D. EARLY ENGLISH JOURNALISM, AND For a long time before the date of our play, newsmongering in England had chiefly been carried on in two ways: by private news-letters; and by printed pamphlets. The newsletter, or, as it was generally called, the 'letter of news,' was the earliest form of the news-system in England. The aristocracy, who, as a rule, spent several months out of the year in the country, often hired persons in London to keep them informed of the news there-the doings at Court, and the gossip of Paul's, the Exchange,1 the theatres, the taverns, etc. For instance, Collins tells us in his Memorials of State2 that late in Elizabeth's reign, Sir Robert Sidney, Sir Philip's younger brother, 'kept a correspondence with Rowland White, the poet-master, a notable busy man, who constantly writ over to him at Flushing, when he was resident there as governor, the news and intrigues of the Court.' Magistrates on circuit, and other important officials, also had recourse to news-writers; and so did merchants out of town. Printers and stationers often wrote news-letters as a side-occupation; but news-writing was a regular profession, and some of those who engaged in it did nothing else. Retired army-captains were regarded as peculiarly adapted for this work, because, having served abroad, they were supposed to know and understand the movements of the army. The pay for such work was good. Among the memoranda preserved in the Clifford family we find: 'To Captain Robinson, by my lord's commands, for writing letters of news to his lordship for a half year, five pounds." Five pounds was then equivalent to from twenty-five to thirty now; and, as the Captain probably had several patrons, his business must have been fairly lucrative. Nor 'Cf. notes on I. 2. 60. did this system end when the newspapers began, though of course that was a hard blow to it. Scorning the vulgar medium of the printed sheet, which made news the property of peasant as well as of aristocrat, some of the wealthier and more proud retained their private writers. In troubled and suspicious times, too, especially during the rigid censorship which followed the Restoration, news-letters flew about. In fact, they continued to be used down to 1712. The writing of news-pamphlets dates back as far as the time of Henry VIII. In the 16th century these pamphlets were single folio pages, each devoted to one event, and hawked about the streets by criers and peddlers. Early in the 17th century they had become books of a dozen or so quarto pages, but, as before, usually devoted entirely to one event. Sometimes they contained English news, and sometimes foreign news, often being mere translations of the news-summaries of writers in other countries. The following are titles of news-pamphlets from the days of Elizabeth: Newe newes, containing a short rehearsal of Stukely's and Morice's Rebellion. 1577. Newes from the North, or a conference between Simon Certain and Pierce Plowman. 1579. Newes from Scotland, declaring the damnable life of Doctor Fian, a notable sorcerer, who was burned at Edenborough in January last. 1591. Newes from Spaine and Holland. 1593. Newes from Flanders. 1599. Newes out of Cheshire of the new found well. 1600.1 By the middle of the reign of King James the printing of these news-pamphlets had grown to be a brisk trade. Burton says in his Anatomy of Melancholy, 1614: 'If any read now adays, it is a play-booke, or pamphlet of newes.' Here are a few sample titles from that period:2 Lamentable newes out of Monmouthshire in Wales, con1 Andrews, Brit. Journalism 1. 26. 'Cited by Bourne, Eng. Newsp. 1. 2. taininge the wonderful and fearfull accounts of the great overflowing of the waters in the said countye, &c. 1607. Woful newes from the west partes of England, of the burning of Tiverton, (with a frontispiece). 1612. Strange newes from Lancaster, containing an account of a prodigious monster born in the township of Addlington in Lancashire, with two bodies joyned to one back. 1613. Newes from Spaine. 1611. Newes out of Germany. 1612. Good newes from Florence. 1614. Among the writers of news-pamphlets at this time, one of the busiest was Nathaniel Butter. Out of the developments which he made in the news-system came the idea of the under-plot of our play, and hence, even though the identification of him with Cymbal, head of the staple-office, on which most writers on this subject are agreed, is open to much question, it will be worth while to consider him and his work in some detail. The son of a small London stationer, Nathaniel Butter was admitted a freeman of the Stationers' Company per patrimonium in 1603-4. If, as Sidney Lee says,1 he was 'more than seventy years old' in 1641, he must then have been considerably over thirty. Perhaps he had spent his early manhood in the employ of his step-father, a stationer named Newberry, whom his mother had married in 1594. In 1605 Butter published The London Prodigal, the play which supplied the chief motif in the over-plot of The Staple of News; in 1607, in