ve of the torturing of Covenanters, how grossly
the Navy Board had cheated the crown in the Victualling of the fleet,
and what grave charges the Lord Privy Seal had brought against the
Treasury in the matter of the hearth money. But people who lived at a
distance from the great theatre of political contention could be
kept regularly informed of what was passing there only by means of
newsletters. To prepare such letters became a calling in London, as it
now is among the natives of India. The newswriter rambled from coffee
room to coffee room, collecting reports, squeezed himself into the
Sessions House at the Old Bailey if there was an interesting trial, nay
perhaps obtained admission to the gallery of Whitehall, and noticed how
the King and Duke looked. In this way he gathered materials for weekly
epistles destined to enlighten some county town or some bench of rustic
magistrates. Such were the sources from which the inhabitants of the
largest provincial cities, and the great body of the gentry and clergy,
learned almost all that they knew of the history of their own time. We
must suppose that at Cambridge there were as many persons curious
to know what was passing in the world as at almost any place in the
kingdom, out of London. Yet at Cambridge, during a great part of the
reign of Charles the Second, the Doctors of Laws and the Masters of
Arts had no regular supply of news except through the London Gazette.
At length the services of one of the collectors of intelligence in
the capital were employed. That was a memorable day on which the first
newsletter from London was laid on the table of the only coffee room
in Cambridge. [165] At the seat of a man of fortune in the country the
newsletter was impatiently expected. Within a week after it had arrived
it had been thumbed by twenty families. It furnished the neighboring
squires with matter for talk over their October, and the neighboring
rectors with topics for sharp sermons against Whiggery or Popery.
Many of these curious journals might doubtless still be detected by a
diligent search in the archives of old families. Some are to be found
in our public libraries; and one series, which is not the least valuable
part of the literary treasures collected by Sir James Mackintosh, will
be occasionally quoted in the course of this work. [166]

It is scarcely necessary to say that there were then no provincial
newspapers. Indeed, except in the capital and at the two Universit