Conspiracies and Conspiracy Theory in Early Modern Europe: From the Waldensians to the French Revolution

289 Pages·2004·21.42 MB·English

by  Barry Coward, Julian Swann

CONSPIRACIES AND CONSPIRACY
THEORY IN EARLY MODERN EUROPE

Conspiracies and Conspiracy
Theory in Early Modern Europe
From the Waldensians to the French Revolution
Edited by
BARRY COWARD
Birkbeck College, UK
JULIAN SWANN
Birkbeck College, UK
First published 2004 by Ashgate Publishing
Published 2017 by Routledge
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Conspiracies and conspiracy theory in early modem Europe :
from the Waldensians to the French Revolution
1. Conspiracies - Europe - History - 16th century - Congresses 2. Conspiracies -
Europe - History - 17th century - Congresses 3. Conspiracies - Europe - History -
18th century - Congresses 4. Persecution - Europe - History - 17th century -
Congresses 5. Europe - Politics and government - 1517-1648 - Congresses 6. Europe -
Politics and government 1648-1789 - Congresses 7. France - Politics and
government - 1789-1799 - Congresses
I. Coward, Barry, 1941-II. Swann, Julian
940.2
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Conspiracies and conspiracy theory in Early Modem Europe : from the Waldensians to the
French Revolution / edited by Barry Coward and Julian Swann.
p.cm.
Based on a conference held at Birkbeck College in July 2001.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-7546-3564-3 (alk. paper)
1. Europe - History - 1492-2. Conspiracies - Europe - History. 3.
Conspiracy - Europe - History. I. Coward, Barry. II. Swann, Julian.
D210.C68 2004
364.1 '094'0903-dc22
2004000030
ISBN 13: 978-0-7546-3564-2 (hbk)
Contents
List of Contributors vii
List of Figures x
Acknowledgements xi
1 Introduction 1
Barry Coward and Julian Swann
2 Detecting the Ultimate Conspiracy, or how Waldensians
became Witches 13
Wolfgang Behringer
3 Conspiracy and its Prosecution in Italy, 1500-1550:
Violent Responses to Violent Solutions 35
Kate Fowe
4 Huguenot Conspiracies, Real and Imagined, in
Sixteenth-Century France 55
Penny Roberts
5 Vengeance and Conspiracy during the French Wars
of Religion 71
Stuart Carroll
6 cThe Monarchical Republic of Elizabeth P Revisited
(by its Victims) as a Conspiracy 87
Peter Fake
7 The Paranoid Prelate: Archbishop Laud and the
Puritan Plot 113
Jason Peacey
VI Contents
8 The Closest Bond: Conspiracy in Seventeenth-Century
French Tragedy 135
Malina Stefanovska
9 Faults on Both Sides: The Conspiracies of Party
Politics under the Later Stuarts 153
Mark Knights
10 ‘Popery at St. James’s’: The Conspiracy Theses of
William Payne, Thomas Hollis, and Lord George Gordon 173
Colin Hay don
11 Conspiracy and Political Practice from the ancien regime
to the French Revolution 197
Veter Campbell
12 Burke and the Conspiratorial Origins of the French Revolution:
Some Anglo-French Resemblances 213
Nigel Aston
13 ‘The Tartuffes of Patriotism’: Fears of Conspiracy in
the Political Language of Revolutionary Government,
France 1793-1794 235
Marisa Linton
14 The ‘Foreign Plot’ and the French Revolution:
A Reappraisal 255
Munro Price
Index 269
List of Contributors
Nigel Aston teaches at the University of Leicester. His research interests and
activities centre on the history of religion (including Judaism) in Western
Europe during the late early modern era of c. 1660—1790 (especially in France
and Britain), with a particular focus on the place of the clergy in politics and
intellectual life. He is the author, amongst other things, of Christianity in
Revolutionary Europe, d 750-1830 (2002).
Wolfgang Behringer is Professor of History at the Saarland University,
Saarbrücken, [umlaut over the u] Amongst his major publications are
Witchcraft Persecutions in Bavaria. Popular Magic, Religious Zealotry and Reason of
State in Early Modem Europe (translated by J. C. Grayson and David Lederer.
Past & Present Publications, Cambridge University Press, 1997), and The
Shaman of Oberstdof. Chonrad Stoeckhlin and the Phantoms of the Night (translated
by H. C. Erik Midelfort. Virginia University Press, Charlottesville 1998).
Dr Peter Campbell is Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Sussex.
He is the author of Eouis XI\Z (Longman, 1993) and Power and Politics in Old
Regime France, 1720-1745 (Routledge, 1996).
Stuart Carroll, Senior Lecturer in Early Modern History at the University of
York, is currently finishing a book entitled ‘Rage of the Gods: Blood and
