IN BRIEF > Topics > Data-driven demagoguery in the early 21st century

First Published: 23 February 2019
Revised (substantive): 21 February 2023

…So easie are men to be drawn to believe any thing, from such men as have gotten credit with them; and can with gentlenesse, and dexterity, take hold of their fear, and ignorance.

— THOMAS HOBBES (1588–1679), Leviathan, or the Matter, Forme, & Power of a Common-Wealth Ecclesiasticall and Civill, 1st edn., 1651, p. 56

Eloquence alone without wisdom is the onely faculty needfull
to raise seditions.

— THOMAS HOBBES (1588–1679), Philosophicall Rudiments concerning Government and Society in 3 parts, 1651, 2.12.8:186
This is an oblique reference to the Ciceronian theory of rhetoric, conjoining wisdom and eloquence (Wisdom restrains Eloquence, and Eloquence tempers Wisdom), as symbolized by the Hermathena of antiquity — an emblem of learning, “of Speech and of Truth,” and, by the late 17th century, the protector of artists (especially as refashioned in the cultural circles associated with the court of Rudolf II at Prague).

Data-Driven Demagoguery

S O R R Y, but this Web page is still under construction.

printer's decorative block

^ 17th-century head-piece, showing six boys with farm tools, engraved by Wenceslaus Hollar (1607–1677).

We apologize for the inconvenience, and hope that you will return to check on its progress another time.

If you have specific questions about planned content for this Web page on data-driven demagoguery — harnessing the power of Big Data and psychographics in the service of rhetorical trickery — contact the website editor.

A B R I E F H I S T O R I C A L N O T E O N “F A K E N E W S”

In this age of data-driven demagoguery, which enabled the monarchical presidency of Donald Trump, our centuries-old debate over “fake news” takes on new urgency.

Amendment I to the United States Constitution (adopted in 1791) reads in full: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” (as printed in 1809)

It is customary to think of the freedoms of speech and press enshrined in the Bill of Rights at the end of the 18th century as representing the founding principles of these United States.

But our 17th-century founders saw things somewhat differently. At a time when deep political divisions, and growing Stuart authoritarianism in Britain, threatened to derail popular government in the most ethnically and religiously diverse colony in British North America (New Jersey), the settlers’ representative assembly chose to limit freedom of the press in the new proprietary colony, making it a criminal offense to “wittingly and willingly forge or publish any false news.”

Government regulation of mendacious speech and communication in this country dates back to 1645, when Puritans in Massachusetts (and subsequently, in the English Commonwealth) made wilful lying a statutory crime. In more heterogeneous New Jersey, the first law against the spread of fake news (called “false news” in the statute) — “whereby the minds of people are frequently disquieted or exasperated in relation to publick affairs” — was enacted by the Third General Assembly in 1675. Accordingly, propagators of false news were to be fined ten shillings, which was also the punishment for the first offence of slander (the second offence being twenty shillings). A subsequent law enacted by the Sixth General Assembly of New Jersey imposed even harsher penalties for spreading fake news and untruth.

In Virginia, statutes addressing the growing problem of “false news” were enacted during the commonwealth as part of the entire revision in 1657–1658 of Virginia law. The revisal, comprised in 131 acts deliberately adapted to Anglo-American republican institutions, was intended to secure the civil & religious rights of the people (other than Quakers, who were targeted by the assembly for “suppression” by the state). Most important, given President Trump’s assertion at a news briefing on 4/15/2020 of his power to adjourn Congress (“I will exercise my constitutional authority to adjourn both chambers of Congress.”) in order to clear the way for recess appointments to his administration, is the evolving political struggle between the executive and legislative branches of government, which dates to the founding of the House of Burgesses in 1619, and escalated during the commonwealth years, from 1656 to 1660:

During this period a severe conflict arose between the two branches of the government, as to the constitutional power of the governor and council to dissolve the assembly. A dissolution of the house of burgesses was ordered by the governor and council; but they peremptorily refused to be dissolved, and passed a resolution declaring that any member who should depart from his post, should be “censured as a person betraying the trust reposed in him by his country.” Several other resolutions equally display the republican sentiments of the assembly; and the firmness of its members. They took an oath of screcy; passed an order directed to the high sheriff of James City county, commanding him in the name of the Lord Protector, to obey no warrant or precept directed to him from any power, except the speaker of the house of burgesses, and finally declared “that they had in themselves the full power of the election and appointment of all officers in this country, until such time as they should have order to the contrary, from the supreme power in England;” and that they were “not dissolvable by any power yet extant in Virginia, but their own.” The house of burgesses had a complete triumph. They declared all former elections of governor and council null and void; re-elected coll. Samuel Mathewes, by whom, with his council, an attempt had been made to dissolve them; and prescribed the mode of electing the governor and council in future.

(W. W. Hening, The Statutes at Large, 4 vols., new edn., 1820–1823, 1.430n*)

Early Virginia laws enacted hefty fines (“two thousand pounds of tobaccoe or less if the merritt of the cause deserve it”) for “Divulgers of False Newes” who engaged in the sort of rumor-mongering and conspiracy theories and agitprop that now flourish on social media — seditious speech, outlawed by Anglo-America’s founders, because it contributed to the spread of “false or dangerous news tending to the disturbance of the peace of this collony under the government now established.”

