University of Virginia Library

The Minute Books of the St. James's Chronicle
by
Richmond P. Bond and Marjorie N. Bond [*]

In March 1761 the St. James's Chronicle started its long, very long life, appearing on the 14th of the month as a triweekly evening paper and continuing far into the next century after merging with several other newspapers along the way.[1] Shortly before it made its appearance in London an enterprising printer, Henry Baldwin, had purchased three papers from William Rayner, another printer—the London Spy, Read's Weekly Journal, and St. James's Evening Post, or British Gazette. The Spy and the Journal were joined together into a single Saturday paper, and the St. James's Evening Post gave way to the St. James's Chronicle: or, the British Evening-Post. To secure financial support for the undertaking Baldwin created a joint-stock company, one of the first such organizations formed to publish a newspaper; the Minutes covering the meetings of the Partners in the company for fifty-four years are recorded in the manuscript Minute Books which are the subject of the present study.

Before Baldwin began publishing the Chronicle English journalism had slowly expanded from the crude pamphlets of the preceding century into sizeable newspapers which were ably directed, capably printed, well patronized by advertisers, and strong enough to influence the affairs of state. Consequently the new paper encountered several

well-established rivals which were already competing for popular acceptance, among them the Public Advertiser and the Gazetteer, two morning papers with daily frequency, and the London Evening Post and the London Chronicle, two triweekly evening papers. In a vigorous contest for readers and for sales the Chronicle, on the evidence of the Minute Books, had its own not inconsiderable success.

In format the paper was similar in many respects to a number of other evening journals of its generation—four folio pages measuring approximately 18 by 12 inches, each page containing four columns. The type was far too small for modern tolerance, and many of the advertisements were almost illegible. The paper appeared on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays and was printed by Baldwin at the Britannia Printing Office, White Friars, Fleet Street. The first issue was gratis, and the price of the next issue was twopence, soon to be advanced by a halfpenny. In general the average issue was clearly organized and compact, with a neatness of composition and imposition somewhat better than that seen in many of its competitors. In content the Chronicle resembled most of its contemporaries—news domestic, foreign, metropolitan; news political, economic, maritime, military, Parliamentary, literary, theatrical; poems, essays, letters, and essay-letters; miscellanea; and the inevitable specula of the day, the advertisements of books, goods, opportunities, occasions, and people.

At the outset the Proprietors of the joint-stock company owning the Chronicle were Baldwin himself and one other printer, one author, and seven booksellers; they were joined almost immediately by two other Partners, a doctor and another author. This predominance of booksellers was natural and no doubt mutually beneficial. The experience, resources, and connections of men in the trade would be helpful to the Chronicle in establishing and developing itself as a London newspaper, and for the men themselves, aside from any possible prestige and influence, there would be monetary advantages. As members of the joint-stock company they had a chance to make a profit on the Chronicle, and they were also able to advertise their merchandise in the paper on a very favorable arrangement. The first such benefit was uncertain during the early years; the second was made quite certain at the very beginning when the Proprietors resolved that the Printer would be "at Liberty to insert Partners Advertisements, not exceeding two per Week of each Partner's, charging such Partners Advertisements with the Duty only."[2]

Henry Baldwin, the man who started it all, was a printer of "the

Old School; bred under . . . the original Printer of 'The London Magazine'"; he had been a liveryman of the Stationers' Company only a few years when he established the Chronicle.[3] In legal matters he was the responsible publisher, and it was apparently his organizing power that gathered together the original group of Partners and that for many years produced an attractive, influential newspaper. The ubiquitous John Nichols thought well of Baldwin's work and his personality, and the Minutes reflect his diplomacy and initiative as the founding father who respected his colleagues and carefully sought the proper unity of industry and honesty. Over the years he alienated one share to his brother Richard and purchased one of the two shares held in trust by Bonnell Thornton. When Henry Baldwin retired, after forty-seven years as the principal figure, he relinquished his two shares to his son Charles. Baldwin died in 1813 after a lengthy career of fruitful and honorable journalism which has brought him less fame than is his due.

The man who through his intelligence and application helped almost as much as Baldwin to make the St. James's Chronicle into a large successful enterprise was a young Oxonian named Nathaniel Thomas. He came to the Britannia Printing Office a few months after the paper started and gave his skill as Editor to the smooth matching of printed words with occasions. The Partners offered him a guinea a week "for translating the Mails, and making Extracts and giving Accounts of such Books and Pamphlets as may be recommended, or he may think worthy Notice, and doing other Matters for the Service of the Paper." His stipend was increased "in Consideration of the Care he has taken," and in 1765 his yearly salary was set at 120 guineas. Finally after sixteen more years Thomas was admitted to the body of Proprietors and entered "his first Signature" to the Minutes in a moment, we should hope, of justified sentiment. When this "gentleman of great learning, sound judgment, and singular modesty" died in 1795 he was quickly succeeded by one Tomlins, who received the same pay of ten guineas a month.[4] It would appear from the Minutes and the newspaper itself that the long work of Nathaniel Thomas was at least a minor mark of editorial distinction in the history of English journalism.

