“To bite” and “Too bee bitten”

Thomas Scott as “public issues maker” at the beginning of the Thirty Years War

Paper for the “New Perspectives in Dutch Golden Age Studies” seminar MA-Seminar University of Amsterdam

Course year 2013-2014 Tutors: M.J. Bok, H.J. Helmers, and E. Swart

Wiel Dorssers Research Master “Europe 1000-1800’

Leiden University Student number 0331538 De Wittenkade 116-huis

1051 AL Amsterdam e-mail: wielcd@xs4all.nl

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Contents

1. Introduction: “to bite” and “to bee bitten” 3

2. Two debates: the early modern ‘public sphere’-debate, and the ‘media war’-debate 6

3. Thomas Scott, his life and times 13

4. “Onely probable, and possible, and likely, not historicall”: Scott as ‘issue-maker’ 18

5. The Second Part to Vox Populi: Scott’s road to war 23

6. Conclusion: “good it may doe, hurt it cannot” 30

Bibliography 32

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1. Introduction: “to bite” and “to bee bitten”

“Indeede I tooke, and take my selfe to be one of their successors,

whome our saviour honours with the title of Salt, and I thought, and

do thinke therefore, it becomes me not to be Sugar”.1

In the “To the reader”, the introductory chapter to a collection of some of his works, published

in 1624, Thomas Scott (1580? - 1626) placed himself in the tradition of Christ’s disciples, whom

Christ called the Salt of the Earth, as related in Matthew 5:13. It seems to be Scott’s ‘mission-

statement’ of his own writing activities: he would be salt, and it would not suit him to be sugar.

And thus, as the “To the reader” continued:

“I know it is the nature of salt to bite, & this, thoug it be profitable,

is painfull; and therefore such must expect to bee bitten againe, as I

haue beene, and am content to bee publiquely …”.

To bite and to be bitten: that was what Thomas Scott expected. When he wrote these words in

1624, he had already had his share of both. His first pamphlet, Vox Populi, had been published

anonymously in 1620.2 Vox Populi pretended to present an account of a meeting of the Spanish

Council of State, in 1618, in which Spain’s present and future position in the world was

discussed. In the words of the Duke of Lerma (1533-1625), president of the Council:

“And thus all our peace, our warre, our treaties, our mariages,

and whatsoeuer entendment else of ours, aimes at this

principall end, to get the whole possession of the World, and

to reduce all to unitie under one temporall head, that our King

may truly be what he is styled, The Catholike and universal King.

As faith is therfore universall & the Church universall, yet so

as it is under one head the Pope, whose Seat is and must

necessarily be at Rome where S. Peter sate: so must all men be

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$!T. Scott, Vox populi. Vox dei. Vox regis. Digitus Dei. The Belgick pismire. The tongue-combat. Symmachia or The true-loues knot. The high-vvayes of God and the King. The proiector (no placename given [Netherlands?] 1624), “To the reader”, *4v; italics in the original (as in the rest of this paper). "!Thomas Scott, Vox Populi, or Newes from Spayne Translated according to the Spanish Coppie; which may serve to Forwarn both England and the Vnited Provinces how farre to Trust to Spanish Pretences (no placename given [London?] 1620).!

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subiect to our and their Catholike King, whose particular Seat

is here in Spaine, his uniuersall euerie where”.3

Thomas Scott’s account of this meeting, according to the subtitle, was a copy of a Spanish

original; it provided detailed information on who was present and who said what and when; and

thus it pretended to be a true rendering of a real meeting. In reality it was pure fiction and

invention: Vox Populi contained a complot theory of Spanish plans for world domination, which

seamlessly fitted in with Black Legend-stories about Spain, current in England and elsewhere at

the time.4

The book caused a terrible uproar in England, and when, in February 1621, it became

public that Scott had been its author, the Privy Council came after him, and he saw himself

forced to flee the country.5 For the rest of his life, Thomas Scott would be living as an exile in the

Netherlands.6

His exile did not cause him to keep silent, however. On the contrary: most of his works

have been written and published during exile, and the year of his ‘mission-statement’ was to be

one of his most productive years. A re-print of Vox Populi appeared in this year, as well as a

newly written Second Part to Vox Populi.7 Other new texts were published, as well as, besides the

collection mentioned above, a volume of his collected works, consisting of twenty-six separate

pamphlets.8 A preacher to one of the English regiments settled in the United Provinces and a

minister at Utrecht by profession, his main reason for fame were these many writings.

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#!Throughout this paper I will be using the 1624 edition from the collection of pamphlets as described in note 1. T. Scott, Vox Populi, p. 6. On the Duke of Lerma, see: J.H. Elliott, Imperial Spain 1469-1716 (London 1990; originally 1963), p. 301-305. %!The ‘Black Legend’ can be described as a protestant propaganda campaign to discredit Spain. Elements of the legend differed from time to time and from place to place, but some constants remained: Spanish militancy, Spanish cruelty, the Inquisition, and Spanish plans for world domination. See for example: K.W. Swart, ‘The Black Legend during the Eighty Years War’, in: J.S. Bromley and E.H. Kossmann (eds.), Britain and the Netherlands 5: Some political mythologies. Papers delivered to the fifth Anglo-Dutch historical conference (The Hague 1975), p. 36-57; J. Pollmann, ‘Eine natürliche Feindschaft. Ursprung und Funktion der schwarzen Legende über Spanien in den Niederlanden, 1560-1581’, in: F. Bosbach (ed.), Feindbilder. Die Darstellung des Gegners in der politischen Publizistik des Mittelalters und der Neuzeit (Cologne 1992), p. 73-94. &!Sabrina A. Baron, ‘The guises of dissemination in early seventeenth-century England. News in manuscript and print’, in: Brendan Dooley and Sabrina Baron (eds.), The Politics of Information in Early Modern Europe (Londen en New York 2001), p. 41-56, p. 44. !'!Thompson Cooper, ‘Scott, Thomas (1580? - 1626), Dictionary of National Biography, 51, 1885-1900: http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Scott,_Thomas_(1580%3F-1626)_(DNB00); Sean Kelsey, ‘Scott, Thomas (d. 1626)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford 2004: http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/24916. Both consulted on 02-04-1214. (!T.S. of U. [Thomas Scott of Utrecht], The second part of Vox populi, or Gondomar appearing in the likenes of Matchiauell in a Spanish parliament : wherein are discouered his treacherous & subtile practises to the ruine as well of England, as the Netherlandes. Faithfully transtated [sic] out of the Spanish coppie by a well-willer to England and Holland (Goricom [Gorinchem] 1624).!)!Thomas Scott, The Workes of the most famous and reverend Sir Thomas Scot (Utrecht 1624).

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His career as a protestant pamphleteer and polemicist, and his ‘transnational’ position in

the ‘public sphere’ of the 1620s will be the main theme of this paper. The quotation marks that

go with the two terms used above signify that these are not obvious and self-evident. Indeed,

they deserve an extensive explanation. But it is important to note here that the ‘early modern

public sphere’-debate that has been going on ever since the English translation of Jürgen

Habermas’s Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit was published in the year 1989, forms the

historiographical and theoretical justification for my research into Scott and his writing.9 How

that is to be understood will be explained in chapter 2, but for the moment, suffice it to say that I

accept the existence of a public sphere in the 1620s; that this sphere was not confined to

‘national’ borders, but instead had transnational characteristics; that Thomas Scott, as an active

political and religious polemicist, helped to shape this public sphere; and that he achieved this by

expressly addressing these political and religious issues ‘internationally’ and not ‘domestically’.

Chapter 3 will be devoted to a brief description of the life and times of Thomas Scott.

In chapters 4 and 5 I will turn to the main object of my research: Scott’s discussion of

international politics in a transnational space. By analysing his two most famous works, Vox

Populi and Second Part of Vox Populi, in chapters 4 and 5 respectively, I hope to shed some light on

this discussion. Two broad research questions will be the focus of these chapters, the first one

concerning the ‘public sphere’-debate. What are Scott’s intentions with these pamphlets? What

strategies does he follow to attain his intentions? Who is he mobilising, and for what reason?

What are the similarities between these texts, and what are the differences? And is there a

development to be seen in his writing: was he becoming more radical, or more lenient? In short:

Scott as ‘issue-maker’ will be at the forefront.

The second broad research question concerns the ‘media war’-debate. In the course of his

writing career Thomas Scott became a strong proponent for English involvement in continental

war activities: the English war against Spain, the Bohemian crisis, the Palatinate, the resumption

of the Dutch war against Spain, all these figured prominently in his books and pamphlets. War in

general, and the Thirty Years War specifically, as ‘media-event’ will be the focus here. The

questions to be raised are: in what way did he defend and advocate war? What were his goals?

Who were his companions, and who his adversaries?

In the sixth and last chapter I will return to my main argument, and hopefully by then, I

will have contributed something to the ‘public sphere’-debate, as well as to the ‘media-war’-

debate.

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*!Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society (Cambridge 1989; originally published in German 1962).!

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2. Two debates: the early modern ‘public sphere’-debate, and the ‘media war’-debate

When dealing with the ‘public sphere’ in early modern Europe, one cannot get around Jürgen

Habermas and his theory of the formation of the ‘public sphere’.10 His thesis states the following:

until the eighteenth century, until the Enlightenment that is, we cannot speak of any ‘public

sphere’ in Europe. Before the Enlightenment, there was only a ‘representational sphere’, in which

kings and princes represented themselves to the larger audience. This audience was the passive

object of the princes’ representation. Only with the separation of the ‘private’ and the ‘public’

domain, in the late seventeenth, beginning of the eighteenth century, a ‘bourgeois’ public sphere

could develop: in public places like coffeehouses, gentlemen’s clubs, debating societies, et cetera,

all important aspects of life were discussed, and with this, something like a public sphere

emerged. The audience was no longer the passive ‘receiver’ of princely messages, but, with the

appearance of newspapers and other periodicals, transformed into an active subject in what could

be called ‘a public sphere of political debate’. This transformation took place first in England,

then in France, and a little later in the German lands and the rest of Europe.

