Later in the century the use of the news-sheet became so general as to clog the mails. Macaulay writes interestingly of the disseminating of information in those days:
In 1685 nothing like the London daily paper of our time existed or could exist. Neither the necessary capital nor the necessary skill was to be found. Freedom too was wanting, a want as fatal as that of either capital or skill. During the great battle of the Exclusion Bill, many newspapers were suffered to appear. None of them was published oftener than twice a week. None exceeded in size a single small leaf. The quantity of matter which one of them contained in a year was not more than is often found in two numbers of the _Times_. After the defeat of the Whigs, it was no longer necessary for the King to be sparing in the use of that which all his Judges had pronounced to be his undoubted prerogative. At the close of his reign no newspaper was suffered to appear without his allowance; and his allowance was given exclusively to the London _Gazette_. The London _Gazette_ came out only on Mondays and Thursdays. The contents were generally a royal proclamation, two or three Tory addresses, notices of two or three promotions, an account of a skirmish between the imperial troops and the Janissaries on the Danube, a description of a highwayman, an announcement of a grand cockfight between two persons of honor, and an advertisement offering a reward for a strayed dog. The whole made up two pages of moderate size.... The most important parliamentary debates, the most important state trials, recorded in our history, were passed over in profound silence. In the capital the coffee houses supplied in some measure the place of a journal. Thither the Londoners flocked as the Athenians of old flocked to the market place, to hear whether there was any news. There men might learn how brutally a Whig had been treated the day before in Westminster Hall, what horrible accounts the letters from Edinburgh gave of the torturing of Covenanters, how grossly the Navy Board had cheated the crown in the victualling of the fleet, and what grave charges the Lord Privy Seal had brought against the Treasury in the matter of the hearth money. But people that lived at a distance from the great theatre of political contention could be kept informed of what was passing there only by means of news-letters. To prepare such letters became a calling in London. The news-writer rambled from coffee room to coffee room collecting reports, squeezed himself into the Sessions House of the Old Bailey if there was an interesting trial, nay perhaps obtained admission to the Gallery of Whitehall and noticed how the King and Duke looked. In this way he gathered materials for weekly epistles destined to enlighten some country town or some bench of rustic magistrates.