Three of the Proprietors were figures of literary note, all of whom by connection or contribution gave the paper an interesting tone as well as content. They were Bonnell Thornton, George Colman, and David Garrick. Thornton had had a larger experience with the periodic

press than any other original Partner, for he had already conducted two minor periodicals, the Have at You All and Spring-Garden Journal, and he was also the co-founder and collaborator with Colman of the lively, prominent Connoisseur. Thornton's wit and versatility must have been particularly useful to the Chronicle in its first years. Of all the Proprietors, Colman had the closest relation to the paper since he was long a Partner and also a frequent contributor. His series of essays called "The Genius" appeared early, when the paper needed a quick wit and deft style; these essays dealt with topics like country life, humor, slander, and the "Reading Desk of the Genius in the British Museum," in which a modern reader may find special enjoyment.[5] By the time Colman died in 1794, after thirty-three years as a Proprietor, he was a famous dramatist, essayist, theatre manager, translator, editor, and the father of another wit. David Garrick, a friend of Colman, had long been a celebrated actor and a man of spirited temperament. There is no entry in the Minutes to date his admission to the company; however, there are frequent references to the Chronicle in his letters, including some that are derogatory. It has been stated that Garrick, Thornton, and Colman had a controlling interest in the paper and even founded it as their professional organ, but the Minutes give no indication of any attempt to control the paper by one Partner or any clique.[6] It was Baldwin as the Printer who naturally served as the prime mover, present at the center of important deliberations and decisions and a fair but firm administrative officer for some forty years.

Among the early Proprietors four of the seven booksellers were active in the affairs of the paper, particularly in such chores as examining the accounts, writing the Minutes, and the like. Lockyer Davis was well acquainted with books and business;[7] Christopher Henderson and Thomas Lowndes were often helpful in managerial ways. Thomas Davies, who had been a popular actor before he became a bookseller, had his finest moment in 1763 when he introduced James Boswell to Samuel Johnson. In 1778 he was a bankrupt and so left the Partners, but he continued his services to the Chronicle in return for substantial payments.[8] Other early members of the company apparently gave small

aid to the career of the paper: Thomas Becket, another bankrupt; Ralph Griffiths, who had founded the Monthly Review; William Jackson, editor of the Oxford Journal; Robert Davis, a minor bookseller; and Dr. John Berkenhout, formerly a soldier who became a physician and a prolific author in the arts and sciences. Berkenhout applied for a second share, and his Partners consented if he would meet certain conditions, one of which was "treating the Partners with a Haunch."[9]

The early Proprietors were replaced from time to time as death or business failure created openings in the membership. Of the new Partners joining the company over the years only one was a man of great promise before becoming a Proprietor—George Steevens, whose edition of Shakespeare had true annotational skill. Some of his satirical poems appeared in the Chronicle. The other Partners in this second group were Richard and Robert Baldwin, brothers of Henry, perhaps included for fraternal reasons as much as professional; William Waller, whose shares had been held in trust; the Reverend Stephen Weston and the Reverend Christopher L. Moody; Alderman and then Lord Mayor Thomas Skinner; Thomas Dyke, the Lord Mayor's partner; Dr. John Gillies; and W. Young, an auctioneer. The twenty-fifth and last Partner was Charles Baldwin, son of the founder. He entered the company in 1799 with the purchase of one share and received two more shares in 1808 on the retirement of his father; in the same year he bought a share from his uncle, Robert Baldwin, and acquired the shares of Gillies, Weston, and Dyke in exchange for annuities of £15. This activity left Charles holding seven shares and Moody holding one share, and the joint-stock company continued with these two members until 1815, when Moody died and the Minutes ended.[10]

The notebooks containing these Minutes of the joint-stock company are of recent discovery, and very little is known of their provenance beyond their purchase by a London antiquarian bookseller and their acquisition by an American university library.[11] They consist of three sturdy quarto volumes, the front flyleaf of the first volume bearing the notation "Minute Book St. James's Chronicle May

15th. 1761." The chronological contents of the books are as follows:

• Book A: Minutes of 161 meetings from 15 May 1761 through 29 June 1775 on 235 pages, and a copy of the Articles of Agreement on 21 pages.
• Book B: Minutes of 228 meetings from 31 August 1775 through 1 July 1795 on 358 pages.[12]
• Book C: Minutes of 154 meetings from 5 August 1795 through 9 August 1815 on 232 pages.

The chirography throughout the Minutes is usually quite legible. All three volumes are bound in contemporary vellum, and it is perhaps partly for this reason that they are in extremely good condition particularly in respect of the long and frequent use they had under a number of hands and pens.

The rights of ownership and the various procedures of the joint-stock company were set forth in the Articles of Agreement, which were probably prepared for the Proprietors by Baldwin with the aid of Lockyer Davis, who as a Proprietor of the Gazetteer was already familiar with the nature of such documents.[13] According to the Agreement there were twenty shares in the company, which had complete control over the paper. A Partner could hold more than one of the shares in his own name, and he was also permitted to hold one share or more in trust. On a Proprietor's wish to dispose of his holding the other Partners had a prior right to buy his share. The same priority held for purchasing the holding of a deceased member. If the Partners did not choose to purchase a vacated share, the executor or administrator could dispose of it to an outsider. The recent purchase of the three papers by Baldwin was noted, and the number of shares in the Chronicle held by each Proprietor was stated: Henry Baldwin, 3; Bonnell Thornton, 4; Ralph Griffiths, 3; Thomas Becket, 11/2; Thomas Davies, 2; Robert Davis, 1; Lockyer Davis, 2; Christopher Henderson, 1; Thomas Lowndes, 11/2; and William Jackson, 1. Of these twenty shares five were being held in trust. One share was kept by Baldwin for George Colman and another by Griffiths for John Berkenhout, both of whom accepted so promptly that they were virtually charter members of the company. Two of Thornton's four shares were held for an anonymous gentleman, and one share held in trust by Davies apparently went to Garrick at a time early but unannounced.

