‘It is Not Easy What to Say of our Condition, Much Less to Write It’: The Continued Importance of Scribal News in the Early 18th Century

Abstract

This article engages with recent work on the nature of the press in the late 17th and early 18th centuries that has emphasized that print, and more specifically printed news, came to dominate religious and political affairs. Recent scholarship has suggested that political elites embraced the new opportunities that the lapse of licensing (1695) offered by reading and buying newspapers and periodicals in ever greater numbers. Inherent in this portrayal of news culture is a sense that censorship had little effect on news‐writers. Journalists, so it is claimed, were left alone to pursue their trade free from any consistent interference. This article, by contrast, argues that scribal news – handwritten newspapers – continued to be important in the 18th century. The reason for the survival of scribal news‐writers such as John Dyer can be found, I argue, in understanding the complex relationship between press and parliament. Far from embracing the press, most members of parliament were, in fact, reluctant to allow unhindered publication of their discussions. While recognizing the importance of news to political debate, this article insists that the continued production of scribal news is indispensable for understanding both the nature of censorship and the power of the press in post‐licensing England.