ABSTRACT
Writing during the death throes of the Interregnum, the royalist grandee Sir Edward Nicholas provided a revealing insight into the rationale which underpinned his enthusiasm for the exploitation of print propaganda, by telling the Marquess of Ormond that ‘reputation is the interest of princes’. Over thirty years earlier, before the print explosion which this study seeks to explore, John Holles offered a more cynical observation, when he opined to the Bishop of Lincoln that ‘princes love to befoole the people’ through the printed word.1 Such comments demonstrate that understanding early modern propaganda, which must begin with analysis of the factors which motivated political grandees to engage in the production of print in order to talk to the people, involves confronting highly charged rhetoric. This chapter seeks to demonstrate that politicians turned to political propaganda for reasons which were partly personal, partly factional, and partly governmental, and that print was understood to be a means of boosting individual reputations and creating more or less formal and distinct political groupings, and also a way of undermining rival grandees and rival claimants to political power. In order to do so, it explores the reality as well as the rhetoric of propaganda – the practice as well as the principles – and develops a methodology for assessing the seriousness with which politicians took the task of engaging with the public through the medium of print. The major focus of attention at this stage will be official statements – declarations and proclamations – in terms of the methods by which they were produced, and the ways in which they were printed and distributed. By examining such works, it will be possible both to compare the practices and attitudes of royalists and parliamentarians, and to explore the strengths and weaknesses of official propaganda, as well as the conceptual and practical problems with such works, which prompted political grandees of all persuasions to turn to outsiders for help in the polemical process, and to invent more subtle forms for publicising their ideas and opinions.
