-
Petitions and the "Invention" of Public Opinion in the English
RevolutionAuthor(s): David ZaretSource: American Journal of
Sociology, Vol. 101, No. 6 (May, 1996), pp. 1497-1555Published by:
The University of Chicago PressStable URL:
http://www.jstor.org/stable/2782111 .Accessed: 29/01/2015 14:01
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the
Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
.http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars,
researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information
technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new
formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please
contact [email protected].
.
The University of Chicago Press is collaborating with JSTOR to
digitize, preserve and extend access toAmerican Journal of
Sociology.
http://www.jstor.org
This content downloaded from 200.131.19.100 on Thu, 29 Jan 2015
14:01:05 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
-
Petitions and the "Invention" of Public Opinion in the English
Revolution1 David Zaret Indiana University
Current accounts of the capitalist and Protestant origins of the
dem- ocratic public sphere are inconsistent and speculative. This
empiri- cal account explains the transition in political
communication from norms of secrecy to appeals to public opinion.
Popular communica- tive change in the English Revolution
anticipated, in practice, the democratic theory of the public
sphere when printing transformed a traditional instrument of
communication-the petition. Petitions had medieval origins and
traditions that upheld norms of secrecy and privilege in political
communication. Economic and technical properties of
printing-namely, heightened commercialism and the capacity to
reproduce texts-demolished these norms by changing the scope and
content of communication by petition. This practical innovation
appears in all factions in the revolution. But among radical
groups, the political use of printed petitions led to novel
theories and to democratic speculation on constitutional provisions
that would ensure the authority of public opinion in politics. This
analysis contradicts key assumptions on communicative change that
fuel pessimistic assessments of the modern public sphere in post-
modernism and critical theory.
The first amendment to the U.S. Constitution concludes by
upholding the right "to petition the government for a redress of
grievances." To the contemporary eye, the reference to petitions
seems archaic, far less central to the public sphere than other
communicative rights. But archaic appearances belie the historical
significance of petitioning for the origins of democracy,
especially for its "public sphere," where political dis-
1 This research was carried out with support from a National
Endowment for the Humanities fellowship and travel grant, a grant
(54-329-06) from the Lilly Endow- ment, and a research leave
supplement fellowship and travel grant from Indiana University. I
am especially grateful to Thomas F. Gieryn for extensive comments
on several drafts of this paper. Helpful advice and suggestions
also came from Jeffrey Alexander, Robert Antonio, Richard Blackett,
John R. Hall, John Lucaites, Paul Seaver, and David Underdown.
Direct correspondence to David Zaret, Department of Sociology,
Indiana University, Ballantine Hall 744, Bloomington, Indiana
47405.
? 1996 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.
0002-9602/96/ 10106-0001$01.50
AJS Volume 101 Number 6 (May 1996): 1497-1555 1497
This content downloaded from 200.131.19.100 on Thu, 29 Jan 2015
14:01:05 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
-
American Journal of Sociology
course arises from rival appeals to public opinion in a
marketplace of ideas with normative authority for setting a
political agenda. In the 17th century, innovative use of petitions
facilitated the "invention" of public opinion. This development
superseded norms of secrecy and privilege in political
communication; but it was a practical and not a theoretical
innovation, an unintended consequence of communicative change.
Print- ing in the English Revolution pushed petitioning and other
traditional communicative practices in new directions that altered
the content as well as the scope of political communication. It
appealed to an anony- mous body of opinion, a public that was both
a nominal object of dis- course and a collection of writers,
readers, printers, and petitioners en- gaged in political debates.
Unacknowledged change in petitioning supplied a practical precedent
for "people's public use of their reason," which Habermas ([1962]
1989, p. 27) describes as an elite, 18th-century development.
This episode of petitioning reveals democracy's practical
origins, when public opinion, well before the Enlightenment, began
to mediate between the state and civil society. Petitions provide
vital clues for old questions about the timing and causes of the
birth of a public sphere, to which socio- logical accounts offer
inconsistent answers. For England (e.g., Bendix 1978; Habermas
1989; Marshall 1966), these accounts place this develop- ment in
the 17th or 18th century and cite capitalism and Protestantism as
principal causes. No agreement exists over precisely what in
capitalism and/or Protestantism had democratic implications for a
public sphere in politics. Neglect of communicative issues
underlies this imprecision; specu- lation is the inevitable
consequence of devoting little attention to communi- cative
practices that are, after all, central to any definition of a
public sphere. When discussed by sociologists, communicative issues
are con- ceived narrowly in terms of printing's implications for
the scope of commu- nication: facilitating more rapid and extensive
dissemination of novel ideas. That the print culture itself was a
source of novelty-a point devel- oped by historians of
printing-remains unexamined. Instead, the reflec- tive
pronouncements of Protestant theologians and Enlightenment philoso-
phers are interpreted by sociologists as valid indicators of
communicative practices that constitute a liberal-democratic public
sphere. The turn from theology and philosophy to communicative
practice is the point of depar- ture for empirical analysis of the
origins of public opinion.
In the origins of the public sphere, petitions are both a cause
and an indi- cator of other causes (e.g., printing). Petitions were
not the only vehicle for political messages in this era. In
sermons, newspapers, pamphlets, and official ordinances and
declarations, messages went from the political cen- ter to the
periphery. But for messages in the opposite direction, periphery to
center, petitions were a principal device. This explains the
importance
1498
This content downloaded from 200.131.19.100 on Thu, 29 Jan 2015
14:01:05 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
-
English Revolution
of petitions for exploring the origins of the public sphere and
printing's role in that development. The change wrought by the use
of printing in petition- ing during the English Revolution provides
empirical evidence for ex- plaining how appeals to public opinion
supplanted norms of secrecy in poli- tics. Originally, petitioning
was a medieval communicative practice with rules concerning form
and content. It was a privilege (in the medieval sense) that
exempted petitioners from secrecy norms that otherwise prohibited
popular discussion of political matters. The traditional petition
referred lo- cal grievances to central authority; it did not load
its message with norma- tive claims about the "will of the people."
Rules for petitions coexisted with more general norms of secrecy
and privilege in political communica- tion. For example, disclosure
of parliamentary debates was a crime, and popular participation in
political discourse was mostly limited to the receiv- ing end of
symbolic displays of authority.
The political use of printed petitions in the English Revolution
violated petitioning traditions and secrecy norms. Petitions became
a device that constituted and invoked the authority of public
opinion, a means to lobby Parliament. This practical development
led to new ideas in politics that attached importance to consent,
reason, and representation as criteria of the validity of opinions
invoked in public debate. Some petitioners came to see the need for
formal constitutional arrangements that would enforce the authority
of public opinion. Thus, novel claims for the authority of opinion
sprang from innovations in petitioning practices. Many petitions in
the 1640s did not come from corporate entities-as tradition
dictated for petitions dealing with public issues-but from
associations of private persons, which were forerunners to modern
political parties. However, ambivalence bordering on denial best
describes contemporary responses to innovative petitioning.
Traditional rhetorical features of petitions were a resource for
denials of innovation. Contemporaries defended petitions they liked
by treating them as deferential, juridical, and spontaneous
expressions of grievance-the rhetorical form that depoliticized
grievance in traditional petitions-and attacked those they disliked
by exposing organizational practices that contradicted apolitical
appearances. Yet more than illogic or expediency underlies these
reactions; they exhibit a pattern shaped by communicative practices
that evolved in advance of supportive theoretical formulations.
In tracing the public sphere to a reworking of traditions for
petitions, this study provides an alternative to sociological
accounts that command little support from current historical
scholarship. Research by revisionist historians (see the discussion
in "Revisionism" below) has demolished presuppositions routinely
invoked by sociologists to show the relevance of capitalism and
Protestantism for democratic developments in the 17th century. The
analysis in this study demonstrates that proximate causes
1499
This content downloaded from 200.131.19.100 on Thu, 29 Jan 2015
14:01:05 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
-
American Journal of Sociology
of the "invention" of public opinion derive from economic and
technical aspects of printing: heightened commercialism and the
capacity to repro- duce texts in communication. Beyond printing,
the most conspicuous feature of this development is "the paradox of
innovation" (see below), a common development in which individuals
do not acknowledge innova- tive behavior in which they participate.
Hence, I place "invention" in quotation marks when I steal a phrase
from Keith Baker's study, "Public Opinion as a Political
Invention," which treats public opinion in 18th- century France as
a linguistic innovation with links to older traditions of authority
(Baker 1990, pp. 167-99). In England the opposite situation arose
in the 17th century: innovative communicative practice appeared for
which new words, like public opinion, were not coined.
THEORETICAL ISSUES Widespread agreement exists on the importance
of a public sphere, where rival political interests compete in open
debates that simultaneously consti- tute and invoke public opinion.
In a liberal democracy, public opinion is the ultimate source of
authority for broadly setting a legislative agenda. "The
distinction between civil society and state . . . cannot fully
account for what comes into being with the formation of democracy."
Equally im- portant is the rise "of a public space . .. whose
existence blurs the conven- tional boundaries between the political
and non-political" (Lefort 1988, p. 35). Accordingly, the authority
of public opinion is not merely one attribute of liberal democracy
but, rather, a presupposition of many, for example, the franchise
(Rueschemeyer, Stephens, and Stephens 1992, p. 44). The point is
widely acknowledged, for example, in T. H. Marshall's (1966) ac-
count of the historical expansion of citizenship rights, in
Habermas's (1989) analysis of critical uses of reason in public
debates, and in optimistic ac- counts by functionalist sociologists
of the rise of civic culture and universal- ism in democratic
societies (for applications to early modern England see Hanson
[1970] and Little [1970]). Recent work on "civil society" (e.g.,
Co- hen and Arato 1992; Somers 1993) also points to the centrality
of public opinion, for the very idea of civil society refers to a
societal community whose axial principle of solidarity demarcates
it from political and eco- nomic realms based on power and money:
public opinion is the principal link between the liberal-democratic
state and civil society.