Back in England, Hobbists such as the marquis of Newcastle advocated censorship for those outside the governing elite — “theye Shoulde bee forbid Eyther Domestick or forrayne newse” — so as no unauthorized individual was tempted to “medle with State afayres” and “Everye man [is] kepte within his owne Circle off his office & place, for [...] Their medlinge did much disorder the Com[m]on wealth for theyr perticuler Gayne” (William Cavendish, Letter to Charles II, a scribal publication written c.1650s). Anticipating Donald Trump by several centuries, Margaret Cavendish not only joined her husband in recommending state censorship of what they viewed as seditious speech, but she also discredited the opposition’s journalists as “Parasites” and their journalism as fake news: “Gazets, which, for the most part, (out of Policy to amuse and deceive the People) contain nothing but Falshoods and Chimeraes ....” (Margaret Cavendish, The Life of the Thrice Noble, High and Puissant Prince William Cavendishe, Duke, Marquess, and Earl of Newcastle ..., 1667, d1r; qtd. and discussed further here)

facsimile of early-18th-century engraving

^ Idle Curiosity. Emblem 80 in Pierce Tempest’s English edition of Cesare Ripa’s Iconology, entitled Iconologia: or, Moral Emblems, by Caesar Ripa (London, 1709).
Ripa’s satiric portrayal of the psychological pull of the tabloid press is glossed: “She has abundance of Ears and Frogs on her Robe; her Hair stands up on end; Wings on her Shoulders; her Arms lifted up: she thrusts out her Head in a prying Posture. ¶ The Ears denote the Itch of knowing more than concerns her. The Frogs are Emblems of Inquisitiveness, by reason of their goggle-Eyes. The other things denote her running up and down, to hear, and to see, as some do after News.” (P. Tempest, Iconologia, 1709, 20)

Thus, government anxiety over the self-aggrandizing manipulation of fake news and obstinately “certain opinions in divinity and politics” (Thomas Hobbes, epistle dedicatory to his scribal publication of Behemoth, written c.1668) dates to 17th-century Anglo-America, and was shared by radicals both left and right. Hobbes even went so far as to argue that the revolutionaries’ more skillful deployment of popular media — stoking controversy over the one real grievance shared by diverse private interests throughout history (taxes) — led inexorably from paper to real bullets. In the dialogue between A. (a wise elder, with lived experience of what he speaks) and B. (younger student, eager to hear A.’s “relation of the actions you then saw, and of their causes, Pretentions, Justice, Order, Artifice and Events”) making up Hobbes’s analysis of the English civil war, Hobbes underlines the deep divisions between private and public interests which undermine every state, and which he believed only an absolute sovereign power can resolve.

     [A. (cont.)]   But this good Fortune [battles won by “the King’s Forces”] was not a little allay’d, by his besieging of Glocester, which, after it was reduc’d to the last gasp, was relieved by the Earl of Essex, whose Army was before greatly wasted, but now recruited with the Train’d Bands [militias], and Apprentices of London.
     B.   It seems not only by this, but also by many Examples in History, That there can hardly arise a long or dangerous Rebellion, that has not some such overgrown City, with an Army or two in its belly, to foment it.
     A.   Nay more; those great Capital Cities, when Rebellion is upon pretence of Grievances, must needs be of the Rebel Party, because the Grievances are for Taxes, to which Citizens, (that is Merchants, whose profession is their private gain) are naturally mortal Enemies, their only glory being, to grow excessively rich, by the wisdom of buying and selling.
     B.   But they are said to be, of all Callings, the most beneficial to the Commonwealth, by setting the poorer sort of people on work.
     A.   That is to say, by making poor people sell their Labour to them at their own prizes [prices], so that poor people, for the most part, might get a better Living by working in Bridewell [sc. a prison or house of correction in which inmates are put to work], than by spinning, weaving, and other such labour as they can do, saving that by working slightly, they may help themselves a little, to the disgrace of our Manufacture. And as most commonly they are the first Encouragers of Rebellion, presuming in their strength; so also are they, for the most part, the first that repent, deceiv’d by them that command their strength.

(Thomas Hobbes, Behemoth, the History of the Causes of the Civil-Wars of England ..., 1st authorized edn., issued by William Crooke as No. 1 in the Tracts of Mr. Thomas Hobbs of Malmsbury ..., 1682, 130–131)

As noted in the sidebar at right, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has argued that our “lack of a set definition for” the term “fake news” presents numerous problems for would-be regulators. And trying to reconcile “multiple and inconsistent meanings” across the ages only further complicates things.

E.g., post-2016, Donald Trump has popularized a narrow and narcissistic definition of “fake news” as anything that is critical of him or his presidency. To his mind, the accuracy and truthfulness of the reporting has nothing to do with judging its value. Rather, evaluating the quality of the information being spread has been displaced by questions about the authenticity (trustworthiness) of the brand spreading it. Real news is, by definition, good news for him, and originates with what Trump calls “Republican/Conservative & Fair Media.” This nakedly partisan point of view is an outgrowth of the sort of tabloid journalism pioneered by Roger Ailes, a marketing genius who “turned Fox News Channel into the most-watched cable news network in the country after less than six years on the air.” “Ailes believed that ‘Fox News would fundamentally be a marketing and communications [operation] and not a newsroom’ and understood that people ultimately ‘want their news to confirm and conform to their worldview.’” It was Ailes who, in 1996, banked on his own astute observation that “People don’t want to be informed, they want to feel informed.” (qtd. in Meredith Blake, “Roger Ailes, the Newsmaker,” Los Angeles Times, 6/30/2019, p. E6)

Thus, for President Trump, “fake news” has nothing to do with epistemology, and everything to do with marketing (undermining brand authenticity, by associating MSM brands with biased reporting and unfair coverage). His stated intent is to delegitimize elite news organizations — “to discredit you all and demean you all, so when you write negative stories about me no one will believe you” (as he reportedly told 60 Minutes correspondent Lesley Stahl off-camera).

President Trump’s sophism concerning “fake news” adds an historic twist to American legal history, turning us even further from our radical republican beginnings.

Seventeenth-century America also had a fake news problem, which was remedied by the legal innovations of godly New England colonists, inspired by the “more truth and light” dictum of the separatist theologian John Robinson (1575/6?–1625) to make lying indictable.

