The Invention of News: How the World Came to Know About Itself

by Andrew Pettegree

  35. The best account is Colin Martin and Geoffrey Parker, The Spanish Armada, 2nd edn (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999). For the ground-breaking archaeological investigations that underpin this study, Colin Martin, Full Fathom Five: The Wrecks of the Spanish Armada (London: Chatto & Windus, 1975).

  36. Jean Delumeau, Vie économique et sociale de Rome dans la seconde moitié du XVIe siècle (Paris: Boccard, 1957–9), p. 60.

  37. Ibid., p. 35.

  38. De Lamar Jensen, Diplomacy and Dogmatism: Bernardino de Mendoza and the French Catholic League (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1964), pp. 156–7.

  39. Copie d'une lettre envoyée de Dieppe, sur la rencontre des armées d'Espaigne & d'Angleterre (Paris: Guillaume Chaudiere, 1588); USTC 8949. There were four 1588 editions in all, including reprints in Lyon and Toulouse. USTC 12721, USTC 53285.

  40. Discours veritable de ce qui s'est passé entre les deux armées de Mer d'Angleterre & d'Espaigne (s.l, s.n. 1588). It was, though, republished in stoutly Protestant La Rochelle, and anonymously elsewhere. USTC 19491 for the La Rochelle edition.

  41. Bertrand T. Whitehead, Brags and Boasts: Propaganda in the Year of the Armada (Stroud: Alan Sutton, 1994), p. 109.

  42. Parker, Grand Strategy, pp. 223–4. For the Elizabethan efforts at intelligence gathering, Alan Haynes, Invisible Power: The Elizabethan Secret Service, 1570–1603 (Stroud: Sutton, 1992); Stephen Alford, The Watchers: A Secret History of the Reign of Elizabeth I (London: Allen Lane, 2012).

  43. Parker, Grand Strategy, p. 270.

  44. Stuart Carroll, Martyrs and Murderers: The Guise Family and the Making of Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), pp. 281–92.

  45. Delumeau, Vie économique et sociale de Rome, p. 54.

  46. Ibid., p. 59.

  47. Ibid., p. 61.

  48. See, for the context of these negotiations, Michael Wolfe, The Conversion of Henry IV (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993).

  49. Delumeau, Vie économique et sociale de Rome, p. 58.

  50. Corte verhael vande groote victorie die Godt almachtich de conincklijcke mayesteyt van Enghelant verleent heft, over de Spaensche armada (Amsterdam: Barent Adriaesnz, 1588); USTC 422639.

  51. Le discourse de la deffette des Anglois par l'armée espagnolle conduicte par le marquis de Saincte Croix espagnol, aux Illes Orcades (Paris: François Le Fèvre, 1588); USTC 9650.

  52. As reported in a newsletter of 3 September. Brendan Dooley, ‘Sources and Methods in Information History: The Case of Medici Florence, the Armada and the Siege of Ostende’, in Joop W. Koopmans (ed.), News and Politics in Early Modern Europe (1500–1800) (Louvain: Peeters, 2005), p. 39.

  53. The ballads entered for publication in the Stationers’ registers are listed in Whitehead, Brags and Boasts, pp. 209–11. John J. McAleer, ‘Ballads on the Spanish Armada’, Texas Studies in Literature and Language, 4 (1963), pp. 602–12.

  54. STC 6558. Illustrated Whitehead, Brags and Boasts, p. 126.

  55. A true discourse of the Armie which the kinge of Spaine caused to be assembled in the haven of Lisbon (London: John Wolfe, 1588); STC 22999, USTC 510911.

  56. Le vray discours de l'armee, que le roy catholique a faict assembler ay port de la ville de Lisbone (Paris: Chaudière, 1588); USTC 19534. There is also an abbreviated Dutch version: De wonderlijcke groote Armade die den Coninck van Spaengien heft toegherust op Enghelandt (Gent: Jan van Salenson, 1588); USTC 413911.

  57. A pack of Spanish lyes sent abroad in the world (London: Christopher Barker, 1588); STC 23011, USTC 510912; Whitehead, Brags and Boasts, pp. 197–8. The irony, of course, is that England was one of the last print cultures to abandon the old-fashioned Gothic in favour of Roman type. Spain was well ahead in this respect.

  58. Christina Borreguero Beltrán, ‘Philip of Spain: The Spider's Web of News and Information’, in Brendan Dooley (ed.), The Dissemination of News and the Emergence of Contemporaneity in Early Modern Europe (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2010), pp. 23–49, here p. 31.

