Unpublished newsletters were an essential source of news in the 1640s and 1650s. Jack Neill, who interned for the House of Lords 1640-1660 section in summer 2026, explores what one particularly scandalous example tells us about the early years of the Long Parliament.
‘What news?’ was a common question in Stuart Britain, heard in both polite coffeehouses and smoke-filled taverns. Newsbooks from the 1640s and 1650s – particularly the famous Thomason Tracts held by the British Library – have been an attractive resource and subject for scholars. The printing of domestic and foreign news was restricted during Charles I’s personal rule (1629-40), before flourishing following star chamber’s abolition in 1641. November 1641 saw the publication of the first weekly newsbook; within two months sixteen were in circulation. In 1642, the total number of titles printed was 550 times greater than the average annual figure of the 1630s. Partly owing to their cheap production costs, the contents of these pamphlets were often read aloud and discussed by those across the social spectrum. Much comment has been made about how parliamentarian and royalist partisans utilised popular print media as a form of propaganda. As differences between these opposing sides sharpened, press smears became increasingly venomous.
Less attention has been paid to how news was shared in manuscript (i.e. unpublished) newsletters. One example of this format is the newsletter ‘Diurnall Occurences in Parliament’. Surviving throughout the tense period from the first sitting of the Long Parliament in November 1640 and ending on 27 May 1642, a few months before war’s outbreak. Details of the source’s origins are frustratingly scant. It is probable that a team of scribes collated the previous week’s parliamentary proceedings on a Sunday before disseminating the finished product. Such a labour-intensive process was no doubt reflected in cost. The noble title of one of its readers suggests as much: the newsletter sits amongst the papers of Edward Herbert, 1st Baron Herbert of Chirbury.
The newsletter is rich in information about the daily practice of the Long Parliament. The Palace of Westminster, especially its Hall, was a hub of activity where litigants made their way to court, books were sold, MPs were accosted, and gossip was shared. Security, by modern standards at least, was lax: one ‘distracted man’, Andrew Windsor, was recorded in December 1641 of ‘conceiving himself heir to the Lord Windsor lately deceased [and] thrust himself into the Lords House rudely’ before being thrown out (Bodl. Rawl. D. 141, f. 17). Recent work has stressed how the chambers of both Houses were similarly raucous, noisy spaces with official parliamentary records designed to hide the mess of daily life.
The ‘Diurnall Occurences’ offers insights into the reality of the Long Parliament as well as seventeenth-century appetites for news. Like all historical records, the newsletter was the product of deliberate inclusions and exclusions by its authors, who recorded irreverent detail alongside serious events. It is significant that of the 25 charges levelled against the Laudian Bishop of Ely, Matthew Wren, only one was reported:
one that having been gored with a cow and much hurt and desiring to be prayed for in the church, the said bishop commanded prayers to be read, used at the churching of women for his deliverance from the cow (TNA, PRO 30/53/9/11, f. 35)
Such an anecdote was probably as humorous to the reader as it was humiliating to Wren. The absurdity of this article is likely why it is included in the newsletter, and precisely why it is omitted from Parliament’s official Journals in an attempt to spare Wren, who, as a bishop, sat in the House of Lords, embarrassment.
Another memorable instance is found on 14 July 1641, when a petition was due to be read in the House of Lords against Henry Montagu, 1st earl of Manchester and Lord Privy Seal. The petition accused Manchester of ‘doing some injustice in his court’ of requests, where he was an allegedly corrupt master, but the earl ‘having notice thereof stood up before it was read taxing the petitioner for troubling the House with such trifling things when matters of such great weight were in agitation’, before assuring the Lords that the matter would be reheard in the court (TNA, PRO 30/53/9/11, ff. 44-44v.). This episode does not appear in either the Lords Journal or the Scribbled Book, perhaps owing to Manchester’s intervention. How Diurnall Occurrences heard the information – whether first hand or through sources – is unclear and a subject which deserves further exploration. Yet it is evident that the earl could prevent the embarrassing accusation being heard but not from being recorded, albeit through an unofficial channel.
The Manchester episode indicates a facet of political life at Westminster which can easily be forgotten: the ease with which elite politicians and ordinary men and women interacted within the parliamentary estate. This aspect of the revolutionary era’s political culture is revealed particularly well in the Diurnall Occurrences. In February 1642, when under threat of punishment for proposing in a fit of pique that the Lords adjourn for six months, the leading royal counsellor James Stuart, 1st duke of Richmond, was reported to:
have his staff taken from him by a company of women (that wanted trading) who violently broke it, and the earl of Bath [Henry Bourchier, 5th earl of Bath] coming to his rescue was called popish lord (though a Protestant) and much railed at, and his band torn from off his neck by the said women (TNA, PRO 30/53/9/11, f. 210.)
For two noblemen to be attacked by a group of women, who, through reference to trading, were undoubtedly members of the poorer or middling sorts, shows an inversion of the gender and social norms that dictated life in early modern England. The inclusion of such a remarkable incident is clearly intentional, as is the episode’s exclusion from the Lords Journal. For peers, stories of this kind were best left off the public record. Fortunately for the historian, the scribes did not share their opinion.
These are but a few instances recorded in the ‘Diurnall Occurences’ of information absent from official records. The scandalous speech and behaviour discussed evidenced the disorder within early modern Parliaments and the appetite of readers for such stories. The recording of such events reveals the fascinating, lively political culture of the Long Parliament. With further archival investigation, historians will uncover more about how information of such scandal escaped the parliamentary chamber and made its way into the public domain.
JN
Further reading
Alex Beeton, ‘Recording a revolution: the clerk of the parliaments and the journals of the house of lords, 1640–9’, Historical Research, 98:280 (2025), 229-243.
Noah Millstone, Manuscript Circulation and the Invention of Politics in Early Stuart England (Cambridge, 2016)
Chris R. Kyle, Jason Peacey, ‘‘Under cover of so much coming and going’: Public Access to Parliament and the Political Process in Early Modern England’, in Chris R. Kyle, Jason Peacey (eds.), Parliament at Work: Parliamentary Committees, Political Power and Public Access in Early Modern England (Woodbridge, 2002), 1-24.
Joad Raymond, The Invention of the Newspaper: English Newsbooks 1641-1649 (Oxford, 2005)
