The Politics and Genre of Captured Correspondence

Abstract

During the civil war, the publication of captured correspondence developed into a literary and political genre of its own, one in which interception and revelation became essential components of that material’s polemical effect and helped inform the publication and reception of more elevated correspondence. Early controversies regarding the capture and review of royal and royalist correspondence by Parliament established interpretative paradigms regarding personal and institutional liberty that would subsequently inform the famous controversy over the publication of royal letters captured at the Battle of Naseby. In particular, the publication of intercepted letters offered Parliament opportunities to reassert both its conciliar prerogatives and its traditional role as guarantor of the nation’s liberties. In response, Charles and his advisors sought instead to align interpretative authority with authorial intent, binding the meaning of a letter’s content to its individual origins rather than submitting to more public and potentially variable processes of reading.