THE PROTECTORATE'S ORDINANCE

Cromwell's Council of State's decision to curb the evils of dueling and challenges through strict legislation reflects one step in a larger, long-term agenda to regulate social interactions deemed perilous to society. Historians have long chronicled the state's drive to reform manners prior to and during the interregnum.Footnote ²² Most recently, Bernard Capp has argued that the reformation of manners peaked during the interregnum largely due to the efforts of puritan moralists, zealous local officials, and to the reformist agenda of the state.Footnote ²³ By legislating morality, the interregnum regimes and several of their ardent supporters led regional initiatives to regulate alehouses, drunkenness, fornication, and adultery and to safeguard the sabbath.Footnote ²⁴ For these reformers, the political revolution paved the way for a more complete reformation of English society. Similar to the laws regulating moral behavior, the success of the new ordinance depended on local factors, including the public's acceptance of its justifications and value. Thus, the ordinance against challenges, duels, and provocations emerged out of a larger imperative: the Protectorate's desire to create a peaceful, moral society through regulation. Much of the regime's legitimacy rested on the success of this undertaking among the populace.Footnote ²⁵

An ordered, peaceful society also required the suppression of conflict, particularly following a divisive civil war, revolution in Church, and the ongoing threat of royalist conspiracy. As with the push to regulate morals, officials attempted to stem the growth of discord through the regulation of everyday interactions. The prohibition of Sunday sports—long desired by reformers—not only protected the sanctity of the sabbath but also curbed large gatherings of young men. Similarly, through the banning of stage plays, the suppression of ales and morris dancing, and the regulation of cock matches and horse races, officials endeavored to usher in a new age of morality while limiting social gatherings that might foment unrest.Footnote ²⁶ As new, tangible threats against the interregnum regimes emerged, the emphasis of the reform movement shifted between the regulation of morals and the maintenance of peaceful social relations.

Prior to the creation of the 1654 ordinance, interregnum officials grappled with policing embarrassing quarrels and tensions brewing among England's upper ranks. Bernard Capp views the apparent rise in dueling during the Commonwealth and Protectorate as a byproduct of the “militarization” of English society.Footnote ²⁷ Such combative behavior not only threatened important alliances during the wars, but also served to foster new divisions following their end. In 1648, Parliament appointed a committee to craft anti-dueling legislation after a public engagement between Colonels Sydney and Jephson in Chelsea Fields.Footnote ²⁸ Applauding Parliament's move against the divisive custom, one London newsbook urged the Commons to quell the rise in “private discontents” that were “of sad concernment between friends” and useful to royalists “who waite for any opportunity of revenge.”Footnote ²⁹ Though Parliament ultimately failed to pass anti-dueling legislation in 1648, Commonwealth and Protectorate officials continued to punish soldiers, officers, and prominent civilians who engaged in the deadly practice.Footnote ³⁰

The high-profile duel between Lord Chandos and Henry Compton rekindled the state's interest in anti-dueling legislation in 1652.Footnote ³¹ Soon after Compton's death, Parliament ordered its law committee to introduce an “Act against Challenges, Duels, and all Provocations.” Although it was read a first and second time, the draft never passed.Footnote ³² Two years later, the Council responded harshly to yet another public quarrel between London esquires Charles Rich and John James. Both men were committed to the Tower until they had bound over 1000l, provided sureties, and pledged “not to fight with each other.” Unrelenting in their designs, Cromwell's councilors not only rejected Rich's request that the state reconsider the conditions for his release–they even refused to read his petition. Other duelists or challengers faced similar punishments before Cromwell and his Council finally approved the new ordinance on 29 June 1654.Footnote ³³ Without the hassle of parliamentary debates, the Protectorate Council managed to craft the new anti-dueling legislation to mend fissures within communities of war-torn England.

This resurgence of “private quarrells” in the spring and summer of 1654 occurred amidst a rash of worrisome events that intensified the Council's anxieties over conflict. At the year's outset, the young Protectorate encountered a string of royalist plots. In February, several conspirators were arrested following seditious gatherings at the Ship Tavern in London. Most of those taken were trivial members of a royalist group associated with the Gerard plot, and Cromwell's spymaster, John Thurloe, failed to see any real danger in their design.Footnote ³⁴ A more serious plot was uncovered the following May, when it was revealed that a group of royalists had conspired to assassinate Cromwell. Though a change in Cromwell's travel plans foiled the plotters, the scheme caught the public's imagination. To quell further threats and public murmurings, the Council of State had to initiate a high-profile trial of the traitors while removing any hint of royalist conspiracy.Footnote ³⁵

Grappling with the threat of royalist agitation, the Council took several precautionary steps to avoid a possible outbreak of unrest. Protectorate officials monitored and limited social engagements that might attract disaffected persons. In late March, the Council put forward an ordinance against cock-matches. Though designed to curb a custom associated with “Gaming, Drinking, Swearing, Quarreling, and other dissolute Practices,” the ordinance labeled any gathering an unlawful assembly, uniting the Council's designs to regulate morality and maintain the public peace.Footnote ³⁶ As the trial of the royalist traitors approached, the Council set up further protections against unrest. Informed of a series of “tumultuous” meetings of alleged Quakers in Derbyshire in early June, the Council ordered their disbandment, claiming that such meetings simply provided an excuse for “notorious” disaffected persons to “prosecute designs.”Footnote ³⁷ After farmers near Winchcomb rose up to protest the act against the cultivation of tobacco, the Council chastised local authorities for failing to apprehend the “ringleaders” of a tumult that questioned “the honour of the supreame power” of England and provided “disaffected persons” with an opportunity to assemble.Footnote ³⁸ In yet another move to quell any possible uprisings, the council put forward an ordinance prohibiting horse races for six months in early July.Footnote ³⁹ Following some troublesome races near Berwick associated with a “designe against his Highness,” the Council commanded Captain Charles Howard to keep a “very strict and vigilant eye” out for “disaffected persons” in the region and provided Howard armed reinforcements to ensure his success.Footnote ⁴⁰ With each of these preventative measures, Cromwell and his councilors attempted to police social interactions that might give way to conflict, breed disaffection, or even promote revolt.

