News in Early Modern Europe <UN> Library of the Written Word volume 39 The Handpress World Editor-in-Chief Andrew Pettegree University of St Andrews Editorial Board Ann Blair (Harvard University) Falk Eisermann (Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Preuβischer Kulturbesitz) Ian Maclean (All Souls College, Oxford) Angela Nuovo (University of Udine) Mark Towsey (University of Liverpool) Malcolm Walsby (University of Rennes II) volume 30 The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/lww <UN> News in Early Modern Europe Currents and Connections Edited by Simon F. Davies Puck Fletcher LEIDEN | BOSTON <UN> This is an open access title distributed under the terms of the CC BY-NC 4.0 license, which permits any non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credited. Further information and the complete license text can be found at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by-nc/4.0/ The terms of the CC license apply only to the original material. The use of material from other sources (indicated by a reference) such as diagrams, illustrations, photos and text samples may require further permission from the respective copyright holder. An electronic version of this book is freely available, thanks to the support of libraries working with Knowledge Unlatched. More information about the initiative can be found at www. knowledgeunlatched.org. Cover illustration: Woodcut illustration from the title-page of a seventeenth-century newsbook: from issues 2–7 of The London Post (1646). Picture reproduced by kind permission of The Provost and Fellows of Worcester College, Oxford. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data News in early modern Europe : currents and connections / edited by Simon F. Davies, Puck Fletcher. pages cm. -- (Library of the written word, ISSN 1874-4834 ; volume 39) (The handpress world ; volume 30) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-90-04-27685-7 (hardback : alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-90-04-27686-4 (e-book) 1. Press--Europe--History. 2. Communication--Europe--History. I. Davies, Simon F. II. Fletcher, Puck. PN5110.D38 2014 079’.4--dc23 2014014321 This publication has been typeset in the multilingual “Brill” typeface. With over 5,100 characters covering Latin, ipa, Greek, and Cyrillic, this typeface is especially suitable for use in the humanities. For more information, please see www.brill.com/brill-typeface. ISSN 1874-4834 ISBN 978-90-04-27685-7 (hardback) ISBN 978-90-04-27686-4 (e-book) Copyright 2014 by the Authors. Published by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi, Brill Sense, Hotei Publishing, mentis Verlag, Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh and Wilhelm Fink Verlag. Koninklijke Brill NV reserves the right to protect the publication against unauthorized use and to authorize dissemination by means of offprints, legitimate photocopies, microform editions, reprints, translations, and secondary information sources, such as abstracting and indexing services including databases. Requests for commercial re-use, use of parts of the publication, and/or translations must be addressed to Koninklijke Brill NV. This book is printed on acid-free paper. <UN> Contents Acknowledgements vii List of Illustrations viii Notes on Contributors x Introduction 1 Simon F. Davies and Puck Fletcher Part 1 International News Networks 1 The 1755 Lisbon Earthquake and Tsunami in Dutch News Sources: The Functioning of Early Modern News Dissemination 19 Joop W. Koopmans 2 “Wee have Tidings out of Polonia”: English Corantos, News Networks, and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth 41 Anna Kalinowska 3 Transylvania in German Newspapers: Systems of Reporting and the News Stories of György II Rákóczi, 1657– 1658 58 Virginia Dillon Part 2 Exploring the Boundaries: News for Entertainment, Propaganda, and Satire 4 News of the Sussex Dragon 83 Andrew Hadfield 5 “Loyal Hind”, “The Prince of Thieves”: Crime Pamphlets and Royalist Propaganda in the 1650s 96 Lena Liapi 6 Intensive Ephemera: The Catholick Gamesters and the Visual Culture of News in Restoration London 115 Adam Morton <UN> vi contents Part 3 News and Social History 7 Rumour, Newsletters, and the Pope’s Death in Early Modern Rome 143 John M. Hunt 8 “A True Reporte”: News and the Neighbourhood in Early Modern Domestic Murder Texts 159 Emma Whipday 9 Life After Death: Gender, Idealized Virtues, and the Obituary in Eighteenth-Century Newspapers 175 Catherine Tremain Part 4 News in Literary Forms 10 “This Straunge Newes”: Plague Writing, Print Culture, and the Invention of News in Thomas Dekker’s The Wonderfull Yeare (1603) 199 Viviana Comensoli 11 English News Plays of the Early 1620s: Thomas Middleton’s A Game at Chess and Ben Jonson’s The Staple of News 215 Lena Steveker 12 “This is Attested Truth”: The Rhetoric of Truthfulness in Early Modern Broadside Ballads 230 Nicolas Moon Bibliography of Secondary Works 251 Index 265 <UN> Acknowledgements This collection