Commons Debates for 1629

ent out in many manuscript copies. It contained no evidence as to its author or editor, it gave no information that was not of general interest. It was a kind of brief summary of events at Westminster that members of the House were glad to enclose with their letters to the country. It gave the story of what was happening from day to day, and sometimes included picturesque and striking episodes of the Commons. It is something quite different from the separate. The separate was, as we have seen, any speech or parliamentary document existing by itself in manuscript copies. The news-letter existed in manuscript copies but was a record of daily events. It was new only in that it was a record of parliament. There had been news-letters before. In Ben Jonson's News from the New World, published in 1620, there is a description of a "factor of news": "Gentlemen, I am neither printer nor chronologer, but one that otherwise takes pleasure in my pen: a factor of news for all the shires of England; I do write my thousand letters a week ordinary, sometimes twelve hundred, and maintain the business at some charge both to hold up my reputation with my own ministers in town and my friends of correspondence in the country."1 It was in connection with the True Relation for 1629 that we first met with the unprinted news-letter. It will be recalled that the True Relation for 1629 turns out to be, not a fixed account of that session by anyone in particular, but an aggregation ... --This text refers to the Paperback edition.