1 - An Appetite for News? Media and the London News Market before the Battle of White Mountain

Summary

The Thirty Years War began at a time when communications about contemporary issues were growing and diversifying. Newsletter writing became a profession for some dedicated correspondents who provided regular and detailed accounts of recent events, while pamphlet publication expanded. Political criticism circulated, often orally, through verse libels, gossip, rumours, sermons and plays, but also in correspondence, satirical woodcut illustrations and broadsheet ballads. In the sixteenth and the early seventeenth centuries, the word ‘news’ was no better established than a variety of synonyms, including ‘tydings’ and ‘relations’, and was not as clearly defined as it is today, but by the start of the crisis in Bohemia in 1618, news interest was widespread. This chapter describes communications extending outwards from London through the British Isles and shows how political awareness increasingly permeated all levels of society. It begins an exploration of how this was transforming the nature of public discussion of current events and how public interest in the affairs of the Stuart Princess Elizabeth and her husband, Frederick of the Palatinate, turned foreign news coverage into a growing business venture for the stationers’ trade in London, leaving a more detailed analysis of the news trade relationship between London and other European cities to the next chapter.

News might begin its circulation in St Paul’s Cathedral and churchyard, at St Paul’s Cross, the inns, taverns and barber’s shops around the City, in Westminster, or at the market places of provincial towns and cities. Chapmen, hawkers and pedlars travelled the country selling smaller books and communicating news, door to door and through inns, markets and fairs. It is difficult to establish just how far off main routes and into the most remote areas of the British Isles they went, though there is evidence of travellers reaching many scattered rural communities throughout England and journeying to and from Scotland and Wales. There is also evidence of trade with bookstores in the far north of England and Edinburgh. The west of England could supply material to customers across the Welsh border and to Ireland; though communications by sea were as likely to be important for Scotland, Ireland and Wales with watermen on the Thames acting as carriers of news from London to Scotland and back.