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By Root 1397 0

seem to have had connections with Pym and with William Walwyn, the later Leveller. Pym may have been complicit in floating these arguments but, at the point where a very significant line was crossed, the views were expressed as private opinion, not as the official parliamentary line. Instead they appeared as the private opinion of polemicists like Parker or anonymously, as in the case of Reasons (which bore the name of neither author nor publisher).33

If it is true that Pym was to some degree complicit in this ideological radicalization, seeking either to fly kites or to soften up the public with a clever manipulation of the press, it bears testimony to an increasingly complicated relationship between politicians and the press.34 For example, the publication of parliamentary speeches seems to have been both commonplace and a breach of a longstanding inhibition on publicizing the deliberations of Parliament.35 Nonetheless, from very early in the Long Parliament speeches had been printed, and there were also, from very early on, publications purporting to be speeches which were clearly fictitious – because the supposed speaker had not spoken in the relevant debate or was no longer even a member of the House. Even this did not automatically cause offence, however. Many of John Pym’s printed speeches seem to have been fabrications, for example: an observation that both cuts him down to size a little, while at the same time inflating his importance as a figurehead for influential views.36 But on occasion what was said, or who said it, or the timing, clearly did cause offence and on those occasions sanctions were imposed which might have seemed to some to have been inconsistent.

Sir Edward Dering offers an instructive case. It was he who famously objected to the printing of the Grand Remonstrance: ‘I did not dream that we should remonstrate downward, tell tales to the people, and talk of the king as a third person’. The experience of these debates was an important moment in his ‘defection’ from the parliamentary cause. He had himself been chair of a committee dealing with ministers” grievances and charged with the licensing of books – he made an early speech complaining about the licensing of crypto-popish books. He had also seen many of his speeches in print, or circulating in manuscript copies, however. On 16 January 1642, at the height of the security scare following the attempt on the Five Members, a collection of his speeches appeared. Styled as moderate, they were highly inflammatory, and very critical of the more radical positions being taken by Parliament. But his parliamentary colleagues were most offended by the irreverent tone, and the public display of this dirty linen (sentiments not unlike his own reaction to the publication of the Grand Remonstrance). This offended against the view that free speech depended on civility, freedom from public opprobrium and, therefore, secrecy. On 2 February the collection was condemned by the Commons and ordered to be burned by the public hangman. Dering himself was expelled from the House and sent to the Tower, where he remained until discharged on his own petition on 11 February.37 The spectacle of politicians appearing on all sides of these questions about the propriety of publication invited satire. John Taylor, one of the most prolific satirists of the period, for example, published a pamphlet (under the anagrammatic pseudonym Thorny Ailo) which promised on its title page that it was based on shorthand notes taken at a sermon.38

Such a public breakdown of government by the King-in-Parliament was bound to resonate more widely and the snowstorm of official and semi-official declarations was part of a larger paper war. Thomason acquired more pamphlets per month in this period than during any other: an average of 165 titles each month, with peaks of 200 in January and 231 in August.39 Much of the output consisted of the official statements of the two sides, published speeches or news items, but there was clearly a much wider mobilization of opinion. This was manifest too in petitions