Dangerous Talk: Scandalous, Seditious, and Treasonable Speech in Pre-Modern England

How could mere words send people to court, to prison, or the scaffold? Dangerous Talk shows how private words had public consequence, how malicious tongues caused social damage, seditious words challenged political authority, and treasonable speech imperiled the crown.

Royal regimes from the house of Plantagenet to the house of Hanover coped variously with 'crimes of the tongue' and found ways to monitor talk they deemed dangerous. Their response involved policing and surveillance, judicial intervention, political propaganda, and the crafting of new law. In early Tudor times to speak ill of the monarch could risk execution. By the end of the Stuart era similar words could be dismissed with a shrug.

Tracing free speech across five centuries of popular political culture, prize-winning historian David Cressy shows how scandalous, seditious, and treasonable talk finally gained protection as 'the birthright of an Englishman'.