The State Trials and the Politics of Justice in Later Stuart England (Studies in Early Modern Cultural, Political and Social History, 40)

The book discusses the 'state trial' as a legal process, a public spectacle, and a point of political conflict - a key part of how constitutional monarchy became constitutional. State trials provided some of the leading media events of later Stuart England. The more important of these trials attracted substantial public attention, serving as pivot points in the relationship between the state and its subjects. Later Stuart England has been known among legal historians for a series of key cases in which juries asserted their independence from judges. In political history, the government's sometimes shaky control over political trials in this period has long been taken as a sign of the waning power of the Crown. This book revisits the process by which the 'state trial' emerged as a legal proceeding, a public spectacle, a point of political conflict, and ultimately, a new literary genre. It investigates the trials as events, as texts, and as moments in the creation of historical memory. By the early nineteenth century, the publication and republication of accounts of the state trials had become a standard part of the way in which modern Britons imagined how their constitutional monarchy had superseded the absolutist pretensions of the Stuart monarchs. This book explores how the later Stuart state trials helped to create that world. "State trials provided some of the leading media events of later Stuart England. The more important of these trials attracted substantial public attention, serving as pivot points in the relationship between the state and its subjects. Later Stuart England has been known among legal historians for a series of key cases in which juries asserted their independence from judges. In political history, the government's sometimes shaky control over political trials in this period has long been taken as a sign of the waning power of the Crown. This book revisits the process by which the 'state trial' emerged as a legal proceeding, a public spectacle, a point of political conflict, and ultimately, a new literary genre. It investigates the trials as events, as texts, and as moments in the creation of historical memory. By the early nineteenth century, the publication and republication of accounts of the state trials had become a standard part of the way in which modern Britons imagined how their constitutional monarchy had superseded the absolutist pretensions of the Stuart monarchs. This book explores how the later Stuart state trials helped to create that world."--Page 4 de la couverture Front cover 1 Contents 8 Illustrations 10 Contributors 12 Preface 16 Abbreviations 18 Part One: What Were the State Trials? 20 Introduction: The State Trials in Historical Perspective 22 1: State Trials and the Rule of Law under the Later Stuarts and Early Hanoverians 43 2: Corruption and Later Stuart State Trials 69 Part Two: Restoration State Trials 90 3: ‘Blood will have Blood’: The Regicide Trials and the Popular Press 92 4: The Trial and Execution of Oliver Plunket 112 5: Sham Plots and False Confessions: The Politics of Edward Fitzharris’s Last Words, 1681 132 6: Constructing Conspiracy: Reporting the Rye House Plot Trials 154 Part Three: Revolutionary State Trials 178 7: Enforcing Uniformity: Public Reactions to the Seven Bishops’ Trial 180 8: Revolutionary Justice and Whig Retribution in 1689 198 9: Relitigating Revolution: Address, Progress, and Redress in the Long Summer of 1710 223 10: Politics and Sentiment in the Jacobite State Trials 243 11: Defeating Innuendos: The Trials of Thomas Rosewell (1684) and Daniel Isaac Eaton (1794) 266 Index 286 Studies in Early Modern Cultural, Political and Social History 300