In somewhat formal phrases the Articles attempted to provide a clear contract of ownership which stated the duties, rights, rules, and procedures of the Partners. The structure of the organization was a simple one. All members were expected to attend quarterly meetings, where they carried out the company's general business and named a special committee of five members to oversee the paper's financial affairs for the next quarter. This committee was supposed to meet every month to inspect the Printer's accounts and to transact any matters not needing action by the full membership. For a general meeting the Printer was required to send each Proprietor a written notice at least four days before the date or pay a forfeit of five shillings. In turn, the Proprietors were to pay a five-shilling forfeit for each absence and two shillings sixpence for tardiness. For committee meetings the fines were more modest—one shilling for both the Printer and the members. Other matters pertinent to the activities of the Partners were set down in the Agreement. For example, the vote of the majority was declared to be the rule, and the members were empowered to assess themselves for the expenses of publishing the paper. Proprietorship in any other evening triweekly newspaper was prohibited.[14] The holding of shares in trust by four of the members was ratified in the document; these members were not obliged to name the person or persons for whom they held shares, and they could "act in every Particular as if they were the Principals themselves." The Articles for the Chronicle, dated 9 March 1761, were signed by the ten members who owned or held all twenty shares.

The Minutes themselves regularly began with a statement of the hour and date and place of the session as well as the names of the members present and absent. The business in hand was then examined, sometimes postponed, but usually resolved; however, the details of any discussion were rarely noted. The Minutes of a committee as a rule required no more than one page; the Minutes of a general meeting usually ran to two or three pages. The final item of business was a decision as to the location of the next meeting, which during the early

years was often the Globe Tavern in Fleet Street or the Bedford Head, not too far from the Britannia Printing Office, where the Chronicle was being printed.[15] At the conclusion of a meeting the attending Partners signed the Minutes. Once a year the Printer entertained his colleagues with a haunch of venison, often at a Hampstead resort; at these gatherings the Proprietors enjoyed game and claret and informality without any records to be read or written.

Whichever Proprietor had the task of writing the Minutes of the meetings, he did so in forthright phraseology without many attempts at embellishment. Any touch of levity or high spirits was quite rare and may sometimes have been slightly barbed. Once, when Griffiths was signing the committee's Minutes in August of 1775, he added after his name "a Lover of accuracy"; and when the Proprietors resolved on 6 September 1781 that certain bills should be discharged "at the Discretion of the Printer," the scribe inserted "indiscreet" before the word "Printer." In a few entries the Partners showed mild disapproval or even censure, but these were generally recorded with no real acrimony. In 1770, for example, the scribe noted a resolution that the Printer had been "very culpable in admitting the Theatrical Journal, N° 1, though at the repeated Instance of the whole Body of Partners, and that all future Numbers shall be omitted." But this passage was crossed through at the Printer's desire, and the revised resolution merely said that further publication of the offending department would be omitted. Three years later, when Lockyer Davis failed to attend a meeting held at the very place he had recommended, the other members of the committee, all six of them, resolved that their colleague should be "reprehended for such Neglect."[16] At times the Minutes were too elliptical for the sure comprehension of the present-day reader, who may find himself a little uncertain about reports that were no doubt completely clear to the Partners.

If the Proprietors ever discussed the general editorial principles that they thought should be followed by the Chronicle, there is no evidence of such colloquies in the Minutes. Yet at times the Partners were quite explicit in their recommendations for the conduct of the paper. At their very first session they decided that prices of grain and

the births and deaths from the weekly bills of mortality should be regularly inserted, and likewise the "List of Letters left at the General Post Office." Some years later they found it "adviseable to take the Proceedings of the House of Commons under the Title of Debates of the Representatives of the People of Utopia." Again, much later, they resolved that "the Hague, the Amsterdam and the Brussels Gazettes be retained, and the other three foreign Prints rejected" and they further determined that all the country newspapers should be discontinued, "also the Portsmouth Correspondence, the Stocks List, Capt. Thompson's Paper, Mrs. Davies's d°., and Mr. W's Publick Advr." In 1790 a letter from a Mlle. Razalio was discussed, and Griffiths was authorized to inform her that her terms could not be accepted, "but if the St. Jas. Chronicle be worth her Acceptance, it shall be sent to her free of Expence, in the Hope only that she will now and then favour the Proprietors with her spontaneous Correspondence; a Circumstance which will be very pleasing to them, and which (as the Views of both coincide with respect to France) may probably be agreeable to her."[17] At the general meeting of 4 April 1792 an order was given for the agreement with the Paris correspondent to be discontinued "as speedily as may be"; however, at the following meeting this resolution was rescinded. Almost nowhere in their administrative concerns did the Proprietors show that they were affected by personality or sentiment, and only a few instances of true benevolence were recorded. On the recommendation of two Partners a feminine "Object of Pity" received a present of three guineas, name and reason unknown.[18] And either in gratitude or compassion on the first day of January 1794 the company voted the Printer's clerk a New Year's gift of five guineas.

