Dialogues with Power

For those of us fortunate enough to live in conditions of democracy, it can be difficult to grasp just how much was at stake in these dialogues. For the monarchy, the myth of absolutism took some work to maintain, while any new monarch had to act quickly to establish authority and set an agenda for a new regime. For the people – preachers, poets, pamphleteers – there could be much to gain from a king or queen, yet also much to lose.

There is an extraordinary volume of material from the seventeenth century that could be included here. In the course of an era in which the relation between monarchs and the people was a matter of contention as never before – an era which included two revolutions and Britain’s only period of republican rule – these dialogues expanded exponentially, across the country. The huge growth of printed publication not only helped to disseminate such exchanges, but also preserves them for us today.

We include four statements by rulers. The accession of James VI of Scotland to the English throne in 1603 was never certain, so the proclamation that declared his rule had much work to do in order to convince his subjects of his legitimacy. In the middle of the century, we can hear Oliver Cromwell working hard to sound monarchical in 1657, and just three years later Charles II announcing his return to England in the Declaration of Breda. Finally, Queen Anne sounds altogether more assured – yet still dependent upon parliament for money – in her accession speech of 1702.

We also have texts written to – and about – monarchs. Gilbert Burnet trod a careful line when he preached a sermon to the future William III in 1688, at a moment when nobody fully understood the invader’s intentions. Poets such as John Dryden and the balladeer Martin Parker, along with musicians such as Henry Purcell, were more outspokenly celebratory. The seventeenth century was the great age of British panegyric: the poetry of praise.

Yet, even in years when rules of censorship were tightly enforced, dissident voices can also be heard. George Eglisham tried to destabilize the rule of Charles I – and his court favourite, George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham – with his outrageous claim that James I had been murdered. The Character of a Protector, written soon after Oliver Cromwell’s installation, satirically reflects upon the very nature of authority.

And, in a subtle yet assertive piece of political expression, Aphra Behn declines an invitation to celebrate the overthrow of James II, a king on whom she had lavished much praise. Her poem, as much as anything else written in this turbulent era of British history, demonstrates a subject thinking through for herself the thorny relation between enforced loyalty and private conviction.