"What If I Told You..." that Anti-Jesuit Rhetoric Was a Seventeenth-Century Meme?

For much of the seventeenth century, political criticism in England centered on religio-political axioms such as “godliness,” and “popery.” Regardless of one’s political position on a particular issue, appealing to the ideal that the said position would advance the godliness of the kingdom and counteract the machinations of the forces of popery was a means of establishing political credibility. Within the broader framework of anti-popish rhetoric, the Jesuits came in for particular opprobrium due to their perceived skulduggery and support of papal supremacy.

Many explanations have been offered for the importance of anti-popish rhetoric in the revolutionary decades of the seventeenth century in Britain and Ireland, but – through an examination of printed materials, personal and official correspondence, newsletters, and verse libels – this paper will explore the processes by which this rhetoric was constructed, disseminated, and used to establish a particular religio-political culture. While not strictly comparative, this paper also considers the possibility that an appreciation for the various theories and principles at work behind modern memes might open up valuable new lines of inquiry into how anti-popish rhetoric was developed and used over the course of the seventeenth century – particularly in relation to its dissemination, reception, and repetition. The ways in which Jesuit behavior was discovered, interpreted, referenced, and – in some instances – fabricated provides a fruitful case study of how anti-popish themes were resurrected in periods of political crisis.