Freedom of speech is a notoriously unstable category. David Colclough argues that it was seen as a significant civic virtue in the early seventeenth century, particularly between circa 1603 and 1628, when there was a sustained debate on its nature, context, and limitations. He concludes that although there was no single theory of free speech, and the debate drew on a broad range of traditions, the foundation of the concept in early modern England was the desire to counsel the monarch. Moreover, claims to freedom of speech entailed a belief in the necessity of citizen participation in state decisions, encouraging people in this period to take on public identities as citizens.

The classical concept of parrhesia, free or civic speech (the Roman licentia), was intimately related to the Renaissance concept of rhetoric. A lengthy first chapter concentrates on the sixteenth century rather than the seventeenth, although it concludes with Francis Bacon's Essays, emphasizing decorum and discretion when giving counsel. Chapter 2 explores the alternative tradition of free speech drawn from the Bible and early church history. It discusses court sermons preached between 1603 and 1629, including those of John Donne, before turning to the pamphlets of Thomas Scott and his followers. Scott is described as “marrying the tradition of religious parrhesia to that of classical humanism” (119) to urge frank communication between the king and his subjects. Here and throughout the book, Colclough relies heavily on the work of Quentin Skinner and Marku Peltonen, with their emphasis on the neo-Roman republican legacy of citizenship. However, most readers of Scott will conclude that the passionate imperatives of the international Protestant cause were far more central. In Vox Populi or Newes from Spayne and other tracts, Scott was not so much counseling the king as opposing his foreign policy in general and the Spanish Match in particular. Any attempt to accommodate Scott to the model advanced by Bacon ignores both the Protestant intensity and the public impact of his pamphlets.

Chapter 3 discusses free speech in the early Stuart House of Commons, since it was only in the Commons that the Speaker formally requested freedom of speech. There is a considerable amount of Elizabethan background, but nothing on the impact of the queen's “Golden Speech” of 1601, with its explicit acceptance of the Commons’ role in reporting the grievances and burdens of the subject—specifically, monopolies—and her thanks to them for doing so. The insistence on the vague but all-encompassing model of counsel underplays the importance of the Commons’ self-perceived function as a point of contact between center and locality, “the eye of the kingdom” and hence a crucial source of raw and occasionally uncomfortable information. In 1614 and 1621, King James's attempts to dictate the agenda of Parliaments, prohibiting discussions of grievances as irrelevant to the key issues (for him), ran counter to this deeply held belief. The bitterness of the 1614 debates on impositions arose from the conviction that by imposing financial burdens without parliamentary consent, James undermined all property rights; to regard this as “a failure of communication … James was simply not speaking the same language” (160, 168) fails to grasp the supreme importance of security of property to the Commons. Similarly, James's insistence in 1621 that parliamentary privileges derived simply from the grace of previous kings (implying that they could be rescinded) agitated members so much that they immediately replied that their privileges were their inheritance (like their property); as in Magna Carta, one member added. It may well be that “the neo-Roman distinction between free men and slaves was vital to this theory” (185), but far more immediate was the language of the common law and the great charter. The model of counsel works better for the parliaments of 1624, 1625, and 1626, since to the Commons the duke of Buckingham was the evil counselor par excellence, but, oddly, there is no discussion of the 1629 session, the last before 1640, which returned to the issue of impositions and the undermining of property rights. The final climactic scene, with the Speaker held down in his chair as members insisted on their freedom to continue debate despite the royal command to adjourn the Parliament, indicates a more robust concept of free speech than merely counsel.

The last chapter discusses manuscript miscellanies, and although Colclough declines to deal with the major issue of censorship, on the grounds that others have done so, he describes vividly the semiunderground world of libels and commonplace books, stuffed with a mixture of news, rumor, and opinion. His discussion of the well-known 1605 episode of the libel on the hearse of Archbishop Whitgift focuses innovatively not on the libel but on Thomas Bywater's tract, discovered during the investigation. Bywater reproached the king for his partiality toward papists and his lack of support for the godly: surely here is a worthy precursor of Thomas Scott, rebuking more than counseling. Bywater disappeared into the Tower.

The existence or otherwise of free speech in early modern England is an important issue. This book deploys wide reading and usefully traces the concept of counsel across the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, but the insistence on using counsel as the key to unlocking every dispute is unconvincing. The fluctuating chronological focus is at odds with the declared emphasis on circa 1603–28. However, Colclough's work is undoubtedly significant in opening up a vital topic and should stimulate further research and analysis.