assistant in the compilation of the Intelligencer.[1] Muddiman organized for himself a far-spread foreign correspondence, and carried on the business of a news-letter writer on a larger scale The London Gazette. than had till then been known. Presently L’Estrange, whose monopoly of printing was highly unpopular, found his own sources of information much abridged, while Williamson, for his own ambitious purposes, entered into a complicated intrigue (analysed in detail by Williams, op. cit. pp. 190 seq.) for getting the whole business into his hands, with Muddiman as his tool and with Muddiman’s clients as his customers. To L’Estrange’s application for renewed assistance Williamson replied that he could not give it, but would procure for him a salary of £100 a year if he would give up his right in the news-book.[2] The Intelligencer appealed (Oct. 1665) to Lord Arlington, and pathetically assured him that the charge for “entertaining spies for information was £500 in the first year.”[3] But L’Estrange boasted that he had “doubled” the size and price of the book,[4] and had brought the profit from £200 to £400 or £500 a year.[5] The appeal was in vain. At that time the great plague had driven the court to Oxford. The first number of the bi-weekly Oxford Gazette, licensed by Arlington and written by Muddiman, was published on the 16th November 1665. It was a “paper” of news, of the same size and shape as Muddiman’s news-letters. With the publication of the 24th number (Monday, February 5th, 1665–1666 O.S.) the Oxford Gazette became the London Gazette. After the 25th number Muddiman, who saw that he was not safe in Williamson’s hands, seceded. Williamson had the general control of the Gazette, and for a considerable time Charles Perrot, a member of Oriel College, was the acting editor.[6] L’Estrange was soon driven out of the field, being solaced, on his personal appeal to the king, with a charge of £100 a year on the news-books (henceforth “taken into the secretaries’ office”) and a further £200 out of secret service money for his place as surveyor of the press. Muddiman, meanwhile, attached himself to the other secretary of state, Sir W. Morice, and he was authorized to issue an opposition official paper, which appeared as Current Intelligence (June 4–Aug. 20, 1666); and though the Great Fire, which burnt out all the London printers, resulted in the reappearance, after a week’s interval, of the Gazette alone, Muddiman’s unrivalled organization of news-letters remained; and they continued, till his death in 1692, to be the more popular source of information. The Gazette, however, now remained for some time the only “newspaper” in the strict sense already mentioned. For several years it was regularly translated into French by one Moranville. During the Stuart reigns generally its contents were very meagre, although in the reign of Anne some improvement is already visible. More than a century after the establishment of the Gazette, we find Secretary Lord Weymouth addressing a circular[7] to the several secretaries of legation and the British consuls abroad, in which he says, “The writer of the Gazette has represented that the reputation of that paper is greatly lessened, and the sale diminished, from the small portion of foreign news with which it is supplied.” He desires that each of them will send regularly all such articles of foreign intelligence as may appear proper for that paper, “taking particular care—as the Gazette is the only paper of authority printed in this country—never to send anything concerning the authenticity of which there is the smallest doubt.” From such humble beginnings has arisen the great repertory of State Papers, now so valuable to the writers and to the students of English history. The London Gazette has appeared twice a week (on Tuesday and Friday) in a continuous series ever since.[8] The editorship is a government appointment.
We come now to the Revolution. The very day after the departure of James II. was marked by the appearance of three newspapers—The Universal Intelligence, the English Courant and the London Courant. Within a few days more these were followed by the London Mercury, the Orange Gazette, the London Intelligence, the Harlem Currant and others. The Licensing Act, which was in force at the date of the Revolution, expired in 1692, but was continued for a year, after which it finally ceased. On the appearance of a paragraph in the Flying Post of 1st April 1697, which appeared to the House of Commons to attack the credit of the Exchequer Bills, leave was given to bring in a bill “to prevent writing, printing or publishing of any news without licence”; but the bill was thrown out in an early stage of its progress. That Flying Post which gave occasion to this attempt was also noticeable for a new method of printing, which it thus announced to its customers—“If any gentleman has a mind to oblige his country friend or correspondent with this account of public affairs, he can have it for twopence . . . on a sheet of fine paper, half of which being left blank, he may thereon write his own affairs, or the material news of the day.”
In 1696 Edward Lloyd—the virtual founder of the famous “Lloyd’s” of commerce—started a thrice-a-week paper, Lloyd’s News, which had but a brief existence in its first shape, but was the precursor of the Lloyd’s List of the present day. No. 76 of the original paper contained a paragraph referring to the House of Lords, for the appearance of which a public apology must, the publisher was told, be made. He preferred to discontinue his publication (February 1697). Nearly thirty years afterwards he in part revived it, under the title of Lloyd’s List—published at first weekly, afterwards twice a week.[9] This dates from 1726. It is now published daily.
It was in the reign of Queen Anne that the English newspaper press first became really eminent for the amount of intellectual power and of versatile talent which was employed upon it. It was also in that reign that the press was first fettered by the newspaper stamp. The accession of Anne was quickly followed by the appearance of First London daily. the first successful London daily newspaper, the Daily Courant (11th of March 1702–1703). Seven years earlier, in 1695, the Postboy had been started as a daily paper (actually the first in London), but only four numbers appeared. The Courant was published and edited by the learned printer Samuel Buckley, who explained to the public that “the author has taken care to be duly furnished with all that comes from abroad, in any language. . . . At the beginning of each article he will quote the foreign paper from which it is taken, that the public, seeing from what country a piece of news comes, with the allowance of that government, may be better able to judge of the credibility and fairness of the relation. Nor will he take upon himself to give any comments, . . . supposing other people to have sense enough to make reflexions for themselves.” Then came, in rapid succession, a crowd of new competitors for public favour, of less frequent publication. The first number of one of these, the Country Gentleman’s Courant (1706), was given away gratuitously, and made a special claim to public favour on the ground that “here the reader is not only diverted with a faithful register of the most remarkable and momentary [i.e. momentous] transactions at home and abroad, . . . but also with a geographical description of the most material places mentioned in every article of news, whereby he is freed, the trouble of looking into maps.”
On the 19th of February 1704, whilst still imprisoned in Newgate for a political offence, Defoe (q.v.) began his famous paper, the Review. At the outset it was published weekly, afterwards twice, and at length three times a week. It continued substantially in its first form until July 29, 1712; and a complete set is of extreme rarity. Defoe’s Review. From the first page to the last it is characterized by the manly
- ↑ This help seems to have been given at the request of the secretary of state, Lord Arlington (then Sir H. Bennet), in 1663; State Papers, Domestic, Charles II., lxxix. 112, 113.
- ↑ State Papers, Domestic, Charles II., cxxxiv. 103 (Rolls House).
- ↑ Ibid. 117.
- ↑ In 1664 he had halved them, so that this really only means he had now restored the original size.
- ↑ State Papers, Domestic, Charles II., cxxxv. 24.
- ↑ Anthony Wood, Athenae Oxonienses, “Perrot.”
- ↑ Calendar of Home-Office Papers, 1766–1769, p. 483 (1879).
- ↑ A complete set is now of extreme rarity.
- ↑ Frederick Martin, History of Lloyd’s, 66-77 and 107-120. The great collection of newspapers in the British Museum contains only one number of Lloyd’s News; but sixty-nine numbers may be seen in the Bodleian Library. Of the List, also, no complete series is known to exist; that in the library of Lloyd’s begins with 1740.
