The accession of a new monarch was always a tense moment in Stuart Britain. Dangers abounded for both sovereign and subject. A contested succession could plunge the kingdom into civil war or provoke foreign invasion, and loyalty had to be carefully transferred from one king or queen to the next. The circumstances of a monarch's accession, and the liminal period between the death of one sovereign and the coronation of the next, could raise awkward questions about whether they had in some sense been elected by their subjects rather than inherited the throne. Any monarch who failed to establish their authority from the start set themselves up for failure.

This wide-ranging collection of essays examines the literature produced by the accession or succession of the Stuart monarchs and that of Oliver and Richard Cromwell. As several of the contributors point out, “succession literature” is a problematic term, since the genre potentially encompasses a huge range of poetry, sermons, loyal addresses, and polemical tracts that discussed either the accession of a new monarch or the succession of the next. Moreover, some of the evidence examined here can only doubtfully be described as literature, since it includes the full range of objects and actions through which monarchical authority was established and contested, including public ceremonial and coins. The coherence of the term succession literature did not particularly bother this reviewer, however, nor did the focus on England—although there are excellent essays covering Scottish and Dutch perspectives. The diversity of the material examined here is one of the strengths of the volume, and builds on the monumental scholarship of Kevin Sharpe, to whom the collection is dedicated. This is a stimulating volume that maintains excellent standards of scholarship throughout, despite the relatively large number of contributors.

The collection is organized into two parts, with the first focusing on the accession of particular rulers. Richard A. McCabe's essay examines the panegyric poetry produced during the accession of James VI of Scotland to the English throne, which expressed concerns about the new regime and even implied that his authority relied on the consent of his subjects. Alastair Bellany examines the succession of Charles I, when any smooth transition of power was complicated by the very different styles and policies of the two monarchs, as well as by rumors that James had been murdered. Stephen N. Zwicker considers how panegyric adapted to the highly unusual succession of Richard Cromwell to the Protectorate. Christopher Highley examines how poetry ostensibly meant to welcome Charles II to the throne addressed doubts about his morality, religion, and ideology, all of which were heightened by his long exile on the continent. Helmer Helmers focuses on succession literature published in the Netherlands in 1685–86, which was surprisingly supportive of James II. John West's essay examines the ways in which the succession literature of 1688–89 attempted to put a positive spin on the artificial means by which William and Mary came to the throne. Queen Anne's coronation, as Joseph Hone argues, demonstrates that arguments for monarchical legitimacy shifted from hereditary right to law, with Anne carefully navigating between Whig and Tory interests.

The second section examines themes over longer periods. Paulina Kewes's essay focuses on Robert Persons's A Conference About the Next Succession and its afterlives, making a convincing case that radical parliamentarians and Whigs owed a debt to Persons that they sometimes tried to hide. Andrew McRae offers a very perceptive analysis of poetry produced in 1603, 1660, and 1688–89, picking up and developing one of the central themes of the volume: that expressing support for authority was only one of the possible functions of panegyric. David Colclough examines sermons produced in the early Stuart period, which were not simply instances of top-down propaganda but involved negotiation. Henry Power's chapter is about commemorative verse produced by Oxford and Cambridge universities. Jane Rickard shows how Scottish coronation literature could express Scottish identity and examine Anglo-Scottish relations. Ian W. Archer's essay deals with royal processions, collaborative ceremonies that complicate our understanding of the authorship and audiences for such displays. R. Malcolm Smuts argues that misogynistic and anti-Catholic portrayals of royal consorts in the seventeenth century were surprisingly episodic, rather than being a continuous feature of political discourse. B. J. Cook examines two revisions of the coinage undertaken by James I and Charles II, perhaps the most publicly visible reconfigurations of authority in the whole century. Mark Knights's essay is about the loyal addresses through which communities gave thanks for a succession or expressed support during a crisis. Finally, Paul Hammond picks up on many of the themes already discussed through a brief discussion of Shakespeare's history plays.

A number of important arguments emerge from this hefty collection. The first is that praise and criticism were two sides of the same coin. Panegyric and other ostensibly laudatory material could communicate grievances, offer unsolicited counsel, and impose limitations on the monarch. Extravagant praise could imply that loyalty was conditional, and that royal authority rested on consent. The symbols and themes of royal propaganda were contested, appropriated, and adapted by all sides; and tropes crossed ideological, religious, and geographical borders. As several of the contributors point out, however, panegyric ran out of road toward the end of the Stuart period. It was a viable genre only so long as its central conceits—the humbleness implied by an address to the monarch and the notion that the kingdom was united in welcoming them—were still vaguely plausible. The political events of the seventeenth century, especially the Glorious Revolution, forced those who had praised the previous regime to perform embarrassing U-turns, and they eroded deference to monarchical authority in general. Partisanship made the pose of unified approval harder to sustain. By the end of the Stuart dynasty, the accession of a new monarch was still greeted with acclaim, but it did not matter as much as it once had.