[From Henry
Goodcole.Natures' Cruell Step-dames: or Matchless Monsters of
the Female Sex. London. 1637.] 
During the seventeenth century, England experienced an
explosion of information as domestic news, in the form of printed
pamphlets and broadsides, became more accessible to the general
public. The political, social and religious upheaval that marked
the century created a demand for information that the London
printing houses worked hard to satisfy. From 1642 to 1651, the
English Civil Wars not only generated much of the news, but also
helped to bring about a change in the political climate that
permitted the proliferation of printed news accounts throughout
the rest of the century. As citizens struggled to follow the
conflicts of the early years of the first civil war, the methods
of censorship which had hitherto made the publication of domestic
and political news illegal and dangerous began to break down,
setting the stage for the development of news as a profit-making
industry. Seventeenth-century newsbooks differed from our modern
newspapers in both form and style, appearing as small pamphlets
and ranging from four to forty pages in length. Although they
generally focused on a single topic, they gave their readers
detailed accounts of the same kinds of events that we read about
in today's newspapers. There were even the equivalents of our
tabloids.
Murders and other crimes were among the most popular subjects for newsbooks, and reports of wives killing husbands, mothers murdering children, and children doing away with parents and siblings abound. Graphic illustrations were often used to heighten the dramatic narrative.
[From Henry
Goodcole.Natures' Cruell Step-dames: or Matchless Monsters of
the Female Sex. London. 1637.]
Traditionally, weather seems to merit the most media attention when it is experienced in its extremes. A number of pamphlets, including The Wonders of this Windie Winter (London, 1613), were generated by an unusually stormy season in 1612-13 which exacted a heavy toll on life and livestock.
It is probably not surprising that the same political unrest and social upheaval that permitted and even encouraged the printing of news as a profit-making enterprise also fostered the growth of suspicion and distrust of news entrepreneurs.Early reporters were not above embellishing and manipulating the facts to make their product more appealing to the news-buying public. Criticism of the press took many forms including drama, art, prose, and even poetry. John Davies's satirical verse, A Scourge for Paper-Persecutors (London, 1625) laments the decline of " serious" literature and the rise of more popular forms of writing, such as news.
Chronicling everything from politics to weather, touching on the mundane and the macabre, the more than one hundred ballads, broadsides, and newsbooks that made up Yesterday's News offered an amusing and dramatic glimpse into the headline-making events of their day.