a day or two previously; on 25 June 1607 ‘a true and tragical discourse’ of the expedition to Guiana in 1605; on 19 May 1608 ‘Newes from Lough ffoyle in Ireland;’ on 16 June 1609 ‘The Originall Ground of the present Warres of Sweden;’ and in 1611 ‘Newes from Spain.’ On 23 May 1622 two publishers, Nicholas Bourne and Thomas Archer, issued the first extant copy of ‘The Weekly Newes from Italy, Germanie, &c.,’ and this was continued at weekly intervals by the same publishers until 25 Sept. of the same year, when Butter and one William Shefford produced a rival quarto sheet entitled ‘Newes from most parts of Christendom.’ This was Butter's first attempt at a newspaper, and its immediate success warranted him in issuing two days later, in conjunction with Thomas Archer, another budget of news from the continent, written (probably by himself) in the form of letters from foreign correspondents. From this date Butter made journalism his chief business, compiling and issuing reports of news at very frequent intervals, none of which exceeded a week, and his enterprise virtually created the London press. On 12 May 1623 an extant copy of a publication of ‘The Newes of the present week,’ printed by Butter, Bourne, and Shefford, bore a number (31) for the first time. The title of the news-sheet varied very much: sometimes it was headed ‘More Newes,’ sometimes ‘Last Newes,’ and at other times ‘The Weekly Newes continued.’ All were mainly compiled from similar sheets published abroad, and gave little information about home affairs, but unfortunately the extant sets are so incomplete that no very positive statement can be made about their contents. Butter soon gained notoriety as an industrious collector of news, and was satirised by the dramatists. Ben Jonson ridiculed him in 1625 in his ‘Staple of News’ under the title of ‘Cymbal;’ Fletcher refers to him in the ‘Fair Maid of the Tun;’ and Shirley in his ‘Love Tricks.’ In 1630 he began a series of half-yearly volumes of collected foreign news, under such titles as ‘The German Intelligencer,’ ‘The Swedish Intelligencer,’ and so forth. On 20 Dec. 1638 Charles I granted to Butter and Nicholas Bourne the right of ‘printing and publishing all matter of history or news of any foreign place or kingdom since the first beginning of the late German wars to the present, and also for translating and publishing in the English tongue all news, novels, gazettes, currantes, and occurrences that concern foreign parts, for the term of twenty-one years, they paying yearly towards the repair of St. Paul's the sum of 10l.’ (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1638–9, p. 182). At the end of 1639 the licenser of the press prohibited Butter's weekly sheet, and on 11 Jan. 1640 he issued a ‘Continuation of the Forraine Occurrents for 5 weeks last past … examined and licensed by a better and more impartiall hand than heretofore.’ Butter had varied his news sheets in his later years with a few plays. In 1630 he issued the second part of Dekker's ‘Honest Whore;’ but on 21 May 1639 he made over the copyrights of all plays in his possession to a printer named Flessher. By 1641 Butter appears to have retired from business; he was then more than seventy years old, and the competition of journalists during the civil war was intense. In Smith's ‘Obituary’ (Camden Soc. p. 60). Butter's death is recorded thus: ‘Feb. 22 [1663–4] Nath. Butter, an old stationer, died very poor.’
[Arber's Transcript of the Stationers' Registers, ii. 736, iii. 277 et seq.; F. K. Hunt's The Fourth Estate (1850), i. 10–54; Alex. Andrews's Hist. of Brit. Journalism, i. 28–38; Nichols's Lit. Anecd. iv. 38–9; Ben Jonson's Works, ed. Gifford; British Museum Collection of Newspapers.]
BUTTER, WILLIAM (1726–1805), physician, was a native of the Orkneys, and studied medicine at Edinburgh, where he graduated M.D. in 1761. After practising for some years at Derby, having obtained some note by his treatises ‘On the Kink-Cough’ (hooping cough), London, 1773, and ‘On Puerperal Fevers,’ London, 1775, he removed to London, where he died on 23 March 1805. He is said to have attempted to open the carotid artery of a patient at the Edinburgh Infirmary, and to have only desisted when the patient fainted after the first incision. He is described as ‘too much under the influence of very favourite hypotheses’ (Catalogue of Living English Authors, 1799, i. 401). Besides the above his writings include ‘A Method of Cure for Stone,’ Edinburgh, 1754; ‘Dissertatio de frigore quatenus morborum causa,’ Edinburgh, 1757; ‘Dissertatio de arteriotomia,’ Edinburgh, 1761; ‘A Treatise on Infantile Remittent Fever,’ London, 1782; ‘An Improved Method of Opening the Temporal Artery,’ London, 1783; ‘A Treatise on Angina Pectoris,’ London, 1791; ‘A Treatise on the Venereal Rose,’ London, 1799.
[New Catalogue of Living English Authors (1799), i. 400; Gent. Mag. lxxv. 294, 580; Munk's College of Physicians (1878), ii. 360.]
BUTTERFIELD, ROBERT (fl. 1629), controversialist, received his academical education at St. John's College, Cambridge, as a member of which house he proceeded B.A.
