n kj / '^ V rt^r 
 
 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
SIR ROGER L'ESTRAXGE. 
 
 (From the Portrait by Kneller.) 
 
 Frontispiece] 
 
SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 A CONTRIBUTION TO THE 
 HISTORY OF THE PRESS IN 
 THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 BY 
 
 GEORGE KITCHIN 
 
 M.A. (EDIN.), B.LITT. (OXON.) 
 
 LECTURER IN ENGLISH LITERATURE AT THE 
 UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH 
 
 With 1 1 full-page Plates 
 
 LONDON 
 
 KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRUBNER & CO., LTD. 
 
 BROADWAY HOUSE, 68-/4 CARTER LANE, E.G. 
 
 I913 
 

INTRODUCTION 
 
 L'EsTRANGE has of late years emerged somewhat into public 
 notice — that is of the small public which can approach the 
 seventeenth century by more direct means than those pro- 
 vided by the popular novelist. After Sir Sidney Lee's 
 great article in the Dictionary of National Biogra'phy a 
 separate life was inevitable sooner or later. Then Mr. J. B. 
 Williams' work on the history of the Press, pointed more 
 precisely to the distressed cavalier as the central figure in 
 the journalistic piece. And quite recently we have had the 
 Times Printing Supplement of 10th September 1912 largely 
 devoting its story of Kestoration journalism to a tale of 
 L'Estrange and his works. On the other side — that which 
 concerns the art of prose — the late Professor Earle pointed 
 out the extremely important place L'Estrange truly occupies 
 in the history of English literature. So that the merest 
 shadow of a type — a vicious type according to all tradition — 
 has at length entered the penumbra at least of learned, if 
 not popular, curiosity. No one need expect, however, that 
 his cumbrous folios and pamphlets, full as they are of a 
 certain salt decidedly non- Attic, will ever be pored over even 
 by the scholarly class. As a writer he is a Goth of the Goths, 
 almost uncultured in the classic sense, and for this, as a 
 corrective to the learned fluency of the age which preceded 
 him, he is to be chiefly valued. The native element must 
 have been intensely strong in the man who dressed Seneca 
 and Cicero in homespun. Even his titles have an extra- 
 ordinary force. No Blinde Guides for Milton, The Relaps'd 
 Apostate and Holy Cheat for the Presbyterians, have a 
 
 266643 
 
vi INTRODUCTION 
 
 terseness which we are too apt to think of as a late 
 acquisition of journalism. 
 
 But few even of those who are capable of relishing the 
 distinction between fine classical work and the rude incult 
 native will have the patience to read his political works. 
 Gnarled, bitter, black, and wasted, are these products of 
 seventeenth - century strife. Their great quality is one 
 which is generally lacking in present-day writing, they are 
 virile. Their abuse — the staple of the kind — is virile. 
 There is no verbal finesse^ none of the tricks of the sophist. 
 They are almost lacking in rhetoric in the popular sense. 
 But for late events in "the north-east corner of Ireland," 
 we might have said that the causes they championed are for- 
 gotten. The minor characters at least are lost to all save 
 the special student. 
 
 But his story may still attract the historically-minded. 
 He had the gift or misfortune which some men have of 
 entangling themselves with every interest of the day — 
 music, the Royal Society, cavalier song and wit at the one 
 end of the social scale, at the other, war, intrigue, imprison- 
 ment, office and the thousand bitternesses of public life. 
 A mere instrument he was not. He went further and more 
 rapidly than his masters. In a sense he became the mind 
 of his party. A picturesque figure is all the relations 
 of life ! 
 
 It has not, however, been the plan of this book to 
 present him in a picturesque light, which is generally a 
 fallacious one. The sobriety of modern history is unfriendly 
 to romantic colour. The deadly footnote stifles the imagina- 
 tion. L'Estrange in some way foretold his fate as the victim 
 of modern research. He somewhere imagines the scribe, 
 one hundred and fifty years hence, busy with his and his 
 enemies' pamphlets in Bodley's library. In a fit of pessimism 
 he assumed that their lies would carry more weight with the 
 historian than his own. As so often happens, and in pro- 
 portion as the causes excite men's minds, the truth is found 
 to be no longer discoverable. The historian can generally 
 
INTRODUCTION vii 
 
 only present their contradictory stories and leave the matter 
 to conjecture. But out of the medley of lies and mixed 
 motives, there arises something on which we can give a 
 modern judgment. 
 
 That judgment, it must be confessed, is on the whole the 
 traditional one. It may indeed be doubted if history affords 
 more than half a dozen examples of a genuine reversal of 
 the popular verdict, when that verdict has been long enough 
 left unquestioned. In L'Estrange's case the judgment of 
 posterity was singularly clear, and — what is rare in political 
 cases — singularly unanimous. When a jury consisting of 
 Swift, Hume, and Johnson on the one side, and Fox, Hallam, 
 and Macaulay on the other is agreed on its verdict, little 
 doubt would seem to remain of the defendant's guilt. It 
 has been left for the present age to question the verdict. 
 But love of paradox and the revival of the extreme Tory 
 point of view in historical literature are no doubt more 
 responsible for this trend of judgment in L'Estrange's 
 favour than a new and broader discussion of the facts and 
 documents. So far as this Life presents new documentary 
 evidence, or attempts a new reading of the hitherto known 
 facts, it will be found that his fame rather suffers, if that 
 were possible, than recovers. That is, of course, entirely in 
 the region of political life. In private life he was ever 
 regarded as a staunch friend, a man of fashion, and a lover 
 of the social pleasures and amenities. But in the half- 
 dozen crises of his fate he displayed a curious mingling of 
 daring and timidity. He had the misfortune too often to 
 appear at the critical moment, after much vaunting, a 
 solitary skulker, or the foremost in flight. So was it at 
 King's Lynn, so after Kent, and so after his examination 
 before the Council in 1680. Perhaps this precipitancy in 
 flight only amounts to an intelligent anticipation of the 
 sauve-qui-peut. If it can be shown that he brought things 
 to a head and gave his party a reasonable chance of success 
 before deserting the field, his courage may still, despite 
 Whiggish jeers, be afiirmed. On the whole the fuller story 
 
viii INTRODUCTION 
 
 given here will tend to establish this. And if we remark 
 that his courage and vigour were always more noticeable 
 when his party was in the ascendant, as in the final prosecu- 
 tion of Titus Oates, and the earlier Restoration persecution 
 of obscure printers, it is no more than saying that he was 
 human. 
 
 It is not his loyalty or his courage that will be questioned 
 
 here. It is his humanity. Even granting the whole Tory 
 
 position in the Stuart reigns — a position which later Tories 
 
 would scarcely grant — his vindictive and unappeasable thirst 
 
 for a petty vengeance is the most observable feature of his 
 
 character. He could be, and habitually was, meanly cruel. 
 
 After the Rye House Conspiracy, he participated in a party 
 
 triumph as complete as any our history can show. The 
 
 fate of the Whig scribes and plotters was pitiable enough. 
 
 It aroused in L'Estrange, however, no generous emotion. His 
 
 pursuit of the lesser instruments, of Care, Hunt, Milton's 
 
 nephew John Phillips, Fergusson ' the Plotter ', Hickeringill, 
 
 and the factious Stationers, had more of personal malice in it 
 
 than of public service. His intrigue with young Tonge, a 
 
 creature whose misery in prison ought to have moved him, 
 
 is perhaps the worst blot on his name. Having no intention 
 
 of relieving Tonge 's condition, he set himself with hints of 
 
 the King's mercy, to extort for party and personal purposes an 
 
 exposure, true or false, of the Whig leaders from that wretched 
 
 youth. 
 
 But there is no need to multiply instances in the case of 
 one who wrote No Blinde Guides against Milton, who harried 
 Richard Baxter, pursued Bagshawe, Jenkins, Crofton, and 
 Delaune with abuse and hardship even within the walls of 
 their prison, and conducted those pitiful harryings of the 
 poor printers which went far beyond even the limits observed 
 by Stuart tyranny. Baxter, Bagshawe, Jenkins, Crofton, and 
 Delaune may have been — Bagshawe and Crofton certainly 
 were — contumacious firebrands, but not even by the standards 
 of that age can we excuse the rigours of his malice. 
 
 As to his honesty and sincerity there is not much doubt. 
 
INTRODUCTION ix 
 
 It was generally charged against him in the days of his 
 licensing that he allowed non-conformist books or 'libels' 
 to appear in the official catalogue Mercurius Idbrarius for the 
 money's sake. So far the charge is true, that works of a 
 modified dissent appear in that catalogue in the years follow- 
 ing the ruin of the Cabal ministry. And on the whole, there 
 is no doubt of his extortionate behaviour in office. But mere 
 venality on the part of a poor gentleman would not then 
 weigh very heavily against him. 
 
 Altogether the picture of him given in the Times 
 Printing Supplement, as a high-minded English gentleman, 
 incapable of fraud or disloyalty is somewhat fanciful. A 
 name associated with that of Chas. Hanse and the notorious 
 Burton and Graham could scarcely be free from their 
 quality. Somewhere between Macaulay's black portrait and 
 that given in the Times supplement lies the true L'Estrange. 
 It may be hoped that the reader will be able from the 
 material given in those pages to determine where. 
 
 The present writer undertook the life of L'Estrange at 
 the suggestion of Professor Firth and Sir Walter Raleigh at 
 Oxford. To the former his debt is very great. Whatever 
 merits the work may have are as much owing to his close 
 supervision and unrivalled knowledge of the period as to the 
 industry of the author, while the constant and sympathetic 
 interest of Professor Raleigh and of Professor Saintsbury 
 of Edinburgh, the author's first guide in the literary 
 path, and his present chief, has done much to inspire in 
 a somewhat laborious task. The kind and ever helpful 
 suggestions of Mr D. Nicol Smith, Goldsmiths'" Reader in 
 English literature at Oxford, has also to be most gratefully 
 acknowledged. 
 
 Lastly for aid of a more material kind he must express 
 his indebtedness to the Carnegie Trust for the Universities 
 of Scotland, one of whose Research Scholarships he held 
 during the years 1909 and 1910. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER I (introductory) 
 EARLY CAVALIER DAYS 
 
 Family— Early education— Outbreak of hostilities in the north— East Anglia 
 and the Civil War — Importance of King's Lynn — L'Estrange at Oxford 
 — Proposals for the recapture of Lynn — L'Estrange betrayed — Con- 
 demned by Court-martial — A cavalier in prison — First step of freedom 
 into Kent — The Kentish Rising — L'Estrange's ambiguous part in the 
 fiasco — He is followed into exile by detraction ..... 
 
 CHAPTER II (1648-60) 
 PROTECTORATE AND INTERREGNUM PASSAGES 
 
 L'Estrange in exile — Is followed by calumny — Vindication to Kent — 
 Visits the court of Cardinal van Hesse — Returns to England under the 
 Act of Oblivion — doubtful relations with Cromwell — Life in Covent 
 Garden — Musical powers in request — Death of Sir Hamon — Scandalous 
 rumours of L'Estrange — Death of the Protector — View of his character 
 not unfavourable — Renewed Royalist and Presbyterian activity — 
 L'Estrange in demand as Royalist pamphleteer and incendiary— His 
 numerous 'manifestoes' and addresses — Rising of Sir G. Booth — 
 Addresses to Parliament and to Monk — Attacks Milton in No Blinde 
 Guides — Livewell Chapman and first brush with the Stationers — 
 Eve of the Restoration — Renewed suspicion of L'Estrange — Restoration 33 
 
 CHAPTER III (1660-2) 
 PURITAN DIVINES AND SEDITIOUS PRINTING 
 
 Situation of parties at the Restoration — 'Ranting' cavaliers offend all 
 parties — L'Estrange's Apology— Vtvcicv^Xq of Vae Victim discouraged — 
 Cavalier clamour — Corbet's Interest of Englmid — L'Estrange's Holy 
 Cheat — He is accused of violating the Act of Oblivion — Savoy 
 Conference — Presbyterian Apologies — Bagshawe and the Bishop of 
 Worcester — L'Estrange attacks Bagshawe — Crof ton and the Baxterians 
 — L'Estrange's Memento — Howell's Cordial and L'Estrange's Caveat 
 for the Cavaliers — The Caveat famous — Brush with Birkenhead— 
 Ajjology to Clarendon 67 
 
 xi 
 
xii CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 THE BLOODHOUND OF THE PRESS 
 
 PAGS 
 
 The Press — Contemporary views of its functions — A Crown monopoly — 
 Origin of the imprimatur in England — Kise of the patentees — Brief 
 survey of Press legislation — Rigour of the Laudian period — Common- 
 wealth Statutes and Ordinances — Areopagitica — Restoration views — 
 The Press ' very foul ' — Nature of libels — Presbyterian and 
 Re5)ublican — The ' feminine part of revolt ' — Petition for Peace — 
 Regicide speeches — Nedham, Chapman, Tytan, etc. — The 'Con- 
 federates ' and The Plwenix — F. Smith and The Year of Prodigies — 
 Smith's narrative — Trial of the ' Confederates ' — Twynn's case excep- 
 tional — Fate of the ' Confederates ' — Other severities — Methods of 
 secret publication — A widespread propaganda 95 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 PRESS LEGISLATION AND THE NEWSBOOK 
 
 The New Press Act — Novelties in the Act — Their far-reaching effect — 
 General futility of the Act — L'Estrange's (and other) criticisms — 
 Attempts to modify it — Considerations and Proposals — Atkyn's attack 
 on the Stationers — L'Estrange's conduct of the Netvshooh — His view of 
 news-mongering — General dissatisfaction with the Newsbook — The 
 Newsletter a serious rival — Intrigue of Williamson with Jas. Hickes of 
 the Post Office— The Plague and the Dxxtcla.— Newsbook relinquished by 
 L'Estrange — The Press and the Conventicles during the Plague . . 126 
 
 CHAPTER VI (1666-70) 
 STATE OF THE PRINTING HOUSES 
 
 Annus Mirdbilis the signal for a new growth of libels — Popish fears and 
 jealousies — Lampoons on the King — Satires on the conduct of the Dutch 
 War — Marvell's Advice to a Painter — Poor Whore's Petition — Trade 
 tracts — Their veiled attacks on the Church — Persecution renewed — 
 Contempt of the clergy — Narratives of the fire — Trap ad Crucem — 
 L'Estrange inactive 1666-8 — Catholic apologies — The Scotch plotters, 
 Pergusson, Forbes, Nesbit, in the city — L'Estrange recalled April 1668 
 — List of libels and his comments — Inquest of the printers 1668 and 
 1669 — Monopolists and the Universities — King intervenes — Temporary 
 lull — L'Estrange and the Stationers . 157 
 
 CHAPTER VII (1672-7) 
 L'ESTRANGE AND THE STATIONERS — LORDS' LIBEL COMMITTEE 
 
 The Quo Warranto, 1670 — Survey of the printing houses 1672— Inaction 
 1672-5 — Mearne and Frank Smith — Mearne and the Rehearsal Trans- 
 prosed — L'Estrange's authority disappears with the fall of Arlington — 
 Williamson appoints him one of his licensers, 6th February 1674-75 — 
 Oldenburg introduced, February 1675-6, as 'one of my deputies for 
 licensing ' — His failure — L'Estrange called in by Williamson in 1676 — 
 Misdemeanours of the stationers — The surveyor frustrated in his 
 attempted negotiations — Renewed quarrel with Mearne — Mearne's 
 history and honours — Accusation against the Stationers — Counter- 
 
CONTENTS xiii 
 
 PAGE 
 
 complaints against L'Estrange — His tyranny and exactions — 
 Prorogation libels and discovery by L'Estrange of Nat. Thompson's 
 midnight printing — Lords' Committee determined on a brief history 
 of its investigation — Quarrel between Stationers and L'Estrange comes 
 to a height 190 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE POPISH PLOT — FLIGHT OF L'ESTRANGE 
 
 The * Popish Plot ' by no means novel — Previous workings of the No-Popery 
 frenzy — Immediate effects on the Press — Popular manifestations — The 
 literature of the Plot — L'Estrange enters the field — His veiled attacks 
 on Gates — His confederates — Castlemaine and Mrs Collier — Clamour 
 for a Parliament — L'Estrange on ' Petitioning ' — Freeborn ETiglishman, 
 Further Discovery, and Discovery upon Discovery — Harry Care and 
 Ben Harris — The Whig Journals — Trial of Castlemaine — Position of 
 the Church — Citt and Bumpkin — Young Tonge's Sham Plot — 
 L'Estrange accused by Gates before the Council — Attacks in Parlia- 
 ment—Flight 222 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE OBSERVATOR AND THE WHIG JOURNALS 
 
 Exile in Edinburgh, and the Hague— Followed by reviling— Counterfeit 
 letter from Edinburgh— Votes of 10th January 1681 for relief of the 
 Dissenters — Reaction in favour of the Church — UEstrange's Sayings 
 provokes the first part of Dissenters' Sayings— The Oxford Parlia- 
 ment — King's Declaration — Observator started (21st April 1681) to 
 support Declaration — Comparison with Heraclitus Ridens — The Whig 
 journalists — Ben Harris and F. Smith — Robert Stephens, Messenger 
 of the Press — Petitions and addresses — Observator presented, August 
 1681— Death of Stephen Colledge— Trial of Shaftesbury— Loyal prentice 
 feasts 260 
 
 CHAPTER X (1682-4) 
 THE PRESS AND THE RYE HOUSE PLOT 
 
 Effect of severities — Trials of Colledge and Shaftesbury — Young Tonge 
 again — Prance — Persecution of Dissenters — French refugees — 
 L'Estrange's Apology for the Protestants — Habin the Informer — Trial 
 of Farwell and Nat. Thompson for ridiculing the 'Plot' — Sheriffs' 
 elections, 1682 — Hunt and Petyt — The Rye Hoiase Conspiracy — 
 Dissenting Clergy and the Plot — Forbes, Fergusson, Collins, and 
 Nesbit — Ambitions of the plotters — L'Estrange's services — As writer, 
 spy, and Magistrate — His allies on the Bench — Charles Hanse and 
 Graham and Burton — Katherine Menzies — Sam Starkey and Aaron 
 Smith — Various communications from L'Estrange to Jenkins — 
 Hartshorn and Eastwood — L'Estrange and the submission of Harry 
 Care — Spies' letters — Dejection of the Whigs — The Newsletter writers 
 examined 289 
 
 CHAPTER XI (1684-9) 
 THE WHIG DEBACLE 
 
 L'Estrange in three characters— Government spy on the city— Some letters 
 —Seizure of HoUoway— Last political trials of the reign— Their effect 
 
xiv CONTENTS 
 
 on public opinion — Death of Charles — L'Estiange the avenger of the 
 ' Plot ' victims — Gates and Prance since 1681 — Failing credit of their 
 ' Plot ' — The Observator's share in the disillusionment — Trial of Gates 
 for libel, 1684 — He complains of L'Estrange's attacks to the King and 
 Bancroft — Prance replies to the Observator — L'Estrange's History of the 
 Times — The Church and the French Refugees — L'Estrange and the 
 new Conformists — He attacks the Trimmers in the Church — Symthies — 
 Hughes — More attacks on the Observator — Observator Proved a Trimmer 
 — Elections for a new Parliament, March 1685 — L'Estrange elected for 
 Winchester — His position in the party — He loses the favour of the 
 Church— The Revolution 331 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 THE REVOLUTION 
 
 The Revolution — Various commitments — Private life — L'Estrange 
 dependent on the booksellers — Unhappiness of closing years — His 
 family — His translations — Theory of translation in vogue — L'Estrange 
 'a master of the English tongue' — His fellows — Earlier works — 
 Quevedo and Botm — Facetiae — Seneca, Cicero, and Erasmus — Post 
 — Revolution works — Educational view of his ^sop — Intruding politics 
 — Terence and Plautus — Tacitus his most wretched performance — The 
 Joseplius — Tributes of contemporaries — Eighteenth-century reaction 
 — Felton, Thompson, Johnson, Blair, Tytler, etc. — Continued popularity 
 of his translations — Modem editions and critics — Professor Earle and 
 the importance of L'Estrange's style — ' A war of declared barbarism ' — 
 Other views— The end 367 
 
 APPENDICES 
 
 L LIST OF L'ESTRANGE'S POLITICAL WORKS . . . .411 
 
 II. CHIEF SOURCES OP THE LIFE 419 
 
 III. THE TIMES PRINTING SUPPLEMENT, lOTH SEPTEMBER 1912, 
 AND THE IXTH VOL. OF THE CAMBRIDGE HISTORY OF 
 
 ENGLISH LITERATURE 431 
 
 INDEX 433 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE Frmtispi^ 
 
 From, the Portrait hy Knellke 
 
 FACSIMILE, TITLE-PAGE OF NO BUN BE GUIDES . To face p. 64 
 
 FACSIMILE, TITLE-PAGE OF CONSIDERATIONS 
 AND PROPOSALS IN ORDER TO THE 
 
 REGULATION OF THE PRESS . . . ,,130 
 
 A L'ESTRANGE PASQUIL ,,140 
 
 OLD STATIONERS' HALL ,,180 
 
 OLD ST PAUL'S, A HAUNT OP THE BOOKSELLERS . ,,192 
 
 OLD LONDON BRIDGE, A HAUNT OF THE BOOK- 
 SELLING FRATERNITY . . . . ,,198 
 
 POPE-BURNING PROCESSION, 17TH NOVEMBER 1679 ,, 224 
 
 POPERY IN MASQUERADE, 1679 ... ,,256 
 
 A POLITICAL CARTOON, 1680-1 . . . . ,,258 
 
 SEIZURE OF JUDGE JEFFRIES . . . . „ 368 
 
 XV 
 
SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 CHAPTEK I 
 
 INTRODUCTORY 
 EARLY CAVALIER DAYS 
 
 Sir Koger L'Estrange, whose career it is proposed to trace 
 in these pages, has left scarcely any private history. His 
 life almost more than that of any man of the second rank 
 in this age was monopolised by public affairs. Far from 
 discomfiting the historian, this circumstance is actually of 
 some value. For Eoger L'Estrange was neither a sufficiently 
 large person in public life, nor in private interesting enough 
 in himself to warrant the troubling of posterity with anything 
 approaching an intimate biography. His sole importance, 
 and the sole pretext for the present undertaking, is the fact 
 that, in a century when men lived stubbornly and clung to 
 affairs to the last, he took a part in almost every movement 
 of his time from the age of twenty-three to well-nigh eighty. 
 He is, moreover, identified at every stage with an interest 
 which is the occasion of this biography — the Press in the 
 seventeenth century. By following his career we may learn 
 more of this difficult subject than from a separate history 
 of the Stationers' Company. 
 
 As a cavalier he has a certain historic interest. As the 
 man entrusted with the tracking down of Titus Gates and 
 ' their Evidenceships ', he touches on the subject which Lord 
 Acton specially recommended to modern English historians. 
 As the most famous translator of his day, and one who still 
 finds his editors, he provides for the student of literature 
 a large field of enquiry. 
 
 1 A 
 
2 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 Roger L'Estrange was the third son of Sir Hamon 
 L'Estrange of Hunstanton Hall, Norfolk. He was born 
 on the 25th June 1616, educated privately at home so far 
 as we know, and at the usual age proceeded to Cambridge, 
 where he entered Sidney Sussex College ^ The learning 
 which he loved to display in his later years affords traces 
 of a less regular schooling, and in some respects more liberal, 
 than was perhaps to be obtained at the ordinary grammar 
 schools of the day 2. As many men have nourished great- 
 ness on Plutarch, so young L'Estrange drew wisdom from 
 Bacon and -^sop. 
 
 Music seems to have entered largely into his early 
 studies ^ and was destined to become a life passion — an 
 agreeable circumstance in a life singularly given to faction 
 and violence. 
 
 We have no trace of his career at Cambridge*, and 
 of his home life we know scarcely more. His mother, a 
 daughter and co-heir of Richard Stubbes, Esq., was a woman 
 of courage and wit. Her whimsical pen has provided the 
 historian of that part of the Civil War which relates to 
 East Anglia, with some piquant if pathetic notes on the 
 exactions of Parliamentary Commissioners ^ Her eldest 
 son Nicholas was also indebted to her for several of the 
 more innocent tales which appear in his collection of 
 anecdotes in the Harleian MSS.^. 
 
 The family boasted a respectable antiquity, for though 
 the popular derivation of the name — Extraneus — as applied 
 
 1 Opened in the year in which the Protector was born. Besides Cromwell 
 and L'Estrange, other distinguished graduates of this College were Thomas 
 Fuller, Bishop Wilson, of Sodor and Man, etc. See Several Weighty Quaeries 
 concerning Heraditus and the Observator in Dialogue — Quaerie 9 — 'whether 
 Sed. Coll. Camb. by sending the Observator into the world have yet fully 
 atoned for 0. Cromwell, who had his education there'. Dr Seth Ward, born 
 the year after L'Estrange, 1617, was also of this College. Wood [Clarice, Life 
 and Times,_ iii., 26) notices that he had been a student at Cambridge. 
 
 2 * He is a great scholar, being taught by his father'. L'Estrange a Papist, 
 February 1682. 
 
 3 ' At Hunstanton Jenkins must have been the teacher of Roger le Strange, son 
 of Sir Hamon'. Aidobiog. of Hon. Roger North, ed. Jessopp (1890), p. 78, 
 editor's note. As a musician Jenkins is described by North as ' that eminent 
 master of his time '. Ibid. 
 
 * Beyond an absurd story — Observator, i., 13 — of *a young fellow of 
 Cambridge that refused to receive the Sacrament because (as he told his master) 
 he was reconciled to the Church of Rome ', 
 
 5 Mr Alfred Kingston, East A nglia and the Civil War (1897), pp. 293-5. 
 
 6 Several ' from my brother Roger ' are also to be found there, but of these 
 only two or three are to be found in the Camden selection, q.v.. Anecdotes and 
 Traditions, ed. W. J. Thomas (1839). 
 
EARLY CAVALIER DAYS 3 
 
 to the Conquest is erroneous, and the original family 
 flourished several centuries under that name as Lords of 
 Limosin, there is scarcely a family in England which can 
 trace its origin more clearly to that event. Dugdale was 
 inclined to place them under the banner of the Dukes of 
 Bretagne at the incoming of the Normans, and hinted that 
 Guy, the first English L'Estrange, was a son of the French 
 Duke, but whilst amusing himself with the vision of what 
 they might have attained and enjoyed had that been the 
 case^, Blomefield's researches persuaded him that it was 
 as vassals of Alan Flaald, ancestor of the Arundels, that 
 the English L'Estranges both in Shropshire and Norfolk 
 entered England, 'and from him they owed all they 
 enjoyed '. 
 
 ' From what has been above-mentioned of the family ', 
 says the historian of Norfolk, 'it appears to be of great 
 antiquity and to have been possessed of the Lordship from 
 the beginning of the reign of Henry I. (if not before) 
 about 600 years, and that Guy the founder of it in 
 England was not a son of the Duke of Britain in France, 
 but came into England with Alan, son of Flaald, ancestor 
 of the Earls of Arundel'. 
 
 Taking Blomefield's date for the settling of the Norfolk 
 sept as fairly correct, the old manor house at Hunstanton 
 saw the passage of sixteen generations of L'Estranges 
 between the John L'Estrange who in 1173 rebelled with 
 Henry the Younger against Henry 11. and the Sir Hamon, 
 father of Roger, whose loyalty to Charles I. practically 
 beggared him and called forth Dame Alice's utmost economy 
 and occasional humorous murmurs. 
 
 At several other periods in these five centuries the 
 family distinguished itself in the service of the crown, and 
 if we find them rebels at the start, we find the grandson 
 of the rebel — a Hamon too — ' a person of great dignity 
 and eminency' in the forty-first and forty-ninth years of 
 Henry III. He was a stout adherent of the royal cause 
 against de Montfort, and his loyalty was rewarded with 
 
 1 B\ome&Gld, Jlistonj of Norfolk (1805), pp. 310-12: 'If this family had been 
 so nearly or any way related to the Dukes or Earls of Britain, what might they 
 not have enjoyed and been enfeofed of by Alan Rufus or Fergeant, Earl of 
 Britain, in France ? ' ' For my quality ', says Roger {Memento, 1662), ' I must inform 
 Mr Bagshawe that L'Estbangk has been in the same seat in Norfolk almost thrice 
 as long as Presbytery has been in the world '. 
 
4 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 the gift of numerous houses in London — all of which 
 disappear before the seventeenth century. 
 
 In the earlier part of Elizabeth's reign, when so many 
 Englishmen sought honour in the European wars, a Roger 
 L'Estrange won the friendship and esteem of the Emperor 
 Maximilian II., and the family preserved with natural pride 
 the patent which recommended him to the favour of Elizabeth, 
 and conferred a pension of 300 crowns on Rogerium Strangium 
 virum genere et nohilitate clarum quern vehementer aTrmmits 
 charumque hahemus. 
 
 When the Irish troubles broke out in the same reign 
 Nicholas L'Estrange was knighted in 1586 for signal service, 
 though we do not read of any grants of land, the usual 
 reward of Irish service. 
 
 Thus, despite a bad start, the L'Estranges appear on the 
 whole, and increasingly in later times, a family much attached 
 to the established powers, intermarrying with the numerous 
 gentry of East Anglia, Cheshire, and their own kinsmen of 
 Shropshire, families of similar principles, eminent for arms, 
 or scholarship, or merely for antiquity, and continuing that 
 strain of loyalty and local service which, despite detraction 
 and suspicion, undoubtedly signalised their conduct through- 
 out England's greatest crisis — the Civil Wars. 
 
 Hunstanton, the home of this family, has a situation at 
 a point where the Wash merges in the North Sea, which 
 aroused the phlegmatic Blomefield to a touch of enthusiasm. 
 Remarkable for its lofty cliff, 100 feet high (where still 
 stand the ruins of the ancient chapel of St Edmund) 'against 
 which the raging sea comes with such force and fury that it 
 is supposed to have gained by length of time a considerable 
 tract of land, about two miles, the headland looks straight 
 out into the German Ocean '. The house itself is pleasantly 
 situated. The work of various builders, it ' consists of an 
 oblong square ; before the front runs a pretty stream or 
 rivulet, walled on each side to preserve it clean and regular, 
 serving not only as an ornament, but as a moat or guard to 
 the house. Over this is a bridge leading to the gatehouse, 
 which, with the wings and buildings on each side, were 
 erected by Sir Roger L'Estrange in the reign of Henry VII. ' ^. 
 
 The L'Estranges had reason to be grateful to the Stuarts. 
 One of the earliest baronetcies bestowed by James I. went to 
 a L'Estrange of Hunstanton, while again in 1629 Charles I. 
 
 1 Memento, 1662. 
 
EARLY CAVALIER DAYS 5 
 
 similarly honoured Nicholas, elder brother of our author. 
 The father of Nicholas and Eoger was for many years High 
 Sheriff of Norfolk, a capacity in which we have glimpses of 
 his activity in the collection of fines for Composition of 
 Knight service. 
 
 It was as High Sheriff of his county that Sir Hamon 
 attended the Norfolk levy against the Scots in 1639. Roger 
 was then twenty - three, had probably just finished at 
 Cambridge, and now accompanied his father in that humili- 
 ating expedition which goes by the name of the Bishops 
 War ^. We know nothing of the movements of father or son, 
 but the extraordinary bitterness which tinges the remarks 
 of the latter on the subject of the Scots and this little war, 
 may be accounted for by what he saw on this occasion. 
 
 Mr Kingston, in the work already referred to, talking of 
 the younger L'Estrange's appearance at King's Lynn three 
 years later, hints at ' an already romantic career ' ^, Beyond 
 the rumours of enemies ^ we can find nothing of this, except 
 the solitary expedition to Scotland, which, far from being 
 romantic, was probably as sorry an outing as ever cavalier 
 experienced. 
 
 The fortunes of the house of L'Estrange in the Civil Wars 
 is bound up with those of the royal borough of King's Lynn. 
 
 This town lies some fourteen miles from Hunstanton. A 
 glance at its position on the Wash will explain the impor- 
 tance attached to it by the Parliamentary leaders. Carlyle's 
 description of it as ' a gangrene in the heart of the Associa- 
 tion '^ is not too strong language to describe the series of 
 troubles which were fomented within its walls. Open to the 
 sea and — owing to the state of the Fens — difficult of access 
 from the land, it looked across to Boston and Skegness, and 
 invited the aid of the cavaliers of Lincolnshire and the 
 
 1 Humble Apology to Olaroidon, 3rd December 1661, p. 4, 
 
 2 Hast Anglia, p. 184. 
 
 3 See The Loyal Ohstrvator, 1683 {Har. Misc., vol. vi.)— E. 1962-5. 
 
 '' Nolibs. — You see how he vapours of his forty years' service to the Crown, what 
 commands he had, how many thousand pounds he expended, what scars of honour 
 he received. You must note the gentleman was a younger brother (the scandal 
 of a worthy family who have long been ashamed of him), and so far from being 
 able to contribute to the royal cause, that during his youth Phil. Porter's plough 
 was his best maintenance. 
 
 * Ralph. — This is nothing to his personal gallantry ; perhaps he rescued the 
 standard at Edgehill, stormed towns as mountebanks, drew teeth with a touch, 
 wounded whole armies of rebels like Almanzor. 
 
 ^ Nobis. — No, no. Valour is none of his talents. He marches indeed equipped 
 with a sword, but it is only for ornament '. 
 
 4 Letters and Speeches of Cromwell (1850), i,, 227. 
 
6 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 attention of Newcastle from the north. The New Town, 
 divided by the Ouse from the more exposed Old Lynn, was 
 capable of a strong defence. The families in the neighbour- 
 hood, bound together by social ties, were predominantly 
 loyal. In its vacillating fortunes it resembled Crowland in 
 Lincoln — a Puritan town surrounded by a cavalier gentry. 
 While its ordinary magistrates were enflamed with zeal for 
 Parliament, they were overawed by the zealous royalism of 
 the neighbouring landed families, among whom there were 
 not a few staunch Catholics. 
 
 At the beginning of the war Lynn was held for Parlia- 
 ment. To provide for its defence brass cannons were brought 
 from London, its walls were strengthened, and the services of 
 Christian, an engineer of some skill, requisitioned to direct 
 the work. 
 
 At the same time, following the example of Col. 
 Cromwell not far distant, Capt. Slaney exercised the 
 Parliamentary volunteers in the market-place, much to the 
 disgust of the gentry alluded to. In this he was aided by 
 the two stout Puritan members for the borough, Messrs 
 Toll and Percival, who, by the general example of the 
 Commons, came down to assist the magistrates in holding 
 the stronghold for Parliament. The two godly ministers of 
 the place, Arrowsmith and Thoroughgood — whose quality is 
 vouched for by the fact that they both found a place in the 
 Westminster Assembly of Divines — leant their by no means 
 despicable aid in inciting the townsfolk to do their duty. 
 Mayor Gurlin was a strong anti-Parliamentarian, in which 
 persuasion he was opposed by his fellow-counsellors, among 
 whom May and Hudson were most prominent. 
 
 It is not to be supposed that the neighbouring loyalists 
 looked on these preparations with indifference, or that they 
 were powerless to raise up a party for the King, even within 
 the walls of Lynn and in the Council. Dame Alice's 
 book shows a perfect correspondence between Lynn and 
 Hunstanton, and the frequent expenses of the disguises 
 adopted by the knight in entering the town are carefully 
 noted, besides more ominous storing of barrels of gun- 
 powder ^ Sir Hamon and his three sons, Sir Chas. 
 
 1 This is for July 1643, a month before the coiip. What with messenger and 
 spy service, munitions, and disguises for ' Mr L'Estrange to avoid the troopers ', a 
 considerable amount must have been expended before Lynn was seized. Kingston, 
 p. 274. 
 
EARLY CAVALIER DAYS 7 
 
 Mordaunt, Lord Allington, Sir Eobt. Grey de Wark, and 
 the Catholic family of the Pastons, formed a powerful party 
 without and within, and only awaited the turn in affairs 
 which should make a successful attack possible and profitable. 
 
 This turn came with the spring of 1643 when the 
 magnificent forays of Viscount Camden on the eastern 
 border of the Association terrorised the whole country 
 south of the Wash and even London. The movement 
 spread into Lincoln which was held on much the same 
 uneasy tenure as the northern parts of Norfolk. Crowland 
 — described by Vicars as ' a scurvy Dunkirk to the Parlia- 
 ment both by land and water too ' — was taken, and with it 
 such an extension of the King's party in South Lincoln 
 became possible as made it imperative for Cromwell despite 
 the local and shortsighted obstinacy of the other elements 
 of the Association, to advance to the relief of the strong- 
 hold, and thus drain Norfolk and Cambridge of Parlia- 
 mentary forces. 
 
 This gave the Lynn faction the opportunity which they 
 were not slow to seize. Lynn was taken or betrayed by a 
 party within her walls, her magistrates and clergy — at least 
 the more refractory — imprisoned by order of Sir Hamon 
 who now assumed the command for the King^, This 
 happened in August and was followed almost immediately 
 by the news of Cromwell's success at Crowland and the 
 brilliant rout of the Cavaliers in the affair at Gainsborough 
 which historians take to be one of the most critical in the 
 war. Three weeks passed before Parliament could under- 
 take the recapture of Lynn, and the interval was used by 
 Sir Hamon to store the town with ammunition, largely 
 paid out of his own purse — a serious drain on an already 
 embarrassed treasury '\ 
 
 The ships in the harbour, mounted with culverins, were 
 regarded as an important item of defence despite the news 
 that Warwick with the Parliamentary fleet was on his way 
 to the scene of war. But the Old Town beyond the Ouse 
 was scarcely held seriously. The Town Hall and Market 
 Square became the centre of the royalist defence. Certain 
 alms-houses — afterwards the cause of much vexatious action 
 against the old knight — were pulled down to assist the 
 defence. Besides the ship cannon. Sir Hamon boasted, 
 
 1 Barrington MSS. {Egerton, 2647, f. 138). 
 
 8 See the accounts already referred to ; Kingston, ^. 294. 
 
8 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 according to one account \ 40 pieces of ordnance, 1,200 
 muskets, and 500 barrels of gunpowder. 
 
 That Lynn was regarded as of first importance by both 
 sides is shown by the dispositions made for its recovery, 
 and by the attention it attracted in these months of August 
 and September. As the weeks passed, the Oxford loyal 
 journal, Mercurms Aulicus, anxiously praised the defence. 
 Vicars ^ raised a song of delight when the * brave town ' at 
 length capitulated after a six weeks' siege, while on the 
 failure of Roger's attempt in December following, Rush- 
 worth, Vicars, and Whitlocke consumed several pages in an 
 exhaustive account of that adventure. Its recovery indeed 
 had for Parliament as much importance as a critical bye- 
 election to a Government, for in the West in these months 
 several towns had been lost, and ' being a most impregnable 
 place ', writes Vicars, ' by natural situation and a maritime 
 or sea-town which having in it a most brave shipharbour . . . 
 it was at that time a mighty and only interruption of the 
 noble Earl of Manchester's opposing of Newcastle's Popish 
 army in those northern parts ' ^. 
 
 The hope of the besieged and the dread of the besiegers 
 was that relief might come from Newcastle by sea. Capt. 
 Poe, who was skirmishing around with some Essex troops 
 before Manchester came up, wrote to Parliament, that 'if 
 relief from the sea can be prevented they can't hold out 
 more than 5 days although they have 40 pieces of ordnance 
 and can get more from their ships ' *. 
 
 In the third week of August, Manchester with 3,000 
 horse and 1,500 foot — many of them however of the 
 bad Essex levies — Cromwell and Hobart sat down before 
 the place, while Warwick completed the blockade from 
 the sea. Cromwell's share in the action was confined to 
 the earlier stages, and after taking part in the storming 
 of the Old Town^, the rest being merely a matter of 
 
 1 Capt. Voe—Barrington MS. quoted by Mr Kingston {Egerton, 2647, f. 138), 
 19th August 1643 — 'marvels very much considering of how great consequence 
 that Town is, and the people that are in it being the chief malignants and 
 recusants in all these parts ', that there are ' no forces more raised by the 
 Association '. 
 
 ^ Burning Bush Not Consumed. 
 
 " Ood in the Mount, p. 413. Mercvrius AuKcus has similar confident refer- 
 ences to its strength. See p. 476, Tuesday, 29th August, 
 
 4 Barrington MS., quoted above, 
 
 5 Mercurius Aulicus 3rd September, p. 488 — Manchester sustains many 
 losses ; 15th September, p. 514 — Old Lynn is taken. 
 
EARLY CAVALIER DAYS 9 
 
 waiting, he hurried off to a more anxious scene — that of 
 his recent victories in Lincolnshire, where once more the 
 King's party had taken advantage of the Lynn distraction 
 and the drain on the Parliament in the west, to seize 
 Crowland and South Lincoln, now once more wholly in 
 their hands, much to the satisfaction of Mercurius 
 Aidicus. 
 
 ' Shortly after, also nearly about the 14th " September 
 1 643 ', says Vicars ^ ' came certain intelligence to London 
 that the brave and strong town of Lynn-Regis, in the county 
 of Norfolk, which had been besieged for about the space of 
 a month by the noble and as virtuous as valiant E. of 
 Manchester, and having been surrounded both by sea and 
 by land, and much infested by our ordnance from old Lynn 
 and utterly hopeless of relief by that impious Popish Earl 
 of Newcastle, and then at last brought into much danger 
 and distress every way and fearing now at last a terrible 
 storming of the Town (which, indeed, was firmly resolved 
 on), . . . they therefore resolved to surrender upon fair 
 quarter and satisfaction'. 
 
 Vicar's 50 piece of ordnance and 20 barrels of gun- 
 powder taken, is rather at issue with Capt. Poe's 600 
 barrels, etc., unless we take it that an extraordinary 
 amount had been used — which seems unlikely, for there 
 was no storm. The excess may have been destroyed, all or 
 most coming out of the pocket of the Squire of Hunstanton. 
 
 The terms of surrender, which Vicars hints at, and the 
 means by which they were vexatiously evaded are interest- 
 ing and typical of what happened in a hundred like cases 
 on both sides. They also explain the impoverishment of 
 a noble house and illustrate the local feuds which more 
 than pitched battles are the special scourge of civil war. 
 Manchester had permitted Sir Hamon and his forces to 
 march out, as Vicars says, on fair terms, and to disperse 
 themselves where they saw fit. Young Roger reported him- 
 self with many others at Newark ^, and ultimately drifted to 
 Oxford on the delusive scheme we are presently to describe. 
 The old knight retired to Hunstanton and in Mr Kingston's 
 words ' tried hard not to offend Parliament '. We shall find 
 
 ^ Ood in the Mount, p. 412. See Charles Parkin's History of Lynn (1762), for 
 a map of Lynn and a list of mayors. 
 
 2 Observator, June 1684, vol. ii. No. 80, and Humble Apology to Clarendon, 
 p. 4. 
 
10 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 that he did offend Parliament so late as 1648 by a very 
 modest entertainment of some escaped loyalist prisoners in 
 that year \ But in the meanwhile the account books of the 
 Lady Alice show not only the regular draining of the wealth 
 of the Association for maintaining the war, but also how the 
 process of impoverishment of royalist estates went on, and 
 how hard it was when a rich man had once offended against 
 Parliament so openly as Sir Hamon had done, to ' purge ' 
 himself and his estate of that offence. The order of 2nd May 
 1643 — among others — for seizing houses, goods, and chattels 
 and malignants in the Eastern Association was sufficient 
 warrant for almost any spoliation, but there were other 
 irregular assessments which came particularly severe on 
 ' unpurged ' cavaliers. In Dame Alice's book we find heavy 
 levies for Sir Thos. Fairfax, for the Eastern Association, 
 to ' the rate for all garrisons ', ' for the reducing of Newark ', 
 ' money for the Skotts ', which Sir Hamon paid not only for 
 Hunstanton, but for his estates at Heacham, Eingstead, and 
 Sedgeford. 
 
 When added to these came the claims of the worthy 
 magistrates of Lynn, and for special damages from the 
 members for the borough — and their wives — whom Sir Hamon 
 had been obliged to imprison during the siege, we can 
 understand the bitterness that invades his and his son's 
 mind. And when on 9th December 1643 an order of the 
 House came down setting up the very claimants and 
 enemies as assessors of the damages they claimed, it 
 appeared that Parliament did not scruple to repudiate 
 solemn engagements entered into by her generals in the 
 field. The order has been preserved in Husband's Collections ^, 
 
 1 H.M.Q., 7th Appendix to 11th Eeport, p. 103, 9th October 1648. Sir 
 Hamon L'Estrange ' understands that Toby Pedder (whom he has not made chief 
 constable to repay him with malice and ingratitude) has given information con- 
 cerning some clandestine favours shown by him to some soldiers of the King's 
 party lately landed at Heacham '. 
 
 2 Historical Collections, p. 396, 9th December 1643. An order for giving 
 satisfaction to the well-affected of King's Lynn : ' Forasmuch as the E, of 
 Manchester in his articles of agreement with the town of King's Lynn remitted 
 their offence in reference to himself and his army while he lay before the town, 
 but touched upon no private injuries done by the Malignants to the well-affected 
 ... it is ordered that Col. Walton, Governor of K. L. , Master Percivall, and 
 Master Toll, M.P.'s, shall examine what damage hath been done . . . and have 
 power to sequestrate so much of their estates and assign it to those that have 
 been damnitied'. Worse still is the direct repudiation of November 1651. 'It 
 does not appear after search in the Records of Parlt. 1643-9 that these articles 
 were ever confirmed '. E.M.C., 7th App. to 11th Rept., p. 104. 
 
EARLY CAVALIER DAYS 11 
 
 and has a pathetic counterpart in several entries iXi Dame 
 Alice's book ^. 
 
 May 1644 — paid to Toll and wife for imprisonment . £50 
 
 „ 1645 — paid to May, Wormell, &c., for their pretended 
 
 losses . 225 11 
 
 As to the awards of the Commissioners mentioned in 
 the note below, we find two significant entries: — 
 
 Aprill4, 1645— (1) To the town of Lynn for the Town 
 Houses that were pulled down, and 
 the governors took away all the 
 materials, yet by his order we pay . £95 13 10 
 (2) To Mr May, Mayor of Lynn, upon an 
 unjust order made by Mr Miles 
 Corbet, Mr Valentine Walton, Gover- 
 nor of Lynn, for the pretended loss 
 sustained as they falsely suggest, by 
 the command of Sir Hamon himself 47 13 4 
 
 The last - named damage was probably the work of 
 Manchester's artillery ^. 
 
 Sufficient is here detailed to show that L'Estrange had 
 peculiar reason twenty years after for publishing in his 
 Reformation Reformed^ a complete list of Parliamentary 
 orders and sequestrations out of Scobel and Husband. 
 When we are inclined to judge his undying bitterness 
 harshly, we should remember the treatment meted out to 
 his family. Such considerations determined him on the 
 next adventure which so nearly cost him his life, and from 
 slanderous accounts of which he had to defend himself at 
 intervals during the next forty years. 
 
 The game of hide-and-seek played by the cavalier gentry 
 of Lincoln and Norfolk between Crowland and Lynn gives 
 those two strongholds a measure of their importance. We 
 saw that Cromwell had to take off the horse in the later 
 stages of the siege of Lynn, and carry them into Lincoln, 
 which was almost lost to the Parliament by movements 
 determined largely by affairs in the West. On 5th October 
 
 1 EastAnglia, p. 296. 
 
 2 Order to pay 18th March 1645 [Reports^ Commissioners, 34, p. 182), the total 
 sum £267, Is. 6d. to be divided between Major Gurlyn, Sir Hamon and Robt. 
 Clench, ' it having been shewn that (they) did unjustly command certain houses 
 and walls in S. Lynn to be pulled down and demolished '. The payment noted by 
 Dame Alice is the half the L'Estrange share. See Husband's Collections, p. 396. 
 
12 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 Crowland had fallen to the King's party, and four days 
 later Manchester, having left Col. Walton in charge of 
 Lynn with some discontented and ill -paid Essex levies, 
 joined Cromwell in that series of sharp engagements which 
 regained Lincoln, but left Crowland desperately obdurate 
 in cavalier hands. The prisoners taken in Lincoln were 
 taken to Lynn, thus creating a hope which a certain Capt. 
 Thos. Leoman communicated' to young L'Estrange at 
 Oxford, where he had drifted from Newark as a volunteer 
 in Major Cartwright's troop i. 
 
 In these circumstances Leoman, who had previously 
 taken the Covenant, approached our hero ^ with a project 
 which did little credit to the cunning of either, unless, as 
 is suggested by Vicars, the covenanting captain was traitor 
 from the beginning ^. 
 
 Besides the evidence handed in at the Court-Martial, we 
 have various accounts of this affair. How singularly Roger 
 was left to make his own defence then and after, is shown 
 by the fact that we have only his own story to set against 
 half a dozen hostile accounts. 
 
 The one piece of evidence which was incapable of being 
 contorted was his precious commission * signed by ' apostate 
 Digby ', for the King, the result of L'Estrange's importunacy 
 at Oxford. 
 
 As to the other circumstances, especially those relating 
 to Leoman, his enemies were divided between the desire 
 
 1 Lords' Journals, vii., 119a. 
 
 2 The Court- Martial ' certificate ' demanded by the Lords says nothing of 
 Leoman apj)roaching L'Estrange at Oxford, and makes the seduction entirely 
 Roger's affair at Lynn — an important point. 
 
 3 Hardly likely in the absence of personal malice so far as we know. Roger's 
 own explanation — he did not know of Leonian's having taken the Covenant — that 
 the fall of Crowland in the first week of December and a week or so after the date 
 of his commission, determined Leoman to play the traitor, seems far likelier. 
 That the cavalier was ' gulled by a dull roundhead ' is but too evident. 
 
 4 E. 21 (31), quoted in full ; Kingston's East Anglia, p. 184 ; Rushworth, 1692 
 ed., vi., 804. Dated 28th November 1644, Charles Rex — After the preamble 
 referring to ' our well-affected subjects of our country of Norfolk and Suffolk 
 and particularly of our Town of Lynn ', and ' our trusty and well-beloved Roger 
 L'Estrange ' the terms of the Commission run : — 
 
 (1) That in case that attempt should be gone through withal, he, the said 
 Roger L'Estrange, shall have the government of the place. 
 
 (2) That what engagement shall be made unto the inhabitants of the said place 
 or any other person capable of contributing effectually to that service, by way of 
 reward, either in employment in His Majesty's Navy or Forts, or money not 
 exceeding the sum of £5,000, the service being performed shall be punctually 
 made good unto them. 
 
 (3) That they shall in this work receive what assistance may be given tiiem 
 from any of our nearest garrisons. 
 
EARLY CAVALIER DAYS 13 
 
 to make the chief figure in the fiasco a ridiculous meddler, 
 and to render him base, as one who extorted a commission 
 from 'the good King' by false pretences. In any case he 
 was the veriest gull of ' a brace of blackguards '. 
 
 'About November 1644', says one hostile account^, *the 
 Town of Lynn being in the rebels' hands, the gentleman you 
 wot of, pretending abundance of interest there (when indeed 
 he had none at all), procured a commission from His Majesty 
 to reduce it, graciously promising him the government of 
 the Town, if he could affect it, and payment of all rewards 
 he should promise not exceeding £5,000, &c. The hair- 
 brained undertaker could think of no other way to reduce 
 it, but by sending for one Capt. Leoman of Lynn (one 
 that had taken the Covenant and a known zealot for 
 the rebels' cause), to a papist's house 2 or 3 miles off 
 and very discreetly blunders out the business, shows him 
 his commission, promises him £1,000 and other preferments 
 if he would betray the Town 2, adding that " the King did 
 value the surprising of that town at half his crown ", a 
 very likely tale. Leoman, perceiving what a weak tool he 
 had to deal with seems to comply ; but the same night 
 acquaints Col. Walton and (according to promise) meets 
 our skulking town-taker next day, but carried with him 
 a corporal in seaman's habit, to whom he also frankly 
 showed his commission. 
 
 ' In the meantime Lieutenant Stubbing and five soldiers 
 habited like seamen came from Lynn to the house, and 
 then the disguised corporal seizes our gallant undertaker, 
 who tamely surrenders both his person and his com- 
 mission ' ^. 
 
 Vicars' account, which is, with certain additions, sub- 
 stantially the same as that given in Rush worth*, adds to 
 the promises that ' within 10 days after certain notice that 
 the Town was reduced, his Majesty would send a sufficient 
 
 1 Tlie Loyal Observator, printed by W. Hammond, 1683 {Har. Misc., vol, vi.). 
 
 - Burning Bush Not Coiisumed, pp. 78-80. Probably a gloss on the last promise 
 in L'Estrange's commission : ' When our said Town shall be reduced ... we 
 shall forthwith send thither such a considerable power as shall be sufficient to 
 relieve and preserve them '. 
 
 ^ We need scarcely refer to Harry Care's slander to the effect that Roger was 
 taken in Lynn whilst on a visit to his mistress. Observator, i., 61. 
 
 ■* Rush worth, vi., 804-8. The latter adds that Roger was taken to London 
 on 19th December, 'brought to the door of the House of Commons, and com- 
 mitted to the Provost-Marshall, and this Ordinance (reference to Court-Martial) 
 made concerning him '. 
 
14 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 power to their relief, and that those forces should be under 
 the command of Lord Goring '. 
 
 In his defence Roger made it a strong point that Leoman 
 was not of the enemy, and that Hagar — the other of the 
 ' brace of villains ' — though one of the garrison, represented 
 himself as, if we may trust Vicars here, ' a poor man living 
 in Fisher's End in Lynn and kept an alehouse, that he 
 was £40 the worse for the Roundheads'. 
 
 There are other circumstantial details in Vicars and 
 Rushworth, as that of the arrival at the lonely house of 
 the five disguised soldiers ^ 'apparelled like ship -broken 
 men, who, banging to the door, and somewhat boldly getting 
 within the courtyard of the said house, being so ordered 
 by the Governor, who, as soon as they were up to the door 
 of the house, the gentlewoman of the house came running 
 up to Mr Strange and told him there were 6 or 7 poor 
 soldiers come from Lynn begging. Mr S. presently sent 
 them down a shilling and wished them to be gone, and 
 Mrs Paston went down to bar the door, which Capt. 
 Leoman seeing winked upon the said corporal then present 
 to lay hold on Mr S., which instantly done he gave a stamp 
 with his foot by which the lieutenant knew what he had 
 to do, whereupon Mr S. seeing he was betrayed, conveyed 
 his commission to Capt. Leoman (out of the frying-pan 
 into the fire), then the lieutenant, not taking notice of the 
 person of the Capt. as known to him, or on set purpose 
 to ensnare S. did first attack Mr S. as an enemy to the 
 Commonwealth and demanded his name, which he refused 
 to tell ; then he required his business, but he denied to 
 have any, etc.'. 
 
 The points in dispute in the various stories are so trifling 
 and the case so complete, that the judge-advocate at the 
 trial produced no witnesses, relying for a conviction on the 
 cavalier's own story. 
 
 This trial by Court-Martial was ordered by Parliament, 
 and whilst the Court had, no doubt, the ordinary powers 
 of such courts, its commission was defined by certain articles 
 which made no direct mention of spies — a circumstance 
 which opened the smallest loop - hole to the distressed 
 cavalier. So his demand for the authority of the Court to 
 try him was met by the production of the Parliamentary 
 
 ^ Vicars, ihid. 
 
EARLY CAVALIER DAYS 15 
 
 order ^ His appeal to honourable precedents, his absurd 
 contention that he was not taken within the enemy's lines, 
 were items of a gallant but futile defence. 
 
 Some contradictions appear in his own later narratives. 
 The first day of the trial was the 26th December, when 
 he declares he asked for some time to prepare his defence. 
 Yet in the same breath he complains that the trial was 
 not concluded the same day because it was perceived that 
 a majority of the Court was friendly. 
 
 On the 28th — exactly a month from the date of his ill- 
 starred commission — the Judge-Advocate having meanwhile 
 been changed from Sir John Corbet, who was friendly, to 
 the hated Dr Mills, and the Court having been augmented 
 or packed '^, Roger's elaborate defence was refused a hearing, 
 and at 11 o'clock at night the Court brought him in guilty. 
 He was condemned to death by hanging — the date fixed 
 being 2nd January, the day on which the Hothams suffered 
 and the authority of the Court expired. 
 
 In regard to this trial it should be observed that the 
 Court was not an ordinary Court - MartiaP, but specially 
 appointed by Parliament with fixed articles to deal with 
 a batch of exceptional treasons which were symptomatic 
 of the doubts and uncertainties of this year. The most 
 outstanding of these was that of the Hothams, father and 
 
 1 Order of House, 19th December, communicated to the Court - Martial, 
 21st December, Lords' Journals, vii., 107« : 'that Mr Roger L'Estrange be 
 referred to the Commission for Martial Law to be speedily proceeded with accord- 
 ing to the course of Martial Law, for being taken with a commission from the 
 King for delivery of the Town of Lynn to the King and endeavouring accordingly 
 to do it '. The reason for haste was that the commission expired on 2nd January. 
 See his Appeal from the Court- Martial to Parliament, 7th April 1647, E. 385 (21). 
 
 Judge- Advocate. — 'We proceed only upon his own confession, and there being 
 no witnesses against him, we take the case as he hath set it forth. The gentle- 
 man might have saved a labour and not limited the power of the Court, for they 
 proceed upon a Law common betwixt the enemy and us '. 
 
 2 ' I was (in effect) tried by one Committee and sentenced by another '. Truth 
 and Loyalty, p. 38, and Appeal from the Conrt-Martial to Parliament. 
 
 3 Husband's Collections, p. 29. Appointed after many conferences between 
 the Houses 16th August of this year, its commission to run for four months. 
 Its powers, therefore, expired, as Mills explained, on 2nd January. L'Estrange 
 was wrong when he said none of the articles of their commission touched him. 
 The second certainly did. As to the Court, twelve of the commissioners, three 
 of whom must be officers, and one Sir Nat. Brent, formed a quorum. Among 
 L'Estrange's friends in the Court were Northumberland, Sir Edward Baynton 
 (to whom in his Apology (1660) he appealed as to the truth of his account of the 
 Court-Martial trial), and Sir John Corbet. ' I never believed Sir John Corbet 
 my enemy, and so I leave his name as fair as I found it ' {Appeal from Court- 
 Mariial). Sir John Evelyn in the House seems to have been friendly too. 
 Lords' Journals, vi., 119«. 
 
16 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 son, who had not L'Estrange's fortune to find a strong 
 party in the House to intervene between judgment and 
 the scaffold. 
 
 It was natural for L'Estrange to make the most of his 
 case, but he probably had in mind an exact parallel in that 
 of Robt. Yeoman, executed in the spring of 1643 by sentence 
 of Court - Martial at Gloucester for an attempt on Bristol. 
 Yeoman, too, had one of those commissions which Digby 
 scattered around, and George Teage played the part of 
 Leoman in the piece. There had been the same lurking 
 about, and attempts to seduce men from the other party. 
 There were later examples as that of Sir Alexander Carew 
 and the attempt to betray Plymouth. The setting up 
 of the Court at Guildhall in August 1643 was the result 
 of the angry feeling aroused in Parliament by the 
 frequency of these Royal Commissions which we must 
 admit with the Judge-Advocate to be wholesale bribes to 
 treachery ^. 
 
 There were, besides the order of the 18th August 
 establishing the special Court - Martial, several orders of 
 the House, one as recent as 18th October, and one of the 
 10th April which laid down in the clearest possible manner 
 that ' whatsover person shall come from Oxford or any part 
 of the King's army to London or the parts adjacent, or to 
 any part of the army under the command of the Earl of 
 Essex, etc., without the warrant of both Houses of Parlia- 
 ment, or of the Lord-General the Earl of Essex, shall be 
 apprehended as spies and intelligencers, and proceeded 
 against according to the rules of war'. 
 
 The extraordinary thing is that L'Estrange was able to 
 raise any sympathy with his case. He says — and we have 
 no reason to doubt his word — ' that his summary treatment 
 was much resented by members of Parliament and officers 
 who happened to be in Town,' — that the latter threatened 
 wholesale resignations. Their action was doubtless dictated 
 
 1 Vicars, ihid., p. 78 : * About the 18th of this month (December) we received 
 certain knowledge of divers plots and treacherous designs of the enemy for the 
 betraying of several towns and strongholds.' The places enumerated are Stafford, 
 Dover Castle, Abington ('wherein Major-General Brown most bravely befooled 
 that furious spark and glittering glo-w-worm of Oxonian wit and base treachery 
 apostate Digby'), Reading, Aylesbury, Plymouth, 'all these about the same 
 time'. For the case of Abington and Digby's attempt to seduce Brown from 
 his loyalty, see Rushworth, vi., 808, and the other side in Mcrcurim Aulimcs 
 for 30th December 1644, p. 1322. No mention of L'Estrange's case is made in 
 Mercurius Aulicus. 
 
/ 
 
 EARLY CAVALIER DAYS 17 
 
 in the first case by a natural dread of reprisals and on the 
 part of the high persons who moved in the affair, by local 
 ties and respect for an ancient family, and possibly also 
 by that circumstance which the condemned himself pleaded 
 — his youth. 
 
 Late as the hour was when Roger received sentence, he 
 retired to his prison to write certain remarkable letters. 
 His hopes now lay with Essex and the King. In his budget 
 to the former accompanying a letter of intercession^, he 
 enclosed : — 
 
 1. A petition to Essex which states that 'He is con- 
 demned to death under the article which condemns to 
 death any one who attempts to betray a town to the enemy ; 
 he cannot understand how this article can refer to him who 
 has ever been of the King's party '. 
 
 2. A printed copy of his commission. 
 
 3. His defence, which is in brief — that there are many 
 honourable precedents for his attempt on Lynn. This was 
 a copy of the paper he threw among his judges when they 
 would not hear him. 
 
 To the King at Oxford he sent the same night a similar 
 plea, the answer to which, dated Oxon, 1st January, must 
 have come too late 2, but for a final appeal which he 
 addressed to the Lords on the last day of December. 
 
 Prince Eujpert to the Earl of Essex. 
 
 ' Oxon, 1st January 1644. 
 
 ' My Lord, — The occasion of my sending unto you at this 
 time is the Report of one Mr Roger L'Estrange, his being 
 condemned to death at London upon a charge of having 
 undertaken somewhat for the reducing Lynn to his 
 Majesty's obedience. If the person be found guilty of any 
 treachery as having been engaged anywise on your side, 
 I shall not interfere. But if not I should be very sorry 
 that any bloody examples should be begun at this season 
 
 1 H.M.C., App. to 6th Rept. — Calendar of House of Lords — pp. 38a, 39a. 
 See also Ohservator, ii. , 80, for L'Estrange's version. 
 
 2 The Hothams v/ere executed at 9 on the morning of 2nd January. Rupert's 
 despatch could not reach Essex till late on the night of 1st January. There was 
 then no time for the conference which must have taken place, and Essex was 
 scarcely likely to act alone in the known temper of the Commons. Rushworth 
 (vi., 808), however, mentions the timely appearance of a trumpeter from Oxford. 
 
 B 
 
18 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 contrary to that fair quarter which hath hitherto been 
 observed on his Majesty's part in this unhappy war ^. For 
 a particular conclusion of which no man prays more 
 heartily than — Your Lordship's servant, 
 
 'RUPERT'. 
 
 Meanwhile his life hung on the petition to the Lords of 
 the 31st December 2, and here we see something of the 
 violent struggle which in the case of the Hothams^ 
 terminated fatally at Tower Hill on 2nd January and in 
 L'Estrange's case was at last successful. 
 
 The Commons as was natural were the more rigorous, 
 and had on the morning of the 31st adopted their usual 
 plan of deferring all private business for ten days. 
 
 ' Upon my Appeal \ says L'Estrange *, ' the Lords ordered 
 a reprieve and that the judge-advocate (Dr Mills) should 
 bring up my charge to that House; Mills appeared, but 
 excused himself as to the charge of want of time to draw 
 it up. But it should be ready in two days. What (says 
 one of the Lords) is the gentleman condemned to die and 
 his charge not yet drawn up ? You don't intend to execute 
 him in the interim? My Lord (says Mills) the warrant 
 is out for his execution to-morrow. How dare you do this 
 (says a noble Lord) when this House has reprieved him 
 till further order ? My Lord (says he) I have an order from 
 the Commons that no reprieve shall he alloived without consent 
 of both Rouses. Hereupon the Lords demanded a conference 
 and with much ado obtained it ; but upon the first mention 
 of my name, the Commons interposed that the House had 
 that morning passed a vote, that no private business should 
 be moved for 10 days. So that I was hampered both ways 
 — First the Lords alone could not save me, and secondly the 
 Commons would not join with them ; but however (after a 
 violent struggle), I was reprieved for 14 days and from 
 
 1 ' Prince Rupert', says Sir Sidney Lee (art. L'Estrange, Diet, of Nat. Biog.) 
 quoting Boy er, Aniuds, iii., 242, 'is said to have informed Essex that he con- 
 templated reprisals if L'Estrange were executed'. No doubt the passage in 
 Rupert's letter quoted above was responsible for the rumour. 
 
 2 The terms of the Petition are excused by his condition, at 27 ' adjudged to 
 die the most ignominious death ; prostrating at their Lordships' feet (he) most 
 humbly implores their Lordships' mercy that he may not be cut off in the prime 
 of his youth, but live to do God and his country service hereafter '. Lards' Joii/rnals, 
 vii., 188a. 
 
 ^' There had been trouble between the Houses over the reprieve for fourteen days 
 of the elder Hotham. See Oldmixon, i., 270. 
 
 4 See Appeal from the Court-Martial (1647), and Humble Apology to Clarendon, 
 The Appeal was reprinted in Tndh and Loyalty Vindicated (1662), p. 38. 
 
EARLY CAVALIER DAYS 19 
 
 then till further order I must not forget what I owed to 
 his Sacred Majesty, upon the whole matter, whose letter to 
 the General, by the hand of his Highness Prince Rupert 
 threatening a revenge if they took any other course with 
 me than according to the ordinary rules of war, was highly 
 instrumental to my preservation ' ^. 
 
 The noble friends in the House of Lords to whom 
 L'Estrange was chiefly indebted were Northumberland and 
 Stamford, while in the Commons, where his case was most 
 desperate Sir Henry Cholmondely, Sir John Corbet, Sir 
 Edward Baynton, and probably Sir John Evelyn, were 
 gratefully remembered. Nor was a word of thanks lacking 
 to some of the other side. Somewhere between his con- 
 demnation and his reprieve, he was visited by two ghostly 
 advisers and quondam enemies Messrs Arrowsmith and 
 Thoroughgood, both 'of the synod', i.e., the Westminster 
 Assembly, the former now curate in Lynn in place of the 
 malignant displaced in 1 643, and the latter Mayor of Lynn 
 in 1652. These men came to him in New Prison with offers 
 of life — though in exile — if he would take the Covenant 2. 
 Though he honourably declined, it would be pleasing and 
 not improbable to think of these worthy men, and perhaps 
 members Toll and Percivall as among the commoners who 
 sided with mercy in that ' violent struggle '. 
 
 Against the other actors in the scene and especially 
 against Tichborne and the man who sentenced him, Dr 
 Mills, he nourished a natural hatred, and when in early 
 Restoration days it appeared that the principle of vae 
 vidis was to be discouraged, Dr Mills as Chancellor of the 
 Bishopric of Norwich offered a target for the indignant 
 Cavalier. Tichborne — and on other grounds as well — he 
 detested ^. Among a mountain of Restoration petitions 
 for restitution and damages we find that of Roger L'Estrange 
 praying 'that his remedy at law against Robert Tichborne 
 and others may be specially excepted out of the Act of 
 Oblivion ' *. 
 
 1 Bumble Apology to Clarendon. This version is confirmed by the account. 
 Lords' Jotmials, pp. 118a and 119a. In his notes to Hudihras 1744, Zachary Grey 
 could not resist the temptation to include Roger's hard usage among instances 
 of Commonwealth justice, i., 395. 
 
 2 Obsercatar, June 1684, ii. , 80. 
 
 3 Tichborne was on the Court-Martial which sentenced him and was identified 
 with the opposition in the Commons to his release. Roger was again to encounter 
 his severity in connection with one of his Interregum squibs. 
 
 4 ^.iJf.a, 7thRept. 96&. 
 
20 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 On the whole a modern judgment would seem to be 
 that he deserved to die as a spy if not as a traitor, and that 
 he was rather leniently treated by the party to whose 
 disparagement he devoted his long life^. This was clearly 
 the view of Clarendon^. 
 
 What embittered L'Estrange — and perhaps rightly — 
 was that already even when he lay in Newgate, the hint 
 was being passed round that * L'Estrange was false'. He 
 had taken the Covenant and the pay of the enemy. The 
 Kentish Rising brought this to a head, and his subsequent 
 history during the Protectorate lent much circumstance to 
 the story, but how anybody, except from malice, could 
 invent such a libel in the four years of his sojourn in 
 Newgate passes comprehension. 
 
 Four years he lay in Newgate. From its dreariness 
 and chains arose the truest Cavalier strain, the Hymn to 
 Confinement, which one would naturally and even on 
 severe literary grounds admit into any collection of Cavalier 
 songs which can excite ' loyal flames ' ^. 
 
 Years after when Howell advised the disappointed 
 Cavaliers to content themselves with ' a good conscience ', 
 Roger rather sadly remarked that they had enjoyed that 
 boon for twenty years. 
 
 So early as 13th February 1644-5 our prisoner petitioned 
 the Lords for liberty on the score of health. He had 'an 
 indisposition of health upon him and much streightened in 
 prison '. An order of the Lords for ' such accommodation as 
 may stand with the security of his person' was the only 
 result. Again on the 24th July 1645 'having all the 
 symptoms of fatal and irrecoverable consumption ', his 
 petition for ' the benefits of a better air than Newgate 
 affords', and a desire for a parole of the city were met 
 sympathetically by the Lords, but the Commons were 
 obdurate. 
 
 1 See Macray's Clarendon, bk. viii. sec. 284. Never possibly was any man's 
 escape from the gallows so often deplored afterwards. ' All honest men in 
 England wished afterwards he had been executed'. Oldmixon, i., 270. So 
 Lord Lucas' speech in the House of Lords {Ihid., i., 612) ' He deserved of all men 
 to be hanged, etc,'. 
 
 2 See p. 21. 
 
 3 A Hymn to Confinement . , . to tvhich is added a poem on the same 
 subject hy the famous Sir Roger L'Estrange when in Newgate in the days of 
 Oliver's Usurpation, London, printed in the year 1705, price Qd. It bears 
 also the names of The Imprisoned Cavalier and Loyalty Confined. See Miss 
 Mitford's Recollections of a Literary Life (1859), p. 276. For its authenticity see 
 Appendix. 
 
EARLY CAVALIER DAYS 21 
 
 Thirty long months he lay in Newgate and then finding 
 no movement for his liberation, he put together and printed 
 some sheets which he entitled An Appeal from the Court- 
 Martial to the Parliament'^ — a tract of ten pages, contain- 
 ing his Commission and the replies of Sir John Corbet 
 to the prisoner's protests. This document may have had 
 sufficient effect to mollify the conditions of his captivity, 
 for next year — that is in 1648 — when things were ripening 
 all round for that futile series of local risings which Eanke 
 names the so-called Second Civil War, Roger slipped out of 
 Newgate, 'with the privity of his keeper' and character- 
 istically made straight for the scene of the greatest danger. 
 
 Clarendon writing long after rather cruelly said that 
 L'Estrange 'was kept in prison till the end of the war 
 and then set at liberty as one in whom there was no 
 more danger', and mingles with this remark ^ the wise 
 rebuke that 'he retained his old affections and more 
 remembered the cruel usuage he had received than that 
 they had not proceeded as cruelly as they might have 
 done ' ^ 
 
 This rather tame version of Roger's liberation is probably 
 correct, as it took place in the moment of strong popular 
 reaction to the Royalist side, when loyal pens were 
 permitted almost to monopolise the Press, and bands of 
 apprentices to demonstrate against the Government. It 
 was a moment of weakness and vacillation on the part 
 of the Government, expecting and dreading the defection 
 of the Presbyterians and of the City^ embarrassed by 
 Cavalier plots ^, and very little assured of their own 
 policy. 
 
 1 7th April 1647, E. 385 (21). 'After thirty months' patience, at least one 
 hundred petitions (but for breathing room) not so few letters of thanks to your 
 members (only for saying 'tis hard). After all this and more I am told my case is 
 different from other men's. Am I then becalmed in Newgate ? . . , Since that I 
 have awaited my promised hearing and can now expect no longer, being at this 
 instant reduced almost to my first principles by a consumptire, hectic temper '. 
 See also a (printed) letter to a member of Parliament 1646, praying him to 
 present a petition from Roger L'Estrange for release. S. Sh. 669 f. 9 (64). 
 
 2 Clarendon would not remember our hero very kindly as the man who stirred 
 up by his Restoration writings all that was embarrassing to the Government, in 
 the attitude of the disappointed Cavaliers. 
 
 3 History of the Rebellion (1826), vi., 26. 
 
 4 'The Houses fear them, if the Army should be away'. Clarendon State 
 Papers, mh May 1648, No. 2790. 
 
 5 Jhid. ' The great bug-beare Plot lately discovered '. Hence the Proclama- 
 tion against Cavaliers which sent them swarming into Kent, to the annoyance of 
 the Kentish men. 
 
22 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 The premature rising in Kent helped them to make 
 up their minds. 
 
 For obvious reasons Clarendon represented that and 
 simultaneous revolts as solitary and unorganised outbursts 
 of the popular will. But though they were certainly ill- 
 organised and their bias altered to suit the loyal interest, 
 the Cavalier leaders had perforce to attempt some sort 
 of leadership when they did appear. The story of the 
 London tumults and the Canterbury Riot leading up 
 to the events of May and June 1648 have been too 
 exhaustively related by the modern historian ^ to need 
 anything here but the barest outline of the main events, 
 with a more particular account of L'Estrange's eccentric 
 part in the movement. 
 
 And first of all Clarendon's portraiture and account of 
 his conduct may best appear here. 
 
 'Mr L'Estrange', he says^, 'was a man of a good wit 
 and a fancy very luxuriant, and of an enterprising nature. 
 He observed by the good company that came to the house 
 (of Squire Hales at Tunstall, in Kent) that the affections 
 of all that large and populous country were for the King. 
 He began to tell Mr Hales " that though his grandfather 
 did in his heart wish the King well, yet his carriage had 
 been such in his conjunction with the Parliament that 
 he had more need of the King's favour than of his 
 grandfather's to be heir to that great estate ; and that 
 certainly nothing would be more acceptable to his grand- 
 father or more glorious to him, than to he the instrument of 
 both, and therefore advised him to put himself at the head 
 of his own country, which would be willing to be led by 
 him ; that when the Scots were entered into the Northern 
 parts, and all the kingdom should be in arms, he might, 
 with the body of his countrymen march towards London, 
 which would induce both the City and the Parliament to 
 join with him, whereby he should have great share in 
 the honour of restoring the King"'. 
 
 In connection with the account which follows, and which 
 might almost lead us to believe that Hales and L'Estrange 
 were the Absalom and Achitophel of the affair, Professor 
 Gardiner warns us that the L'Estrange-Hales part ' can 
 
 1 Gardiner, History, xiii., 381-7. 
 
 2 Hutory of Rebellion, vi., 27. 
 
EARLY CAVALIER DAYS 23 
 
 only have been an episode in the full story ' ^. The tendency 
 of L' Estrange to magnify his share in the adventure was 
 natural, so that one reading, first his description (wherein 
 though mention is made of the Earl of Norwich, the whole 
 scheme seems to collapse with his withdrawal from the 
 scene), and then the not very friendly account of Clarendon 
 which omits altogether the Canterbury disturbance and 
 scarcely mentioned Rochester — the Tale of Kent would seem 
 to be entirely a tale of L'Estrange and his rash intrusive 
 action. 
 
 On the other hand the later Kentish pamphlets so teem 
 with abuse of the unlucky adventurer, that little is dis- 
 cernible for the cloud of suspicion and contumely — which 
 helps also to exaggerate the part which Roger played. 
 
 But when due deduction is made it will appear that 
 this object of universal execration did thrust himself into 
 a commanding position in the councils of the early and 
 local leaders. His own account deserves the closest scrutiny 
 as being a single defence against many detractions. 
 
 In the first place it must be observed that his part 
 in the affair was confined to organising the earlier dis- 
 contents, and that his vainglorious rhetoric led him to the 
 penning of certain extreme declarations before any con- 
 siderable body was in the field. 
 
 The beginning of what Roger calls 'this babel (for it 
 proved but a glorious confusion) ' , was the riots — not con- 
 fined to Canterbury — over the Christmas celebrations which 
 offended the precisians. Whilst the chief fomentors of these 
 disturbances were for over two months lodged in Maidstone 
 gaol, there seems to have been an understanding that no 
 formal prosecutions would take place. But in May, 
 Parliament sent down a special Commission of Oyer and 
 Terminer to Canterbury for the purpose, and special efforts 
 were made to pack the jury — ' none pickt but well affected 
 to Parliament', says the prolix Carter 2. Nevertheless, the 
 jury insisted on returning ignoramus, and not content with 
 this, on the 11th May, met together, and with the help 
 of others framed a memorable petition, the terms of which 
 make it clear that the sheriff^s choice of men weU-affected 
 
 1 He is not even mentioned in the Neiosldters of the Clarendon State Papers 
 Collection (Nos. 2790-2804). 
 
 - Mathew Carter's Most True and Exact Relation of that as Honourable as Un- 
 fortunate Expedition of Kent, Essex, and^Golchesier, printed in the year 1650. 
 
24 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 to Parliament was either singularly careless, or the country 
 singularly unanimous for a change of masters. This petition 
 endorsed with a notice of a great meeting of the shire to 
 be held at Blackheath on the 30th was published widely, 
 and subscriptions, which were to be forwarded to Rochester 
 by the 29th, invited. 
 
 It was, after the event, explained by the men of Kent 
 that the petition was wholly a matter of grievance against 
 the committee-men, but the rush of Cavaliers into the dis- 
 appointed area ' changed the interest '. 
 
 It is now that L'Estrange, fresh from Newgate, enters. 
 He made straight for the village of Tunstall, where he fell 
 in with the youthful Squire Hales, over whose mind he 
 exercised an extraordinary influence. Young as Hales was 
 in 1648 — he was twenty-two — he had already, with the con- 
 nivance of his grandfather, assisted in the abortive Kentish 
 disturbance of 1643, and for their share in that affair both 
 were committed to custody^. The grandfather, although 
 Member of Parliament and Parliamentary Deputy for Kent, 
 behaved on that occasion with such duplicity that L'Estrange, 
 as reported by Clarendon, was possibly right in representing 
 to the youth that the old man would be as glad as not of 
 his successful intervention now, to secure the estate by 
 effecting a Restoration. 
 
 Roger's action, beginning at Tunstall as a base of opera- 
 tions, was limited to the fortnight between the Parliamentary 
 order of the 16th May to the deputy-lieutenant's to suppress 
 the Petition, and the night of 1st June when Fairfax 
 occupied Maidstone. 
 
 When he arrived Kent was seething with discontent, 
 the message of Parliament that the order requiring the 
 suppression of the Petition should be read in all churches 
 having brought matters to a crisis; but especially in the 
 country parts merely formless, though vehement, agitation was 
 observable. From the Manor at Tunstall, the rendezvous 
 of the gentleman of East Kent, Roger set himself to organise 
 rebellion. He was aided by the generous enthusiasm of 
 Hales ^, who seems to have been entirely under his manage- 
 
 1 Hasted, History of Kent (1782), ii., 577 ; iii., 94. 
 
 ^ Whether Hales was chosen generalissimo at the meeting at Rochester on the 
 22nd or before is not clear. There was some rivalry for the post. 'At first 
 appearance there was some contest who should be general ... at last they pitched 
 upon Esquire Hales (a bird that hath good feathers to pluck) '. See Kentish 
 Longtailes and Essex Calves, 14th June 1648 (Bodleian, Wood, 502, 23). 
 
EARLY CAVALIER DAYS 25 
 
 ment, and devoted, says Clarendon, as much as £80,000 to 
 the cause. 
 
 * I found ', says Roger ^, with broad irony, * little to that 
 purpose, much talk of a petition, and the people prone to 
 promote it, but as to the conduct of those inclinations (for 
 ought I could discover) much to seek. No person of quality 
 to avow it. No correspondence to strengthen it, nor (as yet) 
 any commissioners agreed upon for the manage of it ; and 
 this disorder the deputy-lieutenants understood more than 
 enough, who fell in immediately with their troops to suppress 
 it and that with bold and public menaces of violence and 
 severity against the Petitioners, nor were they far from 
 seizing the most eminent of them. 
 
 'Opposition they met with none, but in discourse a 
 universal execration to be for ever slaves and a resolve to 
 redeem their liberties if they might he had for asking. But 
 another medium was now to be thought on and who should 
 strike the first blow was the great question and mutual 
 expectation. This was the state of your affairs, when you 
 invited me into an engagement ' 2. 
 
 In other words, we are to infer that the choice fell on 
 L'Estrange to strike the first blow. But other authorities 
 show that he was not even the first to persuade his pupil to 
 take an open hand, and that the credit of effective persuasion 
 was due to the Earl of Thanet, who ' acted heroic gallantry 
 at Ashford, Holfield and Charing, secured 1,000 men and 
 giving an account of the Rising to Squire Hales, who far 
 more gallantly proceeded than he began, so now when he 
 had made a fair and hopeful beginning and had assured 
 very large assistance from his purse, made a slovenly exit 
 from the scene of honour, and obscures himself beyond the 
 hanging of apostatism. In so much that when he was sought 
 for by his neighbouring gentlemen, whom he had incited 
 by his forwardness, and invited by persuations, the noble 
 Earl was fled to take counsel of his peer the E. of 
 Pembroke ' ^. 
 
 The nature of the 'public menaces' referred to by 
 L'Estrange is discovered in the statement of Sir Anthony 
 Weldon that ' he would not cross the street of Rochester to 
 
 1 Vindication to Kent. 
 
 2 Hid., Clarendon (vi., 28-9) gives a specimen of his oratory— 'Mr L'Estrange 
 spoke to them in a style very much his own, and being not very clear to be 
 understood, the more prevailed over them '. 
 
 ' Cart«r'8 Trneo.vd Kyact Relation. See p. 31. 
 
26 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 save one soul that subscribed the Petition ', and the proposal 
 of a gentle alderman of Rochester to hang two of the 
 petitioners in every parish ^ 
 
 The signal of revolt seems to have been given generally 
 on the 21st. It so happened that on that day the Kentish 
 committee-men were sitting at Sittingbourne, two miles from 
 TunstalP. Roger and his merry men swooped down on 
 them and took the place. Here his lenient treatment of one 
 of the captured committee-men first gave rise to the murmurs 
 that ' L'Estrange was false,' and lost his little company some 
 six or seven men. At the same time he penned the first of 
 a series of rhetorical declarations, which afterwards brought 
 him much detraction ^. 
 
 A move was made on Maidstone on the 23rd when 
 despite the defection after the second day of a third of their 
 men, they now numbered 400 horse and foot. Previous to 
 this move Roger had despatched invitations to Faversham 
 and Canterbury to join with them. Their answer 'that they 
 would look to themselves' was interpreted by the violent 
 amateur as a repudiation of leadership and co-operation on 
 which the rising was wrecked. 
 
 But their answer was due rather to the proceedings of 
 the previous day — the 22nd — at Rochester, where a strict 
 engagement was entered on by a great meeting of local 
 gentry, at which the 30th — the day already mentioned in 
 the Petition — was finally fixed on for the rendezvous at 
 Blackheath, and the local leaders assigned their tasks*. 
 
 One large contingent under Cols. Hamond and Halton 
 marched south to Dover and another body made for 
 Sandwich, where the fortunate apostasy of Capt. Keeme in 
 delivering invitations to the mutinous sailors resulted in a 
 diversion from the sea-board, that proved the most dangerous 
 feature of the rising. 
 
 The return of part of these bands to Rochester on the 
 29th — their object having been effected — was well-timed 
 to hearten the rebels especially in their hold on the valley 
 of the Medway, which L'Estrange's action had for a time 
 seriously threatened. 
 
 ^ Carter's True and Exact Relation, and Clarendon State Papers, No. 2790. 
 
 2 They had come from Maidstone, under Sir Michael Livesey, with one 
 hundred horse. Ibid. 
 
 ^ Vindication to Kent. Thx Declaraiion and ResolvMon of the Knights, Gentry, 
 and Freeholders of the County of Kent. (Wood, 502 (13)). 
 
 4 Clarendon State Papers, 29th May 1648, No. 2791. 
 
EARLY CAVALIER DAYS 27 
 
 That eccentric leader had occupied Maidstone, where he 
 had ' a most effectual reception ' on the 24th. On the same 
 day a party was sent to seize Aylesford on the Medway 
 between Maidstone and Rochester. During the day a 
 superior body of Parliamentarians, which the deputies had 
 got together, was seen to be advancing on Maidstone. 
 Prudence advised pourparlers. Parliament, impressed by 
 the vigorous opposition of the Kentish members to extreme 
 action, had not yet abandoned the attempt to soothe down 
 the revolt ^. Commissioners Oxenden and Biscoe desired 
 to meet the Royalist leader. 'We answered', says Roger, 
 * we could not fight and treat at once. Let us have 
 liberty to discourse. They promised to guarantee us from 
 violence during the treaty'. But it required an alarm 
 and retreat to bring the loyal party to an accommodating 
 temper. 
 
 In the inglorious retreat to Aylesford they were over- 
 taken by the Deputy -Lieutenant Sir Michael Livesey, and 
 again a truce was mooted. L'Estrange was chosen to 
 represent his people (*an office of too coy a nature with 
 a slippery multitude I was now to learn '), and Sir Michael 
 signed for the other side the document which defined a 
 truce of three days from the 24th (Wednesday) to the 17th 
 (Saturday)^. This agreement was reached at five in the 
 afternoon after a harassing day's alarm and provocation. 
 Its terms are important. Things were to remain as they 
 were, and no troops to be imported into the country from 
 London in the meantime. In addition — and this was the 
 clause which failed to recommend the truce to the 
 insurgents — the Parliamentary Commissioners were per- 
 mitted to go to any garrison save that of Aylesford, which 
 meant that in the most critical three days, they were to 
 be allowed to engage in the work already being too w^ell 
 done by the apostate Earl of Thanet^ of mollifying the 
 
 1 Clarendon State Papers, Newsletter, 25th May, No. 2790, quotes the 
 resohition of Parliament to proceed warily. ' They do presently send down some 
 gentlemen to them to desire a forbearance of acting anything further until 
 Saturday. ... I believe they will hardly believe in a Parliamentary promise, who 
 have overreacht them formerly'. 
 
 2 A Declaration of the Several Proceedings of Both Houses of Parliament with 
 tltose in the County of Kent now in arms — printed date 5th June 1648 (MS. in 
 margin 29th May), 'They could effect nothing but a cessation from Wed., 
 24th May till Sat. following, 5 of the clock, during which time the Insurrec- 
 tion did increase to far greater numbers '. 
 
 ^ Ibid, p. 7. Instructions of Parliament to Thanet in his negotiations with the 
 rebels. 
 
28 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 minds of the uncertain countrymen, whose complaints of 
 being seduced by the gentry against the Parliament were 
 already heard on all sides ^. 
 
 Be that as it may, the cry that L'Estrange was false 
 received tenfold encouragement, and a reinforcement from 
 Rochester which came up just after the agreement was 
 signed, was for repudiating its terms. But the discovery 
 that the enemy how posted in Maidstone was still stronger 
 by one hundred men, made for prudence, and in the event 
 L'Estrange was justified. For the country rose rapidly, and 
 on Friday, 26th May, Deptford and Dartford were occupied 
 for the King, and on the day the truce expired six ships 
 in the Downs declared for the same interest. Rochester 
 gave some recruits, and East Kent most of all. But perdere 
 quos vult JupiteVy hos dementat. 
 
 Divided counsels, the lack of a leader till the eleventh 
 hour 2, and distrust of the countrymen, neutralised the 
 huge influx of insurgents, caused partly by the news of 
 the triumphant return of Hammond and Halton from 
 Sandwich^. It was here that Roger's fatal epistolary 
 facility was again requisitioned. On the 27th, and while 
 he was still a great man in the movement, he addressed 
 a petition or declaration to the committee at Derby House, 
 couched in the most grandiloquent language of the ' die 
 with our swords in our hands' type*. 
 
 The day before Fairfax had started for Hounslow Heath, 
 
 1 '.The frothy murmur of the giddy multitude ' is the description used by a 
 sceptical correspondent so early as 29th May. Clarendon State Papers, No. 
 2792. 
 
 2 There was no lack of military talent, for, on the news of the Rising, Kent 
 was invaded by Loyalist captains — an added embarrassment. For, 'though 
 persons of skill in the art of war were arrived into the country in no small numbers, 
 yet many of them expecting to be courted into the business not being taken 
 notice of returned back again whence they came '. Clarendon State Papers, 
 No, 2796. ' Most Lords say the Kentish men are very well officered '. See the 
 pamphlet, The Kentish i^a?/re ( Bodleian, Malone, p. 740). '"What men of note 
 have ye now at the Fayre?" "Sir, we have Sir Eobert Tracey, Sir Gemaliel 
 Dudley, Sir John Many, Sir Thos. Godfrey, Sir Jas. Hales, Sir Wm. Many, Sir 
 John Dorrell, Sir Richard Hardresse, Col. Washington, Col. L'Estrange, Col, 
 Hacker, Col. Culpepper " '. The Kentish men ' w^ere annoyed at having any 
 strangers to come amongst them which hath been no small prejudice in their 
 affairs*. Clarendon State Papers, 5th June, No. 2801. 
 
 •■' Calendar of Clarendon State Papers, i., 424, 
 
 4 Quoted in the Declaration of the Several Proceedings, etc. (p, 27 note). 
 Clarendon (vi., 38) says that when Parliament saw L'Estrange's warrants, they 
 were puzzled to know who he was, and that the members for Kent assured 
 them ' there was no such gentleman in that county '—a singular thing when we 
 remember the prominence given to his trial, his late appeal, etc. 
 
EARLY CAVALIER DAYS 29 
 
 and the Commons referred the Petitioners to the General ^. 
 This communication was received at midnight of the 29th, 
 when the delegates from Essex were still planning with 
 the Rochester leaders for a concerted action ^. ' This grain 
 of paper ', says an eye-witness, * had quite turned the balance '. 
 The men of Deptford and Dartford were ordered to retire 
 on Rochester. L'Estrange, who was doubtless present at 
 this midnight council, either on his own responsibility, or 
 more probably at their invitation as in the other petition, 
 penned a letter to Fairfax breathing the same warlike spirit 
 which ' exasperated the fury and revenge of the army upon 
 the county '. The truth is that the men, who could complain 
 of these defiant letters, were of the wavering type noted by 
 Barkstead in his communication this same day to Fairfax. 
 'The enemy still continue at Dartford. They give them- 
 selves to be 10,000 strong, but the countrymen lessen 
 every day. These countrymen that are come home do 
 extremely cry out against the gentlemen that did engage 
 them, looking upon themselves as utterly undone, which is 
 the only cause of their coming down, hoping thus to keep 
 their necks out of the halter '2. 
 
 Another set of recreants enraged L'Estrange. On the 
 same day he wrote the letter to the committee at Derby 
 House he penned a very hot address to the people of London, 
 inviting them, through the Lord Mayor, to throw open their 
 gates and declare for the revolters. The invitation was not 
 ill-timed, but for the fact that the Presbyterians, though 
 hating the domination of the Independents, dared not trust 
 themselves to the Loyalists, while the merchants and bankers 
 
 1 Vindication to Kent, and Clarendon State Papers, 29th May, Nos. 2791 and 
 2800, 3rd to 13th June : ' Their answer was they should receive it from Fairfax '. 
 
 2 The Lwd-GeneraUs Letter in Answer to the Message of the Kentishmen, dated 
 Blackheath, 30th May 1648. 
 
 3 Some blamed the gentlemen of Kent for irresolution, but all belaboured the 
 poor countrymen. See the wretched poem, Halesiados, A Message from the 
 Normans to the General of the Kentish Forces (Wood, 602 (44)). The hero (Hales) 
 speaks after the loss of Maidstone, and the poet is apparently not aware of his 
 flight :— 
 
 ' 'Tis true we have lost two of our towns 
 By the remissness of unmanaged clowns 
 Who would no long time Martial order keep 
 Lest by their absence they should lose a sheep '. 
 
 See Gardiner's History, xiii., 385. 
 
30 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 had a like dread of the dislocation of trade and credit ^ 
 The conservative forces of commerce were now on the side 
 of the Commonwealth. In resisting our pamphleteer's 
 eloquence, London earned a life-long hatred. ' The reprobate 
 spirit of that apostate city gusts nothing but murther and 
 rebellion'. Thirty years later part of the indictment of 
 L'Estrange before Charles's Council, which forced him into 
 exile, was a similar attack on the City for new causes, which 
 were still the old. 
 
 Fairfax's reply was a soldier's letter. ' He was in a better 
 condition to fight than treat ' ; ' as indeed he is better at it ', 
 was the tribute of L'Estrange who never fought, but always 
 treated. 
 
 On Tuesday the 30th — the day fixed for the Blackheath 
 assembly — a second meeting was held at Burham Heath, 
 on the left side of the Medway, between Aylesford and 
 Rochester. On the former wind and rain-swept day 
 some 400 men had attended. With courage dashed by 
 the elements, they had yet made the dispositions which 
 resulted in the occupation of the Medway valley, the 
 treason of the ships in the Downs and the seizure of the 
 forts on the coast. IS'ow 10,000 men crowded the Heath. 
 But in reality the Fates were more strongly against them. 
 It is true Lord Norwich's credentials were beyond dispute, 
 and thus they were united for the first time under one 
 general. But Norwich was little better than the carpet- 
 knight, Holland, to whom he owed his commission. 
 
 The army that night was quartered at large in the 
 country. The leaders returned to resume the council of 
 war at Rochester, while Fairfax was outflanking them by 
 way of Meopham, Mailing, and Maidstone. 
 
 Among the officers who returned to Rochester on the 
 night of the 30th was L'Estrange's pupil in arms, Hales. 
 He did not stay, however, but, regarding the rebellion as 
 now consummated, held himself released from the oath he 
 
 1 The attitude of London was dubious. Whilst the trainbands guarded the 
 Houses of Parliament, and the Tower was reluctantly relinquished by the 
 Independents, it was confidently said that the citizen soldiers would not march 
 on Kent {Clarendon State Pajjers, No. 2791), and, on the other hand, would declare 
 for the insurgents on news of their first victory {Ibid., 1st June, No. 2797). On 
 31st May the City petitioned Parliament to release their imprisoned aldermen 
 and recall Fairfax {Ibid.) _ The sceptical writer of the Newsletter {Ibid., No. 2792) 
 talks of ' great exultation in London because yesterday the Kentish men retreated 
 from Deptford'. Many London prentices were engaged {Ibid., No. 2801). 
 Altogether ' how the City stands affected in this conjuncture will require some 
 logique to tell you ' {Ibid.). 
 
EARLY CAVALIER DAYS 31 
 
 had taken when L'Estrange and he set out on the eventful 
 morning of the 21st, not to return home till the move- 
 ment was organised^. 
 
 Roger, however, remained to indite one last epistle to 
 the enemy, this time to the troops under Fairfax — surely 
 a reprehensible course ! ' It was hinted to me by divers 
 to write something of an Invitation and Proposition to the 
 enemy's army promising that their arrears would be audited 
 and paid' — the old game of King's Lynn. Norwich and 
 his men were posted on the historic ground of Penenden 
 Heath beyond Maidstone, when Fairfax made his attack 
 on the town on 1st June. 
 
 Surely never leader behaved with more pusillanimity. 
 All the accounts go to show that the most he did was to 
 watch the enemy hovering betwixt Maidstone and Rochester ^. 
 
 L'Estrange by this time had subsided almost into the 
 position of a private volunteer, and deferring to the 'jealously 
 of strangers ' wisely relinquished any general command he 
 may have had during the previous week^ On the 1st 
 June, he says, '7 or 8 of us ' — how his command 
 had shrunk! — '(in chief myself) went thither (to Maid- 
 stone) but found the enemy entrenched. We returned to 
 Rochester to deliberate. I rode over to see Mr Hales 
 and told him Maidstone was lost. He resolved to go to 
 Sandwich with his family. I saw him there and returned 
 to the army. At Canterbury I desired a pass which I 
 got with some difificulty'. Here he in vain implored the 
 committee ' to give another push for it ' *. 
 
 By this time ' a man might read the fate of Kent without 
 
 1 Clarendon {History, vi,, 41) ascribed his defection, perhaps, more 
 reasonably to 'the storms of threats' of his grandfather, and 'the conscience 
 that he was not equal to the charge '. Carter's True Relation {see p. 25) takes the 
 more lenient view. 
 
 '^ The affair started late in the afternoon of Friday and was contested far into 
 the night, which happened to be very wet. See Kentish Longtailes and Essex 
 Calves, and the letter signed I. T. (E. 445, 42). According to the Newsletter, 
 No. 2801, Clarendon State Papers, 5th June, Fairfax lost from six to eight 
 hundred men, and the town was gained by the treachery of the citizens. ' In the 
 action it was observed tbat the inhabitants were favourable to the Parliament 
 . . . the auxiliaries served very well, and the Keutishmen but slackly '. The 
 fight was bloody, however. {Memoirs of Col. Hutchinson (1885), ii., 146). 
 Gardiner's excellent account is somewhat marred by ignorance of Fairfax's 
 crossing at Farleigh Bridge (two and a quarter miles from Maidstone). See art. 
 by H. E. Maiden {Eng. Hist. Rev., vii., 533) with Gardiner's acknowledge- 
 ment, p. 536. 
 
 3 Vindication to Kent. Clarendon, vi., 38, 41 : 'Mr L'Estrange, whom nobody 
 knew ', ' Mr L'Estrange, who had lost his credit with the people ', 
 
 * Jbid, 
 
32 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 an oracle. I repaired again to Sandwich, and hired a boat, 
 and escaped amidst a shower of shot and reach Calais '. 
 
 Thus ended the famous tale of Kent ^ Although Roger 
 is more scrupulous than other writers of blaming Norwich, 
 there is little doubt that his conduct at Penenden Heath 
 utterly disheartened his followers. Whether L'Estrange — 
 and still more Hales — is to be blamed for anticipating the 
 sauve qui peut^ or not, it is difficult to say. From one 
 source we learn that the latter went home with Col. 
 Archer on the night of the 30th to recruit his purse after 
 a twelve days' campaign, with the intention of returning 
 the next day. But that 'the misfortune of the succeed- 
 ing night obstructed their return. For in the night the 
 Lord Fairfax marching down towards Maidstone . . . about 
 Fairley Bridge easily got over ' ^. The view which lingered 
 in Kent was that Hales first, and the bragging L'Estrange, 
 deserted before the main army had been in any way broken. 
 One cannot deny that as he was foremost in inciting the 
 countrymen to revolt, so Roger was almost foremost in 
 flight. 
 
 When Kent was settled* his defiant epistles were 
 remembered with their menaces and rhetoric, but after 
 all his answer that the raising of 10,000 in itself 
 goes far beyond the violence of any letter, seems a good 
 one ^. 
 
 1 Clarendon State Papers, No. 2804, 8tli June : ' "Sir, the men of Kent are 
 now become Kentish men, their fire is vanished into Smoak " '. 
 
 2 ' By a silent and sudden counsel of their own breasts, every man began 
 to think of his particular safety, and in less than 24 hours became 
 dispersed to their several refuges and sanctuaries '. Letter from a gentleman of 
 Kent, 15th June 1648. (Wood, 502). 
 
 3 Carter's Tnce ami Exact Relation. 
 
 4 Macray's Clarendon, i. , 428. 20th June : ' All is subdued in Kent '. 
 
 5 It was attempted to prove rather after than before the event, that the violent 
 Royalists had ' changed the interest from a plain committee war without the 
 least premeditated design against Parliament', to a move in the Stuart game. 
 L'Estrange's epistles, especially that to Fairfax, were censured as committing 
 the petitioners to a rebellion when redress of grievances was all they desired. 
 * Many concluded of a high letter to be written to His Excellency (The L'Estrange 
 Epistle), which others did not approve of as not suiting with their distracted, 
 confused condition and cutting off all overtures of pacification and treaty. 
 Others liked not the peremptory declared engagement into a war '. In these 
 reflections may be found the origin of the maledictions of L'Estrange. 
 
CHAPTEK II 
 
 1648-60 
 PROTECTORATE AND INTERREGNUM PASSAGES 
 
 With the conquest of ' unconquered ' Kent^ — it is curious 
 how false names stick — Koger as we saw looked back from 
 a safe continental retreat with no little disgust at the 
 ' Vanguard of Liberty '. It proved a vanguard of contumely 
 and reproach to him, for scarcely a post but brought letters, 
 newsletters, and printed sheets stuffed with revilings of 
 'the false L'Estrange'. 
 
 ' Upon the dissolution of the party \ he says ^ ' I crossed 
 the sea and then I found the main miscarriage of the 
 business cast upon me'. A meddlesome interloper was 
 the view taken of him and his services in Kent by the 
 court of the Queen which was inclined to regard him as 
 the man who had forced their hand before Holland had 
 his London Cavaliers in a state of readiness, and before 
 the Scots under Hamilton had given the signal for advance. 
 Clarendon though bitterly opposed to the Lord Jermyn 
 faction was scarce likely at first to take a more favourable 
 view of the rash Cavalier, who having by inflammatory 
 speech and manifesto helped the revolt into premature 
 being, withdrew from it at the critical stage and carried 
 with him — as was reported — the generalissimo of the 
 local leaders. 
 
 It was in these circumstances that Eoger betook himself 
 
 1 Wordsworth was not alone in celebrating 'unconquered' Kent. See the 
 poem already alluded to, Balesiados, the epic of the Kentish affair. 
 
 ' Ye for an Impreze on your parcels set 
 That Kentish men were never beaten yet'. 
 
 2 L'Hstrange, His Apology, June 1660 
 
 33 o 
 
34 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 to a weapon which much better suited his genius than 
 the sword. 
 
 The Vindication to Kent is, so far as we know, liis 
 second effort in this kind and the last sort of composition 
 calculated to help the Royalist cause. Had he observed 
 the silence which became him on the eve of the Restoration 
 under similar provocation, his fortunes had perhaps stood 
 higher with his party as a whole. 
 
 This pamphlet with its ambitious motto Magna est 
 Veritas et prcevalebit, we have already partly used for the 
 account of the Rising. In the preface he complains, ' I have 
 been 6 months the patient subject of your (Kent's) injurious 
 clamours and 6 eternities had been the same to me, would 
 you but have bounded your intemperance within your 
 proper circle, but to find my name brought upon a foreign 
 stage, my infamy transplanted, pacquets stuffed with your 
 invectives and scandals, and letters despatched express to 
 that ignoble public. Your malice immortal too ... to these 
 indignities let me be pardoned if I render a sane accompt. 
 I know you hate me as the living monument of your 
 ingratitude, as the reproach of your inconstancy'. 
 
 The charges he had to rebut have been already noticed, 
 viz., his defection after Maidstone and his invective 
 manifestoes. 
 
 The Vindication to Kent seems to have achieved its 
 object, and above all to have satisfied the Chancellor, to 
 whom and with excellent results he presented a copy in 
 Flanders. He seems now to have been a welcome inmate 
 of Clarendon's house ^ and — if we can judge from a single 
 letter and a phrase — employed during the tedious years 
 of exile to keep alive the 4oyal flames' in the hearts of 
 the exiles^. 
 
 As to the general effect of the Vindication it is sufficiently 
 clear from the fact that whilst in the next forty years he 
 was compelled from time to time to return to the defence 
 of his conduct at King's Lynn, Kent, but for occasional 
 references, drops out altogether. 
 
 It is not so clear, however, that on the Continent the 
 
 1 ' Under whose roof I have formerly received so many, many benefits '. 
 Preface to Memmto (1662), pt. i. 
 
 2 Clarendon State Papers, ii., 212. Hyde to Mr L'Estrange in Germany, 
 ' whatever reports you hear of our master's change of religion, you must be sure 
 that nothing is more impossible and he will as readily die for it as his father did '. 
 
PROTECTOBATE AND INTERREGNUM PASSAGES 35 
 
 Kentish scandal met with such a universal quietus. The 
 ranks of the exiles were rent by division and jealousy, and 
 the very fact that L'Estrange was welcome at Hyde's 
 residence, coupled with the necessity of finding some scape- 
 goat for the late fiasco, make it probable that the coldness 
 with which he was regarded by a large party began here, 
 and we may trace the cloud of suspicion which gathered 
 round his head prior to the Restoration to the whisperings 
 of this period. 
 
 With the main band of impoverished Cavaliers, Roger 
 now drifted about the petty courts of Germany. Of his 
 life at this period we know nothing further than that he 
 appeared at the Court of the Cardinal van Hesse — hence 
 a rich crop of later rumours — where his musical ability 
 made him welcome. It was whispered at the Restoration 
 and long after when the question of Protestant or ' popishly- 
 affected ' became the most vital, that it was here that 
 L'Estrange turned Papist, a suspicion which he had the 
 honour to share with his Royal master, but with even 
 less justice. That as a member of the Cardinal's household 
 he went regularly to Mass may be assumed from the fact 
 that when charged at the time of Oates's Plot with being 
 a Papist, he was careful to define the period within which 
 he had not been to Mass, and that period began with the 
 Restoration. That he actually became a Catholic is ex- 
 tremely improbable, not because he repudiates the charge, 
 but because we have evidence of his sincere attachment to 
 the afflicted Church of England. 
 
 At the same time these warm encomiums of the Catholics, 
 which to his credit he uttered in times when it was perilous 
 to do so, had their explanation in the hospitality he 
 experienced in exile, no less than the friendly relations 
 his family had long maintained with Catholic families of 
 Norfolk. 
 
 With a view then of that wandering and probably 
 profligate life of the Cavalier, which Mr Airy has so 
 vividly described \ we may leave this dubious chapter of 
 Roger's life and proceed to those events which bounded the 
 period of his exile. 
 
 The Expulsion of the Rump in 1653 whilst it may have 
 exchanged one form of despotism for another was in itself 
 
 1 Osmond Airy, Charles II. ^ a new edition (1904), p. 129, 
 
36 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 a not unpopular act. It was especially grateful to the 
 Cavaliers because of the hated exactions of that assembly 
 and because Cromwell was well known to favour a more 
 lenient policy, and even, it was hinted, was not unfavourable 
 to the restoration of the monarchy — in which, however, 
 Charles Stuart should not be king. He not only helped 
 many a Loyalist to climb within the pale of the Act of 
 Oblivion^ (passed at his own desire) but even protected 
 them from the spoliation which that Act still permitted. 
 To see Cromwell first and then the Council of State, 
 became the established road to England for many a dis- 
 tressed Cavalier. The Act left it doubtful whether their 
 persons or estates would be imperilled, and the only 
 course was to return and claim a pardon in the terms of 
 the Act, at the same time submitting themselves to the 
 Commonwealth. 
 
 The terms of the Act and the bad faith which had been 
 kept by Parliament despite the protests of the army officers, 
 reduced the matter almost to a surrender at discretion. The 
 trial and acquittal however of Lilburne with the irritation, 
 which the necessity for a public trial had caused the Council, 
 rendered it very plain that, except in abnormal cases, a mild 
 treatment was probable. To 'widen the basis of the 
 Commonwealth ' being Cromwell's policy, it is not surprising 
 that London once more became an excellent covert for 
 many Englishman who had not seen it since the days of 
 Colchester and Preston. 
 
 We are not surprised then to find Roger L'Estrange 
 wending his way back in August 1653. He had how- 
 ever more to fear than he supposed, for his case 
 undoubtedly belonged to the category of exceptional 
 malignancy. In Lilburne's case (in all other respects no 
 parallel) an attempt had been made to destroy him on an 
 old conviction 2. 
 
 It does not seem to have occurred to L'Estrange that he 
 was still under sentence of death for the Lynn affair, a 
 
 1 This Act introduced 3rd September 1651 and passed on the 24th February 
 1652 excepted out of its free pardon * all and all manner of High Treasons (other 
 than for words only) and all levyings of war, rebellions, insurrections and all 
 conspiracies and confederacies . . . since the 30th Jan. 1648-9 '. Scobel, Acts and 
 Ordinances, p. 180, 
 
 2 Gardiner, xi., 244. Lilburne returned to England 3rd May 1653, petitioned 
 Cromwell and the Council, but was committed to Newgate 15th May, three weeka 
 before Roger ventured home. 
 
PROTECTOBATE AND INTERREGNUM PASSAGES 37 
 
 sentence in no way cancelled by the Act of Oblivion. When 
 therefore on his notification to the Council of his arrival, 
 Strickland informed him that he was excluded from the 
 benefits of the Act, and hinted at a necessary ' change of 
 mind ' which the hero of Kent had no intention of pretend- 
 ing, we can understand Roger's wrathful rejoinder that in 
 that case the Act was a mere decoy to tempt Cavaliers into 
 the hands of Parliament \ The summons to the Council on 
 7th September proved only the first of a prolonged attendance 
 and surveillance which was peculiarly annoying at a time 
 when the old Knight of Hunstanton lay on his deathbed. 
 In this exigence Roger took the way to Cromwell who, 
 after various disappointments, at last received him kindly 
 at the Cockpit and on this occasion was able to do more 
 for him than at Cambridge ten years before ^. L'Estrange 
 we find by an entry in the Council books of the 31st 
 October, was 'dismissed his further attendance upon the 
 Council'^ and was thus enabled to go down to Norfolk 
 to receive his father's blessing. 
 
 The occasion must have had even more than the 
 melancholy natural to such a scene. For though the 
 L'Estranges had lost no life to the Civil Wars, they had 
 in another way been exposed to the worst exactions of the 
 Parliamentary tax-collector, and Sir Hamon's last years 
 had been embittered by a process which left him at the 
 mercy of his personal enemies. It was changed days now 
 when Col. Walton, Master Toll (with his injured wife to 
 urge him on), and Master Percivall, were set up by order of 
 the House to sequestrate his estate for damage committed 
 by Parliamentary canon. We have already noted the 
 indiscretion reported by the watchful Toll of entertaining 
 the escaped Royalist prisoners in 1648, for which he paid 
 
 1 This angry scene is characteristic of both men. The Cavalier putting himself 
 about to go to Strickland ' the better to dispose him to my convenience ' and the 
 surly Secretary's demur. Whether Roger used the words ' I might have been as 
 safe among the Turks upon the same terms,' or not, it is clear that the other was 
 exceeding the Act when he talked of ' change of mind.' The conversation reported 
 with Cromwell is also characteristic. * He told me of the restlessness of our party, 
 that rigour was not at all his inclination — (but) that he was but one man '. Truth 
 and Loyalty Vitidicated. 
 
 2 As his prisoner on his way to the Guildhall Court-Martial, Ihid., p. 49. 
 
 3 ' He giving in £2,000 security to appear when he shall be summoned and to 
 act nothing prejudicial to the Commonwealth ' the usual formula for taking which 
 the Court scarcely blamed its adherents. ' I never took any of their Protestations 
 Covenants, Oaths, or Engagements '. Observator (1684), ii., No. 80. 
 
38 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 dearly ^. If he found some balm for these civil wounds in 
 trouncing the pious Thoroughgood's Jews in America^ who 
 shall grudge him the pleasure? 
 
 To such a darkened house came Roger L'Estrange 
 exactly ten years after his own attempt on Lynn, since 
 when he had not seen his family. As he passed along the 
 old road by Cambridge, many bitter thoughts must have 
 crowded on his mind, memories which started with under- 
 graduate dissension at Sidney Sussex, the muster of the 
 N^orfolk levies for the Bishops' War, his riding out to join 
 the King's standard at Newark, his presence under Rupert 
 at Edgehill. But Lynn and Kent must have held the 
 chief place in these depressing recollections. 
 
 If he had turned aside to visit the old precincts at 
 Cambridge, he must have been startled by the silence and 
 gloom of the place, the new discipline, the interminable 
 prayers, the lack of all liberal warmth^. 
 
 Turning aside from such possible reverie to the material 
 side of the visit to which he was not blind *, we find that 
 Roger's share of his father's estate, despite all the drains of 
 the last ten years, must by his own confession (of forty years 
 
 1 MSS. of King's Lynn. {H.M.C. App. vii. to 11th Kept. p. 103.) See also p. 10, 
 chap. i. In the catalogue of Lords, Knights, etc., who have compounded for their 
 estate 1655 (Wood 455) we find 
 
 Hamon L'Estrange, Upwell, Isle of Ely for . . £105 
 Thos. Leoman of Arlesham, Norfolk .... 100 
 
 Clement Paston, Thorp, Norfolk 32 10 
 
 Sir Robert Paston (returned M.P. for Castlerising 1660) is also here. The Hamon 
 L'Estrange here is the second son of Sir Hamon, the Col. Hamon of the 
 Clarendon State Papers. It is difiicult to understand Leoman's appearance in 
 the list. 
 
 2 See his Americans no Jews, London, 1652 — often attributed to his son. 
 
 3 At the same time probably much better disciplined. What does the brave 
 Vicars say ? ' Heretofore — he refers to 1645 — that old prelatical slander of the 
 malignant enemies is already confuted who maliciously and falsely give out as if 
 the Parliament were or would be haters and dismemberers of learning and parts, 
 where as they ever aimed at the advancement thereof by a most necessary 
 Reformation and clearing of the University from its old state, etc.'. But the 
 ' slander ' had a lengthy vogue. See Z. Grey's notes to Hiidihras, 1744 edition. 
 The rifling of the Universities was one of the bribes thrown out to the Rye House 
 Conspirators. L'Estrange has, himself {Reformation Reformed,^ pp. 28-82) drawn a 
 black picture of their dealings with the seats of learning which has been rather 
 overlooked. Quoting Querela Cantabrigiensis he afiirma that ' they made most 
 colleges public tippling houses, strong beer and ale being sold as from common 
 alehouses'. Wood has the same story for Oxford. 
 
 ^Apology, * It concerned me both in point of comfort and interest to see my 
 dying father' can only mean the poor Cavalier was looking to his portion. 
 Nicholas got the main estates, Hamon got Upwell in Ely, and Roger's portion was 
 in money. He had no aptitude to play the country squire. 
 
PROTECTORATE AND INTERREGNUM PASSAGES 39 
 
 later) have been considerable. For by it he was enabled 
 in the six remaining years of the Commonwealth to live 
 on a grander scale than ever before or after. Hence a 
 crop of slanders which are sufficiently referred to by the 
 nicknames 'Oliver's fiddler or pensioner, and Madam B.'s 
 (Boltinglasse's) baseviol '. 
 
 The origin of the former title was the occasion of his 
 repeated attempts to see Cromwell in connection with his 
 discharge. If for such a purpose he bribed the secretaries 
 and porters about the Protector and placated Thurloe, it is 
 no objection to his honesty and loyalty. Oliver's calculated 
 kindness when L'Estrange was at last admitted to him 
 was publicly noised abroad, and there is no doubt that 
 bating a decent appearance of detestation of that 'crafty 
 tyrant', L'Estrange always spoke of him with some 
 respect. 
 
 Of the life which followed his return from Hunstanton 
 and continued to the death of the Protector we have nothing 
 but hints, generally from a hostile source. That he lived in 
 flourishing condition, was able to satisfy his love of music, 
 and went rather freely among puritan companies we can 
 see. ' He kept his coach too ' and there are obscure but re- 
 iterated references to the contributions of Lady Boltinglasse ^ 
 who in the event seems to have exposed him to the laughter 
 of the town. The story of the pension is, of course, 
 absurd but it provoked one picture of a Commonwealth 
 party which is not without interest. Cromwell's love 
 of music is well known and the name of L'Estrange at 
 that period had become rather celebrated for his skill on 
 the viol 2. 
 
 1 Could it be the" same Lady Boltinglasse ' a heap of flesh and brandy ' who 
 married Titus Gates in the King's Bench Prison, 1684 ? Aileshury Memoires (1890), 
 ii., 144. 
 
 2 As the biographer of L'Estrange will have little occasion to dwell on this 
 softer and more social side of life, it may be desirable to notice his musical skill 
 here. All his contemporaries who speak of him in this connection, do so with 
 appreciation. This was the age of musical clubs before enterprising managers 
 introduced hired music into the bill of fare. Of these clubs — by no means 
 confined to the rich or cultivated — Roger North has given some lively descrip- 
 tions in his Memoirs of Masich, pp. 123-7. See also Hawkins, History of Music, and 
 Grove, Dictionary, ii., 239a. The most interesting episode in Roger's musical 
 career was his recognition and encouragement — in concert with Dr Waldegrave 
 and Under-Secretary Bridgeman — of the great Italian violinist, Nicola Matteis, 
 whose visit to England in 1672 marks the decay of the French variety of music 
 not, indeed, introduced by the King, but at any rate fostered by his band of 
 string musicians. After this date newspaper advertisements begin to give 
 evidence of the Italian conquest. Amid countless gibes at Roger's accomplish- 
 
40 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 ' Concerning the story of the fiddle ', he says, ' this I 
 suppose might be the rise of it ; being in St James' Park, 
 I heard an organ touched in a low room of one Mr 
 Henckson ; I went in and found a private company of 
 some 5 or 6 persons. They desired me to take a viol 
 and bear a part. I did so and that part too, not much 
 advantage to the reputation of my cunning. Bye-and-bye, 
 without the least colour of design or expectation, in comes 
 Cromwell. He found us playing and as I remember, so 
 he left us'^ 
 
 These musical parties which were so greatly in vogue 
 in this period and which endeavoured to form a substitute 
 for the forbidden theatre, must have been one humanising 
 element in a life singularly devoted to party. 
 
 The stories, told of course by enemies and long after 
 the event, of amours, humiliating encounters with bullies 
 and brawlers, may be ignored, but one charge which also long 
 persisted and which he partly admitted must be noticed. 
 It is well known and confessed with sorrow by Clarendon 
 that the Cavaliers abroad had learned a dissipation very 
 foreign to the days before the War. One of the earliest 
 of the Restored King's Proclamations directed against 
 the evil, gave great offence to a section of his devoted 
 followers, an offence which L'Estrange, ever ready with 
 his tongue, rather rudely voiced. When Bagshawe quoted 
 and exaggerated his admissions of drunkenness and pro- 
 fanity, Roger feebly retorted that it was not for a minister 
 of the gospel to reproach a penitent for former ill-deeds. 
 This can only mean that in the Commonwealth L'Estrange 
 did not * shun the broad road and the green '. 
 
 The death of his mother (who was a co-heir of Dr 
 Stubbs) in 1656 may have given him a slight access of 
 fortune whereby to continue the riotous life which gave 
 such a weapon to his opponents. The family at Hunstanton 
 indeed suffered of late more by the hand of death than 
 
 ment — which alone he treated with dignified contempt — we may note even 
 Baxter's mild sneer at his ' musical hand '. Ned Ward {Satirical Jieflections on 
 Clubs, 1709) referring to Britten, the small-coalman's concerts says : ' This Club 
 was first begun, or at least confirmed, by Sir Koger L'Estrange, a very musical 
 gentleman, and who had a tolerable perfection on the base-viol '. 
 
 1 Elsewhere ' Truly my fiddel is a base- viol. Instead of my going to Oliver, 
 he came to me. I do profess that I would have made no scruple on the earth to 
 have given Cromwell a lesson for my liberty. But I affirm that I did it not how- 
 ever.' Truth and Loyalty, pp. 47 and 50. Boyer {Qiieen Anne (1722), p. 38) 
 repeated the scandal which thereafter died out. 
 
PROTECTORATE AND INTERREGNUM PASSAGES 41 
 
 that of the sequestrator. Sir Nicholas, author of the 
 Anecdotes, died at the early age of fifty-two, nine months 
 before his mother, and his heir followed him at an even 
 shorter interval^. 
 
 These repeated bereavements are unnoticed by L'Estrange, 
 who evinces throughout life a stoical indifference to domestic 
 sorrow which his study of Seneca encouraged. 
 
 So long as Cromwell lived, there was little opportunity 
 for change except by the hand of the assassin, and people 
 began to wonder if even the Royalists themselves really 
 desired a change. Though the Rising in the north and 
 the conspiracies of Hewitt and Slingsby were regarded as 
 the acts of the more desperate Cavaliers, many Cavaliers 
 were induced to settle down to a moderate enjoyment of 
 what seemed likely to prove a lengthy period, and they 
 practised a sobriety which made their estates flourish ^. 
 
 ' During the rule of Cromwell ', says L'Estrange, excusing 
 his own inactivity, ' there was small encouragement to form 
 any design unless upon his person. For betwixt divers 
 renegade Royalists and mercenary malcontents of his own 
 party it was scarce possible to act without discovery ; 
 besides that he was quick and cruel (two great advantages 
 over a slavish people). His death in 1658 opened the way 
 most certainly to a change, but that which entered upon 
 it in 1659 was of all others (I think) the least expected'^. 
 
 Roger has also devoted a chapter (vi.) of his Memento — 
 the most thoughtful of all his works — to the character and 
 policy of Cromwell, 'that glorious rebel' which shows some 
 insight. 
 
 ' Of strong natural parts I persuade myself he was though 
 some think otherwise imputing all his advantages to corrup- 
 tion or Fortune (which will not be denied however to have 
 concurred powerfully to his greatness). Nor do I pretend 
 to collect his abilities from his words any more than the 
 world could his meaning, save that the more entangled his 
 discourses were I reckon them the more judicious because the 
 
 1 Blomefield, x., 83. 
 
 2 Oldmixon, i., 496. See in this connection Prof. Masson's list of 
 authors living under the Protectorate [Milton, v., 75). Marchmont Nedham finds 
 a place under ' adherants more or less cordial, while a peculiar outrage has been 
 committed on L'Estrange by tying him up with Baxter as "subject by compul- 
 sion." Otherwise he is in good company with Cowley, Denham, Davenant 
 Evelyn', etc. 
 
 3 Memento (1662), pt. i. 
 
42 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 fitter for his business. His interest obliged him to a reserve, 
 for he durst neither clearly own his thoughts nor totally 
 disclaim them — the one way endangering his design and the 
 other his person. So that the skill of his part lay in this 
 — neither to be mistaken by his friends, nor understood 
 by his enemies. By this middle course he gained time to 
 remove obstructions and ripen occasions which to improve 
 and follow was the peculiar talent of this monster. 
 
 'To these enablements to mischief he had a will so 
 prostitute and prone that to express him I must say, He 
 was made up of craft and wickedness, and all his faculties 
 nay all his passions were slaves to his ambitions. 
 
 ' After his death, according to the Instrument the Council 
 is to choose a successor and whoever gapes to be the one 
 is supposed to wish the other ; which probably they had 
 rather hasten than wait for ; so that this miserable creature 
 being pained betwixt the hazard of enlarging his power 
 or having it thus dependant and the disdain of seeing it 
 limited enters into a restless suspicion of his Council, and 
 no way to be quieted but by depressing those that raised 
 him\ 
 
 Of the first of the three parties Cromwell had to fear, 
 viz., the Royalists, the Presbyterians, and Republicans, our 
 author says, ' Touching the Royalists, no good for him was 
 to be hoped for there, but by gaols, exile, selling them for 
 slaves, famishings or murder; all which was abundantly 
 provided for by sequestrations, pretended plots. High Courts 
 of Justice, spies, decoys, etc. Nay (for the very despatch 
 sake) when they should resolve upon the massacre (which 
 beyond doubt they meant us) no cavalier must be allowed 
 so much as the least piece of defensive arms by an order 
 of Nov. 24, 1655, no person suffered to keep in his 
 house as chaplain or schoolmaster any sequestered or 
 ejected minister, fellow of a college, etc. 
 
 ' This was the only party the rebels feared and ruined ; 
 but for the Presbyterians, they knew they'd never join 
 to help the King, and single they were inconsiderable'. 
 
 His ' cherishing the army ', keeping the nation in an 
 eternal ferment against the Royalists, setting one party 
 against another and betraying both by a splendid system 
 of espionage — all these 'methods' are duly discussed. As 
 for his ruling principle, 'The Kingship was the lodestar 
 of all his labours'. Private affections he scarcely knew. 
 
PROTECTORATE AND INTERREGNUM PASSAGES 43 
 
 * 'Tis rumoured that his daughter Claypole in the agonies 
 of his deathsickness rang him a peal that troubled him. 
 Whether 't were so or no 'tis past dispute, his grand dis- 
 tress was for the loss of that which he hoped to gain, and 
 made the most horrid of his sins seem solaces and pleasures '. 
 
 With Cromwell's death ^ the new scene opened * at night 
 with bonfires, with all the clamour, bustle, confusion, that 
 commonly attends these vulgar jollities. The soldiers took 
 the alarm, and in my hearing threatened divers for daring 
 to express their joy so unseasonably ; but they came off 
 with telling them that they were glad they had got a new 
 Protector, not that they had lost the old. In truth ', adds 
 our loyal historian, ' the new Protector was looked upon as 
 a person more inclinable to do good than capable to do 
 mischief and the exchange welcome to all that loved his 
 Majesty', and so he sums up the character of the son with 
 a very modern estimate. 
 
 The accession of Richard indeed opened up a chapter of 
 weakness and confusion in which the veriest novice at 
 intrigue or revolt could bear a hand. The part which was 
 safest to the Cavalier was rather by way of petition and 
 secret manifesto, and a liberal use of the Press than of 
 Parliamentary action or open revolt. These they wisely 
 left to the party so scorned by L'Estrange, the Presbyterians. 
 It is an interesting reflection that the great tyrant of the 
 Restoration Press first entered the politico-literary arena 
 in the character of a seditious libeller, and played this 
 at first dangerous part with insistence and skill. But 
 indeed the Press in the seventeenth and even eighteenth 
 century was little more than a party weapon and the 
 term, ' seditious libel ' connotes little more of sedition than 
 a leader in an opposition journal of to-day. 
 
 Professor Masson has told the story of this Hundred 
 Days^ on its literary side with much information. But 
 so far as L'Estrange is concerned there are of course gaps 
 in the story, and as his action was of some importance 
 in the general movement, it is necessary to describe here 
 
 1 On the question whether Oliver's decease was solely responsible for the ruin 
 of the Commonwealth, L'Estrange was decidedly of the contrary opinion. See 
 Memento, chap, viii., p. 40. * It still seems to me that before Oliver died the 
 Cause was bedrid, hectic and past recovery '. 
 
 '^ 'That bloody crisis,' L'Estrange calls it twenty years after. Discovery 
 2ipon Discovery, addressed to T. Oates, 1680. Masson, Life of Milton, v. 
 643-703. 
 
44 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 what he actually did. He himself has provided us with 
 a chronology of the Interregnum which for brevity and 
 quaintness it would be difficult to surpass : 
 
 Sept. 1658. 
 
 to 
 Apr. 1659. 
 
 r In September Oliver dies, and tben they are 
 Richard's Army, whose puisne Highness must have 
 his Parliament too. They meet and notwithstand- 
 ing a huge pack of officers and lawyers, the vote 
 proved utterly Republican, and friend neither to 
 single person nor Army. 
 
 Apr. 22nd f Now Richard takes his turn, but first down goes 
 to i his Parliament (Apr. 22) and for a while, the Army 
 
 May 9th. { officers undertake the Government. 
 
 May 9th 
 
 'to 
 Mar. 16th. 
 
 Some ten days later up with the Rump again and 
 then they're Lenthal's Army, which in October 
 1659 throAvs out the Rump and now they're Fleet- 
 wood's army. Enter the Rump once more in 
 December, and once the army comes about again. 
 The Rump's next exit is for ever, March 11th, 1660. 
 
 ' Behold the staff of the Rebellion, both the support and 
 punishment of it — a standing army ' \ 
 
 Whatever may have been the character of the various 
 risings since 1648 and of the premature action of the 
 band of Royalists known as the Sealed or Select knot, 
 in Richard's Protectorate, there is no doubt that with the 
 advent of the Rump in May 1659, the responsible leaders 
 abroad began to think that the period of masterly silence 
 and mere plotting was over, and that the hour for action 
 had arrived, if they were not to lose the opportunity of 
 confusion, and the gathering of Loyalist sentiment. Every 
 fresh failure of the Commonwealth to establish itself meant 
 large accessions to their cause, even from the most avowed 
 Republicans. The despairing Cromwellians or Court-party, 
 it soon appeared, were more attached to single-person rule 
 than to the cause which the last single-person had espoused. 
 General disillusionment was throwing large masses of opinion 
 into the Royalist scale, and London especially was honey- 
 combed with sedition, in part due to the patient labour of 
 the secret loyal clubs since the rise of the Protector. Of 
 the very extended nature of the Rising which has become 
 identified with the name of Sir George Booth, it is un- 
 necessary to say anything here further than that it was 
 
 1 Memento (1662), pt. i. 
 
PROTECTORATE AND INTERREGNUIM PASSAGES 45 
 
 common complaint of its organisers, that the old Cavaliers 
 were far too chary of taking any part in it, because of former 
 miscarriages, and that though the risings were designed to 
 take place in those parts where the King's party was strongest, 
 it was rather the Presbyterian than the Cavalier interest to 
 which they appealed ^. 
 
 The jealousy of new leaders and former enemies seems 
 to have deterred many of the old party from joining, while if 
 Clarendon's picture of their demoralisation by debauch and 
 sequestration is exaggerated, there is no doubt a certain 
 cogency in the post-Restoration claim of the Presbyterians 
 to some gratitude on the part of the Government, and since 
 no man was better informed of this than Clarendon, we can 
 see how he was likely to look unfavourably on the extreme 
 and indiscreet demands of the old Cavaliers ^. A great weari- 
 ness had come over the Cavalier party, and whilst they were 
 rescued from utter dejection by Cromwell's ' infatuation ' in 
 not assuming the crown and better still by his death, the 
 
 1 Evelyn's Apologi/ for tlie Royal Party, 1659. 4th November 1659, E. 763 
 (11) "Twas wholly managed by some of their own {i.e. the Presbyterians) party, 
 whom the Rump had disobliged'. The Cheshire Rout sounded for the last 
 time the depths of Presbyterian Royalist suspicions. It was truly the result of a 
 ' universal hatred and disdain of their (Parliament's) proceedings, but what by 
 treachery, delays, babling, disappointments, and scruples of taking in the Royal 
 Party (by those that never meant his Majesty or his friends should be the better 
 for 't) the whole was dashed ', Memento, pt. i. The proposal to bring over the 
 King before any port had been secured gave point to these suspicions. Yet 
 L'Estrange was not quite idle. He issued a paper for the occasion calling in the 
 men of London to demand a Free Parliament. See Verney Memoirs, ii., 450-1. 
 ' The only thing that looks like countenancing Sir George is the intended petition 
 of the City for a Free Parliament, as they say. I do not hear of any one Cavalier 
 in all this affair, but that it is wholly on the Presbytery and those that fought 
 and engaged for what they call the good old Cause.' See also Prof, Firth's 
 Ludlow's Memoirs, ii,, 104 et seq. and Clarendon {Contimiation of Life (1761), ii., 35). 
 
 2 For the classic dispute between Eachard and Oldmixon as to the claims of the 
 Presbyterians see i., 486-91 of the latter's History. Baxter — says Oldmixon — 
 naturally claimed the conspiracy for which Love died, and the Booth Rising as 
 Presbytery's contribution towards the Restoration, 'all the stir the royalists 
 could make was by spiriting up mobs and mutineers in the City and Camp '. p. 304. 
 By their mean work and false pretences they goad the Londoners on with talk of 
 taxes and liberties, etc., p. 449. ' We are now (March 1660, p. 448) come within 
 a few weeks of the Restoration and we have not a word of the Cavaliers unless 
 from those whom Dr Davenant calls Under-spurleathers. Even in the Prentice 
 meeting of Feb. 1660 (when Monk was called into the City) there is not the 
 name of one Royalist of note '. In a word 'they contributed little or nothing to 
 bringing in the King '. 
 
 Another touch at L'Estrange who is included under the title Under-spurleather) 
 is given when the Whig Historian takes Eachard to task for omitting 'the 
 immortal Milton and the very witty Marvell ' from his list of Restoration wits. 
 ' As to Davenant and L'Estrange refining and improving our tongue he showed 
 his knowledge in language to be as imperfect as his History,' p. 491. See 
 Eachard, Hist, of Eng. (1720), ii., 846. 
 
46 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 treacheries which are associated with the names of Sir 
 Richard Willis and the wretched Francis Corker, and from 
 which L'Estrange did not escape, coupled with the jealousies 
 between the old experienced intriguers and the younger and 
 less wary school, produced between the state of helplessness 
 reflected — to choose one out of many tracts — in L'Estrange's 
 own Appeal in the Case of the Late King's Party ' i. 
 
 But if fewer Cavaliers assisted in this adventure which 
 had the full privity and approval of Charles and the 
 Chancellor, the party was by no means deterred from other 
 action of the meaner sort indicated by Oldmixon — that is 
 by embroiling the City on the subject of taxation, and by 
 a liberal use of the Press. The ever-ready L'Estrange took 
 advantage of Lambert's withdrawal on 6th August 1659 
 from London, to set forth the first of a daring series of 
 manifestoes ^. The City was left naked of troops and Roger 
 appealed not indeed for a Restoration, but for what all men 
 knew to carry Restoration with it — a full and free Parlia- 
 ment. Nothing shows more clearly the very small part 
 which the old Cavaliers took in the approaching confusion 
 and the hesitancy to which they were reduced, than the 
 absence almost up to the last of any but covert appeals 
 for the return of Charles. Far bolder but less prudent 
 demands in this direction were made by their old enemies, 
 the Presbyterians. 
 
 The repression which followed Lambert's triumph has 
 been made much of by Clarendon, but if we follow the 
 fortunes of the fallen leaders, we are rather surprised by 
 the leniency of the Government — a mark of weakness of 
 course in this instance. If Royalist designs were at all 
 interfered with, the interference was momentary, and that 
 facility of communication and propaganda noted by Clarendon 
 as having been introduced on the death of Cromwell, very 
 quickly re-asserted itself^. 
 
 1 Not generally ascribed to L'Estrange, but the British Museum authorities 
 are almost certainly right here. See Prof. Firth's Last Years of the Protectorate, 
 i.,206, andii., 69. 
 
 2 The Declaration of tlie City to the Men at Westminster. Not in the 
 Thomason Collection. There is also (Bodl., Wood, 567 (46)) a Remonstrdnce and 
 Protestation of the well-affected People of London, Westminster, and oilier Cities, etc., 
 16 folio pages, with a list of the Parliament men to whom it was to be sent, dated 
 16th November 1659. It looks very like L'Estrange's work. 
 
 3 Eachard (ii,, 849) has various reflections on the conduct of 'this generous 
 undertaking ', which though seemingly fatal to Royalist hopes ' proved a mighty 
 step towards the Restoration '. 
 
PROTECTORATE AND INTERREGNUM PASSAGES 47 
 
 The ruin of the Royalist hopes, for the moment, carried 
 with it also the exaltation of the army and the fall (also 
 momentary) of the Rump, which was expelled by the 
 victorious General on 13th October. Now came the two 
 or three months of chaos which gave an opportunity for 
 the most extraordinary clash of opinions, speculations, and 
 theories of government which has ever convulsed the 
 English nation. The Press was free not by statute, but 
 by the inability of any one to rein it in. Every morning 
 the hawkers and mercuries of London yelled out news of 
 some new scheme of government founded on Greek, Roman, 
 or Mosaic tradition, news of the latest absurdity of the Rota 
 Club, or the Club at the Bow, while pamphlets, declarations, 
 and manifestoes from Harrington, Milton, L'Estrange, and 
 Prynne, and sermons by Royalist and Presbyterian divines 
 deafened the Metropolis i. 
 
 The critical moment — if any moment of such a confusion 
 could be called critical — came with that tacit union of old 
 Rump officials with the Wallingford Council at Whitehall, 
 which demonstrated the futility and error of Lambert's 
 action on 13th October, and clearly pointed to the return 
 of the Rump. It was then that the action of the City 
 became important. By the Proclamation of 14th December 
 calling for a Parliament to meet in January 2, not a 'full 
 and free Parliament ', but fettered by all the Loyalist restric- 
 tions of Cromwell's Parliaments, the Royal party and the 
 City — the terms are almost synonymous now — saw that if 
 this Parliament met, all hopes of relief must be relinquished. 
 The order for an assessment of £100,000 per month brought 
 matters to a crisis. Eight days previous to the Proclama- 
 tion referred to, L'Estrange had the hardihood to issue what 
 he called A Free Parliament, proposed hy the City to the 
 Nation ^, this on the very day that ' Hewson's mirmydons ' 
 were riding down the London prentices, and Whitlocke's draft 
 constitution which embodied the views of the Commonwealth 
 
 1 Lesley, View of the Times (a collected volume of a paper called the Observator 
 Rehearsed, which begun in 1704 to stem the tide of atheism and particularly 
 directed against Defoe's Refoieio, modelled itself on L'Estrange's old Observator) 
 remarks in its 36th number, that Thurloe told Clarendon after the Restoration 
 that * though they were possessed of the People, the Power, and the Army, yet 
 they lost all in a moment. The chief cause of which he attributed to the books 
 and papers wrote by the Cavaliers which, though fewer in number than those on 
 the other side, yet were far superior in strength of reason '. 
 
 2 669 f. 11 (24) Bod. 
 
 3 Dated 3rd January in Thomason Collection, 669 f. 22 (56). 
 
48 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 lawyers and Savoy clergy was submitted to the Army Council 
 at Whitehall. The constitution granted no wide toleration ; 
 it maintained the present Church establishment out of the 
 tithes, and it saddled the country with single-chamber legisla- 
 tion and rule. How intensely disappointing it was to the 
 nation may be seen from the fact that it was equally dis- 
 tasteful to Milton (because of the establishment out of 
 the tithes and perhaps because of the measure of popular 
 election it gave) and to L'Estrange for whom — and his 
 party generally — nothing but a full popular election could 
 at that moment bring about a complete abrogation of 
 popular government, which they desired in the form of 
 the Restoration. 
 
 Meanwhile in the manifesto of 12th December \ Roger 
 had seized, probably with an eye to Monk, news of whose 
 arrival at Coldstream had just come out, on those elements 
 which were most embarrassing to the Government — the defec- 
 tion of Hazelrig and Morley at Portsmouth. Particularly 
 he set himself to fan the disorder and resentment of 
 Hewson's rough handling of the petitioners which had 
 appeared the day before in the City. For the only time 
 in his life, L'Estrange could think of the London rabble 
 with approbation. That passage in Clarendon ^ which recalls 
 a similar passage in Tacitus, where the Chancellor relates 
 and deplores the anarchy of the City ' when father and son 
 engaged themselves in the contrary parties — and the blood of 
 the master was frequently the price of the servants' villany ', 
 indicates the kind of muddy waters which L'Estrange had 
 now to stir up in haranguing the apprentices into revolt. 
 ' The City is grown so impatient of the soldiers that it is 
 feared they will suddenly break out into an open violence 
 upon them; they have already entered into a solemn engage- 
 ment to that purpose'. So reads the preamble to the 
 document of the 16th December^, and the engagement is 
 of rather a startling nature. Nothing less than the setting 
 
 1 Engagetnent and Rem-onstrance of London^ subscribed by 23,500 hands. 
 12th December, 669 f. 22 (18). 
 
 2 Continuation, ii., 39. 
 
 3 Final Protest and Sense of tU City, 16th December, 669 f. 22 (26). 'This 
 sheet gave great offence to the saints, particularly to Tichborne.' {Apology). On 
 20th December appeared a declaration by the Common Council vindicating the 
 Lord Mayor and others from certain scandalous aspersions contained in a 
 pamphlet entitled The Final Protest, etc., 669 f. 22 (32). A Proclamation of the 
 Council (16th December, 669 f. 22 (25)) banishing Cavaliers from London was 
 the 'sting'. 
 
PROTECTORATE AND INTERREGNUM PASSAGES 49 
 
 up of an opposition Parliament to that about to be pro- 
 posed by the Council at Whitehall. 
 
 ' The City of London hath constituted 4 commissioners to 
 treat respectively with the rest of the people of England on 
 behalf of their invaded rights and in such manner to proceed 
 as to the same commissioners shall appear most convenient. 
 Choose out of every county two persons of known integrity 
 that may be still among us to preserve a fair intelligence 
 with us. No longer since than yesterday the Conservators 
 of our Liberties, Hewson and his myrmydons put an affront 
 upon us — the very mention of a Free Parliament enrages 
 them and there is a reason for it. Their heads are forfeited, 
 and if the Law lives, they must perish '^ 
 
 As an effect of the city tumults, the Common Council 
 whence had emanated the proposals for a Free Parliament 
 and the refusal to pay the great tax, was forcibly dissolved. 
 As December wore on, and it became more clear that the 
 Wallingford Council had forgotten Monk, and that 'old 
 silent George' was preparing for his January descent from 
 Coldstream, the impending ruin of the chaotic Government 
 appeared certain, and a corresponding contempt for its 
 soldiers and agents was displayed in the City, where Hewson's 
 regiments were pelted with mud by the rabble to which 
 L'Estrange and others so fervently addressed themselves. 
 Fleetwood's government of the City lacked all firmness. 
 The secret of his hesitancy was his desire to stand well with 
 the party of the Restoration to which Whitlocke entreated 
 him to give ear ere it was too late. 
 
 Two days after the Proclamation of the 14th December, 
 for a restricted Parliament to meet in January, L'Estrange 
 took upon himself to issue The Final Protest and Sense of 
 the City, in which he adopted a freedom of language in 
 speaking of the Government, and discovered such a contempt 
 of the Savoy ministerial clique, that Tichborne earnestly 
 sought out the author and severely abused the hawkers of 
 the inflammatory piece. The daring journalist had also 
 singled out the Lord Mayor, a true trimmer, who had bade 
 the Town be quiet till the new Parliament met 2. 
 
 A week later, undeterred by Tichborne's menaces, Roger 
 
 1 Twenty years later his enemies would use the same menace to him, we 
 shall have a Parliament '. See chap. viii. 250. 
 
 " He found it difficult afterwards to defend his ' trimming ' attitude. S^ 
 the Vindication of the Lord Mayor and Aldermen, 30th April 1660, E. 1023 (2). 
 
 D 
 
50 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 issued (23rd December) a still more audacious Resolve of 
 the City ^ in which he urged that no taxes should be paid 
 till liberty (or the crown) was restored. 
 
 The Eump was restored on the following day (24th 
 December) amid short-lived huzzas. The four days pre- 
 ceding had been days of unprecedented gloom in the City. 
 Though the Restoration was so near the Cavaliers could do 
 little more than work secretly among the apprentices and 
 mob. They had been so easily and signally crushed in the 
 late rising and were so alive to internal treachery and dis- 
 trust that it was highly unlikely that they would again 
 take to arms. A large number had accepted what they 
 regarded as the inevitable, and in any case to most men the 
 present trouble and confusion transcended in importance 
 even the thought of Restoration. Among all men, therefore, 
 whatever vain hopes they nourished in connection with 
 Charles, there was a real sense of their country's wounds 
 and a strong yearning for some form of stable government ^. 
 
 Whatever efforts therefore emanated at this time from 
 the loyal party, care was taken to observe a discreet reticence 
 on the subject of the Restoration, for they had now become 
 convinced that of their own effort they could do nothing, and 
 that they must work through the sane body of moderate 
 opinion which was not yet prepared to shout for Charles. 
 
 In such a position the close of the year found parties, 
 and here it may be fitting to notice briefly what other 
 writers were doing for their respective sides. 
 
 Evelyn, Stubbe, Howell, Prynne, and L'Estrange are the 
 chief champions on the side of the Restoration. They were 
 shortly (towards the end of December 1659) reinforced 
 powerfully by the journalists Henry Muddiman and Giles 
 
 1 Tlie Resolve, etc. (protesting against the terras of the Agreement of the 
 Gen. Council of Officers, 22nd December), 669. f. 22 (32). 
 
 2 Evidence of this weariness on the part of the Cavaliers is found in the 
 pamphlets of Evelyn [Apology for the Royal Party, 4th November 1659, E. 763 (ii). 
 Stubbe, Commonwealth put in the Balance, but best of all in L'Estrange's Appeal 
 in the Case of the Late King's Party, Jamiary 1660, addressed to 'The Present 
 Declared Supreme Magistrate of the Nation between whom and that royal person 
 it is now apparent the only contest for the helmship and steerage of the present 
 government is now probably like to lie, in the very hinting whereof methinks my 
 pen drops blood.' The deprecatory tone of the tract, 'the motives to the 
 writing which were the high displeasure and indignation which hath so long 
 continued against that loyal party (amongst which number I confess myself 
 one)', proves too sadly that as a result of the Booth and other failures 'the 
 Cavalier party began to despair and to give their cause for lost unless by division 
 amongst themselves they should render their victories useless, which fell out 
 sooner than they expected '. Memento (1662), pt. i. 
 
PROTECTORATE AND INTERREGNUM PASSAGES 51 
 
 Durie. Evelyn and Howell contented themselves with 
 defending the Royalist party and repudiating the rumours 
 of the King's apostasy. Stubbe, with his speculative mind 
 entered the welter of debate on the Ideal Constitution which 
 is associated with Harrington's Rota Club. On the inde- 
 fatigable Mr Prynne, Prof. Masson has bestowed the 
 compliment that he more than any other man * had created 
 the feeling that prevailed ', which may have been true, but 
 that London was 'tormented or delighted' by his heavy 
 writings is incredible to a degenerate age. He had come 
 into high honour with the Cavalier party — a party which 
 in these years found it difficult to welcome any who had 
 been the part cause of their troubles — and even L'Estrange 
 calls him ' The Honour of his Age ' ^. 
 
 From the moment of the first restoration of the Rump, 
 Prynne set himself to secure the return of the secluded 
 members, and his already formidable list of pamphlets was 
 extended by numerous true narratives, etc., addressed to 
 Monk and every one else to show the obduracy of the Rump 
 to his pet scheme, which was in the event adopted by the 
 General and consented to on 11th January by the Rump 
 under compulsion ^. 
 
 Milton had scarcely more than entered the fray. He 
 was indeed paralysed hj his dubious attitude to the other 
 parties, nor does it seem to have entered his mind yet that 
 the decisive struggle between the Commonwealth and the 
 Restoration was so near at hand. So late as August, when 
 the Cheshire Rising was the subject of the hour, he was 
 possessed by one idea, a complete Toleration following the 
 Disestablishment of Religion, a cause for which, despite his 
 praise, the Rump was scarce likely to offend the Savoy 
 party. It was not till Lambert laid rude hands on the Rump 
 in October that he was aroused from his dream to a general 
 
 1 A Seasonable Word, February 1660 {See the Apology). Still more com- 
 plimentary, Boger did not include him in the posonce damnosce of Dissentert 
 Sayings, where the other patriarchs of sedition, Burton and Bastwicke, have a 
 high place. The very * Mr ' invariably affixed to his name is significant ; Baxter 
 never honoured L'Estrange with the title * Mr', which Roger resented. See also 
 Engku^d's Confusion, 1659(Somer's Tracts, vi., 560.) ' His (Prynne's) learned, and 
 seasonable writings praise him in the gates ', says the loyal writer. Hallam, 
 Cons. Hist, of Eng. (1879), p. 488, 'Prynne was the first who had the 
 boldness to speak for the King '. See Carte's Letters, ii., 312. Also Prynne's 
 Legal Vindication of the Liberties of England (E. 772 (4)), and Short Legal 
 Prescription (Somer's Tracts, vi., 533). 
 
 2 A not exhaustive list of Prynno s activities in these months is given by Prof, 
 Masson {Milton, v., 531). 
 
52 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 alarm for the Commonwealth, and then he wrote his Letter 
 on the Ruptures of the Gomrifionwealth, in which he proposed 
 his own impossible Eepublican Aristocracy, which partly- 
 reproduced the ideas of Harrington's Bota. 
 
 In the four critical days preceding the Restoration of 
 the Rump, he lay inert and despairing, knowing as all men 
 did now that the decision lay rather at Coldstream than 
 Whitehall. The restored Rump he approved, but its watered- 
 down Republicanism and its views on the Establishment he 
 regarded as a betrayal. 
 
 The General had been greeted on his journey south at 
 his several halting-places by numerous protests and petitions, 
 a large number purporting to give the state of opinion in the 
 provinces, which now seemed for the first time in twenty 
 years to spring into an importance which eclipsed the noisy 
 Capital. 
 
