The Seal of the Commonwealth. This is the version from 1651, the earlier 1649 version wore out.
The prospect of executing Charles I raised a problem for the English Parliament that, on the face of it, may look trivial but which was in fact very important: what was to be done about the royal seal? The seal was used to indicate royal approval on official documents and was therefore a crucial mark of legitimacy. Yet the royal seal (which depicted the King's head on one side and his coat of arms on the other) could not be used by a regicidal regime. Monarchies had a ready-made symbol in the image of the monarch, republics had to be more creative to find effective ways of representing the regime in material form. Another myth of republican government might then be that it is difficult to create a powerfully symbolic material culture for a republican regime. Yet various creative and innovative attempts have been made to do so.
The English regicides were certainly not deterred by the problem. Before Charles I had even been condemned to death plans were in train to produce a replacement seal. Four weeks before the regicide a new 'republican' seal had been designed and four days before Charles's death Thomas Simon was paid to produce it. As a result, the seal of the commonwealth was ready for use just a week after Charles had been executed. In place of the King's arms it depicted a map of England, Wales and Ireland (Scotland was not yet under the control of the English republic). In place of the King's head was an image of Parliament in session, reinforcing the point that that body (rather than a single individual) was now the sovereign.
Bust of a boy wearing a phrygian cap. Reproduced from Wikimedia Commons.
One obvious source of inspiration for later republicans was the Roman Republic where inscriptions, images, material objects, architecture and rituals were all developed to reflect and reinforce the power of the state. The acronym SPQR (senatus populusque romanus, 'the senate and people of Rome') served as a reminder of where power lay in the Roman system and was used as an emblem of Rome's republican government, being emblazoned not just on official documents, but also on coins and buildings. The Roman legacy also furnished a number of motifs that were picked up by later republican states. One of these was the phrygian cap or liberty bonnet. Its origins lay in the practice of shaving the heads of slaves in ancient Rome. Freed slaves would, therefore, be given a hat to hide their shaved head while their hair grew back. On this basis the phrygian cap became a symbol of liberty.
Ambrogio Lorenzetti, ‘The Allegory of Good Government’ from the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena. Reproduced from Wikimedia Commons.
The frescoes that the artist Ambrogio Lorenzetti produced for the Sale dei Nove of the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena between 1337 and 1339 constitute a particularly lavish example of the way in which republican ideology can be reflected in visual form. The cycle of six paintings present good and bad government and the effects of each in the city and in the countryside. Like written texts, the frescoes have been subject to conflicting interpretations. Quentin Skinner has challenged the traditional Aristotelian or Thomist reading, arguing instead that the frescoes reflect the ideology of pre-humanist texts and, more especially, the particular account set out in Bruno Latini's Li Livres dou trésor (Quentin Skinner, Visions of Politics, Volume II: Renaissance Virtues, Cambridge University Press, 2002, pp. 39-116). On this basis Skinner argues that the placing of the figure of peace in the middle section of the middle painting of the cycle reflects the pre-humanist view that the goal of good government is the preservation of peace and concord. He also claims that the regal figure, which had been seen as a symbolic representation of the Thomist doctrine of the common good, is in fact supposed to indicate the kind of magistrates the city should elect in order to secure the common good. Moreover, by simultaneously depicting this figure as representing the city of Siena and a supreme judge, Lorenzetti was emphasising Latini's point that the supreme ruler or judge of Siena must be the Sienese themselves. However we interpret these images, they constitute a powerful representation in visual form of republican political ideas.
Republican material culture could be used not simply to reinforce and disseminate the values of the ruling powers, but also as a tool of opposition. In eighteenth-century Britain Thomas Hollis and Thomas Spence both deployed images and artefacts alongside texts to mount extra-parliamentary republican campaigns.
The cover of the Hollis edition of Algernon Sidney’s Discourses Concerning Government, F *EC75.H7267.Zz751s Lobby IV.4.14, Houghton Library, Harvard University. I am grateful to the Houghton Library for giving me permission to include this here and to Dr Mark Somos for his assistance.
At the heart of Hollis's campaign were the texts of earlier republican authors that he republished. These included Algernon Sidney's Discourses Concerning Government, James Harrington's The Commonwealth of Oceana, Edmund Ludlow's Memoirs, Marchamont Nedham's The Excellencie of a Free State and works by John Milton. But it was not merely the words of these volumes that mattered to Hollis, their physicality or material form was also crucial to the messages that he wanted to convey. The volumes that Hollis republished, and then sent to furnish public and university libraries across Europe and North America, were lavishly produced and deliberately associated with each other by their appearance. They were bound in red leather and embossed with symbols - including a small liberty bonnet. Each volume also bore a portrait of the author designed by the Italian-born painter and engraver Giovanni Battista Cipriani. The portraits were enclosed within a wreath made by two laurel branches (alluding to the victory laurels of ancient Rome) underneath which the liberty cap was repeated. Copies of the portraits were also printed separately, perhaps as advertisements for the volume or to be displayed on a wall. Hollis also commissioned Cipriani to design medals to commemorate key victories, including one which depicted Britannia wearing a liberty cap that was designed to celebrate the victory of the British over the French at Louisbourg in 1758.
Thomas Spence's political programme was grounded in the 'Land Plan' that he first presented in a lecture to the Newcastle Philosophical Society in November 1775. Though the lecture caused controversy and resulted in Spence being expelled from the society, he continued to promote his plan in a variety of publications. These included, not just conventional political pamphlets, but also utopian, semi-fictional works such as Crusonia and Spensonia, and his cheap periodical Pig's Meat. Like Hollis, Spence also experimented with visual representations. In particular he produced tokens depicting images that reflected or served as short-hand reminders of his land plan. He also used the images, as Hollis did, to reflect his broader political views, though he was less reverential. Rather than celebrating military victories he tended to use his tokens to complain about present day injustices. Spence's tokens were subversive in their function as well as their appearance. They were produced in response to the shortage of low denomination coins in the eighteenth century. Spence's tokens could be used by the public as small change and then exchanged for legal tender at his shop. By this means his tokens could be seen as replacing or subverting government authority and royal power. This was particularly the case with those on which the head of the monarch was replaced by an image of a radical activist such as John Horne Tooke or John Thelwall. Spence also counter-stamped official regal coinage with his slogans.
Royal iconography has always been dominated by the image of the monarch. Finding an equivalent symbol to represent republican authority has been a matter of debate and experimentation for republican regimes and opposition republicans alike. Their endeavours have produced a rich repertoire of republican imagery which draws heavily on the Roman legacy, but also reflects different national and temporal contexts.
The concern of those involved in the redesign of the seal in 1649 was to ensure that it reflected the reality of the new situation. By contrast, the official iconography of the United Kingdom today misrepresents the form of government that now prevails. The state is officially a monarchy, as reflected in the fact that the Queen's head is depicted on the royal seal, coins and postage stamps. Yet sovereign power now lies not with the monarch, but in the Houses of Parliament. Perhaps it is time to return to the iconography of 1649? Contrary to the myth, there is plenty of scope for doing so.