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Some British Writers and Gustavus Vasa

2006; Routledge; Volume: 78; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/00393270600642031

1651-2308

Niall Mackenzie,

Scottish History and National Identity

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1. The best English‐language biography of the nobleman who secured Swedish independence and established a royal dynasty is in Michael Roberts, The Early Vasas: A History of Sweden, 1523–1611 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968) 1–198. 2. Henry Brooke, Gustavus Vasa, The Deliverer of his Country. A Tragedy. As It Was To Have Been Acted at the Theatre‐Royal in Drury‐Lane (London: R. Dodsley, 1739), facsimile reprint in The Stage and the Licensing Act, 1729–1739, ed. Vincent J. Liesenfeld, E[ighteenth‐]C[entury] E[nglish] D[rama], vol. 2 (New York and London: Garland, 1981). 3. A Compleat Vindication of the Licensers of the Stage, from the Malicious and Scandalous Aspersions of Mr. Brooke, Author of Gustavus Vasa. With a Proposal for Making the Office of Licenser More Extensive and Effectual. By an Impartial Hand (1739), in Samuel Johnson, Political Writings, ed. Donald J. Greene, The Yale Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson, vol. 10 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977) 55–73. 4. The bulk of this recent secondary material concerns Charles XII and Johnson's Vanity, the initiative essay being Howard Erskine‐Hill, “The Political Character of Samuel Johnson,” in Samuel Johnson: New Critical Essays, ed. Isobel Grundy (London: Vision Press; Totowa, NJ: Barnes & Noble, 1984) 107–36. An ambitious but not exhaustive bibliography on the ensuing debate can be found in the notes to Niall MacKenzie, “‘A Great Affinity in Many Things’: Further Evidence for the Jacobite Gloss on ‘Swedish Charles’,” Age of Johnson 12 (2001) 255–72. The most recent contributions include: Howard D. Weinbrot, “Johnson and the Jacobite Truffles,” Age of Johnson 12 (2001) 273–90; idem, “Johnson and the Jacobite Wars XLV,” Age of Johnson 14 (2003) 307–40: 318–20; Niall MacKenzie, “A Jacobite Undertone in ‘While Ladies Interpose’?,” in Samuel Johnson in Historical Context, ed. Jonathan Clark and Howard Erskine‐Hill (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002) 265–94; idem, Charles XII of Sweden and the Jacobites, Royal Stuart Papers, vol. 62 (London: Royal Stuart Society, 2002). The founding study of Charles XII's image in English literature, to which my title deferentially nods, is Herbert G. Wright, “Some English Writers and Charles XII,” Studia Neophilologica 15 (1942–43) 105–31. 5. J.C.D. Clark, Samuel Johnson: Literature, Religion and English Cultural Politics from the Restoration to Romanticism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994) 166. 6. Howard D. Weinbrot, “Who Said He Was a Jacobite Hero?: The Political Genealogy of Johnson's Charles of Sweden,” Philological Quarterly 75 (1996) 411–50: 420. See also idem, “Johnson, Jacobitism, and Swedish Charles: The Vanity of Human Wishes and Scholarly Method,” ELH 64 (1997) 945–81: 952. Prof. Weinbrot's obstinacy on this point is surprising, as even the late Donald Greene, Hardy to Weinbrot's Laurel in the field of anti‐Jacobite criticism, accepted the possibility of a Jacobite reading of Gustavus Vasa (Donald Greene, The Politics of Samuel Johnson, 2nd ed. [Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1990] 99–100; idem, headnote to A Compleat Vindication, in Johnson, Political Writings, ed. Greene 52–55: 52). In any case, Weinbrot's authority in this area may be judged from his having entered the debate unaware not only of the difference between Henry Brooke the playwright (?1703–83) and Henry Brooke the Oxford jurist (1697–1752), but of the difference between Gustavus Vasa and his descendant Gustavus Adolphus. (The relevant corrections are recorded in: J.C.D. Clark, “The Cultural Identity of Samuel Johnson,” Age of Johnson 8 [1997] 15–70: 47–48; MacKenzie, Charles XII, 43 n. 106.) 