Some historians believe that the ancestor of modern journalism was in fact a dynasty of bankers - the Fugger family. Their newsletters, regularly published from mid-sixteenth century onwards, gave information about important or just odd events all over Europe and the New World. It was probably the success of these newsletters that prompted the publication of a semi-annual "newsbook" in Latin, the Mercurius Gallo-Belgicus, from the 1580s onwards. It is hard to tell how many people read the Mercurius regularly in England, but in 1615 Robert Boothe, a Cambridge don (who also wrote poetry in Latin), decided to venture into publishing: he brought out an English version of the Latin newsbook then edited by "Gotthard Arthus", that is the historian Gaspar Ens in Germany. Entitled A relation of all matters passed, especially in France and the Low-countries... since March last to this present, 1614 was printed by William Welby in London, with the following subtitle right after the dedicatory epistle by Boothe: 'A Discourse full of Delight, containing the relation of the things in most parts of Europe that have passed worhty the remembrance, since March last, 1614, to this present' [i.e. 1615] - and, remarkably, it starts with a description of events in Transylvania after the "lamentable overthrow and death of Bathorie" when "Gabriel Bethline" was appointed Prince of Transylvania "by the Turkes".1 As far as we know, this was the first time the name of Gabriel (Gábor) Bethlen had appeared in print in England. The praise allotted to
him by the Mercurius (and in its wake, by Boothe) is not unequivocal, for although the Turkish envoy to the Emperor Ferdinand of Austria, King of Hungary, is quoted calling Bethlen "a Prince of great wisdome and valour", it is also mentioned that at the imperial Diet of Linz voices were raised expressing the fear that Transylvania could be annexed to the Ottoman Empire, and on this ground advocating intervention.2 The Emperor did not give in to this demand, for he wanted to keep the peace with the Sultan and, consequently, the new Prince of Transylvania escaped military intervention. He had to cope only with a minor incursion of troops hired in 1616 by a Hungarian pretender, György Homonnai, who was quickly defeated.
Consolidating his power in Transylvania, it was only some years later, in 1619, that Gabriel Bethlen took up arms against Emperor Ferdinand. His campaign was started in the context of the election of Frederick of the Palatinate to the Bohemian throne in 1619, vehemently opposed by Ferdinand, the new Holy Roman Emperor; to most contemporaries it was clear that this conflict would lead to a long and devastating war.3 Bethlen's alliance with the Bohemian confederates was not motivated solely by his wish to conquer (as claimed by some Western historians) or his ambitions to gain the crown of Hungary, but also by the religious grievances of the mostly Protestant population of Norhtern Hungary. His armies, even without Turkish help, were sufficiently strong to inflict painful defeats on the imperial forces, a fact gleefully commented upon by most English newsletters or corrantos. In fact, from 1620 to 1625 the deeds of Gabriel Bethlen remained "headlines" in these publications, some of which were first printed in Amsterdam, then with increasing regularity in London.
