¹ British Library, Harley MS 389, fols. 183r–184r. Here and throughout I have modernized the spelling and punctuation of my quotations and spelled out all abbreviations. However, I have left proper names in their original spelling.

² For the early modern European news revolutions in continental Europe, see Dooley, Brendan, The Social History of Skepticism: Experience and Doubt in Early Modern Culture (Baltimore, 1999)Google Scholar; and Dooley, Brendan and Baron, Sabrina, eds., The Politics of Information in Early Modern Europe (London, 2001)Google Scholar.

³ I assume that “sociable” has had different precise meanings in different times; this article is in part an exercise in tracing the evolving historical characteristics of sociability. That said, I generally have used “sociable” in the dictionary sense of the word—“characterized by, pertaining to, contact, intercourse, or companionship with others, esp. in a pleasant or friendly manner.” Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. “sociable.” Historians, philosophers, sociologists, etc., ultimately owe their use of and interest in the word to the rise in importance of “société” and “sociabilité” in early modern France, both as words and as concepts; for this development, see Gordon, Daniel, Citizens without Sovereignty: Equality and Sociability in French Thought (Princeton, NJ, 1994), 43–85Google Scholar.

⁴ Stuteville collected Mead's letters, most of which are now in the British Library, Harley MSS 389 and 390. Most of my citations are directly from these manuscripts; some have been taken from Birch, Thomas, ed., The Court and Times of Charles the First, 2 vols. (London, 1848)Google Scholar. To my knowledge, the series of letters that Martin Stuteville wrote in return to Joseph Mead has not survived. The inspirations and precedents for this article are various microstudies of reading in early modern Europe, among them Grafton, Anthony's Commerce with the Classics: Ancient Books and Renaissance Readers (Ann Arbor, MI, 1997)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lisa Jardine and Anthony Grafton, “‘Studied for Action’: How Gabriel Harvey Read His Livy,” Past and Present, no. 129 (November 1990): 30–78; Morrill, John, “William Davenport and the ‘Silent Majority’ of early Stuart England,” Journal of the Chester Archaeological Society 58 (1975): 115–29Google Scholar; Sharpe, Kevin, Reading Revolutions: The Politics of Reading in Early Modern England (New Haven, CT, 2000)Google Scholar; and Sherman, William, John Dee: The Politics of Reading and Writing in the English Renaissance (Amherst, MA, 1995)Google Scholar.

⁵ Habermas defines the public sphere in early modern Europe as a floating sphere of unanchored discourse, embodied in the printed newspaper, which gradually leached authority from prior, embodied forms of authority and publicity. Habermas, Jürgen, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, trans. Burger, Thomas and Lawrence, Frederick (Cambridge, MA, 1991), 14–26Google Scholar. See also Raymond, Joad, “The Newspaper, Public Opinion, and the Public Sphere in the Seventeenth Century,” in News, Newspapers, and Society in Early Modern Britain, ed. Raymond, Joad (London, 1999), 111–12, 118Google Scholar.