  59. Beltrán, ‘Philip of Spain’, p. 33.

  60. Below, Chapter 8.

  61. Parker, Grand Strategy, p. 244.

  62. No fewer than ten Italian states kept resident ambassadors in Spain, quite apart from those from the western nation states. Parker, Grand Strategy, p. 218.

  63. Ibid., p. 20.

  64. Ibid.

  65. Ibid., p. 65.

  66. Geoffrey Parker, The Dutch Revolt (London: Allan Lane, 1977).

  Chapter 8 Speeding the Posts

  1. Johannes Weber, ‘Strassburg 1605: The Origins of the Newspaper in Europe’, German History, 24 (2006), pp. 387–412.

  2. See below; and above, Chapter 2.

  3. Wolfgang Behringer, Thurn und Taxis. Die Geschichte ihrer Post und ihrer Unternehmen (Munich: Piper, 1990); idem, Im Zeichen des Merkur. Reichspost und Kommunications-revolution in der Frühen Neuzeit (Göttingen:Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2003). A summary of the argument is presented in Wolfgang Behringer, ‘Communications Revolutions’, in German History, 24 (2006), pp. 333–74.

  4. Behringer, Thurn und Taxis, p. 18.

  5. Ibid., pp. 41–6; idem, Im Zeichen des Merkur, p. 63.

  6. Behringer, Im Zeichen des Merkur, pp. 80–82.

  7. Behringer, Thurn und Taxis, pp. 52–4, 79–83.

  8. E. John B. Allen, ‘The Royal Posts of France in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries’, Postal History Journal, 15 (1971), pp. 13–17.

  9. Philip Beale, A History of the Post in England from the Romans to the Stuarts (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1988).

  10. Ibid., p. 119.

  11. Ibid., p. 122.

  12. Ibid., p. 142.

  13. Philip Beale, Adrian Almond and Mike Scott Archer, The Corsini Letters (Stroud: Amberley, 2011).

  14. Behringer, Thurn und Taxis, pp. 49–50.

  15. Wolfgang Behringer, ‘Fugger und Taxis. Der Anteil Augsburger Kaufleute an der Entstehung des europäischen Kommunikationssystems’, in Johannes Burkhardt (ed.), Augsburger Handelshäuser im Wandel des historischen Urteils (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1996), pp. 24–48.

  16. Hans and Marx Fugger stood godfather to Octavia von Taxis in 1572, and Hans Fugger acted as executor for the Augsburg postmaster Seraphin in 1582. Behringer, ‘Fugger und Taxis’, in Burkhardt (ed.), Augsburger Handelshäuser, pp. 241–8.

  17. Von Sautter, ‘Auffindung einer grossen Anzahl verschlossener Briefe aus dem Jahre 1585’, Archiv für Post und Telegraphie, 4 (1909), pp. 97–115.

  18. Von Sautter, ‘Briefe aus dem Jahre 1585’, pp. 107–9.

  19. A. L. E. Verheyden, ‘Une correspondance ineditée addressée par des familles protestantes des Pays-Bas à leurs coreligionnaires d'Angleterre (11 novembre 1569–25 février 1570)’, Bulletin de la Commission Royale d'Histoire, 120 (1955), pp. 95–257.

  20. The letters are discussed in Andrew Pettegree, Foreign Protestant Communities in Sixteenth-Century London (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), pp. 221–5.

  21. See Chapter 7 above.

  22. M. A. H. Fitzler, Die Entstehung der sogenannten Fuggerzeitungen in der Wiener Nationalbibliothek (Vienna: Rohrer, 1937), p. 61.

  23. Behringer, Thurn und Taxis, p. 52.

  24. Ibid., p. 56.

  25. Behringer, Im Zeichen des Merkur, pp. 132–6.

  26. Erich Kuhlmann, ‘Aus Hamburgs älterer Postgeschichte’, Archiv für deutsche Postgeschichte, Sonderheft (1984), pp. 36–68.

  27. Behringer, Thurn und Taxis, p. 58.

  28. Reproduced in ibid., pp. 70–1.

  29. Behringer, Im Zeichen des Merkur, pp. 177–88.

  30. Ibid., p. 178.

  31. Ibid., pp. 205–11.

  32. Swedish involvement in the international diplomacy of these years was graphically demonstrated by the discovery in 1936 of the largest known surviving collection of seventeenth-century newspapers in the stacks of the Royal Library in Stockholm. See Folke Dahl, The Birth of the European Press as Reflected in the Newspaper Collection of the Royal Library (Stockholm: Ru
ndqvists Boktryckeri, 1960).

