"The Devil's Bloodhound: Roger L'Estrange Caricatured" by Helen Pierce

CITATION: Pierce, Helen. "The Devil's Bloodhound: Roger L'Estrange Caricatured." Printed Images in Early Modern Britain. Ed. Michael Hunter. Burlington: Ashgate Press, 2010. 237-254. Print.
Understanding

• Question: How did an English tradition of caricature develop surrounding Roger L'Estrange?
• Answer: Whigs responded in kind to caricatures approved by L'Estrange as Licenser of the Press, but the caricature eventually outlasted visual media.
• Method:  First, Pierce juxtaposes the representation of L'Estrange circa the Popish Plot with the general development of English caricature. Second, Pierce researches the afterlife of L'Estrange's caricature.
• Assumptions: Pierce implies the development of animal caricature was a recent development in 17th century Britain, which is likely to be contradicted by Medievalists and Classicists.
• Sententiae: "During the late 1670s and early 1680s the role of printed ephemera in the shaping of popular political opinion in England was a significant one."
  "Wallis had several aliases for L'Estrange and often described his antagonist using the disparaging nickname of 'crack-fart'. This particular epithet... was an enduring one; in a letter of 1672 to Elias Ashmole, the astrologer William Lilly complains about the involvement of 'Crackfarts' in the licensing process for one of his almanacs." (245)

Overstanding

• Assessment: Pierce writes an admirable balance of formalist history (regarding the development of caricature) and New History. She understates the importance of L'Estrange for other researchers, but that's probably a lesser sin than overstatement.
• Synthesis: Like Bellany, Pierce recounts the illustrated conception of a political figure; unlike Bellany, Pierce describes images as reciprocally influential on and influenced by popular concepts.
  Also, Pierce deals with the aftermath of the 1678 Popish Plot--which is loosely analogous to the context analyzed by Jones for Canker Wormes; moreover, the two situations are similar because the paranoid anti-Jesuitical fervor of the 1620s (the aim of Jones' argument) is comparable to the fallacious anti-Catholic hysteria of the 1670s (the context of Pierce's argument).
• Application: Pierce's inclusion of the anti-Catholic parade suggests a new source of popular symbology that may be rooted in printed image-text. An analysis of the anti-Catholic figures in that procession may reveal the influence of print image on popular culture. Moreover, such an analysis of such an inventory may reveal a more concrete influence (from images onto the rest of popular culture) than evidence from playhouses or playing company properties.