Thanks for reminding me of our post and the helpful references that go with it. There’s also some interesting dicussion in Joad Raymond’s The Invention of the Newspaper. As well as victuallers it’s possible that newsbooks and other pamphlets could have reached relatively settled regiments (eg those garrisoned in a town) via carriers or the postal system. Equally, people often enclosed newsbooks with letters.

Raymond mentions an incident in 1646 where Colonel William Salesbury rejected a summons to surrender Denbigh Castle, saying in his letter that he was returning a copy of the Diurnall. This seems to have been included by Colonel Thomas Mytton, the besieger, to give him wider military and political news and demonstrate how desperate the besieged’s condition was.

It’s incredibly difficult to prove that people read particular texts, and even more difficult to prove that their actions were influenced by them. For example, Barbara Donagan has proved that some civil war commanders owned certain drill books but I’m still not convinced that they necessarily did what the books said.

There was a lot of traffic between the army and London. I discussed it in this old post. It’s even possible that the victuallers sold pamphlets to officers or soldiers, but there’s no way of proving or disproving it.

Thanks for calling attention to these, especially Alex Walsham’s article — love her work and am happy to curl up with this one this evening.