Prison Writing, Writing Prison during the 1640s and 1650s

In this article, Jerome de Groot looks at the ways in which prison was conceived of in writings by imprisoned royalists to show that royalist writings are more diverse than we have realized. He reflects on the physical conditions of prisons and on writings about imprisonment during the 1640s and 1650s as a way of considering the complex, overlapping, and dynamic ways that legal and royalist identity was conceptualized during those decades. Prison writing shows us not simply the models that royalism deployed tu represent itself but also how it understood and engaged with multiple other discourses, including law, religion, and dissidence.