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{{Infobox newspaper | name = Cambridge Intelligencer | type = Weekly newspaper | editor = Benjamin Flower | founded = 1793 | ceased_publication = 1803 }}
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".<ref>{{cite book|author=J. E. Cookson|title=The Friends of Peace: Anti-war Liberalism in England, 1793-1815|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Yzg8AAAAIAAJ&pg=PA97|date=January 1982|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=978-0-521-23928-8|page=97}}</ref>
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.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Emsley |first1=Clive |title=Repression, 'Terror' and the Rule of Law in England during the Decade of the French Revolution |journal=The English Historical Review |date=1985 |volume=100 |issue=397 |pages=801–825 |doi=10.1093/ehr/C.CCCXCVII.801 |jstor=572566 }}</ref>
==Editorial policy== The ''Intelligencer'' first appeared on 20 July 1793, and from the start opposed the French Revolutionary Wars.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Murphy |first1=M. J. |title=Newspapers and opinion in Cambridge, 1780-1850 |journal=Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society |date=1972 |volume=6 |issue=1 |pages=35–55 |jstor=41154513 }}</ref><ref name="Scrivener53">{{cite book|editor=Michael Scrivener|title=Poetry and Reform|date=c. 1992|publisher=Wayne State University Press|isbn=978-0-8143-2378-6|page=53}}</ref> 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.<ref>{{cite book |author=John Ehrman |author-link=John Ehrman |title=The Younger Pitt: The consuming struggle|volume=3|year=1996|publisher=Constable London|isbn=978-0-09-478170-2 |pages=114 and 313}}</ref> It opposed the Anglo-Irish Union.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Jupp |first1=Peter |title=Britain and the Union, 1797-1801 |journal=Transactions of the Royal Historical Society |date=2000 |volume=10 |pages=197–219 |doi=10.1017/S0080440100000104 |jstor=3679379 |s2cid=162509395 }}</ref>
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''.<ref>{{cite book|title=English Dissent|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Ydw8AAAAIAAJ&pg=PA37|publisher=CUP Archive|page=37|id=GGKEY:UGD38TZ8G4J}}</ref> By 1796 James Montgomery was asking the editor acting for him not to reprint material from the ''Intelligencer''.<ref>{{cite book|author=Kenneth R. Johnston|title=Unusual Suspects: Pitt's Reign of Alarm and the Lost Generation of the 1790s|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=meyeUHrtZFMC&pg=PA74|date=25 July 2013|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=978-0-19-965780-3|page=74}}</ref> Flower was able to continue editorial work while confined to Newgate Prison in 1799, lodging with the jail keeper John Kirby.<ref>Whelan, p. 55 note 2.</ref>
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''.<ref>Whelan, p. xxiii note 26.</ref>
==Advertisements== The advertising content of the ''Intelligencer'' was light,<ref name="WhelanR23">Whelan, p. xxxiii.</ref> but included promotions related to Stourbridge Fair.<ref>{{cite book|author=Honor Ridout|title=Cambridge and Stourbridge Fair|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=qmKjkoaWH5oC&pg=PT6|year=2011|publisher=Blue Ocean Publishing Ltd|isbn=978-1-907527-01-2|page=6}}</ref> The publisher Martha Gurney advertised the trial transcripts of her brother Joseph.<ref>Whelan, p. xxxiv note 50.</ref> A work of Thomas Oldfield on electoral boroughs was given space by Flower.<ref>Whelan, p. 4 note 8.</ref> James Lackington advertised his second-hand book emporium.<ref>Whelan, p. 224 note 11.</ref>
==Circulation== The ''Intelligencer'' functioned for a time more like a national newspaper, with circulation handled by representatives in Carmarthen, Dartmouth, Glasgow and York.<ref>{{cite book|author=J. R. Oldfield|title=Transatlantic Abolitionism in the Age of Revolution|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=sUAoAAAAQBAJ&pg=PA130|date=8 August 2013|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=978-1-107-03076-3|page=130}}</ref> The copies sold rose at times to more than 2000, when a typical provincial newspaper would expect several hundreds.<ref name="WhelanR23"/> There was distribution during 1795–7 in Leeds, for example, by Thomas Langdon.<ref>{{cite book|author=Timothy D. Whelan|title=Baptist Autographs in the John Rylands University Library of Manchester, 1741-1845|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=pwd5GuvnedgC&pg=PA415|year=2009|publisher=Mercer University Press|isbn=978-0-88146-144-2|page=415}}</ref>
Initially the paper cost 3{{frac|1|2}}''d'', but a change in the newspaper tax in 1797 brought the price up to 6''d''.; and the circulation dropped, on the paper's own figures, from about 2,700 to the region of 1,800.<ref name="Scrivener53"/><ref>{{cite book|editor=Michael Scrivener|title=Poetry and Reform|date=c. 1992|publisher=Wayne State University Press|isbn=978-0-8143-2378-6|page=21}}</ref> In 1798 the paper still claimed it could be bought in 45 market towns.<ref>{{cite book|author=Mark Philp|title=The French Revolution and British Popular Politics|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=gx6SHE31nMYC&pg=PA204|date=12 February 2004|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=978-0-521-89093-9|page=204 note 49}}</ref> There was a significant market in Scotland.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Harris |first1=Bob |title=Scotland's Newspapers, the French Revolution and Domestic Radicalism (c.1789-1794) |journal=The Scottish Historical Review |date=2005 |volume=84 |issue=217 |pages=38–62 |doi=10.3366/shr.2005.84.1.38 |jstor=25529820 }}</ref>