 He had received on the 9th January, when his army 
 was somewhere between Newcastle and York, Harrington's 
 Rota, or Model of a Free Gommomvealth, and probably at 
 the same time in his London budget a pretentious Address 
 to the Commissioners of the City of London for the Rights 
 and Liberties of the English Nation ^, which purported to 
 be the demands of the Counties and their advice to the City 
 in its dilemma. It vehemently urged that no more petitions 
 to the Rump should come from the City, that no taxes should 
 be paid, and demanded an absolutely Free Parliament. But 
 the document had no provincial authority, for it was penned 
 by Roger L'Estrange in London. 
 
 There was still some danger in demanding a Free Parlia- 
 ment, and Roger was quite right in claiming afterwards that 
 he took his liberty, if not his life, in his hands, when he set 
 forth even these guarded manifestoes 2. But in regard to 
 the anonymous Appeal in the Case of the late King's Party 
 already alluded to — which belongs to this month, and finds 
 no place in the list of his services which his Apology 
 furnishes, and on that account is seldom quoted as his — 
 there is a suspicion that he wished to stand well with the 
 party in power. 
 
 In Bristol Richard Ellsworth urged the prentices to 
 appeal to the Mayor to associate with adjacent counties, and 
 
 1 Dated 3rd January [Apology, 8, 1660). 
 
 "^ He was generous enough afterwards to share the credit of the danger with 
 his publisher, Harry Brome. See Discovery tcpo7i Discovery, 1680. 
 
PROTECTORATE AND INTERREGNUM PASSAGES 63 
 
 with the Lord Mayor and Council of London, and in January 
 further urged the prentice-mob to rise against the Eump, 
 the design to be communicated by the Press ^ 
 
 Responsible people, however, like the Recorder of Exeter, 
 were careful to use language which would promote an inter- 
 mediate state of things leading up to the ' larger policy '. 
 
 This petition of Bampfield's drew some attention both 
 from the Rump and from Monk, perhaps because it was 
 known to emanate from a country which was burning with 
 discontent and arming. 
 
 It reached Monk at Leicester, communicated probably by 
 the Speaker, to whom it was addressed. On 23rd January the 
 Rump made a 'fawning ' reply to it. The same day at Leicester 
 the General sent a cautious letter to Mr Rolle * to be communi- 
 cated to the gentry of Devonshire in answer to Mr Bampfield's 
 Petition '. This letter was read in Parliament, and a more 
 astute document it would be impossible to imagine ^. 
 
 Although the Devonshire Petition was of the crypto- 
 Royalist type and cautiously veiled its true design, 
 L'Estrange as the self-constituted journalist of the Party 
 attacked those parts of it that seemed to exclude the 
 Kingship, and in answer to Monk's still more non-committal, 
 if not adverse letter to Rolle, there appeared what is really 
 an admirable tract long attributed to L'Estrange, the Plea 
 for Limited Monarchy ^. 
 
 The four reasons dubiously alleged against a Restoration 
 by Bampfield and Monk are noteworthy as affording the author 
 of this pamphlet an opportunity for acting the laudator 
 temporis acti of Merry England before the Civil confusion. 
 
 These were : — 
 
 (1) The major part of the nation is admitted to be 
 
 inclined to Monarchy, but .'those that have 
 swallowed crown lands are against'. 
 
 (2) A Republic alone can sort out the entangled interests 
 
 of the nation *. 
 
 (3) The army is against. 
 
 (4) It would beget a new war. 
 
 1 See a Letter from the Prentices of Bristol to those of London, 9th February. 
 
 2 * It seems plain,' says Hallam {Cons. Hist., p. 490), ' that if he (Monk) had 
 delayed a very little longer, he would have lost the whole credit of the Restora- 
 tion ', p. 489. ' The professional hypocrites were deceived. Cromwell was a mere 
 bungler to him '. Monk to Rolle, 22nd January, E. 1013 (20). 
 
 2 E. 765 (3). Included in Soraer's Tracts, vol. vi. ; see note p. 57. Pepys, i., 63. 
 4 This public expression of the opinion that a Republic is best fitted for a 
 trading community is noteworthy and will recur. 
 
54 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 Such reasoning offered ample scope for the author of the 
 Plea. It is difficult to find whether L'Estrange had even 
 the scant authority which enabled him to set forth his 
 Kentish manifestoes when he now addressed to his Excellency 
 Gen. Monk, a letter ' from the Gentlemen of Devon ' ^, in 
 which he represented the intolerable grievances and dis- 
 tractions of the country and attacked the four positions 
 noted above. 
 
 His daring on this occasion was recorded in the events 
 of the following critical week. The Council had taken 
 notice at last of the Eoyalist papers which fluttered about 
 city and country. On 2nd February, two days before Monk 
 entered London, the Lord Mayor was reminded of the Press 
 Act of September 1649 by which it was enacted 'that no 
 hawkers and dispersers of scandalous books and papers 
 shall be permitted ', and was required to proceed against 
 them. Many people had deserted their more laborious 
 callings to run round the streets with a budget of the 
 latest attacks on the Rump. A week later, letters were 
 sent out by the Council to all the garrisons to the effect 
 'that many persons groundlessly and falsely interpret that 
 (Gen. Monk) has declared and is resolved for a full and 
 free Parliament'. This on 12th February when 'from the 
 apprehensions raised thereby the streets of the city were 
 filled with bonfires, tumults, and limitless acclamations of 
 joy '^. Secretary Thomas Scot was admonished to look 
 after the Press, and Tichborne grew alarmed^. 
 
 But even before Monk entered the city the Eoyalist and 
 anti-Republican faction had laboured to prepare the minds 
 of citizens so that he could have no doubt of their wishes. 
 The long abused soldiery were incited to mutiny for 
 arrears, a cause that gave them an occasion to fraternise 
 with the City, which had so recently loaded them with 
 curses. They were invited, not yet successfully, by the 
 intrepid L'Estrange to join hands with the prentices and 
 others who were united by an engagement for a full and 
 free Parliament. 
 
 1 669 f. 23 (23). G.S.P.D. (1659-60), p. 330, 28th January 1660. Under same 
 date petitions to the same effect from Norwich and Suffolk. 
 
 2 Apology, 1660. For a note on the prentices of this period see Prof. Firth's 
 Last Years 'of the Protectorate, (ii., 73). Many of these youths (according to 
 Mercurius Rusticus) were sons of Cavaliers. 
 
 3 C.S.P.D. (1659-60), pp. 343-4. Council of State to the Lord Mayor, and to 
 the Master and Warden of the Stationers' Coy., 2nd February 1660. 
 
PROTECTORATE AND INTERREGNUM PASSAGES 55 
 
 The night of Thursday, 2nd February witnessed an 
 organised riot of the latter, in an attempt which showed the 
 agony of fear and distrust which Monk's policy of silence 
 had produced in the City. The object of the revolters and 
 their Cavalier directors (L'Estrange foremost among them) 
 was to seize the city against Monk's entry, and had they 
 gained over the mutinous soldiers to whom Roger addressed 
 himself, the course of history might have run differently. 
 
 ' Late at night ', says our author \ * the apprentices drew 
 into a party in the city and were scattered by the Army 
 Horse, whereas had they rather drawn down into the Strand 
 and joined themselves with those in Somerset House, it 
 was believed by sober persons, that they might have 
 carried it. About one in the morning, the revolted party 
 was false-alarmed, and persuaded out of their security 
 upon pretence that if they were not instantly posted to 
 hinder Monk's advance into the Town, they would have 
 all their throats cut in their quarters'. 
 
 This device succeeded, the rioters evacuated their 
 quarters and left the City quiet, and in a condition which 
 Roger ungenerously but in courtier wise calls 'honester 
 guests '. 
 
 The following (Friday) afternoon Monk marched in, 
 and if he had time or inclination, he might have perused 
 * another bolt ' from the unwearying Loyalist, to the effect 
 that he (Monk) was far too wise to regard the events of 
 the previous night as (what indeed they were) a menace 
 to his entry. 
 
 On Saturday (4th February) the Rump used its momentary 
 triumph to adopt a measure which would have terminated 
 all Loyalist hopes. This Act raised the Rump to 400 
 members on the electoral basis of 1653. It was followed 
 by a flood of petitions from Oxford, York, Lynn, etc., for 
 a full and free Parliament — demands which were answered 
 by the letter of State to the garrisons, referred to above. 
 
 But on the 7th a critical measure reviving the December 
 tax of £100,000 was passed, which gave the signal for a 
 final rally of all anti-Rump forces ^ not only in the City, 
 but throughout the country. The chief centres of extra- 
 urban agitation were Devon and Norfolk. Warwick sent 
 
 1 Apology, 1660. 
 
 2 ,See a letter 24th February 1658, H. Cromwell to Thurloe {Thurloe State Papers, 
 vi., 821), quoted by Prof. Firth, Last Years of the Protectorate, ii., 271. 'Errors 
 in raising money are the compendious ways to cause a general discontentment'. 
 
66 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 its resolve to resist the tax. On Wednesday the Common 
 Council of London resolved against the order \ for which 
 on the 9th the Rump ordered the arrest of the more 
 prominent objectors, 'half a score of their citizens', says 
 L'Estrange, 'chiefly merchants'. 
 
 On the 7th also — the day of the order — Secretary Scott 
 was enjoined to look strictly after the Press. Whilst Monk 
 was pursuing his odious task of subduing the rebellious city 
 (8th-10th February) news was received from the commander- 
 in - chief in Norfolk of dangerous meetings of the dis- 
 affected in Lynn, while from Exeter came tidings of a 
 great dispersal of arms among the Royal party. 
 
 In the flush of Monk's success, which they counted to 
 themselves, the Rump Council adopted the extreme measure 
 of ordering the discontinuance of the refractory Common 
 Council, and whilst commending the discreet Lord Mayor, 
 prescribed an Abjuration Oath for the next election. 
 
 An attack on City liberties was almost fatal to Charles II. 
 in his greatest moment of power, it was now fatal to the 
 Rump. It threw Monk into the arms of the citizens and 
 thus determined the issue of the protracted struggle ; it 
 was only a matter of how long and by what steps to the 
 Restoration. 
 
 The 9th and 10th days of this memorable month saw 
 Monk carrying out the Rump's destructive work in the 
 City. The 11th saw him tender something like an apology 
 to the City Fathers, and clearly cut himself adrift from 
 the Rump. A week of portentous anxiety followed in 
 which the struggle was transferred to the Common Council, 
 which had defied the order of State. On the motion for 
 raising the City Militia, the Republicans fought stoutly 
 to delay the measure by talking it out. The scene of 
 conference was the house of alderman Wales, where repre- 
 sentatives of the Rump met those of the Common Council, 
 and the General, in a vain endeavour to patch up a peace 
 which only one side sincerely desired. 
 
 The tables were now turned, and Scot's orders to 
 suppress Royalist literature already appeared futile. Never- 
 theless we can admire the desperate efforts of the 
 Republican faction to cling to power. First they opposed 
 the Militia and then, that summoned, they endeavoured 
 to secure the officers. *The Commonwealthmen, they're 
 
 I Resolved to adhere to a former vote of the Court in the negative. 
 
PROTECTORATE AND INTERREGNUM PASSAGES 57 
 
 abirding too, and tell their little tale of Rome and Venice '. 
 From the country came news of flying bodies of Republican 
 troops and the Presses disgorged a load of vehement anti- 
 Restoration literature. 
 
 On the 18th February — three days before Monk 
 marched down to the House to reinstate the Presbyterian 
 majority ^ — L'Estrange published A Word in Season addressed 
 to Monk and the City, in which he had the good sense to do 
 little more than abuse the Rump ^. 
 
 The return of the secluded members somewhat dis- 
 concerted one celebrated tract from the hand of Milton, 
 necessitating thereby a prefatory word of explanation. The 
 Readie and Easie Way, etc., does not awaken memories of 
 splendid rhetoric as does the Areopagitica^ but it is the 
 best of Milton's pre - Restoration tracts. It is written 
 hurriedly and in obvious agitation, though laid aside during 
 the revolution in the City. With the settlement forced by 
 Monk, it undertook its unpopular passage into the public 
 mind, and for ever remains one of Milton's claims to a 
 noble courage^. 
 
 For by this time the danger of publication had been 
 transferred from the side which L'Estrange and Prynne — 
 strange bed-fellows — espoused, and except for Milton, the 
 Republic was now anonymous. 
 
 It is an ungrateful task to record here L'Estrange's first 
 offence ' against the cannons of good taste ' in his attack on 
 Milton. It is possible to regard the poet in the light of a 
 posterior sacrosanctity which his name did not then enjoy. 
 At any rate the gibes of Roger's Seasonable Word published 
 towards the end of the month (February) sins far less in 
 
 1 See A Full Declaration of the True State of the Secluded Members Case 
 which (p. 55) gives a list of the excluded. 30th January, E, 1013 (22). 
 
 2 Printed at The Hague, 669 f. 23 (52). The date of the Plea for Limited 
 Monarchy is given in the Thmnason Catalogue as 20th February. Is it likely 
 L'Estrange woxild have forgotten such an excellent contribution when he summed 
 up his services in his Apology"^ Despite the tribute that this tract ' without the 
 heat of party or faction conveys to us a desirable representation of true English 
 liberty only to be supported by Monarchy ', we must conclude against Oldys's 
 attribution of it to L'Estrange (Somer's Tracts, vol. vi. ). It is not in his style nor by 
 his printer. The same reason is not valid against the Appeal in the Case of tlie, 
 late King's Party (that is, that L'Estrange does not claim it) because its modera- 
 tion on certain points would not increase its author's credit with the Restored 
 Government. An echo to the Plea by the same author, 17th July, E. 765 (4), puts 
 the matter beyond doubt. 
 
 3 With the Restoration stream running so high, it required courage to say that 
 ' Christ himself had put the brand of Gentilism upon Kingship '. Yet not one 
 of Milton's pamphlets had a larger circulation or provoked a more rapid fury of 
 critici»m, Masson, Milton, iii., 657. 
 
58 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 this respect than the two later pamphlets The Character of 
 the Rump (17th March) and the famous Royalist squib of 
 30th March, The Censure of the Rota'^. 
 
 There was one unhappy phrase of Milton's pamphlet on 
 which any fool could fasten, where he adjures the Rump 
 (the author had allowed the passage referring to the state 
 of things before Monk's resolution to stand) 'to quit that 
 fond opinion of successive Parliament ', and to ' perpetuate 
 themselves under the name of a Grand or General Council '. 
 How Milton came to approve such aristocratic Republicanism 
 is a difficult question for even such an apologist as Masson, 
 but certainly it was the cause of endless jeering by the 
 Philistines. How to make peace between Milton and 
 Harrington's Rota became the pet jest of the town, now 
 when the omens of victory turned London to a ' hysteria of 
 jesting'. It was as useless for Milton to explain (second edition 
 of the Readie and Easie Way) that he would concede the 
 principle of the Rota for the sake of the weaker brethren, as 
 to deny that the majority of the people desired the monarchy. 
 He voiced the once heroic minority which by right of 
 conquest had assumed the right to rule. 
 
 ' I could only wish,' says L'Estrange in a civil sneer 
 'his Excellency (Monk) had been a little civiler to Mr 
 Milton ! for just as he had finished his model of a Common- 
 wealth Directory in these very terms of the choice : — " men 
 not addicted to a single person or House of Lords ", and the 
 work is done, in come the secluded members and spoil his 
 project '. 
 
 There were two questions which demanded the attention 
 of the Restored Parliament. The first was settled the day 
 after the return of the secluded (22nd February) by an 
 order for a new Parliament to meet on the 25th April, but 
 not so speedily was the matter of the electoral restrictions 
 settled. The other matter consumed the second half of 
 members' time, and aroused much greater dissension. The 
 irrelevant discussions on the power of the sword actually 
 alarmed the Royal party. In this event Monk saw fit to 
 amend the Militia Act (passed 12th March) in an anti- 
 Royalist direction to avoid giving offence to the officers. 
 But so long had the fanatic party held power over the 
 army, that a feeling existed among the Cavaliers, that in 
 some slip 'twixt cup and lip, that power would still be retained, 
 
 1 26th March. E. 1019 (6*) ; ^ar, Misc., iii., 188. 
 
PROTECTORATE AND INTERREGNUM PASSAGES 59 
 
 The debates on the electoral restrictions, by a sufficient, 
 but not too large, majority turned out fairly happily for 
 the Loyal party. But here, too, the repetition of the familiar 
 harangues which had ruined so many Commonwealth Parlia- 
 ments, raised a hope in fanatic and Republican breasts, that 
 the Restored Parliament might be induced to continue long 
 enough, despite the vote of 22nd February, till by another 
 popular or military movement, the Rump would again come 
 uppermost. Such hopes animated a pamphlet (we must now 
 almost call it a libel) which came out on March 13th 
 entitled No New Parliament, a feeble attempt to answer 
 the swarm of attacks on the Rump which mark the final 
 exit of that assembly. It drew from L'Estrange a vigorous 
 refutation. Bump Enough, or Quaerie for Quaerie i. 
 
 Fear and trembling that the day determined on for the 
 final exit of the Rump — the 16th March — might by some 
 unforeseen accident leave that body still sitting, or the 
 other fear that with the electoral restrictions a new Rump 
 might be foisted on the nation 2, these moods alternated 
 with a delirious abandon reflected in the wildest jocularity. 
 In No Fool to the Old Fool published for the day of exit ^ 
 L'Estrange fell in with this latter temper which, now that 
 the nation began to breathe freely, invaded politics. At 
 the same time he apologises for his levity. His No Fool 
 is a whimsical and ironic forecast of the election, and though 
 not very witty, probably amused the passions of the hour. 
 Sir Harry Vane for Newcastle, Ireton and Tichborne for 
 London, he suggests, while 'for Kent no man like Sir 
 Michael Livesey, and for Norfolk there's Miles Corbet.' 
 The piece is signed Thorn. Scot*. 
 
 The interval between 17th March and 25th April recalls 
 the electioneering phrenzy of the Exclusion Parliament. 
 The Press was a powerful agency, but it was around the 
 army that the main battle raged. On the one hand we 
 see the cautious general holding the balance, on the other 
 a crowd of Rump and Republican agitators working in a 
 last violent effort to arouse the dormant pride of the soldiery 
 
 1 No New Parliament, E. 1017 (8), 13th March ; Rump Enough, E. 1017 (15), 
 14th March. 
 
 "^ Milton wrote the Readie and Easie Way, 2nd part, under the notion 
 that these restrictions would *keep the royalist out' and that thereby the 
 Republic would weather the storm. 
 
 :- 16th March. 669 f . 24 (16). 
 
 4 16th March s. sh. f. (669 f. 24 (16)). 
 
60 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 in the *good old Cause,' and this despite the Council Pro- 
 clamation against such tampering^. 
 
 In the country the factions were still influential and as 
 the old Commonwealth sheriffs still remained, they hoped 
 to have their aid in the elections. If these went against 
 them, they still had hope of the Militia. If the Militia 
 failed, the last resort of policy was to attempt to divide 
 the Presbyterians and Loyalists. Failing all these, the 
 assassination of Monk recommended itself to the extremists, 
 and already on 24th March was privately mooted, if we 
 may believe L'Estrange^. 
 
 Their case then was by no means hopeless, and would 
 not be so till Charles landed, if even then. 
 
 It is to such considerations that we owe the last literary 
 appeals on both sides. On the Republican side a clever 
 attempt was made to revive the memories of the great 
 war by republishing The Rise and Course of the V/ar, as 
 searched into 'for matter to involve the murtherers of the 
 King with those that would have saved him', which was 
 precisely the line taken by vengeful Cavaliers of the 
 L'Estrange type for the next twenty years. This piece 
 did two things — it represented the long course of Stuart 
 treachery, and it whispered an alarm to the Baxterians 
 which in this event proved very real. But Baxter was 
 already preparing his famous Penitential sermon for the 
 opening of the Convention Parliament. 
 
 A Letter Intercepted^ which bears the Thomason date 
 23rd March, adopted the Miltonic opposition to both 
 Monarchy and the increase of popular government involved 
 in a free Parliament. 
 
 A day later — although dated 22nd March — came out a 
 far more formidable letter to Monk bearing the title 
 Plain English^ It issued from the subterranean mint of 
 Livewell Chapman (who also published Milton's Beadie 
 
 1 17th March, Proc. of Council for all abandoned soldiers to quit London, 
 669 f, 24 (24), 19th March (24th March in the Thomason Catalogue), ' A Proc. 
 for the arrest of all persons who attempt the debauching and alienating the 
 affections of some in the Army,' 669 f. 24 (40). L'Estrange says that 'the 
 agitators had possessed a considerable party ' in the Army. See The Army's 
 reply to these attempts. It quotes in the forefront the Proc. of 17th March 
 forbidding officers to meet for the framing of manifestoes, etc. 
 
 2 Apology, p. 95 ; V.S.P.D. (1659-60), pp. 409-11. 
 
 ^ E. 1017 (36). See floger's reply to this tract, A Sober Ansioer, etc., 
 27th March, 1660. 
 
 ^ Not in Thomason Collection. 
 
PROTECTORATE AND INTERREGNUM PASSAGES 61 
 
 and Easie Way) and seems to have been the joint labour 
 of the hotheads of the Republican party. It consists of 
 eight pages of abuse of the Royalist party and fears for 
 the future, when the rabble of London now so anxious to 
 set up the late King's statue shall have returned to the 
 * leeks and onyons of their old bondage'; with the object 
 of reviving old memories it reprints the non-addressing 
 Resolution of the Commons, January 1647-8. 
 
 On the 25th Dr Griffith — of the ranting type of Royalist 
 from whom Clarendon prayed to be delivered — issued his 
 sermon Fear God and honour the King'^^ an indiscretion 
 for which an impartial Council lodged him in Newgate, 
 and which evoked Milton's Brief Notes upon a Late SermoUy 
 — a castigation of this ' Pulpit Mountebank ' which in turn 
 provoked Roger L'Estrange's No Blinde Guides^. These 
 three Republican pamphlets with Milton's second attack 
 on Griffith {Eyesalve) and Nedham's News from Brussels 
 were the last effective sallies of the ' good old Cause '. They 
 were also remarkable as issuing from one daring source. 
 Livewell Chapman was now almost the sole publisher left to 
 the * Cause'. March 22nd is the date of Plain English, 
 and on the 28th the first Proclamation was out for the 
 arrest of Livewell. March 23rd is also the date of Nedham's 
 scandalous News from Brussels which aroused Evelyn from 
 a sick bed to write his Late News Unmasked. The Council 
 did not take action to dismiss him from the writing of the 
 Puhlic Intelligence till the 9th April, when the second part 
 of Milton's Readie and Easie Way was selling ^. Praise-God- 
 Barebones is said to have assisted Plain English into print *. 
 
 We know that Chapman lingered about London several 
 weeks before he fled to the Continent, and it is exceedingly 
 probable that he printed the second edition of Milton's tract. 
 These men — Nedham, Milton, Chapman, and Barebones — 
 
 1 E. 1918 (1). 2 E. 187 (2). 
 
 3 Of far more importance than the Brief Notes on Griffith's sermon. This 
 later edition is ' written a month further down the torrent '. Its motto, Et non 
 Consulem dedinms Syllae has given rise to some surmise as to who Sylla was. 
 
 4 It is dated 10th March in the original. There is an MS. note in one copy 
 as follows : ' this letter as was reported was written by Sir H. Vane, Scot and 
 Major Salloway (?), printed for Chapman the bookseller, who upon the discovery 
 of the matter fled, whereupon a Proclamation issued out against him. ... It 
 was written after the inditement of the said person, by Marchmont Nedham and 
 conveyed to the printers and booksellers by Praise-God-Barebones. The alarm 
 to the officers and soldiers of the army was written by the same persons '. The 
 Proclamation for the arrest of Livewell Chapman is dated 28th March (669 f. 
 24(47)). 
 
62 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 formed a kind of last guard of the Republic, and they were 
 privy to the designs on the Army. The second edition of 
 the Readie and Easie Way suppressed, as Masson points out, 
 the mild references to Monk of the first edition, and sub- 
 stituted a parallel to Sulla. Desborough's letter to Chapman 
 of 8th April demands * more books like your Plain English ', 
 and hints at a design to secure the General's person on 
 8th May, whilst it bespeaks that subterranean agitation 
 among the congregations which was to be the greatest 
 menace to the Restoration and for thirty years to shake the 
 throne of the Restored house ^. 
 
 The reply to the agitation in the army was contained in 
 a loyal address to Monk disclaiming any motive of treason, 
 and signed by all the guards and captains I To L'Estrange 
 fell the task of dealing with the despairing series of 
 Republican tracts mentioned above. On 2nd April his 
 Treason Arraigned chastised Plain English by that point to 
 point method which was to become his favourite style. ' It 
 is a piece drawn by no fool ', he says, * and I should suspect 
 it to be a plot of the same hand that wrote Eiconoclastes. 
 Say, Milton, Nedham, either or both of you (or whosoever 
 else) say where this worthy person ever mixed with you — 
 that is you, or they that employ you and allow you 
 wages ' ^. 
 
 To divide the Presbyterians and the Loyalists — 
 Desborough's policy — was the object of Plain English, 
 but it also appealed to the Army and to the General to set 
 up for himself rather than restore the Stuarts. At the 
 same time it drew a lurid picture of revenge and Popery 
 if Charles were brought back. 
 
 A day later the Alarm to the Army *, proceeding out of 
 the same mint, tried to excite similar discord and suspicion. 
 Yet a few days later, Nedham having been dismissed and 
 
 1 C. S.P.I). (1659-60), pp. 409-11. 8th April 1660, Desborough to Chapman— 
 * We fix on you as the faithfullest raan, to convey our thoughts to our brethren 
 about London. The Press is free enough for it, there is no restraint on that 
 as yet '. 
 
 - Ordered by Monk to be published by H. Muddiman Gent, who was now in 
 high favour, and besides the Newsbooh, printed for the Council of State. 
 
 3 3rd April is Thomason date, E. 1019 (14). The taunt is good in Nedham's 
 case. Forty shillings was the wages allowed him by Thos, Scot for a single 
 newsheet. Marchmont was only the chief of a staff maintained by Scot to 
 write for the Rump. See article on the Neiosbooks and Letters of News at the 
 Restoration, by Mr J. B. Williams, April 1908 [Eng. Hist. Rev.) 
 
 4 L'Estrange answered the Alarm to the Army with Double your Gudrds. 
 (E. 1019 (19)). 
 
PROTECTORATE AND INTERREGNUM PASSAGES 63 
 
 Chapman fled, the second edition of the Readie and JSasie 
 Way was struggling into notoriety. On the other hand, 
 as has been said, the impartial Council had laid Griffith 
 in Newgate, so that if Desborough was not misinformed, 
 there were only Mr Caryl left of London's clergy to dis- 
 countenance a republican conspiracy ^. 
 
 In these circumstances L'Estrange indicted his No Blinde 
 Guides ^ — a tract which his biographer must feel some shame 
 in mentioning. The little restraint observed in his first 
 attack on the poet has entirely disappeared, and the most 
 venomous spirit discovered. It might not be the 'dull 
 Asses' hoof ' of his master Ben Jonson, but it was certainly 
 ' Gildon's venomed quill ' that Roger used on this occasion ; 
 nor does he note those excellencies of Milton's genius, 
 admitted with something like pride by the loyal author 
 (G. S. who may have been Gilbert Sheldon) of The Dignity 
 of Kinship Asserted. 
 
 Here L'Estrange displays an energy of bitterness almost 
 beyond anything that had yet appeared on his side, and 
 unfortunately on behalf of as silly a piece. 
 
 * 'Tis there (i.e. Milton's attack on Salmasius) that you 
 commonplace yourself into set forms of raillery, two pages 
 thick, and lest your infamy should not extend itself enough 
 within the course of usage of your mother-tongue, the thing 
 is dressed up in a travelling garb of language, to blast the 
 English nation to the Universe, and give every man a 
 horror for mankind when he considers that you are of the 
 race. 
 
 * In this you are above the others, but in MkonoJdastes 
 you exceed yourself. There, not content to see that sacred 
 head divided from the body, your piercing malic enters into 
 the private agonies of his struggling soul with a blasphemous 
 violence invading the prerogative of God himself (omnis- 
 cience) and by deductions most unchristian and illogical 
 aspersing his last pieties (the almost certain inspirations 
 of the Holy Spirit) with juggle and equivocation ' ^ 
 
 There was now pouring in from the counties a stream 
 of Loyalist Declarations which assured people that no 
 thought of revenge animated the party, and to make good 
 the pledge there was a good deal of politic abuse turned 
 
 ^ Page 62, note. 2 e. 178(2.) 
 
 3 It is some amends that L'Estrange's name appears in the list of sub- 
 scribers to the 1680 edition of Paradise Lost. 
 
64 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 on the ranting Cavaliers who were likely to spoil all by 
 violence ^. 
 
 These declarations came chiefly from the counties which 
 in January and February, prior to Monk's occupation of 
 the City, had petitioned for a free and full Parliament. 
 Their extremely peaceful, not to say Christian, intention 
 was afterwards remembered in the harsh use made of the 
 inevitable triumph by the Church. And though there 
 was an undoubted attempt made by the Restoration powers 
 to avoid the appearance of an indecent triumph, it was 
 certainly open to the Faction to point to the Cavalier pre- 
 Restoration Declaration — most penitential of documents — 
 where they threw the wolf away and put on the lamb, 
 submitting themselves humbly to their calamities as from 
 the hand of God. They had ' no violent thoughts or inclina- 
 tions against any persons whatsoever ' ^. 
 
 By 20th April, the date of No Blinde Guides, there 
 was really no further or pressing need for a continuance 
 of the warfare in the Press. Royalists were better 
 engaged in directing the people how to vote^ since the 
 danger that the will of the people should not prevail had 
 passed. The pendulum indeed had swung to the other 
 side and a stiff hand was required to restrain the more 
 nervous or vengeful spirits from prejudicing the election 
 by their wild words*. Just as the Republican extremists 
 carried over the warfare into the Restoration, we shall 
 find that certain of these rash Cavaliers proved a serious 
 annoyance to Charles' Government by their importunate 
 clamours for a revenge that would have violated the spirit 
 of the Restoration. L'Estrange became one of them, but 
 
 1 Apart from — or as the result of — Griffith's imprisonment, see A llWd in 
 Season to the Ranting Royalists, price 4d. 10th April, 669. 24 (57), ' Do you not 
 know how the King disowns you, the people dislike you, your friends blush for 
 you. . . . You are more dangerous than the Rump itself '. See Hyde's letter to a 
 Royalist, 16th April 1660. Wood, At/ience, iii., 711-13. ' This very last post has 
 brought over 3 or 4 complaints to the King of the very unskilful passion 
 and distemper of some of our Divines in their late sermons '. The danger of the 
 impression conveyed in Nedham's News from Brussels, ' I hate to show the teeth 
 before we bite', had to be strictly guarded against. See Kennet's Register, p. 
 120, and Hallam, Oons. Hist., p. 491, note. 
 
 2 Oldmixon, Hi^L, i., 464 and 466. May 1660, 'the presbyterians paid their 
 compliments to Breda in money, the Cavaliers in great boasts of service '. 
 
 =5 See Roger L'Estrange, Necessary and Seasonable Caution Concerning Elections, 
 24th March, 669 f. 24 (32). 
 
 ^ Hallam, Cons. Hist, of Eng. (1879), p. 491 note. * The Royalists began too 
 soon with threatening speeches '. See Clarendon State Papers, 721, 2, 7. Thurloe, 
 vii., 887, and the King's Declaration from Breda (Somer's Tracts, vi., 562). 
 
STtaafS^ia-^?**"'*- ■- ^ws^w^tf-v^" -ist mm^nsm^:^!.'' 
 
 N O 
 
 ¥» 
 
 Blinde Guides, 
 
 In Answer 
 
 To a feditious Pamphlet of 
 J. MlLt OH'S, 
 
 INTITULED 
 
 i 
 
 Brief Notes upon n late Sermon Titl'd, the fear of God 
 
 and the King ,• Vreachd, and ftnce fubli(hd, 'Bj 
 
 Matthew Griffith, D. D. And Chaplain to the 
 
 late B^ING^ <^c. 
 
 Addrcfled to the Author. 
 
 Jftht Bl'mde lead the Blinde^ Both jhaH fd hid the Ditch. 
 
 
 -;•.>•- . ? 
 
 Printed for Henrj !Bromt Jp-il %o. 1660. 
 
 TITLE PAGE OF NO BLINDE GUIDES. 
 
 [Face p. 64. 
 
PROTECTORATE AND INTERREGNUM PASSAGES 65 
 
 he cannot fairly be classed with the wild men of 1659-60. 
 On the contrary, at no time did he mingle more prudence 
 with so much boldness. 
 
 The result of the election was, in spite of the restrictions, 
 on the whole a surprise even to the Cavaliers. 'Upon 
 the day appointed the Convention meets, but not altogether 
 so leavened as by the qualifications was intended — excluding 
 father and son of such as had served the King, from the 
 Election. In fine, the major part of the assembly according 
 to their duty gave the King his own again without those 
 shackled conditions which the qualifiers would have 
 imposed'. It was not very long before those who thus 
 graciously waived conditions, and Baxter who blessed their 
 labours with a loyal opening sermon, discovered that they 
 had done something suspiciously like selling the pass. It 
 was the work of their own hands, and they were shortly 
 to find it rather the fashion to remember that Manton 
 officiated at Cromwell's inauguration as Protector, than 
 that Baxter blessed the Convention Parliament ^. We shall 
 find nothing more to reprehend in L'Estrange, than his 
 politic shift from the praise of Mr Prynne in 1659 to 
 his Holy Cheat of 1661 2. 
 
 In reviewing the important service which L'Estrange 
 performed for the King during this period which he calls 
 his 'Third Prenticeship ' in Loyalty, the question arises, 
 which of his many pamphlets was of a character to bring him 
 into personal danger ? He himself claimed that * Rationally 
 he could not expect any other reward than a halter'^. 
 Until Monk on 4th February threw in his lot with the 
 City, any anti-Rump tract involved some danger. Between 
 that date and the polling for the Convention Parliament 
 there was the lesser danger of a reversion of popular feeling 
 or of a new coup on the part of the Army. But from the 
 moment (9th April is the date of the Army's Remonstrance) 
 that that gleam of Republican hope was seen to be fallacious, 
 and that nothing could be done to divide Presbyterian and 
 Royalists, all danger, except from the gratuitous folly of 
 the ' Ranting ' type, was over. This last period is therefore 
 the golden hour of poets and the venal muse, as it was 
 correspondingly the hour of Milton's and Marvell's and 
 Wither's greatest peril. It is the occasion of a thousand 
 
 1 See his Sermon cni Repentance. Ap. 30. E. 1023 (14). Oldmixon, i. 498. 
 2 See chap, iii., 85. 3 state Divinity, 1661. 
 
66 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 congratulations, Britannia Bedivivas, from the Universities 
 and schools, and marks the hot rush of trimmers to the 
 side of safety. Dryden, Waller, Davenant, Sprat, and even 
 Wild are here to pay homage to the Rising Sun. 
 
 But L'Estrange had from the very first — from Booth's 
 Rising, when few dared write — taken up a hold if anonymous 
 attitude ^ His December Protests of the City, which drew 
 down the anger of Tichborne^, his unwearied efforts to 
 arouse the City and fan disorder among mutinous prentices ^, 
 his advice to the General and Pleas for the Cavalier if not 
 for Limited Monarchy * before the danger point was passed, 
 his (unauthorised) representations of country feeling, and 
 notably his intervention in the important Devonshire episode, 
 and lastly his energetic exposure of the work of the fanatics 
 with the army and their tampering with elections, make a 
 record of personal service that ought to have obliterated 
 any suspicions of the kind which made Willis' name 
 accursed, and ruined the wretched Corker ^ We shall find 
 that the men whose record does not begin till the danger 
 hour had gone by, were to attempt to blast the good name 
 of the man whose efforts had made him, if not the first 
 Royalist journalist, at least the best of pamphleteers. 
 
 Finally, then, in his own statement ' as to my behaviour 
 afterwards in all the broils and tumults in the City that in 
 a great measure opened the way to His Majesty's return, I 
 can appeal to Col. John Jeffries and Capt. John Lloyd, two 
 persons of unquestionable integrity and honour, and I believe 
 to forty considerable citizens yet living, that I ventured 
 hanging for His Majesty's service in these times as fair and 
 as often perhaps as any man in the three kingdoms ' ^. 
 
 1 Postcript to Discovery upon Discovery, 1680 (addressed to T. Gates). ' In 
 1659 Lambert was upon his march towards Sir George Booth and Sir H. Vane 
 had listed the Separatists in and about London to be in readiness ; at which 
 time I published the following Paper ' {Tlie Declaration of the City to the Men at 
 Westminster). The Declaration is not in the Thomason Collection. 
 
 2 P. 48 note. 
 
 3 See note p. 54, on Prentices. 
 
 4 See note p. 57. 
 
 5 Firth, Last Years of the Protectorate, ii., 69. 
 
 6 Ohservaior, ii. , 80. 
 
CHAPTEE III 
 
 1660-2 
 PURITAN DIVINES AND SEDITIOUS PRINTING 
 
 L'estrange's active life now demands that for clearness sake 
 we should treat it under three heads rather than abide by 
 strict chronological sequence. At the same time these 
 interests are more or less related, and find a common ground 
 in one agency, the Press, with which indeed the rest of his 
 life was to be mainly concerned. 
 
 For the moment he had four calls on his energies : 
 
 1. To meet the charges against his loyalty which circu- 
 
 lated even during his pamphlet warfare on behalf of 
 the Restoration. 
 
 2. To voice the complaints of the disappointed Cavaliers. 
 
 3. To fall foul of the Presbyterians and prove — what he 
 
 had publicly denied in the late struggle— that they 
 were the real enemy. 
 
 4. To expose the methods of the factions as they were 
 
 concerned with the seditious Press. 
 It may be said briefly that he was successful in vindi- 
 cating himself from the charge of disloyalty, that he gained 
 the regard of the Church, then devoted to that passion for 
 Conformity, noted by Burnet as the Restoration plan, a 
 regard which blossomed into actual monetary rewards at a 
 subsequent period, and that he obtained the Neivsbook and 
 the Surveyorship of the Press as a reward for his activities 
 against the seditious. But as the loud champion of the 
 distressed Cavaliers, he came very near to a gaol for 
 embarrassing His Majesty's Government, and clumsily 
 challenging that wise policy of keeping the Commonwealth 
 men in humour and office for a while ^ 
 
 1 This phrase gave great offence. See his Plea for the Caveat. A bitter note 
 of Dartmouth's to Burnet's History ascribed the policy to Clarendon. See p. 69, 
 note. 
 
 67 
 
68 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 The slight evidence we have shows that Clarendon 
 was inclined to acquit L'Estrange of disloyalty and to 
 relieve him of any apprehension that he was in the same 
 category as Corker, who now (June 1660) wrote his lying 
 apology^. Nothing shows more clearly the authority of 
 the Chancellor at this moment than the manner in which 
 he was addressed as the High Court of Appeal in matters of 
 disputed loyalty. In Flanders, we saw, after the Kentish 
 affair, L'Estrange handed him a copy of his printed Vindica- 
 tion to Kenty and the Chancellor was good enough to say 
 certain soothing things, and to make the young Cavalier 
 welcome at his house. That Clarendon took the trouble in 
 1653 to send an assurance to ' Mr L'Estrange in Germany ' 
 that the rumour of the King's apostasy was false, shows that, 
 all slanders to the contrary, he then regarded Roger as an 
 honest man ^. But when the Cavalier was busiest over his 
 anti-Rump squibs, which really involved some danger, an 
 enemy carried the kind of tale to the Chancellor, which was 
 just then after melancholy examples both in England under 
 Cromwell, and in Scotland under Monk ^, calculated to arouse 
 the blackest feelings. 
 
 Next to the establishment of the Church in all her 
 ancient glory no question agitated the Chancellor more than 
 that of the conduct of the Old Cavalier. When we remember 
 that to his chargin in this direction he imputed Charles' 
 backslidings after a notable Restoration resolve on better 
 things ^ we see how important the matter became ^ 
 
 That dark but probably just passage in the continuation 
 of Clarendon's history ^ which describes Restoration manners, 
 is directly led up to by a long discourse on the violence, 
 jealousies, and loose manners of the Cavaliers. Instead of 
 the devoted gratitude to God for a happy Restoration, which 
 
 1 See Retrospect Review, Second Series, i, , 292. 
 sChap.ii., 34. 
 
 3 For the Scottish betrayals, see Prof. Firth's Last Years of the Protectorate, 
 ii., 121. 
 
 4 It is difficult to say whether we are to regard Clarendon's throwing his shield 
 over Charles in the early days of the Restoration as an attempt to justify that 
 anti-Cavalier bias he adopted, by making the King's subsequent falling away the 
 result of their clamours, or Burnet's frank exposure of Charles from the first 
 night he spent in London, as the true picture. 'Those virtuous Ministers 
 (Clarendon and Southampton) thought it became them to let the world see that 
 they did not comply with the King in his vices.' Airy, Own Times, i., 166-8. 
 
 ^ See Macaulay's estimate of Clarendon in his Essay on Hallam's Const. Hist. 
 6 Continuation of Life, ii., 34-6 ; Airy {Charles II., p. 103) refers to the 
 Chancellor's ' sorrowful eloquence '. 
 
PURITAN DIVINES ANt) SEDITIOUS PRINTliSTG 6D 
 
 the April declarations to the General promised, with the 
 laying aside of all jealousies, there appeared at the Restora- 
 tion no cessation of the disunion and suspicion of the dark 
 days, but, on the contrary — urged on by rewards which went 
 to some — assumed a fiercer aspect than ever. Two things 
 damped the spirit of Charles on his return. On the road 
 to London he was met by the importunate clamours of the 
 Old Cavalier, and at Canterbury he received Monk's wonder- 
 ful list of men worthy of a place. This latter difficulty was 
 much more negotiable than the former, and Monk proved 
 not unreasonable, but a single Commonwealthman in the new 
 Government was sufficient to arouse the ire of the Cavaliers. 
 For the former difficulty there was no solution but time, 
 and the Earl of Ailesbury — a good authority — went so far 
 as to say that to the disappointments of this class is due the 
 rise of ' Whigism ' i. 
 
 As to the character of these office-seekers they 'were 
 observed to be the most importunate who had deserved least, 
 and were least capable to perform any notable service, and 
 none had more esteem of themselves and believed preferment 
 to be more due to them, than the sort of men who had most 
 loudly began to drink the King's health in taverns, especially 
 if for any disorders which had accompanied it they had 
 suffered imprisonment without any other pretences of merit 
 or running any other hazard ' ^, Thus early Clarendon was 
 forced to assume that attitude of hostility to the extreme 
 men — of whom Roger L'Estrange was a noisy example — who 
 wished to limit or scrap the Act of Oblivion^, and whose 
 
 1 ' It really sprung by degrees from the discontent of noble families and of 
 many good families of the first gentry in the Counties whose ancestors were 
 sequestered, decimated and what not on account of their steadfast loyalty — the 
 estates of Lord Byron (under whom L'Estrange served) almost wasted, and I never 
 heard that the heir was ever countenanced — hundreds more had the same fate '. 
 Aileshxiry Memoirs (1890), i., 6. Eachard, iii., 6 : ' The first complaint against 
 Clarendon proceeded chiefly from the Cavalier party, and this began so early 
 after the Restoration that,' etc. 
 
 2 Continuation, ii., 36. 
 
 3 Burnet, Own Times, i., 289: 'The angry men that were disappointed of all 
 their hopes made a jest of the title of it "an Act of Oblivion and Indemnity ", 
 and said the King had passed an Act of Oblivion for his friends and of Indemnity 
 for his enemies. To load the Earl of Clarendon more it was given out that he 
 advised the King to gain his enemies, since he was sure of his friends by their 
 principles '. Burnet hints that * the King fastened it iipon him after he had dis- 
 graced him '. Among the host of exceptions demanded for insertion in the Act, 
 we find Roger L'Estrange's for the exception of Tichborne and others, no doubt 
 for the Court-Martial sentence after Lynn. II.M.C, App. to 7th Rept. 96(6). See 
 chap. i. 19. The Act of Indemnity blotted out all offences since Ist June 1637. 
 Lords' Jmrnals, xi., 240, 379. 
 
70 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 scandalous manners brought a reproach on the whole party. 
 But this hostility for many long years tempered the satis- 
 faction with which many a loyal gentleman read the History 
 and the Continuation'^. 
 
 The Proclamation (given a wide publicity in the Nev^s- 
 hook) which rebuked these noisy ranters, did not mend 
 matters, though it pleased the Presbyterian and straiter sects. 
 
 It is sad to find L'Estrange admitting himself publicly 
 to be of this band, 'not altogether free from drunkenness 
 and profanity ' ^, and loudly voicing the jealousy of Common- 
 wealthmen admitted to favour. 
 
 The rising of Sir George Booth had proved the touch- 
 stone of party, and Cavaliers at the Restoration were keenly 
 divided as to the scope and interest of that affair. Clarendon 
 was convinced that it 'had contributed very much to the 
 wonderful change that had since been issued by the dis- 
 covery of the general affections and dispositions of the 
 Kingdom '. At the same time, as a concession to the Old 
 Cavaliers, he deplores the fact that ' a greater animosity had 
 been kindled in the royal party, and was still pursued and 
 improved amongst them from that combination and engage- 
 ment. ... It had introduced a great number of persons, 
 who had formerly no pretence of merit from the King, rather 
 might have been the objects of his justice, to a just title 
 to the greatest favours the King could confer, and which 
 from that time they had continually improved by respected 
 offices and services, which being of a later date might be 
 thought to cloud and eclipse the lustre of those actions 
 which had before been performed by the more ancient 
 Cavaliers, especially of those who had been observed to be 
 remiss on that occasion ' ^. They therefore habitually under- 
 valued the services wrought by the Cheshire Revolt. 
 
 We have seen that L'Estrange was not quite idle in that 
 affair *, but his claims were not great, and his references in 
 the Memento prove him to be of the class that excused 
 themselves on the ground of suspigion of the true motives 
 of the Rising and of Presbyterian guile. * I well remember 
 
 1 See Dartmouth's note to Burnet's History. ' He furnished the great house 
 in the Picadille chiefly with Cavaliers' goods '. Oion Times, i., 176, with Mr Airy's 
 note. So Evelyn, Diary, 27th August 1667, and Pepys, Dicay, 7th March 1661-3. 
 
 2 Memento, ed. 1662, omitted in reprint 1681 : * I do here publicly confess 
 myself not absolutely free from those distempers which I am both sorry for and 
 ashamed of '. 
 
 3 Continuation, ii., 36. * Chap, ii., 45. 
 
PURITAN DIVINES AND SEDITIOUS PRINTING 71 
 
 one particular in that transaction', he says^, 'that passed 
 my understanding and me thought smelt of treason. It was 
 extremely laboured, that the King might be persuaded to 
 come over, and that too before any port was secured or 
 men embodied, on the bare hopes of the design to engage 
 his sacred person ' 2. 
 
 The Rising in other words was either a mere Presbyterian 
 move, or a deliberate stage-managed attempt to decoy the 
 King into the hands of Parliament. 
 
 Without any evidence that L'Estrange was of the party 
 which pursued Mordaunt with execration, we may take 
 that ungenerous conduct which Clarendon has described as 
 typical of the blight which was presently to fall, not for 
 the first time, on L'Estrange. Mordaunt had no arrears of 
 disloyalty, but his lucky escape from the block when Hewitt 
 and Slingsby were condemned, suggested treachery to the 
 distempered Loyalists. Although his subsequent conduct 
 showed him to be above reproach, the whole party of 
 roysterers and tavern Loyalists united in the pursuit of a 
 noble stag ^. Every petty tale was conducted by a hundred 
 channels to the King's ear with the result that Mordaunt 
 was totally neglected. 'The truth is', says Clarendon, 
 summing up*, 'most men were affected and more grieved 
 and discontented for any honour and preferment which 
 they saw conferred upon another man than for being 
 disappointed in their own particular expectation'. 
 
 Mingled with incriminations of Mordaunt came also the 
 stories already alluded to of L'Estrange's treachery, and 
 Roger might have claimed kindred with Mordaunt if his 
 own manners and jealousies had not too notoriously classed 
 him with the Ranters, Men who were favoured at the 
 Restoration — 'the new modelled of gimcrack' — could afford 
 to assume an attitude of moderation and bid their less 
 
 1 Memento, part i., 36. 
 
 2 Hull — for attempting to betray which Slingsby was condemnod — and 
 Yarmouth had been the hopes of the Cavaliers in the plot of 1658. It is curious 
 that we hear nothing of a port in connection with the Cheshire affair, but then we 
 hear little of the negotiations for bringing the King over. Hallam, Goiis. Hist., 
 p. 483 : ' The Royahsts . . . pressed that he (Charles) or one of his brothers 
 would land on the coast '. For notice of the timidity and irresolution of^ the 
 Cavaliers on this occasion, see Calendar of Clarendon State Papers, i., 491 and 590. 
 
 3 C.S. P.D. (1659-60), pp. 277-8, 6th December to 16th December 1659. ' Their 
 activity to ruin others is greater than their zeal to restore their master. ... I 
 wonder Lord Mordaunt should be so used by them '. Mr Baron to Sec. Nicholas 
 concerning the Sealed Knot. 
 
 "* Continuation, ii., 38. 
 
72 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 fortunate friends be quiet. So Sir John Birkenhead, Master 
 of Faculties, so Howell, Historiographer Royal, Muddiman, 
 writer of the Newsbook, and Sir John Denham, Surveyor 
 of the Royal Buildings. 
 
 But scarcely had Charles been safely restored when Roger 
 — 6th June 1660 — hastened to present the public with his 
 full defence and apology.^ This early appearance naturally 
 brought on him the sneer that he was afraid he might be 
 forgotten in the division of the spoils.^ His ambitious 
 motto : 
 
 * Qui aliquid statuit^ parte inaudita altera 
 Aequum licet statuerit, iniquum est judex,' 
 
 showed he was resolved to let every one know what he 
 had done for the King. Accordingly we are treated — for 
 neither the first nor the last time — to a narrative of events 
 from Lynn to Newgate, from Newgate to Kent, from exile 
 to the Restoration. These earlier matters, however, are 
 dismissed in the compass of four pages, and he unfortunately 
 suppresses thirty-five pages which probably expatiated on 
 the Kentish affair, and perhaps on the conditions of the 
 Cavaliers abroad, and which might have been of historical 
 value. The main part of the book is devoted to the Inter- 
 regnum struggle, and shows abundantly what his enemies 
 might have known already, that he ' ventured hanging for 
 His Majesty's service in these times as far and as often 
 perhaps as any man in the three Kingdoms'^. 
 
 We are here only concerned with the Dedication, which 
 gives a hurried picture of the suspicions of that distraught 
 period. ' When I first heard myself suspected ', he says, ' for 
 an instrument of Cromwell, his pensioner, and a betrayer of 
 his sacred Majesty's party and designs, I could not choose 
 but smile and almost thank the authors of that calumny 
 that, (in a man so full of faults), had fixed a charge there, 
 where it was impossible I should be guilty. But when I 
 came to find that divers of my nearest friends were cautioned, 
 
 1 E. 187 (1) Anticipating Corker's by four days — a very different kind 
 of apology of course. Corker, in the letter quoted in the Retrospective Re-dew 
 (New Series, i,, 291), acknowledges ' my fearfull apostacie ', and was liberated a few 
 days later. 'A striking specimen of the disregard of truth and honour, and 
 almost justified the neglect with which Charles II. treated them after his 
 Restoration,' says this editor. 
 
 2 So recently repeated as in Mr J. B. Williams' History of English Journalism 
 (1909), p. 259. 
 
 3 Olservator, il, 80 (June, 1684). 
 
PURITAN DIVINES AND SEDITIOUS PRINTING 73 
 
 and with monstrous secrecy designs were carried for fear 
 of me (even those designs that were common talk of herb- 
 women and porters) I began to look about me, and in 
 conclusion some two or three women, a fiddler, and a haber- 
 dasher I discovered. Upon further inquiry I found that this 
 intelligence was as current about the King as here, and that 
 many eminent persons were possessed with the same opinion. 
 
 ' It was not then a season to bring myself upon the stage 
 when by struggling I should only have done a public wrong 
 and yet myself no right, whereupon I respited that purpose 
 in hope and expectation of that freedom which we are at this 
 day enjoying. 
 
 ' The tedious expectation of an acquittal ', he continued, 
 * blasts the comfort of my life and cankers all that's con- 
 versable in my nature. I have an inward stream of indigna- 
 tion to find myself suspected among worthy persons, that 
 takes me from the common offices and benefits of society. I 
 cannot visit where I would and ought without a blush, and 
 this forbearance in many places taken to proceed from want 
 of inclination or good manners, when (God he knows) out of 
 an honest tenderness to others I cross myself in what I 
 passionately desire '. His ' tedious expectation ' was to con- 
 tinue for another year or two, and in the meantime the office 
 set up by Act of Parliament for the relief of the ' truly loyal 
 and indigent officers' became the scene of the scandalous 
 recrimination between Birkenhead, L'Estrange, and others 
 which no doubt inspired the reproachful passages already 
 referred to in Clarendon. 
 
 It would be interesting to know the names of those un- 
 impeachable Loyalists whose company Roger dared not seek. 
 For, on the whole, a very small body of Cavaliers accompanied 
 the King home, the vast majority having made their peace 
 with the Government, and being guilty of some compliance 
 or other. 
 
 This very human document remained unnoticed, and 
 meanwhile Roger busied himself — probably in the hope of 
 employment — with haunting the lobbies of Westminster and 
 bringing libels to the notice of members. 29th September 
 1660 is the date marked by himself ' when he first put pen 
 to paper about his discoveries ' ^ But when month succeeded 
 month, and he was still left in the cold, while Birkenhead, 
 Muddiman, and Howell were all recognised, at the same 
 
 1 Observaioi', il, 80 (June 1684). 
 
74 SIR ROGER UESTRANGE 
 
 time that a compromise with Monk had let in Morrice, 
 Cooper, Clarges, and Manchester to high office, not to speak 
 of a similar indulgence in the lower range of offices, among 
 printers, booksellers, and lowly scribblers, Roger began more 
 and more to fall into a cynical hostility, and to speak for 
 a very large company of his kind. The Bartholomew eject- 
 ment had not yet come to glad the Cavaliers' hearts, nor 
 had L'Estrange yet found his metier, which was to help the 
 Government in its struggles with E'onconformity and the 
 seditious Press. When he did, he developed a ferocity 
 entirely at variance with his former mild compliments to 
 Presbytery, and a forgetfulness that he himself had graduated 
 as the greatest exponent of seditious writing against the 
 Commonwealth Government. 
 
 The fruit of these bitter musings was a series of invective 
 pamphlets in which to use his own elegant phraseology he 
 * struck at the Government through the side of Presbytery '. 
 
 The first of these was provoked by Corbet's Interest of 
 England in the matter of Religion, the second part written 
 in the spring of 1661, when the hopes of Presbytery still 
 stood high. The Convention Parliament had a Presbyterian 
 majority, but whilst it lasted, the other side skilfully con- 
 trived to postpone the question of a settlement ^. The party 
 or ' classis ' — as Clarendon calls them — had a more than 
 colourable pretext for their pretensions. The Cheshire 
 Rising was their affair. Prynne, their champion, v/ho 
 supplied the legal arguments for loyal Hewitt^, did more 
 perhaps to forward the Restoration than any other writer. 
 Baxter preached the opening sermon to the Convention 
 Parliament. In a word, they usurped the whole credit of 
 the Restoration, and pointed with some effect to the dis- 
 orders and jealousies which had reduced the Cavalier party 
 to a state of noisy impotence. 
 
 So that the shouting of the Restoration was no sooner 
 over than people began openly to canvass the merits of 
 Presbytery. The Directory was placed in open competition 
 with the Book of Common Prayer. In this work the 
 Freedom of the Press aided powerfully, and L'Estrange 
 corroborates the testimony of numerous writers in saying 
 
 1 'Though the Presbyter would have the Church settled in Parliament the 
 other party are resolved to put it off with delay'. Verney MSS., quoted in 
 Mr Osmond Airy's Burnet, i., 315, note. 
 
 2 Last Years of the Protectorate, ii., 78, note. 
 
I>URITAN DIVINES AND SEDITIOUS PRINTING 75 
 
 that this freedom 'had so manifest an influence on the 
 minds of the people that the unanimous pre-eminence of 
 affection for the Restoration was so altered, that the 
 Presbyterian cause became the common argument of public 
 meetings ' \ 
 
 It was this revival and credit of Presbytery which 
 warned the Church leaders that the hour had come to drop 
 the politic mask of compliment by which the Presbyterians 
 were lured on to effect the return of the King — seemingly 
 the greatest betrayal of their ambitions. 
 
 The two Papers of Proposals to his Majesty which 
 embodied the views of the London Ministers, several of 
 whom had invited the resumption of their livings by their 
 legal owners, were presented 2, the first at the King's express 
 desire after the anti-Cavalier Proclamation, the second after 
 the Declaration of 25th October 1660, which announced the 
 Savoy Conference, and bade people be quiet in the meantime. 
 The first of these is a very modest and grateful document ; 
 the second regrets that whilst the King was graciously 
 pleased with the moderation of the first paper, his Declara- 
 tion altogether omitted references to the question of Church 
 Government. Both these papers were published with 
 other batches of proposals and the Petition for Peace in 
 1661. Hence we shall find much anger on the part of 
 L'Estrange. 
 
 On the whole, while it can scarcely be said that the 
 change was effected with the minimum of friction, it may be 
 doubted if an immediate * showing of the teeth ' (to use 
 Nedham's phrase) would have been more politic than 
 allowing the advocates of Presbytery to find out gradually 
 that they had been betrayed. 
 
 In October 1660, when these things were being amicably 
 discussed, the Rector of Bramshot, Dr John Corbet, bosom 
 friend of Baxter, in the first part of his Interest of England 
 gratefully described the King's Declaration as granting ' just 
 and gracious concessions'. Early in 1661 he issued a second 
 part in the same vein^. These 'Presbyterian insolencies' 
 aroused L'Estrange to break in at once on the false harmony 
 
 1 Truth and Loyalty Vindicated. 
 
 - Burnet, Own Times, i., 316, note. * Many of these had gone into the design 
 of the Restoration in so signal a manner and with such success that they had 
 great merit and a just title to very high preferment '. 
 
 3 10th March 1661, E. 1857 (2). 
 
76 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 with his Holy Cheat ^ — the first unabashed attack on 
 Presbytery, and we should think a considerable annoyance 
 to a Government which was still bent on keeping on the 
 mask of good-will to Presbytery. But Roger had already 
 felt the pulse of Parliament, and despite the brave words of 
 the Lord Chancellor'^ — Sir Harbottle Grimstone, Burnet's 
 Whiggish patron — at the opening of Parliament on the 
 29th August 1660, and the warnings of friends, determined 
 to take his chance of affronting the Court. ' I must tread 
 warily', he said, 'for I am here upon a narrow, slippery 
 ground ' ^. As to the Act of Oblivion and the compact of 
 silence referred to in the Chancellor's words, that is already 
 broken by the Presbyterians themselves, as witness that mass 
 of sedition, Smectymnuus Revived, published in the week of 
 the Restoration by Dr Manton*. Such protestations lead 
 up to smashing attacks on the history and aims of Presbytery, 
 and a downright denial that they had ever served the 
 Monarchy except to make it their tool. 
 
 Meanwhile a new trouble was brewing for Presbytery 
 in the person of the Rev. Zachary Crofton, a zealot of the 
 type that brings trouble to any party. He was at this 
 time (from February 1661-2) a prisoner in the Tower for 
 certain wild and whirling words for the Covenant. A 
 prison seemed to calm his ardour momentarily, and in July, 
 at the invitation of the Governor, he attended the Anglican 
 services in the Tower. It is scarcely possible for us to 
 
 1 The Holy Cheat, Proving from the Utidenidble Practices and Positions of the 
 Presbyterians that the Design of that Party is to enslave both King and People 
 under the Masrjue of Religion by roay of Observation upon a Treatise e^ititled, 
 The Interest of jEngland in the Matter of Religion, etc. Fourth Impression, 
 Ijrinted 1662, and now reprinted 1682. 
 
 2 After the King's Speech, 8th May 1661, quoted by Clarendon [Continuation, 
 ii., 180). The Chancellor said 'it was penal by the Act of Indemnity to use 
 names or words of reproach and that surly looks were within the equity of the 
 Statute '. Oldmixon, p. 477, remarks : ' To prove the integrity of these speeches 
 we need only mention a book mentioned by Eachard and written by the infamous 
 Roger L'Estrange. The Reverend Historian fills one of his folio pages with what 
 he takes out of that notable piece wherein some of the Presbyterians preferred 
 by the King for restoring him to his Kingdom are called Cromwell's creatures, 
 St John's creatures, etc. '. When Oldmixon goes on to say that ' this libel (which 
 is the Relapsed Apostate, not the Holy Cheat) was applauded and bought up by 
 the creatures of the Court, and sufficiently proved what dependence was to be 
 placed in the most fair words ', he goes beyond his book. For nothing is clearer 
 than that the Court frowned ominously on L'Estrange's first adventures in this 
 direction. Even a gaol was contemplated for him. 
 
 3 The analogy between his conduct now and in 1679-80 is striking. In both 
 cases the Government might say of him ' thou marshallest me the way I was to 
 go ', by interpreting the true mind of the Court. 
 
 * TnUh and Loyalty Vindicated, pp. 58-60. 
 
PURITAN DIVINES AND SEDITIOUS PRINTING 77 
 
 understand the bitterness excited by this compliance. 
 Crofton's defence was to be communicated to his brethren 
 in a printed pamphlet, which, however, was warily stifled 
 by his friends. Written copies were handed round, the 
 familiar method of sedition among the sectaries for thirty 
 years. As a result of his compliance Crofton found himself 
 free in 1662, but remorse drove him to the greatest anti- 
 episcopal excesses and marked him out for L'Estrange's 
 quarry ^. 
 
 The abortive proceedings of the Savoy Conference made 
 it clear that unconditional surrender was the fate offered to 
 Presbytery. The concessions in the Prayer Book yielded by 
 the Bishops were ' for the most part verbal and literal rather 
 than real and substantial ' ^. 
 
 Whilst admitting divisions within the ranks of Presbytery. 
 Baxter makes much of similar fissures in the Church. Setting 
 apart intellectual differences which undoubtedly existed, it 
 may be said that between Stillingfleet and Morley it was 
 merely a question of how far Conformity could be forced on 
 people. 
 
 Baxter was naturally regarded as the soul of Presbyterian 
 contumacy, and while he was suspected of a hand in the 
 document referred to below, he was more particularly blamed 
 for the book which came out a little later, and was long 
 regarded as the classic of the Savoy Conference Papers. The 
 Petition for Peace^ has no dedication or preface, but is 
 addressed as a kind of minority Report to the Episcopal 
 Commissioners. Yet, as L'Estrange put it, these people were 
 those from whom it was most scrupulously concealed. That 
 it had to steal out without a printer's name seems to us 
 incredible, having regard also to its singular modesty. In 
 substance it makes the usual appeal in the name of Usher, 
 
 1 Memento (1662), Dedication to Clarendon. Kennet {Register), 397, 402, etc. 
 Baxter (Life, ii. , 288) describes Crofton's career. See his curious Defence against the 
 Fear of Death, written in the Tower, 1661-2, 'and now made publique for the 
 advantage of such as abide under God's present visitation in London by the 
 Pestilence, 1665'. No printer's name. Crofton was minister of St Botolph's, 
 Aldgate. Kennet, 375 (February 1660-1), quotes from Roger L'Estrange's Interest 
 Mistaken {Holy Cheat), ' The single imprisonment of Crofton hath quieted that 
 party more than all the multiplied mercies of his Majesty '. So Ralph, i., 32-3. 
 
 2 ^ Reply to the Most Rev. Archbishops and Bishops commissioned to treat about 
 the Alterations of the Common Book of Prayer ', probably written by Baxter, and 
 bound up with the Petition for Peace. 
 
 3 E. 1091, May 1661. A Petition for Peace with the Refoimation of the Liturgy 
 as it was presented to the Right Reverend Bishops by the divities appointed by His 
 Majesty's Commission to treat vrith them about the alteration of it, 1661. 
 
78 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 as the Mediator between Presbytery, or Primitive Episcopacy, 
 and the Church. The part reason why it aroused so much 
 spleen — apart from its merits — is that it synchronised with 
 two sets of inflammatory tracts which marked the first general 
 engagement between the Government and sedition — the 
 Regicides' printed speeches, and the first batch of Farewell 
 Sermons of the ejected ministers ^, ' some hundreds of whom, 
 able, holy, faithful ministers, are late cast out and not only 
 very many of their families in great distress but (which is of 
 far greater moment) abundance of congregations in England, 
 Ireland and Wales are overspread with lamentable ignorance 
 and are destitute of able faithful teachers, and seeing too 
 many that are insufficient, negligent or scandalous are over 
 the flocks (not meaning this as an accusation of any that 
 are not guilty nor a dishonourable reflection on any party 
 much less on the whole Church) '2. 
 
 The style of the tract strongly resembles Baxter's, and 
 there is scarcely a doubt that he wrote it. So at least 
 thought Roger L'Estrange when he indulged in one of the 
 least creditable of his little creditable attacks on Presbytery. 
 The Eelapsed Apostate created considerable stir^ It is 
 provided with a mocking Dedication, an Advertisement and 
 an Introduction. In itself it is a lengthy diatribe, but in 
 the usual L'Estrange fashion no mere declamation, but a 
 thorough, if one-sided quoting of chapter and verse, adorned 
 also by two quaint quotations from Ben Jonson's Bartliolomew 
 Fair. The ferocity of the piece is partly explained by its 
 date, 14th November 1661. It was issued at the moment 
 of his greatest unpopularity with the Court because of his 
 attacks on Howell. This Presbyterian business offered him 
 a welcome escape from the cloud of infamy he had involved 
 himself in on that account. The situation was most difficult. 
 On the one hand were the men led by Morley — an old 
 Calvinist like Parker — who desired a thorough 'purge' in 
 the Church of all those disaffected elements which at the 
 opening of the Civil War had been a considerable weakening 
 of the Royal cause. Clarendon seems to have been won 
 
 1 Prior to the Bartholomew Ejectment. See Airy, Burnet, i., 315-6. 
 
 2 Petition. for Peace. 
 
 2 The Relapsed Apostate^ or notes ripon a Presbyterian Pamplet entitled, A 
 Petition for Peace, etc., wherein the faction and design are laid as open as heart can 
 wish, by Roger L'Estrange, 1661. It was long remembered by good Church- 
 men. Eachard's extravagant praise is of course corrobated by Kenaet {Register, 
 p. 232). 
 
PURITAN DIVINES AND SEDITIOUS PRINTING 79 
 
 over to this course by his friend Morley, after having 
 trilled with the other view supported by Southampton^, 
 which aroused the hopes alluded to in the King's Declara- 
 tion of October 1660. Burnet hints at a coolness between 
 Southampton and Clarendon as the result of this change 
 of mind, and it is this vacillation in the Government 
 mind during the winter 1660-1 which gives L'Estrange's 
 Relapsed Apostate considerable importance. For it attempted 
 to drive matters beyond hope of the pacification desired by 
 Southampton, Anglesea, and Sir Harbottle Grimstone, but 
 evidently not by Morrice^. 
 
 That Morley and L'Estrange (if we may mention these 
 two together) were not ill-advised as a point of policy in 
 this matter, is shown by the history of the Church for 
 the next forty years, and particularly by the Whig revival 
 within its pale in 1682-5. But whether the no-comprehension 
 movement and the stiff attitude of the Bishops at the Savoy 
 Conference were — as Burnet hints — partly due to the Court's 
 already conceived ambition towards Rome, whilst the spread- 
 ing abroad of rumours of disaffection and exaggerations of 
 the disturbances of 1661-2 were merely the work of the 
 hot spirits to defeat any project of accommodation, it is 
 impossible to say. It is extremely unlikely that L'Estrange 
 in his series of bitter attacks had any motive but to dis- 
 credit the thing he hated ^, and it does not take much 
 imagination to see behind his spleen the sinister figures 
 of the Tolls and Thoroughgoods of King's Lynn who had 
 impoverished his family. 
 
 Nor did it need great perspicacity to note the dangerous 
 drift of the great mass of anti-episcopal literature, which 
 the ejectments and the Regicides' speeches provoked. 
 
 When all this is said it is still difficult to see how the 
 Petition for Peace could be construed as a libel, except — 
 and L'Estrange was clever enough to fasten here — from 
 its clandestine and widespread publication. L'Estrange's 
 information — he had already taken on himself the duties 
 of unofficial Press Scout — showed that the Faction had taken 
 
 1 Airy, Burnet, i., 316. 2 Ibid.^ i., 316, note. 
 
 3 So far Sir Sidney Lee (Art. on L'Estrange, Diet. Nat. Biog.) is right in using 
 the phrase 'with greater disinterestedness' to describe his anti-Presbyterian 
 activity. Others, however, even on his own side, spoke more slightingly. The 
 contemporary view is rather expressed in the remark about some one, who coming 
 away from Lambeth, with only thanks and benedictions instead of money, swore, 
 • Damme, let the rogues henceforth write for themselves'. Ohservator, i., 289. Sec 
 Kennet, Register^ p. 232. 
 
80 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 extraordinary precautions against discovery. They addressed 
 it to the Bishops, yet ' from them of all the rest, it is with 
 most care concealed, but on the other side, the copies flie 
 in swarms about the nation '^ To the excitable Royalist 
 the parallel of the 1641 Petitions for a thorough reformation, 
 and the earlier Scottish tumults, was ever in mind, and with 
 so many recent revolutions, it was by no means certain that 
 the present Government would prove more stable than the 
 others. 
 
 'Just in this manner did they encroach upon his late 
 Majesty, whom they pursued and hunted with their barking 
 arguments upon the very scaffold, and then, when they 
 were sure that words would do no good, they babbled a 
 little, as if they meant to save him ' ^. 
 
 When the Alarm to the Armies and similar papers tried 
 to drive a wedge between Presbytery and the Loyal party 
 in March to April, 1660, Roger had used very different 
 language ^. Now his cue is to confound Presbytery with the 
 violent sects and to minimise their numbers. ' Surely he's 
 much a stranger to the temper of the nation that does 
 not know the Presbyterians to be very inconsiderable, 
 both for number and interest of credit with the people. 
 Where did they ever anything without the Independents ' ? 
 Baxter's claim that the moderately Presbyterian clergy pre- 
 dominated in London was perhaps an exaggeration. But 
 the order of the day was 'down with Presbytery', and 
 L'Estrange was at the labour-oar — a commission from the 
 Church rather than the Court, which still dissimulated. 
 Friends warned L'Estrange against this infraction of the 
 rules of the game, at the same time it was reported that 
 he was preparing a list of all those ' now in employment ', 
 who had borne arms against the King or his father. This 
 was not true, but he did suggest that a list for the King's 
 own private use might be a benefit^. 
 
 About this time, and indeed since the Restoration, another 
 schismatical person was troubling the repose of the Church. 
 
 1 Relapsed Apostate — Introduction. 
 
 2 Ihid., p. 28. Echard, iii., 6-7. 
 
 3 L'Estrange's reply to the Alarm to the Armies, 4th April, 1660, E. 1019 (19), 
 • The shameless beast proceeds to charge the secluded members with the guilt of 
 the King's blood upon a senseless inference drawn from the Declaration of both 
 Houses in 1647 touching the reasons of the votes for non-address '. Koger then 
 explains how these votes were passed. The Independents shuffled them through 
 when the Presbyterians were dining. 
 
 4 Relapsed Apostate — Advertisement. 
 
PURITAN DIVINES AND SEDITIOUS PRINTING 81 
 
 Edward Bagshawe, student of Christchurch, has obtained 
 his place in Anthony Wood's gallery of portraits and a 
 by no means favourable one ^. Nor did Dr Walter Pope ^ 
 remember his bitter and invective nature more tenderly. 
 Of an aspiring and turbulent spirit, his pages — and indeed 
 his titles — are, with the exception of his devotional works, 
 charged with containing nothing but accusations, and his 
 life at Cambridge, and as second master under Busby at 
 Westminster School, displayed a great deal of wrong-headed 
 but always original violence. This man threw in his lot 
 with the ejected ministers in November 1662, but might 
 still have been happy as Anglesea's Chaplain in Ireland. 
 His stay there was however very brief, and in December 
 1661, soured with discontent — according to Wood— he was 
 back in London to begin anew his denunciation of the 
 Bishops and the Government. Hence a broad hint in 
 L'Estrange's Memento in reference to noblemen who 
 harboured schismatical chaplains ^. Bagshawe's first 
 offence was to mingle with a controversy where his 
 interference was distasteful to both the principles. In 
 December 1661 Morley and Baxter (who was still con- 
 tinuing his ministrations at Kidderminster), carried their 
 feud of the Savoy Conference one step further, the Bishop 
 forbidding Baxter to preach, as being in no sense the lawful 
 occupant of the living. Morley published a letter on the 
 subject which revealed the correspondence on both sides, 
 and said many bitter things of the Presbyterians. Baxter 
 had not intended to reply, when in December 1661 
 Bagshawe intruded on the field with his Animadversions on 
 the Bishop of Worcester's Letter. It is well known that 
 Morley, though Calvinist by training, stoutly opposed any 
 real compromise at the Savoy Conference, and rejected, 
 with some disdain, the Proposals for the Reformation of 
 the Liturgy. His notes of objections to the Presbyterian 
 amendments are still worth reading, but his remarks, that 
 he saw no reason for change, nor the men that were fit 
 to make it, must have done less harm than his interdict 
 on Baxter from preaching at Kidderminster. Yet Bagshawe's 
 Ani7nadversions were as offensive to the latter as to the 
 
 1 Athence Oxonienses (Bliss, iii., 944-50), Fasti, ii., 120, 166. 
 
 ^ Life ofSeth Ward (1697), pp. 38-41. See also his lines ' On Le Strange (1689), 
 quoted in Notes and Queries, 3rd Series, v. 462. 
 
 3 Tragically exemplified (according to L'Estrange) in the case of Lord Rnssell 
 and 'Julian' Johnson. See his Considerations upon Lord Russell's Speech, 1683, 
 
 F 
 
82 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 Bishop, and were the occasion of an unseemly wrangle 
 between these two eminent Dissenters i, terminated only 
 by the death of Bagshawe, after various terms of imprison- 
 ment, in 16712. 
 
 But to Morley's Vindication sprang three doughty 
 champions, and the doughtiest Roger L'Estrange, who, not 
 content with the Howell wrangle, his own Vi^iclication, 
 and his abuse of Baxter, now rushed in to attack as 
 abusive a man as himself. His Whip for the Schismatical 
 Animadverter on the Bishop of Worcester's Letter is neither 
 a dignified nor even a clever performance, and the Bishop 
 may have experienced some of Baxter's disgust at his 
 own meddlesome champion. Whilst the Whip was in the 
 Press, Bagshawe, hearing of L'Estrange's breathing out 
 threatenings, cleverly forestalled him with a Second Part 
 of his Animadversions^ ivith an answer to all that L^ Estrange 
 intends to wnte. The date of the Whip is 7th February 
 1662. It so happened that Roger had had for some time 
 in hand a more ambitious book — it deserves the name — 
 The Memento, a work on the Rise of Sedition based on 
 Bacon's famous Essay ^. It was easy and congenial for 
 L'Estrange to infuse a double portion of wrath against the 
 meddlesome priest into the Dedication to Clarendon*. The 
 Memento remained unanswered for some time, and then, 
 on 10th May 1662, Bagshawe addressed a short appeal 
 to Clarendon complaining of the levities and treacheries 
 of L'Estrange. We should remark that while Roger had 
 in the meantime cleared himself before reasonable men of 
 the imputation of disloyalty — his appointment as Surveyor 
 of the Press in February 1662 is warrant enough for that 
 — it was sufficiently annoying to find the old charges re- 
 appearing, as if nothing had been said in the matter, and 
 
 1 Kennet, Register, p. 609. Baxter on Bagshawe : ' I could have wished he had 
 let it alone for the man hath no great disputing faculty — and wholly a stranger 
 to me and the facts, but being of a bold and Roman spirit he thought no suffering 
 should deter a man from the smallest duty '. 
 
 2 The occasion of Baxter's classic lament. * Whilst we wrangle here in the dark, 
 we are dying '. 
 
 ^ 'Of Seditions and Troubles', No. xv. of Essaj/s and Counsels. Koger probably 
 used the 1632 edition. A second edition appeared 1682 under the title A 
 Memento, Treating of the Rise, Progress and Remedies of Seditions, tvith some 
 Historical Reflections vpon the Series of our late TrouUes. It omits the 
 Clarendon Dedication, the personal matter, and the last three chapters of the 
 original edition. 
 
 •* He says it would be a particular favour if Clarendon would order Bagshawe 
 to make good his charges against L'Estrange before the Council. The date of 
 the Ucdication is 11th April, 1662, 
 
PURITAN DIVINES AND SEDITIOUS PRINTING 83 
 
 that by a man who could know nothing of the facts. In 
 appealing to Clarendon in May 1662, Bagshawe was 
 following the example of L'Estrange's A'pology of the 
 preceding December, the result of which had been the 
 office alluded to i. Smarting under the insults of Bagshawe's 
 Appeal and evidently dreading its results, Roger now 
 addressed himself to the Privy Council in a Vindication 
 of singular force and — for him — moderation. As Truth 
 and Loyalty Vindicated'^ throws considerable light on the 
 subject which was to absorb his energies practically for 
 life — the licentious Press — we shall have to notice it more 
 particularly when we come to deal with that interest. 
 Meanwhile we may dismiss Bagshawe with a reference to 
 the meagre details of his remaining years given in Wood, 
 Pope, and Baxter. He had thrown in his lot with the 
 Nonconformists, was ejected from his living at Ambrosden, 
 Oxfordshire, in November 1662. His insolencies or faithful- 
 ness led to his imprisonment first in the Gatehouse and 
 then in the Tower — where one regrets to say he was not 
 free from L'Estrange's persecution^ — was free in London 
 in the Plague year, but on refusal to take the Oath of 
 Allegiance, was again imprisoned, and still maintaining his 
 feud with Baxter, was liberated in order to die in 
 1671. 
 
 If we may judge by one or two unfriendly notices, 
 L'Estrange was generally understood to have been soundly 
 beaten by the Puritan divine. He had found his match 
 in vituperation. 
 
 Before leaving the subject of L'Estrange's attacks on 
 Presbytery it may be convenient to summarise his work 
 in this connection. Apart from Bagshawe he had inveighed 
 against Corbet in the Holy Cheats Baxter and the whole 
 
 1 L'Estrange's Apologj/ to Clarendon, 3rd December 1861, E. 187 (1) used 
 largely in the preceding account of the Interregnum tumults. 
 
 - Truth and LoyalUi Vindicated from the clamours and reproaches of Edmund 
 Bagshawe, 1662. See article in Eng. Hist. Itev., April 1908, Nnoshooh and Letters 
 of News of the Restoration, by Mr j. B. Williams. 'In 64 pages of verbose and 
 vituperative narrative, Roger L'Estrange cleared himself, ended the controversy 
 and silenced his opponent. He was now a famous writer '. This censure of Truth 
 and Loyalty would in another critic scarcely argue much acquaintance with 
 the pamphlet literature of the age. The result is correctly stated, however. 
 
 3 In August 1665 he seized in Bagshawe's cell The Case of John Dairies. 
 Davies was a minor Crofton committed to the Tower 20th December 1662, with 
 the narrative of whose savage treatment Bagshawe was attempting to console 
 himself under like severity. C.S.P.D. (1664-5), p. 545. This vindictive treatment 
 of fallen enemies is the most observablQ vice in L'Estrange's character. Sec 
 chap. xi. 
 
84 Sm ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 crowd of Presbytery in the Relapsed Apostate, and the 
 supplement to it entitled State Divinity'^. The fourth and 
 greatest of this kind printed in the year in which he was 
 formerly installed in the new office of Surveyor is Toleration 
 Discussed^, long remembered as the classic castigation of 
 Dissent, and directed against the whole mass of Dissent, 
 but singling out Calamy in consequence of a contumacious 
 sermon preached in defiance of the Uniformity Act at 
 his old Parish Church, St Mary Aldermanbury, 28th 
 December 1662. 
 
 It will be seen from this list that L'Estrange attacked 
 the very heads of the offending factions, and the men 
 who had some claim on the gratitude of the Crown. Baxter 
 and Calamy had been only less active than Prynne in 
 promoting the Restoration, and Calamy especially was 
 much courted by all parties on the consummation of that 
 event. 
 
 All these pamphlets have a common theme though 
 directed at different persons and with different degrees of 
 abuse. To contest the idea that Presbytery had signally 
 helped on the Restoration, to show that on the great 
 question of Toleration, the enemies of the Church were 
 hopelessly divided and did not know what to ask for, to 
 underline the parallel between 1641 and 1661, and to 
 draw the distinction between respectful and submissive 
 appeals to authority and tumultuous protests, in a word 
 to bring in the Presbyterians guilty of faction, through 
 the double agency of Press and Pulpit, was the iterated 
 burthen of these works. Numerous passages might be 
 chosen to exemplify every one of these positions, but a 
 brief quotation of each may suffice. 
 
 And first there is the claim of the Presbyterians that 
 they originally helped on the Restoration, a claim which, 
 as we saw, L'Estrange was very much inclined to encourage 
 in the Interregnum struggles. When Republicans like 
 Nedham, as a last move, attempted to drive a wedge 
 between the Royalists and Presbyterians by showing that 
 
 1 state Divinity, or a Supplement to Relapsed Apostate, 1661, probably 
 November. 
 
 2 Roger L'Estrange, Toleration Discussed, 1663. Sir Sidney Lee (art. 
 L'Estrange, Diet, of Nat. Biog.), 'He seems to have re-issued at the same time 
 under his own name Preshytery Displayed. ; a tract previously published 
 anonymously ', But Roger distinctly says (Preface to Toleration Discussed) * the 
 author of it, I know not '. He had no reason to publish anonymously then. 
 
PURITAN DIVINES AND SEDITIOUS PRINTING 85 
 
 the latter had been identified with all the great measures 
 against the Stuarts, his indignation then knew no bounds. 
 By 1663, however, things had changed, and we find him 
 writing in Toleration Discussed the following dialogue ^ : — 
 
 * Zeal. What do ye think of the secluded members ? 
 
 ' Conformity. I think a new choice would have done 
 the King's business every jot as well ; and matters were then 
 come to that pass that one of the two was unavoidable. In 
 fine, 'tis allowed at all hands that the prime single instrument 
 of His Majesty's Restoration was the Duke of Albemarle. 
 
 •But if ye come to parties, the very fact appears against 
 ye ; for though all possible industry was employed to make 
 the next choice totally Presbyterian by disabling all such 
 persons and their sons as (in effect) had served the King 
 since 1641, without manifesting their repentance for it since ; 
 yet so strong was the general vote of the people for the 
 King's true interest and against all factions, that all 
 endeavour was too little to leaven the next Convention as 
 was designed. If ye have no more to say for the merits 
 of your party we'll pass on to the merits of the cause'. 
 
 The second position, that the Nonconformists were 
 divided on the subject of Toleration, is argued with an 
 appearance of more reason. Baxter's saying ' We distinguish 
 the Tolerable from the Intolerable ' ^ was spoken in connec- 
 tion with the King's proposal of a Catholic indulgence, but 
 the Commonwealth record of Presbytery is sufficient to show 
 the substantial truth of L'Estrange's plea here^. 
 
 ' If it be the Uniformity ye dislike, how come ye to join 
 with the Directory against the Common Prayer ; with that of 
 the Assembly against that of the Church ? In short your 
 disagreements among yourselves are almost as notorious as 
 your conjunction against us, and ye have given proof to the 
 world that it is not possible for anything else to unite you 
 but a common booty ; witness the contentions, papers and 
 
 1 First edition 1663, p. 25. This was the type of question the Burnets and 
 Oldmixons loved to argue. /S'ce Eachard, iii., 6-7, and Oldnjiixon, i., 486, who reprints 
 Baxter's remarks on the subject, in which the affair for which Love suffered and 
 the Booth Rising are claimed for Presbytery. Page 304, ' all the stir the Royalists 
 could make was by spiriting up mobs and mutinies in City and Camp '. Page 448, 
 * We are now come within a few weeks of Restoration and we yet have not a word 
 of the Cavaliers '. See also Hallam, Co7is. Hist, of Eng., pp. 483 and 488. See also 
 L'Estrange, Double Yoii.r Guards, oth April 1660 (E. 1019 (19)), and Treasons 
 Arraigned, 3rd April 1660, where he attacks 'the shameless beast, (who) proceeds 
 to chaise the secluded members with the guilt of the King's blood '. See chap, 
 iii., p. 80, note. 
 
 ^ Oldmixon, i., 488. 3 Toleration DUcuss'd, p. 44. 
 
86 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 disputes betwixt Calamy and Burton, Edwards and Goodwin 
 and others, not to be numbered, concerning the very point of 
 Toleration. The desires of the Independents for a Toleration, 
 (say the London Ministers), are unreasonable and unequal, 
 and many mischiefs will follow upon it both to Church and 
 Commonwealth. Rutherford tells ye that such opinions and 
 practices as make an evident schism in a Church, and set up 
 two distinct Churches of different forms and government 
 cannot be tolerated. Milton again will have the Presby- 
 terians to be ministers of sedition, not ministers of the gospel' ^ 
 
 Again there is the eternal parallel of 1661 to 1641, after- 
 wards extended to 1681 -. 
 
 Then : Among the presages of foul weather the Lord St 
 Albans reckons ' libels and licentious discourses against the 
 Government ', etc. ' We need not run beyond our memories 
 to argue this point, it being within the ken of our own 
 notice, that libels were not only the fore-runners, but in a 
 high degree the causes of our late troubles, and what were 
 the frequent, open, and licentious discourses of Cloakmen in 
 Pulpits but the ill-boding play of porpoises before a tempest ? 
 
 ' We may remember also the false news of Plots ^ against 
 the religion and liberties of the nation, and how the King was 
 charged as an abettor of the design. We may remember 
 how the Irish blood was cast upon the account of his late 
 sacred Majesty even by those men whose guilty souls are to 
 reckon with divine justice for every drop of it'. 
 
 Moiv : ' If we look well about us we may find this 
 Kingdom at this instant labouring under the same dis- 
 temper ; the Press as busy and as bold, sermons as factious, 
 pamphlets as seditious, the Government defamed. The 
 lectures of the Faction are thronged with pretended converts, 
 and scandalous reports against the King and State are as 
 current now as they were twenty years ago'. 
 
 Lastly, and to sum up. Presbytery is Rebellion — the 
 single theme of the Holy Cheat, the first and most violent of 
 Roger's attacks on that sect *. 
 
 1 See in this connection the excised attacks on ParHament and Presbytery in 
 Milton's //is^o;;^ — published separately by the Court in 1680, printed by H. Brome, 
 L'Estrange's publisher. Milton was singularly little quoted by his own side and 
 for compliments he was indebted to the other side — the usual fate of a purely 
 rational spirit. 
 
 2 The tract called the Parallel or Semper Idem, 1661, is an admirable thesis on 
 this subject, but a doubt as to its authorship forbids quotation. See Appendix. 
 
 3 Inserted to bring it up to date, 1681. The pamphlet quoted from, is the 
 rd edition of A Memento, etc. , originally published in 1662. 
 
 4 First edition 1661, p. 98. All these tracts were reprinted 1681-2. 
 
PURITAN DIVINES AND SEDITIOUS PRINTING 87 
 
 'All popular factions take the Church in their way to 
 tne State, and I am to seek whenever any Prince quitted 
 Episcopacy and saved himself, that is, his royal dignity ; for 
 the empty name of King is but the carcase of Majesty. It is 
 with the unruly populace as it is with raging tides, they 
 press where the bank is weakest and in an instant overrun 
 all, If they had either modesty or conscience, they would 
 not force so far, if they have neither, will they stop there ? 
 What did the late King grant? or rather what deny? 
 till by their mean abuse of his unlimited concessions, he lost 
 his crown and life ? Yet what assurance words could give 
 him, he wanted not, words wrapt up in the most tender and 
 religious forms imaginable. But what are words when a 
 crovn lies at stake? 
 
 'If to be no way forward in promoting changes in the 
 civil State be a mark of the Church, the Presbyterians are 
 out of the pale'. 
 
 Speaking with Crofton particularly in his mind Roger 
 adds : ' Their reasonings are dishonourable to the memory 
 of the late King, seditious and provoking to the people, 
 bold and imposing in themselves, repugnant to the 
 established law, and to the main scope of the general 
 pardon '. 
 
 These excerpts may illustrate the view which was 
 responsible for the persecutions of Charles II.'s reign and 
 of the early months of his successor. They were, as has 
 been said, L'Estrange's title to the gratitude of the Church, 
 but it was not till the Popish Plot crisis that he improved 
 that title to the extraordinary degree that money was 
 publicly contributed to him by Oxford, Cambridge, and 
 the Judges of the realm — a fact which shows clearly the 
 attitude of the Church to that crisis. 
 
 One thing is borne out very clearly, the fearlessness 
 and generality of his attacks. As in the Interregnum, so 
 now these attacks were by no means immune from danger. 
 They fell in as has been said with that victory of Morley 
 and Clarendon over the Southampton party, and were 
 probably more instrumental in persuading the Government 
 that they had overlooked a useful ally than all his Apologies, 
 Caveats, and old Cavalier appeals. Yet the importunacy of 
 these appeals and protests is an important element of his 
 turbulent activity, and since the old historians, Eachard, 
 Oldmixon, and Kennet unite in taking him as the spokesman 
 
88 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 of this phase of Restoration opinion, it may be desirable 
 to take up that story here. 
 
 The Holy Cheat had, as we saw, interrupted this side of 
 his activities, and beyond acrid remarks in the Prefaces to 
 his anti-Presbyterian works he did little publicly to embarrass 
 the Government on that score. But we can imagine Mm 
 mingling in company with the disappointed ones, recapitulat- 
 ing their grievances and setting their account of Edgeaill 
 and Naseby against the Government's mean neglect and 
 meaner abuse. It is clear that in the meantime Roger 
 had been received back into the Cavalier fold and the old 
 suspicions quieted. Had their murmurings been ignored 
 they might have died down with the allocation of the 
 £60,000 grant in 1662 1. By Howell's indiscreet CorMal 
 for the Cavaliers they were suddenly revived. When Howell 
 wrote — July 1661 — Parliament had not yet established the 
 Loyal Officers' Fund, and it was embarrassed by the abortive 
 Press Act and the great Uniformity Act, which Clarendon 
 had at last introduced. Howell's own specially created 
 office of Historiographer Royal had been bestowed in 
 February, and Charles' gift of £200 was an ingredient of 
 his satisfaction^. In his well-meaning way he now said 
 precisely the things to remind men that he at least was 
 provided for. His recommendation of a good conscience 
 was beneath the emoluments if not * the dignity ' of the 
 Historiographer Royal. That the King was nob long 
 established and as yet embarrassed by poverty, that a 
 fund was speedily to be set up to relieve the necessitous, 
 and — the gravamen of the charge from the other side — 
 that the King was not favouring the Commonwealthmen, 
 and a frank acknowledgment of the fact that the King 
 came in through the Presbyterians — these are the points 
 of the Cordial which infuriated L'Estrange. 'Therefore 
 noble Cavaliers possess yourselves in patience'. As for 
 himself his long imprisonment and the loss of a dejure 
 office spoke for themselves. 
 
 1 See p. 93. Incredible heartburning was caused by the distribution especially 
 on the head alluded to by Clarendon, of the sums granted to those who did 
 nothing for the King prior to the Kentish Revolt or even the Cheshire Rising. 
 {Oontinuation, ii., 36.) 
 
 2 Gibber [Lives (1753), ii,, 3-4). ' In the time of the Rebellion we find Howell 
 tampering with the prevailing Power . . . for which reason, at the Restoration, 
 he was not continued in his place as Clerk to the Council, but was only made 
 King's Historiographer'. So Eachard, iii,, 178, *of several parties by his 
 i:)ractice '. 
 
PURITAN DIVINES AND SEDITIOUS PRINTING 89 
 
 The Caveat to the Cavaliers, which answered this some- 
 what cynical consolation — the second edition, enlarged, dated 
 13th August 1661 — starts by referring to it as *a well- 
 meaning mistake ', but gradually the author lashes himself 
 into a fury over the spectacle of ' the City-Church Meetings 
 like authorised Conventicles, the Pulpits profaned by 
 unqualified and seditious lecturers, and those too chosen 
 out of the rankest of the old Separatists, both Presbyterian 
 and Independent', whilst the truth is, even in respect of 
 their boasted numbers, * the odds of it are at least thirty 
 for one throughout the nation'. But what must have 
 enraged parties most was the vehemence of his attack on 
 the late Indemnity Act \ which ' makes them (the Separatists) 
 masters in effect of the booty of three nations while the 
 King's active friends are beggared'. In the same breath, 
 he denies the charge of ' pressing on the King's necessities ', 
 and hints that Henry IV. of France in a similar case at 
 least helped his ' lame soldiers over the stile '. Bacon was 
 called in once more to testify that 'He who pinches his 
 friends' bellies, loses their hearts', and he that advises the 
 Prince to leave the old friends for new, is a traitor. 
 
 As to Howell's estimate of twenty Cavaliers rewarded 
 for one Presbyterian, * Count again and you'll find a dozen 
 of capons to one lark.' 
 
 The Presbyterian and Independent are two ravenous 
 beasts, and there is no such sympathy (as is alleged) 
 between them. 
 
 The vogue of Caveat was very great ^. To call it a 
 
 1 Quoted by Hallam, Cons. Hi&t, p. 506, note. 'The Act of Indemnity put a 
 stop to any suits they might have instituted. . . . They were compelled to put 
 up with their poverty, having the additional mortification of seeing . . . the 
 Clergy . . . not the same in their fortunes '. See also Kennet's Register, p. 233, 
 and Somer's Tracts, vii., 517, 557. 
 
 2 Kennet, Register, p. 231. ' The Cavaliers began to complain over their being 
 neglected. Mr Roger L'Estrange published a bold remonstrance on that occasion, 
 August 1660, answered by Mr Jas. Howell and replied to by L'Estrange, 
 Yet it was certainly after this month, I think in December. The writer got 
 nothing but to be Licenser of the Press '. The above is Kennet's marginal notice 
 of the Caveat which he described in the text as 'a notable book in favour of the 
 distressed Cavaliers, which took so wonderfully in the nation and contained so 
 many bold truths ', Kennet followed Eachard in his quotations from the Modest 
 Fleet for the Caveat as where Hancock (the preaching bookseller) prays, ' Give the 
 King another, a new heart, Lord ' ; and Mead seconds him with a word of comfort 
 * ye know not what a year, yea a month, may bring forth '. See Eachard, iii., 64. 
 Kennet is of course wrong in his year, the date of the Caveat being 13th August 
 1661. The peculiar offence of the work Vv'as that it came so soon after the King's 
 Speech (8th May 1661) warmly recommending the Indemnity Act. From 
 Clarendon's remarks thereon{Cojitimtation, ii., 180), we infer that he half approved 
 L'Estrange's indiscretion. 
 
90 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 menace is perhaps too strong because it mingles its bitter- 
 ness with an extravagant submission, offering the bosom to 
 the Prince's dagger but threatening him with destruction 
 out of the mouth of Bacon if he did not fill their bellies. 
 It certainly was a most liagrant contravention of the Act 
 of Oblivion 'maliciously reviving past differencies,' and 
 report came hot-foot that its author was lodged in Newgate. 
 
 Howell's reply bore an unfortunate resemblaoce in title 
 to another Sober Inspections, written in 1653 in praise of 
 Oliver. It gave L'Estrange the cue for attack in his Modest 
 Plea for the Caveat and its Author (28th August 1661). 
 Besides the exposure of Howell's loyalty, the Modest Plea 
 addressed itself to another, and, to the Court, more grateful 
 theme — the manufacture of sedition by Press and Pulpit — 
 'Not a day that passes without seditious lectures in the 
 City '. Mead's lecture was noted with its significant phrase 
 ' Ye know not what a ononth may bring forth — and with such 
 an accent upon month that upon my soul, I thought it 
 related rather to the timing of a plot'^. 
 
 Francis Tytan, the Commonwealth Stationer and lately 
 made one of the two printers to the House of Lords, incurs 
 our author's anger for ' dispersing treason since His Majesty's 
 return, for there's a combination betwixt the Press and 
 Pulpit to do mischief. 
 
 Before leaving this subject it may afford some amuse- 
 ment to quote Roger on the subject of these furies twenty 
 years later, when he enjoyed the full favour of the Court and 
 could then adopt Howell's satisfied attitude. In Observator, 
 No. 201, vol. i., August 1682, occurs the following dialogue 
 which shows the longevity of the Cavalier's complaints: — 
 
 ' Tory. Are there some of the late King's servants whom 
 his present Majesty has not had either the means or the 
 opportunity perhaps in any remarkable way to oblige ? 
 This does not, however, derogate from the King's gracious 
 inclination. 
 
 ' Whig. Well, but I know scores of these old Cavaliers 
 that have changed their principles no more than the sun 
 does his road, and yet at this day they are accounted as 
 arrant Whigs ^ and seditious rascals. 
 
 1 Modest Plea, p. 6. The date of the Modest Plea is 17th September 1661. 
 •Report speaks me a prisoner,' says Roger, for his Caveat. 
 
 i^ See Memoirs of the Earl of Aileshuri/, i., 6, already quoted. ' Whigism 
 really sprung by degrees from the discontent of noble families '. 
 
PURITAN DIVINES AND SEDITIOUS PRINTING 91 
 
 * Tory. Upon the main I cannot find one instance that 
 suits your purpose, hut if men will go off upon animosities 
 and piqices or disappointments, who can help it ' ^ ? 
 
 Truly there were now a dozen larks to one capon ! 
 
 In Ohservator (1289) he returned to the same subject. 
 This time Trimmer asks: — 'What snarling pamphlet was 
 that you wrote against the Court and Ministers, the Act 
 of Idemnity, the King's Declaration touching ecclesiastical 
 affairs ? It was against Howell soon after the Restoration. 
 
 * Ohservator. Alas for the hand of ye, it was the Caveat to 
 the Cavaliers, and there were some other papers of Observators^ 
 upon several fanatical libels of these days against Church 
 and State '. 
 
 Amongst the group of satisfied Cavaliers was Sir John 
 Birkenhead, who naturally saw much cogency in Howell's 
 Cordial. Besides he nourished a jealousy of the younger 
 man. Aubrey has described Sir John as ' exceedingly con- 
 fident and witty,' but * not very grateful to his benefactors ' ^. 
 His heaped-up honours at the Restoration, and after, caused 
 him to dislike the murmurs of less fortunate men. He wasf 
 one of Howell's defenders and suggested publicly that 
 L'Estrange should be sent to Bridewell and whipped*. 
 Sir John's record of loyalty seemed as good as any man's — 
 having lived in a poor way at Oxford and refused all com- 
 pliance in the Commonwealth — though he had scarcely 
 exerted himself as much as Howell and L'Estrange during 
 the Interregnum. L'Estrange did not hesitate to suggest that 
 Birkenhead had also played the traitor to Oliver ^ This is 
 perhaps worth noting merely as another instance of the 
 reckless charges thrown about in the settlement of these 
 long accounts — the process which gave such pain to 
 Clarendon. 
 
 1 On the whole, Musgrave (Character of (1696), chap, ii., introd., quoted 
 Oldmixon, i. 693) seems justified in saying * The Cavaliers were some of 
 them very well pleased, others as highly disgusted according as he (Charles) 
 answered their expectations'. 
 
 2 Holy Cluat, etc., 1661. 
 
 3 See Wood, Athence, iii., 1203. 
 
 * Belapsed Apostate, introd. *A Justice (Birkenhead) that .... would 
 have had me whipped '. 
 
 5 Ihid. ' What ! Sir John B , too. Your most humble servant, sir. 
 
 Can you tell me whether old Oliver's physicians or his Intelligencers had the 
 better trade on't. ... I am told that he (Birkenhead) and Barkstead (the 
 regicide) were formerly fellow-servants, and conferred notes. Now this same 
 Barkstead laid that very Law to me ; he told me that I was a Fidler, and that 
 a Fidler was a Rogue by the Statute '. 
 
92 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 The Belapsed Apostate, tlie introduction to which bears 
 these charges, is dated 14th November 1661. A week or so 
 later L'Estrange received at Westminster Hall the private 
 apologies of a gentleman who confessed to having conveyed 
 to Clarendon the slanderous story of Roger's pension. 
 
 ' L'Estrange ' (says he), ' I am glad to meet you, for I'm 
 unquiet till I've told you something, which both in honour 
 and in conscience I think myself obliged to acquaint you 
 with'. He then proceeded to explain that Captain James 
 Whitlocke, ' a Knight of Cromwell's ', had told him the story 
 of the £600 pension first. Clarendon's reception of the 
 news was 'charitable, considering the suggestion, but as 
 related to my innocence it loas sharp and cruel '. Hence 
 the cloud of suspicion which surrounded him at Whitehall, 
 and hence on the 3rd December 1661, his Humhle Apology to 
 Clarendon} wherein he demanded to be put on trial for 
 his life. This Apology merely recapitulates in four or five 
 pages the heads of the long story told in the earlier Apology. 
 The apologist afterwards stated that Clarendon gave him his 
 word that he never suspected he could be such a knave, and 
 ' from that day to this,' says the Observator — but inaccurately 
 — ' no mortal has ever offered a syllable in contradiction ' 2. 
 
 One distempered mortal called Bagshawe, as we savr, did 
 six months later ^ repeat the old scandals and to the same 
 high authority in a reply to Roger's Mertiento (April 1662). 
 The motto of this last work, Sic canihus catulos simules, intro- 
 duces a vicious attack on Bagshawe's personal character, 
 besides defending the author from various charges. The 
 pension story had only been scotched by the Apology to 
 Clarendon. Captain Whitlocke was repeating the story and 
 offering evidence on the points. Like the former defence, 
 the Memento is dedicated to Clarendon, ' under whose roof 
 I have formerly received so many, many benefits', and 
 reminds the Chancellor rather boldfacedly that ' it is not for 
 a man either of my nature or condition to thrive by begging '. 
 At the same time he enlarges the scope of his attack to 
 include, though cautiously, the Earl of Anglesea for harbour- 
 ing Bagshawe, who he prays may be ordered before the 
 
 1 E. 195, 625. 
 
 '^ But so late as 31st March 1663 we note that Birkenhead charges L'Estrange 
 before the Commissioners for Indigent Officers with ' writing a book against the 
 King, which Roger L'Estrange denies and offers to prove his denial, if permitted 
 in regard of Sir John's privilege as M.P.' C.S.P.D. (1663-4), p. 92. 
 
 ^ His Apology to Clarendon, June 1662. 
 
PURITAN DIVINES AND SEDITIOUS PRINTING 93 
 
 Council to substantiate his charges. For the last time the 
 writer reverts to the pitiful condition of the Cavaliers and the 
 swelling state of their enemies i. 
 
 * Did but his Majesty walk the streets as we do to over- 
 hear the whisperings and the murmurs, to observe the 
 various passions of the people to see the stand they make '. 
 
 * That's he ', says one, ' that brought me to a Council of 
 War because I would not march against the King at 
 Worcester and now he's so and so. There goes another that 
 condemned me upon the King's account, and he's in such and 
 such an office'. These are brave, jolly fellows, but before 
 this wonder is over, up comes two or three perhaps of the 
 sadde«t spectacles a man's eyes can look upon ; they have 
 scarce strength enough to move, nor cloth enough to hide 
 the scars they have received in the King's service. 
 
 ' Do you see that sickly man ? (cries one) He is a gentle- 
 man that has spent his fortune for his Majesty ; that very 
 Colonel that goes before, he was sequestered and plundered ' 2. 
 
 When Roger wrote the danger point was over and him- 
 self in a — though rather humble — office. The policy of the 
 Court had swung round nearer L'Estrange's position. The 
 Uniformity Act was in operation, though the guillotine did 
 not fall till St Bartholomew's Day of this year. The 
 £60,000 fund for ' the sickly man ' and the * Colonel ' of 
 L'Estrange's quotation was presently to be passed through 
 the House. The policy of keeping the Cavaliers out, on the 
 assumption of their inviolable loyalty, had received a slight 
 check. Questions had been asked in Parliament as the 
 
 1 * Charles II. ', says Bohun [Diary by J. Wilton Rix (1853), p. 127), * had them i 
 all under his feet and the nation so far incensed against them that if he had but 
 left them to their destiny, the public hatred would have plumed them to their 
 bones. . . . But then all was sold for money and that they might not despond, 
 pensions were underhand paid them when those that had spent their estates in , 
 his and his father's service starved in his Court'. See also H.M.C.., 5thRept.,/ 
 p. 105. * As yet men of my loyalty have only our mouths filled with laughter and; 
 our hearts with heaviness '. 
 
 2 Cf. also Capt. Chas. Hammond's Tndhs Discovery, 1664 (Somer's Tracts, vii., 
 557) : ' I believe we have been a table-talk in most parts of Christendom these 
 three years past, but much more since our Dividend of indigent money hath been 
 alloted us ; not 6 weeks' pay for 6 years' service and 16 years' suffering '. The 
 Humble Representation of the sad condition of the King's party {ibid., 517) asks 
 that 'for such soldiers ... as are old, maimed, without calling or stocks to 
 exercise them, provision may be made '. On the other hand others got too much. 
 Sec Marvell's (?) Seasonable Argument, etc., 1677 (chap, vii., 221): 'Sir John 
 Bennet has got of the poor indigent Cavaliers' money £2,600'. Sir John was 
 Treasurer of the fund. See also Introduction to C.S.P.D. (1661-2), pp. 8-9 for 
 The Humble Memonstrance and Complaint qf Your Majesty's Roycd and Loyal 
 Party, 
 
94 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 result of L'Estrange's agitation. Already he was a familiar 
 figure at the Secretary's office — naturally at that of Nicholas 
 rather than that of Morrice. He still haunted Westminster 
 Hall with his discoveries of libels and clandestine printers. 
 He awaited the passage of the delayed Press Act to come 
 into regular office. 
 
 He had talked and talked, raised a storm over the 
 treatment of his fellow-Cavaliers, and done such execution 
 on the Presbyterian leaders and their allies in the Press ^, 
 that his name was now prominent on the list for advance- 
 ment. He had shown much boldness, and whilst always 
 professing an almost abject loyalty, had not trifled with what 
 he conceived to be the truth. He had called on the Crown 
 to do what Charles had made a show of avoiding — to become 
 the King of a party rather than of the nation^. Twelve 
 years later the same Cavalier councils prevailed in Danby's 
 Government in alliance always with the Church. It was 
 said then that the old Cavalier had now become very ancient 
 and pious, a fit instrument for the tyranny of the Church. 
 
 1 Besides his attacks on Crofton, Bagshawe, Calamy, etc. , he urges the arrest 
 of ' Wm. Jenkins, of Christ Church, London '. Macaulay has noticed his savage 
 jeers when in 1684 Jenkins was released by death. See Truth and Loyalty, p. 26, 
 where L'Estrange quotes a sermon of Jenkins' dated 24<7i September 1656. Such 
 was his notion of the Indemnity Act ! 
 
 ^Eachard, iii., 6. 'The King to show that he would not reign over a party of 
 his subjects, thought it proper to reward several, who had been enemies to his 
 father and himself, and at the same time set aside many loyal subjects who had 
 been illustrious sufferers.' But 'the pretenders were as many as the real 
 sutt'erers '. ' The King himself was obliged to act ft.s the head of a Party, a dis- 
 agreeable situation for a Prince, and always the source of much injustice and 
 oppression'. Hume, JSTu^. o/'i?n^., viii., 167. 
 
CHAPTEK IV 
 
 THE BLOODHOUND OF THE PRESS 
 
 We have already touched on the license of the Post- 
 Restoration Press, but in order to understand how Ministers 
 viewed excesses of this sort, it will be necessary to relate 
 very briefly the history of previous legislation on the matter. 
 
 This has already been done so far as the enumeration of 
 Statutes and Ordinances goes, by various writers, but an 
 intimate sketch of the History of the Stationers' Company 
 in their relations to the Government and the Surveyor 
 remains to be done ^. As is to be expected the seventeenth 
 century is prolific in documents printed and other, relating 
 to this subject, but most of these have the bias of party or 
 interest, while later writers, like Hallam and Macaulay on 
 the one side, or formal writers like Wilton, Rix, and 
 Tymperley on the other, either content themselves with 
 speculation or a bare enumeration of Statutes. The more 
 modern labours of Arber and the work of Mr J. B. Williams 
 do more to supply the gaps in our knowledge, but the former 
 has quarried out a vast heap of information with little 
 attempt at a connected narrative, and the latter is confined 
 to too narrow a period and subject to do more than prepare 
 for a more general history. 
 
 Our literature on this subject is therefore, though often 
 well-written and informative, on the whole unsatisfactory. 
 While apart from formal attacks, the seventeenth century 
 ' Whiggish ' literature is saturated with complaints and gibes 
 against the * padlock of the Press ', and the equally grievous 
 monopoly in books, the eighteenth century, scarcely sure of 
 its liberty in this direction, delivers from time to time nervous 
 attacks on the old system associated for all time with the 
 
 1 For a list of writers on this subject see Appendix. 
 
 95 
 
96 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 name of L'Estrange, and attributes the blessings of the 
 Revolution to the enlightenment produced by the defiance 
 of the ' brave assertors of English Liberties ' in the Press. 
 The alarming growth of deism towards the end of the 
 seventeenth century associated with the names of Toland, 
 Tyndal, and Shaftesbury revived the question of a Restraint 
 for a year or two ^. By the late eighteenth and the nine- 
 teenth century the matter had almost entered the antiquarian 
 stage, but the alarm created by the French Revolution and 
 the spread of Atheism provoked certain prosecutions on the 
 part of the Government which recall the worst days of 
 Charles II. and his brother. We have lived to see printers 
 convicted to-day for seditious printing on a panic libel law 
 dating from those alarming times \ An event which induced 
 Southey in the nineteenth century gravely to propose the 
 Repeal of the Act of Toleration might have been expected 
 to arouse the latent re-actionary feeling on the topic, which 
 never quite dies out. Even to-day the example of a Press 
 Law in India causes sober persons to regret the absence of 
 such a measure in England, while the proposed withdrawal 
 of the Restraint on the stage — not quite a parallel it may 
 be admitted^ — causes a good deal of misgiving. The one 
 element, however, which after 1694 is not again seriously 
 proposed, is the part in which Hallam held that the real 
 Restraint resided — the Imprimatur ^. Nor to-day could such 
 a bar be set up. Even in the case of the less prolific 
 drama, those who wish to study the inevitable difficulties 
 and evasions of a seventeenth century licenser, cannot do 
 better than compare the evidence of the late stage licenser 
 before the Committee of Summer 1909, with Bohun's Diary 
 and the accounts of L'Estrange's various appearances before 
 similar committees. 
 
 1 See Genilernan's Magazine, April 1738. Essay on the Press — 'The Revolution 
 may be justly said in some degree at least to be owing to the communication of 
 knowledge by the Press whilst under a licenser, and yet this clog was not taken 
 off it till it expired of itself, and even then great pains were taken to revive it '. 
 For the 'great pains ' see Hallam, Cons. Hist. (1879), p. 719. 
 
 2 The reference is, of course, to the trial of the 'syndicalist ' printer Bowman 
 convicted in March 1912 under the old Statute. 
 
 2 Though its imposition caused the alarm which called forth an edition of 
 Areopagitica in 1738. 
 
 ^ Ibid. 'The liberty of the Press consists in a strict sense merely in an 
 exemption from the superintendance of a licenser '. See for example the draft o 
 a proposed Bill for Regulating the Press, 1698-9, repeated substantially in another 
 attempt in 1706. H.M. C, New Series, iii. , 271 . Every feature of the old Statute 
 is retained save the Imprimatur. 
 
THE BLOODHOUND OF THE PRESS 97 
 
 The absence of Press Law did not, as we shall see, leave 
 the Government powerless to deal with the matter. In the 
 Seventeenth Century, it is again and again insisted on by 
 judges and others, that the Common Law can deal with 
 offenders, and the Eighteenth Century so teems with successful 
 prosecutions that men asked if the Press, what with the new 
 taxes on paper ^ what with general warrants and the still 
 undefined law of libel, had gained much by the Repeal of 
 1694. The General Search Warrant, the ugliest feature of 
 the Restraint in the Seventeenth Century, remained over far 
 into the Eighteenth Century. Monopolies, on the other hand, 
 had certainly disappeared, at least in the outrageous form of 
 the previous age. 
 
 Erom these three features of the Restraint, viz.: the 
 Imprimatur, the General Warrant, and Monopolies, the 
 History of the Press on its penal or prohibitive side may 
 be read. If we add legislation or orders to restrict and 
 govern the printing and bookselling fraternities, we have 
 all the elements argued in our huge mass of literature on 
 the liberty of the Press. 
 
 Conceived from its introduction in the Fifteenth Century 
 as the King's express monopoly, no one predicted for printing 
 such a position of national concern as it soon assumed. It 
 was certainly as easy in the first century of its existence to 
 think of it as Crown property, as it was in the Seventeenth 
 Century to look on the Post Office as the property of the 
 Duke of Fork, to be farmed out as he chose. Both these 
 'late inventions' speedily assumed great proportions, but 
 from its nature the latter has nominally remained with no 
 dissentient voices what it was from the first, while already 
 by the time of the Reformation, we find a good deal of 
 chafing against the Royal prerogative in the Press. The 
 Reformation, the counter-Reformation, and marriage of Philip 
 and Mary, and the Mar-Prelate controversy are events of 
 capital importance from the point of view of the Press in 
 the Sixteenth Century. They let loose angry feelings which 
 demanded a public expression that only the ' late invention ' 
 
 1 Defoe, Preface to 7th volume of Review. ' If such a design (the tax on public 
 papers, 1711) goes on it will soon appear whether it be a proposal to raise money 
 or a design to crush and suppress the papers themselves'. fi!ee also Addison's 
 Spectator, No. 445 — * A sheet of blank paper must have this new Imprimatur clapt 
 upon it'. Professor Henry Morley (ed. of Spectator, p. 63(), note) has some 
 interesting remarks on the Press. 
 
98 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 could give^. 'In the reign of Henry VIII.', says Hallam, 
 ' when the political importance of the Act of Printing, 
 especially in the great question of the Reformation, began to 
 be apprehended, it was thought necessary to assume an absolute 
 control over it, partly by the King's general prerogative, and 
 still more by virtue of his ecclesiastical supremacy '. 
 
 Pemberton in the famous law-suit of Seymour v. The 
 Stationers, 1678, affirmed the Royal control of the Press from 
 the date of its introduction ^. The lawyers who approved or 
 ' exemplified ' the various orders of the Stationers' Company, 
 founded their authority on the Press Act of 19 Henry VII.^. 
 
 Mr Wilton Rix goes still further back in referring such 
 restraints to the Council of Trent, and therein follows the 
 lead of Milton, Blount, and other hot champions of liberty 
 in the seventeenth century, who desired to connect the 
 Restraint with the horrors of the Inquisition. On the other 
 side, an anonymous writer in William III.'s reign, who 
 desired to see the Act revived, complains that 'before the 
 reformation, 1517, printers devoted themselves to printing 
 the ancient MSS,, or books written by the great men of 
 those times for the promoting learning, the printers then 
 being learned men and excellent judges of books and the 
 art not degenerated into a mercenary trade, and whilst 
 this continued, there was no need to regulate the Press. 
 In England, after the Reformation, the terrible havock of 
 unlicensed printing on the Continent (especially Holy Leagues 
 and Martin Luther quarrels) were of slower growth . . . 
 things were well kept under till 1640, and it is well known 
 the calamities the nation groaned under between that and 
 1660 were mostly caused by a lawless liberty of the Press '^. 
 
 1 Printing was adjudged a ' new invention ' down to 1678. ' The Lords in the 
 resolution of that case (Atkyns v. Stationers — law monopoly) relied upon this that 
 printing was a new invention, and therefore every man could not by the Common 
 Law have a liberty of Printing lawbooks '. Modem Reports (1683), pp. 256-7. 
 
 " Ibid. 'The exorbitancies and licentiousness thereof has ever since it was 
 first found out been under the care and restraint of the magistrates. In England 
 it has from time to time been under the King's own regulation '. As late as 1 Jac. 2 
 (Case of Stationers v. Parker, Viner, xvii., 208) the Koyal prerogative was argued 
 on the ground that ' it was an art introduced by the care of the crown '. 
 
 •" Sec the Press Statute in 19 Henry VII., quoted in the Stationers Orders and 
 Rules, 1678, 1682. and 1684. Arber, Transcript of the Stationers' Regiders^ i., 4-20. 
 Yet ' we find no attempt on the part of Henry VIII. or his son Edward VI. to 
 harass the printers as such '. (Bigraore and Wymau, Bib. of Printing (1884), ii., 120. 
 
 •* Tanner MSS. C. 739, 141. See Mr Augustine Birrell's Seven Lectures on the 
 Law and History of Copyright (1899), p. 49, where he quotes M. Renouard (Traite 
 des Droits d'A2cteurs{183S), i., 29-30) to show the reasonableness of this early view 
 of printing ' au moment ou la pensee c'etait la guerre '. 
 
THE BLOODHOUND OF THE PRESS 99 
 
 In Edward VI.'s reign began the system of monopolie 
 in all manner of primers with a view to enforce conformity 
 to the Book of Common Prayer^, a monopoly for which 
 printer Seres suffered in Mary's reign, though Elizabeth 
 handsomely compensated him by setting up in his family the 
 most extensive and detested monopoly of the reign. Mary 
 not only set up the Stationers Company (the Society had long 
 enjoyed an informal existence ^ ) but attempted by an Act in 
 her last year to ' gag the Press '. It has been denied that she 
 was animated in this matter by particular religious animosity, 
 but if she was scarcely awake to the possibilities of the 
 * new invention ', her sister was under no such delusion. 
 The reign of Elizabeth is marked by an ever-tightening 
 grasp of the Press, and all later legislation is indebted to 
 her initiative for Press forms and terrors^. In 1559 a 
 Proclamation *, in 1566 a Star Chamber Ordinance attempted 
 to crush what soon appeared in the quarrels of the sects to 
 be a grave nuisance. The Mar- Prelate controversy gave a 
 new importance to the matter^ and was the cause of 
 Whitgift's Ordinance of 1586, which not only re-affirmed 
 the Imprimatur of the earlier Proclamation, but limited 
 printing to London and the Universities^. The Stationers 
 Company began now to assume great importance, and the 
 authority delegated to them by Mary was by this Ordinance 
 largely increased by rights of search, which, however, were 
 often frustrated by the interference of the civic rulers of 
 London. These rights were the subject of much subsequent 
 
 1 See Strype, Memorial, i., 378 and 504, and Egerton Papers (Cam. Soc), 
 138, 9. 
 
 2 Mr K. C. Eivington's Essay on the Kecords of the Stationers Company, in 
 Arber's Registers, v., 11. 
 
 3 Hilger (Joseph, JJer Index der Verhotenen Bilcher, Freiburg, 1904 (pp. 206-21)) 
 is thinking of this reign particularly when he says, * Wie in keinem andern Lande 
 sind die englischen Zensurgesetze mit Blut geschrieben '. 
 
 •* Arber, i., Introd. ' Printers regard not what they print, so they may have 
 gain ', the refi*ain of so many enactments and orders. 
 
 ^ Martin, Books Privately Printed, p. 16. * In the reign of Elizabeth a 
 private Press was erected at Wandsworth when the Presbyterians established in 
 1752 a Presbytery "the first-bom of all Presbyteries in England'". He quotes 
 Collier {JiJcc. Hist., vol. ii.), 'This junto published a great many venomous 
 pamphlets under the disguise of Martin Mar-Prelate ', and D'Israeli {Quarrels of 
 Aidhors), ' Never did sedition travel so fast nor conceal itself more closely '. 
 
 •> ' This intolerably harsh enactment ' (Bigmore and Wyman, ii. , 121). Sir John 
 Lambe, Dean of Arches, 1637, remarked that ' the Decree (of 23rd June, 1586) 
 doth not appoint any certain number of Master printers but leaves it to his 
 Grace's (of Canterbury) pleasure or the Bishop of London, who when cither of 
 them please may (together with 5 more of the High Commissioners) allow any free 
 and able i^rinter to work as master of his trade '. Arber, Registers, iii., 704. 
 
100 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 recrimination on the part of the monopolists who before 
 exercised them, and indeed until the expiry of the Act in 
 1679 claimed coincident authority with the company. The 
 sad effects of the executive power in the company of 
 Stationers, from Queen Mary to the time when, 'the 
 Company obtained a decree of Star Chamber to invest the 
 executive power of Printing in them against the Patentees ' 
 is the burthen of Eichard Atkyn's Original and Groivth of 
 Printing, 1664. And indeed the Stationers in the seventeenth 
 century were so deeply involved in struggles against crown- 
 monopolists, that a law officer was regularly retained by the 
 company. At the same time several of these were also 
 great men at Stationers Hall, and when we come to examine 
 the methods employed by Charles after the Great Fire to 
 subdue the license of the Press and in despair of the Act, 
 we shall find that they resolved themselves into an attempt 
 to intrude these loyal monopolists into the governing body, 
 and so effect what Atkyns and the others desired, viz., a 
 return in effect to the state of things which prevailed before 
 the Star-Chamber decrees of 1586 and 1637. 
 
 Many Ordinances and Acts of Elizabeth created and 
 protected monopolies, and James' rule, the golden age of 
 monopoly, continued the practice^. But he made the 
 Stationers Company the greatest monopolist. ' The reign 
 of the peaceful James', says one writer, 'seems to have 
 been little disturbed by the products of Private Presses 
 although the work of Vorstius, D& Deo, published on the 
 Continent, which was publicly iDurned here, gave him con- 
 siderable uneasiness, and was the subject of long diplomatic 
 correspondence 2. The reign of his unfortunate successor has 
 been well described by Johnson as " the age of pamphlets " '. 
 
 If James' reign was peaceful, it had hardly closed before 
 the Government was confronted by as serious an irruption 
 on the part of the Press as had called forth the Decree of 
 1586. With the fanatical rigour which characterised him. 
 Laud, as Bishop of London, set himself the task of silencing 
 the Bastwickes, Burtons, and Prynnes, and in the event was 
 
 1 Seres' monopoly was extended in 1571, and in 1591 passed to his son. For 
 example, the law monopoly so fruitful of later troubles is granted (7th Eliz., 6) 
 for 7 years to Totell, 20th Eliz., for 30 years to the same, 41st Eliz., for 30 years 
 to Wright and Morton, and 15 Jas. I., for 40 years to John Moore. /See Arber, v., 
 57. The Statute 21 Jac. I. protects the patentees. 
 
 2 Martin, vols. xiv. and xv. Hilger, op, cit.y cites several other cases in this 
 reign. 
 
THE BLOODHOUND OF THE PRESS 101 
 
 accused, as L'Estrange was later and by the same people, of 
 allowing * popish ' books to pass ^, while his secretary Heylin 
 extracted from the works of Prynne such innuendoes as 
 brought the latter and his comrades to the pillory 2. But 
 the Ordinance of 1637, while regarded generally as the 
 coping-stone of this rigorous policy^, was taken by others 
 and especially the patentees to mean (as indeed it did) the 
 continued augmentation of the power of the Stationers, and 
 while we find the Eestoration tract The Press Pressed and 
 over-Pressed, looking back to the Ordinance as introducing 
 the Golden Age of the Press, we find Atkyns affirming that 
 thereafter ' the pamphlets began to fly about like lightning '. 
 
 To the latter the jurisdiction of Council and Star-Chamber 
 was necessary and the Act of 17th Car. I. which took away 
 that authority brought in the second deluge. 
 
 There is indeed a singular parallel between the years 
 1637-40 and 1677-80. Putting aside Atkyn's jaundiced 
 view, there was in each case, after a display of energy and 
 repression, a period of comparative calm, broken in the 
 one case by the Civil War, in the other by the Popish Plot. 
 Both lead up to factious Parliaments, which swept away 
 previous restraints and endorsed the view that such restraints 
 were aids to Popery. Moreover there was an attempt in 1680 
 to do what the patentees desired, to revive the authority of 
 the Star Chamber and Council in the Press by transferring 
 their precedents and powers to the King's Bench, an attempt 
 which, despite Parliament's rigours towards Scroggs and 
 Weston, was not unsuccessful, and which in the failure of 
 these prosecutions left a heritage of tyranny to the next 
 
 1 See Printer's Complaint, 1629 or 1630, that Laud and his Chaplains monopolise 
 the surveyorship of the Press and allow only Popish books to pass. 
 
 2 For the extraordinary circumstances of this case see Dociiments Relating to 
 the Proceedings against Mr Prynne (Cam. Soc.) ; especially No. 4, Prynne to Laud, 
 p. 19. Printer, author, and licenser were punished, ' for an author who taketh 
 upon himself to write, ought to be a man judicious to understand what he writes '. 
 
 3 * One of the most atrocious laws ever enacted in this "land of liberty"', 
 Bigraore and Wyman, ii., 122. It ordered a bond of £300 to be entered into by all 
 printers, the point which L'Estrange's efforts were chiefly directed to enforce. 
 
 ■* Gentleman's Magazine, April 1738, Essay on the Press. 'By these means 
 {i.e., of Sir George Jeffries, etc.) we now enjoy the fruits of these blessed endeavours 
 which were made by Charles II. and James II. for reviving in another shape the 
 great tract of prerogative of the Star Chamber by transferring its powers and 
 precedents to the King's Bench '. See also Hallam,*Cb?is. Hist. (1879), p. 613. In 
 the famous debate on the conduct of the judges 6th December 1770, it is of some 
 interest to remark that whilst Fox said ' The Judges are blameless ', Burke said, 
 * All judges are but men '. Pari. Hist,, xvi., 1264, 
 
102 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 The Commonwealth Parliament soon found that a Free 
 Press was a luxury they could not afford, and far from 
 the twenty years confusion being a period of liberty, it is 
 rather characterised by greater severity. The Imprimatur 
 which Hallam took to be the essence of restraint, was in 
 1643 handed over to a number of Puritan divines^ who 
 exercised their duties with as much rigour as the old 
 Episcopal licensers, and affronted the Levellers and Inde- 
 pendents by the same highhandedness and intolerance which 
 had swept away the former. The natural result of the 
 Independent triumph of 1649 was the setting up of new 
 licensers under Bradshaw's Act, but again the old trouble 
 of licensing appeared. The three general licensers could not 
 overtake the work 2. In 1652, 1656, and in 1658-9, the 
 authorities were called upon to put the Act in operation, 
 and whilst Cromwell lived a certain severity prevailed, but 
 his son's accession, as we saw, brought confusion worse con- 
 founded, and the Council vainly called on Scot and Tichborne 
 and London's magistrates to put down the nuisance^. By 
 April 1660, we saw, the danger of publication had slipped to 
 the other side, and just before the Eestoration, Prynne was 
 appropriately chosen by the Commons to draw up an Act 
 which should once for all deal with the matter. 
 
 The real trouble in the Commonwealth, as in later 
 periods, was to be found in the Imfrimatur. The twelve 
 clerical licensers set up by the Ordinance of 1643 and the 
 three by that of 1647 were unpaid. There was especially 
 in 1647-9 a real feeling that the restraint was pernicious, 
 and this was inflamed by Royalist writers then remark- 
 ably prolific. In May 1649 Gilbert Mabbot resigned on 
 conscientious grounds*. The Stationers complained of the 
 inadequacy of the three licensers who neglected their 
 honorary task. When the matter was taken in hand at 
 the Eestoration, no provision was made in the Act (1662) 
 for payment of licensers, and it therefore devolved on the 
 Government to make provision for the Secretary's nominee. 
 As the Episcopal licensers gradually restricted themselves to 
 licensing works of pure theology, the vast duties of the post 
 
 i Bigmore and Wyman, pt. ii., p. 22. Parliamentary Papers, No. vi., give a list 
 of the licensers. 
 
 2 See the Stationers' Petition, 20th December, 1648. JI.M.C, 7th Report. 
 
 3 C.S.P.I). (1659-60), pp. 343-4, 2nd February 1660. 
 
 4 Claimed by one of Milton's first biographers, Toland, as a convert to 
 Aroopagitica. 
 
THE BLOODHOUND OF THE PRESS 103 
 
 accumulated, and though the importunacy of L'Estrange, we 
 shall find, made the post actually lucrative, the rock on 
 which contemporary and later licensers split was that of 
 undefined remuneration for impossibly arduous duties ^ 
 
 One class which had gone down the torrent in 1640 
 now clamoured for restitution. To the Patentees the late 
 troubles seemed the chaos resulting from the license of 
 the Press of which they were the natural guardians. Like 
 the Churchmen they awaited impatiently their Eestoration, 
 their Act of Uniformity which should eject the present 
 usurpers. But they had no zealous Parliament to force 
 their claim, and many were doomed to hopeless petitioning 
 for favours already in the possession of those whose retention 
 of them was, according to the early policy of the Court, 
 deemed expedient. 
 
 Of the three parties, patentees, printers and booksellers, 
 the first were concerned with the restoration of their interests 
 and a protective clause in the new Act. They got this, 
 but individuals like Norton, Atkyns, and Seymour had to 
 fight hard in the Law Courts for their individual patents. 
 To decide between the more general rights of the Stationers' 
 Company and the particular copies of the Patentees was 
 the delicate work of the Courts. The Printers were left 
 as they had been in a miserable way still sighing for freedom. 
 They had been the first to petition against the monopolists in 
 1641 -. Their best fortune was to have no restraint on the 
 Press at all. Hence — so the Stationers said — their opposi- 
 tion to the new Act of 1662 ^. That being ineffective, they 
 preferred a strict Act*, which should have the effect of 
 turning them, as in 1637, into a closed select corporation, 
 
 1 L'Estrange said he took no fees for licensing, but then (apart from much 
 evidence to the contrary) he also said that the Neivshook yielded no profit. 
 Tanner MSS. C. 739 (141) c. 1692.— The Copy of Reasons for Reviving the Act, 
 etc., already quoted. 'As to the licenser there is no office employed by the 
 Crown which is not better paid considering his great labour and hazard '. The 
 writer proposes a fine of 8d. on unlicensed books, or a sum for each book licensed 
 ' the omission of which in the Act is one of the greatest defects '. One reason, no 
 doubt, for the continued restraint on the theatre is that the licensing though 
 arduous can still be accomplished by one or at most two officers. 
 
 2 Bigmore and Wyman, ii., 122 ; Pari. Papers, i. and iii. Petitions of Printers, 
 etc. against Monopolies. 
 
 " H.M.O., 7th Report 154a Petition of Stationers, 17th January 1662. ' The 
 great design of these Printers is to obstruct the passing of the Bill and to gain to 
 themselves the estates of Petitioners and others '. 
 
 4 Bigmore and Wyman, ii., 126 ; Pari. Papers, xvi. Case of Free Workmen 
 Printers (1662-5), i., probably belongs to the later date, for it complains that on 
 the expiry of the Act (two years) the Printers had increased to 70. 
 
104 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 and for this end, freedom from the tyrannical Stationers 
 Company (whose great men were booksellers, not printers), 
 and, if possible, separate incorporation was their demand ^ 
 Between Patentees and Stationers, they were in wretched 
 plight and did not hesitate to say that their oppressors 
 encouraged the illegal increasing of their numbers, so that 
 they might have them more at their mercy. The author or 
 scholar was still more at the mercy of the proud Stationer, 
 who dealt with his copy as he liked and played on him 
 all manner of tricks and rogueries 2. 
 
 Such was the condition of parties in the Press when a 
 new stream of sedition warned the Government to hurry 
 forward their Press legislation. 
 
 Those who thought that with the return of Charles to 
 Whitehall, a peace had been declared in the Press, had little 
 knowledge of how repugnant that event was to a fairly large 
 and desperate section. Chapman and Nedham had fled, and 
 of ' brother Brewster ' •"' we hear nothing, but many men lay 
 low during the Eestoration month — and hardly so long — 
 awaiting the moment when the Presses would once more 
 hum with sedition, whilst the great party of Presbyterians 
 were only waiting inevitable disappointment and the pro- 
 scription which was bound to come, and was perhaps 
 hastened by such attacks as those of L'Estrange referred to, 
 before they too would betake themselves to speak from the 
 Press what they could not speak from the pulpit. 
 
 We have seen that L'Estrange's attacks on prominent 
 Presbyterians were a running commentary on their present 
 behaviour viewed in the light of their ambiguous past. He 
 had noted the tears shed for the burnt Covenant, manifestions 
 of tears about to be shed for the Eegicides, and the publica- 
 tion of such things — almost in the week of the King's 
 landing — as Dr Manton's Smectymnuus Revived, and worse 
 still, Douglas' old sermon preached to Covenanted Charles at 
 his Coronation at Scone in 1650. There were also the works 
 
 1 A demand sternly opposed by L'Estrange. See his Oonsiderations and Pro- 
 posals, etc., chap, v., p. 133. It is difficult to reconcile Professor Arber's 
 selection of the Printers as the most enviable body of men with their constant 
 cries of oppression. See Arber, Register, v. xxix. Also Mrs James's (17th 
 January 1704) Reasotis thai Printing may not he a Free Trade. *At the first 
 beginning of printing the whole trade centred in the printer '. Her view, like 
 that of Atkyns, is selfishly monopolist. 
 
 2 George Withers, Scholar's Purgatory (Spencer Society, 6th collection, 
 pp. 62-6) ; and Arber, Register, iv., 13-16. 
 
 ^ Desborough's letter to Chapman quoted chap. ii. 
 
THE BLOODHOUND OF THE PRESS 105 
 
 of the gloomier fanatics God's Loud Cally and a dozen things 
 which conveyed by their vague and prophetic rhetoric the 
 most fearful auguries to ignorant and enthusiastic readers. 
 
 When, therefore, the Government introduced its Press 
 Bill in the same session that saw the Uniformity Act passed, 
 there was a clamant case for its speedy passage. The vital 
 connection between seditious printing (in the metaphor of 
 the day the * feminine part of revolt ') and insurrection was 
 impressed on rulers whose nervousness on this head during 
 the winter 1661-2 is abundantly shown in the examinations 
 of the Tonge and Venner conspirators, and the messages of 
 alarm which passed between the two Houses and the 
 secretaries \ 
 
 Yet the Act introduced in 1661 was defeated on a 
 scruple of the Lords, -who demanded exemption from the 
 clause which empowered the Press Authorities on an ordinary 
 secretarial warrant to search for seditious books ^. 
 
 It has been said that L'Estrange was consulted in regard 
 to this abortive Bill. If the draft of proposals in the 
 document preserved in the Eecord Office ^ is anything like the 
 Bill introduced, it is extremely unlikely that he had anything 
 to do with it. For though the penalties proposed there are 
 sufficiently severe to be of his suggestion, the setting up of 
 twelve of the Stationers Company to be chief inquisitors of 
 the Press was utterly repugnant to his views of the Stationers 
 perfidy, and would besides preclude his chances of a coveted 
 office. 
 
 It is unlikely therefore that ' he must have been consulted 
 with regard to the proposed Licensing Bill ', but the papers 
 which seemed to accompany this ' Abstract of a proposed 
 Act ' — that is, the ' Proposals for preventing, discovering and 
 surpressing libels humbly submitted to authority by the 
 Surveyor of the Press ' * — is undoubtedly his, though it seems 
 
 1 Burnet (Own Times, Airy's edition, i., 326) has suggested that these alarms 
 were purposely fomented by the Government to excuse their harsh policy to 
 the Dissenters. See Eachard, iii., 64; Pari., Hist., iv. 224, 226, also Mr Airy's 
 note on the passage referred to. 
 
 2 Almost the most vital objection to such laws. Not all Milton's indignation 
 based on the rights and dignity of human nature could shake the Imprimatur, but 
 Locke's cunning appeal to the Lords on the inconvenience of the Search Warrant 
 was successful in inducing them to allow the Act to expire in 1694. 
 
 2 Dated in the Calendar of State Papers, July (?) 1661. The writing is not 
 L'Estrange's. 
 
 4 L'Estrange was appointed Surveyor on 24th February 1662. S. P. Pom, 
 Car., ii., 51 (6). ^^e art. NewshooJcs and Letters of News of the Restoration, by 
 Mr J. B. Williams {Eng. Hist, Rev. April, 1908). 
 
106 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 from the word ' surveyor ' to belong rather to February or 
 March 1662. 
 
 Besides these papers there is obviously belonging to the 
 same date, and by the same hand, a collection of extracts 
 from Commonwealth sources between 1644 and 1654, censur- 
 ing the present King, the young *Tarquin' of Mercurius 
 Politicus' playful fancy. The proposals referred to above are 
 instinct with that suspicion of the Stationers which makes it 
 almost certain that the Draft Proposal of the Act is not his. 
 The most rigorous bonds and oaths to be entered on by 
 every freeman of the company are accompanied by a Bye-law 
 * to oblige the Company to see their own bye-laws put in 
 execution '. The Surveyor also demands a general warrant 
 such as the King's Printers have had for twelve years with- 
 out any clamour. He proposes for his emoluments — (a) The 
 printing of all narratives and Intelligence not exceeding two 
 sheets of paper ; (&) A monopoly of all bills and advertise- 
 ment which he licenses^: (c) Is. a sheet on all other 
 books. 
 
 Needless to say these not very modest wishes were 
 ignored, as was also the request for the Search Warrant — a 
 perilous thing to grant at any time, and especially to a 
 Secretary in the spring of 1662. 
 
 The loss of the 1661 Bill seems to have considerably 
 annoyed ministers during the nervous winter 1661-2, and as 
 it was the period when L'Estrauge never ceased to trouble 
 them with new alarms, there was a resolution to get a new 
 Bill rushed through at the earliest moment. Even so early 
 as 1661 it must have been troublesome to a secretary to 
 have printers lying in jail whom only his commitment — a 
 poor legal argument — could keep there. 
 
 It may be remembered that on 3rd December 1661, 
 L'Estrange published his Apology to Clarendon, which, besides 
 pleading his own case, made a powerful exposure of the 
 illicit Press. He had in his mind particularly a most 
 important discovery, the result of his own unrewarded 
 vigilance in July and August of this year — that of the 
 ' Confederate ' Printers of whom we shall hear more presently. 
 
 Between the Apology and May 1662 (the date of the 
 Memento) the question of employing L'Estrange, probably 
 
 1 S. p. Lorn. Gar., ii., 39., No. 92 ; Pari. Hist., iv., 233, March 1662, quoting 
 Ralph, ' as the Pulpit was to be purged by the Act of Uniformity, care was to be 
 taken to bridle the Press and put the reins into the handa of a Licenser ', 
 
THE BLOODHOUND OF THE PRESS 107 
 
 rather on the strength of this discovery than of his com- 
 plaints of neglect, was often mooted, but though he was 
 certainly made Surveyor of the Presses in February 1662 
 by Secretary Nicholas' patent, the Memento itself proves this 
 to have been the merest shadow of office, if it carried any 
 emolument whatsoever^. Hence the proposals referred to 
 above. It seems in fact to have done little more than 
 legalise his amateur scouting in the dens of Little Britain. 
 It was probably armed with the new authority, however, 
 that he was able to score off Bagshawe by seizing a batch of 
 his libels at Anglesea's house — a rather puzzling seizure 
 when we remember the scruple on which the abortive Bill 
 was wrecked^. 
 
 The discussion of the principles on which the new Press 
 Act was framed we may leave to the next chapter. This we 
 are the better able to do as following the example of the 
 new Treasons Act, the Press Law of 1662 was scarcely ever 
 resorted to and was rather held in terror em, or as a justifica- 
 tion to judges to proceed more rigorously by the more 
 compendious Common Law — a course which recommended 
 itself to a Government which wished to dispense with the 
 aid of Parliament where possible, and to use the judges 
 as a branch of the legislature. 
 
 If therefore in the stern cases to be cited, no mention 
 is made of the great Act of this year, it must be remembered 
 that that Act was chiefly valuable for the powers of search 
 and seizure which it vested in the Crown, and by delegation 
 — often disputed on legal grounds — to the secretaries and 
 L'Estrange^. For all practical purposes its only benefit 
 to the public was the raising of prices by that clause which 
 secured their patents to monopolists and that despite the 
 periodical plaints of the poor printers^. 
 
 In the confusion and multiplicity of 'libels', fanatical 
 and Presbyterian, which darkened the air during the first 
 
 1 ' Fortune has been so kind as to leave me yet a bottle of ink and a heap of 
 paper out of which pitiful remains I make your Lordship a present of a book '. 
 Memento, pt. i., May 1662. These are not the words of a man with a lucrative 
 place. 
 
 2 That the houses of noblemen were exempted from liability to search. 
 
 3 The legality of the General Warrant was the subject of exhaustive debate in 
 the eighteenth century, during and after the Wilkes case. The great lawyers 
 who argued that case were inclined to trace the warrant to the powers vested by 
 this Act. See Pari. Hid., xvi., 1277. Debate of 6th December 1770. 
 
 4 See their Petition, 1662-4. S<'<>. also an excellent note on the Law Monopoly, 
 Viner, Ahridgment (1742), xvii., 208. 
 
108 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 three years of the Restoration, it is impossible to trace 
 the history and effect of each. But there were certain 
 of these obscure wares, which either from the juncture at 
 which they appeared or because of their own or their 
 author's importance deserve a cursory notice. 
 
 And first it was L'Estrange's and Atkyn's loud complaint 
 that Presbyterian wares were tolerated. But as time goes 
 on, and especially after the Bartholomew eviction, their 
 immunity became more precarious and they gradually 
 adopted the secret channels of the darker hues of Dissent. 
 
 We have already noted the chief engagements of the 
 conflict between Church and Presbytery in which L'Estrange 
 took such an intrusive part. Here we are only concerned 
 with those papers and pamphlets as they were regarded 
 as • libels '. There were first the two parts of Corbet's 
 Interest of England in October 1660 and March 1661, 
 respectively, the latter celebrating the memory of the 
 regicide Carew. 
 
 Baxter's famous Petition for Peace and the publication 
 of the Savoy papers were the occasion of L'Estrange's 
 violent Belapsed Apostate already noticed. In this work — 
 always having in mind the men lying in gaol for his 
 July discovery — Roger descanted on the secret and wide 
 publication afforded these papers, and roundly accused 
 Baxter of sending them abroad. He detected in the 
 printers of the Petition for Peace a ' ring of menknaves,' 
 who were in. everything during the late times, and several 
 of them — as Francis Tytan — still continued in favour. 
 It is not surprising that those Commonwealth printers 
 of Mercurius Britannicus and other Mercuries, Ibbotson 
 the leveller and R.W. *he that hunts in couples with 
 Tytan ' ^, should bear a hand in a work of such vast sale. 
 ' If my intelligence deceives me not ', says the irate Cavalier, 
 'the same schismatical piece of Holiness was delivered 
 to the Press by one Mr Baxter or by his order, Ibbotson 
 in Smithfield was the printer (the levelling Ibbotson, I 
 suppose, he that printed the Adjutators Proposal, I mean, 
 and the Petition to the Army against the Mayor and Aldermen 
 in October 1647). I am told, too, E.W. has a finger in the 
 pie — Britannicus, his old friend, he that hunts in couples 
 with Tytan. These good folks have printed treason so long, 
 that they think now they do the King a kindness to stop 
 
 1 Mdapsed Apostate^ Introduction, 
 
THE BLOODHOUND OF THE PRESS 109 
 
 at sedition. Indeed 'tis a pity their old Imprimatur - main 
 was so unluckily called aside by a good office into Ireland ; 
 we should have had the Toy stampedelse 'with privilege'. 
 My information tells me further that the bauble was 
 barrelled up for fear of venting, and so sent several ways ; 
 which being performed with much secrecy and despatch 
 does but bespeak a general tumult and prepossesses the 
 nation against better reason '. 
 
 He was right as to Baxter being the author of the Petition 
 for Peace, but his charge against the latter of being privy 
 to the publishing of the Savoy papers was certainly false ^. 
 
 The curious thing is that Baxter should by his informa- 
 tion to Secretary Morrice have admitted that the publication 
 of these modest papers was a crime. Yet there was no 
 Press Law when they saw the light first. 
 
 If we add the papers of the Crofton agitation printed 
 by Ealph Smith, a high person at Stationers' Hall-, and 
 those of the Morley - Baxter - Bagshawe controversy to the 
 category of disturbing, or as L'Estrange would say, seditious 
 literature, we have the main scope of Presbytery's contribu- 
 tion to 'sedition' prior to the more serious Bartholomew- 
 ejectment deluge of Farewell Sermons. 
 
 These pathetic discourses have little in them beyond 
 exhortation to comfort, but in their cumulative effect ^ were 
 a very powerful agency in persuading people that a Govern- 
 ment which could eject such pious men must be vicious. 
 
 The Government indeed hesitated in its treatment of 
 this matter. On the one hand, there was Morrice's dubious 
 action in regard to the Petition for Peace and Papers of 
 Proposals, and a secretarial warrant issued for the arrest of 
 
 1 E. 1870. The Thomason Catalogue gives the date of publication as(?) May 
 1661. Kennet quotes Baxter on the subject {Register, p. 550). * Morley told me 
 when he silenced me that our papers would be answered ere long (but) only 
 L'Estrange the writer of the Neivshook hath tailed out a great many words against 
 6ome of them '. Baxter further tells us that on hearing of the publication of these 
 papers, he informed Secretary Morrice, but would not hunt for the delinquent, 
 though he privately thought him to be a poor curate of Dr Reynold's. Altogether 
 Baxter's conduct was as unique as L'Estrange's charges were violent. ' Although 
 I was above 100 miles off yet it was all imputed to me, and Koger L'Estrange 
 put it in the Newshook that it was supposed to be my doing '. Baxter, Sylvester's 
 Edition of Life (1696), ii., 379-80. 
 
 2 See his Apolog-y for printing Crof ton's Berith Anti-Baal, seized 23rd March 
 1661. Hart, Index Expurgatorias Anglicanus (1872-8), p. 191. 
 
 ^ 'Ten or Twelve Impressions of the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Volumes of Farewell 
 Scrniotis, 30,000 in all, all which as they are now drawn in one binding do 
 certainly make up one of the most audacious and dangerous libels that hath 
 ever been made public, and they are now printing it in Dutch too, for tho 
 greater honour of the scandal *. Considerations and Proposals, 1663. 
 
no SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 Bagshawe for his Animadversions on the Bishoj) of Worcester's 
 Letter (Second Part). On the other hand the Stationers 
 themselves, largely Presbyterians, would not act against 
 them^, and L'Estrange and Atkyns still vainly implored 
 the Government to go to all extremes. 
 
 It seems to have been agreed that nothing except 
 attempts to resurrect the Covenant (Crofton's and Davies' 
 crime) or personal attacks on Bishops from the side of 
 Presbytery were for the moment to be proceeded against. 
 
 The other great class — the non-Presbyterian libel — 
 admitted no such tender treatment. It fell into two or 
 three categories. 
 
 (1) Mere Quaker or Anabaptist stuff taken as an affront 
 
 to the Church and against the Act of Uniformity. 
 
 (2) The Phoenix, Prodigy and Annus Mirabilis tribe 
 
 — passionate tears for the burnt Covenant, and 
 scarcely veiled prophecies of doom to the tyrant. 
 
 (3) Regicide Speeches in two batches — those of October 
 
 1660 when the main body of executions occurred 
 and those of Vane and Cook held over to 1661-2 2. 
 
 These were distinctly seditious and tolerable by no 
 Government of that age. They are to be sharply distin- 
 guished from the scholarly and modestly-worded Appeals 
 of Baxter and Manton ^ Even here, however, a distinction 
 must be made between the direct treason of such a person 
 as Twynne whose case has drawn so much notice, and the 
 merely anti-prelatical jeremiads of Dover and Keache. 
 
 In 1663 the Government was brave enough to cast its 
 mantle over the Church. In ten years we shall find it has 
 enough to do to protect itself. 
 
