David Edwards and the Later Stuart Underground Press

Abstract

Abstract This article investigates the English underground press in the later Stuart period. Following the end of pre-publication licensing in 1695, the ongoing threat of government reprisals meant that controversial political and religious tracts continued to be printed in secret; yet the survival of the underground press into this period has been neglected in recent works of political, religious, social, cultural and literary history. The dominant view, established by some of the most influential book historians of the past century, is that the materials necessary for a study of secret printing do not survive. This article argues otherwise. Through a detailed case-tudy of the career of one such printer, David Edwards, it illustrates how the clandestine activities of a subset of printers helped shape contemporary debate. Combining historical and bibliographical modes of investigation, this article explores the fundamental mechanics of how controversial tracts, written and printed in secret, reached the public. It examines Edwards’s training under the Whig printer Thomas Braddyll, his subsequent links to the exiled Jacobite court, the clandestine techniques he used to disguise his activities, and the authorship of books he printed. These included the use of indentures and tokens to ensure against imposters and tweaking copy texts to mask distinctive stylistic tics. The article concludes by arguing that the vibrant culture of partisan print associated with the later Stuart public sphere was enabled not solely by the demise of pre-publication licensing in 1695, but also by the persistence of the underground press.