Perhaps it was their interest in healthy profits which led the Proprietors to issue warnings on the need for economy and make various specific suggestions.[19] Yet in spite of their concern over the outcome the Partners seem to have had little to do with the day-to-day business details of running the Chronicle. There is almost nothing in the Minutes about the costs of paper, printing, or selling although a rare kind of resolution was made on 10 June 1761 stating that the "Price for printing the first Thousand of the St. James's Chronicle should be Three Pounds Seven Shillings."[20] There is very little about costs of

professional services beyond references to paying the Editor and a few of the Partners. There is no summary of gross receipts from sales of the paper, no record of income from advertisements. At times, of course, Baldwin and his co-owners had to deal with questions faced by any newspaper publisher who remains awake to the need for improving promotion and distribution: they had to cope with hawkers, agents "to push our Papers," "returns" to carriers, and places for possible sales, including the provinces.[21] But unless there were serious problems for their intervention—and these did occur—the Partners apparently left things very much in the hands of Baldwin and Thomas, the expert men who were in charge.

Because the attention of the Proprietors was fixed on dividends the Minutes of their meetings contain a history of early journalistic profits in a length and a detail apparently not heretofore available. A few somewhat similar files of newspaper archives before 1800 are already known and accessible, but they are much shorter than the present document, which covers a span of fifty-four uninterrupted years.[22] Of the hundreds of accounts of the Chronicle from 1763 to 1808 only one quarterly report and four monthly accounts were omitted without explanation—in 1764; in 1774 (bis), 1783, 1791—and it is probable that these lapses resulted from mere inadvertence. Such rarity and completeness make these Minutes doubly welcome in the study of journalistic history.

In accordance with the procedure set down in the Articles of Agreement it was the Printer's practice to bring his records of operating expenses to monthly meetings, where the special committee checked over the accounts, corrected them, and recorded the current financial standing of the company. The kind of error uncovered in this examination was generally insignificant and the amount of money involved was very small, often no more than a few shillings and pence, but such corrections doubtless reassured the Partners that their vigilance was worth the trouble. At the quarterly general meetings the full membership of the company examined the closely related accounts,

declared a dividend, stated the number of shares, determined the current value of a share, and made any large decisions necessary on such matters as the disposition of vacated shares or the settlement of a lawsuit.

Any portion of the profits not used for the current dividends was carried forward as a balance and included in the report for the next period. Such quarterly differences between profits and dividends were generally under £100 and often in the area of £1 to £10. It appears that the Partners were usually anxious to declare as large a dividend as the profits safely allowed. When occasionally, say in times of plentitude, they carried forward a sizeable amount of money for the next period, they probably thought they saw stout contingencies ahead.

With the Minutes of the Proprietors it is possible to follow the fiscal life of the Chronicle over a very long period and to observe this eminent paper as it suffered the changes of the moon and also the uneasy fortunes of journalistic business. The larger aspects of the company's finances may best be understood through a summary of the accounts of the Partners, who systematically recorded the profit or loss from the Chronicle, the regularity and the amount of the dividends, the number of shares and their value. In the beginning the paper was published at a loss for several quarters, and the Proprietors had to wait for more than a year before a dividend could be paid, but then a steady growth was achieved and by the year 1769 the profits reached £1,900. In the seventies the profits, despite several decreases, came to a total of about £18,000; the highest reach of annual profits occurred in the years 1772-1774, with a total of nearly £7,500. In the eighties there was a small decline to £16,000, but for the following decade these rich profits sank to some £12,000. Indeed, the nineties ended with a profit of less than £800 in each of the two final years. This decrease continued into the first years of the new century—in the years 1801-1807 (the last full years before the method of accounting was changed) the profits continued to drop, and by the end of the second quarter of 1808 they virtually disappeared. It was then that a general reorganization took place. The monthly accounts were discontinued, and the reckonings were made on the basis of semiannual reports instead of the quarterly accounts; but this was no more than a simplification in the bookkeeping. At the same time the acquisition of another triweekly, the London Evening Post, for £1,550[23] and the new management by Charles Baldwin produced a vigorous advance in the profits, which for the last six years of the Minutes amounted to

£6,000. The total profits reported from 1761 to 1815 were approximately £65,000, a figure substantially larger than the total dividends because a number of quarterly dividends were omitted and also because any balance remaining after payment of a quarterly dividend was carried over to the next period and thus was included more than once in the statement of profits.

The joint-stock company had two other sources of income to add to the profits realized from the newspaper. The most substantial supplement was the money received from the sale of shares either to a new member buying into the company or to a Proprietor acquiring an additional share. This kind of revenue, of course, depended on the longevity and the varying desires of the Proprietors. The other source of sizeable additional revenue was the government, which for a time paid the Chronicle an annual subsidy of £200. It is recorded elsewhere that the paper received this benefit for several years toward the end of the century, but no mention of it appears in the Minutes.[24]

The first and last goal of the joint-stock company was a good income from dividends, an amount which the Proprietors determined at regular intervals by the simple process of dividing the number of active shares into some portion of the current quarterly profits. After a cautious beginning the dividends rose steadily but not at an equal pace. Sometimes omitting or postponing a dividend was considered necessary, even though unpleasant for the Proprietors. However, from the quarter when the first dividend was declared to the time when quarterly dividends were abandoned, payments were bypassed for only fifteen of the 184 quarters. A specific reason was cited for most of these omissions: in four cases the money was required to pay the penalties of lawsuits, in five to purchase the holdings of a colleague, and in one case to compensate for bad debts.[25] For the other cases the records merely state that a dividend has been deferred or that the accounts of two quarters have been combined; either statement said the same thing to the disappointed Partners.[26] Before the end of the first decade the quarterly dividend reached the £15-to-£25 level, where it remained for many years with occasional points of variance along the route. In 1788, when the purchase money from four new Partners was included in the profits, the highest quarterly dividend in the history of the Chronicle was issued, £108; the highest quarterly dividend without

special benefit was £36 in 1795. Such evidence of prosperity was happily maintained until almost the end of the century, but then for a decade the dividends followed the profits in a steady decline; indeed, during the years from 1803 through 1807 the dividends were twice omitted and in only one quarter exceeded £10, and for the other quarters during that period the dividends averaged only £6. With the purchase of the rival London Evening Post in 1809 and with the enterprise of a new Printer the dividends during the final years of the Minutes generally exceeded £60 for half a year, and the annual figure rivaled that of most of the early years. Over the whole period of the Minutes the amount paid in dividends to all the Proprietors was £50,000.