 Before we consider this disloyal class it may be well to 
 note a few of the outstanding names. 
 
 Nedham we saw absconded — giving out the usual reason 
 of debt, which may have been partly true, for his wages 
 from Scot were stopped in April 1660, when the game of the 
 Republic was seen to be up. He was followed into exile in 
 
 1 * It is noted as a rare thing for any Presbyterian pamphlet to be seized and 
 suppressed unless by order from above, the great business of the Press being 
 engrossed by Oliver's creatures'. Considerations and Proposals. 
 
 - A full list of these seditious tracts is given in Truth and Loyalty Vindicated, 
 with an account of the Surveyor's activities. See also notices in Mcrcuvius 
 PuUicus, No. 27, 2nd July 1663, and 1st October 1662 (notice of a Private Press 
 discovered). 
 
 3 The attempts of Eachard and Kennet to twist the patience of Baxter and 
 Calamy into truculent menaces are ludicrous enough. 
 
THE BLOODHOUND OF THE PRESS 111 
 
 September by L'Estrange's Rope for Pol^ which may, as 
 Mr Williams suggests, have been an attempt to anticipate 
 conversion and subsequent favour for the needy journalist ^. 
 If so it was aimed with foresight, for Nedham returned in 
 the year of the Kestoration, made his peace, set up in his 
 original profession as a physician, and fifteen years after did 
 good court-service — with good pay — against the ' Men of 
 Shaftesbury '. 
 
 Nedham's ally, Livewell Chapman, who printed — and 
 perhaps wrote — Plain English, did some of Milton's work, 
 and kept up his shutters to the last, followed Nedham a 
 week or two later — also for debt, though not also on 
 account of a licentious life. Secretary Morrice gave him 
 a protection in the autumn of 1660, and Livewell ventured 
 back, but unlike Nedham to pursue his old practices and 
 with new allies. We find him in 1661 stocking if not 
 publishing quantities of the most hazardous wares in 
 company with Brewster and Calvert. Shortly afterwards 
 a prison opens for him, and after several interviews with 
 the ' bloodhound of the Press ', L'Estrange, in 1662 he is 
 set at liberty on a bond. But the great * drive ' of October 
 1663 swept him in again, and Frank Smith, the narrator 
 of these earliest Eestoration passages, had the melancholy 
 task of including Mr Lidwell Chapman {sic) in his catalogue 
 of Press heroes ^ 
 
 Chapman's allies — the 'Confederates' L'Estrange called 
 them — Brewster, Dover, Frank Smith, Keache the tailor- 
 printer - preacher, and the wretched Creake and Twynne 
 were not eminent at Stationers' Hall, but they had a wide 
 trade of the roving kind, in which their wives, obdurate 
 Whig spouses whose services to the Cause, ludicrous though 
 it may seem, were real and constant, took a main share. 
 They and their husbands are the elder generation of j 
 Dunton's ' brave asserters of English liberties '. j 
 
 To ascend higher in the Stationers ranks, there were 
 Kalph Smith, Crof ton's Printer and a future warden, Ibbotson, 
 Hodgkinson, Lilliecraft, Kobert Wilson, all printers and 
 publishers of Commonwealth papers, and worst of all 
 
 1 Williams (J. B.), History of Journolwn in the Seventeenth Century, p. 259. 
 The date of the Rope far Pol is September 1660, the date when Roger afterwards 
 stated he first wrote on his * discoveries '. 
 
 ■^ aSIsc L'Estrange's improvement on Quevedo's Vision for a facetious encounter 
 with Livewell in the Infernal regions, chap, xiii., p. 386, somewhat of a compliment 
 to Chapman. 
 
112 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 Francis Tytan, lately appointed printer to the House of 
 Lords, while Cromwell's printers, Newcombe and Fields, 
 seem to have been displaced as King's Printers in favour 
 of the old loyal Barker ^ and Hill. But Newcombe is a 
 great and coming man, is to print the London Gazet and 
 die King's Printer in 1680. 
 
 Hodgkinson still printed the Newsbook. 
 
 These usurpations grieved the old loyal patentees — 
 Richard Atkyns, dispossessed sixteen years before of his 
 law monopoly, and Roger Norton, patentee in English 
 Church books in a similar plight. To their imagination 
 the Stationers craft reflected the sad condition of Cavaliers 
 all over. To them — and especially to Atkyns — L'Estrange's 
 strictures on a Prince who would pinch his friends' bellies, 
 were specially grateful. 
 
 On the other hand Birkenhead and his henchman 
 Muddiman — of whom more in connection with the News- 
 hook — were pleased with substantial rewards, and deprecated 
 the disloyal murmurs of the * have-nots '. 
 
 Those acts of retribution indulged in by the Restored 
 Government which have excited the admiration of the 
 'loyal' party for their moderation, and the censure of 
 the Whig historians, were each the occasion for an out- 
 burst in the Press. The earliest act of judgment, the 
 burning of the Covenant, created as much emotion as the 
 blood of the regicides. These tears took the form of the 
 Phoenix, a daring libel which prophesied the resurrection 
 of the Covenant and all it stood for. It was the work 
 of a Confederate group of Stationers of which Chapman, 
 Calvert, and Brewster, all booksellers, were the chiefs. 
 Creake did the printing, a poor fellow (so said the judges), 
 ' who acted rather upon necessity than malice '. Dover 
 (printer) finished the impression and Thresher bound the 
 precious work. In prison Creake and Thresher gave some 
 useful information to L'Estrange, whose talents in extorting 
 evidence at the cheapest rates were formidable. When 
 the alarm was given Calvert was seized, but Chapman 
 and Brewster slipped through Roger's hands, though later 
 they came in. Tytan was also involved, but there was 
 not sufficient evidence to touch him. 
 
 The whole credit of tracking and seizing the libel was 
 
 1 See his Petition for restitution, II.M.C., 7th Rept., p. 19a. 
 
THE BLOODHOUND OF THE PRESS 113 
 
 L'Estrange's, his first essay in this kind^ Armed with a 
 warrant from Secretary Nicholas and a constable, he took one 
 hundred and twenty copies fresh from the Press, and whilst 
 hot on the scent through Little Britain and St Paul's Church- 
 yard, came across an equally odious production still in the 
 Press, called Annus Mirdbilis, or The Year of Prodigies, a work 
 which recalls the prophecy that England would be betrayed 
 by the Pulpit, the Press, and Astrology, but from another 
 source is impudently described as 'a book grateful to 
 authority, and of general caution to the nation, both to 
 behold and consider the works of God"^. This particular 
 form of Prodigies was not the book for which Calvert 
 had been responsible, and which Brewster handed to the 
 Press. The latter pretended to be Several Prodigies and 
 Apparitions seen in the Heavens from 1st August 1660 
 to the end of May 1661, described in the warrant of 
 arrest as * prognosticating mischievous events to the King ', 
 and seized by L'Estrange in June when only one sheet 
 had been worked off. But all of this 'Prodigy' school of 
 libel have a close resemblance, and are all a strong reflection 
 on the vulgar credulity of the age. For these libels, such 
 of the * Confederates ' as had not fled were committed. 
 Chapman and Brewster came in later, and it was while 
 her husband was lying in prison that Elizabeth Calvert 
 had the daring to order the completion of the Prodigies^ 
 an order given to that chosen vessel of sedition, old Frank 
 Smith — for which she too was committed. But L'Estrange 
 had his eye on Frank, for ' the very day it was published ' 
 he tells us in his narrative ' one of his Majesty's messengers 
 came to my shop with a warrant both to seize the book 
 and my person and carried me before the then Secretary 
 of State (Nicholas)'. 
 
 The warrant for Smith's arrest is of some interest as 
 being of the type contested so vehemently in this and the 
 next century. 
 
 *It is his Majesty's pleasure that you take into your 
 custody the person of Francis Smith, Stationer, for having 
 
 1 Truth and Loyalty Vindicated, p. 56. 
 
 2 Frank Smith's Narrative addressed to Shaftesbury (1680), reprinted at the 
 close of his trial before Scroggs (1680), in State Trials, vii., 937, and in W. H. 
 Hart's Index Expurgatorius Anglicanus, p. 184. It is one of the most interesting 
 documents on the tyrannous side of the Press. L'Estrange is naturally a frequent 
 name in the Narrative, though Frank speaks quite respectfully of him. 
 
 2 Truth and Loyalty Vindicated, pp. 56-8. 
 
 H 
 
114 SIR ROGER L^ESTRANGE 
 
 a hand in printing and compiling dangerous hooks, and that 
 you keep him close prisoner till further order from his 
 Majesty, and for so doing this shall be your warrant. 
 
 * Dated at the Court of Whitehall this 15th day 
 of August, 1661. — Ed. Nicholas. 
 
 * To the Keeper of the Gatehouse, 
 Westminster, or his deputy '. 
 
 * This word in my warrant " close prisoner " ', says Frank, 
 * proved a fatal word to me, as many still living can witness 
 (1680), for the keeper improved it to a title; there I was 
 truly buried alive, it being a prison famous for oppression 
 of poor prisoners as many besides myself can notoriously 
 witness'. Though Smith was an ignorant enough and fanatical 
 person, who took his stand on Magna Charta and frequently 
 quoted the examples of Empson and Dudley m tyrannos, 
 his case in this ' the least exceptionable ' period of Charles' 
 rule was deplorable, and is of great constitutional interest. 
 Three Habeas's were required to persuade Broughton, his 
 keeper, to bring him before the judges of the King's Bench, 
 and in the meantime the warrant was changed and legalised 
 by the introduction of the name of his particular offence — 
 the Annus Mirahilis. Smith was a great stickler for the 
 legal aspect of things. In his opposition to the General 
 Warrant he anticipated Wilkes by a century, and had the 
 rabble at his back applauding his spirited resistance to the 
 constables. But he was not alone in this respect. There 
 possibly never was a time when quite poor and ignorant 
 men proved so learned in the Law, their precedents, it has 
 been observed, being founded on the constitutional experi- 
 ment of the Lancastrian period. Before leaving Smith's 
 instructive narrative, we may anticipate by quoting his 
 reference to the fates of the ' Confederates '. 
 
 'As a close to my afflicted relation, be it remembered 
 that many of these sufferings both in my person and 
 substance were by general warrants exercised on me and 
 without compassion (by those employed in surveying, print- 
 ing, and vending books) upon many others of which a 
 doleful catalogue might be given, of several persons by 
 (in the general) mere arbitrary ways and particular or 
 private piques that have (from a flourishing condition) been 
 
THE BLOODHOUND OF THE PRESS 115 
 
 reduced to such poverty as to die in gaols, others not able 
 to leave at their death so much as to buy a poor 3s. coffin 
 to carry them to the grave ; witness the truth in these 
 cases of one Mr Brewster who died low some years ago in 
 Newgate and his family reduced to such want that his wife 
 lately lived upon charity and died under great extremity. 
 One Mr Calvert died little less than in prison and his family 
 brought to a total beggary, that once lived plentifully ; also 
 one Mr Dover a printer died in Newgate almost to the 
 ruin of his family, Mr Lidwell (sic) Chapman in the like 
 manner, by continued imprisonments he and his family 
 ruined, others fined above their ability as late instance 
 shows ; others by like imprisonments, also were ruined by 
 persons invested with power of surveying the Stationery 
 Trade abusing the same at pleasure and even wink when 
 and where they please as favour or pique governs them^, 
 seize an unlicensed book because others shall not sell them, 
 and sell them themselves'. 
 
 Smith was remanded back to prison, and after vexatious 
 delays and severe treatment and bribes by L'Estrange to 
 discover the authors of Prodigies, was at last released on 
 bail. The expense of several Habeas's and the length of his 
 imprisonment, extending to nigh two years, must have 
 sorely tried him. He became henceforth the most charge- 
 able victim, not only of the Government's search and seizure, 
 but of the Stationers' enmity. L'Estrange is a great figure 
 in his several prosecutions, but before the great libels 
 committee of February 1677, he appears as one of the 
 Surveyor's witnesses against the Stationers. The one enmity 
 was greater than the other. Again in 1684, when the hunt 
 for Whiggish printers was in full cry, L'Estrange had * old 
 Frank Smith' safely laid in prison on his indiscreet venturing 
 over from the Continent 2. 
 
 Of the other Confederates, to the chagrin of L'Estrange, 
 who naturally took a vicious interest in the victims of his 
 'discovery'. Darby was released on the adjournment of 
 Parliament in November. An attempt was made to prove 
 Tytan of the band, but although he was probably a 
 
 1 He refers not so much to L'Estrange as to the officials of the Stationers 
 Company. See chap, vii., 207. A good annotation of this passage would be a 
 capital history of the Stationers Company in the Seventeenth Century. See also 
 Smith's petition to Arlington, February 1673-4, S. P. Dom. Car., ii., 360 (149), and 
 a letter of his (no date) Ihid. (150), both setting forth the Stationers enormities. 
 
 2 See p. 320. 
 
116 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 publisher of the Pho&nix'^, no proof seems to have been 
 forthcoming. 
 
 In February 1662 — the month in which L'Estrange was 
 appointed to the shadowy office of Surveyor — the Government 
 emissary found Brewster at Bristol during the Fair. These 
 provincial fairs were used by the secretaries for setting up 
 booths for the sale of their seditious wares. Brewster was 
 taken in his lodgings and his trunk revealed a wealth of 
 this stuff sufficient to provoke a sharp warning to the 
 Bishop to have a better care of his diocese, and to rout out 
 such seditious booksellers as Simon Moon, whom Sir John 
 Knight had just raided with excellent results ^. 
 
 The fate of the ' Confederates ' was substantially as out- 
 lined by Smith. The Northern conspiracy of October 1663 
 materialised the Government's suspicion and alarm. The 
 direct relation of the seditious press to these revolts was 
 certain. It was felt that something must be done effectually 
 to overcome the delinquents, and L'Estrange in his newly 
 erected office — not that of the old patent of February 1662 
 — felt it desirable to make a great show to justify his existence. 
 
 In the first week in October his vigilance was rewarded 
 by the discovery of Twynne busy at his treasonous work. 
 The following week a visit to Simon Dover (who had 
 lately been released after a year in prison) discovered on 
 his person Murder Will Out — described by L. C. J. Hyde 
 as ' a villainous thing scattered at York, a little unlicensed 
 Quaking book'. The dangerous Panther completed the 
 discovery, and lest it should be said that Dover was re- 
 committed on the old Fhcenix charge refurbished to suit 
 the hour, Roger declared in the Newsbooh that ' the Printer 
 was apprehended in the very act of working it off, and it 
 is hoped that many good uses will be made of the dis- 
 covery as well for the manifestation of a design levelled 
 at the very person of his sacred Majesty, and the peace 
 of the public under the masque and colour of conscience 
 and religion '^ 
 
 Although Brewster and Calvert, with Chapman and 
 Ferguson, had been released on bond in the course of 
 1662, they were again taken up in September when rumours 
 of the Northern Plot reached the Government. 
 
 1 * Francis Tytan is as right as any of the rest '. Tmdh and Loyalty Vindicated, 
 p. 57. 
 
 2 C.S.P.D., 2nd and 7th February 1663, vol. 1663-4, pp. 37 and 43, 
 
 3 Newsbook, No. 8, 12th October 1663. 
 
THE BLOODHOUND OF THE PRESS 117 
 
 Yet another printing rogue was 'pulled out by the 
 ears' in the October raid, one of the old Brewster gang, 
 Nat. Brookes, at whose house a peculiarly offensive book 
 was found containing besides Regicides' Speeches — with a 
 picture of Sir Harry Vane — a batch of ' consolation ' treatises 
 of the 'You know not what a month may bring forth' 
 type. Bundles of another libel which had a great vogue, 
 Prelatich Preachers, were found, and the considerable resist- 
 ance L'Estrange encountered in his memorable midnight 
 raid on this house was used against Brookes at his 
 trial 1. 
 
 Thus by vigilance and by knowing where to look Roger 
 had effected in this uneasy fortnight a clean sweep of the 
 'feminine part of rebellion'. It only remained now for 
 the lawyers to connect by skilful hint and surmise the 
 'feminine' and the masculine Northern part. 
 
 Eighteen weeks they lay in prison. From the notes 
 of Chief Justice Keling, the Newshook, and Frank Smith's 
 Narrative, we learn some very material circumstances 
 regarding their treatment. 
 
 In the first place, the whole credit of the business was 
 due to L'Estrange, and even the printed trials were to his 
 order printed by Harry Brome — a considerable favour 
 shown to L'Estrange by the judges and a part reward ^ 
 
 Secondly, the scandalous interval of nearly three years 
 between the matter alleged against Brewster and Dover, 
 and that against Twynne and Brookes with nevertheless 
 an attempt made to bring them all in as Confederates, 
 raises some doubt of Fox's description of the period as 
 ' by far the least exceptionable part of the reign ' ^ 
 
 Not one of these four cases was tried on the 1662 
 Press Statute, but all — ^^xcept Twynne's, who was indicted 
 under the old Treason Laws — by Common Law. Brookes 
 denied the fact alleged, and cut the poor figure noted by 
 Defoe as characteristic of the printer in the dock*. He 
 'was only a workman. How could he be guilty of sedition 
 
 1 See an account of this interesting night's work in Brookes' Trial — State 
 Trials, vi., 559-63. 
 
 2 The judges then claimed the sole right to print their own cases. Hence — 
 Roger North insinuates — the judgment against Atkyn's law patent, reversed by 
 the Lords. Scroggs admitted in his examination before the Privy Council (1680) 
 that he had sold his right to the exclusive printing of certain trials. Amos [Cons. 
 Hist, of Charles 11. (1857), p. 247]. 
 
 8 Bohn's Chxirles II. and James II. (1857), p. 301. 
 * Life of Daniel Defoe, by W. Lee (1869), ii., 517. 
 
118 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 and scandalous things ? He never printed anything, he 
 was only a book-binder, that was his trade 'I 
 
 Dover made a stouter appearance and grounded his 
 defence first on the fact that admitting the printing — but 
 not selling — ' it was done when there was no act or law in 
 being touching printing ', and, secondly, he demurred that a 
 book of speeches whose title runs ' faithfully and impartially 
 collected for further satisfaction', could not be interpreted 
 as factiously done. Brewster claimed that the speeches of 
 dying men were matters of edification and public — that 
 the speeches were 'almost as common as a diurnal' — an 
 admission on which the judges (who may be styled the 
 prosecution) eagerly fastened. The case in the Regicide 
 packet which gave most offence was that of the lawyer 
 Cooke, who suffered for acting as public prosecutor against 
 Charles I. His letter to a friend included in the speeches 
 could not be described as a public speech, and as it 
 represented the Regicides as clothed in the flames of 
 martyrdom, it carried a long way against the printers. 
 But even without this, Hyde instructed the jury in one 
 of the least judicial speeches of that age of 'good laws 
 and bad Government', that even if the speeches were 
 spoken in public 'let it be upon his own soul that did 
 it'; for in case he did it, no man knew it but those who 
 heard it. But to publish it all over England, 3000 of the 
 first impression and a second, this is to fill all the King's 
 subjects with the justification of that horrid murder 2. 
 
 The Phoenix^ for which Brewster was also indicted, was 
 a collection of old pieces from printed sermons of leading 
 Presbyterians such as Baxter, Douglas, Calamy, etc., during 
 the Commonwealth. 
 
 It pretended to be printed at Edinburgh 'in the year 
 of Covenant breaking', and was indeed handed to the 
 informer Creake by the Confederates so early as May 
 1661. The defence that the Phoenix was not printed 
 from manuscript, but from printed and licensed excerpts, 
 
 1 And so the jury brought him in guilty only of selling not printing. State 
 Trials, vi., 563. 
 
 2 I.e. of Charles I. State Trials, vi., 546. 
 
 ' Brewster : My Lord, these are sayings of dying men, commonly printed 
 without opposition. 
 
 * Hyde : Never. 
 
 * Breioster: I can instance in many ; the bookseller only minds the getting of 
 a penny ; that declares to the world, that as they lived such despei-ate lives so 
 they died . . . and so I think is a benefit far from sedition'. 
 
THE BLOODHOUND OF THE PRESS 119 
 
 was brushed aside by the judge. 'Douglas' (sermon) was 
 printed in Scotland, was it licensed here ? No, it was 
 done there and brought hither. Then for the other sermon 
 (Calamy's) by what license was that printed, was it not 
 to set forward rebellion: to set up the Scotch Presbytery, 
 and this in '45, when they were in arms against the 
 King after the King put himself upon his defence and 
 was at Oxford ? Do you tell me of the license of rebels then 
 for your jiostification ' ^ ? 
 
 So much for the Restoration view of the Presbyterian 
 Imprimatur. The plea that they were very poor and 
 ignorant men was discounted in Tywnne's case at least, by 
 L'Estrange's evidence that he read the proofs of his libel, and 
 in any case their poverty was not Hyde's business when he 
 delivered his ultra tenementum sentences. 
 
 Erom the few remarks made by the jury, they seem to 
 have been mercifully inclined, especially in Dover's case. 
 This jury was by the culprit's own desire specially chosen 
 from the London Stationers. In case of any doubt as to 
 the competence of the prosecution to deal with such a 
 trade matter, Hyde assured them, with an obvious reference 
 to L'Estrange, ' There are those already that understand it 
 as well as booksellers or printers, besides half the jury are 
 such ' ^. 
 
 Creake and some terrorised printers were the witnesses 
 against the Confederates. This person in part printed the 
 Phoenix and Prodigies. A prison and the menaces of 
 L'Estrange extracted from him the names of fifteen suspected 
 persons ^. 
 
 Whilst the political character of these trials is obvious, 
 it cannot be denied that the Government had some colour- 
 able excuse for severity. The Regicides are no sooner 
 executed in October 1660 than their fortitude and inflaming 
 speeches are published abroad to the world, and dispersed 
 among the old soldiers and enthusiasts that thronged the 
 streets, the ground having been already prepared by Phoenixes 
 and Prodigies, the one promising a glorious resurrection for 
 
 1 state Trials, vi., pp. 553-4. 
 a lUd., p. 519. 
 3 Ibid., p. 555. 
 
 * L. G. J. Hyde : Do you think the Press is open to print what you list ? 
 
 * Creak : I did so then. 
 
 ' Hyde : When did you give Mr L'Estrange information of this matter ? 
 
 * Creak : Lately, when I was a prisoner in Ludgate ', 
 
120 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 the Covenant, and the other by lies and superstition seeking 
 to prejudice people against their new governors. Venner's 
 conspiracy in January, excited by the execution and speeches 
 of Peters and the Regicides, was followed in October 1661 
 by the affair of John James, the substance of whose indict- 
 ment was a conventicle speech to the effect that * the King 
 and his nobles had shed the blood of the saints at Charing 
 Cross ', exactly the insinuation of these speeches. Although 
 the bulk of the Presbyterians did not approve the speeches 
 or the attitude of the condemned i, the passing of the 
 Uniformity Act threw a large body of moderate Presbyterian 
 opinion against the Government, and numerous small con- 
 spiracies — which Burnet says were prudently ignored — 
 were the result 2. 
 
 In December 1661 the Lord Chancellor, replying to an 
 anxious message of the Commons to the Lords, stated that 
 intercepted letters showed that there was a wide feeling 
 of revolt, and exactly a year later Tonge's conspiracy sought 
 by means of a treasonous letter, printed off by the thousand 
 and dispersed among the congregations, to take advantage 
 of the despair to which the Church policy was driving the 
 sectarians. At the same time the venerable trick of a 
 ' popish massacre ' was brought into service. While, there- 
 fore, * there is reason to believe that the court very much 
 exaggerated the transactions out of which arose the proceed- 
 ings against those people, the Government is perhaps not 
 to be Wamed for cherishing a most anxious wish to suppress 
 every indication of commotion, which might have furnished 
 a rallying point to all the disaffected'^. 
 
 It can scarcely be wondered at that the prosecution, 
 believing that 'the dispersing of seditious books is very 
 near akin to raising of tumults ; they are as like as brother 
 and sister', should have sought to bring in Twynne as an 
 instrument of the Northern conspiracy and to throw a shade 
 of that suspicion on the others. 
 
 L'Estrange was persuaded of such a connection, but 
 
 1 See the disapproving remarks on this head of even such a zealot as Crofton in 
 his little Defence against the fear of Death (1665). 
 
 2 Burnet speaks only of the 1660 to 1661 conspiracies, when he dismisses the 
 suggestion that Clarendon fomented these petty plots. * Reports were spread and 
 much aggravated as they were reported to the House of Commons of the plots of 
 Presbyterians in several countries '. Airy, JB%irnet, i., 326. 20th November 
 and 19th December 1661 arc the dates of reports to the Commons on the 
 subject. 
 
 3 State Trials, vi., 272. 
 
THE BLOODHOUND OP THE PRESS 121 
 
 beyond the coincidence of the dates, the prosecution did 
 not pursue the hint in Serjeant Morton's speech of such 
 direct association ^ further than to show that the trials 
 at York had proved the existence of a publication depart- 
 ment of the conspiracy in London. Moreover, the piece 
 was handed to Twynne by the Calverts, and it seems far 
 more reasonable to regard Twynne as a poor devil like Creake, 
 who would print anything. 
 
 'John Twynne', says the latest writer on the subject^, 
 * met the just penalty of a crime with which the liberty of 
 the Press was certainly unconnected. He had full know- 
 ledge of the Plot for a rising and for the extermination of 
 the royal party in 1663, refused to save his life by dis- 
 closing his author's name, and part of the document he 
 printed is yet in existence to condemn him as a peculiarly 
 hypocritical and dangerous animal. It of course has not 
 the faintest resemblance to Milton's Tenure of Kings and 
 Magistrates. It was entitled, A Treatise of the Execution 
 of Justice ^, and advocates the assassination of Charles IT.'. 
 All of which is true except the implied assurance that 
 Twynne knew his author. All was managed by the Calverts, 
 who paid him forty shillings for two sheets for 1000 copies*. 
 He probably read the proof and told L'Estrange it was 'hot 
 mettlesome stuff', but that scarcely goes the length of the 
 severe quotation above. 
 
 It only remains to note the hard fate of the ' Confederates '. 
 L'Estrange, following Hyde ^ marked it as an extreme favour 
 that all were not, like Twynne, indicted for treason, but 
 their sentences after eighteen weeks in gaol, must have had 
 an equivalent sound, for besides pillory and ruinous fines, 
 they were to remain in prison during the King's pleasure. 
 Calvert was either dead or too ill to be produced at the trial ; 
 Brewster and Dover were very feeble. It was not long till 
 
 1 ' The conspirators could not be ready till the 12th Oct., for the seditious books 
 that were to lead in that design and the libels and declarations could not be 
 
 . , ,88(76). 
 
 * In the parallel case of Harry Care (1680), tried for writing the Popish Covrant 
 (vol. ii., No. 4) Stevens, the printer admitted a general notion that Care wrote it, 
 but * He did not deal immediately with me ', and ' It was the publisher (Curtis) that 
 chiefly directed me'. ,%<e Trials, vii., 118. The case of Stephen Colledge and 
 the printer (F. Smith) of his Raree Show (1681), is an even better case in point. 
 Smith only stood in the pillory while Colledge was hanged. Sec L'Estrange, ^otes 
 on Colledge, pp. 12-13. 
 
 * Trials, vi., 564. 
 
122 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 the gates of the prison opened for the last time, when a 
 huge funeral concourse accompanied them to the ' phanatique 
 burial-place in Bedlam ', one of the earliest of those melancholy 
 processions which were almost the sole demonstration per- 
 mitted to a subjected people. 
 
 'These people', says L'Estrange, 'might have been set 
 at liberty by his Majesty's special grace, if they would have 
 been so ingenious as to have told the meaning of their own 
 hands and papers, in order to a clearer discovery of their 
 dangerous Confederates and in cases when they themselves 
 could not pretend ignorance, but they rather chose to end 
 their days in a prison. 
 
 * As to the crime for which they stood convicted I should 
 not mention it, but to stop their mouths that have the 
 confidence to call that a severity which was so remarkable 
 an act of clemency and mercy. It was proved to the clear 
 satisfaction of a tender jury that they had printed and 
 published the justification of the murder of the late King, 
 affirming it to have been (in these very terms) the most 
 noble and glorious cause '. 
 
 Marked as these severities were, they did not entirely 
 check this form of sedition, which was by no means confined 
 to these shores. The exiles on the Continent were constantly 
 sending in volumes of sedition and incitement, and in 
 Holland there seemed to be a kind of standing committee 
 for the production of such literature as God's Loud Call, 
 A Voice Crying in Babylon, etc., apart from those more 
 peculiarly Dutch pasquils which were a matter of formal 
 complaint, and an ostensible cause of the Dutch war i. In 
 April the trial of the Northern conspirators drew out almost 
 as much of this kind as that of the Regicides. Narratives 
 of judicial proceedings, despite the judgment of the Court in 
 the case of the * Confederates ' trials, were still briskly pro- 
 ceeding. Nor were these confined to the meaner printers. 
 * One of those very presses wherein Mene Tekel was printed 
 (that most execrable villainy), belonged to a ruling member 
 of that society (of Stationers), who cannot pretend ignorance 
 neither, the printer being known to his lifelong and gross 
 experience for a person of notorious principles and practices 
 against authority'. The Stationers were even attacked in 
 
 1 See the Lord Chancellor's Speech at the opening of Parliament, 9th October 
 1665. Pari. Hist., iv., 317. Also C.S.F.U. (16634), p. 521, 18th March 1664, and 
 1666-7, p. 37 ; 13th August 1666. 
 
THE BLOODHOUND OF THE PRESS 123 
 
 the Newsbooh as the encouragers of these wares ' a special 
 condition of whose Privilege and Trust it is to suppress 
 them ' \ 
 
 The Congregations and the Quakers were now as a result 
 of the persecution let loose on them, extremely voluble. The 
 Informer's name was becoming odious, but as yet the Press 
 informer was not in evidence because the Statute fortunately 
 made no provision for his reward, and L'Estrange's miserable 
 bribes published in the Newsbooh were too small ^. 
 
 In such demonstrations as that in which seventy-five 
 ejected ministers walked at the funeral of ' an ancient man ' 
 one of the persecuted brethren, and that already mentioned 
 of the funeral of the * Confederates ', the Dissenters still 
 continued to offend the Government, and whilst they remained 
 in London, they became the storm-centre of libellous dissent, 
 inspiring the brethren, finding food for the presses, and 
 educating the children in the belief that ' the ceremonies of 
 the Church of England are idolatrous and the ministers 
 anti-Christians '. 
 
 There was one spacious building, the * Bull and Mouth ', in 
 St Martin's, near Aldersgate, which was used for the threefold 
 purpose of a Quakers' meeting-house, a schoolroom, and a 
 private printing-house, which was responsible alone for two 
 hundred libels. 
 
 'As sure as death', said Koger in April 1664 ^ 'till the 
 ejected ministers be removed to some convenient distance 
 from the places where they formerly preached up rebellion 
 and disobedience, this nation will never be thoroughly 
 settled '. 
 
 In 17th May of this year the Conventicle Act was passed, 
 and in July the Conventicle mentioned above was raided, 
 and Wm. Warwick, the preacher, committed to prison, while 
 the books and press were confiscated. An offer of freedom 
 in exchange for a promise to leave off his seditious practices 
 was met with the remark, ' He would go on whithersoever 
 the counsel of the Lord should carry him ' *. The execution 
 of the Conventicle Act involved the raiding of numerous 
 
 1 Considerations and Proposals. 
 
 - Chap, v., 144-5. Sir Sidney Lee (art. L'Estrange, Diet, of Nat. Biog.) talks 
 of ' his shop at the Gun in Ivy Lane ' having been frequently visited by the Informer. 
 There is no evidence of Press secrets having been extracted other than by fear of 
 a prison, and no evidence of a single ' discovery ' by means of L'Estrange's bribes. 
 
 3 Newshook, 16th April 1664. 
 
 \as.P.D. (1663-4), p. 634, 6th July 1664. Draft of Bennett's warrant to 
 continue Warwick in prison, endorsed * till Mr L'Eitrange's charge is known '. 
 
124 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 places, and everywhere the officers discovered how nearly 
 seditious printing was allied to dissent. In a week (17th to 
 23rd July) L'Estrange computes that 130,000 pamphlets 
 were thus seized. The Presses were not yet confiscated 
 generally. The prisons were crowded with sectaries, but 
 their restless pens were as busy there, and half the sedition 
 of these months emanated from gaols, where as much freedom 
 in this line was enjoyed as outside. The threat of trans- 
 portation was supposed to be the only cure for the 
 case \ 
 
 Meanwhile it was thought expedient to bring another 
 offender to trial. In October Ben Keache of Winslow in 
 Buckinghamshire, tailor and preacher, was brought before 
 C. J. Hyde for printing and publishing The Child's Instructor 
 at the modest price of 5d., a non-conformist catechism against 
 Infant-Baptism and for lay-preaching, etc. 
 
 Hyde's conduct to this poor man who had lain in prison 
 since May was long afterwards cited in a speech by Lord 
 Ashburton in 1770 2. His offence was rather against the 
 Act of Uniformity than the Press Act. Except for Hyde's 
 brutality, Keache's treatment was by no means so severe 
 as that dealt to the ' Confederates ', while Warwick, as we 
 saw, had offers of freedom. The feeling aroused by the 
 death of Brewster and Dover in April had no doubt a 
 cautionary influence on the Government, while L'Estrange's 
 savage ravings in the Newsbooh were overlooked. 
 
 The spirit which animated these men is extraordinary. 
 
 'I hope I shall never renounce those truths which I 
 have written in that book', said Keache, and although he 
 paid his £20 fine, 'he was never brought to make any 
 recantation ' ^. 
 
 When the city became too hot, and the Five-Mile Act 
 removed the dissenting ministers, the libel flourished in 
 the country. Baxter's Petition for Peace, it may be 
 remembered, was sent down secretly in barrels, and the 
 carrier's waggon took down a great deal of like stuff in 
 secret. The Gloucester carrier was always an object of 
 suspicion, and the Post Office was extensively used in this 
 
 1 Neioshool, 23th August 1664. 
 
 2 Speech in Parliament, 6th and 10th December, 1770. Cobbet, Pari. Hist., 
 xvi. , 1277. ' C. J. Hyde, who received a verdict from the Jury of Guilty in 
 part, sentenced him as if guilty of the whole '. The school of Hyde and Scroggs 
 denied the jury's right to go beyond the matter of fact. 
 
 3 State Tncds, vi., 710. 
 
THE BLOODHOUND OF THE PRESS 125 
 
 warfare ^ Intercepted letters gave news of movements in 
 the North and West. Wild's verses floated perpetually about 
 Bristol. Ralph Wallis, the * Gloster Cobbler ', with his Scotch 
 assistant, James Forbes of Hackney, was still lurking about 
 in the old trade, while Feake of Dorking, described like 
 Keache as a 'Taylor's man', 'used to come obscurely to 
 Dorking and brought libellous pamphlets'. Dover was 
 another centre of disaffection 2. At Brereton comes news 
 of Crofton ^, late of the Tower, and troubled by compunctious 
 visitings of Nature for his compliance there, riding about 
 the country preaching sedition and scattering his books. 
 Fergusson (the 'Plotter') was already busy*. Wild, the 
 poetaster, had already repented his loyal Iter Boreale, 
 
 The Confederates Calvert and Brewster had a regular 
 correspondence and trade with Bristol^, and now being 
 dead, their wives continue to supply the good booksellers 
 of that city and country fairs with their precious wares. 
 No man carrying a pack was free from suspicion, and 
 when after the Scotch rising of 1669 the Scotch Pedlars 
 descended on the West, the ale-houses where they lodged 
 were the objects of strict occasional search. 
 
 Altogether the period when L'Estrange takes credit for 
 having cleared the Press — that is 1664-6 — was singularly 
 rife with disaffection. 
 
 1 See a Proclamation in the Kingdom's Intelligencer, 16th January 1661-2. 
 C.S.P.D. (1663-4), p. 497. May {?). Col. Bishop turned out for favouring 
 disaffected. 
 
 2 C.S.P.D. (1663-4), p. 175, 18th June. Feake of Dorking ' a dangerous man ', 
 C.S.P.D. (1663-4), p. 429, 4th and 5th January. 
 
 3 Ibid., p. 315, 26th October. Exam, of Wallis and Forbes, C.S.P.D., (1664-5) 
 p. 24. 
 
 4 Ibid., p. 135, 12th May. Bond of Robert Fergusson of Totenham High Cross 
 in £300, and so he is released. For Wild, see C.S.P.D. (1663-4), p. 379. 
 
 5 Ibid., pp. 27 and 297. 2nd February and 12th October 1663. 
 
CHAPTEE V 
 
 PRESS LEGISLATION AND THE NEWSBOOK 
 
 It was seen that L'Estrange, even before his appointment 
 (February 1662) as Surveyor, had established a claim on 
 the government of the Press, and that by work of a 
 peculiarly disagreeable kind^. He was regarded as the 
 unofficial 'bloodhound of the Press' when those who had 
 some vague authority — as Sir John Birkenhead and the 
 officers of the Stationers — did little or nothing in the matter. 
 The two documents already referred to, in which — 
 almost certainly after February 1662 — L'Estrange drew up 
 a list of the enormities of the seditious booksellers, culled 
 from their old works, and proposed some new and binding 
 bye-laws for the Stationers ^ were of the nature of a further 
 bid for the enlargement of his office. At the same time it was 
 
 1 The best guide to this early phase of English journalism is Mr J. B, Williams' 
 article, already referred to (iVez^^sftoo/js, etc., of the Restoration, Eng. Hist. Rev., 
 ap. 1908), and his History of English Journalism, 1909. The older Histories, 
 Hunt's Fourth Estate (1850), and Andrew's Hist of Brit. Journalism (1859), 
 with Mr Fox-Bourne's English Newspapers (1887), are hopelessly inaccurate or 
 incomplete. Prof. Arber's Stationers' Registers do not descend so far, and his 
 Introduction to the Term Catalogues is quite general. The Introduction to the 
 Calendar of State Papers (1665-6), pp. 1-8, is scarcely trustworthy. For the 
 general works on the Press referred to, see appendix. 
 
 2 Ses chap, iv., p. 106. The documents referred to are (1) Extracts from, 
 Mercurius Politicns, etc., from 1644-54, with printers' names in the margin, in 
 L'Estrange's hand. S. P. JDom. Gar., ii., 39-93. (2) Proposals for Preventing, 
 Discovering and Suppressing Libels, humbly submitted to Authority by the 
 Surveyor to the Press. S. P. Car., ii., 39 (92), wrongly dated July 1661, in the 
 Calendar. To this paper is subjoined L'Estrange's demand for a general Search 
 Warrant on the ground that ' the King's Printers have, although but for their 
 own private interest, acted by a general warrant for these twelve years last past 
 without any clamour' ; (3) ^S*. P. Car., ii., 39 (95), not as Mr Williams says (article 
 referred to above) ' an undated and unexecuted grant of the General Warrant to 
 L'Estrange ', but a draft of the proposed Bill, probably belonging to 1660-1, and 
 in any case prior to L'Estrange's rule in the Press. 
 
 126 
 
PRESS LEGISLATION AND THE NEWSBOOK 127 
 
 noted his excessive demands for emolument ^ were ignored, but 
 his incessant activity against the seditious printers in the 
 meantime compelled the government, especially now that 
 Bennet ruled in Nicholas' place, to reconsider, after the 
 comparative failure of the Press Act, the erection of the 
 Surveyorship which L'Estrange held into an important 
 office. 
 
 Roger's advice at that time was what it ever remained 
 — make the Surveyorship an autocratic office with a general 
 Search Warrant, depress or ignore the Stationers, and saddle 
 that company with such bye-laws — proposed by the Surveyor 
 who is to sit perpetually in their councils — as will effectually 
 cripple it for all time. In addition — and here is where he 
 encountered the enmity of Muddiman and his patron 
 Birkenhead — his Minute of a Project for Suppressing Libels ^ 
 proposed to bring written matter, exposed in a public way, 
 within the review of the Surveyor by inserting a clause 
 in the licenses of coffee-house keepers. The most offensive 
 part of his proposal was of course the demand for the 
 Newsbooh, which could only be granted by taking it from 
 the loyal and efficient Muddiman, a course which Secretary 
 Nicholas, who had been especially kind to the latter in 
 granting free postage for his interregnum services, could 
 not contemplate. With the removal of Nicholas in October 
 1662 a new scene opened up, and Bennet, who was to be 
 accused in the Commons of keeping out the Cavaliers, 
 acceded to the demands of the most insurgent of them, 
 by erecting the Surveyorship into an office on the 15th 
 August 1663 3. 
 
 It seems strange that tMs Act should have been branded 
 as exceptionally severe. In a sense it was rather lenient ^. 
 It left the hawkers alone, whom Bradshaw's Press Act had 
 harried a good deal. In this, however, the Government was 
 to learn that they had abandoned prudence, and for the 
 future no point was driven home with more urgency by the 
 
 1 S. p. Dom. Car,, ii., 39 (94) (endorsed, about 1660 '). 'In compensation for 
 his charge and pains . . .let the Surveyor enjoy (1) the Sole privilege of 
 printing all narratives, etc., not exceeding two sheets and all Intelligence. (2) 
 The Sole printing all warrants. Bills and Advts., on one side of paper. (3) Is. pr 
 sheet on all books licensed or to be reprinted '. 
 
 2 S. P. Dom. Car., ii., 51 (10. 1). 
 
 » C. S.P.D. (1663-4), p. 240, 15th August 1663. Observator, i., 259. * His Majesty 
 knows that it was by his particular order and direction that I took care of it 
 (the Press '). 
 
 4 Much more lenient than the Draft Proposals referred to above. 
 
128 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 Surveyor, than that the hawker class constituted a grave 
 peril to the peace of the nation, unless — as L'Estrange 
 attempted for the Newsbooh women — organised by the 
 Government, and chosen for loyalty. The chiefs of this 
 class were the printers' wives — Brewster, Calvert, Darby, 
 and Chapman and Smith — who must all have been women 
 of exceptional strength to endure their frequent imprison- 
 ments and the hardships of their wandering lives, for they 
 went all over the country from fair to fair, as the accredited 
 purveyors of sedition. There was also a huge class in 
 London of the veriest wastrels who in the late liberty had 
 ' forsaken their lawful callings', whom no law could persuade 
 to return to their less exciting occupations. To restore the 
 loyalty of the hawker class was a pet ambition of L'Estrange's. 
 
 The monopolists found themselves protected by the Act^, 
 but the hopes of some that certain of the present owners would 
 be dispossessed for former acts of disloyalty were not realised*. 
 The Stationers were duly recognised and encouraged in the 
 business of cleansing the Press. An important but wise omis- 
 sion was the refusal to set up by bribes the trade of Informer. 
 
 It was during this irksome delay that the great Press 
 Bill became Law on 2nd June 1662. The Bill was in the 
 last stages when people were reading L'Estrange's Memento 
 to all who love the Memory of King Charles the Martyr, written 
 after much study of Bacon, and largely grounded on his 
 Essay of Seditions and Troubles. Its main purpose, as we saw, 
 was finally to clear the author of the pensions fiction and to 
 ask the Secretaries after a vehement exposure of seditious 
 writing, ' Can a King be safe that's served by his enemies ' ? 
 
 The soul of the new Act was the general Search Warrant, 
 bestowed on the Secretaries or their nominees, the feature 
 which wrecked the measure of 1661, and was now negotiated 
 by exempting the Peers from its ordinary operation. The 
 Government's object in a word was not to secure the punish- 
 ment clauses — that could always be effected by Common 
 Law ^, or merely by ignoring Habeas Corpus — but to secure 
 
 1 This must have occasioned great relief, as prior to the Act no man was sure 
 of his copy. There was still a mass of litigation, however. 
 
 2 L'Estrange's Paper, referred to above, S. P. Dom. Gar., ii., 39 (93), singles out 
 Newcombe, Tytan, Field, and Eobert White, all engaged in official work. 
 
 3 C. Justice Hyde. State Trials, vi., 564. ' I must let you and all men know 
 by the course of the Common Law, before this new Act was made, for a printer 
 or any other under the pretence of printing, to publish that which is a reproach 
 to the King, to the State, to his Govt., to the Church, nay to a particular person, 
 it is punishable as a misdemeanour '. 
 
PRESS LEGISLATION AND THE NEWSBOOK 129 
 
 the right of universal search, which could be extended almost 
 indefinitely, and whose subsequent abuse shows how far to 
 seek the eminent lawyers of the eighteenth century were, 
 who supposed its use was confined to the search for particular 
 unlicensed works, and that it was little complained of. As 
 to the Press informer, we shall find the Surveyor forcing a 
 bye-law on the Stationers which should have the effect of 
 turning printers into Informers i. 
 
 When L'Estrange took up the Newshooh, he was so 
 conscious of this defect that he instituted a system of petty 
 rewards, seemingly on his own responsibility, and, so far as 
 we can gather, without results 2. 
 
 The best criticism of this Act came from the Commons 
 themselves in 1695, when they stated their objections to 
 reviving it. It 'in no wise answered the end for which it 
 was made. . . . There is no penalty appointed for offenders 
 therein, they being left to be punished at Common Law (as 
 they may be) without that Act'. The exemption of John 
 Streater, the Bishop's license necessary for booksellers, the 
 'right to work' conceded to journeymen by forcing them 
 on masters who had no work for them, the confining of 
 the trade to London, but, most of all ^ the right of search, 
 the Stationers' monopoly in classics and the granting of 
 monopolies by the Crown (' w^hether the Crown had, or shall 
 have any right to grant the same or not ') created the feeling 
 which rejected the Bill. So the omission of any fees charge- 
 able to the licenser whereby ' great oppression may be and 
 has been practised ', affords an opportunity for an attack on 
 L'Estrange. 
 
 More than a year elapsed after the passing of this Act, 
 before the Government reluctantly set up the Surveyorship. 
 It seems as if the secretaries were waiting till Birkenhead 
 was safely shelved as Master of Faculties*, before they 
 
 1 That when a man applies for the freedom of tho trade, he is bound to dis- 
 cover all he knows of seditious printing. 
 
 _ 2 Though Sir Sidney Lee (art. L'Estrange, Diet, of Ned. Biog. ) seemed to 
 think there was a stream of informers to ' his shop at the Gun, in Ivy Lane '. 
 
 3 Lords' Jouriicdsy xv., 5456. Mr^Hales in his edition of Aerojpagitica (1898), has 
 rightly pointed out that the Commons' objections were, in Milton's phrase, 
 * arguments of merchandise '. The objections of the booksellers to the expiry of 
 the Act in 1695 were due to the fact that Copyright was hitherto bound up with 
 the Imprimatur. The Act of 1710 solved these difficulties. Sec Birrell's Seven 
 Lectures on Copyright, pp. 91-2. 
 
 ■i He got this office in January 1663. Birkenhead's authority in the Press has 
 been the subject of some surmise. Masson thought he avssisted Muddiman to 
 write the Newshook. Mr Williams thinks he merely licensed it. State matters 
 were certainly communicated to him for insertion (see Newsbook, 8th August 1662), 
 
130 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 elevated his enemy. There was indeed no lack of candidates 
 Among other more gentlemanly candidates — L'Estrange 
 seemed to have some scruples of a gentleman's ' putting in 
 for it ' — a master printer ^ petitioned for the place. In the 
 last moment of hesitation Benuet seems to have demanded 
 some sort of prospectus from the future officer, and in the 
 Consideratioris and Proposals for the Regulation of the Press, 
 L'Estrange seized the occasion in a dedication to the King 
 to score off Birkenhead ^ and wipe out the last rumours of 
 his disloyalty, by proffering a formidable list of his more 
 recent unpaid activities in the realm of the Press. A 
 pamphlet of some celebrity, the Considerations is certainly 
 the most informative and perhaps forceful document of the 
 seventeenth - century Press which we possess. It gained 
 down to recent times a name for horrible severity, which 
 indeed it does not deserve. 
 
 One sentence indeed lends itself to a ferocious inter- 
 pretation. In discussing penalties, he says, 'The ordinary 
 penalties I find to be these — death, mutilation, imprison- 
 ment, banishment, etc. — the offence is either Blasphemy, 
 Heresy, Schism, Treason, Sedition, Scandal, or Contempt of 
 Authority ' ^. But far more reprehensible is the suggestion, 
 'Why may not the oath of one credible witness or more 
 before a Master of Chancery or a J.P. serve for a con- 
 demnation, especially the person accused being left at liberty 
 before such oath be taken to appeal to the Privy Council 
 or to abide the decision ' ? 
 
 But the Statute itself is already a dead letter not only 
 because of inherent defects, but because of the failure of 
 those in authority — the Stationers — to put it in force. 
 
 'Scarcely any regicide or traitor has been brought to 
 justice since your Majesty's blessed return, whom either the 
 Pulpit hath not canonised for a saint, or the Press recom- 
 
 and he may have owned it in the same sense that L'Estrange owned it. Mr H. 
 R. Fox-Bourne {English News^aipers (1887), i., 29) says 'Nedham's real successor 
 was John Birkenhead '. See Mr J. B. Williams' article already referred to (on 
 Restoration Newshoohs, April 1908, Eng. Hist. Eev., p. 259, note). Birkenhead's 
 Imprimatur is on the first part of Hudihra^, 11th November 1662, L'Estrange's on 
 the second part, 5th November 1663. (Amos, Hist, of Cons, in reign of Charles IL, 
 p. 241, note.) 
 
 1 Thos. Dawkes, C.S.P.D. (1661-2), p. 227. 
 
 " Sir John we saw reflected on some passages in the Memento. There is a hint 
 of a scene at the Indigent Officers' Fund board, chap, iii., 92. 
 
 3 It is this passage that Hilger {Index der Verhotenen Bucker, p. 217) has in mind 
 when he draws his baleful picture of L'Estrange's rule. Needless to say the 
 reality needed no exaggeration. 
 
IConfiderations and Propofaisi 
 
 In Ordef to the ^ 
 
 Regulation 
 
 ^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 ^ ^ 
 
 ^ OF THE ^ 
 
 IP R E S S:| 
 
 #3 Tc/GEfHER WITH W 
 
 ^ Diverfe hflances of Treafonom , and ^ 
 
 ^ Seditious fam^hlets^ Pro\ing the l&j 
 
 ^ Necefhy thereof, ^i 
 
 «5^ .^ ^ ^ 
 
 I Br 'i 
 
 1 tVOGER JLbsTRANGE. ^ 
 
 I — i 
 
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 TITLK PAGE OF CONSIDER ATlOyS ^S- VROI'OSAIS. 
 
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PRESS LEGISLATION AND THE NEWSBOOK 131 
 
 mended for a patriot and Martyr (besides the arraignment 
 of the Bench for the formalities of their trials). What is 
 the intent and what may be the effect of suggesting to the 
 people that there is no justice to be found either in your 
 cause or in your Courts (both of which are struck at in 
 the same blow) is submitted humbly to your royal 
 wisdom. 
 
 'Since the late Act of Uniformity, there have been 
 printed nearly 30,000 copies of Farewell Sermons (as they 
 call them) in defiance of the Law '. 
 
 By an ingenious calculation, the surveyor now suggested 
 that by a fine levied on each impression of these sermons 
 equal to the value of the book, a sum of £3,300 would be 
 realised, with which the supernumerary printers might be 
 bought out. 
 
 ' It is noted for a very rare thing for any Presbyterian 
 pamphlet to be seized and suppressed unless by order 
 from above '. Nor did the Farewell Sermons give any 
 signs of diminishing popularity. A day or two before 
 this Epistle to the King, Roger had seized several 
 bundles. 
 
 The circumstance was driven home that despite the Act, 
 and despite all the Surveyor's activities, scarcely one person 
 in five was brought before the secretaries, and as for the 
 Stationers — those false trustees of the Press — they had not 
 been responsible for a single conviction. Bribery did its 
 work, too. The rich got off, the poor Keaches and Calverts 
 were taken. 
 
 There was always the difficulty, too, of knowing where 
 to attach the chief blame when the author was not 
 forthcoming. From author to bookseller or hawker there 
 might be a dozen people engaged. The plan is to 'let 
 the obligation of discovery run quite through, from the 
 first mover of the mischief to the last disperser of it'. 
 The Act had ignored the hawker ; then came the class 
 of concealers, men who let their cellars and warehouses 
 for storing these forbidden wares. The Act said nothing 
 of these. 
 
 Moreover on looking into the actual state of the Trade, 
 we find some forty printers beyond what the Act and 
 the bye-laws allow, to say nothing of occasional interlopers, 
 men who, by reason of the vexatious system of general 
 monopolies, busy themselves perforce with nothing but 
 
132 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 sedition or treason ^. It is unfortunately to the interest of 
 the booksellers to make this class as big as possible and as 
 poor. They are the sweaters of the book-trade, and by their 
 means the printers are reduced to the position of slaves. 
 ' The usual agents for publishing (he speaks chiefly of libels) 
 are the printers themselves '. 
 
 It is open to the author to take his copy to a book- 
 seller, who finds a master printer, but if the copy be 
 'mettlesome stuff', it is convenient to have as few inter- 
 mediaries as possible, and the deal is generally reduced to 
 author and printer. 
 
 The decree of 1637 had attempted to reduce the number 
 of master printers to twenty (exclusive of His Majesty's 
 Printers), and the Dean of Arches (Sir John Lambe) had 
 presented the names of twenty-one suitable persons'^ — no 
 others to be appointed except as vacancies occurred, and then 
 only by appointment of the Archbishop of Canterbury or 
 Bishop of London^. 
 
 This limitary clause had been repeated in all succeeding 
 enactments, but was somewhat futile. The present Act 
 reiterated it, but little attempt was made to reduce the 
 printers *, because no provision (another defect of the Act) 
 was made for draughting the supernumeraries into other 
 trades. To help these men out was L'Estrange's proposal, an 
 excellent plan never realised, because of the opposition of the 
 Stationers, scarcely one of whom — the King's Printers often 
 not excepted — but had concealed shelves of unlicensed wares. 
 
 For the rest let the Printers put their names to all 
 works as required by the Act. Interrogate (on oath) 
 candidates for Printerships as to their knowledge of secret 
 Presses, and make it penal for printers to escape the Act by 
 
 1 See the Printers' Petition, 1663-4 (Bigmore and Wyman, pt. ii., Pari. 
 Papers, No. xvi.), despite the Act of 1662 more presses and more masters 
 are set up and more apprentices instructed ; at the time of petition nearly 
 70 Printing Houses and 150 apprentices. Jf none hut licensed work is to he done, 
 a great many of these must starve. Hence they pray for a clause in the revived 
 statute to prevent licentiousness in the Press by keeping down the numbers. In 
 1641 the interests of booksellers and Printers lay parallel, by getting rid of the 
 Patentees. Now they are saddled with that nuisance, their interests diverge. 
 See the Petitions of 1641. Ihid., Pari. Papers, i. and iii. 
 
 2 S. P. Dam. Car., i., 307 (85). 
 
 3 Arber, Tramcript of the Stationers' Registers, v., Hi. and liii., 669. See the 
 Decree of 1637, English Reprints, Areopagiticcc, ed. E, Arber (1668), p. 9. 
 
 ^ The Act of 1662 did not extrude anybody then set up as a master printer, 
 who could show that he had passed through the ordinary course. But no others 
 were to set up till the legal number (20) was reached. The Draft of a Proposed 
 Act {S. P. Dom. Car. , ii. , 39 (95)) left it to the authorities to extrude as they saw fit. 
 
PRESS LEGISLATION AND THE NEWSBOOK 133 
 
 antedating their work. Make a holocaust of the old 
 masters of treason, Kutherford, Douglas, Calamy, etc. ^ 
 
 Lastly, bribe the poor printers to discover the authors 
 of Regicides' Speeches, Trials, etc., and keep a strict watch 
 on all carriers, posts, and coaches leaving London. All 
 packages sent down to the country containing books are 
 to be clearly marked, and at Stationers Hall strict inquest 
 is to be made, and books kept with information of all 
 unlicensed books. 
 
 To sum up the enormities of the trade, * those stationers 
 that would otherwise be honest are forced either to play 
 the knave for company or to break ; for there's scarce any 
 other trading for them, but in such trade'. 
 
 From these considerations Roger turns to the Stationers 
 and Printers. The Act had vested in them an almost sole 
 control of the Press, yet they are the worst offenders. Their 
 Society has never been purged for its compliance during 
 the Commonwealth. They dabble in seditious books, and 
 defeat the object of their own weekly searches by timely 
 warnings to friends. They keep the whip hand of the 
 Printers and are interested in maintaining their numbers 
 to excess. 
 
 As to the latter, they have of late petitioned to be 
 incorporated apart from the Stationers^. But they them- 
 selves in many cases are their own stationers, and have 
 all along shown such a hatred of a class which must be 
 maintained — the loyal monopolists — that they can be trusted 
 still less than the booksellers. The old honest printers 
 went to the wall in Oliver's time, and his creatures now 
 monopolise the trade. They are generally confederated 
 into little seditious groups, and it will be hard to find 
 twenty honest men among them^. 
 
 ' 'Tis true the printers' interest is not so great as the 
 stationers, for when he gets 20 or 25 to the 100, for 
 printing unlawful books, the other doubles, nay, many 
 times trebles his money by selling it'. 
 
 The repetition of the demand for a survey of written 
 
 1 He has specially the Phoenix in view, see chap. iv. 
 
 2 This undated Petition is probably prior to the 1662 Act. S. P. Pom. Car., ii., 
 22, Nos. 8, 8i.-ii. 
 
 2 * It were a hard matter to pick out 20 master-printers (the legal number) 
 who are both free of the trade, of ability to manage it, and of integrity to be 
 entrusted with it, most of the honest sort being impoverished by the late times '. 
 Yet their numbers are more like 60 with 100 journeymen, than 20 with 40, and 
 this withal without counting the interlopers. 
 
134 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 matter publicly exhibited, the hint of discorporation for 
 the Stationers, and his vehemence against the Printers, 
 increased the enmity of these bodies, which largely frustrated 
 his efforts in the Press for the next twenty years. But 
 the Pamphlet recommended itself to Arlington at a moment 
 when the secretaries were alarmed by the dangerous move- 
 ments which characterised this year. On the loth August 
 1663, the King appointed Roger L'Estrange to the long- 
 mooted Surveyorship of the Presses, now for the first time 
 erected into an office. The mass of expert knowledge he 
 displayed, his mingled good sense and zeal, had persuaded 
 the Court that he was a fit Governor of the Press, and 
 so long as he was paid, he continued so. 
 
 From this appointment we are now able to take a 
 view of the most persistent effort to gag the Press and 
 the classic example in England of a continuous effort to 
 control her malign forces. 
 
 As to Considerations, etc., it does not pretend to be 
 anything more than a plain view of the Press couched in 
 the language of a minority report. It accepts unhesitatingly 
 the view that the Press is a doubtful good, a thing to be 
 referred continually to a Government department — in large 
 part, a branch of sedition, 'the honest work being little' 
 and that monopolised into the hands of a few, for whom 
 it is the reward of loyal services. It is Crown property, 
 gifted to the loyal, and those interlopers who dabble in 
 it are to be treated as the very spawn of sedition. 
 
 Granted such a view — and it was the view held by 
 j English judges for at least twenty years more^ — the 
 Considerations is a most logical account. The charges of 
 cruelty, except in one striking particular already noted, 
 are scarcely just. In one respect, a scrupulous regard for 
 the buying out of supernumerary presses and the providing 
 for the outcasts, it is more lenient — and prudent — than 
 any other of these documents. 
 
 Aeropagitica is an impassioned and lofty appeal to 
 higher instincts against the Imprimatur, the first so far as 
 we know to trace that disgraceful bondage historically 
 from the Council of Trent, and to deduce the fact that 
 
 1 Viner {Abridgment (1742), xvii., 208) quotes the arguments put forward, and 
 admitted in the case of the Stationers v. Parker, 1 Jac. 2 in B.R. 
 
 I. Because it is an art introduced by the care of the Crown. 
 II. Because of the inconvenience that may redound to the public from the 
 mismanagement of the Press. See also Modern Reports, i., 256, 
 
PRESS LEGISLATION AND THE NEWSBOOK 135 
 
 without a thorough adoption of the full methods of the 
 inquisition, such half measures of tyranny as had been 
 adopted in English Statutes are nugatory^. 
 
 Mr Fox-Bourne well says^ that in its day it had no 
 greater effect than to eke out a faltering excuse for the 
 Stationers, who had failed to do their duty in cleansing 
 the Press. Whereas Locke's appeal to Parliament in 1694 
 logically argued from practical considerations rather than 
 the dignity of authorship, or of man, may have actually 
 determined this troubled question. It was not the 
 Imprimatur (though he had his quarrel with that) which 
 moved him so much as the exactions of the 'lazy and 
 ignorant company of stationers'. His sojourn abroad — 
 that is in Holland, rather than France — had taught him 
 to despise the restraint and monopoly in books in England, 
 whereas the Dutch had freely advanced a great trade by 
 providing in excellent and cheap editions, not only the 
 Bible but all the classics, and so could anywhere, even 
 under unequal conditions, defeat any attempt at English 
 competition, and capture as it did in a surreptitious way 
 the whole English market^. An author's copyright was 
 just enough for a period of say fifty years, but the hideous 
 system of general monopolies, introduced in Elizabeth's and 
 James I.'s reign, of a patent in Tully and Cassar was 
 unspeakably wicked *. The truth is that when Locke wrote, 
 the urgency of the Imprimatur was not so great, for that 
 question had already solved itself. Again and again, it is 
 true, in the political heat of the next century, the question 
 was revived, notably in 1738 and 1772, when the Govern- 
 ment, maddened by the assaults of too numerous critics, 
 contemplated for a moment a measure which Hume and 
 Johnson seem to have approved. It was thought expedient 
 in these two years to republish Milton's great Tract with 
 annotations to prove the detested nature of the Imprimatur^ 
 
 1 There had been earlier speeches in this vein, as that of Sir Edward Bering in 
 the Commons House, 1640. (Rushworth, Hist. Cdl.^ iv., 55.) 
 
 2 Life of Locke (1876), ii., 312. So Hallam, Cons. Hist. (1879), pp. 611-12. 
 
 3 The eighteenth-century view of the Law Monopoly given by Viner {A bridgment 
 (1742), xvii., 208) is emphatic. * I believe . . . there is not one individual gentle- 
 man of learning but thinks the patentees have most grossly abused it. . . . 
 Whence arises the great disesteem entertained by Foreigners of our Law, but 
 from the trifling paltry books which the Patentees from a plenitude of power 
 have from time to time ushered into the world '. 
 
 4 See Mr Augustine Birrell's Seven Lectures on the Law and History of (Copyright 
 ill Books, pp. 92-6. 
 
136 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 thus showing the permanence of Milton's noble ideas over 
 L'Estrange's forgotten Considerations'^. 
 
 As has been said Locke cunningly addressed his main 
 appeal to the disorders occasioned by the General Search 
 Warrant, the feature which had wrecked the Bill of 1661. 
 
 The conviction of the futility of any but a thorough- 
 paced tyranny of the Press, such as L'Estrange almost 
 attained in 1664-6, was at the bottom of more than Milton's 
 tract. 
 
 In his Preface (1711) to the seventh volume of his Review, 
 Defoe remarked that, ' The Government ought to be of no 
 party at all. Had the ministers of the last 20 years, nay I 
 may say the last 50 years, practised this we had had no 
 Revolution'. Further, 'The stopping of the Press will be 
 the opening of the mouth, and the diminution of Printing 
 will be the increase of writing in which is tenfold, because 
 no authors can be found out, or punished if they are. And 
 this made Charles II. (and he understood these things very 
 well), say that the Licenser of the Press did more harm than 
 good, and that if every one was left to print what he would 
 there would be less treason spread abroad and fewer 
 pasquinadoes ' ^. 
 
 At the same time in 1721, this same author warns us 
 that 'the liberty of the Press may be the most needful 
 liberty, but it is the most abused Liberty in the world ' ^. 
 
 It must be noted that throughout his long connection 
 with the Press, L'Estrange makes no quarrel with 
 monopolies. Yet this grievance even more than that of the 
 
 1 In 1738 the cause of the reprinting of A eropagitica (with the poet Thomson's 
 Preface) was the recent restraint on the Drama, in 1772 the series of troubles 
 associated with the names of Wilkes, Junius and printer Woodfall. 'A design 
 is now ripening to restrain the liberty of the Press ', says the Preface to the 
 latter. See T. Holt White's Edition (1819), p. 129 et seq. See also the series of 
 articles on the Liberty of the Press, Gentleman's Magazine for August 1737 and 
 April 1738. For Johnson's views see Lives of Poets (1781), i., 153-4, *It seems 
 not more reasonable to leave the right of printing unrestrained because 
 writers may be afterwards censured, than it wovild be to sleep with doors 
 unbolted because by our laws we can hang a thief. 'Servile sophistry', is 
 Haley's comment, quoted by Plolt White. Hume {History, viii., 312) expresses 
 the same sentiment more guardedly. The earliest reprint of Aeropagitica is the 
 abridged Reasons Himibly Offered for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing, with the 
 True Character of Ed. Bohun (1693), by Charles Blount who, according to Hilger 
 (Index der Verhotenen B'dcher, p. 217), was chiefly instrumental in the final expira- 
 tion of the Act. 
 
 2 The few occasions on which Charles interfered with the License, as well as 
 his sound sense, might confirm this statement of his view. On the other hand he 
 undoubtedly backed L'Estrange in his dealings with the Stationers. 
 
 ? Defoe {Life by Wm. Lee, ii., 446), 
 
PRESS LEGISLATION AND THE NEWSBOOK 137 
 
 Imprimatur was the real bone of contention between authors 
 and the Stationers. 
 
 George Withers long ago and in a prison wrote his 
 Scholar's Purgatory to condemn the rapacity and rogueries ^ 
 of the Stationers. The Universities for many years con- 
 tested their rights and were instrumental after 16*72, through 
 the Presses at Oxford and Cambridge, in cheapening ' Bible ' 
 and classical stock. They invoked the aid of the secretaries, 
 first Williamson and then Jenkins, in this struggle against 
 the London monopolists. Taken with the great cases of 
 the contested monopolies of Seymour, Atkyns, and Norton, 
 this struggle ranks with the causes cdSbres of Printing in 
 the seventeenth century. At the same time the Patentees 
 had their apologists right to the close of the century, and 
 the greatest opposition to the expiration of the Press Act 
 in 1695 came from that quarter, and was backed by the 
 Booksellers who failed from long association to distinguish 
 the argument for Copyright, from that for the Imprimatur \ 
 The failure of this age to mark the distinction referred to by 
 Locke, between an author's legitimate right in his copy, 
 and the class of general monopolies rightly described by 
 Mabbot when resigning his licensership in 1649 as one 
 of the most grievous monopolies ^ is at the bottom of the 
 mischief, and as the former marked the basis of the Queen 
 Anne Copyright Act, so the latter was one serious cause of 
 irritation against the rule of the Stuarts, who after the 
 Kestoration encouraged the system to absurd lengths. The 
 mediaeval view of Printing discovered in the apologist 
 for the monopolists in 1694 * is nothing less than 
 L'Estrange's view of the Press as Crown property, dis- 
 tributed and delegated to the care of loyal gentlemen. 
 Where they differ is, in the view of the former, that the 
 power of surveying the Press ought to lie with the loyal 
 monopolists, a policy which the latter always contested, 
 
 J See Arber, Stationers' Registers, iv., 13-16. ' Their rogueries were not confined 
 to altering titles, excluding author's names (and intei'est) after the first impression, 
 and ( "if he be not of the assistance of the Coy." ), invoking the whole power of 
 the Stationers Coy. to crush the poor author '. See also Birrell's Seven Lectures. 
 
 2 Birrell, ibid., p. 91, quoting Mr Justice Willes in the great case of Millar v. 
 Taylor, 1769. 
 
 3 Toland {Life of Milton prejixed to Proseworks (1698), p. 83) claimed Mabol 
 {sic) as a convert to A reopagitica. 
 
 •* Rawl. MSS. , C. 806. The writer cites various grants of Elizabeth and the 
 Statutes from 7th Eliz. 6 to 14 Car., ii., c. 33, which protected patentees. See 
 also a copy of Reasons for Reviving the Act for Pi^egidating the Press, Tanner MSS. 
 C. 739 (141). 
 
138 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 because he wished to see that authority in one man's — 
 his own — hands. 
 
 Scarcely a year after his Considerations, L'Estrange found 
 an admiring echo in Richard Atkyn's Original and Groivth of 
 Printing, which came out in the month of the burial of 
 the 'Confederates' (April 1664). Atykns was the unfortunate 
 Law Patentee, so often mentioned, who was denied restitution 
 of his old monopoly by the judges after the Restoration 
 from the desire — hints North ^ — of the latter to print their 
 own cases. Atykn's book was written to anticipate the 
 renewal of the Act in 1664, and boldly stated that 'the 
 reason why the present Act hath operated so little is most 
 apparent, because the executive power is placed in the 
 Company of Stationers, who only can offend and whose 
 interest it is to do so ' ^. He traced the history of the Press 
 from the days of Mary, and his distraught mind saw in 
 the various Decrees and Acts merely a struggle between 
 Stationers and Patentees — a subject on which he was fairly 
 competent to speak, if not to judge. The Star Chamber 
 Ordinance was to him merely a clever move on the part 
 of the Stationers to gain the complete mastery of the Press. 
 'Then {i.e. 1637) libellous and scandalous books began to 
 fly about like lightning, and when this was strengthened 
 by the Act of 17 Car. i. which abolished the Star Chamber, 
 their mischief was completed'. His close study of 
 L'Estrange's striking pamphlet is shown by his quotations 
 of the amount of sedition. Farewell Sermons, etc., printed 
 since the Restoration, and the disparity between that and 
 the number of convictions. L'Estrange, he said, had dis- 
 covered more in two years than the Stationers in all their 
 history, which is no doubt true. In corroborating Withers' 
 tale of their iniquities, he demanded the limitation of the 
 
 1 Lives of the Norths (1890), i., 18. 'The judges had to make that patent 
 (Atkyn's) a monopoly that they might have the benefit of printing their own 
 reports'. /S'ge Viner, Ahridgment, xvii,, 207. 
 
 2 For a good example of their knavery see Norton's complaint to the Council, 
 1646, IJ.M.C, App. to 6th Kept, p. 17. Norton's patent in 'Bible' stock was 
 successfully challenged by the Stationers (1644), and the decision upheld at the 
 Restoration. Under 26th August 1666, Pepys writes, 'The son of the Lord 
 Keeper Coventry swore he would rather hang than see his father's decree over- 
 ruled. This ruined poor Norton', Atkyns, we saw, was similarly ruined. 
 The plaints of these patentees, whom L'Estrange espoused, was a considerable 
 contribution to old-cavalier indignation. See Norton's Petition to be King's 
 Printer, August 1660. The place is now held by gentlemen who don't understand 
 printing, and the work is done hy those who were printers xmder Crornioell. 
 C.S.P.D. (1660-1), p. 24. 
 
PRESS LEGISLATION AND THE NEWSBOOK 139 
 
 Stationers' authority, and that the powers conferred on them 
 by the 1637 Decree should revert to the old Patentees, who 
 were of all men best capable of protecting their rights. 
 
 Lest it be thought that Atkyn's complaint was singular 
 as it was selfish, it may be worth while quoting the document 
 referred to above, written long after (c. 1692), which attests 
 the vitality of the monopolist view. After citing various 
 laws and grants to Law Printers, the writer — a person of 
 quality of course — proceeds to say : * This is the first peace- 
 able age wherein the King's prerogative in this matter of 
 printing the Laws was ever questioned or the aforesaid 
 privileges charged with the imputation of monopolies. 
 
 ' Principles of Treason and Kebellions in matters of state 
 have become more insinuated and fomented by the Liberty 
 of the Press than by any single means. So it may seem a 
 question impartially considered whether the use of Printing 
 recompensed the mischief of the Liberty and abuse thereof. 
 To puhlisli Laws is neither possible nor safe ' ^. 
 
 As to the objection that Patentees produce poor and 
 dear work, that is prevented by the Act 25th Henry VIIL, 
 by which the Chancellor regulates prices. The Universities 
 and the Stationers have numerous patents, and Germany and 
 Holland flourish under them. 
 
 It may be remembered how severely L'Estrange regarded 
 the partial printing of the Eegicides' trials. But it was 
 not till the time of 'Scroggs and his brethren' that the 
 matter reached its full urgency. We shall find L'Estrange 
 expressing even more vehemently the same view when the 
 question is not Law, but News — another branch of the 
 Prerogative. How different this prospect is from that of 
 the 'eagle muing her mighty youth' is apparent, but we 
 are dealing with the ' celebrated ', the ' famous ', but in no 
 sense ' great ' L'Estrange. 
 
 The same deplorable idea then inspired Eoger when in 
 August 1663 he took over the Newsbook, and penned what 
 must be the most insolent foreword that ever disgraced an 
 
 1 Rawl. MSS., C. 806, already quoted. It was seriously debated in this 
 century, whether the ' curs'd invention of Printing ' was not an unmitigated 
 nuisance. That L'Estrange wrote A Rope for PoZ (1660), is almost determined 
 by such a passage in the Advt. to the Reader- as ' It has been made a question 
 long ago whether more mischief than advantage were not occasioned to the 
 Christian world, by the Invention of Typography. But never was any question 
 more fully determined than this has been of late years in these nations '. Even 
 Addison has some melancholy remarks on the subject. Spectator, No. 582, 
 Morley'sed., p. 826. 
 
140 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 editor. Ambition gratified, and revenge partially indulged, are 
 stamped on every line. It is boastful also, and the displaced 
 Muddiman must have smiled bitterly — his services were 
 still requisitioned for the Booh, by order of the Secretary, at 
 the salary of £3 a week — to see his successor and employer 
 eking out eight pages with scarcely an item of real news. 
 
 A word on the history of the Newsbook since the 
 Restoration may be desirable here\ Henry Muddiman 
 first appeared as the champion of Restoration in that 
 feverish week of December 1659, when the report of Monk's 
 entry into England stirred up parties to an incredible 
 activity. His Parliamentary Intelligencer devoted itself at 
 first to the prudent demand for a ' full and free Parliament '. 
 To Muddiman as to L'Estrange, the approach of Monk to 
 the City on 2nd February 1660 seemed an alarming symptom 
 as portending a new Dictatorship. But the General's 
 conduct threw the Parliamentary Intelligencer^ and its 
 Thursday issue, Mercurius PuUicus (in which Muddiman 
 was assisted by the Scot, Giles Durie ^ ), into whole-hearted 
 service, and equally violent opposition to Scot's salaried 
 editors, Williams and Nedham. 
 
 All attempts from the other side to suppress these two 
 popular journals failed because their authors were playing 
 up to Monk's policy, and on the contrary his enemies soon 
 appeared on the defensive. Williams' paper went first ^, and 
 on 17th March, the day after the Rump met for the last 
 time, the Council again discharged Nedham, at the same 
 time giving official and sole support to Muddiman's Parlia- 
 mentary Intelligencer, which enabled him till the Council 
 was dissolved in 1660 to issue it by * order of the council '. 
 
 Nedham, however, remained at his post till 9th April, 
 when his Mercurius Politicus was immediately continued 
 by Williams. 
 
 1 Mr J. B. Williams's article so often referred to {Neivshook, etc., of the 
 Restoration, Eng. Hist. Rev., April 1908), is the best account we have of this 
 frantic chapter of English Journalism. 
 
 2 He had already — as the Thomason Gatcdogne witnesses — done some service 
 against the Republicans and Independents. Muddiman's Parliamentary PiiUieh 
 Jntelligencer was written to oppose Nedham's Piiblick Intelligencer, and ten days 
 later Mercurius PuUicus — which recalled the old Royalist memories of 1648 — 
 replied to his Mercurius Politicus. The Parliamentary Intelligencer (E. (182)) 
 appeared 19th December 1659 ; some Scoticisms betray Durie's hand in it. 
 Mercurius Politicus had one daring revival in the week of the Restoration, 
 31st May to 7th June (E. 195 (62)). 
 
 '•'' But he immediately continued both Nedham's papers when the latter 
 absconded (12th April is the date of his last Mercuriv.s Politicus, No. 6l5)t 
 
ALRY 
 
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 there apptated ktore her 3 old Inchai.frtiies 
 
 anJ the firft approach.n.; i,.r /pale aftei this 
 
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 A L'ESTRANGE PASQUIL. 
 
 [Face ^. 1^0. 
 
PRESS LEGISLATION AND THE NEWSBOOK 141 
 
 Henceforth we find frequent references to H. Muddiman 
 Gent, as the official editor of the Council papers, and one 
 service he did — the publishing of The Army's Bemonstrance 
 — a document of the last importance which later on gained 
 him great favour from the Restoration Government. 
 
 With one or two desultory exceptions Muddiman with 
 his patrons. Monk, Birkenhead, and Nicholas, remained for 
 the first three years of the Restoration sole producer of the 
 official news, both in England and Scotland, and he might 
 have remained so but for the clamours of L'Estrange. 
 
 We have already referred to the rivalry between 
 L'Estrange and Birkenhead, which, provoked probably before 
 the Restoration, culminated in disgraceful recrimination at 
 the Board of the Committee for the Indigent Officers ^ 
 Roger justly or unjustly suspected Sir John of those evil 
 whispers to which he imputed his being overlooked at the 
 Restoration, when the latter was signally honoured. The 
 author of so many perilous papers on behalf of Restoration 
 may have thought that he had some claim for at least equal 
 treatment with Muddiman, who might be represented as of 
 the class deprecated by Clarendon who came in with the 
 flowing tide, and ousted the older generation of faithful 
 Cavaliers. But Muddiman's journalistic services since the 
 third week of December 1659 had been great, and more 
 effective than Roger's occasional fire-balls. To gain posses- 
 sion of the Newsbook then became the prime object of 
 L'Estrange's agitation, and to this his otherwise barren 
 appointment as Surveyor in February 1662 was an important 
 step, while his demand at that time that written matter 
 should come under his survey was interpreted — probably 
 unjustly — as a menace to the monopoly of written news 
 which Nicholas' grant of free postage and his own excellence 
 in the art had conferred on Muddiman. 
 
 The parade of Cavalier grievances in the Commons, 
 specially directed against Coventry, and the consequent turn 
 of fortune towards the Cavaliers marked by that year, may 
 have determined the matter. * The Press being very foul', 
 is Roger's own explanation of his appointment of the 15th 
 August 1663, to the Surveyorship and Neiosbook. The 
 first number of the latter shows clearly that in the transfer 
 
 1 Chap, iii., 92. See also an extract (p. 240 of the Memento) endorsed 'the 
 cause of the aflfront offered to Mr L'Estrange', described as an insufferable 
 affront to Charles I. S. P. Dom. Car., ii., 26, No. 97. 
 
142 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 of the editorship there was some notion of turning it to 
 account as the scourge of dissent and the seditious Press ^ 
 Muddiman had from time to time, probably at the instiga- 
 tion of the secretaries, through Birkenhead, animadverted 
 on the Press, but the new Newsbook is expressly dedicated 
 to this service in a week by week exposure. 
 
 To this circumstance we may look for its favour with the 
 Government while the Press was foul, and the nervousness 
 of the Restoration not yet overcome, but when that stable was 
 partially cleansed, public murmurs would remind the author 
 of a public craving for mere news. In this sense L'Estrange's 
 first attempt at Journalism was * a failure '. 
 
 It has been usual in histories of the early journalism to 
 refer to the audacious first number of L'Estrange's News- 
 look. Indeed anything more contemptuous of its public, 
 and more in line with the mediaeval view of the * cursed 
 invention of printing ', it would be difficult to name. 
 
 But it is sincere and casts a doubt on the general imputa- 
 tion of the author's cupidity. He would hardly have so 
 affronted his public if an access of fortune was his sole object. 
 How vast is the difference between L'Estrange and a repre- 
 sentative of the later journalism, Defoe 1 How modern the 
 latter and, to his readers, how obsequious^, how pragmatic 
 the former ! Yet it was unfair to taunt him with having 
 only six items of jejune news in his first number. The 
 delay on the part of his newly planted correspondence was 
 sufficient excuse for that ^ and the occasion for the following 
 foreword and homily addressed to the English public. 
 
 L Estranges Declaration on taking up the Newsbook, 
 ^\st August 1663. 
 
 ' I do declare myself (as I hope I may in a matter left so 
 absolutely indifferent whether any or more) that supposing 
 
 1 It seems to have been stipulated that Muddiman was still to help with the 
 book at a salary of £3 per week. Greed or dislike prevented the Surveyor 
 from making much use of the great journalist's services, and it was not long 
 before the £3 was stopped and ' H. M. Gent ' ceased to have anything to do with 
 printed news. He had his revenge later. 
 
 2 See, for example, the Introduction to his 7th volume of the Review. ' For all 
 his meannesses and mistakes ... he humbly asks his readers' pardon '. 
 
 •^ The expense of which was great, especially as he did not yet enjoy 
 Muddiman's privilege of free postage. See a letter to Williamson, 16th September 
 1663. C.S.P.D. (1663-4), p. 274. ' Will be at great loss without his help at this 
 point'. The Editor of the Calendar of State Papers (1665-6) is mistaken in 
 supposing this to be an appeal for help in the shape of news. 
 
PRESS LEGISLATION AND THE NEWSBOOK 143 
 
 the Press in order, the people in their right wits and news 
 or no news to be the question, a Public mercury should 
 never have my vote, because I think it makes the multitude 
 too familiar with the actions and counsels of their superiors, 
 too pragmatical and censorious, and gives them not only an 
 itch but a kind of colourable right and license to be meddling 
 with the Government all which (supposing as before supposed) 
 does not yet hinder but that in this juncture, a paper of that 
 quality may be both safe and expedient ; truly if I should 
 say necessary perhaps the case would bear it, for certainly 
 there is not anything which at this instant more imports 
 his Majesty's service and the public, than to redeem the 
 public from their former mistakes and deliver and protect 
 them from the like for the time to come. To both which 
 purposes the prudent manager of a gazette may contribute 
 in a very high degree ; for besides that it is everybody's 
 money and (in truth) a good part of most men's study and 
 business, 'tis none of the worst ways of address to the genius 
 and business of the common people whose affections are 
 much more capable of being tuned and wrought upon by 
 convenient hints and touches in the shape and air of a 
 pamphlet than by the strongest reasons and best notions 
 imaginable under any other and more sober form whatsoever. 
 To which advantage of being popular and grateful must be 
 added (as none of the least) that it is likewise seasonable and 
 worth the while were there no other use of it than only to 
 detect and disappoint the malice of those scandalous and 
 false reports which are daily continued and bruited against 
 the Government. 
 
 * So that upon the main I perceive the thing requisite and 
 (from aught I can yet see) once a week may do the business 
 (for I intend to utter my news by weight and not by 
 measure). Yet if I still find when my hand is in, and after 
 the planting and securing of my correspondence, that the 
 matter will fairly furnish more without either uncertainty, 
 repetition or impertinence I shall keep myself free to double 
 at pleasure. One book a week may be expected however ; 
 to be published every Thursday and finished upon the 
 Tuesday night, leaving Wednesday entire for the printing 
 it off. 
 
 *The way (as to the vent^) that has been found most 
 beneficial to the Master of the book has been to cry and 
 
 1 I.e.. sale. 
 
144 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 expose it about the streets by Mercuries and hawkers ; but 
 whether that may be so admirable in some other respects, 
 may be a question ; for under countenance of that employ- 
 ment, is carried on the present trade of treason and seditious 
 libels (nor effectually has anything considerable been dis- 
 persed against either Church or State without the aid and 
 privity of this sort of people), whereupon without enough 
 assurance against this inconvenience I shall adventure to 
 steer another course, which I only mention that in case of 
 being put upon it, I may not hereafter be charged with 
 singularity and caprice for a proceeding wherein I am totally 
 governed by an honest and conscientious reason, and that 
 too in direct opposition to my particular profit. 
 
 ' Touching the prosecution of the work, I have already 
 given my sense against Repetitions, which I dislike both in 
 respect to the reader and to myself; for neither am I so 
 good a husband as to vamp my intelligence, nor so foul a 
 dealer as to make any man pay twice over for the same 
 commodity ; for the matter I shall endeavour to provide such 
 as may neither tire the reader nor shame the reporter; 
 and some care shall be taken too in point of order and 
 coherence ; for the whole as well as for parts ; for the story 
 as well as for the pamphlet. Nor shall I give myself much 
 pain about the style, but let it e'en prove as it hits and lye 
 as it falls (saving only a constant reverence to authority and 
 truth). Finally after this, if it shall happen at last that 
 I go less then my pretensions, it shall content me that I 
 meant well (at worst), but I have great examples for my 
 comfort and great failures for my excuse. A word now to 
 the second branch of my care and duty, that is the Survey 
 and Inspection of the Press. 
 
 *I find it (in general) with the public as with their 
 neighbours there are too many of the trade to live one 
 by another, but more particularly I find them clogged with 
 three sorts of people — Foreigners, persons not free of the 
 trade, and separatists, which I offer to the end that when 
 it shall be thought fit to retrench the number, the reforma- 
 tion may begin there. In the meantime to prevent mischief 
 (as far as in me lies) and for their encouragement that shall 
 discover it, take these. 
 
 ' (1) To any one who discovers a private Press, hole or 
 corner, " let him repair with such notice and make 
 proof thereof to the Surveyor of the Press (at his 
 
PRESS LEGISLATION AND THE NEWSBOOK 145 
 
 ofi&ce over Brome's shop, the sign of the Gun in 
 
 Ivy Lane) and he will get 40s. with what assurance 
 
 of secrecy himself shall desire." 
 
 ' (2) £5 is offered for discovery of such a libel in printing. 
 
 '(3) 10s. is offered for discovery of an unlicensed book 
 
 printing. 
 * (4) 5s. is offered for discovery of a seditious book being 
 
 sold by the hawkers. 
 ' But alas discovery signifies little without punishment ; 
 wherefore it is of great concern to provide that men may 
 not thrive upon their transgressions, and get ten times as 
 much by a fault as the pay for a composition, which has 
 been but too much a practice of late among the inferior 
 vi(pers ?) of the Press '. 
 
 Then follow the six scraps of intelligence which excite 
 the ridicule of the latest historian of seventeenth-century 
 Journalism ^. 
 
 Besides the journalistic reforms and promises proposed 
 here — which he did not very long observe — the main 
 thing grasped by a seventeenth-century reader would be 
 that the familiar Newsbooh was to be turned into a 
 pamphlet of a semi-political nature, the police-budget of 
 the seditious Press, and its express object to dragoon the 
 multitude into paths of loyalty and submission, precisely 
 the idea which later on inspired the Ohservator and 
 Heraclihts Bidens 2, and the common note of Tory journalism 
 in that age. As it has been cynically said that only a 
 man who has at some time disgraced himself can make 
 himself thoroughly agreeable, so the best journalists were 
 men of the renegade type — the Nedhams, Thompsons, and 
 Cares, or those who, like Muddiman, progressed slowly 
 towards one side or the other. Possessed by the humour 
 of change and allowance, their mercenary pens had always 
 an eye to the interest of mere news and gossip. But the 
 L'Estrange type was vicious in its loyalty, and a red 
 rag to the populace. 
 
 1 Williams, History of English Journalism., p. 188. See also art. in Eng. Hist. 
 Rev. (1908), p. 263. ' Their scanty news was carefnlly spread out and printed in 
 large type — by these means he made them bring in treble the amount they had 
 done in Muddiman's time'. Yet 'the single Gazette far exceeds in profits 
 L'Estrange's double sheets' (Jas. Hickes to Williamson, 8th August 1666, CS.P.JJ. 
 (1666-7), p. 21). 
 
 2 See the first number of Heraditus, 13th_February 1681. 
 
146 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 This first number must have made men prick up their 
 ears for the coming contest with the seditious party, and 
 so it was said long after that L'Estrange could not dip 
 his pen in ink without embroiling the nation. So comfort- 
 able and typical Mr Pepys was disappointed in the first 
 number ^. Indeed it was not long before Muddiman began 
 to perceive by the increased sale of the Newsletters — for 
 which, it seems, the Newshooh was designed as a supplement, 
 rather than independent species — that his department of news- 
 mongering was a considerable and growing one, and he 
 might yet hope to compete with L'Estrange's unpopular 
 book ^. 
 
 As to the rest, the alarm created in a news-loving people 
 by the threat of dropping one of the weekly issues 3, was 
 no doubt equalled by the disgust felt for one who professed 
 a fair deal, and in the same breath cut down the book from 
 sixteen to eight pages, who could not ' vamp * his intelligence 
 and promised an increase of interest in the matter, and yet 
 ' vamped ' out his whole first paper, and, as it soon appeared, 
 provided the most jejune news from all parts of the world 
 save England, or if he did touch home news, avoided those 
 tales of superstition and witchcraft which are an incredible 
 feature of the vulgar mind of the age, and substituted mere 
 diatribe against the other side of politics, or proclamations, 
 or an occasional trial. 
 
 The phrase 'the other side' is perhaps a misnomer. There 
 was only one side — a loyal support of the Government. All 
 else, to minds like L'Estrange's, belonged to the dubious 
 world of sedition. A toleration for a reasonable political 
 criticism had not yet been evolved, nor did the machinery 
 of Government provide for a change. So that a journal 
 which savagely attacked all anti- Government cabals — and 
 did little more — was bound to attract much odium, even 
 though its news had not been ' vamped '. Parliamentary 
 news, of which there had been a great deal prior to the 
 Commons Resolution of 15th June 1660, was barred out 
 
 1 It ' makes but a simple beginning '. Diary ^ under date 4th September 1663. 
 Koger applied to Pepys for Naval news, 'which*, says the latter, under date 
 17th December 1664, ' I shall as I see cause, give him '. Pepys adds : ' He is 
 a man of fine conversation, I think, but I am sure most courtly, and full of 
 complimenting '. See also under date ISth Augvist 1665. It is abundantly obvious 
 that the Diarist did not like the strenuous journalist. 
 
 2 « It became so large that it attained the dimensions of an Institution '. 
 Williams, art. E.II.R. So Hid. of Eng. Jouriudism, pp. 186-8. 
 
 3 Newshookj No. 65, 5th August 1664. In this he was wisely overruled by 
 his friends. 
 
PRESS LEGISLATION AND THE NEWSBOOK 147 
 
 and left to the enterprising newsletter-writer, hence those 
 efforts of the Surveyor to bring it within his scoped 
 
 If we glance at the matters of public interest during 
 L'Estrange's tenure of the JSfewshook, we see copy in the 
 ecclesiastical situation, the Yorkshire Conspiracy with the 
 trials of the Northern Traitors, and their printing 'Con- 
 federates ' in London. The notices of the Indigent Officers 
 Board, the deaths of the chief 'Confederates' in prison, 
 and funeral processions of dispossessed ministers, the 
 movements of the sectaries all over the country after the 
 Five-mile Act, and the operation of the Conventicle Act, 
 all these may reasonably have interested the public. 
 
 Then towards the close of 1664 all interest merges in the 
 preparations for the really popular war with the Dutch, 
 which should at least have provided the journalist with a 
 budget of news. A sign of L'Estrange's waking up in this 
 direction is his application to Pepys for shipping news in 
 1664, which, records Mr Pepys, * I shall, as I see cause, give 
 him '. Yet indeed the inadequacy of his war news was the 
 ostensible cause of his being superseded. Whilst it was a 
 matter of relating the indecencies of the sects at Norwich, 
 Newbury, or Dover, the treasons of itinerant ministers in 
 their compulsory ' rustic wanderings ' due to the Five-Mile 
 Act, the Newsbooh is a good annalist, and describes in 
 caustic and vengeful style the effects of the Bishops' policy. 
 But when all eyes are turned to a matter of national impor- 
 tance, the Dutch War, the book sadly proves the parochial 
 mind of its editor. If there was one duty of a gazeteer in 
 those days, it was to blazon forth the heroic virtues and 
 victories of Princes, even at the expense of a little truth. 
 L'Estrange neglected this duty and omitted altogether that 
 encounter with Opdam in which the Duke of York is said 
 to have signalised his courage, while he, perhaps unwisely, 
 * did justice to Lord Sandwich ' when the public credited the 
 
 1 Mr Williams {Eng. Journalism, pp. 86-8) says that the Newsbook was still 
 aucillary to the Letter of News. But this view is surely an exaggeration due to 
 the fact that the Newsletter was undoubtedly the older form. In 1663 the 
 circulation of the Booh must have been vastly more than that of the Newsletter, 
 but the latter, owing to the Restoration restraint, gained tremendously down to 
 the Revolutit)n. See Observator, i., 259. 
 
 ' Trimmer : For your common Newsletters, they are scarce sooner read than 
 forgotten. 
 
 * Ohservator : Do not you know then that there are hundreds and hundreds of 
 sets of 'em (the baser sort) fairly bound up, posted and preserved in a condition 
 to be delivered over to Posterity, and that in time to come these Collections will 
 be lookt upon with the same reverence as we ourselTos pay at this day to the 
 most authentique Manuscripts of former times '. 
 
148 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 Duke with all the merit of the action, though the latter was 
 magnanimous enough to divide his laurels with the Earl ^. 
 
 It is true that L'Estrange, on the 8th and 10th June, 
 hurried into print Two Narratives of the Signal Victory of the 
 Duke of York over the Butch^, But the Newsbook itself 
 should have been vocal on such an occasion. 
 
 The Plague might have given L'Estrange an opportunity 
 for retrieving some part of his credit, and indeed he showed 
 considerable activity and courage, staying in London during 
 the whole period when the Court and Williamson removed 
 to Oxford, the latter leaving Muddiman to look after his 
 papers. Without a single break the Newshook continued 
 through that disastrous epidemic, and was turned into a kind 
 of bureau of information, and a means of publishing the orders 
 and hygienic advice of the City Fathers to the stricken city. 
 There was a reason for this activity. From a hint in the Neivs 
 of 15th July we gather that this visitation of Nature was 
 being used by the ill-disposed and seditious ' to lay the stress 
 on the wrong place, and to cut off all communication and 
 correspondence with the City ', for the prevention of which 
 L'Estrange is ordered to give regular accounts of the ravages 
 of the disease ; hence some rather useful Bills of Mortality 
 which should be quoted in any account of the Plague. 
 
 What form those sinister attempts referred to took, it is 
 difficult to say, beyond that we know that many of the 
 clergy fled and left the city pulpits to the Conventiclers 
 who boldly continued to minister to the people, and incident- 
 ally to ascribe in their veiled language the terrible visitation 
 to the hand of God, or the blood of the regicides^. As 
 
 1 The danger of praising any one but the Duke is noted by Clarendon {Gontinua- 
 tion, iii., 580). S. P. Bom. Car., ii., 124 (25).— 'All were dissatisfied with his 
 relation of it. There was no account of the Duke of York's singular encounter 
 with Opdam. Prince Kupert was not even mentioned '. There is a letter of Lady 
 Fanshawe's to her husband (Reports Commissioners, 39 (227), 18th January (28), 
 1666) ' Nor must I likewise forget that your friend Mr La Strange hath among his 
 news put in a letter from Madrid highly in thy commendations and his own sense 
 thereupon higher, for which I do not doubt but he will have a good reprimand '. 
 On 15th April 1664, his printer referred to the Duke as 'His Holiness', a 
 particularly unfortunate error. 
 
 2 Of the same size, type, and paper as the Ne.K'sbook. 
 
 3 Baxter, Life, iii., 2. ' Wlien the Plague grew hot, most of the conformable 
 ministers fled '. The silenced ' ministers more openly and laboriously preach the 
 gospel '. ^ee in this connection Zachary Crof ton's Defence from the Fear of Death 
 written in prison 1662, and published in the year of the Plague. He speaks of 
 meeting hordes of London ministers in his ' rustic wanderings ' (he could not come 
 near London of course) who had deserted their places, and praises the brave Non- 
 comfoi^raist ministers who stayed. See also the catalogue of a Collection of Broad- 
 sides, by R. Lemon (1866), Charles II., p. 131, No. 566— 'A Pulpit to Let'. Dr 
 Stoughton {Kist. of Religioti in England, 1901, iii., 355) has described the state of 
 the City churches during these months. 
 
PRESS LEGISLATION AND THE NEWSBOOK 149 
 
 London had recently been the scene of numerous ejectments 
 and conventicle-raids, in which the rabble heartily joined, it 
 is easy to perceive where these preachments tended, and how 
 even the suspicions that a renewed attempt on the city was 
 contemplated when all its guardians were withdrawn might 
 be entertained ^ 
 
 Already, despite the doubling of the paper without 
 raising the price on the outbreak of the war (27th April) 
 — which was simply bringing it back to the old sixteen page 
 size — public dissatisfaction with the News had grown so 
 great that the Government had made certain overtures to 
 Marchmont Nedham, who by this time— he had, it will be 
 remembered, returned at the Eestoration to his old healing 
 art — had made public his easy repentance. That other 
 journalist, Muddiman, was still attending to "Williamson's 
 affairs in London, when the Nedham overtures having failed, 
 a more determined effort was to be made to oust the 
 Surveyor. To this end Muddiman's excellent and wide 
 correspondence was an object of desire on the part of 
 Williamson, and whilst we need not enter into the sordid 
 intrigue which has been already so well described 2, in 
 which James Hickes of the Post Office was employed 
 to steal the correspondence, it is sufficient to say that 
 the scheme was successful, and that the outraged Muddiman, 
 as a solace, was employed for a while to edit the paper 
 produced at Oxford to beguile the tedium of the exiled 
 Court. This was the famous Oxford Gazet, that under 
 the name of the London Gazet is the most ancient of 
 our modern journals, and still retains more of the jejune 
 character of the original than the Eoman type of the 
 title. The author alluded to says that *its size and 
 shape — that of the sheets of written news — shows it 
 was actually intended to be ancillary to the Letters of 
 Intelligence, and it represents the lowest state of degrada- 
 tion of the party press. It was an open recognition of the 
 fact that it was no longer possible to print news freely. The 
 "general applause" with which it was received, speaks 
 
 1 Ballard MSS., vol. xxxii., No. 52. Wm. Bishop to Dr Charlett, 1717-18. 
 * After the Restoration, when we had a war with the Dutch, it was discovered that 
 most of the Dissenters held a correspondence with the Dutch in order for erecting 
 here a Commonwealth which was one if not the chief reason for making the Corpora- 
 tion Act, as was fully made appear then, especially, if I mistake not, by Sir Roger 
 L'Estrange '. Dr Stoughton notes {op. cit , iii., 349) that Aphra Behn was employed 
 at Antwerp to spy on these correspondents, O.S.P.D., 1666-7, xxvii. 
 
 2 Article, April 1908, in Eng. Hist. Rev., by Mr J. B. Williams. 
 
150 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 eloquently of the condemnation of L'Estrange by the 
 public ' 1. 
 
 Yet there seems little to warrant the burst of applause 
 beyond the fact that a rigorous and tyrannical monopoly 
 in unpopular hands was invaded by high official persons. 
 The Gazet was to be almost the sole journal till the Popish 
 Plot, and those students who look to the newspapers of the 
 period for historical matter and colour, will look in vain for 
 such material in these dozen years of the Gazet monopoly. 
 
 But with the terror of that crisis, and the appearance of 
 bold Whig journals, the Gazet for a while became a valuable 
 repository of proclamations, trials, and discoveries. There- 
 after with the suppression of the Whig journals it relapses 
 into the official, but useful, dry - as - dust of its original 
 conception. 
 
 Apart from the failure of L'Estrange to do justice to the 
 Dutch War, and apart from the malice and greed of his 
 enemies, the character of the Gazet gives us a clue to the 
 reasons for his supersession. The question of advertisements 
 was a keen one. In the old Mercurius Politicus Nedham 
 eked out his forty shillings per pamphlet allowance from 
 Scot, by a fair number of half-crown advertisements and 
 Muddiman had not scorned the same source. We perceive 
 that L'Estrange more and more admits this lucrative element, 
 even before he restores the book to its original dimensions. 
 It was complained that he used it solely for his profit. 
 Williamson took the purist view that an official journal 
 was not a place for advertisements. The Oxford Gazet 
 studiously rejected them, and from later notices which 
 appeared concurrently in the Gazet and the spasmodic 
 Current Intelligence'^, we note how strong the distaste was. 
 
 1 Eng. Hist. Rev., p. 267. S. P. Dom. Car., ii., 137 (24) and 137 (99), 25th 
 November, Sir G, Downing to Williamson. — 'The Gazette gains great repxitation, 
 and being in so small a volume, can be sent anywhere'. &ee Introduction to vol. 
 1665-6 of the Ccdendar of State Papers, pp. 4-6. 
 
 2 Gazet, 14th June, 1666, an advertisement: — 'Being daily presst to Republica- 
 tion of books, medicines and other things, not properly the business of a paper of 
 Intelligence. This is to notify once for all that we will not charge the Oazet 
 with advertisements unless they he matters of State ; but that a paper of advertise- 
 ments, will be forthwith printed apart, and recommended to the public by another 
 hand'. 
 
 The advertisement is almost identical in Current Intelligence 18th June, which 
 proves that it also emanated from the Secretary's office, where the Newshook, 
 much to Williamson's chagrin, rested. The paper of advertisements referred to 
 made its appearance in the spring of 1668. It is the Mercury, or Advertisements 
 Concerning Trade. On 4th November 1675 Tl^e City Mercury appeared licensed 
 
PRESS LEGISLATION AND THE NEWSBOOK 151 
 
 The feeling that L'Estrange had vulgarised the book, been 
 too personal and harped too long and too exclusively on 
 the seditious libels topic, and been too averse from the 
 dull and proper reserve of a state organ, was also there. 
 
 It is not to be supposed that the author of the Caveat 
 suffered this relapse gladly. The State Papers preserve 
 several indignant and despairing protests to Arlington. 
 He refused to have anything to do with the perfidious 
 Williamson. 
 
 On 15th October 1665, the latter wrote to L'Estrange 
 a letter which points to the feuds and envies of the 
 journalists. 
 
 * Oxford. 
 
 *I am sorry the distance in which we are from you 
 deprives me of the occasion of helping you in your com- 
 posing of the public news, as would be better for His 
 Majesty's service and your own reputation. I have often 
 advised you to agree with Mr Muddiman in this matter, 
 who having had the good luck and opportunity of falling 
 into the channel of those things, would have been very 
 useful to you, and in despair of seeing this effected in 
 the future, I take the freedom to propose to you that if 
 you will relinquish to us the whole right in the composing 
 and profit of the Newsbook, I will procure for you in recom- 
 pense of it a salary from his Majesty of £100 per annum. 
 
 * If I tax it too low you must blame yourself for having 
 told me several times that the duty of it is very burdensome 
 to you and the profit inconsiderable. I pray you let me 
 have your answer to this by the post and to assure yourself 
 in the (certainty that his betrayer has his best good at heart 
 and that " even this proposal proceeds from that root ") ' ^ 
 
 Eoger had probably himself to blame for his prevarica- 
 tion over the profits of the book, which he was now anxious 
 to magnify. Years after he again declared that he made 
 very little out of it, but in saying this he meant to set down 
 to the debit account his whole expenses as surveyor. In his 
 
 and possibly edited by L'Estrange, who may also have been the 'other hand ' of 
 the above advertisement. The delay in the appearance of the promised Papers of 
 Advertisement was due to Roger L'Estrange, who stopped them by virtue of his 
 patent and (25th June 1666) issued Puhlicic A dvertisements—im. immediate failure. 
 1 S. P. Dom. Car,, ii., 134 (103), quoted O.S.P.D. (1665-6), p. 15. 
 
152 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 reply two days later to Arlington, not to the insufferable 
 Williamson, he unblushingly screwed up the profits as high 
 as he had formerly depreciated them. 
 
 L Estrange to Arlington. 
 
 'London, Vlth Oct., 1665. 
 
 ' My Lord, — I have passed many a thought upon your 
 Lordship's of the 15th inst., which I had the honour to 
 receive yesterday, wherein upon the whole matter, I find 
 only first an abundant instance of your exceeding generosity 
 and goodness, which I shall ever acknowledge with an 
 eternal submission and respect. 
 
 ' Your Lordship is pleased to charge me with some mis- 
 carriages^ in the Public Intelligencer since I was out of 
 distance of your express discretion, wherein I dare not 
 justify myself, although upon a strict reflection, I cannot 
 pitch upon the particulars, but I hope the service I have 
 done his Majesty otherwise during the time of Liberty and 
 Contagion, the hazards I have undergone on that account, 
 may weigh down those failings. As to Mr Muddiman, 1 
 did once make use of him, and found him very short of 
 intelligence, but it was during Mr Williamson's sickness 
 and that perchance might be the reason of it. Now if 
 Mr Williamson could be pleased to engage him to deal more 
 openly with me, I should take the same agreement over 
 again for an obligation, and immediately set the whole 
 again in motion. 
 
 ' Touching your Lordship's proposal of relinquishing my 
 right in the Newsbooh upon a consideration expressed, it is 
 certain that both in gratitude and justice your power over 
 me is without limit, but then let me offer withal that it 
 would utterly ruin me, the books being now improved to 
 about £400 a year, for I did ill explain myself if I was 
 understood to complain of the Newsbooh : for my trouble was 
 
 1 The Government's anxiety to have the Duke's fame in the victory of the 
 3rd of June trumpeted in the City ' to avoid miss - reports ', is shown in 
 Arlington's letter to the Lord Mayor, 5th June {C.H.P.I). (1664-5), p. 108), 
 in which he does not mention Sandwich. Bee also Pepys under date 14th 
 June, 1665 : — * I met with Mr Cowley who observed to me how he finds everybody 
 silent in the praise of my Lord Sandwich to set up the Duke and the Prince. . . . 
 This day the Newsbook (upon Mr Moore's showing L'Estrange Capt. Ferrer's letter) 
 did do my Lord Sandwich great right as to the late victory '. 
 
PRESS LEGISLATION AND THE NEWSBOOK 153 
 
 the excessive charge of entertainiDg spies and instruments 
 for the ... of the paper which cost me about £500 out of my 
 pocket the first year, and if your Lordship had not most 
 charitably promised me £200 from his Majesty for my 
 supply I had found a greater obstination in the work. 
 
 * I shall give you, my Lord, no further trouble at present 
 than to present your Lordship with the wishes of all 
 imaginable comforts. — Your most obliged and ever obedient 
 servant. 
 
 ' EOGER L'ESTRANGE ' \ 
 
 Two more frantic letters to Arlington were despatched 
 by the threatened Surveyor before a final appeal — and a 
 successful one — was made to the King. On 19th October'^ 
 the writer again reminded the Secretary of his thirty years' 
 devotion, and his undoubted service during the Plague 
 which had invaded his family, and had laid low eighty 
 members of the trade with which he dealt. 
 
 When he spoke lightly of the profits of the Newsbooh, he 
 was reckoning the great initial drain on his purse — of which 
 he had informed Arlington at the time, and for which he 
 received assurance of security — of organising a system of 
 espionage in the Press, planting correspondence and establish- 
 ing himself in a large house with servants, etc. All which 
 must now fall and himself be * marked out for beggary and 
 infamy *. In the last resort (21st October) ^ he again recurs 
 to the prospect of employing Muddiman at the old price, £3 
 a week. 
 
 But the resolution was already taken and measures pro- 
 jected for the new Gazet. The naming of this journal was a 
 matter of difficult choice. Newcombe, one of the old 
 Commonwealth printers lately railed against by L'Estrange, 
 was engaged to print the London edition, and all that 
 remained to be done was to get Roger's book prohibited and 
 the free postage he had enjoyed at the good instances of 
 Countess Chesterfield — despite Sir Philip Frowde's hostility 
 during the Plague — revoked, while any other obstacles which 
 Arlington's lately obtained mastership of the Post Office 
 might suggest, were to be used for the purpose. 
 
 Thus by a combination of enemies within the camp he 
 
 1 S. p. Dom. Gar., ii., 134 (11). 2 md., a 135 (g), 
 
 3 C.S.P.D. (1665-6), p. 22. 
 
164 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 espoused, and irrespective of the great malice he had caused 
 outside \ by means which were highly discreditable to all 
 concerned, L'Estrange saw himself undermined and forsaken, 
 his boasted patent waste paper, and his livelihood slipping 
 from him. The Gazet appeared at Oxford, 16th November 
 1665, and was quickly re-issued by Newcombe in London. 
 The 'general applause' which greeted it — much of it 
 manufactured no doubt ^ — urged him on to even more 
 frantic and vain efforts of competition. The number 
 (28th November), in which L'Estrange imitated the Gazet in 
 size and style, displays both his despair and the conscious- 
 ness of the triumph of the new journalism. 
 
 Then at last he made that appeal to the King already 
 alluded to, and obtained a settlement which, had it been 
 carried out faithfully, might be regarded as generous, and 
 which at any rate stole away Williamson's spoils. Roger 
 was guaranteed £200 -"^ from the secret service money, to be 
 paid annually by Arlington. Even if his estimate of an 
 increase of revenue from the Newsbook from £200 in 1663, 
 to £400 or £500 in 1665, were true, a pension of £300 a year 
 was compensation enough. But for the loss of prestige there 
 could be no remedy. The only source of comfort was that 
 the Newsbook ' was taken into the secretary's office ', which 
 may have meant that Williamson failed to get the profits 
 arising from it *, though since we know from James Hickes 
 that the single-sheet Gazet far outdid the old Newsbook in 
 profits ^, the £100 burden on it to L'Estrange would not be 
 a very serious handicap. 
 
 While it may well be said that the Gazet ' represents the 
 lowest state of degradation of the party press ^ ' (though why 
 * party ' seeing that it checked every manifestation of the party 
 conflict) ' it is probably an exaggeration to say that it became 
 ancillary to the Letters of Intelligence '. Such is the pre- 
 eminence of printed matter over manuscript that we have 
 preserved for us several copies of the Gazet for these years, 
 
 1 The quality of his employment was ' to tease and persecute the whole 
 rabble of the faction which I have done to such a degree that I have drawn upon 
 my head all the malice imaginable'. S. P. Bom. Car., ii., 135 (8) 19th October, 
 1665, Roger L'Estrange to Arlington. 
 
 '•J Pepys— who had said of L'Estrange's first attempts : ' He makes but a simple 
 beginning '—under date 22nd November 1665. ' This day the Oxford Gazet came 
 out, which is pretty full of news and no folly in it.' 
 
 3 He makes it £250 in his begging letter to Jenkins, 1684. Sec chap. xi. 
 
 4 Orvionde MSS., N.S., iii., 351-2. 
 ^ Page 145, note. 
 
PRESS LEGISLATION AND THE NEWSBOOK 155 
 
 but only stray volumes of the written news ^, from which we 
 are still able to judge its superior, more intimate and 
 gossipy character, and to see why by the richer part of the 
 community — or even the less wealthy, by subscription — it 
 might be preferred. But though one newsletter generally 
 served a whole country-side, the expense — about £5 a year 
 — must have restricted the recipients of Muddiman's letters 
 in the country, whilst City readers would scarcely trouble to 
 pay heavily for what they could read comfortably and with 
 social and caustic comment of boon fellows at the tavern and 
 coffee-rooms, the keepers of which sometimes wrote the 
 letters themselves 2. 
 
 The Gazet gave the news of Paris, Stockholm, The 
 Hague, Edinburgh, Dublin, Vienna, etc., though without any 
 attempt at order. A feature of Current Intdligence was its 
 division of Foreign news under such heads as Germany, 
 Netherlands, etc. 
 
 We have seen that L'Estrange's book was of some public 
 utility during the Plague in conveying the Magistrate's 
 orders, advertising nostrums, and acting as a sober chronicler 
 of the ravages of the disease. After the Eire the Gazet 
 continued the useful precedent by turning itself into a 
 bureau of information, and it is pleasing to find that 
 L'Estrange worked hand in hand with the new editor in 
 this particular. The immense havoc of the fire, which 
 demolished half the trading rendezvous of the City, caused 
 merchants to seek new places of business. Newcombe of 
 the Gazet, for example, had been burned out, and had 
 removed temporarily to the outskirts of the City, and for 
 a time trade was chaotic. To mitigate the confusion people 
 were invited to go to L'Estrange with their new business 
 addresses, which he was to see inserted in the Gazet, 
 
 1 There are preserved at Longleat fourteen volumes of Muddiman's Letters of 
 News, 29th April 1667 to 12th October 1689. L'Estrange's expectation in this 
 matter {see note, p. 147) has been only partially justified. 
 
 2 For some information on the later history of the Newsletter^ see chap. xi. 
 <Ste also Mr Stanley Weyman's Shrewsbury for a not too fanciful picture of a London 
 Neiosletter writer. But Mr J. B. Williams' article on Neiosletters at the Restora- 
 tion {Eng. Hist. Rev., April 1908) is by far the best account we have of this 
 interesting form of literary activity. It is not difficult to see why the successors 
 of the loyal Muddiman should have been Whiggish. The Newsletter naturally 
 tends — as L'Estrange clearly saw — to sedition. See Macaulay's remarks on its 
 use in India. Hist, of Eng., chap. iii. See also Introduction to Lady Newdigate- 
 Newdegate's Cavalier and Puritan, p. riii.-ix., xii. — Sir R. Newdigate's Diary 
 
 * Read a Neiosletter from Muddiman, whose news I intend to have for one quarter 
 for which he is to have £1, 5s. '. 
 
166 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 In one respect, L'Estrange had been an indulgent 
 employer. The perfidious Hickes on more than one 
 occasion when the Gazet was underway, had the grace to 
 recall L'Estrange's generosity in a direction, where it 
 was good business to be generous. The Mercury- women 
 received from him 5s. a quarter and a monthly bundle of 
 books, whilst Muddiman in the brief interval when he 
 wrote the new Gazet for Williamson gave them 20s. each 
 (surely not quarterly) 'invited them all to Hornsey to 
 dinner and provided them with coaches to take them there 
 and back'^. 
 
 The parsimonious Newcombe who now looks after both 
 the printing and sorting out of news for Charles Perrot the 
 new editor, divides 10s. among them at quarter day. Hence 
 some creditable indignation on Hickes' part. 
 
 How many of these women there were we do not know. 
 Dunton seems to have had only one for his Athenian Mercury, 
 but then Old Bennett was a specially good one. 
 
 In a letter addressed to Williamson dated 12th October, 
 1666, when the City lay in ruins, there is some informa- 
 tion of one woman still going for the paper to Newcombe's 
 Press (now removed 'afar off' from the old Thames Street 
 shop). 'She is a great painstaker. The Fire has burned 
 her goods, and she has no clothes but those on her back ' 2. 
 
 The Gazet is the State conception of a newspaper, and 
 L'Estrange's idea expressed in his first number logically 
 carried out, no editorial disquisition however loyal, no 
 advertisements except by way of Proclamation or Public 
 use, and in Pepys' words ' no folly in it '. In L'Estrange's 
 attempt, though a failure, we see an effort to revive the 
 editorial which had flourished in the days of Mercurius 
 Politicus in a series of excellent essays chiefly on the ideal 
 Free State in which (c. 1650-2) Milton may have had a hand. 
 With his advertisements and disquisition L'Estrange was 
 nearer the line of modern journalism, but he was deficient 
 in the main point of a newspaper — news. 
 
 1 C.S.P.D. (1666-7), p. 21. 
 
 2 Ibid., pp. 193-4. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 (1666-70) 
 STATE OF THE FEINTING HOUSES 
 
 The months between August 166S and the outbreak of the 
 Dutch War represent a period of phenomenal activity against 
 the libellous Press. There had been two distinct growths 
 of libels — the earlier a recrudescence or continuation of 
 Republican feeling brought to a height by the trials and 
 executions of the regicides, and the later, a protest against 
 the Government's surrender to the persecuting majority in 
 the Commons and in the Church. The first is broadly 
 Republican and anabaptist (to use a term which carries all 
 the odium of dissent), the second Presbyterian in character. 
 The strained relations with Holland towards the close of 
 1664 were responsible for a crop of libels and lampoons 
 fresh from Amsterdam and The Hague. The * Contagion' 
 and the Fire naturally gave a slight pause to this form of 
 activity, though as we saw these calamities became the 
 seed-bed of fresh annoyance. For the forces of dissent 
 had been more hardy than those of the Church and had 
 seized the deserted pulpits at a time when they could 
 scarcely be forbidden^. 
 
 After the Plague, the Church was faced with the task 
 of once more clearing London of a dissent which had fair 
 claims on the gratitude or admiration of the people. The 
 Fire wrought tremendous havoc among the bookselling 
 and printing fraternity, and whilst ruining many decent 
 men subjected all to the renewed temptations of the secret 
 
 1 Chap, v., 148. Baxter {Life^ iii., 2) notes that *to this day the freedom of 
 preaching which this occasioned cannot by the daily guards of soldiers nor by 
 the imprisonment of multitudes be restrained '. 
 
 157 
 
158 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 Press and highly priced seditious wares ^. The Surveyor's 
 disgrace in the matter of the Neiushooh paralysed his activities 
 for a while, when wounded vanity would not permit him 
 to pursue the good of a Government which could treat 
 him so meanly 2. 
 
 That Government was discredited in every branch of 
 policy. During the Plague the Court had abandoned London 
 and left only inferior agents like Muddiman ^ and L'Estrange 
 to keep down the lawless and seditious elements in the City. 
 When the Dutch sailed up the Thames, and when the City 
 was in flames, there were sinister rumours of the levity of 
 the King and Court, which we know to be false, but which 
 suggested to the satirist the example of Nero in an age when 
 classical parallels were eagerly adopted. 
 
 But to none of these circumstances do we look for the 
 revival of the ferment of seditious writing which was in a 
 few years to bring England back to the brink of Civil War. 
 It was to Hubert's silly story of his fireballs and the Papist 
 Confederacy for the firing of London, that we trace the 
 beginning of that frenzy. 
 
 The Catholics since the Restoration had lain low, and, 
 despite their claim on the King, their cause had been for 
 the time abandoned by the Court with the failure of that 
 attempt which Baxter opposed in 1661 and Parliament 
 extinguished in 1663. But the dread of Catholic ambitions 
 still slumbered in Protestant minds, and nothing was needed 
 but the awful catastrophe of the Fire and the circulation 
 
 1 For some account of the pro-Dutch Kepublicans anno mirahili, see Introduc- 
 tion to O.S.P.B. (1665-6), pp. xxvii.-viii. As to the damage done to the booksellers 
 — Pepys {Diary, 2ud November 1666) deplores the ill fortune of ' my poor Kiston 
 who is utterly undone and made £2 or £3,000 worse than nothing from being 
 worth £7 or £8,000 '. The estimate of the Stationers' losses given by Pepys as 
 £150,000 is corroborated from several sources. Clarendon sets it as high as 
 £200,000 [Continuation, i., 347). Delaune {Present State of London (1681), p. 457 
 (published by G. Larkins, Duntons Glowworm, but a glowworm of dissent and 
 sedition) imputing the Fire to the Papists and quoting Bedloe's narrative, 1679, 
 p\its it at the same sum. See also Clarke {Wood, Life and Times, ii., 86-7) 
 ' that book which was worth 9d. sticht they sold afterwards for Is.' (under 20th 
 March 1666-7). Stoughton, op. cit., iii., 327. 
 
 2 At the same time he was harrassed by a Parliamentary enquiry (Committee 
 of Commons, 17th October 1666) as to whether there was ' any illegal patent or 
 any abuse in the Licensing or Stopping the Lawful Printing of Books '. He tells 
 us several years after that he was acquitted. See Ohservator, i., 289, and Pro- 
 ceedings of Lords Libel's Committee, 6th April 1677 {H.M.C., Appendix to 9th 
 Rept., pi. ii., 79 et seq.). 'He offered a vote of a Committee of the House of 
 Commons for Printing, etc., in 1666, whereby he was freed of a charge of this 
 nature that the Printers had against him then '. 
 
 - Acting as Williamson's deputy. S. P. Dam. Car., ii., 132 (28), 129 (44). 
 
STATE OF THE PRINTING HOUSES 159 
 
 of Hubert's confession to revive all the terrors of the 
 massacre of St Bartholomew. 
 
 The importance of this circumstance from the dissenting 
 libeller's standpoint was very great. It was recalled that 
 when a Catholic Toleration was proposed at the meeting 
 prior to the Savoy Conference, it was not the Bishops 
 but Baxter who dared oppose what all knew to be the 
 King's wishes. The Bishops had undoubtedly behaved in 
 a persecuting and ' Koman ' spirit. Their informers, remind- 
 ing men of the emissaries of the Inquisition, were every- 
 where. They had adopted methods of extortion in regard 
 to the Church leases which had fallen in during the 
 Commonwealth, and set themselves up in an estate and 
 pride far beyond the golden time of Laud, and that at a 
 moment of declining trade. The multiplied offices of the 
 Church, regarded by enemies as merely a method of fleecing 
 the people, were set side by side with the austerity and 
 simplicity of the Puritan Government at the Church. 
 Innovations — or what was really the re-introduction of 
 Laudian forms — were regarded by many of the younger 
 generation as savouring of Eome^. 
 
 With the cry of Popery sounding in the people's ear 
 the Dissenters could now more boldly attack Eome through 
 the Church's sides, and under cover of abusing the former 
 strike both at Prince and Church. In the Church itself 
 there had scarcely yet arisen that band of eminent contro- 
 versialists who later entered the lists against Eome when 
 it became apparent that the Church was in real danger 
 from that quarter ; so that the first fruits of popular favour 
 in this connection were reaped by the enemies of the 
 Church, who found abundance to rail at in her trappings 
 and circumstance, with unfortunately a sufficient number 
 of very real cases of persecution in those ministers who, 
 like Bagshawe, Jenkins, and Davies, were destined to die 
 in a prison 2. 
 
 No one saw this more plainly than L'Estrange or 
 observed it with greater resentment. He had been brought 
 up in a district where Catholic families almost predominated. 
 He had borne arms with and been sheltered both at home 
 
 1 Clarendon, Contimiation, ii., 475. * From that time (the abortive Toleration 
 Bill, 1663) the King never treated any of them (bishops) with that respect as he 
 had done formerly . . . which easily encoui'aged others not only to mention their 
 Persons very negligently, but their Function and Religion itself '. 
 
 2 Stoughton, Hist, of Religion in England^ iii., 284-5. 
 
160 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 and in exile by Catholics. In all his anti-Presbyterian 
 pamphlets there is scarce a word against the Catholics, and 
 at a later date when the question of Toleration was again 
 mooted, he boldly avowed that if any Toleration was going, 
 it ought to be for the men who fought for Charles I., the 
 faithful adherents of an ancient Faith, King-and-Bishops — 
 men all, rather than for the Eepublican zealots of the 
 Commonwealth. And leaving out of account the people 
 of England, he was right. So far as the Court was con- 
 cerned, it was at any time far safer in these forty years 
 to court the Catholic rather than the Protestant dissenter. 
 
 In the Scottish Kising which presently alarmed the 
 Government, the accusation of one side, that it was contrived 
 by Papists in disguise, was used as an admission by the 
 other that the Presbyterian wherever found might be a 
 veiled Catholic, and that therefore persecution was politic. 
 If the Pope were at the bottom of the Pentland Rising, he 
 was also the first begetter of all Presbyterian intrigues, and 
 at the worst to identify the extreme forms of Presbytery 
 with the extreme ambitions of the Jesuits became the cue 
 for Court and Church writers of the L'Estrange stamp I 
 Meanwhile the spotted panther was to appear as the 
 peaceful mediator. 
 
 In another direction it was impossible to reply in kind 
 to the indecencies of the libellers. We are now enter- 
 ing on the great age of the lampoon and political satire. 
 Always a peculiarly attractive form of literature, the satire 
 naturally chooses for its victims persons of no obscure rank 
 or intelligence. 
 
 The amours of the King had long since become the 
 sport of the taverns", but it was not till Clarendon's fall 
 — which meant privately the triumph of the Countess 
 Castlemaine — that a loose was given to this scandalous 
 kind, in which courtiers and Parliament-men and rhyming 
 lawyers and divines joined with equal zest. From Holland 
 had come the scandalous harbingers of the new mode ^, and 
 it may be said that never was a monarch or Government 
 more foully bespattered, and that in many cases by the men 
 who owed everything to him, and could not be suspected of 
 
 1 A course protested against by Dr Glanvil among other Divines, See his 
 excellent Zealous and Impartial Protestant, 1682. 
 
 2 Clarendon, Continuation, iii., 676 and 814-16. 
 
 3 See the case of Oldenburg and JIattige, p. 196, 
 
STATE OF THE PRINTING HOUSES 161 
 
 seditious designs, and who as in the case of Denham and 
 Evelyn would have much resented the charge of disloyalty. 
 But the products of their light fancies infallibly found their 
 way to an evil companionship in the hawkers' bundles with 
 the worst essays in sedition. For this the King himself was 
 largely to blame. In the company of the class of States- 
 men who had displaced Clarendon he allowed Buckingham 
 to exercise his biting and indecent wit, and even permitted 
 his favourite to turn his shafts on himself. Absent from 
 the King, Buckingham and his imitators regaled companies 
 with these sharp pleasantries which could not fail to bring 
 the King and his Ministers into disrespect i. Clarendon 
 had indeed foreseen this, and one of the most sorrowful 
 passages of the Continuation deplores the license of wit 
 prevailing at the Court. It may be that Koger North copies 
 his own lament from this passage, for what Clarendon wrote 
 generally — except in the matter of the treatment of the 
 old Cavaliers — found a way into the loyal histories of the 
 next century. But all we know points in the same direction 
 and is only a continuation of the kind of Continental evil 
 described by Mr Airy. 
 
 But in a sense it was due to Clarendon that a party 
 of the Commons with their allies in the Upper House had 
 already entered on a powerful opposition to the Court under 
 which libels became almost constitutional. By truckling 
 to the Bishops even in opposition to Charles who seemed 
 lukewarm to the Church, Clarendon had advanced the 
 power of Parliament to a degree which suggested the 
 triumph of a hated principle — that of Ministerial 
 responsibility. 
 
 After the Dutch War, ministers coquetted with the 
 idea of an alliance with France, calculating on the popularity 
 of a course which might avenge the Dutch triumph. But 
 in truth the nation was very cold to it, for fear of the Dutch 
 had given way to a fear and dislike of France. This — taken 
 together with the delay in the disbandment of the army, 
 and his reported hostility to the old Cavaliers ^ — was fatal to 
 
 1 See Ranke, History of England^ iii., 480. 
 
 2 Which he shared with Coventry, Pepys — 2nd June 1663 — almost the date 
 of L'Estrange's Considerations, etc. — notes Coventry's answers in Parliament to the 
 charge that ' Cavaliers were not employed '. It is interesting to notice how the 
 t^yo topics were intermingled, some proposing to keep down the Millenaries, etfc., 
 with a standing army composed of ' the poorer Cavaliers who are much oppressed 
 and would be glad of Oliver's Law, forbidding arrests on Sundays '. C,S»P.D. 
 (1664-5), p. 78. 
 
162 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 Clarendon, and in consenting to his disgrace, Charles chose 
 also the path of personal convenience. But if he thought 
 that Clarendon's political head would appease or disband 
 the new Parliamentary opposition, he was much mistaken. 
 This Parliament of 1667 has been compared by Ranke 
 to the Short Parliament, and the parallel is so far good 
 that it certainly marks in the Press a new crop of libels 
 of a far more dangerous type — because voicing a consider- 
 able section of Parliamentary and even Court opinion. 
 
 The Government which succeeded Clarendon desired to 
 reverse or mitigate his Church policy, and again as in 1661 
 there were comings and goings between Ministers and 
 prominent Nonconformists like Baxter and Manton, in 
 which the Church leaders were scarcely consulted. Accom- 
 modation and indulgences were in the air, and it was 
 hoped that Parliamentary zeal for the persecuting Church 
 had been much modified by the course of eventSc The 
 release in 1668 of many old Cromwellians and insurgent 
 Dissenters was an earnest of the Government's intention, 
 and was passed over by the Parliament which had framed 
 the persecuting statutes with scarce a murmur. The Act 
 of Uniformity had almost fallen into desuetude^ and the 
 momentary movement against the Church even took the 
 form of the suggestion in several pamphlets that the Church 
 lands should be used to pay the King's debts. But even 
 this slight movement towards Presbytery created a revival 
 of the Clarendon Church feeling on the one hand, while on 
 the other tumults once more took place round the Palace 
 and people began to talk of the good old days of Oliver ^. 
 
 It was in these circumstances that Charles turned away 
 from his brief tenderness to the Dissenter and embraced 
 the fatal French policy, which required the support of 
 the alarmed Church Party and culminating in the Treaty 
 of Dover aroused even the Divines of the Church to engage 
 in that great duel with Rome which Burnet has described. 
 
 1 C.S.P.D. (1667-8), p. 165. 'The King is so offended with Bishops, that he 
 resolves on a Toleration. Conventicles multiply and grow bolder '. See also an 
 MS. note on Proc. of 10th March 1667, ' against unlawful meetings of Papists and 
 Nonconformists ' (Bod. B. 14, 15 Line), 'The Presbyterians having used all their 
 endea-v'ours both in Court and Parlt. for a Toleration from 10th October 1667 till 
 February following and (the King and Court favouring it) . . . had their 
 frequent Conventicles both in the City and all countries '. 
 
 ^ See Slingsby Bethel's World's Mistake in Oliver Cromwell (Somer's Tracts, vi., 
 477) for a proof that this feeling existed. Slingsby is Shimei in AU. and 
 Achitophel, 
 
STATE OF THE PRINTING HOUSES 163 
 
 Thus it was that the ninth session of the Long Parliament 
 was marked by another orgy of anti-sectarian feeling, in 
 which the Bishops descanted on the contempt into which 
 both the Clergy and the Laws had fallen, the case of 
 London being cited where dissent — never purged since the 
 Plague — openly reared its head, whilst over the country 
 generally derision and menace were the daily portion of 
 the Clergy ^ 
 
 The tenth session (1670) saw a delusive concord between 
 the King and Parliament and Church on the basis of the 
 severe Conventicle Act which made any meetings of 
 Dissenters whatsoever illegal, and imposed punishments on 
 officials whether magistrates or constables who neglected 
 to put the Act in force. Informers were promised a rich 
 harvest and the Dissenters prepared for a sharp renewal 
 of their troubles 2. 
 
 Had the King kept the terms of this concordat and 
 had he not been already committed to the French Alliance, 
 the gaols might have overflowed with the Church's victims, 
 for twenty years yet, and himself died still popular. But 
 every movement towards France or Kome was a signal 
 for weakening of this harmony and a corresponding relief 
 to Dissenters^. Persecution could only be maintained on 
 a Protestant basis. No sooner were suspicions of the 
 French policy articulate than responsible men on both sides 
 began to ask if this were a time to worry English 
 Protestants when the Catholic enemy was at the gate. And 
 it was this cry which was destined to grow in volume until 
 it mingled with the huzzas of the mob over the mock 
 burning of Popes and Tantivies in Smithfield, and till 
 Parliament itself voted in January 1681 that persecution of 
 Dissenters was treasonous. 
 
 1 C.S.P.D. (1667-8), pp. 243 and 546. Candidly confessed and excused in 
 Eachard's remarkable Grounds and Occasions of the Contempt of the Clergy 
 addressed to R. L('Estrange ?) 1670. 
 
 2 See for example the trials of Penn and Mead in this year for some instructive 
 side lights on the methods of Persecution, State Trials, vol. vi. In some respects 
 the new Act (22 Car., ii., c. i.) was more lenient than the old Conventicle Act. 
 The penalties were reduced and imprisonment for attending conventicles was 
 abolished. The third part of the fine given to informers and the powers of entry 
 given to officers were its most oppressive features. Stoughton, op cit., iii., 387-8. 
 
 '■^ As Ranke has compared the situation in 1667 to that in 1641, we may 
 compare that of 1670 to 1680-1. Then as now the Dissenters ran the Popish scare 
 to death getting in shrewd hits at the Church en passant, which aroused the 
 Church to an alliance with the Crown and a new persecution. James II. 'a 
 decisive step to Rome once more shattered the alliance and saved dissent. The 
 Proclamation commanding Justices to put the Act in force is dated 16th July 
 1669, C.S.P.D. (1668-9), p. 412. 
 
164 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 This brief summary may serve to illustrate the new 
 conduct of the Press, of which the most observable feature 
 already noticed is that the volume of libel is swollen by 
 names which in no sense deserve the stigma of fanaticism. 
 Mean and fanatic writers still continue, but the anti- 
 government (and therefore libellous) ranks are reinforced 
 by names which have their honoured place in literature. 
 Another feature is the outburst of Catholic apologies which 
 were the sure and natural effect of the absurd imputation 
 of the firing of London \ This was the body of ' sedition ' 
 which the Stationers loved best to prosecute, but the 
 Surveyor did little here, and therein earned the reputation 
 of being secretly a favourer of their cause, besides that he 
 licensed some of their milder books. 
 
 Yet another class appeared which treated of the decay 
 of trade, but in part was really designed to commend the 
 freedom enjoyed by the sects in Holland, or to inveigh 
 against the intolerable pride of France, In any case both 
 classes were libels, in the sense that they were covert 
 attacks on the Government by suggesting that the former 
 days were better than these, though several seem to have 
 had the approval of Charles who was never whole-hearted 
 in the persecution policy. 
 
 A dangerous feature of another set was a license in 
 urging the legal aspect of certain laws — as the recent 
 Conventicle Act — as being contrary to Magna Charta and 
 the Constitution 2. It was not long ere a new type of 
 pamphlet urged (precisely as in 1659 against the Eump) 
 that the present Parliament had no validity, its mandate 
 — to use a modern term — having long since expired. 
 
 These new tendencies gathered enormous force. When 
 small coalmen and coffee-house men began to argue the 
 legal niceties of the case, and to lay down the fundamentals 
 of the Constitution, a new stage in the history of the libel 
 is reached. 
 
 Lastly the perpetual pamphlet warfare with the Papists 
 
 1 The Firing of London became the favourite scandal to object against any 
 unpopular person. The Duke of York, Danby, and needless to say Roger 
 L'Estrange were a few of the persons who set the fire ablaze in 1666. C.S.P.D. 
 (1666-7), p. 214 : ' At Moorfields the King, Duke of York, and Nobles came to see 
 Charles I. revenged '. 
 
 2 See A Feio Sober Queries upon the late Proclamation (C.S.P.D. (1668-9), p. 140), 
 the pamphlet for which L'Estrange made 'diligent inquiries'. G.S.P.D. 
 (1660-70), p. 227. 
 
STATE OF THE PRINTING HOUSES 165 
 
 entered on a peculiarly offensive stage by the appearance of 
 all the lying wonders and obscenities in nature to bring the 
 Catholics under a veritable dung-heap of odium. 
 
 It is time to ask what the Surveyor was doing all this 
 while. For though no one would expect the Stationers of 
 themselves to cleanse their trade, it was remembered that in 
 1663-5 when it had been as foul, L'Estrange effectually 
 cleared it. But his activities now depended directly 
 on pay, and he was no longer willing as in 1661-3 to 
 perform his arduous duties as Honorary Surveyor of the 
 Presses. 
 
 Mr Williams says that while Lord Arlington remained 
 Secretary, L'Estrange's pension or allowance for the News- 
 hook as arranged by the King was faithfully paid^. This, 
 however, is not the case. In a letter to the King, dated 
 29th October 1670, he complains that shortly after the 
 Plague his allowance was stopped, and that as a result the 
 Press which he had perfectly cleansed became very foul. 
 In January and October 1667 he received something, but 
 so irregular were the payments that his services as 
 Surveyor may be said to be in abeyance from the Fire 
 onwards. 
 
 That event as we have seen was the signal for a greater 
 freedom than ever. It happened to coincide with the 
 publication of Paradise Lost and the Leviathan, both of 
 which had some difficulty with the Licenser ^, the latter being 
 sold at premium prices owing to its being forbidden ^. But 
 works of a far meaner and more dangerous complexion were 
 being exposed on the stalls or concealed in the cupboards of 
 Stationers, whilst the Surveyor sulked in his tent*. Of 
 these the most important were the various narratives of 
 
 1 Ena. Hist. Rev., April 1908, p. 268. 
 
 2 Hallam seemed to imply that L'Estrange was responsible for the amend- 
 ments to Paradise Lost (Cons. Hist., p. 611), Needless to say it was the clerical 
 licenser Tomkyns, who licensed the work. 
 
 3 Pepys, 3rd September 1668. 
 
 ■1 A question of Judge Keling's at the trial of the ' Confederates ' {State Tnals, 
 vi., 543), elicited some information as to the sale of such pamphlets: — 
 
 ' Keling. — Do not booksellers keep accounts? What books they sell and set 
 down the money ? 
 
 ' Witness. — Not for Pamphlets. 
 
 ' Keling. — Where was this book kept ? publicly as other books, or in other 
 rooms ? 
 
 ' WitTiess. — In the shop, my Lord. 
 
 'Keling. — Were they publicly to view as other books ? 
 
 ' Witness. — Not so public as other books, but public enough, Mr L'Estrange 
 knows.' 
 
166 SIR ROGER L'ESTRAJSTGE 
 
 the Fire which were the greatest source of annoyance to 
 the Court. On the 25th September 1666 Parliament had 
 appointed a Committee to report on the Fire and its Causes. 
 On the 25th January following, their report was laid before 
 the House. The dubious and non-committal nature of the 
 document is sufficient to show that the members, zealous 
 Protestants though they were, had nothing on which to fix 
 a charge, where popular credulity had already placed it. 
 Parties were divided — except for the saner men — between 
 two views, the Court charging the Firing of London on the 
 Republicans and recalling the evidence taken at the trials 
 of Eathbone and his company in the spring of the year\ 
 They remarked the coincidence of the date of the Fire with 
 a prophecy in Lilly's almanac of baleful note for the 3rd 
 September — a prophecy on which the seven conspirators 
 executed in the beginning of the year had seized for some 
 diabolical attempt on London. The very date was significant 
 of their hopes. 
 
 But the vast bulk of the populace took a different 
 view, and Hubert's idiotic confession merely inflamed a 
 suspicion already entertained that the Catholics had done 
 the deed. Burnet indeed scouted the notion — after, in his 
 usual way, giving as strong a turn to the story as possible 
 in order to leave room for a good whiggish doubt. The 
 Fire and its causes in truth gave occasion to one of those 
 interminable wrangles which occupy the pages of the ' Burnets, 
 Oldmixons, and Cooks ' and many a page of L'Estrange's 
 OhservaioT forestalled in laboured fashion Pope's witty 
 couplet 2. The battle then raged round the inscription on 
 
 1 When Popish frenzy was somewhat spent, L'Estrange returned to this old 
 charge in his Observators quoting directly from the account of the Eathbone 
 trials in the Gazet of April 1666, and with much effect, to show that the 
 Republican conspirators had the burning of London in contemplation. What 
 with the controversy aroused by the Inscription on the Monument, 1680 — deeply 
 resented by the Court and by James II. especially, who ordered its deletion in 
 1685, what with Bedloe's Narrative of Lo7idoii's Flavies, and F. Smith's Trap ad 
 Grmem, the Fire reasserted itself as a first class topic in 1679-83.'' In the interval 
 a remarkable series of fires spread over twelve years were catalogued by the 
 Faithful, in 1679 carefully put together by Henry Care the true-Protestant 
 Scribe as Bedloe's Narratvoe^ which became the standard work on the subject and 
 was quoted largely. See Delaune's 1681 Present State of London already noticed. 
 Observator, i., 14, 1681 : ' "Is there not something in a Gazet about that Plot?" 
 " Yes, Yes, the Gazet of 26th April 1666 gives ye the History on't " '. On the other 
 hand Ralph {Hist.^ i., 136) quoted a letter of Arlington to Sandwich, 23rd August 
 1666 : ' We have had less trouble and alarms from the discontented Party than 
 ever we had in any year '. 
 
 2 ' London's column pointing to the skies 
 Like a tall bully lifts its head and lies ', 
 
STATE OF THE PRINTING HOUSES 167 
 
 the monument ordered by Sir Patience Ward, Lord Mayor 
 in 1680. 
 
 The Scottish Rising this winter attracted little attention i, 
 and that little was engaged by absurd but widely credited 
 reports that the Pope's emissaries were busy on the 
 covenanting side. The question at issue with the Dutch 
 had lost interest, except for such rumours as that De Wit 
 had a hand in the Firing of London. 
 
 It was scarcely to be expected that the Catholics would 
 remain silent under those charges^. Roger Palmer, Earl 
 of Castlemaine, the most spirited lay-Catholic of the time, 
 handed to the Press — and himself partly dictated to the 
 Printer — a pamphlet which raised a storm of indignation — 
 the Catholics' Apology ^. At the same time Fiat Lux shifted 
 the blame to Protestant incendiaries. The rush on these 
 pamphlets and the timidity of the booksellers who sold 
 them, is noticed by Pepys*, and illustrates the dilemma 
 of those Stationers who would be loyal in difficult 
 circumstances ^. 
 
 The Stationers shortly after the Fire, at the instigation 
 of the secretaries, made a visitation of the London book- 
 sellers. They were then seeking a renewal of their Charter ^ 
 and some information as to how individuals had emerged 
 from the Fire was desirable. 
 
 They found on their shelves — even on those of the 
 loyal Royston — a medley of old and new libels and un- 
 licensed books. There were, of course, the several ' Enforma- 
 tions' and 'Narratives' of the Fire, London's Flames with 
 lurid anti-papist touches and even insidious hints of the 
 Court's nervous desire to hush matters up in the speedy 
 hanging of Hubert before Parliament could sift the matter. 
 
 ^ It is barely mentioned by Pepys, 3rd December 1666 : ' The Scots Kebels 
 are routed'. For the complete story we are referred to 'this day's Qazet'. 
 There is no hint of the Papists in this, but under the date 14th September 
 1667, the diarist noting the (unlicensed and afterwards prohibited) account of 
 the Proceedings of the Committee, seems like every one else to lay the catastrophe 
 at the feet of the Papists. 
 
 2 There was no such hint in the Official Account published in the Oazet, 
 10th September 1665. See C.S.P.D. (1666-7), p. 107. 
 
 3 To all the Royalists that suffered for His Majesty . . . the Humble Apology of 
 the English Catholics. 
 
 4 Diary, 1st December 1666. 
 
 6 Even the loyal Ric. Royston asks pardon for selling offensive wares, on 
 the ground that he is reduced to extremity by the Fire. C.S.P.D. (1666-7), 
 p. 172. 
 
 6 Exemplified at the request of the Master and Wardens, 10th August 1667. 
 Nichol, Lit, A7iec., iii., 578. 
 
168 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 The popular lampoon on the King and Lady Castlemaine, 
 Tlie Poor Whore's Petition, was discovered in bundles side 
 by side with Hobbes' Leviathan — eagerly sought by Pepys ^ 
 — and the various parts of the Advice to a Painter, the fourth 
 part of which relating to the Dutch insult to London, 
 caused Mr Pepys' heart to ache — so 'home' were its 
 sallies ^. 
 
 But such visitations were of little avail, because the 
 Stationers were more than ever bound up in the sale of 
 these popular commodities. They seized on poor men 
 like Milburn and Osborne (Catholic Printers of the Apology, 
 etc.) and the Dissenters, Darby and F. Smith, and sending 
 notice beforehand to their friends, cleared their own shelves 
 temporarily of objectionable matter. At the same time 
 they threatened and bullied any who appealed to another 
 authority — such as L'Estrange. 
 
 In the same month the Printers, ever sighing for freedom 
 from the rich Stationers, made a separate visitation of their 
 Presses and found that London boasted one hundred and 
 forty printers, ' and some foreigners ' ^. This survey became 
 the basis of a Petition to the Secretaries on the familiar 
 lines. 
 
 As a result of these visitations and complaints, the 
 Secretaries addressed to the Stationers a number of questions 
 or rather charges which concluded with the remark that 
 'The Surveyor of the Press says that he cannot discharge 
 his duty so long as the Printers are dependent on the 
 Stationers Company, whose interest it is to encourage 
 unlawful printing'*. 
 
 The Government set itself energetically to suppress the 
 London's Flames type of libel, and on the other hand the 
 
 1 Pepys under 3rd September 1668. 
 
 2 Pepys, 14th September 1667: 'I met with a Fourth Advice to the Painter 
 upon the coming of the Dutch to the river and the end of the War, that 
 made my heart ache to read it, it being too sharp and so true'. See also 
 (C.S.P.i). (1666-7), p. 209) one of Muddiman's Newsletters dated 20th October 
 1666: 'The House of Commons has ordered inspection of White and Hobbes' 
 book called Leviathan, and examination into abuses in Printing'. This was 
 the Committee from which L'Estrange emerged unscathed. 
 
 3 See their Brief Discourse Concerning Printers and Printing, showing the 
 wrongs sustained from the Stationers and demanding separate incorporation. 
 C.S.P.I). (1663-4), p. 413. 
 
 4 C.S.P.I). (1666-7), p. 430 : ' They found London's Flames at Leache's, but did 
 not prosecute the Printer. They took away Darby's presses for a Quaker's sheet, 
 and Milburn's for the Catholic Apology, only because they suspected tJiem of printing 
 the Company's Copies '. 
 
STATE OF THE PRINTING HOUSES 169 
 
 Catholic Apology'^. There is little doubt they would have 
 liked to leave the Catholic Printers in peace, but the 
 situation curiously resembled the later occasion in 1680-1 
 when they were forced to prosecute both the defamers of 
 the Government and those who exposed the fictions of 
 Titus Gates. On the one hand an unruly and bigoted 
 populace, on the other a mingling of favour and truth, 
 fear and caution. 
 
 It was found that these libels, and especially the former, 
 had been scattered broadcast over the country, and were 
 shortly reinforced by Frank Smith's vastly popular Trap 
 ad Crucem, which expatiated in a plausible way on 'all 
 the Papists' bloody designs' and illustrated them with a 
 wealth of circumstantial narrative. The chief agents of 
 their dispersal were Elizabeth Calvert (widow of the 
 unfortunate Simon Dover) and Mrs Brewster. Bristol, 
 their old hunting ground, was again a chief centre of 
 activity ^. Newcastle, too, demanded some vigilance, because 
 into that town and Hull were imported weekly bundles 
 of libels from Holland — many sent over from Scotland 
 by covenanting zealots to be printed there ^ — and the 
 business largely managed by an exiled fanatic ex-town 
 clerk of Hull through certain of his old Commonwealth 
 friends there. From Carlisle also Sir Philip Musgrave, 
 everwatchful, warned the secretaries of the dispersal of 
 the Fires throughout northern England. From Glasgow 
 before the Scotch outbreak, the Archbishop had sent news 
 of the libellous activity of the dispossessed ministers. In 
 short the old conspiracy which had prepared the ground 
 for the Northern attempt of 1663, was continued by new 
 and old agents, sufficient glimpses of whom are scattered 
 through the State papers, to persuade us that the year 
 1666-7 — the year of the Surveyor's comparative inactivity — 
 was a period of high hopes for the Eepublicans and sectaries. 
 
 1 The order to suppress this book and punish the author is dated 28th 
 November 1666 in C.S.P.I). (1666-7), p. 296. 
 
 '•^ C.&PJJ. (1667-8), p. 282, 6th to 16th March 1668 and 1667, p. 290. 13th 
 July 1667, Mrs Calvert, ' who formerly made a trade of sending seditious books 
 to that City ', has dispersed 50 books on the Fire to Susannah Moore, bookseller, 
 and Michael Thomas at rate of 8s. 6d. per 25 retailed at 8d. each. 'AH of 
 them sold'. Sir John Knight is busy looking after the seditious bookseller, 
 Moon, and troubling the Conventicles. G.S.P.D. (1666-7), pp. 214-15. 
 
 3 C.S. P.D. (1666-7), p. 415, an extract of a Scotch letter, endorsed by L'Estrange, 
 Whiggism and Treason. Sir Philip Musgrave, Sir J. Knight of Bristol and 
 L'Estrange are the most vigilant watchdogs. 
 
170 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 The execution of Eathbone and his six comrades in April 
 with the prophetic references to the 3rd September noticed 
 in the Gazette of 3rd April, the numerous almanacs and 
 prognostics of change^, the holding up of Cromwell's rule 
 to the admiration of the people, and the constant expatiation 
 on the misery and poverty of the country and decay of 
 trade, all these things warned Ministers that the spectre 
 of 1641 was stalking abroad 2. 
 
