§7. Henry Muddiman and "The Gazette". XV. The Beginnings of English Journalism. Vol. 7. Cavalier and Puritan. The Cambridge History of English and American Literature: An Encyclopedia in Eighteen Volumes. 1907

The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907–21).
Volume VII. Cavalier and Puritan.

XV. The Beginnings of English Journalism.

§ 7. Henry Muddiman and The Gazette.

Thus began the career of the most famous of all the seventeenth century journalists; one whose principal “paper”—The London Gazette—is with us still. That he has been forgotten is due to the fact that he made few private, and no public, enemies; for he was not a controversialist, and, throughout his life, devoted himself to what, after all, is the principal part of a journalist’s duty—the collection of news. He had an assistant, a Scot named Giles Dury, who, if his wife’s name, “Turgis,” in his marriage licence in 1649, is a misreading for Clarges, must have been a relation of Sir Thomas Clarges. Anthony à Wood tells us that Dury soon “gave over”; thus, in a few months’ time, when Nedham and Williams had successively been repressed, Muddiman was sole journalist of the three kingdoms.