In the beginning of the joint-stock company Baldwin had, in accordance with the Articles of Agreement, "divided the said property into twenty equal shares," all bought or held in trust by the original Proprietors; the number of shares remained at twenty until 1768. In that year, with the death of Thornton, it dropped to eighteen, and thereafter it fluctuated, up to nineteen, down to eighteen, down and up and down but never again reaching the original number. After the bankruptcies of Davies and Becket and the deaths of Garrick, Robert Davis, and Lowndes the number of shares was reduced to fourteen. The descent was halted in 1788 by the admission of four members, Gillies, Moody, Skinner, and Young, but then came a period with more deaths than admissions, bringing the number of shares in 1807 to only eight, the final figure in the Minutes, held by two Partners. What was the effect of such fluctuation on the stock company? The shares which had "fallen in" were of course available for purchase, and it would seem reasonable to assume that the shareholders might relish the extra income from such sales. On the other hand, dormant shares received no dividends so they did not have to be taken into account when the profits were divided; the fewer the shares, the larger the dividend for each Proprietor. However, this quandary between getting more money one way or getting it another was apparently not a real dilemma. The serious problem lay in the fact that the success of the paper manifestly waned with the century and acceptable eager Partners were not plentiful. The system of issuing shares which were owned or held by a variable number of Proprietors was, of course, central to the joint-stock organization. The virtual disintegration of this structure began in 1808, when Charles Baldwin suddenly, through gift, exchange, and purchase, became the owner of seven of the eight shares then current. For seven years he and

Christopher Moody maintained this lopsided situation with comfortable profits and infrequent meetings. Then after Moody's death at the end of 1815, the Minutes stopped, without giving any reason or suggesting any new status for the joint-stock company. Presumably the company, being reduced to one member, went out of existence. In any case, the St. James's Chronicle continued as a prominent newspaper well past the middle of the nineteenth century.

The value of a share of stock was regularly set by the Proprietors at a general meeting and became as reliable a barometer of the well-being of the company as the dividends. After all, who would better know the Chronicle's financial situation? The evaluation began with the modest sum of 25 guineas for one share, in several years grew at a rightly progressive rate to £125, £150, £175, £200, and £250, and then settled on 300 pounds or guineas for some twenty years. In 1791 the system was changed: instead of setting the value of one share the Proprietors determined the total current value of the paper, and the worth of a single share could easily be arrived at by dividing the number of extant shares into the total value. This value was set at £6,300 in 1791. Thereafter the figure went down steadily until in 1809 the total value was only £600. The purchase of the London Evening Post then brought the value up to £3,000 and then to £4,000. Whichever method was used for stating the worth of the company—listing the value either of an individual share or of the whole property—such evaluation presumably gave a note of stability and continuity and perhaps pride. The last meeting of the Partners to be recorded was that of 9 August 1815, when the two remaining men resolved that the value "for the current six months to the next Half Yearly meeting be 3700£." Thus the Minutes in this prolonged series expired in the midst of futurity.

In considering the Chronicle as an investment each Proprietor had several expenditures to take into account. In the beginning there were the costs of establishing the new enterprise: each share was assessed £12/10/0 for the purchase of the three journals from William Rayner,[27] and five guineas per share were twice required, as set down in the Articles and at the third meeting of the Partners, in order to pay the initial demands of operation. Thus for an investment of only £23 a Proprietor was eligible for the benefits that presumably lay ahead for members of the joint-stock company. He would also be liable for further assessments and would have to accept the possibility that dividends might be postponed or omitted. Thirty years after the paper

began, each shareholder was in fact assessed £96/18/5 1/2 per share to provide the £1,260 due the executors of Lockyer Davis and Dr. Berkenhout.[28] And in 1804 and 1806 lists of "bad or very doubtful debts" amounting to about £105 were debited in due proportion to each Partner.[29] Corporate expenditures that were not charged to individual accounts included the loss of a considerable sum on the Yearly Chronicle, the purchase of the London Evening Post, and a total of about £1,200 for fines and legal expenses. Even so, the Chronicle was a profitable undertaking. If any Proprietor could have lived long enough to hold one share from the time when the newspaper was founded to the end of these Minutes, he would have received dividends totaling about £3,600 on his original investment. Moreover, each Partner knew that at his retirement or death the established value of his holdings would be awarded to the proper heirs, a kind of inevitable dividend. All in all, it would seem that the owners of the Chronicle made an excellent investment.