Sadly, Anglo-Americans’ dissenting emphasis on the primacy of truth in government is no more. As the great lawyer, judge, jurisprudent, and parliamentarian, Sir Edward Coke, said in 1609 about criminal libel at common law, the truth “is not material” in President Trump’s reframing of “fake news.” And with this false rebranding of real as “fake,” we appear to have come full circle: in an odd turn of events, our pluto-populist president’s identification of MSM criticism with seditious libel (e.g., calling mainstream media “the enemy of the people”) smacks of Stuart tyranny.

(What Financial Times economic correspondent Martin Wolf refers to as “pluto-populism” — “policies that benefit plutocrats, justified by populist rhetoric” — has a long history in Anglo-American dynastic politics, starting with the authoritarian leadership and populist policies of Protector Somerset, Edward Seymour [c.1500–1552], lord protector of England [1547–49] and effective ruler of England on behalf of Edward VI. The first such movement in Anglo-America was the pluto-populist uprising of 1676 known as Bacon’s Rebellion. Historians have divided over the charismatic Bacon’s motivations and character — “a hero who anticipated American independence”? or “a rabble-rousing, Indian-hating frontiersman unconcerned about democracy or independence”? — and the similarities between Bacon’s Rebellion in the 1670s and Trump’s “Make America Great Again” insurgency in the 2010s, leading to the Capitol Hill putsch on 6 January 2021, are striking. Bacon’s followers complained of overtaxation, political exclusion, religious persecution, and economic restrictions. The short-lived rebellion commenced with vigilante actions by frontier residents who opposed Governor William Berkeley’s Indian policy, mobilizing disgruntled frontier planters, small property holders, influential white women, white servants, and 400+ African slaves [promised their freedom by the rebels] against neighboring First Nations and the governor, at that moment in time when Virginia fully embraced slavery. For more on the grievances driving Bacon’s Rebellion, click/tap here.)

Of note, while the original Massachusetts Bay colonists “considered the privilege of petition a sacred right” (a longstanding English institution which was to be formally protected at the end of the 18th century in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution), their experiment in theocracy would brook no criticism: “In 1649 at Salem, Mary Oliver was sentenced to be whipped not more than 20 stripes for saying the Governor was unjust. Only a few months after the colony was established, Philip Ratliffe was severely punished and banished for speaking against the government and Church, and Henry Lynn was whipped and banished for writing to England against the government and justice of Massachusetts Bay.” (T. L. Wolford, “The Laws and Liberties of 1648,” 156n40)

And under Stuart colonial rule in 1640, criticizing the legislature (in this case, Anglo-America’s first representative institution, the Virginia House of Burgesses) could cost you your livelihood: “Francis Willis, clerk of Charles River court turned out of his place and fined for speaking against the laws of last Assembly and the persons concerned in making them.” (Extract from the “Minutes of the Proceedings of the Governor and Council of Virginia” for 1640 [an MS. belonging to Thomas Jefferson]; transcribed in The Statutes at Large, ed. W. W. Hening, 4 vols., new edn., 1820–1823, 1.552)

So President Trump’s lashing out against critics of his government — as in his spate of “America, love it or leave it” demagoguery (his tweets of 7/14/2019 and following) targeting four women of color in the U.S. House of Repesentatives (Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass, Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., Ilhan Omar, D-Minn) and their supporters — is not unprecedented.

But President Trump’s own propensity for spreading “false news” (untruths, disinformation, slander, BS) and manufacturing chaos is unprecedented. At this country’s founding during the 17th century, it was a criminal offense in multiple colonies (including Massachusetts, Virginia, New Jersey, Pennsylvania) for any person at the age of discretion (14 years) “to wittingly and willingly make or publish any lye, which may be pernicious to the public weal, or with intent to deceive and abuse the people with false news and reports,” “whereof no certain authority or authentick letters out of any part of America, can be produced” in evidence of truthfulness, and “whereby the minds of people are frequently disquieted or exasperated in relation to publick affairs.” And the penalty for disrupting the public sphere in this manner was severe: any perpetrator of false reports was “to be stockt or whipt” if they lacked the means to pay the escalating fines which “shall be levied upon his or their estate, for the use of the publick.”

[ TO BE CONTINUED … ]

NOTE: Early attempts to promote populist truth-telling in and about “any part of America” will be documented in detail in a related She-philosopher.com study, “Taming & Advancing Our Democracy” (forthcoming) and in a new write-up (also forthcoming) on colonial law and “prudential” law-making, to be added to the section entitled “Legislative process in the most rebellious and diverse of the founding Thirteen American Colonies (East New Jersey)”, in She-philosopher.com’s study of California’s flawed Good Neighbor Fence Act of 2013.