Capitalism and Protestantism After agreement on the importance
of the public sphere, consensus disap- pears over the date and
causes of its origins. England is widely acknowl-
1500
This content downloaded from 200.131.19.100 on Thu, 29 Jan 2015
14:01:05 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
-
English Revolution
edged to be a paradigmatic case,2 in both class-centered and
functionalist accounts that emphasize, respectively, imperatives of
capitalist develop- ment and the centrality of Protestantism for
the early public sphere. But the uniformity of references to the
importance of capitalism or Protestant- ism coexists with wide
disagreement over when the public sphere ap- peared and precisely
what in capitalism and Protestantism had demo- cratic implications
for public life.
Habermas (1989) traces the public sphere to the 18th century and
to privileged social groups, notably the bourgeoisie, who
participated in an elite world of letters. Gould (1987) agrees
about the centrality of the bour- geoisie but puts democractic
initiatives in the middle of the 17th century. Bendix (1964, p.
122; 1978, p. 109), Parsons (1977, pp. 152, 168-73) and Wuthnow
(1989, pp. 218-19) concur with Habermas on the 18th-century origins
of the public sphere but not on the centrality of the bourgeoisie.
Marshall (1966) emphasizes the centrality of the landed gentry in
the 17th and 18th centuries. Alexander's analysis (1988, p. 207;
and see Calhoun 1988, pp. 225, 229) of the news media places "the
differentiation of a public sphere in the late 18th and early 19th
centuries." More recently, Goldstone's (1991, pp. 125-34, 457-58)
demographic account of the En- glish Revolution identifies
"middling" social groups (e.g., yeomanry, urban craftsmen) as
promoters of democratic initiatives; but Bearman's (1993) network
analysis locates change among the local gentry in the late 16th
century as the principal source of ideological conflict in the
English Revolution. Bearman and Goldstone do agree on the
centrality of Protes- tantism for democracy-as do many sociologists
(e.g., Bendix 1978; Gould 1987; Kalberg 1993; Little 1970; Mayhew
1984; Parsons 1977). Yet the inconsistency in references to the
class character of the public sphere also appears in references to
its religious sources. Along with every class between the very
bottom and top, sociologists have invoked every conceivable aspect
of Protestantism to explain the origins of universalistic discourse
in the public sphere: the priesthood of all believers,
justification by faith, the communion of the saints, covenant
theology, Presbyterian- ism, predestination, the sanctity of
conscience, and more (e.g., Bendix 1978, pp. 309-13; Little 1970;
Mayhew 1984; Parsons 1977, p. 132; Prager 1985, p. 188; for a more
complete list, see Zaret 1989, pp. 167-68).
This critique of earlier work requires two caveats. First,
criticism of speculative, inconsistent references to capitalism and
Protestantism as
2 Neoevolutionary models recast sequences of West European and
especially English history as developmental stages (e.g., Parsons
1977). In Bendix (1978) a historicist variant emphasizes
"demonstration effects" of English events for subsequent political
developments in other societies. Habermas (1989) advances a
normative variant that uses English history to explore
developmental tendencies whose implicit universalism remains
underdeveloped.
1501
This content downloaded from 200.131.19.100 on Thu, 29 Jan 2015
14:01:05 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
-
American Journal of Sociology
causes of the public sphere does not imply their utter
irrelevance. I sug- gest that their causal relevance be explored at
the level of communicative practice-printing is a preeminent
instance of early capitalist enterprise (Eisenstein 1980). Second,
sociologists have not completely ignored com- municative issues.
Habermas (1989, pp. 16, 24) notes the importance of printing for
"the new domain of a public sphere whose decisive mark was the
published word." Bendix devotes more attention to this point in
remarks on "intellectual mobilization" (1978, pp. 256-58, 261-67;
see also Calhoun 1988). Mayhew (1984, pp. 1285-87) and Wuthnow
(1989, pp. 201-11) refer to the new vocation of publicist created
by pamphleteering. Yet these remarks treat communicative
developments in the printing revolution too narrowly, as a factor
that facilitates change by disseminating new ideas more rapidly and
to a broader audience. As Eisenstein has shown in her analysis of
the impact of early modern print- ing on learned culture (1980, pp.
691-92; see also Chartier 1987; Darnton 1979), novelty in the mode
of communication can have intimate links with novel ideas. The
cultural impact of printing goes beyond issues of access and
distribution. The printing of petitions as propaganda not only
increased the scope of communication but also created novel
practices that simultaneously constitute and invoke the authority
of public opinion in political discourse.
The Paradox of Innovation Emphasis on the importance of
unintended consequences further distin- guishes the account
advanced here from prior sociological work on the public sphere and
also accommodates central findings of revisionist histo- riography.
The absence of a formal philosophic rationale for communica- tive
change in the English Revolution, along with persistence of old
traditions that placed deference and patronage at the core of
politics, explains the ambivalent reactions of contemporaries
toward political ap- peals to public opinion. This development was
unintended, occurring initially at the level of practice where it
was neither sanctioned nor antici- pated by theoretical
formulations. That this development was not the outcome of
democratic creeds will be inferred from the uniform distribu- tion
of novel petitioning practices among all parties in the English
Revo- lution, most of whom disavowed any democratic creed.
Reluctance to acknowledge innovation derives from the view that
it was antithetical to order. In the 17th century, "History was not
the study of the past as we would understand it but a glass in
which man might observe universal truths" (Sharpe 1989, p. 41).
This was the point of departure for reflection on politics and
religion, as in the unexceptional view of Sir John Coke, a lifelong
official in the early Stuart government:
1502
This content downloaded from 200.131.19.100 on Thu, 29 Jan 2015
14:01:05 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
-
English Revolution
"I ever held it safest in matters of government rather to
improve the received ordinary ways than to adventure upon any
innovation" (quoted in Young 1986, p. 62). Later, Puritan preachers
fueled the outbreak of the revolution with grim warnings about
innovation. "Take heed of innovating in religion," they preach;
"Innovation has been ever held so dangerous that the fear thereof
brought our prudent state to a pause" (E177[11] 1641, p. 62).3 One
cleric perceptively worries that "while we complain of innovations,
we shall do nothing but innovate" (E179[7] 1642, p. 6). Even as Pym
and Strafford fought each other, they agreed "in an ideological
rejection of change" (Russell 1990, p. xvii). Veneration of
precedent led all sides to invoke the "ancient constitution" and
"prim- itive church" as models, respectively, for contemporary
political and religious institutions. Accordingly, M.P.'s ransacked
medieval records for precedents to justify parliamentary
initiatives against the monarchy. Even radical ideas were
"frequently expressed in a phantasmagoric his- toricism like the
Levellers' dreams of the halcyon days of Edward the Confessor"
(Kishlansky 1982, pp. 164-65). Marx and Weber noted this paradox in
17th-century England: Marx in remarks on traditionalism in the
English Revolution at the beginning of The 18th Brumaire of Louis
Bonaparte; Weber in the claim that innovative economic orientations
arising out of Puritanism were wholly unintended.
Although 17th-century England may be a rich site for exploring
the paradox of innovation, it is hardly unique to this era.
Following Shils (1981), we know that innovation can be stimulated
by traditions that value it. Kuhn points out that an "essential
tension" requires the success- ful scientist simultaneously to be a
"traditionalist" and "iconoclast" (Kuhn 1977, p. 227). Hobsbawm
(1983) describes "invented traditions"; Calhoun (1983), the
"radicalness of tradition." These examples lend sup- port for the
supposition that paradoxical features of innovation accentu- ate
two general aspects of interpretative processes: first, a
propensity to impose interpretative continuity on experience (even
if continuity arises out of neophilia); second, the tacit nature of
interpretative activity that sustains impressions of continuity (or
normality). In the case at hand, the paradox of innovation arises
from the reluctance to acknowledge communicative innovation that
violated (1) communicative norms of se- crecy and privilege in
politics and (2) more general social norms that predicated politics
on deference and patronage.
HISTORIOGRAPHIC ISSUES
Petitions occupy a prominent place in early modern revolutions.
Though historical work on England has no counterpart to the
elaborate historio- 3See the appendix for an explanation of
original sources used in this study.
1503
This content downloaded from 200.131.19.100 on Thu, 29 Jan 2015
14:01:05 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
-
American Journal of Sociology
graphic literature on petitions in the French Revolution,
petitions have been an important resource in studies of the English
Revolution. Their prominence in key events makes it possible to
construct a summary ac- count of the revolution in terms of
petitions, which I provide for the benefit of readers who are
unfamiliar with 17th-century English history.
When the Short Parliament met early in 1640, it received county
peti- tions on two principal issues, anti-Puritan innovation and
prerogative taxes. As a partisan report noted, "This day the
petitions [were] read of Middlesex, Suffolk, Northamptonshire,
which petitions stunned the royalists more than anything" (Cope and
Coates 1977, p. 234). After the abrupt dissolution of the Short
Parliament in May, the king impris- oned one M.P. for refusing a
request to turn over petitions and com- plaints pending before the
Committee for Religion (CSPD 1858-97, 16: 142; Rushworth 1721,
3:1167-68). Subsequent petitions requested the king to call another
parliament. When this parliament-the Long Parlia- ment-convened in
November, more agreement existed on the need for modest religious
and political reforms (e.g., limiting the power of bishops, more
parliamentary consultation in fiscal and foreign policy). M.P.'s,
who would later take different sides, presented county petitions
that recited extensively solicited grievances (see Morrill 1993, p.