⁶ Claydon, Tony, “The Sermon, the ‘Public Sphere’ and the Political Culture of Late Seventeenth-Century England,” in The English Sermon Revised: Religion, Literature, and History, 1600–1750, ed. Ferrell, Lori and McCullough, Peter (Manchester and New York, 2000), 208–34Google Scholar; Richard Cust, “News and Politics,” Past and Present, no. 112 (1986): 60–90; Friest, Dagmar, Governed by Opinion: Politics, Religion, and the Dynamics of Communication in Stuart London, 1637–1645 (London, 1997)Google Scholar; Lake, Peter and Questier, Michael, “Puritans, Papists, and the ‘Public Sphere’ in Early Modern England: The Edmund Campion Affair in Context,” Journal of Modern History 72 (September 2000): 590–92, 626–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mears, Natalie, “Counsel, Public Debate, and Queenship: John Stubbs's The Discoverie of a Gaping Gulf, 1579,” Historical Journal 44, no. 3 (September 2001): 629–50, 650CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Raymond, Joad, “The Daily Muse; or, Seventeenth-Century Poets Read the News,” Seventeenth Century 10, no. 2 (Autumn 1995): 189–218Google Scholar, and “The Newspaper, Public Opinion, and the Public Sphere,” 112–17; Worden, Blair, The Sound of Virtue: Philip Sidney's Arcadia and Elizabethan Politics (New Haven, CT, 1996), 109–14Google Scholar; Zaret, David, Origins of Democratic Culture: Printing, Petitions, and the Public Sphere in Early-Modern England (Princeton, NJ, 2000), 170–73Google Scholar. For a general inquiry into whether and to what extent seventeenth-century European news culture had produced a public sphere, see Brendan Dooley, “News and Doubt in Early Modern Culture; or, Are We Having a Public Sphere Yet?” in Dooley and Baron, Politics of Information in Early Modern Europe, 275–90.

⁷ Habermas, Structural Transformation, 93–95. This article depends generally upon the works of Shaaber, Dahl, Hanson, and their successors, which, with a heavy emphasis on print journalism, first established (1) the range of source material, (2) the prosopography, and (3) the general characteristics of Elizabethan and early Stuart news history. See (1) Collins, D. C., A Handlist of News Pamphlets, 1590–1610 (London, 1943)Google Scholar; and Dahl, Folke, A Bibliography of English Corantos and Periodical Newsbooks, 1620–1642 (London, 1952)Google Scholar; (2) Eccles, Mark, “Thomas Gainsford, ‘Captain Pamphlet,’” Huntington Library Quarterly 45, no. 4 (Autumn 1982): 259–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Huffman, Clifford, Elizabethan Impressions: John Wolfe and His Press (New York, 1988), 69–97Google Scholar; Powell, William, John Pory, 1572–1636: The Life and Letters of a Man of Many Parts (Chapel Hill, NC, 1977)Google Scholar; and Rostenberg, Leona, “Nathaniel Butter and Nicholas Bourne, First ‘Masters of the Staple,’” Library, 5th ser., 12, no. 1 (March 1957): 23–33CrossRefGoogle Scholar; (3) Ian Atherton,“‘The Itch Grown a Disease’: Manuscript Transmission of News in the Seventeenth Century,” in Raymond, News, Newspapers, and Society in Early Modern Britain, 39–65; Bellany, Alastair, The Politics of Court Scandal in Early Modern England: News Culture and the Overbury Affair, 1603–1660 (Cambridge, 2002)Google Scholar; Cust, “News and Politics,” 60–90; Fox, Adam, Oral and Literate Culture in England, 1500–1700 (Oxford, 2000), 335–405Google Scholar; Habermas, Structural Transformation; Hanson, Laurence, “English Newsbooks, 1620–1641,” Library, 4th ser., 18, no. 4 (March 1938): 355–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Levy, Fritz, “How Information Spread among the Gentry, 1550–1640,” Journal of British Studies 21, no. 2 (1982): 11–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mousley, Andrew, “Self, State, and Seventeenth-Century News,” Seventeenth Century 1, no. 2 (Autumn 1991): 149–68Google Scholar; Shaaber, Matthias, Some Forerunners of the Newspaper in England, 1476–1622 (Philadelphia, 1929)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Raymond, “The Newspaper, Public Opinion, and the Public Sphere,” 109–40; Raymond, Joad, Pamphlets and Pamphleteering in Early Modern Britain (Cambridge, 2003)Google Scholar; and Zaret, Origins of Democratic Culture.

