“The Hearts of All Sorts of People Were Enflamed”: Manipulating Readers of Spanish Armada News

This article addresses attempts by polemical authors to shape public reactions to news imported into England from the Continent before and after the attack of the Spanish Armada. Focusing on an English propaganda pamphlet as a case study for the applicability of Habermas’s Public Sphere model in the sixteenth century, it investigates how related polemical pamphlets produced by both the Hapsburg and Tudor monarchies attempted to teach skeptical reading practices. By depicting a specifically national reading of Armada news, William Cecil, Lord Burghley, acknowledged that reading the news could generate a dissenus among the population that affected national security.