It was during these turbulent months that the committee drafted the ordinance against challenges, duels, and all provocations. On 6 July, the Council finally ordered its proclamation alongside their new prohibition against horse races. The Protectorate employed both ordinances to curb immediate threats to the regime; yet, these policies also reflected the state's long-term designs to stifle tensions among what appeared to a populace prone to conflict. Though these two ordinances focused on containing divisions and possible seeds of disaffection among social elites, they also reflected the Protectorate's policy of closely policing social interactions to maintain stability and assert its dominance.

While the Protectorate state feared that challenges, duels, and provocations prolonged or reignited divisions forged by civil war, individuals and communities in Middlesex viewed certain provocations as a threat to established social relations. Cromwell's councilors and everyday litigants tackled the dangers of insulting speech, gestures, and ritual violence from different perspectives, but both recognized “the wonderfully disruptive power of systematic impoliteness.”Footnote ⁴¹ By prosecuting “provocative” interactions that went beyond permitted behaviors, Middlesex litigants, no longer confined by common law precedents that defined slights as “malice,” charged rivals and competitors with an indictable offense. An in-depth examination of the ordinance's implementation in Middlesex presents us with some highly suggestive explanations regarding how and why the state, its officials, and the public viewed certain actions and utterances as particularly “provocative” during the Cromwellian Protectorate. Further, comparing cases against provoking words and gestures to those of seditious talk shows that officials drew tight connections between “provocations” against neighbors, relations, and rivals with words “provoking” to state officials or even the state itself.

ENACTING THE ORDINANCE: PROSECUTING “PROVOCATIONS” IN MIDDLESEX

In its implementation, the ordinance ended up altering the patterns of prosecution in Middlesex that had prevailed in slander litigation prior to the civil war. Previously, the jurisdictional boundaries between civil, criminal, ecclesiastical, and prerogative courts were somewhat fluid, offering litigants a degree of choice in the place of prosecution. The words uttered, the gender and social status of those involved, the financial cost of litigation, the desired outcome, and the views of local officials all weighed into the choice of court, the charge, and the form of prosecution.Footnote ⁴² Courts had largely treated insult language as a part of interpersonal conflicts that injured individuals, and the possible damage a slanderous jibe might cause was a major factor in establishing jurisdiction.Footnote ⁴³ A woman taunted by jeers of “poxy whore” often turned to the London consistory court to guard her reputation. In the civil and common law courts, men defended themselves against accusations of being “rogues” or “common thieves” to avoid economic and social paralysis in a world where a man's “credit” ruled supreme.Footnote ⁴⁴ England's elites often found swift punishment for those who snubbed their honor in the High Court of Chivalry, the Star Chamber, and the House of the Lords. Not only did elites choose venues that tended to rule in their favor, but also they used courts that allowed them to sue for damages. The dissolution of the prerogative courts, the church courts, and the High Court of Chivalry in the 1640s revolutionized the prosecution of defamation and insulting gestures.

The Protectorate's criminalization of provocations in 1654 marked a notable shift in the way the law, its enforcers, and litigants managed verbal and gestural insults at the Middlesex sessions. Prior to the ordinance, JPs might decide to charge defamers with breaching the peace at the local sessions, though such cases would not proceed to a formal indictment unless the defendant was charged with assault or the plaintiff could prove the slight caused material damages.Footnote ⁴⁵ John March and other common law barristers had little patience for those who brought forward cases “to promote the malice, and vent the spleene of private jarres and discontents among men.”Footnote ⁴⁶ Though March reluctantly admitted that false accusations could result in the “disturbance of the common peace,” he claimed that such cases were rare and should only be brought to civil or criminal courts for “words of eminent slander, and of great importance.”Footnote ⁴⁷ Despite these arguments, the 1654 ordinance against challenges and provocations enabled elites and their social inferiors to prosecute abusive speech acts at the local sessions—a criminal court—that could now award damages to plaintiffs and impose fines to be paid to the state.Footnote ⁴⁸ The allocation of these cases to the general sessions challenged Edward Hyde's argument against the “arbitrary” High Court of Chivalry, in which he claimed that awarding damages for provocative words contradicted the traditions of common law.Footnote ⁴⁹

The Middlesex records reveal how quickly the language and implications of the ordinance began to inform accusations of verbal sparring by men and women from across the social spectrum.Footnote ⁵⁰ In the ten months prior to the ordinance's enactment in August 1654, accusations against the uttering of “scandalous,” “opprobrious,” “abusive,” “threatening,” “rayling,” “evil,” and “peremptory” words dot more than fifty cases detailing insulting remarks.Footnote ⁵¹ The potential danger posed by such words provided an undercurrent to each case, but they lacked—at least in charge—a uniting factor. While none of these cases described insults as “provoking,” the word appears in seventy-six records in the year following the ordinance's introduction.Footnote ⁵² Though “provocations” had been indictable at the quarter sessions prior to the ordinance, this vast increase in cases reflects the novelty of the 1654 legislation. Clerks directly noted the introduction of the new legislation, frequently referencing the “late ordinance” on their records during the first few sessions.Footnote ⁵³ These references suggest that the new legislation provided firmer support for these actions, even though justices may have been more willing to try sexual slander at the sessions due to the integration of many sexual crimes into common law courts in 1650.Footnote ⁵⁴ Litigants who wanted to prosecute malicious slights were no longer limited to seeking a recognizance for a breach of the peace at the Middlesex sessions. Anyone with the resources and the will could now prosecute insulting slurs and gestures as “provocations”—a privilege usually reserved for elites.

