Politics and the Rise of the Press

Britain and France 1620-1800

Bob Harris

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2008
• Print ISBN:
  9781138154766
• eBook ISBN:
  9781134806508
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: British History
• Index: History

Politics and the Rise of the Press compares the rise of the newspaper press in Britain and France, and assesses how it influenced political life and political culture. From its social, economic and political sources, to its importance for the middling ranks in eighteenth-century British society, and its transformation after the French revolution. This detailed, comparative account, which also contains considerable original research on the early Scottish press, will be of value to all students of French and British history of the period.

1

News serials, newspapers and their readers in Britain, 1620–1800

This chapter traces the progress of news periodicals and their readership in England and Scotland from the early seventeenth century up to 1800. The bulk of the chapter focuses on the period after 1695, when pre-publication censorship lapsed in England and Wales, and the newspaper finally emerged as a major and continuous feature of national political and cultural life. (In Scotland, pre-publication censorship remained on the statute book but was increasingly ignored from the 1710s.) The first section focuses on the ‘prehistory’ of the newspaper, and emphasizes the widespread circulation of news, especially in England, from the early seventeenth century. The rapid development of the newspaper after 1695 owed much to progress in the previous seventy years or so, together with steady social and economic change in the same period.

The assumption that news did not circulate widely in Britain before 1695 has proved hard to undermine. Most historians accept that London provided a potentially huge market for news periodicals throughout the seventeenth century. This was partly a function of high levels of literacy in the capital—by the middle of the century around 80 per cent of the male population was literate compared with 30 per cent for the nation as a whole—and partly a consequence of the capital's unusually open and sophisticated political culture (T.Harris, 1987, pp. 27–35). Outside London, however, the picture that is painted is usually of news penetrating either by routes that were socially very selective —manuscript newsletters or ‘separates’, MPs, judges—or in ways in which the news itself was extremely selective—for example, via proclamations or the pulpit. In the light of recent work, however, important qualifications need to be made to this picture. New research is beginning to suggest that, while London offered a uniquely large market for news (as it continued to do in the eighteenth century), the provincial appetite for news in this period was not insignificant; neither were the means to serve it.

Not surprisingly, it is in periods of political tension and crisis that this has been most fully revealed. Thus, much recent work focuses on the 1620s, a period of interrelated international and domestic political conflict. This decade saw the appearance of the first news periodicals in England—corantos. These were published in London, were usually in quarto format, twenty-four pages in length, and furnished readers with foreign news (for an introduction to these and other forerunners of the newspaper, see Frank, 1961; Schaaber, 1965; Lambert, 1992). One historian has recently asserted that these news serials had ‘a widespread national readership’ (Frearson, 1993, p. 1). The size of editions was between 250 and 1,500 copies, although we lack any firm figures for this. They were distributed beyond London by various methods, although the most important was the growing number of London carriers. These packhorse drivers and waggoners carried goods, together with correspondence before 1635, between the capital and many places in provincial England and even Scotland.

Within local communities in the 1620s, news travelled by a combination of formal and informal means (Cust, 1986). One common starting point was a ‘separate’, a manuscript account of, for example, parliamentary proceedings. Most of these separates were probably purchased by the relatively wealthy. But they appear to have circulated among neighbours and in this way could come into the hands of less wealthy individuals. News from written and other sources also travelled by word of mouth. In 1634, Thomas Cotton read out his weekly London newsletter ‘evry markett daye att Colchester’, surrounded by listeners ‘as people [do] when Ballads are sunge’ (quoted in Frearson, 1993, p. 17). A news diary kept by a Suffolk clergyman, John Rous, illustrates how much news could reach even the relatively isolated provincial observer (Cust, 1986). What is interesting about Rous is that he rarely travelled outside his home area. His social contacts were also with individuals of a similar social standing—fellow clergymen, minor gentry and literate yeomen. Rous records having received a few newsletters and corantos from London, but the most commonly cited source of news is local gossip or talk. The content of this talk was broadly similar to reports in contemporary newsletters or ‘separates’. What Rous's diary illustrates is the many potential points of contact in early seventeenth-century society both between London and the provinces and within local communities, along which news and news serials could travel.

