ABSTRACT
During the English Civil War, Parliament used printed letters to turn the public irrevocably against the King. The war of words paralleled the battles on the field. Parliament capitalised upon the public debate generated; it swiftly published a selection of the captured correspondence in a pamphlet The Kings Cabinet Opened. Letter-writing manuals define epistolary form as a material, practical social form of writing inherently linked to life experience. The House of Commons ignored the King's agenda in order to focus on English problems, in particular the toleration of Catholicism. Kevin Sharpe argues royalist propaganda successfully refashioned the intimate portrait of the King revealed by the cabinet letters to produce a more sympathetic portrait of 'a man of sensibility and sincere emotions'. Henrietta Maria's attempt to exert political influence in the bedchamber foreshadows the enclosure of the processes of state under the personal rule when Charles I ruled through the Privy Council.
