Providence, Editorial, and News in Early Modern Ballads

Abstract This article overturns the assumption that early modern ballads include too much godly, moralizing content to be considered part of news culture. It uses a wide range of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English ballads in print and manuscript to demonstrate that one of the news ballad’s most significant features was the inclusion of providence – the ongoing supernatural workings of God in the material world. Placing these songs in the context of other cheap print genres and drawing on research into the role of religion in everyday life, the article shows that rather than undermining the ballad’s role in news culture, providence defined it. Moreover, the early modern distinction between God’s overall plan and specific examples of his intervention in earthly affairs helps to subdivide the genre into those where providence forms an editorial line and those where providence itself provides the story. This second type has traditionally been seen as godly rather than ‘newsy’. Understanding providence shows that those ballads which have been dismissed as more moralistic than topical in fact shared the most important news people could hear.