In the course of time, several of the building-stones of this theory have come under

attack, and for present purposes, the following criticisms are of importance. Firstly, early

modernists have come to question Habermas’s time-path, and have concluded that already in the

sixteenth and seventeenth centuries active debates were taking place everywhere in Europe. For

example, concerning the United Provinces, Alastair Duke points to the many political debates in

the Netherlands at the outbreak of the Dutch Revolt.11 Willem Frijhoff and Marijke Spies

characterise the Dutch Republic’s culture around the 1650s as a ‘culture of debate’.12

This is not a matter of periodization only, but also, secondly, one of, what I would like to

call the ‘ideal character’ of Habermas’s idea of the bourgeois public sphere. Habermas sees this

public sphere as more or less permanent and fixed: national press and institutionalized ways of

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$+!See for a discussion of Habermas’s theory: T.C.W. Blanning, ‘Introduction’, in: Blanning, The Culture of Power and the Power of Culture. Old Regime in Europe 1660-1789 (Oxford 2002), p. 1-14; Dena Goodman, ‘Public Sphere and Private Life: Toward a Synthesis of Current Historiographical Approaches to the Old Regime’, in: History and Theory 31, 1, 1992, p. 1-20; Joad Raymond, ‘The newspaper, public opinion, and the public sphere in the seventeenth century’, in: Prose Studies: History, Theory, Criticism, 21, 2, 1998, p. 109-136; Peter Lake and Steve Pincus, ‘Rethinking the Public Sphere in Early Modern England’, in: Journal of British Studies 45, 2, 2006, p. 270-292.!$$!Alastair Duke, ‘Dissident Propaganda and Political Organisation at the Outbreak of the Revolt of the Netherlands’, in: Philip Benedict, Guido Marnef, Henk van Nierop and Marc Venard (eds.), Reformation, Revolt and Civil War in France and the Netherlands 1555-1586 (Amsterdam 1999), p. 115- 132; Alastair Duke, ‘Posters, Pamphlets and Prints: The Ways and Means of Disseminating Dissident Opinions on the Eve of the Dutch Revolt’, in: Judith Pollmann and Andrew Spicer, (eds.), Dissident Identities in the Early Modern Low Countries (Farnham and Burlington 2009), p. 157-178.!$"!Willem Frijhoff and Marijke Spies, 1650. Bevochten eendracht (The Hague 1999).

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public debate; nation-wide networks of communication that are permanently open and accessible;

and a public that is constantly informed, engaged, and critical.13 Against this ‘idealized’ idea of a

public sphere, some authors have argued for a more ‘dynamic’ approach, in which temporary,

occasional, patchy, haphazard public spheres appeared.14 The Dutch Revolt could be mentioned

here again, but also the German lands of the Reformation, the France of the Religious Wars, and

the England from James I to the Glorious Revolution.15

Not surprisingly, religion played an important role in these temporary public spheres. So,

in the third place, connected to this ‘widening’ of the concept of permanent public sphere to a

concept of temporary public spheres, a ‘widening’ of the political public sphere to incorporate

religious elements seems appropriate. For Habermas only the state and the political arena are

important, but how can we meaningfully separate politics from religion in an era in which

religious ideas invaded every aspect of human life: family and other social relations, education,

science, ‘high’ politics?16 It is exactly in the religious arena that historians have seen the

ascendancy of a lively public debate with political implications. Rainer Wohlfeil speaks of a

‘Reformation public sphere’ in the German lands.17 Peter Lake and Michael Questier of a ‘Post-

Reformation public sphere’ in Elizabethan England.18

A fourth line of criticism concerns Habermas’s insistence on the state as point of

departure. This has led many historians to focus strongly on developments within one state,

which resulted in a great many publications on public opinion in, for example, the Dutch

Republic, England, France, et cetera. This in itself is not a bad thing, to be sure, but

developments that took place ‘outside’ of one state have been largely neglected, a neglect that

historians only recently have tried to undo. Michael Müller and Cornelius Torp have recently

argued for a ‘transnational’ approach in the writing of history.19 Some historians have already

studied developments that took place across states, as for example between France during the

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$#!Capitalism presents a threat to this idealtype of the bourgeois public sphere, however, according to Habermas. With capitalism, commercialism, entertainment, (state) manipulation of the audience et cetera set in, with the return of ‘representative public sphere’ in the guise of ‘public relations’. $%!Jan Bloemendal and Arjan van Dixhoorn, ‘Literary Cultures and Public Opinion in the Early Modern Low Countries’, in: Jan Bloemendal, Arjan van Dixhoorn and Elsa Strietman (eds.), Literary Cultures and Public Opinion in the Low Countries, 1450-1650 (Leiden and Boston 2011), p. 1-35; Jayne E. E. Boys, London’s News Press and the Thirty Years War (Woodbridge 2011), p. 31.!$&!Asa Briggs and Peter Burke, A Social History of the Media. From Gutenberg to the Internet (Cambridge 2009; originally published 2000), p. 61-90.!$'!J.H. Elliott, Europe Divided 1559-1598 (Oxford 2000; originally 1968).!$(!Rainer Wohlfeil, ‘Reformatorische Öffentlichkeit’, in: Ludger Grenzmann and Karl Stackmann (eds.), Literatur und Laienbildung im Spätmittelalter und in der Reformationszeit (Stuttgart 1981), p. 41-52.!$)!Peter Lake and Michael Questier, ‘Puritans, Papists, and the “Public Sphere” in Early Modern England: The Edmund Campion Affair in Context’, in: The Journal of Modern History 72, 3, 2000, p. 587-627. $*!Michael G. Müller and Cornelius Torp, ‘Conceptualising transnational spaces in history’, in: European Review of History 16, 5, 2009, p. 607-618.

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Religious Wars and the Netherlands at the outset of the Revolt.20 Others have successfully

studied ‘transnational’ religious communication networks.21 Besides these transnational religious

networks, there were other communication networks that existed across geographical borders, as

some beautiful recent books have shown: trade and merchant networks, diplomatic networks,

and scholarly networks were very important in early modern communication.22 These might even

have been more important than confessional networks.

In the fifth place, Habermas’s characterisation of the early modern public as a passive

receiver of ‘official’ communications is rather static and one-dimensional. In a very obvious

manner: early modern print-work consisted not only of official information, but also of

pamphlets, newsletters et cetera, made by and for the very same audience. More importantly,

communication was not a top-down process, with the state as the active part, setting the political

agenda, and the public as the passive partner, only able to receive and possibly discuss this

agenda. The ‘audience’ itself was an active part in the early modern information society, in a

position to set the agenda, and to decide on the issues to be made.23

Lastly, Habermas’s focus on printed matter obscures the ‘mixed-media’ character of early

modern communication.24 It was not only print that mattered. Other means of communication,

handwritten and oral, now often seen as ‘out-dated’, remained vital for many centuries to come.

It is important here to stress the ‘simultaneity of un-simultaneous cultures’. Oral culture was not

a remnant of medieval times, but remained of substantial importance for most people in Europe,

from the sixteenth to far into the eighteenth centuries, as many historians have convincingly

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"+!Henk van Nierop, ‘Eender en anders in de Nederlandse Opstand en de Franse godsdienstoorlogen’, in: Karel Davids and Jan Lucassen (eds.), Een wonder weerspiegeld. De Nederlandse Republiek in Europees perspectief (Amsterdam 2005), p. 25-52; Andrew Pettegree, ‘France and the Netherlands: the Interlocking of two Religious Cultures in Print during the Era of the Religious Wars’, in: Nederlands Archief voor Kerkgeschiedenis 84, 2004, p. 319-337; Lex van Tilburg, ‘Alzoo sprack elck alzoo hij ghesint was. Nieuws uit Frankrijk in de Nederlanden, ca. 1562 - ca. 1572’, unpublished research master thesis, Leiden University, 2010, p. 8-11. "$!Ole Peter Grell, ‘The creation of a transnational, Calvinist network and its significance for Calvinist identity and interaction in early modern Europe’, in: European Review of History 16, 5, 2009, p. 619-636. Although the idea of transnational religious communication networks seems very promising, it remains to be seen, in my opinion, how dissemination of news and information could be kept limited to members of one and the same confession.!""!Filippo de Vivo, Information and Communication in Venice: Rethinking Early Modern Politics (Oxford 2007); Harold J. Cook, Matters of Exchange: Commerce, Medicine and Science in the Dutch Golden Age (New Haven 2007); Francesca Trivellato, The familiarity of strangers: the Sephardic diaspora, Livorno, and cross-cultural trade in the early modern period (New Haven 2009). "#!Lake and Questier, ‘Puritans, Papists, and the “Public Sphere” in Early Modern England’, p. 599-619, 625-627; Bloemendal and Van Dixhoorn, ‘Literary Cultures and Public Opinion’, p. 17; Arjan van Dixhoorn, ‘The Making of a Public Issue in Early Modern Europe. The Spanish Inquisition and Public Opinion in the Netherlands’, in: Massimo Rospocher (ed.), Beyond the Public Sphere. Opinions, Publics, Spaces in Early Modern Europe (Bologna and Berlin 2012), p. 249-269.!"%!As Briggs and Burke write: “ … the attempt to characterize European culture in terms of a single medium (is) misguided”, in: Briggs and Burke, A Social History of the Media, p. 23. See for the intermingling of oral, manuscript and print culture in England during the 1620s: Thomas Cogswell, The Blessed Revolution. English politics and the coming of war, 1621-1624 (Cambridge 1989), p. 20-24.

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argued.25 The same holds true for the cultures of handwriting: these did not disappear overnight

with the invention of printing, but remained “ … equally viable and relevant modes of

dissemination …” for a long period, as Sabrina Baron has shown.26 Poetry, songs, theatre, et

cetera could also be mentioned here.

These ‘revisionist’ criticisms are now generally accepted among historians. There is

agreement on the existence of an early modern public sphere in Europe, with religious,

temporary, transnational, and mixed-media characteristics.

In the person and work of Thomas Scott we can find all these characteristics coming together.

