Book burning before and during the English Revolution, 1641–1660

holocaust (noun, 1): a sacrifice entirely consumed by fire; a whole burnt offering [Oxford English Dictionary]

‘Books have souls as well as men, which survive their martyrdom, and are not burnt but crowned by the flames that encircle them’. [Jean Claude, An historical defence of the Reformation (1683)]

On Monday, 11 March 1650 Jacob Bothumley, a Leicester shoemaker and quartermaster in the Parliamentary army, was tried by a court martial at Whitehall, London upon several articles of blasphemy contained in his book The Light and Dark sides of God (1650).¹ Bothumley was condemned to have his tongue bored through with a red hot iron and his sword broken over his head, to be cashiered from the army and to have his book burned before his face in the Palace Yard, Westminster and at the Exchange, London. Sentence was executed three days later.

The last person burned at the stake for heresy in England had been Edward Wightman at Lichfield on 11 April 1612. Though heretics were no longer incinerated, had Bothumley been convicted of blasphemy and refused to recant he could have suffered death under the provisions of an ordinance of May 1648. That he was not martyred by fire distinguished him from certain continental figures such as the Silesian poet and visionary Quirinus Kuhlmann (1651–1689), who was burned as a heretic at Moscow on 4 October 1689.

Hartmann Schedel, ‘Nuremberg Chronicle’ (1493), fol. 92v

What historians chose to write about is often informed not just by their intellectual interests, but also by present-day concerns. Sometimes those connections are drawn subtly. But on occasion they are deliberate. Whether it’s interest in advances in medical knowledge prompted by fear of deadly epidemic disease, or sensitivity to changing attitudes to the natural world motivated by justifiable alarm of impending environmental catastrophe, the present is in constant dialogue with the past. Historical discussion of book burning is no different.

Indeed, it’s no coincidence that ground-breaking works dealing with the subject were published during the early 1930s – just as the Nazis were burning books in Germany. Generally framed as a long if ultimately successful struggle for freedom of the press, these older studies tended to regard public book burnings as barbaric displays of repressive state power. So it seems an appropriate moment to return to this topic.

It’s a common misconception, however, to think of public book burnings only in terms of censorship. That is because when performed before large crowds they were simultaneously spectacles with a message. And despite changing contexts and different audiences, that message remained essentially unchanged. Leaders, whether secular or religious, were displeased with texts that they regarded as representing a serious challenge to their authority. In other words, public book burnings were as much about legitimating power through dramatic rituals as maintaining it by suppressing dissenting ideas and scandalous statements.

ANTIQUITY TO EARLY MODERNITY

Accounts of deliberate book burning are recorded in the Hebrew Bible (Jeremiah 36:1–26), Apocrypha (1 Maccabees 1:56) and New Testament (Acts 19:19), as well as classical Greece, ancient China and ancient Rome. Thus the philosopher Protagoras’ writings were supposedly burned in fifth-century Athens, the emperor Qin Shi Huang commanded the burning of Confucian books in 213 B.C.E., and the Roman senator Aulus Cremutius Cordus’ History was burned by the aediles in 25 C.E. Cordus committed suicide but his work survived, prompting the historian Tacitus (c.56–c.120) to deride ‘the stupidity of people who believe that today’s authority can destroy tomorrow’s memories’.

It is also evident that ancient texts have sometimes been lost to posterity because of fire. Hence the Roman Emperor Augustus reportedly burned more than two thousand copies of Greek and Latin prophetic verse. At Ephesus many Christian converts were said to have burned their magical books (Acts 19:19). Diocletian allegedly decreed c.295 that forbidden books by ancient Egyptians concerning alchemy were to be thrown to the flames, while only fragments survive of the Neoplatonist Porphyry’s Against the Christians, which was condemned to be burned by the Church in 448. There are also traditions of three infernos, either accidental or intentional, that engulfed the two great libraries at Alexandria. In an age before printing, irreplaceable texts written on papyrus or parchment perished more readily by fire than those inscribed on brick, stone or copper.

Burning of magical books at Ephesus (Acts 19:19), by Eustache Le Sueur (1649)

Exercising censorship and displaying disapproval through book burning was an aspect of Western European ecclesiastical and civil policy from the Roman Empire to the Enlightenment. Thus a thread connects the burnings of prominent Manichaeans and their scriptures ordered by the emperor Diocletian (d.311/12) with the burning of the Talmud at the instigation of various popes from the mid-thirteenth to the early fourteenth centuries. Afterwards a number of Hebrew Bibles and other Jewish books were burned in 1490 on the command of the Spanish Inquisition, while in 1499 about 5000 Arabic manuscripts were consumed by flames at Granada on the Archbishop of Toledo’s orders. In 1553 the Talmud and other works were burned in the Papal States and Venetian territory. Fifteen years later the Venetian government confiscated and burned thousands more Hebrew books. Yet it was not only texts by Jews and Muslims that were consigned to the fire but writings by Christians as well.

