SEXBY, Edward, & Silius Titus (attrib.); MARIGNY, Jacques Carpentier de (transl.)

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Traicté politique, First edition in French of the pro-tyrannicide Killing no Murder, first published in English the previous year to advocate the assassination of Oliver Cromwell, and here published to encourage the assassination of Cardinal Mazarin.Drawing on classical writers including Aristotle, Plato, and Xenophon, and modern writers including Hugo Grotius, the authors provide a basis for tyrannicide as a lawful act, and sets out to prove that Cromwell "was a tyrant on a par with Caligula and Nero. However stable, his reign was an abrogation of law which constituted the enslavement of the English people and threatened the outright corruption of English society. In such circumstances the private citizen was perfectly within his rights in seeking to exact the punishment for which responsibility ought normally to rest with God and the magistrate. Tyranny being the suspension of the normal course of law, tyrannicide could not be regarded as an act of murder" (ODNB, William Sexby). The pamphlet was published pseudonymously under "William Allen", and the author has never been satisfactorily identified. The two most likely claimants are Colonel Silius Titus and Edward Sexby, both of whom claimed authorship; most probably they collaborated.This French translation was produced by Jacques Carpentier de Marigny (1615-1670), a great enemy of Cardinal Mazarin, who was then the de facto ruler of France. Marigny had been involved in The Fronde uprising against Mazarin, and was horrified

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