7. More searching, but still tentative prolegomena are put forward in Howard Erskine‐Hill, “Johnson the Jacobite?: A Response to the New Introduction to Donald Greene's The Politics of Samuel Johnson,” Age of Johnson 7 (1996) 3–26: 12–13; idem, Poetry of Opposition and Revolution: Dryden to Wordsworth (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996) 129–32. 8. Paul Walsh, “Henry Brooke's Gustavus Vasa: The Ancient Constitution and the Example of Sweden,” Studia Neophilologica 64 (1992) 67–79: quotation at 69. 9. Common Sense; or, The Englishman's Journal, 15 December 1739. Samuel Kliger, in his useful but erratic study, cites this Common Sense essay (on the superiority of Gothic architecture) as expressing “the Whig taste in the fine arts”, notwithstanding that it “appears impossible now to identify the anonymous writer as either Tory or Whig” (Kliger, The Goths in England: A Study in Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Thought [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1952] 27, 3–4). In fact, there is no reason to doubt Molloy's authorship; for his relation to the Stuart court, see George Hilton Jones, “The Jacobites, Charles Molloy, and Common Sense,” Review of English Studies new ser. 4 (1953) 144–47. See also Molloy's (?) essay in his issue of 24 March 1739, which says that if the Spaniards had taken more care in preserving their “antient Constitution”, then “England and Sweden would not have been at this Day [the writer is speaking normatively, not descriptively] the only Nations in Europe that are free under a King”. 10. Walsh, “Henry Brooke's Gustavus„ 72; Eveline Cruickshanks, Political Untouchables: The Tories and the ′45 (London: Duckworth, 1979) 12. 11. Cobbett's Parliamentary History of England. From the Norman Conquest, in 1066. To the Year, 1803, 36 vols. (London: Hansard, 1806–20) vol. 5, col. 43. 12. [Anon.,] The Causes and Manner of Deposing a Popish King in Swedeland, Truely Described (London: R. Baldwin, 1688[/9?]) recto (“affronted”), verso (“Swedes”). Narcissus Luttrell, whose copy is now in the B[ritish] L[ibrary] (shelfmark C.122.i.5.[36.]), wrote the date 6 February on this sheet. 13. Joseph Addison, The Freeholder, ed. James Leheny (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979) 230. 14. [René Aubert de Vertot d'Aubeuf,] Histoire des révolutions de Suede. Où l'on voit les changemens qui sont arrivez dans ce royaume au sujet de la religion & du gouvernement, 2 vols. (Paris: Michel Brunet, 1695). 15. Gustavus is presented as a Protestant champion in Samuel Clarke, A General Martyrologie, Containing a Collection of All the Greatest Persecutions Which Have Befallen the Church of Christ, from the Creation, to Our Present Times, 3rd ed. (London: William Birch, 1677) 343–76. See also: Samuell Puffendorf [sic], The Compleat History of Sweden, from its Origin to this Time, [trans. and continued by Charles Brockwell] (London: Joseph Wild, 1702); idem, An Introduction to the History of the Principal Kingdoms and States of Europe, trans. J. Crull, 8th ed. (London: J. Peele, 1719) chap. 13; [John Robinson,] An Account of Sueden: Together with an Extract of the History of that Kingdom (London: Tim. Goodwin, 1694). Robinson (1650–1723), later Bishop of London, passed many years as a diplomat in Sweden. His book was several times reprinted. Pufendorf's relevant writings were available in various formats and languages going back earlier than Vertot. (On Pufendorf as historian, see Leonard Krieger, “History and Law in the Seventeenth Century: Pufendorf,” Journal of the History of Ideas 21 [1960] 198–210.) For a discussion of some earlier seventeenth‐century English notices of Gustavus, see Margaret Omberg, “Gustavus Vasa and the Myth of the Mines,” Studia Neophilologica 67 (1995) 21–39: 21–22. On Gustavus in eighteenth‐century British writing, see also idem, “Gustavus Vasa's Adventures in 18th‐Century English Drama,” in Instead of Flowers: Papers in Honour of Mats Rydén on the Occasion of his Sixtieth Birthday, August 27, 1989, ed. Bengt Odenstedt and Gunnar Persson, Acta Universitatis Umensis: Umeå Studies in the Humanities, vol. 90 (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1989) 163–73. 