 Besides the admirable persistence of the two women — 
 among others — Calvert and Brewster, and the doings at 
 Hull and Newcastle, official complaint was made of the 
 dispersal of seditious pamphlets by the Dutch among the 
 English seamen they fell in with in the Channel and 
 North Sea^. These pamphlets were either of the ultra- 
 pious or ultra-indecent type directed against Charles and 
 his debaucheries. As a result of the abortive Scotch Rising 
 in 1666, numerous Scots crossed the Border and descended 
 into the north and west of England as packmen, their 
 packs stuffed with seditious literature and themselves voluble 
 of treason — a chronic nuisance till the Rye House Plot 
 brought matters to a head. 
 
 Of the more or less organised groups of sedition and 
 their agents, we have notice here and there of the beginnings 
 of the remarkable career of Eergusson the Plotter, preacher 
 in Moorfields and teacher of grammar at Islington. Not 
 yet the almost accredited secretary of sedition and the 
 libels department, he appears first as a victim of the 
 Uniformity Act, an assistant to Dr Owen (who had the 
 courage to set up a libellous tombstone to Bagshawe), 
 and ' in a coffee - house one of the glibbest tongues in 
 England upon all subjects'. So early as January 1662-3 
 he had been betrayed by a brother Scot to Secretary 
 Bennet, and sent for a time to the Gatehouse. In 1668 
 he started his long list of libels, written with that * Scotch 
 force' marked by L'Estrange, and betrayed by occasional 
 Scoticisms. 
 
 1 Sir Sidney Lee {Did. of Nat. Biog., art. L'Estrange) notes the rumour in 
 Pepys {Diary, iii., 56) and Ward {Diary, p. 94), that Roger 'expunged from the 
 almanacs submitted to him in 1665 all prophecies of the Fire of London of 1666 ', 
 which is probably correct and yet ' no great matter '. 
 
 2 Despite Arlington's optimistic letter to Sandwich, see p. 166, note, and 
 Ralph's refutation (Hist, of Eng., i., 136-7 and notes). 
 
 ^ Chap. iv. The Lord Chancellor's Speech in Parliament, 7th January 
 1674 : ' Perhaps it is more than an honourable war doth allow to go about to 
 raise sedition through the country of an enemy'. Pari. Hist., iv., 616, 
 
STATE OF THE PRINTING HOUSES 171 
 
 Of the earlier date there are hints of a private joint 
 stock for the maintenance of dispossessed clergy, in which 
 Calamy, Jenkins, and Fergusson were participators. 
 
 Another Scot domiciled in England, whose career 
 L'Estrange made it his business to watch from time to 
 time, was James Forbes, assistant or co-worker in sedition 
 with Kalph Wallis, the seditious rhymster of Gloucester. 
 Forbes had come to England somewhere about 1653 about 
 two years before Fergusson quitted his native Inverurie, and 
 at the Restoration began a career of sedition and suspicion 
 only second to that of the ' Plotter '. In the active prosecu- 
 tion which had followed L'Estrange's appointment to the 
 Surveyorship, Wallis and Forbes had been seized (September 
 1664), the latter at Clapham, the emporium of their sedition 
 and writings. They were then described by the Surveyor 
 as * the agents of the most dangerous factions about Town ', 
 the dispersers of Sufferers' Catechisms and Wallis' own 
 works ^. Their correspondence in the West was great, and 
 they employed various meaner persons, carriers, etc., to 
 help them out. 
 
 Yet another Scot, almost as formidable in this work, by 
 name James Nesbit, was to set up as a teacher in Clapham 
 and the manager of the disaffected Scots in England, till the 
 Eye House affair fluttered the dovecots. L'Estrange does 
 not seem to have ' smoaked ' Nesbit till the discovery of the 
 Plot set him comparing his old notes. 
 
 In 1668 a peculiarly offensive libel of Wallis' called 
 Boom for the Cohhler, was scattered through city and 
 country. L'Estrange described it as 'the damnedest thing 
 that has come out yet and entreated secrecy till by a 
 cautious delay the Government messengers might seize the 
 whole nest of conspirators. ' If you cannot make sure of 
 destroying the offenders, it will be better to let them alone 
 till an opportunity offers of making them sure. I hope the 
 libel of the Cobblers will be closely followed up '2. There 
 
 1 C.S.P.D. (1664-5), p. 24. Exam, of Wallis and Forbes, 1st October 1664, 
 Forbes denied having read the works L'Estrange found in his study. On 
 8th September 1664, Roger wrote Bennett that he had asked Col. Frowde to 
 seize three of their correspondents in Gloucestershire. We shall meet with 
 Forbes again. But the poor rhymster died in gaol 1669 or 1670. For an 
 autobiographical account of Forbes and his connection with the Barton St. 
 Chapel, Gloucester, of which he was first pastor, see Some Particulars concerning 
 the Life of John Biddle, by Walter Lloyd, Gloucester, 1899. See also Scott's 
 note on Forbes, the Phaleg of Abs. and Achitophel (Drydcn (1808), ix., 368 ; 
 chap, xii., 34). 
 
 2 C.S,F.D. (1667-8), p. 357, 24th April 1668. 
 
172 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 is, perhaps, too much inclination to regard such an affair as 
 the Eye Plot as a suddenly conceived idea and to neglect 
 the patient if perverted genius of these men working 
 through twenty years. In any case of unrest during these 
 years, the attention of L'Estrange would be directed to 
 the haunts in Islington, Clapham, and Moorfields, and as in 
 the week of the Northern Conspiracy, October 1663, he knew 
 where to lay his finger when the moment arrived of ' making 
 them sure ', so on the morrow of the Rye discovery we shall 
 find him hot on the scent of these men. 
 
 Just at the moment when the King was inclining 
 towards the Catholics, and thereby preparing the fatal 
 breach with his Parliament, 'the insolency of the Papists' 
 was in everybody's mouth. Castlemaine's Catholic Apology, 
 as we saw, created much excitement and some embarrass- 
 ment to the Government by printing in red letters' the 
 names of Catholics who had suffered for the King. Its 
 method of publication is instructive. ' The Bell and Three 
 Cranes Tavern' in the Savoy was the scene of its trans- 
 ference from ' two gentlemen ' into the hands of John 
 Brereton, who disposed of it to the hawkers. The Printer 
 was Milburne, whose poverty no less than his faith induced 
 him to do the work. One Printer (Osborne), used after- 
 wards as evidence, had already refused to print it, but 
 introduced Castlemaine to Milburne, at whose house it 
 was printed off, 'and at his Lordship's entreaty he 
 helped him to compare the written paper with one half 
 printed ' ^. 
 
 Osborne was not a Catholic. 
 
 The Council's order to suppress the book is dated 
 28th November 1666. The examination of the offending 
 printers (Castlemaine was shielded for obvious reasons) took 
 place in the month of the Scotch Rising. After a few 
 months' custody Milburne was released. 
 
 The action of the Stationers in this matter was character- 
 istic. They seized Milburne's Press — L'Estrange alleged 
 — not because of the character of the book, but because 
 he was said to print their copies^. It was on this 
 
 1 G.S.P. D. (1666-7), p. 361, 20th December 1666. The proof-reading was always 
 a capital point against a Printer. See Twynne's Case in State Trials, vi., 532. The 
 document referred to is endorsed 'L'Estrange's report of his emjiiiry after the 
 Roman Catholics Apology '. See Hart, Index, pp. 200-2. 
 
 2 CS.F.D. (1666-7), p. 430. 
 
STATE OF THE PRINTING HOUSES 173 
 
 occasion that Warden Mearne of the Stationers threatened 
 Milburne because he appealed to L'Estrange — a signifi- 
 cant commentary on the charge of being *popishly- 
 afFected', which was afterwards to discharge on Roger's 
 head. 
 
 It was pointed out that almost immediately after the 
 Fire, L'Estrange's efforts on behalf of the Press cease, and 
 in 1667 there is scarcely a notice of his name, though in 
 October of that year he received a final instalment of £25 
 to his allowance. Sickness added to his troubles, and he 
 would scarcely be human if he did not regard with a grain of 
 satisfaction the chaos to which Arlington's efforts to do 
 without him had reduced the Press ^. Others were employed, 
 the messengers Wickham and Andrew Crooke were pressed 
 into the Surveyor's work, but their venality and lack of 
 education rendered them indiscreet bullies rather than good 
 officials. They were likewise subject to the Stationers' bribes, 
 while rival authorities and warrants derived from the hostile 
 secretaries, often allowed the prey to slip from their fingers ^. 
 During the first rage of Whore's Petitions, Leviathans, Wallis' 
 libels, and London's Flames Roger lay at home and did 
 nothing^. But to such a height did the trade of sedition 
 grow, and so alarmed the Secretaries, with the King at last 
 seriously and personally annoyed, that in April 1668 over- 
 tures were again made to him. It seemed a moment to 
 dictate terms. 
 
 The immediate cause of this requisition was the intelli- 
 gence which reached the Secretary's office of the large 
 importation of Dutch libels at Yarmouth, Hull, and the Port 
 of London by the means alluded to above. 
 
 There was besides the sure knowledge of several new 
 secret presses in the City, one at Blue Anchor Alley in 
 Little Britain — a noted resort of the more violent sectaries, 
 with the * grand metropolitan of sedition ', Vavasour Powell, 
 
 1 Arlington's letter to^Sandwich 23rd August 1666, quoted by Ralph, in which 
 he speak« of the seditious elements being quiet, must be : taken with some 
 reservation. See p. 170. 
 
 ^ See Wickham's Petition for pardon {C.S.P.D. (1668-9) p. 37, October 1668). 
 He allowed Mearne and Royston, for a consideration, to take possession of 
 Mrs Calvert's second Press and books in Southwark — his own seizure. 
 
 3 That is as Surveyor. He almost cei'tainly wrote a work not hitherto 
 ascribed to him, issuing from Harry Brome's press, Dolus an Virtus (Bod.-B. 14, 15 
 Line) with MS. note ' This book is post-dated, for it came out in November 1667 '. 
 Its motto, Vae vobis Hypocritae, in answer to Corbett's Discourse of tJie Religion of 
 England, 1667. Printer, motto, subject (Roger had in Relapsed Apostate already 
 attacked Corbet), and style, all claim this work for L'Estrange. 
 
174 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 not long out of prison ^. Others were known to be set up in 
 Southwark. It was afterwards discovered that the Darbys 
 were the ruling spirits at the Blue Anchor Alley Press, 
 and that the Calverts and the Larkins (the wives in all 
 three cases are important) were printing south of the 
 river those pestiferous libels, the Painter series, Boom for 
 the GohUery etc. 
 
 Worst of all the loyal Capt. John Seymour was Larkins' 
 protector, if not employer. Wallis and Forbes were known 
 to be very busy flitting in disguise between Hackney and 
 Clapham. 
 
 It was in these circumstances— and probably at the 
 personal instance of the King, who smarted from the Dutch 
 lampoons and The Poor Whore's Petition — that L'Estrange 
 was sent for, and a pardonable mingling of reproach and 
 triumph is shown in his reply, dated 22nd April 1668 ^. 
 
 L Estrange to Arlington, 
 
 ' My Lord, — I have lost at least 40 oz. of blood and stand 
 at present confined to my chamber for a fortnight upon 
 hazard of my life by the order of Dr Willis. 
 
 ' If this distemper may plead my excuse in thus observing 
 the command of my attendant, it is well. If not, I'll wait 
 upon your Lordship in spite of all difficulties. 
 
 ' The bearer of this letter is a gentleman whom I employ 
 as my agent, and will take your pleasure in anything that 
 concerns your service. In the business of the present, I 
 have acted as far as my money, credit, and authority would 
 carry me, and your Lordship may consider that the last 
 trouble I gave you was upon a warrant for those very 
 persons whom you have now in hold, and if I had not 
 brought them in for their necks, long ere this, I would have 
 contented to have forfeited my own. 
 
 ' The Law is so short that unless the very act of Printing 
 the very point in question be expressly proved, the Printer 
 will come off. I do persuade myself the Government will find 
 it a hard matter to reduce the Press to the order I had brought 
 it. Had I been still allowed according to the first intent of 
 his Majesty's bounty, I would have kept it as clear as I had 
 then made it. Not, my Lord, that I ever made an interest 
 
 1 G.S.P.D. (1667-8), pp. 294, 319. 
 
 2 S. P. Doin. Car., ii., 238, No. 179. 
 
STATE OF THE PRINTING HOUSES 175 
 
 of his Majesty's service or ever designed it so, but I must 
 confess I cannot but reflect upon my hard fortune with 
 somewhat of trouble to see myself after 30 years' assiduous 
 and unchangeable service and fidelity to the Crown, exposed 
 at length either to want bread or live the object of a 
 common charity. 
 
 * This I presume to speak nakedly as it is, and without 
 any manner of reproach or insolence. My Lord, I do not 
 deserve to be blamed certainly for using the modest liberty 
 of an honest man, and a gentleman, and I assure my letter 
 of a generous interpretation, especially when your Lordship 
 shall duly consider to what decree I am pinched both in 
 point of Honour and Convenience. 
 
 ' I took the freedom not long since to solicit Mr 
 Williamson for his part now due of £25. But he was 
 pleased to remit the matter to your Lordship. . . . The last 
 payment I had upon your Lordship's account was upon the 
 15th January 1666 and Mr Williamson's last payment was 
 on 15th October 1667. 
 
 ' I must now submit myself upon the whole to your Lord- 
 ship's goodness, and if there be anything wherein so wretched 
 a thing as I am may be of aid to your Lordship, I will most 
 undoubtedly manifest myself to be, my Lord, Your Honour's 
 most Obedient and Faithful Servant, 
 
 'KOGEE L'ESTKANGE'. 
 
 The persons alluded to as being *now in hold' were 
 probably Darby, Calvert, and Kobert White, taken in August 
 1667 for a ^ Trumpet Blown in Sion^ and held over for trial 
 to the Spring Sessions 1668 \ 
 
 It is certain that Arlington made the Amende honorable, 
 for by 24th April we find Eoger in full cry after the 
 libellers again, and the day after, the owner of a secret 
 Press, one Poole, was committed to the Gatehouse. But 
 the discovery of the Larkins Press in Southwark was the 
 work of Eoger Norton of the Stationers' Company, and 
 the suspicion is that L'Estrange would not be very friendly 
 to the scandal of such a discovery attaching to his friend 
 Capt. Seymour 2. 
 
 1 C.S.P.D. (1666-7), p. 395. 
 
 2 There is a printed letter by that extraordinary woman and printer, Eleanor 
 James, to Larkins, 1684, reproaching him for attacking L'Estrange, who had been 
 so kind to him. A Defence of the Chxcrch of England, etc., by Eleanor James, 1687; 
 
176 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 In his letter of the 24th, to i Arlington he has preserved 
 for us the names of half a dozen prominent libels with 
 some excellent comment. He was still confined to his 
 chamber and books were brought to him from the 
 Secretary's office, much as a modern reviewer receives his 
 load from a critical journal. He marked those passages 
 which a jury would listen to, and from his chamber 
 directed the operations of the messengers. On the whole, 
 the moderate tenor of his remarks on these audacious 
 libels, shows a growing respect for juries and a warning 
 against the illegal constraint which had been possible in 
 1662-4. Need one say that the changed temper of Parlia- 
 ment was partly responsible ? 
 
 'I will prepare such an information as may serve for 
 a guide to the King's Council to proceed. 
 
 ' 1. Felo de se is undoubtedly Wallis' ; but a jury will 
 not make much of it. 
 
 * 2. The Queries will punish most, because they reflect 
 on the present Parliament. 
 
 * 3. Omnia Comesta a Belo is a vile libel of the same 
 quality as Felo de se. 
 
 *4. I can fasten nothing on The Poor Whore's Petition 
 that a jury will take notice of. 
 
 * 5. Liberty of Conscience is rather to be answered than 
 punished except as an unlicensed pamphlet. 
 
 *6. The Saint's Freedom has direct treason in it and a 
 little patience would have brought it home, but the alarm is 
 now so hot that all are upon their guard. I send another libel. 
 
 ' 7. Boom for the Cohhler [noticed above]. 
 
 ' It is not easy to govern the License of the Press and 
 those who serve therein should be rewarded'. 
 
 Meanwhile the Conventicle and secret Printing House 
 at Blue Anchor Alley was being watched. In March a 
 a Government spy had informed of Quaker and Fifth 
 Monarchy Meetings in the neighbourhood. Nye and 
 Vavasour Powell were reported to have their headquarters 
 
 1 S. p. Dmn. Car., ii., 238 (202). 
 
STATE OF THE PRINTING HOUSES 177 
 
 there. A Printer's wife had been followed from the Con- 
 venticle, and one of five houses was suspected \ but 'by 
 reason of so many back-doors, bye-holes and passages, and 
 the sectarians so swarming thereabouts, I have been afraid 
 of being discovered scouting, but I saw one of Darby's 
 men at the meeting '2. 
 
 Darby undoubtedly was the evil genius at Blue Anchor 
 Alley, and was ably assisted by the widow Brewster and 
 her son, who promised to be as good at the trade as ever 
 his father was. Witnesses confessed that Mrs Darby sold 
 them copies of The Poor Whore's Petition and one said that 
 Darby printed it. There is little doubt that from his 
 Press issued hosts of little stinging libels in verse, dispersed 
 about the precincts of Parliament ^. 
 
 Thus L'Estrange's return to duty was coincident with 
 the arrest of the remaining members of that old confederacy 
 which he had destroyed in 1663-4. One difference is very 
 striking, however. Then the ' Confederates ' dealt in heavy 
 pious stuff. Now it is chiefly satirical and not a little 
 indecent, and as such, much more difficult to found a con- 
 viction on. A way had been discovered of giving the 
 maximum of irritation to the Government and Court with 
 the minimum of danger to the libeller. Probably as a 
 result of these futilities, the Government in the summer 
 of the year (1668) determined on a reversal of policy and 
 to do what L'Estrange had so long advised — turn their 
 attention to the Stationers Company. They now demanded 
 from that Society a return of all the Printing-Houses in 
 the City and Westminster. A week later (24th July), a 
 complete survey was made, showing the number of presses, 
 journeymen, and apprentices at each House *. The Govern- 
 ment was resolved on making the first earnest attempt 
 since the days of the Star Chamber to investigate the 
 conditions of the Trade. The survey exhibited the names 
 of thirty-five, besides the King's Printers. 
 
 ^^See a curious letter {C.S,P. D. (1667-8), p. 294) from a spy to Sir R. Carr, ♦ As to 
 the Private Press I dare pawn my life, it is in one of five houses in Blue Anchor 
 Alley. I am sure Oliver took more pains when he searched 16 houses in one 
 night in hunting after my life *. 
 
 2 S. P. Bom. Car., ii., 237 (140). 
 
 3 As Come hither, Topham, etc., the verses of 12 lines to Judges and Juries, 
 C.S.P.D. (1666-7), p. 71, etc. Darby was arrested, but released 7th May 1668 on 
 £100 Bond, because as L'Estrange said, no Jury would convict for such work. 
 C.S.P.D. (1667-8), p. 378. 
 
 4 S, p. Dom, Car., ii., 243 (126). 
 
 M 
 
178 
 
 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 A List of the several Printing -Houses taken the 24:th 
 July 1668 1. 
 
 King's Printing Office in English, Hebrew, 
 Greek and Latin 
 
 King's Printing Office in the Oriental 
 Tongues 
 
 The Printing House of 
 
 The other Masters are :- 
 
 Mr Evan Tyton 
 Mr Kobt. White. 
 
 ■*Mr Jas. Flesher 
 Mr Rich. Hodgkinson 
 Mr Thos. Ratcliffe 
 Mr John Macock 
 
 ^Mr John Field 
 
 *Mr Thos. Wocomb 
 
 ■^Mr Andrew Coe 
 
 *Mr Wm. Godbid 
 
 Mr John Redmayne 
 Mr Thos. Johnson 
 Mr Nat Crouch 
 ■^Mr Thos. Purslow 
 Mr Peter Lilliecrap 
 Mr Thos. Leach 
 Mr Henry Lloyd 
 Mr Thos. Milburne 
 Mr Jas. Cotterel 
 Mr Henry Bridges 
 
 Roger Norton 
 
 Thos. Roycroft 
 Colonel John Streater ^ 
 
 Printers disabled by 
 the Fire are : — 
 
 Mr John Brudenell 
 
 Mr John Hayes 
 
 Mr Childe 
 *Mr Warren 
 ■^Mr Leybourne 
 
 Mr Wood 
 *Mr Vaughan 
 ■^Mr Owesby 
 
 Widows of Printers are : — 
 *Mrs Sarah Griffith 
 *Mrs Cotes (Coots) 
 
 •^Mrs Symons (widow of Nevil Symons, Milton's Printer) 
 Mrs Ann Maxwell 
 
 Printers set up since the Act and contrary to it : — 
 Mr Walter Rawlins 
 Mr John Winter 
 Mr John Darby 
 Mr Edmund Okes 
 
 1 Compare this list with the Returns given in Arber's Transcript of the 
 Stationers' Registers, etc. 
 
 Transcript 
 
 Date 
 
 M. Printers 
 
 Presses 
 
 IIL, 699 
 
 May 1583 
 
 23 
 
 53 
 
 v., Hi. 
 
 July 1586 
 
 25 
 
 53 
 
 IIL, 699 
 
 May 1615 
 
 19 
 
 33 
 
 v., liv. 
 
 1660 
 
 59 
 
 
 {The Press Pressed and 
 
 
 
 
 Over-pressed). {Har, 
 
 
 
 
 Misc.) 
 
 1660 
 
 60 
 
 ... 
 
 {The Case of the Free 
 
 
 
 
 Workmen Printers). 
 
 1665 (?) 
 
 70 
 
 150 (apprentices) 
 
 (Biffmore and Wyman, 
 
 
 
 
 ii., 126) 
 
 July 1668 
 
 35 
 
 64 
 
 Of the names above, only four occur in the 1637 Star Chamber Decree List of 
 Twenty, clause xv. (see Eyiglish Reprints, Areopagitica, by Arber, 1868), viz: — 
 Thos. Cotes, Miles Flesher, Thos. Purslow, and Rich. Hodgkinson. 
 
 2 A most favoured person. For his loyalty specially — and solely — exempted 
 from any penalties of the Press Act 1662. In preparing their reasons against 
 renewing the Act in 1695 the Commons declared they saw no reason for treating 
 Col. John Streater differently from others. Lord's Journals, xv., 6456. 
 
STATE OF THE PRINTING HOUSES 179 
 
 We have placed an asterisk at the names of printers (in 
 the first list) against whom, so far as is known, the Govern- 
 ment had no occasion for harshness, or the Surveyor for 
 censure. 
 
 A few days later (29th July) these lists were supple- 
 mented by a thorough survey of each printing-house ^, from 
 the endorsement evidently not handed into the Secretary's 
 office till 19th November. 
 
 The Act permitted 20 master printers and allowed 2 
 presses to each man. The number of men with only 1 press 
 was more than compensated for by those officials, etc., who 
 were privileged to have more than 2. Streater was allowed 
 5, the King's House (Barker's) ^ boasted 6, and the printer 
 for the City (James Flesher) had 5 ; Eoycroft had 4, while 
 Newcombe and Macock ^ (printers respectively of the News- 
 looh and to the House of Lords) had 3 each. So that on the 
 basis of 23 printers, an allowance of 50 presses might be 
 regarded as ample. By this survey there appear 64. 
 
 If we compare this list with that of the 10 printers who 
 petitioned for Incorporation previous to the Act of 1662, 
 
 Kich. Hodgkinson Thos. Mabb 
 
 John Grisraand Dan Maxwell 
 
 Robt. Ibbotson'' Thos. Roy croft 
 
 Wm. Godbid John Streater 
 
 Jas. Cotterel John Hayes 
 
 we see that 3 of the factious Commonwealth printers, 
 Ibbotson, Mabb, and Grismand, had dropped out. Maxwell 
 had left his business to his widow. Ibbotson's removal may 
 have been due to L'Estrange's personal attack ^ Evan, son 
 of Francis Tyton, perhaps for the same cause, no longer 
 printed as his father did, for the House of Lords. 
 
 In the Printers' Petition of 23rd October 1666 — 
 describing their desperate condition as the result of the 
 Fire * 140 printers and some foreigners ' was the total given. 
 Now it is 155. But this includes some half dozen masters 
 who employed no labour. So that a bare increase of 10 men 
 
 1 S. p. Bom. Car., ii., 243 (181). 
 
 2 His 1660 Petition for restitution was successful. 
 
 3 Macook, printer of Current Intelligence, which expired at the Great Fire was 
 a rival of Newcombe, who printed the Gazet. The former had enjoyed the patron- 
 age of Secretary Morrice, the latter that of Arlington through Williamson. 
 
 4 His widow, Ann Ibbotson, along with Ann Maxwell and two others enters into 
 recognisance of £200 not to print seditious matter— 15th August 1667. S. F, 
 Dom. Car., ii., Entry Book 28, p. 1. 
 
 ■^ Introduction to Relapsed Apostate. 
 
180 SIR ROGER L^ESTRANGE 
 
 is to be credited to these three years, while in the matter 
 of apprentices the King's House which employed 18 men, 
 had no apprentices and the total number for the entire 
 Trade was 23. In other words, the destitution consequent 
 on the Fire had been so great that all the labour must be 
 divided amongst the men^. 
 
 This 1662 list of 10 masters is of course very incomplete. 
 If we can rely on the 1669 survey — and the inclusion of 
 Darby seems to warrant this — it appears that besides 
 Grismand, Mabb, and Ibbotson ^, the following had dropped 
 out or been extruded during the Surveyor's first blush of 
 activity — Astwood (Republican), Page (arrested for indecency 
 with Johnson), Hardy, Lee ^ Sparrow, and Mason ^ besides 
 the Confederates, Keach, Tywnne, and Dover. So that 
 Roger's purge had been greater than one had at first thought ^. 
 
 Of those printers impoverished by the Fire, we find that 
 Owesby and Vaughan were taken in at the King's Press, 
 Henry Lloyd found work under Flesher whose five presses 
 must have been busier than ever with City edicts concerned 
 with the rebuilding of the City, etc^. Thos. Childe was 
 accommodated at Ratcliffe's large and Whiggish House, 
 where he soon graduated in the same art in company with 
 Nat Thompson, then also a good Whig. Nat presently set 
 up for himself as a partner of Ratcliffe's (at least they 
 worked into each other's hands). One of his workmen was 
 Robert Stephens, the famous messenger of the Press, between 
 whom and L'Estrange a petty warfare was afterwards to be 
 waged. What with Childe and Stephens, therefore, the 
 Ratcliffe-Thompson House (or Houses) was an exceedingly 
 good vantage-ground to survey the struggles of the Press. 
 
 A frequent complaint was that interlopers, that is men 
 not free of the Company, were employed. Nat Thompson at 
 first appears as one of these. Even in Roycroft's Oriental 
 House three out of ten men were such. 
 
 The month in which the above survey took place was 
 otherwise an anxious one for the Stationers. Richard 
 
 1 For example, the King's House (Barker's) employed 18 men but no 
 apprentices. 
 
 2 Note p. 111. 
 
 3 Besides these, Harding, Roal, and Chewne. G.S.P.D. (1663-4), p. 153. 
 
 4 See S. P. Dom. Car., ii., 99 (162-5), for a fairly complete list of three batches 
 of printers, summoned before the Secretaries on suspicion. 
 
 5 As is otherwise shown by the drop from 59 masters in 1660 to 35 in 1668. 
 ^ Such as the City's Petition for the entry of free timber for a year, etc. 
 
STATE OF THE PRINTING HOUSES 181 
 
 Atkyns, law-monopolist in pre-Commonwealth days, and 
 author of the Original and Growth of Printing^ which so 
 slavishly followed L'Estrange's Consideratimis and Proposals 
 in 1664, was on the strength of James I.'s patent to his 
 grandfather contesting in the Court of Chancery the 
 Company's right to print common-law Books. This pro- 
 tracted law-suit was afterwards alleged by the Company 
 to be the cause (at their own request) of the Quo Warranto 
 issued out against them in 1670. Although the Judges now 
 decided against Atkyns^ (as Koger North hints) to secure 
 their own right of printing their cases, the House of Lords 
 some years after gave Atkyns back his own. 
 
 The point of interest here is that when the Government 
 came into final grips with the Stationers, the latter were 
 embarrassed by these contested monopolies. Two years 
 later began the even more protracted struggle with Oxford 
 University for monopoly in Bible stock. 
 
 Although Roger Norton's lawsuit was likewise un- 
 fortunate ^ he had the happiness in May of this year to 
 be recommended by the King to the Court of Stationers 
 along with two others, Mearne and Roycroft. 
 
 Norton was King's printer in Hebrew and classics, 
 Mearne his bookbinder, and Roycroft as, has been stated. 
 Oriental printer — all thought to be loyal, and their intrusion 
 into the Stationers' Court was the first step of the new 
 policy. With these men a loyal garrison in that Court, 
 and L'Estrange at their elbow, any reform might be hoped 
 for. As this unique proceeding is really an anticipation 
 of the great scheme of Charles, in default of obedient 
 Parliaments, to seize on Corporations and instal the loyal, 
 we may quote the letter of recommendation or command 
 to the Company. 
 
 Bex to the Stationers, 
 
 '2'7th May U6S*. 
 
 'We request you to admit as members of your Court, 
 Roger Norton, our Printer in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, 
 
 1 Viner, Ahridgment, xvii., 208 ; Moder?i Reports, 1256. 
 
 2 On the surrender of his old contested monopoly, he received in 1667 a grant 
 for forty-one years of the sole printing of the Bible in Latin, and all grammars in 
 Greek and Latin, and became King's Printer in Greek, Latin, and Hebrew. 
 O.S.P.D. (1667), p. 496. 
 
 3 IMd. (1667-8), p. 409. 
 
182 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 Samuel Mearne, our bookbinder, and Thos. Eoycroft our 
 Printer in Oriental Tongues, they having contributed much 
 to suppress licentious practices in the Mystery of Printing ; 
 we expect that your Company henceforth will be account- 
 able for the scandalous abuses of the Press '. 
 
 The survey of July was the first fruits of these intrusions, 
 and we already noted the fact that Norton specially signalised 
 himself by the seizure of Larkins' secret Press in South wark. 
 
 Further, as the result of the survey, three of the four 
 printers singled out as 'printers set up since the Act and 
 contrary to it' were in August to be proceeded against ^ 
 These were Darby, Rawlins, and Winter. 
 
 One of the wardens of this year was old Ralph Smith, 
 printer of numerous Commonwealth wares, and remembered 
 by L'Estrange as the printer of Crofton's wild stuff. The 
 Stationers as reorganised — with something of the Good Old 
 Cause left, however — proceeded in a half - hearted and 
 hypocritical way to set their house in order. With some 
 leniency to the three prescribed printers noted above, they 
 suggested huying their presses, 'lest they should set them 
 up in secret places, as has been found by experience, and 
 hazard everything to gain a livelihood, being generally mean 
 people ' ^. As to the three prescribed printers, Rawlins had 
 (in 1666) bought the business in which Ann Ibbotson 
 succeeded her levelling husband. Darby we know as the 
 husband of ' martyred ' Simon Dover's widow. He and his 
 wife with Brewster's widow we have already noted as the 
 bravest of the 'brave assertors'. 
 
 John Winter was made free of the Company and the 
 City in the April before the Eire ^, but had made himself 
 
 1 S. p. Dom. Car., ii., 332 (96). In Itheir cases the usual thing happened, a 
 brief imprisonment, an interview with L'Estrange and a bond not to print 
 unlicensed stuff, Ihid., 244 (77). Thos. Davies informs Williamson 
 that Darby will be forced to quit the Trade. He asks that the Stationers be 
 impowered to buy up the presses of the extruded ' as by the Act there will be so 
 many materials for Printing to be disposed of that there will be no customers '. 
 
 2 C.S.P.D., 3rd August 1668 (1663-4), p. 406. See the Document in 
 C.S.P.D. marked (?) 1663 ; but obviously referring to this year. It proposes 
 that the four typefounders should bring proofs of all letters cast to the Wardens 
 and asking after the treatment of the four supernumeries advises that the Lord 
 Mayor should execute the Act of Common Council against hawkers. Endorsed 
 with notes of a general Search Warrant for Koger Norton and four others. 
 
 3 S. P. Dom. Car., ii., 332 (96). An account of the several printers summoned 
 before the Court of Assistants of the Company of Stationers, 15th January 1672-3, 
 containing their particular claims of right and propriety in their several Printing 
 Houses. The claims and history of ten printers are stated in this important 
 paper. See p. 193. 
 
STATE OF THE PRINTING HOUSES 183 
 
 obnoxious by printing Catholic Apologies^ Mass Books, etc. 
 He was now protected, by the Government evidently, in 
 the form of a iion-jprocess issued by the Attorney-General. 
 Darby was certainly extruded, but we may guess how eager 
 the Stationers were to purge themselves when we find all 
 three openly printing in 1673. 
 
 If we turn to ascertain the degree of success of this new 
 policy in the Press, we shall find after the first flush of 
 zeal, nothing but disappointment. It is true that in October 
 1668, Larkins' press was seized in Southwark with a large 
 quantity of seditious books, but a dispute between the 
 Stationers and the King's messenger Wickham as to who 
 should carry off the booty, and a similar wrangle over the 
 seizure of some Catholic books at Johnson's shop, assured 
 the secretaries that despite the introduction of Mearne 
 and Roycroft, the Company was incurably selfish. At the 
 same time the old rivalries between the secretaries were 
 revived in disputes over the validity of their warrants. The 
 Stationers had Morrice's warrant, Arlington entrusted his 
 with the Surveyor and the messengers — authorities that the 
 Stationers openly flaunted as in the case of Milburne, and 
 that of Taylor yet to come. 
 
 It appeared that the Company was more bent on securing 
 its monopolies against all comers — Atkyns, the Universities, 
 and the latest transgressor Sam Speed ^ — than in carrying 
 out the King's wishes. 
 
 The Surveyor was again reduced to such impotence that 
 another appeal seems to have been made by him to the 
 King in August 1669, for in that month, seven years after 
 L'Estrange's appointment, the King roundly -stated that 
 ' his appointment has proved ineffectual through the opposi- 
 tion of several members of your Company '2, and warns 
 them that they 'are henceforth to take due cognisance of 
 his commission, and employ their utmost power and credit 
 over their members, no further to obstruct him, but to assist 
 him in all searches and discoveries when needful '. Within 
 three days of notice given by him, they are to call a Court 
 of Assistants ' to advise with him and agree on such ways 
 and means for its better government as he shall propose, 
 
 1 An instructive case. See C.S.P.D. (1668-9), p. 280, 16th April 1669. 
 
 2 Ibid., p. 446, 11th August 1669. The undated document subjoined 
 to this (.S". P. Dom. Car., ii., 264 (25a)) is the rough draft of this letter by the 
 Law Officei's. 
 
184 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 being instructed for that purpose, and he is required to 
 return to the Council or a Secretary of State an account 
 of proceedings therein'. This letter is accompanied by a 
 note in Williamson's handwriting to the effect that the Act 
 for Regulating the Press has defects which may be supplied 
 by orders given to the Stationers Company, who oppose the 
 proceedings of the Surveyor of the Press; 'if they will be 
 obstinate, they should be reported to the King and Council '. 
 
 In other words, the hopeful experiment associated with 
 the names of Mearne and Norton has already failed, and 
 from this letter we date the intrusion of L'Estrange as 
 representing the King in the Councils of the Court of 
 Stationers ^. We are therefore prepared for those stormy 
 scenes in that Court which characterise the next eight years. 
 
 It is well known that, however indolent in business 
 matters, there were certain things which could rouse Charles 
 to most effective interest. The foul libels which had 
 besmirched him and the Court, seem to have awakened this 
 interest in the present case. 
 
 In the spring of the following year (1670) the Surveyor, 
 inspired by this fresh authority, submitted various plans for 
 reform to take the form of bye-laws to be passed by the 
 Stationers' Court 2. 
 
 I. The old bond of £300 to be strictly and generally 
 
 enforced. 
 
 II. Loss of interest in the Company's stock and loss of the 
 
 right to print any of the Company's book, is the 
 forfeiture for offence. 
 
 III. All 'foreigners' to be subject to the rules of the 
 Company. At the same time Roger, always mindful 
 of himself, added a personal request for a grant of 
 printing certain bills and papers. 
 
 In April ^ the Law officers had reported favourably on 
 these proposals, and to supplement them as well as to make 
 sure of his new grant, L'Estrange wrote to Arlington on 
 19th May the letter referred to above. His demands, we 
 
 1 Mr C. R. Rivington in his beautiful monograph on the Stationers Company 
 seems to date the Survey er's intrusion from 1663. This does not seem to be 
 correct, however. See ^ Short Account of the Worshipful Company of Stationers^ 
 1403-1903, by C. R. Rivington, 1903. 
 
 2 C.S.P.I)., 19th May 1670, pp. 227-8. The proposals (approved by the Law 
 Officers) are annexed to a reproachful letter to Arlington by L'Estrange. 
 
 3 Ibid.y 21st April 1670, p. 175. Report of Palmer and Finch. The problem 
 was how legally to force * foreigners ' to take the bond. This report said it might 
 be done. 
 
STATE OF THE PRINTING HOUSES 185 
 
 note, have somewhat swollen, and taken together with his 
 letter to the King in October of the same year may be 
 taken to represent the high water mark of his pretensions, 
 as it was the moment of lowest credit at Court for the 
 Stationers. Since his supersession in the year of the Plague, 
 he had seen the Government rely first on the messengers 
 for clearing the Press, then the Stationers remodelled and 
 loyalised in 1668, had been appealed to, whilst the Surveyor 
 was called back in halting fashion. Lastly all having failed, 
 and the King personally alarmed, the secretaries turned 
 again to the only man who had even momentarily succeeded 
 in this difficult work. 
 
 We should note the new elements of the case from 
 L'Estrange's point of view as shown in these letters of this 
 year. 
 
 First, despite the insincere attempt made in August 1668 
 to oust the interlopers — which resolved itself merely into a 
 Cabal against the poorest and meanest printers, and even that 
 unsuccessful — the trades both of Printer and Bookseller 
 were again overrun by deserters from other trades and people 
 like the haberdashers were adding to their business by a cheap 
 line in Church books. These persons, not being members 
 of the Stationers Company, were not subject to its rules and 
 penalties. 
 
 Secondly, the libellous printers and booksellers were now 
 studied in the niceties of the case and the failures of the 
 Press Act. They now bawled out Magna Charta when dis- 
 turbed by a General Search Warrant. The attitude of 
 Parliament made it impossible to adopt the summary 
 treatment of 1661-4, for much of the offence of these 
 wares was cloaked under the no-popery masque which 
 was then becoming vastly popular in the Nation and 
 Parliament. 
 
 Again there were the Stationers and their hostility to 
 reckon with. By their various warrants — Eoyston's from 
 Morrice, Roycroft's and Norton's as King's Printers, etc. — 
 they circumvented all that the Surveyor attempted, and that 
 secrecy which was necessary for a seizure was made impossible 
 while these men sent round their emissaries to warn the 
 trade of an approaching search and even — under their 
 warrant — wrested the messengers' seizures and carried them 
 to Stationers Hall, when they might be secretly returned to 
 the owner or sold by themselves. 
 
186 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 The Bishops and their nominees too were to blame. 
 Men like Parker issued licenses which were contrary to the 
 patent-rights of others, and under cover of meeting the 
 demand for Bibles and Psalters created by the Fire, set up 
 a number of irregular booksellers and encouraged the haber- 
 dashers to sell the same books. 
 
 In a word, the multiplicity of authority was — as the 
 Surveyor long since pointed out — injurious to any real hold 
 on the Press. 
 
 L'Estrange was now emboldened to ask Arlington to 
 move the King to rescind these various authorities and the 
 Court of Aldermen to subject all irregular persons in the 
 trade to the rules of the Company ^. 
 
 It is significant that there is no suggestion here of 
 reducing the Trade to the limits set by the Statute. That 
 hopeless attempt is, however, to be made again in 1672. 
 
 But the first condition of a purified Press is to get the 
 haberdashers prohibited from dealing in books. They cut 
 prices and maintain a number of sweated Printers of pirated 
 copies. At Westminster Hall itself are numerous booksellers 
 who, though under no government, spread abroad the most 
 dangerous wares. No rule of the Press is possible whilst 
 these men elude the law, and the lopping of the Bishop's 
 licensing privileges is the first step towards a remedy. 
 
 Thereafter it is only a matter of bye-laws for the 
 Stationers, and in the event of any refractoriness in that 
 quarter, of renewing their Charter on such terms as to secure 
 the Crown's interest. 
 
 In any case the Quo Warranto is calculated to bring 
 them to their senses. 
 
 Meanwhile it is interesting to note the Surveyor's 
 personal demands. 
 
 ' The constant charge of a deputy and a coach, without 
 which it would be the work rather of a porter than a gentle- 
 man, which amounts to £200 a year, and the contingent 
 charges are more or less as occasion requires. I am allowed 
 £200 a year by Lord Arlington for his interest in the 
 Newsbooky and I am assured by him, that your Majesty will 
 grant me all such privilege of sole printing as Counsel by 
 their report have already stated you may lawfully do ; if a 
 moderate salary is added, sufficient to secure a competent 
 
 1 Proposed letter to the Court of Alderman. S. P. Doin, Car,, ii,, 275, No. 
 155, 19th May 1670. 
 
STATE OF THE PRINTING HOUSES 187 
 
 entertainment to the officer in the execution of his duty, I 
 doubt not but to be able to give a good account of the Press ' ^. 
 
 The deputy referred to was Eichard Jeffries of St Giles- 
 in-the-Field. 
 
 What had happened in the interim to make the King 
 personally instruct L'Estrange in his duty was a new and 
 serious growth of libels, the first bad harvest of the severe 
 Conventicle Act of 1670. That Act, as is well known, was 
 the result of a compact with the Church Party in the 
 Commons, by which in consideration of their neutrality 
 towards the King's French policy, the Bishops were allowed 
 to take up the thread of persecution where the fall of 
 Clarendon had dropped it ^. This evil compact was broken 
 by gradual suspicions of the true nature of the French 
 alliance and a corresponding abatement of the bad feeling 
 towards Holland. But in 1670 the Concordat was in full 
 force and the appearance of a crop of an ti- church libels was 
 excessively disconcerting, especially as some of the men who 
 printed or wrote them had experienced Charles' personal 
 favour. 
 
 It was natural in Frank Smith to bring out a sturdy 
 defence of the Baptists on whom the persecution was 
 specially severe, but it was scant gratitude for Col. John 
 Streater to write and print The Character of a Trite and 
 False Shepherd, which rivalled the old Omnia Comesta a 
 Belo in its anti-episcopal zest. Far more serious were 
 The Unglishman and Sober oMd Serious Queries on the late 
 Conventicle Act 'proving it to be against the Laws of God, 
 of Nature, and of Magna Charta ' ^. 
 
 It is sad to reflect that Larkins and his wife, like Lillie- 
 crap and Brudenell before them, and unlike 'the brave 
 assertors ', had submitted, and in exchange for liberty pro- 
 vided the Surveyor with the information which enabled him 
 to seize some of these libels at Frank Smith's house and 
 at Streater's. 
 
 There was at the same time a villainous book seized 
 
 1 S. p. Dom. Car., ii., 275, No. 155. 
 
 2 We have abundant evidence of the disfavour with which the new persecution 
 was viewed. At Bristol there is a factioiis majority on the Bench {C.S.P.D. (1670) 
 p. 229). At Whitby, the constable refuses to act {Ibid., p. 231). 
 
 3 S. P. Dom. Car., ii., 280 (138), 29th November 1670, Roger L'Estrange to 
 Williamson. — ' The Quaeries I can prove of the printer of them, who likewise com- 
 mitted the MS. to Mr Prosser '. See p. 357. It ' frequently quotes the Bible, 
 Magna Charta, Judge Coke, etc.' It also refers to Empson and Dudlejr *who 
 exceeded Magna Charta and died for it '. See Sir Philip Musgrave to Williamson 
 CS.P.D. (1670), 22nd June, 1670, p. 290. 
 
188 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 by L'Estrange at Smith's press with the rambling title, 
 That Neither Temporalities nor Tithes is dice to the Bishops, 
 etc. ^, and inciting the Lords Temporal to take away their 
 property and use it ^for the defence and benefit of the 
 Kingdom and the relief of the poor^ {a practice) proved 
 hy the laws and practice of 20 Kings of England, Judah, 
 and France, and also hy 120 authors besides, dedicated to 
 the Kings most excellent Majesty \ There is evidence 
 that the King in his then attitude to the Church, might 
 not have been averse from this ingenious proposal, which 
 may account for the fact that the dauntless Frank, 
 though harassed between L'Estrange and Lambeth House, 
 and ' kept undischarged for 20 weeks ^, sometimes in custody, 
 and sometimes at liberty, to his real charge and damage 
 at least £605 ' , was at last suffered to remain in peace. 
 
 To illustrate the new spirit prevalent amongst the 
 Printers we cannot do better than cite the attitude of 
 Streater and Smith to their persecutors. 
 
 Streater actually wrote The True and False Shepherd 
 and when L'Estrange's deputy with a constable attempted to 
 arrest one of his compositors who was engaged on the work ^, 
 ' he refused to go with him, and the whole company of above 
 20 persons, amongst whom James Grover and Jim Carr* 
 were most audacious, fell into an uproar and began crying 
 out that they were freehorn subjects and not to be meddled 
 with by such a warrant ^. The constable thereupon charged 
 some of them, in his Majesty's name, to assist him, which 
 they refused and thrusting themselves between the constable 
 and his prisoner, the latter made his escape '. 
 
 Smith, we must remember, was both preacher and printer. 
 ' Upon the severe Act against conventicles in 1671, 1 had 
 £140 warrants against me for being taken at several times 
 at religious protestant meetings, upon which I lost my shop 
 and trade above six months ' ^. 
 
 1 Hart, Index Expurgatorius Anglicanus, p. 194 ; the tract is printed in 
 Gobbet's Pari. Hist., iv., app. x. 
 
 2 See his Narrative already referred to, chap, iv., 28-9. 
 
 3 C.S.P.D. (1670), p. 322. Streater himself was exempt from the Act. 
 
 4 The Carr whom Evelyn saw pilloried 21st December 1667 : ' I saw one Carr 
 pilloried at Charing Cross for a libel ', 
 
 5 Hallam, Cons. Hist., p. 613 : ' It seems that these warrants were known to be 
 against the Law. [State Trials, vii., 949, 956]. Possibly they might have been 
 justified under the words of the Licensing Act, while that was in force and having 
 been then introduced, were not laid aside '. The lawyers who argued the case in 
 the Court of Common Pleas, 1764, certainly took this view. 
 
 6 Narrative referred to above. 
 
STATE OF THE PRINTING HOUSES 189 
 
 It is important to remark the growth of this spirit of 
 turbulent defiance on the part of quite obscure persons. 
 The Country Party were to enlist many able lawyers on 
 their side in the approaching struggle, and the legal aspect 
 of the case was the object of closest scrutiny. Coke, Brereton, 
 The Mirror of Justice, were all to be ransacked for the elements 
 of the Constitution, while L'Est range was to reply with 
 broadsides from their own Husband and Scobel, Collections 
 and Ordinances, to prove the villany of these doctrines when 
 forced to a conclusion. For the present, after a brief return 
 to power and fitful payment of the allowance which was to 
 provide him with a coach and equipage that might rival that of 
 Mr Pepys, Roger is again forced with the fall of Arlington 
 to retire from the fighting line. We shall find, however, 
 that the grant of blank papers recently obtained was a most 
 lucrative source to him, and a corresponding irritation to 
 others. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 (1672-7) 
 
 l'estrange and the stationers — lords' libels committee 
 
 To understand fully the quarrel which was now imminent 
 between the heads of the Stationers and the party of the 
 Surveyor, we must go back to the proposed Quo Warranto 
 of 1670 ^. This order was issued by the Council on the 19th 
 August of that year and set the Stationers in a notable 
 alarm 2. They convened two meetings within a fortnight 
 of each other early in September, and passed several 
 resolutions embodying the Surveyor's proposals for their 
 better regulation ^ At the same time they pleaded that 
 they had not sufficient power over their own members, 
 which gave the Court an opportunity of offering to renew 
 their Charter in such terms as would secure their loyalty 
 to the Crown and give them the desired power over their 
 members. L'Estrange's proposals — which had been approved 
 by the Law Officers of the Crown in April of this year 
 — we may remember were three in number. (1) The £300 
 Bond mentioned in the Press Act was to be strictly 
 enforced*. (2) Any printer dealing in unlicensed matter 
 
 1 Thrice in this reign Quo Warrantos were proposed. When L'Estrange 
 became Surveyor, he ' held up ' the Stationers till they came to terms with 
 him (C. R. Rivington, Records of Coy. of Stationers (1883), p. 4 ; Arber, v., xl. ; 
 and Williams, Eng. Hist. Rev. (1908), p. 263). The last Quo Warranto issued 
 1684 {see p. 326) was reversed 1690 (Arber, Stationers' Registers, v., xli.). 
 
 2 H.M.C., pt. ii., 9th Rept., p. 69, and 7th Rept. p. 512a. They 
 had the effrontery at the Libels Committee, March 1677, to plead that the 
 Quo Warranto was issued at their own request to deal with the deadlock in 
 connection with the Law Monopoly. 
 
 3 6th and 19th. See P. 1670, C.S.P.D. (1670), p. 451. 
 
 4 The Bond seems only to have been enforced on the grossly seditious, and 
 at the instance of the Government. There is a copy of such a Bond taken by 
 John Brudenell and two others not to print seditious literature. S. P. Dam. Car., 
 ii., 80, No. 63. Finch and Palmer reported in 1670, 'that such a Bond may be 
 required and taken ' (both by Members and Foreigners), Ibid., ii., 274, No. 198. 
 
 190 
 
L'ESTRANGE AND THE STATIONERS 191 
 
 is to lose his interest in the Society's common stock. 
 (3) All supernumerary booksellers or printers, are either 
 to become subject to the rules of the Stationers or to 
 discontinue. 
 
 The last was to be effected through the Court of 
 Aldermen, and orders given from the King to the Bishops. 
 
 On 20th September, as a result of the Stationers' promises 
 of a better behaviour, the King ordered the withdrawal 
 of the Quo Warranto^. The conditions were that they 
 should act sincerely in their resolutions, and that they 
 should consult with the Surveyor who henceforth was to 
 be the King's representative in their Courts, with the 
 right to have a meeting of the Court called within three 
 days of his notice given. The King as we saw, admitted ^ 
 L'Estrange at the same time to an interview, and earnestly 
 urged on him the carrying out of these instructions, which 
 proves that Charles had been genuinely alarmed by the 
 proportions which seditious printing had attained. Mean- 
 while, the resolutions of the 5th and 19th September had, 
 with various additions to be passed into bye-laws, and 
 L'Estrange was to see the work done. 
 
 Pay being always a matter of vital importance to 
 the Surveyor, it is satisfactory to note that in January 
 following he was in receipt of certain arrears, and that 
 his grant of the sole printing of all blank papers, legal 
 and other, was confirmed ^ We shall find that this grant 
 became a considerable cause of annoyance to others, as 
 it was remunerative to the grantee. 
 
 In August of the same year (1671) *, the King reminded 
 the Stationers of what they seemed to have forgotten, that 
 he was willing to renew their charter in the directions 
 already indicated 'with such other Clauses as Counsel 
 shall advise for the security of the Government against 
 seditious and scandalous pamphlets and libels, the said 
 Clauses to be communicated to the Surveyor of the Press'. 
 
 1 H.M.C., 9th Rept., pt. ii., p. 766. Order of Council of 20th March 1670, 
 for Quo Warranto rescinded on L'Estrange undertaking to do the work by bye- 
 laws. 
 
 2 vi., 174. 
 
 3 C.S.P.D. (1671), p. 35, 21st January 1671, L'Estrange to Richards. 
 His Lordship's particular account for 6 months to the 15th inst. was £50. 
 Requests him to remind Arlington of his promise to notify the Lords Com- 
 missioners of his new grant, otherwise he loill lose his toll on the papers printed in 
 connection with the netv supplies. 
 
 4 Jbid., p. 421. 
 
192 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 The proposal of a new Charter, it should be noted, had 
 first been made by the Stationers in order to evade the 
 suggestion or condition annexed to the withdrawal of the 
 Quo Warranto, viz. — that every member of the Stationers 
 should enter into recognisances 'not to print, bind or 
 publish any unlicensed book or pamphlet'^. 
 
 The King reminded them of his offer to renew the 
 Charter on the 8th August 1671 ^ and on the 26th the 
 Company with seeming gratitude accepted the gracious 
 offer. Thereafter nothing was done and the Surveyor 
 relapsed into the lessening activity which, what with 
 the Frank Smith trouble and the dispute with Mearne 
 over the Rehearsal Transprosed^ , became more and more 
 futile till Arlington's transference to the post of Lord 
 Chamberlain in 1674 withdrew even the legal authority 
 on which the Surveyor acted, and left him exposed to 
 the coldness of one who had done him a considerable 
 injury — Sir Joseph Williamson, then Principal Secretary 
 of State. 
 
 1 C.S.P.D. (1670), pp. 436-7, 14th September, and p. 451, 24th September. 
 The King is to renew their patent gratis, but so as to advance the power of the 
 Surveyor. 
 
 2 Ihid: (1671), p. 421. On the 24th August the King ordered the Lord 
 Mayor to assist the Stationers in suppressing interlopers, Ibid., p, 447. See 
 an Order of the Court of Aldermen referring to this injunction and ordering 
 all apprentices of out-dealers to take their freedom at the expiry of their times, 
 'and all lawful means used to translate foreigners being dealers in books to 
 the Stationers Coy. '. Ford, Mayor 1671, 1st October {Notes and Qiiet-ies, 8th 
 Series, vi,, 363). 
 
 3 The licensing of Marvell's Rehearsal Transpvosed illustrates more of the mind 
 of the King than that of any other book. L'Estrange was examined by Coventry, 
 23rd January 1673, in connection with this witty libel, and then stated that his 
 attention had not been drawn to it till the first impression was selling. Harry 
 Brome told him Ponder was the printer and at his shop the Surveyor and 
 Mearne seized the second impression. But Ponder was protected by the same 
 Whiggish Earl — Anglesea — who protected Bagshawe. Anglesea told L'Estrange 
 that the King had expressed his displeasure at the seizure, for ' Parker had done 
 him wrong, and this man (Marvell) had done him right'. He directed Roger 
 to lend the work his Im'primahir at which the scrupulous Surveyor demurred 
 that ' he did not like to tamper with other men's copies, without the privity and 
 allowance of the author ', but at length agreed. The Warden and the Surveyor's 
 names were both affixed to the book, but the Stationer's clerk (Geo. Tokefield) 
 showed more obstinacy. The Surveyor's excisions were not, however, respected 
 in the second impression, which gave an excuse for the withdrawal of his 
 Imprimatur. Anglesea's resentment of the arbitrary methods of the Stationers 
 is as instructive as Parker's efforts to stop the sale of Marvell's attacks. See 
 Rehearsal Transprosed (Marvell's Prose Works (1776), ii., 243 and 269) ; and 
 Coventi-y MSS., H.M.C., App. to 4th Rept., p. 234. It should be noted that 
 Mearne charged L'Estrange before the Lords' Libels Committee, 6th April 1677, 
 with saying that he had the King's order for licensing the work ' and pretended 
 other orders from His Majesty when he had none'. H.M.C, pt. ii., 9th Rept., 
 786. 
 
OLD ST. PAUL'S. 
 
 A HAUNT OK THE BOOKSELLERS. 
 
 [Face p. ig2. 
 
L'ESTRANGE AND THE STATIONERS 193 
 
 It is not quite clear whether the Stationers kept their 
 promise even formally to consult with L'Estrange for the 
 next year or two. But all talk of new bye-laws and 
 compulsory bonds and recognisances died down, and it 
 was now during the disintegration of the Cabal Ministry 
 that the Heads of the Society became corrupted to a degree 
 hitherto unknown. We have seen that this (1674-5) was a 
 period of considerable attack on the Government and the 
 Church, and yet, far from anything being done against 
 any but poor fanatics like Frank Smith and Darby, the 
 very men whom the King had honoured by recommendation 
 to the Court of Stationers in 1668, were known to be 
 knee-deep in the same seditious traffic, and by every 
 means counteracted and anticipated the action of the 
 Surveyor and King's Messengers. 
 
 It is rather sad to have to relate that the unimpeachable 
 L'Estrange connived — for money — at the licensing and 
 leaving unmolested of numerous libels, of which the pages 
 of Professor Arber's Term Catalogues give eloquent proof. 
 But printer ClavelFs shoulders could always bear the 
 responsibility of such offences in Mercurius Librarius'^. It 
 is unfair perhaps to say that nothing was done after August 
 1671, for in the following year a muster-roll of the Printers 
 was taken at the command of Arlington with the object 
 of extruding those who had faulty claims to their presses. 
 But the fact that two out of three of the long threatened 
 supernumeraries of the last enquiry in 1668 are employed, 
 appears to leave very little hope of- any action now. Yet 
 on other grounds this enquiry in the Indulgence year is of 
 considerable interest. 
 
 There is an entry in the Stationer's Records signed 
 by the clerk George Tokefield, of date 15th January 1672-3, 
 requiring that ' Mr Warden Roper, Mr Warden Mearne, 
 and Major Roycroft do attend the Right Honourable the 
 Earl of Arlington with the account of several Printers 
 on Friday morning next '2. 
 
 Unfortunately this account is that of only several 
 Printers and those naturally the suspected ones^. In all 
 
 1 Mearne's charge, 6th April 1677, ibid. See the Examination of Clavell before 
 the Lords' Committee, 6th April 1677, ihid.y p. 79a). Mearne accused L'Estrange 
 of 'licensing 200 unlicensed books in the Catalogue' {Mer. Lib.). Clavell gave 
 Roger 40s. and later 30s, a quarter for his license to the Catalogue ilhid). 
 
 2 S. P. D(m. Car., ii., 332, (96). 
 
 3 Pnd., ii., 332, 96i. 
 
194 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 we have their claims stated to the privilege of Printing, 
 by ten out of some thirty Master Printers, including 
 Rawlins, Winter, and Darby, three out of the four printers 
 noted in 1668 as supernumeraries and ' to be proceeded 
 against at the next assizes'. We learn from this list 
 that in at least one case, that of Wm. Downing, Printer 
 to the University of Oxford, the Archbishop of Canterbury 
 still retained the power to set up a Master Printer, but 
 the right or license to print could be transferred not only 
 from father to son by deed of gift or bargain, but that 
 for example one of the Printers who was 'disabled by 
 the Fire', Thos. Childe, and whom we note among those 
 who had found work at another Printing House, was 
 able to 'depute' his license, or right to print, to Thos. 
 Bennet, who set up in his stead, while Childe (still destined 
 to do good Whiggish work) worked for Ratcliffe, Nat 
 Thompson's partner^. 
 
 Further, it is clear that journeymen could still set 
 up for themselves without consulting anybody 2. We find 
 Robert Battersby and Henry Lloyd who were journeymen 
 in 1668 entering into an uneasy partnership in 1670. 
 
 Two years later ^ the Stationers presented another list of 
 the Printing Houses to the Secretaries, by which it appeared 
 that the numbers had been reduced to 23 (not including 
 the King's Printers), with the usual list of those who 
 had set up since the Act came into force. Darby and 
 Rawlins are there. It does not take much penetration to 
 
 1 The career of the Popish Printer John Winter is interesting. He served a 
 term of ten years with Wm. Bladen sometime King's Printer for Ireland, was 
 made free of the Company and City, 6th April 1666. In the year 1667 he 
 married the widow of Ealph Wood, an actual master printer in 1662. 'The said 
 John Winter was some years since indicted upon the form of an Act made in 1662, 
 which said indictment he was acquitted of by Non-Process issued by the King's 
 Attorney-General, Sir Geoffrey Palmer '. Of Darby we learn that he 'served an 
 apprenticeship with Mr Peter Cole, was made free of this Company and City in 
 the year 1660, married Dover's widow in 1666, and hath kept a Printing House 
 ever since '. 
 
 2 Note the Caveat, April 1676, that no one is to set up a Printing House without 
 notice given to the Master, Wardens, etc., of Stationers, S. P. Bom. Car., ii., 
 Entry Book 45, No. 23. 
 
 3 G.S.P.D. (1675-6), p. 43, 29th March 1675. If we compare this survey with 
 that of July 1668 (chap, vi., 178) we find that Flesher and Purslow have left their 
 businesses to their widows, Wocombe and Coe have disappeared, and Lilliecrap 
 been bought out by the Stationers (he was an old offender). Only one new 
 master printer is introduced, and of the old seditious group (marked ' set up 
 contrary to the Act '), viz. : — Rawlins, Darby, Winter, Okes, the two latter are 
 deceased, while the first two are still, with eight others, marked out for destruc- 
 tion. We shall find them busy shortly with the remarkable series of Constitutional 
 Libels. Rawlins we find in Dunton's gallery {Life and Errors (1818), p. 251), 
 
L'ESTRANGE AND THE STATIONERS 195 
 
 perceive that these periodical visitations of the Press were 
 perfunctory, and that the maintenance of the legal number 23 
 was the merest pretence. There are many books of the period 
 which bear printers' names, neither included in the legal 23, 
 nor the chargeable supernumeraries. At any rate the super- 
 numeraries beyond some harassment were never rooted out. 
 With the fall of Arlington, his successor determined 
 with memories of the rankling sore in connection with 
 the Newsbook, to do without L'Estrange's services as much 
 as possible^. Accordingly, though in February 1674-5 the 
 latter was reappointed as a Secretary's Licenser ^ — the 
 Surveyorship having no legal authority was wholly dependent 
 on a deputation of the Secretary's general search warrant — 
 Williamson had the effrontery a year later, in concert with 
 Secretary Coventry, to warn the Stationers that 'we are 
 informed that daily many things come out of the Press 
 pretended to be licensed by some deriving their authority 
 from us', and that 'they have deputed no one to serve 
 in this capacity ' ^. This may mean that he had withdrawn 
 L'Estrange's Licensership since February 1674-5 — but on 
 the other hand, books still come out bearing Roger's license *. 
 On 6th February 1675 — three days after the above warning 
 — Williamson appointed Henry Oldenburg, 'one of the 
 Deputies of my License'^. Oldenburg's experience as a 
 Licenser was very short-lived, for we find him on 29th April 
 of the same year resigning what he regards — and what all 
 Licensers of general literature did regard — as an intolerable 
 burden. His testimony on this point is interesting as 
 confirming the views of all competent writers, that even 
 admitting the general necessity of a licensing system, it 
 would be difficult at any time to find men so devoted to 
 work as L'Estrange, and that a Licenser, if conscientious, 
 was a real check on the amount of literature produced, 
 and if not, worse than useless. 
 
 1 And paying him as little. S, P. Dom. Car., ii., 432, No. 2, is a letter from 
 Roger L'Estrange to Jenkins, 17th September 1683, explaining that there is 
 • an arriere due to me from His Majesty upon an allowance in lieu of the Neicshook 
 (being £250 a year) which was paid me by His Majesty's order till my Lord 
 Arlington was removed (29th March 1674), over and above £100 a year more 
 allowed me out of the profits of the Gazet '. From then till 1683 he has only 
 had £910. 
 
 2 aS.P.D. (1673-5), p. 571. ^ j^a, (1675-6). p. 640, 3rd February 1676. 
 4 For example on 13th April 1676 — Oldenburg resigned on the 29th— he 
 
 licensed Proposals for the Advancement of Trade and Merciirius Librariiis bears 
 his Imprimatur during the whole period. 
 8 ,S'. P. Dom. Car., ii., Case F., No. 73. 
 
196 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 Oldenburg was one of the wits of the Royal Society, a 
 foreigner by extraction, who laboured under the double 
 suspicion of being a republican and a foreign spy ^, suspicions 
 that no amount of loyal protest could purge him off, and 
 which seem to have clung to all the Restoration Licensers, 
 including L'Estrange and Bohun, That Williamson used 
 him so freely to translate despatches and to help in the 
 Newsbooh is perhaps sufficient to belie such a suspicion, 
 but like Bohun he found that to have anything to do 
 with this unpopular office, was sufficient offence. After 
 complaining that he is the victim of those quos fictis causis 
 opprimere innocentes juvat, and who have insinuated doubts 
 of his loyalty to the Government in the Secretary's breast, 
 despite his so frequent commendation of the English Ministry 
 both to natives and foreigners (as is well attested by * our 
 friend Mr Boyle') as to earn him the name of 'a partial 
 Englishman ' , he continues : ' But besides this consideration 
 of freeing you (Williamson) from anxious thought upon this 
 account, I have further to allege, that though perhaps I 
 should not have resigned so soon as now I do, yet certainly 
 the tenderness of the employment and the vast expense of 
 time it requires above what at first I imagined would ere 
 long have constrained me to have surrendered, who must 
 declare myself to be of the genius and temper that preferring 
 the ease of his mind and the compliance with his other 
 studies before so nice and laborious a task, wherein it is 
 difficult to please universally ... am satisfied in my own 
 thoughts with my performance in reference to this office, 
 which clearness of conscience is to me mille testium loco'. 
 
 As to his experience as Licenser, he has rejected more 
 than he has allowed. Those books he did license, Williamson 
 had already approved. On the whole he is persuaded that 
 he 'has taken more pains and care in the perusal of con- 
 siderable of such books, as came before him — with the 
 exception of that unhappy romance '^ — than perhaps any- 
 
 1 ' He was always remembered by Wren, Hooke, Boyle, and the other Fellows 
 of the Royal Society as a spy '. Notes arid Queries, Second Series, vi., 369. 
 Masson, L-ife of Milton, iv., 626-6. He was also remembered as a very capable 
 oflficial of the Society. 
 
 2 ^S^. P. Dom. Car., ii., 381 (33). The Romance was Hattige or Les Amours du 
 Roy Tamerlaine, printed in Holland, author, one Bremont. 'Last Saturday 
 Bentley went to Oldenburg to have the book again, which he refused, but 
 told him it would not be Licensed '. C.S.P.D. (1676-7), p. 80. Hattige was a 
 Dutch view of Charles XL's amours. L'Estrange is directed by Williamson to 
 search for it, 22nd April 1676. 
 
L'ESTRANGE AND THE STATIONERS 197 
 
 one who has sustained that province these many years. 
 Finally he begs Williamson to give out that the speedy 
 termination of his Licensership is due to lack of time, 
 not lack of efficiency or loyalty. 
 
 The Surveyorship was, it has been said, an office 
 dependent entirely on the Secretary's warrant. That general 
 warrant it is true became itself greatly questioned on legal 
 grounds even in the hands of the Secretary, and Williamson 
 in refusing to renew it to the Surveyor after the fall of 
 Arlington may have been actuated by some constitutional 
 qualms. But his granting it immediately to the Stationers 
 and to certain great Patentees naturally aroused the resent- 
 ment of the Surveyor who had expressly demanded the 
 calling in of all such warrants save his own. In the 
 interval, and until the Lords' Libels Committee, he was 
 from time to time — addressed still as Surveyor — directed by 
 secretarial special warrant to search for certain books, but 
 against the Stationers' general warrant this occasional 
 authority was useless. It was then, during L'Estrange's 
 impotence, that the loyal Mearne and Roycroft exercised 
 the greatest tyranny over the Press — but not in the 
 King's interest. 
 
 It may be remembered that MarvelFs ire was aroused 
 by the severe Licensing Bill sent down by the Lords in 
 November 1675, because it provided drastic clauses for 
 'breaking all houses whatsoever on suspicion of any such 
 pamphlet', whereby, adds Marvell, 'Master L'Estrange's 
 authority was much amplified, to search any other House 
 with the same liberty as he had Sir Thos. Doleman's ' ^. 
 
 This Bill was the result of feeling aroused in the great 
 session 1675 by such things as the Letter from a Person of 
 Quality, already noticed 2. At the Committee formed to 
 consider this and other libels — the forerunner of the great 
 
 1 Lords' Journals, xiii., 20 ; Commom' Journals, ix., 378 ; C.S.P.D. (1675-6), 
 p. 406, 17th November (?) 1675. Roger's father-in-law, Sir Thos. Doleman was 
 a great Whig. See his work on the Succession 1679-80, ordered by the Primate 
 'to be damasked', 8th April 1682 (Arber, Registers, v., Iv.). As Clerk to the 
 Council, he did his best to excuse Gates' halting testimony at the Wakeman 
 Trial {State Trials, vii., 656-7). The date of L'Estrange's marriage to his 
 daughter, Ann Doleman, must be guessed from the fact that it was a case 
 of 'an old fellow marrying a young lasse' {Ansiver to a Whole Litter of Liheh, 
 (1680), pp. 2, 6) and that his first son was born Good Friday 1678. Marvell's jest 
 takes its point from the Whiggish slander that Roger's wooing was somewhat 
 violent. 
 
 2 lizxi {Index, p. 206) says it was the work of Locke, but what share he had 
 in it, it is impossible to discover. 
 
198 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 Libels Committee, which sat immediately after the long 
 Prorogation — I/Estrange's general warrant from Arlington 
 was produced, but Roger informed their Lordships that 
 'he had no such power since Lord Arlington went out of 
 office'. He was thereupon invited by the Committee to 
 lay before them his suggestions for the new and severe 
 Bill contemplated. These suggestions ^ are: (1) The legal 
 term 'libel' should extend to written matter 'because it 
 is notorious that not one in 40 libels ever comes to Press, 
 though by the help of MS., they are well nigh as public'. 
 (2) For the suppression of printed libels a general warrant 
 from the King in Council^ such as he formerly had would 
 suffice him. (3) When the Stationers were admitted they 
 might be obliged to swear in Hall to have nothing to do 
 with libels, and (4) The harbouring of libels without notice 
 given to a Justice of the Peace to be taken as particeps 
 criminis. In other words he reiterated his old Proposals 
 of 1662. The nuisance referred to in his first proposal 
 was coming to a head in these months. In January 
 following (^1676) 2, the Coffeehouse-men were to get a 
 second notice to close, and the Gazet is voluble on the 
 subject. Muddiman's reign in the Department of the 
 Newsletter was over, and it soon appeared that in new 
 hands it was a better carrier of sedition than loyalty^. 
 
 That passage in the Life of the Lord ICeeper North 
 dealing with the Press, although in the latter part dealing 
 with the situation in 1680-1, being expressly tacked on to 
 the coffee-house trouble of 1676, we may take to refer to 
 this session. 
 
 'As to the business of lies and libels', says North*, 
 * which in those days were an intolerable nuisance to the 
 Court, especially finding that the community of gentle and 
 simple strangely ran in with them ; it was moved that there 
 should be more messengers of the Press and spies, who 
 
 1 H.M.C, 9th Kept., pt. ii., 66a and h. 
 
 2 Hallam {Cons. Hist., ch. xiii., 427) praises Charles II. 's moderation in 
 the matter of Proclamations. The first peremptory order to close is dated 
 29th December 1675. See the Gazet under date. On 8th January 1676 a 
 second Proclamation permitted them to continue under recognisances of £500 
 till 25th June 1676. See Lives of the Norths (1890), i., 197. 
 
 ^ His monopoly was gone, but his letters continued till the Revolution amid 
 many competitors. See p. 328. 
 
 ■* Lives of the Norths, i., 198-9. Exatnen, pp. 138-141. M. Beljame {Le Public 
 et les Homines de lettres en Anglete^re (1660-1744), Paris, 1881), in his excellent 
 chapter on Coffee-houses and Newspapers (pp. 172-4) pei-haps infers too much 
 from the fact that Pepys makes very infrequent reference to the Newsbook. 
 

 §8 
 
 O u 
 
 O H 
 
L'ESTRANGE AND THE STATIONERS 199 
 
 should discover secret Printing-Houses (which were then 
 against the Law) and take up hawkers, that sold libels and 
 all other persons that dispersed them, and inflict severe 
 punishment on all that were found guilty '. It seems that 
 North took up a milder attitude, and, like Halifax, suggested 
 the silencing of libels by able writers rather than force, 
 otherwise severity would fall ' not on the authors and 
 abettors, but some poor wretches that sought to get a penny 
 by selling them', and thus excite rather than abate the 
 nuisance. 
 
 Of the kind of loyal pamphlet advocated by Halifax and 
 North, there was no lack, but Bohun has recorded that such 
 exercises had no vogue compared with the others. 'You 
 shall sometimes find a seditious libel to have passed through 
 so many hands that it is at last scarce legible for dust and 
 sweat, whilst the loyal answer stands in a gentleman's 
 study as clean and as neat as it came from the Press ' ^. 
 
 The period of "Williamson's rule is marked by the 
 frequency of Proclamations, by which he hoped to do what 
 the Surveyor with diminished authority could not do ^. 
 
 But the contemplation of severities is a different thing 
 from the practice. If Oldenburg was accurate in saying he 
 rejected more books than he licensed, we can imagine a 
 large amount of secret printing and communication of well- 
 thumbed manuscripts. One of the last things the Lords 
 did on the eve of the Long Prorogation was to remind the 
 Stationers of their duty. In April 1676 the usual Caveat 
 came out against setting up presses without informing the 
 Company ^. 
 
 Meanwhile it was well known that London was seething 
 with libels and that the City itself was so strongly moved 
 by the Constitutional question as to remind men of the last 
 occasion in 1659-60 of similar agitation. On 24th June, 
 their debatings at Commonhall, after a hot speech from 
 Tribune *Mr Jenks', were summarily closed down, and 
 
 ^ Epistle Dedicated to 3rd pt. of An Address to the Loyal Freeholders, 1682. 
 
 ^ Gazet. Besides the Coffee-house Proclamations, 2nd May 1674 — Against 
 Spreading False News, 7th January 1675-6 — For Discovery of Libellers, 10th and 
 13th January 1675-6— Rewards (£20 for printer and £50 for author) for dis- 
 coveries of Naked Truth, etc., the Proclamation of 7th January 1675-6 offered £20 
 to informers which was claimed in connection with a wretched libel at Bristol, by 
 Alderman Fowler — an excellent example of how the Informer's trade invaded 
 Society. O.S.P.D. (1676-7), pp. 50 and 182. By 31st October 1679 the price 
 had risen to £40. 
 
 3 S. P. Dom. Car., ii., Untry Book 45 (23). 
 
200 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 Jenks committed. His printed speech, however, ran like 
 wildfire through the nation, warning the people that their 
 liberties were at stake. The Papists were at the bottom of 
 their miseries, 'wicked, hellish instruments, hired to fire 
 our houses'. Credit was destroyed as the result of the 
 closing of the Exchequer 1671-2, 'no merchant knowing 
 where to put his money'. Trade is impoverished through 
 French tariffs, so that 'we spend in France ten times our 
 English revenue, and we must become the King of France, 
 his slaves, as the Egyptians more excusably yielded them- 
 selves to Pharaoh for bread'. Religion is going, and the 
 presumptive heir to the Crown is a papist^. 
 
 This eruption of what may be regarded as alarming 
 sedition determined Williamson to call L'Estrange back 
 into the fighting line, and that despite a very bitter attack 
 by some unknown person on the Surveyor, 3rd June, which 
 happily illustrates the latter's sources of profit. Besides 
 the old charge of extortion and severity, this document 
 charges L'Estrange with the more serious and at first sight 
 impossible crime of favouring the fanatics. 
 
 Complaint against Boger L'Estrange^ addressed to 
 Williamson^ Srd June 1676^. 
 
 (After referring to L'Estrange's lucrative grant of 1671 
 of the sole right in all blank papers printed on one side 
 only, a grant which touched all legal and formal documents 
 and from which it seems the King's Customs were not 
 free ^, the writer proceeds : — ) 
 
 'At the same time it was offered by one that well 
 understood the illegality of L'Estrange's pretensions, to be 
 done for 8s. 6d. the ream who did perform the same for 
 some years after. Upon which they came to an agreement 
 with him for a pension, induced so to do by his pretended 
 
 1 Jenhs^ Speech, followed by Jenhs, Ids Case, for which L'Estrange was ordered 
 to search, 9th July. C.*S^.P.Z>. (1676-7), p. 215. Jenks was examined in con- 
 nection with the Rye House affair and seems to have been altogether a rather 
 loud, indiscreet, but sincere person. It is important to note that the Whig 
 leaders, Buckingham especially, were accused of applauding Jenks' action. 
 C.S.P.D. (1676-7), p. 352. 
 
 2 S. P. Dom. Car., ii., 381 (252). 
 
 =5 See letter of L'Estrange, 21st January, 1671 (quoted p. 3, note) in which the 
 new Patentee suggests in anticipation of such a charge of exaction as the above, 
 that * it were well if the price were limited by the reams, so as not to exceed the 
 ordinary rate of the King's Printers '. 
 
L'ESTRANGE AND THE STATIONERS 201 
 
 interest at Court and his aforesaid illegal Patent so dis- 
 advantageous to the Crown and oppressive to the subject. 
 To these may be added his numerous annual exactions 
 which those among many others are to be considered. 
 
 (1) From the Company of Stationers by Contract 
 
 out of the English Stock i . . . . £50 
 
 (2) From the Play-Houses besides presents . . 50 
 
 (3) Quacks Bills and Books 500 
 
 (4) Ballads, for licensing these when the poor poet 
 
 hath but 18d. for his pains 2 
 
 (5) For winking at the numerous spawn of non- 
 
 conformity books 
 
 (6) The last (but not the least) his seizing arbit- \ 
 
 rarily without conviction of fact the goods I Vastly 
 
 of such as act contrarily to his pre- 1 considerable 
 tended power. ) 
 
 (7) For licensing all books to be reprinted . . Is. per sheet 
 And for all new books under 10 sheets . . Is. per sheet 
 And for all new books above 10 sheets . . Is. per sheet 
 
 'He hath given out in speeches that his concern is equal 
 in value to the Secretary of State's. The vogue of Mr 
 L'Estrange's late conquests, and his pretended merits in 
 the management of his present employment of surveying 
 the Press, appears strange to those that understand his 
 constitution ; the consideration whereof, if impartially viewed, 
 the result will appear to be : — 
 
 ' First, his illegal assuming power, which by Law is only 
 vested and of right solely appertaining to the King's 
 Majesty, Secretary of State for History and Intelligence, 
 to the Heralds for Heraldry, to the Judges for Law, to 
 the Bishops of Canterbury and London for Divinity and 
 miscellanies, and Mr L'Estrange being none of these, is 
 incapable by Law to manage any of these concerns. As 
 to his management of the Press and the good use and 
 service therein, it amounts to no more but this, that by 
 such pretensions he hath terrified the poor printer and 
 
 1 News from Parnassus (an ephemeral single-sheet, No. 1, 27th January 1681). 
 * When he was Arch-oppressor of the Press he had taken as a bribe from a certain 
 Society every New Year's Day for many years 100 guineas '. 
 
 ^ The 1663 grant gave him the monopoly of ' all narratives not exceeding 
 2 sheets of paper, mercuries, documents, play-bills, Quacksalvers Bills, Sale Bills, 
 and Advertisements, etc' That of 1671 the sole right of printing all blank forms 
 printed on only one side of the papers. His ' pension ', mentioned above, by 
 agreement with the Customs was paid down to the Revolution. MSS. of Lords 
 {Reports, Commissioners, 27, p. 416)— an item of expenditure of the Excise Office, 
 1691, for two and a half years past. To the Door-keeper— for Coffee, Newspapers, 
 Gazettes a,\id letters ; to Sir Roger L'Estrange and other incidents— £548, 12s. lO^d. 
 
202 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 booksellers who have not been able to satisfy his avaricious 
 desires but for his own private gains suffers the rich to 
 escape censured 
 
 Tor many years he hath exacted 5s. per ream for 
 everything whatsoever that was printed for His Majesty's 
 immediate service as for collecting His Majesty's Customs, 
 directions for getting the Hearth Money and Excise, and 
 this not by such content, but many thousand reams per 
 annum, but quo jure this hath been done may rationally 
 be considered. 
 
 * It is granted the late Farmers of Excise paid 17s. 6d. per 
 ream according as His Majesty paid when that part of His 
 Revenue was managed by Commissioners notwithstanding ' ^. 
 
 The seventh Clause of this indictment — the taking of 
 fees for licensing books — if true was not distinctly 
 illegal^. In the case of Reprints, which required a new 
 license (one of the objections often quoted against the 
 Imprimatur) the busy Stationer preferred to compound with 
 the licenser, and even for ordinary books, the slipping of 
 a guinea into his hands, was notoriously said to satisfy 
 the Surveyor. But from all sources it appeared that 
 L'Estrange was by means of his old and new grants levying 
 tribute on every conceivable form of the Stationary trade. 
 As to the licensing of Hhe numerous spawn of noncon- 
 formity' — including Papist books — that matter was yet 
 
 1 For an example of his high-handed conduct see S. P. Bom. Car., ii., 390 (9) 
 3rd January 1676-7. A bookseller had received from Amsterdam a book of the 
 same class as Hattige called Zigliae Amoves, and the Ecole des Filles. L'Estrange 
 having notice, turned the man out of his shop for several hours. It is difficult to 
 say whether the oflfence was against public morals, Charles II., or the Duke of 
 York, who had the forfeit of foreign unlicensed wares. It is singular that in 
 this reign Hart {Index Exp., p. 195) could only find one book {Quaker and his 
 Maid) prosecuted for pure indecency ; for blasphemy, there are more, as 
 Hindmarsh's Presbyterian Paternoster 1681 {Index, 262). 
 
 2 This came under his grant of 1671 as being printed on only one side of the 
 paper — a vexatious monopoly denied to L'Estrange in 1662 (chap, v., 106) 
 enjoyed by Symcock at the beginning of the Civil Wars and complained of by the 
 Stationers in 1628 and again in 1641. See the Printer^ Petition of that year so 
 often referred to. H.M.Q., Appendix to ith Rept., p. 21. In 1678 a similar 
 grant was made to Wm. Paston (Earl of Yarmouth) 'except all matter and 
 things of the nature aforesaid by us granted to Roger L'Estrange Esq. ' {S. P. 
 Dom. Car., ii., War7'ant Booh 1, No. 5), contested by printer Barrel, 1. Jac. 2 in 
 B. R. See Viner, Abridgment, viii., 208. 
 
 "^ He swore before the Libels Committee, March 1677, that he never exacted a 
 penny for licensing books. It may be remembered that his demands in 1661-2 
 included Is. per sheet for every book licensed, H.M.C., pt. ii., 9th Rept., 
 p. 79a. In their objections to renewing the Press Act, 1695, the Commons 
 specially noted that the Act did not limit the Licenser's exhorbitancies, Lords' 
 Journals, xv., 545&. 
 
L'ESTRANGE AND THE STATIONERS 203 
 
 to come before the Libels Committee, and no more need 
 be said here than that a Committee of the Commons held 
 in 1666 had already acquitted him of a charge of reselling 
 his great seizures of Catholic books in the moment of anti- 
 Catholic frenzy succeeding the Fire^. If we accept the 
 8s. 6d. per ream estimate above, and the 17s. 6d. paid, 
 the difference may perhaps be taken as the value of his 
 later monopoly in one great and public department. The 
 author of these complaints does not mention the printed 
 Catalogue of books (Mercurius Librarius)^ which Professor 
 Arber has reprinted under the name of Term Catalogues. 
 During the years of L'Estrange's ' late conquests ', i.e., 1671-6, 
 we find in these Catalogtoes, which were directly under 
 the Surveyor's management^, some damning evidence 
 either of Printer Clavell's carelessness, or L'Estrange's 
 venality in passing the very type of libel he denounced. 
 Clavell, of course, could always be blamed for such indis- 
 cretions, and at any rate the Surveyor could always plead 
 worry, haste, or indisposition. 
 
 Be that as it may, it is certain that in July of this 
 year, the Secretary directed him to approach the Stationers 
 once more and insist on the long delayed bye-laws. 
 Parliament would meet in a few months. Already, what 
 with Jenks' Speech and Accounts of the Folkmote held at 
 Gtoildhall the City was in a very excitable condition, while 
 the libels of the previous year, Locke's (?) Letter from 
 a Person of Quality, Croft's and Hickeringill's Naked Truth, 
 and Marvell's Divine in Mode ^ were still turning the 
 people's heads with rebellious thoughts against both Church 
 and State. There were rumours of more dangerous libels new- 
 hatched by the leaders and lawyers of the Country Party. 
 
 1 II.M.C, ibid., p. 796. The editor of the Catalogue of the Hope Collection 
 of Early Newsioapers in the Bodleian Library, 1865, remarks in an ignorant note 
 (pp. 6-7) that L'Estrange * held the office of Licenser of the Press and directed 
 the power the situation conferred on him in opposition to the intrigues of the 
 Papists'. 
 
 2 Professor Arber has scarcely given L'Estrange the place which was really his 
 in this publication. In the first place from a letter of Arlington's {S. P. Dom. 
 Car., ii., 274 (5)) it appears that the original idea was his, and the quarrel between 
 Starkey and Clavell for the printing of it, merely a printer's quarrel. In practice 
 no doubt, the busy Surveyor left the consideration of many books to Clavell. 
 The appearance of Mercurius Lihrarius and the book of Advertisements (The 
 Mercury) in 1668, marks L'Estrange's eagerness to use his monopoly of advertise- 
 ments to replace the forfeited JVewshool: Clavell became a great bookseller and 
 Dunton gives him a high character {Life and Erros, 207). 
 
 3 Warrant to the Surveyor to search for these libels, 29th March 1676. 
 G.S.P.D. (1676-7), p. 51. 
 
204 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 A month after the City midsummer uproar referred to, 
 L'Estrange on the 14th July ^ appeared at the Stationers' 
 Court and proposed his two new bye-laws, the substance of 
 which was: — 
 
 I. Regulative — that no member of the Society ^rm^ or 
 conceal any unlicensed book, and — most important — 'that 
 the said bye-laws be read to every freeman at the taking 
 of his oath and to be printed with the oath and a printed 
 copy hereof to be forthwith delivered to every member of 
 the Company and all discoveries to be entered in a book 
 kept for that purpose whereof Mr L'Estrange is to have a 
 view on demand'. 
 
 II. Punitive — The Company to use its power of inflicting 
 fines and forfeitures of interest in the Common Stock and 
 work thereon for such offences. 
 
 It need scarcely be pointed out that these are the 
 substance of his old proposals of 1661-2. 
 
 It was the personal application of these rules which 
 annoyed the Stationers. They were quite willing to pass 
 general bye -laws of the nature of pious aspirations to be 
 relegated to the mass of unenforced rules. We are not 
 surprised that from this moment the Surveyor's relations 
 with the Company, never cordial, became intolerable. 
 Whilst assuring him politely that his proposals would be 
 the chief business before the next Court 2, the date of that 
 Court was withheld from him, and as the calling of a Court 
 was a matter to be suddenly decided over a bottle of 
 wine by Roper, Mearne, and Roys ton, care was taken that 
 the next meeting should not be graced by the Surveyor's 
 presence. As it happened, the Mearne faction though pre- 
 dominant was not unopposed in the Society. The Master, 
 Abel Roper, was of the Trimming kind, and seems to have 
 advised capitulation. Frequent bickerings were the result, 
 on one occasion Warden Mearne declining to give up the 
 key of the Hall when a hurried meeting was convened by 
 the other side. 
 
 Towards the end of September, the Surveyor again 
 appeared at the Court to demand what progress they had 
 made with his bye-laws. They had reluctantly passed the 
 
 1 aS.P.D. (1676-7), p. 590. 
 
 2 Ordered that the intended bye-laws and particularly the Papers now 
 delivered into Court by Mr L'Estrange be the first business debated at the next 
 General Court. Ibid. 
 
L'ESTRANGE AND THE STATIONERS 205 
 
 Regulative Clause, but such eloquent delays ^ were objected 
 to the second or Punitive, that L'Estrange informed them 
 that the King would be no longer trifled with — ' the meeting 
 of Parliament was at hand and if the bye-laws were not 
 passed before it met, they would be pestered with libels 
 and the blame lie at their door.' ' Upon this ', says Capt. 
 John Seymour's information 2, * a leading member (Mearne), 
 sprang up and accused them of wishing to make the 
 Company L'Estrange's slaves, and spoke disrespectfully of 
 the King, but on L'Estrange threatening to report the 
 words, they were apologised for by other members. ... It 
 now appeared that the objection of the Company was not so 
 much to the passing of the desired bye-laws, but the com- 
 municating it specially to each member, as they hoped 
 to evade it, by entering it into the bulk of their other bye- 
 laws, and then pretending ignorance of it'. 
 
 It is clear that the Stationers' Court in company with 
 the Mercers, etc., in these months merely reflected the 
 turmoil of the Common Council, with the added excitement 
 of L'Estrange as the King's deputy attempting to bully a 
 free body into compliance^. 
 
 The Stationers afterwards complained that the delay in 
 passing these bye-laws was due to alterations in them made 
 by the Surveyor, and that the noisy scene when Mearne 
 refused the key for the Court summoned to deal with 
 L'Estrange's proposals, was the effect of a purely personal 
 quarrel with the trimming Master. 
 
 On the 4th December, the Stationers passed a bye-law, 
 that no unlicensed book be entered in Clavell's Catalogue, 
 which though described as ' at the instigation of L'Estrange ' 
 was surely meant as an attack on that official, since he 
 kept the key of the Catalogue. 
 
 It was shortly after — the 20th December — that these 
 negotiations having come to nothing, an attack against 
 
 1 The usual ones — admitted by the Surveyor — that they had no power over 
 people so long as outsiders traded in books, S. P. Bom. Car., ii., 391, Nos. 96-7. 
 
 ^ The information here detailed is derived from the proceedings of the two 
 Libels Committees given in the App. to the 2nd pt. of ^th Rept.y H.AI.C, pp. 
 69a-796, and 66a and &, and the corresponding entries in the Lords' Joxtmals. It 
 is clear from the fact that Seymour's indictment coincides largely with L'Estranges' 
 Eeport («S. P. Bom. Car.^ ii., 391, Nos. 96-7) that the former was merely the 
 Surveyor's mouthpiece. Another source is the important document S. P. Bom. 
 Car., ii., 366 (263), being some notes by Williamson of an examination of the Law 
 Officers and the Messengers, 20th December 1676. 
 
 3 Carte, Life of OrmoTide, ii., 522. 'AH mechanical Companies were entirely 
 on the republican side of the dispute '. 
 
206 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 the Stationers which emanated from L'Estrange was com- 
 municated to Williamson, though Capt. John Seymour is 
 the nominal accuser^. 
 
 These charges are the basis of the grand attack shortly 
 to be delivered before the Lords' Committee. 
 
 A word on the two protagonists in this struggle may 
 be desirable here. 
 
 Samuel Mearne was that patentee recommended by the 
 King along with Norton and Eoycroft to the Stationers' 
 Assistance in 1668. His career as a monopolist is not 
 without interest. In Commonwealth times, his record was 
 no doubt clean enough, for his appointment as King's book- 
 seller in June 1661 with a pension of £6, was unchallenged 
 at the moment when the old Cavaliers were denouncing 
 similar favour shown to Tytan, Newcombe, etc. From the 
 time of his introduction to the Stationers for conspicuous 
 loyalty, he took the leading part in those seizures of 
 Popish and sectarian books which marked the years of the 
 Surveyor's declining interest. He displaced the Surveyor 
 at a time when the secretaries were very glad to get rid 
 of the impecunious cavalier. He fell foul of the Baptist 
 Printer, Frank Smith in such ruthless manner 2 that, despite 
 the deep rooted antipathy between their views, L'Estrange 
 seems actually to have received Smith as a useful ally 
 against the pretensions of Mearne, and placed him under 
 the protection of his tool Capt. Seymour, ' to whom all fled 
 that were obnoxious to the Stationers'. 1674 with the Fall 
 of Arlington, we marked as the lowest year of the Surveyor's 
 interest. It was the year of Mearne's greatest power. In 
 June of that year he was sworn Stationer-in-ordinary, and 
 in May 1675 we read that 'Whereas he hath by his humble 
 petition faithfully executed the said Office of bookbinding 
 for so many years past and as also that of our bookseller, 
 and having humbly besought us that in regard the said 
 offices depend on the Trade of Stationer and he having 
 brought up his son, Charles, to the Trade, etc. ... he now 
 surrenders his old grants, and receives a new grant for 
 himself and son of the several offices of bookbinder, book- 
 seller and Stationer-in-ordinary for life, in consideration 
 of the good skill and ability of the said same Mearne and 
 
 1 Page 207. 
 
 2 Chap, iv., 114. F. Smith's Petition to Arlington, and letter to com- 
 
 plaining of Mearne's treatment, S. P. Dom. Gar,^ ii., 360 (149 and 150), February 
 1674. 
 
L'ESTRANGE AND THE STATIONERS 207 
 
 his son to serve in the said employment, as also of the 
 care and pains taken by the said Samuel in inspecting the 
 Press and suppressing scandalous and seditious libels and 
 pamphlets ^. 
 
 So that at the time when The Naked Truth and the Test 
 Libels were flying about, Mearne was enjoying an esteem 
 beyond anything L'Estrange had yet possessed. It is 
 interesting to note that he also presented the precious 
 Thomason Collection of Tracts to the Crown 2, though after- 
 wards his widow had to receive something in consideration 
 of this great gift. 
 
 Seymour, the sanctuary of all the distressed printers, was 
 the gentleman-printer who in 1667 set up or used Larkins' 
 secret press in Southwark to print the Painter and Oloster 
 Collier libels and satires. Yet in October 1669 he was given 
 a forty-one years' grant of fourteen classical works hitherto 
 enjoyed by the Stationers. Larkins ^ and his wife had been 
 protected in gaol by L'Estrange, who now used them for 
 discoveries. Seymour also protected Frank Smith from the 
 vengeance of the Stationers. We shall find that Seymour 
 further provoked the latter by infringing their copyright of 
 Gadbury's Almanac*. Since we have written out at large 
 the charges of the other side against the Surveyor, it is only 
 fair to enumerate the heads of Seymour's indictment, six 
 weeks before Parliament met, of the Mearnes and Eoycrofts. 
 
 1. The Company seizes 'ill-books' and then disperses 
 
 them by means of the hawkers, at enhanced prices. 
 
 2. The Company compounds underhand with offenders. 
 
 3. They give warning to friends of the weekly searches. 
 In the approaching struggle, L'Estrange could reckon on 
 
 a loyal minority in the Stationers Company, including the 
 Master, one Warden, and the Clerk, on all the Press 
 messengers, on Seymour and his henchmen Larkins and 
 Smith, and on those mean printers employed by prominent 
 Stationers to print the great libels, and now by the menaces 
 of the Surveyor turned King's evidence against their 
 employers. 
 
 1 S. p. Dom. Car., ii., Entry Booh 40 A (p. 64). 
 
 2 For the history of this Collection see Bodleian, Oougli Maps, 46, f. 168. 
 
 3 Seymour's ' chief printer ' Libels Committee, H.M.G. 76a. See his subsequent 
 career, chap, xi., pp. 356-7. 
 
 * See this case 1678, Modern Reports, i., 256-7. The case went against 
 Seymour, Pemberton declaring that the King had a right to confer such patents 
 as this enjoyed by the Stationers Seymour was, however, consoled by other grant. 
 15th September 1669, C.S.P,D. (1668-9), p. 493. 
 
208 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 In the month which intervened before Parliament met, 
 Williamson seems to have collected, besides the libels, which 
 still repose in the Record Ofl&ce, a good deal of evidence 
 for the Committee of Lords now determined on to investi- 
 gate the mischief \ This short period was marked by an 
 eruption of seditious printing, as the Surveyor had foretold 
 which by its concert and unanimity, puts it beyond doubt 
 that it was the work of the Whig leaders, and the prologue 
 to their contemplated line of action, which was to place 
 several of them in the Tower. 
 
 It is clear, however, that no bye-laws would have pro- 
 tected the Government against this confederacy. We have 
 already briefly referred to the three great libels printed 
 on the eve of the meeting of Parliament, like a New Whig 
 Gunpowder Plot to blow up the present Parliament. The 
 printers first approached showed a commendable discretion 
 in refusiug to print, the fruit, no doubt, of the rigours and 
 menaces of L'Estrange at the Stationers' Court, but an 
 instrument was found in Nat Thompson who afterwards 
 distinguished himself as the bitterest opponent of sedition 
 and dissent. In his unconverted days Nat was poor and 
 mercenary, though allied to a printer of considerable 
 interest, Thomas RatclifPe^. He had till quite recently 
 employed as a workman the redoubtable Robert Stephens, 
 who lived to be one of the characters of the Press, ' a brave 
 favourer of the Whigs' after the Sheriffs Elections, and 
 the most annoying of all L'Estrange's enemies. He left 
 Thompson at this time — that is, during, or shortly after, the 
 printing of the Prorogation libels — because 'he would not 
 print such books ' ^ and using his considerable* knowledge 
 of the subterranean press, started on a career of discovery 
 which was very grateful to the Secretaries, but so discon- 
 certing to his former employers that 'they threatened to 
 
 1 The very secretive letter from Roger L'Estrange to Williamson, 3rd February 
 1677 (S. P. Dom. Car., ii., 390 (132)) no doubt refers to the preparations for the 
 attack on the Stationers. ' I have set the business you gave me in charge yesterday 
 morning. I am informed that the Stationers are moving against Thompson's 
 servants and for the dissolution of the House. Some of the Printing Houses may 
 be useful to me in my present design. In a few days I promise myself to see the 
 end of this discovery '. The ' Discovery ' is doubtless the three libels referred to 
 above. 
 
 2 By the survey of 1669 it appears that Ratcliffe employed 7 men, 2 presses, 
 and 2 apprentices. 
 
 3 Oftseri/U^or, 20th April 1684, i., 323: ' A rogue that was accompted the very 
 scandal of the Printing Trade, while he wrought among them '. No doubt he was 
 selected on the principle of ' set a thief to catch a thief '. 
 
L'ESTRANGE AND THE STATIONERS 209 
 
 kill him'. Honest Robin had however his reward, for he 
 was made Press Messenger-in-ordinary, an office in which 
 he distinguished himself as the sternest guardian of loyalty 
 until the Plot, or rather the attack on the City's rights, 
 turned him into a Patriot and a Whig. In this character 
 he encountered the enmity of L'Estrange, and on the 
 accession of James was dismissed from his noisy office^. 
 At the Revolution he was restored. 
 
 For the present Stephens denounced Marlow, Battersby, 
 Bridges, and Thompson, the mercenary printers of Marvell's 
 libels, Croft's Naked Truth, etc. With the exception of 
 Bridges, these men had no legal right to set up as Masters, 
 but were conveniently maintained by great men at Stationers' 
 Hall, the brothers Sawbridge^ Wright and Mearne whose 
 questionable work they printed. Thompson had worked for 
 sober Mr Godbid, but was specially marked ' not free of the 
 Company ' in 1672. Battersby, as we saw, had entered into 
 a quarrelsome partnership with Henry Lloyd (who was a 
 master printer in 1672). Marlowe in 1672 was a mere 
 journeyman. But from the Stationers' point of view, the 
 sorrier the rascal, the better hold on his secrecy and the 
 cheaper his work. 
 
 John Redmayne, once a flourishing printer, but much 
 crippled by the Fire, was also of the adulamites who fled 
 to Seymour from the cruelty of the Stationers, and now, 
 as one of the party of the Surveyor, gave valuable evidence 
 against them. 
 
 The Prorogued Parliament met in the first week of 
 February. On the 13th the libel Some Considerations upon 
 the Question whether the Parliament is Dissolved by Prorogation 
 for 15 months was read, and immediately it was moved * that 
 a Committee be appointed to inquire who was the author and 
 contriver and Printer of this book and report what they find 
 to the House ' ^. 
 
 The forty Peers chosen included ten Bishops. The Earl 
 
 1 Dunton, Life and Errors, p. 253. 
 
 2 Geo. Sawbridge was Master in 1675. Dunton {Life and Errors, p. 211) says 
 ' he was the greatest bookseller that has been in England for many years '. He 
 left over £40,000. See notes by Williamson about Printing — The Booksellers and 
 J. Seymour, 20th December 1676, S. P. Dam. Cm\, ii., 366 (263), containing the 
 charges of Messengers Gammon, Blundell, and Rookes, and of the Law Officers. 
 It is a perfect indictment of the guilt of this ' Ring of men-Knaves ', their com- 
 pounding with offenders, seizing, yet sellii^ forbidden (Popish and Republican) 
 wares, etc. 
 
 ^ Lords' Journals, xiii,, 54 ; Foxcroft, Life of Halifax, i., 119. 
 
 
 
210 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 of Aylesbury was chairman, and the Committee included 
 Albemarle and Monmouth. Any five formed a quorum, 
 and their labours were to begin ' Monday next, at 9 o'clock 
 in the forenoon at Princes Lodgings, and to adjourn as 
 they pleased'. The Committee was to enquire into *any 
 other printed books that are of that nature'. 
 
 On 1st March Aylesbury presented his first report, which 
 resulted in nothing more dramatic than the calling of 
 Dr Cary to the bar of the House for handing The Grand 
 Question, etc., to the Press. On Cary's refusal to name his 
 authors or employers, he was sentenced for contempt'^, to 
 be fined £1,000 and to be committed to the Tower 2. 
 
 Although another libel — besides that which was the 
 specific cause of the Committee's labours — had been pre- 
 sented in the form of The Long Parliament Dissolved, and 
 although the Committee had the printers — not the authors 
 — in hold, the Cary libel was felt to overshadow all others 
 because of the suspicions of its high origin. Thompson, 
 its printer, was too mean an object to occupy their Lordships' 
 time, but if the libel could be brought home to Denzil, 
 Lord Hollis, or the conclave of Whig lawyers, it would 
 furnish the Court with a weapon in the approaching struggle 
 which might have anticipated the ruin of the Whig leaders 
 before Oates appeared on the scene. But Cary kept his 
 council despite embarrassing pressure from Charles himself, 
 the Duke of York, Coventry, and Secretary Williamson. 
 Whether Hollis or Shaftesbury had any close connection 
 with this libel or not, the legal ability and knowledge it 
 displayed raise it beyond doubt into the rank of constitu- 
 tional documents of first-class interest. 
 
 One efiect of Aylesbury's report was the order of the 
 Lords — it is singular how much their House predominated 
 in this session — two days later communicated to the Lord 
 Chief- Justice of Common Pleas and Lord Chamberlain, Baron 
 of the Court of Exchequer, to prepare a new Press Act, 
 and the Stationers to lend their aid ^. Mearne claimed some- 
 thing from their readiness to give satisfaction in this direction. 
 
 On the 5th March, the Committee again reported on the 
 
 1 Marvell's Growth of Popefi'y (Thomson's ed. MarvelVs Works, i., 545). 'But 
 now therefore Dr Gary, a commoner, was brought to the barre before them . . . 
 and they therefore fined them £1,000 under that 7ieiv notion of contempt, when no 
 other crime would do it '. 
 
 2 Lords' Journals, xiii., 54-5. 
 
 ^ H.M.C.y 9th Rept.,pt. ii., p. 79, note. 
 
LORDS* LIBELS COMMITTEE 211 
 
 three Prorogation libels, discovering the author of a fourth 
 — a piece of insolent dissent by a Eev. Sam. Smith who 
 now appeared, and did penance^. Thompson printed this 
 too. The 7th and 8th March were consumed by the Lords 
 in reading the libels, and much impressed by their treasonous 
 sentiments, they ordered them into the safe keeping of the 
 Clerk 'not to be communicated to anybody without leave 
 of this House, and a copy be made to be burnt '^. 
 
 This finished the business so far as the Lords were 
 concerned, for Aylesbury's reports said nothing of the 
 affair that was monopolising the Committee's time, viz.: 
 a pitched battle between the friends of the Surveyor and 
 the friends of Warden Mearne. 
 
 A better theatre for this long-threatened contest could 
 scarcely have been chosen. 
 
 On the 10th March — two days after the Lords had 
 disposed so far as they could with the burning of the libels 
 and the punishment of the mean printers — Mearne opened 
 the attack for the Stationers by declaring that Capt. Seymour 
 had set up two or three presses in Putney, contrary to the 
 Statute, referring back to the old offences of 'his chief 
 printer' George Larkins^. 
 
 On the 13th *, Seymour replied that he printed nothing 
 but Almanacs (the Company claimed the sole right in this 
 patent, hence much of the present enmity), and these licensed 
 by the Archbishop of Canterbury. This for his defence, 
 which became the matter of a great lawsuit in the follow- 
 ing year^ His tu quoque attack accused Mearne and his 
 friends of selling the works of two dissenting divines, 
 Dyer and Osborne, which in 1673 had a great vogue. As 
 his witnesses, he desired to call the Master, the other 
 Warden, and the Stationers' Clerk (by name Koper, Clarke, 
 and Lilly respectively) and the influential Newcombe, who, 
 as printer of the Gazet was at Williamson's command, and 
 therefore against the * factious majority ' of the Stationers ^ 
 
 1 Lords' Journals, xiii., 64, 65. 
 
 2 When the search for the author of the Groivth of Popery was proceeding 
 briskly we find it ordered by the Lords, 25th February 1677-8, ' that Mr L'Estrange 
 have liberty to see the MSS. of the libels condemned by this House in March last ', 
 H.M.G., pt. ii., 9th Kept., p. 71. 
 
 ^ IJrid., p. 756. The OohUer ofGloster and the Painter series. 
 
 4 Ihid., p. 75. 5 See note p. 221. 
 
 6 Besides he had just emerged from a suit with the Company argued before 
 the Council (12th May 1676) 'about the printing injunction of King James 1604 ' 
 C.S. P.D. (1676-7), p. 110. Like Seymour he was worsted in this contest, but like 
 him also had his reward for his present services, being made King's Printer shortly 
 
212 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 Both parties appeared in full force on 20th March. On 
 one side Seymour with his witnesses, L'Estrange in the 
 background ; on the other, Mearne, Sawbridge, Wright, 
 Taylor^, etc. The mean printers were held in readiness 
 to convict either party, but chiefly suborned against their 
 old employers, the Stationers. 
 
 After some preliminary recrimination, Seymour presented 
 his printed case against the Stationers 2, and annexed to it 
 a list prepared by the Surveyor of Libels ' printed for some 
 eminent men in the Company and dispersed '. The feature 
 of this list of eight libels was that L'Estrange had carefully 
 written in the margin the names of witnesses ready to swear 
 to the real publishers of each. The enormities and con- 
 tumacy charged against the Stationers in this printed copy 
 are merely the old corruption and bribery noted so often 
 by the Surveyor. 
 
 The 24th and 27th were the grand field days of the 
 contest. On the first day the Stationers proffered their 
 printed paper of counter-charges, while L'Estrange's witnesses 
 gave their evidence. On the 27th, L'Estrange brought up 
 every unit of his little army to crush Mearne's legions, who 
 must then have appeared overwhelmed by the volume of 
 his corrupt actions proved so circumstantially. But a rebuke 
 administered to Seymour on the 30th, a rally on the 
 6th April, and an incursion into the enemy's territory over 
 the matter of the Surveyor's corrupt use of his license, and 
 the old affair of Popish books seized and re-sold by him 
 after the Fire, gave a turn to the contest. 
 
 This last day (6th April) was the Stationers' property, 
 and with the Surveyor's plea for a pardon for his poor 
 informers, the contest closed with divided honours and far 
 from the victory the Surveyor's party had promised itself ^. 
 
 While contumacy and corruption were abundantly proved 
 against the Stationers, as also their tyranny over the meaner 
 printers and their inveterate hatred of any other authority 
 than their own, it was equally proved that L'Estrange had 
 
 after 11th May 1677 (-S^. P. Bom. Car., ii. , Entry Book 40a, p. 199). He became the 
 intimate of L'Estrange and indeed introduced him to Young Tonge in 1680. 
 The Stationers' warfare resolved itself into a pull between the bulls and the bears, 
 L'Estrange, Seymour, and Newcombe versxis the great men at Stationers' Hall. 
 
 1 Kandall Taylor ' came into the Milton inheritance ', says Eoberts {Earlier 
 History of English Bookselling (1889), p. 94). 
 
 - li.M.G., pt. ii., 9th Kept., pp. 76a-6 annexed (77a) L'Estrange's list of libels 
 with notes. 
 
 3 Ibid., pp. 77a-79a. 
 
LORDS' LIBELS COMMITTEE 213 
 
 allied himself to some extent, and for defensive purposes, 
 with the very elements that he had set out so noisily to 
 subdue, and that acting on Williamson's commission of July 
 1676, he had by an overbearing conduct, attempted to over- 
 ride the Stationers. We should therefore call the engage- 
 ment a drawn battle, especially as the scene of contest was 
 merely shifted from Princes Lodgings to that select legal 
 Committee to which the Lords had on 3rd March committed 
 the framing of a new Bill. The Law Lords heard counsel 
 for the Stationers in connection with the proposed clauses on 
 10 th April, from which we gather that the latter were eager 
 to continue the old Act in spite of all its loopholes and grave 
 omissions ^. 
 
 L'Estrange, however, from his side, contested the pro- 
 visions of the old Act, as it had been fully demonstrated 
 that it provided no penalties for the offences of prominent 
 Stationers. The Stationers had again and again evaded 
 L'Estrange's interference by saying that they had little power 
 over their members. Now when the business might have 
 been righted by a new and Punitive Act, they calmly 
 advocated the old Act. 
 
 The Printers were also here with their suggestions which 
 in effect would have achieved what they covertly desired 
 and what the Surveyor had condemned — an independence of 
 the book-selling fraternity 2. 
 
 These proposals never matured. The Lower House was 
 in no mood to listen to such restrictive proposals, and the 
 Government was forced back on a policy of imposing on the 
 recalcitrant Society a body of regulations perused and 
 approved by the Judges, and probably drawn up by 
 L'Estrange. 
 
 It would be wrong to conclude that the few punishments 
 dealt out by the Lords achieved the absolute Peace of the 
 Press ^ The real delinquents, the mercenary printers, had 
 
 1 Lords' Journals, xiii., 13 ; H.M.G., pt. ii., 9th Kept., p. 79a note. 
 
 2 Ihid. , Roger demanded among other things that he should be entered on the 
 Commission of Peace, his authority being restricted to Press matters. See the 
 important paper L'Estrange's Proposals to become anstoeraUe for the Press 
 {C.S.P.D. (1676-7), p. 590). He demanded also an authorised Deputy, and that 
 his servant should be sworn a Messenger of the Chamber. 
 
 3 Bohun {Address to the Freeholders) takes a different view, but compared with 
 the Plot frenzy any previous liberty looks mild. ' The Parliament having had the 
 leisure during a long recess to consider severely what would be the event of these 
 things (Prorogation Libels, etc.) in the beginning of the next session rescued 
 themselves from the contempt and delusion of these houtefeus, and having made 
 some of them examples of their just resentment things went smoother till the 
 
214 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 purchased their pardon, whilst the authors were — with the 
 exception of the Rev. S. Smith and Dr Gary (if he was an 
 author) — unknown. The year following the Committee's 
 labours brought forth a rather heavy crop of arrests for 
 libel, culminating in the pretended search for the author of 
 the Growth of Popery'^, which throws its portentous shadow 
 over all other libels of these years. 
 
 We are not surprised therefore that the Government fell 
 back on regulation by the Law Officers. The pretentious 
 document which embodies these regulations is entitled : 
 * Orders Made hy the Master and Keepers or Wardens of the 
 Stationers Company, 1678 ' 2. 
 
 After quoting the Statute of 19 Henry VII. ^, and retail- 
 ing a good deal of old stuff, relating to the elections and 
 internal economy of the Company, the real gist of the matter 
 is reached on page 11 where it is admitted — what the 
 Stationers affirmed and denied as it suited their purpose — 
 that the old 1662 Statute had signal defects to remedy which 
 these Proposals are submitted. 
 
 Clauses I. and II. forbid the setting up of presses without 
 notice given to the Master, etc. No ' press-in-a-hole ' 
 is to be erected, or to be in any way supplied, with 
 material, wages or 'any sort of comfort', but the 
 freemen of the Company are bound to discover it 
 within three days. 
 
 Clause V. No more presses to be set up until the legal 
 limits (now grossly exceeded) are observed. 
 
 discovery of the Popish Plot '. Beyond the censure of Smith, the imprisonment 
 of Thompson, Joseph Browne, and Dr Gary, we cannot find many examples of their 
 resentment. But even these were remembered. Among the votes of 23rd 
 December 1680 (quoted in Fergusson's (0 J^i-st and Modest Vindication of the Two 
 Last Parliaments) we find it resolved ' that Mr Joseph Browne ought to be 
 restored to all the offices and places which were taken from him ... for 
 publishing an unlicensed book called The Long Parliament Dissolved'. Hart, 
 Index, p. 210. After three years in prison, Browne was pardoned by Royal 
 Warrant, 15th December 1679. 
 
 1 The rigour towards the printers was not ' pretended '. *S^. P. Bonn. Car. , ii, , 
 Warrant Book 1, p. 485, contains the Messengers' expenses for the discovery of 
 bookbinder Thos. Bedenell and ' to 2 days spent with the Coy. of Stationers to find 
 out the Printer of the said book £1, Os. Od.'. 
 
 2;Arber, Transcript, L, A et seq. Various copies of these printed Orders exist 
 in pamphlet Collections. This 1678 exemplification (the earliest we have) is 
 remarkable for the L'Estrange Bye-Law to be read in Hall to every newly 
 admitted member of the Society. 
 
 3 The reference to this Statute is common to all Stationers' Orders which by the 
 old Act required the approval of the Law Officers, and were promulgated * at 
 the request' of the Master, etc., of the Company. 
 
LOEDS' LIBELS COMMITTEE 215 
 
 Clause VII. No one but Ed. Atkyns is to print law-books 
 as Poulton's Statutes, Coke upon Littleton, etc. \ 
 
 The hand of the Surveyor is seen most clearly in the 
 Regulations : — 
 
 i. That the bye-laws be read to every member of the 
 
 Company on entry, 
 ii. The neglect to inform of a secret press (within 3 
 days) is punished by loss of a year's interest in the 
 stock unless the Master, etc., 'with consent of 
 Eoger L'Estrange, Esq., or such persons as hereafter 
 shall have the like power concerning the Press 
 committed to them as he now hath, . . . upon 
 hearing cause, shall think fit to mitigate the same '. 
 iii. For the future, two books are to be kept at the Hall, 
 the one for Information about Presses, etc., the other 
 a complete day-book of unlicensed books, their 
 printers, etc., * which books shall be shown to 
 Eoger L'Estrange, Esq., when he shall think fit '. 
 
 Signed H. Finch C. 
 
 Ee. Eainsfokd. 
 Fka. North. 
 
 A glance at these clauses will show that the Eegulations 
 embodied most of what the Surveyor had been fighting for, 
 and in this sense are a victory. But so little time intervened 
 before the breaking out of the Plot which set free every 
 form of lawlessness that little good can have come of them. 
 The prominence given to Atkyn's monopoly, long contested 
 by the Stationers, the honouring of Newcombe and the new 
 monopolies given Seymour to compensate him for the adverse 
 decision in the matter of printing almanacs, all show that 
 the Government meant the Stationers to feel its displeasure. 
 
 This body of Eegulations efiectually marks the end of any 
 spirit of independence in that Society. In the approaching 
 deluge, it disappears as a curbing force, and the Government 
 acts single-handed against offenders. The expiry of the 
 Press Act in July 1679 and the evil precedent of the entry 
 of the law officers on the scene, is followed by the attempted 
 action of Scroggs and Jeffreys to gag the Press from the 
 Bench of Justice. But to all intents and purposes, the 
 Stationers have disappeared ; a large part of their monopolies 
 
 1 The reversal by the Lords of the Judges' decision came too late to be enjoyed 
 by his father, Richard, the friend of L'Estrange. 
 
216 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 are already filched or ignored, and when in the ignoble 
 stampede of corporations, societies, and even schools towards 
 a yielding up of charters took place, the Stationers had the 
 unenviable distinction of leading the rout. And the truly 
 humiliating thing is that that very Nat Thompson who had 
 been the worst offender in 1676-7, printed and probably 
 composed the following paean of praise ^ : — 
 
 A NEW Song in Praise of the Stationers Company who (after 
 
 THE general forfeit) FOR THEIR SINGULAR LOYALTY OBTAINED 
 
 THE First Charter of London, 1684. 
 
 Verse 3 
 
 ' But the Stationers' Hall so loyal 
 The Charter by which they meet 
 The gift of his ancestors royal 
 Did humbly lay at his feet. 
 Now to the Stationers' Honour 
 The Charter is on record 
 Great Charles, the bountiful donor, 
 Their Franchise has restored '. 
 
 We are no longer in the days of the * factious majority '. 
 
 This period marks also the effectual disappearance of 
 the clerical authorities from the government of the Press. 
 In July and again in October 1678 we find the Bishop of 
 London impartially ordering the seizure of F. Smith and 
 Nat Thompson, the stormy petrels on both sides. It should 
 be remembered that with the removal of Williamson in 
 February of this year, L'Estrange's deputation came to an 
 end. We find him soliciting Compton for a renewal of the 
 lucrative privilege of licensing the almanacs 2, and as an 
 inducement giving his Lordship information of a sect in 
 Lower Moorfields called the Sweet Singers of Israel or the 
 Family of Love^. A letter to Dr Borlase shows that he 
 anticipated no difficulty in getting the deputation renewed *. 
 
 1 183 Loyal Songs (1683), p. 134. That judgment was actually entered against 
 the Company we infer from the fact that in 1690 there was a reversal. Arber, 
 Transcrvpt, v. xli. 
 
 2 Ibid., v., Iv. The Bishop of London had sole right of licensing almanacs, 
 ihid., v., liv. 
 
 3 Rawl. MSS., C, 983 (18), 20th August 1678, ' 40 or 50 together. This Con- 
 venticle they say has been up about two months and multitudes of people flock 
 thither to see them. The neighbourhood takes notice of many women among 
 them, that stay all night, whom, it is believed, they take in common and 
 promiscuous freedom '. This letter announces Marvell's death. 
 
 4 Stowe MSS., 82, f. 1. Roger L'Estrange to Borlase, 20th February 1678-9. 
 ' At present my commission of licensing matters of State is determined by the 
 removal of Sir Joseph Williamson by whose deputation I acted, but that rubb 
 will quickly be over '. 
 
LORDS' LIBELS COMMITTEE 217 
 
 In January of 1679 he is urging his old caution on Coventry, 
 not to listen to the Printers' demands for separate incorpora- 
 tion and for the same rights of search enjoyed by the 
 Stationers Company i. With the advent of the Plot came 
 new difficulties over the licensing of such things as 'limp- 
 ing' Pordage's Brief History of Popish Persecutions, etc., 
 Dr Tonge's Jesuits' Morals and Bloody Narratives, Boyal 
 Martyr, etc., a feature of his licensing career which may be 
 deferred to next chapter. Like Chief-Justice Scroggs he 
 had to read the mind of the Court. In May he was relieved 
 by the expiry of the Act from these difficult duties, but not 
 before he had enraged the rabble by his partial licensing. 
 At the same time he was relieved of his livelihood. The 
 publication of Chas. Blount's (Philopatris) Just Vindication 
 of Learning and of the Liberty of the Press, 1679, may have 
 helped Parliament to make up its mind now, as in the final 
 expiry of 1694 his Beasons HumUy Submitted for the Liberty 
 of Unlicensed Printing may have aided Locke in this direction ^. 
 
 Another form of literary activity already referred to in 
 connection with the loyal Muddiman was exercising the 
 minds of ministers. It had not yet attained the dimensions 
 it was to assume after the Popish Plot, but already it was 
 apparent that L'Estrange's old demand for bringing written 
 matter within the scope of the Press Act was not so 
 unreasonable. On 3rd September 1677, Williamson signed 
 warrants ^ for the arrest of several of the chief agents in 
 this kind, two of whom, Kidd and Giles Hancock, will appear 
 again in connection with the Eye House Plot Examinations. 
 
 The ' Prorogation ' libels being certainly the greatest 
 concerted attempt in political criticism of that age, it may 
 be desirable to conclude this chapter with some description 
 of them. As has been said, they were the work of ' as 
 eminent lawyers as the party boasted ' *. If reprinted with 
 
 1 Two letters to Coventry, 10th and 12th January 1679. H.M.C., 4th Eept, 
 p. 236. 
 
 2 Hilger {Index der Verhotenen Backer, p. 217) has given him as much credit as 
 Locke and Milton combined. 'Im iibrigen V7ar es dieser selbe Charles Blount 
 welcher durch seine Schriften und Intriguen, die Zensur zum Falle brachte, 
 wenigstens ihren Falle vorbereitete '. 
 
 •"' S. P. Dam. Car., ii., Warrant Book 1, p. 411. 
 
 * This was the point of agreement of all the witnesses and admitted by Cary 
 himself. ' The foundation of the Whig Party may be referred to the year 1675 ', 
 says Mr Pollock {The Popish Plot (1903), p. 224). The Green Ribbon Club, whence 
 emanated the decision to agitate for a Dissolution, was ' the centre of the party 
 of pamphleteers who devoted keen ability to incite and defame the Grovernm^nt ' 
 {IMd., p. 237). 
 
218 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 the earlier libels of the session 1675, they would constitute 
 a respectable volume of constitutional theory and practice. 
 The list would then include perhaps: — 
 
 i. The Letter from a Person of Quality ^ 1675 — popularly 
 
 ascribed to Shaftesbury and Locke, 
 ii. The Two Seasonable Discourses^ concerning the 
 Present Parliament ^ with Imprint-Oxford, 1675 — 
 the discourses being: — 
 
 {a) The Debate for dissolving this Present 
 
 Parliament, 20th November 1675. 
 (&) A letter concerning the Last Session 1675 
 from a Parliament man to his friend, 
 iii. Sonne Considerations upon the Question whether the 
 Parliament is dissolved hy its Prorogation for 
 fifteen months, 
 iv. The Grand Question Concerning the Prorogation of 
 
 the Parliament (the Gary libel). 
 V. The Long Parliament Dissolved — for which Joseph 
 
 Browne was punished 2. 
 vi. The Young Man's Plea or the Argument of all those 
 Englishmen that are between the age of 21 and 37 
 for Dissolving this Present Parliament, who hy 
 reason of their non-age were not capable of giving 
 their votes in the Election {of 1660). 
 vii. Jenks' Speech, 24th June 1676. 
 
 The last we have already referred to. It was an excited 
 rendering of the whole gospel to the country party, 
 mingled with anti-Papist hysteria, and demands for a 
 new Parliament. 
 
 The title of the Young Man's Plea explains itself. It 
 came out in February 1677 and was selling when the 
 Libels Committee was sitting. The author is unknown. 
 
 The Letter from a Person of Quality is of earlier date 
 and concerned more with the events which led up to 
 the attempted Parliamentary Test of that year and the 
 intrigues of the Church. It is remarkable for its portraits 
 of 'the vehement Clifford', of Shaftesbury (who is the 
 angel of light) and Buckingham with his medley of 
 
 1 Printed at length in Pari. Hist., iv., app. vii. and vi., pp. Ixxi. and 
 Ixvii., and ascribed to Shaftesbury. Included also in State Tracts of the reign 
 of Quirles II., \., 65 and 69. 
 
 2 See p. 214. 
 
LORDS' LIBELS COMMITTEE 219 
 
 * eloquence ' and * well-placed ' nonsense, showing * how 
 excellently well he could do both ways'. 
 
 Another pamphlet with a similar title believed to be 
 the work of Marvell was the subject of communication 
 between L'Estrange and Mearne, which throws light on 
 their relations during the period succeeding the Libels 
 Committee ^. 
 
 The remaining four pamphlets are more properly termed 
 Prorogation libels, for they have but one object—a new 
 Parliament. The first SeasonaUe Discourse states that *a 
 standing Parliament and a standing army are like those 
 twins that have their lower parts united and are divided 
 only above the navel'. Treating of the objections to a 
 new Parliament, the writer says ' the first is that the 
 Crown is in danger if you call a new Parliament. If 
 those men be in earnest that urge this, it were to be 
 wished they would consider well what are the men likely 
 to be chosen, and they are not difficult to be guessed 
 through the whole Kingdom, men of quality, of Estates 
 and of the best understanding; such will never affect 
 change or distrust the King's Government. A new Parlia- 
 ment will he the Nation'"^. The other discourse addressed 
 to the same point is more jocose. 'We consist', says the 
 author, *of old cavaliers, old roundheads, indigent courtiers 
 and true country gentlemen'; the two latter are most 
 numerous and would probably bring things to some issue 
 were they not clogged with the numerous uncertainties of 
 the former. For the old Cavalier grown aged and almost 
 past his vice is damnably godly, and makes his doting 
 piety more plague to the world, than his youthful debauchery 
 was, for he is so much a bigot to the Bishops, that he 
 forces his loyalty to strike sail to his religion and could 
 be content to pair the nails a little of the Civil Govern- 
 ment, so you would let him sharpen the ecclesiastical talons, 
 which behaviour of his so exasperates the roundhead that 
 he on the other hand, cares not what increases the interest 
 
 1 Roger L'Estrange to Mearne (?) 1676-7. * As A Letter to a Friend in the 
 Cmmtry (commonly called my Lord Shaftesbury) crept into the world last Session 
 of Parliament and got loose by stealth, so am I to advertise you that if you take 
 any notice of a pamphlet entitled Aninucdversions to tlie Men of Shafteshxiry or 
 some such title, you are to give an interruption to it. If the business comes 
 to be questioned, leave me to answer it, etc.'. H.M.G.^ app. to 4th Rept., 
 p. 231. 
 
 2 See Sitwell (Sir George, First Whig, p. 14) for an animated description of 
 the meeting of Parliament after the Long Prorogation, 
 
220 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 of the Crown receives, so he can but diminish that of 
 the mitre. 
 
 * Upon these, therefore, the Courtier mutually plays, for if 
 any anti-court motion be made, he gains the roundhead either 
 to oppose or absent by telling them if they will join him 
 now, he will join with them for a Liberty of Conscience. 
 
 ' And when any affair is started in behalf of the Country 
 he assures the Cavaliers, if they will then stand by him, 
 he will then join a bill against the phanatiques '. 
 
 The other three tracts which engaged the Committee's 
 attention are lawyer-like productions, which address them- 
 selves soberly to the matter in hand. They all go back in 
 their researches to the Statutes of Edward III., which laid 
 the foundations of Parliamentary practice. ' The first point 
 in this case ', says Some Considerations, etc., ' is whether these 
 two Statutes 1 are still in force, and not repealed. They 
 are not repealed by the Act that repeals the Triennial Act '. 
 All three quote the repository of Ancient Law, The Mirror 
 of Justice, and Brereton is quoted a good deal. 
 
 The Grand Question is undoubtedly the greatest of these 
 libels, as it is the most scholarly. No pamphlet of that 
 age more clearly lays down the doctrine of ministerial 
 responsibility. 'If the King practically evade the Law by 
 short Prorogations, it is much to be deplored, but cannot 
 be helped. He cannot be punished, as the law is a rule to 
 him, hut not a rod over him. But it is different fro7n his 
 commanding his subjects, who can he punished, to hreak the 
 Law. 
 
 'A succession of short Prorogations comply with the 
 letter of the Law, while one long one flies in the face 
 of Law ^. I find only one precedent of a Prorogation for 
 more than one year. In the time of Elizabeth, Parliament 
 was prorogued three days over a year due to the Plague. 
 She was mistaken and her mistakes cannot alter Law '. 
 
 The Long Parliament Dissolved was evidently not viewed 
 with the same horror as the others, for though ordered 
 to be burned and though Browne was divested of his 
 
 1 Ihid.y 4 Ed. III., cap. 14: 'It is accorded that a Parliament shall be 
 holden every year once, and more often if need he* ; and 35 Ed. III., cap. 10: 
 • A Parliament shall be holden every year, etc. '. 
 
 2 A hint taken in connection with the Exclusion Parliaments. Such was 
 the alarm created by this tract that L'Estrange induced Dr Nalson to change the 
 title of his Grand Interest of King and People (1677-8), to the Common Interest, 
 because 'the King had declared himself against the word, upon my showing 
 him a pamphlet called the Grand Question, etc. ' (Nichol, Lit. Anec., iv., 70). 
 
LORDS^ LIBELS COMMITTEE 221 
 
 offices for selling it, it was not like the others voted 
 treasonous. Its ambitious motto — 'Cursed be he that 
 removeth his neighbours' landmark and all the people 
 shall say Amen ' ! — is difficult to understand, but its question 
 — 'What pleasure or advantage His Majesty can take or 
 they themselves have in their sitting as a Parliament, 
 when their very jurisdiction is like to be questioned in 
 all Courts of England' — makes it of the order of the 
 Young Man's Plea, absolves the disfranchised from the 
 necessity of paying taxes, and gives the direct cue to 
 the action of Buckingham and Shaftesbury in the new 
 session. What alarmed the Government in this aspect 
 of the agitation was the remembrance that in the same 
 murmurs which had then turned to their advantage in 
 1659-60, the most powerful means had been found to stir 
 up feeling against the Rump. 
 
 If this clamour continued, the Crown might lose the 
 most cherished flower of the Prerogative — the right to 
 dissolve, prorogue, and adjourn Parliaments at will. Hence 
 the rigour and energy of the Libels Committee. In break- 
 ing the power of the Stationers, in turning it finally from 
 a 'factious majority' to the loyal Stationers of Nat 
 "~^^^^ Thompson's muse, the Government was performing excellent 
 ^^ervice for the Court ^. No other Company so well 
 illustrates the fortunes of the struggle between Charles 
 alid his people, his designs on the whole social fabric, 
 y^n^ his attacks on bodies immemorially free. And the 
 reason we are to seek in Justice Pemberton's remark : 
 ' The art of Printing is altogether of another consideration 
 in the eye of the law, than other Trades and Mysteries 
 are ; the Press is a late invention ' ^. 
 
 1 Taken with the imprisonment of Buckingham and Shaftesbury in 1677, the 
 suppression of the Prorogation Libels may be taken to mark the demoralisation 
 of the Whig forces. ' To human reckoning ', says Mr Pollock (Popish Plot, p. 
 225), 'it seemed as if the Whig Cause was lost'. A year later Titus Gates 
 breathed a new spirit into politics. 
 
 " Case of Stationers v. Seymour, 1678. Modem Reports, i., 256-7. We might 
 have added to the list of * Prorogation ' Libels one which, though somewhat later 
 in the year (1677) was regarded as the most venomous of them all — Marvell's 
 tSeasoiiable Argument to Persuade all Orand Juries to Petition for a New Parliament, 
 Amsterdam, 1677. It contains a most invidious list with pungent notes of the 
 chief ' pensioners ' including Sir John Bennet, Williamson, Pepys, Sir George 
 Downing, Sir John Birkenhead, Coventry, Jenkins, etc. See L'Estrange's 
 Account of the Growth of Knavery, 2nd edition, 1681, p. 5. The Seasomtble 
 Argument is printed in Cobbet's Pari. Hist., iv., app. p. xxii., and Marvell's 
 Prose Works (1776), ii., 655. An excellent summary from the 'loyal' side of 
 the events of these four years 1673-7 especially in the matter of the Press is 
 given in Bohun's Address to the Freeholders (1682), pt. i. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE POPISH PLOT — FLIGHT OF L'ESTRANGE 
 
 Few writers approach the most tumultuous chapter in 
 English history without a feeling of the impossibility of 
 traversing that bottomless morass with order or success^. 
 The Popish Plot stirred up every order, interest, and 
 activity of English life to the very foundations, and for 
 a time the minds of the great majority of people were 
 either in a state of real hysteria over the Plot (if they 
 were simple) or over the efects of the belief of others in 
 it (if they were in any position of public eminence). 
 There were, the elements of revolution in it. It was a 
 conflagration in the national mind, and the feelings it 
 excited survived many years. If we may vary the metaphor, 
 this overwhelming billow caught the State ship at the worst 
 possible moment, when the men at the wheel were dis- 
 trusted, and there was mutiny on board. It is easy enough 
 to furnish the bald details of the episode, to trace the 
 career of Oates and his connection with his mentor, Dr 
 Israel Tonge, from the interview which sent Oates to Spain 
 to study the wiles of the Jesuits, to the evening when the 
 two wended their way to Whitehall with the momentous 
 'Plot'. The delays set in their path by an incredulous 
 
 1 Besides the older authorities and sources for this chapter, the latest 'Plot' 
 controversy occasioned by Mr Pollock's Popish Plot, 1903 (undertaken on Lord 
 Acton's suggestion to modern historians), and by the late Professor Gardiner's 
 WJuit the Ounjxmder Plot Was, has already given birth to two works from the 
 Catholic side, viz: Father Gerrard's The Popish Plot and its Newest Historian 
 (1903), and Alfred Marks' Who Killed Godfrey ? (1905) with an Introduction by 
 Father J. H. Pollen, S.J., in which the latter remarks that the importance of 
 the controversy lies in the fact that it affects the question of the possibility 
 of a Catholic King. See also Andrew Lang's The Mystery of Sir Emundhury 
 Godfrey. {Historical Mysteries, pub. 1904.) 
 
 222 
 
THE POPISH PLOT— FLIGHT OF L'ESTRANGE 223 
 
 authority^, the position taken by Godfrey, and the tragic 
 end of that worthy magistrate three weeks later, the hasty 
 seizure of various priests and supposed conspirators, Govern- 
 ment rewards for the discovery of Godfrey's assassins, 
 Bedloe's confession and Prance's arrest on suspicion, the 
 examinations before the King and Council of the accused 
 trio of Somerset House fame. Hill, Berry, and Green, and 
 their execution despite their vehement denials — all these 
 things are part of the familiar story. But to give any 
 conception of the tumult, the terror in society, the doubts 
 of some statesmen, and the jubilation of others — to say 
 nothing of coffee-house cabals and chatter, the daily attend- 
 ance, hems, and huzzahs of the mob at the Law Courts, 
 * the justice of the nation ' ex tolled and canvassed, while 
 the judges and juries gave popular answers to dubious 
 enigmas, but ' justice arraigned ' when the word from White- 
 hall was supposed to signal a staying hand, to describe all 
 this is beyond any pen. 
 
 For our present purpose, the safest track is to follow 
 the late Surveyor in his action throughout this crisis. It 
 so happened that with that meddlesome mettle of his 
 which had already involved him in almost every turn of 
 State from 1640 onwards, he permitted scarcely a phase 
 of the 'Plot' to pass without some contribution, either 
 literary or personal. If the unpopular attitude he adopted 
 at a time when unpopular ways incurred a real danger, 
 was dictated merely by the habit of decrying the multi- • 
 tude, and of writing what he believed to be the Court J 
 mind — though persons who had better opportunities of 
 knowing the mind of the Court than he were for a time, 
 deceived — not much more credit is due to him than thatj 
 of consistent partisanship. He had few imitators on thei 
 Protestant and even on the Catholic side. Even Halifax \ 
 regarded it as suicide to contradict the rabble in this ( 
 matter. { 
 
 As a matter of fact, L'Estrange had long foreseen such 
 a crisis. To counteract ' fears and jealousies ' of Popery 
 
 1 See Sir F. Winnington's Speech against Danby, 1678 : * Was Green, Berry 
 and Hill hanged for killing of Godfrey and must he (Danby) escape that so 
 bitterly discouraged and menaced the Discoverers'? {H.M.C., 10th Report, p. 
 130). Article iv. of Danby's Impeachment : ' That he is popishly-affected and hath 
 traitorously concealed after he had notice, the late horrid and bloody Plot and 
 Conspiracy, and hath suppressed the evidence and reproachfully discountenanced 
 the King's witnesses in the discovery of it '. 
 
224 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 had been almost an obsession with him for the better part of 
 twenty years. 
 
 Three things — by no means small things — we can claim 
 for the ex-surveyor in this connection. 
 
 1. He was almost the first person in the field ^ — Catholic 
 or Protestant — to make a stand in public writing, though 
 at first by mere 'hints and slanting' — against the great 
 Salamanca doctor, and to attempt in the hour of Gates' 
 triumph a guarded exposure. 
 
 2. In the Whig dSdcle following, in the dispute of the 
 Sheriff elections for London, and when moderate men like 
 Halifax said that enough had been done, he insisted on 
 tracking down the Godfrey mystery day in and day out 
 for months in his Ohservators and in the public service, 
 and helped notably to make the Whig ruin complete. 
 
 3. Shortly before the death of Charles II., he received 
 — not without importunity — that monarch's permission to 
 prepare the great Plotter for justice, 'to dress up Gates 
 for the pillory ', and in the first months of James' II.'s 
 reign he succeeded in bringing Titus to Jeffries' tribunal. 
 For that reason he shares with James II. the honour of 
 being pilloried in Titus Gates' Portraiture of King James 
 written after the Revolution, and when Titus though un- 
 absolved ^ was once more enjoying comfort and a measure 
 of public sufferance. 
 
 It is interesting to watch the workings up of the Popish 
 frenzy from the time of the Fire. Any one who reads the 
 story of that catastrophe from the anti-Catholic point of 
 view, as given in, say, the trial of the madman Hubert, 
 self-accused of burning London for the Papists, will admit 
 that the symptoms of madness were already present in 
 the nation. The frenzy of the people in those terrible 
 nights, their suspicions, frantic beyond all suggestion, the 
 wealthy Catholics gladly surrendering themselves to the 
 safety of a prison rather than encounter the fanatic mob, 
 and the solemn acceptance by all, judges, jury, and witnesses, 
 of the probability of Popish wickedness, not impeded by a 
 
 1 'One of the first attempts (besides railing at the witnesses of several libels) 
 was as 1 remember in a printed pamphlet entitled Reflections^ etc., about the 
 beginning of July 1679 ' {Ohservator Proved a Trimmer (1684), p. 5). There was an 
 earlier French tract dated 1st March 1679, which derided the Plot {ff.M.C, 11th 
 Kept., App. ii., p. 97). 
 
 2 That is by Parliament. He was fully absolved by the Commons, but the 
 Resolutions never finally passed the House of Lords. State Trials, x., 1330. 
 
m ill iMflMUl^i I 
 1 1 II fill:: i 
 
 i¥li '-' IP! 
 
 ! .lis 
 
 dim 
 
THE POPISH PLOT— FLIGHT OF L'ESTRANGE 225 
 
 Royal Proclamation which gave colour to this view — these 
 things warn us that the great conflagration of 1666 afforded 
 all the material of a Popish Plot — only the genius of Gates and 
 Tonge was lacking to raise it to the mighty structure of 1678. 
 
 To keep London ablaze, both in a plain and figurative 
 sense, seems to have been the almost conscious policy of 
 the ultra- Protestant party, who were also the factious and 
 Dissenters. From that time, right on to 1678 and beyond, 
 whether by design or accident, it is true that the city 
 suffered from a perhaps abnormal number of fires, and 
 popular feeling was clearly inflamed by the periodic accounts 
 of similar disasters all over the country. It would seem 
 that London's Flames, London's Flames Revived, and The 
 Trap ad Crucem type of libel excited the greatest anxiety 
 in the mind of the Government, because they, and especially 
 the last, played wantonly with the terrors of the credulous 
 people. The very title of the last named — the work of 
 Frank Smith — was sufficient to rouse all the terrors of 
 the Inquisition, and the Game of Trap became as terrible a 
 bogey to the vulgar of that age as history has any record of ^. 
 
 We have, for example, among others in Williamson's 
 private collection of libels for 1673 — a year, as we saw, of 
 exceptional activity in this department — London's Wonders^ 
 printed by A. P. — a Catalogue of Eighteen Fires, all 
 imputed to the Papists, and scattered over the entire area 
 of London, from His Majesty's stables to St Catherines 
 near the Tower, and from Bugg Eow in the City to the 
 George Inn in Southwark. The numerous prints of these, 
 and of the Great Fire, hung or placed prominently at every 
 bookseller's shop, were also calculated to add to the popular 
 terror. In short, it became a party device to catalogue 
 every fire in the City and send them out with explanatory 
 notes on Catholic aspirations ^. 
 
 1 So Parker (the translation called A Hist, of His Oivn Time (1727), p. 386) ; 
 * They had so familiarly accustomed themselves to these monstrous lies that at 
 the first opening of Gates' Plot, they with a ready and easy credulity received al 
 his fictions ; for whatever he published, they had long before expected ', 
 
 2 See Jenks' Speech, 24th June 1676, at the Common Hall: 'London has 
 once already been burned to ashes, and firing is now become such a trade, that 
 not only London, the Borough of Southwark, and the places adjoining, but all the 
 cities, the boroughs, towns corporate, and places of principal trade throughout 
 the whole Kingdom, are perpetually in danger ; so that no rational or considerate 
 man amongst us can promise himself, his wife, his children, or his State, one 
 night's security, but they may all be devoured in the consuming flames, except 
 some speedy and effectual course be taken '. A copy of this pamphlet is 
 to be found in S. P. Dom. Car., ii., Case F., a collection of libels which shows how 
 much alive the Secretaries were to the danger of these pieces. 
 
226 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 Suspicions of the Court even, in connection with the 
 great fire, were rife, and a curious parallel was after- 
 wards made between the haste with which the Court was 
 alleged to have urged on the execution of Hubert, and the 
 same indecent hurry in the case of Coleman and Fitzharris \ 
 
 One of L'Estrange's commonest themes — a theme 
 of damned iteration — was the parallel between the 
 state of affairs in 1641 and that in 1679-81. The most 
 striking point of resemblance was the evil use by great 
 men opposed to the Government of the ' Popish hobgoblin '. 
 There had been a plot then — Habernfeld's — and it was 
 admitted on all sides that Laud had then acted with 
 some zeal. 
 
 Yet the anti-Court party revived that ancient phantom 2, 
 to enfiame those * fears and jealousies ' which finally flared 
 up under the skilful incendiaries, Oates and Tonge. And 
 this before the Fire. 'The Fear of Popery', says L'Estrange^ 
 ' was the leading jealousy, which fear was much provoked (in 
 1640) by pamphlets, lectures, and conventicles, still coupling 
 Popery and Prelacy ; ceremonies and abominations of the 
 whore ; by these resemblances of the Church of England to 
 that of Rome, tacitly instilling and bespeaking the same dis- 
 affection to the one, which the people had to the other '. 
 
 In the same work — 'The sound of Innovations and of 
 Popery, in some places goes a great way with the common 
 people towards a sedition. They fear, they wish, they love, 
 they hate, they know not what ; and yet against this terrible 
 nothing, shall they engage their lives and fortunes as 
 zealously as if their souls were at stake, and as ridiculously 
 as if they fancied these same innovations to be an army of 
 flying dragons, and the Pope leading them on upon a hobby- 
 horse '. He could scarcely foresee at that time that in the 
 Pope-burnings of 1680 he himself would grace the pro- 
 cession in effigy with Mme. Cellier at his side. 
 
 In the Character of a Papist in Masquerade *, he has the 
 
 1 See chap, vi., 166. 
 
 2 So Eoger jeeringly asked if tJmt plot was still carrying on. Discovery upon 
 Discovery, 1680. 
 
 3 Mermnto (1682), 2nd ed. 
 
 4 The Character of a Papist in Masquerade supported by Authority and 
 Experience in answer to The Character of a Popish Successor (by Elkanah Settle) 
 (1681), p. 50. Settle replied with The Character of a Popish Successor Complete, 
 which occasioned L'Estrange's Keply to the 2nd pt. of The Character of a Popish 
 Successor^ 1681, 
 
THE POPISH PLOT— FLIGHT OF L'ESTRANGE 227 
 
 same story, this time after the event but still in the same 
 vein. * What are fears but phansies ? What are jealousies 
 but phansies ? What original had they ? Phansies again. 
 And what was the consequence of them ? Sum up the 
 sins and calamities of the worst of people, and of crimes, 
 those crimes and those miseries were the effect of those 
 phansies. They were hag-ridden and nightmared with 
 goblins and apparitions, and haunted in tlieir beds with 
 images of those visions and illusions which they had taken 
 down from the Press and Pulpit, etc.'. 
 
 It was on these fear and jealousies and fatally-endowed 
 with the power to provoke, that Marvell on the eve of 
 the Plot wrote his Growth of Popery^ which L'Estrange ever 
 afterwards regarded as the first link in the chain of causes 
 which led to the stupendous madness. 
 
 * You cannot but take notice ', he says, in his reply to 
 that work ^, ' that the author of the Growth of Pojpery does 
 upon the main, principally labour these two things. First, 
 to insinuate the King is in some cases accomp table to his 
 people, and secondly, to provoke the people by suggesting 
 that their souls, and their liberties are at stake, to make 
 use of their power'. 
 
 ' From the former proposition he passes on to a florid and 
 elaborate declamation against Popery ; and when he has 
 wrought up the figure to a height to make it terrible and 
 odious, his next business is to tell the people that this 
 goblin is coming in among them, and to possess the multitude 
 with the apprehensions of a former conspiracy against our 
 religion and government ' 2. 
 
 Thus were the people for twenty years, and more 
 especially since the Fire, affrighted by the hobgoblin, and 
 no work was at all comparable — with the possible exception 
 of Trap ad Crucem — to the Growth of Popery in the work of 
 alarm. Oates could not have had a better author to usher 
 
 '^ An Account of the Growth of Knavery with a Parallel betwixt the Refmitieri 
 of 1^11 and those of 1641, 2nd ed., 1681, p. 13. Scott, Dryden, ix., 420: 'I 
 cannot help thinking that . . . Oates and Tonge found the people prepared to 
 receive their legend, by the previous tract of Marvell '. 
 
 2 Ibid., p. 4 : 'The man, I confess, is a great master of words, but then his 
 talent is that which the Lord St Albans calls matter of wonder without worthi- 
 ness. . . . His excursions, many of them, are unmannerly and vulgar'. So 
 Bohun {Diary, Wilton Rix, p. 40), 'A most infamous libel . . . spread and dis- 
 persed into all hands about the Kingdom to rail down both Houses of Parliament. 
 The author is doubtless an honest Puritan ', 
 
228 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 him in, and the hue and cry in the Gazet ^ for the authors 
 and printers of the great libel merely advertised a large 
 section of the people of the Government's duplicity and 
 invincible Romanism. 
 
 When we come to relate the part played by L'Estrange 
 in the Plot business, it will be found that it was not confined 
 to the literature of the Plot. It was the means of his 
 becoming attached to the Secretary's office, in the character 
 of apologist and glorified spy, and later on of a species of 
 Royal Commissioner. So that it was popularly rumoured 
 that L'Estrange had even hopes of a Secretary's place. We 
 noticed in its place that among his demands at the close of 
 the Lords' Libels Committee was that he should be entered 
 on the Commission of the Peace, his magisterial authority 
 being, however, confined to matters relating to the Press 2. 
 This was not granted so far as we know, but in 1679-80 — 
 the year of the expiry of the Press Act, and therefore of his 
 authority — he was entered on the regular Commission of the 
 Peace, the highest honour conferred on him by Charles II. ^. 
 It was in virtue of this new authority that he became 
 personally mixed up in the vast entanglement of the Plot, 
 and a rather important figure in all the succeeding troubles 
 associated with the Whig dMcle. We shall find him in 
 October 1680 as a result of his present hardihood extruded 
 from the Commission, and some two years elapsed before 
 
 _ 1 Gazeff 1288, 21st to 25th March 1678 : ' Whereas there have been lately- 
 printed and published several seditious and scandalous libels against the pro- 
 ceedings of both Houses of Parliament . . . these are to give notice that what 
 person soever shall discover unto one of the Secretaries of State the printer, 
 publisher, author, or hander to the Press, of any of the said libels, so that full 
 evidence be made thereof to a jury, especially one libel entitled An Account of 
 the Growth of Popery, and another called A Seasonable Argument to the Grand 
 Juries, etc., the discoverer shall be rewarded as follows: — He shall have fifty 
 pounds for such discovery as aforesaid of the printers and publishers of it from 
 the Press and for the hander of it to the Press £100, and if it fall out that the 
 discoverer be a master or journeyman, he shall be authorised (in case of tracing 
 the proof to the author) to set up a printing-house to himself. See also 
 Marvell's humorous letter to Wm. Ramsden, Esq., 10th June 1678, concerning 
 the great rewards offered in the Gazet for the author. Three or four printed 
 books (L'Estrange's among others) have described the author ' as near as it was 
 proper to go, the man being an M.P. '. Marvell, Prose Works (1776), i., 428. 
 
 2 Chap, vii., 213. 
 
 3 Luttrell, Diary, i., 39, April 1680: 'Mr R. L'Estrange is made a J. P. for 
 the county of Middlesex and 'tis said his Majesty hath settled on him an 
 allowance ; this person hath writ many things (as he pretends) for his Majesty's 
 service, but they have caused most violent animosities amongst his Majesty's 
 subjects, and will prove very destructive to the Protestant interest '. The 
 'allowance' referred to may be explained by an entry for this month in the 
 Secret Services of Charles II. and James II., p. 42, of a gift of £100 to Roger 
 L'Estrange. 
 