company with John Busby, he published Shakespeare's King Lear; in 1609 he printed Dekker's Belman of London; and in 1611 he published a 1DNB. 2 Butter had published The London Prodigal as the work of Shakespeare (see Introd., p. 23). On the assumption that Jonson wrote it, there is a fine fitness in his satirizing Butter in the same play in which, by his appropriation of so much of The London Prodigal, he asserted his authorship of it. folio edition of Chapman's Iliad. As early as 1605, however, he had been producing pamphlets of news. DNB. gives the titles of several of these which he published during the years 1605-11. Fox Bourne1 tells of one of Butter's pamphlets, dated October 9, 1621, and entitled The Courant, or Weekly News from Foreign Parts taken out of the High Dutch. It seems probable from this title that Butter had then conceived the idea of bringing out his news-pamphlets at regular intervals and all under the same general name. But under this title only this one number is known. Bourne says, however, that there is extant ‘a goodly assortment of similar news-pamphlets of later date, evidently parts of one series.' But though most of these are called Weekly News, so many seem to have been lost, there are so many irregularities in sub-headings, and in the dates, and the imprints so often bear, not Butter's name, but those of Bourne, Archer, and others, who appear to have been in partnership with him, that it is impossible to tell exactly what his share in their publication was. By the middle of the next summer, however, Butter's idea of a series of weekly news-pamphlets with a uniform name had come almost to full consciousness. On August 22, 1622, his weekly tract contained the following announcement: 'If any gentleman, or other accustomed to buy the weekly relations of newes, be desirous to continue the same, let them know that the writer, or transcriber rather, of this newes, hath published two former Newes, the one dated the second, the other the thirteenth of August, all which 1 2 1Eng. Newsp. I. 4–6. 2 From a communication by Charles L. Lindsay in Notes and Queries for August 22, 1903 (9th S. 12. 153), it appears that he possesses the only copy known of the Weekly News of August 2, 1622. The earliest in the famous Burney collection in the British Museum is dated September 25, 1622. The account in DNB. says of this later issue that it 'was Butter's first attempt at a newspaper.' Again DNB. says: ‘On 12 May 1623 an extant copy of a publication of "The News of the present Week" printed by Butter, Bourne, and Shefford, bore a number (31) for the first time.' Mr. Lindsay, do carry a like title, with the arms of the King of Bohemia on the other side of the Title-page, and have dependence one upon another; which manner of writing and printing he doth purpose to continue weekly, by God's assistance, from the best and most certain intelligence. Farewell, this twenty-three of August, 1622.' 'But,' says Fox Bourne, 'he straightway broke his rule, producing Two Great Battles very lately Fought, on September 2, and Count Mansfield's Proceedings since the Last Battle, on September 9, and styling neither of them Weekly News. It did not occur to him to number his papers till October 15, 1622, when what may be regarded as the first of a fresh series of Weekly News was marked No. I. After that the numbering was consecutive for a twelvemonth, another start with No. I being made in October 1623; but the titles were still varied. Sometimes we have The News of this Present Week, sometimes The Last News, sometimes More News, and occasionhowever, says: 'The Burney collection contains an almost complete sequence of Butter's Newes; a few are missing. Besides those named above [i. e. all the issues before Sept. 25, 1622] I note the absence of Nos. 3 and 21; both these are in my collection, and are dated respectively 22 October, 1622, and 7 March, 1623.' The title in full of Butter's tract for August 2, 1622, as given by Mr. Lindsay, is: ""The certaine Newes of this present Weeke. | Brought by sundry | Posts from severall places, but chiefly the progresse and arrival of Count Mansfield with the Duke of Brunswicke into Champeney in | France; and the joyning of sundry of the Princes with them, etc. | With the preparation of the French King to resist him: and what great feare Count | Mansfields unexpected arrivall hath | put all France in, etc. | Out of the Informations of Letters and other, this Second of August, 1622. | London, | Printed by I. H. for Nathaniel Butter, and are to be sold at his shop at the signe of the Pide Bull | at S. Austins Gate. 1622.", 'On the title-page,' adds Mr. Lindsay, 'is the device of a flaming heart within a wreath, and on the verso a full-page woodcut of the arms of Bohemia; one blank leaf, title, and sixteen numbered pages, with signatures and catchwords, small 4to. The first eight pages contain news from various parts of Europe; the remaining pages are devoted to the movements of Count Mansfield.' 1 Andrews, Brit. Journalism 1. 31. |