Though other insult language continued to appear in session files, the words “provoking,” “disgraceful,” and “challenging”–words straight from the ordinance—became the dominant descriptors in most recognizance and all indictment records.Footnote ⁵⁵ In the vast majority of cases prosecuted under the ordinance, differences that previously had informed the prosecution of defamatory language or gestures—the use of sexual slander, grumbles of insubordination, or even the use of force—were normalized and identified as provocative. In what was likely a gripe between neighbors, the court indicted Dorothy Kellaway for giving out “provoking words” to a local man and his wife.Footnote ⁵⁶ In a second, more detailed case, a local barber taunted the spouses of his social superiors, calling the ladies “jades” and “brazen faced Bitches.”Footnote ⁵⁷ A third case reports an incident in which a coachman was charged with staging a challenging gesture—a “pretended” kick—to goad a local turner.Footnote ⁵⁸ The fourth record is the briefest, noting only that Richard Stone, a butcher from Clement Danes, was indicted for handing out “disgraceful provoking words and gestures” to Thomas Capp “contrary to the Ordinance.”Footnote ⁵⁹ This generic case between two men might have been heard at the Middlesex sessions prior to the ordinance, but, in 1654, the allegation focused on the provocative nature of the conflict versus the damages to Capp's credit. This emphasis on provocation neatly linked the language and gestures of insult to the ability to incite conflict and to breach the peace of the community.

While the adoption of the ordinance's language by litigants, justices, and clerks is easy enough to trace, unraveling the definition of a “provocative” speech act is a murkier endeavor. Recognizance records generally provide few particulars about the context and motives of alleged crimes; however, certain records indicate that plaintiffs offered descriptions of malicious jibes and gestures that would be recognized as provocative to the justices and the court. The level of provocation depended on a wide range of factors: the gender and class of those involved, the performance of the utterance or gesture, the words voiced, the use or threat of violence, the spatial context, and the audience of the insult all informed its meaning.

Several cases suggest that officials and litigants often viewed “provocative” acts as ones that linked violent language with the threat of physical harm—even if only in the mind of the slandered. The threat of future pain was nothing compared to fears over the social consequences of ritualized, bodily punishment and the visible and invisible scars it left behind. In May 1655, John Hutchinson was indicted not just for calling Joanne Babbicumbe “a brazen-faced whore,” but also for threatening to harm and humiliate her by having “her duct.” Drawing on penal culture, Hutchinson used the ducking stool as a “visual cue” to haunt Babbicumbe with mental images of future public humiliation and physical pain.Footnote ⁶⁰ In an equally graphic jeer, Cicely Stanton allegedly called Ellinor Moore a “whore,” “bitch,” “jade,” and “quean” who was “so rotten that she dropped as she went along the streete.” Stanton likely taunted Moore publicly, in which case the vivid nature of her insult would have drawn eyes towards Moore's “diseased” body.Footnote ⁶¹ Shrewdly phrased, gut-wrenching insults such as these were often coupled with other threats or challenges to assert one's dominance. Though William Worrall merely used the common insults of “knave” and “rascall” in his slight against Jonas Wright, he pushed the confrontation further by challenging Wright to “come out if [he] dare[d].”Footnote ⁶² In each case, the insulting language formed part of a larger performance that posed a challenge—physical or otherwise—to the slandered.

The Council's ordinance reflected not only its awareness of the “provoking” qualities of insulting gestures, but also that the performance or non-performance of gestures was “inseparable” from abusive speech acts.Footnote ⁶³ Throughout seventeenth-century England, men and women exploited prevailing gestural codes to enhance speech acts designed to promote their social power. At times insulting or offensive gestures were more powerful than language, and such “provocations” found their way into the recognizances of the Middlesex sessions. While such descriptions were not entirely new in 1654, the legislation against gesturing altered the stakes for both those performing and those reporting insulting gestures. Suggestive gesturing of one's fingers as horns frequently accompanied charges of cuckoldry.Footnote ⁶⁴ When John and Mary Gotts charged Ann Walton for heckling Mary for being a husband-stealing “whore,” they also reported that Walton baited John by gesturing horns and jeering that he should walk “as a cuckold does.” Given her allusion to walking, it is possible she also paraded around Gotts as she performed her insult.Footnote ⁶⁵ On occasion, makeshift horns would be directed at the wife who had humiliated her husband, such as when Anne Stillman made horns with her fingers while shouting that Sarah Corbett had made her husband a cuckold. According to Corbett, once her husband heard of this accusation he beat her “most cruelly,” and thus Stillman succeeded in provoking violence, signifying the power of the insulting gesture.Footnote ⁶⁶