16. [René Aubert de] Vertot [d'Aubeuf], The History of the Revolutions in Sweden, Occasioned by the Change of Religion, and Alteration of the Government in that Kingdom, trans. J. Mitchel (London: A. Swall and T. Child, 1696) preliminaries unpaginated (italic and roman type reversed). 17. Ibid. (italic and roman reversed). 18. Steve Murdoch, “Scotland, Scandinavia and the Bishops' Wars, 1638–40,” in The Stuart Kingdoms in the Seventeenth Century: Awkward Neighbours, ed. Allan I. Macinnes and Jane Ohlmeyer (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2002) 113–34: 115. 19. [René Aubert de] Vertot [d'Aubeuf], The History of the Revolution in Sweden, Occasion'd by the Change of Religion, and Alteration of the Government, in that Kingdom, trans. J. Mitchel, 6th ed. (London: James and John Knapton et al., 1729). Walsh reviews the tangled publishing history of Mitchel's Vertot in “Henry Brooke's Gustavus” 78 n. 9. 20. Brooke, Gustavus Vasa [85]. 21. Howard D. Weinbrot, “Johnson, Jacobitism, and the Historiography of Nostalgia,” Age of Johnson 7 (1996) 163–211: 186; idem, “Johnson and Jacobitism Redux: Evidence, Interpretation, and Intellectual History,” Age of Johnson 8 (1997) 89–125: 90. Weinbrot wrongly supposes that the translator's comparison of Gustavus to William III was added to the sixth edition of the English Vertot (idem, “Johnson, Jacobitism, and Swedish Charles” 975 n. 31). 22. Erskine‐Hill, Poetry of Opposition and Revolution 130. 23. I use anti‐Stuart in a loose sense to denote opposition to the dynasty's main male line which, from James VI & I onwards, was rarely free from the suspicion of being inclined to Rome in religion, to France and/or Spain in diplomacy, and to unconstitutional authoritarianism in domestic policy. William of Orange, of course, identified himself as a Stuart prince; his claim to the throne was strengthened by his co‐regent wife's standing in the Stuart succession; and even the Hanoverian family, in due course, based their appeal in Britain partly on their descent from the subordinate but dependably Protestant branch of the Stuart dynasty founded by James VI & I's daughter Elizabeth, “the Winter Queen.” (On the last point see Hannah Smith, “Georgian Monarchy: Politics and Culture, 1714–60 [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006] 41–45.) 24. Anne Kelley, Catharine Trotter: An Early Modern Writer in the Vanguard of Feminism (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002) 95–96. Kelley's treatment is broadly indebted to, though less nuanced than, the first in‐depth discussion of this play: Gunnar Sorelius, “Catharine Trotter's The Revolution of Sweden (1706): A Libertarian Drama about Gustavus Vasa”, Kungliga Humanistiska Vetenskaps‐Samfundet i Uppsala (Annales Societatis Humaniorum Regiae Upsaliensis), yearbook for 1977–78 (1979) 50–75. My comments on Trotter's Revolution were written before I had seen this essay. Sorelius was ahead of his time—and goes farther than I do—in recognizing the complexities in the political position of a writer who was “an advocate of Locke [… and] at the same time a Catholic and presumably also a Jacobite at heart” (58). I am indebted to the Editor of this journal for sending me a copy of Sorelius's essay. 25. Kelley (Catharine Trotter) provides several corrections, including a re‐set date of birth, to the previous standard biographical source: Thomas Birch, “The Life of Mrs. Catharine [Trotter] Cockburn,” in The Works of Mrs. Catharine Cockburn, Theological, Moral, Dramatic, and Poetical, 2 vols. (London: J. and P. Knapton, 1751) 1:i‐xlviii. (Her “Verses Sent to Mr. Bevil Higgons” are at 2:557–59.) 