The model for the dissemination of news that has been uncovered for the 1620s was undoubtedly imitated and extended during the civil wars of the mid-seventeenth century. The wars and political convulsions of the period created a broad-based demand for news, as well as printers and publishers enterprising enough to respond to it. The principal printed forms that news took were diurnals, mercuries, corantos and gazettes, or newsbooks as they have been collectively called by historians (Frank, 1961; Raymond, 1993). These were mostly printed in London. They were weekly publications, usually of eight pages, and had circulations of anything between a few hundred and, on rare occasions, a few thousand. They carried a huge variety of material—political, social, and at times scatalogical. Unlike the corantos of the 1620s, they included news of domestic events and politics. Although Parliament sought to impose controls on them as early as 1643, they were disseminated largely unhindered until Cromwell had them suppressed and strict control of the press was reintroduced in 1654 (Siebert, 1965, pp. 230–2). In Scotland, only a handful of newsbooks appeared during the civil wars and interregnum, and the majority of these appear to have been aimed at English soldiers stationed around Edinburgh. However, William Couper, the early twentieth-century historian of the Edinburgh press, claims that there are references to the circulation of ‘News Letters’ in Scotland in 1642 (Couper, 1908, vol. ii, pp. 70–3). He also refers to the practice of groups of county magnates combining to hire a writer in Edinburgh to send them weekly intelligence from the Scottish capital. This letter was then passed around in country districts and often copied. Slightly later in the century, a number of burghs seem to have operated a similar system. Glasgow had a correspondent in Edinburgh from 1652. In 1657 the burgh had a journal sent weekly from London (Eyre-Todd, 1931, vol. ii, p. 258). In 1665 Stirling paid an individual ‘two shillings sterling weeklie’ for a weekly journal, ‘as Glasgow and utheris burghs payes’ (Couper, 1908, vol. ii, pp. 70–3). Further research will probably show that this sort of arrangement was common to many Scottish burghs and members of the landed elite in this period.

The bulk of work on news and news publications during the later Stuart period has concentrated on London. James Sutherland has recently underlined the importance of the period 1679–82 as a crucial phase in the development of the newspaper (1986). During this period, the period of the Exclusion crisis, the 1662 Licensing Act—and thus pre-publication censorship—lapsed. It was during this short period of relative press freedom that the outline of the form and content that was to characterize the newspaper for most of the rest of the century began to emerge. Forty-odd short-lived newspapers were published in London in these years. Sutherland's study has nothing to say about provincial distribution of these papers, but scattered evidence suggests that, as in the earlier part of the century, this took place on quite a wide scale. The Newcastle treasurer's account books for 1682 record a payment ‘as per order’ to ‘Mrs Maddison, being the news munger’ (Extracts, 1965, p. 59). Maddison was almost certainly an agent either in London or Newcastle who supplied the corporation with newspapers. In 1685, the Edinburgh town council instructed the town's treasurer to pay Robert Mein, the postmaster, for furnishing ‘for the use of the town…news letters, gazettes, and other news’ (Wood and Armet, 1954, p. 152). Recent work on popular politics during the Exclusion crisis, which shows again the readiness and competence with which provincial opinion responded to opportunities to express itself, also strongly suggests that the mechanisms and channels carved out during the 1620s and mid-century were easily revived when political conditions allowed and demanded it (see esp. T.Harris, 1993, pp. 102–8; Jones, 1961, pp. 167–73; Knights, 1994).

