Letters of news first acquired credibility by adapting themselves to the canons of sociability and honour. Letters of news were exchanged sociably among gentle Englishmen and guaranteed as credible by their honour as gentleman; the very act of news exchange constituted part of their mutual recognition of one another's gentility. The canons of sociable newswriting, from known correspondent to known recipient, therefore emphasized eyewitness detail as a way to provide sociable credibility. Sociable newsreading, in turn, emphasized friendly partiality, steady judgment, and public-spirited concern for the commonwealth. Gentle newswriters and newsreaders proved their worthiness to write and read the news by their provision of credible news and by their proper judgment of the credibility of the news.

Sociable Letters

The letter was the primary form of intra-governmental communication of military news, and it was by the letter, conveyed discreetly through England's sophisticated, dense, and largely uncensored networks of manuscript copying and circulation, that military news first burst the bounds of government. The letter's ambiguous ability to be used for both public and private communication made it the natural vehicle for this transformation. A letter written to the government could be easily copied and redirected to a private recipient, with only minimal changes to the body of news conveyed. The era's fuzzy dividing line between public and private life further facilitated the slippage of newsletters into ‘private’ correspondence. The form of the letter facilitated this transformation, whether at the desire of the government or by the desire of private recipients of news.

It is crucial to note that both desires operated at once. Government agents – from high courtiers to merchants abroad – were called upon by the government to dispense news as a form of propaganda, shaping the populace's desires either to match or to change the government's policy. Where there was governmental consensus, a proclamation would serve to inform public opinion and encourage it to endorse a unified government policy: needless excitement of the masses was never a preferred government goal.