Recent years have witnessed a profound transformation in historians' approach to the political culture of the first half of the seventeenth century. Driven, in part, by a concern to develop a response to revisionist accounts of the period, they have breathed new life into studies of the popular and pamphlet literature of the period, and revived interest in the early modern news revolution.' Driven also by a desire to break down the distinctions between social and political history, and between 'elite' and 'popular' politics, historians have sought to re-examine the nature of political participation, and to reconsider public politics.2 Attempts have been made, as a result, to suggest that the period witnessed the emergence of a public sphere of open debate, and even the rise of 'democratic ~ulture'.~ Relatively little attention, however, has been paid to the way in which royalists reacted to the news and print revolutions of the mid-seventeenth century, much less stdl to their attitudes towards 'the public'. For the period before 1640 we are familiar with royalist views regarding the 'stigma of print', their hostility towards public engagement and participation, and their desire to protect the arcana imperii, as well as their aversion, in the language of recent historiography, to 'popularity'. Our appreciation of the way in which their ideas and attitudes developed after 1640 is less clear, even though the king's party obviously needed to engage with an expanding political nation, and to confront their apprehensions regarding the breakdown in political secrecy, and the transformation of political participation which was facilitated by the spread of popular pamphlets and the rise of newspapers. This piece discusses such issues through an examination of royalist attitudes towards the reporting of parliamentary proceedings, in terms of orders and resolutions, motions and divisions, and Commons and Lords debates. This neglected aspect of civil war print culture provides an important key to understanding early modern notions of the relationship between representatives and represented, the nature of political debate, and the role of the 'public' in national life.
