CHAPTER TWO

News, Information and Political Controversy

This chapter focuses on news and other forms of information and printed polemic with the aim of showing the extent to which the English were informed about personalities and events of political significance and about major political controversies. News, and especially news of political events, was eagerly sought. The query “What news?” was a common greeting, used by “clothiers, hose carriers and wain men” as well as more elite members of society.¹ Throughout the period contemporaries commented on the insatiable interest in news, and preachers often complained that news distracted from church attendance. This voracious interest was characterized as “an itch our natures to delight in newness and varietie.”²

London played a key role in the printing, circulation and distribution of news. The areas around the Royal Exchange and St. Paul’s Walk are often mentioned by contemporaries as bustling centers for the exchange and distribution of news. News quickly was transmitted from these centers to the whole of metropolitan London by word of mouth and by hawkers selling news pamphlets, broadsides and ballads, as well as by watermen who ferried passengers across the Thames. Peddlers, chapmen and travelers, and later the post, brought printed news to the countryside. Individuals sent news in personal letters and sent newsletters and printed publications to friends and relatives. Inns and alehouses and other places where travelers stopped also were sources of news.³ Although news did not spread out evenly across the country or across the social classes and professions, the dissemination of news, some accurate some not, became part of early modern life. News and rumor were difficult to distinguish. Wild rumors, especially those stemming from fear of Roman Catholic plots and uprisings, were endemic.

While we have no choice but to rely heavily on printed materials, less easily documentable forms of oral communication and manuscript formats also played a central role in shaping political learning. News might be transmitted orally in the form of gossip or sung ballads. Too sharp a distinction ought not to be drawn between print and oral transmission. Printed texts were often read aloud, and speeches given in Parliament were often known via gossip and manuscript reports. Printed news appeared in single-page broadsides, short and long pamphlets about particular events and news-books that initially covered only foreign affairs. Manuscript newsletters of professional news writers were also important transmitters of news. Information about current religious and political controversies was also derived from the publications of the controversialists, which in turn were commented upon in sermons, conversation and print.⁴

England was a somewhat late arrival to printed news. The Reformation and the political upheavals stemming from it stimulated interest in foreign events. The transformation from manuscript to print was easily made in Zurich’s Neue Zeitung, largely a printed version of Heinrich Bullinger’s correspondence. By 1594 Cologne’s Mercurius Gallobelgicus, a serial publication with an international audience, was circulating in England.⁵

The government played a central role in the dissemination of news. Statutes and proclamations announced things forbidden or required and major events such as declarations of war. Proclamations were read aloud and posted in marketplaces. That printed proclamations occurred as early as 1486 suggests how quickly the Crown adapted to print media. The government or its surrogates were major producers of news and policy-related pamphlets.

To a greater or lesser extent the transmission of printed news was supervised by the Crown, which developed a licensing system for books and other printed material. Licenses were sometimes refused or authors required to alter their work before permission to publish was granted. The licensing system involved the government, the Stationers Company and the Bishop of London. Unlicensed publications were subject to punishment, and High Commission and Star Chamber prosecuted violations. Manuscript communications, such as private letters or manuscript newsletters, were not subject to licensing. Politically provocative material, often anonymous or identified with a foreign place of publication, occasionally appeared unlicensed. The licensing system worked reasonably well except during the breakdown of government controls in 1640 and during the lapse of the licensing act in 1679. Yet even when it worked most efficiently there was an output from illegal and clandestine presses.⁶

Scholars differ substantially on the question of how effectively the licensing system controlled the expression of ideas, circulation of information and freedom of authors to publish. There are claims that surveillance was constant, censorship strenuous and harsh punishment frequently threatened or administered. The contrary view is that the censorship was the inefficient product of several ill-coordinated groups and individuals, implemented so episodically that for much if not all of the period, discussion was not seriously impeded.⁷ The Crown certainly attempted to prevent circulation of what it felt to be seditious material, but did not consistently pursue its policies. Decisions about what could be printed were sometimes influenced by the complaints of foreign ambassadors or by one faction of the Privy Council attempting to suppress the views of another. The civil war era undoubtedly enjoyed a freer press than preceding decades, but civil war and Interregnum governments continued earlier efforts to control the printed word.

The Crown also had the law of libel to punish those who spoke or wrote unfavorably about the government and its officials. Seditious speech had been a criminal offense from the thirteenth century, and a second conviction became a capital crime in 1581. Until its abolition, Star Chamber played a major role in handling prosecutions relating to libel. Even derogatory songs and verses might lead to prosecution.⁸ Adverse comment about prominent political figures was “news” for some, for others a prosecutable libel. For this reason such comments and verses typically circulated anonymously in manuscript form. When libels featured figures of political importance, as they did during the reign of James I, they became of direct concern to the government. Libels were thought to lead to “contencon, malice and sedition,” as well as breaches of the peace, insurrections and rebellion.⁹

News, particularly printed news, developed a set of conventions and norms. The epistolary model was frequently followed,¹⁰ with many reports using such formats as “from Cadiz they write . . . ” or “by Letters from Tangier, we are given to understand. . . . ” News reports were to communicate “matters of fact” that were supported by the testimony of “credible witnesses” or reliable reports. Above all, news was to be truthful. Reports often bore titles beginning “A True Account” or “An Exact and True Account.” News reporting was distinguished from rumor and hearsay and contrasted to fiction on the one hand and lies on the other. Accounts often advertised themselves as intended “to prevent Misinformation,” and news writers claimed to be “faithful” and impartial reporters. Mid-seventeenth century newsbooks often bore titles such as Impartial Intelligencer or The Impartial Scout.¹¹ Often these norms were breached. Newsmen claimed impartiality and fidelity for themselves but accused rivals of distorting the news or reporting rumor, fiction or even lies. News was often slanted to favor or disfavor a certain policy or to praise or condemn a particular event or interest. When serial newsbooks developed during the civil war era, they presented news from the point of view of the Parliament, the king, or the army. It was never difficult to distinguish between a Royalist and a parliamentary newsbook or later between a Whig and a Tory publication.

THE REIGN OF ELIZABETH

The reign of Elizabeth was full of controversy, especially over issues dealing with religion. Many publications dealt with the appropriate form of the church, its doctrine and its vestments. Some were structured as serious debate; others were popular polemical pamphlets such as those of “Martin Marprelate.” The government attempted to regulate printed materials by licensing, and a Star Chamber decree of 1586 limited the number of presses. The Stationers Company was actively engaged in censorship. Theological tracts were vetted by the Bishop of London’s chaplains.

Some publications emanated from government sources. During the Northern Rebellion there were appeals to watch for subversion and conspiracy. Mary Queen of Scots was the subject of printed news and pamphlet material for twenty years. There was a government-sponsored campaign of rumor and printed material directed against her proposed marriage to the Duke of Norfolk. In 1586 the government issued a publication justifying her execution. When the proposed marriage of Elizabeth to the Duke of Anjou divided the Privy Council, those opposing the match turned to print media to convince the public of its dangers. John Stubbe, who attacked the proposed marriage, was punished by the amputation of his hand.¹²

The Crown’s attitude varied over time and depended on what kinds of news and other publications were being circulated. Several of Elizabeth’s speeches were printed. There were printed reports of the Spanish victory over the Turks at Lepanto in 1571 as well as news of Turkish incursions in Hungary. In 1590 there was The Newes From Rome, Spain, Palermo, Geneva and France, an early “coranto.” There was particular interest in affairs associated with the fate of Protestants in Europe. The English had information concerning the Dutch wars against Spain and could follow Parma’s successes and failures in the Netherlands. During the war with Spain, and especially at the time of the Armada, there were anti-Spanish pamphlets, and the Crown explained in print its reasons for sending the navy to sea against Spain.¹³

