The Roundhead's Reply?

Continuing with what has apparently become our "Roundhead Period," here's a great engraving (Thomason Tracts 669.f.6[94]) from the same year, 1642, as the ballad "My Bird is a Roundhead." This satirical print, however, strikes back at those who seek to marginalize the godly as out-of-the-mainstream "puritans" and "roundheads." Instead, the print asserts, those who hurl these epithets are themselves "athiests" and "Arminians," or even crypto-Catholics. The print shows three men: a Sound-head (left), a Rattle-head (center), and a Round-head (right): click to enlarge Beneath the Sound-head (who wears what seems to be a "puritan" hat but whose costume does not seem otherwise particularly "puritan") are these verses: This Foolish World is full of foule mistakes, Calls Virtue, Vice; & Goodnes Badnes makes, The Orthodox, Sound & Religious Man, Atheists call Round-Head (late) a Puritan: Because Hee (roundly) Rattle-Heads, Truths foes, Plainly depaints. As this next figure showes. According to ESTC, the Rattle-Head--so-called because his two-faced head rattles from one side to the other--depicts a composite of Robert Philips, the Queen's confessor, and Archbishop Laud. He is in the process of turning from the English to the Roman Church, taking the Bible from the godly Sound-Head in one hand and transforming it into the crucifix he gives the Round-Head with his other hand. Laud, the story goes, was offered a cardinal's hat by the Pope: his defenders pointed out that he refused it; to his critics, the point was that he was offered it. The verses beneath him read: See, heer, the Rattle-Heads most Rotten-Heart, Acting the Atheists or Arminians part; Vnder One Cater-cap or Ianus-face, Rejecting Truth, a Crucifixe t'embrace: Thus Linsey-Wolsie, Priestly-Prelates vile, With Romish-rubbish did mens Soules beguile. Finally, the Round-Head image shows the godly appropriation of the pejorative epithet, turning it back on anti-puritans, who are revealed as Catholic sympathizers, if not Catholics themselves: But heer's a Round-Head to the purpose shown, A Romish-Rounded-Shavling, too well known; A Balld-pate Fryer a Round-Head indeed, Which doth (almost) Rotunditie exceed: Since These Round-Heads, with Rattle-Heads so 'gree, Romish Malignants Round-Heads right may be. The engraving, combined with the ballad discussed earlier, nicely shows how the idea of orthodoxy itself became a battleground, with each side claiming to represent the mainstream of English Protestantism. And it shows how the battle was waged in the popular press, through images and through poetry. Notes: cater-cap] the square cap worn by academics; hence, I think this is an early sort of David Horowitzian attack on "elitist" university men, whose overly curious studies have led them theologically astray. So, actually, this print gives a small answer to Simplicius's request for a post about the politics of headwar in the Civil War period: the Sound-Head's godly hat; the Rattle-Head's academic catercap; and the shaveling friar's pate. Linsey-Wolsie] ie, linsey-woolsey. Like Janus-faced, this refers to the Rattle-Head's two-faced hypocrisy, since linsey-woolsey is a fabric woven from a mixture of wool and flax. Priestly-Prelates ... Romish-Rubbish] I like the alliteration here, which nicely conveys the Rattle-Head's back-and-forth duality. Which doth (almost) Rotunditie exceed] This line is hilarious.