Provoking Disorder: The Politics of Speech in Protectorate Middlesex

This article explores the impact of the 1654 ordinance against challenges, duels, and provocations. Despite the Council of State's original intentions, this legislation offered non-elites the opportunity to prosecute threatening and abusive language as “provocations,” recasting interpersonal conflicts as dangerous to society rather than to an individual's “common fame.” Indeed, many of the cases prosecuted at the Middlesex sessions centered on “provocative” behavior that questioned normative social and gender relations, revealing how the Protectorate's anti-dueling legislation provided a new weapon in contests over social power. Comparing the creation and implementation of the 1654 ordinance, this article argues that the Protectorate's legislation exposed the connections between the regulation of social interactions and the preservation of the social and political order.