26. See her “A Defence of Mr. Locke's Essay of Human Understanding” (1702), “A Letter to Dr. Holdsworth, Occasioned by his Sermon Preached before the University of Oxford, on Easter‐Monday, Concerning the Resurrection of the Same Body” (1726), and “A Vindication of Mr. Locke's Christian Principles, from the Injurious Imputations of Dr. Holdsworth,” printed sequentially in The Works of Mrs. Catharine Cockburn 1:43–378. 27. Catharine Trotter, The Revolution of Sweden. A Tragedy. As it is Acted at the Queens Theatre in the Hay‐Market (London: James Knapton and George Strahan, 1706) 19, 71. The epithet “Deliverer” occurs passim. (I have consulted the facsimile reprint in The Plays of Mary Pix and Catharine Trotter, ed. Edna L. Steeves, 2 vols., ECED, vol. 32 [New York and London: Garland, 1982] vol. 2.) 28. See Paul Kléber Monod, Jacobitism and the English People, 1688–1788 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989) 23–27 for the emergence by this point of a “‘Whiggish’ Jacobitism” which viewed William III as having realized the danger foreseen by Trotter's Gustavus: “Suppressing Tyranny's an ill pretect [sic]/For our becoming Tyrants […]” (Trotter, The Revolution 4). 29. Trotter, The Revolution 49, 2–3. 30. The parallel also touches Scotland, although Jacobite resistance there was on a smaller scale than in Ireland and lacked a major urban strategic base analogous to Trotter's Stockholm. The Scottish Jacobite state actually outlasted the Irish, finally succumbing (with the tiny garrison on the Bass Rock) in April 1694 (Paul Hopkins, Glencoe and the End of the Highland War [Edinburgh: John Donald, 1986] 276). 31. E.g. His Majesties Most Gracious Declaration to All His Loving Subjects, Commanding their Assistance against the P. of Orange, and His Adherents ([N.p.:] [n. pub.,] [1692]). This document, dated 20 April 1692, inspired several Whig counterblasts, including: [Anon.,] The Jacobites Hudibras, Containing the Late King's Declaration in Travesty (London: Abel Roper, 1692); [Anon.,] Reflections upon the Late King James's Declaration, Lately Dispersed by the Jacobites (London: Richard Baldwin, 1692); [William Sherlock,] A Second Letter to a Friend, Concerning the French Invasion (London: Randal Taylor, 1692). 32. A position signalled by its dedication to Lady Henrietta Godolphin (1681–1733), the daughter and daughter‐in‐law respectively of two of the leading anti‐Jacobites in British politics, the Duke of Marlborough and Sidney (later Lord) Godolphin. 33. Trotter, The Revolution 5. 34. Ibid. 49. 35. [Anon.,] “On ye Thanksgiving 7th June 1716” (Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Rawl. poet. 155 pp. 253–54 [p. 254]). Such phrasing also chimed with the contemporary rhetoric of Tory High Churchmanship (see G.V. Bennett, The Tory Crisis in Church and State, 1688–1730: The Career of Francis Atterbury, Bishop of Rochester [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975] 52–53). 36. Trotter, The Revolution 2, 26. 37. See K. Danaher and J.G. Simms, eds., The Danish Force in Ireland, 1690–1691 (Dublin: Irish Manuscripts Commission, 1962). 38. Jeremy Collier, An Ecclesiastical History of Great Britain, 2 vols. (London: Samuel Keble et al., 1708–14) 1:213. 39. Trotter, The Revolution, 20 (cf. pp. 1–2, 33–34). 40. See Hopkins, Glencoe. 41. [Charles Leslie,] Gallienus Redivivus; or, Murther Will Out &c. Being a True Account of the De‐Witting of Glencoe, Gaffney, &c. (Edinburgh: [n. pub.,] 1695); BL, Additional MSS, 10,118 fol. 297v. 42. Trotter, The Revolution 7, 4. 43. Vertot, The History, trans. Mitchel, 6th ed. 59, 117, 124. 44. For Charles II's rescue by Jane Lane, see Charles II's Escape from Worcester: A Collection of Narratives Assembled by Samuel Pepys, ed. William Matthews (London: Bell and Sons, 1967) 50–58, 78, 96, 104, 117–18. For James's rescue by Anne Murray in 1648, see The Autobiography of Anne Lady Halkett, ed. John Gough Nichols, Camden Society, 2nd ser., vol. 13 (London: Camden Society, 1875) 20–23. 45. For the pictorial record alone, see Richard Sharp, The Engraved Record of the Jacobite Movement (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1996) 178–80, 214–15. 