God's Fury, England's Fire_ A New History of the English Civil Wars - Michael J. Braddick [107]
This is the context of John Thomas’s decision to publish his newsletter of parliamentary business. He had connections with Pym, who had proved himself an eager publicist over previous months, and was a prime mover behind the publication of the Grand Remonstrance. Earlier in the week Thomas had published a pamphlet reporting the Incident. What was particularly important about the Heads of Severall Proceedings, however, was that it was a serial. He published another the following week, and soon had numerous competitors. The boom lasted until March 1643, when Parliament successfully enforced licensing.37 By that time a series of long-term newsbook titles accounted for half of Thomason’s collection – clearly the newsbook eroded the market for the one-off political pamphlet.38
An immediate implication of this was an increase in the supply of news. During the 1630s the services of professional letter writers seem to have cost around £20 p.a. The Earl of Bridgewater seems to have paid something like this to John Castle in return for perhaps three letters every two weeks.39 A little over a year later 1d bought 5,000 words of news each week; for his £20 Bridgewater could have had 4,800 titles (more than ninety each week). More important than the potential banquet that this provided for Bridgewater was that readers who could not possibly have enjoyed the services of a newsletter writer could, for less than one ninetieth of the price, have a weekly newsletter which was fuller, and not necessarily less well-informed, than that of a professional letter writer of the 1630s. Increasing the supply of information is not, of course, a guaranteed way to foster clear understanding, and many readers may have felt that they enjoyed fewer certainties as a result of this news revolution. John Castle had been scrupulous about identifying and weighing sources, advertising particular reports as ‘likely to be true’, distinguishing between rumour, report and news in complex ways. Nonetheless, Bridgewater was unsure what to believe: ‘the various reports of the news of this time be such that no great credit be to be given to the rumours spread abroad’.40 Newsbook writers were evidently aware of this difficulty and quickly came to proclaim their bona fides on their title pages: The kingdomes weekly intelligencer: sent abroad to prevent misinformation; Mercurius Civicus; Londons Intelligencer as truth impartially related from thence to the Kingdome to prevent misinformation; The moderate: impartially communicating Martial affaires to the Kingdom; or the Mercurius anti-mercurius, which claimed to be ‘Communicating all humours, conditions, forgeries and lies of mydas eared newsmongers’
There are some suggestive connections here. The pamphlet about the plague sore had been printed for ‘W.B.’, possibly the bookseller William Bowden, who was active in these months. Bowden is known to have published a number of tracts recounting stories of Catholic plotting and in December he published a number of pamphlets retailing the atrocities of the Irish rebels. John Thomas’s pamphlet about the Incident used the same woodcut as W.B.’s pamphlet about the plague sore. Like Bowden, Thomas was also active in publishing pamphlets about the atrocities carried out by Irish Catholics. It may be that this reflects a network of printers and booksellers working hard to promote awareness of the popish plot and the image of Pym as the main bulwark against its success.41