Most newsletters were translations from German or Dutch, for example the Articles of the League, Made betweene Fredericke, King of Bohemia. and the High and Mightie prince GABRIEL, Prince of Hungaria and Transiluania... (n.p. but probably Amsterdam, 1620) was the translation of a Dutch pamphlet with an almost identical title,4 whereas in the case of Courante or newes from Italie, Germanie, Hungarie, Spain and France, a produce of London printer/bookseller Nathaniel Butter with the date of November 2, 1621, the newsletter claims to have been translated from "A High Dutch" (i.e. German) copy.5
In this phase of the war, that is before the Battle of the White Mountain (November 8, 1620), expectations vis-ŕ-vis Bethlen (usually spelt "Bethlehem" or "Bethlem") ran high. Events on the continent were followed with great excitement and some anxiety. Until 1624 James I, whose daughter Elizabeth, the 'Winter Queen', was married to Frederick of the Palatinate, favoured "mediation not intervention" in the war6, but English public opinion was openly interventionist. No wonder then, that the London-based Our last Weekly newes compared Bethlen to heroes of the Old Testament praising him as "the great hope of the Protestant religion".7 As the Bohemian forces suffered a crucial defeat and the war reached the Palatinate, the newsletters divided their attention between the northern and the southern theatres of war, and during periods of truce between Bethlen and the Emperor kept writing hopefully about the Transylvanian's "warlike preparations". Because of Gabriel Bethlen's alliance with Frederick, the 'Winter King', often discussed in the English newsletters,8 the latter's ambassador to England, Johannes Joachim Rusdorf, realising Bethlen's potential value in harassing the Catholic powers, tried to secure English recognition and material help for him. As long as James I lived this was impossible, although Rusdorf "moved heaven and earth" to that purpose, all in vain.9 It is likely that the negative reports of Sir Thomas Roe from Constantinople were also hindering the realisation of the Anglo-Transylvanian alliance. The change in English attitudes occurred in 1625/26, when first on December 9, 1625 the Hague Convention
establishing an English-Danish-Dutch coalition was signed in London, and in the spring of 1626, when Bethlen married Catherine of Brandenburg at Kassa (Cassovia, Kos©ice in Slovakia). Mostly due to Rusdorf's persistence, but also to the support of Roe and Isaac Wake, the English envoy in Venice, Transylvania joined the Protestant Alliance on November 30, 1626. This diplomatic success of Gabriel Bethlen was, however, undermined, or rather devalued, by his conclusion of the peace treaty of Pozsony (Pressburg - now Bratislava, capital of Slovakia) with the Emperor just a month later. True enough, Charles I did not have much confidence in this "inconstant" warrior of Protestantism who always demanded substantial sums of money for waging war against the Habsburgs; sums which the English treasury was unable to deliver.10 But as (before the Swedish intervention) he was the only European leader who managed to defeat the imperial troops in more than one campaign, he had to be taken seriously if England ever wanted to see the restoration of the Palatinate.
Bethlen also paid more attention to England than any of his predecessors since Stephen (István) Báthori. When sending his nephew, Peter Bethlen, on a grand diplomatic tour round Western Europe in 1627, he wrote to Buckingham about his nephew's impending visit to England.11 This event, which took place in February 1628, was reported from Dover Castle, stating that "A lord of Hungary, nephew, as they say to Bethlen Gabor, and some six with him landed at Margate. He has the Archduchess's [Izabella's] pass and is coming to London,12 which shows the awareness of the Captain of Dover Castle about "Bethem Gabor", clearly a household name in Stuart England. There is also a much more detailed report, a letter written from Paris by János Pálóczi Horváth, a member of Péter Bethlen's retinue, to the young man's father, István Bethlen. This relates how Charles I received the "famous Count Bethlen" providing a very handsome coach for his personal usage while in London which was followed by the Hungarians' visit to Hampton Court, possibly Windsor, Oxford and Cambridge. Pálóczi Horváth claims that there are 122 churches in London in which, apart from English, services are held in four other languages. He also relates (for a Hungarian Calvinist) very strict observance of the 'Sabbath', that is Sunday, when "one cannot sell anything. card-games and gambling are strictly forbidden.13 But what fills him with awe is the grandeur of Oxford and Cambridge: "These two universities have altogether more or less 36 colleges. and we have not ever seen more magnificent buildings than these. Some of them tower over the others like some kind of a citadel (if only our country could have but one of these!). All these colleges have richly endowed libraries of selected books".14
Gabriel Bethlen's fame was at its zenith in England probably in 1625, for in this year we have more than one literary reference to this distant (and according to some, 'inconstant') protector of the Protestant faith. A(braham) H(olland) as well as Ben Jonson mock the zeal of the newsbooks commending their hero to the reading public, Holland ridiculing the compiler/jorunalist who is a 'Decaied Captaine' or just a 'Rook' (cheat, swindler)" whose hungry braines compile prodigious Books / Of Bethlen Gabor's preparations, and / How termes betwixt him and th'Emperor stand"15 whereas Jonson in his play The Staple of the News ("acted in the yeare 1625" that is in fact early 1626)16 indicates his disbelief in the sometimes wild stories printed in the corrantos of Gabriel Bethlen's military or marriage plans. As one of the characters reports:

We heare he has demis'd
A Drumme, to fill all Christendome with the
sound:
But he cannot draw his forces neare it,
To march yet, for the violence of the noise.