  33. See below, Chapter 10.

  34. Klaus Beyrer, Die Postkutschenreise (Tübingen: Ludwig-Uhland-Instituts, 1985); idem, ‘The Mail-Coach Revolution: Landmarks in Travel in Germany between the Seventeenth and Nineteenth Centuries’, German History, 24 (2006), pp. 375–86.

  Chapter 9 The First Newspapers

  1. Johannes Weber, ‘Strassburg 1605: The Origins of the Newspaper in Europe’, German History, 24 (2006), pp. 387–412.

  2. Elizabeth Armstrong, Before Copyright: The French Book-Privilege System, 1498–1526 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).

  3. The University of Heidelberg has an almost complete run for this year, which has now been digitised: http://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/diglit/relation1609.

  4. Johannes Weber, ‘“Unterthenige Supplication Johann Caroli, Buchtruckers.” Der Beginn gedruckter politischer Wochenzeitungen im Jahre 1605’, Archiv für Geschichte des Buchwesens, 38 (1992), pp. 257–65.

  5. The standard directory of early German newspapers is Else Bogel and Elgar Blühm, Die deutschen Zeitungen des 17. Jahrhunderts. Ein Bestandverzeichnis, 2 vols (Bremen: Schünemann, 1971); Nachtrag (Munich: Saur, 1985). See also Holger Böning, Deutsche Presse. Biobibliographische Handbücher zur Geschichte der deutschsprachigen periodischen Presse von den Anfängen bis 1815, 6 vols (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 1996–2003).

  6. Paul Ries, ‘The Anatomy of a Seventeenth-Century Newspaper’, Daphnis, 6 (1977), pp. 171–232; idem, ‘Der Inhalt der Wochenzeitungen von 1609 im Computer’, Deutsche Presseforschung, 26 (1987), pp. 113–25.

  7. Weber, ‘Strassburg 1605’, p. 398.

  8. Karl Heinz Kremer, Johann von den Birghden, 1582–1645. Kaiserlicher und koniglich-schwedischer Postmeister zu Frankfurt am Main (Bremen: Lumière, 2005); idem, ‘Johann von den Birghden, 1582–1645’, Archiv für deutsche Postgeschichte (1984), pp. 7–43.

  9. Listed in Bogel and Blühm, Deutschen Zeitungen, no. 5.

  10. Ibid., no. 15.

  11. Ibid., no. 16.

  12. In this respect Meyer's decision to call his second weekly issue, started in 1630, also Postzeitung, was a definite and unnecessary provocation.

  13. Thus, in the case of Meyer's Wöchentliche Zeitung auss mehrerley örther, the Tuesday edition was given the title Prima, and the Thursday edition, Wöchentliche Zeitung. See Bogel and Blühm, Deutschen Zeitungen, no. 15.

  14. Folke Dahl, Dutch Corantos, 1618–1650: A Bibliography (The Hague: Koninklijke Bibliotheek, 1946); Folke Dahl, The Birth of the European Press as Reflected in the Newspaper Collection of the Royal Library (Stockholm: Rundqvists Boktryckeri, 1960).

  15. Folke Dahl, ‘Amsterdam, Earliest Newspaper Centre of Western Europe: New Contributions to the History of the first Dutch and French Corantos’, Het Boek, XXV (1939), III, pp. 161–97, with a reproduction of this issue from the copy in Stockholm Royal Library. See also D. H. Couvée, ‘The First Couranteers – The Flow of the News in the 1620s’, Gazette, 8 (1962), pp. 22–36.

  16. This means that in cases where copies of both printings survive, they are likely to exhibit small typographical differences. Dahl, Dutch Corantos, pp. 20–23, with reproductions of the copies in the Royal Library in Stockholm and the Mazarine Library in Paris.

  17. Dahl, Dutch Corantos, pp. 23–6.

  18. Dahl, ‘Amsterdam, Earliest Newspaper Centre’, pp. 190–91.

  19. Ibid., pp. 185–6.

  20. On advertising see ibid., pp. 161–98, and Chapter 14 below.

  21. Michiel van Groesen, ‘A Week to Remember: Dutch Publishers and the Competition for News from Brazil, 26 August–2 September 1624’, Quaerendo, 40 (2010), pp. 26–49.

  22. Paul Arblaster, ‘Current Affairs Publishing in the Habsburg Netherlands, 1620–1660’ (Oxford University DPhil dissertation, 1999); Leon Voet, ‘Abraham Verhoeven en de Antwerpse pers’, De Gulden Passer, 31 (1953), pp. 1–37. See also, most recently, Stéphane Brabant, L'imprimeur Abraham Verhoeven (1575–1652) et les débuts de la presse ‘belge‘ (Paris: A.E.E.F, 2009).

