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AbstractThis article builds upon recent interest in scribal news by analysing official uses of manuscript newsletters during the Restoration, in domestic contexts as well as in relation to Anglo‐Dutch affairs. It uses official correspondence and diplomatic archives to trace official attitudes to scribal news, as well as the processes devised for utilising newsletters. In part, this is a study of 'information management', and it explores the methods used for acquiring and analysing intelligence, as well as the personnel involved. But it also emphasises that officials were conscious of the shifting landscape of news across the 17th century, and of popular demand for both printed and scribal news. As such, intelligence strategies involved more than just spies and intercepts, in terms of the need to both 'consume' and produce scribal news, to develop relationships with intelligencers and journalists, and to exchange information. Mapping this complex news ecosystem enhances our appreciation of the ongoing relevance of scribal newsletters, but it also highlights some intractable challenges faced by the government, in terms of the tensions between disseminating information to friendly correspondents and imperilling some of its most valued intelligencers.

AbstractThis article examines neglected evidence regarding the ongoing captivity of the children of Charles I, at the hands of the republican regime, long after the regicide in January 1649. While it is well known that the Long Parliament was anxious to attend to the education of the royal children, and to exert authority over their upbringing, and also that there were rumours during the 1640s about plans to install the youngest prince, the duke of Gloucester, on the throne in place of a deposed king, little attention has been paid to voluminous and intriguing evidence about their fate during the interregnum. The aim of this essay is to survey such sources, and to recover evidence of a political and parliamentary debate about the children's fate, not least in a situation where it was thought possible that they might provide a rallying point for royalists, and a security threat. That debates about their fate were protracted and convoluted is used to flesh out rather sketchy evidence – much commented upon by historians, but not taken very seriously – that there was an ongoing debate over a possible monarchical settlement until 1653.

This article revisits a fairly familiar topic – early modern ceremonial relating to the state opening of parliament – in order to analyse both new evidence and neglected themes. Thus, while it examines the projection of political authority, and the grandeur of state, it also addresses the audiences for, and popular reactions to, such events, and supplements treatment of James I and Charles I with observations regarding Oliver Cromwell and Richard Cromwell during the protectorate. This involves challenging claims that have repeatedly been made about the 'monarchical' style of Cromwellian regimes, but it also involves emphasizing that different rulers and regimes thought carefully about how best to ensure that their approach to ceremonial accurately reflected their governmental style, and about how to take account of audiences and the political mood on the streets of London. Indeed, the article emphasizes the degree to which Charles I sought to balance the desire to project regal authority with concerns about decorum and disorder, while Cromwellian protectors were more preoccupied with the need to balance grandeur with a civic plain‐style.

This article focuses on, and rethinks, the issue of parliamentary 'secrecy' during the mid 17th century, by comparing the official journals of the house of commons with the kinds of information that emerged in the public domain in the 1640s and 1650s, not least in printed newsbooks. It suggests that scholars have too readily assumed that MPs sought rigorously to uphold the principle that parliamentary proceedings were not fit matters for public consumption, and the idea that their activities at Westminster should be protected from the public gaze. It argues that this has involved paying excessive attention to occasional comments and orders which suggest that MPs resented public scrutiny of their activity, as well as a failure to distinguish between different motives for achieving 'secrecy', between attitudes to the availability of different kinds of information, and between principles and political practice. The aim of the article, in short, is to offer a more nuanced appreciation of the ways in which MPs sought to professionalise and formalise public access, even to the extent of rethinking ideas about political accountability.