The seventeenth-century background to the development of the newspaper is important for a number of reasons. In the first place, as the next chapter will show, it helps us to picture more clearly some of the ways in which the dissemination and availability of news was transformed by the newspaper after 1695. It also places the newspaper's development after 1695 in its proper perspective. What the seventeenth-century record shows is the extent to which the social and economic conditions for the emergence of a lively national press were already in place, certainly in England. These conditions included the massive size of London, together with the high levels of literacy among its population. London remained a leading influence on print culture in Britain until at least the mid-nineteenth century. The development of printing and of news periodicals in the provinces was closely linked to experiences gained in the capital's large market. Other conditions included a developing market economy, improving physical links between London and the provinces (roads and carrying services), growing prosperity just below the level of the elites in society, and growing familiarity with print, particularly in areas and occupations in which people of middling rank were concentrated. Recent revisions by Peter Lindert and Jeffrey Williamson of Gregory King's social table of England and Wales in 1688 only reinforce this point. These show an economy and society with, already by the late seventeenth century, sizeable commercial and manufacturing sectors. As Lindert and Williamson have written, King ‘painted a nation consisting of just London and a vast, poor hinterland …England and Wales were surely more industrial and commercial in King's day than he has led us to believe’ (quoted in Crafts, 1985, p. 14).

The progress of the press after 1695 was rapid. New forms of newspaper multiplied. The papers of 1679–82 had been published twice weekly. In 1695 a number of tri-weekly papers emerged. These papers were published on the post days—Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. In 1696 the first evening paper appeared. The first tri-weekly evening paper emerged in 1715. The first daily paper—the Daily Courant—made its appearance on 11 March 1702. The date of the first provincial paper is less certain. The earliest surviving copy of such a paper—the Bristol Post-Boy—dates from 1704, but it is likely that the first provincial paper emerged in Norwich in 1701. Readers had to wait much longer for the first Sunday paper—the British Gazette and Sunday Monitor. This only appeared in 1779, and was published in defiance of sabbatarian legislation. The Edinburgh Gazette was Scotland's first proper newspaper, appearing briefly in 1680 and reappearing in either 1693 or 1699. It was followed in 1696 by the short-lived Edinburgh Flying Post and in 1705 by the longer-lasting Edinburgh Courant (see Kelsall and Kelsall, 1986).

The balance between different forms of newspaper changed over the course of the eighteenth century. Michael Harris has estimated that in 1746 London had a total of eighteen papers—six weeklies and essay sheets, together with the same number of tri-weeklies and dailies (1987, p. 31). In 1770, there were five dailies, eight tri-weeklies and four weeklies published in the capital. In 1783 the figures are nine dailies and ten bior tri-weeklies; by 1790 fourteen dailies, seven tri-weeklies and two weekly papers (Black, 1987a, p. 14). The growing influence of the daily paper reflects, among other things, the impetus to news reporting provided by Parliament's ceding control in 1771 of the press reporting of its proceedings. When Parliament was in session, after 1771 newspapers had access to interesting copy on a daily basis.

