Nero the Second explained

"Nero the Second" or "Nero II" is a traditional ballad that was popular amongst Jacobites in Great Britain and Ireland during the first half of the eighteenth century.^{[1] [2]}

Composed around 1715, the year of a major Jacobite rising, it was considered a seditious libel by the authorities.^[3] The Nero of the title, a reference to the tyrannical Roman Emperor Nero, is a thinly disguised version of George I the Hanoverian who had come to the throne in 1714. Jacobites supported a rival Stuart claimant the English-born James Francis Edward Stuart, styled James III by his followers, who was now living in exile.

Bibliography

• Fenlon, Jane. The Dukes of Ormonde, 1610–1745. Boydell & Brewer, 2000.
• Grosart, Alexander Balloch . English Jacobite ballads, songs & satires, etc 1877.
• Keymer, Thomas. Poetics of the Pillory: English Literature and Seditious Libel, 1660-1820. Oxford University Press, 2019.
• Monod, Paul Kleber. Jacobitism and the English People, 1688–1788. Cambridge University Press, 1993

Notes and References

1. Fenlon p.186
2. Grosart p.6-8
3. Keymer p.113-114