, the plot thickens further if we draw into the discussion Hollis's third repeatedly used inscription: 'Floreat Libertas, Pereat Tyrannis'. The words themselves celebrate the triumph of liberty over tyranny. Yet the works to which Hollis added these words were produced not by advocates of liberty, but by their tyrannical opponents. They include: the collected works of Charles I and his account of his trial; the Letters and dispatches of Charles's close advisor the Earl of Strafford who was executed by Parliament in 1641; and The free-holders grand inquest by the divine right theorist Robert Filmer. It is no doubt significant that while he strongly opposed the arguments reflected in these works, Hollis did not hide them from the Harvard students, but deliberately sent them copies, alerting them by his handwritten inscription that these works contained the arguments of tyrants. Hollis's position seems to have been that it was not sufficient for the colonists to be educated on their rights, they also needed to have a clear picture of what tyranny looked like so that they could recognise it and act quickly when it was imposed against them.

Underlying these decisions by Hollis we can perhaps glimpse the hand of the man he described as 'the divine Milton' (Memoirs of Thomas Hollis, Esq., ed. Francis Blackburne. London, 1780, pp. 60 and 93). In Areopagitica (1644) John Milton argued against the censorship of books, drawing a contrast between the food of the body and that of the mind:

Bad meats will scarce breed good nourishment in

John Milton in the ‘Temple of British Worthies’ at Stowe in Buckinghamshire. Image by Rachel Hammersley

the healthiest concoction; but herein the

difference is of bad books, that they to a discreet

and judicious Reader serve in many respects to

discover, to confute, to forewarn, and to illustrate (John

Milton, Areopagitica. London, 1644, p. 11).

Hollis, following Milton, believed that the American colonists needed to engage with and understand tyranny in order to be able to defend their rights and liberties. The same argument holds today. We cannot understand, let alone defend, what is right, if we are not prepared to listen to, and engage with, alternative viewpoints - even those we might find distasteful.

Northern Early Modern Network

The second conference I attended in the week commencing 17 January was organised by the Northern Early Modern Network. It was delivered in a blended format, which allowed for the best of both worlds. Participants commented on the pleasure of speaking to a live audience after so long in isolation. Yet, including an online presence meant that speakers based in Austria, Spain, Poland, and Malta could participate without having to travel long distances. Most of the speakers were current postgraduates (and I have focused on what they had to say) so the conference provided a snapshot of the future of early modern studies. The excellent papers I heard led me to reflect on a number of themes.

Several papers focused on lesser-known figures or those who challenge conventional narratives. Daniel Johnson explored how Isaac Watts sought to reconcile his religious views with Enlightenment rationalism. Leanne Smith's paper centred on the Fifth Monarchist John Canne and examined his interweaving of religious and republican ideas. She emphasised his commitment to the republican understanding of liberty as freedom of the will and to popular sovereignty. Maddie Reynolds presented her research on the scientific work of Mary Sidney Herbert, showing the subtle strategies that she had to employ as a woman operating in a male setting. Subtlety and careful manoeuvring were also required of the Elizabethan diplomat William Davison, who was the subject of Rosalyn Cousins' paper. Rosalyn showed how Davison saw himself not simply as a servant of the Queen but as a servant of the commonwealth, meaning that he was willing to challenge orders that he thought threatened the country.

Davison's manoeuvring primarily concerned his relations with others, but some early modern individuals and groups, like Herbert, had to manipulate their own identity and self-presentation in order to succeed. Two very different examples of self-fashioning were offered in the papers by Livia Bernardes Roberge and Marlo Avidon. Livia discussed the construction of identity by the Leveller and Digger movements, showing how both groups adopted labels initially intended as terms of abuse, but also highlighting the differences in the process by which they did so. Marlo's paper centred on the women celebrated in Peter Lely's series of portraits 'Windsor Beauties'. She argued that beauty could operate as a form of power for women at that time and that the portraits provided them with some agency within the boundaries of objectification.

Frontispiece to Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (London, 1651). Robinson Library, Newcastle University. BAI 1651 HOB. Reproduced with kind permission from the Library.