45). Agree- ment dissipated when county petitions in 1641-42 sided
with Parliament or king on control over the militia and the fate of
episcopacy; some petitions contain as many as 20,000 signatures,
but most have three to 10,000 signatures. In the winter of 1642-43
rival petitions for peace and war policies delineated the hardening
positions of Royalists and parlia- mentarians. At this time the
Royalist newspaper, Mercurius Aulicus (hereafter MA), appeared; its
first edition gave extensive coverage to peace petitions (MA
[1643-44] 1971, 1:20-23). Petitions in the spring and summer of
1643 mark emergence of the Independents, whose opposition to
increasingly conservative Presbyterian policies led to competitive
peti- tion campaigns.4 One by Presbyterians in January 1646 "marked
the opening of the great City campaign that determined the future
course of the toleration controversy" (Tolmie 1977, p. 131).
Another in December 1646 "set off the chain of events that resulted
in the final split with the army and, ultimately, the army's
invasion of London in the summer of 1647" (Brenner 1993, p. 478;
and see Pearl 1972; Underdown 1978, p. 195). Attacks on the right
of soldiers to petition politicized the New Model Army and prompted
it into action (Woolrych 1987, pp. 43-44),
4 Unless employed in an explicitly religious context (e.g.,
Presbyterian discipline; Inde- pendent churches) the terms
"Presbyterian" and "Independent" refer to political factions. These
religious and political commitments did not always coincide (see
Un- derdown 1971, pp. 15-23).
1504
This content downloaded from 200.131.19.100 on Thu, 29 Jan 2015
14:01:05 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
-
English Revolution
initially to rescue Parliament from the 1647 coup in London and,
subse- quently, to expel moderates from the Parliament (Pride's
Purge) and to demand the execution of the king. In 1648, a letter
of intelligence to Edward Hyde reports that "all counties will be
set to appear in person with their petitions at Westminister, as
they [the Puritans] did at the beginning of the Parliament [in
1640], which course did . .. give a great stroke to the benefit of
that faction, & will conduce as much . . . now to the good of
his Majesty" (MSS Clarendon 30, folio 207). The ensuing petition
campaign (Ashton 1994, chap. 4) signaled the abortive Royalist
revolt that sealed the fate of Charles I. At this time, a radical
Leveller program emerged, the cumulation of ceaseless petitioning
that increas- ingly focused on the unwillingness of Parliament to
receive Leveller peti- tions. In Cromwell's dissolution of the
purged (Rump) Parliament, a prior August 1652 petition from the
Council of Officers for radical legal and political reforms "is a
key document, since eight months later Crom- well and the officers
were able to justify their dissolution of the Rump largely because
so little action had been taken on [that petition]" (Wool- rych
1982, p. 40). Subsequent petition campaigns facilitated the fall of
the Protectorate and the recall of the Rump Parliament (Woolrych
1972, pp. 189-92). In 1660 county petitions for a reinstated
Parliament rained down on General Monk as he marched his army to
London and set in motion events leading toward the restoration of
the Stuart monarchy.
Analysis of the content and signatures of these petitions
supplies critical evidence for divergent accounts of the aims,
ideology, and social composi- tion of participants in the
revolution. This holds for work that emphasizes class conflict and
popular initiative in the revolution (Manning 1991), divisions
between "court" and "country" (Zagorin 1970), the centrality of
"localism" and the "county community" (Everitt 1973; Morrill 1974),
and also work that militates against revisionist emphasis on
localism (Eales 1990; Holmes 1974; Hughes 1987). Petitions have
been extensively used in studies of London (Brenner 1993; Pearl
1961, 1972), the Long Parliament and the New Model Army (Kishlansky
1983; Underdown 1971; Woolrych 1987), the second civil war (Ashton
1994), and noncon- formity (Tolmie 1977). The rise and fall of the
Levellers is a story re- counted by summarizing petitions (for
collections see Haller and Davies [1944]; and Wolfe [1967]). A few
studies explore details of an individual petition (Fletcher 1973;
Woods 1980), rhetoric in petitions (Skerpan 1992, pp. 73-77), and
petitions from women (Higgins 1973). Disagreement exists over the
value of petitions as indicators of local opinion. For county
petitions, Fletcher and Underdown suggest it can be high, Everitt
and Morrill argue the opposite, and Underdown and Everitt see
radical peti- tions as least indicative of local sentiment (Everitt
1973, pp. 60-61; Fletcher 1981, pp. 191-92; Morrill 1974, pp.
45-48; Underdown 1971,
1505
This content downloaded from 200.131.19.100 on Thu, 29 Jan 2015
14:01:05 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
-
American Journal of Sociology
pp. 93, 110n; 1985, pp. 138-39; see also Hughes 1987, pp.
132-33, 136). For army petitions, old claims about Leveller
influence have given way to emphasis on autonomy and spontaneity in
grievances from soldiers (Kishlansky 1983, pp. 180, 189-90, 205-6;
Woolrych 1987, pp. 54, 59, 73-84).
Debate over the causes and nature of the English Revolution is
the principal point of departure for this literature. What remains
unexplored are the principal issues in this article: how
petitioning changed in the English Revolution and the role printing
played in this development. A chapter on petitions in Fletcher's
(1981, pp. 191-227) account of the outbreak of revolution is now
recognized as authoritiative (see Russell 1993, p. 455, n.3). Yet
Fletcher observes only that petitions were quickly printed "as
public utterances intended for general consumption" (1981, p. 198).
He and others note the importance of petitions as propaganda for
mobilizing opinion and forming factions at the local level (e.g.,
Eales 1990, p. 130; Fletcher 1981, p. 283; Underdown 1985, p. 138)
and for the rise of adversarial, party politics (e.g., Brenner
1993, pp. 368-74, 436-50, 471-79; Kishlansky 1983, pp. 78-90,
277-78; Pearl 1972; Un- derdown 1985, pp. 228-29; WoolTych 1987,
pp. 24-25, 168-71). But how did this most untraditional use of
petitions come about, and what is its connection to printing and
its relevance for subsequent liberal- democratic ideas? Skerpan's
(1992, p. 73) analysis of political rhetoric in the 1640s misses
the novelty in the status of petitions as "public docu- ments."
These petitions have been described (Brailsford 1976, p. 189; Pearl
1961, pp. 173, 229-30; Wolfe 1967, p. 261) as an extension or
revival of well-accepted principles of petitioning, but this view,
too, over- looks change in petitioning that violated traditional
restrictions on the expression of grievance in petitions.
Revisionism Over the last two decades, historical work on early
modern England has been dominated by "revisionism"-a graveyard for
optimism about a convergence of historical and sociological
scholarship. A major proponent notes that the revisionist revolt
opposed more than "Whig" and Marxist perspectives: it was "a
salutary reaction against various forms of modern- ization
theory"-or any sociological explanation (Morrill 1993, p. 35).
Revisionism promotes idiographic history: it enjoins researchers
"to abandon the pursuit of grand overarching theories and instead
to ponder the facts" (Cogswell 1990, p. 551). Immersion in primary
sources has l'histoire e've'nementielle as its goal, "to return to
the sources free of preconceptions" (Sharpe 1985, p. x; see also
Russell 1990, p. x). At the empirical level, revisionist studies
(e.g., Morrill 1974, 1976; Russell 1990,
1506
This content downloaded from 200.131.19.100 on Thu, 29 Jan 2015
14:01:05 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
-
English Revolution
1993; Sharpe 1992) show that-even in the English
Revolution-localism and loyalty to vertically integrated
communities outweigh class divisions and often ideological
conviction when deference and patronage remain the common coin of
politics. This work demolishes suppositions central to sociological
accounts about the bourgeois nature of the English Revolu- tion.
Opponents of revisionism concede that "it has yet to be shown that
those who supported Parliament and those who supported the Crown
... differed systematically in social class terms" (Brenner 1993,
p. 643).5 Suppositions about modernizing tendencies in Puritanism
fare equally poorly. Its opposition to church and state is now
traced to an aversion for innovation (Collinson 1981; Lake 1982;
Tyacke 1987), not to democratic impulses.
Sociologists can set aside revisionism's epistemological
claims-we are properly skeptical about inquiry uncontaminated by
presuppositions. Empirical issues are more troublesome. Invoking
the inevitability of the- ory will not rescue sociological accounts
of an English Revolution led by an insurgent bourgeoisie or
"middling classes" with a tradition- repudiating, democratic
ideology supplied by Puritanism. Little support for such claims
exists even among "postrevisionists" (e.g., Cust 1985; Eales 1990;
Hughes 1987) whose work attributes a social basis for politi- cal
conflict.6
Sources Petitions are a common category of 17th-century
manuscript and printed materials. They contain grievances and
requests, of a public and private nature, from individuals and
collectivities. The principal source for this analysis is a subset
of petitions, selected from those (about 500) that raise public
issues and, individually or in collections, were printed between
1640 and 1660. Most appeared in the early part of the period that
is the focus of this study, from the opening of the Long
Parliament, in 1640, to the execution of King Charles in 1649.
These must be used with caution. Appearances can be deliberately
misleading in texts printed as propaganda; "Petitions often do as
much to obscure as to illuminate public opinion" (Underdown 1985,
p. 231). Patterns of deception, even forgeries (when known as
such), are useful. But corroborating evidence from other sources is
indispensable. The
5"Most historians reject the idea that the civil war was a class
conflict," acknowl- edges a leading proponent of this view, who
offers only a weak response to revisionism: "Evidence of class
hostility has proved impossible to ignore completely" (Manning
1991, pp. 41-42). 6 The force of revisionism, for sociological
concerns, is hardly lessened by noting its excesses, e.g.,
overemphasis on consensus in the early Stuart era.
