zaret, david. petitions and the 'invention' of public opinion in english revolution

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

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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 democratic public sphere are inconsistent and speculative. This empirical account explains the transition in political communication from norms of secrecy to appeals to public opinion. Popular communicative 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

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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 anonymous body of opinion, a public that was both a nominal object of discourse 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 sociological accounts offer inconsistent answers. For England (e.g., Bendix 1978; Habermas 1989; Marshall 1966), these accounts place this development 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; speculation is the inevitable consequence of devoting little attention to communicative 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 communication: facilitating more rapid and extensive dissemination of novel ideas. That the print culture itself was a source of novelty-a point developed 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 departure 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 center to the periphery. But for messages in the opposite direction, periphery to center, petitions were a principal device. This explains the importance

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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 petitioning during the English Revolution provides empirical evidence for ex- plaining how appeals to public opinion supplanted norms of secrecy in politics. 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 local grievances to central authority; it did not load its message with normative claims about the "will of the people." Rules for petitions coexisted with more general norms of secrecy and privilege in political communication. 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

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of the "invention" of public opinion derive from economic and technical aspects of printing: heightened commercialism and the capacity to reproduce 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 innovative 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 constitute 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 important 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) account of the historical expansion of citizenship rights, in Habermas's (1989) analysis of critical uses of reason in public debates, and in optimistic accounts by functionalist sociologists of the rise of civic culture and universalism 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 economic 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-

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edged to be a paradigmatic case,2 in both class-centered and functionalist accounts that emphasize, respectively, imperatives of capitalist development 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 appeared and precisely what in capitalism and Protestantism had democratic 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 bourgeoisie 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.

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causes of the public sphere does not imply their utter irrelevance. I suggest 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 communicative 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 printing 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 communicative 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 appeals to public opinion. This development was unintended, occurring initially at the level of practice where it was neither sanctioned nor anticipated by theoretical formulations. That this development was not the outcome of democratic creeds will be inferred from the uniform distribution 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:

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"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 "primitive 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 support 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 secrecy 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.

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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 account 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 petitions 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 complaints 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 petition 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).

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initially to rescue Parliament from the 1647 coup in London and, subsequently, 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 increasingly focused on the unwillingness of Parliament to receive Leveller petitions. 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 petitions as least indicative of local sentiment (Everitt 1973, pp. 60-61; Fletcher 1981, pp. 191-92; Morrill 1974, pp. 45-48; Underdown 1971,

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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 documents." 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,

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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 theory 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 political 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.

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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 rhetoric 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 political disputes. This occurs in private letters, pamphlets, diaries, and newspapers, as partisans and observers describe, attack, and defend petitions. Evidence from these sources is crucial for drawing inferences that go beyond explicit claims made by petitioners-a necessary step for analyzing the paradox of innovation. Thus, petitions should be read in conjunction 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 appeals 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 medieval sense) a privilege demarcated by secrecy norms, whose violation, even by M.P.'s, is a punishable offense. For commoners, norms of secrecy and privilege reflect an unchallenged assumption, no different in early Stuart England than under Elizabeth, when Thomas Smith explained that common people "have no voice or authority in our commonwealth, 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 government (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

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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 communication 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 coexisted with established procedures for expressing grievance by petition. Traditions governing petitions arose in medieval society, when parliaments 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 indicate the prescribed remedy, if any (Maitland 1893, pp. xxvi-xxvii, xxxii, lv, lxvii-lxxiii). Later developments reflect growing complexity in medieval 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-

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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 delineated 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 conflict 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 patronage functioned like money. The word "petition" was a common figure of speech, used literally and metaphorically to signify a deferential request 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 medieval ritual, the appointment of receivers and triers of petitions. Petitions to kings were received by secretaries of state, from petitioners with influence 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 because 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).

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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 hostile 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 corporation 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 grievances 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-

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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 instructed 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 limited 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 "liberty" 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."

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(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 "factious" 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 grievance; 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 people" (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 requested 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).

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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 council 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 commissioners (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 grievances. 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 democratic 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 grievances . . . before you, not presuming to dictate to your graver judgements" (669f.6[101] 1642).

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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 rhetoric 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 information 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 "freedom 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 information 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

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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, common 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 petitions ... 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 encountered 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 agitators 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 contemporaries drew fine distinctions between apolitical conveyance of grievance by petition and factious discontent.

Finally, petitions were not to be made public. There was nothing novel

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in the complaint of a royal officeholder, Sir Thomas Roe, about circulation 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 private associations simultaneously constituted and invoked public opinion-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 writers, readers, printers, and petitioners. Like today's opinion polls, petitions 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

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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 public. 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 established 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

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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 signatures or marks. The assembling of parishioners on Sundays aided collection 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 implications for appeals to public opinion in politics.

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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 intelligence reports sent to Hyde, we can follow the course of petition campaigns in events leading to the abortive Presbyterian coup in 1647 and

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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 instructive. 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 opinion 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 petitions.

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-

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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" petitions, 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 petition had no local support" (Underdown 1978, pp. 195-96; and see Rus- sell 1993, p. 108). Elite involvement could impose national political perspectives 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 references 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

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''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 observers 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).

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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 petitioners 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.

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In these popular developments, private associations of individuals met in homes, taverns, and sectarian congregations to debate and sign petitions. Growing reliance on printed information for organizing these petitions supplements communicative contacts based on primary associations (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 petition (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

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