Grub Street Commerce: Advertisements and Politics in the Early Modern British Press

I n mid-May 1689 James Welwood, Scottish-born physician and polemicist for the dual monarchs William III and Mary II, inaugurated a popular journal of opinion, Mercurius Reformatus or the New Observator. Dr. Welwood's periodical was only one among the dozens of newspapers and mercuries that Londoners read after the Glorious Revolution of 1688, the culmination of events that removed James II, a Roman Catholic, from the throne and replaced him with his Protestant elder daughter Mary and her Dutch husband-first cousin, William of Orange. While "mercury," an allusion to the Roman god of information, eloquence, and wit, was a common publishing appellation, Welwood viewed his periodical as unique, embracing historical as well as contemporary events, and therefore superior to any ordinary newspaper. He also considered himself exceptional. Admittedly, not many political writers had Welwood's admirable credentials: multiple university degrees, familiarity with the court of William and Mary as a royal physician, and active service in medicine on reform-minded wartime commissions. Although Dr. Welwood never affixed his name to the masthead of Mercurius Reformatus , believing that journalism was beneath his professional standing, his reportorial legacy is significant. Moreover, beyond the columns in Mercurius Reformatus , its companion advertisements yield a valuable archive of remarkable particulars about the views of its founder and the audience it reached. During his publication's two-and-a-half-year run, Welwood used the advertisements to reinforce his articles in order to promote his own political, religious, and medical convictions.¹