‘The Royall Entertainment of the King by the Royalists of Huntingdon’, 1645.

This particular newsbook records the taking of Huntingdon in August 1645 by Royalist forces after a brief skirmish on the north side of the town. During the two days they occupied Huntingdon King Charles I held court at the George Hotel, just around the corner from the Cromwell Museum.

Before the Civil War there was strict government regulation and censorship of any printed materials. Once war broke out this control disappeared and huge quantities of print were produced. In 1642 more printed material was published than had been in the preceding 165 years since the printing press arrived in England. Both sides used printing as a means of spreading propaganda with no form of control, at a time when over a third of the population was literate.

Printed newsbooks reported the news as it came in, so were not printed regularly like modern newspapers. However, they were often lurid, politically biased and reported rumour as fact (claiming defeats as victories for example) in order to get their message across and to sell as many copies as possible.

These issues may seem very familiar to us today with social media and the internet – only the technology was different.