RUMOUR, NEWS AND POPULAR POLITICAL OPINION IN ELIZABETHAN AND EARLY STUART ENGLAND ¹

Abstract

This essay explores the circulation of rumour and news among those at the lower levels of society in late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century England. It does so through an analysis of the court records in which people were indicted for spreading false reports or speaking seditious words and which are now preserved in assize files or amid the state papers. These sources reveal the networks of communication by which information was disseminated nationwide and shed light upon the relationship between oral, manuscript and printed media. They show how wild stories could be whipped up in the act of transmission and were fuelled by the political insecurities of this period. At the same time a more sophisticated awareness of current affairs is evident in some illicit conversations which suggest that even humble people were participating in the arguments which anticipated the Civil War.

Footnotes

¹ I should like to thank Keith Wrightson, Alastair Bellany and Wallace MacCaffrey for their helpful comments on an earlier version of this article.