Cambridge Intelligencer

The Cambridge Intelligencer was an English weekly newspaper, appearing from 1793 to 1803, and edited by Benjamin Flower. The historian J. E. Cookson called it "the most vigorous and outspoken liberal periodical of its day".^[1]

Cambridge Intelligencer

Type	Weekly newspaper
Editor	Benjamin Flower
Founded	1793
Ceased publication	1803

Flower suffered imprisonment for contempt of the House of Lords, for remarks made in the Intelligencer against Richard Watson, bishop of Llandaff. His case followed that of Gilbert Wakefield, followed a different procedure, and had a temporary chilling effect on radical publishing at the end of the 18th century.^[2]

Editorial policy

The Intelligencer first appeared on 20 July 1793, and from the start opposed the French Revolutionary Wars.^[3][4] It was one of a number of provincial journals opposed to the administration of William Pitt the Younger; and managed to sustain its editorial independence.^[5] It opposed the Anglo-Irish Union.^[6]

The Intelligencer was considered to represent the standpoint of rational dissent, and was called "the most infamous paper that ever disgraced the press", by the Anti-Jacobin.^[7] By 1796 James Montgomery was asking the editor acting for him not to reprint material from the Intelligencer.^[8] Flower was able to continue editorial work while confined to Newgate Prison in 1799, lodging with the gaol keeper John Kirby.^[9]

The paper ran editorials, an innovation associated with the radical press of this period. Flower was anticipated in this development, which had been in use for a few years in the Sheffield Register of Joseph Gales, the Derby Mercury of William Ward, and Montgomery's Sheffield Iris.^[10]

Advertisements

The advertising content of the Intelligencer was light,^[11] but included promotions related to Stourbridge Fair.^[12] The publisher Martha Gurney advertised the trial transcripts of her brother Joseph.^[13] A work of Thomas Oldfield on electoral boroughs was given space by Flower.^[14] James Lackington advertised his second-hand book emporium.^[15]

Circulation

The Intelligencer functioned for a time more like a national newspaper, with circulation handled by representatives in Carmarthen, Dartmouth, Glasgow and York.^[16] The copies sold rose at times to more than 2000, when a typical provincial newspaper would expect several hundreds.^[11] There was distribution during 1795–7 in Leeds, for example, by Thomas Langdon.^[17]

Initially the paper cost 31⁄2d, but a change in the newspaper tax in 1797 brought the price up to 6d.; and the circulation dropped, on the paper's own figures, from about 2,700 to the region of 1,800.^[4][18] In 1798 the paper still claimed it could be bought in 45 market towns.^[19] There was a significant market in Scotland.^[20]

Contributors

• Anna Letitia Barbauld: The first issue started publishing her Sins of Government.^[21]
• William Burdon, pro-Napoleon letters, leading to Various Thoughts on Politics, Morality and Literature (1800)^[22]
• Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who wrote his 1796 political poem Ode on the Departing Year for the Intelligencer; also Parliamentary Oscillators of 1798, as "Laberius"^[23]
• Ebenezer Elliott, The Vernal Walk (1798)^[24]
• Eliza Gould, letters in 1795;^[25] she suffered for her distribution of the Intelligencer in Devon^[26]
• Jeremiah Joyce, Account, in 1795^[27]
• Henry Crabb Robinson, in 1795, defending William Godwin's Political Justice as "Philo Godwin" ^[28]
• John Towill Rutt, who contributed for example a poem against the press gang, and referencing the radical Thomas Cooper^[29]
• William Taylor^[30]

Others who contributed or who were quoted in the Intelligencer included: George Dyer, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Christopher Wyvill.^[31] Parliamentary reports were typically based on the Morning Herald.^[32] There was much verse, and the publication has been seen as a place where "few poets can refuse themselves the luxury of extended moral comment or political instruction".^[33]

Influence

The Leeds Mercury of Edward Baines, and then the Manchester Guardian founded by John Edward Taylor, carried on the reformist line of the Intelligencer.^[34] Flower's model for a radical paper was tried again in Cambridge for a few years around 1820, by Weston Hatfield in his Cambridge and Hertford Independent Press. He had support from, among others, George Pryme.^[35]

References

• Timothy D. Whelan, ed. (2008). Politics, Religion and Romance: The Letters of Benjamin Flower and Eliza Gould Flower, 1794–1808. National Library of Wales. ISBN 978-1-86225-070-3.