⁸ The Diary of Thomas Crosfield, ed. Boas, Frederick S. (London, 1935)Google Scholar; The Diary of Sir Simonds D’Ewes (1622–1624), ed. Bourcier, Élisabeth (Paris, 1974)Google Scholar; Diary of John Rous, ed. Green, Mary (London, 1856; repr., New York, 1968)Google Scholar; The Letters of John Chamberlain, 2 vols., ed. McClure, Norman Egbert (Philadelphia, 1939)Google Scholar; Diary of Walter Yonge, Esq., ed. Roberts, George (London, 1848)Google Scholar; William Whiteway of Dorchester: His Diary, 1618 to 1635 (Dorchester, 1991)Google Scholar.

⁹ Matthew, H. C. G. and Harrison, Brian, eds., Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004), 4:67–68, 4:70, 4:74–75, 10:105–8, 10:922, 14:413–14, 16:1–4, 21:276–77, 37:683–85, 44:986–87, 47:954, 58:708, 60:818–19Google Scholar. For the Puritan intensity of sympathy toward and interest in the fate of the continental Reformed polities and congregations during the 1620s and early 1630s, also see Cogswell, Thomas, The Blessed Revolution: English Politics and the Coming of War, 1621–1624 (Cambridge, 1989), 21–32Google Scholar.

¹⁰ Stephen, Leslie and Lee, Sidney, eds., The Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, from 1917), 13:178–80Google Scholar; and Matthew and Harrison, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 37:683–85. Randall, David, “Sovereign Intelligence and Sovereign Intelligencers: Transforming Standards of Credibility in English Military News from ca. 1570 to 1637” (PhD diss., Rutgers University, 2005)Google Scholar, demonstrates Mead's typicality at greater length.

¹¹ John Rous recorded Stuteville's death in his diary entry of 13 June 1631: “That day at night, Sir Martin Stuteville, of Dalham, coming from the Sessions at Bury, with Sir George le Hunt, went into the Angel, and there being merry in a chair, either ready to take tobacco, or having newly done it, (ut fertur) leaned backward with his head, and died immediately” (Diary of John Rous, 61).

¹² They may also have been kin; the materials I have examined do not explicitly state their relationship, and Mead's origins are somewhat hazy, but some familial relationship is plausible.

¹³ Stephen and Lee, The Dictionary of National Biography, 13:178–80; Matthew and Harrison, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 37:683–85; Copinger, W. A., The Manors of Suffolk (Manchester, 1909), 5:217–18Google Scholar.

¹⁴ British Library, Harley MS 390, fol. 522r. Here and throughout, [x] represents a word I was unable to read while transcribing Mead's letters. For newswriting as sociable activity, also see William Masham to Lady Joan Barrington, November 1631, in Barrington Family Letters, 1628–1632, ed. Searle, Arthur, Camden Society, 4th ser., vol. 28 (London, 1983), 212Google Scholar.

¹⁵ For classic anthropological works on gifts, see Lévi-Strauss, Claude, The Elementary Structures of Kinship, trans. Bell, James, von Sturmer, John Richard, and Needham, Rodney (Boston, 1969), 52–68Google Scholar; Malinowski, Bronislaw, Argonauts of the Western Pacific: An Account of Native Enterprise and Adventure in the Archipelagos of Melanesian New Guinea (Prospect Heights, IL, 1984), 173–91Google Scholar; Mauss, Marcel, The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies, trans. Halls, W. D. (New York, 1990)Google Scholar. For gift giving and sociability in early modern English government and society, see Peck, Linda Levy, Court Patronage and Corruption in Early Stuart England (Boston, 1990)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Whyman, Susan, Sociability and Power in Late-Stuart England: The Cultural Worlds of the Verneys, 1660–1720 (Oxford, 1999)Google Scholar.

