Beware hedonists bearing white powder. This, in part, was the message pressed in a short book about the excesses of the Jacobean court written by a Scottish Catholic physician and occasional counterfeiter, George Eglisham. The Forerunner of Revenge, published in Antwerp in 1626 in English and Latin, quickly gained notoriety across Europe for its particular depiction of the Stuart monarchy as a dynasty under siege.
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Available from the Spectator Bookshop, £25.50, Tel: 08430 600033. Marcus Nevitt is senior lecturer in Renaissance Literature at the University of Sheffield.
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