This notion of self-fashioning points towards a second theme highlighted in various papers, namely the importance of active engagement as part of early modern religious, cultural, or political processes. This theme was first drawn to my attention in Joshua Rushton's paper on the shifting landscape of sanctity in early modern Venice. Joshua's account of the promotion of the cults of St Mark and St Antony in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries served to emphasise the importance of the spiritual engagement of the laity through the consumption of hagiographical writings and participation in processions. Participation in the politics of the state could also come through enrolment in the army, which is why many republican authors celebrated the idea of citizen soldiers. Nicolau Lutz alluded to this tradition in his paper, but his main focus was on Thomas Hobbes's rather different treatment of the army in Leviathan. Hobbes denied that the army had a corporate nature; rejected its right (or the right of any individual soldier) to act as a representative of the state; and, in complete opposition to the republicans, sought to separate the soldier from the citizen or subject. His ultimate aim, Nicolau explained, was to depoliticise the army.

A lack of political agency can also arise as a result of poverty or disability. Genna Kirkpatrick explored this idea in her examination of the treatment of these themes in the play The Honest Man's Fortune (1613). Genna emphasised the complex interrelationship between poverty, disability, status, and social structures, arguing that the play explores the ways in which the obstacles faced by those who are poor or disabled are not inherent in nature but the result of social structures that favour the rich and able-bodied.

Margaret Cavendish (née Lucas), Duchess of Newcastle upon Tyne by Pieter Louis van Schuppen, after Abraham Diepenbeeck, c.1655-1658. National Portrait Gallery, NPG D11111. Reproduced under a Creative Commons Licence.

Engagement in the private sphere was explored in two papers. Harriet Palin's account of the practice of catechising in early modern England showed how catechesis was used as a process of self-reflection and how for many the aim was to bring a shift from rote learning towards deeper engagement with religious understanding. Lauren Kilbane's paper on the theme of mourning in Margaret Cavendish's play Bell in Campo presented the play's war widow Madame Jantil as a living monument to her grief and emphasised the performative dimension of her role. Her creation of a funeral monument to her husband reflected one opportunity for self-fashioning that was open to women at the time.

Another kind of cultural performance was explored by Nicole Maceira Cumming in her paper on James VI's passion for hunting. As Nicole noted, hunting was not merely an enjoyable pastime but a means of preparing young aristocratic men for their duties - especially in times of war. Nicole insisted that James understood the role of the hunt as a display of power and argued that this was why in Basilikon Doron, he favoured the 'noble' pursuit of hunting with hounds - which reinforced hierarchical distinctions - as against the form of hunting that was more typical in Scotland at the time.

James VI of Scotland and I of England by Daniel Mytens 1621. National Portrait Gallery. NPG 109. Reproduced under a Creative Commons Licence.

It is not just in hunting that entertainment is combined with pedagogy, several papers explored the role of playacting and games as educational tools. Maria Maciejewska's paper on Jesuit plays about Japan noted that plays were crucial to education within Jesuit schools. Not only were they a means of practising Latin and rhetorical skills, but they also provided an opportunity for the exploration of emotions. In her paper Nuna Kümin emphasised the importance of play not just to education but to research and set out her methodology of using games as a means of exploring early modern musical improvisation - an area that is lacking in source material. Nuna ended her paper by picking up her violin and playing one of her games, offering a wonderful audio feast of early modern style improvisation.

Another common theme was the circulation of ideas and the different methods deployed for promoting this. The dissemination of ideas via texts was explored in Alex Plane's paper on the library of James VI and I. Alex argued that James's library functioned as a reference resource not just for his work as an author but also in his role as monarch, with key texts that dealt with specific contemporary issues often being bound together. Information could also be held and carried by people. This idea was explored in Sergio Moreta Pedraz's paper on the role of the governors of the "Estado do Brasil" and "Estado do Maranhao"; in Maciej Polak's exploration of the correspondence of the Royal Commissioners Marcin Kromer and Jan Dymitr Solikowski; and in Rosalyn Cousins's account of William Davison. These figures were all valuable because of their considerable understanding of politics and international affairs, which often far exceeded that of the rulers for whom they worked. In his paper Carlo Scapecchi explored the transmission of a different kind of knowledge, showing how Flemish weaving techniques were imported into Renaissance Italy through the migration of a group of Netherlandish weavers to Florence. Finally, Thom Pritchard's paper focused on the transmission of news around Europe and its disruption due to meteorological events. Employing the analogy of the acoustic shadow, whereby the sound of guns can be distorted by disruptions to sound waves caused by phenomena such as wind currents, Pritchard presented the idea of an informatic shadow where storms and other features of the little ice age impacted on the movement of news across the continent.