46. Several non‐royal Jacobites effected high‐profile jailbreaks through the assistance of women, e.g. Col. John Parker who slipped out of the Tower with his wife's help in 1694, and the Earl of Nithsdale whose Countess sprang him from the same prison in 1716. The latter affair was sufficiently celebrated to establish “Nithsdale,” transiently, as a synonym for the type of riding‐hood which the Countess used to conceal her husband's features. (See Jane Garrett, The Triumphs of Providence: The Assassination Plot, 1696 [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980] 48; The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., ed. J.A. Simpson and E.S.C. Weiner, 20 vols. [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989] 10:438.) 47. Erskine‐Hill, Poetry of Opposition and Revolution 132. Note Johnson's later parallel between the Scottish Highlanders and the Dalecarlians, “mountaineers” who preserve their ancient languages and remain “a distinct nation” within the state (A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland, ed. Mary Lascelles, The Yale Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson, vol. 9 [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1971] 44). 48. Daniel O'Brien to James III, 17 October (New Style) 1745: Royal Archives (Windsor Castle), Stuart Papers, 269/151 (C[ambridge] U[niversity] L[ibrary], Dept. of Manuscripts, microfilm reel 1343). In his capacity as historian of the War of the Austrian Succession, Voltaire did, of course, become Charles Edward's “panegiriste” after a fashion. A note on one of Voltaire's manuscripts, by the marquis de Paulmy (to whose uncle, the comte d'Argenson, as war minister, the manuscript had been sent), offers a fair assessment of the philosophe's attitude towards the Stuart prince: “Ces deux chapitres sont écrits hardiment, vivement et un peu poétiquement. On voit que Voltaire a retrouvé Charles XII et en est charmé. Il est à son aise avec de tels héros assortis à son style et à son génie. Le chapitre dix‐neuf est très touchant et très philosophique. Voltaire y est Jacobite outré, peut‐être uniquement par singularité” (Voltaire, Histoire de la guerre de 1741, ed. Jacques Maurens [Paris: Garnier Frères, 1971] 381). It is instructive to contrast this quotation with Howard Weinbrot's understanding of Voltaire's attitude, at this stage, towards Charles XII, and with Weinbrot's assessment of the plausibility of any analogy between the Swedish king and the Stuart prince. 49. For a study pertinent to our discussion, see Robert Darnton, “Poetry and the Police in Eighteenth‐Century Paris,” Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century 371 (1999) 1–22. 50. The first study to make systematic use of this material (of which a major collection survives in the Bibliothèque Mazarine, Paris) has been Thomas E. Kaiser, “The Drama of Charles Edward Stuart, Jacobite Propaganda, and French Political Protest, 1745–1750,” Eighteenth‐Century Studies 30 (1996–97) 365–81. 51. [Anon.,] Suite des reflexions libres et désinteressées; ou, Problême politique sur le parti que doivent prendre les Hollandois & les autres souverains de l'Europe alliés du Roi Georges, touchant l'envoi d'un secours de troupes que ce prince leur demande dans les circonstances présentes. Traduit de l'anglois ([Paris(?):] [n. pub.,] “1746”) 29. This pamphlet (Bibliothèque Mazarine shelfmark A 11497 [5e p.]) deals with the diplomatic flap aroused by the Dutch government's preparations to send troops into Britain to help George II suppress the rebellion. The Dutch were obliged, by treaty, to reinforce the British in such an emergency. But they were also barred, by a different treaty, from committing the troops in question to fight against the French king or his allies–which did or did not include the Jacobite rebels, depending on subjective definitions. The controversy, into which Voltaire was drawn to ghost a French protestation, erupted in late September 1745 and was not resolved until December (see F.J. McLynn, “Voltaire and the Jacobite Rising of 1745,” Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century 185 [1980] 7–20: 11–13). Despite its claimed date of 1746, no internal evidence seems to exclude the possibility that our pamphlet was published as early as October. 