The Crisis of 1614 and The Addled Parliament: Literary and Historical Perspectives (review)

This book is the outcome of a conference that attempted to bring literary critics and historians together. While individual essays are of interest it cannot be said that the conference really achieved its objective. The ideal of interdisciplinary co-operation is largely unrealised although David Colclough sets the wider issues of freedom of speech and the role of counsel in the specific context of speeches in the Parliament. While the Addled Parliament provided a peg on which the different papers could be hung and John Cramsie argues that 'the extent to which the Addled Parliament affected the mindset of James and his governors… is a key thread among the essays in this volume' (p. 37), most essays touch this theme only tangentially. The divide between history and literature is largely reflected in the difference of focus between the fiscal issues that seem critical to the historians, and the fear of tyranny and the implications of the imprisonment of the Crown's principal critics that absorbs the literary critics. Their analysis of the poetry, stage performances and manuscript commentaries that circulated makes little if any reference to events of the Parliament itself: the abortive details of the legislative process and the speeches of the disgruntled. The poetry, though it was widely circulated among contemporaries, addressed more abstract matters than the Parliament.

The volume thus divides between the disciplines rather than unites them. Conrad Russell addresses the issue of the events of the Parliament itself and largely dismisses the utility of the literary context. Andrew Thrush sets the calling of the parliament in the context of James's negotiations for a bride for Charles and the role his urgent need for money played in his behaviour, which is also the issue for Cramsie. The other contributions provide at the most, background for the Parliament or reflections on the wider role of Parliament and the need to create a space or place for free speech, which is what Anna Bauer provides in her analysis of Raleigh's Dialogue and its later significance. While Alan Stewart's analysis of the conflict between Northampton and Bacon over control of duelling is interesting, in hanging it on the king's defence of his prohibition of duelling by proclamation he ignores the long standing and touchy issue of the relative position of laws and proclamations. Michelle O'Callaghan sees the Parliament as a minor aspect of a court/country struggle to dominate the public political discourse. Joad Raymond's description of the press in 1614, with its careful account of categories, format and place of publication, makes it clear that it provided no sustained commentary on the Parliament nor in any direct way on politics. The other essays are more peripheral. Rosalind Davies adds little to the well-known account of the Cockayne project. James Knowles reviews the masques and political libels that surround the Carr/Howard nuptials and the light they cast on the idea of obedience to the monarch. Disagreements between the contributors emerge from time to time, especially in Jonathan Gibson's consideration of Raleigh's History of the World and Arthur Gorges as a focus of opposition to James centring on Prince Henry, and Stephen Clucas's reassessment of Robert Cotton's A Short View of the Life of Henry the Third.

This is a volume that relates to a year rather than an event. The introductions sets that year up, not entirely convincingly, as the crisis of Jacobean politics and attempts to show that the essays and the way in which they 'explore the perception and characterization of the crisis' (p.5) make an important contribution to the ongoing study of Stuart politics. This is probably an exaggerated claim. The volume, however, does casts some new light on various aspects of the literary/political life at the political centre, that is London and the Court in the middle of James I's reign...