ABSTRACT
The coverage of foreign affairs in Britain varied greatly in character in terms of both news and opinion. Newspapers, moreover, could become part of the news in foreign affairs, and notably so with the most embarrassing incident in press coverage during the entire century. On 11 August 1770, the Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser, a major London newspaper, carried an extraordinary attack upon Charles III of Spain in the form of an anonymous letter that began by attacking in general the Bourbon monarchs, who ruled France, Spain and Naples. The incident, which was not the first attack on Charles in the British press, was seen as helping to make the king very anti-British, although he had already displayed such hostility throughout the 1760s. The French fleet appearing upon the coast may be of great service to us by keeping a certain person at home who otherwise would run gading abroad and surrender the nation's money.
