libelling, Arch Bishop of Canterbury, John Whitgift, 1605, James I, proclamation, seditious, speech

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1599), and new laws in response to the posthumous libelling of the Arch Bishop of Canterbury, John Whitgift (1605). ³⁸ A comprehensive understanding of reactions to abusive and/or illicit verse and opposition literature, however, requires that verse answers in kind also be taken into account as a strategy of response in their own right. In fact, it is characteristic of the majority of the answer-poets I examine that they compete to project the most orthodox and conspicuously royalist argument for the social good against the supposedly seditious opinions and antisocial activities of their rivals. Some of them even emulate, second or act as substitutes for royal proclamations against subversive literature.

Proclamations against opposition literature and seditious speech tend not to enforce the law, although they serve as reminders to those responsible for enforcing it, and the public in general, to remember their duty. One such example is a proclamation from 1559 for ‘Prohibiting Unlicensed Interludes and Plays, Especially on Religion or Policy’ in which “officers that have authority [are charged] to see common peace kept in commandment to arrest and imprison the parties so offending for the space of 14 days”. ³⁹ Officers are simply being reminded strongly to act upon their authority here. The legal efficacy of proclamations against seditious words was even more questionable during the later reign of James I. It was conspicuous in a proclamation from 1620, for instance, that the multitude of offenders discoursing upon matters of state rendered prosecution impractical and, in 1621, a proclamation to the same purpose simply created confusion among London’s citizens. ⁴⁰

³⁷ These can all be found in Hughes and Larkin eds (1961-9).

³⁸ See Croft (1995), pp.267-8 and Alastair Bellany, ‘‘Raylinge Rymes and Vaunting Verse’: Libellous Politics in Early Stuart England, 1603-1628’, in Culture and Politics in Early Stuart England, ed. Kevin Sharpe and Peter Lake (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1994), pp.285-310 (p.287).

³⁹ Hughes and Larkin eds (1961), II. p.116.

⁴⁰ See F. J. Levy, ‘Staging the News’, in Print, Manuscript and Performance: The Changing Relations of the Media in Early Modern England, ed. Arthur F. Marotti and Michael D. Bristol

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