Even with the ordinance's explicit reference to “gestures,” most of the Middlesex records describe “provoking” words. As movements, gestural insults are often left out of written accounts, posing significant problems for historians. Despite these methodological challenges, a close reading of the sources provides us with suggestive evidence that gesturing likely accompanied more slurs than the records overtly state. In his study of the politics of gesture, Mike Braddick notes that historical records often leave an “impression” of gestures, “not only what is given out but what is given off.”Footnote ⁶⁷ An in-depth look at the session files against provocations indicates that the connection between insult language and gesture was so intimately linked in the minds of litigants, officials, and clerks that they often instinctively focused charges on words or actions easy to describe, leaving only “impressions” of performed gestures. Though the insult of “whore” lacked the heavily coded gestural equivalent of “cuckold,” those who taunted women with this damaging insult often spat at the accused “whore” or gestured symbolic punishment, such as the slitting of a woman's nose to “mark” her. Such may have been the case when Anne Hardy threatened to “slit” the nose of Jane Warner. This threat, coupled with Hardy's jeer that Warner was a “pocky whore” who was always in the hospital, earned Hardy an indictment from the jury.Footnote ⁶⁸ In one case involving two women, Elizabeth Reynolds allegedly accused Abigail Holmes of being a “poison patted whore.” Not done, she threatened to give Holmes the whore's mark, threw two bowls of beer in her face, and finally, a brick.Footnote ⁶⁹ In a less explicit case, John and Sybil Casey claimed that the porter John Jenkins “violently” insulted Mr. Casey, challenged him to a fight, and threatened to beat “out his braines” with a stone pot.Footnote ⁷⁰ The record leaves a vague impression of Jenkins possible gestures; the detailed description of his chosen weapon—the stone pot—suggests he backed up his verbal threat with a gestured demonstration. Once again, we see that oral and gestural challenges could not be easily distinguished from one another or from physical challenges. Collectively, they threatened to “provoke” violence.

Gestured violence could easily lead to actual, ritualized violence, but many offenders were still charged with “provoking” litigants instead of assaulting them. These prosecutions indicate that individuals often treated assault similarly to other methods of negotiating interpersonal relations. Before 1654, an assault would be the focus of charges at the Middlesex sessions, ensuring the case was actionable and the charge indictable. The ordinance against provocations problematizes such definitions of violence, as the performance of speech acts often involved the use of language, gesture, and physical assault interchangeably. When Anne Colchester reported Joan Smith's threat to “prove” Colchester a whore, she also reported that Smith's verbal sparring was accompanied by a physical attack on her person.Footnote ⁷¹ An entire family accused Jane Gordon of taunting them with provoking words while she assaulted, beat, and scratched them. In each case, insulting language was merely one aspect of a larger speech act that could provoke aggravation and even conflict. Both cases also detailed women's combined use of insult language, threats, and assault, blurring any distinctions between what were seen as nonviolent, feminine methods of conflict resolution and violent, masculine forms.Footnote ⁷² Assault alone did not necessarily amount to a provocation—the gender and status of those involved, the context and audience of the insult, the use of violence in conjunction with the manipulation of speech and gestures collectively made speech acts potent and “provocative.”

“PROVOCATIONS” AGAINST THE SOCIAL ORDER

Beyond the provocative traits of each spoken taunt, suggestive gesture, and physical assault, there were other underlying tensions behind many of the speech acts prosecuted as provocations during the 1650s. Not only could a jeer, gesture, or threat of violence provoke a rival; the very performance of an insulting or suggestive speech act was designed to demonstrate a degree of authority and superiority over the slighted. The ordinance reflects officials’ awareness of the power of speech and gesture to alter reigning power dynamics between individuals, but the timing of its proclamation further suggests that an attempt to assert one's dominance through a provocation or challenge intensified during a period in which social and political structures were already threatened. Arguably, instances of “provoking” language were active attempts to realign the early modern “grids of power,” and an individual challenge to one power relation undermined the legitimacy of the entire structure.Footnote ⁷³

The number of cases that involved women “provoking” men demonstrates both the reality of and the anxiety over female claims to authority and agency. Garthine Walker has argued that the relationship between women and violence was “unsettled” during the 1640s and 1650s, and that women's ability to inflict “real harm” was tangible. As with all subordinates, women were supposed to remain quiet and docile. Women's use of insult language—regardless of the words themselves—threatened the gender order. The frequent use of the ordinance against women supports the idea that “hierarchical values” were indeed strained and required protection.Footnote ⁷⁴ The sheer numbers of females being charged with provocative behavior also undermines the notion that normative gender roles forced women to use “nonviolent” insult language almost exclusively in interpersonal conflicts fought outside of the courthouse. Provocations included anything from uttering sexual slurs to challenges to fight, and the frequent use of the ordinance against women signals their appropriation of “masculine” forms of conflict resolution.