¹⁶ This compresses the argument of Randall, “Sovereign Intelligence,” 157–61. The theoretical sources for this argument include Foucault, Michel, Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972–1977, trans. Gordon, Colin (New York, 1980), 98Google Scholar; James, Mervyn, “English Politics and the Concept of Honour, 1485–1642,” in Society, Politics, and Culture: Studies in Early Modern England (Cambridge, 1986), 308–415CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Johns, Adrian, The Nature of the Book: Print and Knowledge in the Making (Chicago, 1998), 36, 113–14, 125, 444–621CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Pitt-Rivers, Julian, “The Anthropology of Honour,” in The Fate of Shechem, or The Politics of Sex: Essays in the Anthropology of the Mediterranean (Cambridge, 1977), 1–17Google Scholar; Saunders, J. W., “The Stigma of Print: A Note on the Social Bases of Tudor Poetry,” Essays in Criticism 1, no. 2 (April 1951): 139–64CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Shapin, Steven, A Social History of Truth: Civility and Science in Seventeenth-Century England (Chicago, 1994), 7, 36, 42–64Google Scholar.

¹⁷ Cowan, Brian, “The Rise of the Coffee House Reconsidered,” Historical Journal 47, no. 1 (2004): 21–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Fox, Oral and Literate Culture, 352–53, 375–79, 403–4; Habermas, Structural Transformation, 32–33; Pincus, Steve, “‘Coffee Politicians Does Create’: Coffeehouses and Restoration Political Culture,” Journal of Modern History 67, no. 4 (1995): 807–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁸ As far back as the ancient world, the Greek critic Demetrius wrote that “a letter is a piece of writing and is sent to someone as a kind of gift.” Grube, G. M. A., ed., A Greek Critic: Demetrius on Style, (Toronto, 1961), 112Google Scholar.

¹⁹ British Library, Harley MS 389, fol. 11r.

²⁰ British Library, Harley MS 389, fol. 145r. For newswriting as gift exchange, also see Lord Conway's son to Lord Conway, 1627, British Library, Egerton MS 2533, fol. 45r; and Amias Steynings to John Willoughby, July 1631, in Trevelyan Papers, ed. Walter, and Trevelyan, Charles, Camden Society, 1st ser., vol. 105 (London, 1872), pt. 3, 181Google Scholar.

²¹ British Library, Harley MS 389, fol. 176r.

²² Ibid.

²³ British Library, Harley MS 390, fol. 480r. For dining and news, also see John Chamberlain to Dudley Carleton, October 1618, in The Letters of John Chamberlain, 2:172; October 1622 entries in The Diary of Sir Simonds, 101; and Thomas Meautys to Jane Lady Cornwallis, November 1629, in The Private Correspondence of Jane Lady Cornwallis, 1613–1644, ed. Braybrooke, Lord (London, 1842), 216Google Scholar.

²⁴ For the precedence of orality to literacy, and the ultimately revolutionary nature of the transformation from the former to the latter, see Ong, Walter, Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word (London, 1982)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a review of the literature critiquing, controverting, and complicating Ong, see Coleman, Joyce, Public Reading and the Reading Public in Late Medieval England and France (Cambridge, 1996), 1–33Google Scholar. For the slow and complex nature of the transformation to literacy (acknowledged briefly by Ong; Ong, Orality and Literacy, 115–16) as it applied to news in early modern England, and for the persistence of oral news, see Fox, Oral and Literate Culture, 335–405.

²⁵ Birch, Court and Times, 1:66.

²⁶ British Library, Harley MS 389, fol. 65r.

²⁷ Birch, Court and Times, 1:51.

²⁸ British Library, Harley MS 390, fol. 47r.

²⁹ British Library, Harley MS 390, fol. 137v. For chains of communication, also see November 1627 entries in Diary of John Rous, 11; and July 1635 entries in Diary of Thomas Crosfield, 78.

³⁰ British Library, Harley MS 389, fol. 11r.

³¹ British Library, Harley MS 389, fol. 18v.

³² Birch, Court and Times, 1:63.