Notes

1. J. E. Cookson (January 1982). The Friends of Peace: Anti-war Liberalism in England, 1793-1815. Cambridge University Press. p. 97. ISBN 978-0-521-23928-8.
2. Emsley, Clive (1985). "Repression, 'Terror' and the Rule of Law in England during the Decade of the French Revolution". The English Historical Review. 100 (397): 801–825. doi:10.1093/ehr/C.CCCXCVII.801. JSTOR 572566.
3. Murphy, M. J. (1972). "Newspapers and opinion in Cambridge, 1780-1850". Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society. 6 (1): 35–55. JSTOR 41154513.
4. Michael Scrivener, ed. (c. 1992). Poetry and Reform. Wayne State University Press. p. 53. ISBN 978-0-8143-2378-6.
5. John Ehrman (1996). The Younger Pitt: The consuming struggle. Vol. 3. Constable London. pp. 114 and 313. ISBN 978-0-09-478170-2.
6. Jupp, Peter (2000). "Britain and the Union, 1797-1801". Transactions of the Royal Historical Society. 10: 197–219. doi:10.1017/S0080440100000104. JSTOR 3679379. S2CID 162509395.
7. English Dissent. CUP Archive. p. 37. GGKEY:UGD38TZ8G4J.
8. Kenneth R. Johnston (25 July 2013). Unusual Suspects: Pitt's Reign of Alarm and the Lost Generation of the 1790s. Oxford University Press. p. 74. ISBN 978-0-19-965780-3.
9. Whelan, p. 55 note 2.
10. Whelan, p. xxiii note 26.
11. Whelan, p. xxxiii.
12. Honor Ridout (2011). Cambridge and Stourbridge Fair. Blue Ocean Publishing Ltd. p. 6. ISBN 978-1-907527-01-2.
13. Whelan, p. xxxiv note 50.
14. Whelan, p. 4 note 8.
15. Whelan, p. 224 note 11.
16. J. R. Oldfield (8 August 2013). Transatlantic Abolitionism in the Age of Revolution. Cambridge University Press. p. 130. ISBN 978-1-107-03076-3.
17. Timothy D. Whelan (2009). Baptist Autographs in the John Rylands University Library of Manchester, 1741-1845. Mercer University Press. p. 415. ISBN 978-0-88146-144-2.
18. Michael Scrivener, ed. (c. 1992). Poetry and Reform. Wayne State University Press. p. 21. ISBN 978-0-8143-2378-6.
19. Mark Philp (12 February 2004). The French Revolution and British Popular Politics. Cambridge University Press. p. 204 note 49. ISBN 978-0-521-89093-9.
20. Harris, Bob (2005). "Scotland's Newspapers, the French Revolution and Domestic Radicalism (c.1789-1794)". The Scottish Historical Review. 84 (217): 38–62. doi:10.3366/shr.2005.84.1.38. JSTOR 25529820.
21. William McCarthy (23 December 2008). Anna Letitia Barbauld: Voice of the Enlightenment. JHU Press. p. 340. ISBN 978-0-8018-9016-1.
22. Semmel, Stuart (2000). "British Radicals and 'Legitimacy': Napoleon in the Mirror of History". Past & Present. 167 (167): 140–175. doi:10.1093/past/167.1.140. JSTOR 651256.
23. Morton D. Paley (7 October 1999). Apocalypse and Millennium in English Romantic Poetry. Clarendon Press. p. 141. ISBN 978-0-19-158468-8.
24. Asa Briggs (1 February 1988). The Collected Essays of Asa Briggs: Images, Problems, Standpoints and Forecasts. University of Illinois Press. p. 36. ISBN 978-0-252-06005-2.
25. Cathy Hartley (15 April 2013). A Historical Dictionary of British Women. Routledge. p. 391. ISBN 978-1-135-35534-0.
26. Whelan, p. 1.
27. John Issitt (1 January 2006). Jeremiah Joyce: Radical, Dissenter and Writer. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd. p. 109. ISBN 978-0-7546-3800-1.
28. Peter H. Marshall (1984). William Godwin. Yale University Press. p. 214. ISBN 978-0300031751.
29. Michael Scrivener, ed. (c. 1992). Poetry and Reform. Wayne State University Press. pp. 54–5. ISBN 978-0814323786.
30. Lee, Sidney, ed. (1898). "Taylor, William (1765-1836)" . Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 55. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
31. English Dissent. CUP Archive. p. 57. GGKEY:UGD38TZ8G4J.
32. Wahrman, Dror (1992). "Virtual Representation: Parliamentary Reporting and Languages of Class in the 1790s". Past & Present. 136 (136): 83–113. doi:10.1093/past/136.1.83. JSTOR 650902.
33. Jarvis, Simon (1999). "Wordsworth and Idolatry". Studies in Romanticism. 38 (1): 3–27. doi:10.2307/25601370. JSTOR 25601370.
34. Whelan, xxxix, note 56.
35. historyofparliamentonline.org, Cambridge, 1820–1832.