1507
This content downloaded from 200.131.19.100 on Thu, 29 Jan 2015
14:01:05 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
-
American Journal of Sociology
Journals of the House of Commons often record only a bland
response to a petition that, like the May 1646 petition from
London, provoked heated debate (MSS Add. 31116, folio 271;
Whitelock 1853, 2:26; for a 1644 petition see Journals of the House
of Commons 1643-44, p. 372; MSS Add. 31116, folio 179v, MSS Harl.
166, folio 151). In addition, the rheto- ric of petitions conceals
the organization of petitioning and the evident intent to lobby
Parliament. These issues are illuminated by a "metade- bate" over
the propriety of petitioning that accompanies substantive po-
litical disputes. This occurs in private letters, pamphlets,
diaries, and newspapers, as partisans and observers describe,
attack, and defend peti- tions. Evidence from these sources is
crucial for drawing inferences that go beyond explicit claims made
by petitioners-a necessary step for ana- lyzing the paradox of
innovation. Thus, petitions should be read in con- junction with
other primary printed and manuscript materials.
TRADITIONAL PETITIONS AND SECRECY NORMS IN POLITICAL
COMMUNICATION Prior to the English Revolution, the absence of
anything resembling ap- peals to public opinion in politics derives
from norms of secrecy and privilege that strictly limit political
communication. In theory, no public space for political discourse
exists outside Parliament, where a customary right of free speech
in the 15th century had evolved into a formal privilege under the
Tudors. Confined to Parliament, this freedom is (in the medi- eval
sense) a privilege demarcated by secrecy norms, whose violation,
even by M.P.'s, is a punishable offense. For commoners, norms of
se- crecy and privilege reflect an unchallenged assumption, no
different in early Stuart England than under Elizabeth, when Thomas
Smith ex- plained that common people "have no voice or authority in
our common- wealth, and no account is made of them but only to be
ruled" (quoted in Hill 1974, p. 186; see also pp. 181-204).
Religion (Puritan or otherwise) supplied no reason to dissent from
this view-Hooker repeats Calvin's strictures that "private men"
have no right publicly to discuss govern- ment (Hooker [1593] 1845,
1:102; cf. Calvin [1536] 1962, 2:656-57).
This outlook reflects political and religious presuppositions
that put deference and patronage at the core of politics. The idea
that irrationality inversely correlates with social rank, a central
theme in organic and patriarchal conceptions of politics, received
added support from Protes- tant emphasis on the corruption of
reason. Contemporaries saw nothing remarkable in writings by the
first two Stuart kings, who cite patriar- chalism, the divine right
of kings, and reasons of state to deny the legiti- macy of public
political discussion. King James (1622) described royal accounts of
policy the same way that Calvinists described God saving
1508
This content downloaded from 200.131.19.100 on Thu, 29 Jan 2015
14:01:05 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
-
English Revolution
souls: both were acts of grace. After he dissolved the 1621
Parliament, James published an explanation in which "we were
content . . . to descend many degrees beneath our self, first by
communicating to all our people the reasons of a resolution of
state . . . And lastly . . . opening to them that forbidden ark of
our absolute and indisputable prerogative, concerning the call,
continuing and dissolving of Parliament." His son, Charles,
published accounts of decisions to dissolve Parliaments in 1625 and
1626; but "he was careful to explain that he was not bound to give
an account of his 'Regal Actions' to anyone except God"
(Sommerville 1986, p. 34).
Of course, political communication existed. In contrast to
reflections upholding norms of secrecy and privilege in political
communication, several practices afforded limited opportunities for
political communica- tion in prerevolutionary England (see Zaret
1994, pp. 180-84). Political communication in some form is as old
as kingship, implicit in its com- memorative architecture, coinage,
and coronation rituals. But many practices limit communication to
symbolic displays of authority, to a cultural frame of reference
for understanding reciprocal claims between subjects and rulers.
Other practices involved more than symbolic displays and
facilitated opportunities to send messages from the periphery to
the political center. These include elections and rituals of
restive behavior by crowds. In addition, circulation of news in
hand-copied form was at this time a common practice among the
gentry and aristocracy (see Cust 1986). But these practices were
restricted; autonomy and the scope of political discussion were
inversely related to accessibility-they were lowest where popular
access was greatest.
Medieval Origins of Petitioning Secrecy norms precluded popular
discussion of political matters but coex- isted with established
procedures for expressing grievance by petition. Traditions
governing petitions arose in medieval society, when parlia- ments
met as high courts that received and tried petitions. More than
16,000 petitions went to parliaments that met from the 13th to the
15th centuries. These documents are juridical in nature and
complain of mis- carriage of justice or request relief from taxes,
forest laws, and other regulations. In a three-week session, the
1305 Parliament dealt with nearly 500 petitions, small pieces of
parchment with notations that indi- cate the prescribed remedy, if
any (Maitland 1893, pp. xxvi-xxvii, xxxii, lv, lxvii-lxxiii). Later
developments reflect growing complexity in medi- eval institutions.
Unlike unevenly composed petitions in the reign of Edward I,
petitions acquire a characteristic form for addressing and phrasing
under Richard II-their precision and elaboration often re-
1509
This content downloaded from 200.131.19.100 on Thu, 29 Jan 2015
14:01:05 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
-
American Journal of Sociology
quired the use of scriveners and lawyers, whose fees for these
services appear in guild records (Meyers 1937, pp. 386-88). By the
early 14th century, distinctions are drawn between private
petitions and commons petitions that raise "grievances regarded as
being of common interest." In this development parliaments added
legislative duties to their original juridical functions. But by
the early 16th century, another innovation superseded petitions;
legislation now proceeded by "bill," which deline- ated an act, and
not by petition, though private acts are still called "petitions"
(Butt 1989, p. 268; Elton 1983, 3:118, 128, 132; Sayles 1988, pp.
48-57). Parliaments still "petition" monarchs in cases of acute
con- flict between them. Yet in the early 17th century, M.P.'s
display keen awareness of the antiquarian nature of this use of
petition, noting how its humble overtones are well suited to issues
on which they had little leverage. "We have fallen from a bill to a
petition, and lower we cannot go," observed Wentworth in debates
over royal prerogative that led to the 1628 Petition of Right
(Parliament 1977-83, 3:582; see also 3:273).
Petitioning Traditions in the 17th Century In early 17th-century
England, petitions were objects of popular knowl- edge, well suited
to a hierarchical world in which deference and patron- age
functioned like money. The word "petition" was a common figure of
speech, used literally and metaphorically to signify a deferential
re- quest for favor or for redress of a problem. Letter writers
seeking office or advancement typically called their request a
petition. On Sundays clerics explained that prayer is a petition to
God and the faithful are humble petitioners.7 Worldly petitions
request office, alms, or relief from debt, delay of justice, or
imprisonment. Institutionalized means exist for submitting them to
those in authority. A parliament began with a medi- eval ritual,
the appointment of receivers and triers of petitions. Petitions to
kings were received by secretaries of state, from petitioners with
influ- ence or money, and by the Court of Requests from poor
suitors. This last point calls attention to popular access to
petitioning. Rich and poor alike petitioned; it provided a
substitute for personal connections to the court. When plague
threatened London in 1625, Sir Edward Coke argued that Parliament
should establish no committees to receive petitions be- cause of
"the danger of infection by drawing the meaner sort of people about
us" (Parliament 1873, pp. 11-12).
7 To convey a key Protestant tenet, a popular preacher explains,
"Faith obtains, as a poor petitioner, what the Lord promises in
special favor" (Ball 1632, p. 247). In 1639, Sir Robert Harley,
subsequently a prominent member of the Long Parliament, instructs
his son that fear of God "is the constant petitioner on your behalf
at the throne of grace" (MSS Add. 33572, folio 310).
1510
This content downloaded from 200.131.19.100 on Thu, 29 Jan 2015
14:01:05 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
-
English Revolution
Petitions on every conceivable grievance went to all seats of
authority, and not only to parliaments or kings. They came from
collectivities and individuals who voice public and private
grievances, request favors, and enter pleas in juridical
proceedings between private parties. Apprentices petitioned
London's Court of Aldermen when marriage (a violation of
apprenticeship indentures) blocked their admission to the freedom
of the city; ?10 would unblock it (MSS Rep. 54, folios 47, 57,
90-91). A petition to the mayor and aldermen of Chester, who
controlled a small school in a nearby chapelry, complained about
the incompetence of its teachers who had ruined "a most flourishing
school": "to the general grief of us all, the spring time of our
school is turned into an autumn, the little plants we send there
are no sooner budded but blasted" (MSS Rawl. C421, folios 19, 20).
Puritan aldermen in Norwich complained that "spit," "shit," and an
occasional chair rained down on them from hos- tile clerics who sat
in an overhead gallery in the town cathedral (Evans 1979, p. 113).
Tailors sent petitions to the dean and chapter at Salisbury,
protesting competition from persons who did not belong to their
corpora- tion but who practiced the trade on the chapter's
property; if two were admitted at a "reasonable fine" to the
corporation, the dean promised to evict the others (MSS Harl. 2103,
folio 167). Finally, the earl of Warwick received a petition from
America, from "one of my Negroes . . . that his wife may live with
him"; the earl thought it "a request full of reason" (MSS Eng.
hist. C1125, folio 10). The variety of petitioners and griev- ances
points to the importance contemporaries attached to the right to
petition.
