Men tried to read the countenance of every
minister
as he went through the throng to and from the Royal closet.
Hunt - Fourth Estate - History of Newspapers and Liberty of Press - v1
This Newspaper writer, thus far, did honour to the profession of the press, by bringing to its service much
energy, talent and learning, which, if dimmed at times by party
rancour, still contributed in the main to the improve
ment of the style and manner of early Newspapers.
In the index to the statutes at large, under the heading, " Printers and Printing Press," the reader is
directed to " see seditious societies. "* A fine commen
tary this on the character of our law makers. They
do not legislate to help the press in the good it might effect, but only make laws to cripple it when a govern ment finds such interference convenient. The statutes of Charles the Second afford abundant illustration of this.
Under the new law enforcing the censorship, L'Es trange, the journalist, became the chief executive officer; and, judging by facts that are on record, a scholar and a man of proper feelings must often have blushedfor his new occupation. The Star Chamber was gone beyond
revival, and the Old Bailey became the court where sinners against the press laws were arraigned. The new
statute soon captured a few victims, and a Tyburn audience was assembled to witness the execution of a troublesome printer.
On an October night in 1663, the Licenser L'Es trange, having received secret information, set out on a search for illegal publications. He had with him a
* Raithby's Index to Statutes.
1 10
THE FOURTH ESTATE.
party of assistants, which included four persons, named Dickinson, Mabb, Wickham, and Story. These men were called up after midnight, and made their way by L'Estrange's directions to Cloth Fair. "This had been Milton's hiding-place, when he had fall'n on evil days;" and here now lived another heterodox thinker: a printer named John Twyn, whose press had been betrayed to the authorities as one whence illegal thoughts were spread. When called on afterwards to give evidence as to what happened, Wickham described how he met Mr. L'Estrange near Twyn's house, and how " they knocked at least half an hour before they got in ;" and how they listened, and " heard some papers tumbling down, and heard a rattling above, before they went up. " The door being opened by its unfortunate owner, Wickham was posted at the back door, whilst another stood in front, and the rest of the searchers went over the premises. Efforts had been made to destroy the offending sheets; the type had been broken up, and a portion of the publications had been cast into the next house. Enough, however, was found to support a charge. Twyn's apprentice was
put into the witness box to give evidence against his master, and the judges were ready to coincide with Mr. Serjeant Morton, who appeared for the Crown, and declared Twyn's offence to be treason. The obnoxious book repeated the arguments often urged during the Commonwealth, "that the execution of judgment and justice is as well the people's as the magistrate's duty ; and, if the magistrates pervert judgment, the people are bound by the law of God to execute judg ment without them, and upon them. " In his defence,
SENTENCE ON TWYN. 141
Twyn said, he had certainly printed the sheets; he " thought it was mettlesome stuff, but knew no hurt in it;" that the copy had been brought him by one Cal vert's maid-servant, and that he had got forty shillings by printing it. He pleaded, moreover, in excuse, that he was poor, and had a family dependant on his labour for their bread. Such replies were vain, and the jury found him guilty.
" I humbly beg mercy," cried Twyn, when this
terrible word was pronounced. " I humbly beg mercy never read a word of it. "
; I am a poor man, and have three small children; I
"I
Chief Justice Hyde, to whom this plea for clemency was addressed, "ask mercy of them that can give it: that is, of God and the King. "
'11 tell you what you shall do,"
responded
the
"I humbly beseech you to intercede with His Ma jesty for mercy," piteously exclaimed the condemned
printer.
" Tie him up, executioner," was the only reply; and
Hyde proceeded to pronounce sentence. To read this sentence in the record of the trial makes the blood run cold. " I speak it from my soul," said this syco phant Chief Justice, " I think we have the greatest happiness in the world in enjoying what we do under so gracious and good a King" (this was spoken of
Charles the Second, be it remembered); "yet you, Twyn, in the rancour of your heart thus to abuse him, deserve no mercy ! " After some further expressions of loyalty,
and a declaration that it was high time an example should be made to deter those who would avow the killing of kings, he ordered that Twyn should be
142 THE FOURTH ESTATE.
drawn upon a hurdle to the place of execution ; that he be hanged by the neck, and, being alive, that he should be cut down, and that his body be mutilated in a way which decency now forbids the very mention of ; that his entrails should afterwards be taken out, " and, you still living, the same to be burnt before your eyes; your head to be cut off, and your head and quarters to be disposed of, at the pleasure of the King's Ma jesty. "
" I humbly beseech your Lordship," again cried Twyn in his agony, " to remember my condition, and intercede for me. "
" I would not intercede," replied sanguinary Judge Hyde in the cruelty of his heart, " for my own father in this case, if he were alive. " And the unhappy printer was led back into Newgate, only to leave it for Tyburn ; where the sentence was soon afterwards carried out; his head and the quarters of his body being set up to fester and rot " on Ludgate, Aldersgate, and the other gates of the city. "*
Other printers were seized and tried, but escaped more lightly than Twyn. Simon Dover, Thomas Brewster, and Nathan Brooks, were indicted at the Old Bailey, for printing the speeches and prayers of some of the regicides. Newspapers dared not, under the new regime, publish such things, and the accused printers had ventured on their issue in a separate pamphlet. For this they narrowly escaped the gallows, and their temerity was punished by the pillory, by long imprisonment, and ruinous fines. L'Estrange it was who became the instrument for the apprehension of
. * State Trials, Vol. VI. , p. 539.
printers' HOUSES BROKEN OPEN. 143
all such offenders. His evidence, in one case, will show how he was obliged to proceed. " I came to the house of Nathan Brooks," said he, "about October last, and knocking at the door, they made a difficulty about letting me in. At last, seeing not how to avoid it, Brooks opened the door, and I asked him what he was ? He told me he was the master of the house. By and by comes one that lodged in the house, and throws down this book" (showing a book) " in the kitchen, with this expression, ' I
'11 not be for hanged
never a rogue of you all : Do you hide your books in my chamber ? ' This book had the speeches in it, and other schismatical treatises. After this I searched the next house ; and there I found more difficulty to get in. But, after a long stay, I saw the second floor in a blaze ; and then, with a smith's sledge, I endea voured to force the door, and one comes down and opens the door. I went in, and upstairs, where I found about two hundred copies of the Prelatick Preachers, and certain notes of Nathan Brooks, wherein he men tions the delivery of several of these speeches, and other seditious pamphlets. " A charming occupation this for a Cavalier, a scholar, and a gentleman —a compound of spy, inquisitor, and policeman !
Lord Hyde found another occasion for the display of loyal brutality in the case of Benjamin Keach, who was put on his trial at Aylesbury assizes in 1665, for having written a small book, in which it was urged that laymen might preach the gospel —an indictable doctrine. When brought into court the accused was
treated so shamefully by the judge, that, a century afterwards, the conduct of Hyde became the subject
M! THE FOURTH ESTATE.
of severe comment in the House of Commons. * Keach avowed the authorship of the publication, and would have spoken in defence of but the Chief Jus tice interrupted him, by loudly declaring that the prisoner " should not preach in that court to seduce and infect His Majesty's subjects," and added, " he would try him before he slept. " He did try him, and sentence him also, and Keach stood twice in the pillory whilst his book was burned by the hangman before
his face. fine and imprisonment were also inflicted upon him, which he suffered, "but he was never brought to make recantation. "f Indeed the fortitude of the early martyrs of the press forms prominently remarkable feature in what remains to us of their history.
the censor was also L'Estrange the Newspaper editor. During the Commonwealth, there
were popular journals called the Public Intelligencer, and the Parliamentary Intelligencer. With the Res- toration, and the changes for the worse that made in the Newspapers, came changes of title, and, instead of Parliamentary Intelligencer, the people were offered
Kingdom's Intelligencer. The biographer of the new ruler of the press thus refers to L'Estrange's proceed ings in relation to and also to the career of the
licenser —
L'Estrange, who had received the appointment of licenser
of the press, and held the office until the eve of the Revolution in 1663, for further support, he set up Paper called " The Public Intelligencer and the News " the first of which came out the 1st of August, and continued to be published until January 19, 1665; when he laid down, in the design then
* Parliament. Hist. , Dec. 1770. State Trials, Vol. VI. , p. 710.