THE POPISH PLOT— FLIGHT OF L'ESTRANGE 229 
 
 the Court had the courage to reinstate him, when he almost 
 immediately assumed the leadership of the Tory majority in 
 the Middlesex Justices. 
 
 Despite his previous bias to the Catholics, and his later 
 •boast of having been 'ever an infidel as to the Plot'^ 
 L'Estrange was not all at once proof against the prevailing 
 madness. It is instructive, for example, to compare his 
 treatment of two books in his capacity of licenser, the one 
 written before the Plot fury and the other a little after the 
 first batch of victims had perished. Dr Nalson, author of 
 the Collections of 1682, and a close friend of L'Estrange 
 from this time to his premature death in 1685, submitted 
 in August 1677 a work called A Biscoiorse of the GraTid 
 Interest of King and People, wherein he seems to have 
 reflected as sharply on the Catholics as on the Presbyterians. 
 L'Estrange's verdict on this pamphlet is valuable as showing 
 the methods of a licenser ' who did not like to tamper with 
 other men's copies ' ^, and especially for his hint to Nalson 
 to modify his anti-papal strictures, in L'Estrange's words, 
 *to sweeten the Papists '^ 
 
 In February 1679 — three months before the expiry of 
 the Act and indeed when his own deputation through the 
 removal of Williamson had 'determined' — Dr Borlase's 
 History of the Execrable Irish Behellion was, in like manner, 
 submitted. Happily we possess both the licensers' letter 
 to Borlase and the (printed) text plentifully supplied with 
 L'Estrange's own corrections and additions ^ On several 
 
 1 L'Estrange, Hist, of the Times (1687), To Posterity. 
 
 2 Chap. vii. 192. Cf. also his treatment of Dr Sam. Pordage's Brief Hist. 
 of all the Papists' Bloody Persecutions, etc., Observator, i., 119, and Care's Popish 
 Courant, v., 127. 'This gentleman was limping Pordage, a son of the famous 
 fabulist about Reading, and the author of several libels (one particularly interlined 
 with the paw of scurrilous Care) against L'Estrange, and violently suspected for 
 the Medal Reversed'. He was Mephibosheth in Absalom and Achitophel, pt. ii. 
 /See Scott's note, Dryden, ix., 372. Pordage's work was presented for license about 
 October 1678, * when the Plot was before the Government and . . . he (L'Estrange) 
 would not license anything to put the people in a tumult'. Azaria and Hushai 
 an anonymous answer to Absalom and Achitophel (1682), was Pordage's work, 
 though Cibber {Lives, iii., 346) ascribes it to Settle. 
 
 3 Nichol, Lit. Anec, iv., 68-9. 
 
 4 Stowe MSS., 82, f. 1-2, Roger L'Estrange to Borlase 20th February 1678-9. 
 Borlase waited till the autumn of 1679 {Term Catalogues, November 1679) when the 
 Press was free, and then Roger's * eradications ' ' were craftily omitted in all the 
 printed copies '. But the fact that Brome published it shows some readiness on 
 his part to meet the Surveyor's wishes. In his letter L'Estrange says : ' I was 
 cautioned 3 or 4 years ago not to license anything upon that subject without the 
 approbation of the Duke of Ormonde and some other of the King's ministers add- 
 ing withal that the work was already committed to a particular hand and the 
 materials furnished for the purpose. Under this obligation I do still continue, 
 
230 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 occasions we actually find him in his MSS. notes going 
 out of his way to add to the anti-papal fuel, which may 
 serve to show that within three months of the critical trial 
 of Sir George Wakeman (when Scroggs turned), the 
 Surveyor was carried away as much as his neighbours. 
 The point he labours in this letter to Borlase is that 
 Charles I. must at all events be cleared of the suspicion 
 of conniving at the Irish Kebellion, and the blame of that 
 horror laid on the sects ^ But for the Papists, ' who have 
 not only plotted and intended the destruction of his Eoyal 
 Majesty, but the total subversion of His Government and 
 of the true Protestant Religion within this realm established', 
 — no mercy. 
 
 There are three well-defined phases of the ' Plot '. First 
 the attempt of the ' Discoverers ' to bring it to public notice, 
 despite the opposition of the Court and lethargy of the 
 Council. This period occupies August and September, 1678. 
 Then follows the Parliamentary period, when the House of 
 Commons set aside even the important matter of disband- 
 ing the army to discover and act in the crisis revealed 
 by Gates' evidence. This period, October to January 1678-9, 
 was also the period of the first and principal crop of Popish 
 trials and executions. 
 
 Meanwhile, in the interval of the Dissolution of January 
 and the meeting of a new Parliament in April, the Popish, 
 or at any rate the anti-popular party, had had time to 
 recover from the ruin of their designs, whatever these were, 
 and then synchronising with, or shortly following the period 
 of Plot Narratives — ushered in by Titus Gates' Narrative 
 of 15th April 1679, designed for the meeting of the new 
 Parliament — there appeared a small but invincible band 
 of doubters, who began at first in a cautious and deprecatory 
 
 besides that at present my commission of licensing matters of State is determined 
 by the removal of Sir Joseph Williamson by whose deputation I acted, but that 
 rubb will quickly be over. Since your MSS. came to my hand I have received 
 an order to give my opinion upon the History, the thing being taken notice of 
 long before it was brought to me '. The other hand was Sir John Kemble, Master 
 of the Rolls and Privy Councillor. The scandal got wind among the Faction. See 
 Ohservator, i., 15 : ' L'Estrange refused to license the Irish Rebellion unless he 
 might lay it upon the Presbyterians'. Carte {Life of Ormonde (1736), i., ix.) no 
 doubt refers to Borlase's work in talking of histories ' full of confusion, mistakes 
 and falsehoods '. How critical the Irish Rebellion appeared in 1678-82 may be 
 seen from Charles' action in the matter of Castlehaven's Memoirs which appeared 
 * during the heat of the prosecution of the Popish Plot, a very unseasonable time 
 for reviving and canvassing such a subject'. (Ibid., ii., 521). Hart, Index, ^.252. 
 1 See chap, iii., 86 ; MevieiUo, 3rd ed. (1681), p. 6. 
 
THE POPISH PLOT— FLIGHT OF L'ESTRANGE 231 
 
 manner to cloud the evidence of Oates and Bedloe, suggest 
 a doubt here and a prejudice there. Of these, Koger 
 L'Estrange was first and almost alone, from the Protestant 
 side, in the field, and quickly became recognised as chief ^, 
 and though we need not follow the violence of the times 
 in calling this band the paid hirelings of the Duke, 
 Protestants in masquerade, etc., there is little doubt that 
 their efforts were encouraged by the Government. The 
 popular course of elections both for the new Parliament 
 in April 1679, and for that which met in October of the 
 following year, led these doubting writers into a good 
 deal of indiscreet abuse of the Citts and Bumpkins (citizens 
 and countrymen) who determined the return of increasingly 
 violent Parliaments. Thus they were committed not only 
 to a ' Popishly-affected ' position, but to the contemptuous 
 and dangerous attitude conveyed in L'Estrange's remark 
 that ' a citizen's skull is but a thing to try the temper 
 of a soldier's sword upon ' ^, a natural inference from that 
 opposition to the trading classes which was instinctive on 
 the part of the Church and Court. 
 
 The sop of a Council, composed of the heads of the 
 Whig faction, had quickly appeared fallacious ^ and either 
 members like Temple and Halifax left the Board, or the 
 actions of Shaftesbury were counteracted by Coventry and 
 the creatures of the Duke. The latter, though nominally 
 out of power, really controlled the situation. So that while 
 on the part of Shaftesbury and the other members of the 
 small secret committee of the House of Lords appointed 
 on 17th Noveniber to prosecute the Discovery of the Plot, 
 there was still a vigorous — and if any evidence can be 
 trusted in that age, a base — prosecution of the circumstances, 
 secret examinations, intimidation, bribery, and alleged torture, 
 of dubious witnesses, with every gaol scoured for evidence, 
 and the purses of the Treasury thrown open to the 
 informer. 
 
 On the other side of the Council table, the Duke's men 
 
 1 Scott, Dryden, ix., 261 : 'The first effectual step taken by the Court to defend 
 themselves against popular clamour was in the Observator and other periodical or 
 occasional publications of L'Estrange which had a great effect on the public mind. 
 But during the first clamorous outcry nothing of this kind was, or probably could 
 be, attempted ; while, on the other hand, the Press teemed with all manner of 
 narratives of the Plot '. 
 
 - Apology, June 1660, p. 48, quoted in Mr L'Estrange's Sayings (1681), and 
 Assenters' Sayings in Requital for Dissenters' Sayings (1681), p. 33. 
 
 3 Hume, Hist, of Eng., viii., 96-7. 
 
232 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 were said to be working more secretly, though by the same 
 methods. Hence on both sides a crop of sham plots, Papist 
 and Presbyterian, and mutual recriminations of the darkest 
 charges of trepanning, forgery, and every form of guile, 
 which introduce us to the sinister names of Dangerfield, 
 Cellier, Synge, and young Tonge. 
 
 Thus the interval between the Parliaments of 1679 and 
 1680 was a period of unprecedented agitation on the one 
 side, beginning with modest doubts of the truth of Gates' 
 story, but swelling into counter-Protestant plots before the 
 meeting of the second and more unruly Parliament. On 
 the other side an enormous distraction was created by the 
 device of petitioning (for a Parliament in the winter 1679-80) 
 and one libellous pamphlet — the Appeal from the Country to 
 the City — achieved a splendid notoriety in this connection ^ 
 as besides demanding a Parliament in this contentious 
 winter (and therein voicing the wishes of the best men of 
 the Privy Council, Halifax, Essex, and Temple), it bitterly 
 attacked the Church position, and the L'Estrange crew as 
 the instruments of Popery. Like the Growth of Popery it 
 demanded an answer from L'Estrange, and here it was that 
 Roger first took the liberty of saying very natural but nasty 
 things of the citizens of London. 
 
 During this tumult, and to some extent as the result of 
 it 2, the Press had become free by the expiry of the Statute 
 in May 1679. But even before this date newspapers devoted 
 to the Plot on one side or the other had started up. The 
 earliest of these was Harry Care's Weekly Pacquet of Advice 
 from Eome, the first number of which appeared on 3rd 
 December 1678^, and the last of the fifth volume in 
 July 1683. 
 
 The Weekly Pacquet was scarcely a newspaper except in 
 its regular appearance and form ^. It attempted in a rather 
 
 1 Scroggs at the trial of Ben Harris for publishing the Appeal : 'There was 
 hardly ever any book more pernicious to set us by the ears than this '. State 
 Trials, vii., 927. Hume, Eist., viii., 119. 
 
 2 Heraclitus Ridens, p. 80 : ' For instance, there was the Liberty of the Press, 
 how earnestly was it contended for, the denial of it said to be a relique of 
 Popery, Old Milton's argument and words were dresst up into an Address to 
 the Parlt. for it . . . till at last their own artillery being turned upon 'em . . . 
 they complain of the Licentiousness of the Press '. 
 
 3 And was admitted into Mercurius Lihrarius !— a measure of the popular 
 terror. (Term Catalogues for May 1679). 
 
 '^t^ Like the Observator, Care justly pleaded that the WeeHp Pacquet was no 
 newspaper or * pamphlet of News '. See his Preface to the 1st vol. ' Their 
 clamour that it was but a pamphlet is below an intelligent man's regard, as 
 if sense and reason were confined to folios'. 
 
THE POPISH PLOT— FLIGHT OF L'ESTRANGE 233 
 
 popular-learned fashion to bring the story of the Eeforma- 
 tion on the Continent down to where Dr Burnet had started 
 his History of the English Reformation^ so much approved by 
 the House of Commons and so flatteringly imprimatured by 
 Coventry. Besides the Weeklt/ Facqioet from Borne, there was 
 a Weekly Packet from Germany, begun on the 3rd September 
 of this year but concluded finally in December. 
 
 J. Smith's Current Intelligence was also born out of time. 
 It first appeared on 14th February 1679, and enjoyed a fitful 
 but vituperative existence till the spring of 1682, when the 
 Government was closing down most journals, and the fury 
 of the Plot was expended. 
 
 Of this year also we should notice the redoubtable Ben 
 Harris' Domestic Intelligence, begun on the 7th July 1679, 
 and carried on with but one considerable hiatus till the 
 starting of L'Estrange's Ohservator in April 1681. 
 
 To answer this vigorous Plot paper, Nat Thompson stepped 
 into the breach on the Court side with his True Domestic 
 Intelligence in the same month, and with the change of title 
 in the spring of 1681 to the Royal Protestant and Domestick 
 Intelligence continued into May 1682. Frank Smith (jocosely 
 called Elephant Smith from the name of his sign, the 
 Elephant and Castle)^ did not start his Smith's Protestant 
 Intelligence till 1st February 1681, nor did it last more than 
 three or four months, but Frank made up for the omission 
 by answering Heraclitus Ridens (started February 1681) by 
 Democritus Ridens, and by being active in other ways^. 
 Baldwin, Curtis, and Janeway are of later date, but all in 
 league with the ' Little Luther ' of the faction, Harry Care. 
 
 This man became the natural enemy of Eoger L'Estrange, 
 the chief writer of the Loyal party. He was the owner of 
 
 1 Also the ' Bromigham-Protestant ' — so early was the name of Birmingham 
 put to such uses ! See Scott's Dryden, ix., p. 209. 
 
 - Such as the printing day by day of those numerous votes of this Parliament, 
 which can only be described as democracy run mad. See L'Estrange's remarks 
 on the same, Reformation RefovTrCd, occasioned by F. Smith's Yesterday's Papa' 
 of Vote^, 2nd September 1681. The close connection of these Papers with 
 the Green Ribbon Club whose seat was in a sort of Carfour at Chancery 
 Lane End, ' a centre of business and company most proper for such anglers of 
 fools' {Examen) is noted by Sitwell {First Whig, p. v8): 'Political paragraphs 
 were communicated to the editor of the DmnesticTc Intelligence', i.e. Ben 
 Harris. Care, too, got his 12d. a week whilst in prison, from the G. R. C. 
 and its members were advised to subscribe to the Weekly Pacquet. See Obscrvator-, 
 iii. , 204, 28th August 1686, where Roger has printed several * Pope-burning ' 
 resolutions of the Club, especially that (1st November 1680) in which he 
 himself figured. 'The Ohservator can never forget the obligations he has to 
 the G. R. C. '. 
 
234 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 a facile pen, could depict Popish horrors with unerring 
 judgment, and give them an air of authority by the posses- 
 sion of some considerable learning. Indeed, his Weekly 
 Facquet of Advice, despite its grotesque bias, is not unworthy 
 of study as a history of the Protestant Church on the 
 Continent. That it took with the mob is eloquent of the 
 heated state of public opinion at the time, on the question 
 of Popery. The grave Weekly Facquet was accompanied by 
 a single sheet of remarkable abuse and obscenity which 
 became largely devoted to the most scurrilous attacks on 
 L'Estrange. This part, entitled The Popish Courant, must 
 have disgraced the name of Protestantism, and it is difficult 
 for us at this distance to imagine the state of mind which 
 could revel in the Courant, and be at the same time so stiff 
 on the religious topic, if we did not remember that the mob's 
 hostility to Rome had no connection with religion whatever, 
 but was based on ' fears and jealousies '. Later on, when the 
 Loyal side recovered breath, the Goitrant dropped, but the 
 Facquet struggled on — almost the last enemy to stand against 
 the Ohservator'^. 
 
 The Plot has naturally attracted a vast amount of 
 interest, but the literature of the Plot has almost escaped 
 notice. This may be ascribed first to its inherent lack of 
 literary quality, and then to its confusion and waste. 
 Writers on the Popish crisis have perforce had to study 
 it, but little notice has been given to the fact that the 
 Plot was almost as much a matter of lying Narratives 
 and Pamphlets as actual trials and executions, and that 
 the Government was as much moved by the former as by 
 the latter. 
 
 The first and classic Narrative of Gates already alluded 
 to, was prepared for the meeting of the new Parliament 
 in April 1679. This Narrative, consisting of eighty-one 
 articles, pretended to be only an abridgment of a complete 
 exposure of the hellish design of the Papists, and was 
 with certain significant additions the famous document 
 
 1 Defoe's tribute to Care's Weehly Pacquet in Introduction to 1st vol. of his 
 Revieio, September 1704 (Arber, An English Garner, ii., 618): *If they think 
 that work mean and the performance dull (which the present scarcity and 
 value of these Collections plainly contradict), it remains for these gentlemen 
 to tell us where the meannesses are '. Defoe admitted that the Weehly Poxquet 
 was the prototype of the Review. The Preface to the 1713 reprint of Heraclitus 
 Ridens says: 'We have had not only the venom of former libels collected . . . 
 but entire pieces reprinted, such as the Weekly Poucket of Advice, Popish 
 Gowrants, etc. '. 
 
THE POPISH PLOT—FLIGHT OF L'ESTRANGE 235 
 
 sworn to before Godfrey on 27th September 1678, and 
 submitted to the Council the following day. The preface 
 with which it was now adorned was its most remarkable 
 addition, and created a storm of controversy. Therein with 
 the complete effrontery which made his Plot possible, Gates 
 reminded the King of the attempts of the Papists for a 
 century to embroil parties. The Papists were at the 
 bottom of the late rebellion, they frustrated the Treaty of 
 Uxbridge in 1645, and they sent their missioners into 
 Scotland in 1650 to make matters impossible there for 
 * young Tarquin '. Since the Kestoration by ' firing and 
 plundering our best cities and towns ... by aspersing, 
 deriding, exposing, and declaiming against the King's 
 person ... by Seditious preachers and catechists, set up, 
 sent out, maintained and directed what to preach, in their 
 own or other climate or at public conventicles and field 
 meetings', they render Government impossible and fire 
 the whole nation. The late rebellions of 1666 and 1679 in 
 Scotland with the intermittent contumacy of that country, 
 are solely the work of peripatetic Jesuits in fanatic disguise. 
 
 The current belief that the Catholics had been singularly 
 loyal in the late troubles and that the men associated ^ with 
 the personal safety of the King were Papists, was rudely 
 challenged, and that without a word of proof from a man 
 whose statements were accepted by a large section of the 
 nation as on a par with Holy Writ^. 
 
 It was not to be supposed that the other King's Evidence 
 would allow Titus all the honours of publication. The 
 miserable Prance was shortly afterwards in the field with 
 a narrative. Bedloe contented himself with a narrative^ 
 of the Fires, and Mr Dugdale* presented the nation with 
 
 1 See Castlemaine's Catholic Apology, 1666, for a list printed in red letters of 
 Catholics who suffered on the Royal side during the Civil Wars, chap, vi., 172. 
 
 2 Temple's Memoirs, ed. 1720, p. 339 : ' Though it was generally believed by 
 both houses, by City and Country, by clergy and laity, yet when I talked with 
 some of my friends in private, who ought best to know the bottom of it, they 
 only conclude that it was yet mysterious, that they would not say the King 
 believed it. Upon three days thought of this whole affair, I concluded it a scene 
 unfit for such actors as I believe myself to be ', From a believing source (Coke's 
 Detection (1719), p. 239) we are told that the King * not only countenanced the 
 plotters, but ridiculed the Plot '. So Burnet : In regard to the witnesses. Coke 
 swallows them whole except Dangerfield. There is even a classic precedent for 
 his case. Did not Cicero use Fulvia ? 
 
 ^ A Narrative and Ivipnrtial Discovery of the Horrid Popish Plot, carried on 
 for the Burning atvd Destroying of the Cities of London and Westminster with their 
 suburbs, 1679-80. 
 
 * Not the Plot Witness, as L'Estrange discovered, p. 238. 
 
236 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 a Narrative of the unheard-of Popish Cruelties Towards 
 Protestants Beyond Seas. Besides these, Jesuits' Catechisms, 
 Popish Delusions, and lying wonders * taken out of an old 
 book in Kent, only for diversion's sake ', exposed in every 
 bookseller's shop, made the crowd gape at the perfidy and 
 obscenity of Rome. 
 
 As to the framing of these official narratives, we know 
 that the booksellers had a large hand in their composition. 
 It is something surprising to find a creature like Prance 
 dispensing his lordly permission to printer Dormer to print 
 his Narrative, very much in the same style a Chief-Justice 
 would use. There was no question of the law monopoly 
 for them. On the contrary, they set up such a monopoly 
 in narratives and attacked so fiercely any who dared 
 challenge it, that we have the amusing spectacle of the 
 late Surveyor complaining noisily of the tyranny of the 
 Press. In a small thing like this, we see perhaps more 
 clearly than in greater, the enormous credit which these 
 men enjoyed in the nation. It is still, however, early days 
 with the 'Plot'. 
 
 It appeared from the deposition of another liar that 
 Dr Oates was assisted by a small army of forty clerks^, 
 which seems an exaggeration, however, if we think of 
 the security and secrecy necessary even for the 'Doctor* 
 to practise. But it is certain that he was helped out in 
 the composition of his Narratives by his literary friend 
 Dr Tonge, whose long practice since 1672 in the Popish 
 Delusions Department made him an accomplished hand. 
 Yet Titus, if we may judge by his Trial Speeches, had a 
 certain bold narrative faculty too. Tonge, no doubt, gave 
 some literary finish to the Narratives, and helped them 
 into some sort of order and coherence, besides suggesting 
 the crude historical matter of the Preface and Epilogue, 
 for which Oates had little knowledge, and being, as 
 L'Estrange mischievously suggested, too young a man 
 in 1640 to be an actual observer of Popish intrigue 
 then. 
 
 There is no suggestion that the document which Prance 
 handed to Dormer in May 1679 was not his very own. 
 This narrator was gifted with a wearisome pathos, which 
 might be called garrulity, if it did not touch a matter 
 
 1 Young Tonge's Confessions to L'Estrange in The Shammer &wmmed, 
 1682 
 
THE POPISH PLOT— FLIGHT OF L'ESTRANGE 237 
 
 which, in the public estimate, rendered the most prosaic 
 setting electric. 
 
 Two other official guides to the Plot were a matter of 
 more guile, which it was left to Eoger L'Estrange to expose 
 in his Narrative^, an exposure of the methods of the 
 booksellers as much as of the King's evidence. Speaking 
 of Bedloe's Narrative, he says : ' It was my hap some 
 three or four months since to cast my eye upon a book 
 entitled A Narrative, etc., Dedicated to the surviving citizens 
 of London ruined by Fire. I came to the pamphlet with 
 expectation of some notable discovery, especially finding 
 a promise in the title-page of depositions and informations, 
 never before printed; but when upon the perusal, I found 
 the narrative part of it to be taken verbatim almost out 
 of two or three old seditious libels against the Government 
 that were printed by stealth some ten or a dozen years 
 ago (before Mr Bedloe's time of action) and scattered up 
 and down in most of the public-houses upon the great 
 roads of England, by half a score sometimes in a place, 
 according to the ordinary methods of the Faction in such 
 cases ; I made a strict enquiry into the matter, and this 
 was the business. 
 
 ' There was a consult of three or four booksellers over a 
 bottle of wine, what subject a man might enter upon at that 
 time, for a selling copy ; one of the company was of opinion 
 that a book of the Fires would make a sweet touch, and so 
 they all agreed upon it, and propounded to get some of the 
 King's witnesses' hands to it. Naming first one and then 
 another, they came at length to a resolution, and pitched 
 upon Trap ad Crucem 2 and the History of the Fires as two 
 books that would afford matter enough, if they could but get 
 them put into a method, and have a certain person's hand to 
 the owning of them. Hereupon they applied themselves 
 to one to draw up the story, and so it went to press under 
 his hand, all but what was printed copy, and he made 
 several alterations, too, in the epistle, out of his own head, 
 after it was compiled at the press. So that here are a 
 couple of old libels turned into a new Narrative and the 
 King's magistrates and officers declaimed afresh, and the 
 
 1 L'Estrange's NaiTaUve of the Plot is dated 1680 {Tei-Tti Catalogues, June 
 1680) probably May. But it is more a narrative of the cheats and shams of the 
 other side than of the Plot. 
 
 2 Chap, vi., 169. 
 
238 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 menage of this scandal committed to the hands of a common 
 calumniator. As to what concerns Mr Bedloe's evidence I 
 have nothing to say ; nor to the Papists burning the City ; 
 nor to any one point in the pamphlet which Mr Bedloe can 
 pretend to speak to upon knowledge. But this I shall say, 
 that there are several groundless and dangerous passages in 
 it, and that the most inflaming and seditious of them are 
 libels of ancient date reprinted; that it was a contrivance 
 set out by booksellers for profit, drawn up according to their 
 order and direction, and in an abuse in the very original 
 intendment; the citizens and King's witnesses being only 
 propounded as a property towards the gaining of it some 
 reputation, and made use of to illustrate and confirm the 
 Plot. " But what ", ye'll say, "there's a mournevaP of book- 
 sellers upon a trial of skill in their own trades, one knave 
 invents a story, and a thousand fools believe it ". But then 
 fearful of offending the great doctor in a vital point, " What 
 diminution is it to Dr Oates his Narrative to say that the 
 contrivance of the mercenary booksellers and scriveners 
 herein mentioned are shams ? " ' 
 
 Dugdale's Narrative was an even better instance of the 
 trickery of unscrupulous publishers. 
 
 'The first impression went off clear, with Mr Bichard 
 Dugdale in the title - page, as the composition of Mr 
 Dugdale, the Witness, but the bookseller, finding the 
 business to be smoaked, the Witness's name being taken 
 notice of to be Stephen and not Richard, he very prudently 
 left out the Christian name in the second impression, and 
 made it only Mr Dugdale. And so it went for the Witness's 
 again ; his work being only to find out a witness's namesake 
 by great good fortune he pitched upon an alehouse keeper in 
 Southwark of that name to carry off his project, and the man 
 (as I am told) is a very honest man ' 2. 
 
 At the time L'Estrange wrote the above quotation, the 
 
 1 Mourneval — Murray's New Eng. Diet. (1) A set of 4 aces, Kings, Queens or 
 Knaves. (2) Transf. a set of 4 (things or persons). L'Estrange invariably uses 
 the term of Knaves. 
 
 2 The profit arising from these Narratives was sufficient to seduce both 
 witnesses and booksellers. See 8cott, Diyden, ix., 261. Eccamen, -p. 260 : 'How- 
 ever dexterous the captain was at his pen, having published various sorts of 
 narratives (which by the way is no small availes of a Discoverer that has the 
 selling of the copies) she (Mrs Cellier) was as good at the sport as himself, and T 
 think out-wrote him. The business ended in a print {i.e. Dangerfield's Narrative 
 in which that scoundrel worried Lord Keeper North) to the great gain of the 
 spark. It was no small job for the printer, for the crying about the streets, "the 
 li. C. J. North's Narrative " in a time of such super-foetation of Plot Narratives ', 
 
THE POPISH PLOT— FLIGHT OF L'ESTRANGE 239 
 
 whole pack of Whig libellers were again loose, and in greater 
 freedom than they had ever enjoyed, not merely because the 
 Press Act had expired but because the Government was as 
 yet powerless to interfere, and when a month or so later 
 Scroggs and his brethren did interfere, we shall find it makes 
 part of the matter for an impeachment of that venal judge. 
 The London citizen, as he walked abroad in the morning, 
 had half a dozen True Protestant Mercuries to greet him 
 with the discordant cries of the hawkers^, while Nat 
 Thompson's presses were turning out no less immodest 
 and numerous a spawn of Popish or * Popishly-affected ' 
 broadsheets. 
 
 It was not until the conclusion of the July trials of Sir 
 George Wakeman^ and Corker that the whole fury of the 
 Protestant tempest broke forth. It was this storm that 
 brought L'Estrange to the fore as the ambiguous champion 
 of sanity and moderation. This famous trial, by which, in 
 Burnet's words, ' witnesses saw they were blasted ', occurred 
 on the 18th July 1679. It has been observed that it was 
 as much the Queen's trial as her physician's. That Scroggs 
 had been tampered with by the Court, seemed apparent to 
 the mob from the outset, and his summing-up appeared 
 far different from his usual invective manner in these 
 trials ^. 
 
 Bedloe, too, had made a bad stumble when, on being 
 admonished that his evidence on hearsay that Sir George 
 Wakeman was to ' take off ' the King was no direct evidence, 
 he hastened to amend it by affirming that Sir George told 
 him himself*. 
 
 Gates' evidence was, of course, subject to suspicion of its 
 being an afterthought, as Wakeman's name had not appeared 
 
 1 Gazet, 1432, 7th to 11th August 1679. 
 
 2 Examen, p. 185 : 'Posterity will wonder two things, (1) that such an evidence 
 as this against Wakeman should be admitted to sustain a charge of high treason ; 
 (2) that upon a solemn examination it should bear so much altercation as it did '. 
 
 2 See Roger North's contemptuous portrait of Scroggs, Lives, i. , 196. ' Gates 
 coming forward with a swinging popularity, he as Chief -Justice took in and ranted 
 on that side most impetuously '. He probably did not need North's advice to 
 make him play his politic part at the Wakeman trial. L'Estrange had the doubtful 
 honour to run with Scroggs in the course now to be set them by ' their evidence- 
 ships*. Only Scroggs stayed while Roger fled. See A New Year's Oiftfor L. C 
 J. Scroggs where his tender treatment of the evidence in Coleman's trial is con- 
 trasted with his rigour to Gates in Wakeman's. ' The conduct of the Court on the 
 two occasions', says Mr Pollock (Popish Plot, p. 310), 'was perfectly con- 
 sistent '. It was certainly consistently partisan. 
 
 * 'Whereupon' {State Trials, vi., 643) 'Sir Geoi^e said privately to his 
 fellow-prisoners, "There is my business done'". 
 
240 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 in that prescriptive list which Gates had declared final and 
 inclusive before the Council in 28th September, 1678 -. 
 
 Before we remark on the effects of this remarkable 
 verdict on the popular mind, it may be well to describe 
 what was done on the other side. For Wakeman's trial, 
 more than any other, put life and courage into a despairing 
 party, and the result was a new reading of the Plot and 
 the trials, from a more openly sceptical standpoint 2. As 
 has been said, no man better or more courageously presented 
 this view from the Protestant side than L'Estrange. His 
 History of the Plot was a first nervous attempt in this 
 direction ^. This work is in the Michaelmas Tei^m Catalogue^ 
 and was probably published in September 1679. In Harry 
 Broome's Booksellers' Advertisement^ 27th February 1679-80, 
 beginning, 'Whereas there are several discourses and 
 pamphlets abroad in the world that passe for the writings 
 of Mr Roger L'Estrange, wherein he never had any hand 
 at all, etc. ', it occurs second in the List, since September 
 1678, and it preceded Roger Palmer's Narrative published 
 in October 1679, by only a few days, so that Roger had 
 a survey of all the important trials of the year. Although 
 we have entered this work in the list of sceptics, one must 
 not look in it for anything more daring than hints and 
 glances. Like many a more famous work, it observed so 
 much caution as to be mistaken by both sides, and to incur 
 the anger of Oates along with that of Castlemaine *. Six 
 years later, the author described the methods which alone 
 
 1 A New Year's Oift, etc. — Scroggs — 'Mr Oates, Sir George Wakeman urged 
 it right, that he should not have been permitted his liberty so long, if you 
 had charged him home then '. This is the occasion when L'Estrange's father- 
 in-law, Sir Thos. Doleman, Clerk of the Council, attempted to shield Oates. 
 
 2 Defoe, Remew, vii., 297. 'A party of men appeared, who began with 
 ridiculing the Plot '. 
 
 3 Sir Sidney Lee (art. L'Estrange, Did. of Nat, Biog.) says the History was 
 a mere record of Trials, but its sinister attempt to be fair to the Plot victims 
 is apparent on the surface. So thought the King's Evidence. 
 
 4 See his Com^pendium of the Plot, 1679. 'The author of the said History has 
 past by or slubbered over several things which the parties concerned may 
 justly insist upon to be of force in their business'. There is an Hisioire de la 
 Conspiration d' Angleterre, traduite de VAnglois du sieur L' Estrange par L.D.L.F. 
 d Londres, chez R. Bentley au Oommun Jardin en Rvsselstrcet, etc., 1679, dedicated 
 to Ormonde, in which the translator champions Roger against ' I'autheur d'un 
 certain Libelle public sous le titre do Compendium (qui) le traite de Phanatique ', 
 and the Nonconformists who ' le veuleut f aire passer pour Catholique Remain ', 
 As for L'Estrange, 'il est generallement cpnnu non seulement pour un trbs 
 honn§te homme, mais aussi pour une personne trhs capable. II est officier 
 chez le Roy et outre cela nomme pour revoir les ouvrages qui s'impriment, 
 pour donner la permission de les mettre au jour'. 
 
THE POPISH PLOT— FLIGHT OF L'ESTRANGE 241 
 
 were possible in these months to the sceptic desirous of 
 innoculating the public mind with his doubts. 
 
 'The witnesses led the rabble, the plot managers led 
 the witnesses, and this was the state of things when I 
 first dipped my pen into this subject, and there was no 
 launching out into the abyss of the Plot mystery without 
 certain ruin, but coasting and slanting, hinting and trimming 
 was the best office a body could perform in that season— a 
 little skirting now and then upon the Narrative, and 
 bantering betwixt Jest and Earnest upon the credit of 
 the witnesses, gave people little by little to understand 
 as much as any man could safely communicate, but the 
 foundation of the Plot lay as yet untouched, the patrons 
 and vouchers of it remained sacred, and for a long time 
 there was no meddling with a vote without burning a man's 
 fingers. . . . But since it hath pleased God by a beam of 
 Providence itself to light us into all the intrigues and 
 recesses of it ... I thought I could not do better than to 
 lay hold of and to improve this opportunity of tracing it 
 from the labourers and the journeymen to their principals' ^. 
 
 In his Freehorn Subject, written immediately after The 
 History of the Plot, when he was smarting under an 
 unsuccessful application for Sir John Birkenhead's post 
 of Master of Faculties relinquished by death, he leads up 
 to the circumstances of the publication of his History with 
 the old story of his thirty years' labour for the Crown, 
 his imprisonments and fortitude, a sure sign with L'Estrange 
 that he was in low water, and now, ' the bread taken out 
 of his mouth, and a large proportion shared amongst some 
 of those very people that pursued his late Majesty to the 
 block', is a sad commentary on the expiry of that Act 
 which terminated his licensing gains ^. 
 
 As to those circumstances, 'reflecting on those errors 
 (in the Printed Trials and Narratives of the Devilish Plot) 
 together with the almost inextricable diffiulty of retrieving 
 the truth out of such a confusion of tautologies and forms, 
 the collection being so bulky, too, and the particulars lying 
 
 1 L'Estrange, History of the Times (1687), and the To the Reader introduction 
 to the 3rd Book of Ohse'rvators. 
 
 2 Ibid., p. 44: *I defy any man to produce another gentlenaan in the King's 
 Dominions under any circumstances that has suffered so many illegal, arbitrary, 
 and mean Injustices from any abusers of the King's boiinty '. His enemies were 
 quick to see in these words an echo of the old Cavalier, insurgent complaints 
 of the Caveat, 1661. See Assenters' Sayings (1681), pp. 32-3. 
 
242 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 so scattered, that it was next to the work of Ilesurrection to 
 set any part in its right place, I betook myself to my friends, 
 my thoughts, and my papers, and digested the whole trans- 
 action into an historical narrative. And not in dialogues, 
 neither, nor in words, neither of the Bench, the witnesses 
 nor the prisoners, but in my own style and way, just in 
 the same fashion as I would tell the story. This book I 
 entitled The History of the Plot, and made legal assignment 
 of my right to a bookseller. I authorised him to print it, 
 and he imprinted it by the authority of the author ; some 
 of the Pretenders to the former trials arrest my bookseller 
 as an invader of their propriety \ and threaten him most 
 wonderfully into the bargain. He puts in bail to the 
 action, and there the squabble rests. They do not complain 
 of any imitation of their copy, but take upon them as if 
 no man else were to write upon that subject. At this 
 rate, we shall have all sermons forfeited to the King's 
 Printer, for descanting upon their Bibles, and all books 
 whatever to the company of stationers because they are 
 made out of the twenty-four Letters, and the A B C is 
 their copy. What a scandal is this to the commonwealth 
 of letters, what a cramp to learning and industry that if I 
 have a mind to compile a history, I must go to forty little 
 fellows for leave, forsooth, to write a Narrative of the pro- 
 ceedings upon our blessed King and master, the brave Earl 
 of Strafford, or the Archbishop of Canterbury. If a body 
 would draw up a system of treason and sedition, must he 
 go to the publishers of Bacon's Government for a license ' ? 
 When he urges the merits of his Plot History over the 
 others he is on surer ground. It was sold at half a crown, 
 which was eleven shillings less than the official publication 
 of the Trials. The fact that it was only a sixth of the 
 bulk of that publication was very much in its favour. But 
 
 1 The question of Property Rights in the Trials is important. Scroggs, 
 October 1679, wondered ' by what authority that Arbitrary Power was assumed 
 to forbid any friend of mine the seeing of it ', i.e. the printed trial. The Lords' 
 reversal of the judges' decision in 1668 had left Edward Atkyns sole law 
 patentee, but now in the freedom assumed by the press, property rights shared 
 the general disorder, and the judges began later to share in the plunder. 
 By assiduous tavern courting of witnesses like Dangerfield, mean printers got 
 possession of their lordly imprimaturs. Viner, Abridgment, xvii., 207: 'In 
 arguing the case of printing Roll's Abridgment being licensed by the Judges, 
 it was insisted and admitted by the counsel of the Patentee in Parliament 
 (1) That this grant is no publick grievance. (2) That the stopping the 
 Impression, though licensed by the Judges, is justifiable. (3) That the Law- 
 Patentees may not print law reports without the Judges' License'. 
 
THE POPISH PLOT— FLIGHT OF L^ESTRANGE 243 
 
 his claim to have omitted nothing, and made good the defects 
 of the official trials, was subjected to a good deal of abusive 
 denial. As the most critical aspects of the Plot are either 
 heightened or suppressed according as the writer believed, a 
 further examination of the points charged against L'Estrange's 
 History and the things charged by him and Castlemaine on 
 the other writers, focus the main disputes of the mystery. 
 
 The clever Epistle to the Eeader, which is an accom- 
 plished model of ' hinting and slanting ', at the same time 
 shows a certain consciousness of the magnitude of the 
 Plot mystery in English History — a feeling absent from 
 almost all other contemporary references and narratives. 
 We should read this, too, remembering that it is almost, 
 though not quite ^, the earliest attack on the Gates' Plot by 
 innuendo, omission, and addition. Incidentally it proves the 
 existence of a more considerable body of sceptics than one 
 would at first imagine. 
 
 'There has not been any point, perhaps, in the whole 
 tract of English story, either so dangerous to be mistaken in, 
 or so difficult and yet so necessary to be understood as the 
 mystery of this detestable Plot now in agitation (a judgment 
 for our sins augmented by our follies). 
 
 ' But the world is so miserably divided betwixt some that 
 will believe everything and others nothing, that not only 
 truth, but Christianity itself is almost lost between them, 
 and no place left for sobriety and moderation. We are 
 come to govern ourselves by dreams and imagination; we 
 make every Coffee-house tale an article of Faith, and from 
 incredible fables we raise invincible arguments. A man 
 must be fierce and violent to get the reputation of being 
 well-affected, as if the calling of one another damned heretic 
 and Popish dog were the whole sum of controversy. And 
 what's all this but the effect of a popular license and 
 appeal ? 
 
 ' When every mercenary scribbler shall take upon him to 
 handle matters of Faith and State ; give laws to princes 
 and every mechanic fit judge upon the Government. Were 
 
 J Earlier .sceptical treatment of the Plot is to be found in Nat Thompson's 
 True Domestic Intelligence, which started in the wake of Ben Harris' Domedic 
 Intelligence {1st No. 7th July 1679). The Wakeman trial was on the 18th July, 
 but Nat is very diffident in his references. There was also a Sober aiul Seasonable 
 Quei-ies early in 1679, which took a very decided view of the rascality of the 
 witnesses. The Observaior Proved a Trimmer gives a capital summary of the 
 various onslaughts on the Plot fabric from 1679-1681. 
 
244 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 not these the very circumstances of the late times ^, etc. ? 
 . . . These things duly weighed, and considering the 
 ground of our present distempers, the compiler of this 
 Abridgment, reckoned that he could not do his countrymen 
 a better office than by laying before them the naked state of 
 things, to give them at one view a prospect both of the 
 subject matter of apprehension, and of the vigilance, zeal 
 and needful severity of the Government on their behalf. 
 To which end he hath here drawn up a historical abstract 
 of the whole matter of fact concerning those persons who 
 have hitherto been tried for their lives, either upon the 
 Plot itself or in relation to it, opposing authentic records to 
 wandering rumours, and delivering the truth in all simplicity. 
 He hath not omitted any one material point ; there is not 
 so much as one partial stroke in it ; nor a flourish, nor 
 anything but a bare and plain collection, without any 
 tincture either of credulity or pashion. And it is brought 
 into so narrow a compass, too, that it will ease the reader's 
 head as well as his purse, by clearing him of the puzzle of 
 forms and interlocutories, that serve only to amuse and 
 mislead a man by breaking the order and confounding the 
 relative parts of the proceedings. 
 
 'Having this in contemplation, and being at the same 
 time possessed of a most exact summary of all passages here 
 in question, this reporter was only to cast an extract of 
 these notes into a method, especially finding that upon 
 comparing the substance of his own papers with the most 
 warrantable prints that have been published, his own 
 abstract proved to be not only every jot as correct, but 
 much more intelligible, which, being short and full, he 
 thought might be useful, and find credit in the world upon 
 its own account, without need of a voucher'. 
 
 In this epistle, L'E strange very clearly set forth the 
 position of the clergy and the Court. Admit only so much 
 of the Plot as is visible in Coleman's letters ; decry violence 
 or comment in the course of the trials, and fall foul of the 
 liberties and indecencies of the sectaries, who encouraged 
 by the expiry of the Press Law, and animated against the 
 bishops by their refusal to yield their claims to act as judges 
 in treason trials, and in the case of Danby in particular, 
 indulged in anti-episcopal language, besides which the old 
 
 1 I,e.y The Civil War, Cf, also Justice Dolben's speech, State Trials, vi., 704, 
 quoted p. 245. 
 
THE POPISH PLOT— FLIGHT OF L'ESTRANGE 245 
 
 Conventicle libels paled. Burnet takes this to be the 
 moment — that is, the prorogation and subsequent dissolution 
 of the Short Parliament of 1679 — of critical division in the 
 Church, the more violent party siding with the Court, and 
 crying up the parallel of '41, the other foreseeing a real 
 danger of Popery and setting themselves soberly to * rescue 
 the Church from those reproaches that the follies of others 
 drew upon it ' ^. 
 
 It was at the beginning of Michaelmas term, 1679, and 
 therefore in the very midst of these conflicting narratives, 
 that Scroggs and his brethren showed by certain extra- 
 ordinary speeches on ihe license of the Press how badly 
 they had been hit by the attacks on their conduct of the 
 Wakeman trial 2. If nothing remained of the venal judge 
 but his speech on this occasion, he might well be thought 
 a dignified upholder of justice, which ' should flow like a 
 mighty spring, and if the rabble like an unruly wind blow 
 against it, it may make it rough, but the stream will keep 
 its course'. 
 
 It is true there is no Press Law, but * Let their brokers, 
 those printers and booksellers by whom they vend their 
 false and braded wares, look to it. Some will be found, 
 and they shall know that the Law wants not power to 
 punish the libellous and licentious press, nor I a resolution 
 to execute it'^. "Whilst aflfirming the Plot, Scroggs took 
 the line already laid down by L'Estrange, and for which 
 both were brought near ruin, that 'No Act of Oblivion 
 ought to make us forget by what ways our late troubles 
 began, when the apprentices and porters mutinied for 
 justice in their own sense'. 
 
 Mr Justice Dolben, who spoke next, struck the same 
 note. 'I am old enough to remember (and perhaps feel 
 the smart of it yet) the beginning of the late Eebellion 
 (for a Eebellion it was, and deserves no other name). I 
 know it had the forerunner of such libels and scandals 
 against the Government as this is'. 
 
 1 Burnet, Ow7i Times, ii., 221. 2 state Trials, vii., 702-6. 
 
 ^ This temperate speech was of course interpreted into dreadful menaces 
 by the Protestant rabble. See A New Year's Gift already quoted, p. 8. 
 'With scurrilous threatenings and clinching his fist at them (the booksellers 
 and scribblers) as many of the standers-by observed, with such furious language 
 that they likened him to a bear robbed of her whelps '. It seems from this 
 account that Press Messenger Stephens shared the Judges' anger. ' Sarah ! you 
 have been conniving and tampering'. See Lord Ashburton's speech, 6th 
 December 1770 (Pari. Hist., xvi., 1277). 
 
246 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 One formidable 'scribbler' immediately took pen to 
 express the party's indignation against the writer of the 
 abridgment of the trials. The 'little dirty pug Harry 
 Care', accused of being the veriest hack of the booksellers, 
 the compiler and first begetter of numerous Plot Narratives, 
 and the learned if scandalous author of the persistent Weekly 
 Pacquet of Advice frowj Borne and Protestant Courant, issued 
 his Damnable Popish Plof^, in the epistle of which he 
 attacked L'Estrange by name with great ferocity. At the 
 same time, or shortly after, two other combatants were 
 breathing out threatenings against each other. We have 
 already mentioned King's Evidence Miles Prance, and his 
 (May 1679) narrative of the Godfrey murder. After dark 
 and notorious passages in Newgate, Prance had been 
 called upon to swear away Ireland's life in the May trials, 
 and to attempt Wakeman's in July. Roger Palmer, in 
 following L'Estrange's History so closely as has been 
 observed, took occasion to riddle his tortured evidence, 
 and Prance perforce uttered a feeble and irrelevant reply 
 on 17th October 1679. 
 
 Thus there was in this month — the month also of the 
 famous Appeal from the Country to the City, and of the 
 petitions for a Parliament — a quadrilateral duel over the 
 truth of the King's 'evidence'. 
 
 Care's attack on L'Estrange in the preface to his History 
 of the Damnable Popish Plot is as worthy a piece of invective 
 as exists in the language. His long and ambitious history 
 takes up the thread of narrative from the Reformation, 
 and by inference convicted King, Court, Lords, and Bishops 
 of an affection for Popery, arraigned the Judges for their 
 conduct in the later Plot trials, and appealed to the approach- 
 ing Parliament for judgment. He attacks L'Estrange's 
 Brief History, because it omits the trials of Staley, the 
 Popish banker denounced by Carstairs, the first to suffer, 
 and Reading, who attempted to suborn Bedloe to mitigate 
 his evidence against the Popish Lords in the Tower. To 
 these charges Roger had the very good answer that the 
 
 1 The History of the Damnable Popish Plot (anon.) 1680, 8vo. A second edition 
 appeared 1681. This should be distinguished from Popish DamnaUe Plots 
 against oxir Religion and Liberties ', which may, or may not, have been Care's. 
 We know that John Phillips, Milton's nephew, collaborated with Care in the 
 productionfof these narratives. Hence L'Estrange's enmity. See p. 330. Lingard 
 {Hist, of Eng. (1854), ix., 208) seems to imply that Care had some sort of Parlia- 
 mentary commission to write his Damnable Popish Plot, ' for the instruction of the 
 people '. 
 
THE POPISH PLOT— FLIGHT OF L'ESTRANGE 247 
 
 case of the former lay outside the broad track of Oates' 
 Plot, and Eeading was not brought in for his life. Care 
 was now ready for the vengeance of the Court, which 
 overtook him in the sentence of Scroggs in July 1680. 
 
 But the real front of Eoger's offending was, as we saw, 
 that he had conspicuously indicated the slippery places in 
 the Plot mystery, where, but for a good deal of winking 
 and collusion, the whole business had gone to pieces. He 
 did not yet dare to hint that Shaftesbury was behind the 
 scenes in Newgate, and working as earnestly as any, at 
 the patching-up and rehearsing of the Plot story, drilling 
 the various witnesses in the parts to which they were 
 driven by what amounted to torture or bribery. 
 
 But he cast a glance at the idle rumour that Prance 
 had to be assisted to the witness-box by copious and long- 
 continued threats and actual brutality. The treatment of 
 this wretched being was afterwards to engage his closest 
 scrutiny. In the meantime, he hinted the doubt and passed 
 on. Not so the anonymous Castlemaine. This Catholic 
 nobleman took greater risks for his fellow religionists than 
 any other person, and in the event stood a trial for high 
 treason i. But at the time when in his Compendium of the 
 Plot History, he exposed the evidence of the wretched 
 Prance, he was merely known as a faithful frequenter of 
 the trials, and a bold encourager of Oates' unfortunate 
 victims ^. 
 
 He had been responsible for the most formidable attempts 
 to break down the Plot evidence by introducing, and 
 
 1 Mr Pollock {Popish Plot, p. 360) says : 'The acquittal of Lord Castlemaine is 
 chiefly important as an episode in the infamous career of Dangerfield '. But it is 
 clear that he had a much wider importance from 1666 onwards. However con- 
 temptible on the score of his Countess, he showed remarkable perseverance and 
 courage for his religion. His Compendium is to be distinguished from The 
 Compendious History, etc., loith an account of the Plot, erroneously ascribed to 
 L'Estrauge in the Bodleian Catalogue. 
 
 2 Dangerfield's Narrative (1680), p. 23 : ' The next day I went to wait on the 
 Lord Castlemaine, whom I found in his study writing the Compenditim, and I 
 had time to read some part of a paragraph '. Castlemaine, the ' witness ' 
 continues, was very wroth with him for not acting sufficiently boldly in the work 
 set him by Mrs Cellier and himself, i.e., the murder of Shaftesbury. His chief 
 duty, however, was to frequent the factious coffee-houses, and 'scatter daily 
 reflections and Nevile's {alias Paine) libels '. Castlemaine's book bore no printer's 
 name, but the printer lay in gaol for it several months, by order of the Council. 
 As to Castlemaine's management of the witnesses, see his trial, 23rd June 1680. 
 * My Lord ', said the Attorney-General, * these persons my lord Castlemaine had 
 the management and instruction of at that time, and all along at the Old Bailey 
 my lord C. was present there, and did countenance these persons '. Castlemaine 
 was also remembered as the writer of the Catholic Apology, 1666. See 
 chap, vi., p, 167. 
 
248 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 managing the thirty young witnesses from St Omer's, to 
 prove that Gates was not in England in May 1678. This 
 despised and ridiculed evidence he reintroduced into his 
 Compendium'^, with Certificates from the principal of 
 St Omer's and the municipality of Liege. He brought 
 forward as a proof of their innocence the firm behaviour 
 and dying speeches of the victims, and at every point 
 where popular credulity w^as strained by the evidence, he 
 applied a bitter criticism to their exposure. Prance offered 
 the best attack as the weakest link in the chain. He had 
 been brought in at the moment when for want of more 
 evidence, the Plot was in danger of breaking down. The 
 story of Godfrey's murder was a main pillar of the 
 Plot. 
 
 There are many touches in Castlemaine's Com'pendmm, 
 which recall L'Estrange's History, and since the author refers 
 to the anticipation of his publication by L'Estrange, it may 
 be taken that he earnestly studied Roger's work before 
 committing his own to the Press. But as has been observed 
 the extent and timidity of the ex -Surveyor's ' slanting and 
 hinting ' may be judged by Castlemaine's preface, in which he 
 confounds L'Estrange with the other writers of narratives I 
 
 As to Roger's History, with the exception of the prefatory 
 epistle, which certainly is brave, it is difficult to see any- 
 thing in it beyond a few innuendoes and additions which 
 could raise the ire of either Gates or Care. But it is clear 
 that he was marked out with Castlemaine for the vengeance 
 of the Party. He was not, however, the man to be frightened 
 off the course by the Doctor's coffee-house threats or Care's 
 increasingly scurrilous note in the Courant. His Freehorn 
 Suhject, which finds a place in the same Term Catalogue as 
 his History of the Plot, i.e., Michaelmas, 1679, is a very 
 spirited defence of his conduct, with the warfare carried into 
 the enemy's country in the case cited of the old libel Omnia 
 
 1 The Compendium, or a Short Review of the Late THals in relation to the 
 present Plot (anon), 1679. Castlemaine may also have been the author of that 
 Vindication of the Gatlwlics noted by Dangerfield and ascribed by him to . . . 
 Dormer (Narrative, p, 17) referred to by Anthony Wood as soon suppressed. 
 See Harris' Domestiek Intelligence for 24tli September 1679. An order for seizing 
 the Compendium, its author, and printer. 
 
 " See Anthony Wood's copy of L'Estrange's History/, in the Bodleian (in MSS. 
 'collected and written by R. L'Estrange, ^. 6d.'). By authority. Written on 
 flyleaf : ' He that was the author of this book was the author of another entitled 
 The Freehorn Subject, London, 1679, 4to. Printed in September, This came out 
 soon after Sir George Wakeman's Trial '. 
 
THE POPISH PLOT—FLIGHT OF L'ESTRANGE 249 
 
 Comesta a Belo'^, long the favourite of the fanatics, and a 
 speech delivered by Lord Lucas in the late Parliament, in 
 which the noble lord ventured not only to denounce the 
 Duke, but to hint at the King's lukewarmness towards the 
 Plot. ' Supererogation ' is the term L'Estrange would rather 
 apply to Charles' conduct. 
 
 A glance at the Term Catalogues of this year (1679) and 
 the next will illustrate almost better than anything else the 
 agitations of party at this moment. L'Estrange's license to 
 the Catalogue was not needed after Trinity term, 1679, and 
 accordingly Clavell, always eager to increase his profits, 
 threw wide his lists to every kind of writing. There is, for 
 example, in the Michaelmas and succeeding issue one huge 
 class of the Privileges and Practice of Parliaments type, 
 dialogues between barristers and jurymen to assert the right 
 of petitioning. Here are Petyt's Collection of records to 
 prove that ' the Commons of England were ever an essential 
 part of Parliament ', and numberless attacks on the Bishops' 
 right of judging in capital cases. There are not lacking 
 eloquent appeals on the royal side of the argument, whilst 
 Strafford's case serves anew for political ammunition. 
 
 Side by side with half a dozen Plot Histories and 
 narratives we find in Clavell's Catalogue a very determined 
 growth of clamant Dissent, the party which alone stood to 
 win by the pursuit of the Plot. Here are "Nonconformist 
 Pleas, the works of Baxter and Calamy, and even Quaker's 
 Pleas, enough to drown the old persecuting voices. Burnet, 
 as we saw, takes the vote of the Commons on 10th January 
 1681, for a toleration to Dissent, as the climax of Non- 
 conformist hopes, and certainly the vote was trumpeted 
 forth by every little writer of their party. But it was also 
 the signal for a general alarm, and disgust of the party 
 which was pushing its claims so insolently at a time^ of 
 
 1 First published after the fire, probably in 1667 and now (1679) reprinted. 
 Roger makes some excusable play on the printer's error * a Bella ', the * Bellum ' 
 being the war waged by the Faction against their King. See Wood, Life and Times, 
 ii., 458, 'only Roger L'Estrange answered it in the Englishman's Birthright '. 
 
 2 See the Dialogue between the Pope and a Fanatick, and a Sober Discourse of 
 the Honest Cavalier xoith the Fo2nsh Cmcranter, both printed for Harry Brome, 1680, 
 and admirable as a summary of the general affronts offered by the mob to the 
 local gentry and clergy at elections, and for cases of Church desecration, etc. In 
 the latter, pages 8 and 9, there is cited the case of a Church at Rotherham in 
 East Anglia, where the 'Living indeed is an appropriation and managed by 
 Fanaticks, these religious banditti '. It is not so well-known that the High-fliers 
 and Tantivies of that age repudiated the name Protestant. L'Estrange, their 
 guide, discovers this indiscreet dislike in a dozen places, and the Cavalier in this 
 
250 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 danger. Whether this be so or not, it is certain that even 
 before the meeting of the Oxford Parliament, the battle was 
 half won for the Crown, and L'Estrange, ' the manager of all 
 those angry writings ', and then an exile, was entering into 
 his inheritance, and the perishable gratitude of the Church. 
 
 To return to the Oates-L'Estrange duel of the winter 
 1679-80, we find that the latter followed up The History of 
 the Plot by a Further Discovery of the Plot, with a letter to 
 Br Titus Oates, and Discovery upon Discovery, the former in 
 January 1680, at the same time that he was busy with a 
 translation of Cicero's Offices, and the latter the work 
 probably of March 1680 i. These works carried the quarrel 
 with Oates to the breaking-point. In all companies, in the 
 taverns he frequented, and even when they had met casually, 
 Oates' ' Rogue and Papist ' was forthcoming, and ' we shall 
 have a Parliament ' added in his frown. 
 
 The peculiar annoyance of these works to Titus was that 
 the author fastened on that passage in his Narrative, where 
 the Doctor charged the Papists with being at the bottom of 
 all the late troubles disguised as Fanaticks. 
 
 Accepting this statement (' as who dares deny what the 
 Doctor avers ? ') with obtuse logic, L'Estrange in his letter 
 to Oates, urged the rooting-out of all priests and Jesuits ' by 
 such ways and means as would naturally arise from the 
 reasons and his depositions ', i.e., by the means of the shortest 
 way with the Dissenters. 
 
 In his Discovery upon Discovery, Roger pursued this slight 
 
 advantage, and had he kept to this cue, 'grounded upon 
 
 Oates' evidence ', it might yet have been well with him, but 
 
 he now, though not for the first time, took upon himself to 
 
 commend the Catholics in rather warm terms, reminding 
 
 j himself and his readers of certain passages in his own life, 
 
 where both in England and in exile he had experienced 
 
 \ Catholic hospitality ^. This generous, but dangerous, warmth 
 
 I he repeated several times, neglectful of the danger of such 
 
 \warmth in one who scrupled the word ' Protestant '. 
 
 ' I do at this instant avow to the world, that I never met 
 
 pamphlet ' ingenuously gives his reasons why he has a singular disgust against the 
 word Protestant'. As to the contempt of the clergy — 'After the last election 
 (1679) they did openly boast in streets and coffee-houses that they had now a 
 Parliament that would make the clergy leave off their surplices, and they hope 
 now to see the day when their gowns should be pulled over their ears '. 
 
 1 See Appendix i. 
 
 2 He refers (p. 30) to his eight-months' stay in the house of Cardinal van Hesse 
 in 1651, ' where I was as kindly received as if I had been at my own father's '. 
 
THE POPISH PLOT— FLIGHT OF L'ESTRANGE 251 
 
 with any people since I was born of more candour, generosity, 
 or in a word, of better morals, than among the members of 
 the Church of Kome ' ^ He could scarcely complain when 
 he found that people who ' by the ties of nature, honour, and 
 good manners, ought to be tender of what they say', and 
 some ' whom he could scarce see without an embrace, stabbed 
 him with this poisoned dagger ' — the scandal of Popery. 
 
 But the ' Salamanca Doctor's ' fury was more to be feared 
 both in the case of Castlemaine and of L'Estrange. Although 
 the former's name was not included in that list of such 
 noblemen and gentry as are in this Conspiracy, whose names 
 occur at present the last significant phrase in this proscription 
 gave sufficient latitude for the trial of Castlemaine in May 
 1680. This trial is chiefly interesting for the evidence it 
 affiDrds of the further turn of the tide, and the effect on 
 Oates' mind of those stinging and sceptic narratives which 
 we have noticed. ' My Lord ', said Castlemaine, ' I have for 
 a long time wished for this day, and your Lordship may very 
 well remember it. The reason why I have so much desired 
 a trial is because I thought it means, and the best means, 
 and the only means to show to the world my innocency '. 
 
 By this time, Mrs Cellier, the Popish midwife, agent for 
 Lady Powis, had appeared on the scene, ushered in by 
 Dangerfield's treachery, and the discovery of what goes by 
 the name of the Meal-tub Plot. Into this matter we need 
 not enter more fully here than to say that Mrs Cellier's 
 business was to be used for the ruin of both Castlemaine and 
 L'Estrange. The former was now acquitted, but vengeance 
 was being prepared for L'Estrange — -a vengeance delayed both 
 in the hope of a Parliament which could not now be long 
 withheld, and because Koger was too * plot-learned ' to pro- 
 vide such matter as even a Protestant jury would listen to ^. 
 Pictures we have in the interval of the amenities practised 
 between Oates and L'Estrange. They are almost all of the 
 tavern school, the doctor's spacious ' by the toe of Pharaoh ' 
 oaths, actual encounters with L'Estrange, a crowd of supporters 
 on either side and the name of Traitor flying between them. 
 But one more particular gem will perhaps bear quotation here. 
 
 1 Apology for the Protestants^ 1681 {To the Reaxkr). 
 
 2 Examen, p. 271 : 'But the old knight wasTso plot-learned that nothing would 
 fasten upon him '. Lives of the Norths, i. , 201 : ' As for open opposition by 
 pamphlets (to the "Plot") there was enough published by some Catholics . . . but 
 the attempts were cried out upon as so many instances of shameless impudence, 
 pretending to prove false what the community were resolved should be true '. 
 
252 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 In Zehiel and Uphraim, written in October 1680 when 
 matters had come to a crisis, and a Committee of the 
 Privy Council was actually sitting on Roger's writings, he 
 complains that Oates threatened him with a Parliament, 
 ' but that is a course of speech he has got. If the prisoners 
 but ask a newcomer for his garnish or foy, the Master of the 
 Prison shall be told of a Parliament. A Bishop shall not 
 suspend a Minister for refusing to officiate according to 
 the canon, but he is presently threatened with a Parliament, 
 if the University shall not think fit to allow Mr Oates his 
 degree, the lawn sleeves are to be ruffled next Parliament. 
 I was walking awhile since only across the outer Court at 
 Whitehall, innocently upon my business, and because I did 
 not cap him over the square, as the boys do Fellows in 
 Cambridge, Squire L'Estrange (says he) We shall have a 
 Parliament, twisting his hat about betwixt his finger and 
 his thumb with a look and action not to be expressed'. 
 
 Next to the Meal-tub Plot, perhaps the most dangerous 
 attack on the Popish Plot, was the confession in this year 
 of Simpson Tonge, son of Dr Tonge, the scribe and manager 
 of Oates. Early in the year this young man stated before 
 the King in Council that the whole plot was an imposture, 
 that he was employed with others in helping it out, and that 
 his father and Oates concocted the letters known as the 
 Windsor Pacquet. His testimony was a windfall to the 
 Court, and might have enabled that party to face a 
 parliament with equanimity. Whoever built on Simpson 
 Tonge, however, was building on sand. The effect of his 
 unnatural exposure was that his relatives cut him off; and 
 from one of his subsequent confessions, we learn that the 
 Faction, through his uncle and Stephen Colledge, the 
 Protestant joiner, made use of the Court's imprudent 
 neglect to supply his wants, leading him on to a course 
 of alternate retraction and affirmation, which must be 
 without a parallel even in the Plot mystery. He was 
 well described as a Fireship, who would ruin whoever 
 had anything to do with him. Roger L'Estrange, for his 
 sins, was one of the earliest public men hauled into his 
 net^. So early as July (says one informant) Tonge had 
 
 1 See the full quotation from JfJxamen, p. 271. Also L'Estrange's own 
 account in The Sfmrnmer Shammed, 1682; II.M.C, app. ii. to 11th Kept., 
 pp. 246-9 ; and Tonge's narrative dated 10th December 1680 (though ' held up in 
 lavender ' for the Oxford Parliament). 
 
THE POPISH PLOT—FLIGHT OF L'ESTRANGE 253 
 
 L'Estrange in his thoughts as a person likely to give 
 good evidence against his father in connection with the 
 seditious passages in old Tonge's Boyal Martyr, which 
 Roger had, with much deprecation, refused to license. In 
 the middle of August, it was publicly given out that the 
 unnatural son was wavering in his charges. He was then 
 at Windsor, and in extreme poverty. His uncle, Capt. 
 Tonge, now approached him, and for a time relieved his 
 necessities. 
 
 In September, however, still hankering after superior 
 honours, the young man seems to have expressed a wish to 
 see L'Estrange. If we can trust the latter — we certainly 
 cannot trust Tonge — it was Newcombe, the printer of 
 the Gazet (now also advanced to the post of King's Printer), 
 who took the ex- Surveyor to a certain French physician, 
 Mons. Choquex, who had then charge of young Tonge 
 for a cure, ostensibly to learn from the doctor certain 
 memorials of Prince Rupert's actions in the war in Flanders. 
 "Without doubt the meeting w^as arranged, and Choquex's 
 information was a blind. As to Tonge's confidences to 
 L'Estrange at this meeting, they amounted to little more 
 than 'a nonsensical story of the privacies that had passed 
 betwixt Oates and his father, certain papers concerning 
 the Plot that were written in Greek characters, and hid 
 behind the wainscot; and a foolery of one Green, a weaver, 
 that meeting his father in the Court of Requests, told 
 him for news (and without any knowledge of his, too) 
 that ere long there would be a Popish massacre, whereupon 
 (says young Tonge) my father made an acquaintance with 
 him, and out comes the Plot'. 
 
 Besides Choquex, Tonge had about him a certain Capt. 
 Ely, a kind of go-between and stage-manager for this 
 tragic farce, though in the event, so far as L'Estrange was 
 concerned, an honest enough man. 
 
 Whether the whole thing, as Roger surmised after, was a 
 device of his enemies rendered desperate by the failure to 
 bring Castlemaine to book, and that just before the meeting 
 of Parliament in October, it is certain that the whole town 
 was in September full of the rumour that L'Estrange was at 
 last a dead man — he had attempted, like Reading, to tamper 
 with the King's evidence. 
 
 Oates' formal complaint to the Council against Ely 
 and Choquex — who fled — brought in Roger L'Estrange 
 
254 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 as a third man. It was in vain that (4th October) he 
 hurriedly pressed from Ely and Choquex affidavits to 
 the effect that he was only recently known to Ely and 
 introduced to Choquex by Newcombe for literary purposes, 
 that he had rather avoided Tonge's confidence, and warned 
 the others against having anything to do with him. The 
 matter, planned for the meeting of Parliament, had now 
 gone before the Council, and L'Estrange was in the toils. 
 
 The temper of that Parliament may be best judged 
 by a perusal of its severities to all grades of Catholics, its 
 proscriptions, and by the lamentable death of Strafford, but 
 also on the other hand by its fatal leniency to the Dissenters. 
 All historians are agreed that the Lower House far over- 
 stepped the boundaries of its authority, and scarcely even 
 in 1640 was this overweening temper more manifest. The 
 Council, though purged to some extent of the popular 
 element introduced in April 1679, was forced to bend to 
 the storm, and to seem to encourage those attacks on 
 individuals which Oates, now happy in his Parliament, 
 preferred. Scroggs and L'Estrange were two of the chief 
 malefactors. The Council of the 6th October afforded 
 parties an opportunity of confronting each other. Dr Oates 
 and the Tonges, father and son, were there as accusers ^. 
 
 Mme. Cellier, fresh from the pillory, and L'Estrange, 
 in humiliating association with her, were there. Justice 
 Orlando Bridgeman, once the friend of L'Estrange, was 
 present apparently as Oates' counsel. Young Tonge's 
 charge of subornation against L'Estrange, penned in 
 Newgate, was handed in. 'Very high words passed 
 between Dr Oates and Mr L'Estrange, the latter telling 
 the Council that Dr Oates' took the liberty to call him a 
 thousand times Rogue and Rascal, which the Doctor owned, 
 saying he would prove him to be both, and desired he might 
 be secured '. 
 
 The Whig newspapers of the 7th October make gleeful 
 and circumstantial report of the matter, not forgetting to 
 brace up Roger and Madam together, but omitting Oates' 
 threat of a Parliament. 
 
 ' The paper of young Tonge's Sham-Plot ', says Hancock's 
 
 1 Luttrell, BwA'y, i., 57, October 1680. ''Mr L'Estrange was before the 
 Council, being accused by young Tonga, but he going backward and forward in 
 his accusation, and His Majesty's speaking well of Mr L'Estrange, he was 
 acquitted '. See also Co/oalicr and Puritan in the Days of the Stuarts by Lady 
 Newdigate-Newdegate (1901), p. 111. 
 
THE POPISH PLOT— FLIGHT OF L'ESTRANGE 255 
 
 paper (an old enemy at the Libels Committee), ' being seized, 
 Mr L'Estrange and Mrs Cellier were summoned, but they 
 denied they knew anything of it, but Mrs Cellier would not 
 stand to it, by reason of the many bruises she received in 
 the Pillory ^ ; but next Wednesday Mr Tonge will be brought 
 to confront them '. 
 
 Oates' charge at most amounted to a dereliction of his 
 duty as a magistrate in not informing the Council of young 
 Tonge's dealings with him, and in refusing to take any 
 depositions without a previous disclaimer of his part in the 
 affair. But Eoger's recent writings made better matter for 
 a prosecution, and that reinforced by direct * evidence ' of his 
 being a Papist, proved too strong for him. 
 
 The Council so far encouraged Oates as to direct him to 
 bring in a bill of charges against L'Estrange, who should 
 then be secured, and meanwhile appointed a committee to 
 examine his writings^. 
 
 Of these writings we have referred to the more 
 prominent in their places, with the exception of the most 
 offensive of all. The famous Appeal from the Country to the 
 City of the previous autumn had gone far beyond the limits 
 of the ordinary libel, and being written with singular force 
 — it was believed by L'Estrange to be the last work of 
 Andrew Marvell^ — gained a reputation. Whilst dissecting 
 the enormities of the Court and Church, it paid flattering 
 compliments to the City, at the same time reminding it 
 that the country would get tired of sending the right men 
 to Parliament, if nothing were done. In particular, it 
 
 1 For her libel, Malice Defeated in which she vilified the 'King's evidence' 
 and repeated her stories of the torture used to elicit * evidence ' from Prance 
 and others. Just how Koger became associated with Madam's business is not 
 quite clear. He was not mentioned in her trial in August, and strenuously 
 denied any connection with her — which is probably the truth. Sec her trial 
 for libel, September 1680, printed by Thos. Collins {State Trials^ vii., 1183), which 
 affords some curious information on the methods of dispersal and the prices 
 of Libels, p. 1203. 
 
 * Baron Weston.— l^he King hath set out a proclamation that no lools shall he 
 2)rinted without a license. 
 
 * M. Gellier. — I never heard it. I was under close confinement when the King 
 set it out. 
 
 ' Weston. — No, I deny that, for you were enlarged the first day of Trinity 
 Term, and the Proclamation came out towards the end '. The Proc. of 12th 
 May 1680 does not however enforce the general license. 
 
 ^ L'Estrange's case was something more than an examination by the Council. 
 It seems to have been one of the later examples of Trial by Council. 
 
 •■' Charles Blount ( Philopatris) was the author. Roger, as we saw, announced 
 MarvclTs death to Compton. 20th August 1678 (chap, viii., 216) Scott (Drj/den, 
 ix., 364-5) took it to be Ferguson's who 'tempted Jerusalem to sin'. 
 
256 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 threatened the Court with destruction if by continued 
 prorogations it defeated the purpose of Parliaments. It 
 gave wide impetus to the Petitioning agitation — always the 
 most violent irritant to the Court ^. 
 
 To answer the famous piece, L'Estrange had written in 
 two parts his equally notorious Gitt and Bumpkin, for which 
 he was now chiefly charged. In this work he displayed all 
 the hatred of the rich Whig community to which sufficient 
 reference has already been made. Over and above the 
 abuse of the ' Rich Churles ', the caricature of the city and 
 country Whig mouse, the exposure of the methods used 
 to get signatures to the Petitions for a Parliament, gave 
 special offence because of their truth 2. 
 
 It was about this time, too, that Roger had scandalised 
 the sects with his rude cartoon. The Committee, or Popery 
 in Masquerade^ wherein he ' displays all the rabble of sects 
 as Adamites, Ranters, and what not as counsellors upon a 
 consult jointly petitioning, and John Presbyter Chairman. 
 Then he brings the Petitioners, which are only Swash and 
 the Elder's maid, the Colchester Quaker, and the Mare, 
 petitioning against the Bishop, Service Book, Popish Lords 
 and evil counsellors'^ — a rather beastly production. 
 
 1 See the King's speeches at the opening of Parliament for 1662 and 1666. 
 The Appeal is included in State Tracts temp. Charles II., vol. i. From the 
 top of the Monument the citizens are to imagine 'the whole Town in flames, 
 and amongst the distracted crowd, troops of Papists ravishing their wives and 
 daughters '. See Sitwell, First Whig, p. 47 ; and Hart, Index, p. 206. 
 
 2 The charges of * running the Plot into a sham ' and ' endeavouring to bring 
 the King into jealousy of his good City ' of London, was made the most off. 
 See one of the most piquant replies to Citt and Bumpkin — The Dialogue between 
 Tom, the Cheshire Piper; and Capt. Crackhrains (1680), where the author declares 
 that ' if (the offence) was in France, as fond as he is of that Government, they 
 would anger him, for he would without doubt be put to the question, that 
 a discovery might be made of such grand designs in agitation (as Roger's 
 Presbyterian-City-Plot), and if it proved all a staff of his own, as I dare swear 
 this is, then I believe he would be broke on the wheel for endeavouring to 
 bring the King into a jealousy of hia good City of Paris '. As to L'Estrange's 
 hint, 'Heads will find hands {i.e., for Petitions) if there should be occasions', 
 this writer asks, 'Can anything be more vile than to do as Bumpkin charged 
 himself withal, namely to fill up sheets with Smiths and Walkers, etc., to 
 amuse the Nation with numbers — ay, and for women to under-write for their 
 husbands in the West Indies ' ? See also A Short A nswer to a ivhole Litter of 
 Libellers, p. 6. 'Upon several Rolls, there were 30 names sometimes together 
 all in the same hand '. 
 
 3 Epistle Dedicatory to Tom Cheshire : ' on the right hand aloft, he sets a 
 cabal of rascals as it were in a consult, opposite in the left hand he sets little 
 Alderman Isaac Pennington and the Pope, under them the capital letters of 
 Solemn league and Covenant, under that according to hie usual scurrilous way 
 a piece of Holy Writ, Jeremiah, chap. Ixx., v. 5, which he scoffingly would seem 
 to apply to that wicked combination or Covenant ', a bitter fool indeed ! There 
 are several copies of this celebrated cartoon still preserved. See Bodleian {Gough 
 
I TlK/Jw 0«VI»*r,biKrt.i»rPr.rt, 
 
 
 
 
 A POLITICAL CARTOON BY L'ESTRANGE, 1679. 
 
 [Fare /) 256. 
 
THE POPISH PLOT^FLIGHT OF L^ESTRANGE 257 
 
 On the 13th October the adjourned examination before the 
 Council was held, when L'Estrange's innocence in the matter 
 of young Tonge was unanimously upheld, and the King ap- 
 peared particularly emphatic. 'The charge of the Sham-Plot 
 falling to the ground (without one word of Mrs Cellier as to 
 any concern of mine) Mr Oates was pleased to present me as 
 a person Fopishly-affeded ' ^. Here enters Prance with an oath 
 and witnesses to swear that Koger was a familiar figure at 
 Mass in Somerset House. Hence Prance's subsequent woes. 
 
 'After this Mr Oates exhibited an Information against 
 me for conveying away Bulls and Popish books that had 
 been seized and locked up ; whereupon the Messenger of the 
 Press (Stephens) discharged himself upon oath that the name 
 of L'Estrange was not so much as mentioned in that business. 
 
 'The next blow at me will be (as I am informed) for 
 saying at Will's Coffeehouse that there is no Plot' — of 
 which he adjures Heaven to witness his denial. 
 
 ' In the last place I am to be questioned for my books * 
 (14th October 1680)1 
 
 If there had been only the Council to encounter — though 
 a Council driven by the storm outside, and the necessity 
 of tacking a point — L'Estrange might have weathered 
 through. But there was the dark menace of a Parliament ^, 
 which was shortly to set on Scroggs and Weston, and in 
 which noble lords had already declared their souls on the 
 subject of L'Estrange*. 
 
 Maps 46, f. 204). Brit. Mus. Cat. of Prints and DrawiTigs, vol. i., Satires, p. 623, 
 No. 1080. 
 
 The poetical Explanation which accompanies the picture (Printed by Mary 
 Clark for H. Brome) is as bitter — 
 
 ' Well, but what means this excremental swarm 
 Of human insects ? How they fret and storm ! * 
 
 See a Short Answer to a Whole Litter of Libellers, p. 3, for a defence of this 
 production. In the Brit. Mus. copy there is an MS. note — *a touch on Mr 
 Hem-y Care ' at the couplet, 
 
 ' He deals in sonnets, articles, takes notes, 
 Frames histories, Impeachments, enters Votes '. 
 
 1 The fourth chaise in Danby's Impeachment, "Tis true he was acquitted* 
 says Prance of L'Estrange, 'from being in the Plot at the Council Board, and 
 so he was from being a Papist *, L'Estrange a Papist (1681), p. 29. 
 
 2 U Estrange' s Case in a Civil Dialogue between Zekiel and Ephraivi, October 
 1680. 
 
 3 'Nothing can bind this Proteus, but a Parliament'. Hiie and Cry after 
 Roger L'Estrange, November 1680. 
 
 '^ See A Noble Lord's (Lucas) Speech in the Ifouse of Lords, November 1680, 
 Oldmixon, i., 612. ' Such a one (A Protestant in Masquerade) is Roger L'Estrange 
 who now disappears, being one of the greatest villains upon earth — the bugbear 
 of the Protestant religion — who has traduced the King's evidence by his notorious 
 writings— a dangerous rank Papist, and deserves of all men to be hanged '. 
 
 R 
 
258 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 All he had stood for in the last twenty years, his rigorous 
 yet partial conduct of the Press, his scoffs and gibes at the 
 'true' Protestants, his preaching up of the Prerogative, 
 defaming the City, etc., were now remembered. 
 
 On the 30th October, Shaftesbury reported that the Plot 
 Committee having received information of his apostasy and 
 'other misdemeanours', and having thrice summoned him 
 in vain, their Lordships recommended that 'he should be 
 put out of the Commission of Peace, and not permitted to 
 license the Printing of any more books, nor be employed 
 in any more public affairs '^ 
 
 The men who gave the final word against L'Estrange 
 were appropriately Stationers 2. Richard Fletcher certified 
 that * about three years ago he met E. L. Esq., at the Half- 
 Moon Tavern in Cheapside about licensing a book entitled 
 The Works of Geber, an Arabian Prince and Philosopher, 
 and gave Mr L. a guinea for his license '. After which, over 
 a bottle of wine, Roger disclosed to Fletcher that he was a 
 Catholic. Thereupon the House ordered ' that the Sergeant- 
 at-Arms . . . forthwith attach the body of the said Roger 
 L'Estrange and bring him in safe custody to the House'. 
 
 But — as the hue and cry raised in every little Whig 
 journal informed the good citizens whom he had defamed 
 — Roger L'Estrange was already skulking in some obscure 
 lodging in the 'grey metropolis of the North '^. 
 
 On Queen Elizabeth's Day (17th November) there was 
 
 1 Lords' Journals, 30th October 1680, xiii., 6, 30. Despite the expiry of 
 the Act, in 1679, cautious booksellers still protected themselves by giving an 
 occasional guinea for Roger's Imprimatur. The expiry of the Act was, we 
 saw, deliberate on the part of the Whigs, 'notwithstanding His Majesty 
 recommended it seriously to the Parliament by the Lord Chancellor, at the 
 opening of it'. See Bohun's Address to the Freeholders (1683), pt. ii., 12. 
 
 2 Informations taken by Clarendon and Craven, those of Prance and Mowbray 
 on the 25th October, of Bennet and Fletcher on the 30th. On the 27th, Mrs 
 Curtis charged him with ' refusing to license several books, wherein there was 
 anything against the Papists ', more especially two books ' which upon the 
 first sight were licensed by the Bishop of London', L'Estrange a Papist, 
 February 1682. The two books were The Character of (i TurhulaMt Pragmatical 
 Jesuit — licensed by the Bishop's Chaplain, 15th October 1678, and A Letter from 
 a Catholic Gentleman to his Popish Friends. See the Portraiture of Roger 
 L'Estrange (1681), pp. 3-4; Lcn^ds' Journals, xiii., 629-30; and II.M.C, 11th 
 Kept., app. ii., 167. 
 
 3 II.M.C, 11th Rept., app. ii., p. 167, 6th November. Sergeant-at-Arms 
 reports that he cannot find Castlemaine (denounced on 28th October) or 
 L'Estrange. Fountainhall, Historical Observes, ed. 1840, p, 32. ' It is 
 observable almost none of the English nobility (even of the King's party) and 
 few of their gentry came to visit the Duke of York during his abode in Scotland 
 for fear of offending the other faction, only it was reported Roger L'Estrange, 
 the Licenser of the Press, was here with the Duke incognito ', 
 
THE POPISH PLOT— FI^IGHT OF L'ESTRANGE 259 
 
 the usual monster procession and Pope - burning. This 
 occasion celebrated as great a triumph to the distempered 
 Protestant mind as the destruction of the Armada. Parlia- 
 ment was sitting and its enemies under its foot. Koger 
 L'Estrange, with his inseparable consort Mrs Cellier, was 
 borne along to Smithfield amid the hoots and jeers of the 
 rabble ^ 
 
 1 See (Brit. Mus. Cat. of Prints and Drawings^ Division I. Political Satires^ 
 1083, p. 629) besides various broadsides of the Procession, the cartoon Strange's 
 Case Strangely Altered — long a favourite with L'Estrange's foes — or 'The Hue 
 and Cry After a Strange Old Yorkshire Tike . . . ran away from his master 
 about the 26th inst. (October) seen on Sat. last behind a coach, between Sam's 
 Coffee-house and Mrs Collier's '. The ' Yorkshire Tike ' carries a broom (Book- 
 seller, Harry Brome) under his tail. The explanatory verses follow : — 
 
 * Was ever gallows better set 
 When Hangman, Rope, and Roger met ? 
 
 Thus having 'scaped the fatal tree 
 In devilish haste away flies he 
 For Scotland, France, or Rome, 
 No matter which, for all he strives 
 And needs must go when Devil drives 
 Together with his Brome '. 
 
 Settle was stage-manager of this procession, Nichol, Lit. Anec, i., 43, and 
 Heraclitus Ridens, 30. Dunciad^ bk. iii. : — 
 
 * Though long my party built on me their hopes 
 For writing pamphlets and for roasting Popes '. 
 
 L'Estrange [Hist, of Tirms (1687), p. 23), 'I never liked the Hobby-horse 
 Processions of Godfrey's Funeral and the burnings of the Pope '. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE OBSERVATOR AND THE WHIG JOURNALS 
 
 The last word we had of L'Estrange was his despairing 
 vindication of 14th October, with the statement that he 
 was shortly to be called before the Council for final 
 examination, when the Committee entrusted with the 
 reading of his writings would no doubt report. 
 
 For that examination, as we know, he did not appear, 
 but — so says L' Estrange' s Sayings — sent his wife ^ to excuse 
 him on the plea of bailiffs. In other words, apart from 
 public troubles, the expiry of the Press Act had left him 
 in very low water financially, and though Harry Brome 
 had done his best for him in payment for his numerous 
 works, his failure to get the Mastership of Faculties vacant 
 through Birkenhead's death in 1679, had brought ruin near 
 him. His enemies, now practically the whole nation, spoke 
 of 'lantreloe'^ and Lady Vaultinglasse ^ (Boltinglasse) as 
 the cause of his ruin. 
 
 The course of his exile it is difficult to trace with any 
 certainty. His immediate steps after ignominious lurking 
 in London*, seem to have turned towards Edinburgh^, 
 
 1 H.M,C., IWiRept., App. ii., p. 167. 
 
 2 ' This is to play all night at lantreloe with rooking ladies '. Mr L' Estrange' s 
 Sayings. A Short Answer, etc., p. 2: 'The Gentleman had as many remedies 
 against hanging himself for love as . . . Madam Bear, her damosels, could afford '. 
 
 3 Seemingly the infamous lady that Gates consoled himself with in Newgate, 
 1684. Ailesbury, Memoirs, i., 144. 
 
 ■* See A Letter Intercepted, etc., for his {and his wive's) never-failing Friend, 
 10th February 1680. At the Grange's Court, for some dubious details. — 'The old 
 coachloft Roger, where you and Thompson lay — your white hat, laced band, and 
 sword with your just-asse-ship's gold button coat, and the under petticoat you 
 had of Mm. Vaultinglasse wrapt up in Thompson's canonical gown. They 
 carried them into the Strand and have hung you up Roger (in effigy) on the May- 
 Pole '. This Thompson is not * Popish ' Nat, but the high-flying parson of 
 Bristol, whom the Commons were then persecuting. See State Trials, viii., i. 
 Care was suspected of this letter ' which they say is the counterpart of Fitzharris' 
 liber. Heraditus, 17, Colledge was more probably the author, sec chap, x., 290. 
 
 6 Chap, viii., 259. 
 
 260 
 
THE OBSERVATOR AND WHIG JOURNALS 261 
 
 where no doubt Brome forwarded the evidence of the rage 
 and triumph of his enemies in the form of cartoons and 
 scurrilous satire, and those other symptoms of frenzy, 
 Frank Smith's Votes of the Commons. The late editor of 
 the Boxhurghe Ballads had a kindly leaning to L'Estrange, 
 and the evidence before him in a hundred ballads and 
 cartoons of the state of public opinion on Roger L'Estrange 
 in these months, provoked several diatribes of an almost 
 Giffordian vehemence, though it is to be doubted if Mr 
 Ebsworth was aware of all the particulars of his case^. 
 
 For example, as was hinted at the close of last chapter, 
 in the Pope-burning of 17th November 'with all its toyish 
 jollity', Roger shared with Mrs Cellier the honour of the 
 first Pageant. He is described in Nat Render's issue as 
 'one in black, standing bare-headed, playing on a fiddle'^. 
 This pageant was devoted to the Protestants-in-masquerade, 
 the Plot-sceptics, and Presbyterian-Plot men. The seventh 
 pageant was graced with the Pope's effigy. 'In this fatal 
 Pomp, the Procession sets out from Whitechapel-Bars, and 
 on through Bishopsgate, through Cornhill, Cheapside, and 
 Ludgate, till it comes to Temple-Bar, where it receives its 
 sentence to be burned before Queen Besse's Throne; and 
 in remembrance of her happy days, and for the victories 
 God gives us in our days against the Pope and his emissaries, 
 the solemnity closed with fuzees and artificial Fires ' ^. 
 
 By the actual indignity of the Procession, by largely 
 circulated accounts issuing from the presses of Ponder, 
 Curtis, and Smith, and by wonderful cuts, the delight of 
 that and our age, the victim was thrice held up to reproba- 
 tion. Such was the cheerful reading in Roger's London 
 Budget. 
 
 In default of a single scrap of intelligence from 
 
 1 Roxhurghe Ballads, iv., 220-2, 
 
 2 Brit. Mus. Cat. of Pnnts and Drawings, i., 632 (No. 1084). 
 
 •^ See also the cartoon Rome's Hunting Match, 1680. (No. 1094, pp. 659-60, in 
 Brit. Mus. Gat. of Prints and Drawings, Division 1, Satires.) 'Among the dogs 
 are Treachery, self-interest, adultery, and ambition, the last wearing a cap and 
 "strange ", i.e., R.L.S. '. No. 1095 represents him (Roger) 'to be the Provincial 
 of the Jesuits here in London when they burned it ; he and another cur called 
 Giflford managed that fire, hiring and paying those carrying it from house to 
 house '. The Green Ribbon Club financed these Processions. See Sitwell, First 
 Whig, pp. 78-82, 104-7. ' The heaviest and hardest shafts of club satire were 
 aimed at L'Pjstrange' [Uyid., p. 119.) 'Last of all, if North's memory served him 
 right, came a frame with a single person iipon it, which some said was the 
 pamphleteer Sir Roger L'Estrange, some the Kmg of France, and some the Duke 
 of York'(t6ic?., p. 115.) 
 
262 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 L'Estrange during his Northern exile, we may cite what 
 is perhaps as interesting, the imaginings of his enemies in 
 London, by the familiar device of a counterfeit letter. One 
 of these, dated 10th January 1681, is not too clumsy in 
 its rude wit, and is an interesting reflexion of a Londoner's 
 idea of the barbarous North. 
 
 Honest Harry (it is addressed to Brome), — According 
 to my promise, I should have wrote you long since, to 
 have given you an account how squares go, but the grief 
 and affright of heart I am in, and the long and tedious 
 journey, had so tired me, that I was forced to lie in bed 
 and think of my wicked fate and whilst I was musing I 
 received the skeldry of that damned picture of Towzer^, 
 which so enraged me, that it put my before-heated blood 
 into a fever. I must confess they are now even with me 
 for my jack-an-apes on horseback. ... I had begun a 
 dialogue between Jocky and Blue-cap, but a friend of 
 mine coming in made me burn my papers, for he told me 
 that 'twould prove to be more fatal than Citt and Bumpkin 
 or that between Kichard and Baxter ^ or any other dialogue 
 I had ever wrote, for those plaguey Scots, if they but smelt 
 I was writing of dialogues would knock out my brains and 
 would never take it so patiently as the English had done. 
 
 Things will not always run with so smooth a stream, 
 we are puddling the waters all we can, and let the Citts 
 look to themselves, we may chance to have a brush at 
 their jackets. 
 
 Those furious gentlemen at Westminster, that go on so 
 vigorously may perchance find some repulse if the interest 
 and power of my master^ and the Popish Party are able 
 to do it ; we yet believe that it will not be so easy a 
 matter for you to put the Duke beside the saddle. 
 
 I had your Peer's Speech too*; 'tis a brave thing that 
 any durst speak so plain English, but this comes of the 
 Liberty of the Press ; when I sat at the helm, these things 
 
 1 The ' Yorkish tike '. 
 
 2 See his Dialogue hetioeen Richard and Baxter, or The Casuist Uncas'd (1680). 
 
 3 Duke of York. 
 
 ^ Speech of a Nolle Peer^ printed by F. Smith, 1681. A violent diatribe against 
 the Duke and the Queen. ' This match with a Portugal lady not like to have 
 children '. The Duke aimed at the Crown before the Restoration. His guards 
 are everywhere. The King is in his hands. ' Not a Bishop made without him '. 
 Among numerous answers to the speech is one from that remarkable Printer's 
 widow, Eleanor James. 
 
THE OBSERVATOB AND WHIG JOURNALS 263 
 
 never were. I would have given it a squeeze, you know 
 my fingers were like pitch, whatever they laid hold of, 
 stuck to them so fast, they could never be got from them. 
 I tell thee that Speech was almost as bad as the Appeal ^, 
 a dangerous libel. Had I been in London, I would have 
 answered it, but I tell thee I have been so terrified with 
 the inveterate hatred of these bleu-caps against the scribblers, 
 that I am fain to make them believe I never wrote in my 
 life. I intend when I dare to write again a new History 
 of the Popish Presbyterian Plot \ I will license it myself 
 and nobody shall print it but you. I am got into a cold 
 country where in silence I often hear myself railed at 
 most profoundly. I was asked by a Pride-mouthed rogue 
 the other day, because I was an Englishman, whether I 
 knew E.L.S. or as they term it the S.R., and shewing me 
 the picture of Towzer asked me if it was not like him, and 
 if it was drawn from the life? I would willingly have 
 dashed out his teeth if I durst. But Hal, since I cannot 
 write as I wont, because I must be employed, I am now 
 learning to play upon the Scotch Bagpipes, which I will 
 endeavour to set up instead of the organs in Churches. I 
 am also learning to speak through the nose, and am getting 
 by heart the Scotch Covenant, (that) I may be a proselyte 
 at last and put on that vizard as well as that of the 
 Protestant. 
 
 I long to know if the Parliament shall sit again, for 
 some of us have great expectations. I saw all the Votes ^ 
 and Resolves you sent me; God Bless me, said I, from 
 falling under the clutches of a Parliament. I think I did 
 more wisely than Justice Scroggs when I ran away. 'Twas 
 a madness I thought to fight 4 or 500 resolute men. I 
 remember that black prophet Dr Gates once told me at 
 
 1 Appeal front theOountry to the City. See chap, viii., 255. Diary of Narcissus 
 Luttrell, 15th October 1679. * About this time came out the Appeal ', etc. 
 
 2 A good hit. See chap, xi., 
 
 3 A true hit also. In Obser-vator, 30th March 1685, he says : * I have some 
 reason myself more than ordinary to complain of it (Frank Smith's Printed Votes) ; 
 whilst I was in Holland every post brought me in Gazettes, Towzers, Abhorrers 
 and Printed Votes. Tell a Freeborn Englishman of a French peasant and it works 
 like a charm upon him. We had before us both the Printed Votes and the 
 Printed list of the Westminster House of Commons, and the nem. cons, of the one 
 were charged upon me as the unanimous sense and opinion of the other. That is 
 though I was morally certain that the thing was otherwise, my mouth was stopped 
 with a Nem. Con.'. See Life of Sir L. Jenkins, 2 vols. (17^), i., xl., where the 
 author quotes L'Estrange's strictures on these * Votes * as ' snaps of discourse 
 maliciously patched together '. 
 
264 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 Whitehall twisting his hat about, Well, Sir, we shall have 
 a Parliament, but I did not believe him. I now acknowledge 
 him as great a prophet as Mother Shipton, which the 
 Scots I assure you have in reverence. If you please, you 
 may print this letter which I write by stealth, for if my 
 name be set to it, you know it will sell whatever stuff 
 is in it. Pray you therefore accept this as a New Year's 
 gift, for I have nothing else to send you. — I am, your 
 faithful friend, E.L. 
 
 High Street, Edinburgh, 
 10^^ January. 
 
 10th January, the date of Roger's supposed letter, was 
 the date of the momentous votes of the Commons referred 
 to as marking the turn of the sway-boat. 
 
 Three days later the Lord Mayor and Aldermen presented 
 their offensive Petition to the King for the sitting of 
 Parliament^. It was at this time that the Government, 
 either in the counsels of desperation, or encouraged by 
 popular auguries, began to pluck up courage and to grasp 
 firmly the stinging nettle of dissent and sedition. There 
 is little doubt, though one more manifestation of violent 
 whiggery on the part of the people was due in the Oxford 
 elections, that already in January to an observant spectator 
 the elements of reaction and of the ruin of the Whigs were 
 present, and that despite the desperate efforts of those 
 excellent election agents Harris, Smith, Curtis and the 
 rest. 
 
 Nothing shows more clearly how much L'Estrange had 
 enraged the Faction than the continuance and increased 
 virulence of the attacks referred to above. 
 
 Among the ' fardel of lies ' which was pouring out from 
 the Whig presses, and which pursued him into exile, there 
 was one folio piece called Mr UEstrange's Sayings, whose 
 author was clever enough to cull from Roger's works 
 precisely those passages which were most calculated to 
 arouse the fury of the people. The passages are chosen 
 with sufficient brevity, and the comments are apposite and 
 impudent enough to hit off the humour of the City. Mr 
 VEstrange's Sayings is mainly interesting to us, however, 
 
 1 Printed by the King's Printer Roycroft, who succeeded Jas. Flesher as 
 Printer for the City. The most offensive part of the Petition is the sentence : 
 * Your subjects were extremely surprised at the late Prorogation '. 
 
THE OBSERVATOR AND WHIG JOURNALS 265 
 
 for having provoked our author's most telling contribution 
 to the antisectarian literature of the age — Dissenters^ Sayings 
 faithfidly Reported in two parts (1681)^. It may be worth 
 noting wherein lay the peculiar effectiveness of both the 
 provocation and the crushing retort. 
 
 With the flight of L'Estrange in October 1680 before 
 the menace of a free Parliament, a parallel at once suggested 
 itself between 1659 and 1680. It may be remembered 
 that from the time of Sir G. Booth's Kising particularly, 
 until Monk's Declaration for a Free Parliament, it was the 
 common gibe of the Loyalists and of L'Estrange more than 
 any, that the existing Government dared not call a Free 
 Parliament for reasons of personal safety, and before that 
 Free Parliament met, Chapman, Nedham and others of the 
 subsidiary agents had fled. ' The very mention of a Parlia- 
 ment enrages them, and there is reason for it ; their heads 
 are forfeited, and if the Law lives, they must perish ' ^, and 
 again of the same men 'friendless abroad, and comfortless 
 at home, as guilty and as desperate as Cain '. 
 
 These words which fitted Nedham in 1660 now applied 
 exactly to the exile in Edinburgh and the Hague. There 
 was also the old quarrel of Citt and Bumpkin, the contempt 
 of the Court for the mere citizen, to which Eoger had 
 given such indiscreet expression, and as an instance of 
 which LEstrange's Sayings cited the unfortunate remark 
 in the Apology of 1660 already quoted ^, and the envy of 
 the City's wealth conveyed in the sentence : ' If men will 
 be damned, they had better damn rich, than poor'. This 
 undying hatred of the 'riche churle' we shall find flares 
 up again in the Tory triumph of 1683, when the Observator 
 was first in the field with the suggestion of a boycott for 
 Whig traders. At the present moment it was well answered 
 by the sarcasm that * our author has tugged hard at the quill 
 this many a far day, for a secretary's place, or some other 
 preferment ' *. 
 
 There were also remembered his frequent upbraidings 
 
 1 The French version Le Nonconformiste Anglais dans ses Ecris, etc., is dated 
 1683 and published by H. Brome. The Rye Plot gave it an occasion, as a year 
 later the Monmouth Affair called forth Roger's (?) Cmispiration faite contre le Roi 
 Jacques II. (1685). His solicitude for Continental opinion is notable. 
 
 '•^ Apology, 1660. 
 
 3 Page 48. * A citizen's skull is but a thing to try the temper of a soldier's 
 sword upon'. His master, Bea Jonson, may be responsible for some of this 
 contempt of the courtier for the citizen. 
 
 ^ Additional Reasons to prove Roger U Estrange no Papist (1681). 
 
266 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 of the King in 1661, and even so recent as 1680, for neglect- 
 ing L'Estrange and the Cavaliers. 
 
 As to his disclaimers of a Popish bias, * amongst all the 
 swarms of his stitched tomes and sixpenny volumes, he 
 never wrote one line against Popery, though he had trans- 
 lated Father Bona, the Jesuit, to render that party more 
 acceptable '. 
 
 The writer might have mentioned in mere candour, 
 Roger's excellent translation of Erasmus' Colloquies (1679), 
 a work surely calculated against Popery^. 
 
 This brief but waspish folio of Langley Curtis seems 
 to have been written just before the sitting of the Oxford 
 Parliament (25th March), but was probably not printed 
 until the beginning of April 2. It seems to assume that 
 L'Estrange was still on the Continent, but we have sufficient 
 evidence of his return from the Hague in February, and 
 probably very shortly after the printed letter to Ken, 
 1st February 1681 ^. Dissenters' Sayings was certainly selling 
 the week after the extraordinary dispersal of the members 
 from Oxford, and is as intelligent an anticipation of the 
 Court's new line of action as can be imagined. Putting 
 aside Hudibras and a few such fine things, this work in 
 its year dealt a severer blow at the Dissenters than any 
 other book, and was no doubt partly responsible for the 
 recrudescence of persecution at the close of this year. We 
 have abundance of evidence to show that it became for a 
 time the vade-mecum of the clergy, and as Rutherford's 
 Lex Bex, Calvin, and Beza, were supposed to find a place 
 in every little dissenting library, so L'Estrange's work was 
 sure to be found in more orthodox studies. 
 
 1 And claimed as such in that very Tried of the Pope, 17th November 1680, 
 already alluded to as the first Procession in which L'Estrange figured. See Curtis' 
 broadside on the occasion, p. 2. ' Silly fancies deserve not a serious refutation, 
 and Erasmus' satirical drollery was found to be as effectual to bring down the 
 Romish pageantry, as Luther's gravity of argument '. Care was the ' Little Luther '. 
 
 2 If the date 1681 is any guide. Dates were so falsified that little reliance can 
 be given to them. L'Estrange himself confessed to post-dating. 
 
 3 A respectful notice to Dr Ken, then at the Hague, that he intended to take 
 the sacrament from the Doctor's hands with fearful oaths that he had not been at 
 Mass, as Prance and the rest affirmed. Harris' Intelligence for 25th January talks 
 of ' Towzer again came out of his kennel ', and again on 11th February, gives a 
 humorous picture of a porter that ' went along with a sheet of paper in his hands 
 being a picture called L'Estrange's Case Strangely A Itered, and as often as the 
 hawkers cried "Here's the answer to Peer's Petition" (supposed to be Roger's 
 reply to Essex) the Porter still subjoined, " Here's the old dog Towzer come out of 
 his kennel with a brome at 's tail " '. Toiozer's Advice to the Scribblers seems to fix 
 the date of Roger's return to 20th February 1681. 
 
THE OBSERVATOR AND WHIG JOURNALS 267 
 
 It was quoted with trust and admiration, and was 
 largely its author's title to be the guide of the Inferior Clergy y 
 and with the Ohservators now also due, his claim on what 
 France called the ' almsbasket ' of the Church. Long after 
 his bitter life was over, we find eminent Churchmen referring 
 to him as ' an injured memory ', and no doubt Dissenters' Say- 
 ings contributed to arouse this championship. 
 
 Apt quotation from dissenting fathers and trenchant 
 comment is the idea of this work, which was reinforced 
 by the republication of his earlier Eestoration exposures 
 of Presbytery, and very shortly by the appearance of the 
 first number of the Ohservator. Flatman's Heraclitus Ridens, 
 started in February, was beating the same anvil though 
 in lighter fashion, while Burnet tells us that every pulpit 
 was turned to railery of the Dissenters to the total neglect 
 of the Papists ^. 
 
 We are thus in the forefront of that struggle for which 
 the King's Declaration in April gave the signal, and which 
 after several brief, fierce contests was to end in driving 
 the Whigs into secret revolt, and then to their utter destruc- 
 tion. It is this fact which gives Dissenters' Sayings any 
 importance it may possess in the forward movement. Taken 
 in conjunction with the Ohservators and those numerous 
 tracts timed for the occasion of each of the struggles now 
 imminent, when L'Estrange appears as an almost official 
 Government apologist, it constituted his claim to be 
 regarded as ' a great man at Whitehall '. 
 
 His figure in the Government indeed became consider- 
 able, and is increasingly so after the Eye discovery, when 
 to his numerous writings he added the special activities 
 of a Middlesex Justice of the Peace, urging his brethren 
 to ferret out and suppress all forms of dissent and sedi- 
 tion, and gathering round him such magistrates as Sir 
 Roger Harwich, Sir Clement Armiger, and ' my brother 
 Guise '. 
 
 The forces to be met and destroyed were the disbanded 
 elements of the opposition set loose by the Oxford coup, 
 and driven into a secrecy which was easily construed as 
 conspiracy. There was above all an account to settle 
 
 1 Oivn Times (1823), ii., 209-11. See the preface to the reprint of Heraclitus 
 (1713). 'Deadliest poisons (the Weekly Pacquct, etc.) produce the sweetest and 
 most healings honeys. . . . The descendants of some of the persons herein 
 mentioned have made large amends for their predecessors' turbulent and factious 
 behaviour '. 
 
268 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 with the City, the home of Ignoramus. Its sheriffs who 
 nominated the juries must be so chosen that such verdicts 
 as that returned in College's first trial, or the recalcitrancy 
 shown by the jury in Ben Harris' case the year before ^ 
 would be impossible. 
 
 The passage in which Burnet refers to L'Estrange as 
 the * Manager of all those angry writings ' is placed before 
 the trial of Sir G. Wakemen, but obviously refers to the 
 outburst after the Oxford Parliament, and particularly to 
 Dissenters' Sayings and the Observators. Burnet had no 
 reason to remember the writer of Considerations on the Speech 
 of Lord Bussell very kindly 2, but his description of him 
 at this period is not too unfair, and recalls certain features 
 of Clarendon's earlier portraiture. 
 
 ' A man who had lived in all the late Times, and was 
 furnished with an inexhaustible copiousness in writing, 
 so that for 4 years he published 3 or 4 sheets a week under 
 the title of The Ohservator, all tending to defame the Country 
 Party and to make the Clergy apprehend that their ruin 
 was designed. This had all the success he could have 
 wished as it drew considerable sums that were raised to 
 acknowledge the services he did. Upon this, the greater 
 part of the Clergy, who were already much prejudiced 
 against that party, being now both sharpened and furnished 
 by these papers, delivered themselves up to so much heat 
 and indiscretion, which was vented both in their pulpits 
 and common conversation, and most particularly at the 
 election of Parliament-men, and this drew much hatred and 
 censure upon them ' ^. 
 
 It is thus possible to use the two parts of Dissenters 
 
 1 They at first returned a harmless verdict of mere selling the book (the 
 famous Appeal) ' at which there was a great and clamorous shout '. After some 
 brow-beating, they returned the desired verdict. See his case, State Trials, vii., 926. 
 Also his Twenty-four Soher Queries (1680), and Trium,ph of Justice quoted at p. 271 of 
 this chapter. Sir G. Sitwell [First Whig, Introduction) attempts, not unsuccess- 
 fully to make out a case for the Court on account of Jury-packing and Ignoramus. 
 
 2 See chap. xi. 
 
 3 Own Times, ed. 1823, ii., 211. Coke {Dededion (1719), p. 247) has a similar 
 passage referring to the same period. ' To honour the Court, the Tory party set 
 their writers to work to ridicule the Popish Plot and L'Estrange as pensioner of 
 the party, comes weekly or oftener out in defiance of it, who is party judge, 
 licenser and rifler of the Press, while his antagonist Care (who wrote the WcM,y 
 Paoiuet wherein he discovered the frauds and superstitions of the Court and 
 Church) is not only thereupon arraigned, convicted, and sentenced for printing 
 illicit^ or without license, but by order of the King's Bench it was ordered that 
 the book should be burnt '. Coke is wrong in his ' without license '. No license 
 was needed. 
 
THE OBSERVATOB AND WHIG JOURNALS 269 
 
 Sayings'^ as an index of the progress made by the Court 
 in their new policy from the Dissolution of the Oxford 
 Parliament till August of the same year, which is marked 
 by the execution of College at Oxford on the 29th. 
 
 The preface to the earlier part is not lacking in 
 that crude salt which makes L'Estrange a characteristic 
 writer. 
 
 ' Among the curiosities of this latter age, the invention 
 of transmitting unto After-times the Apothegms and Sayings 
 of men famous in their generations with a He being dead, yet 
 speaketh, for the motto, is in my opinion very considerable. 
 This is the sweet ointment that has perfumed the memory of 
 the late King's Judges ^, the sufferers of the Kirk militant, 
 and the whole band of covenanted martyrs, that having 
 finished their testimony on the wrong side of the Pale, what 
 a comfort is it for a man in the contemplation of his future 
 state to say with the Eev. Mr Baxter (Saints' Everlasting 
 Best, p. 101, 3rd ed.)3, "Then shall ye be with Pym and 
 White " *. This din may do well enough when a man's bones 
 are laid and his head past aching. But to see myself 
 embalmed before my time and serenaded with Mr Roger 
 B Estrange' s Sayings, etc., looks, methinks, too much like 
 the inviting a man to his own funeral. In this Extract 
 or Collection, the reader may fancy himself to be gotten 
 into the fanatics' tiring-room where he sees all their dresses 
 and disguises, their shifts of masques and habits, their 
 change of scenes; their artificial thunders and false fires 5, 
 nay, the very bugs and devils they fright fools and children 
 with, at a distance, to be no more, near hand, than paint 
 and Canvass. You have here laid open to you the mystery 
 of the work to the very springs and wheels that make the 
 motion play, their deeds of darkness brought to light, their 
 very souls exposed, their pleas and conscience still varying 
 
 1 The Dissenters' Sayings in Requital for L'Ustrange's Sayings, published in their 
 oum Words hy Roger L'Estrange (1681), 3rd ed. The second part dedicated to the 
 Grand- Jury of London, 29th August 1681. The first and second parts first 
 advertised together in Observatw for 2nd November 1681. The French Transla- 
 tion ie Nonconformiste Anglois dans ses Ecris . . . et dans ses Sentime7its, is dated 
 1683, and was first advertised, Observator, i., 354, 11th June 1683. 
 
 2 A reference to the old Regicides' Speeches. See chap, iv., 118. 
 
 3 The accuracy of this quotation was impugned, but Roger in a subsequent 
 edition promised that 'if the Reader be not yet satisfied, Mrs Brome has a 
 book of one of these impressions at his service '. 
 
 4 Of White's Century fame (1643). Dissenters' Sayings is really a belated 
 reply to that notorious tract. 
 
 5 A palpable hit at London's Flames, etc. 
 
270 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 with their fortunes. Or in one word, you have here the 
 Dissenters' Picture to the life of their own drawing'. 
 
 The little Parliament of Dissenters quoted in this first 
 part numbers 66, but this includes besides the main 
 characters Bastwicke, Burton, Case, Calamy, Baxter, etc. — 
 minor dramatis personae slumped together at the end like 
 the rude mechanicals of an Elizabethian play — as Crab (a 
 feltmaker), Hobson (a tailor), Mellish (a cobbler), Rice (a 
 tinker), etc. ^ 
 
 Here we are provided with an elaborate and Swiftian 
 picture of the Dissenters as a people who do not agree 
 among themselves, whose motives are blood and revolution, 
 opposed to all innocent mirth and even the ordinary round 
 of employments, regicides, and blasphemers, eikonoklasts 
 and atheists in effect. 
 
 The comments to each chapter are as with his ^sop, the 
 biting parts, and it is impossible not to admire both the skill 
 of quotation and the masterly castigation of the comment. 
 
 Little more than a fortnight elapsed between the publica- 
 tion of the first part, and the appearance of the remarkable 
 Ohservator, whose three volumes are a treasury of history 
 and vulgar, but vivid, English. In February John Flatman 
 had started his excellent Heraclitus Bidens, and it may have 
 been with some idea of catching up this witty journal 
 (which was ascribed to himself) that Roger undertook his 
 second great venture in journalism. This publication on 
 13th April affords an opportunity for glancing at the con- 
 dition of the Press. 
 
 Shortly after the Press Act was deliberately allowed to 
 expire in May 1679, the Government, pestered by swarms 
 of libels, had taken the opinion of the judges ^ as to the 
 
 1 These sayings are quoted from Edward's Gaiigroena and Catalogue of Errors 
 published in 1644. Two works as famous in their day as White's Century, both 
 obscure storehouses of all the most frightful instances and not free of an 
 occasional indecency, on which L'Estrange was glad to lay hold. 
 
 2 The judges met twice — immediately after the expiry of the Act, and again 
 at the beginning of 1680. They decided that {a) all scandalous books were 
 punishable at Common Law ; [h) all writers of news, whether scandalous or 
 not ' if they are false news (as there are few others) are indictable and punishable 
 on that account'. State Trials, vii., 930, 1114. Also London Gazet for 5th and 
 17th May 1680. 
 
 The proclamation of 12th May 1680— For suppressing the Printing and 
 Publishing unlicensed Newsbooks and Pamphlets of News ' the continuance 
 whereof would, in a short time, endanger the Peace of the Kingdom ... as 
 has been declared by all His Majesty's Judges unanimously '. 
 
 The Proclamation of 31st October 1679, against seditious libels offers £40 for 
 discoveries and a pardon to delating hawkers iProcs. of Chasi II., 1671-9. 
 Arch. Bodl. Subt. 31). 
 
THE OBSERVATOR AND WHIG JOURNALS 271 
 
 legality of the new growth of newspapers, and their decision 
 as expressed by Jeffries had been that ' no person whatso- 
 ever could expose to the public knowledge anything that 
 concerned the affairs of the Public without license from the 
 King or from such persons as he thought fit to entrust with 
 that affair'^. This did not of course refer only to Parlia- 
 mentary intelligence, the bann on which, now temporarily 
 relaxed, was strictly enforced during many years of the next 
 century. But it practically included almost anything of a 
 political nature. It was the most flagrant attempt at Judge- 
 made law since the decision on Shipmoney. At the same 
 time it must be admitted that the party writers had in 1679- 
 80 gone far beyond the limits of moderate political criticism. 
 They not only degraded every cause in the Law Courts to 
 the level of the Hustings, but they boldly arraigned 
 judgments delivered in accordance with the just course of 
 English law. The trial of Sir G. Wakeman we saw raised 
 a babel of libellous tongues, and no one reading Scrogg's 
 vindication uttered in the King's Bench Court at the open- 
 ing of Michaelmas term 1679, can fail to extend some 
 sympathy to the pestered judges 2. On the other hand, 
 whatever ground or prescription the King had for a 
 monopoly of News — and the right could only be argued 
 on Star-Chamber precedents — there is no doubt at all of 
 the hardship and cruelty of the batch of Trials which 
 followed this vindication. 
 
 Such was Ben Harris' case in the Spring of 1680 for 
 publishing the famous Appeal from the Country to the City. 
 Such also was the case of Frank Smith for printing some 
 Observations on the Trial of Sir George Wakeman^. 
 
 Harris was fined £500 and kept in a miserable state in 
 Newgate which caused a considerable hiatus (April to 
 December 1680) in his Protestant Domestick Intelligence. 
 
 1 state Trials, vii., 202-6. 
 
 2 lUd. See also the Proceedings of the Committee appointed by the Commons 
 to examine the conduct of the judges. State Tracts, temp. Okas. II. (1693), pt. i. 
 
 ■^ State Trials, vii., 926 et seq. See Harris' Twenty -four Quei-ies for some 
 useful comment on the libel law, appropriately addressed to Scroggs. Query 20 
 is significant of the tumult of these trials ' whether it be any crime against 
 the Law that the people shall give a shout of joy . . . and if it be a breach, 
 why was it not rebuked when a great shout of joy was made by the people 
 because of the brave speeches concerning Justice at the trials of some of 
 the Popish Traitors ? ' The sufferings of these men narrated in Frank 
 Smith's Narrative and elsewhere remind us that we are in the midst of 
 the first great attempt, since the trial of the ' Confederates ' to extirpate the 
 clftss, 
 
272 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 Smith was too ill to appear, and his wife's apology to the 
 Court was taken as sufficient composition. 
 
 Encouraged by this success, which was augmented by 
 Harris' seeming penitence in Newgate, and ignoring the 
 hems of the rabble, the Government proceeded in July to 
 the trial of a far more able culprit, the brain of the 
 faction in the Press and writer of half their stufif, Harry 
 Care^ It is a pity that the little knowledge we have of 
 this man is derived from the scurrilities of L'Estrange 
 and others. In Harris' case we see the ex-Surveyor's 
 hand. He had exposed the Appeal as the most dangerous 
 libel of the times and urged a prosecution. With Care it 
 was — they might have selected any of half a dozen things 
 he was writing then — the indecent Popish Courant which 
 accompanied the Weehly Pacquet of Advice, and which Sir 
 Francis Winnington for the defence described as 'the 
 Satirist against Popery, and thought to be very well liked 
 until this fault was found in it ' 2. The fault was not its 
 gross indecency, but a reflection on the conduct of the 
 Judges at the Wakeman trial, such as might to-day be 
 heavily punished. But only as contempt of Court and not 
 as an infringement of the King's Monopoly of News. Here 
 again were the same tumultuous hems which provoked 
 Scrogg's reference to 'that unfortunate man' Harris, left 
 by his friends in gaol for want of £500 'which may be 
 5s. a piece if they had been as free of their purses as they 
 are of their noises and acclamations ' ^. Care was convicted 
 and sentenced to stand in the pillory and pay a large fine. 
 More important, the Judges ordered that henceforth no one 
 should print the Weehly Pacquet *. 
 
 Frank Smith's trial already referred to was closest to the 
 meeting of Parliament, 16th September 1680. 
 
 1 See A Whig Lamentation for Golledge (1681). 
 
 ' Our case to the correcter men we must refer, 
 To Shadwell and Settle, to Curtis and Carr '. 
 
 2 State Trials, vii., 1121. 
 
 3 ll)id., p. 1126, L. C. J. Scroggs: 'Harris sent to me that his party had 
 all forsaken him and no man would give him anything ', which rendered him 
 more tractable as an informer, as L'Estrange found in 1682. Defoe has a passage 
 written in 1722 which might have been inspired by Scroggs' remark, ' Do parties 
 at any time concern themselves for scribblers and printers when they suffer ? 
 For what then do Printers expose themselves and what thanks have they for 
 their labour ' ? Defoe, W^or^5, iii., 40 (ed. 1868). 
 
 4 ' Such an order was evidently beyond the competence of the Court '. 
 Hallam, Cons, Eist,, p. 613. 
 
THE OBSERVATOR AND WHIG JOURNALS 273 
 
 These then were the cases which formed an important 
 part of the impeachment of Scroggs and Weston, and the 
 humiliation of Jeffries at the bar of the Commons in 
 December 1680^. By their action the Commons reversed 
 the Judges' decision, rebuked Stevens the Press Messenger 
 for acting on Scroggs' warrant, and put back the Law to 
 what it had been commonly thought to be in May 1679. 
 Incidentally they remitted Harris' fine when he proceeded 
 merrily with his interrupted Intelligence. Their hand also, 
 as we saw, stretched back to the penalties imposed on Joseph 
 Browne by the Libels Committee in 1677 ^ and revoked 
 them. 
 
 Thus for a month or two the Press was free by will of 
 Parliament, and against the will of the Court, in a degree it 
 scarcely ever before or indeed since has enjoyed. Both 
 Harris and Smith resumed their factious works, and though 
 professing peaceable ends were scarcely a week in the saddle 
 before their papers — those which pursued L'Estrange into 
 exile — were crammed with votes, lists of pensioners, and 
 (in the prorogation and ultimate dissolution of Parliament) 
 election addresses. On the whole it would be difficult to 
 find two better electioneering agents than these men in the 
 weeks that intervened till the Oxford Parliament met on 
 25th March, and any one interested in this phase of activity 
 of the 'Fourth Estate', cannot do better than consult the 
 Domestick and Protestant Intelligences for the earliest mani- 
 festations of the art. 
 
 It was the necessity of answering these papers — in default 
 of the rough-and-ready way of silencing them — that called 
 into being in February Heraclitus Ridens and Nat Thompson's 
 Loyal Protestant Intelligence. Nat, formerly the chief culprit 
 of the Libels Committee, and since as ardent on the Govern- 
 ment side, had run a good race in pursuit of Harris' 
 Domestick Intelligence, till fate overtook him in the form of 
 the officious Sir Wm. Waller, and in connection — among 
 other things — with his advertisement of the Proposed 
 Burning of the Eump by the Tory Prentices on Restoration 
 Day 1680. 
 
 Since then Nat had languished in prison, but Sir William, 
 
 1 state Trials, viii., 163. Stevens had rather hard measure. He was charged 
 by Scroggs with ' conniving and tampering ' (ix., 36) and yet was censured by the 
 Commons for executing Scroggs' warrant. 
 
 ^ Chap, vii., 214, note. 
 
 S 
 
274 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 he says, ' had not put that badge upon me as to prohibit me 
 pen, ink, and paper, which he has to others, upon as little 
 occasion'. From March to June Nat's journal was one of 
 the goodly list that have issued from a gaol. The fact that 
 it was for the Court, and yet had to deprecate the wrath of 
 * the present and best of Governments ', is sufficient to show 
 that the men of Shaftesbury were still high in power ^ 
 
 With the entry of Heraclitus Bidens in February 1681, 
 and Nat's resumption on 9th March, the Court was in better 
 case to meet their enemies. But though the palm of wit 
 is certainly due to the loyal journals, they were quite over- 
 matched in numbers by Harris, F. Smith, Curtis, Janeway, 
 Banks, etc. ^. 
 
 There was, of course, the liveliest recrimination between 
 these Whig journals, which is discreetly veiled in modern 
 organs hunting on the same side. The commercial side was 
 not lost sight of ^. 
 
 1 For an account of ill - usage to set beside F. Smith's Narrative, see 
 Thompson's Preface to his 183 Loyal Songs, 1683. This abortive Burning of the 
 Rump in May 1680, is the old business of 1659-60 repeating itself. Some loyal 
 gentlemen — L'Estrange no doubt among them — inciting the Prentices to a 
 demonstration of disloyalty. In February 1680 these persons visited Nat's 
 house in Fetter Lane, and the result was the offensive advertisement on the 16th : — 
 * Several apprentices in and about the City of London (not well understanding 
 what they did) having been persuaded to subscribe a Petition to his Majesty for 
 the sitting of Parliament, afterwards understanding how his Majesty resented 
 their way of proceeding, have upon further consideration to show their dislike of 
 what they have done, resolved in solemn manner to sacrifice the Rump, that the 
 present age may keep in memory the practice of '41 and not walk in that 
 precedent'. Nat was refused £1,000 bail offered. Waller acted as the honorary 
 secretary of the Plot witnesses, scouring the City for crucifixes, Catholic relics, etc. 
 The hatred he aroused suggested that his services were not quite honorary. 
 
 2 Besides these, Smith's (John) Current Intelligence ran fitfully with some 
 others during the early months of the year. There were bickerings between 
 Banks and Smith as to which owned the true Current Intelligence. But all the 
 journals, Whig and Tory, seem to have a quarrel with Harris' JDomestick 
 Intelligence for its ' falsities '. There was also a class of journal which existed 
 for only a few numbers, and was merely an attack on Heraclitus, L'Estrange, or 
 Nat Thompson. See for example News from the Land of^ Chivalry, containing 
 the Delectable History of Don Roger de Strangemento, Koiight of the Squeaking 
 fiddle, which ran for three of its promised twenty-four numbers. 
 
 3 P. Smith opened his first number 1st February with the high resolution 
 which recalls L'Estrange's first news pamphlet, ' whereas both the public and the 
 booksellers are frequently imposed upon in buying things twice ; at first a sheet 
 or two and afterwards the same again reprinted in Ben Harris, his Domestich 
 Intelligence, this is therefore to assure the Reader that in this weekly Intelligence 
 we shall avoid any such like clandestine practise of invading the proprietories of 
 others and abusing the public'. Unfortunately Frank could not keep out of 
 trouble, and in his first number prints the order to himself to attend the House 
 for printing a Noble Peer's Speech. He was ordered for trial, but was ignorarmised. 
 Again in August he is up for trial before Jeffries {Lords' Journals, xii., 729ft) in 
 connection with the publishing of Colledge's Raree Show. See L'Estrange's 
 Notes on Stephen Collcdge, pp. 13-15. 
 
THE OBSERVATOR AND WHIG JOURNALS 275 
 
 Besides his own paper, Erank Smith, in March, 
 started in pursuit of the new Heraclitus Bidens with 
 his Democritus Bidens, which Ben Harris had already 
 answered in February with his Weekly Discoverer — in turn 
 answered from the other side by The Weekly Discoverer 
 Stript Naked. 
 
 The safety of these Whig journalists was bound up with 
 Parliament, and the Oxford assembly was no sooner dis- 
 missed, than Harris was arrested on a charge of being present 
 at the Southwark election for Parliament and 'of being 
 frequent with sheriff Bethel', while Smith's paper drops 
 four days before L'Estrange addressed the public in his first 
 Observator, 13th April 1681. In other words, Frank had 
 found his way back to gaol. 
 
 The thing that strikes us most is the consciousness of the 
 Commons that the popular cause was bound up with the 
 entire freedom of the Press, and that, a century before the 
 prohibition on Parliamentary Eeports was removed, these 
 Whig Printers were allowed for a month or two to print the 
 proceedings of the House with impunity. 
 
 The weight of numbers on the one side was balanced by . 
 
 the wit of the other. Flatman's Heraclitus was sufficiently ^ 
 witty and wise to be republished in two volumes duodecimo 
 1713. It displayed the lightness of touch and irony, which 
 wit prefers in its combat with dullness, while the more 
 weighty Ohservators long preserved their right of place in ^ 
 loyal libraries. With the exception of Harry Care's learning 
 — and no wit^ — in the Weekly Pacquet of Advice, there is 
 nothing to set against these Koyalist journals, and when 
 these were reinforced by the wits and the venal muse — who 
 scarcely thought the moment yet auspicious — the disparity 
 became so marked that even Shadwell and Settle appear 
 insignificant attempts at makeweight. 
 
 One figure emerges during these troubles, obscure but 
 important in the history of the Press. Kobert Stevens, or 
 Stephens, we remember as the man who was useful to 
 L'Estrange against his old master Nat Thompson at the 
 Libels Committee. As a reward for his services, and by 
 reason of his knowledge of the secret paths of the Press, he 
 was made a Press Messenger, at the time when North tells 
 
 1 So the Editor of State Trials, vol. vii. (1713) : * In the argumentative part of 
 the work there is much historical and controversical learning. In the other parts 
 the attempts at wit are but rarely successful '. Defoe took another view when 
 he made the Weekly Pacquet the prototype of his Review. See chap, viii., 234, 
 
276 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 us it was decided to augment that service. Now Nat was 
 also working on that side. Stevens became a marked man 
 to the Whig printers, and as Scroggs' instrument in deliver- 
 ing those warrants — against Harris, Smith, Care, etc. — which 
 afforded matter for an impeachment, he participated in the 
 Commons' wrath. Since then the Printers regarded him as 
 their prey. 
 
 In February Lee, Smith, and Harris heard that Stevens 
 had a warrant from the Council to arrest them in connection 
 with a peculiarly evil libel The Vision of the Maid, the 
 offence of which was a prophetic threat that if the King 
 persisted in removing the Parliament to Oxford, he would be 
 poisoned on 15th May. Thinking it best to anticipate 
 matters, on the old charge of invasion of their liberties 
 (by Scroggs' general warrant) at eleven at night, taking a 
 constable they repaired to Stevens' house with the threat : 
 'We have good Sheriffs and good juries', mentioning their 
 authority. Stevens said — through the door evidently — 
 * Damn your authority '. The interest of the case is that in 
 July — whilst the good Sheriffs and juries lasted — when the 
 charge was examined with the damning thrown in, it was 
 the use of Jeffries' old warrant for the seizure of The Boyal 
 Charter of Confirmation granted hy Charles /., and also of a 
 new warrant (6th July) for the arrest of the hawkers 
 who sold an answer to His Majesty's Late Declaration, 
 that was advanced against the Messenger. Stevens in 
 vain protested that he had already answered to Parliament 
 for the Scroggs misdemeanour^, and retorted that 'his 
 general warrant was good enough against Mrs Cellier and 
 Mr Turner, the popish bookseller ' 2. The Whig journalists 
 were in league with the Whig sheriffs. Harris had suffered 
 for sheriff Bethel the previous year, and now in return 
 Bethel, willing to satisfy Ben's humour of revenge on 
 the Messenger, 'was very unwilling to have any abate- 
 ment of the Fine, for F. Smith and Sam Harris' sake, by 
 reason they are of the same club '. In addition, Stevens 
 was fined £20 for using Jeffries' warrant against a pamphlet 
 
 1 Amos {Eng. Cons, in tJce Reign of Charles II. (1857), p. 245) prints a copy 
 of Scroggs' general warrant, addressed to the Messenger, 29th November 1679. 
 It names neither libel nor printer. 
 
 2 Hallam truly remarks {Cons. Hist., p. 613) that the impeachment of Scroggs 
 having fallen through, ' no check was put to general warrants, at least from the 
 Secretary of State till the famous judgment of the Court of Common Pleas 
 in 1764 '. 
 
THE 0B8ERVAT0R AND WHIG JOURNALS 277 
 
 (June 1680) on the Proceedings of the Common Hall about 
 Choosing Sheriffs. 
 
 But the days of good sheriffs and good juries were 
 drawing to a close and with them the fortunes of the 
 Whig party and its Press. With the entry of Sir John 
 Moore in October 1681 on his mayoralty, and the 
 iniquitous election of Sheriffs North and Rich the follow- 
 ing Midsummer, a new era of repression was in sight. 
 Stevens was, however, one of these unhappy men who 
 order their conversions badly. Scarcely were the new 
 authorities in the saddle when Robin changed 'most 
 senselessly ' to the side of the persecuted Whigs, and thus 
 encountered the revived and augmented authority of the 
 Surveyor. 
 
 The latter had, as we saw, ventured to return to London 
 during the early days of February 1681, where he was 
 greeted with a fusilade of not very kindly greetings ^ 
 Though suspected of Heraclitus Bidens, he really did 
 nothing till his neck was safe — that is, till the Oxford 
 Parliament was dismissed. Then he delighted his world 
 with the first part of Dissenters' Sayings and a week or 
 so later the first number of the Ohservator, just when 
 Smith and Harris were perforce closing down^. There 
 were still, however, in the work of the Janeways, Curtis's, 
 Benskins, and Baldwins quite enough to answer, and so 
 long as Slingsby Bethel and Cornish remained sheriffs 
 and Sir Patience Ward, Mayor, the balance of danger, 
 despite the Court, really lay on the other side, as is 
 shown by the successful prosecution of Stevens and the 
 presentment of the Observator and Nat Thompson shortly 
 after, whilst Colledge and Frank Smith as we saw were 
 triumphantly ignor amused. 
 
 It was the threatened presentment referred to which 
 called forth the second part of Dissenters' Sayings and — from 
 the point of view of the Press — the equally instructive 
 Word Concerning Libels and Libellers, addressed to the new 
 Tory Lord Mayor, Sir John Moore, no less than an attempt 
 
 1 Their numbers are too great for quotation ; see pp. 256-264. It should 
 be noted that besides Heraclitus, he was suspected of the answer to Essex's 
 Speech (to the King, asking that the Parliament might be held at Westminster) 
 which Nat Thompson, ' that shore for disemboguing Popish venom ', certainly 
 printed. 
 
 2 ' To set up counterwriters ' was North's advice. The Observator and Heraclitus 
 ' soon wrote the libellers out of the pit '. Lives, i., 200. So Eachard, i., 1009. 
 
278 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 to give his Lordship his cue in regard to the treatment of 
 the Whig Press ^ 
 
 In the matter of topics which agitated the public mind 
 during the period of the Oxford Parliament, it is easy to 
 choose out one or two which had in them the possibilities of 
 Civil War. The alarming and semi-military circumstances 
 of that assembly gave the Tory journalists the occasion to 
 talk rebellion. Indeed, if we may, from A Word Concerning 
 Libels, judge the forces brought into play on that occasion, 
 we must endorse the opinion of those historians who think 
 that Civil War was only avoided by the adroitness of the 
 King in suddenly dissolving Parliament. These forces con- 
 sisted of — as was borne out at the trials of Colledge, 
 Hetherington, and Shaftesbury — an unparalleled freedom of 
 speech in all assemblies, an organised use of the Penny Post ^ 
 for circulation of inflammatory tracts and menaces, the 
 circularising of London, dropping of treasonable bills in 
 convenient places, and prophecies of dire catastrophe. 
 
 It was suspected that all these motions in the Press and 
 private and public canvass were strictly organised by the 
 leaders of the Faction, and at a singal given, the whole riot 
 of agitation would change its objective. To-day we are 
 familiar with those methods as the ordinary tactics of party 
 warfare. But in 1681 they were regarded by people like 
 L'Estrange ^ as portentous signs of commotion, and the first 
 stirring of the Protestant Plot, which, it was eagerly hoped 
 by the Court, would eclipse the old Plot. 
 
 Of these signs the most alarming was the organising of 
 Petitions and Addresses over the length and breadth of the 
 
 1 ' While those libels go scot-free, the authors and publishers of other books 
 and papers (i.e., Ohservatm- and Heraclitus, and Thompson's Intelligence) whose 
 business is only to vindicate the Government from the forgeries, calumnies, malice 
 and sedition of the daily libels of Care, Curtis, Jane way, Baldwin, etc. , are Pre- 
 sented and the Bills found ; as Mrs Brome particularly, for the Obseriutor, by a 
 certain grand-jury who, according to their oath, could neither see nor hear of 
 anything on the other hand, while yet at the same time almost every stall is 
 covered and every coffee-house furnished with newspapers and pamphlets (both 
 written and printed) of Personal scandal. Schism and Treason'. See Kenyan MSS. 
 {Repwts, Commissioners^ 34, p. 129) 1st September 1681. 'Presentments were 
 made against Thompson, Heraclitus, and Mr L'Estrange, and the bills found 
 against them '. 
 
 2 The Penny Post established in 1680 was charged by both sides as the vehicle 
 of sedition. 'The Project for carrjdng letters for a penny a letter so often 
 mentioned in the Intelligence is, as Dr Gates says, a further branch of the Popish 
 Plot. It is the most dexterous invention of Mr Henry Nevil alias Paine'. Harris' 
 Protestant Intelligence, 27th IWarch 1680, denied in Nat Thompson's Intelligence of 
 2nd April 1680. 
 
 2 Sec L'Estrange's Word Concerning Libels, etc., pp. 2-4, 
 
THE OBSERVATOR AND WHIG JOURNALS 279 
 
 land. Tory writers hastened to warn the country that by 
 such means the Civil War had been introduced ^ 
 
 London's Petitions in particular sent men's minds back 
 to 1640 and 1659 when her sullen attitude, her Prentice Riots, 
 and refusal of subsidies, had decided the cause against the 
 then rulers of England. 
 
 It was noted that of late her Common Hall meetings had 
 altogether neglected their proper business and resounded 
 with impassioned speech almost wholly on one side. At 
 first the Court ignored these omens, relying on a policy of 
 suppression applied at the right time ; but when Ignoramus 
 juries protected the seditious, and the Secretary's warrant 
 was no longer, since Scroggs' impeachment, of the same 
 validity, they had perforce to use the weapons of the enemy 
 and appeal to the same quarters and passions. Opinion 
 must be tapped at the source, such demonstrations as 
 roasting the Rump must be revived, loyal gentlemen must 
 once more descend among the Prentices, and by feast and 
 flattery win back their noisy loyalty, ' abhorring ' addresses 
 must be anyhow concocted to meet the lying reports of 
 Parliamentary Petitions which filled the columns of Whig 
 journals ^. 
 
 In this work the Ohservator was an invaluable agent. 
 Its author might be heard admonishing and encouraging 
 the loyal apprentices at Sadler's Hall, as he had done more 
 furtively but in the same cause twenty years before. 
 Venison from Windsor regaled the youths. 
 
 From Bristol, Norwich, etc., came news of rival 
 petitions, discredited on the one side, and regarded as the 
 unanimous voice of the community by the other ^. The 
 obligation of annual Parliaments, the right of Petitioning, 
 the raising of the Militia in the West, became the burden 
 of Whig talk, and found their way into tumultuous petitions, 
 and, more dangerous, the proscription of all who impeded 
 
 1 So Ohservatm-, i., 36. The Parliament of 1640 was ushered in by three 
 Petitions (1) At York by twelve Lords calling for a Parliament. (2) In the name 
 of the City of London. (3) By the Scots to the same purpose, and another from 
 thousands of poor tradesmen in London, complaining of the decay of trade hy 
 reason of the Bishops' and Popish Lords' Votes in the Honse of Peers / 
 
 2 ' Let them lie and accuse till they are weary while we declare at the same 
 time, as may be done with demonstration, that all they say is false and unjust '. 
 North, Lives, i., 200. North (Lord Keeper) himself prepared some notes for a 
 pamphlet, preserved in the JSxameM. 
 
 ^ See the Loyal Intelligence, 17th April and 19th May 1681. ' At Hampton 
 Court (19th May) the Petitions were gone into and most especially that of 
 Windsor commended '. 
 
280 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 the free sitting of Parliament was now appended to the 
 petitions from York, Taunton, Southampton, etcA 
 
 As to the particular causes, there was the excitement of 
 Fitzharris' case which had blocked the Oxford proceedings, 
 and whose fate it was to be claimed as a victim by both 
 parties. Later, when Fitzharris was removed after a con- 
 fession favourable to the Court, extorted by the imminence 
 of death, the trial of the Protestant Joiner occupied the 
 public mind from June to August, and raised to the pitch of 
 frenzy the questions of the duties of Grand and Petty 
 Juries, the legality of a second trial with a change of venue, 
 and lastly the whole question of the inhuman conduct of 
 Treason Trials. There was also the dark figure of Shaftesbury 
 behind. Although the Government selected the minor victim 
 first, it was not doubted that the ' dangerous pilot ' would 
 soon stand for his life. 
 
 A glance at the Ohservator from May to July will show 
 with what desperate zeal L'Estrange flung himself into the 
 turmoil, and how far he outdid the merrier Heraditus. His 
 ferocious temper had been rendered more vicious by his late 
 exile, and by the howl of derision that greeted his return to 
 London. In July we are rather amused to find the author 
 of the Ohservator appealing to Sir George Treby, Jeffries' 
 successor in the Recordship of London, for protection against 
 the Whig junto in the Press 2. 
 
 July, the month of Colledge's acquittal, was the critical 
 moment in the struggle between the two great parties, 
 between the Abhorrers and the Addressers. We have 
 two letters, one from his patron, the Earl of Yarmouth, to 
 
 1 Janeway's Vox Patriae, quoted in L'Estrange's Word Concerning Libels, etc. 
 When M. Beljame says {Le Public et les Hommes de Lettres, p. 172) that the news- 
 paper 'n'^tant pas entr6 dans les moeurs, manquait de lecteurs' and 'Les Joumaux 
 d'opposition n'avaient qu'un droit de parole precaire, parmi ceux du Gouvernement, 
 la Gaxette de Londres ne discutait pas, et VObservator ne discutait qu'avec 
 rapprobation d'en haut. Une telle presse etait une lecture peufroid', etc., he 
 is contradicted by North, Eachard, and others, who attribute the turn in 
 the popular tide primarily to the Observator, Heraditus, etc. Eachard, i., 
 1009 : L'Estrange and Heraclitus with some others ' were thought to have 
 stemmed the tide of a popular current, which with a little more help and 
 success, might have been very pernicious'. 
 
 2 The appeal was, of course, vain ; though Roger declared that Sir George 
 had given him all the satisfaction a gentleman could expect. Observator, i., 21, 
 22, 8th and 11th June 1681. The enmity between L'Estrange and Treby (who 
 has been described by North {Lives, i., 275) as 'no fanatic, but of the fanatic 
 party as true as steel ') was of later growth, and arose from the refusal of Sir 
 George to admit L'Estrange to a view of the Lord Kussell papers, when he 
 was briefed by the Court to write his Considerations on Lord Jiussell's Printed 
 Speech. 
 
THE 0B8ERVAT0R AND WHIG JOURNALS 281 
 
 Sir Edward L'Estrange of Stanning Hall near Norwich, 
 dated 6th July 1681, and the other from Roger to the 
 Earl on the day of the return of Colledge's Ignoramus, both 
 of uncommon interest in connection with the crisis. The 
 Norwich Loyal Address had been one of the earliest to 
 reach the King, and Yarmouth was very anxious to follow 
 it up with such a present from the gentlemen of the county 
 as would shame the late Parliament. At the same time, 
 as Lord-Lieutenant, he had his eye on the factious Justices 
 of Peace, and hopes with the aid of the Lord Chief Baron to 
 get those ejected ' who will not swear '. Shaftesbury, we are 
 informed, 'was brought from the heart of the City to his 
 examination by two single messengers and sent to the Tower 
 with as slight a guard, no man taking notice of him ' ^. 
 
 L'Estrange's letter deserves fuller quotation on account 
 of his later connection with the fate of the Protestant 
 Joiner. 
 
 ' My Lord, — It is now half twelve, and yet I cannot but 
 give your Lordship some account of this day's work. The 
 jury brought in Ignoramus upon Colledge in the teeth of four 
 point-blank evidences and a fifth strong presumption of Sir 
 William Jennings', to the amazement of both Court and 
 Assistants, and the rabble ready with an acclamation upon 
 the event. The points in evidence no less than a design 
 to seize the King and force him to a compliance, or serve 
 him as they did his father; and so to root out that lewd 
 family. A provision of arms, declared and confessed, and 
 upon a bloody-nose at Oxford, a proof of Colledge's saying 
 that ere long there would be more blood spilt in England 2. 
 
 1 Add. MSS., 36, 988, f. 166: *1 am so flatted at the thoughts that the 
 design of a present will fail, that it troubles me ... as we have the credit 
 to outdo and to have foredon all the nation in their addresses (which has been 
 exemplary to other countries) so could we be so lucky as to turn words into 
 coin in gentlemen's proportions, we should be a lucky county '. It is interesting 
 to reflect that Norwich burned Harry Care in effigy {see Care's Popish Courant, 
 iii., 207). The City was not so loyal, however. It lost many of its best citizens 
 who emigrated to Holland this year for conscience sake (see A Modest Ansiver 
 to I>r Dace's Sermon, 1682) at the same time that French refugees loere seeking 
 in it an asylum from Loids' tyranny. Hence some true-Protestant jeers. 
 
 ^ See Roger L'Estrange's Notes upon Stephen Colledge, which went into two 
 editions this year (1681). The authorship and printing (by Frank Smith) of 
 the rude ballad The Raree Show, which was deemed treasonable, are traced 
 by L'Estrange (pp. 12-14) who had been promised 'Four pair of Gallows' in 
 Colledge's ' learned drawings '. * His vein lay much toward doggerel and design- 
 ing', says Roger. Ralph, i., 627, notes that Colledge showed Dugdale the 
 Intercepted Lettei- to L' Estrange, p. 2, note. 
 
282 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 That they pretended to set up Monmouth, but only made 
 use of him as a tool to serve their own turns with. The 
 Session's dissolved, none of the rest bailed. And this is 
 the best information I could gain upon the occasion. This 
 abuse is so gross that I find many of their own part 
 scandalized at it'. 
 
 (Here follows a curious suggestion in a different hand^ 
 but signed E. L. S). 
 
 *My Lord, — It is a great pity that His Majesty has 
 not some instruments of interest and credit among these 
 people to keep them within compass. Not but that there 
 are many considerable and loyal gentlemen in the City, 
 but not of such power and authority among these hot- 
 headed fellows. Methinks your Lordship might find some 
 way to engage Sir E. Cl(ay ton ?) ^ who, as I am told, might 
 be a very useful servant to his majesty upon the juncture, 
 if he were hut sweetened a little. For all men almost agree, 
 he is right in his judgment. Your Lordship will forgive 
 me these presumptions, as proceeding from my zeal to his 
 Majesty's service. I promised to render your Lordship 
 the best account I could get of this affair, and how late 
 soever, I have rather ventured to strain a point of good 
 manners, than to break my promise. — I am. My Lord, Yr. 
 Hon.'s Most Obedient Servant, E. L. S. ' ^ 
 
 The malevolence of the Observaior towards Colledge, the 
 darling of the Faction, and the running exposure of the 
 methods of Petitions, and comment on the City Petition, 
 had raised the clamour against him to the heat of the 
 previous October. Oiservator No. 27 contained a really 
 humorous skit on Whig Petitions^, which irritated them 
 beyond endurance, and as the last act of their effective hate 
 the three Tory journals were on 31st August, the day on 
 which Colledge was hanged at Oxford, presented by the 
 Grand Jury for London, and true Bills found. It was 
 in the Justice Hall of the Old Bailey, that Thompson, Ben 
 Tooke (publisher of Heraclitus), and Joanna Brome (publisher 
 
 1 The 'trimming' Mayor who for his refusal to repeal certain bye-laws and 
 so keep out Moore was to be punished by the Rye Plotters (State Trials, ix., 420). 
 
 2 Add. MSS., 36988, f. 168. 
 
 3 Repeated in the Wo7'd Concerning Libels, etc., pp. 12-13. 
 
THE OBSERVATOB AND WHIG JOURNALS 283 
 
 of the Observator)y were presented for ' maliciously printing 
 and publishing . . . three scandalous and seditious papers 
 and libels . . . tending to the Advancement and Introduction 
 of Popery, and to the Suppression and Extirpation of the 
 True Protestant Eeligion within His Majesties realm '. 
 
 The date of this presentment coincides with Gates' 
 significant ejection from Whitehall. Three days later an 
 order of Council dismissed him from further attendance 
 on the Board. Already the King's evidence was dropping 
 to pieces, the more wary vultures — Bolron, Mowbray, and 
 Harris — preparing for that defection, which completed the 
 ruin of the Plot and its promoters. 
 
 Nothing had angered the Faction more than the attacks 
 of these indicted journals on the Ignoramus juries, which 
 were, as we saw, the boast of Harris and Smith and by 
 whose action (to quote Heraclictus) — 
 
 ' Those laws that should secure thy (Charles') life and reign 
 By treacherous Ignorami are made vain '. 
 
 Equally obnoxious was L'Estrange's demand for the jury's 
 reasons for their verdict, and his refining on the duties of 
 Grand and Petty Juries. The duty of the former was 
 merely to certify that the matter alleged was sufficient 
 ground for a trial. The Petty jury decided on the evidence. 
 But though Wilmore, the foreman of Colledge's London jury, 
 was reported to be preparing reasons to meet the criticism 
 of anxious enquirers like L'Estrange, the reasons were never 
 forthcoming, and the news of his arrest lefore Colledge's 
 second trial is a shock to our notion of the sanctity of 
 Justice. Especially hypocritical is L'Estrange's constant 
 talk of Justice arraigned by the mob, when he himself 
 excused such violence. 
 
 The second part of Dissenters' Sayings (29th August 
 1681) is dedicated with bitter sarcasm 'to his unknown 
 friends the Grand Jury of London ', and attempted to 
 refute the charge that he had made odious reflections on 
 the Common Halls and Common Council of the City. 
 But while he pays lip-homage to ' this famous City ', he 
 cannot forget the late Rebellion, 'when the fanatic ralible 
 tore the Government to pieces by the same methods that 
 are now presented and practised again by hundreds of 
 inflammatory libels'. Some score of them with notes and 
 comments and publishers' names he presented as we 
 
284 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 saw to the new Mayor on his entry into office in 
 October ^. 
 
 It should be remembered that although by October 
 most of the Whig papers had closed down, scarcely a day 
 passed but their printers contrived to vent some new 
 single-sheet libel. And this class apart altogether from 
 the more substantial libel. There was one of this more 
 ambitious class published by Baldwin, to which Roger gave 
 the place of honour in his Lord Mayor's list. It was 
 The Rights of the Kingdom or Customs of our Ancestors y 
 touching the Duty, Power, Election or Succession of our 
 Kings — ' a gallimaufry of fragments ', says Roger, * first 
 published in 1649 in favour of Cromwell's proceeding 
 and Government, the main stress of the discourse resting 
 on these two points, first — the late King was lawfully put 
 to death, secondly — that the English monarchy is not 
 Hereditary but Elective'. 
 
 The Bights of the Kingdom is one of the earlier of a 
 new series of learned sedition in which the hand of the 
 exclusionist lawyer was plainly discoverable, and which 
 made L'Estrange rightly conjecture from ' several sly varia- 
 tions and additions and many things omitted in the latter 
 copy, that this is not the work of a bookseller or printer 
 for profit, but a regular and industrious disposition of 
 matter for some other purpose'. So with the Narratives 
 of the Fires, and Reprints of the ever-fresh Painter series 
 of satires 2, once more appearing to alarm the Protestant 
 vulgar. 
 
 The publishing of the above work was denied by 
 Baldwin in Janeway's Mercury, but the taking of 'one or 
 two of Baldwin's servants at one o'clock on a Sunday 
 morning, posting up the title-page ' went far to discount 
 the denial. 
 
 It is clear that with the publication of such works, bear- 
 ing the impress of research, and of Settle's and Fergusson's 
 work alluded to, the discomfited Whig leaders were again 
 
 1 The Word Concerning Libels, etc., is not later than October because, while 
 it notices Settle's famous Character of a Popish Successor (published by Starkey), it 
 makes no mention of Fergusson's equally famous No Protestant Plot, which came 
 out in the second week of October, preparatory for Shaftesbury's trial in November. 
 This work was thought to be Thos. Hunt's. See Arber, Registers, v., Iv., 8th April 
 1682 : ' Order of the Ap. of Canterbury to damask Doivlman of Succession, Hunt's 
 Postscript, and Hunt's No Protestant Plot '. Hazlitt, Bib. Collections and Notes, 
 2nd series, p. 343, actually ascribes it to L'Estrange. 
 
 2 See Smith's Current Intelligence, 21st February 1680, 
 
THE OBSERVATOR AND W^IG JOURNALS 285 
 
 directly resorting to the Press as in 1676-7 to repair the 
 Party fortunes. The conviction that the King had done 
 with Parliaments — at least for the three years' limit — was 
 working havoc in the Whig mind, and with the Sheriffs' 
 election of 1682, finally produced those councils of despera- 
 tion which precipitated their ruin. We may remember 
 it was during the last long intermission of Parliament, 
 1675-7, that a remarkable crop of constitutional libels 
 appeared. The same fears now produced the same results, 
 and history was ransacked to prove much more than the 
 obligation of annual Parliaments^. There were also the 
 rights of juries, the law of succession, and presently the great 
 case of the City, its Privileges and Charters, with the trump 
 card of all — the right of the City to elect its own Sheriffs. 
 