Detail from ‘St Dominic and the Albigenses’ (c.1495) showing the burning of heretical Albigensian books in the early 13^th century

Martin Luther was burned in effigy at Rome in 1519 and his books subsequently met the same fate at Cologne, Cottbus, Halberstadt, Louvain, Mainz, Meissen and Merseburg. He retaliated by having his supporters burn the works of his opponents Johann Eck, Hieronymus Emser and Johann Tetzel. Luther himself cast the papal bull of excommunication into a pyre at Wittenberg on 10 December 1520.

Martin Luther burning the Papal Bull [after Karl Friedrich Lessing]

Nonetheless, as in German cities so in London an unknown quantity of Luther’s books were burned at Paul’s Cross on 12 May 1521 and then ‘great baskets full’ at St. Paul’s cathedral on 11 February 1526. Nor were these isolated incidents. William Tyndale’s English translation of the New Testament was burned at Cheapside Cross on 19 November 1530 and his body at Antwerp in October 1536. Books and manuscripts held in the library of Münster cathedral were burned by Anabaptists in March 1534. Volumes listed in the Index of Prohibited Books were confiscated by the Roman Inquisition and burned at Venice in July 1548. The Spanish heretic Michael Servetus was burned in effigy at Vienne on 17 June 1553 and in person, together with his books, at Geneva on 27 October 1553.

Execution of William Tyndale, 1536

MID-SIXTEENTH TO MID-SEVENTEENTH CENTURY ENGLAND

In 1555, during the reign of Catholic Queen Mary, two Protestant martyrs were burned at Ely with ‘a great sheet knit full of books’. Similarly, when a Protestant cleric was executed the next year at Cambridge, ‘a company of books’ were cast into the fire. Then in February 1557 the bodies of two theologians were exhumed. They had been posthumously condemned of heresy. Consequently their coffins were burned at the stake at Cambridge along with an assortment of books that had been condemned with them.

Burning of Martin Bucer’s and Paul Fagius’s bones and books at Cambridge, 6 February 1557

During Protestant Queen Elizabeth’s reign symbols of Catholic identity were destroyed. Thus breviaries, missals, primers and psalters along with rood-lofts, relics and vestments were ‘committed to the fire’. Protestant heretics were likewise targeted. Two Dutch Anabaptists were burned at Smithfield in July 1575. The writings of a sect called the Family of Love were ordered to be destroyed and burned. And so too were texts authored by a couple of religious separatists. Other separatists were executed by hanging at Bury St. Edmunds in July 1583 with copies of the offending books burned. In 1595 five continental Catholic works were commanded to be burned at Stationers’ Hall, London by the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Books and manuscripts continued to perish by fire throughout the early Stuart period, though it is significant how few were burned. Indeed, only about fifteen titles were consigned to the flames by royal, civil or ecclesiastical authority during the reign of James I. Infrequent if sometimes spectacular book burnings were also a feature of the early years of Charles I’s reign when roughly fifteen different works were incinerated. These included an edition of the King James Bible issued in 1631. It was burned and the printers fined £300 because they omitted ‘not’ from the seventh commandment: thou shalt commit adultery.

The prophetess Lady Eleanor Davies had her books burned by Archbishop William Laud during her appearance before the court of High Commission on 23 October 1633. Then there was lawyer William Prynne. His treatise against stage plays Histrio-Mastix (1633) was burned in May 1634. Having been condemned in the court of Star Chamber, the author was set in the pillory at Westminster and then Cheapside with ‘a paper on his head declaring the nature of his offence’. On each occasion one of his ears was partially cut off and copies of his huge volume burned by the hangman – a novelty suggested by continental precedent to reflect the text’s ‘strangeness and heinousness’. So intense was the smoke that Prynne was almost asphyxiated. Prynne’s associate the physician and pamphleteer John Bastwick also had an edition of his refutation of Popery ordered burned by the court of High Commission on 12 February 1635. In addition, Bastwick was excommunicated, fined and imprisoned.

THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION, 1641–1660

Before discussing book burnings during the English Revolution some context is necessary. This was a turbulent period, one that has always fascinated historians because so many important things happened and so many significant ideas saw the light of day. In the words of the Digger leader Gerrard Winstanley (1609–1676), the ‘old World’ had been turned upside down and was ‘running up like parchment in the fire’. The background is complex. So I will mention only a few crucial events. There was devastating Civil War and rebellion in the three kingdoms of England, Scotland and Ireland. Episcopacy was abolished. The Church of England lost its power and the clergy became increasingly hated. There were petitioning campaigns to introduce religious toleration and initiate much needed ecclesiastical, educational, electoral, legal, medical and taxation reforms. Political movements with radical demands such as the Levellers emerged. King Charles I was executed in January 1649. Many people feared an imminent apocalypse; some welcomed it. Prophets and visionaries arose preaching repentance, warning sinners that the world was about to end. New religious movements like the Quakers began evangelising campaigns. And gradually the British Republic mutated from an oligarchy into a de facto dictatorship. Oliver Cromwell ruled as an uncrowned Lord Protector supported by an unsteady alliance of magistracy, ministry and military might. In the background were widespread poverty, harvest failure, desperate food shortages, economic decay and outbreaks of plague.

AN ‘EXPLOSION OF PRINT’

Between 1641 and 1660 an estimated 32,238 titles were published in the British Isles or by English speakers elsewhere in the world. That is roughly 26% of the total amount of such publications between 1475 and 1700.

Alain Veylit, ‘Some Statistics on the Number of Surviving Printed Titles for Great Britain and Dependencies from the Beginnings of Print in England to the year 1800’

Despite one well-known historian’s claim that the English Revolution was a short-lived age of ‘freedom’ when relatively cheap and portable printing equipment may have made it easier than ever before for new and sometimes radical ideas to see the light of day, the desire to censor – as is widely recognised – remained in many quarters. There were three effective ways in which this could be achieved: through pre-publication, post-publication and self-censorship.

Pre-publication censorship, particularly of religious literature, which had been used to increasing effect during the 1630s, became a lost cause after 1641. For in that year the secular court of Star Chamber and the ecclesiastical court of High Commission were abolished by act of Parliament. Consequently, the monopoly hitherto enjoyed by the London Stationers’ Company disintegrated. With the collapse of pre-publication censorship the licensing system upon which it had been built became increasingly used to protect the publisher’s copyright rather than to indicate official approval. Despite initial Parliamentary attempts at reasserting control by examining those considered responsible for committing abuses in printing and licensing, and subsequently through legislation, without an equivalent to the Papal Index of prohibited books pre-publication censorship appears to have been almost entirely at the licenser’s discretion. As such it was utterly ineffective. Indeed, during the later 1640s and much of the 1650s licensing was characterised by inconsistent practice and the absence of a universally agreed strategy.

By contrast, post-publication censorship and a range of severe punishments remained. Doubtless legislation empowering civil and military officials to fine or imprison the authors, printers, publishers and booksellers of unlicensed material prompted strategies to avoid detection. The most common were spurious imprints, anonymity and pseudonymity.

Hence several works omitted the names of those involved in their production. Sometimes proprietary details were replaced with defiant political messages: ‘to be sold at his shop in Toleration Street, at the sign of the Subject’s Liberty, right opposite to Persecuting Court’; ‘printed … in the sitting of Parliament; during which time the press ought to be free and open’; ‘at London, in the beginning of that notable day, wherein the secrets of all hearts are laid open; and wherein the worst and foulest of villanies, are discovered’. Alternatively, it was falsely claimed that certain texts had been issued abroad – at Amsterdam and Rotterdam for example. Some authors also exercised varying degrees of self-censorship.

All the same, post-publication censorship proved most effective when implemented by those with intimate knowledge of the printing trade. And in exceptional circumstances its outcome could be dramatic.

PURIFICATION BY FIRE

Excluding corrupt translations of the Bible imported from the Netherlands, Catholic primers, missals and a liturgical devotion to the Virgin Mary, sixty identified printed books, pamphlets and broadsheets, as well as three newsbooks were ordered to be burned by civil, military and ecclesiastical authorities in England between 1640 and 1660. In addition, Parliament ordered a number of letters, notably those maligning its military commanders, to be burned.

English book burning reached its height in 1642 when 13 books and pamphlets were consigned to the flames. Yet with the exception of a significant peak of 9 titles in 1646, during the remainder of the period no more than 5 books and pamphlets were ordered to be burned in a single year. Indeed, as significant as the occurrence of authorised book burning is its absence in 1649, 1653, 1657, 1658 and 1659.

A. Hessayon, ‘Incendiary texts: book burning in England, c.1640–c.1660’

The largest group of books burned during this period were incendiary political pamphlets by the Leveller leaders and their supporters. Defamed as atheists, mutineers, rebels and villains, this increasingly well-organised political movement agitated for a host of reforms including religious toleration; equality before the law; accountability of elected officials; regular Parliaments; the abolition of rotten boroughs; and an extension of the electoral franchise to incorporate more – but by no means all – adult males.