Elizabethans were particularly well provided with news of the French civil wars. They knew of the 1572 massacre of French Protestants and of the successes and failures of the Guises and the Huguenots. Information on French affairs after 1584 appears to have been provided by a network of government and church officials working together with printers, translators, diplomats and spies. Readers of news pamphlets had regular reports of the struggles of Protestant leaders such as Admiral Coligny and Henry of Navarre, later Henry IV. They learned of the French succession crisis, the famine during the siege of Paris and League edicts for the extermination of Huguenots. Printed news of France largely ceased when Henry IV converted to Catholicism. Accounts of France transmitted information about a variety of political theories, including those advocating popular sovereignty, papal arguments for excommunication and deposition of heretic rulers and the writings of French politiques who emphasized unity and peace over religious purity.¹⁴

Domestic news was more difficult to come by. The Privy Council attempted to suppress “libels” and other provocative materials, often attached to church doors or posted at the Exchange, that attacked churchmen, the Earl of Leicester, Lord Burleigh, the lord mayor of London and other government officials. These highly personal attacks peaked in the 1590s and again in the wake of the Essex rebellion in 1601, when many blamed Raleigh and the Cecil circle for Essex’s fate.¹⁵

Although information concerning its proceedings and debate legally could not be distributed, news of Parliament’s activities was sufficiently well known for the queen to complain in 1585 that parliamentary business had become “common tabletalk.”¹⁶ In 1599 Lord Keeper Egerton complained that those “at ordinaries and common tables, wheare they have scarce mony to paye for their dynner, enter politique discourses of princes, kingdoms and estates and of counsels and counselors, censuring every one according to their owne discontented and malicious humours.”¹⁷ The appetite for news would only grow.

THE EARLY STUARTS

Unlike his predecessor, James I publicly advertised his theory of kingship. His Trew Law of Free Monarchies (1598) and Basilikon Doran (1599) were available to English readers even before he became king of England. Absolute divine right monarchy would be given further expression in the king’s speeches before Parliament and in publications following in the wake of the Gunpowder Plot. While the king’s views on the divine origin and divinely ordained duties of kingship were not new, their circulation in the early years of his reign meant that they became public knowledge.

In 1605 James’s speech to Parliament and numerous pamphlets, some produced or sanctioned by the Crown, dealt with the Gunpowder Plot that fueled English anti-Catholicism for decades. Soon after the discovery of the plot, legislation requiring an oath of allegiance rejecting the pope’s claim to an authority to depose kings resulted in another round of pamphlets to which the king himself contributed.¹⁸ James used his speeches to Parliament to inform the public of his views. In 1607 he advertised his controversial proposals for a Union of England and Scotland. His 1610 speech, also published, again publicized his view that kings were “Gods Lieutenants upon earth.” But the speech also sought to provide assurance that he would not use “the absolute power of a King” to alter the government. His 1616 speech given to judges, also printed for public distribution, reiterates his views on divine right kingship and warns against encroachments on the royal prerogative. ¹⁹

Manuscript attacks on highly placed individuals circulated widely. There were libels on Robert Cecil and Sir Edward Coke, as well one attached to Archbishop Whitgift’s funeral hearse. Some attacked James’s Scottish companions and favorites. Many were connected to the sensational Thomas Overbury scandals and murder. News of Overbury was a constant topic of gossip in Paul’s, the Exchange and taverns, and “spread far and near” to the provinces, helping to confirm suspicions of corruption at court.²⁰ Libels would also be directed at other unpopular individuals such as the Duke of Buckingham and later Archbishop Laud. Yet many agreed with Sir Francis Bacon’s view that frequent and open “libels and licentious discourse” were dangerous to the state.²¹

News, and particularly political news, was avidly sought. It was “the fashion of these times . . . for the principal gentry, lords, courtiers and men of all professions . . . to meet in Paul’s Church by eleven and walk in the middle aisle till twelve, and after dinner frome three to six, during which times some discourse of business, others of news. Now in regard of the universal commerce there happened little that did not first and last arrive here.” Those walking the aisles at Paul’s were “most inquisitive after affairs of state.”²² News, rumor and gossip about public matters and public figures were sufficiently widespread to be ridiculed in Ben Jonson’s comic character, Sir Politic Would Be, and lampooned in similar characters presented in the writings of Sir Thomas Overbury.²³

Parliamentary meetings triggered public interest. After an acrimonious exchange with Parliament in 1621, James again reached out to the public, printing his answers to Parliament’s petitions and assailing its insistence on discussing Charles’s marriage. Despite the ban on the dissemination of parliamentary speeches, information about them circulated in private letters and newsletters. Although the king wished to curtail political discussion, he instructed members of Parliament that they were to carry news of state back home.²⁴

Although there was relatively little in the way of printed domestic news, the public was fairly well informed about Raleigh’s trial, the Spanish match, and Buckingham’s involvement in foreign policy. At least fifteen publications appeared in connection with Raleigh’s trial. The Crown was sufficiently worried about public reaction to produce a printed justification for the trial.²⁵ The Duke of Buckingham, first a supporter of the Spanish match and, after its failure, an antagonist of Spain, was the subject of gossip, rumor, parliamentary debate and libelous verse. Parliamentary manuscript “separates,” which recorded important speeches, were produced by teams of scriveners and distributed among the country gentry.

Foreign news was more acceptable to the Crown. During the first part of James I’s reign, news pamphlets kept the English informed about the Dutch-Spanish war and peace negotiations. Typical reports were Newes out of the Low Countries (1606) orA Relation of the late horrible treason, against the Prince of Orange, and the Whole State of the United Provinces (1623). News pamphlets reported the execution of the Dutch republican John van Olden Barneveld in 1619 and the massacre of Englishmen by the Dutch at Amboyna.²⁶ French affairs were not widely reported, with the exception of the assassination of Henry IV in 1610. There was great interest in the Palatinate and Bohemia. Maps were printed of these areas so that the English could more easily follow the war news. There was also news about conflicts with the Turks in Hungary and Poland and even an occasional report about Russia.²⁷

The 1620s brought a substantial increase in foreign news as corantos, news reports in serial form following the Continental model, began to appear. These inexpensive and fairly reliable publications, initially translations from the Dutch and other Continental venues, were dominated by news of the Continent. Butter’s newsbook even carried the Elector Palatine’s coat of arms on its title page. First in single-page folio format and later in 16– to 24–page quarto form, corantos were sold on London streets by the hawkers of ballads before being sent to the countryside.²⁸ There were complaints that corantos “euerie week besmeare each public post, and Church dore” and that the walls were “Butter’d with weekly News compos’d in Pauls.”²⁹ Subscription newsletters became increasingly important during the 1620s as a group of semiprofessional journalists began to provide fairly regular news of the court, copies of parliamentary speeches and Continental news. Pamphlets such as Thomas Scott’s sensational Vox Populi vehemently attacked the Spanish. Buckingham’s exploits and failure during the Ile of Re expedition were well publicized.³⁰ Robert Burton wrote:

I hear new news every day, and those ordinary rumours of war, plagues, fires, . . . cities besieged in France, Germany, Turkey. . . . New books every day, pamphlets, currantoes. . . . Today we hear of new Lords and officers created, tomorrow of some great men deposed, and then again of fresh honours conferred. . . . This I daily here, and such like, both private and publicke newes.³¹

James was not pleased with these developments and even earlier had complained about “itching in the tongues and pens” of his subjects, who should not search into the “deepest mysteries that belong to the persons of state of kings and princes.”³² Royal proclamations complained of licentious speech on matters of state and warned against meddling with secrets of empire. A proclamation of 1621 complained of “excess of lavish and Licentious Speech of matters of State” that did “dayly more and more increase.”³³

By the end of James’s reign the English, and especially those in and around London, were well provided with news, finding it readily available at Paul’s or the Exchange, from whence it circulated outward by word of mouth or newsletter to the countryside. Corantos reported foreign news with some regularity, and individual pamphlets reported on particular events. Domestic news, less readily available and typically conveyed orally or in manuscript form, tended to wax and wane with meetings of Parliament. Expectations and hopes on the part of Parliament and Crown were at their height at the beginning of a session and disappointments and grumblings in their aftermath. Although it would be wrong to speak of parties, some were more sympathetic to Parliament’s grievances and desires, and others to Crown views. There were sufficient differences of opinion within the political elite on foreign and domestic policy and on the nature of the English monarchy and its prerogatives to generate controversy and sometimes distrust. Richard Cust has persuasively argued that the increase of news during the 1620s contributed to the political polarization of this crucial decade.³⁴ Despite some unlicensed printing and the circulation of manuscript libels, the Crown had the advantage in making its views known and could draw more easily than its critics on the printed media.

