ABSTRACT
The thirst for news in the seventeenth century was insatiable and stimulated developments in news gathering, production and dissemination at a national level. Older forms of oral dissemination endured, of course, at alehouses, markets, on the highways and, in London, at the Inns of Court, booksellers’ stalls, the Exchange and Westminster Hall, the latter a favourite haunt of Roger Morrice.2 Correspondence also continued to spread news, and the introduction of the penny post in 1680 and gradual improvements in the postal system facilitated this. But oral and manuscript news was also supplemented by print. The newspaper emerged as a genre in the 1640s and became established in the later Stuart period, particularly after the lapse of licensing restrictions in 1695 allowed greater longevity of titles and provincial publication.3 By the turn of the century, printed news had largely displaced the
The Politics of Commonwealth. Citizens and Freemen in Early Modern England (Cambridge, 2005).
