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The Trials Of John Fowke

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The Trials Of John Fowke

A link post of the story so far

Matt Osborne
Nov 12, 2022
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The Trials Of John Fowke

www.polemology.net

I am scheduled to present the following paper at the Southern Historical Association conference in Baltimore today. It is not about John Fowke. However, as I kept researching the topic intending to write a thesis based on the paper, I noticed this very interesting fellow lurking around every corner of English Civil War London. Once I opened The Court Minutes of the East India Company, I found him right where I was looking for a gunpowder plot device. I have been struggling through Chancery Court documents ever since.

Polemology Positions
The Gunpowder Reason, A Plot
Listen now (135 min) | Before I go any further with the John Fowke project, I would like to present subscribers with a podcast version of the original term paper that started me down this rabbit hole. It’s above the picture. I was curious to understand why the British “military historians” dominating the previous generation of English-language historiography were so dismissive…
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a year ago · 1 like · Matt Osborne

Below the subscription button are all my previous posts on John Fowke of London. Future posts about him will be subscriber-only, so be sure to sign up if he interests you as much as he interests me. The grueling work of document interpretation has been slowed by the distractions of war and work this year, but there are finally fruits coming ripe on the vine, and they will be juicy.

Polemology Positions
John Fowke Versus the British East India Company
Less known than his contemporary Wallenstein, John Fowke was a merchant adventurer in an era of military entrepreneurship. A tax protester, he was also sent to the fleet for refusing to pay tonnage and poundage. After forking over a literal king’s ransom for his release, Fowke became a constant irritant to the court of Charles I and a leader in the grow…
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2 years ago · Matt Osborne

Polemology Positions
John Fowke and the Invention of News
The Mercurius Aulicus newspaper was published in Oxford and within London during the English Civil War. Like everything else organizational to the royalist war effort, it peaked in 1643 and disintegrated during 1645, lasting down the ages as an alternative view to the military victors of the conflict — and inspiring the creation of news as an industry. …
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a year ago · Matt Osborne
Polemology Positions
John Fowke and the Invention of News (Audio Version)
Listen now (6 min) | This is another podcast version of a selected post. I will be doing this for all of my posts about Fowke from now on, as the chair of my thesis committee is blind. (Have you ever seen someone give a 60-minute lecture on English Civil War historiography without notes? I have, and it’s amazing!) I will begin recording posts on other topics soon enough. Do…
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a year ago · Matt Osborne
Polemology Positions
The Piracies of John Fowke
There are few solid facts about John Fowke before 1627. We know he was born at Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire some time around 1598 to William Fowkes and Alice Carr. We are sure that he was a merchant in the Haberdashers livery company, and that he was married to Catherine Briggs, daughter of Richard Briggs. The rest of what we know about Fowke before this…
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a year ago · Matt Osborne
Polemology Positions
The Piracies of John Fowke (Audio Version)
Listen now (22 min) | I am now recording select posts as podcasts. First up is my long post from last week about John Fowke, a Puritan merchant of London whose personal war with King Charles I and the East India Company ignited a slow fuse that exploded into the English Civil Wars…
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a year ago · Matt Osborne

Polemology Positions
How to Succeed in Regicide Without Even Trying
Mercurius Politicus is considered an early newspaper, but today we might see the format as a newsletter, for each edition was printed with articles in sequence, as a single column. John Fowke, merchant adventurer of London, purchased an advertisement in the 22-29 March 1660 edition of the paper to refute widespread misinformation about his role in the t…
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a year ago · Matt Osborne
Polemology Positions
How to Succeed in Regicide Without Even Trying (Audio Version)
Listen now (13 min) | Having done as much as any Londoner possibly could to prepare for war with the king, to raise an army to meet the king in battle, to bypass the normal rules of governance in London to do that, urging action and raising troops and even collecting taxes for the purpose, agitating all the while for an open rebellion against Charles instead of halfhearted i…
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a year ago · Matt Osborne
Polemology Positions
The Walls of John Fowke
It was a dramatic scene by design. On the fateful day in January 1642 that King Charles I swept into Parliament expecting to arrest his enemies, he was embarrassed by their absence. Instead of the more famous John Pym, Denzil Holles, John Hampden, Arthur Haselrig, and William Strode, Charles found an older and even more dedicated op…
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a year ago · 1 like · Matt Osborne
Polemology Positions
The Walls of John Fowke (Audio Version)
Listen now (29 min) | It was a dramatic scene by design. On the fateful day in January 1642 that King Charles I swept into Parliament expecting to arrest his enemies, he was embarrassed by their absence. Instead of the more famous John Pym, Denzil Holles, John Hampden, Arthur Haselrig, and William Strode, Charles found an older and even more dedicated opponent waiting for hi…
Listen now
a year ago · Matt Osborne

Polemology Positions is a reader-supported publication. To help me produce the John Fowke project, please consider a paid subscription for $5 a month

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The Trials Of John Fowke

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