In late 1513, a small book was put up for sale in a bookshop next to St. Paul’s Cathedral. It was a type of literature which is commonplace today, but Tudor readers had never seen before: a printed news report.
News was not an unfamiliar concept by any means. It spread locally through word of mouth, across countries in written correspondence, and internationally via manuscript newsletter networks. News was so enshrined in England’s social fabric that when people met, it was expected they would first exchange any news they had learned before proceeding with their conversation. But, despite the printing press having come to England with William Caxton in 1476, “news” had never been printed.
Nearly 40 years later, Richard Fawkes printed The Trewe encountre or Batayle lately don betwene Englande and Scotlande (1513). This, the first printed news report in England, was a propagandistic account of the country’s victory against the Scots at the Battle of Flodden in 1513.
What was the Battle of Flodden?
The Battle of Flodden was the largest battle ever fought between England and Scotland. Thousands of soldiers died on each side — but the Scottish suffered far more casualties and by the fighting’s conclusion King James IV of Scotland had been killed, alongside much of the country’s leading nobility, politicians, and clergymen.
Scotland and France had formed the “Auld Alliance” against in England in 1295, so when King Henry VIII entered into conflict against France in 1511, James IV honoured the alliance by declaring war on England and preparing to invade.
The Trewe encountre (1513) comprises an apparently eyewitness account of the events leading up to the conflict, the battle itself, and its bloody aftermath. The fighting took place near Branxton, Northumberland, on 9 September 1513 and lasted several hours.
Because Henry VIII was away fighting in France, his wife Catherine of Aragon was regent of England when Scottish forces entered England in August, and ordered an army to be raised. This was commanded by Thomas Howard, Earl of Surrey, who led some 26,000 men against a larger Scottish army of about 34,000.
The battle was fought in wet and windy weather. After a successful initial attack against the English right flank, the next wave of Scots encountered boggy ground which destroyed their momentum. English soldiers found themselves better equipped for the scrappy close-quartered fighting which followed, armed with lengthy bills. Surrounded and fired upon by archers, the Scottish side suffered some 10,000 deaths — including that of their King. The English lost only about 4,000 men.
While not particularly impassioned, and a genuinely useful source of information, The Trewe encountre (1513) is a very partial account of the fighting which was “printed and disseminated […] as much for propaganda as for informational purposes”, according to media historian Martin Conboy.
The account emphasised and exaggerated the achievement of the English forces. It notes that “in this batayle the scottes hadde many great Advantages”, including their elevated position on a hill and the “sodayne rayne” which hindered artillery fire. The anonymous author also falsely claims that Scotland’s army was “nombred to [be] an hundred thousande men at the leest” — a significant overestimation of the actual fighting force.
The pamphlet underscored the evil of the Scots by suggesting that English soldiers dared not consume the “beer, ale, beef, mutton, shellfish, cheese” or other food found in their abandoned tents after the battle for fear it “hadde ben poysoned for theyr destrucction”.
The printer also included a woodcut illustration purportedly showing English soldiers handing the fallen King James IV’s crown to the Earl of Surrey.
What truly distinguished this printed account from the oral reports and gossip about the fighting which would by now have been rampant in London was a list of the forty “noble men” who had been knighted for “theyr valyaunt Acts”. Alexandra da Costa calls this detail a “token of truthfulness”, designed to bolster the pamphlet’s credibility.
Who was printer Richard Fawkes?
Richard Fawkes, who published and probably sold the news pamphlet, was a printer active in St. Paul’s Churchyard, London, between about 1509 and 1537. He may have been a relation of William Fawkes, the King’s printer from 1499 to 1508, though there is no indication that The Trewe encountre (1513) was commissioned by the Crown or any other authority. It would, however, have been wise for a publisher who wished to avoid censorial rebuke to stick to a version of events which was as patriotic as possible.
The eyewitness pamphlet report was probably beaten to the presses by John Skelton’s A ballade of the Scottysshe Kynge (1513), also about the Battle of Flodden and printed by Fawkes, which the court poet penned in such a hurry that he relied on premature reports wrongly claiming James IV had been imprisoned, rather than killed.
This broadside ballad, whose anachronistic details were corrected when Skelton re-wrote the verse years later, is itself notable as the earliest known printed ballad in England. This means that the Battle of Flodden was the source of both the first printed news pamphlet and ballad in the country’s history — and also that Richard Fawkes, though a fairly elusive historical character, is a pivotal figure in the history of early English journalism.
Warfare was, of course, an exciting topic towards which news reports and poetry naturally gravitated. Sufficiently sycophantic coverage was hardly going to arouse the suspicions of the authorities, but the government was nonetheless highly anxious about how its military endeavours were being covered.
A number of books were printed in 1544 to report on the military campaign in Scotland — but some apparently understated the extent of England’s victory. A royal proclamation issued in May lamented that these reports were inaccurate, having been “set forth to the slander of [the King’s] captains and ministers”, and ordered all copies burnt. Anyone found to possess a copy risked imprisonment.
Military news would become a fixture of the print trade — covering the armies of all major European powers — but it was England’s military triumphs in particular which sparked a flurry of patriotic reports.
The exact same woodcut illustration which adorned Fawkes’ 1513 account of Flodden was re-used, nearly 70 years later, in a news pamphlet about the successful siege by English soldiers of a fort in Ireland which had been occupied by Papal and Spanish troops in 1580. Military success was not just politically important for the country, but commercially lucrative for London’s publishers.
