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How did ordinary people, caught up in the violent political and social dislocation of the English Revolution, perceive such astonishing events? Miracles and the Pulp Press During the English Revolution attempts to answer this question through a close study of newsbooks and pulp publications produced from 1640 to 1660. Like The Great Cat Massacre and The Cheese and the Worms, this fascinating and original work enters the world of enchanted belief, superstition, folk religion and magic.

Jerome Friedman investigates why Englishmen outside Parliamentary circles were in fact only incidentally concerned with the political, economic, and religious questions that have so preoccupied scholars of the period. And why, instead, the bestselling issues concerned witches, prodigies, apparitions, divine curses, the readmittance of Jews to England and an obsession with converting the Turks to Christianity. For the great majority of people the period seems to have caused an upswelling of credulous superstition and bizarre prophecy, rather than the radicalization often assumed, and a vivid picture emerges of a frightened, confused society.

Friedman examines, too, the Puritan "battle for morality," the attempts to combat ale-drinking, prostitution, pornography, and the new fascination with marijuana, and how these issues became entangled in popular assessments of the revolution. Finally, by relating all these concerns to the popular astrological and prophetic literature of the day, the author provides convincing answers as to why so many Englishmen ultimately greeted the return of Charles II with joy and relief.

Contents

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgements

Preface

1. Censorship, Popular Publication, and the Pulp Press

Part I – How England Fell

2. Order Within the Universe: The Rebellion Against Charles

3. Signs of the Times: Portents, Prodigies, and Other Indications of God's Unhappiness with England

4. Ancient Prophecies

Part II – Religion in Fallen England

5. The Sectarian Cancer

6. Religious Impostors and Charlatans

7. Catholics, Turks, and Jews

Part III – Sin and Society in Fallen England

8. Signs of Sin Everywhere: Alehouses, Alcohol, Drugs, and More

9. Naughty Women and Worse

10. Bawdy Men and Better

Part IV – England Redeemed

11. More Ancient Prophecies

12. Events in 1660: The Battle of the Frogs and Fairford's Flies

13. Conclusion

Notes

Alphabetical Title Listing of Pamphlets Cited in this Study

Index

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The Ranters came into prominence after the defeat of the Levellers at Burford in 1649 had put a final end to the most serious political and military challenge to Cromwell from the left. With their direct appeal to the outcast urban poor, coupled with a flagrant and often blasphemous defiance of traditional Christian morality, the Ranter sect provide a striking illustration of the continuing radical political and theological opposition to the Cromwellian Commonwealth.

This book contains the first full length study of this, the most radical of all left-wing sects that flourished in the English Revolution of the seventeenth century. It also includes studies of outstanding Leveller leaders — like John Lilburne, Richard Overton and William Walwyn — as well as the first biographical portrait of the pamphleteer Laurence Clarkson, whose life provides a guide to virtually all the independent and radical sects of the period.

Contents

Foreword

Religion and Politics in the English Revolution

John Lanseter of Bury St. Edmonds

John Saltmarsh: a Type of Righteousness

The Ranters

Laurence Clarkson and the Everlasting Gospel

A Still and Soft Voice

Leveller Democracy — Fact or Myth?

Index