Imagining the "Scottish Natioun": populism and propaganda in Scottish satirical broadsides.(Critical essay)

This essay addresses an intriguing though neglected instance of sixteenth-century political satire. During the late 1560s and early 1570s a series of broadside poems papered the market crosses and kirk doors of Scottish burghs. The broadsides first appeared in Edinburgh in 1567 after the sensational murder of the second husband of Mary Queen of Scots, Henry, Lord Darnley, and her rumored affair with the prime suspect, James Hepburn, the Earl of Bothwell. The early poems depict the Queen as an adulterous, murderous Jezebel who deserves to lose her crown. Mary and her advisors immediately recognized the political threat posed by such broadside literature. On April 19 she and her parliament sought to curb the trend of

 
  placards and billis and ticquettis of defamatioun sett up under 
  silence of nycht in diverse publict places alsweill within burgh as 
  utherwyse in the Realme. To the sclander reproche and Infamye of the 
  quenis Maiestie and divers of the nobilitie. (1) 

The parliamentary act expresses a larger concern that the commonwealth itself might become "Inquietit And occasioun of querrell takin upoun fals and untrew sclander." Such a move to censor printed matter, in Scotland or elsewhere, was not in itself new or surprising. (2) But the rash of "placards and billis" in 1567 signaled an altogether different threat, one--as the language of the act itself suggests--with the potency to plunge the commonwealth into quarrelsome unrest, which is precisely what happened.

Contemporary evidence suggests that Mary's political opponents--a group of powerful nobles known as the Confederate Lords and led by her half-brother James Stewart, the Earl of Moray--sponsored the production of these broadsides, capitalizing on the popular form as a way to justify their rebellion. After a scandalous marriage to Bothwell, Mary was removed from the political scene in July 1567: captured and imprisoned, she was forced to abdicate and to agree to the coronation of her infant son and to the installation of Moray as acting Regent. Scotland split between those who remained loyal to Mary and those who supported the cause of her son James--the Queen's and King's Parties. The ensuing civil war ended only with English intervention and the fall of Edinburgh Castle to the King's supporters in 1573. During six years of a conflict notable for its bitter party propaganda, the broadside poetry that first appeared as part of a campaign against Mary underwent modifications to address changing political circumstances. Its commitment to the King's cause never wavered, of course, but as Scotland shuffled through a succession of Regents, the poetry shifted its focus from Mary to other political and religious concerns: execrating the murder of Moray; satirizing loyal Marians; recounting military skirmishes; encouraging support of the Reformed kirk; and, eventually and in more general terms, lamenting the hardships endured by the commons during a protracted civil conflict.

About forty poems survive to comment on these events--a few in manuscript but most on printed broadsides. Familiarly known as the "satirical poems of the time of the Reformation," they earned this title from their inclusion in James Cranstoun's 1891 Scottish Text Society edition, still the only critical text available. (3) With a handful of exceptions, the poems have since been ignored. (4) This critical neglect can be explained in part by the general disregard for Scottish literature in early modern studies. Scottish writers are either absorbed into the English tradition--a practice suggested by the term "Scottish Chaucerians"--or overlooked as participants in a tradition entirely separate from and largely irrelevant to English literary studies in the period. (5) Unsurprisingly, such critical approaches cannot fully account for continuities and distinctions between the two traditions, nor help to illuminate the cultural aspects of a developing politico-religious relationship in the sixteenth century. As a case in point, the satirical poems are a recoverable instance of cultural exchange between Scotland and England, charting the movement of new political ideas as well as the strategic and polemical application of literary forms during the Reformation period. As we shall see, the satirical broadsides were part of a propaganda campaign that did not remain contained and isolated within Scottish borders; on the contrary, the poems all arrived in London addressed to Elizabeth's principal secretary, William Cecil. While Elizabeth's government meddled with political change in Scotland by aiding the regime that replaced Mary's, they surely noted the language and literary forms in which the overthrow of a monarch was justified and explained to the community. The subsequent circulation of English versions of these Scottish ballads testifies not only to English readers' curiosity about these events, but perhaps to their sympathetic interest in religious Reformation and its challenges to political authority. (6)

More important, the poems have been caught in a disciplinary bind, between historians too unmindful of rhetorical strategy and literary critics too repelled by topicality. Literary attitudes, in particular, have contributed to the obscurity of the poems. Cranstoun admittedly chose poems of a "political or party nature,... largely tinged with the satirical element"; and while he acknowledged the "bona fide character" and "perfect sincerity" of his selections, he lamented their "almost total absence of poetic feeling." (7) His comments reflect a conventional bias against satire, one that responds to its historical specificity, its desire to change or reform, as aesthetically inexplicable and unappealing. (8) This attitude prevailed through much of the nineteenth century and led New Critics in the 1950s toward a rhetorical theory that would lift satire out of the messy political worlds from which it often emerges. (9) Like other political satire, the Scottish poems fell victim to such literary critical perspectives. The fervent partisanship of the poems--conceded as problematic even by sympathetic readers like Roderick Lyall and Gregory Kratzmann--has left critics wary and disparaging. David Irving called the poems "indecent and unpoetical"; C. S. Lewis rated them as "famous for ... coarseness"; and Carole Rose Livingston recently suggested that the poems should be recognized "for what they are, polemics dashed off to meet various crises and to persuade readers to a course of action." (10) Such judgments not only underestimate the literary energies of the poems, but also dismiss their bibliographical strategies and, thus, stall more interesting questions about how literature and politics can and do engage with one another. Although less myopic, Livingston's assertion that the broadsides were "dashed off," for example, still seriously misjudges the power of the political and religious alliances orchestrating the production and assuring the survival of such propaganda.

The satirical poems should compel our attention, in fact, for precisely the same reason they are often found unworthy or distasteful: their strong political character. The political engagement of these poems does not diminish their literary or textual merits, but rather points to a more complex, interactive relationship between literature and politics. The poems make demands on our disciplinary categories, asking us to imagine how literary forms might serve, or be modified by, political ends. Why, after all, choose the broadside ballad to justify the establishment of a new political and religious order in Scotland? This paper argues that in these Scottish poems material and literary forms help to advance a specific political agenda, providing frameworks through which social change can be explained and popular political involvement can be imagined. This strategy complicates the poems' connection to historical events and to an ensuing ideological debate about political authority. Rather than simply respond to the rebellion against Mary, the satirical broadsides claim an active role in bringing it about and in guaranteeing the success of the King's Party. (11) They do so in rhetorical ways, by arguing for Mary's immorality and, in one striking case, by outlining a theory of popular sovereignty and political determination to explain her removal from power. But, printed on broadside, a form closely associated with popular culture, (12) the poems also become a material manifestation of that same political argument. Their connection to the "people," whether as producers or as audience, deserves scrutiny, of course, but the appearance of these broadsides in public spaces was a calculated effort to convince the Scottish nobility and their English supporters of a groundswell of support for the cause of the infant King. The implied populism of the Scottish broadsides is generated by the seemingly anonymous yet widespread expression of one political perspective.