This book makes an important contribution to the ongoing debate over the
emergence of an early modern 'public sphere'. Focusing on the
petition-like form of the loyal address, it argues that these texts
helped to foster a politically aware public by mapping shifts in the
national 'mood'. Covering addressing campaigns from the late-Cromwellian
to the early Georgian period, the book explores the production,
presentation, subscription and publication of these texts. It argues
that beneath partisan attacks on the credibility of loyal addresses lay
a broad consensus about the validity of this political practice.
Ultimately, loyal addresses acknowledged the existence of a 'political
public' but did so in a way which fundamentally conceded the legitimacy
of the social and political hierarchy. They constituted a political form
perfectly suited to a fundamentally unequal society in which political
life continued to be centered on the monarchy.