Corantos continued to fuel the view that England was not doing enough to support Protestantism abroad. The English now avidly followed the victories of Gustavus Adolphus. After the battle of Breitenfeld, Charles complained that newsbooks were dealing with matters of state “unfit for public view and discourse.” When the Spanish ambassador complained about their treatment of Spain, printed newsbooks were suppressed.³⁵ Clarendon indicated that “the whole nation” was anxious “to know what pass’d weekly in Germany and Poland, and other parts of Europe.”³⁶ The Privy Council condemned the “great abuse in the printing and publishing of Gazetts and Pamphletts of newes from forraign parts,” and John Pory’s newsletter reported the “smothering of the Currantoes.”³⁷ Manuscript newsletters, however, continued and do not appear to have been intercepted or their authors arrested.

Parliamentary sessions continued to focus public attention. Information about its proceedings leaked to groups crowded around the lobby. Newsletters reported on Parliament’s hostility to Buckingham, apprehension about a Roman Catholic French queen, grumbling about financial requests from the Crown and perennial concerns about religion. In 1626 Charles issued a proclamation blaming “ill affected” members who had “purposely published and scattered copies” of a remonstrance and expressed ill opinions of the Duke of Buckingham. In another proclamation the king found it “fit and necessary” to inform the public of his reasons for his actions in order to stop “the mouth of malice” and satisfy the “doubts and feares” of his subjects.³⁸

Londoners’ insatiable appetite for news did not diminish. All “trafficke for Newes,” wrote Bishop John Earle, whose 1628 “character” described St. Paul’s walk, the bustling center of those seeking news, as a noisy Babel. It was “the great Exchange of all discourse, . . . the Synod of all pates politicke, joined and laid together in most serious posture, and they are not halfe so busie at the Parliament.”³⁹

The Petition of Right was the center of controversy in 1628. Charles insisted that the House of Commons had made “false constructions” on what he had agreed to. Printed copies were confiscated only to be reprinted together with the king’s speech.⁴⁰ After dissolving Parliament, the king explained that it was necessary to declare to “all the world” that he had hoped for “a better and more right understanding” with the House of Commons, an understanding made impossible due to the “malevolent dispositions” and “disobedience and seditious carriage” of some of its members who “represent[ed] him unfairly to the Publike view.” The king denied damaging the “liberties and privileges” of Parliament, defended tonnage and poundage on historical grounds and criticized efforts of the House to bind judges, “a thing never heard of in ages past.”⁴¹ Though the king generally disliked the circulation of news, on this occasion he reached out to the public to counter adverse publicity. At one point Charles considered a government-sponsored publication to help mold popular opinion but in the end rejected the example of Richelieu, who had established a gazette to support the French Crown. Despite efforts to control the production of news, John Taylor reports on the quantity of written material to be found in “taverns, ordinaries, inns, bowling greens and alleys, ale-houses, tobacco-shops, highways and water passages.”⁴²

The Parliament of 1629 again proved contentious. Adjournment was delayed when the speaker was physically coerced to remain in place and several members were arrested, accused of seditious words. A royal proclamation again denounced “ill-disposed persons” who “spread false and pernicious rumours” and raised “causeless fears.”⁴³ The Crown investigated and attempted to punish those responsible for the frequently copied and widely distributed manuscript Propositions for your Majesty’s Service containing two Parts: the one to secure your state and bridle the impertinency of Parliaments: the other to increase your Majesty’s reveune, much more than it is, which purported to originate among the king’s councilors. Characterized as a Machiavellian “project how a prince may make himself an absolute tyrant,” the Propositions appears to have been circulated by a disaffected group including Sir Robert Cotton, John Selden, Oliver St. John and the earls of Clare and Bedford, who feared the elimination of Parliament, illegal taxation and a standing army. Although the Council ordered all copies of the fictitious council memo to be destroyed and investigated those suspected of distributing it, the pamphlet received even wider circulation when a bill designed to show that the pamphlet’s purpose was to raise popular fear of the king’s government included the full text of the offending pamphlet. As Noah Millstone has shown, the manuscript and the excitement surrounding its distribution indicate that we have seriously underestimated the reach and power of this critique of the regime.⁴⁴

During the parliamentary hiatus between 1629 and 1640, controversy was sparked by religious issues and ship money. Refusals to pay culminated in the well-publicized case of John Hampden. Star Chamber meted out severe corporal punishments for seditious publication. Denunciations of prelacy by Henry Burton, John Bastwick and William Prynne resulted in physical mutilation rarely meted out to gentlemen. Laud expanded censorship of religious books, substantially narrowing the range of religious views expressed in print.⁴⁵ Despite Laud’s efforts it was noted that “matters of consequence” and “pro and conning” were to be heard in bake-houses, barbershops and ale-houses. Common people were disputing about the “whole estate of the kingdom.”⁴⁶

The outbreak of rebellion in Scotland radically altered the political scene. Printed corantos reappeared, and a patent was issued for printing and translating foreign news.⁴⁷ The rebellion and the calling of Parliament in 1640 would not only alter English politics but would also dramatically change the distribution of news and polemical pamphleteering and, therefore, public knowledge of and participation in public affairs.

CIVIL WAR AND INTERREGNUM

The next twenty years brought dramatic changes to English politics, institutions and political communication. The summoning of Parliament in 1640 was marked by an explosion of news, political polemic, religious controversy and petitioning. Serial news in printed form dealing with domestic politics was the most obvious innovation, one that greatly altered access to the proceedings of Parliament. News was now focused on Parliament, battles and sieges and negotiations with the king.⁴⁸

Abolition of Star Chamber and its punitive apparatus for enforcement of licensing encouraged an explosion of publication. There would be no authority to prevent the dissemination of domestic news until the House of Commons itself attempted to reinstate licensing in 1642. Some 848 books, pamphlets and other items were printed in 1640; by 1642 they numbered 3,666.⁴⁹ Although the Short Parliament did not permit its members to take notes of its proceedings, speeches were circulated and some printed. This was a period of riot and disorder in London, especially from the dissolution of the Short Parliament to the time Charles left London. It would have been virtually impossible for most of the country to ignore the political upheavals, the war between king and Parliament, changing constitutional arrangements and the fracturing of the church. Whatever political consensus had existed evaporated as the kingdom dissolved into a state of civil war. Most would have agreed with the report of “much discourse in court, parliament and city, nay, and country too, and much discontent in all of them.”⁵⁰

“Innumerable multitude of Pamphlets” and “thousands more scandalous libels, and more invective against the State” appeared.⁵¹ “Poison was carried up and down in books and cried at mens doors every day, in which there are many strange doctrines going abroad open-faced.”⁵² Literacy was increasing the audience for printed materials; in 1640 it had reached approximately 30 percent for men and 10 percent for woman. London literacy figures were considerably higher at 70–89 percent for men and 12–20 percent for women.⁵³ In London a wide spectrum of the population became engrossed in the political events of the day, as both consumers and producers of news.