³³ This sort of judgment of credibility was also bound up in a judgment of the honor of the writer of news, since honor carried with it the connotations of trustworthiness and truthfulness. For the interrelations of honor, truthfulness, and trustworthiness, see Segar, William, Honor, Military and Civill (London, 1602), 229Google Scholar; and Shapin, A Social History of Truth, 7, 36, 42–64. For the interrelation of social status and credibility in early modern Europe, also see Biagioli, Mario, Galileo, Courtier: The Practice of Science in the Culture of Absolutism (Chicago, 1993), 58–59Google Scholar.

³⁴ British Library, Harley MS 389, fol. 184r.

³⁵ Locke and Bacon also preferred to receive their information through as few intermediaries as possible. Shapin, A Social History of Truth, 217–18.

³⁶ British Library, Harley MS 390, fol. 378r.

³⁷ British Library, Harley MS 390, fol. 471v.

³⁸ British Library, Harley MS 390, fol. 123r.

³⁹ British Library, Harley MS 390, fol. 331r. For concern with eyewitnessing, also see John Beaulieu to Thomas Puckering, December 1632, in Birch, Court and Times, 2:203. Newsletters originally mixed private and public news in the same letter; as private and public news diverged from each other, “separates” emerged—handwritten letters of purely public news attached to letters of private news, in a form that allowed them to be made anonymous, copied, and transmitted.

⁴⁰ Habermas, Structural Transformation, 21; Miller, Edwin, The Professional Writer in Elizabethan England: A Study of Nondramatic Literature (Cambridge, MA, 1959), 203–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Shaaber, Some Forerunners of the Newspaper, 226–27.

⁴¹ British Library, Harley MS 389, fol. 455r; British Library, Harley MS 390, fol. 123r. For the commercial locuses of news, also see John Pory to Thomas Puckering, September 1632, in Birch, Court and Times, 2:178.

⁴² British Library, Harley MS 389, fol. 298r. For the mixture of commerce and sociability in the news, also see Atherton, “‘The Itch Grown a Disease,’” 51.

⁴³ This compresses the argument of Randall, “Sovereign Intelligence,” 200–212. The theoretical sources for this argument include Habermas, Structural Transformation; Ong, Orality and Literacy; and Warner, Michael, Publics and Counterpublics (New York, 2002)Google Scholar.

⁴⁴ British Library, Harley MS 389, fols. 18v, 260r; British Library, Harley MS 390, fol. 480r.

⁴⁵ British Library, Harley MS 389, fol. 282r. For making newsletters anonymous, also see John Holles to George Holles, May 1625, in Letters of John Holles, 1587–1637, ed. Seddon, P. R., vol. 2 (Nottingham, 1983), 304Google Scholar; Edward Vere to Anonymous, 1629, in Report on the Manuscripts of the Earl of Ancaster, ed. Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts (Dublin, 1907), 399–402Google Scholar; and George Fleetwood to William Fleetwood, 1632, “Letter from George Fleetwood to his Father,” in The Camden Miscellany: Volume the First, ed. Egerton, Philip (London, 1847), 3Google Scholar.

⁴⁶ British Library, Harley MS 389, fols. 1r, 183r; British Library, Harley MS 390, fols. 127r, 330r–330v, 472r.

⁴⁷ The extent of this anonymity can be measured by the fact that Dahl found only two named sources for news in his entire bibliography of more than four hundred corantos. In A continuation of more newes from the Palatinate (26 July 1622), 3, a letter of news from Brazil was attributed to one William Clarke; and on the title page of The continuation of our weekly newes (28 October 1628, no. 19), an account of a naval battle against the Maltese was attributed to Thomas Roe. Dahl, Bibliography of English Corantos, 73, 162.

⁴⁸ British Library, Harley MS 389, fols. 122r, 188r; British Library, Harley MS 390, fol. 473v. For its winking title, which comments on and acknowledges the anonymity of the genre, also see “The copy of a letter written by a dutyfull Servant Nobody[.] Sent from Bruxells to his Worthy Master Nemo” (1621), British Library, Additional MS 34217, fol. 20v. Much the same letter, untitled but written by “Noebodie,” appears in Huntington Library, Ellesemere Collection, no. 6905.

