The other day I was in the beautiful town of Stamford to give a talk in St Martin's Church,

where William Cecil Lord Burley is buried.

And after a very comfortable night I enjoyed a pretty spectacular run in the grounds of

Burley House the next morning, with the antlers of the deer and the turrets of the house

silhouetted as the sun just rose through the mist.

And when I wasn't thinking about the deer or the sun, I was thinking as I ran about a

question I'd been asked at the talk the previous night, how much did ordinary people in the

early modern period know and care about the great events of the day?

How much, for example, would people living in Burley's hometown of Stamford have known

about the characters he encountered at court?

Now in other words, did news trickle down to the general public in an age before newspapers?

So in today's podcast I thought we'd explore these questions.

And joining me to discuss them is the perfect guest who I'll use that the news was not

only widely spoken about, it was actually sung.

And that guest is Dr Jenny Hyde who is an associate lecturer at Lancaster University,

a former associate vice president of the Historical Association and the author of Singing the News,

Ballads in Mid-Tuda England published by Routledge and you can also find her at her blog

earlymodernballads.wordpress.com

Dr Jenny Hyde, lovely to see you.

Thank you so much for joining me today on Not Just the Tudors.

I am really engaged with this question that I hope you're going to help us answer,

which is how do people find out the news before newspapers?

...