John Milton by unknown artist, c. 1629. National Portrait Gallery. NPG 4222. Reproduced under a Creative Commons Licence.

Given that I am preparing to launch the Experiencing Political Texts network, I took particular note when contributors spoke about genre or the materiality of texts. Victoria Downey presented John Milton's use of the epic in Paradise Lost as a deliberate nod to classical authors such as Virgil, which allowed him to explore surprising elements or silences within the Biblical account. Focusing on his treatment of the serpent, Victoria showed how Milton made use of intertextual readings and allusions to present his theological convictions within the Biblical narrative. Shifts of genre within texts could also have powerful meaning, for example Lauren Kilbane showed how Cavendish switched from prose to verse to indicate that her characters were memorialising. Emily Hay's paper on the sonnets of Mary Queen of Scots showed that the genre of a work could even be twisted - or misrepresented - by later editors and printers for their own ends. She made a convincing case that the poems that were presented as love sonnets to Erle Bothwell - so as to implicate Mary in the murder Lord Darnley - may originally have been written as religious devotional works.

St John’s Co-Cathedral, Valetta, Malta. Image from Wikimedia Commons

The materiality of texts and objects was addressed directly in several papers. Alex Plane reminded us that a library is not just a collection of texts, but an assemblage of physical objects and that material features such as bindings, inscriptions, and marginalia can be as revealing as the printed words. Maddie Reynolds provided an illustration of this in her paper on Mary Sidney Herbert, pointing out that the frontispiece to The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia used emblematic and iconographical images not just to provide details of the plot, but to represent in visual form the alchemical idea of transformation. Nor is it just the materiality of texts that can be revealing. In her paper on the tryptich The Deposition of Christ from St. John's Co-Cathedral in Valetta, Lydia Pavia Dimech argued that gouge marks in the frame which holds the painting can help make sense of its history. Understanding texts and images as physical objects also means thinking about their dissemination. Roslyn Potter's paper on John Forbes's Songs and Fancies addressed this issue, noting the strategy that was employed of sending it direct to music schools to encourage its use.

I am posting this blog in the immediate aftermath of a period of industrial action that has highlighted the immense pressures that academics are under today with pay and pensions squeezed while working conditions deteriorate. Postgraduate students are at the sharp end of this crisis, often doing hourly-paid teaching on precarious contracts to develop essential skills and to make ends meet, while facing an uncertain future. For those of us working in the humanities these worries are increased by concerns about the future of our disciplines, and especially of early modern research. In this context, the conference was heartening. The scholarship on display was strong and the papers reflected new and exciting avenues of research, many of which have direct relevance for the world in which we live today.

With this in mind it seems appropriate to end with Claire Turner's paper on the smellscape of the seventeenth-century plague outbreaks. This is part of her wider PhD project that explores how the plague impacted on the five senses, thereby adopting a new approach to an old topic. The history of the plague has, of course, gained fresh relevance in the last two years, and Claire's reference to techniques such as airing rooms and segregating households sounded all too familiar. The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries may seem a long time ago - and much has changed in the intervening period - but Claire's paper reminded us not only that we continue to face similar problems but also that our common humanity means that we often approach them in similar ways.

Experiencing Political Texts 6: Materiality

We currently find ourselves on a cusp with regard to the materiality of texts. Print copies are still common, but digital editions and open access publishing are on the rise. Yet, for now, the conventions of print tend to provide the framework for digital editions with an emphasis on recreating the look and experience of reading a printed book (for example with 'Turning the Pages' technology) rather than exploring the new possibilities that digital editions might offer.