L'Estrange
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ROGER L'ESTRANGE. US
concerted of publishing the London Gazette, the first of which Papers made its appearance on Saturday, September 4, Many years later, in 1679, he set up a Paper, called " The Observator," to vindicate the King and Court from the charge of being inclined to Popery. In 1681 he ridiculed the Popish Plot so violently, that he raised himself many enemies. He acted in the same manner with regard to the Fanatic Plot in the follow ing year ; but, having weathered all these storms, he was re warded with the honour of knighthood in the succeeding reign. In 1687 he was obliged to lay down the Observator, as he could not agree with the " toleration proposed by His Majesty, though in all other respects he had gone the utmost lengths. " His advocacy of the measures of James the Second caused him to be suspected of Popery, and he was at considerable pains to contradict the charge. On the accession of William and Mary, he was looked upon as a disaffected person, and attacked by many of the writers of the day. Even the Queen herself showed her contempt of him, by the following anagram she made on his name :—
" Roger L'Estrange,
Lying strange Roger. "
Among others who attacked the character of Sir Roger was
the noted Miles Prance, who was convicted of perjury in the affair of the murder of Sir Edmundbury Godfrey. Echard, in his History of England, gives us an anecdote of these two worthies, which seems characteristic of both parties. Echard says that Dr. Sharp told him, when Archbishop of York, that while he was Rector of St. Giles's-in-the-Fields,
L'Estrange, the famous Richard Baxter, and Miles Prance, on a certain sacrament day, all approached the communion table, L'Estrange at one end, Prance at the other, and Baxter in the middle;
that these two by their situation were administered to before L'Estrange, who when it came to his turn, taking the bread in his hand, asked the doctor if he knew who that man (pointing to Prance) on the other side of the rails was ; to which, the doctor answering in the negative, L'Estrange replied, " That is Miles Prance, and I here challenge him, and solemnly declare before God and this congregation, that what that man has sworn
VOL. I.
K
146 THE FOURTH ESTATE.
or published concerning me, is totally and absolutely false, and may this sacrament be my perdition if all this declaration be not true. " Echard says that Prance was silent, Mr. Baxter took special notice of and Dr. Sharp declared that he would have refused Prance the sacrament had the challenge been made in time.
Sir Roger L'Estrange died September 11, 1704, in the eighty-eighth year of his age he was buried in the Church of
St. Giles's-in-the-Fields, where an inscription to his memory was placed. Granger says,* " He was one of the great cor rupters of our language, by excluding vowels and other letters not commonly pronounced, and introducing pert and affected phrases. Speaking of Queen Mary's anagram on L'Estrange, Granger remarks, " This naturally introduces the distich made by Lee, who by years was so strangely altered as scarce to be recollected by his old friend —
Faces may alter, names can't change
am strange Lee altered; you are still L'Estrange. "
The restraint of the press was not exercised without producing murmurs from those who suffered
and L'Estrange's was not the only pen called into activity in defence of the obnoxious law. In 1679, the Church supplied an advocate for the censor ship, when one Dr. Francis regory, rector of Humble- don, came to the aid of the Government with what he entitled, " Modest Plea for the Due Regulation of the Press, humbly submitted to the judgment of au thority. " On the opposite side there appeared pleader who attracted much attention by pamphlet described as " Just Vindication of Learning, or Humble Address to the High Court of Parliament in behalf of Liberty of the Press, by Philopatris. "t The
writerof this says: — " Nothing would be more conducive Biog. Hist. Engl. , Vol. IV. , p. 70. London, 1769.
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AN ARGUMENT FOR A FREE PRESS. 147
( for the preventing of the Popish priests doing mischief)
than the propagating of wisdom and
among the populace; since, as ignorance renders men obedient and susceptible of the meanest slavery, so does it contrary put all men on their guard : Omnes
enim nos sumus, aut corvi qui lacerant, aut cadavera quce lacerantur. Now, for the more speedy effecting hereof, there hath never been discovered any better
expedient amongst men than that of the liberty of the press, whereby whoever opposes the public interest are exposed and rendered odious to the people ; as, on the contrary, they who merit well of their country are ever recorded with immortal honour to posterity. So that if fame and ambition (as all generous souls must acknowledge) have so great an influence over the
minds of active men, what can be more reasonable, what can be more serviceable to the world, than that which hurries men into a necessity, either of acting vir tuously, or of forfeiting their so-much-desired honour for ever? And such I take to be the consequence
of a free press. From which consideration, since the late act, which laid that severe restraint upon printing, is so near expiring, my humble address to your Lord ships, and to you, Gentlemen of the House of Commons, is that, before you proceed to the continuation of
knowledge
anything of that nature, you will condescend so far as to look down upon these ensuing arguments against any such inquisition or embargo upon science. " Philopatris makes free use of Milton's suggestions and authorities, and speaks out most bitterly against licensers and licensing. He reminds the Parliament
that " truth needs no policies, no stratagems, no licens- kM
MS THE FOURTH ESTATE.
ings to render her victorious ; these are only the shifts and defences that error uses against her power. "
In the notice of L'Estrange's career, we have seen that the London Gazette, which still lives amongst us as the vehicle for bankrupt lists and other official notices, was started in 1 665 ; the first number appearing at Oxford, and being called the Oxford Gazette. The reason for this title resides in the fact, that the King and the Court had fled from London to avoid the Great Plague which was then devastating the metro polis, and it being determined that a Royal Gazette, — something like the work under the same title which had appeared in Paris, and which had, doubtless, often
helped to amuse Charles when in exile, —should be published, this work was dated and designated from the
where the first number of it appeared. When Charles returned to Whitehall the new Paper followed in his train, and tookthe name of London Gazette, by which it has ever since been known. It was first placed under the control of Sir Joseph Williamson,* who
* Williamson was the son of Joseph Williamson, vicar of Bride- kirk, in Cumberland. He was first appointed clerk to Rich. Tolson, Esq. , Member of Parliament for Cockermouth ; and after holding several other offices was, in 1677, sworn one of the clerks of the Council in Ordinary, and knighted. He was Under-Secretary of State in 1665, when he procured for himself the writing of the Oxford Gazette. For several years he represented the borough of Thetford. At the treaty of Cologne, he was one of the British plenipotentiaries with the Earl of Sutherland and Sir Sealin Jenkins ; and, at his return, was sworn prin cipal Secretary of State. Nov. 18, 1678, being committed to the Tower for granting commissions and warrants to Popish recusants, he was released the same day by the King, in opposition to the House. He resigned his place as Secretary in 1678, and was succeeded by the Earl of Suther land, who is said to have given Sir Joseph a large sum of money for it. Sir Joseph was President of the Royal Society in 1678, and a great
place
ILLEGAL PARLIAMENTARY REPORTS. 149
appointed a Mr Charles Perrot to edit the new Paper a duty which called, in this case, for no great stretch of
genius. The Gazette contained only what was agree able to the King.
The refusal to permit the publication of Parlia mentary reports led to the surreptitious printing of occasional speeches of members, and now and then to the issue of printed narratives of special discussions. The information for these publications could only be afforded by members themselves, and no men would have run the risk of issuing such illegal works unless they felt deeply interested in acquainting the consti- tuences of the country with their doings. One of these
unlicensed reports was made on the occasion of the debates and resolutions in the House of Lords in April and May, 1675, concerning the bill which proposed " to prevent the dangers which may arise from persons disaffected to the Government. " The philosopher Locke wrote an abstract of this debate at the sugges tion of the Earl of Shaftesbury, and on information supplied by that nobleman. It was published in the form of " a Letter from a Person of Quality to his Friend in the Country," and was widely circulated, to the great vexation of the Privy Council, who evinced
benefactor to Queen's College. He died in 1701, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. The account of his release by Charles is thus related :—" The King sent for the members of the House of Com mons to the banquetting house, where he told them, ' Though you have committed my servant without acquainting me, yet I intend to deal more freely with you, and acquaint you with my intentions to release my Secretary ; ' which he accordingly did before they could draw up an address against so that when they had, the answer, was It too late. ' " — Nobles Granger, Vol. p. 156. Chalmer's Biog. Diet.
I. ,
it,
' is
150 THE FOURTH ESTATE.
their wrath by ordering the publication to be burnt by the hangman. The Earl of Shaftesbury himself subsequently wrote what may be called notices of Parliamentary proceedings. One of these for instance was issued under the title of " A Letter from a Parlia ment man to his Friend, concerning the Proceedings in the House of Commons, this last Sessions begun the 13th of Oct. , 1675. "* Nor must Andrew Marvel be forgotten in the list of those who described the daily proceedings in Parliament when the Government would not permit Newspaper reports. That patriotic member, from 1660 to 1678, regularly transmitted to his constituents at Hull a faithful account of each
The Hon. Anchitell Gray, who for
day's proceedings.
forty years was the representative of Derby, also con tributed to our stock of Parliamentary information by a number of reports made between 1688 and 1694; and these records of what was done in the Legislature during the time when the Newspapers were forbidden to notice the debates, now form a most important addition to our materials forjudging of the history of the period. How much more perfect these materials would have been, had more freedom been permitted to the press, is now painfully evident.
And here, whilst speaking of the operation of the laws upon the press at this period of our history, the notorious Jeffreys must not pass unnoticed, for his unscrupulous brutality was often exercised upon those who were charged with unlicensed printing. One prominentvictim of this judge was Francis Smith,t
who suffered loss of liberty and property for the crime * Pari. Hist. , Vol. IV. t State Trials, Vol VII. , pp. 931—960.
