Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Annabel Patterson is Sterling Professor of English Emeritus at Yale University. she has published a number of challenging and spirited works of seventeenth-century cultural history, and edited The Prose Works of Andrew Marvell, She is the author of Nobody's Perfect: A New Whig Interpretation of History published by Yale University Press.

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THE PROSE WORKS OF Andrew Marvell

YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS

Contents

Volume IIntroduction by Annabel Patterson.........................................................................................xiChronology: Marvell in the Restoration....................................................................................xlivAbbreviations.............................................................................................................liiiREHEARSAL TRANSPROS'DEdited by Martin Dzelzainis...............................................................................................3Rehearsal Transpros'd.....................................................................................................41REHEARSAL TRANSPROS'D: THE SECOND PARTEdited by Martin Dzelzainis and Annabel Patterson.........................................................................207Rehearsal Transpros'd: The Second Part....................................................................................221Appendix A: "The Justice of the Swedish Cause"............................................................................441Appendix B: Suetonius's Life of Caligula..................................................................................450Appendix C: "The King's Speech"...........................................................................................460Index.....................................................................................................................465Volume IIChronology: Marvell in the Restoration....................................................................................xiAbbreviations.............................................................................................................xixMR. SMIRKE and A SHORT HISTORICAL ESSAY ON GENERAL COUNCILSEdited by Annabel Patterson...............................................................................................3Mr. Smirke; or, the Divine in Mode........................................................................................35A Short Historical Essay Concerning General Councils, Creeds, and Impositions, in Matters of Religion.....................115AN ACCOUNT OF THE GROWTH OF POPERYEdited by Nicholas von Maltzahn...........................................................................................179An Account of the Growth of Popery and Arbitrary Government in England....................................................223REMARKS UPON A LATE DISINGENUOUS DISCOURSEEdited by N. H. Keeble....................................................................................................381Remarks Upon a Late Disingenuous Discourse Writ by one T.D. & c...........................................................413Index.....................................................................................................................483

Chapter One

Introduction Annabel Patterson

There can be few publications more richly announced and situated than Marvell's twinned pamphlets, Mr. Smirke; or the Divine in Mode and A Short Historical Essay Concerning General Councils, Creeds, and Impositions, in Matters of Religion. We know exactly what caused him to write them, and the sequence of events that led both up to and down from their publication is unusually fully documented. While the two parts of the Rehearsal Transpros'd can and must be located in the toleration debates of 1668-73, there is perhaps more local information about what provoked Marvell to return to the issue in 1676, providing us with the equivalent of what cultural historians of an anthropological bent have termed thick description, presumably more admirable than thin.

THE CONTEXT The local story began with Bishop Herbert Croft's decision to appeal to the session of parliament that opened on April 13, 1675. The session had opened with a speech by Charles II that Marvell had preemptively parodied, not least because it stated, against all evidence to the contrary, the king's determination to "shew the World [his] Zeal to the Protestant Religion." The session was a heated one, involving attempts to impeach both Lauderdale and Danby, and eventually stymied by the disputes about privilege between the two Houses in the cases of Shirley vs. Fagg and Stoughton vs. Onslow. When not distracted by the latter issue, the Commons pursued "effectual Ways for the Suppressing the Growth of Popery," and in general showed the coercive temper with respect to religious dissent that had forced the retraction of Charles's Declaration in 1673. Croft, bishop of Hereford, having begun as a Roman Catholic, and converted back in the 1630s to ardent Anglicanism, had by the early 1670s become one of the spokesmen for compromise, not for religious toleration or the removal of penalties for those who could not join the national church, but for comprehension within it of as many Protestants as possible by stressing what they had in common rather than the ceremonial points that divided them. In 1667 he had worked with Colonel John Birch and Sir Robert Atkins to introduce a bill for comprehension which never reached the floor of the Commons; and he and Sir Edward Harley, Marvell's friend and correspondent, opposed the new and more rigorous Conventicles Act of 1670. At that time he resigned as royal chaplain. In May 1675, as the Commons floundered about with bills, on the one hand, to prevent "Papists" from sitting in Parliament, and on the other to abolish the medieval statute de Haeretico Comburendo, he and five other bishops attended a meeting of Anglican divines who supported some sort of comprehension, and Croft was nominated to write a pamphlet arguing this position. The result was The Naked Truth: or, the True State of the Primitive Church. Croft must have written it in something of a hurry, trying to reach the parliament before the summer recess. It was an earnest but not particularly impressive piece of argument.

Marvell tells us in Mr. Smirke that Croft arranged for four hundred copies of The Naked Truth to be printed, intending to distribute them to "the Speakers of both Houses, and as many of the Members as [four hundred copies] could furnish." On June 9, however, Charles prorogued the parliament, as being unable to conduct its business properly, until October 13. "The Parliament rising just as the Book was delivering out and before it could be presented," wrote Marvell in the opening pages of his defense, Croft ordered the printer to suppress it until the next session. "Some covetous Printer in the mean time getting a Copy, surreptitiously Reprinted it, and so it flew abroad without the Authors knowledge, and against his direction" (p. 51). Both the authorized and the pirated editions were anonymous, but Croft's authorship was readily guessed. We can deduce from these statements of Marvell's that the pirated impression hit the streets in late summer or early autumn...