Despite his experimental use of genre and the blending of fact and fiction, the physical format of Yanis Varoufakis's book Another Now, which I have discussed in previous blogposts in this series, is relatively conventional. It is available in hardback, paperback, as an audio download, and in e-book form with the last of these merely comprising a digital version of the print copy. However, Varoufakis does acknowledge potential innovations in future in his description of what happens when the narrator Yango Varo first opens Iris's diary:

Two red arrows filled my vision as my hybrid-reality contact lenses detected audio-visual content in the diary and kicked in. Instinctively I gestured to switch off my haptic interface and slammed the book shut. Costa had explicitly instructed me to set up the dampening field device before opening the diary. Chastened by my failure to do so, I went to fetch it. Only once the device was on the desk, humming away reassuringly, was I able to delve into Iris's memories in that rarest of conditions - privacy. (Yanis Varoufakis, Another Now: Dispatches from an Alternative Present. London: Bodley Head, 2019, p. 5).

Title page of Toland and Darby’s edition of The Oceana of James Harrington. Reproduced from the copy at the Robinson Library Newcastle University, BRAD 321 07-TP. I am grateful to the Library staff for allowing me to reproduce the work here.

I have already touched on the materiality of early modern texts in previous blogposts (January 2021, September 2020), but there is more to explore. One area of interest is the way in which the material or physical form of a text was deliberately designed to engage a specific audience. During the eighteenth century the English republican works first published during the mid-seventeenth century were directed, in successive waves, at different audiences and the physical format of those editions varied accordingly. 

Many of the original English republican texts published during the mid to late seventeenth century had been relatively small, cheap editions. When John Toland and John Darby decided to reprint these works at the turn of the eighteenth century, they deliberately reproduced them as lavish folio editions. We know from personal correspondence that they took care to use high quality paper and the title pages often include words in red type, which was more expensive. The size and quality of these volumes makes clear that they were aimed at a high-status audience - particularly members of the political elite. They were destined for their own private libraries or those used by them. While in one sense this was exclusionary - putting these works (and the ideas contained within them) beyond the means of ordinary citizens - there was a positive reason for doing so. Toland and Darby were keen to make clear that, although these texts had been published in the midst of the chaos of the civil war and interregnum, they remained of interest - and of relevance to those in government - even after the restoration of 1660. These works were not mere ephemera, but were of lasting significance and continued relevance in the eighteenth century even though England was no longer ruled as a republic.

Binding of Thomas Hollis’s edition of Harrington’s works. From Houghton Library, Harvard University. HOU GEN *EC65.H2381 656c (B) Lobby IV.2.18. I am grateful to the Houghton Library for giving me permission to reproduce this and to Dr Mark Somos for his assistance.

Thomas Hollis was aware of Toland's publishing campaign and built his own on its foundations. He republished many of the same texts, and again did so in the form of lavish folio volumes with expensive bindings. Hollis commissioned the Italian engraver Giovanni Cipriani to produce portraits of the authors to preface the volumes and to design little emblems that could be embossed onto the front as a key to the nature of the work inside. However, Hollis's dissemination strategy was aimed less at the private libraries of the elite and instead at institutional libraries - public libraries such as those established in cities like Leiden in the United Provinces and Bern in Switzerland, but also the libraries of educational establishments such as Christ's College Cambridge and, most famously, Harvard in the United States. This suggests that Hollis's target audience was less the current political elite than that of the future. His aim was to educate the next generation - especially in America where, from the 1760s, a crisis was brewing.

The American Revolution, when it came, had a significant impact on both sides of the Atlantic. The slogan 'no taxation without representation' flagged up political inequalities in Britain and provided fuel for the incipient reform movement. To further the cause of reform, the Society for Constitutional Information (SCI) was established in 1774. Its main mode of operation was to print cheap copies of political texts which were disseminated freely. In particular, members of the SCI believed it necessary to educate the people on the nature of the British constitution. As the Address to the Public, published in 1780, explained

John Jebb, one of the founder members of the Society for Constitutional Information. Portrait by Charles Knight, 1782. National Portrait Gallery NPG D10782. Reproduced under a Creative Commons Licence.

As every Englishman has an equal inheritance in this Liberty; and in those Laws and that Constitution which have been provided for its defence; it is therefore necessary that every Englishman should know what the Constitution IS; when it is SAFE; and when ENDANGERED (An Address to the public, from the Society for Constitutional Information. London, 1780, p. 1).

