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| Buy Here |
As a historical
fiction author, I have accumulated a lot of data, and stored it for
‘just in case’. One such book I came across deals with
pulp press during the 17th century.
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| Strange and Wonderful Woodcut from 17th century Press |
Thanks to King Henry VIII, most news of
the 16th and 17th centuries was surrounded by religion. The
constant upheaval during these nearly 200 years must have been mind-boggling.
Wars on the Continent, changes in regime in England, regicide, conspiracy
theories and civil wars were nonstop. Even if England wasn’t at war with the
Holy Roman Empire, battles bled into their waters. The English navy was always on the
alert.
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| Something to attract the eye |
Due to these unsettled times, a big
interest was divining the future, reading about ancient prophecies. Strange woodcuts were attached to these pamphlets and journals, used again and again. Most of the woodcuts did not match the story or article.
Even Samuel
Pepys wrote in his diary of an incident where he met a gypsy in the street. She
said, ‘The world will end Tuesday next,’ then she wandered off, leaving the
poor man in a conundrum. Should he put his things in order or leave them be?
After all, if the world ends, no one will want his things, his chest of money
buried in the back garden. There won’t be anywhere to spend it. So, he turned
away from the encounter and went about his everyday business. I don’t recall if he
mentioned having lived through "Tuesday next" or not.
Kings and queens of those centuries tried
to suppress unauthorized stories coming from the press rooms but it was a flow of nature
no one could stop. “A list of prohibited books first appeared in England in
1529.” A licensing system followed where printers had to gain permission from
the Crown before publishing pamphlets, which overwhelmed the Star Chamber whose
other responsibilities were soon dwarfed. Queen Mary finally gave that
responsibility to the English Stationers Company.
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| Example of a 17th century News-sheet |
Nothing could stop the flow. Within a few
years, London was near buried under satirical and blasphemous pamphlets that
soon found their way into the countryside. As a result, strange apparitions and
beasts returned from the countryside in the form of divining the future,
blaspheming God and Country.
The government tried to suppress these incoming and outgoing tides of strange and ungodly news. Men would haunt the lanes looking for unauthorized presses.
Printers found ways to secretly print their pamphlets.
They made the presses smaller, easier to handle, to dismantle and
hide them when the government came looking. Authors had pseudonyms so they weren’t caught and fined, thrown in to
gaol.
As an example: one fellow collected 22 pamphlets
in 1640, almost 1000 in 1641, almost 2000 a year later. By 1660 he’d collected “a
total of over 22,000 pamphlets, newspapers, and news books.”
The really good thing about this is, the
literacy rate increased throughout England.
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Many thanks to:
Wikicommons Public Domain &
The Battle of the Frogs and Fairford’s Flies, Miracles and the Pulp
Press during the English Revolution by Jerome Friedman, St. Martin’s Press,
NY, 1993
