Introduction iii

Although authorship of “The Parliament Fart” appears to have been in part a group activity, and although the poem changes considerably from one version to another, some readers may also have been attracted to it because it was most commonly linked to John Hoskyns. In the early years of James’s reign, Hoskyns typified a political milieu characterized by transgressive acts of wit. Associated equally with the interlinked legal and literary communities of London, he established a reputation for outspokenness and dissent. Moreover, after he was imprisoned by the Crown for his contributions to the Addled Parliament of 1614, he continued to write satirical verse, and appears to have attained the status of “a martyr to the cause of free speech” (Colclough 373). Therefore, while it would risk exaggeration to identify Hoskyns as a figure of political “opposition”, he assumes a central position within a culture which was increasingly prepared to question the structures of authority. There are demonstrable links between Hoskyns and the Spenserian poets of the 1610s and 1620s, who consistently agitated for political reform (O’Callaghan). More importantly, in the current context, his work is increasingly associated in manuscript culture with the waves of libels that shaped political discourse. As will become apparent, in the decades following the emission of Croke’s fart these poems became freshly strident in tone and forthright in analysis.

The evident transformation of “The Parliament Fart”, from a coterie production into a text of national renown, also typifies the way in which networks of political comment were stretching across the nation (Cust; Raymond). Although the discussion of domestic politics in print was heavily proscribed, contemporaries exhibited new levels of sophistication in their production and dissemination of news. The aisles of St. Paul’s Cathedral, long recognized as a central meeting place in the city, became the heart of the news business: “the great Exchange of all discourse”, according to one commentator, where men might “turn merchants...and traffick for news” (Earle I11v; Cogswell, Blessed Revolution 20-53). Beyond Paul’s Walk, news was circulated into the provinces either informally, or through the expanding commercial production of newsletters and manuscript “separates” reporting events and debates. Letters and diaries from the period document the spread and intensity of interest in politics, and equally underline the importance of libels. The Suffolk clergyman John Rous, for example, appears to have found libels both unsettling and compelling. Though generally scornful of “light scoffing wittes” who “rime upon any the most vulgar surmises”, Rous nonetheless recorded a significant number of libels (30). Transcribing a poem about the Isle of Rhé expedition, for instance, Rous commented that, “whether any more be sette downe then vulgar rumor, which is often lying, I knowe not” (22).1