Besides their regular duties of determining profits, dividends, and value the Proprietors often had other matters to consider. One of these had to do with the advertisements which were printed in the paper. They must have been a source of considerable income, but they sometimes involved the Partners in the collection of bad debts and even exposed them to court action. Notices of various commodities and services, including many announcements of new books and current plays, appeared frequently in the Chronicle, but all of them did not represent income since some were placed by the Partners, who had voted themselves limited free space on payment of no more than the tax levied on advertisements by the government. However, although precise receipts were never stated in the Minutes at any time, the liberal number of insertions, the experience of contemporaries as shown in their few extant records, and the rather frequent references in the Minutes to the advertising make their importance apparent.

The Chronicle's charge for advertisements was early recorded as five shillings for the first twenty lines in Long Primer type and one shilling for six additional lines and in Brevier four shillings for the first twenty-four lines and one shilling for eight additional lines "at least as near to this Rule as may be." Several years later the rate for Long Primer was revised to four shillings for every advertisement of twenty lines and one shilling for eight more lines.[30] Whatever the rule,

the question of how to collect the money due the paper for advertisements was a recurring topic at the meetings of the Proprietors. In 1770 the Printer was instructed not to take advertisements without ready money "in any Case where it can be avoided," and a person was recommended "to collect the outstanding Debts for Adverts." In April of the next year the Printer "produced a List of Debts outstanding for Advertisements amounting to £222/0/11, to Christmas last." The following year, in a case that evidently required special tact, a bill and receipt were authorized to be sent to the great Wilkes for his advertising indebtedness, and the Editor was desired to deliver them "in such Way as his Discretion shall dictate."[31]

Advertisements for two lotteries gave particular trouble. The Adelphi Lottery was the project of the Adam brothers, who as architects and promoters had erected more buildings than they could sell. They successfully petitioned Parliament for permission to conduct a lottery which would dispose of the property and thus benefit their creditors. In 1773-74 the Chronicle carried a number of notices for the sale of the lottery tickets, and the bill against the Messrs. Adam became considerable and remained unpaid, so in a moment of adventure the Proprietors directed the Printer to send to the House of Adam for an Adelphi Lottery ticket "on Acct. for the General Concern of the Proprietors." Ticket No. 1928 was duly procured, but the Minutes say nothing about the outcome of this little flutter.[32] A number of years later the paper was the object of a suit for inserting advertisements for a dubious lottery; the Partners quickly resolved that "the irregular Lottery Adverts. from Shergold & C°. & other Advertisers, be rejected till the Legality of their Advertisements shall have been ascertained."[33] A lesser but frequent embarrassment was related to errors in casting up the advertisements and paying the duty to the Crown; these errors were regularly found and corrected by the Partners delegated to examine the accounts.[34]

Another area which had to be dealt with by the Proprietors concerned various lawsuits against the Printer of the Chronicle. Indeed, the largest expenditures not directly related to the costs of publishing

the paper were bred by legal proceedings, i.e. the fines and the legal fees resulting from suits brought by individuals and prosecutions initiated by the government. The first important conflict with the law began after the issue of 18 May 1765, which had described a public disorder of massive dimensions involving the poor London weavers, who were actively protesting their current plight. According to the Chronicle "About Two o'Clock a Message was delivered them from the Lords, signifying that they could not proceed to the Re-consideration of their Grievances 'till next Session, when every possible Step should be taken for their Advantage." This report of the episode appears to have been published without prejudice, but the House of Lords summoned Henry Woodfall of the Public Advertiser, Henry Baldwin, and Charles Say of the Gazetteer to explain such a breach of privilege. Woodfall gave the Chronicle as his source, Baldwin said he copied the piece from the Gazetteer, Say pleaded the cause of "a Family of Six Children," and each printer was fined £100. Another paragraph in the same issue of the Chronicle reflecting on a Member of the House of Lords brought another fine of £100 for Baldwin.[35] These two fines plus expenses, a total of £225/10/8, were of course paid by the Proprietors and recorded in the Minutes of 24 June 1765. This was no light penalty, but the Chronicle did not change its course.

Late in 1769 the Chronicle printed a communication which proved offensive to the government. A mischievous collaboration of George III, Lord North, and Chief Justice Mansfield had challenged the right of the press to print what the public should know of public affairs, and the fearless but careful letters of Junius had been appearing in sharp reply, mostly in the Public Advertiser. On 19 December the Advertiser published one of these letters, the one ending with an appropriate caveat which has often been quoted and as often praised: "The Prince, who imitates their [the Stuarts'] conduct, should be warned by their example; and, while he plumes himself upon the security of his title to the crown, should remember that, as it was acquired by one revolution, it may be lost by another."[36] This Letter to the King immediately became so popular that a special edition of the Public Advertiser was needed, and many members of the contemporary press promptly reprinted it, including such different papers as Say's Gazetteer, John Miller's London Evening Post, George Robinson's Independent Chronicle, John Almon's London Museum, and the St. James's Chronicle. The government took action against the printers.

The Letter had appeared in the Chronicle on 21 December 1769; the first sign of the case in the Minutes appeared two months later, when the Proprietors decided to employ Mr. Hearne as their attorney. Lord Mansfield, the presiding Judge at the trial, made it clear that he would decide whether the Letter was criminal in its substance and that the jury would decide only whether the defendant had published the suspect document. Almon was found guilty; Woodfall was granted a new trial which was never held; Miller and Baldwin were found not guilty; Say and Robinson were apparently never tried.[37] A fortnight after Baldwin's trial the Proprietors resolved to take the opinion of Mr. Serjeant John Glynn, the eminent representative of the defendants, as to "whether a fair Action will lie against the Attorney General, for the Expence of the late prosecution." Months later the paper paid £88/5/10 for these expenses. And then the paper paid the balance of Mr. Hearne's bill, amounting to £17/7/10 and also the fees of £7 to the officers of Commons. The four allusions in the Minutes to this suit show a distinct emphasis on the financial aspects.[38] Whatever the Partners may have said at their meetings, the Minutes reflect no sense of pride in the affair, nor is there any statement of general policy on such matters. The Proprietors could not know the great height of the drama in which their newspaper had had a part, nor did they record any recognition as men of honor as well as of business that the "Letter" they had printed was actually a conjunction of high prose and true democratic spirit.