He crossed many different kinds of borders, geographical ones in the first place: literally, he fled

English soil after his authorship of Vox Populi became known. In his work he transgressed these

borders by bringing Spain, the Pope, Bohemia, the Palatinate, the Dutch Republic, the German

lands together, and by pleading for an ‘international’ war against Catholicism and against

Habsburg. For this reason alone he should not be studied in an exclusively English context, as

has happened up till now, but in an international one.27 Also by dedicating his texts to ‘foreign’

readers and audiences, Scott crossed ‘national’ borders: he had a transnational, rather than a

domestic, political agenda, that he wanted to press onto ‘international’ audiences.28 We must also

think of the ‘network’ that brought him news from England, Spain, the Palatinate, and other

regions. This international network was Scott’s lifeline, which enabled him to stay informed and

write his books. The work itself also crossed borders: pamphlets written in England were

smuggled into the Netherlands and vice versa.29 Apart from geographical, Scott also crossed

linguistic borders: pamphlets were translated into French and Dutch; and he himself added

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"&!Briggs and Burke, A Social History of the Media, p. 23-26; Robert Darnton, ‘An Early Modern Information Society: News and the Media in Eighteenth-Century Paris’, in: American Historical Review 105, 1, 2000, p. 1-35; Adam Fox, ‘News and Popular Political Opinion in Elizabethan and Early Stuart England’, in: The Historical Journal, 40, 3, 1997, 597-620; Richard Cust, ‘News and Politics in Early Seventeenth-Century England’, in: Past and Present 112, 1, 1986, p. 60-90, on p. 65-66. Andrew Pettegree in a beautiful book stresses the importance of oral communication in the case of the Reformation: Andrew Pettegree, Reformation and the Culture of Persuasion (Cambridge 2005). On ‘rumour’ and ‘gossip’ as a special form of oral communication see Henk van Nierop, ‘“And Ye Shall Hear of Wars and Rumours of Wars”. Rumours and the Revolt of the Netherlands’, in: Judith Pollmann en Andrew Spicer (eds.), Public Opinion and Changing identities in the Early Modern Netherlands (Leiden and Boston 2007), p. 69-86, Fox, ‘News and Popular Political Opinion’, and Cust, ‘News and Politics in Early Seventeenth-Century England’, p. 65, 70.!"'!Baron, ‘The guises of dissemination in early seventeenth-century England’, quotation on 41. "(!Marvin Arthur Breslow, in 1970, studied Scott in a singularly English context. Peter Lake, in 1982, likewise, works from an English perspective. Marvin Arthur Breslow, A Mirror of England. English Puritan Views of Foreign Nations, 1618-1640 (Cambridge, MA, 1970); P.G. Lake, ‘Constitutional Consensus and Puritan Opposition in the 1620s: Thomas Scott and the Spanish Match’, in: The Historical Journal 25, 4, 1982, p. 805-825. ")!Remarkably enough, Lake signals this ‘internationalist’ aspect of Scott’s: “In short, Scott’s protestant commitment was internationalist rather than nationalist and in this again he was entirely typical”. Lake, ‘Constitutional Consensus and Puritan Opposition in the 1620s’, 811.!"*!See for the smuggling of books: Keith L. Sprunger, Trumpets from the Tower. English Puritan Printing in the Netherlands 1600-1640 (Leiden 1994), p. 156-169.

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translated French and Dutch pamphlets to his Workes.30 He crossed media borders: when books

and pamphlets were prohibited, such as Vox Populi, they were replicated and disseminated in

manuscript form.31 Scott transgressed genre forms: ‘objective’ news and outright fabrications

were mixed in Vox Populi and in his later works. In this respect especially, by ‘choosing’ a career

of ‘biting and being bitten’, Scott, as a protestant pamphleteer and polemicist, unambiguously

positioned himself at the forefront of European public opinion making in the 1620s. And finally

he transgressed boundaries between religion and politics: constitutionalism, parliamentarianism,

Puritanism, anti-Catholicism, these all mix in his works, making them multi-layered and complex,

as multi-layered and complex as his times were. Because of this, he should not only be studied

from a political viewpoint, or from a religious one, but rather, I would argue, from a viewpoint

mixing both politics and religion. This is what I propose to do in this paper, and Thomas Scott as

a ‘maker of public issues’ in early modern Europe will form the first leg of my research.

Studying Thomas Scott and his work in a multi-faceted and transnational manner not only means

studying the early modern European public sphere, but also studying the beginnings of the Thirty

Years War: in his political activist pamphlets he tried to ‘interfere’ directly in matters pertaining to

the war. “Europe’s Tragedy”, as the Thirty Years War (1618 - 1648) has been called in a recent

study, has, of course, been studied extensively.32 Numerous detailed books and articles on the

military, political, dynastic, and religious aspects have been published.33 The Thirty Years War as

a ‘media war’, or more generally, as a media event, occurring simultaneously with the

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#+!Almost immediately after publication, Vox Populi appeared as La Voix du Peuple in a French translation. In 1621 two Dutch translations of Vox Populi appeared in the Netherlands, one in Amsterdam with Iacob Pietersz. Wachter, the other in Leiden with Zacharias de Wit; a third reprint appeared in 1625 in Utrecht. In 1624 Abraham van Herwijck, publisher in Utrecht, published a Dutch translation of Vox Regis, with an introduction by Lodewijck G. van Maarsen, preacher in Renesse. The first two translations of Vox Populi and the one of Vox Regis can be consulted in the Special Collections-department of the Amsterdam University Library. And in 1625 Vox Dei appeared in a Dutch translation in Utrecht. P.C. Molhuysen and P.J. Blok (eds.), Nieuw Nederlandsch Biografisch Woordenboek 4 (Leiden 1918), p. 1241-1242, “Scott, Thomas”: http://www.dbnl.org/tekst/molh003nieu04_01/molh003nieu04_01_1825.php. Consulted on 22-04-2014. For the adding of Dutch and French texts in English translation to his own collected works, see: Sprunger, Trumpets from the Tower, p. 110; and A. Ewing, ‘‘A Tongue-Combat betweene two English souldiers’: A Comparative Analysis of Catholic and Puritan Polemics, 1618-1628’, unpublished research master thesis, Leiden University 2013, p. 46-50, 141-142. I would like to thank Judith Pollmann for pointing out this thesis. #$!Cust, ‘News and Politics in Early Seventeenth-Century England’, p. 64; Leticia Álvarez Recio states that it had circulated in manuscipt form before being printed, and again after it had been censured; other writers copied it in their manuscripts: Leticia Álvarez Recio, ‘Opposing the Spanish Match: Thomas Scott’s Vox Populi (1620)’, in: Spanish and Portuguese Society for English Renaissance Studies, Sederi Yearbook 19, 2009, p. 5-22, p. 10. !#"!Peter H. Wilson, Europe’s Tragedy. A History of the Thirty Years War (London 2009).!##!To name just a few: Geoffrey Parker (ed.), The Thirty Years’ War (London and New York 1997; originally 1984); Ronald G. Asch, The Thirty Years War. The Holy Roman Empire and Europe, 1618-1648 (Basingstoke 1997); Richard Bonney, The Thirty Years’ War 1618-1648 (Oxford 2002); Peter H. Wilson, ‘Dynasty, constitution, and confession: The role of religion in the thirty years war’, in: The International History Review, 30, 3, 2008, p. 473-514.

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development of ‘an early modern information society’, however, has been neglected.34 This is

remarkable. The literature on the early modern information society is abundant and still growing:

pamphlets, newspapers and other news media, the formation of public opinion, the development

of a ‘public sphere’, these are all highly successful research areas. It has rarely been applied to the

Thirty Years War, however, and where it has, this has been done within a strictly ‘national’

framework.35

In another manner, studying Scott can present a ‘correction’ to the Thirty Years War-

historiography. Traditionally the beginnings of this war are seen as a continental European affair,

in which the role of England, although always mentioned, is often underexposed. Most obviously

this is the case in Josef Polisensky’s 1991 work, when he writes about the “Tragic Triangle” of

the Netherlands, Spain, and Bohemia, but also here Peter Wilson is a modern adherent to a very

traditional idea.36 England had within its borders a faction that openly called for interference in

Bohemia and the Palatinate.37 The issue of the Palatinate directly involved England: being the

hereditary lands of Frederick V (1596 - 1632), husband of King James I’s daughter Elizabeth

Stuart (1596 - 1662), the Palatinate was a matter of Stuart dynastic interest.38 In 1623 worries

about these interests became very acute. James was already old and in bad health. His son Charles

had left for Spain, a dangerous and uncertain journey, from which he might not return. Thus, the

chance of Elizabeth inheriting the throne was not at all imaginary. The tragic triangle must

perhaps be ‘squared’ to incorporate England. The connection of Scott’s writing to continental

developments and to the Thirty Years War will be the second leg of my research.

So Scott’s discussion of international politics in a transnational space is the main object of my

research. This discussion will be analysed through his two most famous works, Vox Populi and

the Second Part to Vox Populi. By studying and comparing these two books, I hope to gain more

insight into the world of the early modern public sphere as well as in the world of the early years

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#%!To my knowledge, the term ‘early modern information society’ has been coined by Robert Darnton: Darnton, ‘An Early Modern Information Society’. See also: Brendan Dooley, ‘Introduction’, in: Dooley and Baron, The Politics of Information in Early Modern Europe, p. 1-16.; Blanning, ‘Introduction’; Briggs and Burke, A Social History of the Media, p. 13-90. Even as recent a handbook as Wilson’s devotes only a meagre three pages out of a total of almost ninehundred to “the war as media event”, and this in the most general terms: Wilson, Europe’s Tragedy, p. 824-827.!#&!Boys, London’s News Press and the Thirty Years War. #'!Josef Polisensky, Tragic Triangle. The Netherlands, Spain and Bohemia 1617-1621 (Prague 1991); Wilson, ‘Dynasty, constitution, and confession’; Wilson, Europe’s Tragedy. #(!Cogswell, The Blessed Revolution, p. 24-27, 28-29. #)!Simon Adams, ‘Spain or the Netherlands? The Dilemmas of Early stuart Foreign Policy’, in: H. Tomlinson (ed.), Before the English Civil War: Essays on Early Stuart Politics and Government (London 1983), p. 79-101, p. 80; Jonathan Scott, England’s Troubles. Seventeenth-Century English Political Instability in European Context (Cambridge 2000), p. 92.!

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of the Thirty Years War. But first something must be said about the life and times of Thomas

Scott.

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3. Thomas Scott, his life and times

There were several Thomas Scotts living in England in the early 1600s. This makes identifying

‘our’ Thomas Scott a difficult and imprecise business.39 What is generally accepted nowadays is

that he was born around the year 1580; that he matriculated, apparently at a rather ‘advanced’ age,

in theology at the University of St. Andrews in 1618; that he wrote his first pamphlet, Vox Populi,

in 1619, while he was in Edinburgh; that he was a rector of St. Saviour’s in Norwich in 1620; that

Vox Populi first appeared in print in London in November 1620; that he fled England in 1621

after it became known that he had been its author; that he lived uninterruptedly in the

Netherlands from that year, without ever returning to England; that he worked as a minister in

Utrecht and as a preacher to the English military establishment in the Netherlands; that he wrote

some twenty-seven pamphlets, some anonymously, some under his own name; and that he was

assassinated in 1626, by an English soldier, who had been supposedly acting out of some spiritual

derangement, or out of revenge.40

His exile in the Netherlands, curiously enough, has been taken for granted by most

historians. Two aspects, connected with this exile, have been utterly neglected. Firstly, his

relationship to these other famous exiles in the Netherlands, Frederick V of the Palatinate and his

wife Elizabeth Stuart, has hardly been investigated. It has been argued by some that Scott, during

and after his flight from England, had enjoyed the protection of certain people in Dutch high

circles, notably Frederick, Elizabeth and Prince Maurice of Nassau (1567 - 1625).41 He dedicated

his Second part to Vox Populi to these same three persons, for the “respect” they had shown

“towards me” (in the case of Frederick and Elizabeth), and for the ‘sometime dependence’ he

had suffered (in the case of Maurice), thus seeming to affirm the protection he had enjoyed. The

reasons for this protection, as well as the nature of the ‘relationship’ when he had settled in the

Netherlands, remain unclear however.