THE VICTIMS OF JEFFREYS. 1-H
of issuing publications unpalatable to the Court. In one case, this victim of the licenser was indicted three
times, and on each occasion the grand jury ignored the bill against him ; yet Jeffreys held him in
separate
gaol, and made him give security for his re-appearance. Another publisher on whom the same judicial tyrant poured out his wrath was Henry Carr, or Cave, in dicted in 1680, for some passages in a Paper entitled The Weekly Packet of Advice from Rome ; which journal first appeared on the 3rd of December, 1678, and was continued till May, 1 680, when it was stopped by the proceedings in which Jeffreys had part. When put on his trial at Guildhall, Carr was described as
" Henry Carr of the parish of St. Sepulchre, gentle man," and he was charged with attempting to scandalize the Government, and to bring it into contempt. In opening the case against the accused, Jeffreys referred to the numerous audience in the court, and said that many " came to know whether or no rascals may have liberty to print what they please. Now," continued this legal authority, " all the judges
of England having been met together to know whether any person whatsoever may expose to the public knowledge any matter of intelligence, or any matter whatsoever that concerns the public, they gave it as their resolution, that no person whatsoever could expose to the public knowledge anything that con cerned the affairs of the public, without license from the King, or from such persons as he thought fit to en trust with that affair. " The Lord Chief Justice Scroggs also declared such to be the law, which was no other than asserting that the King had absolute power over
152 THE FOURTH ESTATE.
the press, and the jury affirmed this view of the state
of things in 1680, by finding Carr guilty. *
Three acts of Parliament, some Royal proclama
tions, Old Bailey trials, and Tyburn executions were, however, ineffectual for the complete subjection of the
From time to time unruly thoughts would find their way into print, and when the religious feelings of the nation were again roused, and when the question of excluding the Duke of York from the throne, on account of his Popish tendencies, was in full debate, a
shower of pamphlets again made their appearance. Amongst the combatants in this war of words was Carr (or Cavet), already mentioned, who wrote against the Church of England party, in a paper which he published weekly in opposition to the Observator conducted by
press.
Another writer took the title of Heraclitus Ridens, and his contributions to the wordy war were afterwards reprinted. About this period it was that the two party names were invented which have cut so con spicuous a figure in the Newspapers from that period even to the present day. In 1679, the word Tory
* See also the cases of Elizabeth Cellier, Benj. Harris, and Jane Curtis. State Trials, Vol. VII.
t Wood in his Athense Oxoniensis, in his Life of Thos. James, when noticing a work called Fiscm Papalis, fyc, observes, "It hath supplied with matter a certain scribbler called Henry Cave, in his ' Weekly Pacquet of Advice from Rome. ' After King James the Second came to the crown, Cave was drawn over so far by the Roman Catholic party, for bread and money sake, and nothing else, to write on their behalf, and to vindicate their proceedings against the Church of England, in his Mercuries ; which weekly came out, entitled ' Public Occurrences truly stated. ' The first of which came out 21st February, 1687, and were by him continued to the time of his death, which happened 8th August,
1688, aged 42 ; he was buried in the yard belonging to the Blackfriars' Church in London. "
L'Estrange.
WHITEHALL THE FOUNTAIN-HEAD FOR NEWS. 153
was first used; the arose soon afterwards.
antagonistic appellation, Whig,
The people, whilst deprived of free Newspapers, had a keen appetite for News, and Macaulay in his History* has given us a graphic sketch of the avidity with which the neighbourhood of the Court was sought
by those who thirsted for information of current events. " Whitehall," he says, " naturally became the chief staple of News. Whenever there was a rumour that anything important had happened, or was about to happen, people hastened thither to obtain intelligence from the fountain-head. The galleries presented the appearance of a modern club-room at an anxious time. They were full of people inquiring whether the Dutch mail was in ; what tidings the express from France had brought; whether John Sobieskyhad beaten the Turks; whether the Doge of Genoa was really at Paris. These were matters about which it was safe to talk
aloud; but there were subjects concerning which infor mation was asked and given in whispers : Had Halifax got the better of Rochester ; was there to be a Parlia ment; was the Duke of York really going to Scotland ; had Monmouth really been summoned from the Hague.
Men tried to read the countenance of every minister as he went through the throng to and from the Royal closet. All sorts of auguries were drawn from the tone in which His Majesty spoke to the Lord President, or from the laugh with which His Majesty honoured a jest of the Lord Privy Seal ; and, in a few hours, the hopes and fears inspired by such slight indications had spread to
all the coffee-houses from St. James's to the Tower. " * History of England, Vol. p. 365.
I. ,
154
THE FOURTH ESTATE.
The same admirable pen gives us a picture of the state of the press in the later days of the feeble and profligate Charles. "In 1685," says Macaulay, "no thing like the daily Paper of our time existed, or could exist. Neither the necessary capital nor the necessary skill was to be found. Freedom too was wanting, a want as fatal as that of either capital or skill. The press was not indeed at that moment under a general censorship. The licensing act, which had been passed
Any
soon after the Restoration, had expired in 1679.
person might therefore print, at his own risk, a history, a sermon, or a poem, without the previous approbation of any public officer; but the judges were unanimously of opinion that this liberty did not extend to Gazettes ; and that, by the common law of England, no man not authorized by the Crown had a right to publish political News. * While the Whig party was still formidable, the Goverment thought it expedient occa sionally to connive at the violation of this rule. Dur ing the great battle of the Exclusion Bill, many Newspapers were suffered to appear ; the Protestant Intelligencer, the Current Intelligence, the Domestic Intelligence, the True News, the London Mercury. None of these was published oftener than twice a week.
None exceeded in size a single small leaf. The quan tity of matter which one of them contained in a year was not more than is often found in two numbers of the Times. After the defeat of the Whigs, it was no longer necessary for the King to be sparing in the use of that which all his judges had pronounced to be his undoubted prerogative. At the close of his reign,
* London Gazette, May 5th and 17th, 1680.
THE LONDON GAZETTE.
15,1
no Newspaper was suffered without his allowance; and his allowance was given exclusively to the London Gazette. The London Gazette came out only on Mondays and Thursdays. The contents generally were a Royal proclamation ; two or three Tory addresses ; notices of two or three promotions, an account of a skirmish between the Imperial troops and the Janissaries on the Danube ; a description of a highwayman ; an announcement of a grand cockfight between two persons of honour; and an advertisement offering a reward for a strayed dog. The whole made up two pages of moderate size. Whatever was commu nicated respecting matters of the highest moment was communicated in the most meagre and formal style. Sometimes, indeed, when the Government was disposed to gratify the public curiosity respecting an important transaction, a broadside was put forth giving fuller details than could be found in the Gazette ; but neither the Gazette, nor any supplementary broadside printed by authority, ever contained any intelligence which it did not suit the purposes of the Court to publish. The most important Parliamentary debates, the most important State trials recorded in our history, were passed over in profound silence. * In the Capital, the coffee-houses supplied in some measure the place of a journal. Thither the Londoners flocked, as the Athe nians of oldflocked to the market-place, to hear whether there was any News. There men might learn how brutally a Whig had been treated the day before in
* For example, there is not a word in the Gazette about the im portant Parliamentary proceedings of November, 1685, or about the trial and acquittal of the seven bishops. —Macaulay.
156 THE FOURTH ESTATE.
Westminster Hall ; what horrible accounts the letters from Edinburgh gave of the torturing the Covenanters ; how grossly the Navy Board had cheated the Crown in the victualling of the fleet; and what grave charges the Lord Privy Seal had brought against the Treasury, in the matter of the hearth money. But people who lived at a distance from the great theatre of political contention could be kept regularly informed of what
*
It is scarcely necessary to say that there were then no Provincial Newspapers. Indeed, except in the Capital, and at two Universities, there was scarcely a printer in the Kingdom. The only press in England, north of Trent, appears to have been at York. " *
Macaulay winds up with a bitter, and perhaps deserved, denunciation of L'Estrange, whose intolerant Toryism, pursued its victims, even beyond the grave, with an inveteracy equal to that of Anthony Wood.
James the Second, like his brother, had a hatred of free Newspapers, and one of the laws made during his short reign was directed against the press. When the intelligence reached him that the Duke of Mon mouth had landed in the west—Argyle being in arms in the north—the Parliament was asked for money to crush the armed rebellion, and for a revival of the statute of 13th and 14th Charles the Second, that the rebellion in type might also be suppressed. The obedient Houses granted both demands, and the tram-
* Life of Thomas Gent. A complete list of all printing-houses in 1724, will be found in Nichols's Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century. There had then been a great increase within a few years in the number of presses, and yet there were thirty-four counties in which there was no printer, one of those counties being Lancashire. —Macaulay.
was passing there only by means of News-letters.
**
FURTHER RESTRICTIONS ON OPINION. 157
mels of printing were strengthened, whilst taxes were spent upon an armed force to keep James upon the throne. The imposition of this additional fetter on free expression calls from the statesman and historian Fox, the remark, that " this circumstance, important as it is, does not seem to have excited much attention at the time, which, considering the general principles then in fashion is not surprising. That it should have been scarcely noticed by any writer," continues he, " is more wonderful. It is time, however, that the terror inspired by the late prosecutions for libels, and violent conduct of the courts upon such occasions, rendered a formal destruction of the liberty of the press a matter of less importance. So little does the magis tracy, when it is inclined to act tyrannically, stand in need of tyrannical laws to effect its purpose. The bare silence and acquiescence of the legislature is in such
a case fully sufficient to annihilate, practically speak
ing, every right and liberty of the subject. "*
The Courts of Law, as well as the Parliament
House, interfered with the press. Soon after the execution of the supposed murderer of Sir Edmunbury Godfrey, there appeared in a Paper of the period a letter criticising the evidence adduced before the coroner's jury, and contending that the deceased knight had destroyed himself, and had not fallen by the hands of others. This letter was published in a journal called The Loyal Protestant Intelligence, the owner of which, one Nathaniel Thompson, was, it appears, known as the " Loyal Protestant Printer. "
Some of the witnesses in the case of Edmundbury * Fox's History of James the Second.
