The newspaper, public opinion, and the public sphere in the seventeenth century

Abstract

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.

Henry Goodcole, Visitor of Newgate: Crime, Conversion, and Patronage

“…55 As their intertextual resonances with the sixteenth-century polemics of martyrdom grew more distant, they strained readers' credulity in an increasingly sceptical and journalistic news-market, especially after the Restoration. 56 Moreover, as documented anti-puritan attitudes towards evangelical conversion attest elsewhere, behaviour such as Evans's was open to oppositional interpretations and deviant appropriations. 57 The second 1635 edition of Heavens Speedie Hue and Cry documents such responses.…”

Public Discourse, Corporate Citizenship, and State Formation in Early Modern England

“…40 According to Joad Raymond, there developed a public sphere in print both distinct from the oral and scribal publics of previous decades and foreshadowing any developments that might have occurred in the later seventeenth century. 41 Moreover, it was driven by factors antithetical to Habermas's model, not least religious heterodoxy and ideological instrumentalism. 42 David Zaret argues that it was in the 1640s, not the 1690s, that "contending elites [first] used the medium of print to appeal to a mass audience, and activist members of that audience invoked the authority of opinion to lobby those elites."…”

Echo Chambers and Paper Memorials: Mid and Late-Seventeenth-Century Book-bindings and the Practices of Early Modern Reading

“…17 However, on the whole, these politically or religiously heterogeneous book collections are notably scarce from the Folger collection. Recent intellectual and cultural histories of the English print market have rightfully emphasized the diversity and complexity of the metropolitan print output of the 1640s and, to a lesser extent, 1650s (Smith 1994;Zwicker 1996;Raymond 1999;D'Addario 2007, 57-62). With the beginning of resistance and eventually the onset of open hostilities between King and Parliament, as well as, more importantly, the collapse of the licensing system in 1642, pamphlets of all political and religious orientation poured into the book stalls of London and spread outward from there.…”

“…Because of this outpouring, a number of critics have speculated on the possibility that a nascent public sphere developed in mid-century England, one that encouraged debate, argument and the public airing of differences. This public sphere, it is argued, was driven in large part by the diversity of opinions that readers could access through printed books, newspapers and pamphlets (Achinstein 1994, 1-27;Norbook 1994;Raymond 1999 (1645), were compiled by the Presbyterian divine Thomas Hall (Folger Shelfmark P3904); John Owen's defenses of the independent position, and specifically John Cotton, were gathered by another reader (Folger Shelfmark O780). 17.…”