⁴⁹ British Library, Harley MS 390, fols. 378r, 525v. For the shift of sourcing from people to letters, also see Peter Moreton to his father, September 1631, British Library, Additional MS 33935, fol. 333r; and John Beaulieu to Thomas Puckering, November 1632, in Birch, Court and Times, 2:199.

⁵⁰ British Library, Harley MS 390, fol. 522r.

⁵¹ British Library, Harley MS 390, fol. 496r.

⁵² This compresses the argument of Randall, “Sovereign Intelligence,” 219–37. The theoretical sources for this argument include Eisenstein, Elizabeth, The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, 1983)Google Scholar; Saunders, “The Stigma of Print,” 139–64; and Zaret, Origins of Democratic Culture.

⁵³ British Library, Harley MS 390, fol. 17r.

⁵⁴ British Library, Harley MS 390, fol. 116r.

⁵⁵ British Library, Harley MS 390, fol. 297r. For distrust of coranto news, also see John Chamberlain to Dudley Carleton, October 1624, in The Letters of John Chamberlain, 2:584; and Gilbert Gerrard to Joan Barrington, January 1632, in Barrington Family Letters, 224.

⁵⁶ British Library, Harley MS 389, fols. 73v, 75r, 252v–253r.

⁵⁷ The six corantos (Courante, or, newes from Italy and Germany [9 April 1621], Courante, or, newes from Italy and Germany, &c. [22 April 1621], Courant newes out of Italy, Germany, Bohemia, Poland &c [25 May 1621], Corante, or, newes from Italy and Germanie [6 June 1621], Corante, or, newes from Italy, Germanie, Hungarie and Spaine [25 June 1621], and Corante, or, newes from Italy, Germanie, Hungarie, Spaine and France [3 July 1621]) are in British Library, Harley MS 389, fols. 56, 68, 79, 82–84, 104, 106.

⁵⁸ British Library, Harley MS 389, fol. 316r; British Library, Harley MS 390, fol. 496r. References to further enclosures of printed news are in British Library, Harley MS 389, fols. 176r, 188r, 200r, 235r, 381r; British Library, Harley MS 390, fols. 13r, 473v.

⁵⁹ British Library, Harley MS 389, fol. 208r.

⁶⁰ British Library, Harley MS 389, fol. 235r.

⁶¹ British Library, Harley MS 389, fol. 272r; British Library, Harley MS 390, fol. 320r.

⁶² British Library, Harley MS 389, fol. 11r.

⁶³ The quotations I have selected overlap in time and show no particular temporal progression. Nevertheless, I do have a sense that Mead became somewhat more comfortable with corantos as the 1620s progressed. I cannot substantiate this impression with footnotes, since this is my reaction to the overall tone of his writing. For what it is worth, I note this impression to the reader.

⁶⁴ British Library, Harley MS 389, fol. 11r.

⁶⁵ British Library, Harley MS 390, fol. 13r.

⁶⁶ British Library, Harley MS 390, fol. 139r.

⁶⁷ British Library, Harley MS 390, fol. 139v.

⁶⁸ British Library, Harley MS 390, fol. 320r.

⁶⁹ British Library, Harley MS 390, fol. 496r. For acceptance of the credibility of corantos, also see October 1626 and summer 1633 entries in Diary of John Rous, 7, 75; William Masham to Joan Barrington, October 1631, in Barrington Family Letters, 211; and Peter Moreton to his father, September 1632, British Library, Additional MS 33936, fol. 34r.

⁷⁰ British Library, Harley MS 390, fol. 137v.

⁷¹ British Library, Harley MS 390, fol. 328r. For judgment of partiality, also see November 1622 entries in The Diary of Sir Simonds, 106; John Holles to the Earl of Somerset, August 1627, in Letters of John Holles, 2:359.