While a slight majority of actions against provocations at the Middlesex sessions in the mid-1650s involved women prosecuting women, male plaintiffs brought a significant minority of cases against female defendants. In the first year of the ordinance's implementation, female defendants accounted for 56 percent of recognizances and 37.5 percent of indictments against provoking interactions. Of the total cases with a female defendant, 40 percent included at least one male plaintiff.Footnote ⁷⁵ Cases in the London consistory court prior to the civil wars had far more female defendants (nearly two-thirds were women) but men only sued 10 percent of those cases. This marked difference between the two courts can be explained in part by the large number of women who prosecuted suits in the London consistory court. Between 1606 and 1640 women prosecuted 70 percent of defamation cases at the church court, a high number that is less unsurprising when one considers that women found ecclesiastical courts more receptive to their actions than common law courts.Footnote ⁷⁶ Even accounting for these variances, the large number of men charging women with provocations in Middlesex is suggestive of tensions in gender relations. A comparison with Robert Shoemaker's study of petty crime in Middlesex during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries also indicates that the number of women charged with “provoking” behavior in the 1650s exceeded the average. Shoemaker notes that female defendants only accounted for 37 percent of recognizances and 30 percent of indictments against offences to the peace—a fluid category that included many acts associated with provocations. The number of men prosecuting women, however, is not provided. As Shoemaker himself notes, women prosecuted more cases by recognizance than men for legal and financial reasons.Footnote ⁷⁷ The differences between these studies, the legal revolution of the 1640s, and men and women's varied paths to conflict resolution only allow for broad comparisons. The limitations common law placed on female plaintiffs and the closure of the church court undoubtedly influenced the gender ratios in the Middlesex court. Even with these important qualifications in mind, the large numbers of women charged with provocative behavior—particularly the high number of men suing women–supports the argument that gender hierarchies were under stress in Middlesex during the Protectorate. Moreover, the frequency with which women charged other women with “provocations” disturbs preconceptions that early modern women were more inclined to seek “nonviolent” forms of conflict resolution than their male counterparts. While the large number of female plaintiffs in the London church court prior to the civil wars indicates that Middlesex women had become more assertive over the course of the early seventeenth century, the 1654 ordinance against “provocations” provided both male and female litigants with a new language to conceptualize the threat such assertion posed to normative gender relations.

Women employed a wide variety of insult language and suggestive or threatening gestures to express their social power over men. Similar to cases within the church courts prior to their collapse, women occasionally used their moral authority to regulate sexual behavior by targeting deviant female sexuality, though often such insults attacked manliness implicitly.Footnote ⁷⁸ We have already seen how Ann Walton taunted John and Mary Gotts by gesturing a cuckold's horns with her fingers. However, these insults only composed one genre that women employed in their slanders against men. Jane Fuller, who was indicted for attempting to shame a local married couple, was accused of calling Elizabeth Frome a “Bawd” and claiming that both Elizabeth and her husband had been “cheaters” all their lives. Though Fuller did use a sexual insult against Elizabeth in her utterance, she also felt free to question and thereby regulate Frome's husband's credibility.Footnote ⁷⁹ Fuller's case is just one of several examples in which a woman accused a man of violating aspects of manhood not associated with female sexuality, signifying women's willingness to regulate male and female behavior publicly. In several cases, women chose to attack a man's economic reliability within different social contexts. At times this involved insulting a female neighbor by attacking her husband's ability to provide. In addition to assaulting Elizabeth Hart, Margaret Dyer “provokingly” said that all of Hart's clothes “on her and her husband's back were stolen.”Footnote ⁸⁰ In several other cases, women “provoked” men directly, frequently uttering the commonplace epithets of “rogues” or “rascalls.”Footnote ⁸¹ Joanna Hawkes allegedly called William Cahoon a thieving rogue, suggesting he had committed a criminal act.Footnote ⁸² Women who engaged in economic transactions on behalf of themselves or their families could also confront men who conducted business wrongfully or unprofessionally. Alice Burnell, the wife of a coachman, was indicted for claiming George Warner was an “old rotten rogue” who had tried to cheat her out of her money.Footnote ⁸³ While we do not know what deed led Jane Finch to insult and taunt John Brown, her insistence that Brown was a “stinking rogue” and that “many honester men than [him]” had been “hanged” was as accusatory as it was inflammatory.Footnote ⁸⁴ Whether their grievances were personal, economic, or a combination of both, each woman participated in the production and contestation of manhood to achieve their ends.Footnote ⁸⁵ The very conceptualization of these female expressions of disdain as “provocative”—as having the power to destabilize gender relations—belies the normative concepts of femininity that support the social order.

The dangers female “provocations” posed to social relations are best depicted through clashes over manliness that included the use or threat of physical violence. Although challenges and duels constituted a ritual form of violent confrontation that was largely confined to men, women did, at times, physically challenge men. As troublesome as women's speech may have been, the use of physical force compounded the threat such acts posed to gendered hierarchies.Footnote ⁸⁶ In a confrontation with Robert Taylor, Mary Cole threatened to break Taylor's neck in addition to doling out “disgracefull and provoking words.”Footnote ⁸⁷ Elizabeth Gouldingay allegedly assaulted and threatened Henry and Sisley Hickman while provoking them with “reviling” speeches.Footnote ⁸⁸ Similarly, Margery Carlin was accused of assaulting and beating John, the servant to Robert Richmond, as well as affronting him with reviling and provoking words.Footnote ⁸⁹ While Garthine Walker sees the violent behavior of women downplayed in the reporting of such confrontations, the ordinance against provocations justified plaintiffs’ or officials’ attention to any threat or act of violence.Footnote ⁹⁰ Female aggression challenged the dominance of men using both the language of insult and, on occasion, physical violence. By breaking free of normative forms of interaction, the aggressive acts performed by these women not only provoked male neighbors, artisans, or competitors, but also threatened the balance of social and gender relations.