of essays grows out of a conference on News in Early Modern Europe, hosted by the Centre for Early Modern Studies at the University of Sussex in the summer of 2012. The editors would like to thank all the speakers and delegates who attended the conference, with special thanks to those who chaired panels, and to our two plenary speakers, Andrew Pettegree and Joad Raymond. We are very grateful to Lana Harper, Barbara Kennedy, and Cathy Parsons for their invaluable help in organizing and running the conference. We would like to thank Andrew and the team at Brill for encouragement and assistance in developing the volume. Finally, we offer our gratitude to the authors presented here for all their hard work and patience along the way. <UN> List of Illustrations figure caption 1.1 Part of the front page of the Amsterdam newspaper of Thursday 27 November 1755, in which the first news about the Lisbon earthquake is published. Copy in Stadsarchief Amsterdam (Amsterdam City Archives), photograph by Joop Koopmans 25 1.2 De Voorlooper van de Groninger Dingsdaagsche Courant [The Forerunner of the Groningen Tuesday Newspaper]. Copy in Universiteitsbibliotheek Groningen (University Library Groningen) 28 3.1 Number and types of religious references from each reporting system 67 3.2 Distribution of violence vocabulary by frequency category for each major reporting region 72 3.3 Distribution of words from Category A between stories about Poland and stories about the Ottomans 73 3.4 Distribution of words from Category B between stories about Poland and stories about the Ottomans 74 5.1 We have brought our hogs to a fair market: or, Strange newes from New- Gate (1652), part of p. 5, showing the image of Charles I. This item is reproduced by permission of The Huntington Library, San Marino, California 110 5.2 We have brought our hogs to a fair market: or, Strange newes from New- Gate (1652), p. 7, showing images of James Hind and a lion. This item is reproduced by permission of The Huntington Library, San Marino, California 111 6.1 The Catholick Gamesters or A Dubble Match of Bowleing (1680), bm Sat 1077, © Trustees of the British Museum 116 6.2 The Committee; or Popery in Masquerade (1680), bm Sat 1080, © Trustees of the British Museum 135 6.3 Strange’s Case Strangely Altered (1680) bm Sat 1083, © Trustees of the British Museum 136 9.1 The death notice of Lord Feversham. Norwich Gazette & Norfolk & Suffolk Advertiser, 25 June 1763. Image courtesy of Norfolk County Council Library 176 9.2 A typical provincial mix of obituary and death notices. Norwich Mercury, 18 February 1797. Image courtesy of Norfolk County Council Library 178 <UN> list of illustrations ix 9.3 Typical layout of boxed-in and paid-for advertisements. Norwich Gazette, 10 March 1792. Image courtesy of Norfolk County Council Library 180 9.4 Men’s obituary qualities: 1760–1800 184 9.5 Women’s obituary qualities: 1760–1800 184 9.6 Male industry versus female good sense 188 9.7 Death notice celebrating “honest industry.” Norwich Mercury, 13 May 1797. Image courtesy of Norfolk County Council Library 189 11.1 Title page of A Game at Chess (1625; stc 17884; rb 28185). This item is reproduced by permission of The Huntington Library, San Marino, California 224 11.2 Title page of A Game at Chess (1625; stc 17882; rb 23674). This item is reproduced by permission of The Huntington Library, San Marino, California 225 12.1 Rafe Norris, A warning to London by the fall of Antwerp (London: John Allde, 1577). This item is reproduced by permission of The Huntingdon Library, San Marino, California. rb 18324 244 12.2 L.P., A wonderfull vvonder, being a most strange and true relation of the resolute life, and miserable death of Thomas Miles… (London: John Wright junior, 1635). © The British Library Board huth 50 [30] 245 12.3 [Anonymous], A discription of a monstrous Chylde, borne at Chychester in Sussex, the .xxiiii. daye of May. This being the very length, and bygnes of the same (London: By Leonard Askel for Fraunces Godlyf, 1562). © The British Library Board huth 50[30] 247 table caption 3.1 Number of reports originating in each region, subdivided by story subject 61 3.2 Vocabulary describing violence in the news stories of Rákóczi, organized by frequency of usage 70 9.1 Frequency of gendered necrological merits 185 map caption 2.1 Distribution of datelines 51 3.1 Map indicating with a star the location of German-language newspapers with extant issues from 1657-1658, and indicating with a circle the reporting locations for the news of Transylvania (size of circle demon- strates number of reports) 60 <UN> Notes on Contributors Viviana Comensoli is Professor of English at Wilfrid Laurier University. She was the editor of Thomas Dekker’s Lantern and Candlelight (1608) (2009), the author of “Household Business”: Domestic Plays of Early Modern England (1996), co-editor of Discontinuities: New Essays on Renaissance Literature and Criticism (1998), and co-editor of Enacting Gender on the English Renaissance Stage (1998).