a calling in London, as it is now 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 ofWhitehall, and noticed how the King and Duke looked . In this way he gathered materials for weekly epistles destined to enlighten some country town or some bench of rustic magistrates.” 10
In Edinburgh news-letters were prepared by writers hired by
groups of country magnates to send them weekly intelligence of the capital, “ just as the coffee -houses of the city undertook to provide news-letters from the southern metropolis , which were
read immediately on the arrival of the mails. These letters passed from hand to hand in the country districts and circulated among the houses of the gentry. Their lives were extended and their usefulness increased by judicious copying. They ceased only when newspapers had obtained such a hold upon the community as made them no longer necessary.” 11
As early as 1652 the town council of Glasgow had a regular correspondent in Edinburgh and the service was kept for nearly fifty years; other cities had similar correspondents in the northern capital.12
In its "paper criers" or "caddies” Scotland made connection with the newsmongers of Paris. "We sometimes wonder,” says Robert Chambers, “ how our ancestors did without newspapers. We do not reflect on the living vehicles of news which then
10 T . B . Macaulay, History of England, I, chap. III. 11 W . J . Couper , The Edinburgh Periodical Press, I , 71– 72. 12 Couper states that a minute of the town council of Glasgow , September 2 , 1681, authorized the payment to the Provost of " ten marks which he gave Donald McKay for half a barrel of herring which was promised him for sending the news-letter and gazettes extraordinary quhilk half barrell
of herring is ordained to be given yeerly for that end." Ib., p . 73, Note.
and relatives in London , but oftener , according to a regular agreement, by clerks in the office of Sir Joseph Williamson . They contain such items of political and military news in London as would naturally at that time have interested an important provincial.—Historical Manuscripts Commission, Twelfth Report, Preface, and Appendix, Part VII.
An interesting series of news-letters in America , somewhat comparable to these, were the nine news-letters written to Governor Fitz John Winthrop by John Campbell, from Boston, dated variously from April to October, 1703.—Massachusetts Historical Society, Proceedings, IX, 485 - 501.
