Whilst the conflicting Bangorian discourses found their political embodiment in the whig schism, they also found material expression in paper and ink. The historian of ideas is concerned solely with the intellectual content of controversy, but the historian of print culture must, on the other hand, attend also to the processes of writing, printing and distribution, to the work of hack writers and doggerel poets, to satire and to the visual dimension of print, as well as to the learned treatises and the formulations of doctrine of eminent divines. This chapter examines the carrying on of controversy – the writing, publishing, reading and disputing through which theological and political convictions found expression, and the ways the controversy affected (or sought to affect) church, government and society. It discerns the reaction of the crowds to the controversy, and the reception of the controversy in the provinces and it highlights the language of duelling, honour and reputation which suffused political and theological contention.

Although religious controversy had always been a recurrent part of the landscape of Western intellectual history, the advent of the printing press changed the dynamics of controversy. Political and religious turmoil in England tended to be accompanied by an increase in the activity of the press. The turmoil of the 1640s witnessed a proliferation of political and theological tracts, ballads and news-sheets. Numerous pamphlets of religious controversy were exchanged between Roman Catholic and Anglican authors during James II's reign.