In these our days, the meanest sort of people are not only able to write . . . but to argue and discourse on matters of highest concernment and thereupon desire, that such things which are most remarkable, may be truly committed to writing and made public, expecting to receive such satisfaction out of the variety of the present several actings, as may content all indifferent men and stop the mouths of willful opposers.⁵⁴

News circulated to the countryside even more quickly than earlier. By 1649 postal services were leaving London twice a week; by 1655 it was three times a week.⁵⁵

Late in 1641 the first serial news publication to focus on domestic news, Heads of Severall Proceedings in this Present Parliament, appeared, soon followed by Continuation of the Most Remarkable Passages, Diurnal Occurrences or, the heads of proceedings of Both houses of Parliament and then by a plethora of continuations and competitors. This was only the beginning of a bewildering number of newsbooks and news reports, many short-lived, with a confusion of overlapping titles. For the first time speeches by members of Parliament were printed on a continuing basis, some authorized by the speakers, some not. This practice was limited to the period 1640–42.⁵⁶ News soon extended beyond Parliament’s activities, especially after the king left London and actual hostilities began.

The printing of the Grand Remonstrance in 1641 was also an innovation, being addressed to the people rather than the king. Printed without the consent of the king or the House of Lords, it contained over 200 items listing the king’s misdeeds and Parliament’s demands. Clarendon characterized the Remonstrance as “a very bitter representation of all the illegal things which had been done from the first hour of the King’s coming to the crown” which “might disturb the minds of the people.”⁵⁷

The year 1641 brought news of the Irish Rebellion, an event that fueled an already exaggerated fear of Roman Catholicism. There were hysterical accounts of barbarous massacres.⁵⁸ There was a torrent of parliamentary declarations, and petitions to Parliament poured in from the counties. Tracts dealt with Parliament and the king. The queen was often depicted as having a pernicious influence on the king, Mercurius Civicus characterizing her as “an Incendiary of the Commonwealth and great causer of the Combustions and Miseries of the Kingdome.”⁵⁹

Parliament relied on ministers to read its declarations from the pulpit in order “to possess the people with the truth and justice of Parliament’s cause.” Like the early declarations of the monarch, these were sent to sheriffs in market towns for distribution and then pasted “upon posts of the Exchange and other chief places of the City and suburbs.” The post and other carriers were directed to send packets of its declarations “into all parts of England.”⁶⁰ Royalists followed similar methods as both sides attempted to reach as many people as possible. When the king arrived in York in March 1642, he set up his own press and issued a proclamation for the suppression of the rebellion.

The multiplication of newsbooks and pamphlets, substantially uncontrolled by the government, exposed purchasers to a variety of political views, first those of Parliament and the king and eventually to a much wider range of political and religious opinions. By January 1642 one contemporary noted the existence of seven newsbooks.⁶¹ As soon as it was able, Parliament attempted to resume control of the press. It reinstated licensing provisions and issued a declaration for the suppression of seditious and scandalous pamphlets. During the hostilities at Hull, Parliament ordered that its own account be read in all churches and chapels. Parliament’s control efforts were largely unsuccessful.

The year 1643, the year of a new Licensing Act, was marked by the development of the influential Royalist newsbook Mercurius Aulicus. When the Royalist cause collapsed and the king and his followers left Oxford, the Royalist press went underground.⁶² Mercurius Britanicus . . . for the better Information of the People, a parliamentary newsbook designed to refute Aulicus, began the same year. Another influential parliamentary paper, Mercurius Civicus, London’s Intelligencer, was directed primarily at Londoners. The Kingdomes Weekly Intelligencer labeled Charles a tyrant and reported that the king did not want peace. A large and sometimes bewildering barrage of newsbooks reported on battles, sieges and other military news. Over sixty newsbooks could be found listed in the Stationers’ register.

Religious controversy in pamphlet form radiated out from the Westminster Assembly, a body appointed by Parliament to work out a religious settlement. As Puritans fractured into a myriad of religious groups, Presbyterians, Independents and others engaged in vociferous public controversy over forms of church government, doctrine, baptism and other practices and the increasingly explosive issue of religious toleration. Whatever consensus had existed earlier on religious reform was shattered.

The parliamentary army developed its own newsbooks and pamphlets. The Levellers and their leader John Lilburne also turned to print. In 1644 one commentator, “Walking the London-streets, which echo with nothing more of late than Newes, and Newes Books,” reported that he saw for sale at some stationers’ stalls publications “reeking hot, as new as day, being by the midwifery of the Presse newly brought into the world.”⁶³ The year 1645 brought the sensational publication of the king’s letters, which revealed his duplicity to all.⁶⁴ Some newsbooks and pamphlets favored peace with the king; others were adamantly opposed. There was a great deal of military news and a good deal of attention to Oliver Cromwell. Army chaplains published battlefield reports “according to order.”⁶⁵ At least a dozen news-book titles could be purchased six days a week, many of which would disappear within the year. Prince Charles had news sent to him in exile so as to be informed of the actions of Parliament and the Council of State.⁶⁶

Newsbooks and news writers were criticized for egregious violations of the norms of truthfulness and impartiality, not surprising since most promoted the goals of particular political groups. The Moderate Intelligencer, for example, which promised news “without invective,” was characterized by a competitor as “the great Historian and Chronicler of the Sectaries.”⁶⁷ One critic complained that the newsbooks “weekly utter, slanders, libel, lies”; another that they promoted “new fangled” heresies.⁶⁸ Royalist poet John Cleveland denigrated the “weekly fragments” and ridiculed parliamentary publications such as “Scoticus,” “Civicus” and “Britanicus.”⁶⁹

The government used licensing both to control the press and to bolster its own position. During the next few years, new newsbooks appeared and old ones faded away. Royalist publications increased during the second civil war but ended when the army purged Parliament. In 1647, Marchamont Nedham, the most prominent journalist of the era, changed sides, now producing the Royalist Mercurius Pragmaticus. Royalist mercuries and satirical poems were said to travel “up and down the streets with so much impunity, that the poor weekly Hackneys, durst hardly communicate the ordinary Intelligence.” Parliament became wary of public exposure and forbade the printing of its proceedings “or other Matters, agitated in both or either of the Houses of Parliament” except by “special order.”⁷⁰ Nevertheless, reports of the negotiations between the king and the Parliament were publicized, as well as the army’s responses.

The trial and execution of the king in 1649 was undoubtedly the most astonishing news. The Kingdomes Weekly Intelligence reported, “The Triall of the King is the great Hinge on which for this week the Doore of this Intelligence must Move.” The Impartial Intelligencer noted that “this Nation hath been long abused by the Tyranny of Kings” and was “now delivered.”⁷¹ In 1649 a new printing act outlawing newsbooks attempted to end opposition printing and led to the searching of shops for seditious and unlicensed pamphlets.⁷²

With the creation of the Commonwealth government, the Council of State and the House of Commons faced the problem of how to secure public allegiance. They were aided by Marchamont Nedham, who, changing allegiance again, produced his long-running pro-Commonwealth and later pro-Protectorate Mercurius Politicus.⁷³ This chatty, witty, opinionated newsbook noted “how sweet the Air of a Commonwealth is beyond that of a Monarchy” and reassured readers that ordinary trials would continue to be tried in the traditional manner. Nedham also used the newsbook as a vehicle for discussing the nature of political obligation and for justifying the current regime. Pamphlets, sermons, news reports and government declarations all featured discussion of the Engagement, the loyalty oath required of all men over eighteen. Pamphlets pro and con flew off the presses.⁷⁴

The wars in Scotland and then Ireland were well publicized, as was the ever growing visibility of Oliver Cromwell, the victories of the New Model Army, conflict between the army and Rump Parliament, its demise, the creation of the Protectorate and Cromwell’s conflicts with his parliaments. New laws controlling the press were issued in the summer of 1655. Nedham’s official Mercurius Politicus and The Public Intelligencer now provided information about and support for Cromwell’s policies. His newspapers attacked Levellers, religious groups opposed to the Protectorate and those “afflicted with the infectious Itch of scribbling political discourses,” a group that included Hobbes and Harrington.⁷⁵

Cromwell was succeeded by his son Richard Cromwell, whose short-lived government quickly collapsed. The revived Rump disseminated An Exact Accompt of the daily Proceedings in Parliament along with a supplement dealing with foreign news. The army provided its own version of the news. A flurry of republican pamphlets appeared, among them Milton’s Readie and Easie way to establish a Free Commonwealth and Harrington’s The Rota: or a Model of a Free State. One pamphlet noted how “Sedition and Rebellion” had been “propagated in full Treatises, Murder . . . [and] practic’d by the late Writer of Politicus, Marchamont Nedham, whose scurrilous Pamphlets flying every Week into all parts of the Nation, ’tis incredible what influence they had upon numbers of unconsidering persons.”⁷⁶ Anti-Rump publications also flourished. On his return to England from Scotland, General Monk recruited journalist Henry Muddiman to issue The Parliamentary Intelligencer, which publicized Monk’s speech advocating a full and free Parliament.⁷⁷ When the Convention Parliament met, however, it again forbade the printing of parliamentary proceedings without its permission, and newsbooks were again suppressed.