Secondly, the effect that his exile has had on his person and works, has not been properly

‘problematized’. Exile has invariably been the ‘topos’ of studies of Frederick’s and Elizabeth’s

stay in The Hague and in the Netherlands: court representation, loss of honour that comes with

having been chased away from Prague, and with the subsequent loss of the Palatine dominions,

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#*!Compare, for example, the many differences between Cooper, ‘Scott, Thomas (1580? - 1626), and !Kelsey, ‘Scott, Thomas (d. 1626)’.!%+!Kelsey, ‘Scott, Thomas (d. 1626)’.!%$!Lake, ‘Constitutional Consensus and Puritan Opposition in the 1620s’, p. 813-814; Álvarez Recio, ‘Opposing the Spanish Match’, p. 10; Louis B. Wright, ‘Propaganda against James I’s “Appeasement” of Spain’, in: Huntington Library Quarterly 6, 2, 1943, p. 149-172, p. 153.!

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Palatine and English influences in their Dutch court et cetera.42 Such a viewpoint is completely

absent in studies of Thomas Scott and his pamphlets. A very obvious and ‘simple’ question as

“What did exile mean for him and his development as a writer and pamphleteer?” has, to my

knowledge, not been posed by any historian so far. Was there a ‘radicalization’ in his thinking

when away from home, for example, or perhaps a ‘softening’? A comparison of Vox Populi and

his other works, especially the Second part to Vox Populi, or Vox Regis, which begins as a

justification of Vox Populi, could perhaps answer this question.43

Cogswell calls his stay in the Netherlands a “voluntary exile”, without, however,

explaining the voluntary aspect of it.44 As Wright has noted, in the 1620s numerous preachers and

pamphleteers had been arrested and imprisoned in England, making Scott’s flight a rational

reaction to real threats, and not so much a voluntary exile.45 In this sense, exile meant safety:

while these preachers and pamphleteers were being arrested and imprisoned for saying or writing

more or less the same things that Scott had been writing in 1619, he, in contrast, escaped such a

fate and lived in relative safety, freedom and well-being in Utrecht. Scott must have been fairly

well integrated in Dutch society. His appointment, in 1622, as first minister to the newly

established congregation of the English Church in Utrecht, is first proof of that. Who mediated

for his appointment remains unclear, but the position was well paid: 600 guilders annually, paid

for by the city and province of Utrecht (300 guilders) and by the congregation itself (300

guilders).46 Surely, Scott’s calling as minister must have meant that he was well connected.47 A

second proof can be found in the relative ease with which Scott was able to have his work

published. His work sometimes appeared anonymously, sometimes with no or false placenames

(Utrech, Goricom, The Hage, Helicon, Paradise), but he succeeded in getting it published, in the

process inspiring “… publication at the Dutch presses of many other books of similar spirit”.48

And the fact that his work was translated in Dutch, in the case of Vox Regis preceded by a preface

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%"!Marika Keblusek, ‘Entertainment in Exile: Theatrical Performances at the Courts of Margaret Cavendish, Mary Stuart and Elizabeth of Bohemia;, in: P. Davidson and J. Bepler (eds.), Triumphs of the Defeated: Early Modern Festivals and Messages of Legitimacy (Wiesbaden and Wolfenbüttel 2009), p. 173-190; Simon Groenveld, De winterkoning: balling aan het Haagse hof (The Hague 2003). %#!Thomas Scott, Vox Regis (no placename given [Utrecht?] 1624).!%%!Cogswell, The Blessed Revolution, p. 291. %&!Wright, ‘Propaganda against James I’s “Appeasement” of Spain’, p. 154-155.!%'!Keith L. Sprunger, Dutch Puritanism. A History of English and Scottish Churches of the Netherlands in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Leiden 1982), p. 215-216. Before his appointment in Utrecht, Scott had been minister of the English Church in the garrison town of Gorinchem: Sprunger, Dutch Puritanism, p. 275. %(!Kelsey, ‘Scott, Thomas’. !%)!Sprunger, Trumpets from the Tower, p. 108-110. According to Sprunger, the fictitious title page, giving a false name or place of printing, was a common Puritan printing strategy: Sprunger, Trumpets from the Tower, p. 27. On the “clandestine network of authors, printers, and financial backers” to which Scott belonged, see: Sprunger, Trumpets from the Tower, p. 34-35.

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by a Dutch minister, must have meant that he was considered important enough.49 Thirdly, after

his violent death in 1626 at the hands of the English soldier John Lambert, a pamphlet was

written, followed by two funerary elegies.50 Thomas Scott seems to have been a relatively well-

respected member of Dutch society, at least of its protestant part.

The issues he wanted to raise remained remarkably consistent: opposition to James I’s (r. 1603 -

1625) policy of appeasement to the Spanish king, and opposition to Catholicism in general; a call

for uniting the Reformed churches in the whole of Europe generally, and in England and the

Dutch Provinces in particular; a rally for war against the Holy Roman Emperor; and lastly, a call

for support for James’ daughter and son-in-law, Elizabeth Stuart, and Frederick V of the

Palatinate, in their claims to the throne of Bohemia and the return of their lands in the

Palatinate.51 It is to these subjects that Scott returned time and again, thereby not only ‘testifying’

to political debates that were taking place in England and all over Europe at this period, but also

precisely actively seeking to define the agenda.

And these were indeed hotly debated topics in the England of James I.52 The best

indication of the English king’s policy of appeasement to Spain was his wish that his son Charles

marry the Spanish Infanta Maria, the so-called Spanish Match.53 James’s marriage project must be

seen, however, in the broader perspective of a desired European-wide balance of power: his

foreign policy was heavily influenced by the increasing territorial, political, and religious divisions

on the continent; and he wanted to protect his country from any involvement in a struggle

there.54 But James’s motivations must also be seen as being very practical: with Henrietta Maria of

France and Maria of Spain there were only two possible marriage candidates for his son. And the

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%*!See note 27 above for the Dutch translations of his work. &+!A Briefe and True Relation of the Mvrther of Mr. Thomas Scott, Preacher of Gods Word and Batchelor of Diuinitie. Committed by John Lambert Souldier of the Garrison of Vtricke, the 18. of Iune. 1626. With his Examination, Confession, and Execution. Printed for Nath. Butter (London 1628). &$!Kelsey, ‘Scott, Thomas’. &"!The fact that Scott returned to these same subjects again and again signifies that he felt very strongly about these issues, but also, in my opinion, that public opinion on these topics was indeed divided. &#!For a general discussion of the debates surrounding the politics and religion of James I, the ‘question’ of the Spanish Match, and the Palatine couple of Frederick V and Elizabeth Stuart, see: Wright, ‘Propaganda against James I’s “Appeasement” of Spain’; Breslow, A Mirror of England, p. 10-44 (‘The Palatine’). P. 45- 73 (‘Spain’) and p. 74-99 (‘The Dutch’); Thomas Cogswell, ‘England and the Spanish Match’, in: Richard Cust and Ann Hughes (eds.), Conflict in Early Stuart England: Studies in Religion and Politics 1603-1642 (London and New York 1989), p. 107-133; Cogswell, The Blessed Revolution, p. 12-20, 36-53; Brennan C. Pursell, ‘The End of the Spanish Match’, in: The Historical Journal 45, 2002, p. 699-726; Robert Cross, ‘Pretense and Perception in the Spanish Match, or History in a Fake Beard’, in: Journal of Interdisciplinary History xxxvii, 4, 2007, p. 563-583. For Thomas Scott and the Spanish Match, see: Lake, ‘Constitutional Consensus and Puritan Opposition in the 1620s’; Álvarez Recio, ‘Opposing the Spanish Match’; Leticia Álvarez Recio, ‘Anti-Catholicism, civic consciousness and parliamentarianism: Thomas Scott’s Vox Regis (1624)’, in: International Journal of English Studies 13, 1, 2013, p. 133-147.!&%!Álvarez Recio, ‘Opposing the Spanish Match’, p. 7; Cross, ‘Pretense and Perception in the Spanish Match’, p. 568.!

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Spanish dowry, 500.000 ducats, later to be raised to 600.000, would be very handy in these times

of English financial need.55 Thus, right after the marriage in 1613, of his daughter Elizabeth to

the Calvinist “Prince of Princes” Frederick V of the Palatine, negotiations with Spain on the

marriage of Charles to Maria began, negotiations that lasted until the end of 1623, when it

became clear that nothing would come of the marriage.56 In England, public opposition to the

Spanish Match was widespread: the “Black Legend” of Spanish cruelty, of the Inquisition, of

Spanish attempts at world domination was very much alive, and many groups in England were

committed to a policy of confrontation.57 It is, as we will see in chapter 3, to these groups in

favour of confrontation, that Thomas Scott directly appealed in his Vox Populi, and in his later

writings.

The Spanish Match should not only be understood as a political matter, however. As

Robert Cross states: “The British king, James I, saw it as the very cornerstone of his pacific

diplomacy, a crucial step in his plan to end the struggles between Catholics and Protestants that

were tearing Christendom apart”.58 This religious aspect of the Match would strengthen James’s

ideas of himself as a Rex Pacificus: it would enable him to mediate between the opposing

confessional camps.59 And these camps needed mediating, not only in Europe, but also in

England, where a constant struggle between Protestants (be they moderates or puritans) and

Catholics was taking place. In this ongoing struggle, Scott’s pamphlets also took position.

Then there was the question of the Bohemian crisis. In August 1619, The Bohemian

Estates revoked Ferdinand (1578 - 1637), the later Emperor Ferdinand II, as their king, and

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&&!R. Malcolm Smuts, ‘Review Article: Early Stuart Foreign Policy’: http://www.history.ac.uk/reviews/review/413. Consulted on 22-04-2013. See this article also for the motivations on the Spanish side in pursuing the marriage alliance. A comment in verse on the Spanish dowry was found by the gentleman-collector William Davenport in 1621: “When Charles hath gott the Spanishe gyrle/The Purytans will scowle and brawle/Then Digebye shall be made an earle/And the Spanishe gould shall paye for all”, quoted in: Cust, ‘News and Politics in Early Seventeenth-Century England’, p. 66-67!&'!Robert Cross, following Simon Adams, points out that marriage negotiations (but for his son Henry) between Spain and England already started right after his accession to the English throne, in 1603, and calls these negotiations “… the centerpiece for Anglo-Spanish relations throughout the following two decades”: Cross, ‘Pretense and Perception in the Spanish Match’, p. 580-581; Adams, ‘Spain or the Netherlands?’, p. 87-88.!&(!Cross, ‘Pretense and Perception in the Spanish Match’, p. 577-578; Breslow, A Mirror of England, p. 45-73 (‘Spain’). There were also defenders of James’s Spanish appeasement: Cogswell, The Blessed Revolution. Against a ‘simple’ dichotomy of two ‘monolithic’ cultures, John Elliott, in a brilliant lecture delivered at Oxford in 2007, points to the English interest in, admiration for, and imitation of, some aspects of the Spanish dominant culture: John Elliott, ‘Learning from the Enemy: Early Modern Britain and Spain’: http://www.history.ox.ac.uk/fileadmin/ohf/images/John-Elliott-Lecture.pdf. Consulted on 04-03-2013.!&)!Cross, ‘Pretense and Perception in the Spanish Match’, p. 580.!&*!The image of James I as Rex Pacificus is an accepted one in Stuart historiography. Smuts, however, mentions recent Spanish research on the Count of Gondomar in which “intriguing evidence” has turned up “that the Spanish authorities believed James to be acting in bad faith, by pretending to support Habsburg interests and peace while he secretly intrigued with the Dutch and other Protestant powers to foment trouble”: Smuts, ‘Review Article: Early Stuart Foreign Policy’. In a different line of argument, Thomas Cogswell writes: “James’s devotion to the maxim, beati pacifici, should not overshadow the vital fact that his celebrated policy did not exclude the use of force”: Cogswell, The Blessed Revolution, p. 13.

