Catalogue description London Gazette

Plans for producing an official government gazette were underway for some time before the first issue was published on 7 November 1665. The earliest issues were titled the Oxford Gazette, because the then monarch, Charles II, was temporarily in residence in Oxford due to the plague in London. From the 24th edition for 1-5 February 1666 onwards, it was published under the name of the London Gazette.

The Gazette then appeared twice weekly, but has sometimes appeared daily, weekly or three times each week.

The earliest editions contained two main categories of news: foreign reports and those from English ports on shipping movements. It also contained news of the King and Court, and other information such as bills of mortality, which included deaths from the plague, legal lists of circuit judges and sheriffs, and occasional reports of crime and its punishment.

During the following decades, the Gazette contained financial news in the form of notices and taxes inserted as they fell due. Advertisements for lost property also began to be inserted, as well as rewards for information on thefts, murders and runaways. From 1684 the printing of proclamations in the gazette offered a supplementary method of distributing information. The first instance of a requirement to publish in the gazette occurred in 1694 when the Queen in Council ordered that the Treasury Commissioners 'should prepare a notice for the London Gazette signifying the approval of the Commission for a subscription to the Bank of England'.

Initially, the Gazette was given a monopoly on printed news. This ended in 1698.

The 1712 Act to relieve insolvent debtors, which required that the debtor give notice to his creditors in the gazette, resulted in a flood of insertions. Shipping and foreign news now decreased, and with the advent of the Daily Advertiser in 1730, the miscellaneous advertising such as property and auction sales disappeared, although official and legal insertions were not affected. Tables of the weekly average price of corn and returns of corn and grain were regularly inserted. With the inception of the Home Office in 1782, the London Gazette was to record its specific concerns (including naturalisation of foreigners as British citizens).

The Gazette saw a substantial increase in the amount of private advertising during the 19th century. In the period of extensive railway investment, each company had to obtain its powers by private Act of Parliament, which were notified in the Gazette.

In the early years of the London Gazette, the editor was appointed alternately by the Foreign Department and the Home Department. In 1849, the Controller of the Stationery Office became responsible for its printing and publication. From 1869, the editor was appointed by the Treasury. Between 1889 and 1910, Harrisons produced the Gazette under contract to the Stationery Office. From 1910, His Majesty's Stationery Office published the Gazette itself.

Other official newspapers of the UK government are the Edinburgh Gazette (founded in 1699 and published regularly from 1793) and Belfast Gazette (founded in 1921), which, apart from reproducing certain materials of nationwide interest published in the London Gazette, also contain publications specific to Scotland and Northern Ireland, respectively.

The legal power to print and publish the Gazettes is a prerogative power conferred on the King's Printer by letters patent. Publication was transferred to the private sector, under government supervision, in the 1990s.

The National Archives currently manages the publication of all three of the individual Gazette titles (London, Belfast and Edinburgh) for the King's Printer, under a concessionary contract. The Gazettes are published online and all issues are available at thegazette.co.uk.