Circulation of news and information and polemical works of all sizes and shapes increased at an unprecedented rate during the revolutionary period despite the efforts of the Long Parliament, the Commonwealth and then the Protectorate governments to control the press. Revolutionary-era governments all retained a licensing system for printed material and attempted to control publications thought damaging to the state. Given the prominence of government-authorized newsbooks, taken as a whole the news media were hardly champions of free speech versus an authoritarian government. Yet the English public, always avid for news, experienced unprecedented exposure to domestic political and religious news and opinion, giving it a far greater opportunity to engage with political affairs during this period than it ever had before. This was a politically transforming experience.

THE RESTORATION

The reign of Charles II was proclaimed May 8, 1660, in the principal places of London accompanied by bells, bonfires and an outpouring of laudatory poems, pamphlets and sermons. It was not immediately evident what policy the Crown would follow with respect to the media. The Duke of Newcastle advised the king to forbid newsbooks and manuscript newsletters. On the other hand Sir Edward Nicholas suggested a propaganda campaign “to mind the people what an advantage and happiness the king’s restoration would be to the nation.” Charles himself believed that “the exorbitant Liberty of the Press” had “been a great Occasion of the late Rebellion in the Kingdom and Schisms in the Church.”⁷⁸

The government initially turned to the experienced journalist and subscription newsletter writer Henry Muddiman, suppressing all printed news except his Parliamentary Intelligencer and Mercurius Publicus. Employed to organize the correspondence of the secretaries of state, Muddiman also prepared abstracts for his weekly manuscript newsletters that contained information about parliamentary matters. In 1661 legislation less repressive than that of Cromwell and the Rump was enacted that controlled news and reduced the number of printing presses.⁷⁹ Further legislation was enacted the following year because “evil disposed persons have been encouraged to print and sell heretical, schismatical, blasphemous, seditious and treasonable books, pamphlets and papers.”⁸⁰ Although Muddiman’s printed newsbooks The Kingdomes Intelligencer and Mercurius Publicus ended in 1663, when Roger L’Estrange was granted a monopoly of official news, his sought-after, revenue-producing newsletters continued. L’Estrange produced the Intelligencer, Published for the Satisfaction of the People and The News, Published for Satisfaction and Information of the People. Yet he himself did not favor a “public mercury,” believing such a medium made “the multitude too familiar with the actions and counsels of their superiors, too pragmatical and censorious, and gives them not only an itch but a kind of colourable right and license to be meddling with the Government.” Nevertheless he concluded that the times required a “safe and expedient” newsbook “to combat the pamphlets.”⁸¹ For a time the only newsbooks available were produced by L’Estrange and the only newsletter by Muddiman.

This situation changed when Secretary of State Sir Joseph Williamson created the Oxford Gazette, a twice-weekly publication providing mostly foreign news with Muddiman as its first editor. This widely distributed newsbook, soon renamed the London Gazette, also featured noncontroversial domestic information such as royal speeches, acts of the Privy Council, royal ceremonies and proclamations and new appointments. There were complaints that the Gazette lacked news about Parliament.⁸² Given the civil war and Interregnum experience, it is not surprising that there was greater demand for news than the official Restoration newsbooks could satisfy.

There were different views within government circles about how to handle news. Williamson, now a newsman, commented that “the itch of news” was now “grown a disease.”⁸³ Danby advised the king to manage rather than suppress the news and suggested that someone be directed “to write both about the present state of things to give the world a better impression of them than they are now possessed with and to give constantly weekly accounts of what is done at any time which may be for the satisfaction of men’s minds.”⁸⁴ Writing somewhat later, Chief Justice North thought the best method for dealing with seditious publications was “to set up counter writers” to answer libels.⁸⁵

Government-controlled news media, however, were only a part of the world of news and cannot provide an accurate view of what kinds of political information were available or what issues divided the country. Word of mouth, private letters, ballads and the new institution of the coffee house helped to circulate information and facilitate debate. Political news and comment could also be found in printed pamphlets, some a page or two in length, others fifty or more pages. Andrew Marvell suggested that pamphlets first circulated in various London venues were then sent to friends at universities, then on to the county and cathedrals, where “those . . . that can confide in one another, discourse it over in private.”⁸⁶ One did not need newsbooks or privately circulated newsletters to be informed of the ferocious debates relating to religious dissent. There were countless publications in a variety of formats advocating toleration, comprehension or persecution of Protestant dissenters. The controversial Act of Uniformity of 1662 and the various statutes against conventicles were widely discussed in a variety of polemical formats, as was the legality of the King’s Declaration of Indulgence in 1672, which aroused fears over the use of the prerogative to implement religious toleration. The Test Act of 1673 that excluded Roman Catholics from public office also engendered pamphlets, sermons and treatises.

Domestic events such as the plague and the Great Fire of London generated a plethora of publications. The First Dutch War, largely fought over competition for the overseas trade, elicited a substantial number of news accounts, some favorable to the war, some not. In 1672, when England was again at war with the Netherlands, an increasing number of publications expressed reservations about the war. Opinion had shifted from an anti-Dutch to an anti-French point of view. France was increasingly associated with popery, absolutism and poverty.⁸⁷

There was far less information about Parliament than the public desired. Although it was forbidden to print the votes or proceedings of Parliament without special permission, there were evasions. In 1673 several publications discussed parliamentary affairs, one providing votes and addresses of the House of Commons.⁸⁸ From 1674 on, publications called for new elections,⁸⁹ which in turn provoked a royal proclamation restraining “the Spreading of False News and Licentious talking of Matters of State and Government.” About this time Roger L’Estrange reported to a committee of the House of Commons that manuscripts were currently “more mischievous than prints because more bitter and dangerous.”⁹⁰ When the 1677 speeches of the Duke of Buckingham and Lord Shaftesbury favoring the dissolution of Parliament were printed, the two were imprisoned.⁹¹ Parliament’s role in the imprisonment was much discussed “in Discourses and Printed Papers,” and “the strangeness of these Proceedings” was reported to be “the publick Discourse of the Town.”⁹²

Elections, prorogations and dissolutions were much spoken of and written about during the 1670s and still more during the elections and proceedings of the Exclusion parliaments. Efforts to exclude the Duke of York from the succession were widely discussed in a flood of pamphlets. Parliamentary actions became better known in 1680, when the House of Commons ordered that its votes and transactions be printed daily. Sir Francis Winnington noted, “I think it neither natural, nor rational . . . that the People who sent us hither, should not be informed of our actions.”⁹³ When Charles dissolved that Parliament he issued a declaration justifying his action to the public. Another royal declaration in 1680 warned that those who claimed Monmouth was legitimate would be prosecuted “according to the utmost Severity of the Law.”⁹⁴ Provocative pamphlets such asA Letter from a Person of Quality to His Friend in the Country (1675) provided news of Parliament and argued against requiring members of Parliament and officeholders to swear that it was “unlawful on any pretence whatsoever to take arms against the king or to endeavor any alteration in the government of church and state.”⁹⁵ That tract, ordered burned, was answered by Nedham. Another Nedham publication warned of a civil war instigated by “Pamphlets spread in citie and Country” that would again “seduce the publicly People.”⁹⁶

