" Is there anything whereof it may be said , See, this is new ? it hath been already of old time."
BEN JONSON 's plan for “ a staple of newes," even though pur
porting to emanate from the moon , must have been realized and been practically coincident with the beginnings of the newspaper in England. The marriage of the daughter of James I with Fred erick , the Elector Palatine, had involved England, sympathetic ally , in the Thirty Years' War, and there was great demand for
news of the war as well as for tidings from friends. Impecunious English volunteers on the continent translated the current accounts of the war and these quickly developed into the weekly “ corantos;" 1 and soon the civil war in England gave rise to the
“ diurnal,” and to the " mercurius,” with various descriptive terms. The extraordinary development of “ newsbooks,” — " all
themain features of the modern newspaper being found in them within seven years, ” 2 — and of their successors undoubtedly made necessary the realization in some form of Ben Jonson 's description
of the " office of the staple of newes,” with its governor, emissaries,
examiner, register, and clerks who " manage all at home, and sort, and file ,
And seal the news and issue them .” 1 It is clearly evident from Williams' History of English Journalism that the author believed that these “ war correspondents ” gave England its first
newspapers. The titles of the corantos in the Burney collection , from May to November, 1622, indicate the receipt of news from Italy , Germany ,
Hungary, Austria , Bohemia , the Palatinate, France, the Low Countries, and " most parts of Christendom .” — J. B . Williams, History of English Journalism to the Foundation of the Gazette , Appendix C , pp. 215 -217; J. B .
Williams, “ The Beginnings of English Journalism ,” Cambridge History of English Literature , VII, 389- 415. These corantos in the Burney collection have been held to be the earliest
English newspapers known . But they are antedated by a collection of eigh teen newspapers printed in English at Amsterdam , including one at the Hague, running in time from December 2 , 1620, to September 18 , 1621.
The first five were “ to be soulde by Petris Keerius, dvvelling in the Cal verstreete, in the uncertaine time.” “ A faithful reproduction made from the originals , acquired in 1913 by the British Museum , London , and published
on the occasion of the International Exhibition of Graphic Art, Leipzig , 1914 ,” has been edited by W . P . Van Stockum , Jr., and was published at The Hague in 1914 . - For an account of these see J. B . Williams, “ The First English Newspaper,” Nineteenth Century and After , March , 1914 , 75 :
514 -525.
J. B . Williams, History of English Journalism to the Foundation of the Gazette , p. 30.