1-58 THE FOURTH ESTATE.
felt aggrieved at these comments in the Newspaper, and a prosecution was instituted against Thompson the printer, and the authors of the critique, William Pain and John Farwell. The trial took place at Guildhall, and a verdict of guilty having been returned, Mr. Justice Jones sentenced Thompson and Farwell to the pillory and to pay a fine of £100, whilst Pain escaped with a fine only. This judgment was carried out. On the 5th of July, 1682, Thompson and Farwell stood in the pillory in the Old Palace Yard at West minster, with this writing over their heads, "For libelling the justice of the nation, by making the world believe that Sir Edmundbury Godfrey murdered himself. "* Had Charles Dickens written in such times, he would inevitably have been made a martyr, had he ventured to give such admirable and useful
descriptions as the one in Pickwick, where the tyran nical rascalities of Mr. Fang are exposed.
The slavery of the press, whilst James the Second held power in England, was further manifested in the case of the pious and exemplary Richard Baxter, who having written a Paraphrase on the New Testament, certain passages were culled from (it said by
and declared to be an attack on the
L'Estrange,)
bishops. The infamous Jeffreys sat as judge in the case, and his coarse brutality towards the pious divine has formed subject of remark to every writer who has referred to the trial. Baxter was condemned, and fined £500, and ordered to lie in prison till the money was paid. A still more cruel case was that of the Eev. Samuel Johnson, who, publishing an address to
State Trials, Vol. VIII. , p. 1389.
*
a
it, is
A CLERGYMAN PILLORIED AND FLOGGED. 159
the Protestants of the army, was arrested and tried at the King's Bench Bar at Westminster, 21st of June, 1686, on a charge of seditious and scandalous libel against the Government. The address was far less severe than most of the leading articles of a modern
morning Paper, yet Johnson was ordered to be de graded from the Church, to be pilloried, and to be flogged from Newgate to Tyburn. This abominable sentence was executed. The ceremony of degradation was performed by three supple and obedient church men, Dr. Crew, Bishop of Durham, Dr. Sprat, Bishop of Kochester, and Dr. White, Bishop of Peterborough. These dignitaries had the prisoner taken to the Chap
ter House of St. Pauls, where they put a square cap upon his head, and then took it off; they then pulled off his gown and girdle, and put a Bible into his hands, "which he not parting with readily, they took from him by force. "* From the cathedral Johnson
was taken to Newgate, where the common hangman awaited him, and he was flogged from the Old Bailey to Tyburn, " which he endured with as firm a courage and as Christian behaviour as ever was discovered on any such occasion ; though, at the same time, he had
a quick sense of every stripe which was given him, with a whip of nine cords, knotted, to the number of
He was likewise put thrice into the pillory, and mulcted of 500 marks. When James's love of Popery had lost him the throne, the Parliament was called upon to take Johnson's case into consideration; and, so great was their sense of the injustice done him, that they declared the judgment to have been illegal
* State Trials, Vol. II. , p. 1352. f State Trials, Vol. II. , p- 1351.
317. "t
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and cruel, and the ecclesiastical proceedings against him to be null and void. They also solicited the new King to grant him some compensation, —which was done.
These attempts for the suppression of printed thought by James had, however, again the effect which was produced by similar tyranny in the times of his
father, Charles the First. The printers of London dared not multiply the opinions of those who differed from the Crown ; but the printers of Holland had no such scruples, and again the shores of England were invaded by pamphlets produced at the Hague. Nor censors, nor custom-houses could stay the force of this inroad. The people would have Protestant books and News. The King issued two proclamations in support of his act of Parliament. These manifestoes were declared to be for " restraining the spreading of false News. " But in vain. The printed paper still poured in from Holland, and a King and Queen soon followed from the same shores to occupy the throne
from which the press-coercing James was compelled to flee.
CHAPTER V.
A CENTURY OF NEWSPAPERS. THE ORANGE INTELLI GENCER OF 1688 TO THE TIMES OF 1788.
" For almost all that keeps up in us, permanently and effectually, the spirit of regard to liberty and the public good, we must look to the unshackled and independent energies of the press. — Hallam's C'awititutional History.
The Orange Newspapers. —The Career of Tutchin. — Judge Jeffreys. — Defoe. — The time of Pope and the first Daily Paper. — Bolingbroke. —Swift. —Addison. —The first Stamp Act and its effects. —Steele expelled the House of Commons. —Fielding. —Foote. —Burke. —Dr. Johnson. —Smollet. —Wilkes. — Churchill. —Junius. —Chatterton. — The House of Commons and the Printers.
THE press was emancipated from the censorship soon after the Revolution, and the Government
(as Macaulay says) immediately fell under the censor ship of the press. Both Whigs and Tories looked to the Papers of the time to gain support for their different opinions, and the people were thus again openly and avowedly appealed to for a judgment on political questions. The Government set up the Orange Intel ligencer for the promulgation and support of their policy, whilst the opposition were equally provided with journals in which the character and proceedings of the authorities were unscrupulously criticised. All
this was favourable to the cause of rational liberty; since, in the contest of argument, there was little fear
but truth would ultimately gain an advantage over
error. The Newspapers too became a sort of safety-
valve by which the effervescing elements of society VOL. I. L
162 THE FOURTH ESTATE.
(so to speak) might find at least a partial means for venting sentiments, which when restrained become dangerous. The press grew rapidly with its increased freedom, and became active, unscrupulous, and influ ential. Speaking of this period, Hallam says : —" vigilance, and indeed for almost all that keeps up in us, permanently and effectually, the spirit of regard to liberty and the public good, we must look to the un shackled and independent energies of the press. " In the reign of William the Third, and through the influence of the popular principle in our constitution, this finally became free. The licensing act, suffered to expire in 1679, was revived in 1685 for seven
In 1692, it was continued till the end of the session of 1693. Several attempts were afterwards made to renew its operation, which the less courtly Whigs combined with the Tories and Jacobites to defeat. *
Both parties indeed employed the press with great diligence in this reign ; but while one degenerated into malignant calumny and misrepresentation, the signal victory of liberal principles is manifestly due to the boldness and eloquence with which they were promul gated. Even during the (short) existence of a cen sorship, a host of unlicensed publications, by the negligence or connivance of the officers employed to seize them, bore witness to the inefficacy of its restric tions. The bitterest invectives of Jacobitism were
* Commons' Journals, 9th January, and 11th February, 1694-5. A bill to the same effect, sent down from the Lords, was thrown out, 17th April, 1695. Another bill was rejected on the second reading in 1697, 3rd April.
For
years.
mount's publication. 163
circulated in the first four years after the Revolution. * Politicians were severely criticised by their opponents, but, since both sides had to pass the same ordeal, the ultimate result was a gradual diminution of partizan violence and a growing moderation, both in the exercise of power and in the acrimony of opposition. " States men had a scrutiny to endure which was becoming day by day more severe. The extreme violence of opinions abated. The Whigs learned moderation in office ; the Tories learned the principles of liberty in opposition. The parties almost constantly approxi mated, often met, and sometimes crossed each other. There were occasional bursts of violence ; but, from the time of the Revolution, those bursts were constantly becoming less and less terrible. "t
The press, though enjoying more liberty, was still occasionally brought in contact with the law when the
Government chose to regard its productions as danger ous. Thus, before the expiration of the licensing act, a publication, entitled " King William and Queen Mary Conquerors," said to have been written by C. Blount, was ordered (1693), by the two Houses of Parliament, to be burned by the common hangman, whilst the licenser, Mr. Bohun, was removed from his office for allowing it to be printed. ! In 1744 Sir John Knight's speech in Parliament against the bill for naturalizing Protestant foreigners having been
* Somer's Tracts passim. John Dunton the bookseller, in the History of his Life and Errors, hints that unlicensed books could be published by a douceur to Robert Stephens, the messenger of the press, whose business it was to inform against them. —Note to Hallam.
t Macaulay's Essays, Vol. p. 204. Tindal's Rapin, Book XXV.
