List of Illustrations - Acknowledgements - Abbreviations and Note on the Text - Introduction: As clearly malignant as cavalier - 'Cum Priuilegio: For the KING': a Caroline poetry of praise - 'Bels which ring backward': war and the pen - 'T' upbraid the State Poeticks of this time': making sense of the enemy - 'Thy visage is not legible': royal author, royal text - 'Like committed Linnets': polemic and the poetry of retirement - Notes - Index

English literary history has long incorporated the category of 'Cavalier' verse, and the critical presuppositions that have shaped such a category continue, even now, to determine the ways in which much civil war writing is read. Through a detailed study of both manuscript and printed texts, James Loxley arrives at an account of the interaction between poetry and royalist political activity which for the first time presents a sustained and coherent challenge to such presuppositions.