News and political activity in Early Stuart England, HIS211

What forms of news media were there? How much news travelled via word of mouth, by letter, pamphlet or broadside? To what extent was preaching controlled? How effective was government censorship of the printed word? To what extent did domestic political events or foreign affairs promote and increase interest in news?

• The pulpit
• Books and the printed word
• The man in the street: the spoken word

How effective was the pulpit as an arm of government propaganda under James and Charles?
Think about the extent to which people might have heard seditious sermons, the response of the Stuart government and the issues about which ministers talked.
Produce a short answer to this question. Your answer should include a short commentary on the contents of the document(s). Read the document extract and try and read the relevant parts of the following secondary literature. Use the main reading list if these books are difficult to get hold of. Recommended secondary literature for seminar topic. Just try and read a couple of chapters, or two articles as well as the document(s).

Lockyer, R. (1989). The Early Stuarts. A Political History of England 1603-1642. Longman.

Cogswell, T. (1989). The Blessed Revolution. English Politics and the Coming of War, 1621-1624. C.U.P. 941.061-COG.

Fincham, K. (Eds.). (1993). The Early Stuart Church, 1603-42 . Macmillan. 274.206 EAR

Seaver, P. (1970). The Puritan Lectureships. Stanford:

• The Sentence on Prynne, Burton and Bastwicke, 30 June 1637
• Examination of Nehemiah Wallington in Star Chamber, 1638
• Testimony of widow of printer John Oakes, at trial of Archbishop Laud 1644

Lambert, S. (1989). Richard Montagu, Arminianism and censorship. Past and Present, 124,

Plomer, H., 'Secret printing during the Civil War', The Library, n.s., V(1966), 374-403.

Mendle, M., (1995) De Facto Freedom, De Facto Authority: Press and Parliament, 1640-1643. Hist. J., 38, , pp. 307-32.

S. Lambert, ‘The printers and the government, 1604-37’ in R. Myers and M. Harris, eds., Aspects of printing from 1600.(Oxford, 1987), ROBINSON 010.93 ASP

P. Seaver, Wallington's World

D. Freist, Governed by Opinion. Politics, religion and the dynamics of communication in Stuart London 1637-1645 (London, 1997). Not yet in Library.

• The Law of Treason in early Stuart England
• Captain Watt reports a seditious conversation in a puritan alehouse in 1640
• (Reported conversation of an Irish woman, Anne Hussey to Phillip Bainbridge, August 1640

Croft, P., (1995), Libels, popular literacy and public opinion in early modern England. Hist. Res., 68, pp. 266-85

Freist, D. The King's Crown is the Whore of Babylon: politics, gender and communication in mid-seventeenth-century England, Gender and History, Special Issue, 7 (3), (1995), 457-81.

Lindley, K. (1986 ). London and popular freedom in the 1640s. In R. C. Richardson, & G. M. Ridden (Ed.), Freedom and the English Revolution: Essays in History and Literature

Lindley, K., (1997), Popular politics and religion in Civil War London. (Scolar Press).

D. Freist, Governed by Opinion. Politics, religion and the dynamics of communication in Stuart London 1637-1645 (London, 1997). Not yet in Library.

Manning, B. (1976 ). The English Revolution and the English People .

Reay, B. (Eds.). (1985 ). Popular culture in seventeenth-century England .