The Right to Petition Contemporaries held strong views on the
right to petition, which was applicable to individuals and
collectivities. It was "the indisputable right of the meanest
subject" (E341[5] 1646, p. 6). When the Long Parliament met in
November 1640, an M.P. attacked the crown for seizing papers of
members at the dissolution of the Short Parliament, reasoning that
"the search of papers was a greater injury than the imprisonment of
the body. For by that I suffer in my own person alone, but by the
other, myself and all my friends and many petitioners might be
drawn into danger, so as no man will either complain or let us know
his griefs" (D'Ewes 1923, p. 168). The right to petition was upheld
even when persistent petitioners annoyed petitioned authorities
(Parliament 1977-83, 5:129, 131). When petitions poured into the
Long Parliament, the patience of M.P.'s reached the breaking point
when receipt of a junior instead of senior fellowship prompted a
disappointed professor at Cambridge to petition-but references to
the Magna Carta stalled pro-
1511
This content downloaded from 200.131.19.100 on Thu, 29 Jan 2015
14:01:05 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
-
American Journal of Sociology
posals to receive no more petitions (D'Ewes 1923, p. 415). In
1646, M.P.'s invoked the right to petition in heated debate over a
Presbyterian petition that challenged Parliament's rule over the
church. Some saw this as contempt of Parliament, but other M.P.'s
argued that petitioners "ought not be so charged for all the
subjects may petition and show their reasons why freely" (Harington
[1646-53] 1977, p. 15). Confronted by an insurgent Royalist
movement in 1648, the House of Commons in- structed a committee to
frame an order against "all tumultuary meetings under pretense of
petitions, with an assertion of the subject's liberty to petition
in a due manner." The order refers to "the right and privilege of
the subjects . . . to present unto the Parliament their just
grievances, by way of petition" (Journals of the House of Commons
1646-48, pp. 563, 567; Journals of the House of Lords 1647-48, p.
273). Royalist petitioners affirmed their right to present "just
desires of the oppressed in a petitionary way (the undoubted right
of the subject) and the very life of their liberty itself" (669f.
12[20] 1648).
Invocation of tradition lies at the core of this contemporary
affirmation of the right to express grievance "in a petitionary
way" and of the duty of officials to receive petitions. Modernist
tenets of the Enlightenment are clearly irrelevant. Contemporary
perspectives on the right to petition rely on a medieval conception
of right: to petition is to enter a privileged communicative space,
analogous to privileges that follow admission to the "freedom" of a
municipal corporation. Petitions afford subjects lim- ited immunity
to norms that otherwise restrict public commentary on political
matters. Radical petitions against bishops and episcopacy were
defended with the claim that "freedom . . . to make our grievances
known is a chief privilege of Parliament" (E146[24] 1642, p. 2).
Agitators in the New Model Army invoked the rhetoric of "privilege"
and "lib- erty" to defend their right to petition Parliament for
redress of grievances (Clarke [1647-52] 1992, 1:56). But this
customary language also appears on the other side. A staple feature
of Royalist ideology is the charge that the Long Parliament aimed
at "arbitrary rule" when it interfered with Royalist petitioning.8
In 1643 (E65[32] 1643, pp. 24-25; E67[23] 1643, p. 3; HMC Cowper
1888, p. 311) and again in 1648, Royalists defend the right to
petition, "the birthright of the subject . . . [that] once lost,
must be succeeded with slavery and tyranny" (E453[37] 1648, p. 1;
and see E443[8] 1648, p. 3; E441[25] 1648, pp. 6-7). Because
Royalists, army agitators, Puritans, and Levellers understood the
right to petition in terms of tradition-a "primitive practice,"
according to one Leveller
8 In analyzing the idea of "public interest" Gunn (1969, p. 122)
errs in describing the right to petition as an extension of
"radical ideology."
1512
This content downloaded from 200.131.19.100 on Thu, 29 Jan 2015
14:01:05 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
-
English Revolution
(E378[13] 1647, p. 9)-its assertion by all parties invoked the
same "birthrights" that we usually associate with radical Leveller
ideology.9
Restrictions on Petitions Initially, it seems odd that the right
to express grievance by petition was so strongly entrenched in a
society whose politics were predicated on deference and patronage.
But like other medieval rights, the right to petition was far from
absolute. Restrictions on expressions of grievance in petitions
provided only limited immunity against secrecy norms. Though no
formal law defined these restrictions, their nature can be inferred
from prevailing practices and from negative reactions to "fac-
tious" petitions. First, a petition did not invoke or imply
normative claims for the "will of the people"; second, the rhetoric
of petitions portrayed grievance as an apolitical conveyance of
information, by em- phasizing deferential, juridical, and
spontaneous attributes of the griev- ance; and, third, grievances
should be local and neither critical of laws, indicative of
discontent with authority, nor made public.
1. "Vox populi" is not "lex suprema."-Permissible messages from
the periphery to the political center did not include claims about
the suprem- acy of popular will over petitioned authority. In
debate over rival "peace" and "war" petitions from London citizens,
a radical M.P., Henry Marten, was reprimanded in the House of
Commons "for saying that we ought to receive instructions for our
proceedings from the peo- ple" (MSS Add. 31116, folio 14). The view
in Parliament was no different than the one in the leading Royalist
newspaper, Mercurius Aulicus, over the impropriety of petitions
perceived to be "directing in a manner what they would have done"
(MA [1643-44] 1971, 1:107; and see MSS Add. 31116, folio 170; MSS
Harl. 166, folio 216). o
An important extension of this point invoked secrecy norms in
political communication: petitions should not take cognizance of
business pending in Parliament. "A great debate was in the House"
in 1644 over "a
9 Traditional religious metaphors were also important. The
commonplace on prayer as a petition to God was used to justify
Leveller petitions. Women petitioners re- quested that Parliament
not "withhold from us our undoubted right of petitioning, since God
is ever willing and ready to receive the petitions of all. . . The
ancient laws of England are not contrary to the will of God"
(669f.17[36] 1653; and see E579[9] 1649, p. 1). 10 In 1647 and 1648
Parliamentary declarations assert, "It is the right of the subject
to petition. . . It is the right of the Parliament to judge of such
petitions" (Journals of the House of Commons 1646-48, p. 375; see
also Journals of the House of Lords 1647-48, p. 273).
1513
This content downloaded from 200.131.19.100 on Thu, 29 Jan 2015
14:01:05 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
-
American Journal of Sociology
seditious petition delivered in by some citizens of London" (MSS
Harl. 166, folio 151). In prematurely thanking Parliament for a
vote that led to formation of the New Model Army, the petition
violated secrecy norms "in taking notice of a vote passed in the
House before it came to be made public in an Ordinance" (MSS Add.
31116, folio 179v). The next year Parliament reprimanded London's
Common Council after the coun- cil had forwarded petitions from
citizens that referred to ongoing deliber- ations over the church.
When these citizens later presented a new petition against
Parliament's decision to vest disciplinary authority in lay commis-
sioners (and not in presbyteries), they justified this step because
"now the Ordinance [for lay commissioners] was passed, they had
liberty to petition" (HMC Sixth Report 1877, pp. 104-5; MSS
Williams 24.50, folio 68). In 1645 Mercurius Britanicus echoed
Parliament's position-as did Presbyterians and Independents in
mutual recriminations-when the newspaper attacked a Presbyterian
petition: it is "prejudicial and deroga- tory to the gravity and
majesty of a Parliament; that when they are upon determination of
anything, men should presume to instruct them" (E308[5] 1645, p.
919; see also Journals of the House of Commons 1645-46, p. 348;
E323[2] 1646, pp. 44, 67; E340[5] 1646, p. 4).
2. Rhetorical conventions. -Deferential rhetoric pervades
petitions. Aided by juridical and religious metaphors, it portrays
petitioners as "humble" suitors who "pray" and "supplicate" for
relief from griev- ances. This rhetoric restricted expression of
grievance so that petitions did not invoke or imply popular will as
a source of authority. Instead, grievance appears as a neutral
conveyance of information, submitted to the wisdom of the invoked
authority, that eschews prescribing solutions. Lobbying-a principal
motive for mobilizing public opinion in demo- cratic politics-is
prohibited. This appears in a petition to the king from London in
September 1640 (Rushworth 1721, 3:1264). Popular desire for
convening a Parliament had grown rapidly since the dissolution of
the Short Parliament, in May, and the subsequent military fiasco
that, in August, resulted in a Scottish army of occupation in
northern England. In asking the king to convene Parliament, the
"humble petitioners" recite grievances about taxation, religion,
and the military situation, and report that they have found "by
experience that they are not redressed by the ordinary course of
justice." Thus, they advance their petition so that "they may be
relieved in the premises." (This last phrase is still a term of art
for lawyers.) This rhetoric depoliticizes petitions by concealing
the intent to lobby, to promote preferred solutions to grievances,
for this would signal contempt of authority. "We come," declared
London apprentices in a petition for peace in 1643, "to embowell
our griev- ances . . . before you, not presuming to dictate to your
graver judge- ments" (669f.6[101] 1642).
