A few large caricatures, embodying satire of a more comprehensive description, appeared from time to time, during this troubled age. Such is a large emblematical picture, published on the 9th of November, 1642, and entitled “Heraclitus’ Dream,” for the scene is supposed to be manifested to the philosopher in a vision. In the middle of the picture the sheep are seen shearing their shepherd; while one cuts his hair, another treats his beard in the same manner. Under the picture we read the couplet—
The flocke that was wont to be shorne by the herd,
Now polleth the shepherd in spight of his beard.
No. 181. Folly Uppermost.
On the 19th of January, 1647, a caricature appeared under the title “An Embleme of the Times.” On one side War, represented as a giant in armour, is seen standing upon a heap of dead and mutilated bodies, while Hypocrisy, in the form of a woman with two faces, is flying towards a distant city. “Libertines,” “anti-sabbatarians,” and others, are hastening in the same direction; and the angel of pestilence, hovering over the city, is ready to pounce upon it.
The party of the parliament was now triumphant, and the question of religion again became the subject of dispute. The Presbyterians had been establishing a sort of tyranny over men’s minds, and sought to proscribe all other sects, till their intolerance gradually raised up a strong and general feeling of resistance. Since 1643 a brisk war of political pamphlets had been carried on between the Presbyterians and their opponents, when, in 1647, the Independents, whose cause had been espoused by the army, gained the mastery. “Sir John Presbyter” or to use the more familiar phrase, “Jack Presbyter,” furnished a subject for frequent satire, and the Presbyterians were not slow in returning the blow. In the collection in the British Museum we find a caricature which must have come from the Presbyterian party, entitled “Reall Persecution, or the Foundation of a general Toleration, displaied and portrayed by a proper emblem, and adorned with the same flowers wherewith the scoffers of this last age have strowed their libellous pamphlets.” The group which occupies the middle part of this broadside, is copied in our cut No. 181. It has its separate title, “The Picture of an English Persecutor, or a foole-ridden ante-Presbeterian sectary.” (I give the spelling as in the original.) Folly is riding on the sectarian, whom he holds with a bridle, the sectarian having the ears of an ass. The following homely rhymes are placed in the mouth of Folly,—
Behould my habit, like my witt,
Equalls his on whom sitt.
Anti-Presbyterian is, as will be seen, dressed in the height of the fashion, and says—