Three hundred years ago, before the coffee houses came into vogue! the news centres, were old St. Paul's and the Exchange, and in 1591 John Floria writes:
These be news ca abroad to. toed gri countries confections to feed the Sommon sort. withal. "Aman must five no more credit fo Exchange news Paul's news than to. fugitives!
ind players" fables.
These writers of news were a low! tot, haunters of taverns and places where men congregated, seeking only for a story irrespective of ite truth, and compiling, in the copies of their work which still exist, mass of misinformation which " has as we find it to-day. By the closing years of the reign of James I the Seed had germinated, and though the young. plant was just above the round, it had to suffer a return of the Tudor persecution of the print ing press under the government of Charles I. Even Butler's modest efforts were hampered by the idosynerades of the autocratic censors who were appointed apparently to prevent the populace from knowing too much, or indeed anything which tended to interfere with the _maintenance of things as the Stuarts thought they ought to be. News had to be trimmed and twisted not only to get past. the censor but 10 avoid offending the powerful inthe land,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.