facsimile of 17th-century engraving

^  A Writer Employed by the Dutch Army. Late 16th–early 17th century engraving, by Hendrik Goltzius (1558–1617), captioned: “Militiae nervum bellantis, Scriba, Gradiui / Adnumero intrepidis aera satellitibus.”
     This print satirized the age’s insatiable appetite for tabloid news, along with those who reported it. In his right hand, this dandy of a journalist holds the tools of his scrivener’s trade — a rolled up paper. The military camp is in the background. Click/tap here to view a larger digital facsimile (a 246KB JPG file).
     Intelligencers had been “embedded with the military” (as we now call it in the United States) since at least the 16th century, and mostly reported on foreign affairs — some topical event, especially one which was military in nature, with repeated references to English troops serving overseas, “often with lurid or partisan details” (Joseph Frank, Beginnings of the English Newspaper 1620–1660, 2). Such early state propaganda made powerful, but limited, appeals to Englishmen: “one might expect that, after reading them [military newsbooks], young men would everywhere have rushed to join the colors. But such was not the case, for opposed to these sometimes calculating and generally stirring appeals was the spectacle of veteran soldiers, home from the wars — ragged, wounded, uncared for, forced to beg for subsistence, in danger of imprisonment as rogues and vagabonds. The sight of these men and the sound of their woes were undoubtedly enough to offset whatever emotions were engendered by the military news pamphets. As a result, impressment, rather than recruitment, was the only successful way of raising troops” to fight in the Low Countries, for example (Henry J. Webb, “Military Newsbooks during the Age of Elizabeth,” 248–9).
     Indeed, the partisan tabloid media — which provokes animosity and fans the flames of civil war in an already turbulent society — dates from this time. As does the sort of culture clash we see today (e.g. Fox News vs. MSNBC News), which placed cultural elites on the defensive. Established authors such as the poet and playwright Ben Jonson (1572–1637) worried “in the 1620s over the power of the journalist to supplant the poet as the counsellor to princes” (Joad Raymond, The Invention of the Newspaper: English Newsbooks 1641–1649, 92). And later in the century, the politician and historian Sir Philip Warwick (1609–1683) “complained that the propaganda campaign of Viscount Falkland, Colepeper, and Hyde was excessively witty and elegant. Ultimately it would make the readers more uncomfortable and suspicious than compliant.” (J. Raymond, The Invention of the Newspaper, 96n94) Hobbes also argued that elite polemicists asserting “the Essential Rights of Sovereignty” against the republican “[dream] of a mixt Power of the King and the Two Houses” (to Hobbists, “a divided Power, in which there could be no Peace”) were dangerously out-of-touch with the generality of men: “for the People either understand not, or will not trouble themselves with Controversies in writing, but rather by his compliance by Messages, go away with an opinion, That the Parliament was likely to have the Victory in the War.” Moreover, “seeing that the Penners and Contrivers of those Papers [newsbooks supporting absolute monarchy and the Stuart king’s cause], were formerly Members of the Parliament, and of another mind, and now revolted from the Parliament, because they could not bear that sway in the House which they expected, men were apt to think, they believed not what they wrote." (T. Hobbes, Behemoth, the History of the Causes of the Civil-Wars of England ..., 1st authorized edn., issued by William Crooke as No. 1 in the Tracts of Mr. Thomas Hobbs of Malmsbury ..., 1682, 129–130)
     The military newsbook — whether printed for public consumption, or the private newsletters penned by “such fellowes as Captin Rosingame thatt made 500£ a yeare with writinge newse to severall Persons,” according to the marquis of Newcastle (William Cavendish, Letter to Charles II, a scribal publication written c.1650s) — was an important precursor to the serially-published English newspaper, which was “invented” during the 17th century (Joad Raymond has dated its beginning a few months before the outbreak of civil war in England, where the early newspaper took root in the flourishing political print culture of the 1640s). While some historians attribute the first weekly English newsbooks (also called gazettes and diurnals) which appeared in November 1641, on the eve of the civil war, to the foreign-affairs “newspaper or coranto” which appeared in England in 1620, Raymond disagrees: “the immediate predecessor of the [English] newsbook was not the printed coranto but a manuscript” — “the scrivener’s newsletter.” (J. Raymond, The Invention of the Newspaper: English Newsbooks 1641–1649, 83) Newsletter writers, such as the dandy imaged by Goltzius, coexisted with print journalists for decades in the scribal marketplace, which survived the pressures on distribution and price, introduced by printed texts, well into the Restoration.
     Goltzius’s manuscript newsletter writer is depicted in typically bold style, by an artist known for his “swelling and tapering,” “dazzling engraved lines”: “The delight he takes in rendering swelling curves, be they as bombastic as they will, is irresistible. The Standard-Bearer [another military print; see following thumbnail] is a magnificent example. The pose [with striking similarities to that in A Writer Employed by the Dutch Army] was evidently a favourite one, for it is repeated in the nude figure of the Dawn (1588), a print in his broader manner.” (A. M. Hind, A History of Engraving and Etching from the 15th Century to the Year 1914, 120)
Thumbnail image of Goltzius print, *The Standard Bearer* (n.d.).
     “Goltzius was perhaps the first adequately to realise the capabilities of the graver in expressing tone and surface qualities. Much was done by an increased command of the graver in swelling or diminishing the breadth of each individual line in its own length, much again by the intermixture of lines of different thickness, a brilliant surface being often achieved by the alternation of thick and thin, while a calculated variation of the intervals between the lines of shading required to suit the various parts of the design is a third factor of scarcely less importance. Despite the efficacy of these means to render the most varied tone, the yielding folds of cloth, the shimmer of silk, the glister of steel, the whole tendency is a questionable encroachment on the domain of painting, which Dürer, Marcantonio, and the greatest masters of line had, perhaps consciously, avoided. But, for good or for ill, there are few rivals of Goltzius and his pupils, Jan Muller, Jacob Matham, and Jan Saenredam, as virtuosi of the burin.” (A. M. Hind, A History of Engraving and Etching from the 15th Century to the Year 1914, 120)
     Click/tap here to view a large digital facsimile (646KB file) of Goltzius’s print, The Standard-Bearer (n.d.), from the same series of war-time images communicating military news as A Writer Employed by the Dutch Army (n.d.).
     For more on Goltzius’s visual rhetoric, see the Editor’s Introduction for the digital reissue (2014) of Thomas Tryon’s The Planter’s Speech to his Neighbours & Country-Men of Pennsylvania, East & West-Jersey ... (1684) at our sister project known as Roses.

