If any gentleman has a wish to oblige his country friend or correspondent with his account of public affairs, he may have it for two-pence, of J. Salisbury, at the Rising Sun in Cornhill, on a sheet of fine paper, half of which being blank; he may there write his own private business, or the material news of the day.
Nathaniel Butter, as the father of our English newspapers, deserves to rank next to Caxton in the honorable roll of names associated with the English press. In the seventeenth century the rulers in Church and State were not favorable to the free circulation of information or the free expression of opinion. Some courage must have been required to start the first newspaper in the time of the Star Chamber, and when the penalties likely to be exacted on the person of an offending printer were whipping, the pillory, imprisonment, degradation of various kinds, mutilation, and even death. Periodical publications of a political character, which could not probably in most cases be designated newspapers, appeared in profusion during the stormy days of Charles I., and ran the gauntlet of censorship and prohibitive regulations with more or less success. During the Commonwealth the censorship was rigorously exercised, and there was not that freedom of tjie Press which some writers have claimed. One feature about the early days of the Press must, however, be noted. For rather more than thirty years after newspapers began, they had no advertisements. Mr James Grant discovered the first advertisement in the Commonwealth Mercury for November 25th, 1658—just after Cromwell's death. This paper inserted advertisements at "the extremely moderate price of 1½d. and 2d. a line!" With the commencement of advertising we may imagine that the Newspaper Press was beginning to attain a general circulation, and was regarded as a useful and convenient vehicle for public announcements.
Before. the English Press had completed the first halfcentury of its existence, its growing importance attracted
