In the Bedroom of the King: Affective Politics in the Restoration Secret History

Abstract

In 1709, Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough, wrote a letter warning Queen Anne of rumors being spread about the queen's relationship with Abigail Masham, her current favorite, insinuating the Queen being a subject of gossip for her subjects, either orally or in print, was in itself a problem. What is interesting about Churchill's letter, which was prompted by the publication of Delarivier Manley's popular secret history, The New Atalantis, is how she links the problem of gossip about the Queen to the genre of the secret history itself, gesturing toward the low nature of Manley's text, which is not well written (Private Correspondence 1: 244). Churchill writes, that looks so much the worse, for it shews the notion is extensively spread among all sorts of people (1: 244, emphasis added).1 The idea subjects may be judging the queen and her counselors is clearly a notion troubles the Duchess, whose letter acknowledges the political potential of the community of brought together by the secret history text.Churchill's recognition of the potential problems inherent in this type of early novel has been noted by critics of early eighteenth-century secret histories: Nicola Parsons emphasizes Churchill's concern, arguing gossip, and its reiteration in the mediated form of the secret history could have serious material effects (Reading Gossip 56). Increased scholarly recognition of the political power of secret histories and their role in shaping reading practices in the early eighteenth century has renewed interest in a genre was too-often denigrated and overshadowed by a certain teleology of the history of the novel.2 What has been overlooked by critics interested in post-1688 secret histories is the political potential of the genre was being actively exploited in the name of factional politics well before Manley's text caused such concern at court. In the early 1680s, in the height of the Exclusion Crisis and its immediate aftermath, many texts-from John Dryden's well-known poem Absalom and Achitophel (1681) and Aphra Behn's novel Love Letters Between a Nobleman and his Sister (1684-87) to more obscure, anonymous works like The Perplex'd Prince ( 1682) and The Fugitive Statesman 1683)-intervened in the propaganda war surrounding the question of the succession.Although many of these texts operate solely on the level of factional propaganda, the secret histories use romance modes as their generic cover provide a more subtle, ideological slant to their propagandistic purposes.3 In contrast to post-1688 secret histories, which Rebecca Bullard forcefully argues encourage readers to believe their rulers are in league against them and encourage suspicion of Courts in general ( 4), the secret histories operate under the cover of romance narratives affectively lessen the distance between the reader and the monarch/hero. By bringing into their monarch's bedroom and by couching their political factionalism under the cover of a romance tale, these texts created an affective intimacy between Restoration subjects and their monarch. This affinity, I argue, temporarily enabled an illusory sense of power on the part of the subject, which acted as a perceived entitlement to sit in judgment over the behavior of the monarch. The illusory sense of power was intensified through communities in London's public spaces where socially oriented gathered to share their interpretations and to gossip over these popular texts. The interactions among secret histories and the communities of coalesced around them contributed to the contemporary ideological shifts concerning notions of who had the right to speak and to judge in political society.Focusing on two secret histories about Charles II-The Perplex'd Prince and Sebastien Bremond's Hattige: or the Amours of the King of Tatuaran ( originally published in French in 1676 and first translated into English in 1680)-I will demonstrate how these texts contributed to political shifts in England from 1660 through the 1688 revolution and after, and to the rise of party politics and parliamentary power in the eighteenth century. …