Anti-Catholic sentiment remained a central part of English political culture. Publications denounced the machinations of the pope and popish rulers, and enflamed fears of popish dangers. Andrew Marvell’s An Account of the Growth of Popery and Arbitrary Government in England (1677) charted the dangers of popery from the Elizabethan treasons and the Spanish Armada to current threats of “a French slavery” and “Roman idolatry.”⁹⁷ Marvell’s Account was countered by Roger L’Estrange’s An Account of the Growth of Knavery, which “paralleled” Marvell and his associates with those responsible for the civil war.⁹⁸

Fears of popery reached a high point in 1678 with news of a Popish Plot that allegedly involved the assassination of Charles II and the Duke of York. The allegations resulted in a series of well-publicized trials and another outpouring of pamphlets. Whigs, or those who would soon be labeled Whigs, whipped up anti-Catholic sentiment. Parliamentary speeches and debates relating to the “Horrid Popish Plot” were printed.⁹⁹ Despite the London government’s restriction on news venders, it was reported that the streets “are much pestered with a sort of loose and idle person, called Hawkers, who do daily Publish and Sell Seditious Books, Scurrilous Pamphlets and scandalous Printed Papers.”¹⁰⁰ Printed material and rumor flew around the country. In 1678 some 1,178 titles were published in London; that number rose to 1,730 the following year, peaking at 2,145 in 1680.¹⁰¹

Whig efforts to prevent the succession of the Duke of York resulted in another deluge of printed tracts and broadsides. Supporters often espoused a theory of government based on popular consent that allowed for revocation of government authority when rulers violated their trust. Locke’s famous two treatises on government were written in this context but would not be published for another decade. Opponents emphasized the need for unbroken lineal succession or a divinely ordained kingship and warned of a renewal of civil war. Filmer’s Patriarcha (1680) was perhaps the best known of these efforts. Elkanah Settle’s The Character of a Papist Successor (1681), a provocative Whig pamphlet, triggered several replies, including one by Roger L’Estrange, which in turn elicited a Settle response.¹⁰² Some publications operated at the level of vilification, others at a higher intellectual plane. One commentator noted, “There is no Coffee-house, and a few private houses, but their Table-talk” is about succession.¹⁰³ Even porters discussed the Duke of Monmouth’s claim to the throne.¹⁰⁴ The excitement engendered a large number of publications consumed by a wide social spectrum in a wide range of venues. It also led to new forms for conveying political argument, among them the anonymous published letter typically labeled “A Letter from a Gentlemen of Quality to his Friend.” This format often was purported to present views from the country to the city or the city to the country.

These pamphlet wars were facilitated by the expiration of the licensing act in 1679, which the government did surprisingly little to revive. It did, however, issue a proclamation that year for the suppression of seditious and treasonable books and pamphlets. Nevertheless this was a time of “publick Prints, Diurnals, Courants, Gazettes, Pamphlets, which fly up and down thick and threefold, especially of late.”¹⁰⁵ London “swarms with Pamphlets. Two or three appear every day.”¹⁰⁶ “Ware Houses” were said to be “Cram’d,” book stalls full, and “all Tongues and Pens agog” with news of the Popish Plot.¹⁰⁷ There were now Whig as well as Tory accounts of the news. Benjamin Harris’s radical Domestick Intelligence lasted until 1681 when its editor was tried, fined and pilloried. Henry Care’s anti-Catholic A Pacquet of Advice from Rome was directed at those in London and Westminster of “meaner Capacities” unable to “comprehend large and elaborate Treatises.”¹⁰⁸ There was also Janeways’s Impartial Protestant Mercury, and Smith’s Protestant Intelligence. Although the word “Protestant” in the title typically signaled Whig affiliation, The True Protestant Mercury was designed to counter the Whigs in “some Popular Medium,” to rectify “Vulgar Mistakes” and to instill “Dutyful, and Honest Principles into the common People, upon that Turbulent and Seditious Juncture.”¹⁰⁹ A fair amount of council business, often quite detailed, was leaked to the news media, despite the fact that privy councilors were sworn to secrecy. Partisan newspapers flourished, though the official Gazette largely ignored controversy. Several Whig publishers were prosecuted for seditious libel, among them Jane Curtis, who was one of the increasing number of women involved as printers, publishers, booksellers and hawkers.¹¹⁰

The petitioning movement demanding that Parliament meet was well advertised in Whig publications. In 1680 newsman Benjamin Harris not only printed the monster petition the day after it was presented, a petition he reported as being over one hundred yards long, but also provided progress reports on petitions being collected in the various counties. An anti-Whig paper reported with disapproval that “Tables, Pen, Ink and Petitions have been placed upon the Royal Exchange at Change time, and People invited to subscribe them.”¹¹¹ The Gazette included proclamations against tumultuous petitioning and expressed opposition to the forms being sent to the country for signature. Addresses to the king “abhorring” the practice of petitioning were reported positively by the Tory press.

Roger L’Estrange, who emerged as the government’s most prolific polemicist, began a news publication, The Observator, despite his belief that newsbooks and newsletters “misrepresent[ed] proceedings of State.” His own government-approved publications designed to refute “seditious doctrines” were the only “remedy” for the “epidemicall” distemper of the press.¹¹² L’Estrange also introduced Hericlitus Ridens in 1681 to provide readers with “a true Information of the state of things” and advance their “understandings above the common rate of Coffee-House Statesmen who think themselves wiser than the Privy Council, or the Sages of the Law.”¹¹³

In 1681 readers would find four Whig, three Tory and one neutral paper plus the official London Gazette.¹¹⁴ Muddiman subscribers were provided full reports about proposed legislation and parliamentary activity. His immensely influential and widely distributed newsletter was characterized by an unfriendly commentator as

the Cream of Intelligence, Communicated twice a week by his Letters to very many in diverse countries, who do largely pension him, and to the Countrey Coffee-House that pay him a very considerably yearly Rent for his State Informations; where Lecturers being read, and Annotations made upon them . . . Faction spreads her wings and carries it as fast as she can home unto too many of the Gentlemen and Farmer’s Houses; . . . From Whence it comes to be chewed over again at every Conventicle or congregation meant, and repeated at every Market. ¹¹⁵

The constant bombardment of partisan publications led John Evelyn to refer to “this diffuse age, greedy of intelligence and public affairs.”¹¹⁶ Thomas Bayly also remarked on “these scribling Days (wherein the Press groans under the insupportable Burthen of Pamphlets)” that “inveigh against one another by Bitter Sarcasms and Biting Satyrs.”¹¹⁷ Another wrote of “the Pen and Ink War. . . . We live in an Age wherein was never less Quarter given Paper.”¹¹⁸ Mark Knights estimates that there were about 1,800 pamphlets published in 1680, double the number three years earlier.¹¹⁹

The defeat of the Whigs dampened the news and pamphlet culture that had created and sustained the excitement of the previous few years. Already in 1680 a judicial opinion ruled that the king could prohibit the printing and publishing of all unlicensed “News Books and Pamphlets of News whatsoever.” Soon afterward, the Privy Council announced a ban on all unlicensed newsbooks. Muddiman reported, “The Whigge party are quite down in the Mouth.”¹²⁰ Despite the ban, there were still those who complained of “Vain Reports,” which “Scandalize the Government, and of those who print and publish pamphlets of news without license or authority.”¹²¹ In 1682 the author of Julian the Apostate, directed against the Duke of York, was fined and imprisoned. In January of 1682 there were seven papers. After the prosecution of Whig newsmen, only the London Gazette and L’Estrange’s Observator remained. Despite the ban, however, some news and information, mostly foreign, continued to circulate. Gilbert Burnet reported in 1682 that “Our gazettes and newsletters have been of late” filled with the conflict between the pope and the French king. ¹²² Turkish incursions in Europe were widely reported and their siege of Vienna closely followed.¹²³ On the home front the quo warranto proceedings against and the subsequent loss of London’s charter in 1683 were well publicized.¹²⁴