Before 1714, it was the tri-weekly papers that were circulated in greatest number (Price, 1958). Figures based on returns from payment of stamp duty—an impost levied on news-carrying publications from 1712—show that the Post-Man, the most successful paper during Queen Anne's reign, had an average circulation between August and September 1712 of 3,812. The one daily paper of that period—the Daily Courant—had average sales of 859 (Snyder, 1968). For about twenty years after 1714, it was the weekly journals and tri-weekly evening papers that proved the most successful. In the early 1720s, before it was purchased by the ministry, the weekly London Journal was probably selling around 10,000 copies per issue (M.Harris, 1987, p. 39). By the end of the 1720s, the print run of the most famous political essay paper of the early Hanoverian period—the Craftsman—was over 10,000 (Harris, 1970). The most successful tri-weekly evening paper of the same period was almost certainly the London Evening Post. This probably had a print run in the mid-century of around 5,000 (M.Harris, 1987, p. 56). These sorts of magnitude of circulation were not exceeded before the early nineteenth century. In 1769 the publication of the famous ‘Junius’ letters in the influential daily the Public Advertiser boosted its circulation from an average of around 2,800 to 3,400 (Brewer, 1976, pp. 143–4). Among many provincial papers there was probably some increase in circulation during the second half of the eighteenth century, although firm evidence for this is slim. Isaac Thompson of the Newcastle Journal was claiming 2,000 regular purchasers in 1739, while Whitworth's Manchester Magazine boasted that it had a sale of 1,200 in 1755. Many provincial papers before 1750 probably had significantly lower circulations, however, of the order of a few hundred (Cranfield, 1962, pp. 168–76; see also Maxted, 1990). For the second half of the eighteenth century, account books and records survive for a few years for the Hampshire Chronicle (Ferdinand, 1990). These provide precise figures for printing, circulation and returns between 1781 and 1783. They show an average print run of around 1,050–1,100. In 1779 the circulation was 500. In 1780 the proprietors of the Salisbury Journal were claiming a circulation of ‘upwards of 4000’ (Ferdinand, 1990). Not all provincial papers were so successful. As late as 1837 the Devonshire Chronicle had a circulation of only 250. The circulation of Scottish papers is largely unknown. Ruddiman's Weekly Magazine claimed a circulation of 3,000 in the late 1770s (Fagerstrom, 1951, p. 189). If this was true, and Hugo Arnot, the eighteenth-century historian of Edinburgh, also emphasizes the ‘unprecedented’ nature of the paper's success (Arnot, 1779, p. 453), it perhaps suggests circulations in the hundreds for most eighteenth-century Scottish papers. A claim in 1815 that the two contemporary Aberdeen papers had a combined circulation of 2,000 suggests that this sort of magnitude is probably correct (Wilson, 1822, p. 169).

The growth, therefore, of the eighteenth-century press was not achieved by expanding significantly the circulation of individual newspapers. Instead, the number of titles published multiplied as the century progressed and, with it, the overall circulation of newspapers. The pattern of growth was uneven. The press grew strongly in periods of war and political excitement—most obviously, the 1710s, later 1730s, 1745–6, mid-1750s, later 1760s and early 1770s, later 1770s and early 1780s, and early 1790s—but stagnated or even declined in circulation at other times (Harris, 1978a, p. 88). The general sorts of magnitude involved can be deduced from figures derived from stamp tax records and estimates based on extrapolations from the few figures recorded elsewhere. These should be treated with caution. Stamp tax records are incomplete; they also only survive for certain years. Other figures are often derived from claims made by individuals with an interest in exaggerating circulations. The figures for the stamp tax for 1712 and 1713, the only figures for the first half of the century, are particularly problematic. Nevertheless, from them it has been suggested that in 1713 the annual sale of newspapers was around 2.5 million (Snyder, 1968). In 1750, the date of the next set of surviving stamp tax returns, 7.3 million stamps were purchased by the press. By 1760 the figure had risen to 9.4 million, by 1775 to 12.6 million. Seven million stamps were issued for London papers in 1801, and 9 million for provincial papers. The underlying pattern of growth that emerges therefore is of rapid growth up to 1750, slower growth until around 1780 and then another take-off into much quicker growth after that date.

The patterns of growth revealed by the provincial press and the Scottish press diverge from the general picture. The provincial press grew rapidly between around 1720 and 1750, stagnated until the later 1770s, and then resumed a rapid upwards trend. In 1745 there had been around forty provincial papers. In 1753 the figure fell to thirty-two. By 1782 there were approximately fifty. By 1800 there were over a hundred (Read, 1961, p. 59). The picture for Scotland is necessarily more tentative, since we still lack a modern study of the early Scottish press. Edinburgh and Glasgow dominated Scottish newspaper publishing throughout the eighteenth century. Growth was generally much slower north of the border than in England. But the 1770s and 1780s were something of a turning point. The American war and the war against revolutionary France both gave important boosts to the Scottish press, although the dominance of the two major cities was only reinforced (Craig, 1931; Couper, 1908; Cowan, 1946). This reflected the wide circulation of Edinburgh and Glasgow papers. Elsewhere, papers generally failed to establish a foothold, although by 1800 the two cities had been joined by Aberdeen, Dumfries and Kelso. Dundee, Perth, Berwick, Montrose and Arbroath had also seen the brief appearance of magazine-type periodical publications (see esp. Carnie, n.d.).