And therefore he is faine by a designe,
To carry 'hem in the ayre, and at some
distance,
Till he be married, then they shall
appeare.17

Paradoxically, the first creditable full account in England on the ruling Prince of Transylvania was published only some months after his death, in 1630. This is in the sixth edition of Giovanni Botero's cosmography, Relations of the most famous kingdomes and Comon-wealths throuwout the world. enlarged "according to moderne observation" by a certain R.I. (Robert Johnson), the author being a Hungarian, Petrus Eusebius Maxai (Péter Maksai Oýse). Hungary and Transylvania are discussed in three spearate chapters (on pp. 378-394, 394-399 and 399-408) under the titles "Hungarie", "The State of Bethlen Gabor in Transilvania", and "The Estate of Gabriel Bethlen or Bethlen Gabor in Hungaria, which came to him either by Election, or by Conquest achieved from the Emperour: With a Brief Relation or Chronicle of his Birth and fortunes". The first chapter, a general survey, had already appeared in the previous (1616) edition of Botero and is probably based on the so-called Hansard manuscript, written at the end of the sixteenth century.18 A new chapter describes the geography and main cities of Transylvania, devoting only the last two passages to Gabriel Bethlen, whereas another surveys the Partium (the parts adjoining Transylvania) and the seven counties that Bethlen won in his campaigns against "the German Emperour", continuing with a short biography of the prince. Maksai gives detailed information about the state of education in the lands under Gabriel Bethlen's control, including the fortified town of Várad which is "adorned. with a College of five and thirty Fellowes, an hundred Schollars, a Master and a publike Reader"; Debrecen is also "adorned with a goodly College of Students", and finally "this yeare of 1629... [Bethlen] erects an University at Alba Julia which crownes and blesses all the fame of his former actions".19 As for the prince himself, it is stressed that Bethlen is "a zealous Calvinist, seldom going without a Latine testament in his pocket", and later Maksai refutes slanders spread about him being "basely borne" and "a Turke in religion", which are but "Jesuiticall knaveris".20 Bethlen's refusal to accept the Crown of Hungary is explained by the author with his wish to preserve his relative freedom of action vis-ŕ-vis the Sultan; at the same time his dealings with the Emperor are discussed in a carefully balanced tone. Maksai Oýse ends his essay with a piece of information which is sadly out of date by the publication of the book, according to which Bethlen was "dangerously sicke" this [1629] summer but "we have heard newes of his safe recovery".21

A few words have to be said about the author of the Hungarian chapters of the 1630 Botero edition. Péter Maksai Oýse was born in 1599 and as he calls himself "nobilis Transylvanus", came from a family of a higher social standing. He went to school at Kolozsvár (Clausenburg - Cluj in Romania) and left Transylvania for higher studies abroad in 1622. After a stay in Frankfurt/Oder, Franeker and Leiden, he returned to his native parts where he published a theological dissertation in Alba Julia.22 It was during his second peregrination between 1628-1632 that he visited England; although he matriculated in Leiden on March 4, 1629, he could not have spent more than a few months at that university, for at the end of his English text he refers to events "this summer", so it was some time during the autumn of 1629 that he composed his essay for the new edition of Botero's Relations. While it is known that he visited Oxford in the summer of 1632, otherwise all that can be said about his time in England is what Gábor Haller wrote in his diary: that he spent a long time, probably three and a half or four years in London, where "he lived at the Archbishop of Canterbury's".23 This, or course, opens up an intriguing possibility: was it Calvinist-leaning Archbishop George Abbot, always sympathetic to the cause of foreign Protestants and an early supporter of Gabriel Bethlen, who en-couraged Maksai to write two informative chapters in Latin about the much-slandered Bethlen? Did he suggest to Robert Johnson to translate and include this piece in his new edition of Botero?
