ABSTRACT
But what the newly news-conscious readers of the early modern period may have made of what they read is still shrouded in uncertainty.3 Formidable methodological difficulties face anyone intending to reach inside the minds of seventeenth-century people. What sources could possibly be representative enough to give more than a suggestive impression? What evidence concerning how readers read political information is likely to be reliable enough to reveal some of the basic tendencies? How do we account for the varying effects of information on the minds of readers in different geographical locations, following the pattern of the spread of information itself ? And, how to account for variations in impact from social category to social category?