facsimile of early-17th-century engraved title-page

^  Title-plate for Diverse Pièces pour la Défense de la Royne Mere du Roy tres-chrestien Louys XIII (Antwerp, 1637), by Matthieu de Morgues (1582–1670), sieur de Saint-Germain. Engraved by Cornelis Galle I, after a design by Rubens.
     Author Matthieu de Morgues was a French polemicist, and chaplain of the French queen regent, Marie de Médicis (1573–1642), whom he here supported in her political power struggle with her son, Louis XIII, and the French cardinal and statesman, Armand Jean du Plessis Richelieu (1585–1642).
     The engraved title-page is a nice example of how past rulers, besieged by what Donald Trump would call “fake news” (events, facts & truths which tend to discredit a ruler and her government), put their spin on dynastic power politics, shifting the optics around their leadership, and constructing a more favorable narrative for themselves (always with themselves as triumphant hero).
     “This publication contains 801 pages of text, consisting of eleven political tracts against King Louis XIII of France and Cardinal Richelieu and in favour of the Queen-Mother, Maria de’ Medici. These tracts had been published separately during the years 1631 through 1637. They were reprinted in 1637 to serve the cause of Maria de’ Medici, who had been living in exile at the Brussels court since 1631. The author was Mathieu de Morgues, Abbot of Saint-Germain (Saint-Germain-Leprade, near Le Puy-en-Velay, 1582 – Paris, 1670). He began his career as a novice in the Jesuit Order in Avignon, and after a short stay there, he moved to Paris, where he completed his theological studies. In 1613, he became priest to Marguerite de Navarre, Henry IV’s first wife, and after her death in 1615, he assumed the same position in Louis XIII’s entourage. In the quarrel between the latter and his mother, Maria de’ Medici, Mathieu de Morgues took her side, and beginning in 1618 he wrote pamphlets in her defense. At first, he was still a close associate of Cardinal Richelieu’s, but when the latter opposed his nomination as Bishop of Toulon, they became enemies. De Morgues followed the Queen Mother into exile in the Netherlands. It was during her stay in Antwerp from 1635–36 that de Morgues met Balthasar Moretus and that for the first time the latter published the author’s tracts. When the Queen Mother left Brussels in 1638, de Morgues remained. The Cardinal-Infante bestowed upon him the position of Provost in Harelbeke near Courtrai. In 1643 he returned to France.
     “There is a large and interesting correspondence concerning this frontispiece between Moretus, the author, his brother M. du Verdier and Cornelis Galle.... It begins with a letter from Moretus to de Morgues, dated February 10, 1637, in which we first hear that Rubens is going to design the frontispiece. On April 3, 1637, Moretus wrote to du Verdier that Rubens had made the design but that another artist would execute the drawing. In spite of repeated letters from du Verdier urging Moretus to send the pencil drawing (‘le Crayon du frontispiece’ or ‘le frontispiece crayonné’) to Brussels, the drawing in question was finally sent to de Morgues on May 22, 1637. At his request, the draughtsman, Erasmus Quellin, made some corrections. The improved drawing was transmitted to de Morgues on June 20, 1637, two days after Quellin had been paid 24 guilders by Moretus. The drawing by Quellin is preserved in the Plantin-Moretus Museum. It has two pieces of paper loosely attached to it with corrections for the original sheet. Instead of transmitting the drawing to Cornelis Galle, de Morgues must have returned it to Moretus. The publisher sent it, together with the copper plate, to Galle on July 14, 1637. After a last check by the author, permission to engrave the frontispiece was given. By August 18, Galle had cut the frontispiece and delivered it to Moretus, but several small corrections were made by the engraver between August 29 and September 6. Cornelis Galle the Younger engraved the inscriptions.
     “On December 5, 1637, Galle was paid 12 guilders and 15 stuivers for printing 275 copies of the frontispiece. Nearly the whole edition, one thousand copies, was bought by the Queen Mother for 12,000 guilders. Moretus, at the request of du Verdier, distributed some copies in Antwerp, including one to Rubens.
     “The center of the frontispiece is dominated by an enthroned female figure wearing a crenellated crown and resting her arms on two obedient lions. According to Rooses, the lions represented Maria de’ Medici and Louis XIII being calmed down by a genius. Bouchery-Van den Wijngaert have given an even more complicated and far-fetched explanation. They maintain that the right side illustrates the present and the left side the future state of the relationship between the Queen Mother and her son. The enthroned female is supposed to be a personification of Maria’s political thoughts on this question: the lion to the right illustrates her present patient non-aggressiveness, the one to the left her new rise to power once Truth has been brought to light. In fact, there can be no doubt that the female figure with the turreted crown and the lions is Cybele, the mother of the gods. In this context she represents the Queen Mother. She keeps her lions under control, meaning she does not take any action against her enemies and is confident of the outcome of the differences between her and her son. This is explicitly shown by the symbols and mottoes in the upper corners. To the left is a dove with an olive branch in its beak, referring to Peace which will return, carrying the inscription CUM PACE REVERTAR (I shall return with Peace). On the other side, an eagle is poised above several snakes. Between them, one reads POSSEM SED NOLO (I could but I do not want to), meaning that the Queen Mother does not want to destroy her enemies, although she could do it.
     “In the Dedication of the book to King Louis XIII, Mathieu de Morgues emphasizes the idea that the quarrel betweeen the King and his mother is only the result of the slander uttered against her by her enemies (meaning of course Cardinal Richelieu) and that the reappearance of Truth will dissipate the differences between the two royal personages. The author hopes that his writings will help to achieve this and Rubens’s frontispiece translates this hope into two images. To the left of the title, Time rescues Truth and to the right Time destroys Discord. These two actions are closely linked since the latter will, in the opinion of de Morgues, follow the former immediately and automatically. Rubens had already used the same image of Time Rescuing Truth some fifteen years earlier in connection with the same conflict between Louis XIII and Maria de’ Medici in one of the paintings in the Medici Cycle.
     “At the bottom of the frontispiece, three small scenes illustrate the futility of the efforts of the Queen Mother’s opponents. To the left, a brillant sun breaks through the clouds and one reads PER NUBILA MAIOR (Greater through the clouds). In the center, a dragon vainly fights against the sun’s light and is killed by an arrow emanating from it. Beneath the monster, one reads PESTIFERO, INGRATO (To the pestiferous and ungrateful one). On the right, a head vainly tries to blow the clouds in front of the sun, which has chased them away. The inscription reads LUCI, QUOS EXTULIT, OBSTANT (They stand in the way of the light which has driven them away). A final inscription summarizes the fate of the villain who fights the light of truth: In Solem ingratus qui sibilat inficit auras, Caelesti debet luce perire draco (The ungrateful dragon who hisses against the sun, who infects the air, must perish through the heavenly light).
     “A proof print without the inscriptions is in the Rijksprentenkabinet, Amsterdam. The copper plate is preserved in the Plantin-Moretus Museum.” (J. R. Judson and C. Van de Velde, Book Illustrations and Title-Pages [pt. 21 of Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard], 2 vols., 1978, 1.310–313)
     Click/tap here to view a larger digital facsimile (1.7MB JPG file) of the 1637 title-plate designed by Rubens.

