David Cressy’s Dangerous Talk joins the ranks of new works analyzing the power and place of speech within political culture and popular politics. Cressy’s study asks why certain “lost conversations” spoken in Whitehall corridors, at market stalls, and across dining tables were deemed dangerous. How might an alehouse squabble over proper governance elicit “shrugs” at times and unleash the full force of the law at others? To answer these questions, Cressy attempts “to reconstruct the circumstances of speech offences and the personal dynamics and ideological frictions that may have underlain them” (xii). Throughout this extensive survey, Cressy provides many vivid, meticulously researched examples of dangerous talk, from a lawyer’s drunk rant against Frederick V to Shaftesbury’s invectives against Charles II. Silence from the archives plagues other examples, and Cressy admits that these forgotten conversations only represent “the disorderly sounds of a minority” (xi). Perhaps it is only through a collective effort that historians of sociolinguistics may develop an integrated theory of the dynamics of speech, giving order to the cacophony of early modern voices.

Cressy’s book shines a bright light on the “murky” history of sedition and treason law and the prosecution of dangerous utterances. Judicial transcripts, prescriptive literature, letters, legislative proceedings, and diaries uncover the potency of illicit grumbles and well-timed insults. A synthesis of scholarly work on slander, defamation, and the language of insult sets the stage for Cressy’s analysis of words against the state. After exploring the first iterations of treason law in late medieval England, the book centers on the question of why regimes viewed specific jibes as seditious or treasonable and whether words alone could be ruled treason at all. While Henry VIII’s parliaments crafted legislation that expanded the definition of treason to include speeches and rumor definitively, Charles I’s regime was unable to convict Hugh Pyne for speaking treason in a precedent-setting case that claimed treason required physical action. Cressy ties these vicissitudes not only to shifting political and religious circumstances but also to larger transformations in political culture. Charles I may well have wished to have the protection of Henry VIII’s treason law—the strictest in English history—but his regime operated in a climate hostile to draconian limitations on political speech.

In a strong chapter dedicated to Hugh Pyne’s case, Cressy deftly reconstructs the circumstances surrounding Pyne—a well-known lawyer and former MP—who allegedly likened the “unwise” Charles I to a “child with an apple” in 1625 (116). Cressy contextualizes the case within factional politics and the tense 1620s, when Charles fielded criticisms over his favorite, the Duke of Buckingham, and his unpopular Forced Loan. The crown judges assigned to review Pyne’s case ruled that mere words were not treason, a blow to the Caroline regime. Following Pyne’s case, words alone might lead one to the scaffold only during moments of extreme political vulnerability.

In his survey of successive regimes, Cressy examines popular idioms to measure political and religious tensions pulsating through society. Those with reservations about Elizabeth I’s ability to rule often spoke in gendered and sexualized language, labeling the queen a whore or accusing her of bearing a bastard. Tensions over precarious religious settlements exposed almost every early modern monarch to charges of irreligion. Certain Elizabethan Catholics prayed for a successful Spanish invasion; Jacobean puritans charged the king and his sons with popery. Liminal moments after monarchs’ deaths also gave rise to grumbles over successors and rivals such as the Duke of Monmouth or James the “Pretender.” Closely analyzing the words uttered against vulnerable regimes, Cressy argues that scatological, sexualized, and even perverse expressions added humiliation to insults that eroded the sacrality of the English crown.

While written in the easy prose of a popular history, the book also subtly engages in historical debates. In a chapter covering the reign of Charles I, Cressy’s findings question the revisionist view that the 1630s were a period of relative consensus. The book also links shifts in legislation and action against dangerous talk to the rise of free speech. Cressy traces the gentle decline in the persecution and prosecution of “seditious” or “treasonable” language, emphasizing the Revolution of 1688–89 as an important watershed. The final sections of the book argue that successive regimes became more tolerant of dangerous speech, although amid trying times—the French Revolution, Chartist agitation, or world war—government officials sought out expressions that threatened to destabilize the political order. Against this decline, Cressy sees a growing concern with seditious writings in an increasingly literate society. This intriguing argument would benefit from a discussion of the historiography of politeness and civility that informs other works on the language of insult during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Finally, the book ends with a brief glimpse at troublesome speech today, which, Cressy suggests, no longer threatens the authority of the state but threatens the welfare of society. Expressions aimed at stirring up racial or ethnic tensions represent the sort of dangerous talk that makes jibes against the Windsors seem flippant in comparison.

Although hate crimes are a product of the modern world, Cressy rightly recognizes that antisocial language in the premodern era could also “intensify divisions within communities and erode the fabric of society” (6). He similarly claims that seditious speech “abraded the social fabric,” raising the question of what precisely made utterances “dangerous” in early modern England (41). Although he never explicitly defines the term, Cressy uses official reactions as his gauge throughout the book. While this thorough study illustrates what speeches might cause authorities to tremble, it is uncertain that these forms of illicit speech were the most dangerous to society as a whole. Cressy references seminal theories of language and speech, but his prose only engages with these concepts superficially. Scholars will benefit immensely from Cressy’s survey of seditious and treasonable speech; however, a systematic examination of the relationship between grumbles against the state and verbal spars among neighbors may more fully illuminate the dynamics of speech in premodern English society.