Just
380 years after the outbreak of the English Civil War on August 22, 1642, the
memoirs of the era’s most notorious, controversial and successful journalist
are finally published.
Marchamont
Nedham, who was just 22 at the outbreak of war, became a newspaper pioneer, the most successful publisher of the
era.
In an era when “freedom of speech” did
not exist, he was jailed three times, threatened twice with execution and once
fled the country fearing he would be hung, drawn and quartered.
He was as notorious in his day as
journalists like Boris Johnson, Piers Morgan or Jeremy Clarkson are today. His “crimes” included attacking King
Charles I, attacking Oliver Cromwell, attacking King Charles II. His other
offences included:
·
Revealing leaked Government documents;
·
Publishing illegal reports of
Parliamentary debates;
·
Exposing greed and hypocrisy among
Puritan MPs;
·
Condemning the politicians who executed
the King;
·
Attacking the Scottish, the French and
the Dutch.
Nedham’s memoirs are closely based on the 17th
century newspaperman’s career.
In an unrestrained age,
when invective was as rife in print as it is on Twitter today, Nedham was a
master of the well-aimed insult.
He first wrote a newspaper in support
of Parliament against the King; then a second backing the King against
Parliament; his third was the official newspaper of the Cromwell dictatorship.
Finally, he was employed writing for Charles II against the King’s political
enemies.
In the 17th century,
newspapers were in their infancy. Nedham was a pioneer – the most successful
journalist and editor of the era – yet he is relatively unknown today.
Historians accuse Nedham of
inconsistency but they disregard his greater achievement – to write, print and
distribute three successive weekly news-sheets over a turbulent period of 18
years from the outbreak of the civil war in 1642 to the restoration in 1660.
The desire for news was insatiable and
literacy was surprisingly widespread with about half the population of London
able to read.
News-books were not sold in vast
numbers (1,000 copies a week costing one penny each was about average) but they
were widely shared and read aloud in many places, especially among the armies
involved in the war. Politicians tried many times to rein
in the press. They wanted to control what was being reported and, at the same
time, they wanted to use the press for their own ends.
Marchamont Nedham’s
writings on constitutional and political issues helped inspire the American
revolution. Yet because his allegiances and his opinions shifted according to
who he was working for, he has been dismissed by historians as a contemptible
“triple-turncoat” of no great significance.
I would contend
that there is nothing wrong with being a pen for hire and, in navigating his
way through the deep, dark currents of the English Civil War, he not only kept
his head above water but laid many of the foundations of journalism that we
take for granted today. A martyr in the cause
of free speech – jailed three times and fleeing for his life once – he was a
pioneer whose importance to journalism should not remain as obscure as it has
done for centuries.
Marchamont Nedham, who
died of a heart attack in a London coffee house in 1678 aged 58, was
belligerent to the end. His last publication was a robust attack on the French
who, he said, were “those monkeys of mankind”.
I have written his autobiography for him, taking the known facts about
Nedham’s career and trying to stitch them together by filling in the gaps.
