The voice of the people is assumed to have carried little authority in early modern England. Elites often caricatured the common people as an ignorant multitude and demanded their obedience, deference and silence. Hostility to the popular voice was an important element of contemporary political thought. However, evidence for a very different set of views can be found in numerous polemical tracts written between the Reformation and the English Civil War. These tracts claimed to speak for the people, and sought to represent their alleged grievances to the monarch or parliament. They subverted the rules of petitioning by speaking for ‘the people’ as a whole and appealing to a wide audience, making demands for the redress of grievances that left little room for the royal prerogative. In doing so, they contradicted stereotypes about the multitude, arguing that the people were rational, patriotic and potentially better informed about the threats to the kingdom than the monarch themselves. ‘Public opinion’ was used to confer legitimacy on political and religious demands long before the mass subscription petitioning campaigns of the 1640s.

中文翻译：

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为早期现代英格兰的人民说话*

人们认为，在现代早期的英国，人民的声音几乎没有权威。精英们经常将普通民众讽刺为无知的大众，并要求他们服从、尊重和沉默。对流行声音的敌意是当代政治思想的一个重要元素。然而，在宗教改革和英国内战之间撰写的众多论战小册子中，可以找到一组截然不同的观点的证据。这些传单声称代表人民，并试图向君主或议会表达他们所谓的不满。他们通过为“人民”整体说话并吸引广大听众，颠覆了上访规则，要求平复冤屈，几乎没有留给王室特权的空间。通过这样做，他们与大众的刻板印象相矛盾，认为人民是理性的、爱国的，并且可能比君主本人更了解王国面临的威胁。早在 1640 年代的大规模订阅请愿运动之前，“公众舆论”就被用来赋予政治和宗教要求的合法性。