L 2
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printed and circulated by the Tory party, it was ordered by the House, that the speech contained false and scandalous and seditious expressions and reflec tions, and that it be burnt by the hangman. The
attended in Palace Yard to see this order executed. At the end of the same year,* a complaint was made to the House of Commons that a
News-writer, named Dyer, had presumed to take notice of their proceedings in one of his productions, and an order was issued that this offender against the privileges of Parliament, should be summoned by the Serjeant- at-Arms, to attend at the sitting of the House ; a command which he obeyed, and after an examination he acknowledged his offence, and was ordered to kneel at the bar, whilst the Speaker reprimanded him "for
his great presumption. " The Commons afterwards came to a resolution " that no News-letter writers do, in their letters or other papers that they disperse, presume to intermeddle with the debates, or any other proceedings of this House. "t Here was a direct avowal of a determination to keep all their proceedings out of print. The Parliament objected, in fact, to the scrutiny of the people ; but some of their debates were printed, nevertheless, from time to time. Dyer appears not to have been altogether intimidated by the Speaker's censure, for we find on record a story which shows that he still continued to issue his News-letters, and
to mention in them the names of peers of Parliament. " One Dyer," says Kennet, "was justly reprimanded by
the Speaker for presuming to represent the proceed ings of the House. But such a gentle rebuke could
* Dec. 21, 1694. t Pari. Hist, Vol. V. , p. 363.
Serjeant-at-Arms
THE FLYING POST. 165
not reform a fellow who wrote for two very necessitous causes, for the Jacobite party and for bread. But the Lord Mohun rebuked him more effectually some time after; for finding him at one of his factious coffee houses, and showing him a letter, wherein his lordship was named, Dyer owned not knowing my lord; who immediately laid on him with cudgel he had
provided for that purpose, and made him swear to have no more to say of the Lord Mohun. "
In 1697 the Parliament set about the task of re trieving the public credit, and to supply the want of
money the currency of exchequer bills. The News paper known as the Flying Post* thus referred to the
proceedings: — "We hear that when the exchequer notes are given out upon the capilation fund, who soever shall desire specie on them, will have at 5j per cent, of the society of gentlemen that have sub scribed to advance some hundred thousands of pounds, "t The House voted this passage to be malicious insinuation, in order to destroy the credit and currency of the exchequer bills. They ordered the printer, John Salisbury, to be sent for in custody and they
gave leave to bring in bill to prevent the writing, printing, or publishing any News without license. But when such bill was presented by Mr Pulteney
was thrown out before the second reading. " Here was the attempt to revive the licensing act which Hallam refers to. It was, as we have seen, defeated in an early stage of its progress, and this result may be partially attributed to the circulation of tract,! written
Published April 1697. Pari. Hist. , Vol. V. , p.
energy, talent and learning, which, if dimmed at times by party
rancour, still contributed in the main to the improve
ment of the style and manner of early Newspapers.
In the index to the statutes at large, under the heading, " Printers and Printing Press," the reader is
directed to " see seditious societies. "* A fine commen
tary this on the character of our law makers. They
do not legislate to help the press in the good it might effect, but only make laws to cripple it when a govern ment finds such interference convenient. The statutes of Charles the Second afford abundant illustration of this.
Under the new law enforcing the censorship, L'Es trange, the journalist, became the chief executive officer; and, judging by facts that are on record, a scholar and a man of proper feelings must often have blushedfor his new occupation. The Star Chamber was gone beyond
revival, and the Old Bailey became the court where sinners against the press laws were arraigned. The new
statute soon captured a few victims, and a Tyburn audience was assembled to witness the execution of a troublesome printer.
On an October night in 1663, the Licenser L'Es trange, having received secret information, set out on a search for illegal publications. He had with him a
* Raithby's Index to Statutes.
1 10
THE FOURTH ESTATE.
party of assistants, which included four persons, named Dickinson, Mabb, Wickham, and Story. These men were called up after midnight, and made their way by L'Estrange's directions to Cloth Fair. "This had been Milton's hiding-place, when he had fall'n on evil days;" and here now lived another heterodox thinker: a printer named John Twyn, whose press had been betrayed to the authorities as one whence illegal thoughts were spread. When called on afterwards to give evidence as to what happened, Wickham described how he met Mr. L'Estrange near Twyn's house, and how " they knocked at least half an hour before they got in ;" and how they listened, and " heard some papers tumbling down, and heard a rattling above, before they went up. " The door being opened by its unfortunate owner, Wickham was posted at the back door, whilst another stood in front, and the rest of the searchers went over the premises. Efforts had been made to destroy the offending sheets; the type had been broken up, and a portion of the publications had been cast into the next house. Enough, however, was found to support a charge. Twyn's apprentice was
put into the witness box to give evidence against his master, and the judges were ready to coincide with Mr. Serjeant Morton, who appeared for the Crown, and declared Twyn's offence to be treason. The obnoxious book repeated the arguments often urged during the Commonwealth, "that the execution of judgment and justice is as well the people's as the magistrate's duty ; and, if the magistrates pervert judgment, the people are bound by the law of God to execute judg ment without them, and upon them. " In his defence,
SENTENCE ON TWYN. 141
Twyn said, he had certainly printed the sheets; he " thought it was mettlesome stuff, but knew no hurt in it;" that the copy had been brought him by one Cal vert's maid-servant, and that he had got forty shillings by printing it. He pleaded, moreover, in excuse, that he was poor, and had a family dependant on his labour for their bread. Such replies were vain, and the jury found him guilty.
" I humbly beg mercy," cried Twyn, when this
terrible word was pronounced. " I humbly beg mercy never read a word of it. "
; I am a poor man, and have three small children; I
"I
Chief Justice Hyde, to whom this plea for clemency was addressed, "ask mercy of them that can give it: that is, of God and the King. "
'11 tell you what you shall do,"
responded
the
"I humbly beseech you to intercede with His Ma jesty for mercy," piteously exclaimed the condemned
printer.
" Tie him up, executioner," was the only reply; and
Hyde proceeded to pronounce sentence. To read this sentence in the record of the trial makes the blood run cold. " I speak it from my soul," said this syco phant Chief Justice, " I think we have the greatest happiness in the world in enjoying what we do under so gracious and good a King" (this was spoken of
Charles the Second, be it remembered); "yet you, Twyn, in the rancour of your heart thus to abuse him, deserve no mercy ! " After some further expressions of loyalty,
and a declaration that it was high time an example should be made to deter those who would avow the killing of kings, he ordered that Twyn should be
142 THE FOURTH ESTATE.
drawn upon a hurdle to the place of execution ; that he be hanged by the neck, and, being alive, that he should be cut down, and that his body be mutilated in a way which decency now forbids the very mention of ; that his entrails should afterwards be taken out, " and, you still living, the same to be burnt before your eyes; your head to be cut off, and your head and quarters to be disposed of, at the pleasure of the King's Ma jesty. "
" I humbly beseech your Lordship," again cried Twyn in his agony, " to remember my condition, and intercede for me. "
" I would not intercede," replied sanguinary Judge Hyde in the cruelty of his heart, " for my own father in this case, if he were alive. " And the unhappy printer was led back into Newgate, only to leave it for Tyburn ; where the sentence was soon afterwards carried out; his head and the quarters of his body being set up to fester and rot " on Ludgate, Aldersgate, and the other gates of the city. "*
Other printers were seized and tried, but escaped more lightly than Twyn. Simon Dover, Thomas Brewster, and Nathan Brooks, were indicted at the Old Bailey, for printing the speeches and prayers of some of the regicides. Newspapers dared not, under the new regime, publish such things, and the accused printers had ventured on their issue in a separate pamphlet. For this they narrowly escaped the gallows, and their temerity was punished by the pillory, by long imprisonment, and ruinous fines. L'Estrange it was who became the instrument for the apprehension of
. * State Trials, Vol. VI. , p. 539.
printers' HOUSES BROKEN OPEN. 143
all such offenders. His evidence, in one case, will show how he was obliged to proceed. " I came to the house of Nathan Brooks," said he, "about October last, and knocking at the door, they made a difficulty about letting me in. At last, seeing not how to avoid it, Brooks opened the door, and I asked him what he was ? He told me he was the master of the house. By and by comes one that lodged in the house, and throws down this book" (showing a book) " in the kitchen, with this expression, ' I
'11 not be for hanged
never a rogue of you all : Do you hide your books in my chamber ? ' This book had the speeches in it, and other schismatical treatises. After this I searched the next house ; and there I found more difficulty to get in. But, after a long stay, I saw the second floor in a blaze ; and then, with a smith's sledge, I endea voured to force the door, and one comes down and opens the door. I went in, and upstairs, where I found about two hundred copies of the Prelatick Preachers, and certain notes of Nathan Brooks, wherein he men tions the delivery of several of these speeches, and other seditious pamphlets. " A charming occupation this for a Cavalier, a scholar, and a gentleman —a compound of spy, inquisitor, and policeman !