52. A Full Collection of All Poems upon Charles, Prince of Wales, Regent to the Kingdoms of Scotland, England, France and Ireland, and Dominions thereunto Belonging, Published Since His Arrival in Edinburgh the 17th Day of September, till the 1st of November, 1745 ([Edinburgh(?):] [n. pub.,] 1745) 4 (“Shallop”), 11 (“Children”), 5 (“VASA”) (in verses beginning “Hail Glorious Youth! the Wonder of the Age”, pp. 3–11). This poem reappears in a collection privately printed, perhaps for the 4th Duke of Beaufort, in 1750: A Collection of Loyal Songs, Poems, &c. ([Raglan Castle(?):] [n. pub.,] 1750) 7–15 (publication details noted on the fly‐leaf of the BL copy, shelfmark G.18451). 53. MacKenzie, Charles XII 21, 42–43. 54. Michael Hughes, A Plain Narrative or Journal of the Late Rebellion, Begun in 1745: Describing its Progress in Scotland and England, till the Full and Glorious Defeat at Culloden (London: Henry Whitridge, 1746) 58. 55. A Short Account of the Union Betwixt Sweden, Denmark and Norway, Which Commenced about the Year 1396, and Was Broke about the Year 1523. Taken from Puffendorf's History of Sweden p. 85. Printed at London 1702. Fit to be Perus'd by Scotsmen at this Juncture; and Published for the Benefit of Such as Have Not Access to the Book (Edinburgh: [n. pub.,] [1706]) 4 (BL shelfmark 9425.bbb.13). 56. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. H.C.G. Matthew and Brian Harrison, 61 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004) 27:72–73, 74–75. 57. Birch, “The Life of Mrs. Catharine Cockburn” v. Kelley speculates that Trotter came to know Higgons through her mother's Jacobite kinsman the Duke of Perth (Kelley, Catharine Trotter 88). 58. The 1736 reprint is as the first volume of The Historical Works of Bevill Higgons, Esq, 2 vols. (London: P. Meighan, 1736). 59. E.g., [John] Philips, The Pretender's Flight; or, A Mock Coronation. With the Humours of the Facetious Harry Saint John. A Tragi‐Comical Farce. Being the Sequel of The Earl of Mar Marr'd (London: E. Curll, 1716). 60. E.g., Julian Hoppit, A Land of Liberty?: England, 1689–1727 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000) 396–97. 61. Thomas Innes to James Edgar, 21 December (New Style) 1738: Royal Archives (Windsor Castle), Stuart Papers, 212/8 (CUL, Dept. of Manuscripts, microfilm reel 1318). 62. The Jacobite Relics of Scotland (First Series), comp. James Hogg, ed. Murray G.H. Pittock, The Stirling/South Carolina Research Edition of the Collected Works of James Hogg, vol. 10 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2002) 43, 57; also 78 (probably a late song). Pittock's relevant notes are at pp. 440, 445, 451. 63. A Full Collection 20–21. Cf. the lines beginning “Hail, Wallace! gen'rous Chief!”, and ending, “Culloden was not lost in vain”, by the Jacobite veteran of the '45, William Hamilton of Bangour (The Poems and Songs of William Hamilton of Bangour, ed. James Paterson [Edinburgh: Thomas George Stevenson, 1850] xvii). 64. B[evil] Higgons, A Short View of the English History (London: Tho. Edlin, 1723) 109. 65. The Prelude i. 212–20. 