‘Stampt with your own Image’

The most familiar representation of European monarchy in the seventeenth century still remained the coinage. By this time it was unremarkable in itself that a new reign would produce new coin designs, but virtually every Stuart succession involved an extra dimension of some significance, including the accession of a foreign monarch; the restoration of the monarchy; and the joint sovereignty arrangements of William and Mary. Two Stuart reigns, those of James I and Charles II, began with two new coinage redesigns in quick succession, following an initial acknowledgement of the new reign with a more thoroughgoing revision, even though this had the potential to distract from the image and message each had initially established. This chapter reviews how these highly unusual adjustments proceeded and what motives lay behind them.

Stuart Coronations in Seventeenth- Century Scotland

The Scottish coronations of Stuart monarchs were highly politically significant—and controversial—occasions. When, in 1633, Charles I finally visited Scotland to be crowned, the manner of the coronation and of the king’s conduct bred anxiety and resentment among the Scots. His son would be crowned in Edinburgh long before being crowned Charles II in England: taking place in 1651, this Scottish coronation was a defiant challenge to the Commonwealth regime. Restored to the throne of England in 1660, Charles II was crowned in London in a ceremony that did not acknowledge his earlier Scottish coronation. This chapter examines the literature surrounding and linking these three coronation ceremonies that was published in Scotland, and, in some cases, republished or answered in England. It argues that this succession literature both illuminates and plays a dynamic role in shaping Scottish cultural identity and Anglo-Scottish relations.

‘The Idol of State Innovators and Republicans’

This chapter explores the seventeenth-century afterlife of the most daring political tract of the Elizabethan era, A Conference About the Next Succession to the Crowne of Ingland (1594/5) by the Jesuit Robert Persons. The chapter begins by explaining what is distinctive about A Conference, notably its direct attack on the hereditary principle and on the pre-eminence of the monarchy itself, and gives an overview of its transmission, reception, and appropriation. It goes on to trace the text’s signal and varied influence on Protestant writers from Henry Walker and Henry Parker during the Puritan Revolution and John Somers and Algernon Sidney during the Exclusion Crisis, to the defenders of the ‘Glorious’ Revolution. It thus invites a rethinking of the republican and Whig traditions in English political thought by revealing their dependence on the work of an Elizabethan Jesuit.

‘He seems a king by long succession born’

On 3 September 1658 the death of Oliver Cromwell thrust the dilemma of succession onto the Privy Council; that day they declared Oliver’s eldest son, Richard, Lord Protector. In the weeks and months that followed, the challenge of imagining, celebrating, and legitimating this unprecedented succession would be taken up by those writing on the event of Oliver’s death and Richard’s accession. This chapter addresses the dilemmas facing those who would fashion Cromwellian celebrity and succession by focusing on a small pamphlet of funerary verse, Three Poems Upon the Death of his late Highnesse, issued in the spring of 1659, rather late in the season of mourning. The volume itself presents a number of puzzles—formal, bibliographical, and imaginative—that can be read both as an emblem of the contradictions of Cromwellian rule—present and absent Oliver Cromwell—and of the anxieties that lay ahead when Three Poems finally appeared.

Panegyric and Its Discontents

This essay examines the conflicted nature of the panegyrical literature of the Stuart accession of 1603, examining examples from many genres and forms—such as homily, pamphlet, reportage, and pageant—to locate formal verse eulogies of James VI and I in the context of the wider polemical discourse in which they were situated, with particular regard to the problems arising from (1) the advent of a ‘foreign’ king; (2) the questionable nature of his relationship to Elizabeth; (3) the uncertainty of his ecclesiastical outlook; and (4) the implications of his plans for the creation of Great Britain. Comparison is made between the literary responses to the accession in England, Ireland, and Scotland to illustrate the radical disunity and suspicion underlying the rhetoric of friendship and union.

‘I have brought thee up to a Kingdome’

This chapter analyses sermons preached around the accessions of James VI and I and Charles I, focusing on the complex tasks facing preachers as they attended to the spiritual state of the former and current rulers, counselled the new monarch on ecclesiastical policy, and spoke to the anxieties of a nation in transition. Sermons greeting the accession of the first Stuart king addressed the various claims for his legitimacy as Elizabeth’s successor; those delivered at the opening of Charles I’s reign were untroubled by such concerns but sought to reassure their auditories that the nation’s foundations were secure under its new ruler.

Welcoming the King

The seventeenth century was the great age of English panegyric, and no events stimulated writers of this genre more than royal successions. This chapter considers panegyric as a dynamic form of political expression: poems, at their best, engaged with contemporary debates about the authority of the monarchy and relations between subjects and their rulers. The chapter focuses on panegyrics produced for the three Stuart reigns that began with monarchs arriving in England from elsewhere: those of James I in 1603, Charles II in 1660, and William III and Mary II in 1688–9. The chapter argues that the century’s manifold political changes placed intense strains on panegyric, and concludes by considering two poets who, under conditions of intense personal pressure, openly rejected it. Despite their different politics, George Wither and Aphra Behn both reflect valuably upon the limitations of this vital genre of political literature.

‘A great Romance feigned to raise wonder’

Historians have recently explored afresh the conflict and uncertainty surrounding the succession of William and Mary of Orange to the English throne. But literary criticism has offered relatively little analysis of its poetry. This chapter sets examples of verse panegyric on the succession alongside pamphlet literature, particularly focusing on a neglected succession poem by Elkanah Settle. The chapter argues that imagery of literature—poetry, fiction, and romance—in pamphlet polemic registered an understanding of the succession as an event that was either a remarkable true fiction or an illegal fabrication. This alignment of literary invention and constitutional innovation affected panegyric negatively because poets were unable or unwilling to use the form to offer advice to the new regime. A reading of A View of the Times by Settle shows a novel though ultimately frustrated attempt to retrieve for panegyric a role in shaping rather than merely reflecting contemporary politics.

Charles II and the Meanings of Exile

Before the restoration of Stuart rule in 1660, Charles II spent the best part of a decade in exile at the mostly Catholic courts of Europe. When he did return briefly to England, he found himself a fugitive in his own realms, a kind of internal exile, before escaping again overseas. This chapter examines how the royal experience of exile became an especially fraught issue in the many printed works produced by Charles’s friends and enemies in the months surrounding the Restoration. Charles’s enemies argued that his time abroad had fatally compromised his Protestantism and fitness to rule, whereas his friends presented his exile as a positive formative experience. In building their cases, however, both sides relied on a discourse of exile that by the second half of the seventeenth century was associated with an English Catholic narrative of religious persecution. Thus, especially for Charles’s Protestant supporters, the terms available for representing his exile rendered problematic his reputation as a resolute Anglican.

Writing the King’s Death

The writing produced around the succession of Charles I in 1625 was dominated by discussion of the life and death of his father, James I. Focusing on a range of texts about James I’s death and funeral—James Shirley’s poem on the king’s ritualized lying-in-state, John Williams’s funeral sermon for the king in Westminster Abbey, Abraham Darcie’s engraved memorial broadside, and George Eglisham’s infamous secret history of James’s murder—this chapter explores how panegyric succession writing was shaped and undermined by significant tensions within early Stuart political culture—about religion and monarchy, kings and court favourites, domestic and foreign policy, and royal authority and the public sphere.