Such as have settled in new habitations since the late fire, and desire for the convenience of their correspondence to publish the place of their present abode, or to give notice of goods lost or found, may repair to the corner house in Bloomsbury, or on the east side of the great square [Bloomsbury Square] before the house of the Right Honourable the Lord Treasurer, where there is care taken for the receipt and publication of such advertisements.
Among the very few advertisements relating to those great calamities is the following, produced by the Plague, which is inserted in the Intelligencer, June 22-30, 1665:—
THIS is to certify that the master of the Cock and Bottle, commonly called the Cock alehouse, at Temple bar, hath dismissed his servants, and shut up his house for this long vacation, intending (God willing) to return at Michaelmas next, so that all persons who have any accounts or farthings belonging to the said house, are desired to repair thither before the 8th of this instant, July, and they shall receive satisfaction.
Relating to the Fire, the following from the London Gazette, March 12, 1672-73, was the notification:—
THESE are to give notice that Edward Barlet, Oxford carrier, hath removed his Inn in London from the Swan at Holborn Bridge to the Oxford Arms in Warwick Lane, where he did inne before the Fire. His coaches and waggons going forth on their usual days, Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. He hath also a hearse, with all things convenient to carry a corpse to any part of England.
There is not, however, a single advertisement relating to any of those temporary conveniences of every kind which invariably arise, as by magic, on any great and unusual emergency. Indeed, about this period, and for a long time after, the London Gazette, which was the official organ of the day, appeared frequently without a single advertisement; and till the end of the reign of Charles II., it was only very rarely that that paper contained more than four advertisements of a general kind, very frequently the number being less. The subjects of these were almost exclusively thefts, losses, and runaways. Booksellers’ and quacks’ advertisements were, however, even then frequent in this paper; their announcements always preceded the others, and were printed in a different type.
In 1668 Mr (afterwards Sir) Roger L’Estrange commenced the Mercury, or Advertisements concerning Trade, which does not seem to have answered, for it soon became extinct. Some years after, the now well-known scheme of issuing sheets of advertisements gratuitously, trusting for profit to the number of advertisers, was for the first time attempted. The paper started on this principle was called the City Mercury, and appears to have had a hard struggle for existence, since the publishers thought it necessary to insert in No. 52 (March 30, 1673) a notice of this tenor:—
Notwithstanding this paper has been published so long, there are many persons ignorant of the design and advantage of it. And it every week comes to the hand of some, both in City and Country, that never see it before: For which reason the Publisher thinks himself obliged (that all may have benefit by it), to inform them that:—
1. He gives away every Monday above a thousand of them to all the Booksellers, shops and inns, and most of the principal coffee-houses in London and Westminster. Besides they are now sent to most of the cities and principal towns in England.
2. Any person that has anything to insert in it, as the titles of books, houses or land to be lett or sold, persons removing from one place to another, things lost or stole, physitians’ advertisements, or inquiries for houses or lands to be lett or sold, for places or for servants, &c., may bring or send them to the Publisher, Tho. Howkins, in George Yard, in Lombard Street, London, who will carefully insert them at reasonable rates.