Establishing the basic facts surrounding the growth of the press in the eighteenth century is relatively easy. Interpreting these facts is more difficult. Jeremy Black, while acknowledging the extent of the developments that did take place, has recently suggested that the market for the press was more limited than rehearsing figures for overall growth alone would appear to indicate (see esp. Black, 1987a, p. 21). His argument rests on two principal factors. First, many more newspapers failed than succeeded in the eighteenth century. This was true of all forms of paper—London and provincial, weekly, tri-weekly and daily. Over half of the provincial papers published before 1760 failed in the first five years (Wiles, 1965, p. 25). Second, the pattern of growth of the provincial press was uneven (see Wiles, 1965). In some towns, the picture is one of continual innovation and steady expansion. In Manchester, before 1760 six papers came into existence, four of them lasting for more than five years. In the 1740s, Newcastle and the surrounding region was able to support three papers—the Newcastle Journal, the Newcastle Courant and the Newcastle Gazette. Some large and growing towns, however, struggled to support a newspaper until comparatively late. The first Liverpool paper, the Leverpoole Courant, appeared in 1713, but only survived for a few issues. It was only in the later 1750s that renewed (and more successful) attempts were made to establish a paper in the city. Third, by comparison with growth in readership in the nineteenth century, the advances of the eighteenth century can be made to seem small. This perception also informs Arthur Aspinall's seminal, albeit now dated, study of the London press between 1780 and 1850. Impressed by the large circulations achieved by certain papers after 1814, when The Times started to be produced on a steam-powered press, Aspinall was dismissive of the efforts of eighteenth-century newspaper printers. As he remarked (1949, p. 379):

When Pitt [the Younger] was in Downing Street a newspaper was merely a small commercial speculation designed primarily to advertise new books, quack medicines, theatre programmes, auction sales and shipping news. It contained only a few paragraphs of news and no leading articles; and its sale was measured by hundreds.

The print runs of newspapers during the eighteenth century were certainly circumscribed by various factors. These included technology, cost, content and, to a lesser degree, illiteracy and poor communications. The basic form of technology, the hand-press, made it very difficult to increase print runs above around 1,000 without adding further presses and workmen, something that only a printer sure of future success could contemplate (for the wooden hand-press and the constraints it imposed on newspaper production, see esp. Popkin, 1989, ch. 5).

The relative unimportance of illiteracy is suggested in the first place by the fact that demand for printed material other than newspapers among the lower ranks—for example, almanacs and chapbooks—was generally buoyant throughout the century. As Tessa Watt has argued recently, even in the sixteenth century, rural as well as urban communities were becoming increasingly habituated to literate as well as oral modes of communication (1991). Margaret Spufford has uncovered a massive popular printing industry in the later seventeenth century. Charles Tias, a contemporary London Bridge wholesaler had a stock at his death (in 1664) which included 90,000 chapbooks, that is one for every fifteen families in England and Wales. He also held over 37,000 ballad sheets (Spufford, 1985, pp. 92–4). The problem for newspaper printers, in other words, was not, in Roger Chartier's phrase, one of ‘typographic acculturation’ (Chartier, 1989). There was a popular or mass demand for print. The issue, however, was one of whether eighteenth-century newspapers could or did seek to tap it.

The impact of poor communications was uneven and diminished as the century progressed. Communications improved considerably in the course of the century, becoming more extensive, faster and cheaper. The road system was extended and significantly improved by the turnpike revolution of the central decades of the eighteenth century (Pawson, 1...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half Title
• Historical Connections
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Series editors’ preface
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 News serials, newspapers and their readers in Britain, 1620–1800
• 2 The press and politics in Britain: from the glorious revolution to the French Revolution
• 3 The press in eighteenth-century France
• 4 The press, society and political culture
• Conclusion
• Blbliography
• Name index
• Subject index