⁷² British Library, Harley MS 390, fol. 123r.

⁷³ British Library, Harley MS 390, fol. 322v.

⁷⁴ British Library, Harley MS 390, fol. 324r. For judgment by examination of textual details, also see September 1620 entries in Diary of Walter Yonge, Esq., 35; October 1620 entries in William Whiteway of Dorchester: His Diary, 31; and September 1622 entries in The Diary of Sir Simonds, 98.

⁷⁵ British Library, Harley MS 389, fol. 9r.

⁷⁶ British Library, Harley MS 389, fol. 455r.

⁷⁷ This compresses the argument of Randall, “Sovereign Intelligence,” 319–28. The theoretical sources for this argument include Giddens, Anthony, The Consequences of Modernity (Stanford, CA, 1990), esp. 21–27, 79–85Google Scholar; Luhmann, Nikolas, Trust and Power, trans. David, Howard, Raffan, John, and Rooney, Kathryn (Chichester, 1979), 4–95Google Scholar; Popkin, Richard, The History of Skepticism from Savonarola to Boyle (Oxford, 2003)Google Scholar; and Shapin, A Social History of Truth, 114–25, 243–354. For extensive news reading, also see George Wetheryd to Charles Radcliffe, July 1623, in Wentworth Papers, 1597–1628, ed. Cooper, J. P., Camden Society, 4th ser., 12 (London, 1973), 189Google Scholar; Ambrose Randolph to Jane Lady Cornwallis, February 1632, in Private Correspondence of Jane Lady Cornwallis, 250; and John Pory to John Scudamore, November 1632, in microfiche suppl. to Powell, John Pory, 1572–1636, 333. More generally, extensive reading dates back to antiquity, but the printing revolution's vast multiplication of available texts greatly promoted its practice. Blair, Ann, “Reading Strategies for Coping with Information Overload, ca. 1550–1700,” Journal of the History of Ideas 64, no. 1 (January 2003): 11–28, 14Google ScholarPubMed; Eisenstein, Printing Revolution, 43–44.

⁷⁸ Atherton, “‘The Itch Grown a Disease,’” 50.

⁷⁹ The phrase “perceptual competence” is Shapin’s. Shapin, A Social History of Truth, 75–78; Fox, Oral and Literate Culture, 339. Compare Scott-Warren, Jason, “News, Sociability, and Bookbuying in Early Modern England: The Letters of Sir Thomas Cornwallis,” Library, 7th ser., 1, no. 4 (December 2000): 381–402CrossRefGoogle Scholar. But Shapiro argues that no particular perceptual competence is imputed to gentlemen in the legal records of early modern England. Shapiro, Barbara, A Culture of Fact: England, 1550–1720 (Ithaca, NY, 2000), 26Google Scholar. Looking forward, it is interesting to note that Milton's and Lilburne's arguments for a free press rested in good part on the assumption that God granted to the individual reader, regardless of earthly station, the “conscience”—sense, reason, and perceptual competence—to know truth from error. Achinstein, Sharon, Milton and the Revolutionary Reader (Princeton, NJ, 1994), 27–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁸⁰ For the Neostoic tradition, see Barbour, Reid, English Epicures and Stoics: Ancient Legacies in Early Stuart Culture (Amherst, MA, 1998), 145–94Google Scholar; Burke, Peter, “Tacitism, Scepticism and Reason of State,” in The Cambridge History of Political Thought, 1450–1700, ed. Burns, J. H. and Goldie, Mark (Cambridge, 1991), 491–98Google Scholar; McCrea, Adriana Alice Norma, Constant Minds: Political Virtue and the Lipsian Paradigm in England, 1584–1650 (Toronto, 1997), xxviii, 3–4, 10–11CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Oestreich, Gerhard, Neostoicism and the Early Modern State, trans. McLintock, David (Cambridge, 1982), 57–75, 114–17CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Schellhase, Kenneth, Tacitus in Renaissance Political Thought (Chicago, 1976), esp. 127–49Google Scholar; Smuts, R. Malcolm, “Court-Centred Politics and the Uses of Roman Historians, c. 1590–1630,” in Culture and Politics in Early Stuart England, ed. Sharpe, Kevin and Lake, Peter (Stanford, CA, 1993), 21–43Google Scholar.

