The Committee, plate ten from Hudibras

William Hogarth’s success as an engraver was largely due to his ability to create compositions that are clear and easy to read. At the point in Hudibras that is depicted here, Samuel Butler digressed for a canto to lampoon Oliver Cromwell and discuss the infamous burning of the rumps, the celebratory burning of effigies of members of the Long Parliament of 1640–49. In The Committee, a meeting of the Puritan Saints is interrupted with news of the celebrations. Butler and Hogarth together made the political atmosphere of this scene both humorous and easy for the general public of the time to understand.