History Forum / General / British History / January 2006

Ann Hughes has a few books out on the various printed works of the period,
most of which I'd like but can't afford.

Kevin Sharpe is more interested in the literature of the period than its
political effects.

And

Print was incredibly important,  and there are a number of very important
collections of pamphlets that tell us most of what we know about the period.

Again I recommend that people get hold of Hill's 'The World Turned
Up-sidedown" and Beresford's 'The Levellers",  both of which are quite old
but are absolutely indispensable reading when you're trying to get some sort
of handle on what ordinary people were reading and thinking.

The ECW was the first war where the ordinary people actually got to hear
what both sides were saying from print rather than hearing it from their
masters.

The best collection of pamphlets is in the British Library (which is where
Marx read them) but there in an excellent collection in Hull that I have
consulted on several occasions.

To an extent we get sidetracked by the war itself,  not realising that
people like Lilbourne left the army after the first civil war and went into
politics,  forming the very first political party.

On 26 Jan, john@cartmell.demon.co.uk wrote:

Responding to my own mailing I hope that Melvyn Bragg won't object to my
quoting from him. I've just received the weekly IOT newsletter commenting on
this week's programme. He says:

"The discussion about the influence of Eikon Basilike continued in the Green
Room.  Let us say there was a sharp and interesting difference of opinion
between Kevin Sharpe and Joad Raymond.  I got the impression that this was
not the first time the two had clashed on this issue.

"The interesting thing for me was that it brought into play the word
'effective'.  In my view, Kevin Sharpe is absolutely right to stress the
effectiveness of this strange piece of work, mistakenly said to have been
written by Charles I but widely attributed to him.  39 editions in the first
year and the best-selling book of the 17th century does say a great deal.  
It is possible that Charles I did more for monarchy by being a martyr than
he ever had done in being a king, and the posthumous description of his road
to martyrdom kept together the monarchical forces through the Commonwealth
and the Protectorate for those eleven years, before his son, Charles II,
sailed back with astonishing ease and took up his father's place on the
throne.

"But Joad Raymond surely has a point when he speaks of effectiveness in terms
of winning the intellectual argument.  Ann Hughes backed him up that
Milton's reply, Iconoclastes, demolished the arguments in the sentimental,
carefully manufactured, pietistic offering of Charles I.

"But it's a good example of an effective intellectual rebuttal having, at the
time anyway, very little, if any, impact whatsoever, on a prevailing opinion
which prefers to group around its own prejudices, even though they're
expressed in prose and in content which the mind of Milton could condemn so
comprehensively and disdainfully.

"In his response, Milton excoriated those who had taken anything at all
significant from Eikon Basilike.  Such readers were fools, ignorant, etc.  
Ann Hughes commented that Milton often felt that the reading public badly
let him down."

"He goes on to explain how newspapers arrived on the scene:

"And then we have newsprint and I wish we'd had time to investigate more the
invention of the newspaper which arrived like Topsy in 1641.

"This was done by breaching the privilege of Parliament, but under the
protection of the leading parliamentarian of the time in 1641.  Joad Raymond
referred to it but here is his fuller account of it:  

" 'The publisher was John Thomas, who had connections with John Pym, the
unofficial leader of the Parliament.  Thomas simply printed the manuscript
'Diurnal Occurrences' for the week; the content was therefore utterly unlike
any previous news printed publication.  This publication was an actionable
breach of the conventions of parliamentary privilege, but no official
complaint was registered.  It seems likely that the first newsbook appeared
under the protection of Pym, and was part of a parliamentary propaganda
exercise.  An Edinburgh reprint appeared the same week.  The newsbook, the
immediate predecessor of the modern newspaper, was the product of political
conflict, self-conscious propaganda, and a focused interest in parliamentary
proceedings.  Since the morning of 29 November 1641 Britain has almost never
been without newspapers.'  This is from Pamphlets and Pamphleteering in
Early Modern Britain by Joad Raymond himself."

Now we have plenty to discuss here on alt.history.british. I'd like to know
how literacy made the jump that made newspapers possible. My grammar school
was founded not quite 500 years ago - but newspapers were 4 or 5 generations
later. So what happened and when?

I won't be quoting from Melvyn Bragg extensively again - so if you want the
IOT newsletter you'll have to request it yourself from the BBC IOT web site.

BTW Melvyn ends with:
"There's a great deal more to return to in the Civil War.  Even though we
were only speaking of six years, it still seemed too full a dish to eat at
one sitting."

He can say that again! ;-)

I would think that all you need to do is click on the link and it'll
download and play.

Let me know how you get on.

Now work your way through a few years of past programmes on history, science,
&c. ;-)

The trouble with IOT is that you need more than a week between programmes to
do the background reading - and then you want to get the speakers back to
question them and take the issues further! ;-)

And you *cannot* have it playing 'in the background'. It demands full
concentration.