Review: The Battle of the Frogs and Fairford's Flies: Miracles and the Pulp Press During the English Revolution

The Battle of the Frogs and Fairford's Flies: Miracles and the Pulp Press During the English Revolution by Jerome Friedman
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

After reading Charles II, it was interesting to get this anthology of responses to the Interregnum and preceding Second English Civil War through popular "newsbooks" printed up of miraculous/ominous events ala The Book of Miracles (although this has nowhere near the pictures, just one per chapter). The average Englishman, it appears, was shaken to his core by the overthrow and execution of Charles I, cruelly abrogating his divine right and upsetting an assumed world order. In their confusion and fright, writers praised Royalist highwaymen, feared witches, extolled Fortean wonders, and excoriated spiritual anarchists like Adamites and Ranters.

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