Lord Hyde found another occasion for the display of loyal brutality in the case of Benjamin Keach, who was put on his trial at Aylesbury assizes in 1665, for having written a small book, in which it was urged that laymen might preach the gospel —an indictable doctrine. When brought into court the accused was
treated so shamefully by the judge, that, a century afterwards, the conduct of Hyde became the subject
M! THE FOURTH ESTATE.
of severe comment in the House of Commons. * Keach avowed the authorship of the publication, and would have spoken in defence of but the Chief Jus tice interrupted him, by loudly declaring that the prisoner " should not preach in that court to seduce and infect His Majesty's subjects," and added, " he would try him before he slept. " He did try him, and sentence him also, and Keach stood twice in the pillory whilst his book was burned by the hangman before
his face. fine and imprisonment were also inflicted upon him, which he suffered, "but he was never brought to make recantation. "f Indeed the fortitude of the early martyrs of the press forms prominently remarkable feature in what remains to us of their history.
the censor was also L'Estrange the Newspaper editor. During the Commonwealth, there
were popular journals called the Public Intelligencer, and the Parliamentary Intelligencer. With the Res- toration, and the changes for the worse that made in the Newspapers, came changes of title, and, instead of Parliamentary Intelligencer, the people were offered
Kingdom's Intelligencer. The biographer of the new ruler of the press thus refers to L'Estrange's proceed ings in relation to and also to the career of the
licenser —
L'Estrange, who had received the appointment of licenser
of the press, and held the office until the eve of the Revolution in 1663, for further support, he set up Paper called " The Public Intelligencer and the News " the first of which came out the 1st of August, and continued to be published until January 19, 1665; when he laid down, in the design then
* Parliament. Hist. , Dec. 1770. State Trials, Vol. VI. , p. 710.
L'Estrange
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ROGER L'ESTRANGE. US
concerted of publishing the London Gazette, the first of which Papers made its appearance on Saturday, September 4, Many years later, in 1679, he set up a Paper, called " The Observator," to vindicate the King and Court from the charge of being inclined to Popery. In 1681 he ridiculed the Popish Plot so violently, that he raised himself many enemies. He acted in the same manner with regard to the Fanatic Plot in the follow ing year ; but, having weathered all these storms, he was re warded with the honour of knighthood in the succeeding reign. In 1687 he was obliged to lay down the Observator, as he could not agree with the " toleration proposed by His Majesty, though in all other respects he had gone the utmost lengths. " His advocacy of the measures of James the Second caused him to be suspected of Popery, and he was at considerable pains to contradict the charge. On the accession of William and Mary, he was looked upon as a disaffected person, and attacked by many of the writers of the day. Even the Queen herself showed her contempt of him, by the following anagram she made on his name :—
" Roger L'Estrange,
Lying strange Roger. "
Among others who attacked the character of Sir Roger was
the noted Miles Prance, who was convicted of perjury in the affair of the murder of Sir Edmundbury Godfrey. Echard, in his History of England, gives us an anecdote of these two worthies, which seems characteristic of both parties. Echard says that Dr. Sharp told him, when Archbishop of York, that while he was Rector of St. Giles's-in-the-Fields,
L'Estrange, the famous Richard Baxter, and Miles Prance, on a certain sacrament day, all approached the communion table, L'Estrange at one end, Prance at the other, and Baxter in the middle;
that these two by their situation were administered to before L'Estrange, who when it came to his turn, taking the bread in his hand, asked the doctor if he knew who that man (pointing to Prance) on the other side of the rails was ; to which, the doctor answering in the negative, L'Estrange replied, " That is Miles Prance, and I here challenge him, and solemnly declare before God and this congregation, that what that man has sworn
VOL. I.
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146 THE FOURTH ESTATE.
or published concerning me, is totally and absolutely false, and may this sacrament be my perdition if all this declaration be not true. " Echard says that Prance was silent, Mr. Baxter took special notice of and Dr. Sharp declared that he would have refused Prance the sacrament had the challenge been made in time.
Sir Roger L'Estrange died September 11, 1704, in the eighty-eighth year of his age he was buried in the Church of
St. Giles's-in-the-Fields, where an inscription to his memory was placed. Granger says,* " He was one of the great cor rupters of our language, by excluding vowels and other letters not commonly pronounced, and introducing pert and affected phrases. Speaking of Queen Mary's anagram on L'Estrange, Granger remarks, " This naturally introduces the distich made by Lee, who by years was so strangely altered as scarce to be recollected by his old friend —
Faces may alter, names can't change
am strange Lee altered; you are still L'Estrange. "
The restraint of the press was not exercised without producing murmurs from those who suffered
and L'Estrange's was not the only pen called into activity in defence of the obnoxious law. In 1679, the Church supplied an advocate for the censor ship, when one Dr. Francis regory, rector of Humble- don, came to the aid of the Government with what he entitled, " Modest Plea for the Due Regulation of the Press, humbly submitted to the judgment of au thority. " On the opposite side there appeared pleader who attracted much attention by pamphlet described as " Just Vindication of Learning, or Humble Address to the High Court of Parliament in behalf of Liberty of the Press, by Philopatris. "t The
writerof this says: — " Nothing would be more conducive Biog. Hist. Engl. , Vol. IV. , p. 70. London, 1769.
by
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AN ARGUMENT FOR A FREE PRESS. 147
( for the preventing of the Popish priests doing mischief)
than the propagating of wisdom and
among the populace; since, as ignorance renders men obedient and susceptible of the meanest slavery, so does it contrary put all men on their guard : Omnes
enim nos sumus, aut corvi qui lacerant, aut cadavera quce lacerantur. Now, for the more speedy effecting hereof, there hath never been discovered any better
expedient amongst men than that of the liberty of the press, whereby whoever opposes the public interest are exposed and rendered odious to the people ; as, on the contrary, they who merit well of their country are ever recorded with immortal honour to posterity. So that if fame and ambition (as all generous souls must acknowledge) have so great an influence over the
minds of active men, what can be more reasonable, what can be more serviceable to the world, than that which hurries men into a necessity, either of acting vir tuously, or of forfeiting their so-much-desired honour for ever? And such I take to be the consequence
of a free press. From which consideration, since the late act, which laid that severe restraint upon printing, is so near expiring, my humble address to your Lord ships, and to you, Gentlemen of the House of Commons, is that, before you proceed to the continuation of
knowledge
anything of that nature, you will condescend so far as to look down upon these ensuing arguments against any such inquisition or embargo upon science. " Philopatris makes free use of Milton's suggestions and authorities, and speaks out most bitterly against licensers and licensing. He reminds the Parliament
that " truth needs no policies, no stratagems, no licens- kM
MS THE FOURTH ESTATE.
ings to render her victorious ; these are only the shifts and defences that error uses against her power. "
In the notice of L'Estrange's career, we have seen that the London Gazette, which still lives amongst us as the vehicle for bankrupt lists and other official notices, was started in 1 665 ; the first number appearing at Oxford, and being called the Oxford Gazette. The reason for this title resides in the fact, that the King and the Court had fled from London to avoid the Great Plague which was then devastating the metro polis, and it being determined that a Royal Gazette, — something like the work under the same title which had appeared in Paris, and which had, doubtless, often
helped to amuse Charles when in exile, —should be published, this work was dated and designated from the
where the first number of it appeared. When Charles returned to Whitehall the new Paper followed in his train, and tookthe name of London Gazette, by which it has ever since been known. It was first placed under the control of Sir Joseph Williamson,* who
* Williamson was the son of Joseph Williamson, vicar of Bride- kirk, in Cumberland. He was first appointed clerk to Rich. Tolson, Esq. , Member of Parliament for Cockermouth ; and after holding several other offices was, in 1677, sworn one of the clerks of the Council in Ordinary, and knighted. He was Under-Secretary of State in 1665, when he procured for himself the writing of the Oxford Gazette. For several years he represented the borough of Thetford. At the treaty of Cologne, he was one of the British plenipotentiaries with the Earl of Sutherland and Sir Sealin Jenkins ; and, at his return, was sworn prin cipal Secretary of State. Nov. 18, 1678, being committed to the Tower for granting commissions and warrants to Popish recusants, he was released the same day by the King, in opposition to the House. He resigned his place as Secretary in 1678, and was succeeded by the Earl of Suther land, who is said to have given Sir Joseph a large sum of money for it. Sir Joseph was President of the Royal Society in 1678, and a great
place
ILLEGAL PARLIAMENTARY REPORTS. 149
appointed a Mr Charles Perrot to edit the new Paper a duty which called, in this case, for no great stretch of
genius. The Gazette contained only what was agree able to the King.
The refusal to permit the publication of Parlia mentary reports led to the surreptitious printing of occasional speeches of members, and now and then to the issue of printed narratives of special discussions. The information for these publications could only be afforded by members themselves, and no men would have run the risk of issuing such illegal works unless they felt deeply interested in acquainting the consti- tuences of the country with their doings. One of these
unlicensed reports was made on the occasion of the debates and resolutions in the House of Lords in April and May, 1675, concerning the bill which proposed " to prevent the dangers which may arise from persons disaffected to the Government. " The philosopher Locke wrote an abstract of this debate at the sugges tion of the Earl of Shaftesbury, and on information supplied by that nobleman. It was published in the form of " a Letter from a Person of Quality to his Friend in the Country," and was widely circulated, to the great vexation of the Privy Council, who evinced
benefactor to Queen's College. He died in 1701, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. The account of his release by Charles is thus related :—" The King sent for the members of the House of Com mons to the banquetting house, where he told them, ' Though you have committed my servant without acquainting me, yet I intend to deal more freely with you, and acquaint you with my intentions to release my Secretary ; ' which he accordingly did before they could draw up an address against so that when they had, the answer, was It too late. ' " — Nobles Granger, Vol. p. 156. Chalmer's Biog. Diet.