Female “provocations” could unsettle multiple nodes of the “grids of power” in a single confrontation. Class and status were often contested terrains in these battles for social authority. When the widow Elizabeth Rutland defended her own reputation by calling Robert Ewer a “slanderous knave,” she did so in front of the Justice of the Peace.Footnote ⁹¹ Her willingness to accuse Ewer before a local official reveals the relative ease with which she expressed her moral and social superiority over Ewer. In a risky confrontation with a Middlesex JP, Ann Oxton doled out “provoking speeches” to John Waterton. Given the rank and authority of Waterton, the JP could have charged Oxton with scandalum magnatum, but the language on her record suggests he prosecuted her under the ordinance.Footnote ⁹² Other women also took it upon themselves to challenge the authority of local officials in the execution of their duties. When a constable and two concerned local men entered Sarah Lynes's house in search of a woman, Lynes barred the door against the “rogues and rascals.”Footnote ⁹³ Elizabeth Whaley thoroughly affronted and provoked the headborough Peter Argent when she came upon his watch late at night, offering the men beer and calling them “shameful and immodest names and speeches” that the clerk ruled not “with modesty to be repeated.”Footnote ⁹⁴ Much like confrontations with civilian men, at times women combined their insults with an assault on officers. Edward Allen, the headborough for Stepney, was patrolling the streets at night when he came across Hannah Welch, who, when taken by his men, not only called Allen a “roague,” but also “violently” struck him and pulled at his hair.Footnote ⁹⁵

Female aggression was not the only behavior redefined as “provocative” and threatening to the social order. Abusive words uttered at officers of the peace had long been indictable at the Middlesex sessions; however, following the implementation of the ordinance, justices and local officials frequently began to charge those who insulted and ruffled local authorities with “provoking” behavior. This specific use of the ordinance shifted officials’ focus from abusive language to the challenge posed to officers’ authority. Affronts were now conceived as attempts to discombobulate a local official, to unsteady him, and to elicit a reaction. For example, when the mariner Edward Curtis quarreled with headborough George Pierce of Wapping late one evening, Pierce not only accused Curtis of resisting the watchmen, but also of “provoking” them with jeers of “thief” and by promising to be “the death of them.”Footnote ⁹⁶ Speech acts directed towards local authorities questioned the legitimacy of their power; however, anyone who had the ability to provoke an officer to retaliate impulsively would have demonstrated a degree of superiority over the official while undermining his credibility. Though not common, such challenges to local officials did occur. Elizabeth Bewley allegedly gave Constable Alexander Briscoe provoking words that tended “to a challenge.” More explicitly, another record notes that Cornelius Daniel, a yeoman, not only assaulted and beat the headborough John Youth, but also challenged him to a fight while calling him a “hedgebird rogue.”Footnote ⁹⁷As in Daniel's case, such challenges to an officer's authority were often supported by assaults on the official's character. When the East Smithfield victualler taunted and threatened John Gelley, an Algate constable, he also claimed that if Gelley had his just “desert” he would have been hanged at Tyburn long ago.Footnote ⁹⁸

Threatening challenges to authority were problematic for officials not only because they questioned the legitimacy of traditional power structures, but also because they came close to the cultural form of conflict resolution historically limited to elites: the duel. Admitting important cultural differences existed between a formal challenge to duel and an everyday challenge to fight, there were also clear similarities between the two forms of confrontation. Historically, social elites engaged in duels to defend challenges to their honor in a show of ritualistic violence. To accept a challenge from an inferior suggested he or she was your social equal. During the early seventeenth century, most nobles and gentlemen chose to prosecute the slanders and provocations of social inferiors at courts such as the Star Chamber, King's Bench, or the High Court of Chivalry. Though the act against scandalum magnatum endured after the revolution, peers and magistrates did not use it with any regularity.Footnote ⁹⁹ The language of the 1654 ordinance and its method of implementation undermined the duel's use as a form of “social stratification,” just as Democritus’s narrative of the quarrel between the shoemaker and blacksmith had predicted.Footnote ¹⁰⁰

Though social elites constituted the primary actors in the Council's conception of the “duel,” many other people were involved in challenges to fight.Footnote ¹⁰¹ Specifically noting that the new ordinance should be used to prosecute “any person or persons of what degree or quality soever,” the Council recognized that dangerous, formal challenges were doled out by varied members of society—tradesmen, women, and aristocrats alike.Footnote ¹⁰² Thus, the Council's focus on elite duels and challenges did not preclude its willingness to extend the ordinance to the lower orders. Cases prosecuting butchers, a gardener, a bricklayer, a mariner, a wheelwright, a porter, and a woman reveal that challenges to fight were not the province of social elites alone.Footnote ¹⁰³ The yeoman Henry True and the butcher Richard Hoskins were so invested in their challenges that they placed a five-pound bet on the outcome of their fight in the fields.Footnote ¹⁰⁴ Most of these cases did not result in an indictment, which may reflect the financial burden of pursuing an action rather than attest to the importance officials and juries placed on challenges to or among social equals. Clearly, symbolic challenges were not the sole preserve of the socially ascendant. Through its implementation, the Council's legislation conveyed the similarities between all expressions designed to enhance one's own or undermine another's social and political capital. In Middlesex, cases between quarreling elites—the precise conflicts the Council intended to police—made up only a fraction of struggles prosecuted under the ordinance.