The Society focused on printing works that contributed towards this mission, stating that:

To diffuse this knowledge universally throughout the realm, to circulate it through every village and hamlet, and even to introduce it into the humble dwelling of the cottager, is the wish and hope of this Society.

Consequently, the SCI disseminated works such as Obidiah Hulme's Historical Essay on the English Constitution, but also extracts from older works that spoke to these issues. Yet, as the statement of intent makes clear, the Society aimed to disseminate political works not simply among an elite, as their predecessors had done, but throughout the population. This, it was believed, was the best means of awakening people to their rights and thereby furthering the case for the reform of Parliament.

The SCI continued to function into the 1790s and was, therefore, well placed to capitalise on further calls for reform sparked by the outbreak of the Revolution in France in 1789. In this febrile atmosphere, others took up the cause of educating the ordinary people about their rights by making available to them important political texts from past and present.

Spence token advertising Pig’s Meat. Reproduced from Wikimedia Commons.

In 1793 the Newcastle-born radical Thomas Spence published the first issue of a weekly publication entitled Pig's Meat; or, Lessons for the Swinish Multitude, which printed extracts from political texts including from works that had been republished by Toland and Darby or Hollis. The title was a reference to Edmund Burke's derisory comment in Reflections on the Revolution in France which referred to the ordinary people as swine. Spence's publication cost just 1 penny, making it affordable even for those who were relatively poor, and as he explained on the title page, his aim was 'To promote among the Labouring Part of Mankind proper Ideas of their Situation, of their Importance, and of their Rights. AND TO CONVINCE THEM That their Forlorn Condition has not been entirely overlooked and forgotten, nor their just Cause unpleased, neither by their Maker nor by the best and most enlightened of Men in all Ages.' Alongside his Pig's Meat publications, Spence engaged in other means of spreading political ideas including writing works of his own and producing and disseminating tokens.

What is the relevance of all this? First, it reminds us that it is not just the content of political works that matters, but also the form in which they are printed, and the way they are disseminated and read. Literary critics like George Bornstein, inspired by Jean Genet and Jerome McGann, have been making this point for some time. But it has yet to fully penetrate the historical investigation of political texts. Secondly, the attempt by authors, editors and reformers to reach ever wider sections of the population during the course of the eighteenth century is striking. It reveals the importance of politics to eighteenth-century British society and the firm belief (at least on the part of some) that political education could and would bring political reform. Is there, I wonder, the same appetite for political knowledge today? What kind of publications would best attract twenty-first century audiences? And what kinds of reform might they propose?

Experiencing Political Texts 1: Endings and Beginnings

While it is January that is named after a god who looks both forwards and backwards, for those of us working in educational establishments in the UK, the early autumn is also a good time for simultaneous reflection on the past and forward planning. In this spirit, this month's blogpost will look back to a project I have recently completed and offer a preview of a new project I am planning.

On 25 September Republicanism: An Introduction was published by Polity Press. As we approach the final month of the Presidential election campaign in a country that has long claimed to exemplify republican ideals, the United States, the questions: what is republican government? and what is required in order for it to function effectively? are more pertinent than ever. As I explain in my book, the older definition of a republic was a system in which government operated in the interests of the common or public good. The violent clashes that have taken place recently between Black Lives Matter protestors and Trump supporters throw doubt on any claim that there is a single, shared understanding of the common good in the US today. Of course, in the now more commonplace definition of republican government as the antonym of monarchy, it may seem that the US is unquestionably a republic, but can this judgement survive in the face of rule by a billionaire who wields far greater powers than any sitting monarch in the world and who gifts members of his own family positions of high office?

I explore these definitions more fully in a blogpost I have written for Polity Press. The book takes a chronological approach, starting with the ancient ideas and practices that formed the basis of later republican theories, before examining how those theories developed and were put into action in the context of the Renaissance, early modern Europe and the Enlightenment, and the English, American and French Revolutions. It then considers the ways in which republican ideas have been adopted by new groups, and adapted to new ends in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Overall, the book argues that republicanism is a dynamic, living language, the survival of which is predicated on its adaptability, and which retains the potential to offer answers to the pressing political issues of the twenty-first century.

Last month's blogpost on this site, which focused on the material culture of republican rule, was the last in a series about myths of republican government, exploring current political issues on which the history of republican thought offers useful insights. Yet that post simultaneously pointed towards my next project.

