The Crimes of Seditious Libel and Seditious Speech
This chapter provides the legal context for these discussions of eighteenth-century freedoms of press and speech and seditious publishing and speaking. The common law crimes of seditious libel and seditious words arose in England to criminalize dissent toward the king or government officials that could not successfully be suppressed as treason. The seventeenth-century crime of seditious libel was created by the Star Chamber’s Case of Libellis Famosis and other cases, and quickly attracted criticism for the Star Chamber’s prosecutions of such dissidents as Dr. Alexander Leighton, William Prynne, Dr. John Bastwick, Rev. Henry Burton, and John Lilburne. After the Revolution of 1688, that and other Star Chamber precedents were adopted by Lord Chief Justice John Holt, and an eighteenth-century framework of unique rules for prosecuting seditious libel was assembled by Holt in a series of cases, and was revised by Lord Chief Justice Mansfield.