An Inky Business

A History of Newspapers from the English Civil Wars to the American Civil War

Matthew J. Shaw

• Publisher: Reaktion Books
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781789144185
• Topic: Histoire
• Subtopic: Histoire du monde

An Inky Business is a book about the making and printing of news. It is a history of ink, paper, printing press, and type, and of those who made and read newspapers in Britain, continental Europe, and America from the British Civil Wars to the Battle of Gettysburg nearly two hundred years later. But it is also an account of what news was and how the idea of news became central to public life. Newspapers ranged from purveyors of high seriousness to carriers of scurrilous gossip. Indeed, our current obsession with "fake news" and the worrying revelations or hints about how money, power, and technology shapes and controls the press and the flows of what is believed to be genuine information have dark early-modern echoes.

1

Origins

Our story might begin in Drogheda, a town in eastern Ireland some 50 kilometres (30 mi.) north of Dublin. It had the misfortune to occupy a strategic spot on the mouth of the River Boyne during the civil wars of the mid-seventeenth century. By 1649, following the overthrow of English rule, the Irish Catholic Confederation controlled most of Ireland. In August that same year, however, Dublin and the port of Rathmines had been regained by the English in a surprise attack by the Parliamentarian commander Colonel Michael Jones. Once the seaport was secured, Oliver Cromwell was able to land an army of 12,000 along with siege artillery in an attempt to reconquer Ireland. Drogheda, whose 6 metre (20 ft) walls and fort were defended by over 3,000 royalists, became the first town assailed in Cromwell’s campaign. Demoralized and lacking ammunition, the defending forces began to melt away. On 11 September, after offering terms of surrender that were refused, his forces overwhelmed the high walls and stormed the town. On Cromwell’s orders, and in line with the standards of the day, the remaining garrison and Catholic priests among them were given no quarter and were killed, along with many of the townsfolk. The commanding officer, Arthur Aston, had his brains beaten out with his wooden leg by the besiegers, who believed it contained gold pieces (some accounts suggest they later found two hundred coins in his belt). The numbers are unclear, but perhaps 3,000 royalist troops who refused Cromwell’s summons were killed in hot and cold blood, and three hundred of the garrison were executed after surrendering to Cromwell’s mercy, some within the church in which they were sheltering. The ranks were decimated in the Roman fashion, and many survivors deported to the West Indies. The heads of sixteen royalist officer corpses were decapitated, sent to Dublin and put on pikes on the roads into the city.

Although arguably not unusual by the standards of seventeenthcentury warfare on the Continent, if not in Britain, the massacre at Drogheda remains very much a live issue, contested by historians and those on either side of the Irish question. Indeed, the paragraph above, as neutral and as objective in intention as it is, will undoubtedly contain enough to anger either side. Cromwell himself justified the killing in three ways. The behaviour of the attackers could be justified by the laws of war. It could also, he claimed, be seen as ‘a righteous judgment of God upon these barbarous wretches who have imbrued their hands in so much innocent blood’, even though many of those killed had not taken part in the confederate rebellion against the English; Drogheda had never been a confederate town. Finally, he argued for the killings as a compassionate act in the long run, as they would terrorize other towns into immediate surrender (only four other towns did refuse to surrender after Drogheda, although this included the massacre at Wexford a month later). For the royalist side, the actions of Cromwell’s armies presented them with a propaganda coup. Royalist presses quickly set to work in Britain and Ireland, printing and disseminating the news that 2,000 of the 3,000 dead were civilians, and reporting in detail the horrors of those put to the sword. The anonymous ‘A Bloody Fight in Ireland’, for example, which was printed in Smithfield, London, in 1649, reported ‘news come of the certain taking of Drogheda’ via the master of a boat from Dublin, who ‘could not stay to bring over any Letters, himselfe being a testimony sufficient’.

Yet the terrible stories of murder, killing and massacre in Ireland were sadly far from unique. While such sectarian violence and the treatment of the defeated defenders at Drogheda and Wexford offered a startling comparison with the interpretation of the laws of war on English soil (despite the many atrocities committed by Royalist and Parliamentarian alike), they were familiar to anyone who had read or heard about the horrors of the Thirty Years War. A dispute between the Catholic and Protestant powers within the Holy Roman Empire became a central European war, attracting intervention from Denmark and Sweden and growing into a clash between the Bourbon and Habsburg powers. Between 1618 and 1648, disease, dearth and conflict reduced the population of Germany by more than a third. The male population was halved.

