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Unsurprisingly this was a great age of satire but there was also a very evident desire to uncover the truth. This operated at several levels: most fundamental of all, a desire to know what was actually going on. Newspapers and pamphlets offered true relations and authentic versions at the same time as they denounced the lies of others. It also prompted stylistic innovation. Denunciations of the sensationalist accounts of the Irish rebellion may have given an extra emphasis to the development of a more sober style. Men like John Thomas and W.B. had been keen to maximize fear of the dangers of armed popery, but in response to the charge of sensationalism Thomas at least seems to have adopted a plain style in his pamphlet on Derbyshire, which ‘performed’ reliability and authenticity on its title page, even though it was probably untrue.24 But contemporary chronicling was unashamedly polemical even as it performed this simple reportage. For example, Josiah Ricraft’s account of England’s Champions, written towards the end of hostilities, reviewed the military history of Parliament’s campaigns from a shamelessly partisan angle. His purpose was to promote the reputation of those within the parliamentary coalition who were faithful to the Solemn League and Covenant, interpreted by him as a commitment to Presbyterianism. His account therefore rested on a clear view of which programme of political and religious reform God had favoured by delivering victories in battle. In seeking to establish his political and religious case Ricraft wrote a military history in which the heroes were Leslie, Manchester and Essex. In a manuscript version eighteen senior commanders were celebrated individually, a further twenty-seven given an important supporting role. Oliver Cromwell does not merit individual treatment and he appears in the chronology of Parliament’s military history only for his victory at Stamford and his seizure of Basing House in 1645. According to Ricraft the truth about the second battle of Newbury, so controversial in the parliamentary coalition, was simple: Manchester, ‘this noble General utterly routed [the royalists]’. When it appeared in print in 1647 Cromwell and others had been added, although the judgement on Newbury had remained unaltered.25

Newsbooks also pilloried strained readings of the standard terms of contemporary political discourse: most notably perhaps in Bruno Ryves’s reporting on the actions of parliamentarian soldiers, crowds and religious radicals, which juxtaposed their behaviour with their claim to be acting to preserve religion and liberty. Political conflict in the 1640s was, in that sense, a battle over key words – treason, honour, allegiance, reformation, custom, popery, law – and over the relationship between political claims and real actions. These were closely related problems – definition of terms, accurate description of what was going on and authoritative interpretation of its meaning. For example, one of the texts published by Ryves in 1647 was the Micro-chronicon, a narrative of the battles of the civil war akin to that published by Ricraft. In this case, however, the text probably originated with George Wharton, on whose earlier publication Ryves’s version seems to have rested. Wharton, as we have seen, was better known as the royalist astrologer, the main political opponent of William Lilly.26 Given the bizarre interpretations of standard terms it is not surprising to find a pervasive and more practical concern to understand what important people were really up to, whatever they had said in public: private letters were often published in order to reveal underlying truths; cabinets were opened, and plots discovered.

Even if the facts of the case could be agreed there was plenty of room for disagreement about what they meant. This was particularly true of providential stories – it was often clear that an event carried meaning, but it was not at all clear what that meaning was. For example, an established genre of writing, the warning piece, was put to work. A sinner