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offered the Bohemian Crown to Frederick V of the Palatinate. At the end of September, he

accepted.60 With his acceptance, the Bohemian Revolt sparked the Thirty Years War, and

Frederick’s dream of a united Protestant Europe turned into a nightmare: he ‘lost’ his Bohemian

kingdom (1620), after which he was forced to flee to The Hague, and subsequently he lost his

own Palatine dominions (1620-1623).61

James had been against his son-in-law Frederick’s acceptance of the Bohemian Crown

(something that deeply offended both Frederick and Elizabeth) and refused to aid him militarily,

when he tried to defend it from the Austrian Habsburgs. Diplomacy should be the way, James

believed, both in settling the Bohemian crisis, and, later, in returning Frederick’s lost Palatine

dominions.62 The Spanish Match was a possibility for both, so James thought. But Frederick,

convinced that the Habsburgs would not give up their gains through negotiations, opposed the

Match.63

Choosing between war and diplomacy was a matter of the King only: he alone decided in

matters of war. But it concerned all Englishmen of course. All through society there were many

advocates of war, who voiced their opinion in poems and pamphlets, in theatre plays, and from

the pulpit.64 So Thomas Scott was not the only one critical of James’s policy, although he might

have been the fiercest. To be sure: not everyone in England called for war; there were quite a few

that defended James’s policy of neutrality and ‘appeasement’.65 Thomas Scott was not one of

them, however. And although he did not yet plead openly for war in his Vox Populi the first signs

of a ‘confrontational’ approach were already present. In numerous later pamphlets he invariably

associated himself with the ‘warring’-side.

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'+!Brennan C. Pursell, The Winter King. Frederick V of the Palatinate and the Coming of the Thirty Years’ War (Aldershot 2003), p. 72-80; Cogswell, The Blessed Revolution, p. 16-17. '$!For Frederick as the ‘hope’ for European Calvinism, see: Jaroslav Miller, ‘The Henrician legend revived: the Palatine couple and its public image in early Stuart England’, in: European Review of History 11, 3, 2004, p. 305-311; Marika Keblusek, ‘Celebrating a Union: The Festive Entry of Friedrich, Elector Palatine, and Princess Elizabeth in the Netherlands’, in: Sara Smart and Mara R. Wade (eds.), The Palatine Wedding of 1613: Protestant Alliance and Court Festival (Wiesbaden 2013), p. 391-409; Pursell, The Winter King, p. 4; Boys, London’s News Press and the Thirty Years War, p. 27-31 '"!James felt himself, out of dynastic loyalty, committed to Frederick only in Frederick’s hereditary rights in the Palatinate. Adams, “Spain or the Netherlands?’, p. 88. '#!Smuts, ‘Review Article: Early Stuart Foreign Policy’.!'%!See: Breslow, A Mirror of England, p. 10-44 (‘The Palatinate’) and p. 45-73 (‘Spain’); Boys, London’s News Press and the Thirty Years War, p. 131-134; Cogswell, The Blessed Revolution, p. 12-20, 36-53. '&!Cogswell, The Blessed Revolution, p. 27-31.!

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4. “Onely probable, and possible, and likely, not historicall”: Scott as ‘issue-maker’

In Vox Populi, several of Spain’s grandes, together with the papal nuncio, are assembled in Madrid,

to listen to what the Count of Gondomar (1567 - 1626), the Spanish ambassador in England, had

to say about the advancement of Spain’s plans in England. The year was 1618, and Gondomar

had just returned from a long stay in England, where he had been involved in arrangements over

the Spanish Match. His message to the Council of State was an optimistic, even a triumphant

one. In short: his mission in England, “[T]o make profit of all humours, and by all means to

aduance the state of the Romish Faith, and the Spanish Faction togither …” had been a great

success, and Spanish chances to advance its goals had never looked better.66 According to

Gondomar, the king and the country desperately longed for peace; they needed money to fill

their empty coffers; Spanish factions, and adherents to the Spanish cause, were active in many

different strata of English society; internal divisions, between king and parliament, between

Catholics and Protestants, between proponents and opponents of the marriage of Charles to

Maria, paralysed the country; the army and navy were in decay and utterly useless; England’s

projects in the colonies were a failure, et cetera. “Thus stands the state of that poore miserable

Countrey, which had never more people and fewer men”.67 This would be the perfect time for a

Spanish invasion, Gondomar believed.

It is a very clever text. In the first place because of its verisimilitude: all that was written

could be true. On a general level: English society was indeed divided; king James had indeed been

longing for negotiation, and not for confrontation; the country indeed suffered many

institutional, financial, and military weaknesses.68 On a more specific level: Gondomar had indeed

returned to Spain in 1618; the Council of State had indeed been in session at this time;

negotiations for the Spanish Match had indeed been going on for quite a while now, with

Gondomar as key-figure on the Spanish side.69

The form of the dialogue, with different characters voicing different arguments in a

question- and answer-model, lends the text liveliness, immediacy and authenticity. Participants in

the meeting are allowed to criticise Gondomar, and to put up objections to the Anglo-Spanish

cooperation in the match, thereby presenting pro’s and contra’s to the policy pursued, and thus

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''!Scott, Vox Populi, p. 9.!'(!Scott, Vox Populi, p. 21.!')!Scott, England’s Troubles, p. 41-112. '*!Cross, ‘Pretense and Perception in the Spanish Match’; Pursell, ‘The End of the Spanish Match’.!

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giving the text the impression of being a moderate and well-balanced argument, instead of a

strong and one-sided opinion. Gondomar, however, has the last say in everything, and

unsurprisingly, against the positive images of England by some of his interlocutors, he paints a

most dark picture of an effeminate, degenerate, and cowardly English nation, open to bribe, and

not able or willing to defend itself.

By putting words in the mouth of others, Scott enabled himself to accuse several people

and groups in English society of supporting the Spanish ploy, notably “[T]he begging and beggarly

Courtyers, that they might haue to furnish their wants” and “[T]he Romish Cathlikes, who hoped

hereby at lest for a moderation of Fines & Lawes, perhaps a tolleration, and perhaps a totall

restauration of their Religion in England”.70 The same procedure also enabled him to be reflexive

on his own position and activity. At one point in the meeting, the papal nuncio asks Gondomar:

“But are there none of the hereticall Preachers busie about this match? Me thinkes their fingers

should itch to be writing, and their tongues burne to be prating of this businesse especially the

puritanicall sort”.71 Indeed, in England many preachers were preaching, and many writers were

writing.72 Gondomar answered the nuncio not to worry: the writers were “… muffled for

barking, when ours may both barke and bite too”.73

Lastly, Vox Populi was clever in its style: Scott’s grandes used everyday and accessible

language, easy for everyone to understand; his characterisation of the meeting and of the

participants was witty; the juxtaposition of the proud, pompous, and plotting Spaniards and the

weak, timid, and impotent English (except of course the Puritans, who, in the eyes of the

Spaniards, were the true Protestants) confrontational, but effective. It is a feast to read.

The book contains many different elements. It is the story of a complot of Spain and

Rome against England. Spain and Rome are personified in the person of Gondomar “… who

brought the imperious Genius of Austria and Spaine, linked in league with the Catholike Genius of

Rome, to outface the modest and bashfull Genius of England, Scotland, and Wales”.74 In this, it

contained also an ‘anthropology’ of both the Spanish, and the English nations. Central in this

anthropology was the matter of trust: the Spanish are never to be trusted (indeed, Spain, in the

words of the papal nuncio, was “… at libertie in all respects …” to break all of their promises to

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(+!Scott, Vox Populi, p. 12.!($!Scott, Vox Populi, p. 24. !("!Breslow, A Mirror of England, p. 45-73 (‘Spain’); Boys, London’s News Press and the Thirty Years War, p. 131-134; Cogswell, The Blessed Revolution, p. 12-20, 36-53.!(#!Scott, Vox Populi, p. 25. Whether Scott alluded to censorship when using the term “mufled” is not explicit, but it would be probable. According to Álvarez Recio, Cyndia Clegg in her 2001 Press Censorship in Jacobean England, has suggested that the censorship-proclamation of December 1620 was partly provoked by Scott’s Vox Populi. I have not been able to consult Clegg’s study myself. See: Álvarez Recio, ‘Opposing the Spanish Match’, p. 10.!(%!Scott, Vox Populi, ‘To the reader’, p. 4r.!

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England “… since there was no Faith to be kept with Heretikes”).75 The English, on the other

hand, were too trustful and too confident in a satisfactory termination.

It is also a short history of England from Elizabethan times until the present, and the

history that Scott painted was one of a downfall: the English were once great and mighty, but

now not anymore.

This leaves the following questions still to be answered: what was the pamphlet’s aim? And

whom was it aimed at? To answer the first question might be the easier task. It was first and

foremost, as the subtitle already indicated, a ‘warning’: a warning to England and the Dutch

United Provinces, of Spain and the Spanish, and their ‘untrustworthiness’. According to Leticia

Álvarez Recio, “... Scott’s attack on Spain did not serve as a goal in itself, but encouraged further

reflections on the interaction between the king and his subjects, and Englishmen’s direct

involvement in foreign and domestic affairs”.76 This characterisation makes Vox Populi a rather

moderate pamphlet, with modest aims: it was meant as a wake-up call. This is too weak a

conclusion, though, in my opinion. More than to “further reflection”, the pamphlet was written

to incite and inflame the English in their discontent over the Anglo-Spanish appeasement: it was

a fabrication, in harsh, strong, and inflammatory language, pretending to be an actual account of

Gondomar’s and Spain’s intentions for England and the world. It reflected already existent

prejudices in England, but it was sure to incite even more indignation.77 Certainly, it was not a

rally for war, as some of his later writings would be, nor was there as yet direct mention of an

‘international’ Protestantism, or an alliance with other European Protestant nations, that would

invariably be present later on. But a modest ‘invitation’ for reflection it was not: it was an attempt

to arouse public opinion.