Violence in France, 1450-1700’.
Barry Coward is Professor of History at Birkbeck College, University of
London. His most recent books are The Cromwellian Protectorate (2002 and the
third edition of his The Stuart Age: England 1603-1714 (2003). He has also
edited The Blackwell Companion to Stuart Britain (2003).
Colin Haydon is Reader in Early Modern History at King Alfred’s College,
Winchester. He edited, with John Walsh and Stephen Taylor, The Church of
England, c.1689—c.1833: From Toleration to Tractarianism (Cambridge University
Press, 1993) and, with William Doyle, Robespierre (Cambridge University
Press, 1999), and is the author of Anti-Catholicism in Eighteenth-Century England,
c.1714—80 (Manchester University Press, 1994).
viii Conspiracies and Conspiracy Theory in Early Modem Europe
Mark Knights teaches early modern history at the University of East Anglia.
He has published a book on the succession crisis of 1679-81 and his next
book,’ Representation and Misrepresentation in Later Stuart Britain:
Partisanship and Political Culture’, is forthcoming from OUP in 2004. He is
also part of an editorial team producing an edition of the ‘Entring Book of
Roger Morrice, 1677-1691’, which is to be published in 2005. Both these
works have further discussions of the conspiratorial mentality of the later
Stuart world.
Peter Lake is professor of history at Princeton University. His most recent
book (written with Michael Questier) is The Antichrist's Lewd Hat. He is
currendy working on a book about Catholic accounts of the Elizabethan
regime as a tyranny and a conspiracy.
Marisa Linton is a senior lecturer at Kingston University. She has published
a book on the political culture of eighteenth-century France, The Politics of
Virtue in Enlightenment Franee (Palgrave, 2001). She has also published several
articles on French revolutionary politics on sic subjects as Robespierre’s
political ideas and on revolutionary projects for the future.
Kate Lowe is Professor of Renaissance History at Goldsmiths College,
University of London. Her research interests are in Italian and, to a lesser
extent, Portuguese Renaissance history. She has a particular interest in
cultural, religious and social history, and their interactions, including an
interest in political history. Amongst her publications are Church and Politics in
Renaissance Italy: the Life and Career of Cradinal Francesco Soderini, 1453—1524
(Cambridge University Press, 1993) and Marriage in Italy, 1300—1650
(Cambridge University Press, 1998).
Dr Jason Peacey is Senior Research Fellow at the History of Parliament
Trust, London. His publications include Politicians and Pamphleteers: Propaganda
During the English Civil Wars and Interregnum (Ashgate, 2004), and he is editor of
The Regicides and the Execution of Charles I (Palgrave, 2001), and co-editor (with
Chris R. Kyle) of Parliament at Work: Parliamentary Committees, Political Power and
Public Access in Early Modem England (Boydell, 2002).
Munro Price is Reader in Modern European History at Bradford University,
and specializes in late eighteenth-century and Revolutionary France. His most
recent book is The Fall of the French Monarchy: Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette and
List of Contributors lx
the baron de Breteuil (Macmillan, 2002), and he is currently working on a study
of French politics between 1814 and 1848.
Penny Roberts is Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Warwick.
She has published extensively on the religious and social history of
sixteenth-century France. Amongst her principal publications are: A City in
Conflict: Trojes during the French Wars of Religion (Manchester U.P., 1996), and
The Adventure of Religious Pluralism in Earlj Modem France, ed. (Peter Lang,
2000).
Malina Stefanovska is professor of French and Francophone studies at
U.C.L.A. She is the author of Saint-Simon, un historien dans les marges (Paris,
1998) and has published extensively on the literature and cultural history of
seventeenth and early eighteenth century France.
Julian Swann is Lecturer in early modern European history at Birkbeck
College, University of London. He is the author of Provincial power and absolute
monarchy. The Estates General of Burgundy, 1661—1790 (Cambridge University
Press, 2003), and is currently writing a history of ‘Disgrace: internal exile and
political punishment in early modern France’.