In 1630 therefore the educated English reader could learn as much about con-temporary Hungary and Transylvania as was possible in the circumstances; he could have had reliable information on Bethlen's actions and character, much better presented than the often contradictory and sensationalist reports of the corrantos. After his death Bethlen was evaluated both by Sir Thomas Roe and other seventeenth-century Englishmen as having a rare "greatness of Soul" and "activeness of Spirit". He was thought to be a prince whose support of the Ottoman power could have had "ruinous consequences", but whose balancing act between great powers could be understood and, indeed, approved by the detached observer. In Sir Paul Rycault's opinion, "being seated between two such powerful Monarchs, as the Emperour and the Turk, there was need of dexterity and courage to steer between the rocks of such opposite Interests".24

1 A Relation of all matters passed... London, n.y. [1615], B
2 op.cit., F1
3 E.g. Count Solms's letter quoted in Geoffrey Parker, Europe in Crisis, 1598-1648, 2nd ed. Fontana, London, 1981, 163.
4 Artyckelen van het Eeewich Verbondt, ghe-maecht tusschen Frederick... Met... Heer Gabriel, Prince van Hungarien ende Transylvanien, by Ian Evertz, Amsterdam 1620, listed in RMK III: 1275.
5 Folke Dahl, A Bibliography of English Courantos and Periodical Newsbooks 1620- 1642, London, 1952.
6 Geoffrey Parker, Europe in Crisis 1598- 1648, 2nd ed., 1981, 163.
7 Our last weekly newes Nr.7 (November 4, 1621).
8 E.g. in More newes from the Palatine and more comfort to every true Christian... (n.p., 1622), 6.
9 J.J. Rusdorff, Consilia et Negotia politica, Frankfurt and Lepizig, 1727, 45.
10 Memoires et Negociations Secretes de Mr.de Rusdorf, ed. E.G. Cuhn, Lepizig 1789, 681 and 689, also Angyal Dávid, Erdély politikai érintkezése Angliával, ("Transylvania's political contacts with England) Budapest, 1902, 60.
11 British Library, Harleian 1760 f. 29. The letter is dated 27 August 1627 from Alba Julia.
12 Calendar of State Papers. Domestic Series. Charles I, 1627-28, London 1858, 543.
13 Utazások a régi Európában (ed. Pál Binder), Kriterion, Bucharest 1976, 87.
14 ibid., 88.
15 A.H.A Continued Inquisition against Paper-Persecutors, London 1625, 7.
16 Martin Butler corrects the date, pointing out that it refers to the 'legal year', The Library, 7th Series, Vol 4:1, 58.
17 Ben Jonson, The Works, Vol. VI. (ed. C.H. Herford, Percy and Evelyn Simpson), Oxford, 1954, 337.
18 Two copies are extant in the British Library: Harley Ms 7314 and Lansdowne Ms 775.
19 Relations of the most famous kingdoms and Common-wealths throwout the world. Translated out of the best Italian Impression of Boterus. And since the last Edited by R... London, 1630, 400 and 407, also reprinted in Irodalomtudományi Közlemények (ItK), Budapest, 1976, 224229.
20 ItK, 1976, 227-228. Bethlen spoke fluent Turkish and was held in high regard in Constantinople.
21 ibid, 229.
22 Disputatio de iustificatione hominis peccatoris coram Deo, Alba Julia 1628, cf. Régi Magyar Nyomtatványok, Budapest, 1983, II:1408. Earlier in Franeker Maksai was a respondent in Ames's anti-Bellarminian series: Amesius, Gulielmus, Bellarminus enervatus... Franekerae, 1625, Disputatio XV.
23 Magyar utazási irodalom. 434
24 Sir Paul Rycault, A History of the Turkish Empire, From the Year 1623 to the year 1677. London, printed by J.D. for Tho. Basset,
R. Clavell, J. Robinson and A. Churchill, 1687, 13.

George Gömöri
is a Hungarian poet, translator and essayist, Retired Lecturer at the University of Cambridge, and Honorary Fellow of Darwin College. His latest book Erdélyi merítések (Transylvanian Catches) appeared in Kolozsvár (Cluj, Romania) in 2004.