6 - Readers and Press Reactions 1622–48: A Developing Dialogue

Summary

As we have seen in Chapter 4, we know something about the readership of news during the Thirty Years War from the frequency of news publication, from print runs and from the format of issues. To understand how the news was read and how readers reacted we need to know more about the readers themselves. Some, particularly those who were among the middling sort, have left records of their reading in diaries, correspondence, commonplace books and even, occasionally, in marginalia on the newsbooks. Other contemporary commentary can be found in sermons, plays and poetry, though this was from writers who were themselves part of the media. Dramatists and preachers, while reflecting on society and its interests, were also often addressing and seeking to influence the same audiences and were, consequently, in competition to some degree with the periodical press: a penny or two spent on a newsbook might otherwise go to the theatre or to the church. News editors are another source of information: they reflected on customers’ comments and responded in print, and tried to anticipate reactions to the issue in preparation. Their motivation was to explain their product to readers and to connect with them to increase sales. This chapter follows the periodical press through three decades and explores the evidence that has been left by readers and by those in the media who commented on news reporting, to assess the extent to which we can learn about the penetration of Thirty Years War news in early seventeenth-century society and about the way it was received.

Readers who left records in their diaries and correspondence include those frequently commenting and combining news from a variety of sources often because their livelihood was to a degree associated with the business of the news. These include the correspondent John Chamberlain; Dudley Carleton, Viscount Dorchester, the diplomat and secretary of state, and the magistrate, merchant, and MP in 1626; and William Whiteway, in Dorchester, who traded in France and whose records in both his diary and commonplace book cover domestic, foreign and shipping news up to 1635. To these we can add Walter Yonge, a merchant and puritan, educated at Oxford and the Middle Temple, who became Sheriff of Devon in 1628 and MP for Honiton in 1640. His diary for the years 1604–28 shows that he relied on the correspondence to help him keep abreast of the news.