  23. See Christiaan Schuckman, Hollstein's Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts, ca. 1450–1700, vol. XXXV (Roosendaal: van Poll, 1990), pp. 217–26, nos 2–5.

  24. The text of the privilege is given in Brabant, Verhoeven, p. 281.

  25. Illustrated in Dahl, The Birth of the European Press, p. 18.

  26. Augustus, 1621, 112. Tijdinghe wt Weenen, ende hoe dat het doodt lichaem … van Bucquoy, binnen … Weenen op chrijschmaniere … is ghebrocht, ende in baren ghestelt, inde kercke vande minimen. Copies in Antwerp, Heritage Library: B 17885: II, 112, and London, British Library: PP.3444 af (269).

  27. Paul Arblaster, Antwerp and the World: Richard Verstegen and the International Culture of Catholic Reformation (Louvain: Louvain University Press, 2004).

  28. As demonstrated in Andrew Pettegree, ‘Tabloid Values: On the Trail of Europe's First News Hound’, in Richard Kirwan and Sophie Mullins (eds), Specialist Markets in the Early Modern Book World (Leiden: Brill, 2014).

  29. Quoted Paul Arblaster, ‘Policy and Publishing in the Habsburg Netherlands, 1585–1690’, in Brendan Dooley and Sabrina Baron (eds), The Politics of Information in Early Modern Europe (London: Routledge, 2001), p. 185.

  30. Lisa Ferraro Parmelee, Good Newes from Fraunce: French Anti-League Propaganda in Late Elizabethan England (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 1996).

  31. I. Atherton, ‘The Itch Grown a Disease: Manuscript Transmission of News in the Seventeenth Century’, in Joad Raymond, News, Newspapers, and Society in Early Modern Britain (London: Cass, 1999). For the career of one particular newsletter agent, see William S. Powell, John Pory, 1572–1636: The Life and Letters of a Man of Many Parts (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1976).

  32. Folke Dahl, A Bibliography of English Corantos and Periodical Newsbooks, 1620–1642 (London: Bibliographical Society, 1952), nos 1–16 (with illustrations). The printer was Joris Veseler, the same man who had printed the Dutch edition for van Hilten. Dahl, Birth of the European Press, p. 29. See STC 18507.1–17.

  33. Dahl, Birth of the European Press; STC 18507.18–25 (Amsterdam: Jansz.; or London for Thomas Archer). STC 18507.29–35 (London: N. Butter).

  34. STC 18507.35–81.

  35. Dahl, Bibliography, nos 80 ff.

  36. Illustrated Dahl, Birth of the European Press, p. 30.

  37. Nicholas Brownlees, Corantos and Newsbooks: Language and Discourse in the First English Newspapers (1620–1641) (Pisa: Ets, 1999); Nicholas Brownlees, The Language of Periodical News in Seventeenth-Century England (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, 2011).

  38. C. John Sommerville, The News Revolution in England: Cultural Dynamics of Daily Information (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 26.

  39. Ibid.

  40. An example in Jason Peacey and Chris R. Kyle, Breaking News: Renaissance Journalism and the Birth of the Newspaper (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009), p. 55: ‘I send you here enclosed the Currantos that are come out since my last letter, which is in effect all our present foreign news.’

  41. Michael Frearson, ‘The Distribution and Readership of London Corantos in the 1620s’, in Robin Myers and Michael Harris (eds), Serials and their Readers, 1620–1914 (Winchester: St Paul's Bibliographies, 1993), p. 17.

  42. Thomas Cogswell, ‘“Published by Authoritie”: Newsbooks and the Duke of Buckingham's Expedition to the Ile de Ré’, Huntington Library Quarterly, 67 (2004), pp. 1–26, here p. 4.

  43. In the original: ‘1. To settle a way when there shall be any revolt or back sliding in matters of religion or obedience (which commonly grows with rumours among the vulgar) to draw them in by the same lines that drew them out, by spreading among them such reports as may best make for that matter to which we would have they drawn. 2. To establish a speedy and ready way whereby to disperse in the veins of the whole body of a state such matter as may best temper it, and be most agreeable to the disposition of the head and
principal members. 3. To devise means to raise the spirits of the people and to quicken their concepts. … It extends the sense by degrees to the concept of the right rules of reason, whereby they are wrought easily to obey those which by those rules shall command them.’ Powell, Pory (1976), p. 52.

  44. See here the brilliant article by Thomas Cogswell, ‘“Published by Authoritie”’.

  45. Ibid., p. 14.

  46. Frearson, ‘London Corantos’, p. 3.

  47. Jayne E. E. Boys, London's News Press and the Thirty Years War (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2011).