66. The main secondary sources for this well‐known affair are cited in MacKenzie, Charles XII 38 n. 60. In his discussions of Johnson's Vanity, Howard Weinbrot has staked rather a lot on the claim that the Swedo‐Jacobite plot had, by the late 1740s, faded from public memory. This suggestion, much eroded already, is further weakened by a piece of evidence not hitherto adduced: an updated version of Pufendorf's Swedish history, published at Amsterdam in 1748, discusses the plot (if only to acquit Charles XII of direct involvement), and also mentions the diplomatic fluster caused by Swedish preparations to reinforce the Jacobite rebels in 1745–46 ([Samuel von] Puffendorf [sic], Histoire de Suede, avant et depuis la fondation de la monarchie, trans. and continued by [Antoine‐Augustin Bruzen de La Martiniere(?) and others(?)], 3 vols. [Amsterdam: Zacharie Chatelain, 1748] 3:189–90, 514–17). Weinbrot also argues that the general European retrospect on Charles XII was by this point “almost uniformly hostile to him as a destructively imprudent, vengeful, madman”. Our 1748 continuation of Pufendorf calls Charles “le plus intrépide Héros de notre siecle” (3:195; Weinbrot, “Johnson, Jacobitism, and Swedish Charles” 960). 67. At least one English edition of Voltaire included, on the final verso, a Latin poem by the Scottish Jacobite Archibald Pitcairne (1652–1713). Pitcairne's poem recalls the possibility–elsewhere rumoured–of a marriage arrangement between Charles XII and James III's sister Louise‐Marie (1692–1712): Voltaire, The History of Charles XII. King of Sweden, [trans. Andrew Henderson(?) and John Locker(?),] 3rd ed. (London: C. Davis; A. Lyon, 1732) [372]; see pp. 5–7 for an idealised outline of Gustavus Vasa's career. 68. Sir John Hawkins, The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D., [corrected edn] (Dublin: Chambers, 1787) 69. 69. For some Whig subscribers, see Weinbrot, “Johnson, Jacobitism, and the Historiography of Nostalgia” 185. 70. With a letter, signed “A.Z.”, which offers as proof of Brooke's “Poetical Merit” a transcript of his prologue (which “accidentally fell into my Hands”) (Common Sense; or, The Englishman's Journal, 7 April 1739). The prologue as given here differs slightly from the version Brooke finally published. 71. For Catherine Sheffield, née Darnley, Duchess of Buckingham (c. 1682–1743) see Valerie Rumbold, Women's Place in Pope's World, Cambridge Studies in Eighteenth‐Century English Literature and Thought, vol. 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989) 168–94; for her connection with Molloy, see Jones, “The Jacobites, Charles Molloy, and Common Sense”. Charles Smith figures regularly in Memorials of John Murray of Broughton, Sometime Secretary to Prince Charles Edward, 1740–1747, ed. Robert Fitzroy Bell, Publications of the Scottish History Society, vol. 27 (Edinburgh: T. and A. Constable, 1898), “Gustavus Erricson” at 348. The subscription list appears between the preface and the prologue to Brooke, Gustavus Vasa (preliminaries unpaginated). 72. On the title page of Gallienus Redivivus (cited in note 41 above), Leslie presents an extract from Plutarch's life of Timoleon, describing the Sicilians' groans under the oppression of their “pretended DELIVERERS” (cf. Timoleon, xi. 4). 73. Old Common Sense; or, The Englishman's Journal, 24 March 1739. This essay was reprinted in the Gentleman's Magazine 9 (1739) 146–47: 146. The Whiggish Old Common Sense ran favourable notices of Brooke's play (in a poem in the same issue, also re‐run in the Gentleman's Magazine 9:156; and in its issue for 12 May 1739). But it seems to me that W.S. Lewis was correct in interpreting this rhetorical question as equating “Deliverer” with James III (The Yale Edition of Horace Walpole's Correspondence, ed. W.S. Lewis et al., 48 vols. in 47 [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1937–83] 13:171 n. 7). 74. [Anon.,] The History of the Life and Actions of Gustavus Vasa, Deliverer of his Country. Recommended to the Spectators of a Tragedy on that Subject, Now in Rehearsal at the Theatre‐Royal in Drury‐Lane. Extracted from the Best Historians (London: J. Roberts, 1739) 3. This pamphlet's release by a different publisher (J. Roberts in Warwick Lane) from the play's eventual publisher (R. Dodsley, Pall Mall) weakens the possibility that Brooke is the author. 75. Ibid. 14, 15, 29. 76. A Compleat Vindication, in Johnson, Political Works, ed. Greene 66. 