Identity area
Reference code
Title
Date(s)
- [17th century] (Creation)
Level of description
Extent and medium
Manuscript
Context area
Repository
Immediate source of acquisition or transfer
Content and structure area
Scope and content
Manuscript copy of The Raree Show, the libel for which Stephen College was executed for treason. In a seventeenth-century hand.
Appraisal, destruction and scheduling
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Conditions governing access
Conditions governing reproduction
Language of material
English
Script of material
Latin
Language and script notes
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Finding aids
Allied materials area
Existence and location of originals
Existence and location of copies
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Notes area
Note
Open
Note
Catalogued
Note
Stephen College (c.1635-1681) was known as "The Protestant Joiner". He became notorious at the time of the Popish Plot for authoring numerous satirical poems. His criticisms of figures like the Duke of York and Lord Chief Justice William Scroggs brought him the patronage of the Whig party. College's luck ran out however with his satirical ballad of 1681, A Ra-Ree Show, which caricatured the King. He was tried for treason first in London where a verdict of ignoramus was returned. When he was tried a second time in Oxford, he was found guilty and executed. He was memorialised as a Whig martyr, with particular notice given to the legal irregularities of the Oxford trial.