1514
This content downloaded from 200.131.19.100 on Thu, 29 Jan 2015
14:01:05 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
-
English Revolution
In addition to deferential and juridical rhetoric, petitions
appear to be a spontaneous expression of grievance. In this
context, the antithesis of spontaneity is faction. (The point
displays links to ideas in classical rheto- ric that hold
spontaneous utterances to have more probative value than
premeditated ones.) The expression of grievance by petition was
com- pared to the sensation of pain from an injured limb: "So
questionless may the members of the body politic, finding
themselves wounded or weakened ... by humble petition sue unto the
King and Parliament ... the very heart and head." Just as pain
spontaneously conveys informa- tion to the brain, petitions ideally
are a spontaneous message, a neutral conveyance of information,
devoid of normative claims for subordinating politics to popular
will. The author of this point, in a tract that defends petitions
against bishops, describes the right to petition in terms of "free-
dom of information" (E146[24] 1642, pp. 2-3). But this idea does
not derive from specifically Puritan or parliamentarian
commitments. "Con- veying information by the humble way of
petitions" is how a Royalist petition from Hereford describes and
defends a petition from Kent whose defiant tone led to its
suppression in 1642 (669f.6[49] 1642). Levellers defended the right
"to frame and promote petitions, for your better infor- mation of
all such things as are . . . grievous to the commonwealth" (E428[8]
1648, p. 12). When Parliament refused to receive petitions from
female Levellers, the latter criticized M.P.'s who "scorned
information, despised petitions" (669f.17[26] 1653). Like
deferential and juridical rhetoric, the portrayal of grievance as
spontaneous information maintains apolitical appearances in
petitions. It deflects potentially fatal accusations of "faction"
by diverting attention away from the premeditation and organization
that invariably lay behind petitions with many signatures that had
been gathered in campaigns often organized by parish or ward. These
campaigns in London might be tied to sectarian churches and in the
countryside to assize and quarter sessions, when political
discussions among the assembled gentry in taverns led to a petition
later presented for endorsement by a grand jury. An inevitable
discrepancy thus existed between appearance and reality: what a
petition's rhetoric portrays as a spontaneous expression of
grievance is, in fact, a product of coordination and planning.
Yet this discrepancy was a resource as well as a liability, for
it enabled petitioners to put an acceptable face on requests that
might otherwise be perceived as factious. An elaborate game of
impression management by petition took a treasonable turn in August
1640, when 12 peers petitioned King Charles to summon what was to
be the Long Parliament. This occurred with a coordinate petition
campaign by the City of London and the gentry in counties, who sent
petitions to the same end. Intelligence of the entire operation was
passed to the Scots, then a hostile occupying
15 15
This content downloaded from 200.131.19.100 on Thu, 29 Jan 2015
14:01:05 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
-
American Journal of Sociology
army in the north of England; they too would petition Charles to
call a parliament (Donald 1989, pp. 227-28). Yet the king never
received a petition from Hereford that was part of this campaign
because its framers feared, on September 19, that it would not
arrive before an Assembly of Peers to be convened on the
twenty-fifth: "If it come to his majesty after that day, it will
savor of faction" (MSS Add. 70086, unfoliated). An essential
tension between organization and spontaneity in petitioning was,
then, a delicate issue.
3. Other restrictions on content. -Other rules also limited
expressions of grievance so that petitions appeared as an
apolitical conveyance of information. The right to petition
pertained to individuals as well as collectivities; but, if
grievance had a public complexion, petitions usually came from
corporate entities, for example, guildhalls, wardmoots, com- mon
councils, and assize and quarter sessions. Petitions on public
issues from private parties were more open to accusations of
faction-no small matter in a society where the ideal of organic
unity made faction tanta- mount to sedition. In addition,
grievances in petitions should be local, that is, experienced
directly by petitioners; "A petition must be according to verity
and particularity," noted Sir Edward Coke in the 1628 Parlia- ment
(Parliament 1977-83, 3:480). Violation of this precept underlies
the negative response to an April 1640 petition from the militia in
Hertford: "It cannot be imagined that this petition was framed by
those whom it concerns, but by some factious and indiscrete
persons" (HMC Salisbury 1971, p. 131). Other rules further
separated the ideal petition from an ideological pronouncement. It
should neither criticize specific laws nor imply popular discontent
with government. Agreement existed over the seditiousness of
petitioning against a specific law or ruling. Criticism leveled by
King Charles against persons who sought "to publish peti- tions ...
against the known laws and established government" (El 12[26] 1642,
p. 5) was also advanced by the king's opponents (Harington 1977, p.
25; Luke [1644-45] 1963, p. 281). In 1605 Sir Francis Hastings
encoun- tered this criticism when he was questioned by the Privy
Council for his role in a Puritan petition from Northampton. It was
"seditious, mali- cious, factious"; neither local nor sufficiently
deferential. Hastings was a Somerset M.P., and the petition alleged
"that a. thousand [Puritans] are discontented." They were not
"discontented," protested Hastings, but "grieved" (Hastings
[1574-1609] 1969, pp. 90-91). Later, army agi- tators used
identical words to defend a petition denounced by Parliament in
1647; there was no "discontent," only "grievances" (Clarke
[1647-52] 1992, 1:31, 36, 50-53). For us the distinction is
meaningless; but contem- poraries drew fine distinctions between
apolitical conveyance of griev- ance by petition and factious
discontent.
Finally, petitions were not to be made public. There was nothing
novel
1516
This content downloaded from 200.131.19.100 on Thu, 29 Jan 2015
14:01:05 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
-
English Revolution
in the complaint of a royal officeholder, Sir Thomas Roe, about
circula- tion of manuscript copies of a 1640 petition from York
framed at the summer assizes: "I am sorry to find the copy of the
Yorkshire petition spread abroad to all hands . . . but all is out
of order" (CSPD 1858-97, 16:565). The right to petition did not
create a public sphere; it established a privilege for petitioners
to communicate directly to those in authority. Petitioners strongly
affirmed this privilege. At the election of London M.P.'s to the
Long Parliament, "a petition was given by the multitude" to the
elected members for delivery to Parliament. "Some of the people
cried out to have this petition read out," but, after debate, this
was voted down, "the major part . . . saying they would not have
their grievances published but in Parliament" (MSS Add. 11045,
folio 128v). Petitioners used this logic to denounce printed
attacks on petitions cur- rently pending in Parliament.
Independents held Presbyterian attacks on petitions before
Parliament to be "contrary to the course of Parliament and the
liberty of the subjects" (E5 16[7] 1647, p. 11). When Independents
used this tactic, Presbyterians objected to "obstructing the course
of the people of England's free petitioning" (E352[3] 1646, p. 9;
E355[13] 1646, p. 36; E368[5] 1646, p. [259].)
Thus, communicative rules for petitioning permitted expressions
of grievance, but only in a restricted form that has little in
common with modern conceptions of the public sphere as a forum for
free and open debate over conflicting political goals. The
traditional petition was well suited to a society where political
conflict and factions were understood as deviant behavior. What
remains to be examined, then, are new uses for petitions in the
English Revolution, when printed petitions from pri- vate
associations simultaneously constituted and invoked public opin-
ion-a historically novel communicative practice that underlies
modern conceptions of the public sphere.
PETITIONS AND OPINION-POPULAR? ELITE? MANIPULATED?
Petitions in the English Revolution have a complex relationship
to public opinion. They represent individual opinions but are also
a tool for their manipulation. This complexity reflects the dual
nature of public opinion as a nominal and real entity. Nominally,
it is a discursive fiction; qua public opinion it collectively
exists only when instantiated in political discourse. Yet real
individuals participate in political discourse as writ- ers,
readers, printers, and petitioners. Like today's opinion polls,
peti- tions are devices that mediate between nominal and real
moments of public opinion. Thus, to assert that innovative uses of
petitions led to the "invention" of public opinion in the English
Revolution involves two claims: first, that petitions were
important as propaganda, at least in
1517
This content downloaded from 200.131.19.100 on Thu, 29 Jan 2015
14:01:05 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
-
American Journal of Sociology
the minimal sense that contemporaries valued them as tools to
influence opinion; second, that petitions have links to debates in
civil society and were not merely literary interventions foisted
upon an unsuspecting pub- lic. Having established these points, we
can then examine the printing connection and the paradox of
innovation.
Petitions as Propaganda The propaganda value of petitions
derived, not only from their legiti- macy, which we have already
examined, but also from popular interest in them. Evidence on this
is hardly conclusive, but what exists reveals widespread interest
in petitions and petitioners. In London this was heightened by the
processions that took a petition to Parliament. In the countryside
petitions were hot topics at assize sessions (Woods 1981).
Perceptions of unprecedented popular participation in petitioning
also heightened interest. In 1641, well before political
petitioning had fully developed, one observer thought that "no time
nor history can show that such great numbers of oppressed subjects
of all sorts ever petitioned" (Oxinden [1607-42] 1932, p. 286).
'This comment refers, in part, to a petition (669f.4[55] 1642)
presented to Parliament by London's porters. Observers remarked on
the "extraordinary nature" of this petition, from "the lowest and
inferior sort of the people in the City," who "coming in
[Westminster], all with white towels over their shoulders,
delivered a petition with 1500 hands" (PJ 1982, pp. 259, 265; HMC
Cowper 1888, p. 306). The sense of novelty attached to this
development also holds for petitions from the other side. A hostile
report on a Cornwall petition (669f.4[64] 1642) that stridently
upholds royal prerogative and the estab- lished liturgy describes
how a Cornwall cleric "solicited hedgers at the hedge, plowmen at
the plow, threshers in the barns" (Buller 1895, p. 33). Satirical
petitions ridiculed popular support for the Long Parliament in
petitions from women, the insane, and even "infants, babies and
sucklings." A fictive petition from the last observes that "all
sorts of people . . . some of all degrees and conditions have
petitions to this high court"; we "have therefore thought good, and
according to our infantile understandings, to present to your grave
consideration, these few lines" (MSS Ashmole 830, folio 294; see
also E180[17] 1641; E404[30] 1647).