The question of whom Vox Populi was aimed at, is much more difficult to answer.

Readership- and reception-history for early modern Europe is notoriously difficult, but I think

we can begin to answer the question by looking at the book’s format: it was a pamphlet; it used

direct, simple, and strong visual language; the setting was ‘dramatic’, both in Spain (the gathering

of ‘pompous’ Spaniards), as in England (a nation in decline); the juxtaposition of plotting

Spaniards and ‘innocent’ Englishmen; the element of ‘warning’ in the title; all these elements

seem to imply that Scott wanted to reach as large and popular an audience as possible. In this he

succeeded: it was one of many pamphlets written and circulated at the time, but Vox Populi had

many reprints, was immediately translated in other languages, and became an ‘example’ for many

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(&!Scott, Vox Populi, p. 11.!('!Álvarez Recio, ‘Opposing the Spanish Match’, p. 19.!((!Wright, ‘Propaganda against James I’s “Appeasement” of Spain’, p. 152, 156.!

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pamphlets to follow. In this, Louis Wright is certainly correct in his evaluation of Scott as “an

early type of successful propagandist”.78

One of the keys to understanding Thomas Scott as an active propagandist, instead of as a

political ‘informer’, lies exactly in the ‘fabrication’-aspect of his work. In a later text, Vox Regis

(1624), he returned to the question of credibility and truthfulness. He addressed here, in a

masterful way, the objections that had been raised against Vox Populi. They were ten in total,

according to him, of which the fourth was “That the Plot or Frame was a fiction, and therefore

deserved censure”. Scott answered very laconically: “Why, who profest otherwise? Was there any

that published it for a certaine truth?” before continuing:

“Was it not called Vox Populi, to note it onely probable, and

possible, and likely, not historicall? (I mean, for so much as

concerned the Plot.)”.79

His text was meant as only probable, not historical. Still, Spain’s intention “to get the whole

possession of the world”, in Scott’s and many others’ eyes, was neither a lie. Scott wrote: “The

truth is, those that understand any thing of Spanish Affaires, know such a course is observed …”,

hereby merely telling what by now everybody knew: “The Matter contained within, was, what all

the people spake, (whether Romane, or Reformed Catholiques) as one man …”.80 He prayed to

God that he might “… proove it a fiction and not to be too true”.81

Scott’s wonderful rhetoric on truth and fiction of his first pamphlet is interesting for

many reasons. First of all, countering ten points of criticism is not only a matter of rhetoric. It is

evidence that Scott felt very strongly about his convictions, but it may also signify that there had

been a vast public debate after its publication. Indeed, the debate was considerable and furious, as

some contemporary sources tell us.82 Whether the text was believed to represent fiction or truth,

is an interesting, but open, question. According to Wright “it was received on publication as

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()!Wright, ‘Propaganda against James I’s “Appeasement” of Spain’, p. 150. See for other pamphlets on Spain circulating in England: Breslow, A Mirror of England, p. 45-73 (‘Spain’) and Joad Raymond, Pamphlets and Pamphleteering in Early Modern Britain (Cambridge 2003), p. 122-149.!(*!Scott, Vox Regis, p. 10. )+!Scott, Vox Regis, p. 11.!)$!Scott, Vox Regis, p. 10.!)" Wright, ‘Propaganda against James I’s “Appeasement” of Spain’, p. 153 and Álvarez Recio, ‘Opposing the Spanish Match’, p. 10, mention the antiquarian, writer and member of the Parliament Simonds D’Ewes commenting on the “anxiety” the text caused in King and people. !

! ""!

Gondomar’s actual report”.83 But bearing in mind the fourth objection to which Scott in 1624

responded, this seems not at all certain. The debate in part covered the truth or fiction-aspect of

Vox Populi, thereby reflecting, and at the same time undermining, Barbara Shapiro’s stance that ‘a

culture of fact’ was emerging in England (and in Europe as a whole) at the end of the sixteenth,

beginning of the seventeenth century.84 Indeed, it was very important to establish the truth of a

certain ‘fact’, but for others ‘getting a message across’ might be more important than speaking the

truth. Thomas Scott was exactly such a person: here we have a polemicist and pamphleteer who

was first and foremost interested in ‘making an issue’ and setting the agenda, even if that meant

writing “probable” and not “historical” things.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

)#!Wright, ‘Propaganda against James I’s “Appeasement” of Spain’, p. 152.!)%!Barbare J. Shapiro, A Culture of Fact. England, 1550-1720 (Ithaca and London 2000).

! "#!

5. The Second Part to Vox Populi: Scott’s road to war

In 1624 a Second Part to Vox Populi was published. Some variables in Scott’s life and in historical

circumstances had thoroughly changed between publication of this book and his first one.

Variables, moreover, that had their impact on his writing. First of all: in 1624 Scott was no longer

in England, but living in exile in Utrecht, and by this time he had already written many more

pamphlets, several of which were expressly intended to further an alliance between England and

the Dutch United Provinces. One of his first exile-pamphlets, published anonymously, was

written to “ … shewe you the necessarie dependancie betwixt our Kingdome of Great Brittaine

and the vnited provinces …” against the “ … many of those who labour to effect a division betwixt

us …”.85 And in 1624, Scott had written, anonymously again, that “ … there is nothing of more

moment (in humane considerations) for the advancement of religion, then the supportance,

fauoure, and protection of potent Princes and States, who are or ought to be nurseing Fathers and

nurseing Mothers …”. To this end, England and the United Provinces should be enabled “… to

unite themselves in perfect amitie togither …” since “… the cheefe burthen and honor of this

worke lies vpon their shoulders …”.86 Both pamphlets must be read as an effort to prove an age-

old alliance between the two nations. To be sure, in Vox Populi, Scott had already paid attention

to the ‘common fate’ of England, France, Venice, the Low Countries, and Bohemia, all “ …

labouring for life vnder our [Spanish; Gondomar is speaking here-W.D.] plots …”, and the book

was expressly meant as a ‘warning’ to the United Provinces, but an alliance between England and

the Netherlands was not yet clearly present in 1619-162087 It seems reasonable to assume that the

idea for this alliance, if not originated during his exile in the Netherlands, grew stronger.

An Anglo-Dutch alliance did not, however, only exist in Scott’s mind. English

identification with the Dutch had already existed since the beginning of the Dutch Revolt.88 Now

that the Twelve Years Truce had come to an end in 1621, and war was resumed, Scott reflected

these changes in his writings.

The change in Dutch-Spanish relations from truce to war, were also mirrored in Anglo-

Spanish relations. With the return of Charles and Buckingham in October 1623 in England from

Spain, the Spanish Match had definitively failed, and with this the Anglo-Spanish turn in English

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

)&!Thomas Scott, Belgicke Pismire: Stinging the slothfull Sleeper, and Awakening the Diligent to Fast, Watch, Pray; and worke out their owne Temporall and Eternall Salvation with Feare and Trembling (London 1622), ‘The preface’, p. A2. )'!Thomas Scott, Symmachia: or, a True-Loves Knot, tyed, betwixt Great Britaine and the Vnited Prouinces, by the wisedome of King James, and the States Generall; the Kings of France, Denmarke, and Sweden, the Duke of Sauoy, with the States of Venice being Witnesses and Assistants. For the Weale and Peace of Christendome (no placename given, 1624), p. 1. )(!Scott, Vox Populi, p. 9. ))!Hugh Dunthorne, Britain and the Dutch Revolt 1560-1700 (Cambridge 2012), p. 1-2.

! "%!

foreign policy had met its end.89 Charles and Buckingham had travelled to Spain to pursue

marriage negotiations, but during their stay it became clear to everyone involved that it would be

without any success.90 With this failure, the ‘peaceful’ policy of James I made way for the collision

course of Charles and Buckingham. On their return, there was rejoicing in all the streets of

England, and in the many pamphlets that were published anti-Catholicism and anti-Hispanianism

reached new highpoints.91 Scott was also happy with this result: “[A]fter the shouts and

acclamations of all true hearted English, for the safe and single returne of the Prince of Great

Brittaine, had made the roofe of Heaven to resound, and with the noyse had shooke such a terror

into the ill affected body of Spaine …”.92 Indeed, Charles’ ‘single’ return was what caused Scott

to be so relieved and enthusiastic: “Alone-o words of comfort”, as he wrote in Vox Regis.93

Palatine fortunes had also changed between 1619 and 1624. In 1619 everything looked

very promising for Frederick: he was elected king of Bohemia, and all his Palatine dominions

were his still. In 1624 he had been chased away from Prague and from Heidelberg, his dominions

lost, his electorship taken away. He was living in exile, financially dependent on the Dutch States

and on his father-in-law’s contributions.94 Scott dedicated his Second Part to Vox Populi to

Frederick (as well as to Elizabeth and Maurice of Nassau) without, however, commenting

extensively on this change of fortune: he only asked for pardon because of his having pressed

himself into their presence.95 It is in another pamphlet of the same year, that he addressed the

Bohemian crisis and the state of “totall ruine and extirpation” that Frederick found himself in.96

And by now, Europe was in a full-blown war. Scott was in favour of war by 1624, as

becomes immediately clear by the title of two pamphlets that he had written: A Relation of More

Particular wicked plots, and cruell, in humane, perfidious, and vnnaturall practises of the Spaniards, with More

Excellent reasons of greater consequence, deliuered to the Kings Maiesty to dissolve the two treaties both of the

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

)*!Simon Adams at least writes in these terms: from a traditional Anglo-Dutch-policy, especially under Elizabeth, England under James I had made an Anglo-Spanish turn: Adams, ‘Spain or the Netherlands?’. With the failure of the Spanish Match, this Anglo-Spanish appeasement came to an end, and from 1625 both nations were in war again. *+!See for Charles’ and Buckingham’s journey to Spain and the negotiations there: Pursell, ‘The End of the Spanish Match’ and Cross, ‘Pretense and Perception in the Spanish Match, or History in a Fake Beard’.!*$!Cogswell, The Blessed Revolution, p. 6-12, !*"!Scott, The second part of Vox populi, p. 1.!*#!Quoted by Cogswell, The Blessed Revolution, p. 12; with reference to Scott, Vox Regis, p. 10. I cannot find the quote on this page, however.!*%!Nicolette Mout, ‘Der Winterkönig im Exil. Friedrich V. von der Pfalz und die niederländischen Generalstaaten 1621-1632’, in: Zeitschrift für Historische Forschung 15, 3, 1988, 257-272. *&!Scott, Second Part to Vox Populi, ‘Dedicatorie’, p. 1. *'!Thomas Scott, A briefe information of the affaires of the Palatinate. The which consist in foure principall heads, Which be 1. The acceptation of the Crowne of Bohemia. 2. The difference and controuersie which hath ensued thereof, betweene the Emperour Ferdinand, and the King Frederick. 3. The proscription and bloudy proceeding that hath ensued thereof. 4. And the interposition of the King of great Brittaine, and with that which hath happened in the meane space (no placename given, 1624), p. 58. This might be an original by Scott, it might also be a translation from the French by him. However that may be, it had been included in his Works of 1624.

