Print, Propaganda, and PR: The English Civil War | Sophie Whitehead

Print, Propaganda and PR: The English Civil War – An Untold Story.

By Sophie Whitehead

The topic of news and propaganda is one which is familiar to all of us today – with the advent of social media facilitating a dissemination of information, it feels like a modern, novel topic. However, this is not the case. With the advent of the printing press in around 1438, information was able to be spread at a greater pace than ever before. The first, most notable example of this dissemination occurred during the Protestant Reformation which started in 1517, in which the Ninety-five Theses were famously printed, translated, and sent out around Europe. The reach of Martin Luther’s theses was of course limited – literacy rates were low across Europe, with only 11% of the population able to sign their own names in 1500. Over a century later, there is evidence of yet another major print propaganda push: the English Civil War. The propaganda of the English Civil War was of a different character yet again. By tracking both who had access to printing presses and who was literate in the year 1650, it is estimated that 53% of the population of what is now the United Kingdom was literate. This meant that print was able to flourish more easily than ever before, due not only to an increase in ease of printing but also due to the growth in the audience toward which it was marketed– when literacy rates and population growth is considered, it is estimated that this audience increased about ten-fold. The English Civil War was the first war of public relations, and it would set the blueprint for the future relationship between the media and those in power. Whilst the print wars of the English Civil War are well studied, this essay shall focus on the parts of the history where the scholarship is sparser: the participation of women within print, and the involvement of non-English neighbours in the propagation of information.

There is a great deal of scholarship on the subject of print propaganda and the English Civil war; some have attributed this increase in focus on print propaganda to the “new historicism”, more focus being placed on historical context, where literary scholars have, if not provided answers, at least shed a light on possible methodologies to analyse the works within their own contexts rather than as timeless truths. However, some scholars, such as Kevin Sharpe, have criticised the field, arguing that ‘the entire notion of an early modern government engaging in propaganda is anachronistic’. However, evidence, as will be discussed later, does point to the idea that propaganda was used as a tool, comparable to the use of swords or cannons or to the use of propaganda in wars to this day. There is also a focus on what has been termed the “news revolution”, the idea that the general public over the course of the seventeenth century were becoming increasingly interested in local and national politics. Newer scholars such as Maayan Rosen have also begun to focus upon the role of women--a previously understudied area of the scholarship--within print, not only as subjects, but also as print makers in their own right.

According to Rosen, the field of scholarship which focuses on women’s work within the print propaganda of the Civil War– which began with Paula McDowell-- focuses on women’s work in shaping the canon of political propaganda. Rosen argues that the Civil War provided the impetus which enabled women to participate, with ‘political conflicts of the century also creat[ing] an opening for women’s participation in printing’, and the number of female printers increasing from fifteen publications a year between 1600 and 1640 to 120 publications a year by 1650 and close to 140 yearly by 1660. The scholarship also looks at women’s involvement within different types of print media. Older historians have tended to focus upon elite women publishing either poetry or religious works, such as in the case of the Duchess of Newcastle, whose ‘self-promotion’ led to her book Poems and Fancies being published by John Martin and James Allestryre in 1656--the most upmarket publisher of the time, according to Jane Stevenson. However, Stevenson argues that there was a great deal of class conflict in the genera of works published.

Whilst there were those such as the Duchess of Newcastle, there were also tradeswomen using print to financially provide for their families. In spite of discrepancies caused undoubtedly by class barriers in the seventeenth century, the English Civil War provided a fertile breeding ground for women who either wished to--or were, due to their financial circumstances, forced to-- participate within the print industry, both as authors and printers. According to indexes of printers, there were roughly 370 female printers working in the print trade around this time. However, the participation of women should not be taken to mean any kind of increased equality – many women still published under their husbands’ names, and 60% of the works which women produced were pamphlets, deemed one of the lowest forms of printed literature.

Yet another understudied form of scholarship begins to uncover the use of English Civil War propaganda within the entirety of Great Britain and Ireland rather than, as is the case with much of the studies of the period, a focus on England and more specifically on London and Oxford. This focus is understandable: the English Civil War propaganda would most predominantly be produced in England, with more than 30,000 publications being published in London alone between 1640 and 1660. However, scholars now increasingly look at the involvement of Scots within particularly religious propaganda. Lloyd Bowen studies the ways in which the Royalists mobilised the parish clergy to mobilise support during the “Scottish crisis” of 1639-40. Bethany Marsh has also studied the actions of non-English parties, in this instance Irish Catholics, with regards to the dissemination of false information– fake news, if you will. In her article for History Today, Marsh conducts an in-depth analysis of the false royal commission of 1641 in which Sir Phelim Roe O’Neill of Kinard forged a royal commission claiming to be from the king in support of the claim. Marsh demonstrates that the forgery was not watertight, as parliamentarians would have known from the seal used that it was not genuine; however, this is one of the first examples of fake news being knowingly propagated through print.

Both the involvement of women in print in the Civil War and the involvement of non-English neighbouring parties within print are underresearched areas of scholarship – however, both also appear to be undergoing a scholarly rediscovery. The increasing role of women in print demonstrates that conflict created an area in which women could participate more freely, though it had its limits. Participation was still restricted by class, and the proliferation of women in print did not mean equality, with many women still signing their husband’s names on their works. What the study of non-English scholarship does is shift the narrative away from the London and Oxford-centric visions of participation in the propaganda movement of the English Civil War. They both demonstrate that the historiography on Civil War propaganda can be broadened to create a more inclusive narrative and that this more inclusive narrative is a better representation of what propaganda has been, what it is, and what it will be in the future.