Even before the printing of petitions became routine in 1642,
letters and diaries often refer to petitions in 1640 and 1641 (HMC
Beaulieu 1900, pp. 129, 131, 134-35; HMC De L'Isle 1966, p. 371;
HMC Various 1903, pp. 257-58, MSS Tanner 63, folios 32, 43; MSS
Tanner 65, folio 209; MSS Tanner 66, folio 181; D'Ewes 1845,
2:242-43; Rous [1625- 42]1856, pp. 91-94). Interest in petitions
appears in diaries kept by a London artisan, Nehemiah Wallington
(1869, 2:14-19), who refers to
15 18
This content downloaded from 200.131.19.100 on Thu, 29 Jan 2015
14:01:05 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
-
English Revolution
100 petitions between 1640 and 1642; a member of the Kent gentry
(Oxin- den 1933, pp. 232, 285-86); and a country cleric (Josselin
[1616-83] 1976, pp. 88, 91, 97-98, 122-23, 127). Surviving evidence
provides tan- talizing clues about the care with which petitions
might be read. A news- letter in 1642 reports that the king in York
received a supportive petition and that he "after gives an answer,
both so concurring as if, some say, it was made by consent of
parties" (HMC Beaulieu 1900, p. 148). An- other notes similarities
in the Twelve Peers Petition and petitions from the Scots (CSPD
1858-97, 17:62). Parliamentary diarists and journalists often refer
to the repetitive quality of county petitions in 1642 (see Fletcher
1981, p. 191), describing petitions as "tending to the same ef-
fect" as ones previously presented (e.g., E201[23] 1642, p. 5, and
see p. 2; PJ 1987, pp. 2, 6, 23, 32, 38, 46). But an unusually
assertive passage in the version of a January 1642 petition that
Hertford petitioners pro- posed to send to the Lords startled
M.P.'s-it reprimanded the House of Lords for "want of compliance by
this honorable house with the House of Commons" (E133[15] 1642, p.
2). "God's wounds, here is a petition indeed," remarked one M.P.
Others noted that the Hertford petition to the Lords had "not only
what was expressed in their petition to this House but other
particulars also, and that in too broad and plain terms" (PJ 1982,
pp. 161, 171; see also HMC Cowper 1888, p. 304).
It is important to note that popular interest in petitions did
not depend on the ability to read them.11 Petitions were read aloud
and discussed in churches and taverns, often in conjunction with
efforts to obtain signa- tures or marks. The assembling of
parishioners on Sundays aided collec- tion of signatures; so did
the parochial authority of clerics (Fletcher 1981, pp. 195-96). In
1641, members of the clergy at Chester Cathedral an- nounced "that
there was something more to be done than reading of prayers." One
described the current Puritan petition campaign for abol- ishing
the established liturgy, "to prevent which danger the nobility and
gentry of this country have drawn a petition." The petition was
read; all who "had received any benefit" from the liturgy should
"repair to the communion table and subscribe to the petition." Some
left without signing and were challenged by a prebend who "asked
the people what they meant to go out" when "most of the best of the
city has subscribed to it" (MSS Nalson 13, folio 66). On the other
side, radical petitioning in London relied on Independent churches
(see Tolmie 1977, pp. 144-72). After Leveller petitions were burned
on a Saturday in May 1647, a letter of intelligence to Hyde
reports, "The next day . . . there was a sermon in Coleman Street
[a radical stronghold], a very passionate exhortation
" Elsewhere (see Zaret 1994, pp. 184-86), I discuss literacy in
this era and its implica- tions for appeals to public opinion in
politics.
1519
This content downloaded from 200.131.19.100 on Thu, 29 Jan 2015
14:01:05 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
-
American Journal of Sociology
persuading the people to remain firm to the cause and to sign
another petition of the like nature" (MSS Clarendon 20, folio
227v).
Well-founded presuppositions about popular interest in and
access to petitions thus lay behind their use in print as political
propaganda by all sides. The publication of Thomas Aston's
collection of Royalist petitions (E150[28] 1642) prompted a
proposal, in An Appeale To The World In these Times of Extreame
Danger (E107[26] 1643, p. 3), for compiling and printing a
collection of pro-Parliament petitions. The intent to direct
printed petitions to a public at large and not merely elite opinion
also appears in the preface to a pamphlet that defends a July 1643
petition. The first manifesto of a nascent Independent party, its
arguments will be "useful to the less knowing sort of men" (E61[21]
1643, signature A2v). Later, Independent attacks on a Presbyterian
petition from Lanca- shire were said to be more concerned with how
the petition fared "with the people" rather than Parliament
(E352[3] 1646, p. 8). Royalist reports in 1643 of "petitioning for
peace" were intended "to incense the people against the Parliament"
(E65[11] 1643, p. 227). Perhaps the clearest indi- cation of the
motive to influence the opinion of an anonymous public is the
practice of printing copies of petitions for use in gathering
signatures and then publishing another edition to distribute among
the public at large-a tactic used by Royalists (669f. 11[47] 1647;
E518[11] 1647), Pres- byterians (669f. 10[58] 1646; 669f. 10[63]
1646), Independents (669f. 12[63] 1648; E452[7] 1648; E452[38]
1648), Levellers (E548[16] 1649 is bound with two title pages; one
is addressed to potential subscribers, the other to the general
public), and proponents of the "good old cause" (669f.20[71] 1657;
E936[5] 1658).
Political leaders in Parliament used petitions to create the
appearance of popular support for their policies. Coordination of
parliamentary ma- neuvers and petitioning was a political art
practiced to perfection by Pym. In 1641 a massive petition from
London citizens aided his efforts in the House of Commons to
overcome resistance in the House of Lords to proceeding against
Strafford by a bill of attainder. "The earl has many friends in the
Lords," an M.P. reports on April 17: "To balance the Lords there is
a petition preparing in the City with 20,000 or 30,000 hands
subscribed" (HMC Cowper 1888, p. 278). On April 24 the Com- mons
received the petition with 20,000 signatures; on April 29 another
M.P. wrote "The London petition for expedition of justice is
transmitted by us to the Lords, with a special enforcement of our
own; upon which they have read the bill of attainder twice" (MSS
Osborn fb. 94, no. 7). On May 7 the bill passed the Lords. The high
value placed by political elites on petitions as propaganda also
applies to the other side. In intelli- gence reports sent to Hyde,
we can follow the course of petition cam- paigns in events leading
to the abortive Presbyterian coup in 1647 and
1520
This content downloaded from 200.131.19.100 on Thu, 29 Jan 2015
14:01:05 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
-
English Revolution
the Royalist uprising of 1648 (MSS Clarendon 29, folios 68, 72,
158, 161, 165, 227, 263; MSS Clarendon 31, folios 37v-38, 43, 56,
73, 67v, 77v, 79v, 80, 83v, 85v, 88, 99). Efforts to suppress
petitions are also instruc- tive. On all sides they involve fine
political calculation as well as brute force. In 1641 an M.P.
reports, "All art is used to keep petitions for episcopacy from
being presented to the House" (HMC Cowper 1888, p. 295). That year
the king instructed London's mayor to suppress the anti-Strafford
petition: but let "his Lordship have a care to do that se- cretly
as of himself, and not by any command from his Majesty" (CSPD
1858-97, 17:538). The next year Presbyterians enlisted an
Independent cleric, Philip Nye, to work discretely to kill plans by
Independents to petition against the Solemn League and Covenant,
which allied England with Scottish Presbyterianism. No trace of
this episode appears in Parlia- ment's records; but, not
surprisingly, it is reported in Mercurius Aulicus (see Gardiner
1883, pp. 5-6; MA [1643-44] 1971, 2:55-56). In 1647 and 1648 M.P.'s
were often at the center of efforts to stop petitions from radicals
(MSS Tanner 58, folio 50) and Royalists (Journals of the House of
Commons 1646-48, pp. 130, 134, 563).
Petitions as Indicators of Public Opinion Only part of the
complex relationship between petitions and public opin- ion appears
when we examine petitions as propaganda. As propaganda, petitions
nominally constitute public opinion as a means to influence the
real opinions of individuals. But how important is the reverse
movement? Do petitions have tangible links to opinions held at the
individual level, to discussion and debate in civil society, or are
they merely literary pro- ductions with no discernible relation to
a public sphere? Answers to these questions require an assessment
of the importance of manipulation and outright deceit in practices
that led to the framing and signing of peti- tions.
Manipulation and deceit were topics of contemporary speculation
on petitioners as unwitting tools to further a hidden agenda.
Mercurius Auli- cus charged that the war party in the House of
Commons had allocated this role to London citizens; Levellers
thought that a "malignant" faction in the House of Commons put
London's Common Council in this role- accommodation petitions to
Parliament were "first contrived and plotted by themselves, and
then cunningly laid to be acted in Common Councils" (MA [1643-44]
1971, 1:392; E452[21] 1648, p. 2; and see E522[38] 1648, p. 5). The
"element of charade" that Fletcher (1981, p. 194) discerns in some
county petitions in the early 1640s was noted by contemporaries.
After the king's failed attempt to arrest five parliamentary
leaders in January 1642, the first petition to protest this move
came from Bucking-
1521
This content downloaded from 200.131.19.100 on Thu, 29 Jan 2015
14:01:05 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
-
American Journal of Sociology
ham. Skepticism greeted presenters who stated, in the Commons,
that they were "not counseled thereto by any but hurried along with
appre- hensions of the dangers this honorable House was in." D'Ewes
noted the petition was already in print. Whitelock "did dislike
this manner of petitioning," despite his support for the five
leaders, because one of the five-John Hamden, a Buckingham M.P.-had
orchestrated its promo- tion (PJ 1982, p. 36; Whitelock [1605-75]
1990, p. 130).