Pamphlets – short and quickly printed accounts – offered English readers a window into the horrors unfolding across the Channel, as well as Protestant theological reflections on their cause. As one told its readers, ‘Behold here, as in a Glasse, the mournefull face of a sister nation, now drunke with misery.’ Central Europe, England and Ireland were not alone in the religious and political tumults of the early and mid-seventeenth century. France underwent a series of rebellions by members of the aristocracy and their followers, known as the Fronde; she was also violently divided between Catholic and Huguenot. News of ‘much fear’ and the ‘execution of eminent persons’, as one ‘Letter from Paris’ recounted, was collected and printed in pamphlets. North America offered some respite from such strife, at least in the thoughts of a few, high-minded settlers, such as the Pilgrim Fathers. But for most, and certainly for the indigenous peoples of that land, the New World was a land of violence, imported or freshly encountered, disease, exile and enslavement.

Our story of news begins, then, within a Europe and America divided, suffering from pestilence, war and violence. The nature of the state, the balance of power between monarch, nobility and subject, the true interpretation of scripture and the meaning of religious tradition were all in question. Print, manuscript and oral debate offered a clamour of voices, often fervent in their views, but giving little room for compromise. It was a world that was confused, argumentative and desperate for some sort of meaning or authority to be imposed. While the medieval world-view might be described as relatively static, with shared views about the natural state of affairs, the jolts caused by the overthrow of old certainties meant that the world needed to be freshly described, with new tidings and interpretations offered up to an eager public. Change, and the speed of change, gave rise to the need for regular updates: for what we now call news.

‘News’, as we call it today, had of course always been sought. The ability to produce information about current events required a certain amount of organization and technological ability, as well as creating an information hierarchy among those with access to news and those excluded from it. From the start, the production of news was also tied to official propaganda: from ad 206 to 221 the Han Dynasty in China distributed government news sheets known as tipao, a form of imperial bulletins issued by local and central government destined for consumption by bureaucrats. Either handwritten or printed by engraved wooden blocks, sadly no early tipao survive, but their echo can be felt. As a format they continued into the early modern period, and even into the nineteenth century, as ‘reports from the capital’. Information and the carriers of information were closely linked to the centres of power.

In the West, written news took epistolary form. The letter, written on rolls of papyrus paper, established itself as a routine means of public and private communication in the Greco-Roman world and carried news of goings-on across the Roman Empire. Romans could also discover the latest official news from Acta diurna (‘Daily Acts’ or ‘Daily Records’), once these initially secret bulletins were made public under Julius Caesar. Lasting until the age of Constantine, the Acta initially reported the outcomes of legal proceedings, but expanded to include more general public announcements, as well as notable births, marriages and deaths, and imperial or senatorial decrees. Again, no physical Acta survive, despite being archived after being displayed in public spaces, such as the Forum, on whitened boards (album) or inscribed on metal or stone. We do, however, know a little of how the Acta were used from other texts that survive, including accounts of slaves reading the Acta out to their master for the amusement of those at the table. There are also hints of what we might call the first journalists: a substantial number of actuarii working for the senate who gathered and prepared the information.

Others made a business out of reporting on the Acta and disseminating them to the provinces. News even spread beyond Italy, making use of Rome’s vast network of roads and maritime commercial networks. From the time of Augustus, and probably long before, official couriers travelled the roads by horse or carriage, stopping at regular staging posts. It is estimated that news could usually travel at 40 kilometres (25 mi.) a day, with 80 being possible if the news was especially urgent. In theory, this system, which represented an enormous expense, was limited to official correspondence, particularly confidential information. Merchants also had their own means of sharing information along the roads and across the seas, sharing financial news, such as the cost of corn, with their colleagues. Other forms of correspondence made their way across these networks, bringing news to the furthest reaches of the empire, along with ‘tydings’ passed on by word of mouth. From the fragments of numerous wooden writing tablets found at Vindolanda, a Roman military camp in modern-day Northumberland, England, we can grasp a little of how the empire’s communication networks knitted the known world together. Remarkably preserved by the chemical properties of the soil, these wooden tablets are covered in inked script, written by a broad cross-section of garrison society, from the governor and his wife to more lowly members. They reveal something of the extent of literacy at the time, and of its close connection to the workings of imperial power. The creation of a postal system, with the vast cost involved, enabled the projection of Roman Imperial might even to this cold, windswept edge of civilization. The control of communication meant the control of power.

Medieval Europe placed similar importance on epistolary communication, and the written transmission of information played a crucial role in shaping the influence of the main pillars of power: the Church, the State and, increasingly, merchants. It took centuries to replace the distressed communication networks of the Roman Empire. The Church remained wedded to the written word through a largely literate priesthood, and through the scriptoria of monasteries the institution continued to hold some of the knowledge of the classical world. Furthermore, a network of bishoprics and monasteries formed permanent nodes in a communications network, where letters could also be copied at scriptoria and copies deposited at libraries en route to their destination. Although cloistered, monks took a lively interest in the world and began to record the stories of their times, perhaps most famously in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. We can think of this, anachronistically no doubt, as a slow-moving ticker tape, recording the few events deemed noteworthy that year – tidings of floods, Vikings or religious signs.¹

