The Stuart Successions Project

Moments of royal succession crystallize perceptions of monarchy and debates about political structures. In the early modern period, these moments also generated huge quantities of writing: mostly panegyric, but stretching across a range of other genres, including pamphlets, works of counsel, and satires. In the years between 1603 and 1702 in England, six monarchs were crowned and one Protector was installed. This interdisciplinary project proposes that attending to these moments of transition, with a breadth and depth of investigation never before attempted, will throw new light on a singularly turbulent and vibrant century of political and literary history. It will help researchers to make sense of particular controversies, and to engage afresh with some of the key debates about changes in political values and culture across the the Stuart era.
At the heart of the project is the task of defining a genre of succession writing. The project is founded on the hypothesis that contemporaries recognized and understood this genre, and that a greater modern appreciation of it promises to enrich our appreciation of the Stuart century. In pursuit of this hypothesis, the project aims to produce an annotated, online bibliographical database, cataloguing texts predominantly concerned with a succession and published, normally, within three years of a succession. This has never before been attempted, partly because of the sheer volume of relevant material; indeed in succession years material directly concerned with the transfer of power accounted for a substantial proportion of all publications. The database will function as a map to the field, of value to the project team and future generations of researchers. Within the project, the process of identification will underpin a range of editorial and interpretative work. The editorial work will lead to the publication of an anthology of succession literature, and to the dissemination of texts electronically and in performance. The interpretative work, informed but not restricted by the database, will produce two distinct, yet overlapping, kinds of publication: firstly, synchronic studies, closely analyzing particular texts and/or historical moments; and secondly, diachronic studies, using succession writing as a vehicle for reassessing changes in political values and literary practice throughout the period. This work will command the attention of researchers across a number of related fields, setting an agenda for future lines of enquiry.
The applicants bring a wealth of experience and expertise to the project. The PI, Andrew McRae, has published on politics and literature in the early Stuart period, with a specific focus on satire and libels, and an underlying concern with literary constructions of authority. He co-edited the online 'Early Stuart Libels', and managed the AHRC-funded project that produced it. The CI, Kevin Sharpe, is a leading authority on early modern literature and politics. He has held numerous grants and fellowships, and recently completed a three-volume study of representations of early modern monarchy: a project that involved a sampling of succession literature, and prompted questions about the nature and function of this material. The project team will include an Associate Research Fellow and two PhD students. In addition, the PI and CI will recruit a number of researchers, with international profiles, to produce essays for a co-edited volume.
The project's outputs will include: the database; the 150,000-word co-edited volume of essays; an edited 100,000-word anthology of succession writing; two colloquia, involving contributors to the co-edited volume; a number of articles and conference papers; an information-rich web-site; a public launch event; and two PhD dissertations. It will also provide a foundation for future work beyond the period of the grant, icluding likely monograph publications by the PI and CI, and knowledge-transfer activities.

Who will benefit from this research?
We propose that this research will have wide public interest. The project will be undertaken at a time when, in all likelihood, there will be increasing levels of interest across Britain in succession, and by extension in the meanings of monarchy. Indeed even now, as Britain prepares for a royal wedding, questions of succession are consistently debated. Moreover, when people look to history to pursue such interest, they are inevitably drawn to the seventeenth century, an era of unprecedented upheaval in which many of the nation's fundamental values and discourses were forged. Our project, as an academic investigation offering genuinely fresh perspectives upon this century, and attending afresh to the category of monarchy, therefore offers much to a wider audience of people with an informed interest not only in political and literary history, but equally in the structures and enduring political discourses of our own time.
We also propose that the project will hold particular interest for museums and galleries. Although we intend to focus specifically on literature, for sound academic reasons, we are well aware of the strong connections that might be drawn with the visual arts. The CI, in fact, has written on such material and recently served as historical consultant for the major Van Dyck exhibition at The Tate. We believe, therefore, that this project could provide a foundation for a subsequent exhibition, and we will use the period of the research to explore such possibilities. In particular, we will seek to establish links with people working on succession in other periods, with a view to being able to participate in an exhibition with wider historical breadth.

How will they benefit from this research?
We envisage the impact from the project having a relatively long duration. We will be prepared for media interest at appropriate times, at once within and beyond the period of the grant, and indeed will actively seek opportunities to bring some of the material and findings of the project into the public domain.
As described more fully in the 'Pathways to Impact' statement, we plan on connecting with non-academic beneficiaries in a number of demonstrable ways. Firstly, the website will not only serve as an entrance-point for the database, but will also contain a range of pages of explanatory materials and learning aids. In addition, it will provide c.30 selected texts, in full, accompanied by introductory notes and available additionally for audio download, read by professional actors. The web-site, moreover, will give the project long-term visibility, and increase the likelihood of subsequent application and exploitation. Secondly, a public launch event, at the conclusion of the project, will include a public lecture, a demonstration of the web-site, and public readings of exemplary texts by professional actors. Thirdly, each of the project's academic colloquia will be accompanied by a small-scale exhibition. And fourthly, we will pursue other opportunities: e.g. to publish findings and documents in The Times Literary Supplement (and comparable publications), and to develop radio programmes. We have had initial discussions with a Radio 4 producer about the latter, since we believe the material at the heart of the project is ideal for radio, and we will be keen to resume negotiations in the course of the project.
We submit, finally, that interest in the British monarchy is strong across the world, and contributes to the tourist industry in this country. This project aims to add substance to our appreciation of perceptions of monarchy in the early modern period, and to this extent should help to raise levels of engagement with this important matter of historical concern.