ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the growing propaganda campaign against the queen which was beginning to take shape in 1643. How were newsbooks produced and circulated? Who read them? How did they discuss Henrietta's actions and intrigues? Among anti-royalist pamphlets, one issue repeatedly commented upon was the undue influence Henrietta allegedly had over Charles. Back in 1557 Queen Mary issued a royal charter to the Stationers' Company in an attempt to effectively control the printing trade. A charge raised against Henrietta, and constantly repeated in parliamentary pamphlets, was that as a papist herself, her goal was to return England to Rome. After hearing how the Scots in Ireland had taken Antrim prisoner, Henrietta wrote to Charles of how happy and relieved she was that he had nothing of hers in writing. One final point, on which to end, concerns the subject of English civil war news culture in general.