Monasteries and other religious settlements were often placed at key geographical points, and even if originally placed at deliberately remote spots, they often became destinations in themselves. The popularity of pilgrimages, in which the devout would travel to shrines of particular saints, ensured a steady flow of travellers who could carry news by word of mouth and also courier letters. The numbers could be great: in 1300, after Pope Boniface VIII declared a plenary indulgence for pilgrims to the Holy Basilica in Rome, around 200,000 made the journey. Rome also served as the administrative centre for Christendom, bringing thousands of petitioners and office seekers, many of who would write home during their often long sojourn in the city. The papacy also generated its own correspondence and had a small team of around forty papal couriers who could be trusted with confidential despatches. This select body was augmented by sending less confidential correspondence with those returning from visits to Rome or Avignon (the latter becoming the seat of papal administration from the fourteenth century). Such systems steadily grew into a formidable, if expensive, communications and information network, able to bring in and circulate the news that it wished. That said, letters could still take weeks or months to arrive – or even be sent, as for reasons of economy they tended to be bundled up together.

Church, State and commerce were often interlinked. During the thirteenth century, Glastonbury Abbey (in Somerset in the west of England) was one of the richest in the land. Although still largely surrounded by marshes, it was linked to the wider world by the River Brue. The abbey employed one particular tenant to keep up an eightman boat in order to ferry the abbot, his men, kitchen, huntsmen and dogs from the abbey to his summer house in Meare to the east of the main abbey. His duties also included carrying the abbot’s letters to Bleadney and Panborough, where the abbot kept a vineyard and wine depot.

Secular authorities in the patchwork of kingdoms, principalities and empires that constituted Western Christendom also desired the ability to discern what was going on, but although they attempted to emulate the reach of the papacy, the expense of such systems ensured that information parity eluded them. News of the rulers’ wishes could be sent downwards among their subjects with relative ease, but communication between states was trickier, as was news gathering. Like the papacy, royal families relied on private teams of couriers to carry letters and messages: an expensive business. Isabella, wife of the Prince of Wales and future Edward II, employed thirteen messengers, two of whom were mounted, largely to keep in contact with her family overseas.

The official business of state generated an enormous amount of correspondence ranging from tax matters to official writs. By the fourteenth century sheriffs of English counties could expect to receive several thousand writs each year. Italian city-states developed sophisticated systems of financial record-keeping and generated a wealth of paper chits and letters, helping trade to flourish as well as spreading information between their courts and senates.

News gathering, if we can call it that, was also driven by political demands. Smaller states, such as the Italian city-states mentioned above, were driven by the need to understand what their neighbours were up to, while communicating with their own citizens was much more straightforward. As such, the tools of diplomacy – notably resident emissaries at foreign courts, as well as sophisticated cyphers to encrypt letters – were first put into place by the Italians. An important duty for such proto-ambassadors was the collection and reporting of news back to home state. Elsewhere, competition for land and commercial advantage also gave reason for monarchs to be well informed. A premium was placed on foreign intelligence from as far away as the Levant. The letter-books of King James II of Aragon (1264–1327) reveal an extensive network of correspondents across his native Italy and beyond. The many thousands of letters reveal a steady stream of reports on commercial and political developments. In Northern Europe the dynastic wars of the fourteenth century gave an impetus to create better information networks, as well as a means of undertaking negotiations with other states or dynastic families. Effective monarchy depended, at least in part, on the creation and maintenance of a proper pool of trained couriers and the cultivation of a network of correspondents. Information became a necessary component of the wielding of power.

These networks, then, helped to enable an early form of news, which remained a protean form of intelligence. They mixed the oral with the literate and were largely limited to closed circles of connections. Trusted couriers carried confidential messages from the pope or a king, which they communicated verbally, but they would also carry letters of introduction, along with other written correspondence. Those without their own network of couriers would also try to include their own written messages in the official letters carried between the courts of Christendom. Such networks remained highly unreliable, dependent on the weather, the vagaries of shipping and the condition of mud-soaked roads, paths and byways. War and disease, notably the Black Death, amplified the desire for news and information while destroying the very networks that helped disseminate it and draining the royal coffers that paid for a cadre of messengers. Such events also generated rumours and gossip, increasing the amount of information but severely damaging its reliability. Within the courts of Europe, systems had to be developed to filter this information.

During the English Wars of the Roses (1455–87), many subjects were reluctant to believe the latest news, such as of victory or defeat, or the death of a protagonist, until they saw physical evidence. Eyewitnesses could also quash rumours: following the killing of the Earl of Warwick for treason, King Edward IV display...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1. Origins
• 2. Reporting Parliament
• 3. Colonial Papers
• 4. News and the American Revolution
• 5. The French Revolution
• 6. Scandal
• 7. The Creation of the Modern Press
• Afterword
• REFERENCES
• FURTHER READING
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• PHOTO ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• INDEX