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Print Culture, State Formation, and an Anglo-Scottish Public, 1640–1648

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 September 2017

Jason Peacey
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Abstract

Based upon the idea that debates regarding the “public sphere” have paid insufficient attention to the notion of multiple publics and the movement of texts across state borders, this article explores how print culture provided ways of promoting transterritorial publics. It does so by revisiting the vexed notion of the “British problem” in the seventeenth century and relations between Scottish Covenanters and English parliamentarians, and by emphasizing the need to consider print culture in tandem with state formation. It demonstrates that a significant volume of printed material––produced both in England and Scotland, and sometimes collaboratively––reflected and promoted cross-border cooperation, thereby fostering a nascent Anglo-Scottish public. It also emphasizes that the practices involved were intimately linked to attempts to establish federal political institutions that both responded to the existence of a “British” public and necessitated its further development. Ultimately, however, the need to address and maintain such a public led to printed texts being used to navigate tensions between Covenanters and parliamentarians, to the point where Anglo-Scottish interests gave way to national interests, where resistance grew to the legitimacy of using print as a cross-border device, and where print helped to undermine cross-border cooperation.

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Articles
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Journal of British Studies , Volume 56 , Issue 4 , October 2017 , pp. 816 - 835
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Copyright © The North American Conference on British Studies 2017 

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20 Here (and in subsequent footnotes), references too numerous to cite in full are indicated by means of a standard bibliographical reference, from the English Short Title Catalogue (ESTC): E1448; R574; E2175; E2788A; E1448; E1437A; W1440A; W1430; W1435. This would become much more marked in the later 1640s, not least when Tyler reprinted a number of Presbyterian ministers’ petitions from across England. See ESTC S2605; B5691; G886; H800B; and H1315. Such texts, however, were not included in Tyler's inventory, which raises questions about the degree to which his press retained a degree of independence from the covenanter authorities. For Tyler and the Stationers’ Company, see Stevenson, “Revolutionary Regime,” 327.

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49 ESTC E3910.

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75 See ESTC E2520; D599; and Peacey, Jason, Politicians and Pamphleteers: Propaganda during the English Civil Wars and Interregnum (Aldershot, 2004), 55 Google Scholar, 113, 120.

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85 SD, no. 141, 1–8 July 1646, 718–19; SD, no. 147, 12–19 August 1646, 4; SD, no. 158, 28 October–4 November 1646, 96; SD, no. 133, 6–13 May 1646, 651.

86 SD, no. 137, 3–10 June 1646, 683; SD, no. 138, 10–17 June 1646, 696.

87 SD, no. 9, 8–15 December 1643, 71; SD, no. 10, 15–22 December 1643, 85; SD, unnumbered, 25 December 1646, sig. A2v.

88 SD, unnumbered, 25 December 1646, sig. A2v; SD, no. 16, 26 January–6 February 1644, 120.

89 SD, no. 1, 13–20 October 1643, 1; SD, no. 2, 20–27 October 1643, 9; SD, no. 46, 23–30 August 1644, 361; SD, no. 70, 14–21 February 1645, 548; SD, unnumbered, 25 December 1646, sigs. Av, A2v.

90 SD, unnumbered, 25 December 1646, sig. A2v.

91 On 10 September 1646, the committee of foreign affairs was ordered to examine the printer, publisher, and author of issue 146 (5–12 August), and on 24 September, Smith, as author of the Dove, was brought to the bar of the House of Lords and charged regarding comments “against the French king.” Journals of the House of Commons, vol. 4 (London, 1802), 664 Google Scholar; Journals of the House of Lords, vol. 8 (London, 1767), 504 Google Scholar. See also SD, no. 152, 16–23 September 1646, 43; SD, no. 150, 2–9 September 1646, 31; SD, no. 143, 15–22 July 1646, 753; and SD, no. 148, 19–26 August 1646, 14.