Consistently interesting, The Restraint of the Press in England, 1660–1715is in part a call to arms against public sphere theory and some of the more closed elements of recent historiography, not least the tendency to downplay religion and to emphasize secularization. Alex Barber tackles the established accounts of newspaper history and the “Glorious Revolution” of 1688–89. The system of press control was greatly weakened when William III (of Orange) seized power. He indeed brought a mobile printing press with him when he invaded as he knew the value of publications. As a consequence of the “Glorious Revolution,” it is possible to relate the rise of press freedom to the end of Stuart authoritarianism. Nevertheless, once in control, William moved to revive the machinery of press control. The “Glorious Revolution” had led to the appearance of newspapers, many short-lived but all of them favorable to William. However, the revival led to attacks on unlicensed works, Richard Baldwin finding himself in trouble with both Secretaries of State and Parliament in 1690–1, despite his Whig credentials.
Because the existing system for the supervision of printing was felt to be inadequate, plans were drawn up to prepare a new regulatory act, only for them to be killed due to parliamentary divisions and a lack of parliamentary time. As a result, the Licensing Acts lapsed in 1695. Linked to this, it is readily apparent that newspaper development could have gone on several different paths in England. No one path was inevitable. Instead, the key context explaining English distinctiveness was that of politics, with religious politics and political economy part of the equation. These provided the context for the independent initiative of entrepreneurs, and thus for a press focused on free market, liberal principles. There were subsequent calls for new legal restrictions, and these led Daniel Defoe into contrary arguments, notably in two works published in 1704, An Essay on the Regulation of the Press, and To the Honourable, the C---s of England . . . Relating to the Bill for Restraining the Press. In the event, in 1704, and more generally, the proposed legislation failed. In the first, Defoe affirmed the value of publication:
To put a general stop to public printing, would be a check to learning, a prohibition of knowledge . . . the high perfection of human knowledge must be at a stand, improvements stop, and the knowledge of letters decay in the kingdom, if a general interruption should be put to the press (An Essay on the Regulation of the Press, 3).
Much of the discussion of political issues in the English press, and particularly by the late-seventeenth century, was handled in pragmatic terms, with detailed, specific instances, reasons, and means of cause and effect playing a major role accordingly in the discussion. At the same time, the context was generally that of moral factors presented in terms of Christian values, while religious partisanship was also an important filter of information.
The result was the development of what has been termed a “public sphere” in which printed opinion played a major role. This is an exaggeration as many were not comprehended in such a sphere. Instead, it was more an “élite and some others sphere” (Jeremy Black, The English Press: A History [2019], PAGE).
Newspaper readership certainly developed after the lapse of the Licensing Act. Despite attempts in 1697, 1698, 1702, 1704, and 1712 to revive a licensing system, attempts that drew on members of both political parties, the press, nevertheless, remained free of pre-publication supervision, although Customs officers confiscated unwelcome “printed papers” as they arrived into the country. Moreover, there were many specific attempts to influence publication on particular issues or by individual titles.
Barber focuses on the ecclesiological placing of the discussion of the press and of publication as a whole. This was a new iteration for discussion that had preceded printing but was greatly accentuated by it. Many members of the Church of England regarded the changes from 1689 as a threat not only to their position, but also to the religious orthodoxy, moral order, and socio-political cohesion that the Church was seen as representing and sustaining. This perception that the Toleration Act was but part of a longer-lasting crisis contributed to a feeling of malaise and uncertainty. The individual quest for salvation, depicted by Bunyan, side-tracked, and thus evaded, the intercessionary role of the Sacraments, administering clergy, and the ceremonial context in formal sacral spaces. Thus, clerical ideology was challenged, although some clerics (and laity) refused to accept the new system and became Non-Jurors. The writings of radical Whigs, such as Toland, sharpened a sense of anxiety, as did Dissenter practices and alleged ambition. Occasional Conformity, the loophole that allowed Dissenters to avoid restrictions on non-Anglicans, particularly troubled many commentators favorable to the Church of England.
Barber argues that a liberal interpretation of the press has been deployed too insistently as part of an inherently secularist account of the past and of British history. Instead, he favors an account of the early English enlightenment in terms of a narrative of churchmen maintaining religious shibboleths whilst simultaneously accepting the needs of civil peace. Indeed, Barber suggests that what in effect was press legislation was passed in the early eighteenth century but that it was passed by Whig churchmen preventing High Churchmen from criticizing church policy. At the same time, Barber appreciates that government, in the broadest sense, in the period understood the value of information flows for the operation of successful political economy.
Barber's argument for moving beyond a liberal versus authoritarian account of the press is well-taken, and he is certainly correct to emphasize the role of ecclesiological ideas and such figures as Matthew Tindal. Moreover, I sympathize strongly with his stress on a revisionist account of the “Glorious Revolution” and the need to read this forward into the 1700s. My caveats are that he may well have overegged his case to the extent that the autonomy and importance of political events are underplayed, while I would have welcomed a treatment that included discussion of the situation elsewhere, not least in the American colonies as well as in the United Provinces (Netherlands). However, this is an important, indeed path-making, book that deserves considerable attention.