I. ,
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150 THE FOURTH ESTATE.
their wrath by ordering the publication to be burnt by the hangman. The Earl of Shaftesbury himself subsequently wrote what may be called notices of Parliamentary proceedings. One of these for instance was issued under the title of " A Letter from a Parlia ment man to his Friend, concerning the Proceedings in the House of Commons, this last Sessions begun the 13th of Oct. , 1675. "* Nor must Andrew Marvel be forgotten in the list of those who described the daily proceedings in Parliament when the Government would not permit Newspaper reports. That patriotic member, from 1660 to 1678, regularly transmitted to his constituents at Hull a faithful account of each
The Hon. Anchitell Gray, who for
day's proceedings.
forty years was the representative of Derby, also con tributed to our stock of Parliamentary information by a number of reports made between 1688 and 1694; and these records of what was done in the Legislature during the time when the Newspapers were forbidden to notice the debates, now form a most important addition to our materials forjudging of the history of the period. How much more perfect these materials would have been, had more freedom been permitted to the press, is now painfully evident.
And here, whilst speaking of the operation of the laws upon the press at this period of our history, the notorious Jeffreys must not pass unnoticed, for his unscrupulous brutality was often exercised upon those who were charged with unlicensed printing. One prominentvictim of this judge was Francis Smith,t
who suffered loss of liberty and property for the crime * Pari. Hist. , Vol. IV. t State Trials, Vol VII. , pp. 931—960.
THE VICTIMS OF JEFFREYS. 1-H
of issuing publications unpalatable to the Court. In one case, this victim of the licenser was indicted three
times, and on each occasion the grand jury ignored the bill against him ; yet Jeffreys held him in
separate
gaol, and made him give security for his re-appearance. Another publisher on whom the same judicial tyrant poured out his wrath was Henry Carr, or Cave, in dicted in 1680, for some passages in a Paper entitled The Weekly Packet of Advice from Rome ; which journal first appeared on the 3rd of December, 1678, and was continued till May, 1 680, when it was stopped by the proceedings in which Jeffreys had part. When put on his trial at Guildhall, Carr was described as
" Henry Carr of the parish of St. Sepulchre, gentle man," and he was charged with attempting to scandalize the Government, and to bring it into contempt. In opening the case against the accused, Jeffreys referred to the numerous audience in the court, and said that many " came to know whether or no rascals may have liberty to print what they please. Now," continued this legal authority, " all the judges
of England having been met together to know whether any person whatsoever may expose to the public knowledge any matter of intelligence, or any matter whatsoever that concerns the public, they gave it as their resolution, that no person whatsoever could expose to the public knowledge anything that con cerned the affairs of the public, without license from the King, or from such persons as he thought fit to en trust with that affair. " The Lord Chief Justice Scroggs also declared such to be the law, which was no other than asserting that the King had absolute power over
152 THE FOURTH ESTATE.
the press, and the jury affirmed this view of the state
of things in 1680, by finding Carr guilty. *
Three acts of Parliament, some Royal proclama
tions, Old Bailey trials, and Tyburn executions were, however, ineffectual for the complete subjection of the
From time to time unruly thoughts would find their way into print, and when the religious feelings of the nation were again roused, and when the question of excluding the Duke of York from the throne, on account of his Popish tendencies, was in full debate, a
shower of pamphlets again made their appearance. Amongst the combatants in this war of words was Carr (or Cavet), already mentioned, who wrote against the Church of England party, in a paper which he published weekly in opposition to the Observator conducted by
press.
Another writer took the title of Heraclitus Ridens, and his contributions to the wordy war were afterwards reprinted. About this period it was that the two party names were invented which have cut so con spicuous a figure in the Newspapers from that period even to the present day. In 1679, the word Tory
* See also the cases of Elizabeth Cellier, Benj. Harris, and Jane Curtis. State Trials, Vol. VII.
t Wood in his Athense Oxoniensis, in his Life of Thos. James, when noticing a work called Fiscm Papalis, fyc, observes, "It hath supplied with matter a certain scribbler called Henry Cave, in his ' Weekly Pacquet of Advice from Rome. ' After King James the Second came to the crown, Cave was drawn over so far by the Roman Catholic party, for bread and money sake, and nothing else, to write on their behalf, and to vindicate their proceedings against the Church of England, in his Mercuries ; which weekly came out, entitled ' Public Occurrences truly stated. ' The first of which came out 21st February, 1687, and were by him continued to the time of his death, which happened 8th August,
1688, aged 42 ; he was buried in the yard belonging to the Blackfriars' Church in London. "
L'Estrange.
WHITEHALL THE FOUNTAIN-HEAD FOR NEWS. 153
was first used; the arose soon afterwards.
antagonistic appellation, Whig,
The people, whilst deprived of free Newspapers, had a keen appetite for News, and Macaulay in his History* has given us a graphic sketch of the avidity with which the neighbourhood of the Court was sought
by those who thirsted for information of current events. " Whitehall," he says, " naturally became the chief staple of News. Whenever there was a rumour that anything important had happened, or was about to happen, people hastened thither to obtain intelligence from the fountain-head. The galleries presented the appearance of a modern club-room at an anxious time. They were full of people inquiring whether the Dutch mail was in ; what tidings the express from France had brought; whether John Sobieskyhad beaten the Turks; whether the Doge of Genoa was really at Paris. These were matters about which it was safe to talk
aloud; but there were subjects concerning which infor mation was asked and given in whispers : Had Halifax got the better of Rochester ; was there to be a Parlia ment; was the Duke of York really going to Scotland ; had Monmouth really been summoned from the Hague.
Men tried to read the countenance of every minister as he went through the throng to and from the Royal closet. All sorts of auguries were drawn from the tone in which His Majesty spoke to the Lord President, or from the laugh with which His Majesty honoured a jest of the Lord Privy Seal ; and, in a few hours, the hopes and fears inspired by such slight indications had spread to
all the coffee-houses from St. James's to the Tower. " * History of England, Vol. p. 365.
I. ,
154
THE FOURTH ESTATE.
The same admirable pen gives us a picture of the state of the press in the later days of the feeble and profligate Charles. "In 1685," says Macaulay, "no thing like the daily Paper of our time existed, or could exist. Neither the necessary capital nor the necessary skill was to be found. Freedom too was wanting, a want as fatal as that of either capital or skill. The press was not indeed at that moment under a general censorship. The licensing act, which had been passed
Any
soon after the Restoration, had expired in 1679.
person might therefore print, at his own risk, a history, a sermon, or a poem, without the previous approbation of any public officer; but the judges were unanimously of opinion that this liberty did not extend to Gazettes ; and that, by the common law of England, no man not authorized by the Crown had a right to publish political News. * While the Whig party was still formidable, the Goverment thought it expedient occa sionally to connive at the violation of this rule. Dur ing the great battle of the Exclusion Bill, many Newspapers were suffered to appear ; the Protestant Intelligencer, the Current Intelligence, the Domestic Intelligence, the True News, the London Mercury. None of these was published oftener than twice a week.
None exceeded in size a single small leaf. The quan tity of matter which one of them contained in a year was not more than is often found in two numbers of the Times. After the defeat of the Whigs, it was no longer necessary for the King to be sparing in the use of that which all his judges had pronounced to be his undoubted prerogative. At the close of his reign,
* London Gazette, May 5th and 17th, 1680.
THE LONDON GAZETTE.
15,1
no Newspaper was suffered without his allowance; and his allowance was given exclusively to the London Gazette. The London Gazette came out only on Mondays and Thursdays. The contents generally were a Royal proclamation ; two or three Tory addresses ; notices of two or three promotions, an account of a skirmish between the Imperial troops and the Janissaries on the Danube ; a description of a highwayman ; an announcement of a grand cockfight between two persons of honour; and an advertisement offering a reward for a strayed dog. The whole made up two pages of moderate size. Whatever was commu nicated respecting matters of the highest moment was communicated in the most meagre and formal style. Sometimes, indeed, when the Government was disposed to gratify the public curiosity respecting an important transaction, a broadside was put forth giving fuller details than could be found in the Gazette ; but neither the Gazette, nor any supplementary broadside printed by authority, ever contained any intelligence which it did not suit the purposes of the Court to publish. The most important Parliamentary debates, the most important State trials recorded in our history, were passed over in profound silence. * In the Capital, the coffee-houses supplied in some measure the place of a journal. Thither the Londoners flocked, as the Athe nians of oldflocked to the market-place, to hear whether there was any News. There men might learn how brutally a Whig had been treated the day before in
* For example, there is not a word in the Gazette about the im portant Parliamentary proceedings of November, 1685, or about the trial and acquittal of the seven bishops. —Macaulay.
156 THE FOURTH ESTATE.
Westminster Hall ; what horrible accounts the letters from Edinburgh gave of the torturing the Covenanters ; how grossly the Navy Board had cheated the Crown in the victualling of the fleet; and what grave charges the Lord Privy Seal had brought against the Treasury, in the matter of the hearth money. But people who lived at a distance from the great theatre of political contention could be kept regularly informed of what
*
It is scarcely necessary to say that there were then no Provincial Newspapers. Indeed, except in the Capital, and at two Universities, there was scarcely a printer in the Kingdom. The only press in England, north of Trent, appears to have been at York. " *
Macaulay winds up with a bitter, and perhaps deserved, denunciation of L'Estrange, whose intolerant Toryism, pursued its victims, even beyond the grave, with an inveteracy equal to that of Anthony Wood.
