I was re-reading the London Root and Branch petition last week for a class and noticed for the first time, amongst the list of religious and constitutional grievances, a very specific issue:

8. The swarming of lascivious, idle, and unprofitable books and pamphlets, play-books and ballads; as namely, Ovid’s Fits of Love, The Parliament Of Women, which came out at the dissolving of the last Parliament; Barns’s Poems, Parker’s Ballads, in disgrace of religion, to the increase of all vice, and withdrawing of people from reading, studying, and hearing the word of God, and other good books.

The London petition was presented to the Commons on 11 December 1640, shortly after the opening of the Long Parliament by Alderman Isaac Pennington, a City MP, along with about 1,500 of his signatories. Around 15,000 people signed the petition itself. The petition had been brewing since the opening of Parliament: on 18 November 1640 the Scots commissioner Robert Baillie noted that:

The Toun of London, and a world of men, minds to prefent a petition, which I have feen, for the abolition of Biihops, Deanes, and all their aperteanances. It is thought good to delay it till the Parliament have pulled doun Can terburie and fome prime Biftiops, which they minde to doe fo foon as the King hes a little digefted the bitternefs of his Lieutenant’s cenfure. Hudge things are here in working: The mighty hand of God be about this great work!

Exactly how the petition was organised is something we will probably never know. It’s possible that organisation centred on the parish of St Stephen’s, Coleman Street, led by John Goodwin. Goodwin had close links to Pennington, who was a parishioner. But the actual process through which signatures were gathered remains unknown.

Most of the petition criticised the religious constitutional policies of the 1630s. What was it about these particular books that merited their inclusion?

A pirated translation of Ovid’s Ars Amatoria by Thomas Heywood – which dated back to earlier in the century – was re-published in 1640. It’s almost certainly this that is the first objectionable book on the petitioners’ list. For a  particular type of puritan, the Ovidian hero, using theatres and the arena as his hunting ground for one night stands, would  have been unacceptable.

The Parliament of Women is an anonymous satirical pamphlet that is almost certainly by the poet John Taylor. It was entered into the Stationers’ Register on 18 June 1640 which suggests it was still fresh in the minds of those putting the petition together. It features characters like Bridgit Boldface, Mistress Tattlewell and Hannah Hit-Him-Home. Although these are recycled from earlier poems like A Juniper Lectures and The Womens Sharpe Revenge, the timing of this pamphlet just a month after the dissolution of the Short Parliament is interesting too.

Barns is a bit more of a mystery. It’s possible that it means Barnabe Barnes, a poet and playwright from the late Elizabethan period whose play The Divils Charter was about the life and death of Pope Alexander VI. However, I haven’t been able to find any of Barnes’s works that were reprinted during 1640.

Martin Parker was a prolific ballad writer whose career stretched from the 1620s into the 1640s. The content of his ballads was summed up by his fellow pamphleteer Henry Peacham:

‘For a peny you may have all the Newes in England, of Murders, Flouds, Witches, Fires, Tempests, and what not, in one of Martin Parkers Ballads’.

Whether it was his collected back catalogue that offended London puritans, or a particular ballad, is unclear. But it’s interesting that 1640 saw Parker produce a particularly proto-royalist ballad, An exact description of the manner how his majestie went to the parliament, the thirteenth day of April, to mark the opening of the Short Parliament.

This is the title page to The Vindication of Christmas, or His twelve yeares observations upon the times (London, 1652). It’s George Thomason’s copy, so despite the poor quality of the image you can see where he’s methodically crossed out the New Style 1653 and replaced it with an Old Style 1652.

In the woodcut you can see Father Christmas in the middle saying “O Sir I bring good cheere”. On the left, a soldier says, “Keep out, you come not here” whilst putting one hand to his sword. On the right, a countryman (with a basket on a stick) says, “Old Christmas welcome; Do not fear”. The sub-title explains more about the politicised content underlying the woodcut:

The Vindication of Christmas, or His twelve yeares observations upon the times, concerning the lamentable game called sweepstake; acted by general plunder, and major general tax; with his exhortation to the people; a description of that oppressing ringworm called excise; and the manner how our high and might Christmas ale that formerly would knock down Hercules, & trip up the heels of a giant, strook deep consumption with a blow from Westminster.