==Contributors== *Anna Letitia Barbauld: The first issue started publishing her ''Sins of Government''.<ref>{{cite book|author=William McCarthy|title=Anna Letitia Barbauld: Voice of the Enlightenment|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=kTZL66z4CF0C&pg=PA340|date=23 December 2008|publisher=JHU Press|isbn=978-0-8018-9016-1|page=340}}</ref> *William Burdon, pro-Napoleon letters, leading to ''Various Thoughts on Politics, Morality and Literature'' (1800)<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Semmel |first1=Stuart |title=British Radicals and 'Legitimacy': Napoleon in the Mirror of History |journal=Past & Present |date=2000 |issue=167 |pages=140–175 |doi=10.1093/past/167.1.140 |jstor=651256 }}</ref> *Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who wrote his 1796 political poem ''Ode on the Departing Year'' for the ''Intelligencer''; also ''Parliamentary Oscillators'' of 1798, as "Laberius"<ref>{{cite book|author=Morton D. Paley|title=Apocalypse and Millennium in English Romantic Poetry|url=https://archive.org/details/apocalypsemillen0000pale|url-access=registration|date=7 October 1999|publisher=Clarendon Press|isbn=978-0-19-158468-8|page=[https://archive.org/details/apocalypsemillen0000pale/page/141 141]}}</ref> *Ebenezer Elliott, ''The Vernal Walk'' (1798)<ref>{{cite book|author=Asa Briggs|title=The Collected Essays of Asa Briggs: Images, Problems, Standpoints and Forecasts|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=cWhS4-t_xp0C&pg=PA36|date=1 February 1988|publisher=University of Illinois Press|isbn=978-0-252-06005-2|page=36}}</ref> *Eliza Gould, letters in 1795;<ref>{{cite book|author=Cathy Hartley|title=A Historical Dictionary of British Women|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=uY2B224NwmYC&pg=PA391|date=15 April 2013|publisher=Routledge|isbn=978-1-135-35534-0|page=391}}</ref> she suffered for her distribution of the ''Intelligencer'' in Devon<ref>Whelan, p. 1.</ref> *Jeremiah Joyce, ''Account'', in 1795<ref>{{cite book|author=John Issitt|title=Jeremiah Joyce: Radical, Dissenter and Writer|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=xQvMDB3lrvgC&pg=PA109|date=1 January 2006|publisher=Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.|isbn=978-0-7546-3800-1|page=109}}</ref> *Henry Crabb Robinson, in 1795, defending William Godwin's ''Political Justice'' as "Philo Godwin" <ref>{{cite book|author=Peter H. Marshall |title=William Godwin|url=https://archive.org/details/williamgodwin0000mars |url-access=registration |year=1984|publisher=Yale University Press|isbn=978-0300031751|page=[https://archive.org/details/williamgodwin0000mars/page/214 214]}}</ref> *John Towill Rutt, who contributed for example a poem against the press gang, and referencing the radical Thomas Cooper<ref>{{cite book|editor=Michael Scrivener|title=Poetry and Reform|date=c. 1992|publisher=Wayne State University Press|isbn=978-0814323786|pages=54–5}}</ref> *William Taylor<ref>{{cite DNB|wstitle=Taylor, William (1765-1836)|volume=55}}</ref>
Others who contributed or who were quoted in the ''Intelligencer'' included: George Dyer, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Christopher Wyvill.<ref>{{cite book|title=English Dissent|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Ydw8AAAAIAAJ&pg=PA57|publisher=CUP Archive|page=57|id=GGKEY:UGD38TZ8G4J}}</ref> Parliamentary reports were typically based on the ''Morning Herald''.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Wahrman |first1=Dror |title=Virtual Representation: Parliamentary Reporting and Languages of Class in the 1790s |journal=Past & Present |date=1992 |issue=136 |pages=83–113 |doi=10.1093/past/136.1.83 |jstor=650902 }}</ref> 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".<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Jarvis |first1=Simon |title=Wordsworth and Idolatry |journal=Studies in Romanticism |date=1999 |volume=38 |issue=1 |pages=3–27 |doi=10.2307/25601370 |jstor=25601370 }}</ref>
==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''.<ref>Whelan, xxxix, note 56.</ref> 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.<ref>[http://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1820-1832/constituencies/cambridge historyofparliamentonline.org, ''Cambridge, 1820–1832''.]</ref>
==References== *{{cite book |editor=Timothy D. Whelan |title=Politics, Religion and Romance: The Letters of Benjamin Flower and Eliza Gould Flower, 1794–1808 |year=2008|publisher=National Library of Wales|isbn=978-1-86225-070-3}}
==Notes== {{Reflist}}
Category:Defunct newspapers published in the United Kingdom Category:1793 establishments in Great Britain Category:1803 disestablishments in the United Kingdom Category:Newspapers published in Cambridgeshire