The Invention of News: How the World Came to Know About Itself (23 page)

Entertainment and variety were offered by those who visited from farther afield: entertainers, quack doctors and tooth-pullers, and long-distance
travellers. These played an important role in the network of news. Often, in contrast to the authoritative news bearers we have encountered in previous chapters, they were men and women of low social status. Alice Bennet, a poor woman from Oxfordshire, was described as one who ‘goeth abroad to sell soap and candles from town to town to get her living and she useth to carry tales between neighbours’.
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There were fitful attempts to control such tattle, but they were bound to fail. In England any traveller arriving from the capital was regarded as an authority and likely to face the question, ‘What news from London?’ Some information could be gleaned from the boatmen who rowed across the Thames, other news from the ubiquitous taverns. Harry Shadwell had heard various rumours in 1569 about the Duke of Alva in the Netherlands, and an alarming tale that ten thousand Scots had joined the Rising of the Northern Earls. William Frauncis returned to Essex with the rumour that ‘there was one in the Tower which sayeth he is King Edward’.
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Travelling tradesmen could also bring the occasional letter to friends and family in the provinces, as in the case of the London apprentice who in 1619 sent back to his parents in Wigan, Lancashire, the following breathless despatch:

Given that the news vouchsafed is complete nonsense, one can only wonder what might have been the quality of the ‘other strange things’. But we can sense the excitement of the new-minted Londoner happy to be in the thick of things – and not averse to tantalising his distant parents with his unaccustomed superiority in the news market, however illusory.

The marketplace was the major public space at the heart of any community. It gathered residents, folk from the surrounding villages, and travellers who came to buy and sell. Market towns were also frequently the seats of local government, and of other powerful organisations such as town corporations and guilds. At irregular intervals market towns would also be the seats of the local law courts, or assizes. Early modern justice was swift, and those who came to trade might also see justice done. Bakers who sold underweight bread, fraudsters, prostitutes or vagabonds would frequently be punished, by ridicule or corporal punishment, in the market square. This was also sometimes the place of execution, though sentence was often conducted in some other large
open space away from the main trading area. Executions were invariably a public spectacle. To modern eyes this appears cruel and voyeuristic. But the ritualised quality of such public punishment was essential to the early modern sense of community.
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Justice was a communal process, and execution a ritual act of expulsion. So although the onlookers might sometimes pity the prisoners in their terrifying last moments, they undoubtedly approved the process of the law. They would carry the news away with them, along with their purchases.

It is sometimes suggested that the news value of the more sensational cases was eagerly exploited by nimble publicists, who would move through the crowd selling accounts of the crimes and the prisoners’ deathbed confessions. This seems improbable, at least in the sixteenth century. As we have seen, such accounts of notorious crimes circulated widely, and for long after the event.
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Their pedagogic value, and capacity to titillate, was not closely linked to the place where the crime or execution took place. In England such a market for news would have been impossible in any case, since there was virtually no printing outside London.
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These were news events experienced for the most part by eyewitnesses and shared by word of mouth. The corpse left to rot on the gibbet would serve as a reminder to those who came by later.

Visitors to the market could also see news being made. Authorities took advantage of the presence of a crowd to announce the latest regulations, or pass on news of recent legislation. In major cities, where the market was a permanent event, these proclamations might happen any day. In France and elsewhere the public announcement of the latest royal decree was attended by an elaborate ceremony. The royal herald would appear accompanied by a trumpeter to gain attention. Once the crowd had been silenced, he would declaim the king's announcement before moving on to the next main thoroughfare. In Paris there was a fixed itinerary to be used on such occasions. The new decree was then carried by courier to the main provincial towns, where the municipal authorities were obliged to repeat the ceremony.

It is hard to know how much the witnesses of these solemn ceremonies would have taken in. Presumably the trumpeter (in other places the ringing of a bell) would have secured reasonable attention; but the general hubbub, the clucking and bellowing of live animals, and the coming and going of impatient shoppers would have made the reading difficult to hear. Proclamations could also be long, and couched in formal legal language, complex and intricate. The announcement would therefore also subsequently be posted up, usually in many copies, which more and more frequently would be printed texts. These would be pinned up in prominent public places, in the marketplace, on the church door, in the toll booth. The public reading served as much as intimation that something important was afoot, and the citizenry should acquaint
themselves with the details. These could be passed by readers to other interested parties, ideally with reasonable accuracy. For those with a professional need to know, a printed text, sometimes a broadsheet and sometimes a pamphlet, became an increasingly important adjunct to these public readings. Even so, the process of law enforcement always began with a spectacle, or announcement, in public open space.

The marketplace was volatile: a powder keg as well as a place of exchange. In times of dearth high prices or empty stalls offered a tangible demonstration of the authorities’ need to take steps to ameliorate the crisis. The gathering of disenchanted citizens provided a fertile environment for the spreading of rumour, misinformation and discontent. In such situations the power of early modern government was limited. These were not police states: most cities could afford only a handful of bailiffs or guards, and the presence of other armed men, troops or a noble retinue, was usually highly unwelcome. The maintenance of law required a tacit public consent and, if this was withdrawn, there was little the magistrates could do but ride out the storm. In such circumstances news, spread by rumour, mishearing and misunderstanding, was a poison. Its toxic quality was only exacerbated by the ubiquity of strong drink.