The next prominent suit was brought in King's Bench by John Elphinston, Captain in the Royal Navy. He had been present at the capture of Quebec and for several years served as Rear Admiral in the Russian navy, and had become an object of both English and Russian criticism. In its issue of 29 January 1774 the Chronicle printed a letter directed to the Earl of Sandwich, the inadequate First Lord of the Admiralty, and signed "Commissioned Officers, but neither Profligates, nor Huntingdonshire Voters." The letter asked Lord Sandwich what were his reasons "for appointing a Man to the Command of one of the most capital of his Majesty's Ships, who has behaved notoriously ill in a neighbouring Service, and been dismissed from it with Ignominy? Besides which your Lordship cannot be ignorant of the Insults he offered to the brave Admiral who commanded at Portsmouth, and to the British Fleet, when this Man was there with a

Squadron of Russian Ships some few Years ago." For printing and publishing this "libel," which hurt and injured the naval officer in his "Character and Reputation amongst diverse of his Majesty's Officers and other good and worthy Subjects of this Realm," Henry Baldwin was found guilty by a jury which took a quarter of an hour from a July day to make its decision. Damages were set at £500, with £38 more for costs and charges.[39] The Proprietors of the Chronicle had to make adjustments in their dividends in order to pay this heavy penalty, the largest such loss the paper suffered.[40]

Another suit of consequence involved a matter of international, or rather inter-English, relations. The difficulties fostered by the Crown with the American colonies were producing a strong feeling against the war and a strong sympathy among many Englishmen with their cousins across the ocean. One of the protesters who acted vigorously was John Horne. A former clergyman who was a friend of John Wilkes, Horne was the sort of person who devotes himself to common causes and is sometimes carelessly accused of radicalism or even treason. As an Englishman with a head for political theory he could see that the Americans were asking only for the practice of English principles, and when he inserted a signed advertisement in several leading papers on 9 and 10 June 1775, all London was made acquainted with a special circumstance in a familiar context. The notice, which came from the King's Arms Tavern, Cornhill, reported that a member of the Constitutional Society had proposed a subscription of £100 for the relief of widows, orphans, and aged parents "of our BELOVED American Fellow Subjects, who, FAITHFUL to the Character of Englishmen, preferring Death to Slavery, were, for that Reason only, inhumanly murdered by the KING's Troops at or near Lexington and Concord in the Province of Massachusetts on the 19th of last April." Subscriptions were to be paid to the account of Dr. Franklin. On 18 July, Horne inserted another small advertisement to say that £50 had been raised. Some months later the government prosecuted him for libel along with the printers of the Chronicle and other selected offending papers. Each printer was fined £100 and Horne twice that amount with an imprisonment of one year.[41] As usual, the comments in the Minutes of the Proprietors were brief and factual—two years after the original offense the Printer reported he had been given notice to attend

the Court of King's Bench to receive judgment, and the next month a dividend was omitted because of the "Expence of £220/14/0 being incurred by a Law Suit, and some other Charges."[42] After this celebrated case Horne became more and more active in politics, was tried for treason and acquitted, and was refused the seat in Parliament he had won by election; he published works of philology, became well known among writers of a liberal bent, and added the name of Tooke to his own. John Horne Tooke had the honor of being the central figure in this celebrated state trial, and the Partners of the Chronicle had the memory of printing some thirty lines for him.

The final case of mark was the affair of the Russian Ambassador, a matter involving the old problem of diplomatic privilege. On 20 January 1781 the Chronicle reported conferences between Lord Viscount Stormont, one of the Secretaries of State, and His Excellency John Simolin, Her Russian Majesty's Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary. According to this report "the Ministry have had Reason to suspect his Excellency to be little better than a Spy, and last Week had the good Fortune to get at a Packet of his"; as a consequence he "was charged with living here in the Habit of furnishing the Enemies of Great Britain with Intelligence."[43] This sort of scandal would be embarrassing for Secretaries, Ambassadors, Catherine the Great, and George III. The printer of the Chronicle and the printers of six other offending papers were ordered to attend in the Court of King's Bench to answer the charges of libel. All the other printers received sentences of fines and imprisonment, and one was also ordered to stand in the pillory. Baldwin, "making it appear, he had used every Endeavour in his Power to atone for having indiscretely copied the offensive Article in Question, . . . was fined £100 without any Imprisonment."[44] Twice the Partners gave their attention to this case but only to record the expenses of the suit;[45] any interest they had in diplomatic immunity or Muscovite relations did not enter the Minutes. The Proprietors of this distinguished journal, at times beleaguered and unjustly prosecuted, corporately dealt only with the expenses of Justice.[46]