In the text, Father Christmas laments that “some over-curious hot zealous Brethren” tried to proclaim him to be dead by preaching funeral sermons. The zealots have gone on to assume and abuse their power, but Father Christmas comforts himself that many still believe in Christ and Christmas alike.

Father Christmas then tours London, where he meets wonderful Scrooge-like characters such as Sir Achitophel Pinchgut and M. Miser: plus a spendthrift son, Mr Pound-Foolish.

He then goes to Devonshire, to spend Christmas with some farmers. There he has dinner, roasts apples on the fire, plays cards, dances with “plow-boys” and “maidservants”, and sings the following carol:

Let’s dance and sing, and make good chear,
For Christmas comes but once a year:
Draw hogsheads dry, let flagons fly,
For now the bells shall ring;
Whilst we endeavor to make good
The title ‘gainst a King.

This is supposed to be sung to “the tune of hey”. There are a few songs this might be, but I think it might be “Hey boys up go we” (although I’m happy to be corrected by any ballad experts out there!).

Merry Christmas and thanks for reading this blog during the last twelve months. For more early modern Christmas posts check out:

• Edward Vallance on interregnum attempts to ban Christmas.

• Rich at Chronologi Cogitationes on Christmas in 1626.

There’s an interesting post from Roy Booth over at Early Modern Whale, about the vandalism of Cheapside cross during the early 1640s before its eventual pulling down in 1643. Roy’s image of the cross prompted me to go to EEBO to have a look for other images, which threw up a couple of interesting things.

First, the woodcut Roy reproduces from a 1643 pamphlet, The Downe-fall of Dagon, or, the taking downe of Cheap-side crosse this second of May, 1643, appears to have been recycled. An identical image appears in The Dolefull lamentation of Cheap-side crosse, or, Old England sick of the staggers, from 1641. Here are the two pamphlets alongside each other.

So if nothing else, this is an interesting example of printers recycling woodcuts.

But funnily enough, given that I have recently been posting about John Taylor, I think there may also be a Taylor connection.

• In 1642 Taylor published A full and compleat answer against the writer of a late volume set forth entituled A tale in a tub, or, A tub lecture : with a vindication of that ridiculous name called roundheads : together with some excellent verses on the defacing of Cheapside crosse. Although ostensibly written by one Thorny Ailo, this is obviously an anagram of Iohn Taylor (not least because he states “annagram” on the cover!). In it, Taylor imagines a typical middling sort iconoclast, a brewer’s clerk, contemplating pulling the cross down and using the lead to make bullets. To counterpoint it, he writes his own verse on the importance of the cross for Christians, on how the Devil must be a puritan, and how those who reject the cross are Turks, infidels and Jews. This pamphlet was printed for F. Cowles, T. Bates and T. Banks.

• In January 1642, The dolefull lamentation of cheap-side crosse: or old England sick of the staggers was published. This was printed for F.C. and T.B. – in other words, it is highly likely that the undertakers for this were the same as two of the three for Taylor’s pamphlet. The pamphlet has the same Puritan middling sort stereotypes, listing the weavers, box makers and button makers who support the vandalism of the cross. It then shifts into direct speech by the cross, lamenting its fate.

• In 1642 there also appeared The resolution of the Round-heads to pull down Cheap-side Crosse, which is sometimes attributed to Taylor (the reference to tub-preachers in it makes this plausible). This too was printed for F.C. and T.B. and is a satirical address by a roundhead, mostly covering their various hypocrisies, but ending with the ambition to level the cross.

• In 1643 there appeared the subject of Roy’s post, The Downe-fall of Dagon, or, the taking downe of Cheap-side crosse this second of May, 1643. This was printed for Thomas Wilson, so there is no link with Taylor’s earlier printers. But the pamphlet does recycle the woodcut from The dolefull lamentation, and there are also other similarities – the similarity of the cover layout, the cross addressing the reader directly, similar themes, and both say that the cross’s full name is Jasper Cross. It’s possible of course that this is another author riffing on Taylor’s original – Taylor had fled to Windsor then Oxford in March 1643, so the text would I suppose have had to be sent back to London for publication. But even if this is the case it shows the creation of another niche genre – laments by crosses! – in the wildly creative times of the early 1640s.

UPDATE - in response to Roy’s comment, here’s another image of vandalism from A dialogue between the crosses in Cheap, and Charing Cross in 1641 (see my comment below). A close look shows it’s a drawing of the cross from the other side (the statues at the top are reversed).