 Whilst the grand jury of London plotted the destruction 
 of the Tory journals in October 1681, it became equally 
 important for the other side to silence the Protestant 
 Intelligences- before Shaftesbury appeared for his life at 
 the Old Bailey. In the end, and probably as a result of 
 L'Estrange's solicitation 2, the Council resumed a course 
 which for obvious reasons it had not adopted since Scroggs 
 was impeached. On the 17th October — Shaftesbury's trial 
 was in November — four Whig Pressmen, Baldwin, Vile, Jane- 
 way, and Hancock, the men marked out most prominently in 
 A Word Concerning Libels, with one Popish printer thrown in 
 to make the list look impartial, were summoned to Whitehall. 
 It was noteworthy that — following the example of the work 
 just quoted — these men were not charged with the news- 
 papers for which they were responsible, but with the seditious 
 pamphlets which they issued, Baldwin for Fergusson's No 
 Protestant Plot, The Tendency of Addresses, etc., Hancock^ 
 for a work on the Election of Lord Mayors, etc. 
 
 The summoning of these men meant in effect the 
 
 1 The Whig gibe [Ohservator, i., 83), that ' there were men employed to search 
 Records and Histories to find out something more ancient than Pariiaments, that 
 may serve as a pretence to take away Parliament ' was rather unreasonable in a 
 party that revelled in Historico-partisan research from King Alfred downwards. 
 The other point referred to — the despair in the Whig mind of a Parliament 
 coupled with the successful attack on the City, was clearly responsible for the 
 Whig conspiracy, if we can trust the confessions of West, Bourne, and the rest. 
 
 2 In the Observator and his Appeal to tJie Lord Mayor. 
 
 3 Little Hancock (son of the Hancock examined by the Libels Committee, 
 February 1677). His offensive trade was that of a newsletter writer and general 
 penny-a-liner. He haunted the Courts and Whitehall, and supplied savoury news 
 to the journalists, thereby incurring the particular hatred of L'Estrange. We 
 find him in 1684 before the Council with his brother news-writers, when L'Estrange 
 at last got the Council to attend to the dangerous trade. See chap, i., 329. 
 
286 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 resumption of the rule of the Press by the Secretaries, 
 and it was retorted that since Heraclitus and the 
 Observator had turned the tables on them, they had begun 
 to cry out against the monstrous liberty of the Press. They 
 had failed effectively to cripple their opponents, and now 
 it was their turn to feel the weight of an offended authority, 
 which had been in abeyance since Titus Gates appeared on 
 the scene. Their license was now challenged at the moment 
 when Titus was expelled from the Court. 
 
 Thus with these four chief offenders under Council 
 surveillance, ' infallible ' Ben Harris in gaol, and reported 
 to be making 'loyal discoveries'^, with 'Elephant' Smith, 
 and Dunton on the eve of flight for Amsterdam, there was 
 cause for the deep dejection which fell on the Whig ranks. 
 
 On the 26th October the Sessions ended with true bills 
 returned against the two sets of offenders in the Press, 
 Whig and Tory. The Government had, however, to pro- 
 ceed warily. There was little hope of Tory juries till the 
 swearing-in of the Tory Sheriffs in Michaelmas 1682, but 
 already counsel was being taken, and parties preparing for 
 the struggle which had narrowed down to the question of 
 who should choose London's Sheriffs. 
 
 The trial of Shaftesbury in November is memorable 
 not only for the feverish canvass of party opinion in the 
 popular journals, but for the entry on the scene of a 
 force which as students of literature we may deplore, but 
 which for good or bad was to mingle with the muddy 
 waters of politics for a century. The venal muse now 
 thought it safe to appear on the scene. Dryden, Otway, 
 Lee, Behn, D'Urfey espoused the Tory side, while Shadwell 
 and, for a time, the uncertain Settle, did service for the Whigs -. 
 
 1 His repentance was perforce more thorough than on the occasion in 1680, 
 when he appealed to Scroggs against the neglect of his own party. See p. 271. 
 Luttrell, Diary, i., 127, 18th September 1681, notes that Harris has informed in 
 hopes of Liberty. 
 
 2 Beljame, Le PuUic et Les Rovimes de Lettres, etc., p, 188, praises Shad well's 
 consistency when nearly all the others ratted. See Shadwell's Dedication to Buri/ 
 Fair : ' I never could recant in the worst of times, when my ruin was designed 
 and my life was sought '. Dryden (or Tate) celebrated L'Estrange in the second 
 part of Ahsalom o.nd Achitophel under the name of Sheva. 
 
 ' Than Sheva none more loyal zeal have shown 
 Wakeful as Judah's lion for the crown 
 Who for that cause still combats in his age 
 For which his youth with danger did engage. 
 In vain our factious priests the cant revive 
 To enflame the crowd while he with watchful eye 
 Observes and shoots their Treasons as they fly '. 
 
THE OBSERVATOR AND WHIG JOURNALS 287 
 
 Another new element which grew out of the Prentice 
 feasts was the periodic party dinner, with which an anxious 
 Government scarcely knew how to deal at first i. Nor was 
 the matter of tolerating Opposition feasts settled finally — 
 at least in Scotland — till the beginning of last century. 
 The Government in 1682 was scarcely to be blamed for 
 not recognising in these occasions useful vents for party 
 feeling. It is interesting to find L'Estrange an increasingly 
 prominent figure at the loyal feasts 2. 
 
 In the midst of these struggles the word went round 
 that the intractable people on whom L'Estrange and others 
 had lavished all their abuse, the Dissenters, were again to 
 be persecuted^, and that scarcely twelve months after they 
 had reached their highest round of favour when a Parlia- 
 ment had been dissolved for passing votes in their favour. 
 At the same time their Apostle Oates was being chivied 
 from post to pillar, his Doctorate denied, his very name 
 hunted for in registers to prove him a forger, humbug, 
 cheat, and worse. Colledge had done the Dissenters 
 much harm; the unfolded page of Oates' life did much 
 more *. 
 
 Now only Jane way's Impartial Protestant Mercury, and 
 Care's Weekly Pacquet held on their way. Heraclitics, its work 
 done, had laid down the pen. But L'Estrange had at last 
 found his metier, and a vocation which not only attracted 
 the applause, but the money of the Church and the Judges' 
 
 1 HeiucUtus, No. 65. The Whig feast, 'so insolent a riot', is quashed by 
 order of the Government. ' I had a ticket given me by a friend and had set my 
 heart on it, for I was told their dictator (Shaftesbury) resolved to be there tlw' 
 Jie came in a litter '. Heraclitus skilfully expatiates on the scene of the proposed 
 feast, ' those Halls where some of them had sate before in great pomp as they 
 were like to do now, in committees for sequestration, I don't doubt but the 
 grand Cabal chose those places — to call to their remembrance those glorious 
 times, etc.'. Luttrell (i., 212) ' disliked the Tory feasts because the Court thought 
 fit to prohibit the late feast of the Whigs'. He gives a list of ministers, etc., 
 present at the great Tory feast of 9th July 1682. The date of the prohibited 
 dinner was 19th April 1682. For a copy of a ticket to one of these Whig feasts, 
 see Sitwell's First Whig, pp. 121-2. Luttrell, Dkurij, i., 182 and 212, has a good 
 deal on this subject. 
 
 2 Macaulay, chap, iv., quotes the Ohservatcrr to show his prominence at the 
 Fountain Tavern dinner on the eve of James II. 's first Parliament. 
 
 '•> Bohun (3rd part of Address to the Freemen, pub. 15th October 1682) 
 urges the King, since no money is to be had from factious Parliaments, to fill 
 the Treasury by putting the laws against Dissenters to the utmost stretch. Nor 
 was he alone. 
 
 ^ Ohservator, i., 89: 'And now they are hunting of registers for Dr Oates* 
 baptism. Why they'll tear the man limbe-meal before they ha' done with him. 
 Not Dr Oates cries one, not Mr Oates says another, and now they will not allow 
 him to be so much as Titus Oates'. 
 
288 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 Bench ^ He had come back from the Hague poor and 
 out of favour. Murmurs of the old Cavalier reproaches at 
 the Court, both that it let him starve and failed to protect 
 its servants, escaped him. But these were early days. By 
 February 1682 he was sunning in Court favour, the flattered 
 of literature, for not only D'Urfey and Behn — not to speak 
 of Nat Thompson's rhyme — but even laurelled Dryden 
 stooped to call him fellow-worker 2. 
 
 He looked for a resumption of those laws and that 
 oJB&ce which had made him once dreaded. Altogether at the 
 age of sixty-five, things stood brighter with him and his 
 party than a year before, lurking in Edinburgh, he had 
 any reason to expect. 
 
 Such was the aspect of affairs when the issue of the 
 struggle of the Sheriffs election, and the more ominous 
 rumble of the Rye House Plot, apprised the nation that 
 the Whig chiefs had had recourse to methods which in 
 the event of failure could only bring ruin, swift and 
 complete. 
 
 1 For a (hostile) list of Roger's emoluments at this period, see New News from 
 Toryland (printed for S. Norman, 1682) : ' Who would not be the Danae of an 
 Ohm-vator to be courted in Golden showers ? From Cambridge, £250 ; from 
 Oxford, £200 ; from Norwich, £170 ; from Salisbury, £90 ; from Bristol, £100 ; 
 Madam Joanna's yearly tribute, £150 ; summa totalis, £960 '. Wood {Life and 
 Times, iii., 26), August 1682, notes the gift of £200 from Cambridge, from * Lord 
 Norrys and other gentry' £100; from Magd. Coll., Oxford, £20 (iii., 83), a 
 collection by the Judges. 
 
 2 See, besides the tribute in Absalom aiid Achitophel, his Epistle to the Whigs. 
 Thompson's 183 Loyal Songs (1688), contains many references to L'Estrange, and 
 at least one lyric : — 
 
 ' Here's a health to L'Estrange and the boon Heracliius, 
 And true Tory Thompson, who never did slight us. 
 Not forgetting Broom, Paulin, and Alderman Wrightus 
 With Tony and Bethel, Ignoramus, and Titus '. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 (1682-4) 
 THE PRESS AND THE RYE HOUSE PLOT 
 
 In enumerating L'Estrange's services to the Crown, one 
 circumstance cannot fail to strike us — that he first appears 
 as an intruder whose services, valuable as they might be, 
 were in part unwelcome because discounted by a violence 
 which Charles' sagacity told him was unwise. It was 
 different when James II. became King. From the first 
 as the relentless pursuer of the Gates gang, he was accepted 
 at his own valuation, and urged to press forward those 
 schemes of vengeance which marked the first few months 
 of that revengeful reign. But with Charles II., it was 
 by dint of constant hints, reproaches, and intrusions that 
 our busy pamphleteer worked himself into any employment 
 at all. It was never in Charles' nature to go out of his 
 way to save a servant, and while Scroggs had remained 
 to face the storm of the winter 1680-1, to be finally dis- 
 carded, L'Estrange, equal in popular odium, had been driven 
 into exile by the Council over which Charles presided. 
 When he crept home no murmur of welcome reached 
 him from the Court to soothe him for the gibes of his 
 enemies. His devoted Ohservator was allowed to be baited 
 by Protestant Grand Juries, and his complaint that it was 
 easier to write up sedition than loyalty recalled the days 
 of the Caveat and the Apology. 
 
 CoUedge's trial and death made a difference to which 
 Shaftesbury's acquittal in November was a mere temporary 
 offset. The Protestant Joiner had been symptomatic of 
 all that the term dissenting Whig conveyed. His religious 
 frenzy, his association with Gates and Shaftesbury, his 
 cartoons and crude ballads against the Church and the 
 
 289 T 
 
290 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 Pope, his tavern speeches and songs, and above all his 
 constant use of the word Protestant — made him the darling 
 of the Faction. His two dying speeches left a belief in 
 the public mind that at last a Protestant martyr had 
 suffered 1. L'Estrange was called in a month after his 
 death to silence these doubts. The Colledge papers were put 
 at his disposal, those prepared by Aaron Smith which Lord 
 Chief Justice North had taken from him, and the miscel- 
 laneous bundle of Baree Shows, and True Protestant Ballads 
 by which this judicial murder had to be vindicated. Without 
 attempting to measure the degree of success which Roger 
 achieved in his Brief Notes on Stephen Colledge, it is sufficient 
 to say that his attack on the memory of one who had 
 made him the butt of his rude ridicule ^, made it impossible 
 for him to maintain the decorous attitude prescribed de 
 mortuis^. The performance no doubt pleased the Govern- 
 ment, for it is the first of a series which finishes with a 
 witless attempt to cope with Halifax's powerful Letter to 
 a Dissenter, 1687. 
 
 In the Shaftesbury trial the Observator is obviously 
 briefed by the Government to attack that fallen chief in 
 prose, as Dryden was demolishing him in famous verse. 
 From this time onward, there is not a branch of English 
 politics but receives some illustration from the pen of 
 the Ohservator. And no movement does he so fiercely urge 
 forward as the work of renewed persecution, undertaken 
 in the month of Shaftesbury's acquittal. The word seems 
 now to have been passed round that Parliament was a 
 very remote possibility, and the King's Declaration had 
 been taken as an announcement of non - Parliamentary 
 rule. Caution was therefore thrown to the winds. The 
 
 1 Long remembered as such. See Chas. Lesley's View of the Times (1708), 
 No. 124. 
 
 2 See chap. ix. , 260, note. Brief Notes : ' I should be ungrateful if I did not 
 acknowledge the honour he (Colledge) has done me in divers of his emblematical 
 pieces. He has presented the world with six Towzers and L'Estrange with four 
 pair of gallows '. He may have been the author of The Intercepted Letter to 
 Roger L' Estrange, which F. Smith printed. Dugdale's evidence at his trial, 
 Kalph, i., 627. See State Trials, viii., 595. Dugdale produced the Intercepted 
 Letter of which ' Colledge told me he was the author ', the printer being Curtis 
 or his wife, who ' cheated him of some of the gain '. 
 
 3 Macaulay (i. , 192, Popular Edition) speaking of his pursuit of the Rev. Wm. 
 Jenkins who died in Newgate, is more severe — ' From the malice of L'Estrange 
 the grave was no hiding place, and the house of mourning no sanctuary. Such 
 was the spirit of the paper {Observator) which was at this time the oracle of the 
 Tory party and especially of the parochial clergy '. See Ohservator for 29th 
 January 1685. 
 
THE PRESS AND THE RYE HOUSE PLOT 291 
 
 year did not end without an adventure which recalled his 
 peril of the previous year, and which was taken to show the 
 desperate straits to which the Oates Party was reduced. It 
 may be remembered that the chief charge advanced against 
 L'Estrange in October 1680 was an attempt to suborn young 
 Tonge against the King's evidence. On that occasion he 
 says: ' Upon two full hearings before his Majesty and Council 
 (in despite of all that Oates could say and Tonge could 
 swear against me) I had the honour to be twice acquitted 
 by the unanimous judgment of the whole Board '^ L'Estrange, 
 as we saw, pretended, and Dr Choquex and Captain Ely^ 
 (Tonge's physican and manager) had borne him out, that 
 the accidental circumstance which brought L'Estrange and 
 Tonge together was a curiosity on Roger's part to know 
 from Choquex something of Rupert's achievements in the 
 wars in Flanders. Newcombe, the publisher of the Gazet, 
 had introduced him for this purpose. Young Tonge's original 
 charge against his father and Oates, it need scarcely be 
 added, was that of collusion and fabrication of all those 
 lying narratives, Windsor Letters, etc., which were the Plot. 
 So often did he affirm and deny his evidence that the 
 disgusted Court had allowed him to lie in Newgate during 
 the whole of 1681, where he was reduced to a very miserable 
 condition. Towards the end of the year, all hope from the 
 other side being lost, it was rumoured that he was in a 
 mood to make a contrite and final confession. His con- 
 fession would have been very welcome to the Court as 
 a justification of the new severity adopted against the 
 Dissenters, and especially as a vindication of their treatment 
 of CoUedge, who was in close association with the * evidence ' 
 gang ^ But it was not to be bought at too great a price, 
 and nothing was to be done to alleviate Tonge's misery 
 till all was drawn out of him. In short, the rather mean 
 
 1 Shammer Shammed (1682), chap, ix., 46, 52; Prance, L'Estrange a Papist^ 
 p. 29 ; Luttrell, Diary, i., 39 ; U Estrange' s Appeal humbly submitted to the King 
 and the Three Estates (1681), p. 33. 
 
 2 Tonge in his Narrative dated 10th December 1680 (but ' held up in lavender ' 
 for the Oxford Parliament), imputed the subornation mainly to Ely who 
 belonged to the Earl of Chesterfield, whose Countess was once L'Estrange's 
 patron in the matter of free postage. He blamed L'Estrange merely for abusing 
 him in Zekiel and Ephraim. See the whole perplexed intrigue in H.M.C., App. 
 a. to the Wth Rept., pp. 247-9, Zekiel and Ephraim, and the Shammer Shammed^ 
 from which, apart from the newspapers, the information following is chiefly 
 drawn. L'Estrange had already befriended the Catholic Choquex by clearing 
 him of a charge of being found with fireballs in his house. 
 
 3 Old Tonge lived his last months in CoUedge's house and died in his arms. 
 1680. 
 
292 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 course was adopted of extracting piecemeal, all he knew 
 or could invent — it mattered little which — with very little 
 intention of doing anything for him. 
 
 The first overture however, came from L'Estrange^ 
 ' This good time ', i.e., the Christmas Season, was made the 
 excuse and charitable occasion for a letter to Tonge from 
 'Your Loving Friend, R L'Estrange', 27th December 1681, 
 in which the latter suggested that ' Gates and Colledge had 
 the handling of him before he gave his evidence' against 
 L'Estrange in 1680. ' I ask no questions nor do I desire 
 anything from ye ', the writer lyingly says, ' though I should 
 be glad to find any instance of your conversion and that 
 the Truth of the whole matter might appear'. In other 
 words, L'Estrange sought to clinch his Brief Notes on Stephen 
 Colledge, and to show to the world the cheat of the conspiracy 
 against him in October 1680. 
 
 This mischievous letter had the desired answer from the 
 King's Bench Prison on 30th December. ' If you had known 
 how I was used by my uncle first, and afterwards by Colledge 
 and Gates to force me to accuse you falsely, you would 
 sooner have pitied my weakness and forgiven me what I 
 have done against you '. Enclosing a petition to the King, 
 to be presented by L'Estrange, he asks the latter to intercede 
 for him, and afi&rms that 'the Plot was contrived by my 
 father and Titus Gates, when he returned the second time 
 beyond the seas; my father and he writ much of it out 
 of (Houselife) ^ Queen Elizabeth, and out of the book writ 
 
 1 An important point, Roger North (JUxamen, p. 271) was good enough to 
 take the view that the intrigue was from the first an attempt to entrap 
 L'Estrange. 'After Dangerfield's sham, Symson Tonge, son of the famous 
 Dr Tonge, put himself in the way of trade by endeavouring to trepan somebody 
 or other and seemed to level most directly at Sir Roger L'Estrange, but the old 
 Knight was so plot-learned, that nothing would fasten upon him. But yet he 
 was nettled at the attempt and the encouragement and assistance Tonge had 
 from the Faction in all their News and Pamphlets, by which they sought to 
 defame him as much as if he had been a shamplotter in earnest, and thereupon 
 he gave himself the trouble to print in a quarto pamphlet entitled The Shammer 
 Shammed (1681), the whole transaction adorned with all the circumstances. And 
 any one that would observe the low politics of this sort may see there a complete 
 process of such knavery. This young rascal had sworn Gates' plot construed by 
 his father and then unswore it again to and fro. But in gaol, the saints made 
 ample provision for him in diet and clothes '. L'Estrange says {History of tlie 
 Times (1687), chap viii.): 'In December 1681 there came a person to me from 
 Young Tonge in the King's Bench ', but of this no mention in the Shammer 
 Shammed. We may perhaps regard it as one of his ' falsifications ' complained 
 of by Mr Pollock [Popish Plot). 
 
 2 Holinshed. Probably the first and second volume of Chronicles ^ first collected 
 hy Raphael Holinshed now newly augmented 1586, hy John Hooker alias Vcnvell, Gent. 
 It is singular that L'Estrange could not identify this work from Tonge's description. 
 
THE PRESS AND THE RYE HOUSE PLOT 293 
 
 by Hooper or Hooker, that came from Kome and swore 
 against Campian and the other Jesuits. . . . They (Oates 
 and Tonge) first writ at . . . where the " Plot" was written by 
 Oates in Greek letters, and afterwards went to Fox-hall, 
 and one of the Jesuit's letters in my father's hands '. The 
 Petition to the King blames the wicked uncle for debauching 
 him, and accuses Colledge ^. 
 
 L'Estrange's answer to this pitiful appeal places it 
 beyond doubt that he was cruelly playing with his victim. 
 * You must be more particular and clear before I presume to 
 undertake the office ', i.e., of intercession. He indicates the 
 points where discovery would be desirable. 
 
 Without noting all the letters of this correspondence 
 in which suspicion on both sides prevailed, it is sufficient 
 to say that on 11th January L'Estrange closed the corre- 
 spondence, after a final appeal from the wretched youths 
 with *I dare not presume to trouble the King in your 
 affair '. 
 
 Meanwhile, after the receipt of Tonge's second letter on 
 2nd January, the thing had taken air in Nat Thompson's 
 Intelligence in the form of a complete confession by young 
 Tonge, in confirmation of which a letter of the latter to 
 Nat was published in the Intelligence of 19th January. 
 The negotiations having fallen through, the Plot party 
 awoke to the dangers of the intrigue, and seemingly made 
 a bid for the final denial of this extraordinary being. * He 
 was taken one day out of the Prison by a Printer, and at 
 his return talked of something to be published toward the 
 middle of the next week concerning L'Estrange. This visit 
 put him presently into clothes and money in his pocket 
 by a providence which must be left to time and further 
 scrutiny to unriddle \ 
 
 Now the whole party was alarmed. The Popish Courant 
 for 6th January is loud with angry cries of a new suborna- 
 tion by L'Estrange. The Printers' visit — Curtis or his 
 agent — bore fruit on 19th January in the form of Tonge's 
 Vindication against the Ohservator^ published by Curtis and 
 
 1 ' When your Petitioner was committed to Newgate, Colledge came to him 
 and by threats and promises forced your Petitioner to deny the Truth '. Humble 
 Petition of Simson Tonge. Shammo- Shammed, p. 26. 
 
 - * I have a great cold with sitting on the ground to make peggs, as I do 
 all the week and must work very hard for three halfpence a day, which is 
 all I have. I am barefoot and almost naked'. Tonge to Roger L'Estranee, 
 10th January 1682. ^ ' 
 
294 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 written doubtless by Care. In this Vindication we have 
 notice of Tonge's Narrative of the Plot printed a year 
 before in December 1680, and held over for the Oxford 
 Assembly ^. 
 
 The issue of the whole affair was, as we saw, a renewed 
 appeal by L'Estrange for the protection of the ' generous and 
 loyal governors ' of this City from * at least 300 scandalous, 
 rank and notorious lies that these several wretches have 
 published bareface against my single self. From the 
 Observator we gather that this appeal was ' taken into debate 
 by the Lord Mayor and Court of Aldermen on Thursday 
 last; i.e., 9th February 1682 2. 
 
 This business had scarcely deserved the importance given 
 to it here, had it not illustrated the despairing methods 
 of the Faction to keep alive the Plot and destroy the 
 chief agent of the Tory Press. 
 
 Another affair — that of Prance and L'Estrange — is 
 spread over the entire year and the next, and forms the 
 most tedious disgression of the Observators. To hunt 
 down Oates and Prance is the task to which Roger had 
 already dedicated himself, and to understand the hate, 
 the persistence, and the detail with which week in, week 
 out, he pursued these wretches, we must recall those dark 
 days in October 1680 when they swore him into exile 
 before the Council with which it was his ambition to 
 stand well. 
 
 Since then, Prance had from time to time, as a habitn^ 
 of the Taverns, made various incursions and gibes against 
 L'Estrange, and in April of this year (1682) as a reply 
 to a new story of his villany which the Observator was 
 serving up with much iteration, published an attack on 
 L'Estrange, re-affirming all the old charges. Without going 
 into the endless scandal, it is sufficient to say that the 
 Observator accused Prance of having, in 1672, when he 
 was employed as the Queen's silversmith, to make a silver 
 antipendium for the altar at Somerset House, substituted 
 
 1 This narrative, with its order to print dated 2nd February 1681 was somehow 
 stifled. L'Estrange was informed that several copies of it were dispersed to 
 divers members of that Gonvention. See Shavimer Shimmed^ p. 4. 
 
 - To Sir John Moore and his Tory Allies—^ Wwd concerning Libels and 
 Lihelleo-s (1681). See Observator, i., 100, 18th February 1682. 
 
 ' Whig.— Yes, yes, I heard a talk of such a letter, but I suppose it is a 
 private thing, for my bookwoman told me there were none of 'em to be got. 
 
 ' Tory. — The Newapeople, ye must know, are most of them of counsel for 
 the other side. In short, by hook or by crook, that letter is to be stifled *. 
 
THE PRESS AND THE RYE HOUSE PLOT 295 
 
 brass for silver screws ^. There were some other obscure and 
 ill-vouched-for stories of fraud which L'Estrange circulated 
 against Prance to destroy his credit as a tradesman, but in 
 the meantime he prudently left it to Nat Thompson to 
 reiterate Mrs Cellier's stories of the torture used by 
 Shaftesbury to get Prance to toe the Plot line in the winter 
 of 1678-9. When it was no longer dangerous, and after 
 Nat and his accomplice had stood in the pillory for their 
 attempt on the life-blood of the 'Plot', Roger took over 
 the story and made it the foundation of his final exposure of 
 the mystery. But at that time, even Mrs Cellier who first 
 — after Castlemaine — took this dangerous line, was enjoying 
 her pension from James II. 2. 
 
 It is not necessary to discuss the part allotted to Prance 
 in the Plot, further than to say that without his evidence 
 the Somerset House theory of Godfrey's murder fell to 
 pieces — Bedloe, the only other witness of that branch, 
 being dead — which explains the venom and zeal with which 
 Tory pamphleteers fastened on the weak points of his 
 evidence, and the part played in Prance's case by the 
 torture chamber. But we are to imagine during 1682, when 
 the balances between Plot and Fraud were still fairly even, 
 though steadily inclining towards the latter, the incessant 
 and jarring encounters between L'Estrange and Prance in 
 Cofifee-houses, taverns and wherever the two met, even 
 when L'Estrange drove past the silversmith's house. 
 Prance's business also rose and fell with the credit of the 
 Plot, and his bitterest complaints were that he suffered 
 financially from the Observafor's persecution ^. 
 
 1 A Psalm or Song for L'Estrange to be sung in all Coffee-houses (quoted 
 Ohservator, i., 129). 
 
 ' An anti-Protestant is he 
 That will no Popish treason see 
 But silver head with brazen screw '. 
 
 See Observators for April 1682, i., 117-25. 
 
 2 Secret Service— Charles II. and James 7/.— Camden Soc., Pub. January 1687 
 and April 1688, Mrs Cellier got £50 and £40. 
 
 3 Luttrell, i., 178, April 1682 : ' This day being Easter Sunday, Mr Miles Prance 
 and Mr Roger L'Estrange received the sacrament at St Giles Church-in-the-Fields, 
 one protesting that what'lie swore about L'Estrange being at Mass was true, and 
 the other denying it. Baxter took upon himself to rebuke this contentious iise 
 of the Sacrament, much to L'Estrange's resentment '. Chalmers {Gen. Biog. Did. 
 (1818), p. 209) quotes Echard's version of this story. See the Psalm referred to 
 p. 10, note. 
 
 * Strange the Sacrament did take 
 To cheat the world and blind the State '. 
 
296 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 Those who imagine that the 'Plot' was quickly dis- 
 credited however are mistaken. The roots and ramifications 
 were too deep and numerous, and it was open for the Faction 
 to say that L'Estrange and his fellows waited till Tonge, 
 Bedloe, and the rest had disappeared before they began the 
 work of taking it to pieces ^. 
 
 But more serious in one sense to the ' Plot ', was the 
 withdrawal of public attention to other matters. The re- 
 newed persecution, begun in December 1681, was a corollary 
 of the decline and fall of that frenzy, whilst the attack on 
 the city, the preliminary of similar attacks on the Corpora- 
 tions all over the country, necessarily withdrew the ablest 
 Whig apologists, and left the ' Plot ' rather naked of defenders. 
 This forward policy of the Court was politically prudent, and 
 it was aided by the pulpit eloquence of the clergy who 
 were nourished on the Observator's bi-weekly diatribes. Song 
 and wit were enlisted on the same side. So long, however, 
 as * good ' sheriffs remained, the men of Shaftesbury were a 
 power in the City, and Whig might well say in the Oiservator 
 of April 1682 : 'Though the Protestant joiner is departed, 
 we have architects left yet ', and Tory sadly answer : ' London, 
 I confess, is a good covert ' ^. Whilst the London mob was 
 still violently factious, Tory writers referring to the City 
 were able, after 1681 to praise, ' the governing part of it'^. 
 
 The trials of those Whig printers presented in October 
 1681 came on in May 1682, when Janeway and Sam Harris 
 appeared at the Guildhall, the latter for printing Treason in 
 Grain, the libel for which Fitzharris suffered. Though the 
 trial was conducted by the notorious Graham and Burton, 
 and though £50 was publicly offered for evidence. Sheriff 
 Pilkington's jury returned a bland Ignoramus. 
 
 Two months previous, a significant thing had happened 
 in the case of Langley Curtis. The Attorney - General in 
 February 1682 had moved Justice Jones to prosecute him 
 for publishing in his Mercury of 7th February the old votes 
 of 10th January 1681, that, * they ought not to prosecute the 
 
 1 So Titus Gates, Portraiture of King Ja^nies II., 3rd ed. (1696), i., 183 ; 
 Lonsdale, Memoirs ; Bohn, Charles II. and James II., p. 450. * The Popish Plot 
 of a long time discredited and now no more thought on '. But this refers rather 
 to 1685. 
 
 2 Ohservoior, i., 119. 
 
 3 Dryden, Medal — 
 
 ' Sedition has not wholly seized on thee 
 Thy nobler parts are from infection free '. 
 
THE PRESS AND THE RYE HOUSE PLOT 297 
 
 Dissenters upon the Penal Laws'. The recalcitrant Whig 
 jury ' being asked whether it did own the same as truth or 
 not, one of their printed warrants to Constables was produced, 
 wherein the said Grand Jury had cancelled the clause relating 
 to the duty of Constables to disturb Conventicles '. For 
 this offence, both Curtis and the Grand Jury were now 
 brought to the bar of the King's Bench, on which the 
 Jury gave in and promised to present the redoubtable 
 journalist^. 
 
 As a result of these prosecutions, we find that Janeway's 
 Impartial Protestant Mercury ceased at Ko. 115 on 26th May 
 1682, but Curtis and Care^ still go on for a little yet. 
 
 More observable is the general persecution which 
 L'Estrange was called upon to palliate and defend. No 
 writer had done more to urge on these severities, and when 
 from Bristol ^, Gloucester, and Hertford, etc., came stories of 
 ejectment and Grand Jury presentments, there was no one 
 more generous in applauding the enlightened work. Old 
 names began to appear once more. There had been no 
 general persecution since 1675-6. Old haunts were visited 
 and old lurkers drawn to light. The carriers on the high- 
 ways were examined, and the Scotch pedlars who flocked to 
 England after the last eruption in 1679, became the object 
 of suspicion and arrest. 
 
 This persecution, it is admitted, was more ruthless than 
 any of its predecessor, and more successful in driving people 
 to Church. Vicars and Bishops reported the 'conversion' 
 of huge numbers. The Churches were crammed with the 
 strange multitude which scarcely knew the decent forms of 
 worship. From other parts, it is true, came reports of 
 indecent behaviour on the part of the new Conformists, of 
 loitering in the Churchyard during service, and veiled sneers 
 at the Ritual. A feature of the persecution is conveyed in 
 such significant advertisement in the loyal papers as that the 
 Commissioners for the Admiralty were taking steps to eject 
 all the factious and dissenting *. 
 
 1 For this case see Nat Thompson's Loyal Intelligence under dates given and 
 for fairness' sake, the other journals. 
 
 2 In July (1682) the Weekly Pacquet was also in danger, and in December the 
 Courant actually dropped. }^ee the Weekly Pacquet for 28th July 1682, where 
 Care has t^e effrontery to describe the indecent Courant as * some small, neither 
 unuseful, nor unpleasant digressions for the Reader's entertainment '. 
 
 •^ Ohservator, i., 153, savagely reflects on some aldermen of Bristol, who not 
 only tolerate Conventicles at their doors, but champion them on the Bench. 
 4 Thompson's Loyal Intelligence, 14th February 1682. 
 
298 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 Another and more disgraceful feature was the rise of a 
 new tribe of delators, induced to take to their shameful trade 
 by rewards offered under the old Conventicle Act. These 
 men did not limit their operations to the Dissenters, but 
 began to spy on the magistrates and constables who shirked 
 their offensive duty. Thus discord and treachery invaded 
 every class of governors and governed, and the historian 
 will no doubt look closely in this direction when he is 
 enumerating the causes of the disgust which finally expelled 
 the Stuarts. 
 
 This persecuting movement was inaugurated, we saw, in 
 November 1681 by the action of the Middlesex Justices, and 
 it was kept alive in the Metropolis by their frequent 
 resolutions and admonitions. But for any severe operations, 
 for a general pursuit and hounding out of the meeting folk 
 in the city, we must wait till Pilkington and Shute no 
 longer nominate the juries. It is this that gives the 
 candidature of Papillon and Dubois for the shrievalty in this 
 year such importance and popularity. Never since London 
 enjoyed the privilege of electing its own sheriffs had that 
 office been so canvassed, or so much been written to prove 
 or disprove the practice of elections. Despite L'Estrange's 
 charges that large numbers of those brought up in different 
 companies to vote, were not livery-men in the legal sense ^ 
 — as probably they were not — there is no doubt that 
 Papillon and Dubois were the choice of the electors. 
 Against these candidates L'Estrange had nothing further 
 to urge in June than that the Tory candidates were 
 better men. The candidature of the former is interesting, 
 because at that moment French Protestants were settling 
 in multitudes in England 2, establishing fisheries at Dover 
 and Chatham, and weaving at Spitalfields, as a result of 
 that revival of French persecution which by no means 
 came suddenly in the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, 
 and indeed synchronised so closely with the English 
 persecution as to leave little doubt in the popular mind 
 of an understanding between the two Monarchs. A few 
 
 1 Carte, Life of Ormonde^ ii., 522: 'All mechanical Companies were entirely 
 on the Republican side of the dispute, and the Courts of Assistants of those 
 Companies called up all the mean and virulent fellows, etc.'. Pago 524 : ' Some 
 Clerks kept out of the way, and the Courts of Assistants of the Glovers Coy. 
 absolutely refused to let their books be seen for the making out of a list '. 
 
 2 While true Protestant Englishmen were emigrating from Norwich, Gloucester, 
 etc. (See A Modest Answer to Dr Dove's Sermon^ printed 1682.) 
 
THE PRESS AND THE RYE HOUSE PLOT 299 
 
 months before \ Koger L'Estrange had published a transla- 
 tion of a French Apology for the Protestants in four parts, 
 a work which may have been moderate in France where a 
 real persecution was raging, but in England — especially with 
 L'Estrange's preface — was calculated to arouse some clamour. 
 For whilst paying a notable tribute to the Catholics, and 
 advocating in veiled language a re-union with them — that 
 is of King-and-Bishops-men against dissent — the preface 
 attacked the favourite Konconformist belief that in their 
 struggle with the Church they had the sympathy of the 
 Foreign Reformed Churches. 
 
 * In France, there is no permitting of any Dissenters at 
 all (a notable commentary on the Edict of Nantes, 4 years 
 before it was revoked) ; in Holland (though a Government 
 that was founded upon a universal license) an Anabaptist 
 would sooner dare to swallow a crucifix than utter one 
 word against the State ', and as for French Protestants, ' the 
 author of the Apology piously laments the imperfections of the 
 French Presbytery for want of a royal authority to establish 
 and support them in a more regular form of Administration '. 
 
 The curious state of mind which here confounds the 
 word Protestant with Anabaptist, or Dissenter, is not 
 accidental. L'Estrange and his class actively disliked and 
 repudiated the term^. As to the text, he is unfortunate 
 in being contradicted by his author ^ When we remember 
 that this Apology and its preface were also L'Estrange's 
 apology against attacks on his Protestant orthodoxy — which 
 he was particularly anxious to prove just then when Prance 
 was repeating his charges and the Church preparing to 
 contribute her guineas*— it is not difficult to see how it 
 
 1 It is dated 1681, and is first advertised in the Ohservator for 13th August 1681. 
 Although we cannot find the original there is no need to class it with those 
 fictitious translations of which frequent complaint was made. 
 
 2 Ohservator Defemied (1685) : ' They have gotten a trick of covering all 
 Religions but Popery under the cant of the Protestant Religion '. 
 
 •■' Pt. ii., 31. In Protestant Countries such as Holland, the Catholics who 
 are the Dissenters there ' may openly and frankly own His religion . . . and are 
 connived at without being hunted out of their houses ', which is more than Frank 
 Smith's Narrative (q. v.) will testify for English dissent. 
 
 4 Luttrell, Diary, i., 93, June 1681. There is a Discourse that the University 
 of Cambridge have collected of the Masters and Graduates of that University 
 the sum of £200, which they intend to make a present to Roger L'Estrange as an 
 acknowledgment of his good services he hath done the Church of England. ' Pope's 
 sneer', says Sir Sidney Lee, 'in a letter to Swift that the Tory Party "never 
 gave him sixpence to keep him from starving" (Pope, W<yrJcs, Elwin and Courthope, 
 vii., 5), does not seem wholly justifiable'. He might have used stronger terms. 
 Roger was very well treated. 
 
300 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 would be received by any but * Highfliers ' and * Tantivies '. 
 But, at the moment, he was doing such valuable work in 
 leading the Anti-Dissenting crusade of the Church, that 
 it took four or five years for the Apology to do him the 
 harm it might have been expected to do. In the interim, 
 the Church had awakened from its wild and vicious dream 
 and saw itself abandoned by its Court allies. The author 
 of the Observator, which was then still lagging superfluous 
 on the stage, had developed the thesis of the Apology into 
 definite terms of Catholic re-union. There were no more 
 Church guineas, but only ostracism for L'Estrange, whilst 
 he bitterly pointed to the date of his Apology \ 
 
 One hideous result of the persecution we saw was the 
 Delator 2. Nowhere in English history does this painful 
 disease seem so widespread as now. The tragedy of one of 
 these Informers, Habin of Chichester, may be taken as 
 typical of what was happening all over England. This man 
 had been a bailiff before the persecuting resolution of 
 December 1681 suggested to him and his brother a more 
 lucrative trade. It was admitted that before this change, 
 the Crown office looked with suspicious eye on both, but 
 then it was the theory of L'Estrange and his party that a 
 little perjury and debauchery are venial offences compared 
 with conventicling ^. 
 
 Chichester was a hot-bed of dissent, and Stockdale was 
 generally the rendezvous of the Conventicle. The break- 
 ing of a certain Capt. Brickley's windows comes into the 
 story, for it was on the occasion of the burning of the 
 
 J Ohservator Defended. 
 
 2 See Lord Chief- Justice Saunder's Observations on the 22 Car. II. cap. I. (Con- 
 venticle Act), where he discusses the means by which Dissenting Pastors escape, and 
 the legal methods of the Informer. Fergusson, whose copious classical allusions 
 gained him L'Estrange's soubriquet of 'Scotch Tacitus', has several nervous 
 passages on this pest. He quotes the 'Roman Historian on the blackest character 
 of Tiberius' reign, those delatores genus hominnm puhlico exitio repertum et pdenis 
 quidem nunquam satis coerciium per praemia eliciehantur '. See the Cruel Ca^e of 
 the Quakers (1682), from which it appears that 320 died in jail since 1660, brought 
 there by ' cruel informers, often impudent women who conceal themselves, and a 
 company of idle, extravagant, and merciless informers '. See also Hickeringill's 
 Mancatclier. Such were the women whose evidence in the Rosewell case {State 
 Trials (1684), vol. xii.), even the Judges blushed to take. 
 
 3 ' Now do I take a Conventicle (even upon that day— Sunday) to be much 
 worse than a Tippling-house, as I take a Schism that breaks Christianity to be 
 worse than a personal debauch . . . (which) is only a beastly and odious excess 
 that serves to keep other men sober by the loathsomeness of the spectacle'. 
 Accomx)t Cleared^ p. 7. 'Hawks, hounds, dice, drabs, drinking, etc.', Roger 
 catalogues in the ' Roll of Good-Natured sins ', and that at the age of seventy-six. 
 See his JEso-p, 1692 ed., p. 336. 
 
THE PRESS AND THE RYE HOUSE PLOT 301 
 
 Pope, and Habin swore to the persons guilty of the riot 
 though he was not present. This stirred up black feeling, 
 and when on Sunday morning, 6th August, the two brothers 
 — slightly fuddled with brandy — were seen to enter 
 Chichester for a good day's hunting, the rabble of small boys 
 pelted them, when Halsted is said to have drawn his sword 
 and slashed their clothes. One of the urchins' stones — 
 according to one account — broke Habin's head, who there- 
 upon made for the nearest house, that of a local gentleman 
 and great Whig, Mr Farringdon. Habin had old scores to 
 settle with Farringdon, and, blinded by pain, passion, and 
 brandy, he used his stick to break his enemy's windows. 
 At that moment Farringdon's coachman came up to Habin, 
 and — seemingly with the master encouraging him from 
 the window — closed with the informer. In the end Habin 
 lay dying in the Bishop's house, where he had gone, after 
 shelter and protection were refused by the townsmen and the 
 Mayor to the social leper. 
 
 The inquest declared him murdered by Farringdon's 
 coachman, who had fled. 
 
 This hasty verdict did not please the Government or the 
 Bishop, who saw an excellent chance of striking higher. 
 On the 12th August the inquest was by order re-opened 
 in the Town-hall, and an attempt made to obtain a verdict 
 against Farringdon. After an extraordinary tumult, the 
 case was adjourned till Monday, when to the frantic delight 
 of the people, the jury gave a verdict of Ignoramus'^. 
 
 This tragedy was complicated by the charges of another 
 informer against local Dissenters of wounding the Bishop's 
 horses. 
 
 Without further enquiry into this affair, it may be said 
 that it became a cause celehre, and formed the staple of 
 chatter in Whig and Tory circles for months to come. It is 
 an interesting aspect of the case that in the Town- hall of 
 Chichester on Saturday, 11th August, among the two hundred 
 spectators were men who might almost be called special 
 correspondents to the Press. L'Estrange and Thompson had 
 their correspondents there, and Curtis and Care had theirs. 
 
 1 The Pastor of the Conventicle— Sara. Pomf ret— escaped. The coachman 
 was taken after the Rye Plot and condemned, but at Jeffries' suggestion his 
 execution postponed in hope of discoveries. See Luttrell under date 16th 
 November '82. For a parallel in some respects to the Chichester case, see reference 
 to ' Hilton, the Grand Informer ' of Middlesex, and the indignation of the rabble. 
 Cavalier and Puritan, p. 99. 
 
302 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 Their varying reports might be taken as constituting one of 
 the earliest cases on record of the Special Correspondent^. 
 
 That in some sense the Government was aware that the 
 Delator system was on trial at Chichester is shown by the 
 setting of L'Estrange to substantiate and sum up the 
 Ohservator's day to day reports in two separate pamphlets. 
 The importance of the case is that all London is seen to be 
 discussing the pros and cons of a case which a few years 
 before would have passed unnoticed^. 
 
 The Habin case came close on the heels of the political 
 event, which really settled the fate of the Whigs — the 
 ' election ' of the Tory sheriffs North and Rich to succeed 
 Pilkington and Shute. These were busy days for the 
 Ohservator and its author. For months previous what time 
 could be spared from the cautious pursuit of Gates, Tonge, 
 and Prance, that journal devoted to proving the Mayor's 
 right to choose one sheriff by the ancient ceremony of 
 drinking to him. The opposite party with much force and 
 learning proved the antiquity of the citizens' right of 
 choosing both. Democracy and autocracy confronted each 
 other nakedly. Already the complaints that Sir John 
 Moore was too often on the road to Whitehall to receive his 
 orders from Secretary Jenkins were heard ^. The Court in 
 truth was jealously watching events in the City. The 
 many rebuffs to its policy by Ignoramus juries and Guild- 
 hall presentments of its champions, showed clearly that the 
 Sheriff^s Election was the only breach possible in the City's 
 defence. The re-ordering of the Charters would come later. 
 
 1 Ohservator, i., 192-200. 
 
 2 Whilst declaiming {Ohservator, i., 225) against 'your parboiled Justices that 
 are still blind on that side where the information of a Conventicle happens to be 
 presented ', Roger asks all people bringing news of the Prosecution of Dissenters 
 to bring adequate testimonials. On the other side an attempt to boycott 
 informers was made. ' This is to let all good people know that Mr Hone, a 
 bookseller, and Mr Brightwell, a cutler, are both of them Informers against 
 God's people, and both shopkeepers under the Exchange in Cornhill. You are 
 desired to avoid them, You may tklnk whxd time of day it is with them tvhen they 
 take up this trade'. Ohservator, i., 226. Among other persecuting tracts see 
 Remarks upon the Growth of Nonconformity (1682), ascribed, probably erroneously 
 (but see Appendix), to L'Estrange. It had great effect. ' I can say no less than 
 I think it written both to deceive and to provoke the Magistrates in the Spring- 
 time of heat and ferment ', says an anonymous answer, Moderation a Virtue 
 (1683), p. 17. 
 
 3 Carte, Ormonde, ii., 522-3 : ' The Duke of Ormonde was the person that 
 inspired him with courage ; he generally dined with him twice or thrice a week 
 during the contests w^hich now happened, and was the only person about Court 
 employed on these occasions '. Ohservator, i,, 175: ^ Whig. — He (Moore) acted 
 contrary to the duty of his office— in giving up himself implicitly to the 
 Government and conduct of Sir L. J.' (Leoline Jenkins). 
 
THE PRESS AND THE RYE HOUSE PLOT 303 
 
 Before this famous election, a renewed and prudent 
 attempt was made finally to reduce the Press. Some show 
 of impartiality was made, for the Government was embarrassed 
 almost as much by friend as foe. Warrants were issued 
 for the arrest of Nat Thompson and the two Catholic lawyers, 
 Nevil and Farwell. At the same time the Council under- 
 took the final crushing out of the Curtis-Care junto. 
 
 The chief mover against Popish Nat was Michael 
 Godfrey, brother of the late Sir Edmundbury ^, and the charge 
 was the publication of certain letters to Miles Prance in 
 which the authors — Nevil and Farwell — ridiculed the whole 
 idea of the Plot, and brought forward the old suggestions of 
 torture in the case of Prance. Brought first before the Bar 
 of the King's Bench, 7th April, the defendants were bound 
 over in £500 to appear next term. When, after various 
 delays, Nat and his friends were on the 20th June sentenced 
 to stand in the pillory, the only ingredient lacking to the 
 general satisfaction was that L'Estrange was not to stand by 
 their side. 
 
 But this popular triumph, the last use made by the 
 Whigs of ' good sheriffs ' — the election took place four days 
 later — was dashed by the final fall of the Whig journalists. 
 On 26th May 1682 we saw Janeway brought low, and, 
 worse still, used by the Secretary to make discoveries 2. 
 * Care still spoke through Curtis '. But in the week of 
 Nat's trial, the latter was questioned by the Council con- 
 cerning various libels and his Mercury, when he made his 
 submission. The lust of battle was, however, too strong for 
 him, and his jubilation over Nat's pillorying ^ too boisterous 
 
 1 Mrs Aphra Behn's Poem to Sir Koger L'Estrange (1687), congratulating him 
 on the completion of his 3rd vol. of Observator. 
 
 ' And with a just disdain those authors hate 
 Who on the innocents transferred his (Godfrey's) fate 
 A sacrifice to save a vile estate \ 
 
 It was this insinuation which now brought Nat to the pillory. Sir Sidney Lee 
 in his excellent article on L'Estrange {Diet, of Nat. Biog.) has blundered some- 
 what in describing Roger's connection with the Plot. He not only makes his 
 Discovery on Discovo^ (chap, viii., 250) to be the work of the other side, but 
 ascribes the Letter to M.P. to L'Estrange. 
 
 2 His ' discoveries ' however were very dubious. See Thompson's Loyal Intelli- 
 gence for an account of his tricks and knavery, 12th June 1682. 
 
 "' Luttrell, Diary ^ i., 176, under dates 5th April and 3rd and 5th July 1682. 
 Nat, of course, says nothing of his pillorying, but Care's Popish Courant gives a 
 humorous account. Mr Goodenough (the Undersheriff of Rye House fame) 
 commands all spectators not to throw stones ' or any hard things '. ' Behold how 
 like a couple of Jesuits they look', was the comment of the joyous rabble. 
 * Upon which the small shot began to fly with rotten eggs and dirt, and when 
 
304 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 to keep him within the scope of the Government's tolerance. 
 On 8th August he slipped away to join his brother-in-law, 
 Frank Smith, in Holland, and on his return secreted himself 
 in the country, where he busied himself with a yet more 
 notable libel ^. Still his extraordinary wife kept at the 
 task, and for a while the True Protestant Mercury mended its 
 manners. But on 28th October the Tory Sheriffs being now 
 in the saddle we find her at the King's Bench, where this 
 bold Whig spouse ' questioned the truth of the warrant, and 
 authority of the Court', refused to discover her husband's 
 whereabouts, and was consigned to jail ^. Thus, on the 14th 
 October, the True Protestant Mercury flickered out, and though 
 Harry Care still forged ahead with his Weekly Pacquet, on 
 31st October on an indictment of libel, he too, it was rumoured 
 (falsely), had fled to join the Mayor of Goatham, * Elephant ' 
 Smith, and Dunton, whereat 'there was weeping and 
 gnashing of teeth amongst the brethren '. Baldwin had been 
 extinguished in the June proscription for a libel on Danby ^. 
 Thus perished Whig Journalism at the moment when the 
 City's rights of free election were invaded. Thereafter the 
 Government could proceed to forge chains for the City, and 
 no rude libellous Press would interrupt the work. Only 
 L'Estrange's Ohservator and Thompson's Intelligence to bless 
 them *. 
 
 they hit Thompson, they cried Thompson Farewell, and when they hit Farwell, 
 they cried Farewell Thompson ! . . . Thompson had ten times more dirt thrown 
 at him that Farwell'. Heraditus (No. 78) complains that Ben Harris in a 
 similar position ' did not suffer the least abuse either from gentle or simple '. So 
 Luttrell (i., 34, 17th February 1682) : ' They would permit nothing to be thrown 
 at him'. Heraditus goes on to tell of the preparations for this event — 'Dick', 
 says another to a porter, ' how many rotten eggs have you laid up in store to 
 bestow upon Popish Nat? I knew you'd make holiday to-morrow to pepper 
 him'. An important point remarked by Hallam (Co7is. Hist., p. 720) is that the 
 Judges * permitted evidence to be given as to the truth of the alleged libel ', and 
 so opened up the Plot Story. By 1742 (the date of Viner's Abridgment, xv., 88) 
 it is declared that * a libel though the contents are true is not to be justified '. 
 
 1 Julian the Apostate, see p. 50. 
 
 2 Hart, Tndex Expurgatorius, p. 254, 
 
 3 See Care's final word in the Weekly Pacquet, 27th April 1683. The Courant 
 had dropped 15th December 1682. 
 
 4 It must be admitted, however, that they did their best to silence these too. 
 Thus under pressure Nat gives an illusory promise — 16th November 1682 — to 
 close. 'The Kingdom (being) every day pestered with libels stuffed with 
 scandals to the Church and Crown, I thought it my duty to publish this my 
 Loyal Protestant Intelligence. But being now informed that authority is dis- 
 pleased therewith, I am very wilUng to desist in regard it would be very 
 inexcusable for me who have ever writ in defence of them and their Authority, 
 now to continue in disobedience to their just commands '. He lingers on, how- 
 ever, till the eve of the Rye discovery, 20th March 1683. Thereafter the 
 Obsei'vator alone continues. 
 
THE PRESS AND THE RYE HOUSE PLOT 305 
 
 It is no exaggeration to say that the event for which 
 these prosecutions cleared the way, was of greater importance 
 than a Parliamentary General Election. The right choice 
 of Sheriffs meant that London would no longer be the * good 
 covert ' for Whigs, which the Ohservator declared it to be in 
 June. It meant that an open or secret life in London was 
 no longer possible for Shaftesbury, and was therefore the 
 signal for that skulking about in disguise, which preceded 
 the flight to Holland ; and as it meant more furtive associa- 
 tion among the Whig leaders, Fergusson, the 'soul of the 
 machine ' and the inferior instruments, it involved the more 
 hurried and desperate counsels which in March 1683 matured 
 into the darkest episode of the reign. It also meant the 
 total extinction of the Whig Press, the absolute submission 
 of such companies as the Stationers and Mercers, and the 
 other stout Guilds, and therewith the passing of the huge 
 body of patronage in London Hospitals, Schools, Colleges 
 and Almshouses, ' the nurseries of Whiggery ', from ' factious ' 
 to 'loyal' hands. Finally it meant that the Middlesex 
 Justices already predominently Tory were now reinforced, 
 where lately they had been checkmated, by the influence of 
 Guildhall, and shortly by the new-modelled Common Halls. 
 
 The scene at this famous election has been described by 
 North and a dozen Tory writers, besides the account in the 
 State Trials. But happily the Council's efforts to suppress 
 the Whig journals had not yet been so successful as to leave 
 us no Whig notes on the subject. Besides the Mercury 
 which Mrs Curtis still carried on for her exiled husband. 
 Nan Maxwell had bravely started a Protestant Ohservator 
 whose sole object was to bespatter L'Estrange. From those 
 two papers we learn that Roger was a dangerously prominent 
 figure at this election, when 'the Royal Standard of the 
 Multitude ' was set up, and the Lord Mayor buffetted by the 
 Protestant mob, whose tumultuous No North; no Popery 
 was eagerly interpreted as evidence of a riot. The entrance 
 on the scene of Capt. Quiney with the train bands was the 
 ' whiff of grape shot ', and to the Whig mob ' the monster of 
 military power', from which London had been free since 
 Monk patrolled her streets ^. 
 
 L'Estrange had secured a view of the riotous scene from 
 the window of the Common Sergeant's office, where he 
 * lolled with his brazen face at the gentlemen of the livery 
 
 1 Ohservator, i., 216, 218, 224. 
 
306 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 as they passed out'. His own impression of the mob 
 beneath is piquant. 'The Ohservator was at a loss for a 
 description to make the Reader understand what kind of 
 spectacle he had before him and could think of nothing 
 liker to it, than the picture of the damned in Michael 
 Angelo's famous piece of the Day of Judgment '. He had 
 seemingly not the good sense to be quiet at his coign of 
 vantage, but ' pointed at 4 or 5 bawling rogues there in 
 the crowd, with what fiery gestures and contempt we can 
 imagine ' ; for it drew the attention of the mob to the fact 
 that the object of their hate was lolling down on them. 
 Whereupon a good deal of pent-up fury was showered on the 
 insulting head above, and it might have gone hard with 
 Roger, had not more important business been in progress 
 below. Stones were thrown, and it was suggested by the 
 wiseheads of the Faction, that his appearance was a calculated 
 incitement to the mob to do that which might be termed a 
 riot. Whether there was sufficient disturbance to justify 
 this step or not is not clear, but undoubtedly the investing 
 of Guildhall with the train-bands so that the liverymen 
 could not meet and proceed to their own election of Sheriffs, 
 was the brief but decisive application of military power 
 which brought in its train all the absolute proceedings of 
 the next four years ^. We are not to suppose that Liberty 
 perished unheard. The mantle of Marvell had fallen on 
 several able writers of whom the most notable were 
 Hickeringill, Petyt, Doleman, and perhaps ablest and certainly 
 most assertive Thos. Hunt, Esq., of Gray's Inn 2. This 
 remarkable man wrote like Hickeringill, first on the side of 
 the Bishops and their right of judging in Capital cases. 
 But in the midst of the Sheriff's crisis, and before the Court 
 creatures had voted away the City's Charter, he raised a 
 learned and eloquent protest in a work which earned him 
 the undying enmity of L'Estrange. In the Defence of the 
 Charter, after describing Roger as 'this Fracemaker and 
 
 1 See the Observators, Nos. 210-222, 23rd September to 12th October 1682. 
 That the Whigs were quite aware that the Common Council Hall was 'the 
 last resort of Liberty', see Ohservator, \., 353. 
 
 2 Hunt's Postscript to the Bislwps' Right of Judging in Oapital Gases (1681), 
 made a fine onslaught on L'Estrange, Filmerism, and those 'who have drawn 
 the youngsters to question the truth of the Popish Plot. . . . Out of the same 
 mint came (L'Estrange's) loathsome print entitled, The Oommittee or Popery 
 in Masquentde'. See chap, viii., 256. Hunt finds a place with Bastwicke 
 and Prynne in Defoe's Hymn to the Pillwy, 1703 (Lee's ed. 1868, ii., 605). 
 Petyt is 'Mr Huntscrap Petyt' in Heraclitus, No. 18. 
 
THE PRESS AND THE RYE HOUSE PLOT 307 
 
 Scaramuche of the vain youth of the nation ' and falling foul 
 of Dryden's immoral couplet ^ (put in immoral lips however), 
 
 ' For Conscience and Heaven's fear, Religion rules, 
 They are all state-bells to toll in pious fools, ' 
 
 he calls on the City Fathers to prohibit such exhibitions in a 
 public theatre, by which 'you and your great offices are 
 exposed and reviled'. To the Ohservator it belongs 'to 
 confound trust and falsehood', not to 'our poet'. But he 
 is strongest when drawing on ancient and classical example 
 for instances of the fall of free communities, when their 
 institutions are attacked, and appeals to the researches of 
 his friend Petyt for proof of the rights of Parliament and of 
 the City to choose its sheriffs. We gather that one proposal 
 emanating from the Court was to call a Parliament by 
 nomination — a preposterous suggestion which, however, was 
 almost realised in James II.'s Parliament 2. Hunt is most 
 eloquent when he pictures a dischartered London, the dis- 
 location of trade due to the Quo Warranto, * the customary 
 provision for wives and children' neglected, marriages 
 rendered null, and orphans dispossessed, there being no stock 
 to pay them, 'as they are almost undone already by the 
 bankruptcy of City Credit ', etc. 
 
 In the treasonable movements which resulted in the Whig 
 Plot, it is interesting to note the behaviour of those particular 
 men and classes against whom our author had thundered for 
 so many years. Apart from the quarrels and recriminations 
 of the various conspirators, we learn from the examinations 
 and trials, that the issue of the Sheriffs' Election gave the 
 signal for insurrection ^, and that in London, where the chief 
 dependence was placed on the sectaries and republican 
 zealots, the word was passed round, especially in the smaller 
 assassin group which had Shaftesbury, while he lived, for a 
 head, and Fergusson for Secretary, that the dissenting 
 ministers with one or two exceptions were not to be trusted *. 
 They were regarded as garrulous and timid, too scrupulous 
 to seize the hour and the methods of relief from a raging 
 persecution. This fact is of importance, for while on the 
 
 1 The Spanish Frktr, Dryden's malevolence to the Clergy was remembered 
 by Johnson. Arnold's Six Chief Lives, p. 167. 
 
 2 See pp. 361 ct seq, 
 
 3 So Lord Russell's Speech at his execution. See p. 312. 
 
 ^ • West said they were a parcel of rogues that had ruined the people ever 
 since Constantine '. Exam, of Bourne, 6th July 1683. State Trials^ xi. 414, 
 
m SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 discovery the Government had up for examination and placed 
 under close surveillance, the peripatetic priests of dissent, 
 with an obvious anxiety to entrap them, on the whole a 
 conclusion of not guilty, so far as actual knowledge of the 
 Plot was concerned, was reached. When the time came for 
 adjusting accounts, this comparative innocence was credited 
 to them, along with their discreet behaviour in regard to the 
 second Indulgence. 
 
 But there were one or two on whom suspicion fell 
 heavily. Fergusson — from whom emanated the advice 
 quoted above ^ — was the heart and soul of the conspiracy. 
 Stephen Lobb was almost alone of the dissenting clergy 
 approached by the conspirators, when he gave a doubtful 
 blessing to the project. On the Rev. Joseph Mead with 
 Drs Owen and Collins, suspicion fell more heavily, and 
 though the tortuous examinations of July before Charles 
 and his Council failed to elicit more than proof of a general 
 association with the conspirators, with, however, an absolute 
 certainty of their guilt, L'Estrange set himself to make 
 their treason manifest 2. 
 
 There were, however, a few disbanded lay preachers 
 and schoolmasters who incurred more than suspicion. They 
 were a class whose movements had from time to time come 
 under the notice of the Surveyor of the Press ^. James 
 Forbes of Gloucester and London, Hicks the tobacconist 
 and Anabaptist preacher of Bristol, James Nesbit alias 
 Johnson, and Benjamin Keach, the preacher and brick- 
 layer fined in 1665 for a new Children's Catechism, are 
 now again busy. These unaccredited officers of the darker 
 dissent did a great work in their wandering and obscure 
 way, sounding and stirring up 'true men' and enflaming 
 the ultra-Protestant mind. The first named was the most 
 dangerous. Of the same cautious nation as Fergusson and 
 Nesbit, whom he knew well, and once as the associate or 
 assistant of Wallis the Gloucester Cobbler, under the special 
 surveillance of L'Estrange, Forbes was a man fully entered 
 in all the disguises and aliases of the trade. Although he 
 
 1 state Trials, xi., 410. The Nonconformist Pastors were 'silly and weak '. 
 
 2 These are L'Estrange's 'new generation that preach with their teeth as 
 much as their tongues— Mr Calamy, Dr Burgess, Mr Ward of Ipswich. Mr Oase, 
 the Laborious and Catholique Mr Baxter, Mr John Corbet and Dr Owen*. 
 Observator, i., 193, 28th February 1682. With the exception of the last, none 
 of these patriarchs of dissent were so much as suspected now. 
 
 a Observator, i., 106. Schoolmasters and Ushers teaching school without a 
 license. 
 
THE PRESS AND THE RYE HOUSE PLOT 309 
 
 denied any correspondence with Scotland or acquaintance 
 with the Scotch insurrectionists in London, there is no 
 doubt that he is one of the dozen Scots in the capital, 
 who directed the operations of the army of Scotch pedlars 
 that descended on England after Both well Brig^ 
 
 But of all these Eob. Fergusson, the * Plotter ', has come 
 down to posterity as the lago of the Conspiracy. His 
 biographer ^ quotes a rhyming broadsheet, Iter Boreale, 3rd 
 July 1682, to show the part he already occupied in the 
 public mind. But many months before he was familiar to 
 the public through the Observator, L'Estrange recognised 
 in * Scotch Tacitus ' the evil genius of the Faction. He was 
 supposed to be the author of the famous Appeal from the 
 Country to the City and the three parts of No Protestant Plot, 
 the last so recent as May 1682 and the most eloquent 
 vindication of Shaftesbury^. In anticipation of the adverse 
 Sheriffs' Election of midsummer 1682, he had a month 
 before journeyed into Scotland, and in the public mind 
 reflected in the ballad above referred to, it was he through 
 whose infectious poison 
 
 * Charter lyes bleeding 
 Whole Corporation suffers for believing '. 
 
 He was the symbol to the popular mind of all that was 
 republican and levelling. The Association proceeded from 
 his brain, and to topple down nobles was his delight. 
 Altogether he was in everything, knew everybody, the thinker 
 and inspirer, the referee of all matters of doubt, the man 
 whose name occurred most to witnesses. Burnet throws 
 some odium on his name in connection with his manage- 
 ment of his secret Press *, but the more modern verdict is 
 that the man was without a rival in a fierce republican 
 quality in which he rivalled Sydney without Sydney's 
 aloofness, and a daring and industry which has no parallel 
 
 1 See chap, vi., 169-171. Observatar, l, 99, 15th February 1682. 
 
 * Whig.— What's become of Jas. Forbes the Scotchman that was at Gloucester? 
 
 ' Tory. ~Yo\x mean Cromwell's emissary. He had his quarters beat up there- 
 about 2 years ago and the meeting house destroyed, so that little by little that 
 congregation is dissolved '. 
 
 See also the Examination of Forbes and of the Scotch pedlars who came into 
 England in 1674, 1675, 1678, and 1682, and who went about with two edged 
 swords and pistols. S. P. Dom. Car., ii., 428 (45) and 436 (49). 
 
 ^ Jas. Fergusson's Fergusson the Plotter (1887), p. 79. 
 
 3 ♦ Much of it stolen from your dead author's pamphlet, called the Growth of 
 Popery ', Dryden, Epistle to the Whigs, prefixed to the Medal. 
 
 4 Qion Times, ii., 358. 
 
310 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 in that busy age. That is an interesting piece of informa- 
 tion of Bourne's that 'Fergusson desired me to tell them 
 one night when we met, that we must have a party to 
 seize Mr L'Estrange, for he should find strange papers and 
 that great care must be taken to secure the Paper Office 
 at Whitehall'!. 
 
 As to the kind of encouragement Fergusson meted out 
 to the others, it differed according to the man he talked 
 with, but one thread ran through alP. They were to be 
 the Liheratores Patriae from tyrants who invaded all civil 
 and religious rights. As a master of character, he addressed 
 himself to the various appetites of his instruments, to the 
 more commercial-minded promising the Chimney-money, 
 the Excise, and a raid on the Bankers and Goldsmiths, to 
 the ambitious lawyers of the Plot the remodelling of the 
 Constitution and the Judicial Bench, to the mere patriots 
 — there were some — 'all was to be left to a Parliament'. 
 This last was indeed the cry of the fainthearted lords, who 
 wished to see themselves in their old places and honours, 
 rather than to see these inferior revolutionaries dividing 
 out the spoil. Thus, far from being the leveller of the 
 ballad quoted^. West called Fergusson a 'credulous fool' 
 for holding with the selfish and timid Lords*. At the 
 same time the wild men were humoured by being allowed 
 to draw up a kind of Bill of Rights which proves the 
 urgency of the popular election of Sheriffs, the demand for 
 annual Parliament, and complete Liberty of Conscience. 
 
 To understand further the naked passions which inspired 
 these wilder men, we should read West's Fiorther JExamina- 
 Hon of 7th July, where it is stated that 'Sir John Moore 
 and the Tory Sheriffs were to be flayed and stuffed and 
 set up in Guildhall as a perpetual memory of their ill- 
 deeds '. The Lord Keeper's body was to be similarly treated, 
 whilst Parliament itself was to contain interesting specimens 
 of stuffed Pensioners. ' Some Discourse was had of applying 
 those revenues and of one half or two-thirds of the Colleges 
 in both Universities to public uses, in ease of the people's 
 taxes ' ^. 
 
 We have dwelt on the passions which underlay the Plot 
 
 1 state Trials, xi., 419. 
 
 2 Ibid., pp. 409-10. 
 
 3 * Who would all our nobles to his ninepenee bring '. — Iter Bareale, 1682, 
 
 4 Examination of Bourne, 6th July. State Tricds, xi., 414. 
 6 Jbid., ix., 420. 
 
THE PRESS AND THE RYE HOUSE PLOT 311 
 
 because they afford a view of all those fatal hopes which 
 L'Estrange had laboured to expose for twenty years. He 
 had, as we have seen, proved himself particularly obnoxious 
 to the Whig rabble at the Sheriffs' Election. His attack 
 on poor Colledge after his death, his abuse of Ignoramus 
 juries, and incessant girding at the Dissenters, had caused 
 him to be singled out as the chief provocative agent of 
 the Government — hence Fergusson's anxiety to seize him 
 and his papers as a first step in the Revolution. It was 
 therefore natural that on the discovery of the Plot and 
 those exhaustive examinations of the Council, presided over 
 by Charles himself, L'Estrange's services should be requisi- 
 tioned. Apart from his zeal, it was clear that a man whose 
 active life had been spent in spying on the agents of 
 sedition in Press and Pulpit, had a vast knowledge not 
 only of persons, but of their habits, and the most hopeful 
 methods of using prisoners towards discoveries. It is a 
 commonplace that an imperilled Government first turns 
 a suspicious eye on the channels of Publication, and for 
 this no one was so well fitted as the ex-Surveyor. Assisted 
 by his 'brother Guise', a Middlesex fellow- Justice, and 
 by Charles Hanse ^, a Court lawyer of the Middle Temple, 
 Roger set himself to harry and browbeat his old enemies 
 in the Press. His operations were not, however, confined 
 to that sphere. He concerned himself as a Magistrate 
 with several of the main seizures and discoveries, and from 
 this time onward we are to regard him as, if not a paid, 
 certainly an active Government spy, and that despite 
 various symptoms of failing health 2. We shall find that 
 pay was not furthest from his mind ^. The form of pay 
 he demanded was — besides money for fines, and the arrears 
 
 1 Whom he afterwards recommended to the King as an able assistant for 
 Graham and Burton, a commendation which brings the lawyer into association 
 with those dread instruments of arbitrary rule. 8ee his examination before the 
 'Murder' Committee, 1689. State Trials, ix., 951. 
 
 See also Gentleman's Magazine, vi., 203 (1742), which involves L'Estrange and 
 Hanse in a common guilt with Burton and Graham. ' They were the principal 
 instruments against Stephen College'. In the affair of Sir John Moore and 
 the Sheriffs' Election, they were equally criminal. 
 
 ^2 Luttrell, Diary, 5th March 1683 (i., 252) : ' Mr R. L. hath been lately very 
 indisposed with fits'. See chap, xii., 2. 
 
 3 S. P. Dom. Gar., ii., 432 (2)— 17th September 1683. He begs Mr Jenkins 
 for the King's (third) part of the £320 fine levied on Lord Clare for permitting 
 sixteen Conventicles in the Old Play House. It is instructive to find in the 
 seventeenth century this revival of the penalties inflicted by the Emperor 
 Theodosius, 381 A.D., on owners of houses, used for propagating the Arian 
 heresy. See Hodgkin's Italy and Uer Invaders, i., pt, i., 368 (ed. 1892). 
 
312 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 on his Newshooh allowance — the recovery of his old office 
 in a glorified form; but that did not come up till March 
 of the next year when the Stationers were outrunning all 
 competitors in the rush to surrender Charters. 
 
 Besides those services which we shall presently 
 enumerate, his bitter pen was requisitioned — in addition 
 to the Observators — in defence of the Government's course 
 of vengeance. The condemnation of Russell by a process 
 of constructive treason, has given rise to a library of execra- 
 tion and justification, in which the most eminent lawyers 
 took part then, and more eminent men since. Amongst 
 these justifications will be found Roger L'Estrange's Con- 
 siderations upon a Printed Sheet entitled ' The Speech of the 
 Late Lord BusselV, etc., printed of course by the faithful 
 Mrs Brome. This was a more popular form of an 
 admirable vindication {An Antidote against Poison) credited 
 to L'Estrange^ but really the work of the Court lawyer 
 Sir Bartholomew Shower. Roger's pamphlet has obvious 
 borrowings from the Antidote ^. The immediate controversy 
 was prolonged beyond the Revolution, when the 'Murder' 
 Committee recommended the reversal of the verdict. It is 
 well known that Burnet — who with Tillotson was Russell's 
 ghostly adviser in prison — was suspected of the authorship 
 of the printed speech, though he himself never confessed 
 to more than drawing up a few heads. But certain turns 
 of expression and what the Court regarded as the limit 
 of artful equivocation ^ seemed to put it beyond doubt — 
 
 1 Fountainhall's Historical Observes, ed. 1840, p. 102 : ' which looks like Eoger 
 L'Estrange's pen '. 
 
 2 As the attempt to make the doctrines of 'Julian' Johnson responsible for 
 the Conspiracy. Antidote : ' That deluge of blood which must necessarily have 
 ensued in the heats of a general rising did not affect him, because this might 
 become any heroic Christian drawn in armour by the pencil of the author of 
 JuLian (Rev. Samuel Johnson) and is not unlike to the practice of the ancient 
 Christian so shamefully practised by the same author '. Considerations : ' We 
 come now to the paper itself, which in several places looks like the character of a 
 primitive Christian exposed to the lions in a Roman Theatre, or that of an un- 
 fortunate heroic in the field, etc. '. There are several other close likenesses. The 
 Antidote and its answers are to be found in State Trials, ix., 710. L'Estrange's 
 tract was reprinted by the Clarendon Historical Society (Reprints 12 and 13, 1884) 
 with the editorial comment, ' The pamphlet here reprinted is extremely scarce ; 
 it was published by order of the Court'. See Mr Airy's note {Burnet, ii., 379). 
 Luttrell says Burnet's authorship was generally assumed. Ralph, i., 725, notes 
 L'Estrange's attempt to involve Burnet. 
 
 3 Sprat, in his Ilistwy of the Cons'piracy followed the equivocation cue so 
 strongly indicated by Shower and L'Estrange. 'Presbyterian Casuist' is the term 
 he uses. That Burnet wrote the Speech was the popular belief. See among other 
 notices the libel A Satyr on the Ghost of the Lord Russell for which the printer 
 was fined £6, 13s. 4d. (Cordy's Middlesex Records), 12th December 1683. Russell's 
 
THE PRESS AND THE RYE HOUSE PLOT 313 
 
 so L'EstraDge argued — that the document was much more 
 Burnet's than Eussell's work. Be that as it may, it was 
 the immediate cause of Burnet's exile, and its extraordinary 
 sale — it was selling an hour after the execution ^ — and the 
 widespread methods of its publication, raised it to the level of 
 a first-class libel. If Burnet did write it, or was, as L'Estrange 
 hints, ' the evil genius at my Lord's elbow ', he is to be 
 classed with Marvell, Hickeringill, and Hunt as contributing 
 one of the most popular wounds to Charles' Government. 
 
 Apart from the authorship of the piece, the printing of 
 the speech, as with the?Eegicides' Speeches in 1660-1, was the 
 sore point. ' I challenge the world to show any one colourable 
 reason for the printing of it, that's honest ', says L'Estrange, 
 echoing therein Shower's second vindication of the Govern- 
 ment. ' For what purpose was that pamphlet printed ? It 
 could not be for the good of the nation, for as I have been 
 told, that is a Erench commodity. It could not be for the 
 bookseller's profit only, for a reason to be guessed at ' \ 
 
 One thing the publication of the speech did do. It 
 helped with several other things — like Johnson's Julian 
 the Apostate and the Plot Sermon — to raise once more in 
 the mind of the Government the question of the remaining 
 liberty of the Press, and the management of the ' unknown 
 students and barristers of the Inns of Court* from whom 
 the brain of the Faction was still recruited^-. We shall 
 have occasion later on to show what form the Government's 
 resentment took. In the meantime we may describe those 
 services which L'Estrange performed as a magistrate*, in 
 
 ghost loquitor — 'I'm not the author, for-though it went disguised under my name, 
 yet Dr Burnet only made the same '. Lady Russell in her letter to the King 
 {Life of L. Russell by Lord John Russell, p. 258) refers to the argument from 
 what L'Estrange calls the ' high flights ' and * dashes ' of the Speech. In regard 
 to Tillotson's letter to Russell, printed at the close of Roger's tract, the Dean 
 informed the ' Murder ' Committee, 18th November 1689 that L'Estrange came to 
 him, and on his admitting the letter to be his, told him it was to be printed. 
 State Trials, ix., 953. 
 
 1 ' It fills all mouths and places ' (L'Estrange, Considerations, p. 45). * Every 
 line's a snare' [ibid., p. 10). 
 
 2 Viz. : That he was arrested by order of the Council. Darby (Dunton's 
 ' religious ' printer) did it. Did he print LudMo's Memoirs, 1696 ? See Prof. 
 Firth's Ludlow's Memoirs, Preface to vol. i. He printed Joannis Biddli Vita, 
 Typis Darhianis (1682), see p. 49. He|was tried 20th November 1683, and 'sub- 
 mitted ' 1st February 1684 (Hart, Index, pp. 280-2). 
 
 '^ See Shower's reply to the Answers to the Antidote, State Triols, ix., 714. 
 
 •^ Luttrell, Diary, i., 265, July 1683 : *His Majesty has been pleased to put 
 Mr L'Estrange into the Commission of the Peace'. His appointment in this 
 month of seizures is noteworthy. He was dismissed from the commission it may 
 be remembered in October 1680. Baxter was not above sneering at ' Justice ' 
 Roger L'Estrange in his second True Defence of the Meer jVonconformists (168 J) 
 when, as he knew, Roger was no longer a Justice, 
 
314 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 connection with the seizures and surveillance of the 
 disaffected. 
 
 Any information on this head must be gleaned from 
 the hitherto unpublished papers in the Eecord Office, and 
 these, though fragmentary enough, give us frequent glimpses 
 of our busy author in a character which was not altogether 
 novel. For during the great period of the Surveyorship 
 1662-5, we saw that he made himself familiar with the 
 ins and outs of Newgate and the Gatehouse, with almost 
 the authority of a Secretary of State eliciting discoveries 
 from arrested printers and booksellers by means of threats 
 and bribes. Now he extends the trade and lends a helping 
 hand to the Government all round. When the seizures 
 are over, he still acts as a City spy on the Whigs. In 
 the closing months of Charles' reign, and the first of his 
 successor, the Gates business absorbs all his time and 
 faculties. 
 
 In the bundles of letters and papers accompanying 
 the five books of the Council Minutes taken from the 
 29th June 1683 to 11th June 1684, from which Dr Sprat 
 compiled his History of the Conspiracy ^, to which L'Estrange 
 also had access for his History of the Times (1687), and which 
 Blathwayt, Clerk to the Council, delivered over to Sir Joseph 
 Williamson on 15th April 1687, we find a goodly number 
 from Roger L'Estrange to Secretary Jenkins. 
 
 During those first sessions of the Council in July when 
 the main batch of traitors was taken, we find Roger pester- 
 ing the Government with somewhat ineffective suggestions 
 and ancient information. On 2nd July and again on the 
 5th, he handed in petty informations, in the first case of 
 some one who used some bad language against the Duke 
 at Richard's Coffee-house in the company of the late 
 Protestant Joiner 2. In the other case it was *a paper I 
 
 1 There was some rivalry between L'Estrange and Sprat, who should write the 
 History of the Rye House Conspiracy. On 8th September 1683, the former 
 informed Jenkins of a plan he had ' to digest all the Insurrrections and Con- 
 spiracies in the 3 Kingdoms since his Majesty's return into an Historical model ', 
 therein making good the facetious intention ascribed by the writer of the 
 Counterfeit letter from Scotland (chap, ix., 263). 29th September is the date of 
 the Order of Council to publish a History from the Informations, and Dr Sprat to 
 write the same. S. P. Dom. Car., ii., 438 (182). Cibber {Lives (1753), iii., 236-7), 
 referring to a letter of Sprat's to Dorset expressing a distaste for the task, says 
 ' the reason he executed these orders with so much reluctance was because many 
 of the most popular men in the nation were either concerned themselves or had 
 some relatives engaged'. L'Estrange had no such delicacy, but the Government's 
 choice was wise. 
 
 8 S, P. Dom. Car., ii., 427 (159). 
 
THE PRESS AND THE RYE HOUSE PLOT 315 
 
 had by me of several years standing and pointing so 
 expressly to the Conspiracy now in question that I 
 reckon it my duty to send your Honour the original here 
 enclosed '1. Again in September, when the first batch of 
 victims was despatched, he is hot on the clue of one 
 Ralphson or Marsden, a ' non - con. traitor ', whom Roger 
 surmised was identical with a Rev. Marsden, one of the 
 Rymer's Plot conspirators. To prove this, he fetches 
 down various manuscripts and breviates of that conspiracy, 
 which show that Ralphson, against whom more recently 
 'many seditious things (words I mean) might be proved 
 in the pulpit ', was ' the agitating parson ' who was in league 
 with the Scots emissaries in June 1663, ' when it was 
 resolved to reconcile the dissenting sectaries against the 
 Royal Interest'^. 
 
 It is not clear if his mouldy breviates were of any service 
 to the Government, but before smiling at Roger's anti- 
 quarian zeal, we must remember that in many cases, the 
 same men had been on the road for twenty years, as Forbes, 
 Fergusson, Crofton, etc., and that the ramifications of the 
 Northern Conspiracy were constantly kept open during 
 this whole reign by the Government's policy of persecution, 
 and the discontents constantly reinforced from over the 
 Border, as the pressure there became more insupportable. 
 How wide that secret society had become, we can judge 
 from the informations taken by the Scottish Privy Council, 
 and the trials at the High Court of Justice at Edinburgh '. 
 To L'Estrange and his 'brother Guise' was entrusted the 
 task of sifting out one piece of the Northern entanglement, 
 that which concerned the Scotchman Menzies or Murray 
 
 1 Not in the papers of this bundle. It probably was some dissenting piece. 
 S. P. Do7R. Car., ii., 427, Nos. 29 and 36. 
 
 2 S. P. Doni. Gar., ii., 432, No. 121, 7th September 1683. This Ralphson, now 
 arrested, became the comrade of Delaune in his imprisonment. See the latter's 
 NarratiTC with Defoe's remarks in his Introduction to Delaune's Plea for the Ntyti- 
 co7iformists (1706). ' The Court told us that in respect to our education as scholars, 
 we should not be pilloried, though we deserved it — we were sent back to our con- 
 finement, and the next execution day, our books were burnt with Fire, and we 
 continue here — but since I writ this Mr Ralphson had a supersedeas by death to 
 a better place '. For Marsden in March 1665, see G.S.P. D. (1664-5), p. 246 : 'The 
 chief Agitators Atkinson, Mai-sden and others are in London '. See Cavalier arid 
 Puritan, p. 98 : ' one Mr Ralphson a dissenting minister in Newgate, died last 
 Thursday of a burning fever '. 
 
 3 State Trials, ix., 454-487. York, 11th July, 'Great numbers of Scotch 
 pedlars flock to us ', S. P. Dom. Car., ii., 427, (No. 45), Examination of 
 Scotch pedlars in England ' who came in in 1674, 1675, 1678, and 1682, and who 
 went about armed with two«edged swords and pistols '. 
 
316 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 and his wife who passed in London for the Lady Kildare, 
 and whose house in her husband's absence became the 
 rendezvous of the most dangerous characters. This man 
 was closely associated with the moving spirit of the Scots 
 conspirators in London, James Nesbit, already alluded to. 
 Kesbit was a schoolmaster, and the familiar of the ' agitating 
 parsons' in the City, the few dissenting clergy who leant 
 an ear to the Plot — Owen, Griffel, Mead of Stepney, and 
 Stephen Lobb^ Next to the exiled Argyle, Gordon of 
 Earlston was the principal name in the Scottish branch 
 of the Conspiracy, and Nesbit under the name of Johnson 
 held him informed of the movements in London. Menzies 
 as Nesbit's associate went by the name of Murray. Whilst 
 Nesbit in writing to the Scotch confederates used the cant 
 of commerce to disguise his treasonable meaning, Murray 
 in May informed the Northern meetings, under the metaphor 
 of marriage, that the Insurrection was to be speedily 
 opened in England. 
 
 On the discovery Menzies fled, but in October a letter 
 was intercepted from him to his wife addressed to the 
 Golden Bell in Bloomsbury, where on the 6th L'Estrange 
 seized her papers^ and had her committed. She admitted 
 that her husband came to London in March, 'just to time 
 the execution of the Conspiracy,' and that 'jfie intended 
 for Carolina '. At present, however, he was with other 
 plotters awaiting a ship for Germany and the name of 
 Harwich mentioned in the intercepted letter aroused Roger's 
 suspicions of that port, which was accordingly watched. 
 
 Fergusson — the Ohservator of August regretfully remarked 
 — had escaped a month before^, from what port we know 
 not. Against this man, as we know, L'Estrange nourished 
 a personal hatred, and no one of the plotters with the 
 possible exception of Hunt, did he seek from the earliest 
 discovery of the Plot with more persistence. At the time 
 the pursuit was hottest, we have his urgent despatch to 
 
 1 Examination of Nesbit, 5th July 1683, *,Sf. P. Dom. Car., ii., 427 (36). 
 
 2 Which included a paper on the Carolina project, and other notices of 
 movements in the semi-cant language. See the two papers, 3rd and 6th October, 
 1683 {S. P. Dom. Car., ii., 433 (41 and 61)) the latter being Mrs Menzies' 
 Information * Coram me, Roger L'Estrange '. 
 
 ^ Ohservator, i., 398, August 1683. 
 
 * Observatm: — There's no news of Fergusson then ? 
 
 ' Trimmer. — Not a word and yet what a deal of hunting, setting, and search- 
 ing has there been about that man. But I believe he's got over the water and 
 really 'tis a great providence '. Such were supposed to be Mr Trimmer's true 
 sentiments. 
 
THE PRESS AND THE RYE HOUSE PLOT 317 
 
 the Secretary, which seems to prove that if the popular 
 notion of Fergusson's double treachery being the cause 
 of his marvellous escapes be true, at least the agents of 
 the Government were not in the secret. 
 
 L'Sstraoige to Secretary Jenkins. 
 
 * Qth July 1683. 
 
 *Capt. Johnson lives next door to the "White Lyon in 
 Old Gravell Land, a member of Fergusson's congregation 
 and a sea-commander formerly. He has got an Estate 
 and is lately removed to it, being a purchaser of Friston 
 Hall, in Essex some 3 miles from Saxmundham and 
 about that distance from Aldebrough (as in Camden's map) ^ 
 It is (I am told) a solitary farm. Capt. Smith is now in 
 town. He lives in Broad Street, near Old Gravell Land, 
 a new street not quite finished. Both these Captains are 
 (or were) disciples of Fergusson and of so great credit with 
 him, that they have been still associated with all his secrets, 
 and seen his person too when he durst not show his head. 
 
 * These houses have several backways ; my informant is 
 very confident, that Fergusson is in one of these two houses, 
 and that which makes him so, is that yesterday Fergusson's 
 daughter ^ was seen to pass and repass with bundles under 
 her arm, and to enter into Johnson's house. 
 
 ' The person that saw her is Thos. Greyney at the White 
 Lyon in Old Gravell Land and a very loyal man. 
 
 ' With pardon, my conjecture is that Fergusson's daughter 
 might perhaps have some things to give to her father and 
 Johnson's people to take care of them, and that Fergusson 
 is with Johnson at his country house ^. 
 
 * Friston lies for the sea and possibly Fergusson waits there 
 for a passage. But there is not time to prevent him. I 
 lay great weight upon this Information. — Your honour's, etc., 
 
 'ROGER L'ESTRANGE '. 
 
 1 Saxmundham is in Norfolk, some 12 miles from the Essex border. 
 
 2 S. P. Dovi. Car., ii., 427, No. 243. See Mr Stanley Weyman's Shrew.shmy 
 for a fanciful picture of this girl, whom the novelist would like to see in the 
 same historical category with Lady Russell. There is something of her more 
 akin to fact in Fergusson the Plotter. 
 
 3 Fergusson the Plotter, pp. 170-2. In his letters to his wife on the eve 
 of the discovery, Fergusson is very earnest in desiring her to take Hannah 
 back with her to Bath. There is a good sketch of Fergusson in the tract 
 erroneously ascribed to L'Estrange {see Appendix), * La Conspiration faite 
 contre le roi Gh. II., 1685. Pr^dioateur s^ditieux, autheur de quantity de 
 libelles d^flfamatoires contre le Roy et ses ministres, ^oquent inquiet, adroit, 
 znalin, et ennemy implacable du Roi . 
 
318 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 Ayloffe and Fanshawe came in for a share of the busy 
 Magistrate's attention, whose widespread correspondence 
 and name brought him numerous notices of strange men 
 in the City and Country ^. Argyll's books were taken and 
 the information having been brought to L'Estrange, they 
 were, despite Messenger Stephen's protest (he had now 
 'senselessly' changed sides) brought by Jenkins' special 
 messenger, to his house in High Holborn. Various papers 
 seized were likewise referred to the ex-Surveyor, and the 
 examination and committal of numerous small fry 
 of the conspiracy referred to him. There were besides 
 all those suspects connected with the Press, of whom 
 Roger's unparalleled knowledge and opinion had to be 
 sought. 
 
 The person he dealt with in this connection was Wm. 
 Blathwayt, Clerk of the Council, already referred to as 
 having in his possession the 'Plot' Minutes of the Council. 
 Those papers which referred to the Press, Blathwayt con- 
 signed to L'Estrange, much as Arlington did a dozen years 
 before. Unfortunately we have no trace of the books and 
 papers referred to in this correspondence. 
 
 r Estrange to Blathwayt ^. 
 
 'lUh July 186S. 
 
 ' Sir, — I have carefully perused all the papers received. 
 The Prints have nothing in them to be laid hold of. Those 
 with the shorthand Sermon Notes, and an old letter are 
 together bundled up in the Pacquet. 
 
 ' The letter and Certificate here enclosed are likewise of 
 ancient date. 
 
 ' The Certificate is only matter of form and recommenda- 
 tion of young men to be entertained in the exercise of the 
 ministry. The letter is the whimsy of a fanatical Scotch 
 Minister written in his banishment to his congregation, rude 
 and violent enough. 
 
 ' It bears date in the time of the present concerns at 
 Durham and nothing in it that I see useful or remarkable. 
 
 1 He has information that they are lurking at Hitchin, Herts {S. P. Dom. 
 Car., ii-., 433 (143)), 17th October 1683. 
 a S. P. Dom. Qar., ii., 428 (39). 
 
THE PRESS AND THE RYE HOUSE PLOT 319 
 
 But yet I have noted some passages in it with alphabetical 
 reference to the Paper itself. — Yours, etc., 
 
 'ROGER UESTRANGE'. 
 
 L'Estrange with his powerful memory extending over 
 twenty years' sedition, and his ' alphabetical references ' 
 was admirably suited for sifting out the inferior characters 
 of the Conspiracy. There were, for example, the servants of 
 the two most dangerous men — next Fergusson — in London, 
 Aaron Smith, would-be Counsel for College at Oxford and 
 Plot-emissary to the Scots, and Richard Goodenough, under- 
 sheriff during the shrievalty of Pilkington and Shute, and 
 general counsel for the disaffected. The servant of the first 
 of these was Samuel Starkey, nephew of Starkey the Whig 
 bookseller, Clavell's competitor in printing the Term 
 Catalogues, and a constant irritation to the Government. 
 Young Starkey earned the goodwill of his uncle by being 
 useful in the dark schemes of his master, and after a 
 pretended dismissal from Smith's service on account of a 
 growing detestation of that gentleman's seditious associates, 
 was taken back into his service when the latter returned 
 from his mission to Scotland. On the discovery, he was 
 naturally ordered into custody. A letter to Jenkins of 
 6th October 1683 complains that but for Sir Roger's ^ rigour, 
 he might have been useful in discovering the whereabouts 
 of Armstrong, Grey, and the rest. His information of 5th 
 July is quoted here because of the light it throws on the 
 confederates in the Press 2. 
 
 Information of Sam Starhey. 
 
 * Aaron Smith (when he was clerk) caused him to write 
 several copies of writings called Queries for the Better 
 Estahlishment of Laws for England. He made 7 or 8 copies. 
 Smith told him to be secret as he valued the friendship of 
 his uncle (the bookseller). 
 
 ' He constantly went with Aaron to meetings, and " thus I 
 remarked upon these sermons, that they were consonant, to 
 such proposals and papers as aforesaid (the Queries) and the 
 ministers laid before the congregation the dangers they 
 were in, and what a cloud of persecution was likely to 
 
 1 .S^. p. Dorti. Gar., ii., 433 (43). Sir Roger Harwich, not Roger L'Estrange. 
 - Information of Samuel Starkey, 5th July 1683. Endorsed 'the original 
 delivered to Mr Attorney General, 9th July 1683 '. S. P. D&tn. Car. , ii., 427 (60). 
 
320 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 obscure the Gospel of Christ Jesus and would pray for the 
 confounding of those hellish instruments (meaning, I conceive, 
 the King and the Court)". . . . Simon Mayne (son to Mayne, 
 one of the late King's Judges), Thos. Haselrig (kinsman 
 to the late Sir Arthur Haselrig), had each a copy of the 
 Queries ; so Dr Harrington ^ (brother to the late Sir James) '. 
 
 There is talk of a treasonable letter, burnt by Starkey, 
 containing an account of how the Whigs were kept hot, 
 and then ' " goes on to Smith, the bookseller of the Elephant 
 and Castle in Cornhill, how he was had before the Council 
 for printing the Association and Queries upon it — that Smith 
 denied it stiffly and bravely, was true and trusting and 
 ought to be valued. Then he set forth a dialogue betwixt 
 him" and the King in Council . . , and commends the 
 boldness and audacity of Smith ^ in his answers. ... It 
 also says he was pleased at the Satyrs (a libellous paper 
 upon the King and Court) and told Mayne that "Dryden 
 was suspected to have writ it and was assassinated one 
 night upon his coming from ' Will's Coffee-house in Covent 
 Garden'". 
 
 'He overheard that Smith directed Gates and directed 
 others what they were to say; Smith being looked upon 
 as " an ancient stickler for the Cause and a man of profound 
 parts", they consulted him'. 
 
 The other servant referred to, Hartshorn, who served 
 Goodenough, was thought to know enough to ruin his 
 master, but appears less ingenuous than Starkey. When 
 L'Estrange heard of his release, he busied himself to blast 
 his credit beforehand. Hartshorn's information is one of the 
 earliest, and like Starkey's bore out the connection between 
 the Faction and the booksellers. It mentions a company 
 consisting of the famous Francis Jenks^, Goodenough, etc., 
 ' the day before my Lord Shaftesbury's trial ', when it was 
 decided to order Cotterel, stationer at the Three Legs in 
 
 1 Harrington was one of the Green Ribbon Club according to Dangerfield's 
 List {see his Narrative), Mr Henry Starkey appears both in Dangerfield's and 
 Nat Wade's Lists {see Sitwell's First Wldg, p. 200) along with West, Bourne, 
 Aaron Smith, etc. 
 
 2 Smith (Old Frank) had fled, as we saw, but on returning towards end of 
 this year was by L'Estrange's order, committed. Smith Sen. was seized, 3rd 
 March 1684. His son and daughter (Eleanor) in Messenger Steven's report 
 (15th January 1684) ' traverst their indictments till next sessions '. S. P. Bom. 
 Car., ii., 436 (35). 
 
 3 Of JenM Speech fame, June 1676. See chap, vii., 200. 
 
THE PRESS AND THE RYE HOUSE PLOT 321 
 
 the Poultry, to get printed a Chronology, i.e., a list of Court 
 enormities. Jenks naively asked ' if they would insert the 
 manner of the designs they had to kill the King, that it 
 might be for future ages to see how they had served the 
 son as they had served the old King'. But Goodenough 
 said : * The Whigs were too great politicians to do the same 
 thing over again, etc. . . . they would have enough Billa 
 Vera's to hang all the butterflies at Court '^. Hartshorn 
 was now at liberty, but one of the 'butterflies at Court', 
 Roger L'Estrange, on the 12th July informed the Secretary 
 that * though sound in credit at Whitehall ' he was * a very 
 scandalous, dangerous fellow. He was a prisoner and since 
 this conspiracy came to be laid open, he hath been set at 
 liberty, but I cannot learn upon what terms '. To crown all, 
 the writer has lately learned that Hartshorn 'hath lately 
 forged a writ in counterfeit of Mr Justice Witham's hand ' 
 and indeed * saw it himself ' \ 
 
 Among the other inferior persons of the Conspiracy on 
 whom L'Estrange kept a wary eye were Prosser, Cawdron ^, 
 and Glover. The first was a servant of a certain Eastwood, 
 but had decamped a year before after robbing his master. 
 On 6th July, Prosser had been discharged attendance on 
 the Council without fees and under a cloud of suspicion *. 
 In October when L'Estrange examined the papers of 
 Katherine Menzies or Kildare, he found some corre- 
 spondence from Prosser. This man is interesting as one 
 of the intermediaries between the booksellers and the 
 Conventicles. We shall find him later concerned in the 
 distressing case of Child's perversion and suicide. On 
 that occasion Larkins was employed to print. The dates 
 on which Starkey and the other printers appeared before 
 
 1 He also mentioned the King's disgust at the City — the cause of his pro- 
 jected Palace at Winchester. There are many songs on the subject (S. P. 
 Bom. Car,, ii., 427 (152)). 
 
 2 S. P. Bom. Car., ii., 427 (291). An intercepted letter of Hartshorn, warning 
 the Earl of Clare that he is being suborned against him, dated Gatehouse, 
 September 1683, shows that Roger's hint was taken, and the ' dangerous fellow' 
 re- committed. The hint of subornation seems to point to similar practices to 
 those which made such a scandalous chapter in the Popish Plot. L'Estrange 
 managed the prosecution of Clare and demanded a share in the spoil. See p. 311. 
 
 •^ Steward to Earl of Clare, a ' receiver of Oliver's in Ireland ... a matter 
 excepted out of the Act of Oblivion', says L'Estrange to Jenkins, 17th October 1683 
 {S. P. Bom. Car., ii., 433 (147)). In the same letter which shows him to be over- 
 whelmed with ' Plot ' work he highly commends the exertions of Hanse. Cawdron 
 was sentenced for seditious works, 12th May 1684. 
 
 ^ Council Minutes of 6th July (S. P. Bom. Car., ii., 427 (No. 223)). He was a 
 fanatic bookseller, and had been prosecuted with the John Howe noticed on p. 327 
 for A Saiyr upon Scroggs, 1680 (Hart, Index, p. 276). He appears again, xi., 356. 
 
322 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 the Council were 8tli July and again on 29th September. 
 We see the hand of L'Estrange in the proceedings. Besides 
 Starkey, Cotterel (Printer of the Queries), Dunton, and 
 Parkhurst, the great Presbyterian bookseller, appeared i. 
 These men were accused of printing the obnoxious Plot 
 Sermon'^. Dunton said he refused to take a hand in it, 
 but Starkey confessed to printing. Dunton's matrimonial 
 bliss was interfered with by these examinations, and after 
 the Monmouth Rising he fled to New England to collect 
 a debt as he humorously says ^. At this examination 
 also appeared Lowndes, the great bookseller in the Strand, 
 against whom 'is nothing but Mr L'Estrange and the 
 Common Seargeant to his prejudice'*. 
 
 In September the four Stationers and authors examined 
 were Chiswell, who had absorbed, and was increasingly to 
 absorb, the greatest trade in London, 'Julian' Johnson, 
 Russell's intrepid chaplain, Darby ^ and Curtis, the children 
 of the seditious Press. The cause of this second appearance 
 of the printers was the publication of Lord Russell's Speech 
 and Julian the Apostate, the latter blamed, as we saw, by 
 Shower for the sentiments which inspired Russell and the 
 Conspirators. The first part of this famous tract came out 
 in summer 1682, the second had been ready on the eve 
 of the discovery, but was judiciously withdrawn from 
 publication, though the copies were carefully stored till 
 the omens were more auspicious. Besides ' Julian ', Darby 
 admitted printing 20,000 copies of Lord Russell's Speech, and 
 Curtis the first part of Julian ' in the country ' when his wife 
 was carrying on his Mercury ^. He denied, however, printing 
 
 1 Council Minutes, 8th July 1683 (*S^. P. Dom. Gar., ii., 428 (138)). 
 
 2 Parkhurst said the Plot Sermon was ' a Sermon sold up and down called 
 Truth Will Out' {S. P. Dom. Car., ii., 428 (147)). Starkey had been outlawed in 
 1682 for printing an Historical Discourse of the Laws of England from MS. Notes by 
 J. Selden, Esq. (Hart, Index, p. 258). 
 
 3 Life and Errors, p. 79. 
 
 4 See his character, ibid., p. 213 ; for Starkey, iUd., p. 210. He fled to 
 Amsterdam, where Dunton met him. 
 
 6 S. P. Dom. Car., ii., 433 (244-7): 'Darby is a most dangerous, desperate 
 fellow. If any information shall produce an order for searching his house, I 
 humbly desire the messenger may advise with me, for he has (or had at least) a 
 secret conveyance for 50 or 60 persons which I can direct to '. Roger L'Estrange 
 to Jenkins, 7th September 1683, ibid., ii., 432 (117). 
 
 6 The True Protestant Mercury, for which (10th June 1682) she was indicted 
 when she refused to inform of her husband's whereabouts (Hart, Index, p. 254), 
 Nothing is more remarkable than the inveteracy of these men, Darby was tried 
 20th November 1683, and on his submission, 1st February 1684, was lightly 
 treated. Curtis was sentenced on 21st April 1684 for yet another libel. The 
 Night- Walkers of Bloomshv/ry (Hart, Index, pp. 280 and 283). 
 
THE PRESS AND THE RYE HOUSE PLOT 323 
 
 Hunt's Postscript. Johnson admitted the authorship of 
 Julian, and stated that Hunt and the great Whig lawyer, 
 Sir William Jones, approved it. Chiswell, like a tradesman, 
 shuffled out of the matter. He ' took it {Julian) for a piece 
 of History'. He * never read it', 'knew the author in 
 all things to be a conformist '. * There was no obligation 
 to put his name to it ' — which was quite true ^. 
 
 Although L'Estrange does not appear by name in this 
 scene, we may reasonably conjecture that the leading 
 questions were suggested by him. 
 
 These examinations settled in the mind of the Govern- 
 ment the need for drastic and final action in connection 
 with the Stationers. The absence of any Press Act — and 
 the hopelessness of expecting another — made an extension 
 of the general attack on corporations to include the 
 rebellious Company very necessary. In October, the 
 Stationers were informed that a thorough purge was con- 
 templated, and that body, enfeebled by the late proscriptions 
 and prosecutions not only of men like Larkins, Curtis, 
 and Smith, but 'great' men like Chiswell, Dunton, and 
 Parkhurst, offered less resistance than at any moment of 
 the reign. In future, it was announced, no officer of the 
 Company, not approved by the Crown, could take office. 
 At the same time, the Charter was to be called in and a 
 new one granted. For practical purposes, these resolutions 
 finish the History of this famous Company. 
 
 There was one man more obnoxious than all the rest 
 put together. It was rumoured in October that Harry 
 Care of Weekly Pacquet fame, and collaborator with Milton's 
 nephew, John Phillips ^ in numerous Plot Narratives, etc., 
 had found salvation in the Plot discovery. In the 
 very first of the trials he was mentioned as one who was 
 suing for grace, with promises of discoveries^. There 
 is something peculiarly mortifying in this conversion under 
 
 1 S. p. Bom. Car., ii., 433 (611). Council Minutes of 29th September 1683. 
 See his lengthy apology to Jenkins, 15th January 1683-4, S. P. Dom. Car., ii., 
 436 (31). He is a hearty lover of the King and Government and conformity to 
 the Church of England is his avowed principle. Dunton {Life and Errors, p. 204) : 
 ' His name at the bottom of a title page does sufficiently recommend it '. The 
 list of Chiswell's publications given in the Gentleman's Magazine, liv., 179, does 
 not include Julian. 
 
 2 ' J. Phillips, the supposed writer of The King's Evidence Justified and some 
 other Whig stuff . . . prized very much by the party upon the score of his 
 having been brought up at the feet of that great Gamaliel, John Milton'. 
 Heraclitus, p. 64. 
 
 3 See Walcot's Information, Staie Trials, ix., 449. 
 
324 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 peril, and at the expense of old associates, of a main instru- 
 ment like Care. It has been said that nearly all the 
 Whig writers ' ratted ' ^. But he had said such things, 
 and in such a way as made a change seem out of nature. 
 The rumours brought no balm to one wounded breast. 
 Roger L'Estrange was alarmed as he had been when Nedham 
 became in the same way eligible for Court favour. His 
 revengeful spirit lies patent in the letter he addressed to 
 the Secretary, 25th October 1683. 
 
 ' Care (the writer of the Facquet) is certainly making 
 his application for favour. I have written to Mr Attorney- 
 General about it. Give me leave, I beseech your Honour, to 
 think that after all the scandals that villain has thrown 
 upon me for doing my duty, I have some sort of reason 
 to hope that he may be obliged to set himself right with me. 
 I have no other end in this, than to offer that as a pacifica- 
 tion of giving him this answer upon his Petition, that his 
 way would be to go to L'Estrange and to see what report he 
 will give concerning him upon a consideration of what he 
 has to say. 
 
 *Upon this authority and occasion of examining him. 
 I can ask him such questions as nobody else is privy to. 
 I do certainly know that he can make very great discoveries, 
 and I will as certainly put him to it. And besides (with 
 honour to your character and person) there is a very 
 great respect both to his Majesty's service, his ministers 
 and his learned Council in this very offer of diverting 
 this office out of their hands. For I will make no scruple 
 of appearing in many things, wherein if I should 
 transfer an importunity to your Honour, it would not 
 be answerable to your Professions and to your obligation 
 of my being, Sir, Your Honour's most affec. obedient 
 Servant, 
 
 'ROGER L'ESTRANGE '2. 
 
 Upon what terms Care was received into the loyal camp, 
 we do not know, but from the abuse which still publicly 
 came from L'Estrange it is clear that his lust for revenge 
 
 1 Save Shadwell. Beljame, Le Public et les Hommes de Lettres, p. 220. But 
 see Care's Defence in the preface to his Lex Draconica (1687), where he protests 
 that it was ' not all for belly's sake '. 
 
 2 S. P. Dom. Car., ii., 434 (192) 
 
THE PRESS AND THE RYE HOUSE PLOT 325 
 
 was not satisfied ^. Another and greater prey seemed to 
 lie at his hand, and with the same hypocritical pretence 
 of ' having no other end in this ', he proceeded to demand 
 it. It was in October that he heard of the steps to be taken 
 to reduce the Stationers, and that the Company was fore- 
 stalling ruin by a complete submission, which might be as 
 successful as that in 1670. A new Charter and, sooner 
 or later (as he believed), the old state of things, was contrary 
 to the wishes of L'Estrange, who desired nothing more than 
 to see this seed-bed of sedition for ever dischartered and 
 managed by a Crown officer — himself for preference. As 
 he had said long ago, so he repeated now — 
 
 ' The interest of their Trade and that of the State are A 
 diametrically opposite — for the worst books bring them most 
 profit, and there is a mystery in the manage of these affairs, 
 which will certainly mislead and impose upon any man, that 
 is not thoroughly acquainted with all the secrets of their 
 business '. .' 
 
 ' The short way ', he proceeds, ' to keep them in order will * 
 be this. His Majesty may be pleased to appoint a standing 
 officer of his own to Superintend the Company in such 
 manner and with such power and limitations as shall be 
 found reasonable. The Company to allow him £200 a year 
 for the purpose of his establishment, which may well be 
 afforded out of above £5,000 a year which the Company 
 enjoys by the bounty of the Crown ^. I do not propose this 
 upon any prospect of recommending myself to that office, 
 though I have a Patent already of 20 years' standing, which 
 constitutes me the sole overseer of the Press, and his 
 Majesty knows it was never so clear as while I was 
 supported in the execution of that duty. It is no vanity 
 for a gentleman to pretend to any extraordinary Faculty 
 in an employment of that quality and, therefore (being sure 
 
 1 In James II.'s reign, however, some sort of peace was probably arranged. 
 They both appeared against Halifax's Letter to a Duseyiter, and in his Lex 
 Draconica Care went far beyond L'Estrange's limits in publishing a list of 
 religious bonds and persecutions which made a clear case for Parker's plea for 
 the Repeal of the Tests. As to Harry's latter end, it was like that of Dryden, 
 L'Estrange, Settle, and so many others — wretched. ' It is true ', says Defoe 
 (Introduction to 1st volume of Hevieiv (1704), Lee's ed., ii., 618), 'he had his 
 imperfections and the fury of circumstances, and the unhappy love of his bottle, 
 reduced him low for a man of his capacity '. Defoe esteems himself unworthy 
 ' to carry his books after him '. For a story in connection with Roger's feeble 
 reply to Halifax's tract see U.M.C., 7th Mept. {Verney MSS.\ p. 5056. 
 
 2 From the Monopoly in various Church books, Bibles, etc. 
 
326 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 the King is now betrayed and as certain that he shall never 
 be betrayed by me) I take the freedom to speak my fears 
 that it will be hard to find another hand that can do it and 
 when I shall have set the which a-going, I shall as readily 
 submit that anyone else may reap the credit and the finish 
 of my endeavours, which has hitherto been the constant fate 
 of Your Honour's much obliged and affec. Humble Servant, 
 
 ' ROGER L'ESTRANGE ' \ 
 
 Happily Jenkins had sufficient sense to reject this 
 advice. But the reform of the Stationers was to be none 
 the less real. At this moment, the Company was again 
 encumbered by their perennial dispute with Oxford over 
 their monopoly in Bibles. Jenkins like Williamson, was 
 closely attached to Oxford. Among other slight things 
 Dr Wallis, who was delegated to plead Oxford's case, had 
 done service in correctly deciphering the secret corre- 
 spondence of the Whig traitors 2. 
 
 The matter dragged on through the winter 1683-4. On 
 the 23rd March 1684 the Stationers presented a petition to 
 the King, the preamble of which recounts their History 
 and Privileges from the Incorporation by Mary. Without 
 quoting this lengthy document^ in full, it may be said 
 that it asks the King to assume the veto on all appoint- 
 ments and asks him to confirm the appointments of 
 the present ofiicers ITorton, Towse, and Hills, all men of 
 traditional loyalty. The Clerk and the inferior officers are to 
 be appointed directly by the Crown. In the new Charter the 
 King is besought to insert such clauses, as will for all time 
 make seditious printing impossible. Finally an important 
 clause which foreshadows the Proprietary Act of Queen Anne, 
 1710, asks for the sole right of entering copies in a book. 
 
 A more abject apology than the peroration it would 
 be impossible to conceive. 
 
 One result of this prescriptive method was that lists of 
 the loyal and disloyal were canvassed for transmission to 
 the Secretary's Office. There is, for example, a paper dated 
 5th April 1686 subscribed by three Stationers (evidently those 
 proscribed by the chief Stationers) presenting a list of the 
 present assistants 'with the character of those that are or 
 
 1 11th October 1683, S. I\ Dom. Car., ii., 433 (65). 2 JUd., 434 (74). 
 
 3 Ibid., 437 (101). The Stationers Orders were exemplified in 1684. See 
 Arber, Registers, i., 4-20. 
 
THE PRESS AND THE RYE HOUSE PLOT 327 
 
 have been factious to which we have put a cross against 
 their names ' ^ . 
 
 From these rival lists the Attorney-General no doubt 
 arranged a comfortable compromise. The degradation of a 
 great Society could go no further. 
 
 There was one important official who had received his 
 dimittis a few months after the settling of the Charter^. 
 Stevens (or Stephens), the messenger, had, as we saw, ' turned 
 Whig most senselessly' about the time of the Sheriffs' 
 Election and acted injuriously to the Government. The 
 Ohservators of 1683 are full of charges against this poor 
 man, as that when in the pursuit of Hunt, the Whig 
 lawyer^, he whiled away his time, informed Hunt's wife, 
 and babbled his warrant all over town*. 
 
 He contested, as we saw, L'Estrange's right to the seizure 
 of Argyll's books, and when any of the Faction was in danger 
 gave timely warning in the coffee-houses. In September 
 1683, when it became clear that Robin was bent on follow- 
 ing out his Lord Mayor's warrant to the extirpation of the 
 Ohservator, L'Estrange hunted out one poor wretch, John 
 Howe, a factious bookseller, who declared that Stephens was 
 persuaded by a bribe of 20s. to leave him alone, despite 
 his warrant^. 
 
 The renewed prosecution of the Ohservator came on in 
 the very month when he was asking Jenkins to make him 
 Crown Governor of the Stationers at a salary of £200 a 
 year. L'Estrange wrote here and there in a blind fury, 
 first to destroy Stephens' credit, then to prove that the 
 Ohservator was not a newspaper, and in the last resort to 
 produce his ever-ready 'patent of more than 20 years' 
 
 1 ^S-. p. Bom. Car., ii., 437 (129). 
 
 '•^ Luttrell, Diary, 19th December 1684 (i., 323): *Robt. Stephens, messenger 
 of the Press is lately turned out '. 
 
 '^ L'Estrange and the pursuit of Hunt. See a letter to Jenkins, 18th January 
 1684 (/?. P. Uom. Car., ii., 436 (79)), 'without doubt, Hunt is privy to the 
 conspiracy'. Let him search his friend Lovel's Chambers. Thompson's Loyal 
 Intelligence, 20th February 1683, says that Hunt has fled to Holland. See also 
 the Loyal Intelligence, 1st March 1682, for Steven's character. 
 
 ■t See Ohservators for 20th and 23rd April 1683 (i., 323 and 325) : * a rogue that 
 was accompted the very scandall of the Printing trade while he wrought among 
 them. How often has this glavering fellow come to me for notes against Care, 
 Curtis, Starkey, and others ! . . . I give him those instances that would certainly 
 have reached 'em, but the devil-a-bit I ever heard of them more '. 
 
 6 Howe had the honour despite his present treachery to be tried with Baxter, 
 May 1685. His case is quoted by the author of Reasons Humbly Offered for the 
 Liberty of UyiUcensed Printing (1693), who was probably Chas. Blount. 
 L'Estrange himself took his Information, ISth October 1683 {S. P. Dom. Car.y 
 ii., 433 (149)). Such was his notion of justice. 
 
328 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 standing ' ^. In spite of all this Joanna Brome was indicted, 
 and the Ohse^^vator presented for a second time as a disturber 
 of the Peace. But while nothing came of the Presentment, 
 Robin's fate was sealed. In December 1684 he was dis- 
 missed ^ but all true lovers of virtue triumphant will rejoice 
 to hear that he had a glorious resurrection at the Revolution. 
 In one sense, therefore, his conversion was not so senseless as 
 Fergusson's. It may be of some interest to note here that 
 'Popish Nat' Thompson, Stephens' old employer in the 
 days before the Libels Committee of 1677, had also his 
 dwiittis in November 1687 from gaol to another world. 
 Since his pillorying in July 1682, half his life had been 
 spent in prison, and at the time of Stephens' dismissal he 
 was committed for a libel The ProdigaVs Return Home, 
 which denied the King's supremacy^. 
 
 One department of literature, constantly under L'Estrange's 
 lash for twenty years and the very vehicle of sedition, now 
 presented itself for correction. Modern readers can scarcely 
 understand how long and obstinately the Newsletter contested 
 the ground with the printed sheet *. Its greater freedom in 
 treating Parliamentery matters gave it a decided bias towards 
 what was then called sedition. In loyal Muddiman's hands 
 this was not the case ; but even in the days of his monopoly 
 L'Estrange had protested against the immunity of this kind. 
 Now the Penny Post enabled a new race of Whig news- 
 
 1 See his letters to his lawyer friend Chas. Hanse and to Jenkins, both of 
 date 18th October 1683 (^. P. Bom. Car., ii., 433 (1»1)). The former deplores 
 the law charges (evidently the Ohservator was in no great danger) of £20 for 
 the presentment, and defames Stephens on the score of Hunt, that to the 
 Secretary in connection with Howe. Both show him in a mean light ; Howe's 
 crime was an indecent attack in verse on the Duchess of Portsmouth which 
 Eoger forwards, S. P. Dom. Car., ii., 433 (150), see also Dunton, Life and 
 Eirors, p. 220. 
 
 2 His successor was Thos. Saywell, who acted more ' loyally '. At the time 
 of the Monmouth Eising he journeyed into the West in the trail of Jeffries. The 
 Press messenger's salary was £50 per annum [Secret Services of Charles II. and 
 James II. — Cam. Soc, 23rd January 1683), besides expenses. 
 
 3 Luttrell, Diary, i., 176, 381 and 421. The Ohservator (i., 325) in which 
 Roger defends his paper is of some importance for the History of the Press. 
 Stephens 'threw down His Majesty's Proclamation of May 1680, and so the 
 Bill was found '. 
 
 4 See chap, v., 155. Mr J. B. Williams' instructive article on the Newshooks 
 and letters of news of the Restoration [Eng. Hist. Rev., April 1908) does not 
 bring down their History to the present date. Mr Stanley Weyman's treatment 
 of Mr Brome, the Newsletter writer, in Shrewsbury is not open to so much objection 
 as his portrait of Fergusson. See also Aubrey, Lives of Eminent Men (ed. Clarke), 
 i., 15 ; North, Examen, p. 133, and Beljame, Le Puhlicet ct les Ilommes de 
 Lettres (1881), pp. 174-5; Wood, Life and Times, Clarke, iii., 180; Lady 
 Newdigate - Newdegate's Cavalier and Puritan, introduction, pp. viii.-ix., has 
 some general remarks on the NevMetter. This work is a collection of Extracts 
 from a series of Neiosletters in 19 folio vols, from 1675-1712. 
 
THE PRESS AND THE RYE HOUSE PLOT 329 
 
 men to make it the very vehicle of sedition. Perhaps 
 the most obnoxious of these was that 'little Hancock' 
 of Libels Committee fame, and so often inveighed against 
 by L'Estrangei. In the Whig triumph of 1678-81, no 
 one could compete with him. But there were others, and 
 a natural rivalry existed of which the Government now 
 took advantage in the case of William Cotton 2, 'now (15th 
 October 1683) in Mr Atterbury's house, in close custody'. 
 
 The valuable document^ in which Cotton exposes his 
 brethren and the character of the trade is too long for full 
 quotation here. For himself he says : ' I did not hold corre- 
 spondence with those men myself for the news, but procured 
 it by other hands from them, and so I gave so much a 
 week for it as it cost them, and our coffeehouse had Mr 
 Hancock's letter again in an hour's time, when I had taken 
 out what I had occasion for'. Of Hancock: 'He is one 
 that hath great intelligence, both from Court and Council. . . . 
 He hath often very private things which he doth show to 
 such as he thinks good, and whatever is considerable 
 whether publique or private he hath it with the first. ... I 
 believe he hath a great number of customers, since I lost 
 mine, for when I wrote he brought above 300 letters oft- 
 times to the Post'. He gets £4, £5, and £6 a year for 
 letters. * I have often heard that he made it his boast that 
 it was worth (I am sure) £100 a year, I think £150 '. 
 Combes * the coffee-house writer is here. He makes up for 
 
 1 See chap, vii., 178. Epistle Dedicatory to 2nd pt. of Dissenters' Sayings: 
 
 * What if ye should set forth your grievances in a Protestant Mercury, or get 
 little Hancock to open your case in one of his Nevjsletters ? He'll do it for pence 
 a piece and that's just 18 pence for his reward '. The Nev)sletter business was a 
 lucrative one. 30s. 8d. a quarter is quoted as a fair price, £6 a year elsewhere. 
 The stock-in-trade was modest. The majority of writers did not trouble to 
 plant a correspondence, but either bought the news they stuffed into country 
 letters from other news- writers, or as in the case of Cotton, cited above, borrow- 
 ing for an hour from a neighbouring coffee-house Hancock's Letter. Hancock 
 was now in gaol, and very willing to do a little spying for Liberty. S. P. Bom. 
 Car., ii., 427 (153), 5th July 1683. 
 
 2 Often lashed by L'Estrange, to whom his arrest was doubtless due. See 
 Observator, 230, 25th October 1682 : 'I hope the written news-sheet shall go current 
 still, and Hancock, Kid, and Cotton made the superintendents of that province *. 
 Observator, i,, 259: 'I fancy Trimmer, that if you and I could but get leave to 
 peep out of our graves again in a matter of 150 years hence, we should find these 
 papers in Bodley's Library among the Memorials of State and celebrated for the 
 only warrantable'. Even Muddiman's letters were specially forbidden at 
 Oxford in 1686 (Wood, Life and Times, iii,, 180). 
 
 a S. P. Dom. Car., ii.,"433 (120-1). 
 
 4 Is this the Combes of Dangerfi eld's Green Ribbon Club List? See his 
 Narrative, See also Thompson's Loyal Protestant Intelligence, 1st March 1682: 
 
 * The generality of Newswriters about Town are factious and have foisted their 
 wares upon most of the nation at the constant pension of 48. or 5s. a week per 
 Coflfeehouse '. 
 
330 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 a failing trade by his letters. A Mr Blackhill serves the 
 coffee-houses with his letters, and the Haarlem Courant 
 translated. We learn from Cotton's paper that 'the coffee- 
 houses were coimnanded last summer to take in no more written 
 neios '. Three shillings and sixpence a week for Hancock's 
 letter was given. * Many scores of clerks are maintained by 
 the Industry, and several of the Post Office clerks write letters'. 
 
 When we remember the incessant wrangles over this 
 question, the Government, we may think, had reason to 
 congratulate itself on being able to lay its hands on the 
 chief offenders. 
 
 A period of great repression had now set in, when the 
 very bluecoats and schoolboys were to be turned out as 
 little Tories, and the loyal corporations were tumbling 
 over each other in the race to yield up their Charters. To 
 this rout of the Government's enemies we may claim that 
 * the loyal L'Estrange ' had contributed not a little. He 
 was now seventy-two. At the beginning of the period 
 marked by this chapter, he had just returned from a 
 miserable exile, the butt of the jeering wits and an offence 
 to the nation. Now he was a ' great man at Whitehall ', 
 but his vindictive treatment of his literary adversaries, of 
 Care, Hunt, Phillips^, Hickeringill 2, and Johnson, places 
 him altogether outside the pale of civilised letters and 
 makes him the true comrade of Mr Bayes. 
 
 1 Phillips' Speculum Crape-Oownormn, 1682 (modelled on Eachard's famous 
 Grounds and Occasions of the Contempt of the Clergy (1670), dedicated in a 
 letter to R. L. (Estrange)) was described as 'by a guide to the Inferior Clergy.' 
 Hence, as in Care's case, Roger's wrath. See W. Godwin's Lives of Edward 
 aiid John Phillips (1815), p. 223. In 1690 after ' ratting ' a second time, 
 Phillips viciously attacked L'Estrange in his Secret History of Cltarles II. and 
 James II. : * The ridiculous pen of R. L'Estrange . . . with the buffoonery of 
 his bantering acquirements'. Lives, p. 273. 
 
 2 Rector of All Saints, Colchester, the most gifted and voluble of the earlier 
 Whig clergy, modelled himself on Erasmus, and struck at nothing so fiercely as 
 the Imprimatur. Although his Gregory, Father Greyleard in a letter to our old 
 friend R. L ('Estrange) from E. H. 1673, is described as * a Reflexion upon the 
 Rehearsed Transprosed ', it shows much admiration of Marvell's work, and joins 
 him in an attack on L'Estrange for ' keeping the key of the Press '. ' I had not 
 written to you (R.L.) above all others, but on purpose that you might open the 
 Press-door and let me in with ^'■Imprimatur R. L. ". The honest booksellers 
 being guided solely by the sale, have imbibed a prejudice against books so 
 marked in the forehead constraining it to be a brand of Infamy '. His Naked 
 Truth (pt. i.) made matter we saw for the Lords Libels Committee, 1677, while 
 the second part of the same was the cause of his appearance at Doctors Commons, 
 8th June 1681, and the furies of Jefl'ries. The Ohservator brackets him with 
 Marvel] and ' Julian ' Johnson. For his recantation see p. 353. Like 'Julian', 
 Bagshawe, and others of the Whig Divines attacked by L'Estrange, Hickeringill 
 was chaplain to a distinguished nobleman— the Duke of Albemarle. See Roxburghe 
 Ballads, v., 220-2. 
 
CHAPTEK XI 
 
 (1684-9) 
 THE WHIG DEBACLE 
 
 In the closing months of Charles II.'s reign, we see 
 L'Estrange in three characters — as a Government spy on the 
 conquered City, as the tracker-down of Gates and the rest 
 of ' their evidenceships ', and as the vehement exposer of Mr 
 Trimmer (in other words the Whig Kevolt) in the Church. 
 
 In the first of these capacities, we are able to compare 
 his fearful lucubrations with the less nervous reports of 
 another City spy, who does not sign his reports, but who 
 was probably Atterbury, the chief of this department. 
 
 L'Estrange, whose imagination makes 'every bush a 
 bear ', cannot conceive that his and the Government's enemies 
 after a generation's contumacy, should sink into even a 
 sullen acquiescence. No doubt his hopes lay in further 
 * plots ' and discoveries. The other writer does not minimise 
 the Government's task or the inveteracy of the Faction, but 
 he has the sense to see that for the moment the Whigs had 
 accepted the inevitable. 
 
 The earliest of these City advices was timed to prevent 
 any notion of clemency in the case of Sidney. The writer 
 — suffering from the gout and therefore indebted for his 
 information to 'some considerable visits ', rather than personal 
 observation — 
 
 ' finds such a portending damp upon the spirits of diverse 
 men of honour, interest, and resolution that he cannot but 
 tremble at the consequences of this desperation, if they 
 be not timely recovered. Their being so much in the 
 dark makes all shapes and noises frightful to them. The 
 other party in the meanwhile are as huffy and bold well- 
 nigh as ever they were. I doubt not but thousands of 
 
 331 
 
332 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 letters are sent into all quarters with the news of the 
 Duke of Monmouth's disclaiming the publication in the 
 Gazet of his declaration and submission ; how his Grace 
 hath complained to the King of it, that it is to be retracted 
 in the next Gazet ^. 
 
 'They give it out that Col. Sydney is to be pardoned upon 
 the Duke of Monmouth's clearing of his word to the King, 
 and that the witnesses are to be questioned. 
 
 ' All people are inquisitive and anxious. I say the best I 
 can and more than I know. The enclosed is sure. — With 
 my most humble duty, 
 
 'ROGER L'ESTRANGE 2. 
 * Nov. 30th, 1683'. 
 
 In Eebruary of the next year, Roger continued the same 
 anxious and querulous vigilance, extending it to include 
 Bristol, the scene of the most dangerous branch of the late 
 plot, where old Sir John Knight was retiring from his 
 work of harrying Quakers and Anabaptists. 'The town 
 of itself, writes L'Estrange, 'is not right, and as it had 
 not been what it is without him (Knight), so neither will 
 it hold when it is without him. It is known that the 
 conspirators intended Bristol for their magazine and I am 
 misinformed if Rumsey hath not declared that Knight and 
 Thompson were the men that disappointed all their designs ' ^. 
 
 A month or two later Roger had some confirmation of 
 the importance of Bristol in the report of Holloway's 
 capture at St Eustatia in the West Indies, which he im- 
 mediately communicated to the Secretary, evidently in the 
 belief that his report was news. That growing habit of 
 tutoring Jenkins which shows some degree of familiarity 
 in their relations, is observable here : — 
 
 L'Estrange to Jenkins. 
 
 ' 8th Ap. 1684. 
 
 •My heart is so set upon this thing, that I cannot 
 forbear suggesting to your Honour, that if this providence 
 
 1 As indeed it was. See the Gazet under date, and Foxcroft's Life of HaUftto:^ 
 i., 401-4 ; Burnet, ii., 406-8 with Mr Airy's note ; Sprat, Hist, of the Conspiracy, 
 Appendix, pp. 137-140 ; Kalph, i., 789. 
 
 2 S. P. Dom. Car., ii., 434 (152). 
 
 3 lUd., 436 (225), 28th February 1684. The Kev. Richd. Thompson is 
 the ' Tantivy ' who incurred the displeasure of the Commons in 1680 and was 
 bracketed with L'Estrange as ' fled ' in the letter from Scotland. See chap. ix. , 260. 
 
THE WHIG DEBACLE 333 
 
 could be kept so private as that Eumsey should have no 
 inkling of it beforehand, some good men that know both 
 Holloway and Rumsey very well, are strongly persuaded 
 that a great light might be gathered from the sifting of 
 this matter towards the making out of many things that 
 are hitherto in the dark. 
 
 * It is given for granted that Eumsey keeps himself yet 
 upon the reserve ' ^ 
 
 Of the state of the City in the spring of 1684 we find 
 side by side with an anonymous advice, March 20th — ' The 
 Whigs are very low as well in City as suburbs. All 
 meetings being every Sunday beset with constables'^ — 
 L'Estrange's fearful report to Jenkins on 12th March 1684. 
 
 ' There are certainly a great many new faces come lately 
 to town, full and frequent meetings, and some persons taken 
 notice of that cannot be understood to have any business 
 here, but mischief — as Manly, the broken brewer, and 
 one of Cromwell's Majors, Wildman, a bold and desperate 
 fellow. 
 
 ' There is notice taken of men that walk late more than 
 ordinary. Perhaps a strict account of night walkers and a 
 diligent search in the stables about Moorfields and Spittal- 
 fields to take an account of what and whose houses, might 
 make a discovery. There is a young man that has lodged 
 two or three months in Vere St. He has never stirred 
 abroad. Nobody knows what he is, only a lass in the 
 
 1 *S^. p. Dom. Gar., ii., 437(91). As L'Estrange's earlier communication of this 
 important seizure is dated 4th April, S. P. Dom. Car., ii., 437 (73), it may be his 
 report was the first to apprise the Secretary. It is interesting to note that he 
 prepared Holloway'a dying speech for the printer, the naive proposal that the 
 West Indies should be made an asylum 'for all religious folks' being marked 
 in Roger's writing 'to be left out'. Rumsey's complaint to Jenkins on 14th 
 May that he 'had been loaded with more than he was guilty of in Holloway 's 
 narrative ' is an ironic comment on L'Estrange's feverish desire to get Rumsey's 
 full evidence against Holloway. The latter was probably the most ingenuous 
 of the conspirators, and one of the few seduced by public motives. He 
 made no greater submission than the fear of death may excuse. Nor did 
 he incriminate any one — with the exception of the wretched Rumsey — who could 
 suffer by it. His verses — he was an inveterate rhymster — written in Newgate, 
 9th April, have a pathetic sincerity. 
 
 * I now a prisoner am to London come. 
 But not afraid, not yet a friend to Rome 
 Nor Rome's adherents, Tories, Popish tools 
 Of Englishmen, the most besotted fools 
 
 I will no friend betray. 
 But rather choose to gang up Holborn way '. 
 
 2 S, P. Dom. Car., ii., 437 (66). 
 
334 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 house was saying he looked like a woman in man's clothes. 
 This person is visited twice or thrice a week constantly 
 by Major Wildman who stays commonly two or three hours, 
 sometimes longer. He leaves his coach and servants in 
 the next street '^ 
 
 An unusual attack of nerves is also seen in his report a 
 few days before the seizure of Holloway. 
 
 * I reflect upon some among the rest (of his letters) 
 which I would only have recommended to your particular 
 self, and if it may stand with your convenience and good 
 liking, I would beg those may fall into no other hands. 
 
 ' There is something a brewing more than ordinary. Sir 
 Sam. Bernardeston, Dr Cox, H. Nevil and Major Wildman ^ 
 are exceeding busy back and forward, up and down within 
 these three days'. 
 
 The executions of Holloway and Armstrong created an ^ 
 unparalleled dejection in the Faction, and a corresponding 
 relief in Court circles. But the three months' calm which 
 followed was well understood to be deceptive. Such was 
 the state of Parties that the slightest movement one way 
 or another in the Law Courts which could possibly have 
 a party construction, was eagerly canvassed, as if it carried 
 the fates of the Party. Every new trial — those notably of 
 Bernardiston and Papillon, and the thirty-two writers whom 
 Carrel computes to have been convicted for libel in this 
 year*, drove the Faction deeper and deeper into its own 
 brooding counsels, which it did not take a prophet to 
 foretell, would on the first occasion flare into rebellion. 
 At the same time, many were ready to be converted into 
 
 1 S. p. Dom. Car., ii., 437 (229). Why Wildman was not arrested is as great 
 a mystery as Fergusson's escape. See Maeaulay on Wildman and Danvers, 
 History, chap, iv, See also an earlier information of L 'Estrange of 12th February 
 1684 {Car., ii., 436 (183)) of a Lodger 'who by speech and report goes for a 
 Scotchman, who goes sometimes in canonical habits and sometimes in a black 
 coat without the gown— very shy of being noticed— insomuch that upon the 
 servant's bringing a candle he hath broken out into exclamations, crying, 
 "God damn ye— what do ye look at". Goes out early and comes in late'. 
 Truly, < men must not walk too late '. Of Wildman, Hallam {Cons. Hist., p. 464) 
 remarks : ' a name not very familiar to the general reader, but which occurs per- 
 petually for almost half a century . . . one of those dark and restless spirits, who 
 delight in the deep game of conspiracy against every Government '. 
 
 2 The Oentlemayi's Magazine (1742), vii., 203, raking up the evidence of the 
 ' Murder ' Committee, 1689, says : ' they (Graham, Burton, Hanse, and L'Estrange) 
 offered one Cragg a pension of £100 quarterly, if he would become evidence 
 against the E. of Macclesfield, Lord Delamere, and Major Wildman '. 
 
 3 S. P. D(m. Car., ii., 437 (583). 
 
 4 Bohn's Charles II. and James II. , p. 184. See State Trials, x., 126-7, for a 
 note to the same effect. 
 
THE WHIG DEBACLE 336 
 
 Trimmers, as there was a sagacious section of the Court 
 party ready to meet them on that common and abused 
 platform. It was charged against the wealthier Whigs, 
 just as it had been against the weary Cavaliers in 1659, 
 that in the late conspiracy they had been too purse proud 
 to move^. The main body of dissenting clergy were not 
 admitted to that conspiracy, and already Fergusson — the 
 arch - plotter — was coming in for a harvest of reproach 
 from the sober element of his own party. 
 
 Two trials in the autumn focussed the interest of the 
 nation, and in the event cheered the Faction beyond their 
 best hopes. In the first of these Hayes was acquitted, and 
 in the more important, Rose well ^, the fanatic preacher, was 
 both allowed counsel and on the second day of the trial 
 spoken so civilly to by the Bench that, as in Wakeman's 
 case, it was interpreted as a signal from Whitehall and 
 a confirmation of the rumours of Charles II.'s closing 
 months, that he was turning away from the Duke of 
 York. 
 
 In October and November, we have for example one or 
 two important letters of the anonymous spy alluded to, 
 which throw some light on the City in these last months. 
 
 ' 2^th October. 
 
 * Since I have known anything, I never knew the Whigs 
 in London so very wary in managing their discourses and 
 of their Company. If 3 or 4 be together in an afternoon 
 upon the Exchange talking of news, if two more of their 
 party join them, part of the rest shall walk away, how 
 desirous soever they are to hear the discourse. . . . They yet 
 say little of Rosewell's case because he is only arraigned 
 and hath so long time as to the 18th November for his 
 trial. 
 
 'Nat Thompson's commitment is upon the stage; they 
 say it is a wonder he should be committed for printing 
 Popish books, and that there are Whiggish books which 
 he hath also printed, which give the greatest offence, and 
 it appearing that he is a mercenary fellow for any field 
 that pays him well. 
 
 1 Bourne's second Information, 6th July 1683 [S. P. Dom. Car., ii., 427 (223)) 
 Fergusson said nothing was to be expected from the rich old citizens, and there- 
 fore half a dozen of them must be taken out of their houses and hung on their 
 sign-posts '. 
 
 2 Slate THals, x., 147, 23rd October 1684. 
 
336 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 'I do observe that a great number of such as are 
 outwardly good Church of England men and have little 
 in them of preciseness do at this juncture speak more 
 plainly and resolutely against the Government than the 
 Dissenters. There is a mighty party that seems to espouse 
 the cause of the late E. of Essex, and Lord Russell, and 
 which in all appearance will never be reconciled unless 
 the Duke of York and the Duchess of Portsmouth should 
 happen to die. . . . They say the Court and great ones dare 
 not look a Parliament in the face ' ^. 
 
 It need scarcely be said that in the reference to the 
 ' Good Church of Englishmen ', we have an indication of the 
 rise of the mighty party of Mr Trimmer, against whom the 
 Observator was now turning all his shafts of angry ridicule. 
 
 What with gout, dread, a wretched home life and 
 approaching bereavement, the author of these papers takes 
 a gloomier view. On 3rd November 1684 he had proposed 
 to Jenkins certain questions to put to 'One Philips — a 
 writer ' — who had been privy ' to the contrivance of several 
 narratives which may enable him to make a great 
 discovery ' ^. 
 
 The next communication we have from him is dated 
 3rd February 1685 when news of the King's fatal seizure 
 was creating incredible anxiety in all parties. 
 
 'Sir, — No time is unseasonable for the duty of that 
 season. Immediately upon the news of yesterday morning's 
 dismal accident, there was a great stirring up and down, 
 from one to another, in the King's Bench, and a confluence 
 
 1 S. p. Dom. Co.T., ii,, 438 (203). See another letter, 26th November 1684, 
 where the writer noting the issue of the two trials alluded to, repeats his distrust 
 of Whig calm, though ' they are more easily managed than he took them for '. 
 On the 29th, ' They speak more reverently of the King '. 
 
 2 S. P. Dom. Car., ii., 438 (213). John Phillips, Milton's nephew. There is an 
 MS. note on the fly-leaf of a pamphlet Horse Flesh for the Ohservator (1682), by 
 T.D., B.P., Chaplain to the Inferior Clergy's Guide. ' This Writ by Mr Phillips 
 the poet in answer to several observations in relation to Mr Prance. This Prance 
 was a silversmith and as the Observator pretends made brass screws — when they 
 should have been silver '. The writer adds, ' These Ohservators were writ by Sir 
 Roger L'Estrange, a man of great parts, but of no principles, a great incendiary '. 
 Phillips wrote an excellent Vindication of Gates, 1680. Like Care, Settle, etc., 
 he ' ratted ' most shamefully, abusing his old comrades in a poem on the death of 
 Charles II. See Wm. Smith's Intrigues of the Popish Plot Laid Open (1685), 
 quoted in Wm. Godwin's Lives of Edward and John Philips (1815), pp. 204-8. 
 Phillips dedicated his translation of Don Quixote (1687), to L'Estrange's noble 
 friend, the E. of Yarmouth. These successful ' rattings ' were all very discon- 
 certing to Roger's vengeful mind. 
 
THE WHIG DEBACLE 337 
 
 of people into the Mint and thereabouts, and they had 
 other business and passions in their faces than suited that 
 occasion. The Mint is a kind of Sanctuary for these 
 dangerous men, besides the improvement of that mixture 
 of the people by the influence of the neighbourhood. One 
 tells me yesterday for certain that Gates did a while ago 
 put 50 guineas into his Attorney's hands to the Counsel 
 and instruct breviates, etc. Since which time, he hath 
 never heard of either attorney, breviates or Council. If 
 I had not thought these cautions about the King's Bench 
 and the Mint to be a matter of some moment, you had 
 not received the present trouble from, — Sir, Your most 
 humble and obedient Servant, 
 
 ' EOGER L'ESTRANGE ' \ 
 
 To understand the reference to Gates, we must remember 
 that for months past, the Ohservators are stuffed with a 
 public exposure piece by piece of the Plot and its great 
 architect, an exposure which culminated in the appearance 
 in Court of the ' Salamanca Doctor ' in 1684 for defamation 
 of the Duke of York, the brutal episode of May 1685 which 
 has rankled in English memory as the most signal revenge 
 in our history and yet inadequate, and the writing of 
 L'Estrange's History of the Times in three books in 1687. 
 
 The bull-dog tenacity with which L'Estrange for five 
 years hung on to the Gates gang can have few parallels in 
 English history, and when people recall the ruin and 
 punishment of Titus, they should see the image of Nemesis 
 in the form of L'Estrange, working for it as he had never 
 worked for anything before. In a sense the mission of 
 the ObservatoT was in Roger's words *to dress up honest 
 Titus for the pillory', and to this end the best means at 
 his disposal was 'by giving the world a taste of his 
 character, manners, life, conversation, and palpable perjuries 
 and contradictions beforehand ' ^. 
 
 His devotion to this service is expressed in almost 
 religious terms in the last paragraph of that memorable 
 appeal To Posterity which prefaces the third volume of the 
 Ohservators. 
 
 1 S. p. Dom. Car., ii., 438 (288). 
 
 - ObservcUor, rol. iii. (1687), printed by J. Bennet, for Chas. Brome at the 
 Gun, St Paul's Churchyard — last paragraph of Preface — To Posterity. This 
 publication was the occasion of Aphra Behn's tribute, already alluded to. 
 Chap. X., 303. 
 
338 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 'I contracted a horror for this villainous cheat (The 
 Plot) from the very spawning of it, and in the same moment 
 an ambition above all things under the sun, to have some 
 hand in breaking the neck on't. From that time to this, I 
 have barred myself the benefits of ease, liberty, conversation, 
 and effectually all the comforts of humane life in order to 
 this end. But to make short, I found by degrees, that the 
 Plot itself and the Plot's master lost ground. I followed the 
 Plot until it was ridiculous. I followed Gates to the King's 
 Bench Bar, the pillory and the Cart's tail, and since that 
 was over, I have had the business of Sir E. Godfrey in my eye. 
 But I have no lease of my life, and so I cannot possibly 
 undertake for it. But there was still wanting a part 
 calculated to finish the work which I have here drawn into 
 a very clear method, and as narrow a compass as other 
 infinite variety of cross-purposes and debates would admit. 
 In one syllable more, I am an old fellow, and if I can but 
 live to get through that solemn foppery of Prance and 
 Bedloe's vision at Somerset House, I shall die in peace '. 
 
 We need not here follow out the story of this pursuit 
 from the days when Gates and his legionaries had denounced 
 L'Estrange to the Privy Council, October 1680. The account 
 of their incessant wrangles is to be gleaned from the 
 Ohservators. But L'Estrange is strictly accurate when he 
 describes the methods and caution he used in this work. 
 Down to October 1682, when Nat Thompson and Farwell 
 were pilloried for the Letters to Miles Prance^, the main 
 story of the Plot and the Godfrey murder could not be 
 assailed with impunity, and L'Estrange cunningly confined 
 himself to ' hinting and slanting ', to personal defamation of 
 Prance as a tradesman and Gates as a man. He * knew too 
 well what part of the Plot would bear handling '. It is 
 scarcely to be doubted that Nat's humble denial on that 
 occasion of the popular assertion that ' the worthy author of 
 the Ohservator is a follower of mine — a person of so great 
 learning and prudence that I am not worthy to wipe his 
 shoes' was suggested to him by the cautious L'Estrange, 
 who was well pleased that such a corpus vile as Nat should 
 
 1 Chap. X., 304. The ' popishly-affected ' view is conveyed in the clownish 
 humour of a poem in the Second Qollection of Songs, etc., against Popery, 1689 — 
 ' Hodge (L'Estrange). What, you believe the Plot of varlet Gates ? 
 Porter. Ten Proclamations and four Senates' votes. 
 Johnny (Dryden). That Godfrey's Life was by the Papists sped. 
 Porter. Oh ! no ! He killed himself when he was dead '. 
 
THE WHIG DEBACLE 339 
 
 be experimented on in a public trial ^, to show how far he 
 might shoot his own bolts. 
 
 The publication of the Shammer Shammed the previous 
 winter had also been a shrewd blow at the ' Plot ', but it was 
 not till the juries were loyal, that is till after the Sheriffs 
 election of 1682, that any bolder course could be taken. 
 The Eye House Conspiracy effected an alteration in the 
 goading policy of the Observator. It may be remembered 
 that in September following a great attempt was made to 
 close down that journal. We can understand the forces 
 behind these attempts to get it closed with the ordinary 
 fry of small Whig newspapers. The Faction still stood by 
 the Plot, though it had half repudiated the * Doctor ' ^. To 
 see it going to pieces under the skilful prodding of L'Estrange 
 was more than nature could submit to. As a sample of his 
 'fleering sarcasms' which maddened the Faction, take the 
 dialogue which appears in the Ohservator of 12th April — 
 four days before Stephen's threatening letter and boasted 
 warrant. 
 
 * Trimmer. — Briefly, d'ye believe Gates or not ? 
 
 * Ohservator. — Wheresoever he believes himself, I do 
 believe him, but a man may be allowed I hope, to miss- 
 remember and to recollect, and to take one man for another. 
 I have done it 40 times myself '. 
 
 The continued rain and increasing audacity of these 
 attacks raised the hue and cry which the poor Press 
 Messenger tried to direct into a sweeping away of the 
 journal which embroiled the nation, kept up ancient 
 animosities, etc. And there is little doubt that the 
 Government would gladly have seen Koger make an end, 
 
 1 state Tricds, viii., 1381-4. 'I call it a trial with respect to the sacredness 
 of the seat of Justice, though the formalities of the Court were interrupted, and 
 the dignity of the Tribunal affronted with such clamours and insults from the 
 rabble, that a man might honestly enough at a distance have taken it for a bear- 
 baiting '. Hist, of Tim£s, p. 234. Nat had also his mercenary dirge, * That 
 which was done, was done by way of Trade, notwithstanding I was made a 
 precedent — no Printer ever yet (before myself) being prosecuted when he fairly 
 produced his author'. Nat had never heard of Michael Sparkes, bookseller, and 
 Wm. Prynne, author. ' The men were tried in the fairest manner possible ', says 
 Mr Pollock {Popish Plot, p. 102). Sir Jas. Stephen (Hist, of Crimiiml Laii\ 
 i., 193) came to the same conclusion of Godfrey's murder and Prance's guilt. But 
 Father Gerard's examination of Pollock {The Popish Plot and its Neioest Historian, 
 1903) leaves the mystery very much where it was. 
 
 a Fonntainhall, HistoriaxZ Observes (1840), p. 102 : ' Some wondered how Gates 
 came not to be named in the new Plot, but . . . they durst not trust him with 
 their secrets '. 
 
340 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 and so achieve that silence of the Press, so grateful to 
 a despotic Government ^. 
 
 This failure in October 1683 to stop the Observator's 
 cruel laceration of what remained of the ' evidence ' was 
 fatal to the Oates tribe. From the new disposition of 
 parties L'Estrange could now boldly proceed to the direct 
 charges of perjury, and work up by way of an agitation for a 
 Melius Inquirendum to the Bar of the King's Bench. 
 
 There were no more 'good sheriffs and good juries', 
 there was no Whig paper to reply, there was no thought of 
 a Parliament, though three years had elapsed since the 
 Oxford Parliament. The veil of sarcasm and allusion was 
 dropped. 
 
 The short and final stage in this long campaign began 
 in February 1684. We have fortunately a letter from 
 L'Estrange to Jenkins which clearly indicates the lead to be 
 taken and which resulted in our author's being in a position 
 to become, though a partisan, yet a well - equipped Plot 
 historian *. 
 
 Roger V Estrange to Jenkins ^. 
 
 ' 28th Feb. 1684. 
 
 ' Right Hon., — I have laid out several ways to find the 
 writers that were employed by old Tonge and Oates to copy 
 for them, and being upon this quest, I am told a box of old 
 Tonge's papers and draughts that was delivered about a year 
 since (more or less) to Major Oglethorpe and brought after- 
 wards before the King and Council ; the person from whom 
 they came examined whence he had them, and that there 
 the matter rested \ 
 
 * If this information be true, and the papers of such a 
 quality as I am given to understand, I persuade myself some 
 good use might be made of them ; and if no such box and 
 
 1 It is interesting to note L'Estrange's defence of his Journal. (1) His ancient 
 Patent for news 15th August 1663. (2) The Observator is not a newspaper but a 
 bi-weekly pamphlet. (3) The King's Proclamation of May 1680, referred only to 
 pamphlets of news. 
 
 '^ This should not be lost sight of. Mr Pollock {Op. cit.) is perhaps too inclined 
 to do what Sir G. Sitwell (Introduction to First Whig) rightly deprecated, viz. : 
 brush aside or use L'Estrange according as it is convenient. Whilst he makes 
 some use of the History of the Times, he refers little to the more important 
 Observatm-s, which are invaluable as showing the evolution of Plot-scepticism. 
 
 3 ,S. P. Bom. Car., ii., 436 (227). 
 
 4 20th December 1679, Capt. Tonge secures his brother's papers, H,M,G, lltk 
 Rept. App. ii., p. 148. 
 
THE WHIG DEBACLE 341 
 
 papers were so delivered, I could possibly make some use of 
 that mistake. 
 