Singing the News

The market was an essential cog in the early modern information network. Its place at the heart of village life can be judged by its importance in folk tales: country people went to market to sell their wares, but also to be duped and cheated by the sly rogues who lay in wait. The market was too the locus operandi of the most marginal figures in the world of news, the itinerant pedlars.
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In some European cultures these were known as ‘news singers’ because they would literally sing out their wares. Their songs were often contemporary events turned into ballads.

This is the one part of the early modern news world that has no clear equivalent today. In the Europe of the sixteenth century, however, singing played an important role in mediating news events to a largely illiterate public. The news singers, sometimes blind and often accompanied by children, would sing out their wares, then offer printed versions for sale. In Spain the writers of ballads would sometimes teach them to a group of blind pedlars before sending them out on the roads. The pedlars displayed their wares on a wooden framework strung with cord, rather like a clothes line; in consequence these publications are sometimes known as ‘cord literature’.
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Broadsheet ballads were clearly printed in enormous quantities, as we can see from the thousands of copies listed in the inventories of booksellers’ stock, and ballad pamphlets
were also popular. Samuel Pepys bought a whole bundle when he visited Spain from Tangiers in 1683.
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Most likely, though, with the Inquisition keeping a close eye on the print industry, Spanish ballad singers would usually have steered clear of the more dangerous contemporary news topics.
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6.1 An early song broadsheet. Note that, although this song text was conspicuously well printed, there is no musical notation. Published in 1512, it relates the French victory at Dôle in an earlier war.

This was not the case elsewhere in Europe, where topicality was a major selling point. Although the sellers were among Europe's most marginal groups, and could be brutally treated by the local authorities, the trade was lucrative. In 1566 a travelling pedlar in the Low Countries had a printer in Overijssel run off one thousand copies of a sheet containing three popular political songs. He paid one guilder for the whole batch. Even if he sold them for the smallest coin then in circulation, he would have made a handsome profit.
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The trade in song-sheets was also welcomed by more established members of the trade, such as the Oxford bookseller John Dorne: in 1520 he
sold over two hundred broadsheet ballads in forty separate transactions. He charged a standard halfpenny a sheet, though there were discounts available for customers who bought more than six.
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In Italy the printed versions of performed songs tended to be short pamphlets rather than broadsheets; here, it is suggested, pedlars might take the edition from the printer in instalments, taking more copies as the cash came in.
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The most successful public singers moved far beyond these humble beginnings. The famous blind singer of Forlì, Cristoforo Scanello, owned his own house and was able to invest two hundred
scudi
in having his son trained for a commercial career. Another well-known and versatile balladeer, Ippolito Ferrarese, was able to build on his fame as a performer by publishing his own compositions.
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In Italy, in particular, the street singer was deeply rooted in the culture of the urban commune. In the thirteenth century cities had employed singers to perform at public ceremonies. This official encouragement prepared the way for an increasingly overt political repertoire in the sixteenth century. The crisis in Italian politics with the French invasions after 1494 provoked a flood of sung commentary. In 1509, the height of the danger for Venice, a local chronicler complained that throughout Italy anti-Venetian verses were being sung, recited and sold on the piazzas ‘by the work of charlatans, who make a living from this’.
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Some of this was deliberately orchestrated by the Pope, Julius II, a determined and deadly foe of Venice and a statesman who took an active role in promoting political propaganda. Many of these songs were very cheap: ‘so that you can buy it, it will cost you only three pennies’, as was stated in one song celebrating the might of Venice's opponents. Some texts, indeed, were distributed free of charge, as was the case with the propagandistic poetical works showered down from windows and distributed on the piazza when the papal legate made his formal entry into Bologna in 1510.
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These songs were clearly intended not only to entertain but also to inform. The anonymous author of a poem about the battle of Ravenna in 1512 told his audience that his principal intention in composing the work was ‘not because you would take pleasure from it, but so that you might have some indication of this event’. Events moved fast in this conflict of swift marches and topsy-turvy alliances, and the singers were obliged to respond. A song composed to celebrate the naval battle between the Ferraresi and the Venetians, which took place on 22 December 1509, was already in print by 8 January 1510. A singer who published a song about the battle of Agnadello in 1509 claimed to have composed and given it to the press within two days.
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A French example from a later date has a song celebrating the Huguenot victory in Lyon in 1562 on the streets the very same day.
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Singing was an important part of the festive culture of the day. The most popular of these political songs were those that captured a public mood of celebration, usually with new words set to a familiar tune (compositions known as
contrafacta
). But singing also offered a means to process bad news. A local publisher would not, on the whole, wish to test the patience of the local authorities by publishing a prose account of a crushing defeat: such adverse news was usually left to pass by word of mouth. A poignant lament, on the other hand, could catch the mood of the moment, without calling down retribution. But even here, care was required. The Venetian Senate was certainly aware of the potential dangers of free circulation of political songs at a time of crisis. In 1509 they intervened to remove from sale a song critical of the Holy Roman Emperor, Maximilian I, an erstwhile foe but now an ally (it is possible the vendor had just not kept up with the turn of events). The Senate continued, however, to encourage the sale of songs against the Ferraresi.