SOURCE: Maguire, Nancy Klein. “Regicide and Reparation: The Autobiographical Drama of Roger Boyle, Earl of Orrery.” English Literary Renaissance 21, no. 2 (spring 1991): 257-82.

In the following essay, Maguire reviews Orrery's corpus as it repeatedly develops the theme of forgiveness and mercy, proposing that through his heroic dramas Orrery sought to expiate his—and by extension society's—guilt for the execution of Charles I and the civil war.

“For nought is virtue w(ch) successe does want.” 

(Orrery, The Generall)

“Guilt next to Love, above all ties does bind.” 

(Orrery, Mustapha)¹

Roger Boyle, Lord Broghill and Earl of Orrery, straddled both sides of 1649, and his autobiographical plays, while admittedly not great literature, record at least one participant's astute but guilty response to the execution of Charles I. Painfully obsessed with the act of regicide, Orrery overtly debates the nature of monarchy in his self-indicting autobiographies. Orrery's close connections to the...