facsimile of early-17th-century oil painting

^  The Triumph of Truth (1622–25). Last work in the Marie de’ Medici Cycle of oil paintings, by Sir Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640).
     An heroic portrayal of the French queen regent, Marie de Médicis (1573–1642), recycling iconic themes from revered history paintings dating back to Apelles — in this case, the notion that “the truth will out” ... in time.
     This painting depicting Time Rescuing Truth was the source for Rubens’s initial design of the title-plate to Matthieu de Morgues’s Diverse Pièces pour la Défense de la Royne Mere du Roy tres-chrestien Louys XIII (Antwerp, 1637). See the Wikipedia page on the Marie de’ Medici cycle for an explanation of the painting’s symbolism, and for descriptions (and digital reproductions) of other paintings in the cycle.
     The extravagant visual rhetoric achieved by this influential cycle of heroic portraits was typical of court propaganda during the 17th century, including at England’s Caroline court, where Marie de’ Medici’s daughter, Henrietta Maria, was queen consort of Charles I. Not surprisingly, Rubens’s genius for heroic symbolism influenced book design across Europe, including illustrated works by Margaret and William Cavendish (with frontispieces and figures designed by Abraham van Diepenbeeck, a scholar of Rubens and, according to Walpole, “one of his best disciples”).
     I have long argued that Rubens’s art and celebrated collections of curiosities influenced the visual imagination of both William and Margaret Cavendish, who rented Rubenshuis from Rubens’s widow and lived there (1648–1660) during their time in exile.

facsimile of late-16th-century drawing

^  Time Rescuing Truth from Calumny (2nd half of 16th century). Allegorical drawing in pen and ink and wash, heightened with white bodycolor, over red and black chalk on paper, by the Italian Mannerist painter and architect, Federico Zuccaro (c.1540/41–1609).
     The design, another adaptation of the celebrated work by Apelles, satirizes the artist’s own court enemies who have slandered him, all the while proclaiming his innocence and eventual triumph over adversity and exile.
     The classical truism about time rescuing truth is worth revisiting in these glory days of fake news, when the unprecedented speed and reach of communication via social media gives the lie an ever greater head start on the truth, in all its colors.
     Now that we have a pathological liar as president, with numerous online counters tracking all the presidential untruths (many emanating as tweets with immediate global reach), I often encounter the witticism — “a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes” — variously attributed to Mark Twain, Winston Churchill, Thomas Jefferson, Ann Landers, etc., none of whom have proven to be its original author.
     Researchers have instead traced the source of the conceit to the 18th-century satirist Jonathan Swift (1667–1745): see “A Lie Can Travel Halfway Around the World While the Truth Is Putting On Its Shoes” by Garson O’Toole (posted to The Quote Investigator website, 7/13/2014).
     But I would argue that Swift, in turn, was reconstructing an age-old visual commonplace for the modern communications age. The classical optimism of the history painters — awarding to truth the final triumph — was demonstrably not credible in 1710. Like Hobbes before him, Swift knew that “if a Lie be believ’d only for an Hour, it has done its Work ... Falsehood flies, and the Truth comes limping after it; so that when Men come to be undeceiv’d, it is too late; the Jest is over, and the Tale has had its Effect....”

