Overview

The Calves' Head Club was a secret association of anti-monarchical incendiaries who met each 30 January to mock Charles I and celebrate the anniversary of his execution. They met at night and their alcohol-fuelled shennaningans included dining on cod's, boar's, and calves' heads; and performances symbolising the King's beheading. Though a piece of Tory propaganda, Edward Ward's Secret History of the Calves'-Head Club remains the main source of information relating to this scandalous society. Via documents and testimonies, he shines a light on their shady gatherings, and conducts an exegesis of their songs, which prove replete with insolence, arrogance, and mean-spirited revanchism. Who did they think they were? seems to be the underlying question. Ward's popular text was published during the reign of Queen Anne, and enjoyed numerous reprints. This one, based on the 8th edition, comes with an appendix and other enlargements, including, as the author saw it, exposés, in verse and in prose, of the character of Presbyterians and modern Whigs; a vindication of Charles; and a defence of his character. The author has the cheek to nominate his targets his patrons, ostensibly posing as a 'friend' desiring to 'help' them by encouraging them to desist and thereby avoid prison or the chopping block.

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9781909606371

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Edward 'Ned' Ward (1667 - 1731), a publican by trade and a satirical writer by vocation, first enjoyed success with his Trip to Jamaica, published in 1698. This led to a series of other satirical travel books, including to New England, to Islington, to Sadler's Wells, to Bath, and to Stourbridge. Adapting the Jamaica format he then published his most famous work, The London Spy, which surveyed in 18 monthly instalments the seamier side of the London scene, and through which he established his name and style in the literary world. A High-Church Tory, he used his political writings to attack Whigs, Puritans, and Presbyterians; although they also landed him into trouble and, charged with sedition for accusing Queen Anne of not supporting the Tories in Parliament, was condemned to stand in the pillory. As a publican, he kept the King's Head Tavern, an alehouse in Clerkenwell, the Bacchus Tavern, and the British Coffee House, near Gray's Inn.

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