Political excitement revived with the revelations of the Rye House plot, an allegedly Protestant conspiracy led by Whig notables to kill the king. Publications attacked Lord Russell’s treason; others defended his innocence. His “last dying speech” was on sale the day of his death, and 2,500 copies were available for sale the next day. Russell became a Whig martyr remembered by generations of Whigs as a victim of tyrannical government. On this occasion too the Crown commissioned an account of its version of the conspiracy.¹²⁵

The trial of Algernon Sidney, like that of Russell, was well publicized, especially by government and Tory publicists. One publication suggested that dissenters and fanatics had assumed “to themselves that Liberty, of aspersing their Superiours, in Common Prints, Libels, and Pasquils . . . whilst their Coffee Houses, and Tables afforded no other Discourse then the wise Methods of altering the Fundamental and Integral parts of Government they lived under.” Though their “general Cry was Religion, Property, and a Parliament, ’twas a Common Wealth at the bottom, and nothing less would satisfie this all asking Party.” The author denounced lower-class “mechanicks and Joyners of State” who “railed at their Prince and Government” as well as the “Hellish Plot, to Rout out the True Protestant Religion,” and kill the king, subvert laws and liberties and set up popery and arbitrary power.¹²⁶ The scarcity of newspapers did not mean an absence of news or controversy.

James II’s reign began with a new licensing act. The Gazette continued to purvey reports of royal progresses, sometimes exaggerating popular response to them, royal proclamations and events such as the birth of a new Prince of Wales. The new king wished to limit public discussion as much as possible. He increased postal surveillance and the number of informers. It was widely believed that it was “imprudent as well as dangerous to write any news.” Many quite humble persons were charged with criticizing the regime. As one government supporter indicated, “shops were made for trade and commerce, and not for stating the question about politics and the arcana of government.”¹²⁷ The Observator closed in 1687 with L’Estrange’s opposition to the king’s Declaration of Indulgence, but Elkanah Settle and Henry Care, now supporters of James II, were permitted to publish news. Care’s Publick Occurrences Truly Stated supported the king’s policy of religious toleration. News letters, however, became illegal in 1686. James’s multifaceted efforts at re-Catholicizing England, which included appointing a Roman Catholic king’s printer and allowing a Roman Catholic press in Oxford, ran into difficulties when censors refused to license Roman Catholic books. Nevertheless, the Crown distributed over 100,000 Catholics books in a single month, free of charge.¹²⁸ Despite harsh press controls, newsworthy events, such as Monmouth’s rebellion, James’s Declaration of Indulgence and the trial of the seven bishops, were publicized. News and information, some accurate, some not, continued to circulate at quarter sessions and the assizes and in ale houses and coffee houses.

Although prosecutions for seditious libel shut down several newsbooks, there were only four prosecutions for seditious libel during the lengthy reign of Charles II and three, including the trial of the seven bishops, under James II. The years 1688–89, however, would not prove to be a watershed for liberty of the press. Although printed newsbooks revived, licensing remained in force until 1695. News of Parliament, however, would circulate not only in licensed newsbooks but also in unlicensed accounts, newsletters, gossip and in the coffee houses that had developed over the last few decades.¹²⁹

THE CIRCULATION OF NEWS AND THE CULTURE OF THE COFFEE HOUSE

The dissemination of political news and polemic cannot be fully understood without an examination of the coffee houses that provided a public venue where information could be transmitted and debate about current affairs could be conducted with relative freedom. Given the fact that for a modest charge one could read and discuss the most recent newspapers and pamphlets, it is not surprising that Jürgen Habermas identified the age of the coffee house, c. 1680 to 1730, with the emergence of the “public sphere.”¹³⁰

Coffee houses began to spring up in the 1650s in Oxford and London. By 1663 at least eight could be found in London. Even the plague could not keep patrons away. By 1673 the coffee house had spread to “most cities and eminent towns throughout the nation.”¹³¹ In Cambridge scholars would repair to the coffee house after chapel, where “hours are spent in talking; and less profitable reading of newspapers, of which swarms are continually supplied from London.”¹³² At Oxford, “Nothing but news and the affairs of Christendom” were the staples of coffee house talk.¹³³ In 1681 a grand jury complained that coffee houses had become places where individuals were “debating state matters and hearing news.”¹³⁴ After the Oxford Parliament dissolution there were “all sorts of pamphlets and libels; one side running down the papists and upholding the dissenters, the other side crying down both, aspersing the last two houses of commons and ridiculing the proceedings . . . Publick intelligencers news abounding every day . . . filling town and country with notorious falsehoods.”¹³⁵ The coffee houses were full of such fare.

Coffee houses were thought to be social levelers attracting “A great concourse of all degrees of persons . . . from high to low.”¹³⁶ It was said that any person could visit, “That great privilege of equality is only peculiar to the Golden Age, and to a coffee house.”¹³⁷ “The Rules and Orders of the Coffee House,” a broadside, reported that “all are welcome thither . . . sit down together” without concern for rank.¹³⁸ The coffee house was one of the few places “where people of all qualities and conditions meet . . . no distinctions of persons, but gentleman, mechanic, lord and scoundrel mix.”¹³⁹ A song from the lord mayor’s show suggests the court and country, camp and navy could be found there.¹⁴⁰ While such comments, especially those to be found in the satirical “character” genre, no doubt exaggerated the degree of social equality, coffee houses allowed more social interaction among different classes than occurred elsewhere.

Some, like John Aubrey, favored the opportunity to mix and converse with those outside of his immediate circle or viewed the social mixture as yielding “the most intelligent Society,” or even an “Academy of Civility, and Free-school of Ingenuity.”¹⁴¹ Others were disgusted by the “lower sort” who sat “at Coffee houses” and undertook to “Judge of the Actions of great Persons.”¹⁴² Roger L’Estrange objected to its habitués acting as “judges of those councils and deliberations which they have nothing to do with at all.”¹⁴³

News, domestic and foreign, was the staple of conversation. Printed newsbooks dominated the coffee house scene, but manuscript newsletters, often more frank than printed sources, could also be found in abundance. “For a penny” one could “have all the news in England, and other Countries . . . in the weekly News-books.”¹⁴⁴ Coffee houses were “dasht with diurnals and books of news.” “He that comes often, saves Two pence a week in Gazettes, and has his News and his Coffee for the same Charge.”¹⁴⁵ Because the coffee houses had become a “Store of Mercuries” available to multiple readers, press runs greatly underestimate readership.¹⁴⁶

The most coveted news was political. Parliamentary news was readily available, some of it supplied covertly by a clerk of the House of Commons, some by rumor and gossip. So were the “Designs, Projects, Intrigues . . . and the cabals of the court.”¹⁴⁷ Coffee drinkers discussed the “growth of Popery” and “French Power” and commented on the king and his ministers.¹⁴⁸ Patrons sat all day and “discourse with all companies that come in of State Matters, . . . arraigning the judgment and discretion of their governors, censuring all their actions, and insinuating into the ears of the people a prejudice against them.”¹⁴⁹ It was reported that the Cabal requested that the king make “coffee-clubs” talk of humbler matters than “state affairs and interest of Kings.”¹⁵⁰ The Dutch wars, liberty of conscience, the king’s pro-French policy, the Popish Plot trials and the Exclusion controversy were all discussed.