facsimile of early-17th-century engraving

^  Queen Elizabeth on Horseback (title from Horace Walpole); alternatively titled Truth Presents the Queen with a Lance and Queen Elizabeth as St. George. Inscribed across the sky (upper left): “ELIZABETHA ANGLIÆ ET HIBERNIÆ REGNÆ. &c.” Engraved after 1625 by Thomas Cecill (fl. c.1625–1640); printed after 1642.
     Actual dating of Cecill’s Queen Elizabeth on Horseback is difficult, since the printseller Peter Stent (b. in or before 1613, d. 1665) of Guiltspur Street, didn’t open his own shop until 1642, where he sold engravings printed on his own rolling presses from plates Stent had acquired second hand. “Disruptions during the civil war presented an opportunity to purchase over 700 plates from printsellers and artists” and we know that “Stent aggressively added new pieces until he had eight times more plates than any predecessor — over 1750.” (Alexander Globe, ODNB entry for Stent, n. pag.) Moreover, many of the plates, including those Stent commissioned, even from high-caliber artists such as Wenceslaus Hollar, were reworked by lesser artists. “Copper for plates was scarce because of the war, so Stent ... did not hesitate to buy up old plates and to employ journeymen to rework them to suit [his] immediate needs.” (R. Doggett, J. L. Biggs, and C. Brobeck, Impressions of Wenceslaus Hollar, 27) Plus, the audience for prints was shifting, and protecting the integrity of the artistic process was less important to those who were not connoisseurs. During the 1640s and 1650s, Stent catered “to a clientele that was more interested in revolutionary political and religious ideas and in the growing civil conflict” than in “copies of works of art.” (Doggett, Biggs & Brobeck, 24) His “business was driven not by artistic considerations, but by the question of whether his projects could recapture the investment in materials, shop overheads, and hourly rates paid to engravers.” (A. Globe, n. pag.) Stent did whatever the new commercial business model required, and he thrived.
     How or when Stent acquired Cecill’s historical portrait of Elizabeth I (1533–1603; r. 1558–1603) is unknown to me, as is the date when Stent made prints from Cecill’s plate with his name affixed. It’s quite possible that there were several states of the plate, with prints in circulation that do not bear Stent’s imprint (positioned beneath border of the print, at lower left: “sould by Peter Stent”), which has been cropped from the copy I reproduce here.
     This civil-war-era engraving by Cecill contributed to the potent narrative of Elizabeth I’s “glorious Fame” that took on a life of its own during the 17th century, as images and stories of her “heroicke Acts, and Divine Vertues” (depicting Queen Elizabeth as Justice, Temperance, Wisdom and Fortitude, personified) circulated widely, and schoolbooks promoted her reign — identified with “Justice, Valour, Honour, Temperance, Magnanimity, Clemency, Truth, Liberality, Civility, Courtesy” — to future generations.
     Cast as “the most Religious, learned and prudent Empresse that ever lived on earth: and Soveraigne Head, or supreme Ruler, next God, over this flourishing Kingdome” (Abraham Darcie, “To the Noble and Wel-Disposed Reader” in Annales, by William Camden, 3 books [part 1], 1625, n. pag.), Elizabeth I became a popular, unifying figure for a troubled commonwealth, especially during the 1640s and 1680s, when the Stuarts (Charles I, Charles II, James II) divided the nation.
     This particular print sold by Stent glorifies Elizabeth’s famous speech rallying the troops, along with public opinion, when the supposedly “invincible” Spanish Armada (130 ships, carrying about 8,000 sailors and 19,000 infantrymen) was sent to invade England at the end of May 1588. Elizabeth was in her mid-50s when she attired herself as a warrior queen (Pallas Athena qua commander-in-chief), and viewed her army at the hastily assembled Tilbury Camp (on the north side of the Thames estuary, at west Tilbury), then delivered her martial address the following day.
     The historian and herald, William Camden (1551–1623), chronicled Elizabeth I’s Armada Speech to the Troops at Tilbury Camp (9 August 1588) in the following glowing terms: “Being then already at sea, they [the Spanish fleet] tooke their route towards the North, followed by the English Fleete, unto whom they would sometimes shew their prowesse: and many being of opinion they would returne, the Queene, with a Kingly courage, mounted on horsebacke, and holding in her hand the trunchion of an ordinary Captaine, made a review of her Army, & campe, which was at Tilbury, walkes up and downe, sometimes like a Woman, and anon, with the countenance and pace of a Souldier, and with her presence and words fortifieth the courages both of the Captaines and Souldiers beyond all beliefe.” (William Camden, Annales. The True and Royall History of the Famous Empresse Elizabeth Queene of England France and Ireland &c., part 1 in 3 books, 1st Eng. trans. by Abraham Darcie, 1625, 3.282–283)
     Elizabeth’s modern biographer points out that “The myth that the might of Spain was overcome by England’s little ships is far from the true story. The English fleet was in fact the most up-to-date and formidably armed in existence. The odds were stacked against England only if the Armada succeeded in landing Parma’s [i.e., Alexander Farnese (1545–1592), Prince of Parma, and Spain’s appointed Governor of Flanders (aka the Spanish Netherlands and the Low Countries) from 1578–1592] expeditionary force. Yet, the logistics of co-ordinating the ships of Don Alonso Pérez de Guzmán el Bueno, seventh duke of Medina Sidonia, with Parma’s soldiers proved extremely problematic. With little or no prospect of success for the combined operation which was the whole point of the exercise, the advantage was seized by the English fleet on 7 August [1588] through the use of eight fireships, the existence of which was successfully hidden from the Spanish. It was a small but decisive victory, assisted by the weather. As the Spanish fleet, still more or less intact with some 112 vessels, was driven northwards, around Scotland to a series of shipwrecks in the Atlantic and on Irish coasts, Elizabeth struck the Armada medal which sounded a note of protestant providentialism rather than triumphalism. ‘God breathed and they were scattered.’” (Patrick Collinson, ODNB entry for “Elizabeth I (1533–1603), queen of England and Ireland,” n. pag.) Barely half the original Armada returned to port.
     Elizabeth’s humble turn to “protestant providentialism rather than triumphalism” in victory was also a key part of England’s Armada mythography, popularized in such press accounts as: “After this great Deliverance Queen Elizabeth (who ever held ingratitude Base, Especially towards her Almighty Protector) as she began [the Spanish skirmish] with Prayer, so she ended with Praise and Thanksgiving, commanding Publick Thanksgiving to be Celebrated in the Cathedral of St. Pauls, on Sunday Sept. 18. at which time 11. of the Spanish Ensigns were hung upon the lower Battlement of that Church.  ¶   Queen Elizabeth her self on Sunday Sept. 24. came to St. Pauls, and humbling her self on her Knees, with audible voice she praised God for that Wonderful Deliverance wrought to Her and her People.” (Anon., in T. Malthus’s abridgement of Sir Francis Drake Revived, retitled The Voyages of the Ever Renowned Sr. Francis Drake into the West Indies ... To which Is Added, an Account of his Valorous Exploits in the Spanish Invasion, 1683, 165) Of note, this glowing account of magnanimous Elizabethan conduct was published when the British commonwealth was again bitterly divided, in a book intended “to divert that Spirit of Contention that is now arisen in every one almost against his Brother, and to excite, in the Spirits of Young People especially, an AEmulation of this Worthy Patriot [Drake] in Advancing the Glory of their Country by Foreign Conquests.” (T. Malthus, “To the Reader,” The Voyages of the Ever Renowned Sr. Francis Drake into the West Indies ..., 1683, A2v)