These examples show the danger of taking petitions at face
value. Contemporaries acknowledged this danger in references to
"parrot" peti- tions, local petitions that reiterated the substance
of a London petition. Though Royalists used this tactic (MSS
Clarendon 29, folio 72), parrot petitions are usually associated
with the other side, as in the following cynical verse: "Though set
forms of prayer be abomination/Set forms of petitions find great
approbation" (MSS Rawl. poet 62, folio 51). The 1640 Root and
Branch petition from London for Puritan reform was a model for
county petitions. In presenting one from Kent in January 1641,
Edward Dering, a prominent Kent M.P., remarks that "if it were not
the spawn of the London petition" it was "a parrot taught to speak
. . . by rote calling for Root and Branch" (E197[1] 1641, p. 9).
Later, this point was raised against Independent and Presbyterian
petitions (E350[12] 1646, p. 3; E352[3] 1646, p. 13). But as
Underdown points out, such coordination "does not necessarily prove
that a particular peti- tion had no local support" (Underdown 1978,
pp. 195-96; and see Rus- sell 1993, p. 108). Elite involvement
could impose national political per- spectives on petitions from
localities where opinion might be insular and unideological. But
the filtering of opinion that occurred in the framing of petitions
could also move in the opposite direction: it might conceal sharp
views at the local level that were inconvenient in Parliament. The
case of Dering and the Kent petition is instructive. In presenting
it to Parliament, Dering boasts, "I dealt with the presenters
thereof . . . until (with their consent) I reduced it to less than
a quarter of its former length, and taught it a new and more modest
language." This "modest" version substitutes bland remarks on
countenancing of papists for specific refer- ences to contentious
religious issues (e.g., predestination), moderates its vitriolic
anticlericalism, and omits a passage that denies the king to be
above the law (E197[1] 1641, p. 9; 669f.4[9] 1641; Larking 1862,
pp. 30-33). The London Common Council modified petitions from
citizens before forwarding them to Parliament. 12 In 1647 officers
eliminated
12 In December 1646 the London Common Council prepared a
petition that, like many from that body, justified this step by
enclosing earlier citizens' petitions to the Council. The committee
drafting the Common Council petition was "to alter, add or dimin-
ish . . . what they in their discretion should think requisite."
The printed version of the Council petition appended the citizens
petition "with some omissions and few
1522
This content downloaded from 200.131.19.100 on Thu, 29 Jan 2015
14:01:05 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
-
English Revolution
''more offensive complaints" as they consolidated regimental
petitions from soldiers into one petition from the army; in 1652
Cromwell moder- ated passages in a petition from officers to the
Rump Parliament (Wool- rych 1982, pp. 41-42; 1987, p. 91).
Thus, coordination between local activists and national
political elites does not necessarily imply fraud in petitions. It
might facilitate expression of local opinion. For example,
complaints about "malignant" clerics in parish petitions often
involve coordination between local activists and prominent M.P.'s,
including Harley, Dering, Barrington, and D'Ewes. A Hereford
justice of the peace wrote to Harley about a malignant cleric: "I
am advised to prefer a petition unto the Parliament against him,
and to that purpose have sent my man to solicit the business, if
you think necessary" (MSS Add. 70106, Kyrle to Harley, unfoliated;
see also MSS Add. 70003, folio 111; MSS Stowe 184, folio 33). Among
the papers of Barrington is a draft of a parish petition, with
editorial revisions (e.g., "suffered" is substituted for "groaned")
and instructions for the parish activists: "You should do well to
get as many hands to this petition as can be . .. & if you have
heard the vicar or his curate preaching anything contrary to true
doctrine, to agree upon the particulars among yourselves, that you
may be able to prove it" (MSS Egerton 2651, folio 98). But
initiative could flow in the other direction. A local activist
writes to D'Ewes "to put you in mind of that petition and articles
against the vicar of our parish, wherewith we have troubled you and
you stand entrusted" (MSS Harl. 383, folio 199).
The issue of manipulation also arises in connection with efforts
to gather signatures to petitions. Here, too, appearances can be
deceiving. Even when petitions had thousands of signatures
"understanding observ- ers had learnt that the number of signatures
and marks attached to a petition testified more to the vigour with
which it had been organized than the degree of enthusiasm for its
contents in a particular locality" (Fletcher 1981, pp. 194-95; see
also Everitt 1973, p. 90; Harley 1854, p. 111). Allegations of
fraud and deceit flew on both sides. Hyde (1849, 1: 286-87) claims
that Puritan petitions for radical reform used a moderate text to
get signatures. Puritans said this about petitions for the
established liturgy in Cornwall and Chester: "The hands of the men
of Chester were not underwritten to this petition but to the
subsequent brief declaration of the intent of the petition."
Organizers of this petition responded with a parish petition whose
signers affirmed their signatures (MSS Harl. 4931, folio 118v, MSS
Add. 36913, folio 131; Buller 1895, p. 31). Few records shed light
on individual decisions to sign a petition, so it is diffi-
alterations" (MSS JCC 40, folio 199v; E366[15] 1646, p. 2; see
also MA [1643-44] 1971, 1: 194).
1523
This content downloaded from 200.131.19.100 on Thu, 29 Jan 2015
14:01:05 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
-
American Journal of Sociology
cult to assess the relative weight of informed consent versus
manipulation and coercion. Surviving evidence contains references
to popular debate and discussion over a petition. Laypersons sought
advice from parish ministers; newspapers and sermons advertised the
readiness of clerics to discuss a petition in circulation (E302[24]
1645, p. 380; E323[2] 1646, p. 110; E341[24] 1646, p. 3; Journals
of the House of Commons 1646-48, p. 436). Reports of conflict and
failed petitions indicate that ordinary persons could resist
coercion by clerics and other local authorities. In 1642 a
parishioner wrote to D'Ewes about efforts by his Isle of Ely vicar
"to have my hand to a petition on the behalf of the bishops" in
which the vicar "pressed me so far for my reasons of refusing,
until some coarse language passed between us" (MSS Harl. 383, folio
197; see also MSS Nalson 13, folio 66; Fairfax 1848, 2:108;
Fletcher 1981, p. 289; Oxinden 1933, p. 232; Underdown 1985, p.
93).
The context in which potential subscribers encountered petitions
was initially the extant structures of civil society-its parishes,
wards, guilds, common councils, and quarter and assize sessions. We
have already seen the importance of parish churches for petitions
in the countryside. In London, wards were the organizational unit
for the 1640 City Petition in support of the Twelve Peers' Petition
(MSS Add. 11045, folio 121) and, later, for Presbyterian petitions.
For one in January 1646 "there was a sermon in every ward; all of
them drove one & the same way" (MSS Williams 24.50, folios 56v,
101v; and see 669f.10[41] 1645; MSS Nalson 22, folio 131). Yet even
within these established structures of everyday life, popular
participation in London petitions made a decisive break with
traditional practice. Petitions organized at the ward or parish
level might bypass the mayor, aldermanic court, and Common Council-
only they had authority to issue petitions on behalf of the city
corporation. Petitions began to come forth in the name of the
city's "inhabitants." The Privy Council complained about this
development in London's 1640 petition that supported the Twelve
Peers' Petition "to which many hands . . . are endeavored to be
gotten in the several wards. . . . And we cannot but hold it very
dangerous and strange to have a petition framed in the names of the
citizens, and endeavored to be signed in a way not warranted by the
charters and customs of the City" (Rushworth 1721, 3:1262).
Royalists advanced this criticism against the Root and Branch
petition: it was not from the corporation, observes Digby, "but
from I know not what 15,000 Londoners" (Rushworth 1721, 4:170-72;
D'Ewes 1923, p. 335). This popular development enabled citizen
peti- tioners to oppose or lobby municipal corporations-and not
only in Lon- don. In Norwich, competing petitions from Independent
and Presbyte- rian citizens (E352[7] 1646; E355[13] 1646; E358[4]
1646) lobbied the Common Council over proposals to petition
Parliament.
1524
This content downloaded from 200.131.19.100 on Thu, 29 Jan 2015
14:01:05 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
-
English Revolution
In these popular developments, private associations of
individuals met in homes, taverns, and sectarian congregations to
debate and sign pe- titions. Growing reliance on printed
information for organizing these petitions supplements
communicative contacts based on primary associa- tions (e.g.,
residence, family). For example, in rival petition campaigns by
proponents of "peace" and "war" policies in the winter of 1642-43,
opposing sides met in taverns and advertised meetings on tickets
posted in public places (E86[35] 1643, p. 16; Pearl 1961, pp.
233-34, 255). In politics, petitioning became the organizational
analogue to sectarianism in religion. Both the gathering of
separate churches and petitioning cut across traditional
residential affiliations by ward and parish, uniting like- minded
individuals in voluntary associations (Tolmie 1977, pp. 139, 142).
Signatures to petitions from radical opponents of London
Presbyterians were "gathered all about the suburbs . . . especially
at conventicles and private meetings" (E339[13] 1646, p. 676).
Hostile and sympathetic accounts describe heated debates in private
houses and taverns among Independents and Levellers over "different
judgements for seasons of petitions," that is, whether it was
tactically wise to proceed with a peti- tion (Walwyn [1649] 1944,
pp. 351-33, 355; E368[5] 1646, p. [163]; E426[18] 1648, pp. 9-10).
It is hardly surprising, then, that petitioners on all sides began
to defend "our native right to meet together to frame and promote
petitions" (E428[8] 1648, p. 12; see E323[2] 1646, p. 44; E438[1]
1648, p. 7).
These popular developments in petitioning derived from mass
petitions encouraged by political elites as propaganda in the early
1640s. But when Levellers and army activists