Book Review: Dangerous Talk: Scandalous, Seditious, and Treasonable Speech in Pre-Modern England, by David Cressy

Abstract

Dangerous Talk: Scandalous, Seditious, and Treasonable Speech in Pre-Modern England. David Cressy. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012. 392 pp. $35.00 pbk.Reviewed by: Jane E. Kirtley, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, USA DOI: 10.1177/1077699013506345Mind what you say by night and day,And don't speak out of reason,For everything God bless queen,Is reckoned up high treason.-Firth ballad (1848)This cheery bit of doggerel marked enactment of Crown and Government Security Act of 1848, British Parliament's reaction to Chartism, a political move- ment aimed at extending voting rights to poor but which attracted more than its share of radicals, some of whom advocated violence. The statute was latest in a long line of laws that penalized advocating treason, which specifically included speech criticizing Queen Victoria.But law, inevitably dubbed the new gagging bill, was already an anachronis- tic throwback to many statutes dating back to 1352 that had made it a crime to imagine (compass) death of sovereign, to accuse her of heresy or tyranny, or simply to suggest that life in England might be better with no monarchy at all. Like most of those laws, which typically had expired at conclusion (whether by death or deposition) of a reign, Crown and Government Security Act was a panicked response to popular uprisings, like Wyatt's Rebellion in 1554 or Gunpowder Plot in 1605, aimed at curtailing speech perceived to threaten stability of realm.But as David Cressy, George III Professor of British History and Humanities at The Ohio State University, demonstrates in Dangerous Talk: Scandalous, Seditious, and Treasonable Speech in Pre-Modern England, trying to stop ordinary English subjects from talking about those who governed them was futile. As he recounts in this meticu- lously compiled catalog of hapless individuals who were hauled into court for sedition or treason after uttering some ill-chosen in a market, pub, or coffeehouse, it was no easy thing to define these legal terms, let alone find a jury that was willing to con- vict someone of these grave crimes that carried death penalty.The problems were twofold: by focusing on spoken, not written, word, speech itself was ephemeral, or as Cressy puts it, words are but wind. It was simple to send out spies to eavesdrop on people; Henry VIII's Chief Minister Thomas Cromwell was a master at it. But with no recording devices available-given high levels of illiteracy, not even a quill pen and parchment would be very helpful-it was almost impossible to find multiple witnesses to confirm, for example, that wife of a Middlesex tradesman had threatened to shoot King James II. And many of those who did come forward to testify turned out to have a grudge against accused speaker, such as a previous falling out at football play more than a month before. …