In early December I took my third-year special subject students on a field trip to the John Rylands Library in Manchester. At least that was the plan. In the event, I took part remotely while the students visited in person, but even so, it was really interesting to get out of the university and to be able to introduce my students to some of the material that we have been looking at in class, especially as they had never seen anything quite like it before – there are times when looking at images on a screen is no real substitute for seeing the items in the flesh.  And of course, the staff of the Rylands are lovely, and Julianne Simpson had put in lots of work to find and introduce some really fascinating sources for my students to look at.

My special subject is on news media in early modern England, although we’ve always got an eye to the wider world as there are so many Connexions between news in England and Europe. Much of the material that the students saw at the John Rylands library came from the Spencer Collection. Although the library purchased this material from the 5th earl of Spencer in 1892, much of it was collected by the family in the early 19th century or even earlier. It was this collection that established the John Rylands as a world class library, although they continue to collect and have an active purchasing policy even now. The items in the Spencer collection were handed down through the family, many of them having been bought new at the time that they were produced.

As part of the course, the students have studied various genres of news media from the early modern period. Of course these include a lot of ballads, given that that’s what I work on, but they’ve also looked at things like letters, proclamations, pamphlets, and news books. The John Rylands Library was able to show them examples of all these forms of news. So for example, not only were they able to see copies of Mercurius Aulicus and Mercurius Publicus, but also less formal forms of news such as a ballad on the fall of Antwerp and my personal favourite, a news pamphlet called A Declaration of a Strange and Wonderful Monster born in Kirkham. furthermore it was really useful for them to be able to see a collection of news letters written to Sir William Temple and William Blathwayte, because although we’ve been able to talk about this form of news transmission in class we hadn’t been able to look at any physical sources.

It was also helpful for them to be able to see other forms of news that we hadn’t talked so much about, such as the library’s collection of Geschichtsblätter, copper engraved plates depicting news subjects from 1559 to 1601 by Hans Hogenberg and others, covering the European Wars of Religion and the struggle of the Netherlands for independence from Spain. They show scenes of battles executions, sieges, and parades and were produced shortly after the events occurred. Although they were widely disseminated there is a whole scholarly debate about their accuracy. 

They were also able to think about how news was transmitted and received around the provinces by looking at Robert Hassall’s Commonplace Book. Hassall was a lawyer trained at the Inns of Court, Who returned to his home county of Cheshire to practise law. The commonplace book begins with items about his profession and then devotional items and was passed down through the family. Over the years other items were added, including a copy of a ballad on the earl of Essex’s execution, and even items about Wyatt’s rebellion were being added more than 40 years after the event took place. This will be particularly useful for our discussion of novelty and speed of news production when we return to the course after Christmas.

All in all it was a really useful trip and I think they got a lot out of it – I certainly enjoyed it and if the special subject runs again next year, it’s something I really hope we can do again.  I can only thank Julianne for her help in making the session possible.