77. [Anon.,] The Country Correspondent: Humbly Address'd to Gustavus Vasa, Esq; and All the Never‐Enough‐to Be Admir'd, Inimitable, and Incomparable Authors of that Famous, Excellent, and Fine New Patriot Play, Call'd The Deliverer of His Country. Which Lately Narrowly Escap'd Being Acted (London: R. Swan, 1739) 18. On Fog's, see Paul Chapman, “Jacobite Political Argument in England, 1714–1766” (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Cambridge, 1983) 63–65, 164. 78. [Anon.,] The Country Correspondent 24; Historical Manuscripts Commission, Calendar of the Stuart Papers Belonging to His Majesty the King, Preserved at Windsor Castle, 7 vols., Historical Manuscripts (Royal Commission) Reports (London: HMSO, 1902–23) 5:59–61. 79. Brooke, Gustavus Vasa 36. 80. [Anon.,] The Country Correspondent 24. 81. Ibid. 4, 5. 82. Christine Gerrard, The Patriot Opposition to Walpole: Politics, Poetry, and National Myth, 1725–1742 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994; repr. 1998) 232. 83. Haywood writes: “If the true Amor Patriæ be a Virtue these Times are not ashamed of, how must every Breast glow with the noble Ardour at the illustrious Example of [Brooke's] Gustavus Vasa, and his brave Dalecarlians?” (The Female Spectator, ed. Kathryn R. King and Alexander Pettit, 2 vols., Selected Works of Eliza Haywood, set II, vols. 2–3 [London: Pickering & Chatto, 2001] 1:277). 84. For an astute discussion of Brooke's position in Ireland, see Joseph Th. Leerssen, Mere Irish & Fíor‐Ghael: Studies in the Idea of Irish Nationality, its Development and Literary Expression Prior to the Nineteenth Century, Utrecht Publications in General and Comparative Literature, vol. 22 (Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1986) 363–64, 376–77, 386. 85. Ibid. 377. Brooke's facility as a dissembler is shown in a sycophantic letter to Pope (November 1739), where the Whig playwright refers to Pope's late mentor, the exposed and banished Jacobite agent Francis Atterbury, as “that great and good man the Bishop of Rochester” (Alexander Pope, Selected Letters, ed. Howard Erskine‐Hill [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000] 304). 86. Brooke, Gustavus Vasa 12, 22, 3, 6, 39. 87. Ibid. 15, 72. 88. Erskine‐Hill, Poetry of Opposition and Revolution 129. 89. Brooke, Gustavus Vasa 11, 16, 3. 90. The Works of James Thomson, [with a biographical introduction by P. Murdoch,] 4 vols. (London: A. Millar, 1766) 2:110–11. 91. Brooke, Gustavus Vasa, prologue (unpaginated). 92. “Henry Augustus Raymond” [Sarah Scott], The History of Gustavus Ericson, King of Sweden. With an Introductory History of Sweden, from the Middle of the Twelfth Century (London: A. Millar, 1761). 93. Gary Kelly, “Women's Provi(de)nce: Religion and Bluestocking Feminism in Sarah Scott's Millenium Hall (1762),” in Female Communities, 1600–1800: Literary Visions and Cultural Realities, ed. Rebecca D'Monté and Nicole Pohl (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000) 166–83: 175. 94. See the anonymous Mr. Morton's Zorinski and Brooke's Gustavus Vasa Compared. Also a Critique on Zorinski. As It Appeared in the Morning Post and Fashionable World; With All Such Paragraphs as Were Inserted in the Oracle and True Briton, by Mr. Morton and His Friends, in a Weak and Wild Attempt to Confute Truth. With Alterations and Additions, by Truth (London: Hookham and Carpenter, 1795). 95. Herbert Wright, “Henry Brooke's ‘Gustavus Vasa’,” Modern Language Review 14 (1919) 173–82: 177–78. 96. E.g., W. Dimond, Gustavus Vasa, The Hero of the North, An Historical Opera, new ed. (London: J. Barker, 1811); W.S. Walker, Gustavus Vasa, and Other Poems (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1813). 97. Olaudah Equiano, The Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African, Dover Thrift Edition, ed. Joslyn T. Pine (Mineola, NY: Dover, 1999) iv. 98. Omberg, “Gustavus Vasa and the Myth of the Mines” 38 n. 36. 99. T. Haweis, The Three Kings; Containing Incidents Singularly Amusing, as well as Strikingly Providential, in the Lives of Gustavus Vasa, King of Sweden; Charles II. King of England; Stanislaus II. King of Poland (London: T. Chapman, 1796).