⁸¹ Johns, The Nature of the Book, 380–443.

⁸² Nevertheless, having copied down for Stuteville what he heard read aloud, he did speculate to Stuteville as to what was passed over in silence: “And I could almost guess by what I have heard since by others what were those passages he concealed or some of them. For I heard that the Queen [Elizabeth] was desirous to come into England, but her Father [James VI and I] had absolutely forbidden her. That the King [Elector Frederick] should say, that were it not for the person of his Lady which he loved above all other, he could have wished he had married rather a Boor's daughter, then the King of Great Britain’s, &c.” British Library, Harley MS 389, fol. 67v.

⁸³ British Library, Harley MS 390, fol. 496r. For restraint in passing on news and criticism of the failure to exercise such restraint, also see John Beaulieu to Thomas Puckering, August 1627, in Birch, Court and Times, 1:263; and George Fleetwood to William Fleetwood, September 1632, “Letter from George Fleetwood,” in Egerton, Camden Miscellany, 12.

⁸⁴ British Library, Harley MS 389, fol. 61r. For slow, careful news reading, also see John Holles to George Holles, May 1625, in Letters of John Holles, 2:304; Thomas Barrington to Joan Barrington, June 1631 and April 1632, in Barrington Family Letters, 195, 235; Peter Moreton to his father, April 1632, British Library, Additional MS 33936, fol. 24r; and John Pory, December 1632, in Birch, Court and Times, 2:210. For eagerness to believe the best news, also see 1627 entries in Diary of John Rous, 11–12; and John Pory to John Scudamore, December 1632, in microfiche suppl. to Powell, John Pory, 1572–1636, 334–35.

⁸⁵ British Library, Harley MS 389, fol. 61r.

⁸⁶ British Library, Harley MS 389, fol. 220r.

⁸⁷ British Library, Harley MS 390, fol. 292r–292v. For emotional news reading, also see July 1623 entries in The Diary of Sir Simonds, 148; Thomas Barrington to Joan Barrington, May 1632, in Barrington Family Letters, 243; John Holles to John Holles Jr., July 1632, in Letters of John Holles, ed. Seddon, P. R., vol. 3 (Nottingham, 1986), 441–42Google Scholar; and Raymond, Joad, “Irrational, Impractical and Unprofitable: Reading the News in Seventeenth-Century Britain,” in Reading, Society, and Politics in Early Modern England, ed. Sharpe, Kevin and Zwicker, Steven (Cambridge, 2003), 185–212CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁸⁸ British Library, Harley MS 389, fol. 11r.

⁸⁹ British Library, Harley MS 389, fol. 239v.

⁹⁰ British Library, Harley MS 390, fol. 116r.

⁹¹ British Library, Harley MS 390, fols. 191v, 194r.

⁹² British Library, Harley MS 390, fol. 317r. For suspension of judgment, also see June 1628 entries in Diary of John Rous, 18.

⁹³ Habermas, Structural Transformation, 5–14, 32–33.

⁹⁴ Ibid., 92.

⁹⁵ Mousley, informed by Marxist theory, believes that both early modern and modern news reading were and are essentially passive activities that in turn produced a passive citizenry. Mousley, “Self, State, and Seventeenth-Century News,” 166–67. I believe that Mousley is incorrect in his estimation of the past and that active news reading (and therefore an active citizenry) characterized early modern England. If Mousley's description of the past is incorrect, it plausibly follows that so is his description of the present.