Journalism in the English Civil War - Political crisis and the origins of public
opinion
The social and political upheavals that occurred in Britain between 1640 and 1660
included the fall of the government and the execution of the king, the creation of a
secular parliament, and a civil war between supporters of Parliament and Royalists.
These momentous events – sometimes seen as the beginning of the modern era in
British history – certainly gave birth to the first writing and publication we can
recognise as professional journalism in newspapers.
Change was spectacular – and fast.
SLIDE 1
In 1581 Queen Elizabeth I had made the production of seditious literature a capital
offence. And, in early years of the 17th Century printing was controlled via strict
censorship by the Star Chamber.
The crown claimed the right to publish (or not) all matters pertaining to England, and
the few news based pamphlets that circulated in London dealt exclusively with
foreign news.
This was partly because printers felt they could safely distribute reports and opinions
about events in France, Germany and Holland. Writing about domestic affairs was
risky.
But there was also a commercial reason to concentrate on news from abroad. The
powerful and literate in London had a reasonable chance of finding out what was
going on at the Royal Court and in Parliament through social contacts with friends
and associates.
News from abroad was harder to obtain from such informal sources. And it was a lot
more interesting. Religious wars on the continent produced sensational tales – often
involving gruesome accounts of barbarity and torture. And, given that these were
happening a long way from home and were largely unverifiable, they could also be
embellished to make them more sellable.
There was an influx of news-sheets (as they were called) from Europe. Periodicals
published in Amsterdam and Cologne became available and they were avidly read.
This encouraged English publishers – none of whom would yet call themselves
journalists – to distribute tales from abroad. In 1622 Nicholas Bourne and Thomas
Archer launched a title. Weekely Newes from Italy, Germanie, Hungaria, Bohemia
and the Palatinate, France and the Low Countries.
SLIDE 2
So, these entrepreneurs were publishing something we would recognise as a
newspaper. But note that it still dealt exclusively with foreign news.
Domestic news was formally illegal and a bit too hot for commercially ambitious
printers to touch – but that did not mean it did not exist. Manuscript letters about
British political issues – including debates in parliament – circulated among a small
elite based in London. They were expensive – and only available to people who knew
of their existence – but their circulation created an appetite for the tide of printed
domestic news that would flow from London printing presses after 1641.
(For a detailed description of these events please read Denis Griffiths, Fleet Street,
Five Hundred Years of the Press and Martin Conboy’s Journalism, A Critical
History.)
Today I want to introduce you to the journalism of the English Civil War. First – and
briefly - what was the Civil War
(Insert Dr Mike Stoyle’s introduction and my slides)
Exciting stuff – and it invigorated journalism too.
In the years before the war began in 1642, radical Protestants produced a deluge of
illegal pamphlets promoting their religious opinions and criticising the King.
Initially, Archbishop Laud, the King’s official Censor of the Press, came down hard
on them. Printers were fined, whipped and jailed. In extreme cases some were
branded with red hot iron and had their ears cut off.
But political crisis creates an appetite for information.
The political crisis that precipitated the English Civil War began to simmer when
King Charles failed to crush the Scots in the autumn of 1640. The Long Parliament
was summoned – on November 3 1640 – and members of parliament assembled to
discuss the affairs of the nation.
This was politics in the raw – and the MPs of all factions wanted their views heard
beyond the Palace of Westminster. They insisted on having their speeches printed and
distributed. They responded to each other’s speeches by publishing criticism.
All this was a boon for printers – the disputatious politicians were paying to put their
views in the public domain. More than this, it placed topical controversies before the
public in greater numbers and at lower cost than ever before.
In the Spring of 1642 the exchange of printed declarations and opinions between
Parliament and the King produced a plethora of publications known as “Separates”
essentially half-sheets of printed material or several sheets folded together. This
period became known as the “War of Words.”
Public interest in news now became intense. So intense that, in a reversal of the
previous tradition of bringing in interesting news from abroad, British printers now
began to sell news about England to the continent. One title, Le Mercure Anglois, was
printed in London and sent to France.
The King tried in vain to restrict this outpouring of critical news and commentary –
but he had lost control of Parliament. In 1641, the Star Chamber was abolished.
Religious and political pamphlets and sheets poured of the presses including, on
November 22 1641 the first official report of parliamentary news. It was called Heads
of Severall Proceedings in this Present Parliament.
Print was on its way to becoming a medium of genuinely public debate and
information. Accounts of debates in Parliament involved readers in political debate.
Publishing created a channel for the circulation of political news and opinion. The
appearance of a real newspaper in 1641 saw politics breaking through the barriers that
had always existed under absolute monarchy.