! "&!

Match and the Pallatinate, and enter into Warre with the Spaniards, and A Worthy Oration Appropriated,

vnto the most Mighty and Illustrious Princes of Christendome, wherein the right and lawfulnesse of the

Netherlandish warre against Phillip King of Spayne is approved and demonstrated. These pamphlets,

together with a third one, possibly not by Scott but by his friend Stephen Offwood, An Adioynder

of Sundry other Particular Wicked plots and Cruell, Inhumane, Perfidious; yea, Vnnaturall practises of the

Spaniards, were combined and published, in 1624, as A Second part of Spanish Practices.97 And in the

already mentioned Symmachia Scott had made the same point: he called upon his fellow

countrymen to fight for the Dutch

“… with undaunted resolution, and, in neede bee, dye for them

with comfort and cheerefulnes euen as for your owne Countrye

…”.98

Scott, by 1624, was on a road to war.

In these new circumstances Thomas Scott decided to write and publish a Second Part to Vox

Populi, wherein

“… you shall perceiue the Curtaine (though not fully) drawne,

from before the Spaniard, that the world may for certaine see,

that hee is not so beautifull, as many of our English (who so

long haue doated on him) would make him to be, nor on the

other side so terrible, that your Dutch neede to feare him, how

grimme & terrible soeuer he lookes upon them”.99

Two things become clear from this quotation. First, the subject of the Second part to Vox Populi

would be more or less the same as that of Vox Populi: to show the untrustworthiness of Spain

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

*(!Thomas Scott, A Second Part of Spanish Practices, or, A Relation of More Particular wicked plots, and cruell, in humane, perfidious, and vnnaturall practises of the Spaniards, with More Excellent reasons of greater consequence, deliuered to the Kings Maiesty to dissolve the two treaties both of the Match and the Pallatinate, and enter into Warre with the Spaniards, wherevnto is adioyned A Worthy Oration Appropriated, vnto the most Mighty and Illustrious Princes of Christendome, wherein the right and lawfulnesse of the Netherlandish warre against Phillip King of Spayne is approved and demonstrated. With S.O., An Adioynder of Sundry other Particular Wicked plots and Cruell, Inhumane, Perfidious; yea, Vnnaturall practises of the Spaniards (no placename given, 1624). On the friendship between Offwood and Scott: Sprunger, Trumpets from the Tower, p. 110. *)!Scott, Symmachia, p. 18.!**!Scott, Second Part to Vox Populi, ‘Dedicatorie’, p. 2. In 1624 Vox Populi had been reprinted, and Second Part to Vox Populi was meant to supplement this: Raymond, Pamphlets and Pamphleteering in Early Modern Britain (Cambridge 2003), p. 129.!

! "'!

and the Spaniards. Indeed, in this the Second Part is almost a repetition of the first: Spanish plots

to infiltrate in court and country, in ecclesiastical and military circles; English plots and violence

against Spaniards (Gondomar included), Catholics, and Jesuits; a history of England and also of

the Netherlands, especially of their revolt against Spain; an anthropology of the Spanish nation as

fundamentally different from other nations; an explanation of the ‘hate’ of all things Spanish.100

Even in the setting (a meeting of the Spanish Council of State, now ‘supposedly’ in Seville in

1624), its form (a dialogue in which different participants ask and answer questions), and its

‘wittiness’, Second Part to Vox Populi resembles its ‘original’. And also in the ‘fabrication’-aspect,

the two pamphlets are almost identical: the “faithfully translated out of the Spanish Coppie by a

well-willer to England and Holland” reminds us of Vox Populi, also ‘translated’ from the Spanish.

Historians have consequently treated the Second Part of Vox Populi as more or less identical to the

original, and this is defensible up to a point. But there are some important differences between

both texts, as also becomes clear from the above citation.

There is an unmistakable change in tone: from Vox Populi we already knew that the

Spaniard was not as beautiful as the English thought he was, but now he seemed not so terrible

as to be so feared by the Dutch. Indeed, whereas Vox Populi presented the Spanish grandes in a

triumphant tone as proud and powerful people, convinced of their superiority, now, in the Second

Part, these same grandes seem to be in a crisis, doubtful, and in search of a ‘medicine’ to heal a sick

body:

“ … like a colledge of wise Phisitians to consult of the state of

that body and Kingdome, how with medicines (as Physitians call

them) to prevent her future danger, withal for the present to

repayre the ruine of her reputation and credit with the world

(since now her plots and practices are smoaked, their Gordian

knots untwisted even by children) …”.101

This negative, and at times even ‘defeated’ tone is, in my opinion, one of the most remarkable

features of the Second Part.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

$++!There are beautiful ‘stories’ to be found in the text, for example a ‘climatic psychology’ of the peoples of the South and North; the grandes’ answers to the question ‘where does Spain’s bad reputation come from?’; Gondomar’s activities in the English printing industry et cetera. And the Black Legend is featured by a nice ‘quotation’ of Luis de Velasco, one of Spain’s grandes, on Spanish cruelty: “Crueltie is naturall and inhaerent to our Nation, for except our victories be drowned in blood we cannot tast them”: Scott, The second part of Vox populi, p. 48. $+$!Scott, Second Part to Vox Populi, p. 3.!

! "(!

But it is not the only difference. A similar change is to be found in the evaluation of

England’s prospects. Whereas in Vox Populi England was effeminate and impotent, it is now

Spain that is not ready for war:

“For first, we are not so well furnished with men, munition,

or money, as the World imagineth, or Arsenalls Magazines and

store-houses in Sevill, Cadiz, Lisbone, being almost disfurnished

of all manner of munition and necessaries, though they seeme

otherwise”.102

England, on the other hand, had succeeded in throwing Spain’s friends out of parliament,

furnishing and rigging up its navy, securing subsidies for the army, in short: England was

prepared for war.103 And because of this reversal, Gondomar advised the Council of State not to

go to war with England. Still, this should not be a reason for Spain to hang its head openly. In

what could be called an example of ‘typical’ Spanish treacherousness, the Count of Sefa

remarked:

“So weighing all occurrences rightly, we shall finde it no time to

thinke of an offensive warre with England, for which we are not in

case, yet it is not amisse for vs to pretend like Lyons, and seeme

terrible to the world, but necessitie doth admonish,

notwithstanding we must eeke and lengthen out our hides with

Foxes tayle”.104

Concerning the United Provinces, the situation was somewhat different. With their economic

and military power, their colonies, their navy, and their boldness, the Netherlands were

responsible for the decline of Spain: “I thinke the Diuell intends to giue them all the kingdomes

of the earth”, Luis de Velasco remarked upon the Dutch.105 To take the wind out of Dutch sails,

immediate action was called for:

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

$+"!Scott, Second Part to Vox Populi, p. 42. This is the Count of Gondomar speaking.!$+#!Scott, Second Part to Vox Populi, p. 36-37.!$+%!Scott, Second Part to Vox Populi, p. 44.!$+&!Scott, Second Part to Vox Populi, p. 44.!

! ")!

For the dore being but halfe shutte we had yet roome to enter,

if we prolong the time we shall be so bard and bolted, that

there will be no hope of entrance at all (…) for we see

whatsoeuer we entend, the Hollanders are still in action, dayly

getting ground of vs.106

The Duke of Sefa summed up Gondomar’s advice:

“Therefore (…) it is best to make faire weather with

England, in any case so long as the lest, till wee haue tried

the vttermost of our strength against Holland which I hope

his Catholicke Maiesty our Maister will doe this Summer

…”.107

Fair weather in England, storm in Holland. This was exactly the reason for Scott to call

Gondomar a “Matchivillian”: he was trying to part and divide England from the United

Provinces. And this was also exactly the reason for writing a pamphlet that so resembled an

earlier one: both nations shared their religion, their history and their future, and both shared their

dealings with the “Haughty-Pride, Thirsty-Covetousnes, and kind dissimulation of the same Fox

populi, Count Gondomar the Great”.108 Where first war should be waged on England, war should

now be waged on the Netherlands. And what was first meant as a ‘warning’ for England, should

now be a warning for the Netherlands.

What was the aim of the Second Part to Vox Populi? This question must be answered in more or

less the same way as in the case of Vox Populi: its aim was, more than to ‘inform’ the general

public of Spanish vices, to influence public opinion on Spain and the Spanish, and to call for

action. But whereas the action called for in Vox Populi was not yet so clearly defined, now there

seemed only one possibility left: war. It is difficult, if not outright impossible, to tell when and

why exactly Scott made a ‘turn to war’. One could argue, and some historians have, that war was

central to Scott’s writing. But it must be stated here, that an international war of united European

Reformed powers against Spain and its allies was not yet present in his first writing. It might be

dangerous to posit an idea of ‘radicalization’ in the work of Scott: what does radicalization mean

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

$+'!Scott, Second Part to Vox Populi, p. 45. This is the Count of Sefa speaking.!$+(!Scott, Second Part to Vox Populi, p. 44.!$+)!Scott, Second Part to Vox Populi, p. 59.!

! "*!

in the light of one book, compared to many others that show a high degree of homogeneity?

Especially when that one book already contains several elements of his later work? What does it

mean, moreover, in such a relatively short period of time? And lastly and most importantly, what

does it mean when we cannot find any direct references to it in the author’s work? Still, it seems

reasonable to argue for some sort of radicalization on the part of Thomas Scott, or perhaps

better: a ‘sharpening of pen and opinion’. Whether this sharpening was connected to his exile is

hard to ascertain: Scott himself did not in any way comment on his life in exile. That it would be

connected to the changes that had been taking place during the early 1620s seems obvious

enough: the Palatinate was involved in war; the Netherlands resumed war against Spain;

Buckingham and Charles headed for war. It seems obvious indeed that in these changing

international circumstances, an explanation for Scott’s turning from an ‘informer’ (in Álvarez

Recio’s opinion) to a ‘political propagandist’ (in Wright’s opinion) to a ‘warmonger’ (in Alec

Ewing’s opinion) is to be found.109

Whom was Second Part to Vox Populi aimed at? We can begin to answer this question by

returning to what was said earlier about Vox Populi: that pamphlet was aimed at as large an

audience as possible. Second Part was aimed at an even larger and, more importantly, a more

international audience as this first pamphlet. True enough, in his first pamphlet England is not

Scott’s only concern: he writes about the United Provinces, about France, about Bohemia, about

almost every continental nation of the time. Still, it had a predominantly English focus, and this is

the reason for the overwhelmingly domestic context in which historians have understood the

book. While such a purely English context might already be debatable for Vox Populi, it

completely fails for understanding Scott’s other writings: their main concern is not England or

English affairs, but on the contrary, continental, transnational, and international-protestant

affairs. For these affairs, Scott sought, and found, an international audience.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

$+*!Ewing, ‘‘A Tongue-Combat betweene two English souldiers’, p. 4. !