One of the most obvious threats provocative language or gestures posed to the social order came from subordinates who exploited or manipulated the “expressive order” to challenge his or her superiors. Despite the dictates of the social hierarchy, these slights often implied that the subordinate's power over elites emanated from the accused's higher moral standing. Speech acts challenging the character, behavior, or actions of a social superior directly rejected the oratorical code that required deferential silence from subordinates.Footnote ¹⁰⁵ Jeers aimed at social elites presented an interaction order not based on hierarchical values, but on the credit and character of the people involved. In a direct rejection of the traditional social order, the yeoman William Shuttle was indicted for attempting to “procure and occasion challenges and quarrels” with Thomas Rowe and Sir Henry Rowe by scandalously stating that both men, along with their families, were rogues for whom he “did not care a fart.”Footnote ¹⁰⁶ Edmund Borden, a shoemaker, was also indicted for telling Sebastian Lovedon, Esquire, that he was a “pymping rogue.”Footnote ¹⁰⁷ Considering Borden's trade, it may well be that a dispute arose over services rendered by Borden. We know from Hyde's impassioned plea against the High Court of Chivalry in 1640 that many cases in that court were fought between elites and tradesmen who had a disagreement over services rendered, and, lacking a jury, most verdicts favored the plaintiff.Footnote ¹⁰⁸ A similar clash between an elite client and a tradesman took place between George Waldrum, a butcher's son, and the gentlemen Richard Nailer. Waldrum not only called Nailer a “pimpe,” but he further jeered that “he had seen as good as him goe to be hanged.”Footnote ¹⁰⁹ The bricklayer Thomas Sturges felt authorized to tell his gentleman neighbor, John Pettifer, that he was a rogue and rascall and that his wife was a “brazen faced Queane”—a relatively obscure slight that alleged Pettifer's wife was an aging hussy. A yeoman made a similar claim to moral superiority by calling local gentleman Francis Woodcocke a rogue, rascal, coxcomb, and, far more damagingly, “an adulterer.”Footnote ¹¹⁰

In prosecutions against slights to their reputations in the Middlesex court, elites used the ordinance to protect their status against other, competing notions of social superiority. Though such cases formed a minority of recognizances, evidence from indictments that list the occupations of the plaintiffs and defendants intimates that elites did often pursue an indictment when affronted by their inferiors. These actions uncover an alternative definition of power that threatened the social order, but these cases–unlike suits prosecuted in the High Court of Chivalry–required elites to demonstrate such slights as “provocative” before jurors who may have sympathized with certain defendants’ claims to moral authority.

Even in the speech acts Cromwell's council viewed as the most dangerous—seditious and treasonable speech—we can see the influence of the ordinance's language against provoking and disgraceful words. Given the severity of seditious talk, Cromwell and his Council legislated against these crimes separately. Nevertheless, the reiteration of the 1649 treason act in January 1654 suggests that Cromwell and his Council drew connections between the threats posed by all illicit language designed to unsettle or challenge reigning power dynamics. Though less severe than the infamous 1534 treasonable-speech statute, the 1649 act along with the 1654 treason ordinance deemed certain words and expressions treasonable.Footnote ¹¹¹ Looking closely at the wording of the 1654 ordinance against treason, we find similarities between its language and that within the ordinance against challenges and provocations. The treason ordinance stated that anyone who attempted “to plot, contrive or endeavour to stir up or raise force against the Protector or the present Government, or for the subversion or alteration of the same” would be judged a traitor. The ordinance also made it clear that anyone who “maliciously” published through writing or “openly” declared that the Protector and Parliament were not the supreme authority of the nation would also be convicted as a traitor.Footnote ¹¹² According to this legislation, officials viewed these speeches not as “malice” alone, but also as attempts to provoke action or elicit strong feelings of disaffection that were damaging to the legitimacy of the commonwealth. Despite the revolution, the new treason act and ordinance still defined treason as an attempt to usurp sovereign power, and both recognized that challenges to authority threatened the Commonwealth and Protectorate's sovereignty.Footnote ¹¹³ The 1654 ordinance against challenges, duels, and provocations similarly recognized the power of speech acts to destabilize social relations. It explicitly states that “disgraceful and provoking gestures” must be criminalized to “prevent all occasions of Challenges and Quarrells.”Footnote ¹¹⁴ Lastly, both 1654 ordinances justified the creation of new legislation against old crimes due to the unstable and violent atmosphere of the commonwealth at the time.

Further evincing the links between provoking and seditious acts, the language from the ordinance against challenges, duels, and provocations had become so prevalent that officials used similar terms to describe speech acts against the state. Select cases of seditious speech suggest that officials prosecuting both ordinances drew connections between the two types of illicit utterance. Historically, terms used in cases involving slights to the state often mirrored language found in slander cases. Many grumblings against authority earned the label “scandalous” or “malicious,” much like venomous speeches uttered at neighbors.Footnote ¹¹⁵ The language found in records of seditious speeches against Protectorate officials reflects the same tensions and fears present in cases dealing with interpersonal “provocations.” Though the records never suggested that the slighted official was likely to be “provoked” by the abusive jeers, at times they did indicate officials’ concerns over the larger consequences of public grumblings against the state. When the London merchant Henry Cole was indicted for uttering that Cromwell was “a cheating rogue” who had “cheated Three nations,” Cole was accused of attempting to “stirr up and provoke” discord between the Lord Protector and the people of the “Commonwealth,” perhaps leading to further sedition or, worse, unrest.Footnote ¹¹⁶ Such phrasing was by no means unique, though the use of the word “provoke” had not been used as regularly as the phrase “to stir up” insurrection. Other language from the ordinance against provocations also made its way into cases of seditious speech. Richard Trumball, a brewer's servant, was accused of “speaking disgracefully” against Cromwell in April 1655.Footnote ¹¹⁷ Although the word “reviling” was not mentioned in the ordinance, officials and/or plaintiffs often used this descriptor when detailing language that violated the ordinance.Footnote ¹¹⁸ Arguably, the difference between these forms of illicit speech was one of scale, but during a period in which civil war and revolution had destabilized hierarchical structures, such differences blurred before the collective threat provocative utterances posed to the social order.

