Early Modern Scribbling

The Duke of Buckingham’s 1627 Siege of Saint-Martin-de-Ré: A Stuart PR Nightmare

On 29 October 1627, thousands of English soldiers scrambled in a disorganised, deadly retreat from the citadel at Saint-Martin-de-Ré, just off the west coast of France. It was the humiliating culmination of a siege which had lasted three months.

Corrupt Cooks and Troublesome Tapsters in Early Modern England

In 1641, England was not a happy place. On the brink of civil war, the country had only the previous year weathered the storm of a Scottish invasion in the north and more conflict was about to break out in Ireland. Throw into the mix a few violent storms, plague outbreaks, and radical religious sects for good measure — is it any wonder people flocked to the alehouses to drown their sorrows?

Anthony Nixon: 17th Century Writer, Journalist, and Plagiarist

There emerged, some time around the final two decades of Queen Elizabeth I’s reign, a new type of author in England — the professional. These were men who, as Jason Peacey observes, did not write as an intellectual exercise or to supplement some other source of income but whose livelihood depended entirely on ‘their wits and the fruit of their pens.’ Frequently, these were men fresh out of university who came to London in search of a career in writing, though many were educated only to a grammar school level, and (I believe) possessed extraordinary skills — in their navigation of tumultuous literary waters and perceptiveness of the market — which are often underappreciated.

A Possible Author or Inspiration for Ralph Harford’s Widecombe-in-the-Moor Thunderstorm Pamphlets of 1638

In February, I wrote about a series of interesting news reports concerning a storm at Widecombe-in-the-Moor, Devon, which appeared in the bookshop of Ralph Harford in November 1638 — the post can be viewed here. While not strictly necessary, this post will be much easier to understand if the previous one is read. The purpose of this post is to append some additional information I have since come across (and I believe has not yet been discovered) which, at best, puts forward a candidate for the reports’ authorship or, at the very least, sheds light on what might have influenced the anonymous author.

Widecombe-in-the-Moor’s 1638 Thunderstorm: A Case Study in 17th-Century News Reporting

This post concerns three news pamphlets published by Ralph Harford in November 1638. Each concerns the same event: a ‘most Lamentable Accident’ which occurred at the Church of Saint Pancras in Widecombe-in-the-Moor, Devon, the month prior. The pamphlets, two of which are nearly identical and one of which constitutes an updated version of the two antecedent reports tell of a terrible thunderstorm afflicting a congregation gathered for afternoon Sunday Mass. They are not only intriguing narratives in their own rights, but shed considerable light on the nature of procuring, presenting, and propagating information through the medium of cheap print.

Joseph Swetnam and (Early) Modern Misogyny

There appeared in 1615 a pamphlet which, though but one among a tumultuous sea of provocative works, proved particularly controversial. Its title pulled no punches—The Araignment of Lewde, idle, froward, and unconstant women—and its author went by the pseudonym ‘Thomas Tel-troth’, a generic guise for writers who affirmed the truth of their message but were wary of its consequences.

Handguns in Early Modern England: Crime, Class, and Social Order

In his deeply critical review of Channel 5’s Anne Boleyn (2021), the Daily Mail‘s Christopher Stevens took issue with a variety of things—among them, was the historical accuracy of the show regarding firearms. In one scene, Anne Boleyn (played by Jodie Turner-Smith) is so bothered by peacocks’ squawking that she requests them to be shot. Stevens was not having any of it: ‘With what — cannon?’, he rhetorically asks. ‘Handguns’, he dutifully informs the reader, ‘were unknown in England in 1536.’

Tracing the Seventeenth-Century Roots of ‘Journalism’

If a person (in a Western or otherwise technologically developed country) wishes to become informed of the news, it is not hard for them to do so—visiting a news website, opening social media, or turning on the television fulfils the task easily enough. It is more challenging, perhaps, to try and remain ignorant of it, given the influx of news online. As such, there is all sorts of ‘journalism’ present in the modern world, from celebrity gossip to reporting capable of toppling governments. But what of the seventeenth century?

Radical Ideas in English Cheap Print

It is never quite clear what to make of apparently ‘radical’ print. This is in part because it is such a difficult category to define in the first place—if it can even exist as a coherent classification at all. ‘Radical’ is an entirely relative notion, a descriptor which might signify that some idea exists at, or just outside of, the periphery of acceptable social/political/economic/religious norms. But those norms were, and are, in constant flux over time, across places, and between groups of people.

Windy Weather, Divine Providence, and Spire-Toppling Devils

Last Friday (18 February) saw Storm Eunice batter most of the UK, with speeds reaching upwards of 120mph on the Isle of Wight, significant damage done to hundreds of houses, over a million houses losing power, and at least four people losing their lives.