The cover of Thomas Hollis’s edition of James Harrington’s The Commonwealth of Oceana, Houghton Library, Harvard University: HOU GEN *EC65.H2381 656c (B) Lobby IV.2.18. I am grateful to staff at the Houghton for giving me permission to include this here and to Dr Mark Somos for his assistance. Note the owl on the front cover which indicates the wisdom of the text.

In early modern Europe, improvements in the mechanics of printing, rising literacy levels, and a series of political crises, combined to provide both the means and the market for an outpouring of political texts. Historians of political thought have paid great attention to the content or substance of those texts; analysing the language used, the arguments made, the debates to which they contributed, and the historical contexts out of which they emerged. Far less attention has been paid to the form of these texts, by which I mean both the genre(s) in which they were written and their physical or material aspects. There was no uniform genre for early modern political works, they could take the form of philosophical treatises, dialogues, travel literature, utopias, even poetry or drama. Moreover, many of them playfully blended fact and fiction. Similarly, the material dimensions of political texts - including their size, paper quality, frontispieces, typeface and binding - varied enormously and often provide clues as to their intended audiences and relate closely to the arguments they were designed to convey. Moreover understanding the ways in which those texts circulated as physical objects is also crucial to making sense of both the intentions of their authors and the ways in which they were received and used by readers.

Paying attention to these aspects of early modern political texts is crucial if we are to understand fully the functions of those texts. Often they were designed not merely to inform their readers and convince them of the validity of the arguments presented, but to prompt their readers' engagement with those arguments and even incite them to action. This was particularly important for republican texts, which were often explicitly concerned with provoking a shift from otium (contemplation) to negotium (action).

The elaborate frontispiece to John Toland’s edition of James Harrington’s The Oceana and Other Works of James Harrington (London, 1737), Copy author’s own.

It was my work on James Harrington that first drew these neglected aspects of early modern political texts to my attention. Scholars have long found it difficult to explain why Harrington veiled his greatest work, The Commonwealth of Oceana, in a rather laboured utopian form. The common argument - that it was a way of avoiding censorship - is inadequate given that a work advocating commonwealth government was in line with the views of the authorities in 1656 and that he actually removed the utopian veil from the works he produced in 1659-60 - a much more dangerous moment to voice republican arguments with the return of the monarchy looking increasingly likely. Rather, as I argued in my book, Harrington used the utopian format to indicate that what he was offering in that work was an alternative vision of England's future - one that departed in crucial ways from the actual path that had started to be taken after the dissolution of the Rump Parliament in 1653. Moreover, the fictional elements were designed to give the impression to his readers that the events he was describing were actually taking place, thereby providing them with the opportunity to imagine his ideal commonwealth and effectively to try it on for size - albeit in their imaginations rather than in reality. This fitted with Harrington's underlying philosophy that people are more likely to be convinced of the viability of new systems and institutions if they experience them rather than just read about them. This strategy also extended beyond the genre of the work to its physical form, with the constitutional orders printed in black type to make them look to seventeenth-century readers like official proclamations issued by the Government.

As my initial research has revealed, Harrington was by no means unique in using this sort of strategy. Examining the form of other early modern political texts therefore has the potential to enrich and expand our understanding of those texts, the arguments their authors were advocating, and the impact they were designed to elicit in their readers. Over the next few months I will offer a number of case studies of early modern political writers whose attention to form was central to their mission and purpose.

Exploring these methods and considering how effective they were in achieving their ends has implications for our reading of those texts today and for the ways in which they are presented to modern audiences. It raises questions, for example, about the relative advantages of accessing the text in its original form, in a modern paper edition, or in a digital version. It also prompts us to think about whether there may be ways of reflecting the material elements of a text (its size, paper quality etc.) in digital form. Finally, all of this raises questions about how political arguments are articulated today. Does the format in which we receive political information or opinion affect how we understand or approach it? How far does the layout of a text determine the extent to which we engage with or interact with it? Do we respond differently to political ideas that come to us in hard copy (in a newspaper or printed book) as compared with those that we access digitally? And how do different digital formats affect our understanding? In both these contexts, paying attention to form as well as to substance may yield some interesting observations.