Although the chief enterprise of the joint-stock company was the St. James's Chronicle, which had replaced the triweekly St. James's Evening Post, the Proprietors were also responsible for the two other newspapers bought from Rayner, the London Spy and Read's Weekly Journal.[47] The purchase of all three papers was duly recorded in the Articles of Agreement, but the Minutes mention only a few details about the two weeklies. In April 1761, soon after their purchase, they were issued as a single Saturday paper with their titles combined, and thereafter the status of this weekly was sometimes noted at meetings of the Proprietors. Apparently the hybrid did not flourish. According to two early entries in the Minutes it was in arrears by nearly £10, and even though this deficit was much less than the loss which was currently being reported for the Chronicle, the Partners soon found a remedy.[48] At their general meeting for 16 December they altered the title of the Spy-Journal to Baldwin's London Journal: or, British Weekly Chronicle. At the same time, making sure that at least some of the best content would remain the same, they agreed that the paper should continue printing the essay signed by the name of Simon Gentle Touch. The "new" eight-page Saturday paper first appeared on 2 January 1762. The second issue contained an announcement of other developments—a statement, signed by M. Mechell and repeated for two months, declaring that Mechell's Weekly Chronicle and The Old British Spy had both been disposed of to Baldwin and had been united by him with the Spy-Journal to form the new weekly paper.[49] Baldwin's London Journal was not unlike other weekly papers which printed news or other material extracted from contemporaries of greater frequency, thus satisfying readers in town and country who

were content with one newspaper a week. It was Baldwin's procedure which was unusual. He relied in the main on the other paper he published, and for the most part he limited the content of the Journal to selections from the Chronicle. Ten years earlier Charles Say had founded the Craftsman; or Gray's Inn Journal as a weekly compilation of his own daily Gazetteer and had thus provided a ready prototype for Baldwin's London Journal.[50]

According to the accounts in the Proprietors' Minutes the profits of the new paper during the first year came to £4. The profits gradually grew so that for the next four years the average profit was £7 per quarter, a satisfactory sum but far smaller than that of the triweekly Chronicle. At the end of 1766 the Partners voted to make the paper over to Baldwin, giving him the liberty of returning it if "he should not think it worth his while to continue the same."[51] But Baldwin kept the journal for many years, and the Minutes had no more to say about it.

The Proprietors were involved with another publication whose brief existence is also noted in the Minutes—The Yearly Chronicle. A more than ample description of this octavo work is found in its alternate title—"A Collection of The most interesting and striking Essays, Letters, &c. which appeared in the St. James's Chronicle for that Year. To which is added, A Diary of the most remarkable Events. The Whole serving as A Complete Register of the Politics, News, Literature, &c. of that Period." It was printed in 1762 not for all the Proprietors but for only seven of them, along with C. Reymers in Holborn. The selections in the Yearly Chronicle cover 414 pages, about two pages to the item, and relate to lords and gentry, plays and the theatre, and such varied topics as clubs, almanacs, taxes, sham auctions, city smarts, mad oxen, and smoky chimneys; this gallimaufry appeared in essays, letters, poems, tales, and Characters, in prose and a sprinkling of verse. The second part, in sixty-two pages, is a register of events, mostly trivial and very dull.

The reprinting of letters or essays from a single journal had had a mild popularity, but the reprinting of items miscellaneous in form and content from the same journal of the same year was a rare project and evidently an unsuccessful one. The Minutes show to what extent the Yearly Chronicle was not a happy venture. Two and a half years after it appeared, Baldwin reported to the Partners that Thornton

and the gentleman for whom he held a share in trust had suffered a large loss by publishing the volume. Two months later the Printer produced an account showing that 899 copies of the work remained unsold. The Partners resolved to dispose of them to Becket for £21 and to cover the loss of £72/0/9 with funds from the Chronicle; they later deducted the amount from the January-March profits in 1765.[52] It seems that no further volumes were issued.

Such were the minor publications created in the shadow of the Chronicle—one a weekly compilation which continued for years under Baldwin, the other an annual which existed for only one year.

Official records of the profit or loss of a prominent newspaper over many years give authentic information about the paper itself and also offer fruitful hints about the fluctuations of the times in which it appeared. Consequently these Minutes of some 500 meetings of the Chronicle's Proprietors covering more than half a century can be of special benefit to students of economic history or of the press because the statistics about the paper can be examined in the frame of such a long span of years. Terse, sober, and systematic, the Minutes provide in methodical detail the Chronicle's shaky beginning and early struggles, its experiments, changes, and improvements, its long success and decline and recovery.

The Minutes also contain various other notes of much value though in less abundance. The Proprietors themselves seem to have been scrupulous and fair-minded men who took on varying degrees of responsibility for their mutual undertaking. Some of them attended the meetings of the company irregularly while others gave much time and energy to the enterprise. Meeting and planning together month after month after month over a number of years, they practiced the rules of a joint-stock company in a period when that kind of organization was apparently rare in newspaper publishing. Many of the circumstances of maintaining the stock company—the occasional need to recruit new members, the changes resulting from death and retirement, and the individual relations both familial and professional—required the regular attention of the Partners. Some of the problems they encountered were solvable; others were stubborn and recurring. Advertising in several phases was a frequent topic, and the government's disciplinary attention to the press was ever a matter of concern.

The scarcity of such records as are contained in these early Minute Books of the St. James's Chronicle adds to their importance as archives

which are exceptional in their length and their usefulness as a fiscal calendar kept with industry and judgment. The men of affairs who were financially accountable for the paper wrote here their own lengthy chronicle of the business life of this notable and prosperous newspaper.

Notes