London's News Press and the Thirty Years War revisits London newspapers' seventeenth-century origins in light of revisionist and postrevisionist historiography and information about transmission networks. Growth in printed news responded to an increasingly literate and enthusiastically Protestant population's demand for war news, the consumption of which created a nascent public sphere that James I and Charles I had to consider.

Initially, James saw war news as threatening his peace effort. Recognizing the power of “media” (209), however, he gave “official recognition” (85) to a news syndicate and appointed Sir Francis Cottington, who had served in Spain, as licenser for news. Long-standing continental news networks, formed along confessional lines, supplied the English syndicate. Instead of following the continental practice of summarizing and supplementing news as it moved from city to city, the English syndicate added material from other sources and employed editors who created a narrative, explained political and geographical contexts, and catered to domestic interests. James's expectation that constraints on news would convert readers to his peace agenda was not met because “James was not sufficiently proactive to win the public debate” (198). Instead, prompted by news, popular sentiment supported war with Spain. As England moved closer to war, collaboration between government, licensers, and the syndicate diminished, and the syndicate, beset by internal differences, dissolved, disturbing the trade in news.

On becoming king, Charles expected his commitment to war would “align foreign policy with public opinion” (211). Protestant setbacks, however, produced angry readers, leading to a breech between king and parliament in 1625. In 1626 England joined an anti-Habsburg alliance, and Charles sought parliamentary support for war, again unsuccessfully. Without English money, continental bad news “continued unabated” (214), and newsbook sales declined. These political setbacks led Charles to reconsider his approach: he embraced “a minimal exercise of censorship” and took “a proactive approach to public relations” (215). In 1627, “to win back popular acclaim,” Buckingham embarked on the Rhé expedition. “A publicity campaign was planned alongside the expedition, with publications going to Thomas Walkley, while restraints were placed on circulation of other news, particularly on the activities of [Nathaniel] Butter,” a former syndicate member, who was “cautioned in particular because of his association with news publication” (215). In addition, the government appointed Georg Weckherlin to license news. The Rhé expedition, a public relations nightmare for Charles and Buckingham, temporarily revived interest in news, but Walkley's glowing reports produced public skepticism. For the next few years newsbook sales waxed and waned with Protestant war successes and failures. During this time Weckherlin's presence as licenser and William Watt's as editor, with their “almost unprecedented access to privileged news, signified a court attempt to influence news coverage to support the Crown” (226). This is a somewhat paradoxical position, since Boys reports repeated efforts during this time to prevent news publication, culminating in the 17 October 1632 ban on London news publishing “by order of the Star Chamber” (228). (Boys mistakes what was a Privy Council order for a court of Star Chamber order.) In effect until 1638, the order eliminated news periodicals, but Weckherlin “was happy to allow a Protestant foreign news press to thrive” (230). During the Civil War, regular reports of the Long Parliament's proceedings adapted the methods of coranto reporting. International news continued but became a “two-way process and Nicholas Bourne used his contacts to establish a successful news market niche exporting English parliamentary and Civil War news to European Protestants” (275).

While London's News Press and the Thirty Years War attends to print culture (publishers, formats, fonts, trade relations, distribution networks, and literacy), it focuses on Jacobean and Caroline high politics, readers, and the press. Boys admits it anachronistic “to blame either monarch for their failure to fully grasp the power and potential of the media as a vehicle for the cultivation of public opinion or to manage it effectively to promulgate their own views” (272), but she uses “public relations” and “media” to frame the narrative anyway. News gave “A week-by-week window” (273) on the failures of early Stuart foreign policy—policy that neither James nor Charles sufficiently explained to the people. As Thomas Cogswell (upon whose studies of Stuart propaganda Boys relies) has shown, influencing the public is not entirely anachronistic–but language like “media” is gratingly so.

Annoying language is but a peccadillo among the book's problems. Mostly an amalgam of secondary material (albeit thoroughly cited), little here is new. Its scattershot citation, though, is vexing. Attention to author, title, and page number is meticulous, but multiple sources are cited in a single footnote. Sometimes considerable differences (conflicts even) exist among the sources cited, but Boys only occasionally accounts for or attempts to reconcile these. Other times Boys's text takes considerable liberty with a source's actual argument. Furthermore, the writing can be confusing—arguments vacillate, sequence is disrupted, or concepts are unclear, as may be seen in the discussion of licensing by the Stationer's Company (77). The Stationer's Company held a monopoly on printing; therefore, anything printed that was not protected by a royal patent came under its jurisdiction. By the 1620s the company required that all titles be licensed (or in Boys's words “registered”). “Registering” prevented piracy (which, by the way, did happen in some cases Boys discusses but seems not to understand). By printing with a false imprint, a publisher was deliberately avoiding “registering,” so seeing registering as a means to remedy false imprints is altogether circular. Boys's imprecise knowledge about the Stationers' Company, its practices, and its relationship to government undermines what otherwise might be convincing arguments about “media” and early Stuart government.