Informed members of the public wanted to know what was taking place in parliament
and to participate in debates about what should happen next. They needed journalists
to tell them. Parliamentarians needed journalists – or propagandists – to promote their
case and convince supporters. The demand for news created regular, professional
newspapers – known as newsbooks.
Civil War newsbooks made politics part of the daily experience of their readers. Note
that these readers were a small minority of the population, but they were a much
larger group than the tiny elite that had previously dealt with affairs of state.
And this early journalism offered a distinct advantage to those who opposed the King
and supported parliament. Charles did not use the new means of communication to
make his case. He was an absolute monarch. He did not believe that he should engage
in dialogue with his subjects. He considered himself king by divine right. To use
persuasion to advance his case would be to accept that he had a case that needed to be
argued. As far as he was concerned, that was nonsense. He was king because God had
made him king.
So, at first, the Royalist faction left the new opportunity for propaganda to their
parliamentary opponents. This was a colossal error. The leaders of the parliamentary
faction were articulate and passionate. They did not hesitate to use journalism to
create a new form of public politics of a kind never previously seen. They had new
and radical ideas about religion and power and they wanted to share them and build
public support for them.
Thus, the period between 1640 and 1660 became, in Martin Conboy’s words “an
extended experiment in the politics of the press under conditions ranging from almost
absolute freedom to almost absolute control.” This was also a time when several
techniques used in modern political journalism were used for the first time. These
included:
Planted stories
Exposés – particularly of royal corruption
Editorial comment
Specialist correspondence
The first use of headlines (short sentences indicating the content of the story below
first appeared in the Kingdom’s Weekly Intelligencer in January 1643. The idea soon
caught on)
The first use of illustrations – Mercurius Civicus: London’s Intelligencer began to use
woodcuts as soon as it was launched in 1643
Use of shorthand – In your reading pack you will find an account of the execution of
King Charles on Tuesday, January 30 1649. It comes from A Perfect Diurnall. It is
plain that the reporter has taken a verbatim shorthand note of the speeches.
The Civil War itself brought about a huge advance. Both sides saw the need to
promote their cause and condemn their opponents. They knew that newspapers were
an effective way to do it.
The war saw the launch of the most famous of the early newsbooks – The Mercuries.
Many titles included the word Mercury – he was, after all, the Roman God of
Messages – usually depicted as the winged messenger. Two of these titles, Mercurius
Aulicus and Mercurius Britannicus are best remembered as intensely partisan
propaganda newspapers.
In the disputes that preceded the outbreak of fighting in 1642, several newsbooks had
attempted objective reporting. They knew there was a market for information. It made
commercial sense to supply it. However, when the conflict began polemical and
partisan writing began to dominate. The two most famous Mercuries exemplify it
(SLIDE)
Mercurius Aulicus was the official Royalist title. It ‘Communicated the Intelligence
and Affaires of the Court to the Rest of the Kingdom.’
Mercurius Britannicus offered the alternative view.
Writing in 1651 one observer of the newspaper scene, Clement Barksdale wrote a
verse about the competing versions of events presented in these titles:
As the armies did against each other fight;
Even so doe our modern Historians write;
Each for his side; The Stationer says, Buy Both:
Compare them, and you may pick out the truth.
That argument – that truth may be discerned by considering a diverse range of
accounts of the same event in various publications - would become very much more
familiar centuries later as a genuinely free press emerged in Victorian England. It
retains some value today.
The propagandas has a distinctly salacious feel. To my mind it sometimes feels
vaguely modern. This is from Mercurius Aulicus – the Royalist title – of 23
December 1643. The war is in full swing and the Royalists are keen to blacken their
enemy’s reputation.
“On Sunday last…While his majesty’s forces were at Church, one of their prisoners
was missed by his Keeper, who searching for him, and looking through a cranny
into the stable, he saw a ladder erected and the holy rebel committing buggery on
the keeper’s own mare”
But, in seventeenth Century England the argument against censorship had not been
won. As soon as the Parliamentarians under Oliver Cromwell has executed the King
and proclaimed their Commowealth, they reacted no less vigorously than the King to
the challenge of free speech. They sought to suppress it. The Long Parliament created
the ‘Committee for Examinations to search for unlicensed Presses,’ and it ordered that
‘No book shall be printed unless the same be approved and licensed by such.’
This provoked the scholar, poet and independent Protestant, John Milton, (the future
author of Paradise Lost, 1667) to write the Areopagitica (Explain using St.
Lawrence Institute notes) ***Hand out Copies***
So the Civil War provoked an initial outburst of furious propaganda – after which
Cromwell imposed a state monopoly of news under the supervision of a government
censor. At the restoration of the monarchy in 1660 the system was embraced and
operated by the new king.
(Take in Grayson Ditchfield’s notes)
.