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JOHN FELTON, POPULAR POLITICAL CULTURE, AND THE ASSASSINATION OF THE DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 June 2006

THOMAS COGSWELL
THOMAS COGSWELL
Affiliation:
University of California, Riverside
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Abstract

This article analyses the motivation behind John Felton's assassination of the duke of Buckingham in August 1628. It focuses attention on his family's tortured relationship with the regime, and it highlights Felton's military service in Spain, Ireland, and France. Wounded in the disastrous withdrawal from the Ile de Ré, he returned to London to convalesce, and there he slipped into the metropolitan ‘underground’ manuscript culture that was saturated with poems and tracts excoriating the duke. Finally he was able to witness the mounting violence in the city in the summer of 1628 that culminated in the murder of the duke's sorcerer, Dr Lamb. Felton's murder of the duke was far from inevitable, but as this article hopes to show, his ability to slot his own personal frustration into the increasingly virulent hostility to the favourite ultimately transformed Felton into the instrument of public retribution.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 49 , Issue 2 , June 2006 , pp. 357 - 385
Copyright
© 2006 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

I am indebted to Susan Brigden and Peter McCullough for inviting me to present my initial thoughts on the duke's assassin to the History and Literature Seminar at Oxford University in Spring 1999. Alastair Bellany, Richard Cust, Simon Healey, Peter Lake, Michael Questier, and Christopher Thompson have often discussed, and read, drafts of this article. Alastair Bellany and I will present a much fuller account of the duke's assassination in England's assassin: John Felton and the killing of the duke of Buckingham (Yale University Press, forthcoming).