     Cecill’s print harnesses horsepower & myth (the legend of Saint George and the Dragon, the classical allegory of Time Rescuing Truth) to magnify Elizabeth’s charismatic leadership & “Kingly courage” at Tilbury. The artist re-imagines the military scene as heroic allegory — depicting Elizabeth, astride a magnificent white steed, as a majestic figure clothed in white velvet, wearing a helmet decorated with flowers, and carrying a sword and shield, with the sun shining off her silver breastplate. Beneath her horse is a 7-headed dragon, disjointed armor and miscellaneous weapons. In the background, on the shore at Tilbury, are various formations of the soldiers whom Elizabeth inspired to greatness in battle, and on the sea is the Spanish Armada, instantly recognizable by its familiar crescent formation. In Cecill’s revisioning, Elizabeth accepts a lance extended to her by a bare-breasted female figure emerging from the flames, holding a book lettered TRUTH in her right hand. This evocative exchange between mythical women concerning the truth and legacy of Armada conduct and events — with all its religious overtones for Cecill’s mid-17th-century audience — presents us with a more complex personification of royalty, and a less omnipotent monarch, than did contemporary Elizabethan treatments of the subject.
     Cecill’s print reflects the nostalgic cult of Elizabeth which had been building since the 1620s. According to this narrative, the virgin warrior-queen’s prudent reforming spirit — her inspirational religious, political, and humanist vision for “my Realm” — was on full display in her courageous performance in the field during the Spanish invasion of 1588. What “my faithful, and loving people” actually saw and experienced during Elizabeth’s carefully staged royal visit to Tilbury on 8 and 9 August 1588 is anyone’s guess. “Perhaps an objective observer would have seen no more than a battered, rather scraggy spinster in her middle fifties perched on a fat white horse, her teeth black, her red wig slightly askew, dangling a toy sword and wearing an absurd little piece of parade-armour like something out of a theatrical property-box. But that was not what her subjects saw, dazzled as they were by more than the sun on the silver breastplate or the moisture in their eyes. They saw Judith and Esther, Gloriana and Belphoebe, Diana the virgin huntress and Minerva the wise protectress and, best of all, their own beloved queen and mistress, come in this hour of danger, in all simplicity to trust herself among them.” (Garret Mattingly, The Defeat of the Spanish Armada [Boston, 1959], 349; qtd. in Winfried Schleiner, “Divina Virago: Queen Elizabeth as an Amazon,” 168)
     The earl of Leicester, “Generall of Her Majesties auxiliary troops” in the Low Countries, who established the fortified camp at Tilbury and arranged Elizabeth’s visit to the field, had “advised against ‘imploying yor owne person in this daungerous action ... yet wyll I not that in some sort, so princely and so rare a magnanymytye shold not appere to yor people and the world as yt ys’. As a compromise [the queen] should ‘spend two or three days to se both the camp and the fort’. Yet even the visit was controversial, for the privy council was seriously worried that Elizabeth might be the target for an assassination attempt.” (Simon Adams, ODNB entry for “Dudley, Robert, earl of Leicester (1532/3–1588), courtier and magnate,” n. pag.)
     The queen was undeterred, trusting to God and placing “my chiefest strength, and safeguard in the loyal hearts and good will of my subjects.” (Elizabeth I, Armada Speech, delivered on 9 August 1588, prior to the defeat of the Spanish Armada) Her presence in the camp, walking fearlessly among “armed multitudes” to inspect her troops in person, worked wonders; but her rousing battlefield speech the next day “was pure magic.” (P. Collinson, ODNB entry for Elizabeth I, n. pag.) It was her galvanizing speech — delivered by “a weak and feeble woman” with “the heart and Stomach of a King” — that transformed the military battle into a national mission of epic proportions (a righteous war against tyrants in defense of liberty & justice).
     Nor was this the first time that Elizabeth had cast herself and her kingdom as military saints fighting against tyranny and oppression. While Drake was preparing for his Great Expedition to Spanish America in 1585, Elizabeth accepted the protectorate of the Netherlands (July 1585). About 2 weeks after Drake sailed in September, the queen published her Declaration accepting the protectorate of the Netherlands (dated at Richmond, 1 October 1585), setting forth the reasons which had induced her to give aid to the afflicted and oppressed people of the Low Countries.
     Although it is little-known today, historians consider Elizabeth’s principled proclamation, justifying the people’s rebellion against the tyranny of rulers who infringed and attempted to subvert their rights and liberties, to be “one of the noblest state papers that was ever written” and, by arousing the spirit of American colonization, one of the founding documents for the U.S., “not unworthy to take a place beside the Declaration of American Independence.” Of note, “Many of those who learnt their lesson under the influence of the sentiments expressed in this document were afterwards very instrumental in establishing English Protestant colonies in America.” (A. Brown, The Genesis of the United States, 2 vols., 1890, 1.17) In the forthcoming study, “The Missing Historical Context: Anglo-American Gun Laws & the Original Intent of the Second Amendment”, I discuss the foundational role of military men, who served in the Low Countries, in transporting Elizabeth I’s human-rights rhetoric to the mainland colonies of Anglo-America.
     I am working on a digital edition of the queen’s 1585 Declaration for the She-philosopher.com LIBRARY.
     In the meantime, see this website’s illustrated IN BRIEF biography of Queen Elizabeth I for another of Elizabeth’s celebrated photo ops, and the earl of Newcastle’s appreciation of Elizabeth’s genius in knowing “at what time to play the King, and when to qualifie it, but never put it of[f]; for in all triumphs whatsoever or publick shewing your self, you cannot put upon you too much King.” (William Cavendish, Letter of Instructions to Prince Charles for his Studies, Conduct, and Behaviour, written c.1638)
     NEW For additional context concerning Cecill’s mythologizing of Queen Elizabeth as St. George, slaying the dragon of Spanish imperialism, see the section on bearing heraldic arms in the appendix with excerpts from Archbishop John Potter’s Archaeologia Graeca (rev. and enl. 2nd edn., London, 1706), giving ancient Greek laws (6th century BCE) disarming the multitude — a founding principle for western civilization.
     Click/tap here to view a larger digital facsimile (615KB JPG file) of Cecill’s popular print, Queen Elizabeth on Horseback.

go to TOP of page

go up a level: She-philosopher.com’s IN BRIEF page

Q U I C K L I N K S

N O T E

Data-Driven Demagoguery

A B R I E F H I S T O R I C A L N O T E O N “F A K E N E W S”