Chopping off a person’s head typically stops them from speaking, and so guarantees victory in an argument or debate, though would probably be frowned upon as a means of remedy by most people. Not so for William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury, who, in the 1640s, couldn’t seem to shut up.
While imprisoned in the Tower of London, under charges of treason (though really because he was accused of crypto-Catholicism), the prelate was credited with all kinds of dialogues — including with the ghosts of his political adversaries and fallen allies. And, as this week’s featured woodcut shows, he was even chattering away after death.
The rest of this newsletter will comprise some small historical titbits which are currently in the “Mini-Posts” section of the website’s homepage. I am going to remove this section in the near future (and replace it with something new), so this is where they’ll be preserved.
As always, please subscribe (for free) by entering your email address in the box above if you’d like to be notified of new content. (On that note, I have an article — hopefully — coming out in the not-too-distant future.)
Featured Woodcut
Usually I introduce woodcuts by mentioning whose bookshop they occupied before being snatched up by customers. But this, shall we say, intriguing illustration accompanies a pamphlet which was apparently “printed for” its author, the splendidly-named William Starbuck.
The woodcut depicts William Laud’s severed head — complete with dripping blood and executioner’s axe — in conversation with, or at least talking in the vicinity of, an unidentified man with ginormous hands, with a short bit of verse between them.
I have said before that woodcut illustrations often compromised their own spatial logic or otherwise eschewed aesthetic priorities in the interest of most efficiently communicating their message, but the crudeness of this woodcut is fairly indefensible.
Still, the figure on the left — clad in a cloth Canterbury cap and freshly separated from his body — can be none other than Laud, and the figure on the right some anonymous detractor, or a depiction of the author himself, who is a strong critic of Laud. (For more on the visual lampooning of Laud at this time, see my article from 2021.)
The author is a man named William Starbuck, and he employs the common technique of literary ventriloquism to have the archbishop indict himself and issue the following warning:
My head that wrought all misery
is smitten off, as you may see,
You Prelates be warned by me,
the reward of evill just you see
The woodcut illustration is attached to Starbuck’s A Briefe Exposition, Paraphrase, or Interpretation Upon The Lord of Canterburies Sermon or Speech, upon the last Pulpit that ever he preached, which was the Scaffold on Tower-hill (1645). It was published on about 22 January 1644, less than two weeks after Laud had been beheaded for treason on Tower Hill (despite King Charles I granting him a pardon). He had previously been imprisoned in the Tower of London by the Long Parliament in 1641, during which time the printing presses had been weaponised against him.
Starbuck’s pamphlet is no exception. Indeed, three of the four surviving works attributed to him were attacks on the archbishop, the other two being ballads (Starbuck’s remaining work is a set of commendatory verses wishing the Parliamentarian forces well in 1644). I have not been able to find out a single detail about the author’s life besides these works. His evident interest in ecclesiastical matters, and incorporation of biblical verses into his “spirituall” ballads lend some credence to the idea that the pen of a clergyman was at play here.
But no record of him as a churchman is to be found (and those records are generally well-kept), and A Briefe Exposition (1645) ends with an acrostic poem of his own name. The latter in particular suggests a fondness for wordplay, polemic, and writing which may tempt us to wonder whether “William Starbuck” is a pseudonym, though I cannot tell why this name in particular was chosen.
Romani People in Thomas Harman’s A Caveat For Commen Cursetors (1566)
In his pamphlet about the types of criminal in Tudor England, Thomas Harman outlines the behaviour and characteristics of 24 different classes of rogue he claimed were active as part of a vast criminal underworld. He published it in the hope of suppressing these “marevelous subtle and crafty” delinquents — which he conceded would be no easy feat.
At the beginning of A Caveat For Commen Cursetors Vulgarly Called Vagabones (1566), the former Justice of the Peace gives an example of one type of person who had been much targeted: “Egyptians”.
These people were not actually from Egypt, but rather Romani travellers who apparently wore exotic head attire and, Harman claims, scammed the “rude common people wholly addicted … to novelties, toyes, and new inventions” by offering palm readings for a fee.
Thomas Kyd Probably Did Not Write a Murder Pamphlet
John Kyd was a minor Elizabethan publisher, but he features quite prominently in my article about supernatural stories in early modern England . His greatest claim to fame is that his surname appears to be the sole reason for which some scholars (and Wikipedia) believe Thomas Kyd — author of The Spanish Tragedy (c. 1587) — penned a 1592 pamphlet about the fatal poisoning of a London goldsmith by his unfaithful wife.
The surviving copy of this work at Lambeth Palace bears the name “Tho. Kydde” on its final page. But this attribution is not supported by any known facts and has seemingly only persisted because of an unfounded assumption that the dramatist was some relation of this obscure bookseller.
John Payne Collier asserted in 1862 that Thomas Kyd’s name had been scribbled on this particular copy before it was given to the Archbishop of Canterbury to receive a license for publication. But this claim is nonsensical because funding the printing of a title before permission had been granted for its sale would be absurd — it was always manuscripts which were provided.
Arthur and Janet Freeman make this point in their lengthy 2004 study of Collier’s scholarship and forgery, and suggest the Victorian writer forged the signature. Of the suggestion that the pamphlet resembles Kyd’s style, they say:
[…]no one would imagine the author of The Spanish Tragedy, and the elegant translations of Garnier and Tasso, guilty of the lumbering prose and insipid morality of this third-rate squib. Nor is there anything in his known late career to suggest such descent into pamphlet hackwork of so low a standing.
Arthur Freeman and Janet Ing Freeman, John Payne Collier: Scholarship & Forgery in the Nineteenth Century (2004), p. 860.
William Hornby and Wordplay in Early Modern Authorship
Early modern writers loved wordplay and often showed off by treating their own names as guinea pigs of this linguistic science — anagrammatizing, augmenting, and punning on them.
The obscure Stuart poet William Hornby referred to himself as “Cornu-ape” several times in the two tracts of his which survive. “Cornu” means “horn” in Latin and “ape” translates to “bee” — i.e. William “horn-bee”.
The verse which follows is (I’m sad to say) mediocre even by the standards of cheap print poetry. But there’s an interesting little anecdote in Hornbyes Hornbook (1622) where the author describes a revolt he partook in with his fellow students while at school.
The children, weary of learning, locked their master out of the classroom and — “like a little Armie in the field” — barricaded themselves inside for four days, only leaving after their teacher tricked them with a “false pardon”.
Stationers in the Slammer
In my article on the corrupt informer Griffin Flood, who extorted London’s citizens and eventually murdered a tradesman, I mention that the printer George Eld possessed a monopoly on certain kinds of prison literature and had evidently nurtured fruitful relationships with the incarcerated to get scoops on jail life — probably including details of Flood’s own stint in Newgate Prison.
But printers, booksellers, and writers also regularly found themselves inhabiting the slammers of early modern London — and not always for producing illicit works.
In 1613, the court of the Stationers’ Company ordered that George Eld himself be imprisoned for an unspecified period of time and fined 30 shillings for “using undecent & unfitting speeches to the wardens”. Details of the precise insults used have, unfortunately, not survived.
For more examples of stationers behaving naughtily, see the second part of this newsletter from July.