 * This may appear a slighter matter to your Honour, than 
 effectually it is, in regard that it is not fit for me to 
 importune you with the particulars, whereupon the whole 
 affair turns. — With my most humble duty, 
 
 'EOGER L'ESTKANGE'. 
 
 This courtly letter achieved its object, and elsewhere 
 L'Estrange describes the contents of the box in question^. 
 A trunk taken at Colledge's house (where Tonge died) after 
 his execution, attested in the presence of several Justices 
 of the Peace contained ' whimsies of projects, calculations of 
 anti-Christ, and the number of the beast, snaps of chemistry, 
 political speculations. But among others were abundance 
 of dirty fragments of papers with a confusion of minutes and 
 memorials of times, dates, places, and particularly several 
 passages according to the circumstance that I found in the 
 narrative '. ' The Doctor's hand ', he adds, ' is as distinguish- 
 able from any other character that ever I saw '. 
 
 Whether the receipts for * the paying of above 40 clerks 
 to write for him, and the expenses of Irish and English 
 witnesses (" of which I hold discharges ") were included in 
 the " dirty scraps " we are not told. But the five Windsor 
 letters which had passed the uncritical or wicked eyes of 
 Sir Wm. Jones now lay before L'Estrange, and so probably 
 did the paper from Tonge of 29th April 1679 urging on the 
 King the utter extirpation of the Catholic priests, to which, 
 says Roger, " the King showed great dislike " ' \ 
 
 It would be unnatural for the victims of these prepara- 
 tions to do nothing in self-defence. The publication of the 
 first volume of the Ohservators on 26th April 1684 with the 
 To Posterity preface, drew blood from both Gates and Prance, 
 from the latter in the form of a Postscript to the Ohservator, 
 and from Gates a printed appeal to the King and the 
 Primate. 
 
 There was some sense, perhaps, in appealing to the 
 Archbishop against L'Estrange, for already it was whispered 
 that Roger had lost much ground with the Church, since the 
 
 1 See his History of the Times (1687), chap, viii. See also a Nmdetter in the 
 Throgmm-ton MSk, H.M.C. 10th Kept., p. 172, 29th September 1681; 
 * Great discoveries expected to be made of Dr Tonge's papers '. 
 
 2 L'Estrange, History of the Times, pt. ii., ch. viii., 110. See Examen 
 also, p. 271. 
 
342 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 days of the Cambridge (and Oxford) guineas, by the already 
 started attacks on certain estimable Trimming divines. As 
 the appeal to the King is printed in the Somer's Tracts ^ it 
 may be better to quote here the petition to Bancroft, especially 
 as Titus skilfully touches the one topic which could hope for 
 a response. 
 
 Titus Oates to Sancroft ^. 
 
 nbth March 1684, 
 
 ' My Lord, — Be pleased to understand that for my vindica- 
 tion I have written to Mr Jenkins ^, and in my letter have 
 enclosed a petition to the King's most excellent Majesty, and 
 to the Lords of the Privy Council, against one Roger 
 L'Estrange who, in several of his pamphlets called the 
 Olservators, and other seditious pamphlets, hath vilified the 
 discovery of the Popish Plot, and in that I humbly conceive 
 he doth arraign and reflect on the justice of the Government, 
 and God having called you to the great office of an Arch- 
 bishop and Privy Councillor, I thought my application to 
 your Grace would not be all unproper, and therefore I 
 thought I may lay before your Grace the hard usage I have 
 had from the said L'Estrange and his confederate villains, 
 who neither fear God nor reverence man. Your Grace I 
 suppose hath not forgot that four Parliaments did enter upon 
 the examination, both of witnesses and individuals concerned 
 in the Popish Conspiracy. I was the first that appeared to 
 detect that villainy and received the thanks of the Council 
 and the Lords in Parliament, and it was looked upon such a 
 piece of service that your Grace was of opinion that some 
 mark of favour should be conferred upon me *, but I was not 
 thinking of my own interest '. 
 
 (After reference to the benefits of a good conscience) ' I 
 think the Government is bound in honour and conscience 
 and justice and truth to maintain their own proceedings and 
 justice upon the reflections of so vile a fellow as L'Estrange 
 
 1 Vol, viii., 378. Sir Walter Scott's introduction : 'The days were now passed 
 when Oates' credit with the public was so high that "'Twas worse than plotting 
 to suspect the plot ". The 'Tory pamphleteers headed by Sir Roger L'Estrange, 
 the Coryphaeus of their party, now assailed the disgraced evidence with the 
 utmost fury both of raillery and invective, but the monumental brass of Oates 
 was altogether impenetrable'. 
 
 2 Rau'l. MSS., C. 739 (117). 
 
 3 Also in Somers' Tracts, viii., 380. 
 
 ■^ Sitwell, Op. cit. , p. 44 : 'At Lambeth he (Oates) received several kindnesses 
 fvom the Archbishop', In his great days of course, 
 
THE WHIG DEBACLE 343 
 
 appears to be in those his pamphlets. He pretends in one 
 or two that he hath leave from one or both of his Majesty's 
 Secretaries for so doing, which I dare not for my soul believe 
 . . . together with the agreement of his falling upon the whole 
 Government in that particular. 
 
 ' Certainly the Church (my Lord) must be in a sad con- 
 dition that stands in need of L'Estrange for a supporter ; the 
 religion established by law will be very contemptible if 
 Roger's penny Ohservator must give it life. I am sure our 
 Bishops have given such testimony of themselves and their 
 powers that there is no need of this scurrilous and scandalous 
 pen to maintain their authority and reputation. Are Clergy- 
 men to' be judged by the Popish Party to be men of little 
 understanding, if they stand in need of him to be their guide ; 
 hath he not fallen upon the most considerable of the clergy 
 of the City, men that do not stand in need of his push to 
 equip them for the work of the community ? ' 
 
 (Here he prays not to be left to the oppressor * for the 
 service which your Grace hath formerly owned in Council 
 and Parliament'). 
 
 'T. GATES'. 
 
 But no power could save Titus, and the Ohservator, far 
 from moderating the attack, was now issued daily as if 
 L'Estrange feared to lose the moment of revenge. So that 
 honest Luttrell was able to say on 20th June : ' It has been 
 hotly discoursed about town that there are informations 
 taken by Mr Justice Guise and Mr Justice L'Estrange, of 
 High Treason against Mr Gates, and that he would be 
 indicted thereon the next sessions ' ^. Not content with the 
 old scandals and contradictions, the Ohservator now added the 
 curious charge that Gates was a pro-Turk, and dwelt with 
 mocking humour on the alleged rivalry between Gates and 
 Tonge as to who should be the first discoverer of the Plot, 
 a rivalry said to have separated the two men in the old 
 spacious Whitehall days^. 
 
 Prance's Vindication'^ showed a curious mingling of 
 cringing respect and malice. It is a considerable compliment 
 to the Ohservator^ and marks clearly the turn in the popular 
 tide. 
 
 1 Luttrell, Diary, i., 311. 
 
 2 So Hist(yni of the Times, chap, vi., 89-90. 
 
 3 Printed by Janeway, 1684, 
 
344 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 * My daily conversation ', he says, * is beset witli spies and 
 no man that comes into my company, but is presently in 
 danger of being exposed as a fanatic, and marked out to the 
 fury of the rabble and destruction of his fortune and family. 
 I thought it high time to give the world all the satisfaction 
 of the truth of the case between Mr L'Estrange and myself, 
 that all persons of this age and such as shall write Histories 
 in the next (which I find our Observator much values his 
 numerous sheets upon as the just standard for them to take 
 measures from) ^ may have cognisance of the defence as well 
 as the charge '. 
 
 Like Mr Wegg, Prance here drops into poetry. 
 L'Estrange is ' So great a master in the mysteries of 
 buffoonery-fooling, 
 
 A little wit joined with a vast ill-nature 
 * And qualified for lies as well as satyr 
 May easily commence an Observator '. 
 
 He continues to deplore a contest with *a gentleman of 
 known abilities, and reputed loyalty, so high in popular 
 esteem of so large an invention and taking expressions, and 
 who will be sure to have the last word; nor do I forget 
 his character is now qualified as magistrate, but truth is 
 truth even in the coarser language of a silversmith ' 2. 
 
 'Whatever services Mr R. L. has done the Govern- 
 ment and the Church against the Faction ', Prance 
 hypocritically adds, ' I cordially applaud and thank him, 
 nor do I repine at his presents and New Year's gifts of 
 1,000 guineas. I shall never envy any man's growing fat 
 
 1 The appeal to Posterity is a feature — almost an obsession— of the age, and 
 nowhere more marked than in L'Estrange. So Baiter {Life (1696), iii., 187) 
 deplores the fact that the Historian will have to use L'Estrange's pamphlets — 
 'Many of the malignant clergy and Laity and especially the Obsei-vator do with 
 so great confidence publish the most notorious falsehoods, that I must confess 
 it hath greatly depressed my esteem of most History and of human nature '. 
 Carte, Life of Ormonde, Introduction, pp. ix.-xi., making the same general charges 
 against the historians of that age, bestows the same compliment on Baxter, 
 of being utterly credulous. So Burnet. L'Estrange is constantly thinking of 
 some person who 150 years hence will unearth these pamphlets in Bodley's 
 library. 
 
 2 Prance always pretended to be overcome by a sense of Roger's learning. So 
 in his L'Estrange a Papist (February 1682), pp. 20-1 : 'There be men in England 
 that have gone to school and read Latin and Greek as well as he '. After reference 
 to the * quips and taunts of a quaint and fluent pen ' — ' He is a great orator and 
 writes in a brief laconique style. He is excellent at similes and knows all the 
 tropes and figures of Rhetoric. He is a great scholar, being taught by his father, 
 and is so used to writing and scribbling that he can make a book in his sleep '. 
 
THE WHIG DEBACLE 345 
 
 on the almsbasket. In a word, I have as good an esteem 
 for the active and ingenius Squire L'Estrange as I ought 
 to have, and if he be (as the author of the Pacquet of 
 Advice from Geneva affirms) ^ " undoubtedly sent from above 
 to act here in his generation for the great good of his 
 King and Country, and to be vere malleus rehellium et 
 'pTianaticorum (which I am told signifies a mawler of rebels 
 and fanatics) I only wish he held altogether to the 
 work"'. 
 
 'Who can but blush to see a gentleman of his parts 
 and figure, a man of the age of three score years and ten, 
 or thereabouts, a person that besides Quevedo and Politics 
 has read Seneca's Morals and Cardinal Bona, spending the 
 last moments of his life in blowing soap bubbles. I have 
 no small difficulty to get a few innocent sheets printed, 
 such is the dread of his name, whilst he, besides the 
 eleemosynary guineas in abundance, makes a revenue 
 weekly by blurting out papers filled with such egregious 
 scandals upon me'. 
 
 Finally, Eoger forces his printer to work on Sunday 
 to get out Monday's paper — a new problem for 
 journalism. 
 
 Luttrell's rumour referred to above was not without 
 foundation. By the May trial for defamation of the Duke, 
 Titus was safely in hold, and the prey of mercenary attorneys. 
 Two months before Charles died, a commission was extorted 
 from him — L'Estrange himself says 'not without importunity ' 
 — empowering Eoger L'Estrange as a Eoyal Commissioner to 
 call witnesses and take evidence on oath relating to the 
 whole field of the Godfrey mystery. A fortnight later 
 true bills were found against Gates for perjury, though his 
 trial was held over to the next reign. There had been as 
 we saw a last desperate effort in September to get the 
 Ohservator prohibited and petitions were opened in the City 
 to this end 2. In the work of preparing for the great trial 
 he was assisted by Graham and Burton, their assistant 
 Hanse, whom he himself had recommended to them, Drs 
 Nalson and Char let, his brother justices Harwich and 
 
 1 No. 2, p. 10. 'The author (of the Weekly Pacquet from Geneva) was one Mr 
 Pratt (calling himself Dr) heretofore a virulent papist '. 
 
 2 Observatm; 20th September 1684. Koger says ho will, with all his heart, 
 ' take a walk to Bloomsbury to see the names ', 
 
346 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 Guise, etc.^. When on the 8th May, Gates appeared before 
 Jeffries on two charges of perjury, it was found that 
 Eoger had got together with the help of these gentle- 
 men twenty-two witnesses to the first charge, and forty- 
 seven to the other 'most of them persons of a very 
 considerable character '. 
 
 'I had the honour to take their informations myself 
 and I reckon it my duty to do them right upon this 
 occasion in saying (over and above the quality of the 
 persons) that it was impossible for men to be tenderer or 
 more scrupulously cautious in what they swore '^. 
 
 On the 26th May Justice Withans pronounced the brutal 
 sentence. L'Estrange was not present at the whipping ^ 
 ' For the honour of the criminal ', he says, ' it must not be 
 forgotten that he stood his ground to the last'*. 
 
 Nothing is more noteworthy than that the whole business 
 of this signal revenge, even down to the preparations for 
 the public trial, seems to have been left to the important 
 old, 'plot-learned' Knight^. 
 
 1 Gates {Portraicture of King James 11. , i., 183) complains that this prosecution 
 was forced on after all his witnesses were dead. He talks of 'perjured witnesses 
 and four lambskin rogues then sitting in the King's Bench. It cost him (Jas. II.) 
 dear, being £3037, 9s. 6d. besides the subornation money Old Hodge (L'Estrange) 
 received'. 
 
 2 L'Estrange, History of the Times (1687), pp. 151-2. See Gerard's Popish Plot 
 and its Neioest Historian (1903), p. 19. The Ohservator Proved a Trimmer (1684), 
 pp. 3-9, gives a good account of the various attacks on the Plot. From the fact 
 that Hanse (who directed the Gates trial in May 1685) received £1,800 for his 
 services, while Russell's trial cost but £15 {Kenyon MSS., Reports, Commissioners, 
 34, p. 264), we can judge how L'Estrange was able to get together his forty-seven 
 witnesses ' of a very considei-able character '. State Trials, x. , 1079 and 1227. 
 
 3 Ohservator, 27th May 1685 : ' He called at my house (in Holborn) but I was 
 not at home '. 
 
 4 History of the Times, p. 152. 
 
 5 We have in the Correspondsnce of the Paston Fa^nily (1551-1699), three of his 
 letters to Lady Yarmouth about this time which display the extraordinary 
 pressure of his business. The first dated 30th January 1684-5 {Add. MSS., 36988, 
 f . 237) says : ' The Press of Gtes' business lying wholly upon my hand takes up 
 every moment of my time, in some respect or other what with attendances and 
 enformations. And this will certainly hold me for ten days '. Gn the 11th 
 February he writes [Add. MSS. , 27448, f. 296) : ' The present hurry of my indis- 
 pensable affairs keeps me an absolute slave and without one moment that I can 
 call my own. My hours are cut out till next Wednesday. ... I have no place 
 for the most necessary offices of Justice, duty and good manners'. Between 
 Gates' trial and his sentence, 16th May 1685, Roger is engaged upon some service 
 for his noble correspondent, but ' I have a matter under my hand at present 
 which I must despatch before I can wait upon the King ; it being upon a subject 
 that immediately relates to his Majesty's service, and which presses likewise upon 
 the point of haste' {Add. MSS., 27448, f. 306). There was Baxter's business 
 also on his hands. To this long continued absorption in State affairs may 
 be traced the neglect of his young wife, and her solace at the gaming table. 
 See chap, xii., 370, 
 
THE WHIG DEBACLE 347 
 
 The punishment of Gates left the way clear to Prance. 
 During the first eighteen months of James II.'s reign, our 
 author used his Eoyal commission with great diligence, 
 calling before himself practically all the characters in the 
 Godfrey tragedy who were still alive, including the jury- 
 men of the Coroner's Inquest, and those people especially 
 whose evidence was formerly refused or ignored. His 
 labours lie completed before us in the History of the Times^ 
 of which it may broadly be said that it disproves the 
 Bedloe-Prance theory of the tragedy, but that the theory 
 substituted — substantially the theory of the Letters to 
 Miles Prance, which set Nat Thompson and Farwell in the 
 pillory in October 1682 — is still utterly conjectural. To 
 discredit the Somerset House assassination view, it was 
 necessary to show that Bedloe and Prance (the only 
 witnesses) had never seen each other before they met in 
 the Lobby of the House, that Sir Wm. Waller, under 
 Shaftesbury, helped Bedloe — after a failure to recognise 
 Prance — to a good recovery, and that Prance was lessoned 
 by Shaftesbury's creatures in gaol, in those critical days 
 of December 1678, to follow faithfully the main points of 
 the story told by Bedloe, who had 'shot his bolt so long 
 before Prance appeared'. Even then there were notable 
 discrepancies in the two versions. As to the torture alleged 
 by Mrs Cellier to have been applied to Prance, Dr Lloyd, 
 Dean of St Asaph's, who had seen the prisoner shortly after, 
 now became for L'Estrange an important witness. Despite 
 some believing passages in his sermon at Godfrey's funeral, 
 it now appeared that he had always suspected Prance's 
 evidence^, and though avoiding the word torture hinted 
 at a very rigorous treatment. 
 
 These two points established, the inquest which had 
 declared in 1678 that Godfrey 'was murdered by divers 
 unknown persons', must be called to L'Estrange's Bar. 
 Here the Eoyal Commissioner had very malleable material, 
 for either a change of conviction or ' the dread of his name ' 
 caused these merry men, and especially Coroner Cowper, 
 to modify their impressions from the time when *it was 
 
 1 ' I never saw how Prance's evidence could stand, and I never went about to 
 support it '. Lloyd to L'Estrange, April 1686, quoted History oftJie Times, p. 85. 
 Pollock, Popish Plot, p. 103, and Gerard upon Pollock, pp. 22-3. The former dis- 
 misses as a ' mere fiction ' Roger's story {History of Times, pp. 81-4) of Prance's 
 and Bedloe's Lessoning. The amazing thing is Lloyd's change of front. 
 
348 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 effectually the test of a Protestant or a Papist to believe 
 or disbelieve the story'. 
 
 To get together ' 40 collateral witnesses ' to prove that 
 Godfrey on the morning of his disappearance enquired the 
 way to Primrose Hill (where he was found four days 
 later) and to prove that the chief witnesses had been pre- 
 vented by the menaces of Shaftesbury and his creatures 
 from giving their evidence freely, or were excluded 
 altogether, and to lay down the proposition (the bare 
 hint of which four years before had proved ruinous to 
 Thompson and Farwell) that Godfrey's brothers desired to 
 avoid a verdict of felo de se in order to secure the estate, 
 and therefore entered passionately into the Shaftesbury 
 plan — these were the objects of L'Estrange's enquiry, and 
 putting aside the work of the modern historian \ the last 
 effort to solve the enigma. 
 
 Godfrey's melancholy was a capital point towards the 
 verdict L'Estrange desired. To this end Harry Moore, 
 Godfrey's clerk, who had withdrawn himself into the in- 
 accessible Isle of Ely, was to be got at. A letter from 
 L'Estrange to his friend and fellow-sufferer of the Plot-years 
 Dr Nalson^, elicited little more from the ancient Moore 
 than a faint corroboration of his master's * black humours ', 
 after he had taken the Oates^ Information. 
 
 1 It is singular that though his History finds a place in indexes it has been so 
 sparingly used by historians. Macaulay scarcely mentions it. Mr Pollock makes 
 some little use of it. On the other hand Mr A. Marks (W7io killed Godfrey 1 
 (1905), p. 76) makes it the chief support of his attempted refutation of Pollock. 
 When we remember that L'Estrange had really a Royal Commission for the 
 purpose and was really a well-equipped (though violently partisan) historian, 
 greater reference to his work might have been expected. 'Bad testimony, 
 assertions and insinuations ', is Mr Pollock's verdict on the History. It is not 
 necessary on this view of Prance's guilt to assume that L'Estrange concocted the 
 Prance confession of 7th January 1688 (p. 349). Though admitting that 'the 
 Depositions collected by L'Estrange must be regarded with suspicion ' and even 
 that ' L'Estrange was not above falsifying evidence ' one is scarcely prepared to 
 go this length. Sitwell (Fir*^ Whig, p. 40) takes the 'melancholy' explanation 
 of Godfrey's fate, which L'Estrange developed and Mrs Behn celebrated in con- 
 gratulatory verse. 
 
 ' By you the fatal riddle was revealed 
 Which Hell's dark malice long had kept concealed, 
 The melancholy self-murtherer you trace 
 Thro' his Death-searching paths to the fatal place '. 
 
 Poem to Sir Rogerr L'Estrange, licensed by R. Midgely, 22nd April 1688. 
 
 2 See a letter from L'Estrange to Nalson, 2nd October 1684 [Rawl, MSS., 
 C. 739 (124)), concerning his commission. 
 
THE WHIG DEBACLE 349 
 
 On the testimony of an oilman, Joseph Eadcliffe, who 
 had been with Godfrey at a Vestry-meeting on the Friday 
 night before the disappearance, Eoger placed great impor- 
 tance. But the credit due to these late Depositions is 
 measured by the difference between Kadcliffe's description 
 of Godfrey's * pleasant, good, even humour and temper ' of 
 1678, and his present evidence of Godfrey's settling up 
 his earthly affairs after the Vestry, and going into the 
 accounts of his weekly dole of 10s. in bread to the poor ^. 
 
 Such in eft'ect was L'Estrange's contribution to the 
 Godfrey mystery, too powerfully mingled with party 
 passion to be of much use in disentangling that affair. 
 The main actors had disappeared, and it was only too 
 apparent that this parade of enquiry was conducted more 
 for the undoing of the remaining evidence than from a 
 passion for abstract justice^. 
 
 It is interesting, however, to learn that though these 
 depositions resulted in no new convictions. Prance almost 
 from his death - bed had the grace at last to justify 
 L'Estrange's seven years labours, by an open and final 
 confession. This man, once a respected tradesman, was 
 entirely moved by two very natural springs — fear of death 
 and loss of trade. 
 
 ' My Lord Shaftesbury ', he now said ^ told me my trade 
 should be better now than ever it was, and bought some 
 plate of me himself, part whereof was for Gates'. 
 
 The reference in Gates' appeal to Sancroft to the 
 City Clergy, offers an easy transition to the third sphere 
 of L'Estrange's activities. It may be remembered that 
 the Commons' Eesolutions of January 1681 in favour of 
 the Dissenters were construed as an attack on the Church, 
 and that from that moment the clergy turned their attention 
 
 1*1 am resolved to settle all my business to-night '. Mr Marks ( Who hilled 
 Godfrey t pp. 78-84) makes a good deal of this ' information '. He admits that 
 the lapse of six years is a serious drawback, but contends that L'Estrange's 
 witnesses were at least free from fear. Prance's ' such is the terror of his name ' 
 {Postscript to 4th vol. Ohservator) somewhat discounts this. 
 
 2 After Mr Pollock's latest attempt to establish the Plot, and Father Gerard's 
 able refutation, one will be inclined to Gibber's verdict {Lives of Poets (1753) — 
 L'Estrange). ' After all the murder of Sir E. Godfrey is perhaps one of those 
 secrets which will ever remain so, till the hearts of all men are laid open '. 
 
 •' Histoi-y of the Times, pt. iii., pp. 26-7. Prance to L'Estrange, 17th January 
 1688. On 16th June 1686, at the King's Bench, Prance pleaded guilty to a 
 charge of perjury against Green, Berry, and Hill. 8tate Trials, vii., 228. He 
 was excused the whipping part of his sentence. His confession to L'Estrange 
 referred to in the Text cannot be received with much more credit than attaches 
 to young Tonge's avowals in a similar position. 
 
350 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 to persecution, following therein the directions of the ' guide 
 to the inferior clergy'. Mr Smerke was for a season 
 enthroned, and few words spoken against the Papists. The 
 Cambridge guineas to L'Estrange and the prosecution of 
 the few Whig divines like Hickeringill and Du Moulin 
 mark the same phase of zealotry which had been power- 
 fully aided by the publication in 1680 of Filmer's Patriarcha, 
 written in Commonwealth times and now for the first time 
 given to the public. It is difficult to conceive the effect 
 of this work on the minds of the clergy, excited by the 
 recent spectacle of 'tribunitian arts' exploiting 'a fiction 
 which exceeds the ordinary bounds of vulgar credulity '^ 
 Those who wonder that Sydney could be induced to write 
 the MS. reply to this work, which cost him his life, are 
 little acquainted with the ideas and temper of those times. 
 Even Locke consumed some valuable time in trouncing 
 a work which extended the principle of the Fifth Com- 
 mandment to the whole field of civil government, and 
 which approved in an absurd degree the doctrine of preces 
 et lachrymae against which Hickeringill boisterously jeered 
 and 'Julian' Johnson wrote his best pages ^. 
 
 The hated Informer, and the effectual revocation of 
 the Edict of Nantes in 1681 started the Whig reaction 
 in the Church. The struggle for the soul of the French 
 Protestant is an instructive phenomenon of the times, the 
 Low Church and Dissenting Factions claiming him, with 
 the example of all the Reformed Churches on the Continent, 
 and L'Estrange foremost on the Church side in his Apology 
 for the French Protestants (1681), insisting on his dislike of 
 English dissent, to which an enforced assent seemed to be 
 given by the submission of the French Protestant Churches 
 in England to the practice of the Anglican Churches. Thus ' 
 we have on the one side Care's picture of Sir John Knight's 
 
 1 Hume, Hist, of Eng., viii., 304. 
 
 2 See Hunt's Postscript — which attacks L'Estrange as ' one of the old Knaves 
 admired by young coxcombs 'for * a despicable faculty which hath ma,de a 
 famous gentleman who hath a liberal dose of it, a writer of books, caused him to 
 waste so much paper, etc. '. Of Filmer's Patriwcka : ' Since the discovery of the 
 Popish Plot it is that Sir Robt. Filmer's book was reprinted together and recom- 
 mended by the title-page and the Puhlic Gazette to our reading '. It was not 
 ?-eprinted however. 1680 is the date of the first edition. Bohun issued an 
 edition in 1685 with a Reply to Sydney's paper. After the Revolution, Bohun 
 reconsidered his views. Filmerism survived many years in the Church. See 
 Lesley's Vieiv of the Times (1708), Nos. 55, 56, and 58. It was regarded in some 
 quarters as the only check to Deism. 
 
THE WHIG DEBACLE 351 
 
 furies against the Bristol Dissenters^, and on the other 
 an attempt of the ' Tantivies ' to goad the people into 
 resentment of the French refugees — described as the scum 
 of Europe — who come to take the bread out of the people's 
 mouth, and in such cases as Papillon and Dubois (though 
 they had been long naturalised), to foment sedition and 
 anarchy. 
 
 By the severities arising from the discovery of the 
 Bye Plot, and the skilful effort made to represent the 
 executions of CoUedge and Lord Kussell as Protestant martyr- 
 doms, new impetus was given to the reaction, apart 
 altogether from those men, like Halifax, who insensibly 
 drifted into the Trimming position 2. The letter from 
 the City spy already quoted marked the 'mighty party' 
 of those who sympathised with Russell's cause. 
 
 Thus the English persecution which was real enough 
 was aided by the more dramatic misery of the destitute 
 arrivals from France, the victims of a policy which English- 
 men felt was closely associated with the secret tendencies 
 and past history of the English Court ^. At the same 
 time the 'idolatry' of the Church of Rome, which came 
 up for defence in James II.'s reign by Parker, Walker, 
 and L'Estrange, was alarmingly extended to certain parish 
 churches, and the people told broadly by divines of that 
 church, that she had taken sensible steps towards Rome"*. 
 The classic instance of this was the image of St Michael 
 in Dr George Hicke's Church in Butolph's Lane, which 
 gave rise to a violent schism in that parish, and to the 
 
 1 Cottrant, v., 136. ' Bristol, Bristol, thou has done gallantly. I could not 
 but snicker the other day to see a parcel of wooden-shoed French heretics that 
 had fled for shelter, how sillily they looked when they saw a parcel of English 
 calvinists dragged out of their meetings and hurried to the gaol '. 
 
 2 Obseruator, i., 287: 'When College came to his trial what exclamations 
 were there as if in that single man the neck of the whole Protestant cause 
 had been brovight to the block '. See also the tract Parliamentum Pacificitm^ 
 written by order of the Court to answer Halifax's Letter to a Dissenter (1687), 
 p. 31. 'No sooner was the Prince of Providence placed in his Throne, and 
 whom their sermons of non-resistance they say solely set upon it (though his 
 fortunate arms in the West did somewhat to secure it too), but some of the 
 very same men managed the matter so, as if they had a mind to preach him 
 out again. Arbitrary Power, Popery, Prot. Keligion, was more the theme of 
 the Pulpit, than before it had been of the Phanatick's papers and pamphlets '. 
 
 3 Weiss, C. (Histoire des Refugies Protestants (1853), ii., 272) computes the 
 number of French exiles in England from 1680-90 at over 70,000, a third of whom 
 settled in London, but admits ' il est impossible d'en constater le nombre ' 
 becaiise complete lists were not published owing to the fear of popular jealousy 
 already alluded to. 
 
 J See Du Moulin's famous tract. The Several Advances made by the Church 
 of England toioards the Church of Rome (1681). 
 
352 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 publication of the Burning of St Michael for which our 
 old friend Larkins was prosecuted. The London parishes 
 were in these months repeating on a small scale the 
 violence and schism which have so often disgraced the 
 Christian Church. The Magistrates and Justices were 
 favourable to the Government, and therefore to the sort 
 of Church practices indulged by Hickes and Sherlock. 
 The contests of the now silent Hustings had been trans- 
 ferred to the parish churches of London. 
 
 The dissenting chapels or houses were of course — 
 since the 'Rjq discovery — either closed or sentinelled the 
 more violent pastors such as Lobb, Fergusson, Collins, etc. 
 in exile or hiding \ and the Baxterians or moderates — 
 who were now moving to meet the Whig party in the 
 Church on the common ground provided by Mr Trimmer — 
 either harassed and interrupted in their modest morning 
 lectures, or lying in prison with Ralphson, Jenkins, and 
 Delaune. In these circumstances the poor herd of Dis- 
 senters in the City had no choice but to disperse them- 
 selves among the parish churches — a saving of fines, 
 sneers L'Estrange — where they naturally sought out those 
 moving preachers who were least harsh on their late 
 practices. It appeared that London afforded many such, 
 and whilst in the country the new proselytes made 
 impatient and rude demonstrations, in the whiggish City 
 Churches, they found to their surprise that they could 
 applaud such discourses as they heard at Mr Hughes' 
 or Mr Smithies' Churches. 
 
 Far from welcoming these converts, L'Estrange fulmin- 
 ated against them, and the men they thronged to hear. 
 He evaded the fact that while several of the latter were 
 undoubtedly City firebrands, several more were drawn 
 from the old Cavalier class. 'There are', he said, in 
 August 1683, 'a great many dissenters come over to us, 
 but then they run all of 'em in shoals to the Churches 
 of those motley Christians, where they are as much at 
 home in a Parish Church as in a Conventicle'. In 
 January 1684, he had the pleasure of one recantation, 
 
 1 James Forbes of Gloucester, for example : ' I had 5 years (1682-7) quiet 
 exercise of my ministry wonderfully hid, where others in most places around 
 us were in great troubles'. See p. 309. L'Estrange did not know where 
 he was — Ohservator, i., 119, 15th September 1682. Forbes as we saw was 
 summoned before the Council at the Rye Plot excitement. Forbes is the Phaleg 
 of Absalom and Achitophd, pt. ii. See Scott's note, Dryden, ix., 368. 
 
THE WHIG DEBACLE 363 
 
 solely due to himself. In the Observator of 14th January, 
 Ed. Wetenhall, Kector of St Edmunds, apologised for a 
 Whiggish work which made some stir. The Protestant 
 Reconciler, in which the author * through want of prudence 
 and deference to authority ' had offended the Government ^. 
 But the more notorious cases, which Eoger now cheer- 
 fully undertakes, were to prove beyond even his power of 
 hectoring and menace. ' One Fergusson in a Parish Church, 
 does more harm than 40 Fergussons in as many Conventicles ' 
 was the motto of this new crusade ^. Even in Cathedrals — 
 as at Gloucester — were to be found those who 'leave their 
 canonical oaths '. In this spirit, in the late summer of 1684, 
 began the singling out of the City Clergy for punishment. 
 The two men he pitched on were the Eev. Wm. Smithies^ 
 and the Eev. Thos. Hughes, who admirably illustrate the 
 great principle of 'Trimming' for they approached that 
 neutral territory from opposite directions. Even before 
 Halifax published his celebrated Essay, the term Trimmer 
 had become a term of odium in all Government reports, 
 and was as familiar in the mouth of Jeffries as that other 
 by - word, Presbyterian. The residuum of violence and 
 knavery on both sides, L'Estrange saw in it only a more 
 insidious form of Whiggery, a form no longer clumsy and 
 anarchic, but politic to the last degree*. 
 
 1 An even more satisfactory recantation was that of the eccentric but gifted 
 Edmund Hickeringill, at whose pen, says his editor {Collected Works of Ed. 
 Hickeringill (1709), preface), *as great a genius as Sir Eoger L'Estrange *s was, 
 it submitted to his superior way of reasoning, although Mr Hickeringill gave 
 Sir Koger sufficient provocation '. His recantation on 27th June 1684, is printed 
 in Lesley's Vim of the Times (1708), No. 195. For a note on his 'provocations', 
 see chap, x,, 330 and xi., 353, note. 
 
 2 The Observator after the Rye discovery, increases its vicious tone. See 
 No. 388. ' If I were a Prince I would no more leave any schools, academies, 
 synagogues, nurseries, seminaries, conventicles, cabals, consults of dissenters 
 in my dominions than I would leave so many bitch-wolves '. He admits, however 
 (387), *a man may be a dissenter and yet be honest'. After the Monmouth 
 Rising it rises to a shriek of hatred against dissent and expresses a desire — 
 quoted by Macaulay — to adopt the latest essays in cruelty of the Scots Parlia- 
 ment, especially in relation to the Press. Sqq Documents Relative to Scottish 
 Printing, 1686-1705. 
 
 3 Dunton (Life and Errors, p. 369) includes him in his gallery of Church 
 divines, ' His faithful and excellent preaching commands the attention of men '. 
 
 4 Observator, i., 240, 13th November 1682, gives a derivation of the term— 
 * Gouranter. — How came you at first to be called Trimmers ? 
 
 ' Trimmer. — We write with an alias, but I fancy the name originally had an 
 allusion to the language of the River. When a vessel does not row even they 
 cry Trimm the boat and so when one side is lower than 'tother, 'tis one way to 
 lean to the other side, to make the best of things'. 
 
 L'Estrange seems also to have invented or passed into currency the nick-name 
 ' Grindaliser ' (see Moderation a Virtue (1683), p. 20). He never forgave the 
 Trimmers. His ^sop (1691) has many sharp reflections on them. See Fables, iv., 
 
354 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 The two Trimmers chosen by L'Estrange had large City 
 charges, and had learned the moderation which mingling 
 with all classes ought to teach. 
 
 ' I live ', says Smithies, ' in a parish where the burden 
 of poverty is very heavy. Yet some have reproached me 
 for concerning myself for the poor, as I have done, 
 pretending that it increased the number of them. That 
 which the Observator charges me with, is suggesting that 
 the Dissenters lay under the burden of oppression and 
 persecution, and that the Government ought to ease them ', 
 which Mr Smithies affirms never entered his mind. The 
 heads of his offending were many, but chiefly that he was 
 too tender to the Dissenters, omitted certain ceremonies 
 at baptism and marriage to which they objected, and as a 
 distributer of bequests, gave to the poor Dissenter as well 
 as to the orthodox person. 
 
 It appears that there had been a split at Cripplegate 
 and like all such splits, it attracted the vulgar and along 
 with them Roger L'Estrange, who since his return from 
 exile had made a speciality of spying on the congregations 
 where political trouble was rife ^. A worthy alderman 
 of Tory leanings, and therefore a supporter of the party 
 of Moore and North in the City, had gathered a party 
 against Smithies. A sermon on a text from Galatians, 
 ' Bear ye one another's burdens ' had brought matters to 
 a head, and L'Estrange was requested to come down and 
 see for himself what was happening, an intervention which 
 caused Smithies to remark on 'an ancient gentleman, who 
 makes it his calling and employment to reproach and 
 vilify whom he pleases'. It so happened that Smithies' 
 position was really stronger than appeared, for he was of 
 the class of Cavalier who had been turned against the 
 
 xxxix., xli., etc., quoted with approval in La Grose's Wor^s of the Leai-ned 
 (January 1692), p. 213. ' ^sop condemns the double practices of Trimmers and 
 false shuffling and ambidexterous dealings '. It has often been pointed out that 
 many of the -^sopic Fables — as that of the ' Reed and the Oak ' (L'Estrange, 
 No. ccxv.) — teach the doctrine of yielding and politic shuffling. 
 
 1 See Courant (1681), No. 47, where he is accused of absenting himself from 
 Church to 'lend an ear to Conventicles' ; and Observator, i., 282, February 1683: 
 *You were speaking just now how quick the pulpits and the pamphlets have 
 been of late and that put me in mind of a sermon that I heard yesterday was 
 se'nnight at Pinners Hall '. See A Pleasant Conference upon the ObseTi'ator, p. 10 : 
 'Whilst he clamours of Dissenters, for not coming to Church, he thinks 'tis 
 canonical enough to walk to Guildhall Yard, peep in at the Preacher, and 
 presently retire to meet the Club of witty good mockers by Fleet-Ditch-side and 
 droll away the day in blasphemy, ridiculing religious duties, or inventing Jack- 
 pudding lies of some pretended Non. Con.'s preaching'. 
 
THE WHIG DEBACLE 356 
 
 Government by its violence, and Roger could not have 
 selected a more damning case of what was happening 
 over all England. 'My name/ says the worthy pastor, 
 *was then malignant as it is now Trimmer'^ and he had 
 brought over numbers into the Church. 
 
 This affair occupied September 1684. We need not 
 examine Smithies' various replies to the Observator in 
 November, nor did Roger give them more attention than 
 to thank with unusual modesty ' a better pen than his own ' 
 for a Vindication of the Observator, which proves that he 
 had still friends in the Church. 
 
 In November another victim was brought to the 
 bar of the Observator, the Rev, Thos. Hughes, who proved a 
 much easier victim in some respects, but whose gift of 
 simple garrulity in the end proved as deadly as Smithies' 
 loyal antecendents. In Prof. Arber's Term Catalogues for 
 November 1684 appear, besides Smithies' three replies, a 
 printed sermon by Hughes of 1683, which had drawn 
 L'Estrange's fire together with his Rumble Candid Plea. 
 Hughes was of the vacillating dissenting type, which offered 
 L'Estrange good scope for attack. In the Civil Wars he 
 had fought against the King. He belonged to the same 
 Presbyterian knot as Love and Jenkins, whose death in 
 prison this year created a profound impression 2. In 1652 
 when only twenty-six, he preached a hot sermon for the 
 Parliament which he recanted at the Restoration. Then 
 followed twenty years hovering betwixt Church and Chapel, 
 and in 1680 an offensive Endeavour for Peace which blamed 
 the Church for making a reunion of Protestants impossible. 
 Shortly after he found his way into the Church, and 
 became a rallying ground of dissent within the Church. A 
 sermon of his in 1683 after the Rye Discovery thanks God 
 for the King's preservation from the Popish Plot. Just then 
 L'Estrange was moving heaven and earth for a Melius 
 Inquirendum, and to find a Churchman who still regaled his 
 people (though ' a very mean auditory ' which could scarcely 
 be expected to know that the great Observator had demolished 
 Gates' dagon) with ' fears and jealousies ' was more than 
 L'Estrange could stand. In his defence The Candid Plea 
 
 1 Gbservat<yr, i., 201, 8th September 1682 : 
 
 * Whig.—l know scores of these old cavaliers that have changed their principles 
 no more than the sun his road and yet at this day are accounted as errant Whigs 
 and seditious rascalls '. 
 
 2 See chap, xi., 336. He died 26th January 1685. 
 
356 SIR ROGER L^ESTRANGE 
 
 1684, Hughes pleaded the recantation of youthful follies 
 and even dared to sport with the Olservator. 'For me', 
 says the obscure curate, *to engage in such skirmishings 
 were to take pains for promoting of his profit, and mine 
 own damage ; his business lying in this way of writing, and 
 to prodigious gain they say '. 
 
 As a result of these furies there appeared in December 
 a really famous tract The Observator Proved a Trimmer. It 
 does not rank with the Growth of Popery, Anatomy of an 
 Equivalent, or Dissenters' Sayings, but in part comes near the 
 best of these. The author may have been Danvers ^ One 
 would have thought that L'Estrange had known Care's and 
 Johnson's style better than to suspect them. Though the 
 tract came from Larkins' secret Press and through the 
 dissenting channels, it is unlike the stuff that emanated 
 from the lurking-holes of seditious dissent, and L'Estrange 
 may be excused for taking it as a voice from the Church. 
 What the channels referred to were, forms one of the 
 fascinating problems of the Press '^. The Larkins family 
 deserves a special place in the Temple of Nonconformity. 
 Of George Larkins his apprentice Dunton says : ' like a glow- 
 worm he still shined on me in the dark — my alter ego'. 
 A month or two before, Larkins had printed a striking 
 refutation of a pamphlet called A Second Argument for . . . 
 a Union among all good Protestants, written by a person 
 called Child who was one of the late converts to the Church 
 so often mentioned. Delaune, in Newgate, wrote the refuta- 
 tion, which may have caused Child's suicide. It would be 
 uncharitable to blame the saints for a feeling of grief 
 tempered by satisfaction. From Larkins' Press issued a 
 re-print of Delaune's Answer to Child's Preface. Now a 
 month later Larkins is found printing The Observator Proved 
 a Trimmer. Roger justly felt that Larkins (who as Mrs 
 James reminded him, had been befriended by L'Estrange) 
 was the glow-worm of dissenting intrigue. A letter inter- 
 cepted from the seditious bookseller, Enoch Prosser, to a 
 
 1 He was then being sought for another libel, Murder Will Out, Gazette, 4th 
 January 1685. For Danver's precarious career see Macaulay (Popular edition, 
 i., 256), who, true to his saint-or-devil method, makes him with Wildman a devil. 
 
 2 Prof. Arber was puzzled for example by the amount of ' Quaking ' stuff that 
 got into print. See Preface to vol. i. of the Te^-7)i Catalogues. Unfortunately 
 none of the few Catalogues of Friend's Books supply much information on the 
 subject. That of Joseph Smith, 2 vols., 1867, with a supplement 1893, gives 
 more evidence of the large amount printed, than of how and by whom. It con- 
 tains also many works which had no connection with the Quakers. 
 
THE WHIG DEBACLE 357 
 
 dissenting brother, James Wood, then lying at Wood St., 
 Compter, throws some light on these secret methods of 
 publication ^ 
 
 ' I hear it objected that Mr Larkins and myself cannot 
 publish the book as well as others, because we have no 
 shops; therefore no occasion or motive to exchange with 
 booksellers. To which I answer that no bookseller would 
 exchange such a book till he is forc't to it, for want of sale 
 for ready money ; but will make what monies they can of it 
 first and disperse printed advertisements to all booksellers, 
 and other public places, about the Town, prefix the Title to 
 all booksellers' doors and insert it in the Catalogue of 
 Printed Books, that comes out every Term and which goes 
 all over England. This Mr Larkins and myself can do, by 
 dispersing a proper advt. all over the Town to give 
 notice where they are to be sold, and send a person with a 
 convenient parcel of them at encouraging rates to all book- 
 sellers besides the care we are able to take expeditiously to 
 furnish the several congregations with them 2. 
 
 The popularity of the Observator Proved a Trimmer 
 which came from this Press, is proved by L'Estrange's 
 confession that it became as meritorious to be suspected of 
 having a hand in it as afterwards was the case with the 
 Letter to a Dissenter^. 
 
 Warned by this uproar, in the new reign Eoger resolved 
 to walk more warily, and a truce of God is proclaimed in the 
 new volume of Observators, which began in February. The 
 
 1 Beljame, Le PvMic et les Hommes de Lettres, p. 178 : ' tandis qu'a la surface 
 la Cour prenait ses ^ats joyeux, et que le Th64tre et la litterature l^gere 
 semblaient etre tout, il y eut une litterature souteraine, si Ton peut dire, sur 
 laquelle nous n'avons que des aper9us incomplets, mais qui dut Stre considerable, 
 et qui sans 6clat mais aussi sans d^faillance, poursuivit son oeuvre lent et silen- 
 cieuse, non sans effets.' For Larkins see chap, vii., 207. 
 
 2 Observator, ii., 204. Enoch's Conventicle rhetoric is exhibited in another 
 letter concerning Child's fate ; ' a wandering star tossed to and fro, and a cloud 
 without water'. Brother Jones, from Wood St., Compter, directed these press 
 negotiations, hence the intercepting of these letters which L'Estrange publishes. 
 A letter from Larkins to Jones, 12th December 1684 {Observator, ii., 199, 8th 
 January 1684-5), clearing himself from the scandal of ' My being baptised, and 
 sometimes since confirmed ', gives some interesting details of his religious and 
 printing career, * I have been under much trouble about some Qtiaeries which I 
 composed as a Journeyman at Mr Darby's, upon which account I was forced to 
 be a witness against him, at the Old Bailey — the issue of which was Mr Darby's 
 standing in the pillory '. >See chap, vi., 187, note. 
 
 3 Observator, 5th January 1685. People look at him * with a fleering kind of 
 compassion after that unanswerable piece 0. P. T. with such a look as I remember 
 the City Marshall gave me when he delivered me up to the Keeper of Newgate 
 in order to my execution, "Pray, sir, be civil to him, for he's a gentleman ", with 
 one side of his mouth drawn up to his ear at the word gentleman '. 
 
358 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 impossible condition is * no new Provocation '. Referring to 
 this period in his Porti^aicture of King James II}, Titus 
 Gates, after acknowledging the services of L'Estrange in his 
 own case, says : ' Some of the Devil's brokers of the Popish- 
 High-Church-non-juring Conspirators roared this, That hy 
 taking the Coronation Oath James had already weakened the 
 Prerogative, out of their pulpits by the direction of Old 
 Hodge (L'Estrange) their guide '^. 
 
 A further collision with the City Clergy was certain, but 
 it came before the proposed truce was well out of his mouth. 
 In their address to the new King, these gentlemen used the 
 seemingly harmless phrase * our religion ', which to Roger's 
 distempered mind set up a barrier between the Church and 
 the Crown, and might be an inlet for any religious 
 enthusiasm. Kot content with attacking this address, he 
 followed up a week later by an extravagant eulogy of the 
 Catholics — 'Their principles are known and certain, and 
 the other {i.e., of the Church of England) unaccountable 
 and vagabond'. At the same time he exposed certain 
 popular scandals, such as those of idolatry and the doctrine 
 alleged of the Papists, that ' King's may be deposed '. He 
 still inveighed bitterly against a 'popular liberty of con- 
 science'. In April he committed the crowning offence of 
 developing the doctrine of the King's dual conscience, 
 public and private, the former being immediately translated 
 into the vernacular in the form All subjects are hound to he of 
 their Sovereign's religion. 
 
 In addition to the odium of his attacks on the Whig 
 Clergy it cannot be doubted that his savagery directed to 
 notable Nonconformists in the beginning of this reign 
 swelled the popular indignation, and that men of the 
 Hughes-Smithies type would be shocked by the prosecution 
 of Baxter, following so close on Jenkyn's death in Newgate. 
 As we saw, this was the occasion of an unequalled display 
 of barbarity in the Ohservator (29th January 1685) which 
 attracted Macaulay's severest censure. The account of 
 
 1 Iq four parts, 3rd ed., 1696, i., 97. 
 
 '^ Sir Sidney Lee (art. L'Estrange, Diet. Nat. Biog.) quoting State Poems, ii., 
 182, says of the same period, ' the savagery of his polemics was approved by the 
 Clergy who believed in his reiterated cry of "the Church in danger". The 
 " minor clergy " at this period is said to have thronged Sam's Coffee-house in 
 order to listen to L'Estrange, who sat among them "prating " to them "Like a 
 Grand Doctor " '. This may have been true of 1681-3. By 1685 he was both too 
 unpoi)ular with the City Clergy and too troubled with bereavement, gout, and 
 fits, to play any such part. 
 
THE WHIG DEBACLE 359 
 
 Baxter's triaP does not mention L'Estrange, but we know 
 that he selected the passages of the Paraphrase of the New 
 Testament, on which the indictment was founded. Baxter 
 himself has remarked in a note to be inserted in the second 
 edition of his Para'phrase : ' I was for this book by the 
 instigation of Sir Roger L'Estrange and some of the Clergy 
 imprisoned nearly two years by Sir George Jefferies, Sir 
 Francis Wilkins (Withans) and the rest of the Judges of 
 the King's Bench '2. 
 
 It was in January 1688 that the subject of a liberty 
 of conscience began to be eagerly canvassed, and people 
 naturally turned to the Ohservator to see what line the 
 author of Toleration Discuss' d would take. The accommoda- 
 tion which he had advocated, having proved ineffectual, the 
 way of Toleration alone remained. In January, Trimmer 
 is willing to bet a guinea that L'Estrange will eat his 
 words and set up for a Toleration. The answer — * if I find 
 the wisdom of my superiors that way inclined, I should 
 never open my mouth against it ' — was followed two days 
 later by a remarkable letter to the King. 
 
 * Great Sir, — The world will needs have me to be a Roman 
 Catholic and the report of it is so strong that I reckon myself 
 bound both in honesty and respect to inform your Majesty 
 that I am really a true son of the Church of England ' ^. 
 
 A week before he had written Dr Charlet *. ' I can 
 assure you that there is no thought of a Toleration. 
 You heard I suppose of the Quo Warrantos against the 
 
 1 state Trials, xi., 494 (merely some notes taken by friends), and an even 
 more cursory notice in Modem Reports, in., 68. 
 
 2 Life and Times of Richard Baxter, by Wm. Orme (1830), pp. 464-5 : 'The 
 conduct of L'Estrange in promoting the prosecution of Baxter, is only in harmony 
 with the other parts of his character. He was one of the most unprincipled, 
 mercenary scribblers of the age ... he had often before attacked Baxter by 
 his pen, he now employed a more formidable and dangerous weapon, the 
 Attorney-General and L. C. J. Jefferies '. Of those other occasions of literary 
 strife which had proceeded intermittently since the Restoration, Orme admits 
 that Roger's Casuist Uncas'd in a Dialogue between Richard and Baxter (1680), 
 in reply to Baxter's Nonconformists' Plea fm- Peace (1679) is ' a witty pamphlet, 
 but wickedly intended ; yet the writings of Baxter furnished ample means for 
 such a production, and it cannot be denied that Sir Roger makes a very dexterous 
 use of them. The dialogue is often very humorous, so that it is impossible not 
 to smile at the joke while we regret the object for which it is furnished. Baxter 
 took it all very coolly. '* I have never had the schooling of L'Estrange, and 
 so never taught him to understand my writings, and therefore undertake not 
 that things incongruous shall not seem contradictions to him " '. Third Defence 
 f(yr the Plea (1682), ii., 151. 
 
 ^ Observator, 26th January, 1686. 
 
 * Ballard MSS., xi. (54), 19th January 1686. 
 
360 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 Universities, Deans and Chapters and of a Commission for 
 an enquiry into Abbeylands, etc., and 20 stories of the same 
 batch which are all shams. The Newsletters will go to 
 wreck everywhere and if there shall be any steal out of the 
 same stamp with what they used to be\ you'll oblige me 
 in a word or two upon the matter. 'Tis almost as current 
 here in London that the Ohservator is prohibited ^ and kicked 
 out of the coffee-houses in Oxford, as anything in Oxford 
 of what is done at London. I do not ask as doubting it, 
 but I do believe that more or less, there was some fire for 
 the smoke. 'Tis a hard matter to make a people that have 
 been used to license and riot believe in the necessary pre- 
 rogatives of an Imperial Prince to be less than tyranny and 
 to distinguish between the King's authority and his religion. 
 — I am, with much thankfulness, Your very faithful Servant, 
 
 'E. L'ESTEANGE'. 
 
 Scarcely had this letter been penned, when a final attack 
 on L'Estrange, this time without doubt from the City Clergy, 
 was delivered, ' out of the mouth of the Church itself ', as 
 Roger says. Like all good attacks, it begins its powerful 
 assault by complimenting its victim as a gentleman and a 
 scholar. To meet this Difference hetivecn the Church of 
 England and the Church of Rome, L'Estrange had once more 
 recourse to an English bishop. Compton had ordered the 
 first sheet of the Difference^ etc., to be suppressed, and now 
 our author thought him likely to be a sympathetic reader 
 of his Ohservator Defended'^. In this tract he gathers up 
 a bundle of miscellaneous charges — the chaff of the coffee- 
 houses — as that he ' had threatened booksellers who presumed 
 to print anything against Popery '. To conclude ' There were 
 great pains taken before the opening of Parliament to make 
 work on it, for a formal complaint, but the pretence would 
 not hold water '. 
 
 1 See Wood, Life and Times, iii., 180. Muddiman's letters seem to have been 
 specially objected to. * Yet other trite and lying letters came '. They returned 
 in 1689 ( TFooc^, iii., 298). 
 
 2 Luttrell, Jan. 2, 1686-7 (i., 392) : ' 'Tis said Sir Roger is commanded to 
 write no more Ohservators'. 2nd March 1686-7 (i., 396) : 'He hath certainly laid 
 down writing anymore '. Under the same date Luttrell notes * the names of the 
 Justices of Peace of Middlesex who desired his Majesty would dispense with 
 their taking the oaths and Test'. Sir Edmund Warcup and his friend Sir 
 Roger L'Estrange are among the seven. 
 
 3 Ranke (iv. 267-8) takes it as evidence of ' the change of feeling which had 
 taken place in the circle of the Episcopal Church '. 
 
THE WHIG DEBACLE 361 
 
 This really finished L'Estrange's brawl with the Church. 
 Further than a submission to his superiors in the matter of 
 Toleration he would not go, and Trimmer's guinea may be 
 fairly said to have been forfeited. The whole controversy leaves 
 him much where he stood before. A vicious partisan truly, 
 but sincere also. Granted Filmer's notion of Government 
 we are landed at once in all the absurdities of L'Estrange's 
 political creed. His religion, as he assured King James, 
 was loyalty. Oxford applauded Eilmer's views. He only 
 desired to carry them to their logical conclusion ^. 
 
 In dwelling on L'Estrange's relation with the Church, we 
 have omitted to describe those dignities and rewards which 
 his fidelity had gained him. He had always been a 
 'Yorkist', and James hastened to make that 'scandal to 
 all chivalry', Koger L'Estrange, a knight 2. Shortly after 
 we hear of him as Crown candidate for Winchester, to sit 
 in that Parliament which Macaulay has described as com- 
 posed of the country boobies he delighted to picture the 
 Tory gentry and clergy of that age^. Other historians 
 invite us to scan the lists of Parliament to observe therein 
 the most honoured names in English life*. But no one 
 has ever denied the justice of Seymour's attack on the 
 universal coercion adopted to secure the return of Court 
 candidates, or grudged the pages which Macaulay devotes 
 to this subject^. It has been already remarked that the 
 Whig historian made better use of the Observators than 
 most writers, and so in his catalogue of corruptions in 
 connection with this election, he is indebted to L'Estrange's 
 paper for one such instance. It is curious he should have 
 omitted reference to Eoger's own case at Winchester which 
 lay to his hand, and is at least as instructive as the election 
 manoeuvres at Newport, Pagnell, Chester ^, or St Albans. 
 
 1 When Bohun was turned out of the Commission of the Peace by James II. 
 (he had written 'a book against the Papists', which was refused a license) he 
 ' began to consider whether the Filmerian doctrines could be reconciled with 
 Liberty '. {JDianj of Ed. Bohun, Wilton Rix (1853), pp. 77 and 69). 
 
 2 Oldmixon, i., 695. Luttrell, Diary, i., 34, 30th April 1685: ' with a particular 
 satisfaction he had in his loyalty '. 
 
 3 Macaulay (Popular Edition), i., 249-50. 
 
 4 Eachard, 1056 : ' It consisted for the most part of the late prevailing party, 
 but of the richest and wisest men of the Kingdom'. Evelyn {Diary, i,, 595) 
 corroborates Burnet's report which is of course unfriendly. Luttrell, Diary, i. , 341, 
 has something to the same effect. So Coke, Detection, ii., 333 ; and Ralph, i., 861. 
 
 J Macaulay (Popular Edition), i., 233-5. 
 For the Chester election and defeat of the Whiggish Sir Robt. Cotton, see 
 Ohservator, in., 25, 4th April 1685. 'You have here the Life and Death of 
 Whiggism in these parts', is L'Estrange's comment. 
 
362 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 There were two parts of the Kingdom where special 
 efforts were needed to get the right man elected. As to the 
 North, we have letters from Lord-Lieutenants and men in 
 authority all over, eking out testimonies of loyalty with 
 hopes and promises, mingled with cautions and threats in 
 connection with the elections at York, Newcastle, Berwick, 
 etc. A special anxiety is also displayed in respect to 
 Bridgewater, Bristol, Salisbury, and Winchester, in the 
 west and south ^. The judges were the main instruments 
 of coercion, and Sunderland chief Whip of the King's 
 Party. The last named city, the capital of Hampshire, 
 was one of the centres of Whiggish disaffection. It elected 
 two members, who had been for several Parliaments, Sir 
 John Clobery and a Mr Morley. The honest townsmen 
 had fixed on their re-election, and as the matter rested 
 largely with the Mayor and the Aldermen, the choice 
 was regarded as settled when on a Monday evening in 
 March, Justice Levinz, then on circuit, received Sunderland's 
 commands to force the names of two entire strangers, one 
 Sir Roger L'Estrange, the other his creature, Chas. Hanse, 
 on the community. ' My Lord/ says Levinz 2, * the next 
 morning (being 3rd March) between 7 and 8 of the clock 
 I sent to the Mayor of the Place to desire I might speak 
 with him and his brethren. But he being laid up with the 
 gout within a short time after, the Recorder and 3 or 4 of 
 the Aldermen came to me and I acquainted them with 
 what your Lordship commanded me. They told me it was 
 late because they had pitched upon the others before, but 
 some of them said they should choose Mr L'Estrange and 
 Mr Hanse 3, since they were likely to be most acceptable 
 to his Majesty, and some said they would have them and no 
 others. The next morning Sir John Clobery having heard 
 of this came to me, of which I was glad because I heard 
 there began to grow a very great division in the Town 
 about the matter intending to endeavour to persuade him 
 to decline standing which upon the discourse, I then had 
 with him, I had some hopes to effect'. 
 
 Something of this growing division is conveyed in an 
 
 1 See numerous letters in >S^. P. Dom. Janus 11.^ i., 58, 80, 81, 82, etc. 
 
 2 S. P. James IT., i. 79. 
 
 '^ That Sir Roger should be pressed on Winchester is bad enough, but that he 
 was able to carry 'his comrade' Hanse is truly surprising. Soe II.M.C, llth 
 RepL, pt. v., p. 123. Bp. Ken notifies that the election of L'Estrange was agree- 
 able to the King's wishes. Duckett, Penal and Test Acts (1882-3), i., 42/. 
 
THE WfflG DEBACLE 363 
 
 anonymous letter to the Mayor on the same morning^ 
 (3rd March). 
 
 ' Mr Mayor, — It is reported that Bernard Howard ^ has 
 recommended Mr L'Estrange to you to be your burgess in 
 Parliament and that you intend to choose him. ... He is 
 a papist. Have you read the book entitled The Ohservator 
 Proved a Trimmer ? ' 
 
 Sir John was not so easily dissuaded from standing, for 
 the feeling of the townsmen and the support of the two 
 Lord-Lieutenants made him think of defiance. All over the 
 country reports of such sturdy resistance were coming in, 
 and gave some slight colour of rebellion and the threat of 
 military force ^. In the case of Salop the same means were 
 employed *. The people who resisted or put up opposition 
 candidates were t' horrid Whigs ', or ' those they call 
 moderate men, i.e. Trimmers, as great rogues as live in the 
 King's dominions, etc.'. 
 
 What happened in the case of Winchester is conveyed in 
 two letters from Howard of the 25th and 26th March. 
 Clobery and Morley had a strong following both among the 
 townsmen and gentry. The Earl of Gainsborough and Lord 
 Camden went as near opposing the royal mandate as they 
 decently could. Whilst giving out that they personally 
 would take no part in the election, these noblemen gave 
 instructions to their stewards to prosecute a vigorous canvass 
 for Clobery and Morley. Hence the first letter referred to ^, 
 asking the Government to convey a hint to Gainsborough, 
 ' to say that his Lordship hath given new instructions, that 
 he will serve them (the Tory candidates) with his interest, 
 not vote against them '. The second letter says that 
 Gainsborough ' will neither write nor vote for us, but be 
 well enough pleased to have the Whigs in commission under 
 him'. The loyal Howard proceeds to regret that His 
 
 1 Ohservator, 12th March 1685. 
 
 2 The Recorder of Winchester, whose partisan letters to Sunderland are 
 sufficient alone to justify Macaulay's strictures on this period. 
 
 ^ S. P. James J I., i. 81, 3rd April : ' My Lord Derby had ordered the 
 Deputy-Lieutenants to draw part of the Militia into Lancaster where the election 
 is, for the rabble will certainly commit some grand riot against the gentry, if they 
 do not actually rise in rebellion'. See the Ohservator, iii., 25 already alluded to 
 for an account of these tumults. 
 
 * Ihid., 80, 4th April 1685. 'The King was so gracious to Mr Lewson as 
 upon his account to order Capt. Orme to desist '. See also Jeffries to Sunderland 
 {iMd., 82) : 'Hamden will assign his interest to Sir Roger Hill, who now sets up 
 a horrid Whig'. 
 
 5 Ihid., 64. 
 
364 sm ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 Majesty's Lord-Lieutenants should be so factious. At the 
 same time he encloses — surely the most scandalous feature 
 of the later Stuart reigns — lists of the factious on the 
 Commission of Peace ^ 
 
 The result of these underhand dealings was that on the 
 26th Clobery and Morley at a meeting of their party 
 decided 'that their numbers were inconsiderable', and the 
 same night 'the Mayor sent us word that they had both 
 declared that they would give over the contest, and we 
 have just now chosen Mr L'Estrange and Mr Hanse'^. 
 
 Of Morley we hear no more ^, but Clobery, unwilling to 
 suffer a total eclipse, a month later sends Sunderland notice 
 of a poor girl of sixteen called Kemp, who was heard to 
 speak wild words of Charles 11. having been murdered by 
 his brother *. By such means could an English gentlemen 
 seek to vindicate his loyalty ! 
 
 This Parliament is remarkable for what must be almost 
 the earliest example of the meeting of the leaders of parties 
 on the eve of Parliament. It speaks something for the 
 position L'Estrange had gained in the Party, that he took a 
 leading part in addressing the loyal gentlemen who met at 
 the Fountain Tavern in the Strand, the day before Parlia- 
 ment met ^ His name, however, does not appear prominent 
 in the debates which followed, and which were interrupted 
 by the news of Monmouth's rebellion. One measure, the 
 last passed before the adjournment caused by that event, 
 must have pleased him. Macaulay has expressed surprise 
 that the Press Act ' which would in our age convulse the 
 whole frame of society ' was revived with a batch of other 
 Acts, no care being even taken to define the old Statute. 
 Its renewal with 'every clause, article, and thing therein' 
 was taken as a matter of course, as the legislators of 1660 
 
 1 aS^. p. Dom. James II., i., 66. 'Your Lordship will see by the enclosed 
 testimony of the present Mayor (Mr Penton), Mr Fletcher and Mr Hanse, how true 
 that is which you could not believe of Mr Morley '. As to the townsmen, ' I have 
 comforted them by assuring that they shall have the custom of all my friends 
 both now and when the Coxirt conies dcnvn '. 
 
 2 Ihid. 
 
 3 He appeared for Winchester in the Convention Parliament. Duckett, 
 op. cit., i., 427. 
 
 4 ^S-. P. JainesIL, i. (93). 
 
 8 Ohservator, 27th May 1685, quoted by Macaulay, Popular Edition, i., 249 ; 
 Verriey MSS. {H.M.G. App. to 7th Rep., p. 499), 10th March 1685 : 'There's mad 
 work in many elections. L'Estrange and his comrade, I hear, is chosen at 
 Winchester '. Ibid., 13th May : ' The Town says that Sir Roger L'Estrange shall 
 be a Lord '. Luttrell, Diary, i., 367 : ' There is a report that Sir Roger L'Estrange 
 is to be made a Master in Chancery '. 
 
THE WHIG DEBACLE 365 
 
 proceeded to delete the legislation of the previous twelve 
 years, so the ' loyal ' Parliament of 1685 took up the thread 
 where it had been dropped by the tumultuous Parliament of 
 1679 1. The expiry of the Act in that year was not a mere 
 accident as we have seen, and when in 1695 the Act was 
 finally dropped, the Commons could give eighteen good 
 Whiggish reasons why it should not be continued 2. 
 
 The best proof that the Stationers were securely gagged 
 is that we hear no more of them in this reign. The 
 Ohservator closed at the 244th Number of the Srd volume ^, 
 2nd March 1687. It is observable, however, that from the 
 moment he began to lose the favour of the Church, all 
 life seems to drop from L'Estrange's pen, which may serve 
 to prove the sincerity of his attachment to the Anglican 
 Establishment, rather than how much he feared a coalition 
 of his enemies. The triumph over the Monmouth Eebellion 
 had carried him, as Macaulay remarks, into the fiercest 
 excesses. His visit to Scotland in 1686 and setting up 
 a Press in Holyrood, to persuade the Scottish Parliament 
 to repeal the Tests, to dispense with which he with others 
 petitioned the King, had not added to his popularity. As 
 member for Winchester he was specially interested in the 
 upheaval in the West, and must have remarked with 
 mortification that the City which had the honour to be 
 represented by himself and Hanse provided — on his own com- 
 putation — no less than four hundred to the rebel host. Worst 
 of all, of these only some twenty, or thirty were declared 
 Dissenters K In the Great Civil War the contrary had been 
 true. Hence the bitterness now for the first time quite 
 openly directed against the Church in his Beply to the 
 Reasons of the Oxford Clergy against Addressing. The 
 spirited resistance of these gentlemen to the high-handed 
 
 1 Bigmore and Wyman, Bib. of Printing^ ii., 127. Kalph, i., 981 : 'The very 
 party (Church) who first prepared this Act . . . were made liable to the smart 
 of it', i.e., from Catholics. 
 
 2 Lords' Journals, xv., 5456, chap, v., 5a. For an account of the new 
 severities in the Press, see Reasons Humbly Submitted for the Libei'ty of Unlicensed 
 Printing {\%^2t) ; Macaulay, Hist, of Eng.^ chaps, xix. and xxi. 
 
 3 There is some notice of the setting up of a Catholic Press by L'Estrange at 
 Holyrood, 1688. See Fountainhall's Historical Notices {\M^), p. 744, and Wodrow's 
 History of the Sufferings., p. 371, quoted in Mr Hume Brown's Hist, of Scotland, 
 ii., 438. For the Catholic Press set up by Jas. Watson at Holyrood see article 
 Jas. Watson, King's Printer, by W. J. Couper— *Sfco<. Hist. Rev., vii., 27. 
 
 4 Reply to the Reasons of the Oxford Clergy (Somer's Tracts, ix., 36) : 'Go 
 down to Winchester where were above 400 of the meaner sort, and except 20 
 or 30, all declare themselves to be of the Church of England '. 
 
366 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 conduct of Parker, their Bishop, who insisted on their 
 participating individually in the Address, invoked the 
 intervention of him whom Scott calls 'the Coryphaeus of 
 his party'. All his usual cautions are thrown aside, and 
 the Church is roundly attacked for harbouring the main 
 supporters of the two late conspiracies^. Little wonder 
 that what with his attacks on the Dissenters within the 
 Church, the ' Grindalisers ', Hughes and Smithies, what 
 with his appeals for accommodation and reunion and his 
 present open attack, he found it difficult after the Revolu- 
 tion to defend his attitude, and that despite death-bed and 
 other protestations, those divines who wished rather to 
 remember his earlier services found it difficult to ' vindicate 
 an injured memory '. His friendships, too, must alone have 
 exposed him to attack. From Cartwright's Diary ^ we learn 
 that he was on familiar terms with that hated prelate and 
 his friends. He was associated with Sprat, Parker, and 
 the Bishop of Ely. His lay friendships as we have seen 
 were as notorious. Guise, Armiger, Harwich, and L'Estrange 
 were the persecuting party in the Middlesex Justices, 
 allied with North, Moore, and Wright of the City, with 
 Graham, Burton and Hanse at the Law Courts, and with 
 Sir Edmund Warcup and Justice Withans on the Judges 
 Bench. In short he was a main figure in that experiment 
 of absolute rule which has provided the Whig historians 
 with the part of their argument which is unanswerable. 
 
 1 Somer's Tracts, p. 38. 
 
 2 Diary of Br Thomas Qartwright, published by the Camden Society, 1843, 
 pp. 4, 5, 45, etc. 
 
CHAPTEK XII 
 
 THE REVOLUTION 
 
 The Eevolution of course brought ruin and the long 
 threatened Parliament to L'Estrange. With Sprat ^ and 
 others he had dropped off before the end, but his name 
 was too prominently associated with every attack on liberty 
 to make him immune from vengeance. It has been said 
 that the Ohservators ceased, because L'Estrange could not 
 go back on Toleration Discussed, This is not quite true, 
 for, as we saw, he was prepared to eat his words in that 
 much-vaunted performance, but to sign his name to the 
 unnatural union between Dissent and Eome, which the 
 Court contemplated, was too much for him. He was by 
 no means an opportunist, and displayed a degree of fanatical 
 persistence on behalf of the Crown, which is deprecated 
 even by Hume, Johnson, and Swift ^. 
 
 The first news we have of him after the Eevolution, is 
 of his commitment in December 1688. Apparently he 
 was not immediately seized like Jeffries^ and Walker, but 
 a specific pretext for his arrest was alleged, that of ' writing 
 
 1 See his Letter to Dorset (1689) quoted in Gibber's Lives, ed. 1753, iii., 237. 
 
 2 « A superficial, meddling coxcomb ' is Swift's tribute (not in his hand, 
 however) in one of his Notes on Burnet, Airy's ed., ii., 221. 
 
 3 Though they were associated in the popular mind. See the ballad Rome 
 in an Uproar (Roxburghe Ballads, iv., 309), 'the work of some convicted libeller 
 such as John Tutchin', says Mr Ebsworth, and Charles Blount's {Philopatris) 
 poem. The Olservator, o7' the History of Hodge, beginning ' Stand forth thou grand 
 Impostor of the times '. That Hodge should ' dance the long jig ' was the hope 
 and expectation of the rabble. In the outburst of crude poems on the model of 
 Absalom a7id Achitophel which increased at the Revolution, we find several in 
 which L'Estrange appears as Absalom Senior or Achitophel Transprosed and 
 Uzziah and Jotfoam (1690). Roger finds a place in the latter after Peters and 
 Jeffries, under the name of Rabsheka {sic). He is ' the State's keen spy .... 
 whose wit beyond compare, could subdivide an atom, split a hair '. With 
 * nicknames of distinction ' and * cramp words ' he kept the nation in a pother. 
 On the whole, however, with the exception of attacks like Oates' Portraictiire of 
 King Jaines II. , and Phillips' Secret History of Charles II. and James II. 
 Sir Roger came off rather lightly. 
 
 367 
 
368 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 and dispersing treasonable papers against the Government '. 
 Two Jesuits shared his fate^. He had evidently taken to 
 the old trade of the Interregnum 1659-60, but with less skill 
 or fortune. We shall find that on the discovery of the two 
 most dangerous conspiracies of this reign, that of Ashton's 
 Plot in 1691, and again in the Fenwick Affair of 1696, our 
 fabulist was promptly committed. It is extremely unlikely 
 that these arrests were anything more than precautionary 
 measures, or that Sir Roger was more indiscreet than to 
 write or disperse an occasional fireball. Of these, however, 
 we find no trace with the exception of Ashton's paper 
 found on his person. But the fact that on two occasions, 
 he seems to have been taken in the company of Jesuit 
 plotters, points to some lack of prudence on the part of 
 such an old 'plot-learned Knight'. That he refused to 
 take the Oaths to the Government after 1696^, that he 
 was cautioned to moderate the tone of his reflections in 
 his JEsop and Se^iieca^, that he was committed on the two 
 or three crises of the reign, these facts sum up our know- 
 ledge of his relations to William's rule. In Queen Anne's 
 reign, we actually find this aged incendiary and moralist 
 (he was eighty-six when Anne succeeded) once more solicit- 
 ing employment and seemingly not without hopes of 
 success *. 
 
 Whilst L'Estrange as a political force, is extinct after the 
 Revolution, we learn more of his private life during the 
 last decade of the century, and above all of his relations 
 with the booksellers, than at any corresponding earlier 
 period. What we know is as in the case of Dryden's last 
 years, and still more of Settle's, intensely unhappy. The 
 shadow of the Government's displeasure shown in the arrest 
 of December 1688 referred to, and the more injurious 
 circumstances of his seizure in the Assassination Plot of 
 
 1 Kenyon MSS. Reports, Commissioners, 34, p. 211, 18th December 1688. 
 Father Hall and Father Peters' brother are the two Jesuits. 
 
 2 Ballard MSS., xi. (79). Justice Warcup to Dr Charlet, 28th November 
 1696 : ' Poor Sir R. L. S. told me he is (among others) convicted for not taking 
 the oaths to the Government, which subjects him to all the penalties of a 
 convicted papist'. 
 
 ^ u'Esop at Richmond [To the Reader). 'He (R. L. S.) told me privately he 
 had been informed that some of his works had been directly against his will, 
 rendered disgustful and obnoxious to the best of Kings and Governments '. 
 
 "* H.M.C., App. vii. to 11th Rept., p. 114 — R. Sare to Sir Nicholas L'Estrange, 
 10th March 1704-5 : ' He would soon have made himself capable of preferment, 
 and in order thereto, I had got the Queen's letter for him '. For some account 
 of Sare, see Notes and Qwries for 6th August 1910. 
 

 Engraved far tluD evils' Brcker 
 
 SEIZURE OF JUDGE JEFFRIES AT THE REVOLUTION. 
 
 [Face p. 368. 
 
THE REVOLUTION 369 
 
 March 1691 1, was scarcely relieved by the appointments of 
 his old enemies to good posts. Oates had his £400 pension, 
 Trenchard took high office, * Julian ' Johnson was rewarded, 
 and even ' honest ' Stephens, the Press messenger, got back 
 his place 2. Shadwell was on the throne vacated by Dryden. 
 Worst of all the ' Mephistopheles of the faction ', Aaron 
 Smith, ' Oates' legal prompter ', became solicitor to the 
 Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer. 'Lord Grey 
 was given office and an earldom, and Fergusson a sinecure 
 in the excise with a salary of £400 a year ; Wildman, the 
 first ' proposer and mover ' of the assassination scheme, was 
 made Postmaster-General, the sentence on Walcot was 
 reprieved ^, The feeble Eraser ' a poor broker of books ' 
 succeeded him as licenser, to be succeeded in turn (August 
 1692) by the Tory Edmund Bohun, who was accused of 
 being 'a second L'Estrange'^ 
 
 Devoted to literary employments — which poverty made 
 necessary — Sir Koger contemplated the full circle of fortune 
 with some of the fortitude his Seneca might have approved. 
 Unfortunately his home life was wretched. His wife, Ann 
 Doleman, the ' young lasse ' wedded to ' an old fellow ' of 1680, 
 had found the card- table more attractive than the incessant 
 political wrangling in which her husband found his being 
 — wrangling of a kind which affronted her father's politics ^ 
 
 1 C.S.P.D. (1690-1), p. 291, 3rd March 1691, Viscount Sydney to Nottingham. 
 ' At another place was found Sir Roger L. and two Irish Papists with Mr 
 Assheton's paper, thrown under the table, and in his pocket several memoranda, 
 that we do not yet know what to make of '. Assheton's paper was the declara- 
 tion left behind after execution, ' in which he owned his dependence upon 
 K. James and his fidelity to him '—Burnet. Luttrell, Diary ^ ii., 189 (March 1691) 
 notes that he was taken with Capt. Throgmorton and Father Francis. 
 
 2 C.S.P.D. (1689-90), p. 3. Warrant to Robt. Stevens, Messenger, and Inspector 
 of Printing Presses. His office seems from the title to have been enlarged. 
 Dunton, Life and Errors, p. 253 : ' If I printed a book that had no license, I 
 took such care to dazzle his eyes, that he could not see it', which bears out 
 Roger's attacks. Yet 'perhaps none thought him as black as the Observator 
 makes Stevens '. 
 
 ^ Sitwell, First Whig, p. v, 
 
 4 Of Fraser, Bohun {Diary, Wilton Rix, p. 110) says : ' Under him the Whigs 
 had golden days ', but he seems by the flood of Jacobite literature to have been no 
 ' bloodhound of the press '. Bohun's patron was Nottingham, to whom ho was 
 recommended by the Bp. of Norwich. He was voted into custody by the 
 Commons, 20th January 1693, for licensing Blount's King William and Queen 
 Mary Conquerors. ' I was a Jacobite, a tub-preacher, a hackney-writer under Sir 
 Roger L'Estrange ', He was called * L'Estrange's amanuensis ', etc. See Reasons 
 Uumhly Offered for the Liberty of Unliccn.sed Printing ; v>ith the True Character of 
 Mr Ed. Bohun (1693) : ' Mr B. and Sir R. are cronies, and 'tis well known have 
 acted in concert ', There is no evidence from L'Estrange's side that he even 
 knew Bohun. 
 
 5 Chap, viii., 240, note. 
 
 2 A 
 
370 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 There were three childreD of the marriage ; the first a 
 son, died in February 1684 when his father was starting a 
 new volume of Observators ^. His daughter must have been 
 born shortly after, for in 1694 we gather she is a girl in her 
 teens, and her conversion to Eome in 1700 could scarcely 
 have taken place much before her twentieth year. A 
 second son, Roger, was a youth at school when his father 
 was lying in prison in connection with the Fenwick con- 
 spiracy, 1696 2. The full force of the misery existing at 
 the household in High Holborn can best be understood from 
 a letter or two which have survived in the Muniment Room 
 at Hunstanton. The first of these worth quoting in this con- 
 nection is dated 2nd July 1693, and addressed by Sir Roger to 
 his grand-nephew. Sir Nicholas L'Estrange, the present squire. 
 It is pleasant to relate that his dark fate was relieved by the 
 occasional kindness of Sir Nicholas and his lady. At the 
 moment referred to, Roger's daughter had found a refuge from 
 the sordid misery of her father's house at Hunstanton Hall. 
 
 ' My heart aches ', writes the old Knight ^ * for fear of 
 that addle-headed stubborn girl of mine, that has the honour 
 to be under the protection and charity at present of your 
 roof '. If her behaviour to Sir Nicholas and his lady be 
 what the father trembles to think of — he continues — he 
 will not suffer her longer to be an encumbrance to her 
 best friends in spite of the reduced condition of his fortunes. 
 
 Less than a year later the ' addle-headed ' girl lost her 
 mother, and if any letter can do credit to L'Estrange's heart 
 that which he then penned to Sir Nicholas must do so. 
 
 ' 1th April 1694, 12 at noon. 
 
 * Play and gaming company have been the ruin of her 
 wretched self, her husband, and her family ; and she dies 
 with a broken heart ; but after all I have said, never any 
 
 1 Observaior, 13th February 1684. 
 
 • Trimmer. Your only son is dead, I hear, and methinks when the hand of God 
 lies so heavy upon ye, you should find something else to take up your thoughts 
 than the writing of Observators. 
 
 * Observator. The poor creature was born upon Good-Friday 1678, and he died 
 Thursday last, 7th February, and I do persuade myself that it is as great a loss 
 as ever any man suffered in a child under six years of age '. 
 
 2 H.M.C., x\p2). vii. to llth Kept., p. 112. 
 
 s Ibid.^ p. 111. This girl is possibly the child mentioned bv Luttrell 
 {Diary, i., 340, 30th April 1685), as christened by the Bp. of Ely, "Sir Thos. 
 Doleman, gotlfather, on the day Roger was knighted. Sir Sidney Lee (art. 
 L'Estrange, Did. Nat. Biog.) thinks it may be the boy mentioned above. He 
 also seems to think that her ' religious vagaries ' were the only cause of her 
 father's anxiety. 
 
THE REVOLUTION 371 
 
 creature lost a dearer wife. She made mention often of 
 yours and your lady's generous and charitable friendship 
 to us both, in your goodness toward the poor girl'^ 
 
 The extreme opposition between the politics of her 
 father 2 and of her husband may have added to the 
 difficulties of the household. Something had been hoped 
 to relieve their embarrassed finances from Mrs L'Estrange's 
 reversion on the Doleman estate, but it was the melancholy 
 duty of Eoger's publisher, Eichard Sare (who replaced the 
 Bromes, and seems to have pretty well taken over Sir 
 Roger's monetary affairs) to announce to the squire of 
 Hunstanton that the lady had gambled away a large 
 part of her reversion. Judging by the time it took to 
 settle this matter we may infer the tangled nature of 
 L'Estrange's affairs. The question was not finally settled 
 when that conspiracy which so much resembled the Rye 
 House Plot in its purpose and effects swept all Jacobite 
 suspects into gaol, and aroused Parliament to imitate by 
 an association the Protestant fervour of 1584 ^. The main 
 seizures of the discovery which is so fully related by 
 Burnet, took place on the nights of the 22nd and 23rd 
 February 1696. The fact that L'Estrange was not com- 
 mitted till 6th March* shows that, in his case, bare 
 suspicion was the motive, and we scarcely need his 
 assurance communicated to his grand-nephew, three weeks 
 after his arrest, that he has ' held himself clear of contriving, 
 fomenting or being privy to any one point of the Plot now 
 in agitation ' ^. 
 
 How long he lay in prison beyond the three weeks 
 noted here is uncertain, but again in November of the 
 same year we find him convicted for not taking the Oaths 
 to the Government ^, and on this occasion his imprisonment 
 lasted till January of 1697 at least I 
 
 1 JI.M.C, App. viL to mil Rej)t., p. 111. 
 
 - Doleman on the Succession was a classic on the Whig side. 
 
 ^ See A Sumnmry Account of tlie Proceedings upon the tiappy discovery of the 
 Jacobite Conspiracies, 7th March 1695-6 {Reports, Commissioners, 26, 20d), con- 
 cluding, ' You must not expect a license for this, for Sir Roger L'Estrange had 
 last night the mishap to be committed close prisoner to Newgate '. L'Estrange 
 is not mentioned in the Informations taken in connection with this Plot. State 
 Trials, xii., 1302. 
 
 ^ Luttrell (iv., 24, 3rd March 1695-6), Col. Graham, Sir John Friend, Sir 
 Roger L'Estrange taken. 
 
 8 H.M.G., Am}, vii. to Wth Rept., p. 111. Sir Roger L'Estrange in Newgate 
 to Sir Nicholas L'Estrange at Hunstanton, letter initialled R. L. 
 
 « Ihid., p. 1121 7 Hid, 
 
372 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 From the extraordinary outburst of ^sopic skits which 
 followed his ^sop, we gather that his imprisonment had, 
 despite Sare's kindly assurances to Sir Nicholas, affected 
 his health which had never been good since his first 
 apoplectic seizure in 1683^. If we may judge from these 
 wretched productions, he visited successively Tunbridge 
 Wells, Bath, and finally crossed the river to Richmond 
 Wells ' so famed of late '. jEsop at Richmond, recovered of 
 his late illness, dedicated to his B. H. Duke Humphrey^ is 
 the title of one of these, dated 1698, when Sir Roger was 
 preparing the second part of his Fables and finishing his 
 eight years' task on Josephit^s. In 1700 we find him, in 
 his letters to Caryll 2, very feeble. * I have neither eyes 
 nor fingers', he says^ and when he does write himself, it 
 is in a very quavering hand though the spirit is still 
 brave. At the moment when his Josephus is about to 
 appear, we find him undertaking, with the help of his 
 nephew as amanuensis (his own hand, he says, would be 
 a scandal to the copy) to prepare or correct a version of 
 St Evremond's Memoirs, which he regards as very worth- 
 less and * not worthy of Mr Caryll's pen ' *. The project 
 was accordingly set aside for the moment, though, such 
 was the appetite for this literature of amours, much 
 appeared of these Memoirs a year or so later. This appears 
 to have finished his labours. There was some difficulty 
 over apportioning his Josephus expenses among the various 
 undertakers, which caused him to utter some fretful words, 
 and the work did not appear till 1702 ^ Boyer says that 
 his faculties were much impaired during his last years, 
 
 1 Luttrell, Diary, i., 252,; 5th March 1683: 'Mr R. L. hath been lately very 
 much indisposed with fits '. April 1692 (ii., 414) : 'Sir R. L. was seized yesterday 
 with an apoplectic fit, and is since despaired of '. 
 
 2 For some notice of this patron of letters, who introduced Pope to Steele, see 
 Life and Times of Rich. Steele, by G. A. Aitken (1889), i., 87. 
 
 3 Letter to Caryll, 3rd September 1700, Add. MSS., 28237, f. 4. 
 
 4 Letter to Caryll, 15th September 1700, Ibid., f. 8. It may be of some 
 interest to remark that as his first essay in translation, the Qzcevedo, was designed 
 to revenge himself on the women and lawyers, so he declined the St Evremond 
 Memoirs, the last project with which he was connected, on the grounds that * the 
 whole is but a satyr upon women under the cover of novels and morals'. 
 
 5 Roger L'Estrange to Caryll, 18th October 1700, Add. MSS., 28237 f. 12: 
 'The story is as follows. I was hard pressed by some booksellers to translate 
 Josephus, and came in the end to an agreement with them, for a convenient 
 sum of money and 50 copies for my pains, one half in common paper, the other 
 in royal. The 50 copies I have reserved to myself upon this bargain, are to 
 be raised upon 50 subscriptions with receipts to them under my own hand till 
 the number is out'. Ibtd., f. 10, Roger L'Estrange to Caryll, 5th October 
 1700 : ' It is no secret that I have consulted my own advantage in this impression'. 
 The ' convenient sum ' was £300 {H.M.C., llth Rept, Axjp. vii., 113). 
 
THE REVOLUTION 373 
 
 and this has been copied by the later biographers. If so, 
 there is little sign of it, other than physical, in his latest 
 letters, and we see him actually soliciting office down to 
 the last moment. He was then much exercised by the 
 fear that posterity, to which he had so long strained his 
 vision and which has cared so little for him, should 
 remember him as a Catholic. The last blow, the con- 
 version of his unruly daughter to Eome, increased the 
 dread to such a pitch that he committed to his friend 
 the Jacobite Bishop of Ely (who had been her godfather) 
 a solemn statement on the subject, and the task of con- 
 futing the calumny if need be. 
 
 ' I6th Feb. 1702-3. 
 * The late departure of my daughter from the Church of 
 England to the Church of Eome ', he says, * wounds me to the 
 very heart of me, for I do solemnly protest in the presence 
 of Almighty God, that I knew nothing of it, and for your 
 further satisfaction, I take the freedom to assure you upon 
 the faith of a man of honour and conscience that as I was 
 born and brought up in the communion of the Church of 
 England, so I have been true to it ever since with a firm 
 resolution with God's assistance to continue in the same 
 to my life's end. Now in case it should please God in 
 His providence to suffer this scandal to be revived upon 
 my memory when I am dead and gone, make use, I 
 beseech you, of this paper in my justification, which I 
 deliver as a sacred truth. — So help me God. 
 
 * EOGEE L'ESTEANGE ' \ 
 
 Many years later (30th August 1735) Dr Tanner writing 
 to a friend says : ' The emissaries of the Church of Eome are 
 very busy when our senses and faculties decline, and it was 
 Sir Eoger L'Estrange's desire (after his daughter had been 
 seduced into that communion) that all those gentlemen 
 should be kept from his dying bed, he being no stranger to 
 their compassing sea and land to gain proselytes ' 2. Despite 
 the injury done to his credit with the Church in James II.'s 
 reign, Eoger maintained for many years a very particular 
 place in the affections of the High Party in the Church. 
 We find, for example, Dr Charlet, a few months after the 
 above letter, urging the same defence against ' a D.D. of our 
 
 1 H.M.C., App. mi. to nth Rept., p. 118 ; cf. Sloane MSS., 4222, p. 14, 
 
 2 fiallard Mas., vol. xix., No. 18, ' ' r 
 
374 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 church of Hereford (who) has spent his time so laudably as 
 to publish a new English translation of ^sop's Fables, and 
 reflecting on Sir R. L. S. for apostasising in extremis to the 
 Church of Rome ' \ 
 
 The accession of Anne naturally inspired new hopes in 
 Jacobite breasts, and, such was his incredible spirit, even 
 L'Estrange at eighty-six looked for a renewal of employment. 
 In the midst of these hopes he died ^, 12th December 1704, in 
 the eighty-eighth year of his age, ' during the latter part of 
 which', says Chalmers ^ 'his faculties were impaired'. It 
 would be difficult even in that great age to point to a life 
 more full of contention, of greater span, and down to the 
 last ebbings, despite more than common disasters and insults 
 of fortune, more occupied with affairs^. He had been 
 Cavalier, poet, musician, surveyor, magistrate, Projector, 
 Journalist, Government spy and apologist, Royal Com- 
 missioner, Prince of Pamphleteers and Translators, and in 
 all capacities by force or violence had made himself out- 
 standing, hated by the many, loved by the very few. ' I 
 have had ', he said, ' an unlucky hand, and so must every man 
 expect, that makes so many men his enemies, as value a 
 trimming interest before an inflexible honesty ' ^ 
 
 1 Ballard MSS., vol. xix., No. 30. 
 
 2 H.M.C, App. mi. to 11th Rept., p. 114. R. Sare to Sir Nicholas 
 L'Estrange, 10th March 1704-5. ' The death of poor Sir Roger was very sur- 
 prising. The Captain gave good reason to hope he would soon have made 
 himself capable of preferment and in order thereto I had got the Queen's 
 letter for him. The trouble about Sir Roger's concerns will now by this loss 
 be quickly over and all matters may safely be resigned to his davighter'. 
 
 ^ Article L'Estrange in Chalmer's Gen. Biog, Diet. (1815) pp. 205-11. The 
 reference to impaired faculties is copied from Gibber's Life of Roger L' Estrange 
 (ed. 1753, iv., 295-303), which in turn is taken from Boyer {Queen Anne, p. 38). 
 * He was suffered, however, to descend to the grave in peace, though he had in a 
 manner survived his understanding', is Gibber's paraphrase of Boyer's — 'He 
 went to his grave in peace though he had in a manner survived those intellectuals 
 he enjoyed to an uncommon perfection'. 
 
 '^ In addition to the portraits and engravings of L'Estrange noted by Sir 
 Sidney Lee (art. Diet. Nat. Biog.), viz. : a Kneller at Hunstanton (painted 1684), 
 the Lely exhibited at South Kensington, 1868 (714 on Gatalogue), and a mezzotint 
 by P. Tempest 1684, we have R. White's engraving from the Kneller in the ^sop 
 (1st part) and two fine engravings, one a mezzotint with autograph in the 
 Sutherland Collection at the Bodleian. See Catalogue of tlie Sutherland Collection 
 of Portraits, i., 593. 
 
 5 L'Estrange's Tioo Cases Sxibmitted to Consideration, etc., printed from his 
 original MSS., 1709 (printed as a single-sheet folio, 1687). Even Dunton, to whom 
 Nature gave such a large share of the milk of human kindness, has his gibe. His 
 portraiture of L'Estrange {Life and Errors, p. 265) was probably written in 
 Roger's last year. 'His sting is gone and since his weekly Satire is fallen 
 asleep, is no longer a guide to the Inferior Clergy. Hark ye, Sir Author ', says 
 Dunton to himself, ' comes a little piece of crape buzzing in my ears— consider 
 what ye say and do. There is a respect due to the unfortunate, especially to 
 those who have been great and are still men of sense and ingenuity'. 
 
THE REVOLUTION 375 
 
 It is of L'Estrange in the last mentioned capacity — that 
 of Translator — that we come to speak now. 
 
 And first there is the question of his relations with the 
 booksellers, a race of whom Malone says, ' their conduct in 
 the seventeenth century was less liberal, and their manners 
 more rugged than at present '\ 'Sir Eoger', says Gibber, 
 ' having little of paternal fortune, and being a man rather 
 profuse than economical, he had recourse to writing for 
 bread ', the trade which, according to the same writer, Howell 
 introduced I The gibe — so it would be considered in that 
 day — is scarcely true of any lengthy period prior to the 
 Revolution. Whilst in the long period of the Surveyorship 
 he found it profitable to eke out his living with an occasional 
 French or Spanish translation, he depended much more on 
 his lucrative monopolies. His first dip into the world of 
 translation was during that brief period following his loss 
 of the Newshook, when the secretaries desired to dispense 
 with his services. His publishers during the entire thirty 
 years from the Interregum agitation, when both printer and 
 author were involved in a common danger, to the last months 
 of James II.'s reign, were the Bromes, 'honest' Harry, then his 
 widow, and latterly his son Charles ^. The great publishers 
 Sare, the brothers Churchill, and Gilliflower came to his 
 rescue after the Revolution. Tonson and Curll, especially 
 the latter, held the copyright of his facetice in the age of 
 Anne and George I. In the furious agitation of 1679-81, 
 and when in exile, it is clear that our author was in very 
 low water from the withdrawal of his office and the virtual 
 loss of his patents. The republication of his old Restoration 
 anti-Presbyterian works was hit on both as a means to punish 
 the faction and to reimburse the author. Never was author 
 more loyally served by publisher than L'Estrange was then 
 by Harry Brome, who has been preserved in many an abusive 
 cartoon as the broom between the dog Towzer's legs*. 
 Roger's writings during these troubles were very numerous, 
 but except for his History of the Flat, and his translations 
 
 1 Malone, Dryden, quoted in Nichol's Illtcstrations, i., 293. 
 
 2 Cibber, Lives, ii,, 34 ; and iv., 293. Johnson, however, says that L'Estrange 
 was the first author he could find who was regularly enlisted in party service 
 for pay. Needless to say the race of Nedham and Birkenhead was earlier. 
 
 3 For some account of this notable bookselling family, see The Earliei' History 
 of English Bookselling, by Wm. Koberts (1889), p. 104. 
 
 •1 Sir Sidney Lee {o'p. cit. ) notes the longevity of the ' Towzer ' nick-name and 
 quotes Defoe complaining (1703) of a pirated edition resembling the original no 
 more than the dog Towzer resembled L'Estrange, 
 
376 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 of Cicero, Erasmus, and Seneca, were mostly forced upon him 
 in the controversy which his temerity provoked. During 
 the later years of Charles' reign and the three years of his 
 successor, his figure was so great and his monopolies so 
 lucrative that he was far from the necessity of ' scribbling 
 for bread '. Yet these years are responsible for a great deal 
 of work, to say nothing of his Ohservators with their 
 * prodigious gain '. But with the Revolution we enter a new 
 field. There was scarcely as, in 1679-80, much hope of restitu- 
 tion of office, save by a counter-Revolution. His old works, 
 mostly ephemeral in their nature, had no sale, and he could 
 not under the new licensers republish or refurbish them as 
 in 1681-2. The household at High Holborn was, we have 
 seen, ruinous. Then began at seventy-two the courageous 
 struggle for bread, which was sometimes relieved by the 
 presents of anonymous admirers, and which at any rate kept 
 him from descending to the levels his old antagonist Settle had 
 reached. His fame made this profession of letters, despite 
 the venality of the booksellers, on the whole not unsuccessful. 
 
 In a letter to Sir Nicholas, dated 5th October 1700 \ 
 announcing the opening of the subscription lists for Josephus, 
 he says people have been mightily concerned a long time 
 to know how he lived, some maintaining that he has an 
 estate of his own, others that he is supported by his relations. 
 He speaks with a due acknowledgment to Sir Nicholas 
 for many charitable offices, but he has no settlements or 
 annuities. Finally 'I have received very considerable 
 presents from divers persons, not so much as known to me 
 by their names as a reward for my goodwill to the publique ^, 
 but after all this, my pen has been my chief support '. 
 
 It may be desirable to preface an account of L'Estrange's 
 works with a list of his essays in Translation ^. These are 
 as nearly as we can state : 
 
 1, The Visions of Dom Francisco de Quevedo VillegaSy 
 Knight of the Order of St James, licensed 26th 
 
 1 II.M.C, Apjp. mi. to 11th Report, p. 113. 
 
 2 So 12th September 1700, he acknowledges to Caryll (whom he suspects of 
 the kindness) 'a glorious present of partridges. If you know the generous 
 benefactor, give him my humble thanks'. Add. MSS., 28237, f. 6. 
 
 ^ This list should be compared with the excellent one given by Sir Sidney 
 Lee (art. L'Estrange, Did. Nat. Biog.) which though fairly accurate does not 
 always give the first editions, omits the Machiavel and the Apology for the French 
 Protestants, and confuses the 2nd part of the Fables, 1699, with the later edition 
 of the 1692 ^sop. Nor does he mention the Plautus or state clearly L'Estrange's 
 part in the Tacitus, which has been curiously obscured by all his biographers. 
 
THE REVOLUTION 377 
 
 March 1667, published the same year, 6th edition, 
 December 1678, price 6d. 
 
 2. A Guide to Eternity, Extracted out of the Writings 
 
 of the Holy Fathers and Ancient Philosophers, by 
 John Bona, 1672, 2nd edition, May 1680. 
 
 3. Fi'oe Love-letters from a {Portuguese) Nun to a {French) 
 
 Cavalier, licensed 28th December 1677, published 
 1678, 2nd edition, 1693, a French and English 
 'second' edition 1693. 
 
 The authorship of Five love-letters written ly a 
 Cavalier in Answer^ etc., 1694, with a second 
 edition 1701, where both appear together, is 
 doubtful, as is also what Sir Sidney Lee 
 rightly calls ' a disagreeable work ', the Love- 
 letters between a Nobleman and his Sister, viz : 
 F — d, Lord Gr — y of WerJc, and the Lady 
 Henrietta Berk-ley, by the author of the ' Letters 
 from a Nun to a Cavalier^ (1693 ; 2nd edition, 
 17341. 
 
 4. The Gentleman Pothecary, a True Story, Done out 
 
 of the French, 1678, ' a volume of curious indecency * 
 —2nd edition by Curll, 1726. 
 
 5. Seneca's Morals by way of Abstract, December 1678 ; 
 
 2nd edition, 1680 ; 5th edition, 1693; 7th, 1722. 
 
 6. Tully's Offices in 3 books, May 1680. 6th edition 
 v revised by John Leng, Bishop of Norwich. 
 
 7. Twenty Select Colloquies of Erasmus Boterodamus, 
 ^ pleasantly representing several superstitious Levities 
 
 that were crept into the Church of Borne in his days, 
 November 1679; 2nd edition with two added, 1689, 
 issued with Tom Browne's additional seven and Life 
 of Erasmus, 1709. 
 
 8. An Apology for the French Protestants, in four parts, 
 
 Done out of French into English, by Boger L' Estrange, 
 May 16812. 
 
 9. The Spanish Decameron or Ten Novels made English, 
 
 1687, licensed 17th February 1686-7. 
 
 1 The Bodleian Catalogue assigns them probably correctly to Aphra Behn 
 whose initials (A. B.) are put to the Amours of Philander and Silvia, being the 
 second and last part of the Love-letters between a Nohleman and his Sister- (1693). 
 See App. i.j Doubtful Works. 
 
 2 First advertised in Observator, i., 42, 13th August 1681. Original unknown, 
 
378 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 10. Besides these pre - Revolution works there was, 
 
 probably begun in 1680, a translation of Don 
 Alonso de Castillo Sovorcano's (Castillo Solorzano) 
 called (in Curll's 1717 edition) The Spanish 
 Polecat or the Adventures of Seniora Buefina, in 
 four hooks, being a detection of the Artifices used hy 
 such of the Fair Sex as are more at the Purses than 
 the Hearts of their Admirers. Completed by Ozell 
 1717, and re-issued 1727 as Spanish Amusements. 
 
 To the period when he most certainly ' wrote for bread ' 
 belong : — 
 
 11. Fahles of ^sop and Other Eminent Mythologists, by 
 
 Sir Roger L'Estrange, Kt., 1691, fol. with portrait, 
 ' the most extensive collection of Fables in existence ' 
 (Sir Sidney Lee). 2nd edition, 1694; others 1699, 
 1704, 1712, 1724; a French edition, 1714, and a 
 Russian, 1760. 
 
 12. The Third Booh of Tacitus' Histories, 1694. 
 
 13. Terence, Six Comedies (in collaboration with Eachard), 
 
 1694. 
 
 14. He may have been 'one of the hands' in the 
 
 translation of three of Plautus' Comedies, 1694-6. 
 
 15. Fables Moralised, being a Second Part of uEsop's 
 
 Fables, 1699. 
 
 16. Josephus — The Works of Flavins Josephus compared 
 
 with the original Greek, 1702. 
 
 Besides these are one or two other scraps, a single sheet 
 entitled MachiaveVs Advice to his Son, newly Translated 
 out of the Italian into English verse by B. L., and A Key 
 to Hudibras printed in Butler's Posthumous Works (1715), 
 vol. ii., L'Estrange's authorship vouched for by ' the learned 
 Dr Midgely'. Lastly he wrote the Preface to Fairfax's 
 Translation of Tasso's Gerusalemme Liberata, 1687. 
 
 It will be seen from this list that our author did not 
 confine himself to classical translations, but that he was 
 an important member of the group of * hackney-writers ' 
 who were attempting to familiarise England with the 
 choicer delicacies of Continental Belles Lettres^. It 
 
 1 Sir Sidney Lee (op. cit.) censures him for this branch of his works. But 
 his age demanded them and very little of his share can be described as 
 scandalous, viz: — The Gentleman Fothecary, and The Spanish Polecat in part. 
 The Love-letters of Ford, Lord Grey^ we do not take to be his, 
 
THE REVOLUTION 379 
 
 should also be said that with L'Estrange, the seeming 
 candour of the task is discounted either by a deliberate \ 
 political choice of the work to be translated, or by a 
 strong, often ludicrous, bias in the performance, especially 
 in those belonging to the earlier period. So that we 
 may divide his labours of this sort strictly into works 
 which were purely bookseller's projects, and those in which 
 ''twixt jest and earnest' he indulged the humours and 
 spite of party which could not well be openly expressed. 
 Thus it is that our earliest accepted ^sop, which still 
 finds its editors, owed much of its salt to James II.'s 
 abuse of his Dispensing Power, and Seneca appeared in 
 English garb to rebuke the tumult of the Popish Plot V. 
 crisis. Even the work of the gentle Bona was made r 
 to express the disgust of a disappointed courtier at a 
 turn of English politics. Erasmus' Colloquies were in 
 Brome's lists described as 'against Popery', when 
 L'Estrange desired to defend himself against the charge 
 of being * popishly-afifected '. 
 
 The translations need not, of course, suffer on that 
 account. We find that he did best those things which 
 spite or spleen dictated, and the modern reader who still 
 wonders at the extraordinary vigour of some of his passages 
 when compared with the original, must thank the human 
 passion (which his originals deprecated) for this pleasing 
 quality. The mind of L'Estrange was polemical, not scholarly, 
 and therein as a translator he was happy in his age. 
 
 The question of his equipment as a translator was not 
 so serious then as it would be in a modern writer^. It 
 was regarded as a good boast that an author had rather 
 written a new work, than a faithful translation, and Dryden, 
 relying on a dubious line of Horace ^, may be regarded as 
 having leant his authority to his view. It is true Bentley 
 warred against these loose notions, and the new century 
 
 1 ' The qualification of a translator worth reading, must be a mastery of the 
 language he translates out of, and that of the language he translates into, but if 
 a deficiency bo to be allowed in either, it is in the original '. Dryden, Preface 
 to Life of Luoian (Malone's 1800 ed., iii., 388). 
 
 2 Preface to Ocid's Epistles, ibid., p. 15. ' Nee verbum verbo curabis reddere, 
 fidus interpres', 'Nor word for word too faithfully translate' in Roscommon's 
 much applauded version. So Sir John Denham to Fanshawe on his translation 
 of Piistor Fido, 
 
 ' That servile path thou nobly must decline, 
 Of tracing word by word, and line by line '. 
 
 Tytler {Essay on the Principles of Translation^ 3rd edit., 1813, p. 264) censures 
 Penham for this advocacy. 
 
380 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 opened with a protest from Sir Edward Sherburne, prefixed 
 
 to his translation of three of Seneca's tragedies, 1702 ^. But 
 
 Dryden's authority, affirming that of Denham and Fanshawe, 
 
 naturally prevailed over the close translation, and what Tom 
 
 Browne called the ' ridiculous affectation of antiquity '. Nor 
 
 can we blame the taste of the day, which looked back to the 
 
 race of ' servile copiers ', to Ben Jonson, Feltham, Sandys, 
 
 and Savile, men who, according to Dr Johnson, by creeping 
 
 after the Latin idiom and diction did nothing for the 
 
 language. Cowley was one of the first who saw a better 
 
 way, who 'left his authors,' and by adopting a greater 
 
 , freedom was able to preserve the English idiom. 'It was 
 
 I reserved for Dryden ... to give us just rules and 
 
 I examples of translation', says Johnson. The translator 
 
 I ' is to exhibit his author's thought in such a dress of diction 
 
 as the author would have given him, had his language been 
 
 English'. 
 
 It is unfortunate that this reaction from the earlier 
 'verbum verbo' school of Johnson and Sandys, involved 
 more than a freedom in the turning of phrases according 
 to the genius of the different tongues. In Dryden to some 
 extent '^, in L'Estrange, Eachard, Spence, Phillips, and Tom 
 Browne ^ to a much greater degree, it involved two things 
 more, the utmost license of diction and the accommodation of 
 . manners to suit modern notions. So that Rome of the third 
 f century B.C. became London of the seventeenth century, and 
 Vitellius is to swagger and bully like Captain Otter. 
 
 In France, needless to say, the same phase had appeared, 
 but whilst Roman heroes masqueraded as courtiers at 
 
 1 Johnson (Dryden, Arnold's Six Chief Lives, p. 181), Sir Ed, Sherburne, 'a 
 man whose learning was greater than his powers of poetry, and who being better 
 qualiHed to give the meaning than the spirit of Seneca, has introduced his version 
 of Three Tragedies by a defence of close translation. The authoi'ity of Horace 
 which the new translators cited in defence of their practice ("Nee verbum verbo ", 
 etc. ) he has by a judicious explanation taken fairly from them ; but reason wants 
 not Horace to support it '. Johnson is scarcely right in taking Sherburne to be 
 the only objector. 
 
 2 ' Dryden though a great and undisputed genius, had the same cast as 
 L'Estrange. Even his plays discover him to be a party man and the same 
 principle infects his style in other respects', Johnson, Lit. Mag. (1758), p. 197. 
 T. Gordon {Preface to his Tacitus, 1728) imputes to Dryden's translations not 
 coarseness, but the contrary French defect of 'faintness and circumlocution'. 
 Hallam says of his Virgil (Introduction to the Literature of EuroiJe (1883), p. 790) : 
 ' The style is often almost studiously and as it were spitefully vulgar '. 
 
 ^ See, for example, his excellent I^ife of Erasriius prefixed to his version of the 
 Colloquies (1699), where he disclaims ' a ridiculous affectation of antiquity ' and 
 calls Scaliger, the elder, ' Bentley's hero ', the ' prince of pedants '. This Life 
 presents very well the late seventeenth-century view of translation, 
 
THE REVOLUTION 381 
 
 Versailles^, we do not find the same license taken with 
 the language, which was afterwards held to disgrace the 
 English School of translators. The genius of Madame 
 Dacier, the exquisite lingual precision of La Fontaine almost 
 in a day rescued French translation from such crudities, and 
 set it in a shining place. So that whilst Johnson was able 
 to say later of our poetical translations of the ancients, that 
 it was ' a work which the French seem to relinquish in 
 despair, and which we were long unable to perform with 
 dexterity,' we must take it that despite a good recovery 
 in the early half of the eighteenth century, English transla- 
 tion both in prose and verse was in the last decade of the 
 seventeenth century far behind the French in precision 
 and elegance, and what is more, scholarliness, a term 
 scarcely understood in England. Speaking of this period, 
 M. Bellanger^ has said of the two schools in France — 
 what very well describes the English schools too — *Nous 
 avons vu les primitifs (traducteurs) defiguer I'antiquite pour 
 nous empecher de la reconnaitre. Nous allons voir les 
 nouveaux traducteurs la defiguer a leur tour, sous le pretexte 
 de Tembellir. Ceux-1^ nous la cachaient sous un v^tement 
 epais et lourd ; ceux-ci jetteront sur elle une sorte de voile 
 destine a en dissimuler pudiquement les nudites et a en 
 noyer les contours dans un nuage. La simplicite naive s'est 
 enfuie, elle a cede le pas a I'elegance raffinee et delicate'. 
 The Abb^ Persin, for example, boasts himself in his transla- 
 tion of Virgil to be * le premier a vous le (iEneas) montrer 
 sous I'habit d'un cavalier fran^ais et avec le pompe des 
 plumes et du clinquant '. ' Mais nous voici enfin ', continues 
 Bellanger, *en la presence de Tune des gloires les plus 
 incontestees de la nation des traducteurs, de I'ecrivain qui 
 malgre de greves imperfections domine tout cet age par 
 la superiorite de ses talents. Je veux parler de Madame 
 Dacier '. Yet though the L'Estrange - Eachard Terence 
 and Plautus were based and almost copied from the versions 
 of 'the French lady', no trace of her elegance appears in 
 their work, and indeed no English translations are more 
 deformed by the faults alluded to above ^. To ' give it a 
 lift ' in L'Estrange's refined language; was their object, and 
 
 ^ See J. J. Jusserand's edition of To7n Bimone's Scan'on (2 vols., 1892), Introduc- 
 tion, p. liii., where he refers to Dryden's (?) Scarron (1692) as full of the most 
 humorous accommodations and coarseness. 
 
 - Bellanger (Justin), Hktoire de la Traduction en France^ pp. 29 and 45. 
 
 * Sec Tytler, <yp. cit. , chap. iv. 
 
382 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 labouring under the notion which Dryden admitted of ' the 
 
 inferiority of our language ', they too often attempted to do 
 
 so by sheer coarseness of phrase. ' I have endeavoured ', 
 
 I said Dryden, 'to make Virgil speak such English as he 
 
 would himself have spoken, if he had been born in England, 
 
 and in this present age \ a boast he repeated in his Epistle to 
 
 Dorset (1693) On the Origin and Progress of Satire'^. But 
 
 i in the same essay he excuses the accommodation of manners. 
 
 'If sometimes any of us (and it is but seldom) make him 
 
 I (Juvenal) express the customs and manners of our native 
 
 \ country, rather than of Rome, it is, either when there was 
 
 Isome kind of analogy betwixt their customs and ours, or 
 
 When to make him more easy to vulgar understandings, 
 
 we gave him those manners, which are familiar to us. But I 
 
 defend not this innovation, it is enough if I can excuse it '. 
 
 Malone's note ' To attempt to defend this kind of innovation 
 
 would indeed shew great want of judgment' expresses the 
 
 verdict of a later age on a practice which L'Estrange made 
 
 peculiarly his own 2. That Dryden sinned with Phillips 
 
 and Browne and L'Estrange both in the so-called coarseness 
 
 and the passion for modernising everything, is painfully 
 
 evident from the translation of Scarron of 1692, supposed to 
 
 be his, and the Tacitus (1694) in which, with L'Estrange, he 
 
 bore a hand. 
 
 Whilst the style which L'Estrange and his imitators 
 (among whom we may class Dryden) recommended to their 
 age as a genuine English style, made the elegant but 
 ' unsinewed ' French appear pale by contrast, and whilst 
 its practitioners were constantly styled 'masters of the 
 English tongue', it must not be thought that there were 
 no dissentient voices. But criticism was at first, and so 
 long as L'Estrange lived, directed to such gross cases as 
 that of Phillips^ or Ferrand Spence, whose Lncian drew 
 
 1 Malone's ed., iii., 222. 
 
 2 Yet such a precisian as Felton {Dissertation on Reading the Classics, 1713) 
 would excuse the practice, so long as only the actors and not the customs 
 were changed. 
 
 2 The Terence can only be matched in its eccentricities by Phillips' Don Q^dxote 
 (1687). ' When he (Phillips) professes to give us Don Quixote " made English 
 according to the humour of our modern language ", he understands this phrase 
 with a fulness of interpretation that is perfectly astonishing . . . the allusions 
 are always in the style of low and vulgar English '. Yet, as we might say of 
 L'Estrange, ' his buffoonery is always vigorous and eloquent ' — Godwin (Lives of 
 Ed. and John Phillips (1815), p. 253). As L'Estrange introduces Livewell Chapman 
 
 ide 
 
 in his Quevedo, so Dangerfield of * Plot ' fame, finds his place as the ring-leader of 
 the band of convicted thieves in Don Quixote, Apropos of the general sterility in 
 original compositions remarked by Hallam and so observable in L'Estrange, 
 
THE REVOLUTION 383 
 
 Dryden's fire (himself not free from the vice). Whilst 
 declaring against the system of metaphrase, the latter adds : 
 ' I would not be understood that (the translator) should 
 be at liberty to give such a turn as Mr Spence has in some 
 of his, where for the fine raillery and attic salt of Lucian, 
 we find the gross expressions of Billingsgate or Moorfields 
 and Bartholomew Fair '. The surprising thing is that such 
 criticism was not immediately recognised as true of large 
 parts of his own and L'Estrange's works, and especially 
 of the portion of Tacitus which, along with L'Estrange and 
 another, he translated for Gillyflower m this very year. 
 
 A consciousness of hidden strength, an admission of 
 present inferiority to the French both in language and style, 
 a desire above all to enliven and modernise whatever they 
 touched, are the characteristics of these English translators. 
 They were not lacking in self-knowledge. They admitted 
 with too much humility not only the * inferiority ', but the 
 * poverty' of their tongue, and as a result of the feverish 
 admiration for all things French which characterised the 
 last decade of the century, they hoped to transplant the 
 Academy \ and thus tame the uncouthness of their tongue. 
 Faintness and periphrasis (as in the case of Madame Dacier) 
 are the acknowledged faults of French. English only wants 
 pruning to make it superior, as it already is in vigour and 
 — thanks to the early Elizabethan translators '^ — simplicity. 
 They are quite aware (though they sin much here) that the 
 coining of new words and phrases is to be deprecated except 
 by acknowledged masters, and then sparingly. Otherwise 
 the practice savours of affectation 3. It followed that in 
 
 Godwin {ibid., p. 225) expresses wonder that such a droll as Phillips should in 
 his Grape-Goionontm limit himself to an imitation of Eachard's (1670) Contempt 
 of the Glergij. Yet we see L'Estrange's reflexion on such plagiarists in Fable 
 xxxiii., jEsop, 1692. 
 
 1 See Gentleviaii's Journal (1692-3), ii., 18-20. On the French Academy— a 
 project defeated says Johnson by the squabbles of Whig and Tory. Lit. Mag. 
 (1758), p. 198. 
 
 2 Johnson {ibid., p. 152) of the translations of Philemon Holland, etc. 'It is 
 inconceivable of what service his performances were to the English language'. 
 So Godwin, op. cit., p. 241. 
 
 ?\ "' Dryden does not exclude new words, ' I trade both with the living and the 
 dead for the enrichment of our native language'. But 'we have enough in 
 England to supply our necessity . . . every man is not tit to innovate ' {Discourse 
 on Epic Poelnj, Malone's lJr>/den, iii., 545). Gordon (Introd. to Tacitus, p. 33) : 
 ' I wanted new words, but have rarely coined any as the creating of words is 
 generally thought affected and foppish. Yet I have sometimes ventured upon 
 a new phrase'. The French craze was, of course responsible for many of these 
 'fopperies'. ;See Aphra Behn's ridiculous Essay on Transloied Prose, prefixed 
 to her version of Fontenelle's Theory of New Worlds Inhabited, etc., p. 4: 'It 
 
384 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 English translation, fidelity to the original was not the 
 first thing thought of. The aim was rather to present a 
 new work, largely quarried from the ancients, but thoroughly 
 English in dress and language. ' It has rather the air of an 
 original than a translation ' is their boast, and ' a mastery in 
 the sense and spirit of his author and in his own language 
 a style and happiness of expression ' are the translator's 
 qualities. When we add that a special license to wander 
 round the phrase was permitted to the gentleman trans- 
 lator^, as opposed to the mean 'hackney-writer', and that 
 in the interests of a true English style, we begin to under- 
 stand the vast vogue of L'Estrange's works, and how natural 
 that in the eighteenth century reaction (especially where the 
 malice of politics entered) critics should fall foul of the 
 most shining example of this kind of vernacular transla- 
 tion. Another cycle of criticism brings a strange revolu- 
 tion in taste, and from Granger's dictum, 'He was one of 
 the greatest corrupters of the English Language ', to 
 Professor Earle's latest appreciation, there stretches the 
 whole gamut of literary values. 
 
 The gust for the mere matter of foreign authors en- 
 couraged writers to hurry into English dress anything 
 which bore that stamp, and the booksellers, who were the 
 publishers, recked little if the versions were faithful (or 
 even if they had an original), so long as it was the right 
 stuff and could be dealt out to an eager public as from 
 the French, Spanish, Italian, or Portuguese^. Thoroughly 
 uncritical truly, but nutrition, not criticism, was the 
 demand. The home market, as Hallam points out was 
 unproductive^, save for one or two trifles. Yet we are 
 on the eve of as fine a critical outburst as our literature 
 
 is modish to ape the French in everything, therefore we not only naturalise 
 their words, but words they steal from other languages ! ... If one endeavours 
 to make it English standard, it is no translation '. Therefore she has done what 
 Dryden deprecated, 'kept as near his words as possible' and excuses the use 
 of ' the Latin word axis, which is axle-tree in English '. 
 
 1 Dryden, Life of Liician, Malone, iii. , 388. 
 
 2 The name of bookseller was as odious as when Wither^wrote his Scholar's 
 Purgatory, and for the same reasons. Dryden, ibid., p. 387 : ' The booksellers 
 are the undertakers of works of this nature and they are persons more devoted 
 to their own gain than the public honour. They are parsimonious in rewarding 
 the wretched scribblers they employ, and care not how the business is done, so 
 that it be but done '. So it' was with his own Tacitus and Scarron. 
 
 '' Lit. of Europe (1882), p. 828 : ' The scarcity of original fiction in England 
 was so great as to be inexplicable by any reasoning. The public taste was not 
 incapable of being pleased, for all the novels and romances of the continent 
 were readily translated'. 
 
THE REVOLUTION 386 
 
 can boast. On the whole it cannot be regretted that at 
 the expense of considerable looseness, English translation 
 became the coursing ground for a new and vigorous language 
 at a time when nothing was secure, and when outside the 
 drama and the pulpit nothing native was being produced. 
 In L'Estrange we see these merits and defects exaggerated. 
 To get to the matter of his author, to moralise it, 'give itl 
 a lift ' is his object. Contemporary (which largely meant \ 
 French) research then beginning interested him little. \ 
 Hence what we would regard to-day as the most impudent 
 plagiarism is openly vaunted, and hence also his vast 
 popularity. Not on the cold fruits of scholarship, not 
 on the sinewless elegance of the French, but on a bold 
 and often ignorant seizure of whatever seemed to suit \ 
 the English palate, his success depended. The greatest I 
 booksellers kept him in commission long years for the 
 sake of his name. A man of his age and not a day] j 
 beyond it. I [ 
 
 To turn now to the translations themselves, we must 
 repeat that in the earliest, the Qtcevedo 1668, the political 
 and even personal element is supreme, and those who 
 desire the very best instance of the type of translation 
 ' excused ' but not ' defended ' by Dryden, and on the whole 
 a wonderful piece of English writing, cannot do better than 
 read this work. As has been said, it was written and 
 licensed in the year of his greatest neglect, when he had 
 been ousted from the NewshooJc by the meanest intrigue in 
 which a Minister had not disdained to take a part, when 
 sickness oppressed him, and before secretarial penitence 
 (and alarm) took the form of a pension. A more than 
 fanciful resemblance in his fate to that of the author 
 Dom Francisco de Quevedo is observable. The same 
 versatility, rewarded by the same ingratitude, four years 
 imprisonment, with want and solitude, oppressed by a 
 great man, are features of the resemblance. The same 
 savage outlook on all orders of men and women inspired 
 L'Estrange to write a preface which, in sheer rudeness and 
 acid, rivals his Foreword to the Newsbooh and it alone. 
 His object was 'pure spite, for the author has had hard 
 measure among the physicians, the lawyers, the women, etc., 
 and Dom Francisco de Quevedo in English revenges him 
 upon all his enemies'. 
 
 The 'bold additions and frequent accommodation of its 
 
 2b 
 
386 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 jests to the scandal and taste of the times ' ^, to which the 
 historian of Spanish Literature ascribed its success, however 
 they may have shocked the precisians of the eighteenth 
 century, are of the same daring and successful flight. The 
 Sixth Vision, for example, provided the discarded Surveyor 
 with an opportunity of inveighing against the bookselling 
 fraternity, and of these Livewell Chapman had the distinction 
 to be dragged into posthumous fame. 
 
 ' I passed forward thence into a little dark alley where 
 it made me start to hear one call me by name, and with 
 much ado I perceived a fellow there all wrapt up in smoke 
 and flame. " Alas, sir ", says he, " have you forgotten your 
 old bookseller in Popes-Head Alley ? " "I cry you mercy, 
 good Livewell ", quoth I. " What, art thou here" ? " Yes, sir ", 
 says he, " 'tis e'en too true. I never dreamt it would come to 
 this ". He thought I must needs pity him, when I knew him, 
 but truly I reflected rather upon the justice of his punish- 
 ment. For in a word, his shop was the very mint of 
 heresy, schism, and sedition. I put on a face of compassion, 
 however, to give a little ease, which he took hold of and 
 vented his complaint. " Well, sir ", says he, " I would my 
 father had made me a hangman when he made me a 
 stationer, for we are called to account for other men's 
 works as well as for our own. And one thing that's cast 
 in our dish, is the selling of translations so dog cheap 
 that every sot knows now as much as would formerly 
 have made a passable doctor, and every nasty groom and 
 roguey lackey is grown as familiar with Homer, Virgil, 
 and Ovid, as if 'twere Eobin, the Devil, the Seven Champions, 
 or a piece of George Wither". He would have talked on 
 if a devil had not stopped his mouth with a whiff from a 
 roll of his own papers and choked him with the smoke of 
 
 1 Ticknor, Hist, of Spanish Literature, ii., 325-6 and 339 : ' The Visions were 
 translated into French by Genest and printed 1641. Into English they were 
 freely rendered by Roger L'Estrange and published 1668 with such success that the 
 10th edition was printed at London in 1708 and I believe there was yet one more. 
 This is the basis of the Translation of the Visions in the Edinburgh ed. 1798, vol. i., 
 and Roscoe's Novelists (183i^), vol. ii. All the translations I have seen are bad. 
 The best is that of L'Estrange or at least the most spirited. L'Estrange is not very 
 faithful, where he knew the meaning and he is sometimes unfaithful from 
 ignorance'. Mr H. C. Lea reviewing Reusch's Index der Verhotenen Biicher 
 (1883), p. 5, remarks (J^ng. Hist. Rev., iv., 83) : 'No reference to F. de Quevedo 
 whose works furnish an interesting bit of literary History. In Sotomayor's Iiidex 
 of 1640, p. 425, there is a curious entry permitting his works of edification and 
 suppressing all the rest — the Suenos (Visions), the Biiscon. the Uiscurso de todos 
 los DimUos, by which he is best known to modern readers ', and this by his 
 own request ! 
 
THE REVOLUTION 387 
 
 it — but I went away saying this to myself : If the book- 
 seller be thus criminal, what will become of the author ! ' 
 
 Needless to say Quevedo is improved out of recognition 
 here, but Tyburn, Newgate, ' Falstaff's hostess ' are the merest 
 trifles of the transformation^. 
 
 The Manuductio ad Caelum or Guide to Eternity of the 
 Cistercian Father Bona, had a remarkable vogue before 
 L'Estrange tried his hand at it in 1672, and consciously 
 attempted to rebuke the intemperance of English politics^. 
 In the same spirit some six years later he finished a more 
 ambitious work which went into many editions before and 
 after the Eevolution, and by which — next after his jEso'p — 
 he was known to his generation. In this Seneca's Morals 
 Abstracted, more than any other of his translations, we 
 see the workings of his distempered mind both in the 
 text — which, like Lodge's old version of 1614, is a digest 
 rather than a translation' — in the To the Reader, and in 
 the subsequently added Afterthought. The * Divine Pagan ' 
 had traits of character which appealed to L'Estrange in 
 an age of ' Eanters ' and * Adamites ', and that calm 
 acquiescence — not even with preces et lachrymae — with which 
 the philosopher received his Prince's order to die, the 
 contempt of the rabble and insistence on the generous 
 private side of life, made it a veritable treasury of rebuke 
 for the wild men of the Faction, no less than *a system 
 of good councils and of good manners'. 
 
 ' If it were written up to the original', says Roger, 'it 
 would be one of the most valuable presents that ever any 
 private man bestowed upon the public. As to the timing 
 of it, we are fallen into an age of vain philosophy (as the 
 Holy Apostle calls it) and so desperately overgrown with 
 drolls and sceptics, that there is hardly anything so certain 
 or so sacred that is not exposed to question or contempt'. 
 
 1 Dunton {Post- A ngel, March 1702, p. 180) announces a New (Whig) Quevedo, 
 which revenged the Chapmans of L'Estrange's version. 
 
 2 A second edition appeared 1680, and the seventh in 1722. Thereafter the 
 steady stream diminished. But Mr J. W. Stanbridge {Library of Devotion, 1900) 
 re-edited L'Estrange's old version, with a tribute to the vigour and stimulation of 
 his style. It is remarkable among his translations as being singularly faithful. 
 Jas. Price a year after (1673) issued an edition, which only wanted L'Estrange's 
 force to make it excellent. 
 
 ■i L'Estraiige tried to anticipate criticism of this excessively free style — To tlic 
 Reader : ' It is Seneca, every thought and line on't . . . but a little more in the 
 bulk than the 3rd part of the original.' *This ranging humour of his (Seneca's) 
 as Mr Hobs expresses it ' is Roger's excuse. Biit he hints at ' somewhat still 
 wanting towards the doing of full right to Seneca ' and promises to do it, if 
 he have ' day enough to go through with it '. 
 
388 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 A few months before the Revolution, the fourth edition 
 appeared with an Afterthought into which the author poured 
 all the gall and bitterness of his discarded state. ' The 
 world has not been altogether so kind of late to my politics 
 as to my morals, and what's the meaning on't but that we 
 live in an age that will better bear the image of what people 
 ought to do, than the History of what they do ' ^. He con- 
 cludes with a remark which shows the prevalence of literary 
 canvass at the Coffee-houses. 
 
 ' The undertaker (of the translation), I fear, will find 
 well nigh as much difficulty to preserve his own reputation 
 in this attempt, as to do right to the author, especially when 
 he is sure to have every coffeehouse set upon him like a 
 court of justice and if he shall but happen to stumble upon 
 any of the same figures or illustrations over again, if the 
 supplement shall have so much as the least tincture of any 
 that's done already, a common criminal for the basest sort 
 of washing, clipping and coining, shall find better quarter '. 
 [ It is of some interest to note that between the third and 
 
 I fourth impressions appeared in Easter Term 1685, Reflexions on 
 Morality or Seneca tlnmasked^ a boiled-down English version 
 of Rochefoucauld's immensely popular Maximes by Mrs 
 Aphra Behn. The putting of Seneca and La Rochefoucauld 
 in opposition thoroughly suited an age which had so run to 
 party that philosophy and divinity and even the labours of 
 the Royal Society were made matter of political canvass. 
 
 Erasmus' Colloquies, in some respects his best translation, 
 was the work of 1680, and appeared just after the great 
 budget of Plot Narratives. L'Estrange's own History of the 
 Plot was, it will be remembered, attacked not only by Care 
 in his Damnable Popish Plot, but from the other side also in 
 Castlemaine's sceptical Compendium. The fact that the 
 latter had — after careful study — been unable to detect the 
 sceptical design of L'Estrange's work, is a rather dubious 
 commentary on Roger's claim to have been ' ever an infidel 
 as to the Plot\ In any case it gave him a claim in publish- 
 ing the Colloquies to represent himself as having been 
 misunderstood and belaboured by both extremists — like 
 Erasmus, a victim of moderation ^. So that again, as with 
 the Quevedo, the Bona, and the Seneca, our translator is 
 
 1 He had just issued his History of the Times (1687), which seems to have fallen 
 flat, despite Mrs Behn's prean (1688). 
 
 '^ ' So that with Erasmus himself, he is crushed betwixt the two extremes '. 
 To ifie Header. 
 
THE REVOLUTION 389 
 
 able to identify himself in a peculiar way with his author. 
 The Colloquies (against Popery) were written expressly to 
 refute the charge of being popishly affected^. But it was 
 rather the contempt discovered in the Colloquies for vulgar 
 opinion that gave them relish to the translator. The various 
 appeal of the Colloquies is shown very well in the seventeenth- 
 century English versions. Burton's old Seven Dialogues 
 (1606) makes most of the worship of false gods. When 
 Tom Browne in 1689 added seven dialogues to the twenty- 
 two already given by L'Estrange, and prefixed to the whole 
 volume a very good Life of Urasmus, it clearly appeared 
 that the indecencies of which the latter was accused in his 
 day, formed a main attraction for Browne. For the diction 
 he pleaded that ' the language of dialogue ought to sit loose 
 and free'. Lucian, the greatest master of this sort, was 
 Erasmus' model. For the Latin maxims of the Colloquies 
 which Browne,!like L'Estrange, translates or rather paraphrases 
 with the greatest freedom, he is ready to cross swords with 
 the great Bentley * who pretends that a man may cite them 
 in his works without being guilty of pedantry ' 2. To under- / 
 stand the vast difference not only in diction, but in the entire j 
 conception of translation between the early and the later I 
 seventeenth century, we cannot do better than compare^ / 
 Burton's by no means poor version of the first colloquy, / 
 the N^aufragium (1606) with L'Estrange's energetic rendering 
 of the same. If Hey wood's excellent heroic verse translation \ 
 (Pleasant Dialogues^ etc., 1637) be added for the intervening I \ 
 period we can observe a remarkable process of evolution. V) 
 
 The Cicero published this year, is in no way remarkable, 
 being quite straightforward, not too unfaithful (for L'Estrange), 
 and also rather free from the usual L'Estrange * fopperies *. 
 It achieved four editions in his lifetime and the latest so 
 recent as 1900. These works with the Spanish contes 
 exhaust the first group of translations ; written mostly as 
 
 1 Chap, ix., 266. See A Short Anmer to a Whole Litter of Libellers (1680). 
 Harry Care is the ' doggerel ' of the attack. ' If he gathers my itch of scribbling 
 from my translations, 'tis an itch I presume that he is in no danger of. There's 
 TuUy and Seneca, a couple of Pagans that will stand fairer before the great 
 tribunal than a million of calumniating and truly diabolical Christians. There's 
 Bona's Guide to Eternity (a Manual of pious and excellent morality), why should 
 that trouble him either ? ... as for Erasmus' Colloquies and Quevedo's Visions, 
 they are not tart enough perhaps for his palate, for 'tis not the strength or moral 
 of a satyr that pleases him, but the spite and venom of it, and in truth I have 
 heard that he is much happier too in his libels that pass only in MSS. than in 
 his printed ones '. 
 
 2 Browne refers us to the preface to Bentley'i Ansiver to Boyle, p. 87. 
 
390 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 revenge or weariness of the age prompts him, they are the 
 private reflections and solace of a busy spirit. It may seem 
 rather a pity that our author with his unrivalled vigour, 
 his delight in derision, and rude skill in detail which makes 
 the satirical - humorous picture, had not the independent 
 imagination to supply that hiatus in native literature noted 
 by Hallam and others, but was forced to jeer at the Livewell 
 Chapmans by a strain on another man's words. 
 
 Having remarked the excellence of the QuevedOy 
 L'Estrange's other experiments in thQ facetim class need not 
 detain us long here. They are the doubtful Five Letters from 
 a Nun to a Cavalier (1677), which appeared afterwards with the 
 Cavalier's Answers (certainly not by L'Estrange), the Gentle- 
 man Pothecary and Spanish Decameron in 1685. Besides, if we 
 can trust Curll's advertisements, there was the Spanish Polecat 
 described as begun by L'Estrange, which changed its name in 
 1726 to Spanish Amusements, the work of Castillo Solorzano. 
 The 'shameless Curll', as we saw, came into possession of these 
 copies, and in 1717, 1726 (when he was fined for publishing 
 indecent works), and 1727-8 we find him tempting the public 
 with wares bearing the name of L'Estrange ^. The Five Letters, 
 etc., is of a different class, worth reading merely as a specimen 
 of what was considered romance in these days. The Spanish 
 Decameroni^ a more important work ". Cervantes was,by 1680, 
 fairly well-known in England, but more in connection with his 
 romances which went by the name of Exemplary Novels than 
 by his Bon Quixote. Milton's nephew, John Phillips, had 
 given a very loose and licentious version of the latter in 
 1687, but it was not till Motteux's 1697 edition appeared that 
 Don Quixote can be said to be fairly on its way in English 
 literature. Phillips, who was a pioneer in this sort, had also 
 given in 1656 some Spanish stories, but the earlier Exemplarie 
 Novels of James Mabbe of 1640 ^ has been long recognised 
 
 1 ' Curll's chaste press ' naturally selected that small portion of L'Estrange's 
 versions to which Sir Sidney Lee's strictures reasonably apply. He produced 
 the Gentleman Pothecary (1726), and the following year The Spanish Polecat or 
 Spanish Amusements. 
 
 2 It is curious that Tieknor should have overlooked this English version of 
 Cervantes' Novellas Exemplares. {Hist, of Spain, Lit., ii., 144-5). 
 
 ^ Godwin [op. cit., p. 246), has extravagantly but excusably praised this 
 version which was 'turned into English by Dom Diego Puede-ser, printed by 
 John Dawson for R. M., 1640 ', addressed to''the worthie Mrs Strangeways'. 1640 
 is also the year of the learned Savile's Tacitus. No contrast is more instructive 
 than that afforded by these two translations. A close study of Mabbe's and 
 L'Estrange's versions seems to show that Roger L'Estrange did not know the 
 earlier version. The French translation of 1640 by F. de Rosset and the Sieur 
 d'Audiguier, was undoubtedly his original. 
 
THE REVOLUTION 391 
 
 as one of the finest pieces of work in English translation, 
 with all the quaintness natural to its date and yet of both 
 accurate and charming narration. It was to supersede this 
 version that L'Estrange wrote his Spanish Decanieron, and 
 indeed it is very hard to decide which is superior. It is not 
 the best specimen of Roger's work, and it was not the kind 
 which suited his audacity and 'fopperies', but set side by 
 side with any of Phillips' or Ozell's essays in the same kind, 
 it appears excellent. 
 
 It cannot be doubted that this school of translation, 
 which included Tom Browne, D'Urfrey, Phillips, Savage, 
 Spence, Ozell, and Head, scandalous as it often was, had a 
 very great influence on English style, and we may claim that 
 L'Estrange with his Quevedo in 1668 was like Phillips (but 
 with vastly more influence), a poineer ^. 
 
 When we pass to the Post-Revolution works we are at 
 once in a new world, where L'Estrange was definitely in the 
 pay of the booksellers. The last decade of this century 
 shows the greatest activity in the most formidable class of 
 translations, no longer undertaken by obscure individuals, 
 but ' let out ' by conclaves of the great booksellers to men 
 whose names commanded most respect in the world of 
 letters. That of L'Estrange was a definite asset in such 
 work. He began now, on the score of his non-political 
 work, to be talked of as the 'celebrated Sir Roger', 'the 
 prince of translators ', and Dryden was no more the patriarch 
 of poets than L'Estrange the patriarch of English transla- 
 tion and a referee in all points of taste in prose ^. 
 
 Always a preacher, and now on the shore of time, his 
 active mind looked to the new generation, which might be 
 wooed from the errors and violence of their fathers, and the 
 scheme of manners brought back to its old-time severity. 
 In his mind this meant only one thing — obedience and 
 respect to governors, with the inculcation of the social virtues 
 and goodfellowship, 'all that's human and conversible in 
 life ', — a noble aim, but over-looking the quality of stubborn 
 Whiggery in the human mind. The project of an ^sop 
 
 1 Godwin, (op. cit., p. 253) has not spared Phillips' Don, Quixote for the faults 
 for which L'Estrange stands as the type. ' He loved to revel in the slang of the 
 vulgar tongue. The liberties taken by him exceed upon the whole those of any 
 traaslation I ever saw'. 
 
 2 So Caryll commissioned him in 1700 * to see that the English (of his version 
 of St Evremond's Memoirs) should be proper and the story intelligible in the tell- 
 ing '. L'Estrange to Caryll, 15th September 1700, Add. MSS., 28237, f. 8, 
 
392 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 broached to him by three great booksellers appealed power- 
 fully to his mind. By a * sidewind of a lecture from the 
 fields' ^sop would mollify their crass minds. Later on 
 Terence would re-introduce urbanity and the pleasing trickery 
 of comedy. An honoured place was to be given in the 
 schools to the study not only of the old pedantries, but of 
 manners. Non verhum, sed res. Lilly might be banished 
 and L'Estrange introduced. 
 
 L'Estrange in the character of an educationist is some- 
 thing of a novelty, and the pretension afforded his enemies 
 an opportunity to jeer, which was indulged many years after 
 his death. Since, however, the author insisted on the 
 pedagogic value of his work on ^sop, it may be worth while 
 enquiring into the system then in vogue in the schools. 
 
 Sir Roger's ideas are broadly those which Locke dis- 
 coursed to the Countess Shaftesbury. The childmind is 
 tabula rasa^ ' blank - paper reading indifferently for any 
 impression good or bad (for they take all upon credit), and 
 it is much in the power of the first comer to write saint or 
 devil upon't '. Again, ' While the memory is firm and the 
 judgment weak, it is the director's part to judge for the 
 pupil and it is the disciple's to remember for himself '. 
 
 ' 111 train or Habit ' is, as with Locke, all-important. 
 It is ' the kernel, not the shell ', the thing not the word, the 
 example not the precept, we seek. These are in brief Locke's 
 contribution to Education and L'Estrange in some measure 
 anticipated him. 
 
 ' This rhapsody of Fables is a book universally read and 
 taught in all our schools ; but almost at such a rate as we 
 teach pyes and parrots that pronounce the words without 
 so much as guessing the meaning of them ; or to take it 
 another way, the boys break their teeth upon the shells, 
 without ever coming near the kernel. They learn the 
 Fables by lessons, and the moral is the least part of our care 
 in a child's instructions. ... To supply this defect now, 
 we have had several English paraphrases and Essays upon 
 ^sop and divers of his followers both in prose and verse ; 
 the latter have perchance ventured a little too far from the 
 precise scope of the author upon the privilege of a poetical 
 license ; and for the others of ancient date, the morals are so 
 insipid and flat, and the style and diction of the Fables so 
 coarse and uncouth that they are rather dangerous than 
 profitable '. 
 
THE REVOLUTION 393 
 
 How far Koger really expected that his huge folio would 
 find its way into the schoolroom, it is difficult to say. But 
 from both the Preface to the 1692 edition and the second 
 collection of 1699, we gather that he had hopes of displacing 
 the 'pedantries and fopperies' of verbal learning, by his 
 jEsop. The inclusion of Poggio's doubtful facetim in the 
 latter, was certainly unfortunate from this point of view ^. 
 The complaint which we now regard as perennial, that boys 
 spend their best years stumbling through Lilly and a Latin 
 dictionary, and that in the end they know neither Latin nor 
 English, was then a somewhat novel proposition in England. 
 It may have been true that the average English gentleman 
 found difficulty in expressing himself, and that a futile 
 fumbling with Lilly was the cause of it. Locke appears 
 very strong on this point, and actually proposed that 
 mothers should help themselves and their offspring through 
 the classics (and Hebrew) with the aid of an interlineary 
 translation, and himself published the first English JEsop in 
 this manner. 
 
 But schoolmasters were conservative. The free transla- 
 tion, good enough perhaps for gentlemen readers, was out- 
 rageous for the schoolroom, while a literal rendering was 
 pooh-poohed on the ground that the grain of Latin idiom 
 ran so counter to English that such a translation could only 
 produce the worst English, if not nonsense. Thus we reach 
 Felton's disapproval of translations altogether, and Aphra 
 Behn's complaints ^. 
 
 In the following generation John Clarke of Hull, the 
 indefatigable educationist and translator, attempted an 
 enlightened change. The real difficulty seems to have 
 been the ignorance of schoolmasters, few of whom could 
 be trusted with even a good literal translation. Clarke 
 was captivated by the free and idiomatic translation which 
 L'Estrange had made familiar, as a means of teaching 
 gentlemen's sons the genius of the English tongue. He 
 himself first introduced the Latin classics side by side 
 with a literal translation, 'as literal as possible', and in 
 such manner following L'Estrange's footsteps produced an 
 ^soy, Erasmus' Colloquies, and a dozen other classics 
 which ran through numerous editions. 
 
 1 See p. 398. 
 
 2 Aphra Behn's Essay on Translated Prose, quoted p. 384. * If one endeavours 
 to make it English standard, it is no translation '. 
 
394 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 Without pretending that L'Estrange's versions could 
 possibly have been of much service in the schoolroom, it 
 may be claimed that he rescued translation from insipidity, 
 and despite frequent rudeness he first dispelled the notion 
 that the English language was incapable of carrying across 
 the sense of the original in a style which, though far from 
 a model, has much of the strength of the best English. 
 Writers of his day thought that the new and improved style 
 was destined to take the direction in which he pointed, and 
 they scarcely noted the barbarities so observable to us. 
 But purified of these, there remains the vigour and plenty 
 of a true English style. 
 
 His JEsop had the honour of several imitators in prose 
 and verse apart from the ^sopic skits referred to already. 
 From the preface of one of these — that of E. Stacey 1717 
 — we learn how the idea of translating ^sop first occurred 
 to the worthy knight, and how the performances of La 
 Fontaine reacted on England. ' 'Twill be needless ', says 
 this encomiast, ' for me, I presume, to detain you with 
 encomiums upon Sir R. L'Estrange's Morals and Reflexions. 
 
 'After this great man', Stacey modestly continues, *I 
 will only add that they have a natural tendency to promote 
 an inquiry into the cause and consequence of things. 
 
 'Though this be the first public appearance that these 
 Fables have made in the shape they now bear^, yet the 
 design is of an older date and in some respect may be said 
 to be derived from our author himself. 
 
 "Twas I think about 3 years before his first volume 
 {i.e., 1691-2) was published, when a proposal of this nature 
 was upon the stocks. He then seemed to approve it, and 
 was very zealous to have an experiment made which was 
 accordingly done to his satisfaction, upon which he not 
 only promised to promote the attempt, but was pleased at 
 the same time to observe, that a poetical version of the 
 Fables of ^sop, if the performance were tolerable would 
 
 1 He means presumably the first verse L'Estrange, rather than the first verse 
 ^Esop. Even the former had been done in burlesque in jEsop at the Bell Tavern, 
 (1711). In 1704 appeared an interlineary (English and Latin) prose iEsop 
 (probably that of Locke referred to by Clarke). Then came the 4th edition of 
 Roger L'Estrange's 1691 FaUes and Baudoin's old 1631 edition Englished. The 
 2nd edition of Sir Roger's 1699 FaUes appeared May 1708, and in November 1708 
 Truth in Fiction or Morality in Masquerade, a collection of 225 Fables of 
 ^Esop and other authors in English verse by Edmund Arwaker, chaplain to the 
 Duke of Ormonde, to whom Dryden's Fables were dedicated {See Arber's Term 
 Catalogues for these months). 
 
THE REVOLUTION 395 
 
 recommend them exceedingly to the public, but then, said 
 he, to carry this design through will require a great deal 
 of pains, judgment and integrity. What pity, nay how 
 scandalous is it then that they should not be put in better 
 language and delivered for the future out of the talons of 
 ignorant scribblers and poetasters. Nay, says he (Sir Koger), 
 'tis a sort of blemish upon our conduct, and throws a slur 
 upon the English language that it has been so long neglected. 
 
 'This was the doctrine this incomparable mythologist 
 then preached. However, upon some particular reasons 
 which are not at all material here, this design was laid 
 aside, and there was no more heard of it till it was 
 revived by a fresh rumour that Sir Roger L'Estrange had 
 been prevailed with to take the sole management of these 
 Fables upon himself. Some time after, his first volume 
 came out, and as it was the most correct performance of 
 this kind that ever was in our own or perhaps in any 
 other language, so it soon obtained a general approbation 
 and gave an additional lustre to the character of that 
 great man. 'Tis needless to trouble the reader with col- 
 lateral encomiums upon a work that has been so universally 
 esteemed. I will only take upon me to add that the i 
 Reflexions which are the only part of the hook which he can \ 
 'properly call his own, are writ with such exquisite judgment, \ 
 so well adapted to the design of the Eables and in such a \ 
 beautiful and correct style, that in many instances they I \- 
 exceed his Seneca. . . . His periods are full and com- 
 prehensive and a native elegance and purity of language 
 shines through 'em all'. 
 
 Before referring to ' the only part of the book, which he 
 can call his own' it may be desirable to enquire what 
 editions of ^sop existed, when, in the Revolution year, a 
 conclave of booksellers approached L'Estrange. 
 
 Sir Roger, Locke, Clarke, and others referred with dis- 
 taste to the school JSsop, and we have seen that all three 
 hastened to mend matters. The J^^sop ' in usum Scholae 
 ^tonensis' was a duodecimo 'Mythologia ^sopica', the 
 Greek and Latin side by side, and containing 297 Fables 
 by iEsop, Babrias, etc., secundum editionem Neveleti. There 
 was also the common school book ^sopi Fhrygis Fabulce, 
 una cum nonnullis variorum auctorum Fahulis adjectis (383 
 Fables). The latter Sir Roger had particularly in mind. 
 
 Since 1670, there had been (juite a cult of ^sop by the 
 
396 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 'ignorant scribblers and poetasters', among which John 
 Ogilby's 1673 Fables paraphrased in English verse was 
 regarded with some favour, till its author passed into the 
 eternal shades of the Dunciad^. 
 
 On the prose side there was in 1670 a remarkable little 
 version ' with morals in prose and verse ' which by 1695 
 had achieved thirteen editions. In 1672 a similar but larger 
 volume with one hundred and ten sculptures appeared, and 
 finally in 1676 'in twelves' and for the modest sum of 28., 
 The Fables of JEsop with all his Life and Fortune. How he 
 was subtle, wise, and born in Greece ; he was of all men the 
 most deformed and evil - shapen, etc., whereunto are added 
 the Fables of Avian, and also the Fables of Alphonso, with 
 the Fables of Poge the Florentine. 
 
 These were the ^^sops when Sir Roger is reported to 
 have expressed his disgust with English Fables, and no doubt 
 his disgust was justified. Before his ponderous folio appeared, 
 two rather serviceable editions appeared — that of Philip 
 Ay res 1690, and Nat Crouch's little non-^sopic Fable book, 
 issued with a second part 1695, which went into many editions. 
 
 The editions of Sir Roger's ^sop are of the first part 
 1692, 1694, 1704, 1712, etc. ; of the second part published in 
 1699, there was a second impression called in 1708. There- 
 after it lost ground. In 1704 Baudoin who stands to the 
 French ^sop in the same relation as L'Estrange to the 
 English, was Englished, and ten years later with numerous 
 editorial compliments the version of ' Le Chevalier L'Estrange ' 
 was translated into French for the instruction of a noble- 
 man's children^. 
 
 If — as Stacey suggests — L'Estrange thought of himself 
 as a rival to La Fontaine, it could only be a momentary 
 weakness, and he rightly decided to measure swords with 
 the greatest of French prose mythologists, with Baudoin, 
 whose old 1631 version, with morals, was, and should be 
 still, a work of infinite delight ^. In Baudoin's case it w^as 
 true to some extent also that 'the only part of the book 
 
 1 Tom Browne's Letters from the Living to the Dead (1702), p. 22, refers to 
 * Bentley making ^sop out to be a fine-looking fellow. No, no, replies Mr 
 Nokes, Jilsop is just such a crumpled, hump-shouldered dog for all the world, as 
 you see him before Ogilby's Translation of his fables '. He might have added as 
 he appears in Baudoin and L'Estrange. 
 