News appeared thick and fast. “For home Intelligence, we have it Daily, and Hourly, and minutely, and half Minutely. So that there is ample provision made for divulging and publishing the Affairs of this World.” News came from “all Parts of the Earth, Dutch, Danes, and Turks, and Jews.”¹⁵¹ “There’s nothing done in all the world From Monarch to the Mouse, But every day and night ’tis hurl’d Into the coffee house.”¹⁵² Satirical pamphlets suggested that the coffee house denizen discussed “What hath been done, and is to do, ’Twix Holland and the King, What Articles of Peace will bee, He can precisely show; What will be good for Them or Wee, He perfectly doth know.”¹⁵³

What appeared to be authentic on one day or the next often turned out to be rumor or misinformation. Some thought the coffee house to be the “Midwife of all false Intelligence.”¹⁵⁴ The Character of a Coffee House noted, “He discovers some mysterious Intrigue of State, told him last Night by one that is Barber to the Taylor of a mighty great Courtier’s Man.” There were reports of 550 Jesuits “mounted on Dromedaries, seen by Moon-shine on Hampstead Heath” and “a terrible Design hatched by the College of Doway, to drain the narrow Seas, and bring Popery over dry-shod.” Ignorant coffee men mistook Hungary to be the home of the hungry and Morea that of the Moors.¹⁵⁵

Though satirists had a field day with the coffee houses and their patrons, the political significance of coffee house culture was clear and sometimes feared. One commentator thought they functioned “in the Nature of a common assembly, to discourse of Matters of State, News and great Persons.” Because separate tables were sometimes provided for patrons of different interests, a character in a 1681 play could query, “Which is the Treason-table?”¹⁵⁶ Aubrey refers to a meeting of a fairly large group of Rota-men that included Henry Neville, Major Wildman and himself as a “philosophicall, or Politicall Club, where gentlemen came at night to divert themselves with Politicall discourse.”¹⁵⁷

Tories associated the free-wheeling conversation of the coffee houses with rebellion and the Whigs. Coffee houses were the “rendezvous of idle Pamphlets, and a Person more idly employed to read them; . . . where every little Fellow . . . takes upon him to transpose Affairs both in Church and State, to shew Reasons against Acts of Parliament.”¹⁵⁸ Clarendon thought them “places where the boldest calumnies and scandals were raised, and discoursed amongst a people who knew not each other, and came together only for that communication and from thence were propagated all over the Kingdom.” He claimed that it was “generally believed that those Houses had a Charter of Privilege to speak without being in Danger” and recommended that the king “apply some Remedy” to the “growing Disease.”¹⁵⁹ The coffee house was “a Lay Conventicle, Good-fellowship turned Puritan” or even “a Rota room.”¹⁶⁰ In 1673 a government intelligencer informed Joseph Williamson of their “indecent, scandalous and seditious discourse.”¹⁶¹ Roger L’Estrange not only wrote that the Popish Plot was the “subject of every Coffee-House Discourse” but that “Coffee-Houses brew Sedition.”¹⁶²

Although Tory comments were often exaggerated, Whigs did use coffee houses and taverns to collect signatures for their petitions. In 1680 Shaftesbury was charged with bringing “the King and Governours into disgrace, by frequent Clubs at Coffee-Houses and Taverns.” These “Places and Sinks of Sedition and Rebellions” were used “to breed Differences between the Two Houses of Parliament” and hatch designs like those of 1641.¹⁶³ By 1681 it was being said that “most, if not all,” coffee houses were “Whiggified.”¹⁶⁴ L’Estrange saw no difference between “Conventicle and Coffee-house” except “that the Laws allows one and not the other, . . . they are both full of Noise and Phanaticks.” “Coffee-house Statesmen” thought themselves “wiser than the Privy-Council or the sages of the Law.”¹⁶⁵ He complained of coffee houses “furnished with News-Papers and Pamphlets . . . of personal Scandal, Schism and Treason,”¹⁶⁶ but himself used Sam’s coffee house as the center for his propaganda efforts. Whigs, however, did not accuse the Tories of plotting in coffee houses.

Not all comment was negative. Some found the coffee house “liberty of Speech” desirable. It was a place “Where men of differing judgments crowd,”¹⁶⁷ where the people were “free and communicative, where every Man may modestly begin his Story, and propose to, or answer another, as he thinks fit.”¹⁶⁸ John Aubrey praised the liveliness of political discussion, and thought “arguments in the Parliament House were but flat” by comparison.¹⁶⁹ Coffee houses were occasionally defended as “a friend to monarchy,” and as venues where “the principles of a popular government at the Rota were weakened, and rendered contemptible.”¹⁷⁰

Like alehouses and taverns, coffee houses were licensed. Efforts were periodically made to exclude politically suspect Catholics and dissenters from proprietorship. Uncontrolled political discussion and dissemination of domestic and foreign affairs alarmed government officials and resulted in surveillance. Clarendon suggested suppression or spies to discover those “who had talked with most license.” Secretary of State Arlington had scouts collecting information at coffee houses. However, when the attorney general was directed to prepare a proclamation for suppression, Sir William Coventry, a strong supporter of the government, surprisingly objected, arguing that coffee houses had been beneficial to Royalists during Cromwell’s time and had contributed to the Restoration in that the king’s friends at that time had “used more liberty of speech in those places” than elsewhere.¹⁷¹

Suppression was considered by Parliament in 1673. A proclamation for closure was issued in 1675 charging that coffee houses attracted the disaffected and produced false, malicious and scandalous reports against the king’s government. A petition advocating revocation soon followed, and the proclamation was quickly rescinded. Grateful proprietors promised to “prevent treasonable talk in their houses.”¹⁷² In 1677 the Privy Council withdrew the licenses of twenty coffee houses because customers “of mean birth and education” discussed affairs of state there. Two years later they were forbidden to receive newsletters. A Tory pamphleteer declared that the royal proclamation had successfully prevented “saucy Prying” into “Arcana Imperii” or “irreverent Reflexions of State.”¹⁷³ Additional regulatory efforts followed in 1681 and 1682. During the Oxford Parliament university officials forbade scholars from patronizing coffee houses.

Coffee house culture remained politically significant during the reign of James II despite the king’s order that the Middlesex justices suppress coffee houses and forbid discussion of political affairs by writing, print, speaking or listening.¹⁷⁴ When the Bishop of London complained to the presiding judge at his trial that he did not have a copy of the indictment, Lord Jeffreys retorted that “all the coffee houses had it for a penny.”¹⁷⁵ In 1688 a proclamation was aimed at coffee house patrons for “assuming to them a liberty” of censuring and defaming “proceedings of state.” By this time, however, such royal efforts were hopeless. William had already landed in England.¹⁷⁶

The coffee house and coffee house conversation about news and politics were a prominent feature of English political culture, despite periodic governmental efforts to contain or suppress them. By the early eighteenth century, the Craftsman could confidently claim, “[We] are become a nation of statesmen. Our Coffee-houses and taverns are full of them.”¹⁷⁷ While they may not have been quite the model of a civil society governed by reasoned arguments, they were a venue in which political matters could be discussed, often with partisan passion. Despite continued surveillance, the coffee house had become an accepted part of political life.

CONCLUSION

A distinct pattern emerges from the whole period. There is an acceleration in the conveyance of oral and written political news and argument, a proliferation of the means of that conveyance, most notably the multipage, periodically published newsbook, and emphatic claims of veracity for what is reported. The coffee house provided a kind of multiplier effect for the volume and velocity of available political information and opinion. Most of the communication is initiated in London but then transmitted outward. There are fluctuating and only partially effective efforts of the Crown to control this communication through licensing accompanied by Crown attempts to employ the media to its own advantage. The explosion of the news media in 1640–42 and 1679–81 provides us with some sense of what the news marketplace would have been like without government counter-pressure. Throughout the period there are streams of commentary on public figures, a good deal of it defamatory and eliciting accusations of libel, both personal and seditious. There is a considerable increase in the transparency of government motives and actions, particularly those of Parliament. Whether the marked increase in the amount of political information and misinformation readily available to the public at large, or at least to the reading and politically conversing part of it, actually increased the influence of public opinion on government policy-making is difficult to determine. It might be assumed, however, that the amount of effort expended by whoever controlled government at any given movement to control or influence news reporting and commentary indicates that it was a significant factor in the politics of the day.