! #+!

6. Conclusion: “good it may doe, hurt it cannot”

“And since a little Treatise of a Spanish Consultation

(whether really acted, or poetically feigned I know not)

came to my hands, first written in Spanish, now by my

selfe translated into English, only for the behoofe and loue

I beare as well to England, my natiue Countrie, as to the

Netherlands, I have sent it abroad, good it may doe, hurt

it cannot”.110

Not everyone agreed with Scott in the “good it may do, hurt it cannot”-evaluation of his Vox

Populi. Richard Verstegan (c.1550 - 1640) for example thought Vox Diaboli would have been a

better title for the book.111 For him it had meant living a life in exile. For English society it had

meant a fierce and prolonged public debate, which, according to some historians, was a prelude

to the Civil War. Vox Populi was not the origin of this debate, but it had played its part in it.

Returning to my two broad research questions, what can now be concluded? First of all,

Scott was smack-dab in the middle of a process of English, and European, public opinion

formation. On a basic level this means that he was well aware of a European-wide debate on the

topics he himself treated in his books, and of a ‘present’ that he shared with others in Europe.

With Brendan Dooley, we can call this awareness the “experience of contemporaneity”: the

sharing of a perceived present at different levels, from the family to the wider world.112 It is not

only ‘awareness’ that characterizes Scott, however: he was not merely ‘registering’, he was trying

to convince, thereby actively ‘shaping’ the public sphere. Dooley’s concept of contemporaneity

resembles Habermas’s concept of the public sphere, as Dooley himself remarks, and in this sense

we can conclude that such a public sphere existed long before the eighteenth century.113

Secondly, with this public opinion formation Scott was also attempting some sort of

‘community formation’, namely a community of the Reformed ‘international’.114 Indeed,

addressing a Reformed Protestantism for all of Europe seems to be the crucial point of his

writing. Contemporaneity is thus not only an ‘inclusive’ experience, but is also ‘divisive’: the

Reformed international would be defined in opposition to a Catholic and Spanish international.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

$$+!Scott, Second Part to Vox Populi, ‘Dedicatorie’, p. 1.!$$$!Ewing, ‘A Tongue-Combat betweene two English souldiers’, p. 4. $$"!Brendan Dooley, ‘Introduction’, in: Brendan Dooley (ed.), The Dissemination of News and the Emergence of Contemporaneity in Early Modern Europe (Farnham 2010), p. 1-19. $$#!Dooley, ‘Introduction’, p. 8.!$$%!See also: Grell, ‘The creation of a transnational, Calvinist network’.

! #$!

In formulating this community of the Reformed, Scott was well ahead of the ‘imagined

communities’ that Benedict Anderson identifies with the emergence of the nation-states.115

Thirdly, in this process of public opinion- and community formation, he crossed every

border that could be crossed, but notably a geographical one: in person in the first place, but

even more so in his writing. He was not concerned with local issues, but with supra-local ones,

that he considered of importance not only for a domestic, English audience, but for an

international ‘market’. We can call him truly transnational.

In the fourth place, Scott not only crossed geographical but also textual borders.

Anything was permitted in his writing strategies: mixing truth with fiction, presenting a world in

black and white, rhetorical tricks, anything that would help to influence his readers would do. We

need not wait for Habermas’s twentieth-century spectre of advertisements, propaganda, public

relations, and media-indoctrination. Scott’s propaganda campaign had it all, even with

accompanying slogan: “good it may doe, hurt it cannot”.

A fifth point is the development in Scott’s writing. We can call him, with Sprunger, a

‘political Puritan’, but that must not be understood as a fixed and stable definition.116 To be sure,

politics and religion cannot sensibly be separated in this period, and Scott always was ‘political’

and ‘Puritan’. It was in the context of changing international circumstances, however, that his

political Puritanism changed direction: ‘issue-making’ clearly depended on circumstances. War

became very real in the 1620s: the Thirty Years War, the war over the Palatinate from 1620 to

1623, the reopening of the Dutch war in 1621, the renewal of military hostilities between

England and Spain in 1625. With these war-realities, Scott’s ‘politics’ likewise became one of war.

This brings me to my last point: all these wars were ‘real’ wars. But they were all

accompanied by ‘warfare of words’. Cogswell states that there are inherent problems in “ …

allowing parliamentary history to pass for political history’.117 We would only gain a partial view,

and never have a complete picture. Similar problems are inherent when allowing military history

to pass for history of warfare. War can be studied as an issue of kings, of armies, of official

declarations, but it is also an issue of texts, of discourse, of public opinion formation. Putting

Scott’s writings in an international context as I have tried to do, makes this point abundantly

clear. Wars were also media events, already long before the nineteenth-century Crimean War was

‘officially’ recognised as the first media war.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

$$&!Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities. Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London and New York 2003; originally 1983). $$'!Sprunger, Trumpets from the Tower, p. 34. $$(!Cogswell, ‘England and the Spanish Match’, p. 110.

! #"!

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Primary Sources: Writings by Thomas Scott Scott, Thomas, Vox Populi, or Newes from Spayne Translated according to the Spanish Coppie; which may serve to Forwarn both England and the Vnited Provinces how farre to Trust to Spanish Pretences (no placename given [London?] 1620). Scott, Thomas, Belgicke Pismire: Stinging the slothfull Sleeper, and Awakening the Diligent to Fast, Watch, Pray; and worke out their owne Temporall and Eternall Salvation with Feare and Trembling (London 1622). T.S. of U. [Thomas Scott of Utrecht], The second part of Vox populi, or Gondomar appearing in the likenes of Matchiauell in a Spanish parliament : wherein are discouered his treacherous & subtile practises to the ruine as well of England, as the Netherlandes. Faithfully transtated [sic] out of the Spanish coppie by a well-willer to England and Holland (Goricom [Gorinchem] 1624). Scott, Thomas, Vox Regis (no placename given [Utrecht?] 1624). Scott, Thomas, Symmachia: or, a True-Loves Knot, tyed, betwixt Great Britaine and the Vnited Prouinces, by the wisedome of King James, and the States Generall; the Kings of France, Denmarke, and Sweden, the Duke of Sauoy, with the States of Venice being Witnesses and Assistants. For the Weale and Peace of Christendome (no placename given, 1624). Scott, Thomas, A briefe information of the affaires of the Palatinate. The which consist in foure principall heads, Which be 1. The acceptation of the Crowne of Bohemia. 2. The difference and controuersie which hath ensued thereof, betweene the Emperour Ferdinand, and the King Frederick. 3. The proscription and bloudy proceeding that hath ensued thereof. 4. And the interposition of the King of great Brittaine, and with that which hath happened in the meane space (no placename given, 1624). Scott, Thomas, A Second Part of Spanish Practices, or, A Relation of More Particular wicked plots, and cruell, in humane, perfidious, and vnnaturall practises of the Spaniards, with More Excellent reasons of greater consequence, deliuered to the Kings Maiesty to dissolve the two treaties both of the Match and the Pallatinate, and enter into Warre with the Spaniards, wherevnto is adioyned A Worthy Oration Appropriated, vnto the most Mighty and Illustrious Princes of Christendome, wherein the right and lawfulnesse of the Netherlandish warre against Phillip King of Spayne is approved and demonstrated. With S.O., An Adioynder of Sundry other Particular Wicked plots and Cruell, Inhumane, Perfidious; yea, Vnnaturall practises of the Spaniards (no placename given, 1624). Scott, T., Vox populi. Vox dei. Vox regis. Digitus Dei. The Belgick pismire. The tongue-combat. Symmachia or The true-loues knot. The high-vvayes of God and the King. The proiector (no placename given [Holland?] 1624). Scott, Thomas, The Workes of the most famous and reverend Sir Thomas Scot (Utrecht 1624).

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Dutch Translations of Thomas Scott in possession of the Amsterdam University Library, Department of Special Collections. Scott, Thomas, Nieuwe Tydingen wt den Conseio ofte Secreten Raedt van Spangien waer-inne men als in een levendigh tafereel kan sien / hoe dat de Spangiaert steedts swanger gaet met de op-richtinge van syne gepretendeerde Monarchie / daer hy meynt toe gerecht te syn / door den Tytel van Catholychen Koningh / hem gegeven door den paus van Roomen. Dienende tot waerschouwinge voor Groot Bretangien / de Vereenigde Nederlanden / ende andere Princen / Potentaten ende Republicquen / van wat religie sy oock mogen syn / sich te wachten voor den Spangiaert ende syne trouloosheydt. T’Amsteldan, door Iacob Pietersz. Wachter, Boeckver-kooper op den Dam / inde Jonge wachter. Anno 1621. Met Consent der E. Heeren Burgermeesteren ende Regierders der voorsz Stede (Amsterdam 1621). Scott, Thomas, Consejo Espanoñolesco dat is Den Secrete Raet van Spaengien Waer wt den Tijdt-looper ons tijdinge brengt hoe den ouden Brandt-stoker in desen tijdt / met het Coninckrijck van Groot-Brittanien ende de vereenighde Nederlanden meynt om te springen. Tot Leyden, By Zacharias de Smit / Anno 1621. (…) met consent der E. heeren Burgermeesteren ende Regeerders der Stadt Amsterdam (Leiden 1621). Scott, Thomas, Vox Regis. Of de Stemme des Conincks van Enghelant: Sijnde al seen Apologij van een seecker Tractaet ghenaemt Vox Populi, of gelijck in Nederduytsch is Conseio of Spaenschen Raedt: In’t Engelsch beschreven door Thomas Scott, Predikant vande Engelsche Kerke tot Vtrecht. Ende tot dienst van die ghene die de Engelsche Spraecke niet en verstaen in Nederduytsch ghetrouwelijck overgheset. Tot Vtrecht, Bij Abraham van Herwijck Boeckvercoper wonende op St. Janskerckhof. Anno 1624 (Utrecht 1624). Other Primary Sources: A Briefe and True Relation of the Mvrther of Mr. Thomas Scott, Preacher of Gods Word and Batchelor of Diuinitie. Committed by John Lambert Souldier of the Garrison of Vtricke, the 18. of Iune. 1626. With his Examination, Confession, and Execution. Printed for Nath. Butter (London 1628).

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