At times, the line between provocative language and seditious speech was indistinguishable. During the last days of the Protectorate in February 1659, Gabriel Benfield was charged with doling out “provoking, slanderous and scandalous language” to a soldier. In this particularly bold speech, Benfield allegedly taunted the trooper by remarking that all the soldiers who served the commonwealth were rogues, and that “there was not an honest man in the army.” If this had not successfully riled the soldier, he also jeered “that the soule of his late Highness was in hell, and that he was damned.” To top it all off he supposedly urged the solider to drink a health “to the landlord of the master to whom you serve.” It is hardly surprising that the record notes that his actions were “tending to the breach of the peace.”Footnote ¹¹⁹ Though Benfield's language was particularly scandalous, officials’ belief that such speeches were hazardous to public order was simply an extension of their more general fears of an incitable and quarrelsome populace. Thus, Benfield was not merely prosecuted for voicing seditious opinions, but also for attempting to provoke further disturbance between the government's forces and its civilians. The potential agency of his words—of their ability to bring about violence and disorder—was not lost on Protectorate officials.

Benfield's case illustrates the relationship between interpersonal squabbles and other speech acts that shook the foundations of the macro-order. On the most basic level, Benfield aimed his insults at one individual—a soldier—and he drew upon concepts of proper manhood when he labeled him a “rogue” and claimed that all men in the army were dishonest. Because much of what Benfield added to this jeer against the army was seditious, the record provides a rare, larger glimpse into this confrontation. Targeting his grievances with Cromwell at a rank-and-file soldier, Benfield both personally insulted the trooper while also slandering the former Lord Protector. Without both of these dynamics at play in his speech act, much of the force of Benfield's statement may have been lost on his audience. This example explicitly demonstrates how interpersonal challenges and provocations were easily tied to challenges to authority and to the social order more broadly. Squabbles between neighbors over sexual conduct, household transactions, or public credibility all belonged to a broader spectrum of illicit language that threatened to undermine authority and the social hierarchies that legitimized it. Proclaiming an ordinance against provocations during a moment of increased social and political instability suggests that this spectrum compressed as differences between genres of dangerous speech were blurred; not only did all types of provocative speech acts challenge a range of power relations, but the performance of speech acts themselves became problematic regardless of their intended target.

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Analyzing provocative language as part of the social history of politics allows us to gain perspective on how legislators, authorities, and civilians approached speech in mid-seventeenth-century English society. While none of these groups had a homogenous opinion on the subject of dangerous speech and gestures, undoubtedly those crafting the legislation had different motivations and views of speech acts than those implementing it, those using it, and those being prosecuted by it. Just as the entire performance of speech acts—the words and gestures chosen, the space in which they were acted out, and the person or office being slandered—informed its definition as “provocative,” so too did general fears over the power of speech to provoke. During times of political instability, ideas about what made speech dangerous and the reasons why it was perceived as such transformed.Footnote ¹²⁰ Officials’ heightened anxiety over the power of speech, present in other periods, rose to the surface in 1654 and informed legislation controlling the public's behavior.

Examining what officials envisioned as the likely consequences of provocative behavior speaks to how the Cromwellian regime imagined its subjects. The legislation that poured forth in the spring and summer of 1654 suggests that Protectorate officials viewed certain people as easily provoked and generally unruly. In their attempts to simplify legislation against dangerous and troublesome speech and gestures, the council crafted an ordinance that, perhaps unintentionally, brought out the connections between slanderous utterances, provoking gestures, and challenges to personal and official authority. Regardless of the councilors’ precise motivations, the emphasis their 1654 ordinance placed on the capacity of provocative words to do something—that is, to provoke conflict by unsettling social and gender relations during a time of vulnerability—suggests that they saw people's loyalties as unstable. While this is most evident in cases like Gabriel Benfield's, litigation involving provoking words between private individuals also reflected these anxieties.

Looking past the ordinance to its implementation, legal actions involving breaches of the new law problematize attempts to separate “interpersonal” from “political” conflicts during the early modern period. Through speech acts, private quarrels were easily made public, and they not only threatened the reputation, honor, and livelihood of the slandered, but also the peace upon which early modern social order was predicated. Civil war and revolution destabilized the social order, and the ordinance, while attempting to uphold these values, also provided individuals with a new outlet for expressing their social power. Local officials’ and litigants’ use of the ordinance in Middlesex suggests that the overall threat posed by all forms of provocative language, gestures, and challenges trumped differences between sexual slander, abuse of local authorities, and subversive grumblings against social superiors. While officials could still prosecute scandalum magnatum under separate legislation, the use of the ordinance to prosecute language against gentlemen and nobles reflects the porous boundaries of these criminal categories. Even in cases of seditious or treasonable speech, we see officials employing similar descriptions of the offensive words. Those who spoke against authority drew upon the same language of insult used in various interpersonal conflicts, whether they employed the gender-related language of “common fame” and “credit” or the illusion to public punishments for social infractions. Middlesex litigants and officials who appropriated the Council's anti-dueling ordinance to prosecute personal slights as provocations unearthed the intimate links between interpersonal challenges and challenges to authority. Individuals who manipulated language or gestures to usurp social or political power chipped at the hierarchical structures that upheld the political order. Labeling such interactions as “provocative” proposed that all such negotiations went beyond the pale—that these attempts to alter social relations threated to undermine the uneasy power relations of Cromwellian England.