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| | | Making History
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Go to the Listen Again page | ![]() | | | | |  | |  Tuesday 3.00-3.30 p.m | | | Vanessa Collingridge and the team answer listener’s historical queries and celebrate the way in which we all ‘make’ history. | | | | Programme 12 | 18 December 2007 |
| | |  | | | | Sedition
Where did the law of sedition that Malone was charged with originate? Making History consulted Professor Bernard Capp at the University of Warwick. He told the programme that Sedition was always about undermining the king (or the state); dangerous religious ideas were covered by heresy and later blasphemy laws.
The first acts of Parliament on seditious talk go back to Edward I in the 1270s, making it a crime to spread false and damaging stories about the king. This filled a gap in legislation - treason meant rising up in arms against the king, and something was needed to cover dangerous words which might incite such actions, even though the speaker himself had not taken any physical action at all. It becomes a far more pressing issue with Henry VIII and the Reformation: the nation was deeply divided over the break with Rome, so for several generations there were large numbers of people who thought the reigning king or queen was on the wrong side (whichever that was), and was therefore an evil person, tyrant, no fit monarch and so on. Henry VIII and Mary brought in new laws to cover seditious words or writings that fell short of treason, which the courts could now punish with fines, imprisonment, cutting off ears, or even death in certain circumstances.
Elizabeth approved, and her first Parliament confirmed all this in 1559. In both the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries there are cases of ordinary people being charged with sedition. This is not only evidence of ordinary people holding strong political views but, presumably, also people who opposed them and felt equally strongly. The civil wars brought another highly sensitive period, but the existing laws served king and parliament equally well. The law was interpreted during the interregnum to say that 'king' could stand for 'sovereign power', which covered Parliament and then Cromwell as Lord Protector. So in the 1650s it was seditious to abuse Parliament and praise the king; in the 1660s seditious to attack him.
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Making History is produced by Nick Patrick and is a Pier Production
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Vanessa has presented science and current affairs programmes for BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5 and Discovery and has presented for BBC Radio 4 & Five Live and a regular contributor to the Daily Telegraph and the Mail on Sunday, Scotsman and Sunday Herald. 