Composition, Counsel, and the Prerogatives of Deliberation

During the Jacobean era, disputes over the cognitive processes structuring both manuscript and print helped establish and bound state authority. The chapter examines the collapse of the 1614 Addled Parliament and then a conflict between James I, Francis Bacon, and Sir Edward Coke that arose in the aftermath of the session upon the arrest of Edmund Peacham for a hostile but undelivered sermon. The ensuing debate centered on the nature of Peacham’s offense and the textual evidence that revealed it, as well as the king’s right to consult with his judges prior to trial. When read together, the debates over Peacham’s manuscript and subsequent disputes over Coke’s own Reports present an ideal case study in how early modern conflicts over the processes of writing—the distillation of thought, its production on the page, and its circulation—illumine the period’s much larger struggle over the mechanisms of individual and corporate thought.