 2 Les Fables D'Esope et de plusieurs autres eoc^dlens Mytliologistes, accompagnies 
 du sens moral et des reflexionstde Mons. le Chevalier L' Estrange, 1714. 
 
 3 Other editions of Baudoin followed in 1660 (116 Fables), 1669, and 1680. No 
 doubt L'Estrange used the last of these. 
 
THE REVOLUTION 397 
 
 that could be called his own' was the Eeflexions or Dis- 
 courses. When L'Estrange and Baudoin changed countries 
 in 1704 and 1714, it was with a curious difference which 
 illustrates a trait of national character. Sir Roger 'took 
 the French air' with his extraordinary Reflexions and 
 Morals solely adapted to the noisy theatre of English 
 politics^, but the English Baudoin assumes not only the 
 tongue but the politics and religion of its adopted country, 
 and its charming classical allusions are rendered back into 
 Latin by the English translator, while a magnanimous story 
 of William III. and * our Sir Wm. Temple ' adorns this version. 
 
 No comparison of ' Reflexions ' can be more instructive 
 and consonant to the genius of the two peoples than those 
 of Baudoin and L'Estrange, the former adorned with all the 
 graces of classical allusion, and void of party malice, L'Estrange 
 labouring out the party wisdom of the stormiest half century 
 of English politics. He is not, however, absolutely devoid of 
 literature and history, and makes up for the Frenchman's 
 grace by a rude wit, and the shrewd vernacular both of 
 language and manners, which make his jEsop eternally fresh. 
 
 We cannot enter here into those numerous examples 
 of perverted politics which mar L'Estrange's version and may 
 have called for a caution by the Government. A simple 
 inversion of the moral of the story is his method where Jure 
 Divino is in question, as for example in The Frogs Chuse a 
 King (No. XIX. in L'Estrange, 1692). Other writers noticed 
 — some with favour — his frequent lashing out at the Trimmers. 
 No better relic of Filmerism, it would be safe to say, has 
 survived 2 than this 'most extensive collection of Fables 
 
 1 With, however, his vigorous or eccentric idioms, as ' to chop logic ', * Master 
 and Wardens of the Foxes Company', etc., smoothed out into reasonable French. 
 
 2 De la Crose { Wcrrks of the Learned, January 1691-2) quotes several of the anti- 
 Trimming morals, evidently with approval, Thos. Grordon (Introduction to his 
 Tacitm, 1728) : ' To put his books into the hands of youth or boys, for whom 
 chiefly ^sop by him burlesqued was designed, is to vitiate their taste and to give 
 them a poor low turn of thinking, not to mention the vile and slavish principles 
 of the man . . . out of the mouths of animals inured to the boundless freedom of 
 air and deserts, he has drawn doctrines of servitude and a defence of Tyranny'. 
 A much later writer (in Notes and Queries, 2nd series, iii. , 281) says : 'The old folio 
 of Sir Roger L'Estrange fills up pleasantly some of the vacant intervals or ends of 
 time. Sir Roger's taste for proverbial philosophy and his homely yet vigorous 
 and idiomatic English as well as shrewd sense render him so far fit for the task he 
 has undertaken ... I often wish that some one with requisite taste and learning 
 would bring out a choice selection of Fables . . . with the different applications 
 made'. The writer then proceeds to censure Roger's extraordinary Morals, 
 quoting Trench {Parables of our Lord) for a condemnation of the general glorifica- 
 tion of cunning in the ^sopic and Reineke Fuchs Fable. But L'Estrange's error 
 is generally the opposite of the pliancy of the reed in Le CMne et les roseaux. 
 The rigour of the oak pleased him better. 
 
dm SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 in existence '. As to the Life of JEsop which Roger prefixed 
 to his Eables, it is copied from Baudoin, and accepts the 
 story of the monk Planudes and of Camerarius without 
 hesitation, with all the particulars of ^sop's deformity. 
 La Fontaine of course preserves the same tradition. 
 Although in the 1704 English Baudoin, Meziriac's Life 
 replaced the Planudes version, in all the L'Estrange editions 
 the old story remains, despite 'Bentley's slashing hook'^. 
 One of the most striking advances of La Fontaine is the 
 variety of his sources, and the extension of the Fable to 
 include almost any incident or hon mot which could bear 
 a moral, ^sop, Abstemius, Babrias, Avianus, and Poggius ^ 
 had supplied the old collections both in England and France, 
 but La Fontaine quickly exhausted these, and in the editions 
 of 1682 and 1685 avowed 
 
 * J'avais Esope quitte 
 Pour etre tout a Boccace '. 
 
 Rabelais, Regnier, de Commines and even Boileau and 
 Madame de Sevigne repair the supply. Of the ancients, 
 Horace, Pliny, Martial, and Livy contribute something. Of 
 the 500 fables in the first L'Estrange Collection 201 were 
 ^sopic, the rest drawn from the traditional fabulists. 
 
 The second part in 1699 is entirely derived from original 
 sources. Besides a large number of Italian stories of 
 Boccalini, Boccaccio, etc., stories in many cases difficult to 
 trace, there are a number of English instances — generally 
 true-Protestant quips and a host of marriage jests mingled 
 with tales of Virgil, Alexander, and Augustus, in such a 
 medley as to entitle us to claim this work as almost the 
 sole English collection of Contes. In 1694 when a second 
 edition of the Msop was called for, L'Estrange's name 
 appeared to two other translations and possibly he had 
 a hand in a third. The L'Estrange-Eachard translation 
 of Terence (six comedies) and of Plautus (three) was slavishly 
 
 1 See his Remarks in T. Goodwin's 1705-8 ed., p. 454, in which he attacks Sir 
 W. Temple's ' mighty commendation of the fables now extant ' and the inventions 
 of ' that idiot of a monk Planudes, which are not a bit better than our penny 
 merriments printed at London Bridge '. 
 
 2 For an excellent monograph on the later Fable, see Robinson Ellis's Fables of 
 Avianus, Oxford, 1887. When L'Estrange wrote there was no commentary on 
 Avian. The earliest is dated 1731. De la Crose might well wonder with Gordon 
 (see p. 397) how Roger could include Poggius's indecent jests in a book intended 
 for the school -room as well as for the study. For a study of the works of Poggius 
 ('ce Voltaire Plorentin') see Pierre des Brandes Les Fac^ties de Fogge Floroitin. 
 Erasmus had defended the lapses in his Colloquies on the ground that the objectors 
 * suffered Plautus and Poggius his jests to be read to their children '. 
 
THE REVOLUTION 399 
 
 based on the fine French version of Madame Dacier of 1688. 
 In France with the exception of P. R. Rebour's version of 
 1681, and the partial work of Lemaistre de Sacy, there had 
 been no translation comparable in vogue to the old and 
 excellent 1500 version. The contrary had been the case 
 in England. The Latin text flourished in the schools with 
 Erasmus, Cicero, and Seneca, whose tragedies had an 
 immense vogue in the first half of the seventeenth century. 
 The printing of these texts was, until the Restoration, in 
 the hands of the Stationers, impensis societatis StatioTiarum. 
 Thereafter the Press at Cambridge captured the TercTice, 
 while Oxford was engaged in her struggle with the Company 
 for the printing of Bible stock. As to English versions, 
 though the oldest English edition is nearly a hundred years 
 after the French (1598), they were many and regular in 
 the seventeenth century. If we compare the 1614 edition 
 with Bernard's version of 1641, and that with Charles Hoole's 
 in 1676, we are again reminded of the rapid changes in 
 languages during this century. Hoole's version was in 
 Latin and English, a very poor thing indeed, the property 
 of the Stationers' Company, which seized on the English 
 version, now that it had lost the Latin to Cambridge. 
 
 If any English writers were capable of entering the 
 lists against Dacier to recover the Terentian laurel, Eachard's i 
 vapid style would disqualify him ^ and while L'Estrange \ 
 could give a rude life to the version, it could only be by 
 heightening the contrast with French elegance. Their 
 performance deserves the censure so liberally poured forth 
 in the next century. The strict homage which their version, 
 like a rude wooer pays to ' the French lady ', is part of the 
 deference so general over the whole field of translation, that 
 we must conclude that England's debt to France in this 
 era was greater than is generally understood, and it was 
 perhaps with reference to this class as well as to the 
 drama, that Pope uttered his well-knowm admonition 2, 
 
 ' Your scene precariously subsists too long 
 On French Translation, and Italian song '. 
 
 When we come to criticism of L'Estrange's performances, 
 nothing is more remarkable than what we might almost 
 call the conspiracy of praise in his own day for an author 
 
 1 Though even Tytler {op. cit., p. 262) admits to his Terence and Flautus 
 'upon the whole much merit'. 
 
 2 Prologue to Addison's Oalo, 1713. 
 
400 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 who in an another connection is rarely mentioned without 
 a savage jeer. Whilst he lived he was elevated into a 
 kind of Surveyorship of the English Language, and had 
 the agitation for an Academy not been defeated by the 
 wrangles of Whig and Tory, Sir Roger would doubtless 
 have had his chair. Winstanley, the earliest of his critics, 
 who wrote before the ^sop, Terence, or Josephus appeared, 
 wonders that *he should ever write so many (books) and 
 those who have read them considering the skill and method 
 they are written in will admire he should write so well. 
 Nor is he less happy in verse than in prose, which for 
 elegance of language and qaickness of invention deservedly 
 entitles him to the honour of a poet'^. Fortunately our 
 first critical journals, Motteux's Gentleman's Journal and 
 De la Grose's Works of the Learned were started early 
 enough to include a review of the ^sop and an anticipation 
 of the Terence. ' Fables ', says the former 2, ' have ever been 
 valued by the ingenious. In France Mons. De la Fontaine 
 esteemed inimitable in his way, hath revived them as much 
 as that great master of our tongue, Sir Roger L'Estrange 
 hath done lately among us ; the prose of the last, and the 
 verse of the first, being equally beautiful in their kind. 
 We had been waiting for Sir Roger's Msop with all the 
 impatience imaginable, at last it hath seen the light and 
 England may boast now of the best collection of Fables 
 in the world'. 
 
 The learned La Grose while insisting on the educational 
 value of the performance is quite as complimentary. ' It is 
 the masterpiece of a man of parts to raise a common subject 
 to the relish of ingenious palates. This Sir Roger has 
 performed'. He then proceeds to 'give a taste of the 
 author's polities', which he tacitly approves ^ 
 
 The project of an English Terence following Madame 
 Dacier and of an English Tacitus based on Sir Henry 
 Savile's old 1640 edition, and those more recent of 
 D'Ablancourt, and De la Houssaye, was hailed in Motteux's 
 Journal in February and September 1693, respectively'^. 
 
 1 Lives of Eminent Poets (1687), p. 219. We might have included Mr Miles 
 Prance among the earliest of L'Estrange's literary critics. See chap, xi., 344, 
 Burnet (to whose view of the new prose Matthew Arnold defers so much in his 
 preface to the Six Chief Lives from Johnson) refers merely to his ' unexhausted 
 copiousness in writing . 
 
 2 January 1691-2, p. 23. 
 
 3 Wwhs of the Learned (1692), p. 213. 
 * Vol. ii., pp. 58 and 312. 
 
THE REVOLUTION 401 
 
 The latter is promised at the hands of ' three persons of 
 quality who are all such masters of English, that doubtless 
 they will give us an excellent Translation of that difficult 
 author, principally if we consider that the old English 
 Tacitus, though the language has heen altered, has been 
 esteemed '. As to the Terence * I hear that the same method 
 (i.e. that employed by Dacier) is followed in the English 
 version '. 
 
 In January 1694^ the latter was received with faint 
 praise. * There was no tolerable version of them before. So 
 this will doubtless be acceptable to those who cannot con- 
 verse with that admirable author in the original '. In May 
 we are informed that ' Terence's comedies, as lately Englished, 
 have been so kindly received, that those who gave us that 
 Translation have now published that of Plautus'. Gilly- 
 flower's Tacitus in four books appeared in 1694, shortly after 
 the Terence, and Koger's name appeared to the third book 
 of the Histories \ Fortunately L'Estrange died in the echo 
 of these paeans, and Dunton ^ and Boyer continued the strain 
 of eulogy *. His Josephus had added to his laurels which 
 were to wither so quickly. The eighteenth century re-action 
 against the free translation which he represented and Dry den 
 encouraged, against the accommodation of manners which 
 Dryden excused and Felton, Malone, and Tytler deplored, 
 and against the use of vulgar or colloquial English in serious 
 translations of which L'Estrange was the great master, swept 
 him altogether out of the roll of reputable authors. His 
 Quevedo, Bona, Colloquies, stood the new tests better, but his 
 
 1 Motteux's Journal, iii., 27. 
 
 2 L'Estrange's earlier biographers make some mystery of this performance, 
 although his name appears to it. 
 
 3 If Mr Dunton's opinion is worth quoting, it is to the effect that ' he only I 
 has had the rare happiness of bettering some of the best authors in a translation, | 
 and his Seneca and Offices will live as long as the world ' (Life and Errors, p. 266). 
 
 ^ Life and Reign of Queen Anne (1722), p. 38, from which Gibber and 
 Chalmers quoted. The distinction between L'Estrange's detested political career 
 and his generally respected literary life is very marked here. After relating the 
 most injurious circumstances of his relations with Cromwell, Boyer continues: 
 'He went to his grave in peace, though he had in a manner survived those 
 intellectuals which for so many years he enjoyed to an uncommon degree. His 
 abilities and masterly style were chiefly displayed in several excellent translations 
 from the Latin, Spanish, and French, particularly Seneca's Morals, some of 
 Erasmus' (^oUoquies, iEsop's Fables, Dom Quevedo, Josephus, etc. '. ' To think 
 like Sir Roger L. once in his life is enough to recommend him to his readers' 
 approbation ever after', is the flattering-encomium of the Preface to L'Estrange's (?) 
 Hymn to Confinement printed 1705. So Homer in a Nutshell by Sam. Parker, 
 son of the Bishop, 1700 (a Fable poem in 3 Cantos), Dedication to Sir Roger 
 L'Estrange — ' Now all straggling Apoloques fall to you as Lord of the Manor '. 
 
 2 c 
 
402 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 Seneca^ the deplorable Tacitus^ the Billingsgate Terence^ and 
 the unscholarly Josephus invited a torrent of abuse, too 
 steady and too long continued for full quotation here. 
 
 Perhaps the earliest critical attack on L'Estrange's 
 memory is contained in that oft-quoted number of the 
 Spectator which deplores the degradation, corruptions, but 
 chiefly the retrenchments of the English tongue in which ' our 
 politest authors ' joined to the destruction of the Tongue ^. 
 Sir Roger, still one of ' our most celebrated authors ', figures 
 as the prime delinquent in that process which was to adjust 
 the spelling to the pronunciation and so * confound all our 
 etimologies '. 
 
 Five years after L'Estrange's death, Henry Felton wrote 
 (he did not publish till 1713) his famous Dissertation on 
 Beading the Classics arid Forming a Just Style. It went into 
 three editions, and is the most curious reflection on the new 
 forces at play. He had been educated in the school of 
 Dr Busby, who frowned on all cribs and commentaries. 
 Yet Felton had sufficient of the new age in him to suggest 
 that grammar may be learnt from texts as well as texts from 
 grammar, and to imbibe the idea of the realists that * in this 
 polite and excellent age of learning we lose our time in 
 words \ He also hailed the new criticism of Addison and 
 Steele and approved Swift's project for ascertaining the English 
 Language. Felton arose to scourge the impertinents, * pre- 
 tenders to learning who have made their small knowledge 
 of the modern tongues supply their ignorance of theancient ', 
 and are thus 'at double distance from the original', 
 a rating in which, with some allowance, L'Estrange is 
 included. 
 
 It is easy to perceive that, with considerable enlighten- 
 ment, Felton belonged to the contemptuous classic school 
 referred to by Professor Earle, and yet he pays due tribute 
 to his own tongue, placing it (as the fashion had then 
 become) high above the French, whose ' circumlocution, 
 talkativeness, and a certain airiness' have frustrated the 
 worthy attempts to render the classics at home in that 
 language. English, he admits, above all modern tongues, 
 has the gravity and ease fitted for Roman work. 
 
 But even for English translation we must choose our 
 ablest pens, and none but a universal genius — which 
 L'Estrange was not — should attempt all kinds. Moreover 
 
 1 Spectator, No. 135. 
 
THE REVOLUTION 403 
 
 two things are specially displeasing in the late movement, 
 the method of paraphrase and still more of digesting an 
 author, which L'Estrange used (and defended) in his Seneca^ 
 and a ' way of Imitation I can by no means admit of and 
 that is adapting ancient authors to modern times and making 
 Horace, Juvenal and Persius, etc., not only speak our 
 language but know our manners '. If it is only a matter of 
 change of actors and scene, however, Felton is not inexorable. 
 
 As to the former evil, ' I know the general practice is 
 avoiding a literal translation, but there is a great deal of 
 difference between a literal translation and a paraphrase'. 
 These censures fittingly introduce the chief offender. 
 
 * Sir Koger L'Estrange, who was a perfect master of the -^ 
 
 familiar, the facetious, and jocular styles, fell into his proper 
 province when he pitched upon Erasmus and JEsop. Tully's 
 Offices were suitable enough for their plainness and familiarity 
 to his genius, but he could never rise to the solemnity and 
 dignity of his Orations. He was neither Orator nor Historian, 
 his talent was banter and ridicule, and how well qualified 
 he was for the translation of Josephus among a thousand 
 other levities and low expressions we may judge from the 
 character of Herod, who was one " that would keep touch 
 neither with God nor man " according to his translation '. 
 
 We have quoted Stacey's extravagant eulogy four years 
 after this attack appeared, but in 1728 a much more vicious 
 onslaught was delivered by Thos. Gordon, who translated 
 Tacitus ^, and thought it incumbent on him to prepare his 
 public by an all-round trouncing of English translators, 
 and especially of L'Estrange, which Gibber deprecated rather ; 
 on the score of good manners than faulty criticism 2. Gordon } 
 also gives us a brief history of English style of the kind of | 
 which Aphra Behn's Ussay on Translated Prose stands at I 
 the one pole and Johnson's article in the Literary Magazine 
 of 1758 at the other. This censorious, but often acute, critic 
 has nothing new to tell us of the differing capacities of Latin, 
 French, and English, but he has something to say of the rise 
 of the ' flippant jargon ' of which Sir Koger is the great master. / 
 
 1 The worhs of Tadhis hy T. Gordon, vol, i., containing the Annals to which are 
 ^efixed Political Discourses upon the Authors, London, 1728. 
 
 2 Ldves, iv. , 301 : ' To raise the reputation of his own performance, he has 
 abused that of L'Estrange in terms very unfit for a gentleman to use supposing 
 the censure had been true. Sir Roger's works indeed are often calculated for the 
 meanest capacities and the phrase is consequently low, but a man must be greatly 
 under the influence of prejudice who can discern no genius in his writings \ 
 
404 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 'The taste and style of the Court', he says, *is always 
 the standard of the public. At the Eestoration, a time of 
 great festivity and joy, the formal and forbidding gravity 
 of the preceding times became a fashionable topic of ridicule, 
 a manner different and opposite was introduced, jest and 
 waggery were encouraged, and the King himself delighted 
 in drollery and low humour \ Hence the language became 
 replete with ludicrous phrases; archness and cant grew 
 diverting; the writings of witlings passed for wit, and if 
 they were severe upon the sectaries, as the fashion was, 
 they pleased the Court. By this means L'Estrange got his 
 character. It is very true that there appeared at the same 
 time men of just wit and polite style, but it cannot be 
 denied but that the other manner was prevalent ; the greatest 
 wits sometimes fell into it. This humour ended not with 
 that reign, nor the next, but was continued after the Ke volu- 
 tion by L'Estrange, Tom Browne, and other delighters in 
 low jests, their imitators, and such witlings have contributed 
 considerably to debauch our tongue '. 
 
 ' Full of technical terms ', ' phrases picked up in the 
 street from apprentices and porters', 'nothing more low 
 and nauseous', are some of Gordon's flowers. 'Yet this 
 man was reckoned a master, nay a reformer of the English 
 language ^ ; a man who writ no language, nor does it appear 
 that he understood any; witness his miserable translations 
 of Cicero's Offices and Josephus. That of the latter is a 
 version full of mistakes, wretched and low from an easy 
 and polite one of Mons. D'Andilly '. And so on to the 
 attack on the truly wretched Tacitus. 
 
 Gordon is not a stickler, however, for literal translation, 
 which encourages an attachment to 'words and criticism' 
 as in the case of the learned Savile whose old Tacitus, from 
 
 1 See for example A Pleasant Conference upon the Observator, quoted p. 354. 
 Clarendon {Continuation of Life (1761), p. 475) has shown, and Eachard's Cojitempt 
 of the Clergy (1670) confirmed that this raillery was not confined to the Sects, but 
 especially after the Dutch War, was directed at the Anglican Clergy. Godwin 
 {Lives of Ed. and John Philips, pp. 43-4) has attempted to describe this vogue 
 of buffoonery. 
 
 2 Dunton, Post- Angel, November 1701, pp. 287-8 : 'Mr Motteux, who in your 
 opinion is the best English Master of English style in his works ? Sir Eoger is the 
 greatest master of the English Tongue, and has endeavoured to imitate Terence '. 
 In praising the ' ingenious Mr Boyer's ' translation of Bona's Moral Essay upon 
 Friendship {Post-Angel, ibid., p. 411), Dunton's tribute can go no higher than 
 that the performance is ' in no ways inferior to the eloquence of the Great English 
 Master of Translation ', that is, L'Estrange. 
 
THE REVOLUTION 405 
 
 which L'Estrange largely copied, he regarded, unlike De la 
 Grose, as insipid. 
 
 The exceptions he makes in favour of 'certain men of 
 just wit and polite style ' after the Eestoration, is admitted 
 also by Johnson^, who attempted to rescue the prose of 
 Cowley and Sprat from the general sentence. The name of 
 the latter suggests a passage in Eachard's History where in 
 proclaiming the merits of the men of the Restoration, he 
 brackets L'Estrange and Sprat, as having 'refined and im- 
 proved our tongue ', a tribute for which Oldmixon naturally 
 trounced him ^. 
 
 While Gordon attributes the faults of Restoration prose 
 to the affectations of the Court, Royalist writers regarded 
 the Commonwealth as the ' fatal interruption ' to the manly 
 prose which, about 1630-40, was replacing the pedantry of 
 the Jacobean age. It became customary to point to the 
 difference between the language of the Church and the 
 snivelling cant of the sects, which fell like a blight on 
 the English tongue. So Johnson in the essay referred to 
 above ^, and so the servile Dr Blair, who actually starts 
 modern English style with Clarendon *. Johnson of course 
 could not use Gordon's terms, but when he wants to 
 deprecate the same faults in Dry den, he likens him to 
 L'Estrange. ' Language ', he says, ' was by them cultivated 
 only as a mode of elegance. Hence it became more 
 enervated, and was dashed with quaintness, which gave the 
 public writings of those times a very illiberal air. L'Estrange, 
 who was by no means so bad a writer as some have repre- 
 
 1 And by Felton on behalf of certain ' persons of quality who excelled in style 
 in Charles II. 's Court '. T. L. Oliphant {Standard English, p. 312) takes Cowley 
 and Baxter to be ' the heralds of a new style that was soon to be brought to 
 further perfection by Dryden '. 
 
 2 Oldmixon, i., 491. 'How came he to forget the immortal Milton and the 
 very witty Marvell, I suppose they were too republican with him to have politeness 
 or taste '. But Milton's prose had many more years to wander in the wilderness. 
 
 ^^Lit. Mag., May 1758, p. 196: 'The like poverty of style infected all the 
 writings of the party. The pulpits resounded with the most abject stuff from all 
 the ruling sects, and even the great Milton in the character of a prose writer is as 
 despicable as he is divine in that of a poet'. Felton, Bissertatum., p. 60: 'Such 
 crude indigested volumes, my Lord, are many of the dissenters' writings'. From 
 the other side see Mackenzie's excellent Cominentary xipon the Present Condition of 
 the Kingdom and its Melioration (1677), p. 26 : ' That method of preaching is a 
 prejudice to the life and power of Religion wherein men set forth themselves by 
 studied discourses, with ornaments of History, Rhetoric, subtle disputations, nice 
 distinctions, etc.'. Amos {Hist, of Gonstitution in Reign of Clmrle^ II., p. 142) 
 quotes at length an Oxford poem, Coiiventicula Dissijmla, which is a model in 
 Latin verse of this kind of puritan ridicule. 
 
 4 Following Johnson as usual, whom, however, he manages to misunderstand. 
 Hugh Blair, Lectures on RMoric and Belles Lettres (1846), p. 208. 
 
 I- 
 
 X/ 
 
406 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 sented him to be, was sunk in party writing, and having 
 generally the worst side of the argument^ often had recourse 
 to scolding, pertness, and consequently a vulgarity that 
 discovers itself even in his more liberal compositions'. 
 
 Gibber we saw reproved Gordon for his abuse of 
 L'Estrange, but has very little to urge in defence. Chalmers 
 writing in 1815 endorses Granger's judgment that he *was 
 one of the great corrupters of the English Language '. He, 
 however, faintly excuses his levities on the ground that he 
 had to contend with 'men whose language was equally 
 vulgar and intemperate'. He cautions us also to verify 
 the statements in his newspapers. About the same time 
 (1813) appeared a far more trenchant summing up of 
 eighteenth - century censures in Tytler's Essay on Transla- 
 tion. Tytler has nothing new to offer by way of attack i, 
 but he makes some interesting comparisons with the transla- 
 tions of Motteux, Smollet, and Sterne 2. 
 
 The modern reader will perhaps not regard the specimens 
 of coarseness which Tytler cites as very fatal. Nor would 
 the remarkable translation of Seneca from which he culls 
 them, have run through so many editions — one about the 
 very time Tytler wrote, and the latest for Prof. Rhys, side 
 by side with the delightful old version of Thos. Lodge, — did 
 his charges not resolve themselves largely into an inability 
 to distinguish between vernacular force and vulgarity. 
 
 Such at any rate we might gather the modern judgment 
 to be, if still continued editions were any criterion of taste. 
 But we have also express modern criticism of L'Estrange's 
 style in the prefaces to these latest editions of the jEsop, 
 Seneca^ Cicero, Erasmus, and BonM by fastidious editors. 
 Their judgment is unanimous, though here and there lingers 
 the eighteenth - century tradition. That he is saved with 
 all his faults, by vigour and honesty of style, by the 
 incommunicable something that makes style, we may now 
 admit, even if Prof. Earle had not gravely rescued him 
 in his remarkable study of the styles which emerged at 
 the Restoration. 
 
 1 Op. ciL, 3rd ed,, 1813. He expands Felton's remarks on the Cicero and 
 Seneca. ' Seneca, though not a chaste writer, is remarkable for a courtly dignity 
 
 ^ } of expression, which, though often united with ease, is in the opposite extreme to 
 meanness or vulgarity. L'Estrange has presented him through the medium of 
 such coarseness that he is hardly to be known'. 
 
 2 He refers (p. 262) to the Slawkenbergius story in Tridrem Shandy, vol. iii., 
 chap, vii., and compares Motteux's with Smollet's Don Quixote. 
 
THE REVOLUTION 407 
 
 The 'established modes of the Century' according to 
 Prof. Earle, were the ornate classical type, contemptuous 
 of the vernacular and the ' quaintly - figured style of 
 Puritanism — both cultured styles — rooted in one and the 
 same aesthetic principle '. Clarendon and Bunyan are types 
 of these. The new school of which L'Estrange is herald 
 and apostle is ' studiously negligent and iricult \ It prides 
 itself upon *a wanton affection of slovenliness' and never- 
 theless 'the true parentage of all that is most firm and 
 valuable in the present prose must be derived from the 
 new style (rather the old revived) that came forward after 
 the Kestoration\ and the flagbearers of it are first of all 
 the journalists L'Estrange and Defoe, and then the allegorical 
 Bunyan and the poet Dryden '. And this was ' the war of 
 declared barbarism against the established modes of the 
 century to break them down and prepare the way for the 
 compromise of the next century and the balanced proprieties 
 of the age of Queen Anne ' 2. 
 
 L'Estrange and his kind had the misfortune — though 
 really, according to the above view, the saviours of the 
 language — to be speedily overtaken by the reformation 
 with which Swift and Addison are associated, and which 
 so thoroughly conquered that in the next generation Blair 
 almost complains that 'refinement of language has of late 
 begun to be much attended to. In several modern pro- 
 ductions of very small value, I should find it difficult to 
 point out many errors in language'. When we remember 
 that the Professor of Taste was able to take to pieces — 
 though respectfully — the very essay in which Swift pleads 
 for a reformation in diction, we must conclude that by 
 the latter half of the eighteenth century refinement had 
 become a diseased 
 
 The three specimens of L'Estrange's style which Prof. 
 
 1 Matthew Arnold [Six Chief Lives, preface xxi.) : * It is the victory of this 
 prose style "clear, plain and short " over what Burnet calls "the old style long and 
 heavy ", which is the distinguished achievement in the history of English Letters 
 of the Century following the Restoration '. 
 
 2 Engli$h Prose (1890), p. 453 : ' L'Estrange has been selected for something 
 of a special stigma, as if he had been a wanton corrupter of English. This 
 is not accidental, nor is the cause obscure. He came forward in a moment 
 of great reaction and his long and popular authorship rendered him a typical 
 figure. . . . Now once more emerges this long suppressed and homely style . . . 
 of which we have only seen here and there a surviving waif since the 15th 
 century '. 
 
 3 Blair, Lectures^ pp. 262 and 272. 
 
408 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 Earle has given are^ chosen unfortunately from his earlier 
 works, and outside the quarter-century range which he 
 has rightly taken as marking the reaction. Those earlier 
 productions are often in an exceedingly wooden and intricate 
 pattern and unsightly from an immoderate use of the square 
 bracket which Prof. Earle has observed 2. It is not till after 
 his first disastrous essay in journalism (1663-6), that in the 
 Quevedo we see the new style fully grown. And so it 
 continued in his translations — though the work named is 
 with the Erasmus undoubtedly his best. It may be fanciful 
 to see a more decided push in this development after the 
 Observators (1681-7), but not even Cobbett had better 
 opportunity of using the language of the people than 
 Sir Roger had now. 
 
 The wit-combats, the abuse, the drolleries of L'Estrange's 
 wars with Frank Smith, Curtis, Care, and Prance, come 
 thus to have some account in the final settling of English 
 prose. The fact that one man was widely — we may say 
 vastly — read, and constantly referred to as learned, was 
 in eternal and public conflict with men who often plead 
 their ignorance and lack of education, has a real significance, 
 and if — as was everywhere affirmed — the clergy studied 
 and preached L'Estrange for a dozen years, we must 
 conclude that his influence for good or bad was very 
 great. 
 
 After all the best defence of L'Estrange's translations 
 is their longevity. They are re-edited to-day by men 
 who seek quaint vigour and relish rather than a scholarly 
 version. His Bona for example ('useful for families and 
 convenient to be given at funerals ') after a steady stream 
 of editions down to 1722, was re-edited in 1900 (J. W. 
 Stanbridge, Library of Devotion), its editor admitting that 
 he has ' here and there introduced English expressions 
 which he has thought adapted to enliven the meaning ', but 
 claiming that ' while the translation is made more racy and 
 stimulating, it is never misleading'. The Erasmus (which 
 appeared in an edition of 1711 with Tom Browne's seven 
 additional Colloquies and the Life already alluded to) 
 continued till 1725, and was superseded by J. Clarke's 
 1720 version, which went into twenty editions. Clarke 
 as we saw modelled himself on L'Estrange. The Seneca, 
 
 1 Earle, ihid.^ p. 455. The specimens arc from The Holy Cheat, and the Memento. 
 « Ihid., p. 177. 
 
THE REVOLUTION 409 
 
 after a fourth American edition 1807, was (with Thos. 
 Lodge's old version) edited for Prof. Rys' Camelot series, 
 1888, under that system of abstracts condemned by Felton. 
 Even the Josephus had several editions, 1717, 1732, 1733 \ 
 and gave way only to Whiston's great edition 1733 which 
 was 'compared' with L'Estrange's. Whiston's in turn 
 became the foundation of Shilleto's 1899 edition. So 
 that something of Roger's labours may have survived even 
 here. The Cicero (De Officiis) makes a charming appearance 
 in the Temple Classics, and though very far from faithful in 
 detail, has much of the tart quality which induced the 
 editor of Mr John Lane's Hundred Fables of ^sop (1899) 
 to cull them from L'Estrange's Collection I That this 
 latest edition is meant for children justifies the original 
 purpose with which Roger set out. 'Modern renderings', 
 says this editor, 'with one eye to the anxious parent and 
 the other on the German Governess, have often achieved 
 an impotence of English that increases our admiration 
 of a tongue that can survive such mishandling and still 
 remain the language of men. . . .' L'Estrange may have 
 had his faults of diction, faults of excess, of violence, of 
 recurrent effort for the explosive phrase, wherein we get 
 indeed the telling snapshot efifect, but somehow hear the 
 click of the kodak as well. Yet his version remains the 
 one version, and these are not the Times in which we may 
 expect to get another. It is more than doubtful whether 
 ^sop would have approved of it, and yet for good or 
 for evil, it is the ultimate version. On the other hand 
 L'Estrange's controversial works, his Ohservators and the 
 rest found no editors and few readers. Heraclitus Bidens 
 had the honour of republication in 1713, but no one 
 has yet come forward to digest the great Observator. So 
 that of his original work, he was known to the eighteenth 
 century by the merest scraps, and these doubtful. His 
 Hymn to Confinement (1705), his Two Cases submitted to 
 Consideration (1709), MachiaveVs Advice to his Son (1734), 
 A Key to Hudibras (1715) (a two-page identification of the 
 characters in that famous drollery). The Somer's and 
 Harleian Collections of Tracts revived a few of his things 
 
 ' A second edition in Elzevir type, 3 vols., preparing at John Bowyer's 
 printing-house, was burnt, 30th January 1712 (Nichol, Lit. Anec, i., 56). 
 
 2 A Hundred Fables of jEsop, with Pictures by Percy J. Billinghurst and an 
 Introduction by Keneth Orahavic (1899), published by Mr John Lane. This 
 edition gives the Morals, not the Reflexions. 
 
410 SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE 
 
 including the very doubtful Plea for Limited Monarchy^ 
 and his championship of Parker against the Oxford Clergy 
 {Reply to the Reasons of the Oxford Clergy against Addressing). 
 A collection of Fishery Tracts (1751) included the pamphlet 
 which he wrote at the command of Williamson, 1674 ^ 
 Apart from his translations, he passed into the historical 
 limbo before the century closed, and his memory was 
 preserved by a few divines of the Church of England, 
 who remembered his efforts on her behalf. 
 
 1 S. p. Dom. Car., ii., 361 (235), 17th September 1674, Roger L'Estrange to 
 Williamson. ' In company with this paper your Honour will find the Pamphlet 
 and the Project concerning the Fishing which you were pleased to command of 
 me at Windsor. This proposition hath past the test of as intelligent merchants 
 as any are upon the Exchange. ... It rests only to inform you that his Majesty 
 hath several vessels that lie rotting for want of care and employment, many of 
 which were built for the fishing '. See also a letter from Roger L'Estrange to 
 Mr Smith Watson on a project of the Fishery. 23rd August 1677, Add.MSS., 
 28053, f. 109. L'Estrange is acting as intermediary for Smith to bring his 
 project to the notice of the Court. 
 
APPENDIX I 
 
 LIST OF L'ESTRANGE'S POLITICAL WORKS 
 (For a list of his Translations^ see chap. xii. p. 377) 
 
 Authorities— WiNSTANLEY.—Xms of the Eminent Poets (1687), 219 : 
 * Because some people may imagine his works not to be so many as 
 he hath Avritten, we will give you a catalogue of as many as we can 
 remember'. He remembers altogether twenty-six, six being trans- 
 lations, viz : — the Quevedo, Erasmus, Seneca, Cicero, Bona, and the Fiv» 
 Love-Letters from a Nun to a Cavalier. The errors in the titles of his 
 list prove that it was an effort of memory on the part of one who 
 himself boasted of having written ' seven score ' works. (Oldys' MS. 
 notes to Winstanley in Bodleian Copy.) 
 
 Gibber. — Lives of Poets (1753), iv., 295. Copies his list from the 
 old General Dictionary, which in turn borrowed from Winstanley, 
 with the addition of the Considerations on the Speech of the late Lord 
 Russell, the JEsop, and the Josephus, which had not appeared when 
 the latter wrote. 
 
 Chalmers. — Diet, of Gen. Biog. (1815), art. L'Estrange, gives a 
 fuller list of thirty-four political tracts and six translations, but it 
 is evident that he, too, copied the old list, for he reproduces Winstanley's 
 errors in titles. 
 
 The Observator. — Is a frequent advertiser of L'Estrange's Works 
 after 1681, and is in several cases a valuable guide to their date. 
 We find, however, a work (the Apology for the French Protestants), 
 first advertised in the Observator in August 1681, previously appearing 
 in the Catalogue for May term 1681. On the other hand we follow 
 more of the mind of the author in the Observator appearances, for the 
 advertisements in the Catalogue were Brome's affair, but L'Estrange 
 had an eye to the state of parties in his Observator lists. 
 
 Harry Brome. — L'Estrange's faithful publisher, from time to time 
 gives lists of his author's recent productions, especially at the time of 
 the Popish Plot, when it was important that people should distinguish 
 between what Mr L'Estrange wrote and what his enemies said he 
 wrote. The first of these is a bookseller's advertisement, 27th February 
 1680, printed at the end of Citt and Bumpkin, 4th ed. 1680—' This is 
 to advertise the reader that since September 1678, he (Mr Roger 
 
 411 
 
412 APPENDIX I 
 
 L'Estrange) hath published these following pieces, and no other'. 
 Here follow eleven works, including two translations, the Erasmus and 
 the Cicero. 
 
 At the end of the Further Discovery of the Plot, July 1680, appears a 
 new list, including four more, two of which are the Seneca and the 
 Guide to Eternity. Lastly, there is Brome's Collection of Several Tracts 
 written mostly since the Discovery of the Popish Plot 1678, being 
 all against Popery and against Presbytery. 
 
 Putting aside the re-issues of the old anti-Presbyterian Toleration 
 Discuss^df and the Relaps'd Apostate, it appears that the Seneca was 
 written between Citt and Bumpkin, 4th ed., and Further Discovery^ 
 while the Erasmus was later. In all, between the 4th edition of 
 Citt and Bumpkin and this Collection of Tracts no fewer than eight 
 tracts are to be credited to L'Estrange. Every pamphlet in this 
 collection is of date prior to L'Estrange's flight in October 1680. The 
 bookseller's list noted above is dated 27th February 1680. So that 
 between the last day of February and the last day of October 1680 — 
 eight months — our author wrote and published eight controversial 
 tracts, besides the translation of Cicero, and republished two old tracts 
 with alterations to bring them up to date. Well might Professor Arber 
 describe him as, with Baxter, and after Prynne, the most voluminous 
 writer of the age (see Term Catalogues, vol. i., introduction). Further, 
 in the two years from September 1678 to October 1680 he wrote 
 eighteen pamphlets and translated Seneca, Cicero, and Erasmus. 
 
 The Term Catalogues. — Professor Arber's edition of the old 
 Mercurius Librarius, enables us to place the works of this busy period 
 (1677-82) with fair accuracy. It must be remembered, however, that 
 the appearance of a book in the Catalogue does not settle the date of 
 publication, even where the printer has been careful enough to specify 
 1st, 2nd, or 3rd edition. A bookseller finding a number of works on his 
 hand, after exhausting his own methods of advertising — that is, post- 
 ing them in rubric on his walls, etc. — would often, as a last resort, 
 send in his advertisement to Clavell, often with the fear that 
 L'Estrange's quick eye for sedition and schism would detect its quality. 
 This does not hold, of course, with Roger's own works, but in some 
 cases we find Brome inserting a work in the Catalogue many months 
 after the date of publication. We can only say that we are more likely 
 to get the true date, in the case of Brome's advertisements in the 
 Catalogue, than of most other booksellers. 
 
 Hazlitt's Bibliographical Collections and Notes, 2nd series, 
 p. 343, attempts some sort of list. 
 
 Sir Sidney Lee (art. L'Estrange, Diet, of Nat. Biog.) first attempted 
 a really inclusive list of L'Estrange's works, from which it appears 
 that our author is to be credited with fifty controversial works and 
 fifteen translations. The list, however, is imperfect, includes some 
 things that L'Estrange almost certainly did not write, and omitting 
 some that he did, often fails to give the date of first publication. 
 
 On the whole, it is rather to be wondered at that the Catalogues 
 of the Bodleian and British Museum Libraries agree so often in their 
 lists of the writings of such an author, than that there are serious 
 omissions and mistakes in both. 
 
APPENDIX I 413 
 
 The following list — which omits his printed appeals for liberation 
 in 1644-6 and his Kentish and Interregnum manifestoes — attempts to 
 supply the few defects of these lists. From this it will appear that 
 L'Estrange wrote fifty-eight political works. This added to the 
 number of his translations, given in chap, xii., p. 376, makes his 
 round total of works, seventy-two. 
 
 1. U Estrange, His Appeal from the Court Martial to the Parliament ^ 
 
 7th April 1647. 
 
 2. L'Estrange, His Vindication to Kent and the Justification of Kent 
 
 to the World, 1649. 
 
 *3. An Appeal in the Case of the Late King's Party, 1659. 
 
 4. No Blinde Guides, April 1660. 
 
 5. DEstrange, His Apology, with a short view of some late remarkable 
 
 transactions, leading up to the happy settlement of these nations, 
 10th June 1660. 
 
 *6. A Rope for Pol, or The Hue and Gry after Marchmont Nedham, 
 September 1660. 
 
 7. A Caveat to the Cavaliers, July 1661, 2nd ed., enlarged 13th 
 
 August 1661. 
 
 8. A Modest Plea both for the Caveat and the Author of it, 28th 
 
 August 1661 ; 2nd ed. 17th September 1661. 
 
 9. The Relaps'd Apostate, or notes upon a Presbyterian pamphlet 
 
 entitled A Petition for Peace, 14th November 1661 ; 2na ed. 1681. 
 
 10. State Divinity or a supplement to Tlie Relaps'd Apostate, 
 
 November 1661. 
 
 11. Interest Mistaken or The Holy Cheat — the 4th ed., 1682, states 
 
 that 'it was published at the latter end of 1661 though dated 
 (to keep it the longer fresh) 1662 '. 
 
 12. To the Earl of Clarendon, the Humble Apology of Roger 
 
 L'Estrange, 3rd December 1661. 
 
 13. yl Whipp, a TVhipp for the Schismatical Animadverter on the Bp. 
 
 of Worcester's Letter, 7th February 1662. 
 
 14. ^ Whipp, a Whipp with an answer to a second and impudent libel 
 
 from the same hand, March 1662. 
 
 15.-4 Memento, directed to all those that truly reverence the memory 
 of King Charles the Martyr, dedicated to Clarendon, 11th April 
 1662 ; 2nd ed. 1682 entitled A Memento, treating of the Rise, 
 Progress, and Remedies of Seditions, and omitting the personal 
 prefatorial matter. 
 
 IQ. Truth and Loyalty Vindicated from the reproaches and clamours of 
 Ed. Bagshawe, 7th June 1662. 
 
 17. Consideratio7is and Proposals in order to the Regulation of the 
 
 Press, 3rd June 1663. 
 
 18. Toleration Discuss'd, in two Dialogues, 1663 ; 3rd ed. 1681. 
 
414 APPENDIX I 
 
 19. The Kingdom's Intelligencer (Newsbook), 28tli August 1663 to 
 January 1666. 
 
 *20. Dolus an Virtus 2 November 1667 (date supplied in MS. note, 
 Anthony Wood's copy, Bodleian). 
 
 21. Discourse of the Fishery, by Roger L'Estrange, 1674. 
 
 22. The Parallel, or An Account of the Growth of Knavery, anon., 
 
 1678, 2nd ed., with name and title An Account of the Growth of 
 Knavery with a Parallel betwixt the Reforrners of 1677 and 
 those of 1641, in a Letter to a Friend (folio 6d. ; Term, Catalogue, 
 November 1679). 
 
 23. Tyranny and Popery, Lording it over both King and People, 1678 ; 
 
 2nd ed.. May Term 1680, Is. 
 
 24. The Reformed Gatholique or The True Protestant, 1678 ; 2nd ed. 
 
 corrected May Term 1680, 6d. 
 
 25. The History of the Plot, or a Brief Historical Account of the GJiarge 
 
 and Defence of Ed. Coleman, Esq., etc., in folio 2s. 6d., November 
 Term, 1679. 
 
 26. The Freeborn Subject, or the Englishmen's Birthright asserted against 
 
 all Tyrannical Usurpations either in Church or State, 1679 (prob- 
 ably October) ; 2nd ed., May Term, 1680, 6d. 
 
 27. The Case put concerning the Succession of H.R.H., the Duke of 
 
 York, November Term, 1679 ; 2nd ed.. May Term, 1680, 6d. 
 
 28. A71 Answer to the Appeal from the Country to the City, 1679 
 
 (probably November). 
 
 29. A Further Discovery of the Plot dedicated in a letter to Dr Titus 
 
 Dates, 1680 ; 3rd ed.. May Term, 1680. 
 
 30. A Seasonable Memorial in some Historical Notes upon the Liberties 
 
 of the Presse and Pulpit, May Term, 1680, 6d. 
 
 31. Citt and Bumpkin in a Dialogue over a Pot of Ale, 4tb ed., 27tli 
 
 February 1680. 
 
 32. The second part of Citt and Bumpkin, May Term, 1680; 3rd 
 
 ed., June 1680. 
 
 33. Discovery upon Discovery, May Term, 1680. 
 
 34. The Committee or Popery in Masquerade, May Term, 1680, broad- 
 
 side anon., 6d., accompanied by a verse The Explanation. 
 
 35. A Narrative of the Plot, May 1680 ; 3rd ed., June Term, 1680. 
 
 36. A Short Answer to a Whole Litter of Libellers, June Term, 1680. 
 
 37. The Casuist Uncas'd or Richard and Baxter in a Dialogue, 1680. 
 
 38. L'Estrange, His Appeal, humbly submitted to the King and the 
 
 TJiree Estates of Parliament, October 1680. 
 
 39. L'Estrange's Case in a Civil Dialogue between Zekiel and Ephraim, 
 
 October 1680. 
 
APPENDIX I 416 
 
 Period of Exile — October-February 1680-1. 
 
 40. L'Estrange no Papist nor Jesuite (1680-1), May Term, 1681. 
 
 41. A Letter to Dr Ken at the Hague dated 1st February 1680-1. 
 
 May Term 1681. 
 
 On Eeturn from Exile — February 1681. 
 
 42. The Observator in Dialogue began 13tli April 1681. 
 
 43. Dissenter's Sayings in requital for L'Estrange's Sayings, pt. i., 
 
 April, 1681. 
 
 44. An Apology for the French Protestants in 4 parts, May Term, 1681. 
 
 (First advertised in Observator, 2nd August 1681). 
 
 45. Dissenter^ Sayings, pt. ii., 29th August 1681. November Term, Is. 
 
 46. The Reformation Reformed, occasioned by Frank Smith's yesterday's 
 
 Paper of Votes, 2nd September 1681. 
 
 47. Notes upon Stephen Colledge, September 1681 ; 2nd ed., November 
 
 Term, 1681. 
 
 48. The Character of a Papist in Masquerade in reply to (Settle's) 
 
 Character of a Popish Successor, November 1681. 
 
 49. A Reply to the Second Part of The CJiaracter of a Popish Successor 
 
 (The Character of a Popish Successor complete). November 
 Term, 1681. 
 
 50. A Word concerning Libels and Libellers humbly presented to the 
 
 Rt. Hon. Sir J. Moore, December 1681. 
 
 51. The Shammer Shammed, February 1682. 
 
 52. TTie Accompt Clear' d in answer to A True Account from Chichester 
 
 concerning the Deaih of Habin the Informer, May 1682. 
 
 53. Considerations upon a Printed Sheet entituled TJie Speech of the late 
 
 Lord Russell, June 1683. 
 
 54. The Observator Defended by the author of the Observator, 
 
 December 1685. 
 
 55. A Reply to the Reasons of the Oxford Clergy against Addressing, 
 
 1687 (Somer's Tracts, ix., 38). 
 
 56. A Brief History of the Times in 3 parts, 1687-8. 
 
 *57. A Key to Hudibras (Butler's Posthumous Works, 2 vols., 1715). 
 58. Two cases submitted to consideration : — 
 
 (1) Of the necessity and exercise of a Dispensing Power. 
 
 (2) The Nullity of any Act of State that clashes with the Law 
 
 of God. S. Sht. Fol. 1687. Another edition, 1709. 
 Somer's Tracts, ix., 36-8. 
 
 It remains to discuss the authorship of some doubtful works 
 ascribed in various Catalogues or by various biographers. 
 
416 APPENDIX I 
 
 I. — Translations 
 
 Five Letten from a Nun to a Cavalier is certainly his, and appears 
 under his name in the Term GatalogueSj June 1680. 
 
 The anonymous Five Letters from a Cavalier to a Nun in Answer 
 were never claimed by or for him. Aphra Behn wrote them, as well 
 as the Love Letters between a Nobleman and his Sister, 1693.^ The 
 Epistle to Thos. Condor, Esq., in the latter tells the circumstances of 
 her writing it. As it is on these two works chiefly that Sir Sidney 
 Lee bases his strictures on L'Estrange's indecencies, the only works of 
 this class the biographer has to defend are the Gentleman Pothecary^ 
 and the second part of the Fables, 1699, which, however, admit of no 
 palliation. 
 
 As to the Translation from Solorzano — TJie Spanish Polecat — said 
 to have been finished by Ozell, we have no evidence of L'Estrange's 
 authorship beyond Curll's advertisements 1718 and 1726. We know 
 for certain that he took part in the Terence, wrote the third book of 
 Tacitus' Histories, but of the Plautus we can affirm nothing beyond 
 rumour, and that Motteux says it was to be done by the same hands 
 as had translated Terence. 
 
 II. — Controversial and other works 
 
 The following have been variously ascribed : — 
 
 1. A Hymn to Confinement, written in Newgate, 1645-6. 
 
 *2. The Appeal in the Case of the late King's Party, 1659. 
 
 3. A Plea for Limited Monarchy, 1659. 
 
 *4. A Rope for Pol, or The Hue and Cry after M. Nedham, September 
 1660. 
 
 5. Presbytery Displayed for the Justification of such as do not like the 
 Government, and for the benefit of those who do not understand it^ 
 1663 ; 2nd ed., 1681. 
 
 •^6. Dolus an Virtus ? November 1667. 
 
 7. Theosebia or the Church's Advocate, 1665-6 (?). 
 
 8. The Parallel or Semper Idem, printed 1662 ; 2nd ed. 1682 ; 
 
 printed in Har. Misc., iv., 398. 
 
 9. Heraclitus Ridens, February 1681. 
 
 10. Reflections on a Pamphlet stiled ' A Just and Modest Vindication 
 
 of the Two Last Parliaments \ 1682. 
 
 11. The Lawyer Outlawed. A brief answer to Mr Hunt's Defence of 
 
 the Charter, 1683. 
 
 12. The Royal Apology, ot An Answer to the Rebels' Plea ivith a 
 
 parallel between Doleman, Bradshaw, Sydney, and others of the 
 true Protestant Party, 1684. 
 
 1 In the same year (1693) appeared ' The Amours of Philander and Silvia, 
 Ming the Third and Last Part of the Love Letters between a Nobleman and , his, 
 Sister. By A. B.'. 
 
APPENDIX I 417 
 
 13. La Conspiration faite contre le Roy Charles II. et son Frh-e, 
 1686, a Paris. 
 
 An asterisk is placed before those works which have been included 
 in the list of Works. 
 
 1. There is no authority for the Hymn to Confinement beyond rumour 
 and the preface to the 1705 edition, 'an MS. poem said to be by Sir 
 Roger L'Estrange '. Miss Mitford (Recollections of a Literary Life, 1859, 
 p. 276) quotes it at length, but only assumes it to be L'Estrange's. 
 Nor does any of his contemporaries refer to it as his. See Roxhurghe 
 Ballads, iv., 222. 
 
 2. The Appeal in the Case, etc., may be identical with Collections for 
 the King, persistently included in the old lists from Winstanley's 
 downward. Both from the circumstances and the style, there is a 
 strong presumption of L'Estrange's authorship. The Catalogue of the 
 Brit. Mus. Lib. ascribes it to him. 
 
 3. The Plea, etc., was first doubtfully ascribed to L'Estrange by 
 Oldys {Har. Misc., 1744, vol. i.) who rightly praised its moderation and 
 style, neither of which, however, are characteristic of L'Estrange. Nor 
 did he claim it after the Restoration, when he was so eager to press his 
 late services. The same objection does not stand in the way of his 
 authorship of The Appeal in the Case, etc., because it accepted the 
 Commonwealth and apologised for the unruly Cavaliers. 
 
 4. The Rope for Pol is entirely in L'Estrange's manner, being an 
 anthology of Nedham's Republican excesses. ' No doubt by him ', says 
 Mr J. B. Williams (Eng. Hist. Rev., April 1908). 
 
 5. Presbytery Displayed is an old tract of 1644 refurbished by 
 L'Estrange, 1663 (but expressly ascribed to another) ; republished 
 1681. ' He seems ', says Sir S. Lee, ' at the same time to have re-issued 
 under his own name Presbytery Displayed, a tract previously published 
 anonymously '. He did not, however, put his name to it. 
 
 In the preface to the 4th edition, corrected 1681, L'Estrange tells 
 us, ' it came to my hand with the authority of a very judicious and 
 honourable person, whose name should now warrant it to the public '. 
 The title alone he altered. The original title seems to have been The 
 Platform of Presbytery. 
 
 6. Dolus an Virtus'? (Bodl. B. 14, 15 Line.) from the motto. Press- 
 mark, and style, is almost certainly L'Estrange's. 
 
 7. Tlieosebia is ascribed to L'Estrange in the Catalogue of the 
 Advocates' Library, Edinburgh. In style, method, and publication it is 
 totally distinct from the usual L'Estrange Tract. 
 
 8. The Parallel or Semper Idem, is very close to his style, principles, 
 and method of excerpting authors ; see p. 86. 
 
 9. HeraclitusRidens,B.scv\bQdL to L'Estrange by Scott (Dryden, ix.,374), 
 who quotes No. 50 (a castigation of Settle), is marked in the Bodleian 
 Catalogue as his. Sir Sidney Lee thinks he may have had a hand in it. 
 There is no authority for this beyond some ignorant contemporary 
 
 2d 
 
418 APPENDIX I 
 
 conjecture. He may, of course, have suggested something to its author, 
 John Flatman, but its quips are all in merrier vein than L'Estrange 
 affected. He is not referred to in the duodecimo reprint of 1713. Ben 
 Tooke, the publisher, was prosecuted for it in 1681; at the same time 
 L'Estrange (A Word concerning Libels and Libellers) complains only on 
 account of the prosecution of the Observator. 
 
 10. Ed. Bohun wrote the Reflections on the Just and Modest Vindica- 
 tion (see his Address to the Freeholders^ 1682, pt. iii.). 
 
 11. The Lawyer Outlawed^ 1683 (a reply to Hunt's Defence of the 
 City's Right), ascribed to L'Estrange in the Catalogue of the Advocates' 
 Library, Edinburgh, is far from L'Estrange's style. L'Estrange had 
 no reason to be anonymous in 1683. It very well represents his feelings 
 towards Hunt, however (see p. 327), and is advertised in Nat Thompson's 
 One Hundred and Eighty-three Loyal Songs, 1683. 
 
 12. The Royal Apology, etc., ascribed to L'Estrange in the Catalogue 
 of the Signet Library, Edinburgh. Its anonymous character and open 
 attack on Doleman (L'Estrange's father-in-law), apart from style, prove 
 it to be by another author. 
 
 13. La Conspiration, etc., though professing to be a translation from 
 L'Estrange, has too many ludicrous errors in spelling and names to 
 have been even glanced at by him. The writer may have collected 
 his information from the Observators. 
 
APPENDIX II 
 
 CHIEF SOURCES OF THE LIFE 
 I. Contemporary Pamphlets, Newspapers, and Poemata. 
 
 (a) Pamphlet Literature. The most copious and in some respects 
 reliable source is L'Estrange's own works, corrected by innumerable 
 hostile replies. Though written in the heat of Party warfare, and 
 containing, therefore, a large amount of mere recrimination, on points 
 of fact, especially where corroboration or admission by the other side is 
 possible, they are not likely on that score to be gratuitously inaccurate. 
 Those into which the biographical element enters most are the Vindica- 
 tion to Kent J his two Apologies of June 1660 and December 1661, The 
 Relaps'd Apostate (Introductory matter), The Caveat and Plea for tlie 
 Caveat^ November 1661. The Memento, May 1662, Truth and Loyalty^ 
 June 1662, and the Dedication (to the King) of Considerations and 
 Proposals in order to the Regulation of the Press, 1663, give a lively 
 picture of 'old -Cavalier' recriminations. Thereafter until the end 
 of the ' Plot ' — the period of his greatest importance in the History of 
 Literature — he is practically silent, though other pamphleteers, Mar veil, 
 Hickeringill, Eachard, etc., were busy with his name. With the 
 appearance of Gates on the scene, his pamphlets again provide the most 
 abundant material, corrected by the running unfriendly comment of 
 the Whig Journalists, Curtis, Care, Jane way, Smith, Harris, etc. The 
 Freeborn Subject, 1679, Further Discovery of the Plot, Discovery upon Dis- 
 covery, Narrative of the Plot, Short Answer to a whole Litter of Libellers, 
 VEstrange, his Appeal to the King, and L'Estrange's Case, the two last 
 written in October 1680 when under Council examination, give an 
 animated account of his movements in that crisis. In the violent 
 struggle following the dissolution of the Oxford Parliament, we are 
 enabled to judge the position he now occupied in the Councils of his 
 Party by the rapid, month to month, production of such things as 
 UEstrange No Papist, Dissenters' Sayings, pts. i. and ii. ; Notes on 
 Stephen Colled^e, and in the later Whig debacle, the Accompt Clear' d, 
 1682, and Considerations on the late Lord Russell's Speech, 1683. But for 
 this period the great source is the Observator, started in the month of 
 the dismissal of the Oxford Parliament, April 1681, and continuing to 
 the spring of 1687. Part newspaper, part pamphlet, it is probably 
 the most minute and regular guide to the movements of the times that 
 we possess. At the same time it attains almost to the usefulness of a 
 private diary so far as L'Estrange is concerned. The attacks on it and 
 
 419 
 
420 APPENDIX II 
 
 its author make a respectable body of literature. As it concerned 
 itself chiefly with the exposure of the 'Plot', it soon attracted the 
 whole force and acrimony of that agitation, which did not cease with 
 the proceedings at the King's Bench in May 1685. As the unwearied 
 advocate of the prosecution of the dissenters it involved itself in con- 
 troversy with all the sects, with Baxter, Du Moulin, Calaniy, and the 
 milder men among the Church Divines. As the vehement antagonist 
 of the "Whig or Trimming movement in the Church after the severities 
 of the Rye House Plot, it earned the hatred of the City Clergy, and by 
 its later excesses, the coldness of the Church. 
 
 In these various connections he crossed swords with almost every 
 hostile controversialist of the age. With Milton in the Interregnum 
 period (whose Brief Notes on a Sermon by Dr Griffith provoked his 
 No Blinde Guides, April 1660), Nedham {A Rope for Poly September 
 1660), Corbet {Interest Mistaken or The Holy Cheat, July 1661) in the 
 Restoration period. With Baxter he waged an intermittent war for a 
 quarter of a century from The Belaps^d Apostate (14th November 1661), 
 which answered Bsixtefs Petition for Peace, to his witty Gasuist Unca^d, 
 or a Dialogue between Richard and Baxter, 1680, with the revival of 
 The Belaps'd Apostate the following year. The Bagshawe wrangle 
 evoked Truth and Loyalty (1662), which is wholly biographical, and the 
 ' old-Cavalier ' dispute his Caveat and Plea for the Caveat, in answer to 
 Howell's Cordial for the Cavaliers (1661). 
 
 Of the later period, 1678-87, a vast amount of biographical matter is 
 provided by his contests with Marvell, Hickeringill, Hunt, Blount, 
 Settle, Ferguson, Care, Pordage, Pope, Du Moulin, ' Julian ' Johnson, 
 Colledge, Petyt, Phillips, Smithies, Hughes, etc., whose works are too 
 numerous for mention here. Reference to the more important will be 
 found in the Index. As authorities some dependence may be placed on 
 them when the subject is matter of common knowledge, admitted by 
 L'Estrange or corroborated from some neutral source. Otherwise 
 consisting of charges largely on account of his conduct of the Press, his 
 goading of the authorities into the path of persecution, or his ' running 
 the Plot into a sham', they must be subjected to the closest scrutiny. 
 
 Marvell's Rehearsal Transprosed, Mr Smerke or the Divine a la 
 Mode, and Growth of Popery, pts. i. and ii., are contained in his Prose 
 Works, collected in 3 vols, by A. B. Grosart. 
 
 Hickeringill's Works, in 3 vols., published 1709, contain his 
 Gregory, Father Greybeard, 1673 (his contribution to the Mar veil- 
 Parker wrangle with many sly hits at the Surveyor), his Ceremony- 
 Monger and Man-Catcher, 1680. The preface to this edition refers to 
 L'Estrange. In these works, notably A vindication of Curse Ye Meroz 
 and the Black Nonconformist, 1681-2, Hickeringill returned to the 
 charge. There was also an imperfect edition in 2 vols. (1708) which 
 contains his View of Jamaica. Hunt's Postscript to the Bishops' Right, 
 etc. (1681), a violent attack on L'Estrange which (not, as Sir Sidney 
 Lee says, a work of Hickeringill) occasioned L'Estrange's Short Answer 
 to a Whole Litter of Libellers, is contained along with two Whiggish 
 pamphlets on the Exclusion in his published works, 1686. A Prefatory 
 Discourse to a late Pamphlet entitled ' A Memento for English Protestants ', 
 with some occasional Reflections on Mr L'Estrange's writings, 1681 ; 
 Mr V Estrange' s Sayings, 1681 ; and Assenters' Sayings in Requital for 
 Dissenters^ Sayings, 1681 ; The Loyal Observator, printed for W. Hammond, 
 
APPENDIX II 421 
 
 1683 {Har. Misc., vi., 66) ; A Pleasant Conference upon the ^Obser'vator' 
 and ^ Heraclitus^ in a Dialogue between Belfaggor and Pluto, 1681-2, are 
 among the more important attacks on L'Estrange, the last two giving 
 notice of some intimate scandals connected with his name. Blount's 
 works, collected in 1695 by an anonymous friend, contain his Deistical 
 Anima Mundi, a book with the licensing of which (1679) L'Estrange 
 was charged ; his Appeal from the County to the City, 1679 (ascribed even 
 by L'Estrange to * your dead author Marvell '), which occasioned Roger's 
 Freeborn Subject ; and A Just Vindication of Learning and of the Liberty 
 of the Press, 1679, a digest of Milton's great essay, which caused Hilger 
 (Index der Verbotenen Bucher, p. 217) to describe him as the most 
 effective opponent of the Imprimatur. The Appeal to the City, Omnia 
 Comesta a Belo, TJie Appeal from the Cabal at Whitehall (see chap, vi.), 
 Ferguson's Just and Modest Vindication of the last two Parliaments, 1681, 
 the two parts of Settle's Character of a Popish Successor, and the works of 
 * Julian ' Johnson, which provoked numerous attacks in the Observatory 
 are contained with many other libels noted in the Text in the 
 collections of State Tracts published in 1689 and 1693 by Eichard 
 Baldwin. The first of the 3 vols, of the folio Collection of State Tracts 
 published on occasion of the late Revolution and during the reign of King 
 William III, contains a few also, such as Tlie Letter to a Dissenter, 
 etc. See also in connection with Johnson A Second Five Years' Struggle 
 against Popery and Tyranny, published 1689, and the Memorials of his 
 Life prefixed to his Works in folio 1710. For Smithies' three Replies 
 to the Observator, 1684 ; Hughes' Candid Plea, 1684 ; Care's Weekly 
 Pacquet and Courant ; and Lex Draconica, 1687, we must search in the 
 ordinary collections of pamphlets. Some of Colledge's and ' limping ' 
 Pord age's verse skits on L'Estrange are included in Poems on Affairs of 
 State, pub. in 2 vols, in 1697 and again in 1703-7. 
 
 In connection with the Popish Plot we have the whole mass of 
 ' Plot ' Narratives, but of more particular reference to L'Estrange, The 
 Solemn Protestation of Miles Prance, his D Estrange a Papist, 1681, and 
 Postscript to the Observator' s First Volume, 1684. From Titus Gates no 
 less than three Petitions against L'Estrange, addressed (1684) to the 
 King, to Sec. Jenkyns, and to Sancroft, the first two printed in Somer's 
 Tracts, viii., 378-380, the last in MS. quoted in the Text (p. 340). 
 Of earlier date the writer of the French translation of L'Estrange's 
 History of the Plot, 1679 (Histoire de la Conspiration d'Angleterre), the 
 Narration of J. Fitzgerald, 1680, Castlemaine's Compendium of the Plot, 
 1679. Of later date Phillip's Secret History of Charles II. and James II., 
 1693, and Oates' Portraicture of the late King James II., 1696 (3rd 
 edition Epistle Dedic. and pt. iii.,94) provide some commentary on the 
 labours comprised in his own Brief History of the Times, 1687. 
 
 In various vindications of the Observator, 1684-5, and L'Estrange's 
 own Observator Defended, 1685, addressed to Compton and described by 
 Ranke {Hist.,iv., 267-8) as ' a remarkable proof of the change of feeling' 
 in Episcopal circles, we remark the efi"ect of such things as TJie 
 Observator Proved a Trimmer, 1684, and The Difference between the Church 
 of England and the Church of Rome, 1685, both anonymous. See also A 
 Letter to Dr Foivler, Vicar of St Giles, Cripplegate, 1685. Almost the 
 only scraps of L'Estrange's political works reprinted are Cmisiderations 
 on the Speech of the late Lord Russell (Clar. Soc. Reprints, 1884) ; A 
 Reply to Reasons of the Oxford Clergy against Addressing; and Two 
 
422 APPENDIX II 
 
 Questions Submitted to Consideration, 1709 (Somer's Tracts, ix., 38). 
 But the works of his adversaries enjoyed a more enduring date, and 
 were either collected separately or included in those collections of 
 State Tracts published in 1689, 1693, and 1706-7. 
 
 (&) From Contemporary Newspaper Literature we gather more of the 
 period 1678-83 than from any other source outside L'Estrange's own 
 works. Though often hopelessly abusive and slanderous, these sheets are 
 sometimes valuable for information of trials, proclamations, intrigues 
 of the Press, etc., and are the complete presentment of the mind of the 
 Whig mob. Without pointing to the particular numbers noticed in 
 the Text, it may be said that Harris's Domestick Intelligence and F. 
 Smith's Protestant Intelligencer are for the early months of 1681, pre- 
 ceding the Oxford Dissolution, the most perfect examples of 
 electioneering journalism of that age, and are involved in daily conflict 
 with the exiled ex-Surveyor. In recording Votes of the late Parlia- 
 ment (many of them said to be fictitious), and in the great matter of 
 Addressing, they are the excellent repositories of Whig agitation, from 
 which Oldmixon largely borrowed for his History of Addressing, 
 1709. Later in the year 1681 Jane way's Impartial Protestant Mercury 
 (started April 1681 as The Impartial London Intelligence, and Curtis's 
 True Protestant Mercury boldly opposed Nat Thompson's Loyal 
 Protestant Intelligence, Heraclitus Bidens, and the great Ohservator. 
 L'Estrange's earlier essay in Journalism, The Kingdom^s Intelligence, 
 August 1663 to January 1666, was exceedingly useful as a diary of the 
 Surveyor's crusade against the unauthorised Press. His later and more 
 famous Ohservator, like Care's Weekly Pacquet of Advice from Pome, 
 repudiated the name of newspaper in order to evade the Proclamation 
 of May 1680 against 'pamphlets of news', and has therefore been 
 included in his pamphlet labours. It need scarcely be said that the 
 cautions necessary in accepting statements and charges in the pamphlet 
 literature are even more requisite in dealing with newspaper libels, and 
 still more in the fugitive Poemata of the period, in which the name 
 L'Estrange occurs with more frequency than even that of Jeffries or 
 Father Petre, and where for praise or blame Towzer is yoked with Jack 
 Squab (Dryden). Besides several poems addressed to him — such as 
 Aphra Behn's Poem dedicated to Sir Roger L'Estrange on the com- 
 pletion of his 3rd vol. of Observators, 1688 ; D'Urfey's (?) Here's a Health 
 to L'Estrange in Nat Thompson's One Hundred and Eighty-three Loyal 
 Songs, 1683 ; Tate's tribute (under the name of Sheva) in Absalom and 
 Achitophel, pt. ii., 1682 (Scott's Dryden, ix., 350) ; Luctus Britannici, 
 1705 (and Brit. Mus. Poetical Broadsides, p. 173, an Elegy on his 
 death) ; and the single-sheet (Bodleian, Ashm. G. 16 (48)), 'Upon that 
 worthily admired Patriot the Ohservator, or a poem. Were Brains now 
 cheer'd with such Celestial Fire \ 1684 — there is a huge body of ballads 
 and skits of a satirical nature, several of which will be found in State 
 Poems, vol. ii., 180-3, etc., and Baldwin's Collection of Poems, Satyrs, and 
 Songs against Popery and Tyranny in 4 parts (most of them writ by the late 
 Duke of Buckingham, Mr A. Marvell, Mr John Aylos, and Mr Stephen 
 Colledge, 1690. These were published separately and without printer's 
 name in 1689 (besides A Collection of Poems on Affairs of State, by 
 A. M. L., Esq., and other eminent wits) as Four Collections of the 
 Newest and Most Ingenious Songs, Catches, etc., against Popery, relating 
 to the Times (1689), the first part containing (p. 15) The Ohservator or 
 
APPENDIX II 423 
 
 the History of Hodge as reported hy some from his siding with Noll and 
 Scrihling for Rome^ beginning 
 
 * Stand forth thou grand Imposter of our Time 
 The Nation's Scandal, punishment, and crime ', 
 
 and describing his amours (Joanna Brome is in the list) and his 
 treachery under Cromwell. The second Collection, p. 12, has a thing 
 entitled Enter Oliver's Porter, Fidler (L'Estrange), and Poet in Bedlam 
 (Dryden) — 
 
 * Besides I served him (Cromwell) as a faithful spy 
 And did deceive the Cavalierish fry '. 
 
 See also Tom Browne's {Worhs, v., 118) Heraclitus Ridens Eedivivus or 
 A Dialogue between Harry and Roger concerning the Times, 1688. See 
 also a dozen single-sheets, Towzer's Advice to the Scriblers forbihing 
 (sic) them to come near his kennel (the verso occupied with Towzer's 
 confession) ; Towzer the Second, a Bull-dog, or A Short Reply to Abs. 
 and Achitophel; and Towzer Discovered, or A New Ballad on the Dog 
 that writes, Strange-Lee — all belonging to the period of his exile, 1680-1. 
 In Colledge's Raree Show, the Catholique Gamesters, and * divers of his 
 emblematical pieces', Roger finds a place, while Dr Walter Pope 
 (Mus^s Farewell to Popery and Tyranny, 1689) wrote some fifteen lines 
 'On Le Strange' to the tune of Tlie Old Man's Wish (reprinted in 
 Notes and Queries, 3rd series, v., 462). See also A Satyrical Poem against 
 those Mercenary Wretches and Troublers of England's Tranquillity, the 
 Author of ' Heraclitus' and ' Observator', by Philopatris (C. Blount), 1682 
 — a poor performance. Three modern collections of satires — Roxburghe 
 Ballads, ed. J. W. Ebsworth (iv., 309, 220-2 ; v., 221, etc.) ; A Catalogue 
 of a Collection of printed Broadsides, by R. Lemon (1866), pp. 130-1, 136 ; 
 and the British Museum Catalogue of Prints and Drawings, Division I., 
 Satires, pp. 629-631, etc., contain numerous satirical pieces by or on 
 L'Estrange. The Gough Collection at the Bodleian (H. 24) contains 
 several, including (f. 204) L'Estrange's own Committee or Popery in 
 Masquerade, 1680, without the poetical Explanation which accompanies 
 Harry Brome's Collection of L'Estrange Tracts, 1681, and (f. 206) 
 L'Estrange's Case Strangely Altered, 1680-1, with eight Explanatory 
 Verses. Besides these we should note two remarkable outbursts of 
 poetic imitations, viz. : the Absalom and Achitophel poems, which 
 continued beyond the Revolution, and the iEsopic skits, started by 
 L'Estrange's own work on iEsop. The imitations of Dryden's great 
 poem are mostly Whig, and are as abusive as dull. L'Estrange generally 
 finds a place in them as Rabsheka (a character given by Dryden or 
 Tate to Sir Thos. Player, Chamberlain of London and Member for 
 the City in the Exclusion Parliaments). The best account of these 
 is given in the ninth volume of Scott's Dryden (1808), which (pp. 376-7) 
 contains extracts from Settle's Absalom Senior or Achitophel Transposed 
 and Pordage's Azariah and Hushai (pp. 372-3), with excellent notes 
 on their authors. There was also a Uzziah and Jotham (1690), the 
 work of Blount or Phillips, and the dullest of them all. The -^sopic 
 Verses are too numerous to mention here. They are to be found in 
 pamphlet collections of date 1694-1711. Some, as AUsop at Whitehall, 
 have no reference to L'Estrange, some, as u^Esop at Tunbridge Wells, are 
 merely indecent, others are of some slight biographic value. 
 
424 APPENDIX II 
 
 II. Contemporary Sources of a more particular Character. 
 
 Clarendon (Hist of Rebellion, iv., 333-6). Burnet {Own Times, 
 Airy's ed., 1900, ii., 221). Baxter {Reliquiae Baxterianae, Sylvester, 
 169a, iii., 187). Winstanley {Lives of Eminent Poets, 1687, p. 219). 
 ; Coke {Detection, 1719, pp. 239 and 247). Boyer {Atmals, iii., 242 ; 
 and Life of Queen Anne, 1722, p. 38). Dunton {Life and Errors, 1818, 
 pp. 218 and 265-6) provides us with brief biographical notices, which 
 are supplemented by the diarists. Evelyn {Memoirs, Bray's ed., 1827, 
 i. 298, 468, 59). Pepys (H. B. Wheatley, 1899, iii., 269n ; iv., 308 ; 
 iii., 269 ; vi._, 355n ; iv., 445 ; vi., 159). Sir John Bramston {Autohiog. 
 Cam. Soc, 1845, p. 300). Memoirs of Lady Fanshawe, 1907, with 
 some colourless notices in Cartwright's Diary (Cam. Soc, 1843, pp, 
 4, 5, 45, etc.). Besides these we have some valuable notices in Wood's 
 Life and Times (Clarke, ii., 235, 458, 484 ; iii., 83, 331 ; with a good 
 character at iii., 26). The best source of this kind both for the life 
 and the history of the Press is, however, the Brief Historical Relation of 
 Narcissus Luttrell, Oxford, 1857 (i., 39, 57, 93, 178, 198, 252, etc. ; 
 ii., 189, 217, 414). In addition see Ward's Diary, p. 94 ; TJie Life of the 
 Hon. Roger North (ed. Jessopp, 1890, iii., 80n.) ; The Memoirs of Thos., 
 Second Earl of Ailesbury (ed. Buckley for Eoxburghe Club, i., 6 and 
 ii., 144) ; Fountainhall's Hist. Observes (Rox. Club, 1840, pp. 32, 102) 
 and Hist. Notices, 1848, p. 744 ; Wodrow's Hist, of the Sufferings, p. 371. 
 For contemporary reference to particular events not mentioned in 
 the above notices : — 
 
 1. The Siege of Lynn and L'Estrange's attempt on it, December 
 1644— ikfercwniis Aulicus (1642-3, pp. 476, 488, 514), Vicars {God in 
 the Mount, p. 413, and Burning Bush Not Consumed, p. 78) ; Rush worth 
 {Collections, 1692, iv., 804-8) ; Husband {Hist. Coll., v., 283) ; Whitlocke 
 {Memorials, 1682, pp. 114, 116, 117); Commons Journals, iv., 34; 
 Lord^ Journals, vii., 119a, 506-7, 906-7, etc.) ; Hist. MSS., Com. 7th 
 App. to 11th Kept., pp. 103-4, Reports, Commissioners, 34, p. 182; 
 Observator, June 1684, ii., 80 ; Humble Apology to Clarendon, 1661 ; 
 Truth and Loyalty, 1662, etc. 
 
 2. Kentish Rising, May to June, 1648 — the various pamphlets 
 noted in the Text ; L'Estrange's Vindication to Kent, 1649, 
 partly reprinted in Truth and Loyalty; Clarendon {Hist, of 
 Rebellion, iv., 333-6) ; Whitlocke {Memorials, pp. 303-6) ; Newsletters 
 m the Clarendon State Papers, Nos. 2790-2804 ; Memoirs of the Life 
 of Col. Hutchinson, (ed. Firth, 1885, ii., 146). Although not con- 
 temporary, it may be well to refer here to Mr H. E. Maiden's correction 
 of Gardiner's account of the fight at Maidstone {Hist., xiii., 381-90) 
 and Gardiner's acknowledgment {Eng. Hist. Rev., vii., 533 and 536). 
 
 3. For the Interregnum Struggle, \Qb^-QO—L Estrange, his Apology, 
 1660 ; Truth and Loyalty, 1662 ; Memento, 1662, p. 40 ; Appeal in the 
 Case of the late King's Party, 1659 ; Discovery upon Discovery, 1680, 
 pp. 13-15 ; Censure of the Rota Club {Har. Misc., iii., 188) ; Evelyn's 
 Apology for the Royal Party, L659 ; Memoirs of the Verney Family, ii., 
 450-1; Bramston {Autobiog., 177); Lesley {View of Times, 1708, 
 No. 36) ; Tlie Parliamentary Intelligence and Mercurius Politicus for 
 December to March 1659-60 ; Various pamphlets in the Thomason 
 Collection noted in the Text ; Somer's Tracts, vi., 533, 560. 
 
APPENDIX II 425 
 
 4. For the period of the Survey orship, 1662-1679, chiefly the 
 Kingdom's Intelligencer {Newshook, August 1663 to January 1666), there- 
 after the London Gazet (from October 1665), chiefly useful for proclama- 
 tions and notices of libels (Nos. 1059, 1446, 1468-9, 1442, 1502, etc.) ; 
 State Trials, vi., 514 (Trial of John Twyn), 702 (Trial of Ben. Reach), 
 807 (Examinations concerning the Firing of London, 1666), 1190 
 (Proceedings against Fr. Jenks), vii., 591 (Trial of Sir G. Wakeman), 
 926-1111 (Trials of Harris, Smith, Curtis, Care). Calendar of State 
 Papers. Lords' Journals, xi., 79, xii., 13, 17, 33, 7296, 56-64 ; Commons' 
 Journals, ix., 378 ; Scobel (Acts and Ordinances, i., 44, 134, ii., 88, 
 290) ; Lemon, Catalogue of a Collection of Broadsides, pp. 130-1 ; Hist 
 MSS., Com. App. to 9th Kept., pt. ii., pp. 66a and 69a -78&; 10th 
 Kept., pp. 128-30 ; 4th Kept., pp. 234-6 ; 7th Kept., p. 512a ; 2nd Kept., 
 pt. ii., p. 766, etc, ; Arber, Term Catalogues ; Cobbet's Pari. Hist., iv., 
 810, 837-9, 1174 and App. vi. and vii., xvi., 1264-6, 1276-8, 1314; 
 Shaftesbury Papers, S3rd Rept. of Deputy Keeper, pp. 243 - 251 ; 
 Clarendon (Continuation of Life, iii., 475, 676, and 814-16), besides the 
 various pamphlets and libels mentioned above ; Crof ton, Defence against 
 the Fear of Death, 1665, Baxter (Relig. Baxt., ii., 380, iii., 2) ; Third 
 Defence of the Cause of Peace, 1681 ; A Specimen of the Present Mode of 
 Controversy in Reply to L' Estrange, 1682 ; Bohun (Address to the Freeholders, 
 pt. i., 1681 ; Epistle Dedic. to Third Part, 1682, etc.). 
 
 5. For the period of the Whig Debacle and beyond the Kevolution, 
 the same general authorities, with the great additional source of the 
 Ohservators and the newspaper literature mentioned above. The 
 Calendar of State Papers, 1689-90 and 1690-1. State Trials, viii., 550 
 (Trial of Colledge) ; 1350 (Trial of Nat Thompson, Paine, and Farwell) ; 
 the Kye House Plot Informations in same vol. ; ix., 951 (Report of the 
 Examinations of the ' Murder ' Committee) ; x.. Trial of Gates, 
 pp. 1079 and 1227 ; of Koswell, 147, vol. xi. ; Trial of Baxter, 494 
 (and 3 Modern Reports, 68) ; xii., Informations in connection with 
 the Fenwick Conspiracy, 1695-6, p. 1302. The proceedings against 
 Scroggs and the Judges, December 1680, are contained in State Trials, 
 viii., 163, and also in Baldwin's Collection of State Tracts privately Printed 
 in the Reign of Cliarles II., 1693. Somer's Tracts, viii., 320 (Acquittal of 
 Shaftesbury), 327 (The Addresses Importing an Abhorrence of an 
 Association), ix., 315 (A Short Prefatory Life of Ferguson), 174-8 
 (Burnet's Apology for the Church of England, 1689), p. 339 ; Memoirs of 
 Titus Oates, p. 38 ; L'Estrange's Reply to the Reasons of the Oxford Clergy 
 against Addressing, with Scott's Notes ; Wood (Life and Times, iii., 83, 
 331) ; House of Lord's MSS., Kept, iii., new series, p. 271 ; Halifax's 
 Character of a Trimmer, Anatomy of an Equivalent, and Letter to a 
 Dissenter, with Replies by Care (Lex Draconica, 1687) Parliamentum 
 Pacificum (anon.), and L'Estrange's Reply ; Sprat (History of the Con- 
 spiracy, 1685, appendix, pp. 137-40) ; Secret Services of Cliarles II. and 
 Jas. II. (Cam. Soc, p. 206) ; Burnet (Airy's ed., ii., 221, 379) ; Lord^ 
 Journals, xiii., 7296, etc. ; Hist. MSS., Com. ; Hun.stanton Papers, 
 App. vii. to 11th Kept., pp. 93, 118 ; MSS. of Borough of Kings^ Lynn, 
 Reports, Commissioners, xxxiv., 182. 
 
426 APPENDIX II 
 
 Later Authorities. 
 
 The eighteenth century and later historians. As there was no 
 period when historians were more blamed for giving themselves up to 
 the spirit of faction than the first half of the eighteenth century, we 
 must receive the verdicts of the ' Burnets, Oldmixons, and Cooks ' with 
 some reserve. In the case of L'Estrange especially they provide dis- 
 tinctly partisan accounts. On the one side Kennet {Register and Chronicle, 
 1708, i., 550, 574-5, 609, etc.) quotes at length his diatribes against 
 the Presbyterians with obvious relish, though he is far outdone in this 
 enthusiasm by Eachard (Hist, of Eng., 1720, pp. 793-4, 1009, etc.) ; North 
 {Examen, pp. 271, 260, 208, 185) is of course frankly appreciative. On 
 the other side the violence of Ralph (Hist, of Eng., i., 627, 757, etc.) is 
 condoned by his excellent notices on the Restraint of the Press (i, 32-3, 
 62, 981). Qldmixon {Hist, of the Stuarts, 2 vols., 1730, i. 486, 491, 
 etc.) is to be set against Eachard, whose praise of L'Estrange's style as 
 well as actions raises one of the countless angry wrangles between those 
 writers. Burnet {Own Times, ii., 221-2) was, we saw, rather moderate 
 in his condemnation. In the latter half of the eighteenth century 
 L'Estrange was forgotten by the historians, while he was relegated to 
 the brief notices of biographical dictionaries. Hume does not mention 
 him, though he has a paragraph on the Freedom of the Press in 1679 
 (Hist, of Eng., viii., 312-13). Neither Fox (Introduction to Hist, of 
 Jas. II.), Rose in his Observations thereon, nor Mackintosh in his 
 Continuation of Fox, name him at all. In the ninteenth century 
 Hallam {Const. Hist., 1879, p. 606n) rescued him at least from oblivion 
 (as a political force), and Macaulay {Hist., 1855, iv., 348-50) completed 
 the notorious picture of L'Estrange Redivivus from the canvas of 
 Oldmixon and Ralph. Lingard in his treatment of the Plot {Hist, of 
 Eng., 1854, ix., 170-8) makes frequent reference to L'Estrange's Brief 
 History of the Times, and uses the Observator. Amos (The Eng. Con- 
 stitution in the reign of Ch. II., 1857) has considerable reference to 
 his work in the Press. Sir T. Erskine May's Const. Hist, of Eng., 1871, 
 has a great deal on his baneful rule of the Press {Press under Censorship, 
 ii., 239-46). Carlyle {Letters and Speeches of Cromwell, 1850, i., 227) 
 makes a passing notice of his restless and romantic career, neither 
 friendly nor unfriendly. Ranke {Hist. of. Eng., iv., 267) merely refers 
 to the importance of his Observator Defended, 1685, as evidence of the 
 change in the position of the Church. Gardiner {Hist., xiii., 381-90) 
 relegates L'Estrange to an unimportant part in the Kentish Rising of 
 1648. On the other hand, he was never quite lost sight of in new 
 editions which revived the perennial dispute between Cavalier and 
 Roundhead in private memoirs, bibliographical dictionaries, and 
 catalogues of writers, nor at all in Literary History on account 
 of his translations. In Butler's Posthumous Works, for example, 
 published 1715, we find his Key to Hudibras, with several notes, intro- 
 ducing his name, while in Zachary Grey's edition of 1744, he is frequently 
 quoted against the Commonwealthmen {see i. 395). Neale's Hist, of 
 the Puritans (ed. 1822, iv., 434-5), on the other hand, gives a bitter 
 character, corroborated, of course, with a saving admission of humour 
 and spirit however, in Orme's Life and Times of Baxter (ed. 1830, ii., 
 279-80, 464-5). The eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries' formal 
 lives in dictionaries and elsewhere are moderate in their censure as they 
 
APPENDIX II 427 
 
 proceed farther away from their object — see the old Biographical 
 Dictionary J vi., 317 ; the Life given by Nicols (Lit. Anec, iv., 55) ; 
 the severe account by D'Israeli (Amenities of Lit.^ 1844, p. 406, and 
 Curiosities of Lit, 1882, p. 57), by Cibher (Lives of Eminent Writers, 1753, 
 iv., 295), Granger (Biog. Hist, of Eng., 1804, iv., 69-70) ; Chalmers' 
 equally severe biography (General Biog. Diet., 1815, xx., 205-11) ; and 
 the later accounts in the Dictionary of Universal Biography (xiii., 189) ; 
 and the Catalogue of the Hope Collection of Newspapers at the Bodleian, 
 1865, pp. 6-7. Sir Sidney Lee's Life in the Diet, of Nat. Biog. is of 
 course the first attempt of modern research to sum up his activities. 
 On the whole, it is both exhaustive and accurate. The earlier accounts 
 are severe or appreciative according to the writer's politics. These later 
 ones admit the virtue of consistency and even (in Sir Sidney Lee's) 
 some disinterestedness. With the exception of the last named, they 
 all suffer from being mere copies from their predecessors — the inevitable 
 fault of such compilations. 
 
 Of later years, while the general historian lost sight of him, the 
 revived interest in the Popish Plot crisis and in the history of the 
 Press has brought him into some prominence. In the former con- 
 nection see Sitwell (First Whig, p. 14, etc.) ; Ebsworth's remarks 
 (Roxburghe Ballads, iv., 220-2, 309, etc.) ; a brief life in the Brit. Mus. 
 Cat. of Prints and Drawings, Division I., Satires, pp. 629-31 ; Mr Alfred 
 Marks' Who Killed Godfrey ? 1905, pp. 72-5 ; Pollock's Popish Plot, 1903 ; 
 Gerard's The Popish Plot and its Netbest Historian, 1903 ; Andrew 
 Lang's The Mystery of Sir Edmundbury Godfrey (Historical Mysteries, 
 1904). Sitwell and Ebsworth are sympathetic as Tories, Messrs Marks 
 and Gerard as Catholics — all four are a useful corrective to the long sway 
 of the Whig view. The former (Mr Marks) discovered in L'Estrange 
 the chief Protagonist on the anti-Plot side, and naturally treats him 
 with great deference. 
 
 In the history of the Press L'Estrange has, of course, figured largely. 
 In his own day, as we saw, he was praised by a few interested persons 
 and attacked by all the more liberal writers. The eighteenth century 
 was peculiarly alive to the importance of the Imprimatur for the reason 
 Dunton gives for describing the Licensers so fully (and deferentially), viz. : 
 that no man could tell when their services might be again requisitioned. 
 The Life and Errors of the latter, first published 1705, is a priceless 
 review of all the characters in the Press (treats of L'Estrange and the 
 Licensers, ed. 1818, pp. 264-6) ; Defoe (Life and Works, by Walter 
 Wilson, 1830) is of great value on account of the long extracts from 
 his writings, and especially in reference to the Press, ii., 171, iii., 84 — 
 Defoe's Essay upon the Regulation of the Press ; Lee's Life and Times 
 of Defoe, 1868, is richer in the period after Anne, when his author is 
 more conservative in the matter of the Press. See also Swift (On the 
 Liberty of the Press, Scott's ed., 1808, vi., 165-9) ; Addison (Spectator, 
 Nos. 445, 582, with Prof. H. Morley's excellent remarks on the Press, 
 pp. 636-7 and 825); Johnson, Prose Works, 1848, ii., 259; The 
 Gentleman^s Magazine (D'Anvers' articles on the Liberty of the Press, 
 1738-45, vols. viii.-xvi.) ; Toland's Milton's Prose Works, 1698, p. 43 ; 
 Thomson's (the Poet's) ed. of Areopagitica, with Preface, 1738. Most 
 reprints of this famous tract have been accompanied by valuable notes 
 on the subject, especially those of Holt White, 1819 (which included 
 Tindall's tract against Pulteney's Press Bill, 1698, pp. 202 and Ivii., and 
 
428 APPENDIX II 
 
 Mirabeau's digest of Milton, Sur La Liberie de la Presse) ; Arber (Eng. 
 Reprints, 1868, valuable for the Press documents printed with it) ; and 
 J. W. Hales, 1874 (p. xxxviii.). Masson has much excellent matter on 
 the same subject (Life of Milton, iii., 446-50, etc.), and, indeed, with the 
 possible exception of D'Israeli (Curiosities of Lit., ed. 1882, p. 250, ' On 
 the Licensers of the Press' ; and Amenities of Lit, 1884, p. 405, 'The 
 War against Books' ; Calamities and Quarrels of Authors, 1882, pp. 16, 
 396, etc.), gives a more intimate account of the Commonwealth and 
 Eestoration Press than any other author since Nichols (Literary 
 Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century, iv., 33, 'Of Public News and 
 Weekly Papers'). Of more Legal Works, Pari. Hist., xvi., 1264- 
 1314, gives the memorable debate in the House of Lords of 6th 
 December 1770 on the question of Libel and the General Search 
 Warrant ; Modern Reports, i., 266-7 ; Viner's Abridgement, 1742, xvii., 
 208-10, discusses the abuses of monopolies. See also Sir Jas. Burrow's 
 Report on the Question concerning Literary Property, 1773, and P. C. 
 Webb's Copies taken from the Records of the Court of King^s Bench, etc., 
 of Warrants issued by the Secretaries of State . . . for seizing authors, 
 printers, etc., of Libels, 1763. The legal and constitutional issues raised 
 by these eighteenth-century works re-appear in the work of Hallam 
 (Introduction to the Lit. of Europe, 1882, pp. 613, 719); Buckle {Hist, 
 of Civilisation, ii., 225) ; Macaulay, whose nineteenth and twenty-first 
 chapters of his Hist, of Eng. attempt to atone for the neglect of the 
 question of the Press Laws in William III.'s reign by other authors ; 
 Amos (Cons. Hist, of Ch. II., viii., 238) devotes an excellent chapter to the 
 Press ; so Erskine May (Cons. Hist, of Eng., 1871, ii., 239-46, on Censor- 
 ships, and ii., 318-58 on the Press Statutes). On the more technical side 
 see Birrell (Augustine, Seven Lectures on the Law and History of Copyright 
 in Books, 1899). The Autobiography of Ed. Bohun, by S. Wilton Rix, 
 1853, has some valuable Press information (pp. 94-8, a List of 
 Licensing enactments) ; Bigmore & Wyman's Bib. of Printing, 1884, 
 pt. ii., pp. 118-48, contains an excellent list, entitled Parliamentary 
 Papers; Tymperley (Hist, of Printing) ; Lownde's Bibliographer's Manual 
 of English Lit, 1864, iii., 1347, has some notice of L'Estrange (The 
 Brief Hist of Times, 1687, and his translations), with prices annexed ; 
 Hazlitt's Bib. Collections and Notes, 2nd series, p. 343, gives an 
 accurate description of some twenty-five of his works, but erroneously 
 includes No Protestant Plot. 
 
 Of later works dealing more particularly with the trade and 
 history of journalism, viz. : — 
 
 The Fourth Estate (by F. K. Hunt, 1850) ; The Hist of Brit 
 Journalism to 1855 (by Alex. Andrews, 1859) ; English Newspapers (by 
 H. R. Fox Bourne, 1887), it may be said that they are all unsatisfactory 
 on the seventeenth century ; perhaps Fox Bourne's (see also his Life 
 of Locke, 1876, ii., 312) least so, but his inaccuracies have been pointed 
 out by the latest historian of English Journalism, Mr J. B. Williams, 
 whose Hist, of Eng. Journalism in the Seventeenth Century is much 
 more informative and accurate than the others. His article on News- 
 books and Letters of News of the Restoration, in the English Historical 
 Review for April 1908, has been of great service to the present writer. 
 See also an article, The Growth of the Freedom of the Press, by D. M. 
 Ford (Eng. Hist Rev., iv., 1), and Introduction to the Cal. of State 
 Papers, 1665-6. For the Times Printing Supplement of 10th September 
 1912, see Appendix III. 
 
APPENDIX II 429 
 
 Only an occasional hint or fact has been gleaned from the History 
 of Bookselling, by H. Cnrwen, 1873 ; Wm. Roberts' Earlier Hist, of 
 English Bookselling, 1892 ; and Clferles Knight's TJie Old Booksellers 
 (vol. V. of his London series). More has been taken from a series of 
 articles in Notes and Queries, 5th series, viii., 461, and 6th series, vii., 
 461 ; 8th series, vi., 363, etc. Vol. vi., p. 69, of the 2nd series con- 
 tains also an article on The Three Patriarchs of Newspapers^ borrowed 
 largely from D' Israeli. 
 
 Perhaps the greatest source of all is found in the labours of Professor 
 Arber— his Term Catalogues (1668-1709), 3 vols., 1903-6, with Introduc- 
 tion ; the documents printed in his Stationers' Registers, especially vol. 
 iii., and vol. v., Introduction, with Mr C. R. Rivington's Accou7it of the 
 Worshipful Company of Stationers, 1903, and his Records of the Stationers 
 Company, 1893, printed in The Term Catalogues, vol. v., p. xxxix., and the 
 Star Chamber and other Decrees and Acts, printed in his edition of 
 Areopagitica (English Reprints, 1868). 
 
 Of foreign authors who have touched on the English Press, Beljame 
 (Le Public et les Hommes de lettres en Angleterre, 1874) describes with a 
 lighter hand than Masson the activities of the Restoration Press, while 
 Hilger (Index der Verbotenen Biicher, 1904, pp. 206-221) draws a too 
 severe picture of the Licensing Laws, especially in his reference to 
 L'Estrange (p. 211). 
 
 The Index ExpurgatoriusAnglicanusoiW. H. Hart, 1872-8 (unfinished, 
 and ending abruptly in 1684), supplied something ; but the work is 
 meagre and defective, and awaits some more laborious author. 
 
 Authorities and sources for the literary side of L'Estrange's career 
 are The Prose Works of Dryden (Malone's ed., 1800, Scott, 1808-9) viz. : 
 his Preface to Ovid's Epistles, Life of Lucian, and Discourse on Epick 
 Poetry; Aphra Behn — Love Letters between a Nobleman and his Sister, 
 1693, and Essay on Translated Prose (prefixed to her version of 
 Fontenelle's Theory of New Worlds Inhabited, 1692) ; Sir Edward 
 Sherburne's Preface to his Translation of three of Seneca^ Tragedies, 1702 ; 
 Tom Browne's Life of Erasmus, prefixed to his Seven Additional Colloquies, 
 1699, d^ndi Letters from the Living to the Dead, 1702 ; Phillips' translation 
 of Don Quixote, 1687 ; Jas. Price's version of Bona's Guide to Eternity, 
 1673 ; Jas. Mabbe's Exemplarie Novels, 1^40, and the French versions 
 of F. de Rosset and the Sieur D'Audiguier in the same year ; Baudoin's 
 j^sop, eds. 1631, 1660, 1669 ; Locke's interlineary (Latin and English) 
 version of Fables, 1704 ; Edmund Arwaker's collection of 225 Fables, 
 1700 ; The Introduction to E. Stacey's Poetical Version of some of 
 L' Estranges Fables, 1717 ; Robinson Ellis, Fables of Avianus, Oxford, 
 1887 ; De la Grose, Works of the Learned (January 1691-2, p. 23, and 
 1692, p. 213) ; Notes and Queries, 2nd Series, iii., 281 ; Pope's Prologue 
 to Cato, 1713; Bentley's Epistle to Boyle, 1697 (?), p. 87 ; Dunton's 
 Post-Angel, November 1701, pp. 287-8, and March 1702, pp. 180, Life and 
 Errors (ed. 1818, p. 266) ; Motteaux's Gentleman's Journal, ii., 58, 312, 
 February and September 1693 and p. 27, January 1694. Addison's 
 Spectator, No. 135 ; Boyer, Life and Reign of Queen Anne, 1722, p. 38, 
 and his translation of Bona's Essay upon Moral Friendship, 1701 ; 
 Winstanley, Lives of the Eminent Poets, 1687, p. 219 ; Felton, Disserta- 
 tion upon Reading the Classics, 1713 ; 'Tacitus', Gordon's Preface to his 
 version of Tacitus, 1728 ; Arnold's Six Chief Lives (from Johnson's Lives 
 of the Poets), Preface pp. xi.-xxii. ; Johnson, Literary Magazine, 1758, 
 
430 APPENDIX II 
 
 p. 197 ; Hallam, Introduction to the Lit. of Europe, ed. 1883, p. 790 ; 
 J. J. Jusserand's Preface to Tom Browne's translation of Scarron, 2 vols., 
 1892 ; Ballanger (Justin) Histoire de la Traduction en France, pp. 29 
 and 45 ; Godwin, Lives of Edward and John Phillips, 1815 ; art. by H. 
 C. Lea {Eng. Hist. Rev., iv., 783) on Keusch's Index der Verhotenen Biicher, 
 1883-5. 
 
 Ticknor, History of Spanish Literature, 1849 ; Gibber, Lives, 1753, 
 iv., 301 ; T. L. Oliphant, Standard English, p. 312 ; Blair, Lectures on 
 Rhetoric, ed. by Dale, pp. 262, 272, etc. ; Earle, English Prose, 1890, p. 
 453 ; Preface to J. W. Stanbridge's Library of Devotion ; edition of 
 L'Estrange's Guide to Eternity, 1900 ; and Keneth Graham's One 
 Hundred Fables of ^sop, pub. by John Lane, 1899. 
 
 III. Manuscript Sources 
 
 (1) Record Office. A chief source has been the uncalendared 
 documents in the Record Office for the years 1677-1685, and those 
 papers which were insufficiently described in the Calendar. 
 
 (2) Brit. Museum.— Shane MSS., 4222, p. 14. 
 "^Stowe MSS., f. 82, 1-2. 
 
 Add. MSS., 28618, 28053, f. 109, 27, 448, ff. 296, and 306, 282371, 
 
 f. 1-15 ; 36988 f. 277, 36988, f. 168 and 166. 
 Barrington MSS. {Egerton 2647 f. 138). 
 
 *Stowe MSS., vol. 82, is the printed copy of Borlase's Hist, of 
 the Execrable Irish Rebellion, with L'Estrange's eradica- 
 tions and interpolations, preceded (pp. 1 and 2) by a letter 
 to Borlase ; and (f. 3) some anon, remarks on the publication 
 and L'Estrange's Licensing of the book, t Letters belonging to 
 the Caryll family, the volume presented by Sir Chas. Dilke. 
 
 (3) Bodleian Library, Ballard MSS., ix., 12 ; xi. 15, 54, 79 ; xiii.,54 ; 
 
 xxxii., 52 ; xix., 18, 30. Some Newsletters in the Clarendon 
 
 State Papers, Nos. 2790-2804. 
 Tanner and Rawlinson MSS., various papers mentioned in the 
 
 Text. 
 Some MSS. Notes in books by "Wood, Oldys, and anonymous 
 
 persons. 
 
APPENDIX III 
 
 THE TIMES PRINTING SUPPLEMENT, 10th SEPTEMBER 1912. 
 
 One had scarcely needed to refer to this handsome supplement in this 
 connection, but for the important place given to L Estrange in the 
 history of early journalism. Indeed the writer of the article on the 
 Press has taken L'Estrange's career as a framework for his account. 
 With that account itself we have no quarrel. Indeed it is, considering 
 the limited space at the writer's command, quite the most orderly 
 treatment of an obscure matter which has yet appeared. It devotes 
 substantial space to the Newsletter^ and endorses the claim for it 
 already made by Mr J. B. Williams, that down to the Revolution it 
 not only competed with the printed Newsbook, but in some manner at 
 intervals actually ousted it. Whether, however, the Newsbook was 
 ever or for any long period intended to be ancillary to the Newsletter 
 is extremely doubtful. A very able account of newspapers in Scotland 
 and in Ireland concludes a notable contribution to the subject of early 
 British newspapers. No pretence, of course, is made of exhaustive 
 treatment, but for general accuracy and co-ordination of the parts of 
 the story it would be difficult to point to a better treatment. The 
 chief novelty in the treatment is the close following of political crises, 
 always symptomatic of movements in the Press. Previous accounts 
 had given lists of rival papers with but little explanation of their 
 appearance. But here we have given the political weather-chart of 
 journalism, the Gates' papers after the discovery of the * Plot ', the 
 Tory rejoinders, the first Whig outburst at the Revolution, and so on. 
 A biographer of L'Estrange will not complain of disproportion- 
 ately large treatment given to his hero. But whilst the intrigue 
 carried on by Sir Joseph Williamson and James Hickes which 
 deprived L'Estrange of the Newsbook, is very clearly exposed, 
 it may be asked if the writer were really acquainted with the true 
 nature of the Surveyor, or had only read sufficient to gain a surface, 
 and, at first sight, favourable knowledge of that important person. 
 In all the cases where L'Estrange was engaged, in those where his 
 character might be supposed to suffer most, the writer vigorously 
 upholds his conduct, as being the only treatment possible to the 
 pestilent sects. In other words, he espouses the extreme Tory view. 
 The case of John Twynne might be granted him because of the 
 peculiarly dangerous nature of the document which that unfortunate 
 man was printing when seized by L'Estrange. But nothing can condone 
 his cruelty to the others of the poor printers. This matter has 
 already been referred to in the Introduction. One remark of the 
 Times writer, however, must be referred to. It is to the effect 
 that the failure of the Whigs in the spring of 1683 to successfuUy 
 prosecute the Observator was a triumph for free journalism. This — the 
 writer quotes L'Estrange's own defence given in the Observator — is of 
 the nature of a perversion of the facts. The prosecution of the 
 Observator was dropped by the Whigs, not because of L'Estrange's 
 defence published in the Observator, but because the discovery of the 
 Rye House Plot had dashed all their councils and precipitated their 
 doom. Moreover, all the other Whig newspapers had largely, at 
 L'Estrange's instigation, been closed down, and L'Estrange now, by 
 the breakdown of this prosecution, could look round with satisfaction 
 on the wilderness which he had created in the name of peace. His 
 own defence of the Observator is trifling. First, he has, by his old patent 
 
 431 
 
432 APPENDIX III 
 
 of 1663, a monopoly in news. Second, his paper is not a newspaper, 
 it merely conducts a political causerie on current topics, etc. Such a 
 defence was not of itself calculated to discourage his Whiggish prosecutors. 
 The summing up of the character of L' Estrange is as perverse 
 as anything the new school of Tory Absolutism can show. A portrait 
 which makes L'Estrange a high-minded English gentleman, loyal and 
 sincere and generous, ought not to be ungrateful to his biographer. But 
 truth is perhaps preferable to paradox, and the unfolded story of his 
 public life will not warrant such a reversal of the popular tradition. 
 Of loyalty he was capable even in an extreme degree. Sincerity he 
 certainly can claim. But if generosity means chivalry to the 
 vanquished, or if it is part of a high-minded English gentleman's 
 character not to aggravate suffering or pursue the quarry to the death, 
 he has no title to that fine name. 
 
 THE IXTH VOL. OF THE CAMBRIDGE HISTORY OF ENGLISH 
 LITERATURE. 
 
 The first chapter of the latest volume of the Cambridge History of 
 English Literature contains a brief account of L'Estrange's career as a 
 journalist. The writer (Professor Trent of Columbia University, New 
 York) remarks in connection with the Ohservator that ' Defoe who was 
 probably in London during the latter part of the Observator's life, may 
 thus early have determined that if ever he should edit a paper of his 
 own, he would avoid the awkward dialogue form and an extravagance 
 that defeated its own ends '. The bibliography appended to Chapter I. 
 contains a list of L'Estrange's works, which is not altogether trustworthy. 
 There is no evidence for L'Estrange's authorship of Physician Cure Thy- 
 self , and the style not even remotely resembles his. A Plea for Limited 
 Monarchy, though ascribed by Oldys, is certainly not his work, A Letter 
 to Miles Prance was possibly written by Nat Thompson or Farwell, 
 certainly not by L'Estrange, The Apostate Protestant, and Remarks on the 
 Growth and Progress of Non-Conformity bear no trace of his manner, and 
 have otherwise nothing to support L'Estrange's authorship. In regard 
 to the Translations, no mention is made of his part with Dryden and 
 Eachard in the Tacitus. L'Estrange wrote Five Love Letters from a Nun 
 to a Cavalier. The Five Love Letters written by a Cavalier in Answer, 
 however, is probably the work of Aphra Behn. In any case it is not 
 L'Estrange's. 
 
 In Chapter X. Mr Charles Whibley discusses with his wonted 
 thoroughness the place of L'Estrange among the professors of 'the 
 New Art of Translation'. As to L'Estrange's methods, 'he made him 
 (his author) for the moment a true-born Englishman, speaking the 
 slang of the moment with the proper accent of the cockney , . . and 
 the mere fact that L'Estrange set upon all the works which he 
 Englished this very stamp and pattern of his own time, while it 
 increased their momentary popularity, prevents their general acceptance 
 as classics '. At the same time Mr Whibley has with all competent 
 modern critics succumbed to the fascination of our author's quaint 
 rudeness, and he praises the catholicity displayed in his selection 
 of originals. Tlie Select Colloquies of Erasmus he thinks preferable for 
 its ' light touch and merry conceit ' to the Bona, the Cicero and even 
 the Quevedo. This last judgment is rather surprising. Finally, 
 * L'Estrange has many faults, but he never sank to the depth of Brown's 
 ineptitude '. The ' strict economy ' of words, even of what was called 
 Billingsgate in his ^sop, makes him an artist in the best sense. 
 
INDEX 
 
 Absalom and Achitophcl, Part II., 286 
 
 Absalom Senior^ 367^ 
 
 Accompt Cleared, 300 
 
 Account of the Growth of Knavery, 221, 
 
 227« 
 
 Account of the Growth of Popery, 210, 
 211, 214, 227 
 
 Acton, Lord, i 
 
 Admiralty, Commissioners for, to eject 
 Whigs, 297 
 
 Advice to a Painter, 168 
 
 y^sop, at Richmond, 372 
 
 ^sop, translation of, 392 
 
 Ailesbury, Earl of, 69 
 
 Lords' Libels Committee Report, 
 
 210 et seq. 
 
 Alarm to the Army, 62 
 
 Allington, Lord, 7 
 
 An Address to the Loyal Freeholders, 
 199 
 
 Anglesea, Earl of, 81 
 
 Anglican converts, 1683, 352 
 
 Animadversions to the Me?i of Shaftes- 
 bury, 219 
 
 Anne, Proprietory Act of, 1710, 326 
 
 Annus Mirabilis^ 113 
 
 Antidote against Poison, 312 
 
 Apology for the French Protestants^ 
 
 299. 350 
 Appeal from the Country to the City, 
 
 232 
 Arber's Transcript of the Stationers' 
 
 Registers, 132, 178 
 Archer, Colonel, 32 
 Arlington, 152-4, 166, 176, 179, 186, 
 
 19s 
 Armiger, Sir Clement, 267 
 Ashton's Paper, 369 
 
 Plot, 368 
 
 Assenters" Sayings, 24in 
 
 Association, etc., 320 
 
 Atkyns, Rich., 100, 103, 112; his 
 
 Original and Growth of Printing, 
 
 138-9, 181 
 'Aylesford, 27, 30 
 Ayres, Phillip, 396 
 Azaria and Hushai, 22gn 
 
 Bagshawe, Edward, 81-2, 92 
 
 Bampfield's Petition, 53 
 
 Barebones, Praise-God, 61 
 
 Barker, King's printer, 179 
 
 Barkstead, John, 29 
 
 Batters by, Robert, printer, 194 
 
 Baudoin, his yEsop, 396 
 
 Baxter, Richard, his Petition for Peace, 
 
 45, T], 81, 83, 85, 109, 148, 157-8; 
 
 Non-Conformists' Plea for Peace, and 
 
 Trial, 359 
 Baynton, Sir Edward, x<^n, 19 
 Bedloe, Wm., 235-9 
 Behn, Aphra, 288, 388, 393; her Poem 
 
 to Sir R. L' Estrange, 303^ ; her 
 
 Essay on Translated Prose, 383, 
 
 403 
 Ballanger, Justin, 381 
 Bennet, Thos., printer, 194 
 Bentley, Ric. , 379 ; and Aisop^ 396/^ 
 Bernardiston, Sir Samuel, 334 
 Bethel, Slingsby, i62«, 277 
 Bible stock, 399 
 Biddle, Life of John, 171 
 Birkenhead, Sir John, 91, 126, 129, 
 
 221 
 Biscoe, Parliamentary Commissioner in 
 
 Kent, 27 
 Blackheath, 24, 26, 30 
 Blair, Hugh, 405 
 Blathwayt, Wm., 318 
 Blomefield, Historian of Norfolk, 3 
 Blount, Chas., and the Restraint on 
 
 the Press, 98 ; (Philopatris), Just 
 
 Vindication of Learni?ig, 217 
 Bohun, Edmund, 196, 199, 221, 227, 
 
 369 ; his Address to the Freeholders, 
 
 213 
 Boltinglasse (Vaultinglasse), Lady, 39, 
 
 260 
 Bona, Cardinal, 348 ; Guide to Eternity, 
 
 387 
 Booth, Rising of, 70 
 
 , Sir George, 44 
 
 Borlase, Dr, History of the Execrable 
 
 Irish Rebellion, 216-17, 229 
 Boyer's Queen Anne, 374 
 Boyle, Robt. , 196 . 
 
 Brewster, Ric, bookseller, iii, 118 y^ 
 Brickley, Capt., 300 
 
 433 
 
 2e 
 
434 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Bristol, French refugees in, 351 
 Brome, Harry, bookseller, 52, 117, 260, 
 
 374. 379 
 
 , Mrs Joanna, 278, 328 
 
 ' Bromigham ' Protestants, 2337? 
 
 Brookes, Nat., 117 
 
 Brown, Joseph, 214 
 
 Browne, Tom, Life of Erasmus, 380 ; 
 
 404 ; and Bentley, 396;? 
 Burham Heath, 30 
 Burnet, Gilbert, 267 ; his History of the 
 
 English Reformation, 233; on the 
 
 Observator, 268 ; and Fergusson, 309 ; 
 
 and Lord Russell, 312 
 Burning, the, of St Michael's, 352 
 
 Calamy, Edward, 84, 87 
 Calvert, Eliz., 113, 169 
 
 , John, no 
 
 Camden, Lord, and Winchester, 362 
 
 , Viscount, 7 
 
 Candid Plea, A, 355 
 
 Canterbury, Riots at, 22, 23, 26, 31 
 
 Care, Harry, his Popish Courant, 229, 
 
 257^, 323-5, 389; and the "Plot," 
 
 246 ; his History of the Damnable 
 
 Popish Plot, 246 ; burned in effigy at 
 
 Norwich, 281 
 Carew, Sir Alex., 16 
 Carr, James, printer, 188 
 
 , Sir Robert, 177 
 
 Carters, Mathew, True Relation, etc., 
 
 23, 3i;z 
 Carte's Ormonde, 205^ 
 Cartwright, Dr Thos., his Diary, 12, 
 
 366 
 Cary, Dr, 210 et seg. 
 Caryll, Joseph, 372 
 Case, the, of the Free Worhmen, 178 
 Castlehaven's Memoirs, 230 
 Castlemaine, Countess of, 160 
 , Roger Palmer, Earl of, 235, 
 
 240 
 Casuist Uncas'd, The, 262, 359;? 
 Catholics' Apology, The, 167, 172, 183 
 Caveat to the Cavaliers, A , 89 
 Cellier, Mrs Eliz., 251, 254, 259, 295, 
 
 347 
 Cervantes' Exemplarie Novels, 390 
 Chapman, Livewell, 61-2, in, 386 
 Charlet, Dr, 345, 359 
 Chesterfield, Countess of, 153 
 Chichester, Dissenters at, 300 
 Child, Thos., perversion of, 321; his 
 
 suicide, 356 
 Childe, Thos., printer, 194 
 Chiswell, bookseller, 322 
 Choquex, Mons., 253 
 Cibber's Lives, 406 
 
 Cicero, De Officiis, Translation of, 389 
 Citt and Bumpkin, 256 
 City Clergy, 353 
 
 City Mercury, 150 
 
 Clare, Earl of, and a Conventicle, 311 
 Clarendon, Apology to, 92 
 Clarendon, Ed. Hyde, first Earl of, 
 20-5, 34, 45-8, 68-9, t6i-2 ; his style, 
 
 405 
 Clarke, John of Hull, 393, 408 
 Clavell, Robt,, bookseller, 193, 203 
 Clayton, Sir Robt., 282 
 Clobery, Sir John, 362-3 
 Coffee-houses, ordered to close, 198 
 Coke's Detection, 235 
 Colledge, A Whig Lamentation for, 
 
 272 
 Colledge, Brief Notes on, 290-2 
 Colledge, Stephen, and Young Tonge, 
 
 252, 341 ; and The Raree Show, 274. ; 
 
 ignoramused, 281 
 Colloquies of Erasmus, 388 
 Committee, The, or Popery iti Mas- 
 
 querade, 256 
 Compton, Bishop of London, 
 ' Confederates ', The, 165 
 Considerations and Proposals, 109, 124, 
 
 130 
 Considerations upon * The Speech of the 
 
 Late Lord Russell' , 312 
 Contributions by the Church to 
 
 L'Estrange, 299 
 Conventicle Act, 1670, 188 
 
 at Stockdale, 300 
 
 Corbet, Dr John, his Interest of Eng- 
 land, etc., 74 
 
 , Miles, II 
 
 , Sir John, 15, 19, 21 
 
 Corker, Francis, 66 
 
 Cornish, Alderman, 277 
 
 Cotterell, printer of Queries, etc., 322 
 
 Cotton, Sir Robt., 361 
 
 , Wm., Newsletter digGUi, 329 
 
 Coventry, Secretary, 195 
 Cox, Dr, 334 
 Creake, Thos., 111-12 
 Cripplegate, Parish of, 354 
 Crofton, Zachary, 76-7, no, 182 
 Cromwell, 2, 7, 8, 12, 20, 36-9 
 
 , Richard, 43 
 
 Crooke, Andrew, Press Messenger, 
 
 173 
 Crowland, 6-7, 9, 11, 12 
 Curll, Edmund, 375 
 Current Intelligence, 150 
 Curtis, Langley, bookseller, 266, 296 
 , Mrs, 305 
 
 Dacier, Madame, 381, 399 
 
 Dangerfield's Narrative, o.df'jn 
 
 Darby, John, printer, 115, 168, 177, 
 
 193-4 1 a-J^d Lord Russell's Speech. 
 
 322 
 Davenant, Wm., 45 
 Davies, John, the case of, 83 
 
INDEX 
 
 435 
 
 Dawkes, Thos., stationer, 130 
 
 Defoe, tribute to H. Care, 234^ ; 
 
 Review, 97, 136, 325 ; and Delaune, 
 
 3i5«; Hymn to the Pillory, 1703, 
 
 306 
 De la Crose, Works of the Learned, 
 
 397-8 
 De Sacy, Lemaislre, 399 
 Delaune (Wm.), Present State of 
 
 London, 166 
 Delaune's Answer to Child s Preface, 
 
 356 ; Plea for the Noncomformists , 
 
 315 
 Denham, Sir John, on Translation, 
 
 379 
 Derby House, Committee at, 28-9 
 Dialogue between the Pope and a 
 
 Fanatick, 249^ 
 Dialogue between Tom the Cheshire 
 
 Piper, etc., 265;^ 
 Difference between the Church of 
 
 England and the Church of Rome, 
 
 360 
 Digby, George, Earl of Bristol, 12, 16 
 Discourse of the Grand Interest, etc., 
 
 229 
 Discozery upon Discovery, 226, 250 
 Dissent, rapid growth of, 1679, 249 
 Dissenters, renewed persecution of, 
 
 1682, 2^7-2^7 
 
 Dissenters' Sayings, 22,in, 265 ; Part II., 
 283 
 
 Dissenting Divines, 1683, 352 
 
 Dolben, Mr Justice, 'Plot' Speech, 
 1679, 245 
 
 Doleman, Anne, 369 
 
 , Sir Thos., 197, 370;^; On the 
 
 Succession, 371 
 
 Dolus an Virtus ?, 17 2> 
 
 Dover, 26 
 
 , Simon, 169, 180 
 
 Downing, Wm., printer, 194 
 
 Downs, Treason of ships in the, 30 
 
 Dryden, John, 288 ; Medal, 296;^ ; 
 Spanish Friar, 2f^n \ Epistle to 
 Dorset, 382 ; Preface to Lucian, 379 
 
 Dugdale, Ric. , 235, 290^ ; h\s Narrative, 
 238 
 
 Dunton, John, 401 ; Life and Errors, 
 203 ; flight of, 1683, 322 ; his Post- 
 Angel and Athenian Mercury, 156, 
 404 
 
 D'Urfey, Tom, 288 
 
 Durie, Giles, journalist, 140 
 
 Eachard's Grounds and Occasions of the 
 Contempt of the Clergy, 163 ; Transla- 
 tions, 381 
 
 Earle, the late Prof., 402, 406-7 
 
 Ecole des Filles, 202 
 
 Eikonoklastes, 63 
 
 Elections to Parliament, 1685, 361 
 
 Ely, Bishop of, 373 
 
 Endeavour for Peace, 355 
 
 Erasmus' Colloquies, 266 
 
 Essex, Robt., Devereux, third Earl of, 
 
 16-17, 336 
 Evelyn, Sir Robt., 15, 19 ; his Apology, 
 
 45, 50-1, 188 
 Examen, 239; on the ' Plot', 251 
 Examination of L' Estrange, 254 
 Exemplarie Novels, Jas. Mabbe's, 390 
 
 Fairfax, Sir Thomas, 10, 28-31; his 
 
 translation of the Gerusalemme 
 
 Liber ata, 378 
 Fanshawe, his translation of Pastor 
 
 Fido, 380 
 
 , Lady, 148 
 
 Farewell Sermons, 78, 131 
 
 Farley Bridge, 31-2 
 
 Farringdon, Squire of Stockdale, 301 
 
 Far well, Mr, 330 
 
 Faversham, 26 
 
 Felton, Henry, his Dissertation on the 
 
 Classics, etc., 402 
 Fenwick Conspiracy, 368 
 Fergusson, Hannah, 317^ 
 , Robt., 116, 125, 170, 300, 305, 
 
 307-10, 317, 353 ; his No Protestant 
 
 Plot,_ 258 
 Filmerism, 306, 350, 361, 397 
 Fishery Tracts, A collection of, 410 
 Five Letters from a Ntin to a Cavalier, 
 
 390 
 Flatman, John, 270 
 Flesher, Jas. , printer for the city, 179 
 Forbes, Jas., 125, 171, 308-9, 352 
 Fountain Tavern, Tory feast at, 364 
 Fountainhall's Historical Observes, 339 
 Freeborn Subject, 241 
 French refugees, 298, 351 
 Frowde, Sir Philip, 153 
 Fuller, Thos., Q.n 
 Further, A, Discovery of the Plot, 
 
 250 
 
 Gainsborough, Affair at, 7 
 
 , Earl of, and Winchester, 363 
 
 Gentleman Pothecary, 390 
 
 Gloster Cobbler, 207 
 
 God's Loud Call, 105 
 
 Goodenough, Ric, Under - Sheriff of 
 
 London, 303;^, 319 
 Gordon, T., his translation of Tacitus, 
 
 380^ 
 Goring, George, Baron, 14 
 Graham and Burton, 345 
 Green Ribbon Club, 320, 329 
 Gregory, Father Greybeard, 330» 
 Grey, De Wark, Sir Robt., 7 
 Greyney, Thos., 367 
 Griffith, Dr Matthew, 61 
 Grimstone, Sir Harbottle, 76 
 
436 
 
 INDEX 
 
 " Grindaliser," 353 
 Grover, Jas., printer, 188 
 Guise, Mr Justice, 267 
 
 Haarlem Courant, 330 
 
 Haberdashers and Church Books, 185 
 
 Habernfeld's " Plot," 226 
 
 Habin, the Informer, 300 
 
 Hagar, 14 
 
 Hales, Squire, 22, 24, 30-2 
 
 Hallam on Translation, 384 
 
 Hammond, Capt. Chas., 93 
 
 Hancock, Giles, 89, 217, 285, 329 
 
 Hanse, Chas., M.P. for Winchester, 
 
 311, 345, 362 
 Harrington, Dr, 320 
 Harrington's Rota, 54, 58 
 Harris, Ben., bookseller, 232^ ; his 
 
 Domestick Intelligence, 2;^2> 272 ; his 
 
 Twenty-four Queries, 271 
 
 , Sam, 276 
 
 Hartshorn, servant to Goodenough, 
 
 320 
 Harwich, Sir Roger, 267, 319 
 Haselrig, Sir Thos. , 320 
 Hattige, or Les Amotirs Dti Roy 
 
 Tamarlane, 196 
 Hawkins, 199 
 Henckson, Mr, 40 
 Heraclitus Ridens, 232, 267 283 287, 
 
 409 
 Hickeringill, Edmund, 203, 300 330, 
 
 353 
 Hickes, Dr George, 351 
 
 , Jas., 149, 155 
 
 History of the Conspiracy, 314 
 History of the Plot, 240, 242-4 
 History of the Times, 241, 314, 337-8, 
 
 347 
 Hobart, Capt., 8 
 Hobbes' Leviathan, 165-8 
 HolinshecVs Chronicles, 292 
 Holloway, Rye House Conspirator, 
 
 332-3 
 Holy Cheat, The, 65, 88, 408 
 Holyrood, Catholic Press at, 365 
 Horace on Translation, 379 
 Hothams, The, 15-18 
 Hounslow Heath, 28 
 Howard, Bernard, 363 
 Howe, John, bookseller, 327 
 Howell, Jas. , 20, 88-9 ; Cordial for 
 
 the Cavaliers, 88 
 Hzidibras, A Key to, 409 
 Hughes, Rev. Thos., 353 
 Humble Candid Plea, 355 
 Hundred Fables of ALsop, 409 
 Hunt, Thos., of Gray's Inn, 306, 350; 
 
 pursuit of, 327;^ ; his defence of the 
 
 Charter, 306 ; Postscript to the 
 
 Bishop's Right, etc. , 306^ 
 Husband's Collections, 10, 15 
 
 Hyde, L. C. J,, 119 
 Hymn to Confinement^ 409 
 
 Ibbotson, Ann, 179 
 Ignoramus Juries, 279 
 Imprimatur, The, 134-7 
 Informers under Conventicle Act, 298 
 Informing Shopkeepers, boycott on, 
 302^ 
 
 James John, Affair of, 120 
 
 Janeway, Rich., 274 ; Vox Patriae, 
 
 28o« ; Impa7-tial Protestant Mercury, 
 
 287, 297 
 Jeffries, Sir George, 273, 301 « 
 Jenkins, Rev. Wm., 94 
 , Sir LeoHne, 326 - 7, 331 - 6, 
 
 340, etc. 
 Jenks, Francis, and Rye Plot, 320-1 
 Jenks' Speech, 199-200, 203, 225 
 Jennings, Sir W., 281 
 Johnson, Dr, 380, 405 
 
 1 'Juhan', 312, 322 
 
 Jones, Sir W., 323, 341 
 
 Josephus, editions of, 372-6, 401, 409 
 
 Journals, Extinction of Whig, 1682, 
 
 304 
 Juhan the Apostate, 313, 322 
 Jusserand, J. J., 381 
 
 Keache, Ben, 123, 308 
 Keeme, Capt., Apostasy of, 26 
 Keling, Judge, and the ' Confederates ', 
 
 165;? 
 Kent, Vindication to, 34 
 Kentish Rising, 1648, 20-32 
 King's Lynn, Siege of, 5-12 
 
 , L'Estrange'sattempt on, 12-16 
 
 Knight, Sir John, 169, 332, 350-1 
 
 La Crose, his Works of the Learned, 
 
 354^2 
 
 La Fontaine, 381 
 
 Lambe, Sir John, Dean of Arches, 132 
 
 Lambert, General, 46 
 
 Larkins, George, 158, 207, 321, 356-7 
 
 Leoman, Thos., 12-14, 38 
 
 Lesley, Chas. , View of the Times, 47, 
 290^ 
 
 L'Estrange, Dame Alice, 6, lo-ii 
 
 , Sir Edward, 281 
 
 , Sir Hamond, 2, 6-10, 37 
 
 , Sir Nicolas, 41, 370 
 
 , Sir Roger, ancestry and 
 
 education, 2-5 ; attempt on King's 
 Lynn, 11-14 ; trial and condemna- 
 tion, 15-20 ; his part in the Kentish 
 Rising, 22-32 ; in exile, 33-5 ; inter- 
 view with Cromwell, 39 ; social life 
 under the Protectorate, 39-41 ; 
 activities during the Interregnum 
 struggle, 48-66; his truculent be- 
 
INDEX 
 
 437 
 
 L'Estrange — continued 
 haviour at the Restoration, 68-72 ; 
 his Apology to Clarendon, 72-3 ; his 
 first appearances as ' Bloodhound of 
 the Press', 74-5; attack on Pres- 
 byterian Divines, 76-83, his Toleration 
 Discuss' d, 85 ; his Caveat to the 
 Cavaliers, 89-91 ; attack on Ric. 
 Baxter, 108-9 ; his tracking down of 
 the 'Confederates', in -20; his 
 appointment as Surveyor of the Press, 
 129; his Considerations and Proposals, 
 133-4 1 J^'S conduct of the Newsbook, 
 142-53 ; his loss of the news 
 monopoly, 153-5 1 his renewed ac- 
 tivity against the seditious Press, 
 167-78 ; the King admonishes him 
 to be more strict, 183-7 ; he is 
 accused of corruption, 193 ; his de- 
 putation as licenser ceases, 195 ; 
 renewed charges against him, 200- 
 2 ; he is again deputed licenser and 
 renews his activity, 203-5 J his un- 
 friendly relations with the Stationers, 
 206 - 10 ; his appearance before the 
 Libels Committee of the House of 
 Lords, 211 -17; the part he played 
 in the Popish ' Plot ' crisis, 223 - 4, 
 228-30 ; his sceptical History of the 
 Plot, 240-3 ; he is attacked in the 
 Preface to Care's History of the 
 Damnable Popish Plot, 246-7 ; and by 
 T. Gates publicly, 250-5 ; his ex- 
 amination before the Council, 257-8 ; 
 his flight, 258-9 ; L'Estrange in exile, 
 260-4 ' his return heralded by Dis- 
 senters' Sayings, 266-7; h\sObservator 
 started, 279 ; his malevolence to 
 CoUedge and others, 282-3 '■> his Notes 
 on Stephen CoUedge, 290 ; his in- 
 trigue with young Tonge, 292 - 4 ; 
 his attacks on Prance, 294 - 6 ; his 
 leading part in the renewed persecu- 
 tion of Dissenters, 298-300 ; his 
 Considerations, etc. , upon ' The Speech 
 of the late Lord Russell ', 312 ; he aids 
 in tracking down the Rye House 
 conspirators, 314, 323 ; his sugges- 
 tions for dealing with the Stationers, 
 325-6 ; his letters to Sec. Jenkins on 
 the state of parties in the city, 331-6 ; 
 his final exposure of Titus Gates and 
 Prance, 336-50 ; he attacks the Whig 
 divines ; the Church, 352-6 ; protests 
 himself a true member of the English 
 Church, 359; his election as M.P. 
 for Winchester, 362 - 4 ; his com- 
 paratively mild treatment at the 
 Revolution, 367-9 ; his return to 
 purely literary employments, 369 ; 
 relations to his family, 369 - 70 ; his 
 daughter's apostasy, 372-3 ; his deal- 
 
 ings with the booksellers, 375 ; his 
 
 death, 374 
 L Estrange, a Papist, 257 
 L' Estrange, his Apology, 72-3 
 L'Estrange's Case, 257 
 L' Estrange' s Sayings, 260, 264 
 Lxtter, A, Intercepted, etc., 260 
 Letter, A, to a Dissenter, 325, 351^ 
 Letter from a Person of Qtiality, 197, 
 
 203 
 Letters to Miles Prance, 338, 347 
 Lex Draconica, 325 
 Libels, " Prorogation," 209 et seg., 
 
 218 
 
 , seditious, 1667-74, 164 
 
 Licensing, fees for, 202 ; difficulties 
 
 of, 195 
 
 Bill, 1661, 105 
 
 , Bishops and, 186 
 
 Lilly's Almanac, 166 
 Literary Magazine, 405 
 Livesey, Sir Michael, 27 
 Lloyd, Bishop of St Asaphs, 347 
 
 , Henry, printer, 194 
 
 Lobb, Stephen, 316 
 
 Locke, John, 135, 197, 392 
 
 Lodge, Thos., his Seneca, 387 
 
 London Gazet, 147-50, 199, 228 
 
 London's Flames, 167 
 
 London's Wonders, 225 
 
 Long Parliament Dissolved, 210 et seq. 
 
 Lord's Libels Committee, 197 et seq. 
 
 Lucas, Lord, his speech in Parliament 
 
 against L'Estrange, 257 
 Luttrel, Narcissus, Diary, 228, 254 
 
 Mabbot, Gilbert, licenser, 102 
 MachiaveV s Advice to his Son, 409 
 Maidstone, 23 ; occupation of, 24-9, 
 
 3i« 
 Malice Defeated, 255 
 Malone and the booksellers, 375 
 Manchester, Edward Montague, second 
 
 Earl of, 8-10 
 Manton, Dr, 76, 104 
 Marsden, Rev., 315 
 Marvell, Andrew, 93, 2i6«, 405 ; his 
 
 Divine in Mode, 203 ; and the Appeal 
 
 from the Country to the City, 255 ; 
 
 and the Licencing Bill, 197 
 Masson, Prof. David, 43, 51 
 Matteis, Nicola, 39 
 Maxwell, Nan, 305 
 Mayne, Simon, 320 
 Mearne, Sam., 173, 181-4, 193, 204 
 
 et seq. 
 Medal Reversed, The, 229 
 Medway, The, 26-7, 30 
 Mefnento, A, etc., 41, 70-1, 92-3, 107 
 Mene Tekel, 122 
 
 Menzies, alias Kildare, Katherine, 321 
 Mercurius Aulicus, 8, i6n 
 
438 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Mercuritis Librarius, 193 
 
 Mercnrius Politicus, 106, 126 
 
 Mercurins Publicus, 140 
 
 Meziriac's Life of ^^ sop, 398 
 
 Midgely, Dr, 378 
 
 Mills, Dr, 15-19 
 
 Milton, John, 47-8, 51, 57-8 ; and the 
 Restraint on the Press, 98 
 
 Mint, The, 337 
 
 Moderation a Virtue, 302 « 
 
 Modest Plea for the Caveat, A, 89 
 
 Monk, 51 et seq. 
 
 Monmouth, 282, 332 
 
 Monmouth's Rebellion, 364 
 
 Moore, Harry, clerk to Godfrey, 348 
 
 , Sir John, 277, 294, 310; and 
 
 Jenkins, 302 
 
 , Susannah, bookseller, 169 
 
 Mordaunt, Sir Charles, 6-7, 71 
 
 Morley, Bishop of Worcester, 81 
 
 , Mr, 362-3 
 
 Morrice, Secretary, 109 
 
 Motteux's Don Quixote, 390 ; Gentle- 
 man^ s Journal, 400 
 
 Muddiman and the Newsletter, 50, 129, 
 140-8, 152-3, 155, 198 
 
 *' Murder" Committee, 313;? 
 
 Murder Will Out, 116, 356 
 
 Musgrave, Sir Wm. , 169 
 
 Naked Truth, The, 199 
 
 Nalson, Dr, 229, 345, 348 
 
 Nantes, Revocation of Edict of, 298 
 
 Naufragium, The, 389 
 
 Nesbit, Jas., 171, 308, 316 
 
 Nevil, Henry, 278, 334 
 
 New News from Toryland, 288 
 
 Newark, 9, 12 
 
 Newcombe, Thos., printer of the Gazet, 
 
 112, 154-6, 179, 253 
 Newdegate, Lady Newdigate, 155 
 News from Parnassus , 201 
 Newsbook at the Restoration, The, 140 
 , L'Estrange's declaration, 1663, 
 
 129, 142 
 Newsletters, a later phase, 217, 328-30 ; 
 
 suppressed, 360 
 Nicholas, Secretary, 127 
 No Blinde Guides, 63-4 
 No Fool to the Old Fool, 59 
 Noble Peer's Speech, A , 263 
 N onconformiste Anglois dans ses Ecris, 
 
 Le, 265 
 North, Life of the Lord Keeper, 198 
 North, Roger, and the " Plot," 239 
 Norton, Roger, 138, 175, 181 
 Norwich, Geo. Goring, Earl of, 23, 
 
 30-2 
 
 , Loyal Address, 281 
 
 Notes and Queries, 397^ 
 
 Gates, Titus, i, 262 ; his Narrative of 
 
 the Plot, 234-5 ; his Portraicture of 
 King James, 224, 358 ; and the St 
 Omer's witnesses, 248 ; attacks 
 L'Estrange, 251, 255; and Young 
 Tonge, 292 ; his appeals to the King 
 and Sancroft, 341-2 ; his defence, 337 
 
 Observator, The, 232, 263, 267, 278-80, 
 294-5 J ^^d the Fire, 166 ; Proved a 
 Trimmer, 224, 243, 346, 356-7 ; on 
 Colledge and the Whig Petitions, 
 282; presented, 283, 327-9; Defended, 
 300, 360; or The History of Hodge, 
 367 ; Vindication of, 355 ; A Pleasant 
 Conference upon, 354^ ; final exposure 
 of Gates, 337 
 
 Ggilby, John, 396 
 
 Oglethorpe, Major, 340 
 
 Gldenburg, Henry, 195 
 
 Omnia Comesta a Belo, 176 
 
 Gwen, Dr, 170 
 
 Gxenden.Parhamentary Commissioner, 
 27 
 
 Gxford, 8, 12, 16-18, 267-8 ; Gazet, 149 ; 
 University Press, 326 ; and Filmer- 
 ism, 366 
 
 Palmer, Roger, Earl of Castlemaine, 
 
 167, 172 
 Pamphleteers, Tory, 295 
 Papillon, 298 
 Parker, Bishop, 366 ; his History of 
 
 His Own Time, 225 
 Parkhurst, Thos., bookseller, 322 
 Parliament of 1678, 154 ; of 1685, 361 
 Parliamentary Intelligencer, 140 
 Parliamentum Pacificum, 351 
 Paston, Wm., Earl of Yarmouth, 202, 
 
 280-1 
 Patentees, 103 
 Penenden Heath, 31-2 
 Penny Post, The, 278 
 Pepys and A Fourth Advice to the 
 
 Painter, i68n ; and the Newsbook, 
 
 146-7, 152 ; and the Fire, 158 
 Petitions and Addresses, 278 
 Petyt, Wm., 306-7 
 Phillips, John, 323, 336 ; his translation 
 
 of Don Quixote, 2,82n ; his Speculum 
 
 Crape-Gownorum, 330^ 
 Phoenix, The, 112, 118 
 Plain English, 60 
 
 Plea, A , for Limited Monarchy , 57, 410 
 ' Plot ', The, in disrepute, 296 ; Meal- 
 tub, 252 
 , Narratives, 235-7; trials, property 
 
 rights in printing, 242 ; newspapers, 
 
 274-7 ; sermon, 313 
 Plymouth, attempt to betray, 16 
 Poe, Capt., 8 
 
 Poggio, the Florentine, 393 
 Pomfret, Rev. Sam., 301;? 
 Poor Whores Petition, 173-6 
 
INDEX 
 
 439 
 
 Pope, Alex, the poet, 299;?, 399 
 
 burning at Smithfield, 1680, 259 
 
 , Dr V/alter, 81 
 
 Pordage, Samuel, 217 
 
 Portraiture of Roger L' Estrange, 258?? 
 
 Powell, Vavasour, 176 
 
 Prance, Miles, 235, 246-7, 257 ; and the 
 
 Observator, 294-5 '■> ^^^ connfession, 
 
 349 ; his Proscript to the Observator, 
 
 341 ; his Vindication, 343 
 Prentice Feasts, 287 
 Presbyterian Paternoster, 202 
 Press Act, Macaulay on the revival of, 
 
 364 ; final expiration of, 1695, 365 ; 
 
 a new to be prepared, 1676, 210 
 , a free. May 1679, 232 ; and the 
 
 coffee-houses, 198 ; Restraint on the, 
 
 96 et seq. ; Statutes, 102 et seq. ; 
 
 Surveyor of the, 106 
 Press Press' d and Overpress'd, loi, 178 
 Printers' complaint. The, 1629-30, 
 
 lOI 
 
 Printing Houses, A list of, 194 ; in- 
 quest of the, 178-80 
 Prodigals Return Home, 328 
 Prosser, Enoch, 321, 357 
 Prynne, Wm. , 50, 65, ioi« 
 Publick Advertisements, 151 
 Publick Intelligencer, The, 140 
 
 Radclifte, Joseph, 349 
 
 Ralphson, Rev., 315 
 
 Reasons, etc., for the Liberty of Un- 
 licensed Printing [monni), 217, 369 
 
 Rebour, P. R., 399 
 
 Redmayne, John, printer, 209 
 
 Reflexions on Morality, 388 
 
 Relaps'd Apostate, 79 
 
 Reply to the Reasons of the Oxford 
 Clergy, etc., 365^, 410 
 
 Restoration Prose, styles which emerged, 
 406 
 
 Rex, Wilton, 98 
 
 Rights of the Kingdom, The, 284 
 
 Rochefoucauld's Maximes, 388 
 
 Rochester, 23-4, 26-31 
 
 Room for the Cobbler, 171, 174-6 
 
 Rope for Pol, A, iii, 139 
 
 Roper, Abel, 193 
 
 Rosewell, Rev. Wm,, 335 
 
 Royal Society, 196 
 
 Roycroft, Major, 193 
 
 Rump Enough, or Quaerie for Quaerie, 
 
 59 
 Rump, The, 44, 55 
 Rumsey, the conspirator, 333 
 Rupert, Prince, 17-19 
 Rushworth, John, 8, 12-16 
 Russell's, Lord, Speech, 307 
 Rye House Plot, 314 et seq. 
 
 Sam's Coffee-house, 358 
 
 Sancroft, 342 
 
 Sandwich, 26-8 
 
 Sare, Ric, bookseller, 368^ 
 
 Saunders, L. C. J., Observations on, 22 
 Car. II., Cap. I., ^oon 
 
 Savile, George, first Marquis of Halifax, 
 199 
 
 , Sir H., 380 
 
 Sawbridge, George and Tom, book- 
 sellers, 209 
 
 Saxmundham, 317 
 
 Scot, Secretary, Thos,, 54-6, 61-2 
 
 Scotch Pedlars, 297, 309, 3i5« 
 
 Scott, Sir Walter, 342 
 
 Scroggs and the ' Plot ', 245, 272;? 
 
 Scroggs, A New Years Gift to, 240^ 
 
 Seasonable Discourse, A, etc., 219-21 
 
 Seasonable Word, A, etc., 57 
 
 Seneca's Morals Abstracted, 345, 387-8 
 
 Settle, Character of a Popish Successor, 
 'Z'zSn 
 
 , Stage-manager of the Pope- 
 burning, 1680, 259 
 
 Seymour, Capt. John, 205 et seq. 
 
 Shadwell's Dedication to Bury Fair, 
 286 
 
 , Thos., 324 
 
 Shaftesbury, Anthony Hugh Cooper, 
 first Earl of, 258, 281, 290, 349 ; and 
 the Rye House Plot, 307; Trial of, 
 286 
 
 Shammer Shammed, The, 236^, 291-3, 
 339 
 
 Sherbourne, Sir Edward, 3S0 
 
 Sheriffs election, 305 
 
 Short Answer to a Whole Letter of 
 Libellers, 257 
 
 Shower, Sir Bartholomew, 312 
 
 Sidney, Sussex, Cambridge, 2 
 
 Sittingbourne, 26 
 
 Sitwell, Sir George, First Whig, 219, 
 256^ 
 
 Slaney, Capt., 6 
 
 Smectymnutis Revived, 76 
 
 Smith, Aaron, 319 
 
 , Frank, 110-13, 168-9, 188, 193, 
 
 206, 304 ; his Protestant Intelligence, 
 233 ; his trial, 272 ; his flight, 
 
 320« 
 
 , J., his Current Intelligence, 
 
 233 
 
 , Ralph, 182 
 
 , Rev. Sam, 211 
 
 Smithies, Rev. Wm., 353 
 
 Spanish Decameron, 390 
 
 Spectator, attack on L'Estrange, 402 
 
 Sprat, Bishop of Rochester, 314 
 
 Stacey, Ed., 394-5 
 
 Stanbridge, J. W., 408 
 
 Starkey, Sam, 319-20 
 
 Stationers' Company, i, 102-4, 167, 
 
 172; Proposed Byelaws for, 184, 
 
440 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Stationers' Company — contimied 
 204 ; Regulations for, 215-16 ; Law 
 Lords and, 213 ; struggle between 
 L'Estrange and, 212 ; Case of, v. 
 Seymour, 1678, 221 
 
 , and Rye House Plot, 323 
 
 , and the Classics, 339 
 
 , A new Charter for the, 325 et seq. 
 
 , Corruption of, 205 et seq. 
 
 , Court and L'Estrange, 208 
 
 Stephens, (Stevens), Robt., Messenger 
 of the Press, 180, 273-6, 327, 369 
 
 St Evremond's Memoirs, 372, 391 
 
 Strange' s Case Strangely Altered, 259 
 
 Streater, Col. John, 179 ; his Character 
 of a True and False Shepherd, 
 187 
 
 Strickland, 37 
 
 Stubbing, Lt., 13 
 
 Surveyor and Stationers, 204 
 
 , exactions of the, 202 
 
 Surveyor's oppressions, 201 
 
 Surveyorship, Proposals for the, 127 
 
 Sweet Singers of Israel, 216 
 
 Swift, Jonathan, 299^ 
 
 Sydney, Algernon, 332 
 
 Tacitus of Sir H. Savile, 404 
 
 , proposed translation of, 401 
 
 Tanner, Dr, 373 
 
 Teage, George, 16 
 
 Temple, Sir Wm., 232, 397 
 
 Terence translated, 382, 398 
 
 Term Catalogues, 193, 203, 249 
 
 Thanet, Earl of, 25, 27 
 
 Thompson, Nat., 180, 2018 et seq., 273-4, 
 
 335, 338 ; and the Godfrey mystery, 
 
 303 ; in the pillory, 304^ ; Song in 
 
 Praise of the Stationers' Coy., 216; 
 
 True Domestick Intelligencer, 233 
 
 , Rev. Rich., 260, 332^ 
 
 Thurloe, 39 
 
 Tichborne, Robt., 19, 48 
 
 Tokefield, George, 193 
 
 Toleration Discussed, 84 
 
 Tonge, Dr Israel, 217, 340-1 ; Royal 
 
 Martyr, 253 
 , Simson, 23672, 291-4; and 
 
 Colledge, 252 ; his Vindication 
 
 against the Obsei'vator, 293 
 Tonson, Jacob, bookseller, 375 
 Tooke, Ben., bookseller, 282 
 Trap ad Crucem, 225, 237 
 Treason Arraigned, 62 
 Treby, Sir G., 280 
 Trimmer, Mr, 336, 353 
 Truth and Loyalty Vindicated, etc.. 
 
 Two Cases Submitted to Consideration, 
 
 etc., 374«, 409 
 Two Papers of Proposals, 75 
 
 Twynne, John, in, 180 
 Tytan, Francis, 90 
 
 Tytler, Essay on Translation, 379, 
 406 
 
 Uniformity, Act of, 93 
 
 Vicars, John, 8-9, 12-14 
 Vision, The, of the Maid, 276 
 
 Wakeman, Sir George, trial of, 239, 
 
 271 
 Waller, Sir Wm,, 273-4, 347 
 Wallingford Council, 47-9 
 Wallis, Dr, and the University Press, 
 
 326 
 , Ralph, 125, 171, 308 ; his Felo 
 
 de se, 176 
 Walton, Colonel, 10-13 
 Warcup, Sir Edward, 366 
 Ward, Dr Seth, 2« 
 
 , Ned, dfOn 
 
 . Sir Patience, 277 
 
 Warrant, General Search, 185 
 Warwick, Sir Robt. Ritch, second Earl 
 
 of, 7 
 
 , Wm., preacher, 123 
 
 Weekly Pacquet of Advice from Rome, 
 
 232-4 
 Weldon, Sir Anthony, 25 
 West, Information of, 310 
 Weyman, Stanley, his Shrewsbury, 155, 
 
 3i7« 
 Whip, A, for the Schismatical Anim- 
 
 adverter, etc., 82 
 Whitelocke, Bulstrode, 8 
 Wildman, Major, 333-4 
 Willia.ms, Mr J. B., and the Newsbook, 
 
 165 ; and John Twynne, 121 
 Williamson, Sir Joseph, 150 et seq., 174, 
 
 182, 196 
 Willis, Dr, 174 
 Winchester, election at, 362 
 Winnington, Sir P., and the CouraJit, 
 
 2.J2 ; speech against Danby, 223% 
 Winter, John, printer, 182, 194 
 Withans, Mr Justice, 346, 359 
 Withers, George, 104, 137, 386 
 Wood, Anthony, 2«, 248;? 
 Word, A, Concerning Libels and 
 
 Libellers, 277-S, 284 
 Wordsworth, 33 
 
 Yarmouth, Lady, 346 
 Yeoman, Robt., 16 
 
 York, Duke of, and the Fire, 164^, 
 ^202, 335 
 Young Man's Plea, 218 
 
 Zekiel and Ephraim, 252, 291 
 Zigliae Amores, 202 
 
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