Another important cluster of writings consigned to the flames was those that promoted religious heresies. That considered most dangerous of all was denial of the Trinity since the entire foundation of Nicene Christianity depended upon it. Indeed, such was the fear of anti-Trinitarian heresies that writers publicly proclaiming the Trinity to be an outmoded superstition were denounced from across almost the entire theological spectrum.

A second type of dangerous book concerned profanation of the Sunday Sabbath. Equally appalling for contemporaries was the teaching that God was responsible for human sin. But more shocking still were those accused of believing themselves incapable of committing sin. They were called Ranters. And scandalised contemporaries generally demonised them as a promiscuous, ungodly crew given to all manner of wickedness. Among their alleged irreverent and debauched activities were blaspheming, cursing, swearing, drunkenness, tobacco smoking, mixed dancing, whoring and even public nakedness.

Clearly, texts that were burned publicly had transgressed accepted limits, whether of political and religious discourse, or of public conduct. They either challenged the establishment by being too radical. Or they went beyond the boundaries of what could be tolerated in thought and behaviour.

Burning of the ‘Book of Sports’ at London on 10 May 1643

PROTESTANT AUTOS DA FÉ

Borrowing from continental practice, the use of the hangman in public book burnings had been introduced to England in May 1634. By 1640 his presence had become a familiar aspect of a scene of street theatre designed to frighten onlookers. The locations selected for these ritual mock executions by fire were invariably large open public spaces in the cities of London and Westminster and the universities of Oxford and Cambridge; Cheapside, Smithfield, Paul’s churchyard and the Old Exchange in London, the New Palace at Westminster and the Market Place in Southwark.

We have seen that not one person was burned at the stake for heresy in England after 1612 – not even those executed on the charge of witchcraft (they were hung by the neck since their supposed crime was a felony). But in a country which still torched the Pope and other prominent Catholics in effigy, the published writings of seditionists and blasphemers were occasionally consigned to the flames in public book burning rituals that resembled Protestant Autos da Fé by proxy.

Burning books was an effective way of destroying particular printed texts. But not, it must be emphasised, of eradicating them. For it appears that at least one example survives of every book, pamphlet, broadsheet and newsbook ordered to be burned in England between 1640 and 1660. Indeed, there is evidence that book burning occasionally stimulated demand for condemned works by arousing the curiosity of collectors. As the novelist Daniel Defoe was to remark, he had heard a bookseller say that ‘if he would have a book sell, he would have it burnt by the hands of the common hangman’.

FAHRENHEIT 451

Public book burning was the most dramatic method of post-publication censorship in early modern England. As an aspect of legislation designed to regulate the press it worked in concert with Parliamentary efforts to suppress religious dissent. Together these measures created a climate in certain circles conducive to self-censorship.

There are numerous instances of authors not putting their names to inflammatory printed works. Printers, publishers and booksellers tended to be more cautious still. Even when risks were taken by committed individuals printing remained an expensive business. It did not become more affordable in the 1640s and 1650s. For despite a so-called ‘explosion of print’ it seems that, besides the rich, only those with wealthy benefactors or organised group support had sufficient means to publish their writings. Moreover, the 1630s had seen a sudden and sharp rise in book prices and, if the complaints of stationers are to be believed, prices remained high in the succeeding two decades. If this was an age of press freedom then it was a relatively limited freedom of the press.

* * *

On 26 January 1661 the bodies of Oliver Cromwell (1599–1658) and his son-in-law Henry Ireton (1611–1651) were disinterred from their graves in Westminster Abbey. A few days later, on the anniversary of the execution of Charles I, their corpses together with that of the king’s judge John Bradshaw (1602–1659) were hung at Tyburn. In May 1661 Charles II’s regime continued with its attempt to erase the English Commonwealth and Protectorate from historical memory by ordering key republican legislation to be burned.

The nineteenth-century German poet Heinrich Heine had a character remark in his tragedy Almansor (performed 1823) that ‘where they have burned books, they will end in burning human beings’. During the English Revolution and long after the restoration of the Stuart monarchy, however, the contrary was the case: where they could no longer burn people they could still burn their books.

Burning of books associated with ‘witchcraft’ in Mount Juliet, Tennessee (2 February 2022)

NBC News (7 February 2024)

1. Full-length version originally published as ‘Incendiary texts: book burning in England, c.1640–c.1660’, Cromohs – Cyber Review of Modern Historiography, 12 (2007): 1–25 <https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/8543/2/hessayon_incendtexts.html>.