Nero in Warwickshire

This chapter discusses how Eglisham's most infamous work continued to percolate through English and Scottish political culture during the 1630s. Discussion of James' murder had not ended with Buckingham's assassination in 1628. Contemporaries continued to circulate and read copies of The Forerunner, and other documents on the secret history, as they tried to understand what had gone so wrong under Buckingham's rule. In one particularly sensational case, elements of the secret history found their way into a play about the Emperor Nero, his favourite, and the problem of tyranny, a drama written, and perhaps even performed, in the English provinces during the 1630s. Despite the surface calm of the Personal Rule, the political culture remained frayed and, on some questions, deeply polarized; and memories of the 1620s remained dangerously contested.

Geography · Classical Antiquity Studies · Medieval Literature and History