Maybe a weird/stupid question. Today we have mass media, and any new law/political scandal that happens reaches almost everyone instantly. Previously, radio broadcasts. Before telecommunications, information could go around presumably by letters, word of mouth, etc. Before even any of that, how would entire populations in, for example, the 11th century find out about new laws that were passed in their country, or if their country was going to war, and was it ever possible to communicate this fairly quickly (that is, within a week or two?)
In: 1822
Certainly a lot less information got passed around and more rural parts of a country might miss even the biggest events. Heck even in modern times in some arse backward end of Siberia there was a single farmstead with one very elderly lady who managed to sleep through all of CCCP and was quite surprised in 90ies to learn that there is no tsar anymore.
In general it wasn’t that much of a problem, what did a king care if some crofter didn’t hear the latest palace gossip? It’s not like elections hinged on it. Knowing what was going around the world didn’t have the same importance it does today.
For information the state actually did want to get passed around there were town criers who were pretty much just yelling the information on the town square or whatnot. Who heard, heard, who wasn’t around maybe got the information second or third hand, maybe not, didn’t really matter anyway.
And governance was not really centralized quite the same way anyway. Higher echelons of nobility were terribly distant and abstract for your typical serf, their concern was the local landed knight or manor lord who demanded their servitude. That is who made their laws and enforced them in practice. Kings law was for those actually able to take their complaints to court and that certainly didn’t include the lowliest peons.
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