James the Second, like his brother, had a hatred of free Newspapers, and one of the laws made during his short reign was directed against the press. When the intelligence reached him that the Duke of Mon mouth had landed in the west—Argyle being in arms in the north—the Parliament was asked for money to crush the armed rebellion, and for a revival of the statute of 13th and 14th Charles the Second, that the rebellion in type might also be suppressed. The obedient Houses granted both demands, and the tram-
* Life of Thomas Gent. A complete list of all printing-houses in 1724, will be found in Nichols's Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century. There had then been a great increase within a few years in the number of presses, and yet there were thirty-four counties in which there was no printer, one of those counties being Lancashire. —Macaulay.
was passing there only by means of News-letters.
**
FURTHER RESTRICTIONS ON OPINION. 157
mels of printing were strengthened, whilst taxes were spent upon an armed force to keep James upon the throne. The imposition of this additional fetter on free expression calls from the statesman and historian Fox, the remark, that " this circumstance, important as it is, does not seem to have excited much attention at the time, which, considering the general principles then in fashion is not surprising. That it should have been scarcely noticed by any writer," continues he, " is more wonderful. It is time, however, that the terror inspired by the late prosecutions for libels, and violent conduct of the courts upon such occasions, rendered a formal destruction of the liberty of the press a matter of less importance. So little does the magis tracy, when it is inclined to act tyrannically, stand in need of tyrannical laws to effect its purpose. The bare silence and acquiescence of the legislature is in such
a case fully sufficient to annihilate, practically speak
ing, every right and liberty of the subject. "*
The Courts of Law, as well as the Parliament
House, interfered with the press. Soon after the execution of the supposed murderer of Sir Edmunbury Godfrey, there appeared in a Paper of the period a letter criticising the evidence adduced before the coroner's jury, and contending that the deceased knight had destroyed himself, and had not fallen by the hands of others. This letter was published in a journal called The Loyal Protestant Intelligence, the owner of which, one Nathaniel Thompson, was, it appears, known as the " Loyal Protestant Printer. "
Some of the witnesses in the case of Edmundbury * Fox's History of James the Second.
1-58 THE FOURTH ESTATE.
felt aggrieved at these comments in the Newspaper, and a prosecution was instituted against Thompson the printer, and the authors of the critique, William Pain and John Farwell. The trial took place at Guildhall, and a verdict of guilty having been returned, Mr. Justice Jones sentenced Thompson and Farwell to the pillory and to pay a fine of £100, whilst Pain escaped with a fine only. This judgment was carried out. On the 5th of July, 1682, Thompson and Farwell stood in the pillory in the Old Palace Yard at West minster, with this writing over their heads, "For libelling the justice of the nation, by making the world believe that Sir Edmundbury Godfrey murdered himself. "* Had Charles Dickens written in such times, he would inevitably have been made a martyr, had he ventured to give such admirable and useful
descriptions as the one in Pickwick, where the tyran nical rascalities of Mr. Fang are exposed.
The slavery of the press, whilst James the Second held power in England, was further manifested in the case of the pious and exemplary Richard Baxter, who having written a Paraphrase on the New Testament, certain passages were culled from (it said by
and declared to be an attack on the
L'Estrange,)
bishops. The infamous Jeffreys sat as judge in the case, and his coarse brutality towards the pious divine has formed subject of remark to every writer who has referred to the trial. Baxter was condemned, and fined £500, and ordered to lie in prison till the money was paid. A still more cruel case was that of the Eev. Samuel Johnson, who, publishing an address to
State Trials, Vol. VIII. , p. 1389.
*
a
it, is
A CLERGYMAN PILLORIED AND FLOGGED. 159
the Protestants of the army, was arrested and tried at the King's Bench Bar at Westminster, 21st of June, 1686, on a charge of seditious and scandalous libel against the Government. The address was far less severe than most of the leading articles of a modern
morning Paper, yet Johnson was ordered to be de graded from the Church, to be pilloried, and to be flogged from Newgate to Tyburn. This abominable sentence was executed. The ceremony of degradation was performed by three supple and obedient church men, Dr. Crew, Bishop of Durham, Dr. Sprat, Bishop of Kochester, and Dr. White, Bishop of Peterborough. These dignitaries had the prisoner taken to the Chap
ter House of St. Pauls, where they put a square cap upon his head, and then took it off; they then pulled off his gown and girdle, and put a Bible into his hands, "which he not parting with readily, they took from him by force. "* From the cathedral Johnson
was taken to Newgate, where the common hangman awaited him, and he was flogged from the Old Bailey to Tyburn, " which he endured with as firm a courage and as Christian behaviour as ever was discovered on any such occasion ; though, at the same time, he had
a quick sense of every stripe which was given him, with a whip of nine cords, knotted, to the number of
He was likewise put thrice into the pillory, and mulcted of 500 marks. When James's love of Popery had lost him the throne, the Parliament was called upon to take Johnson's case into consideration; and, so great was their sense of the injustice done him, that they declared the judgment to have been illegal
* State Trials, Vol. II. , p. 1352. f State Trials, Vol. II. , p- 1351.
317. "t
100 THE FOURTH ESTATE.
and cruel, and the ecclesiastical proceedings against him to be null and void. They also solicited the new King to grant him some compensation, —which was done.
These attempts for the suppression of printed thought by James had, however, again the effect which was produced by similar tyranny in the times of his
father, Charles the First. The printers of London dared not multiply the opinions of those who differed from the Crown ; but the printers of Holland had no such scruples, and again the shores of England were invaded by pamphlets produced at the Hague. Nor censors, nor custom-houses could stay the force of this inroad. The people would have Protestant books and News. The King issued two proclamations in support of his act of Parliament. These manifestoes were declared to be for " restraining the spreading of false News. " But in vain. The printed paper still poured in from Holland, and a King and Queen soon followed from the same shores to occupy the throne
from which the press-coercing James was compelled to flee.
CHAPTER V.
A CENTURY OF NEWSPAPERS. THE ORANGE INTELLI GENCER OF 1688 TO THE TIMES OF 1788.
" For almost all that keeps up in us, permanently and effectually, the spirit of regard to liberty and the public good, we must look to the unshackled and independent energies of the press. — Hallam's C'awititutional History.
The Orange Newspapers. —The Career of Tutchin. — Judge Jeffreys. — Defoe. — The time of Pope and the first Daily Paper. — Bolingbroke. —Swift. —Addison. —The first Stamp Act and its effects. —Steele expelled the House of Commons. —Fielding. —Foote. —Burke. —Dr. Johnson. —Smollet. —Wilkes. — Churchill. —Junius. —Chatterton. — The House of Commons and the Printers.
THE press was emancipated from the censorship soon after the Revolution, and the Government
(as Macaulay says) immediately fell under the censor ship of the press. Both Whigs and Tories looked to the Papers of the time to gain support for their different opinions, and the people were thus again openly and avowedly appealed to for a judgment on political questions. The Government set up the Orange Intel ligencer for the promulgation and support of their policy, whilst the opposition were equally provided with journals in which the character and proceedings of the authorities were unscrupulously criticised. All
this was favourable to the cause of rational liberty; since, in the contest of argument, there was little fear
but truth would ultimately gain an advantage over
error. The Newspapers too became a sort of safety-
valve by which the effervescing elements of society VOL. I. L
162 THE FOURTH ESTATE.
(so to speak) might find at least a partial means for venting sentiments, which when restrained become dangerous. The press grew rapidly with its increased freedom, and became active, unscrupulous, and influ ential. Speaking of this period, Hallam says : —" vigilance, and indeed for almost all that keeps up in us, permanently and effectually, the spirit of regard to liberty and the public good, we must look to the un shackled and independent energies of the press. " In the reign of William the Third, and through the influence of the popular principle in our constitution, this finally became free. The licensing act, suffered to expire in 1679, was revived in 1685 for seven
In 1692, it was continued till the end of the session of 1693. Several attempts were afterwards made to renew its operation, which the less courtly Whigs combined with the Tories and Jacobites to defeat. *
Both parties indeed employed the press with great diligence in this reign ; but while one degenerated into malignant calumny and misrepresentation, the signal victory of liberal principles is manifestly due to the boldness and eloquence with which they were promul gated. Even during the (short) existence of a cen sorship, a host of unlicensed publications, by the negligence or connivance of the officers employed to seize them, bore witness to the inefficacy of its restric tions. The bitterest invectives of Jacobitism were
* Commons' Journals, 9th January, and 11th February, 1694-5. A bill to the same effect, sent down from the Lords, was thrown out, 17th April, 1695. Another bill was rejected on the second reading in 1697, 3rd April.
For
years.
mount's publication. 163
circulated in the first four years after the Revolution. * Politicians were severely criticised by their opponents, but, since both sides had to pass the same ordeal, the ultimate result was a gradual diminution of partizan violence and a growing moderation, both in the exercise of power and in the acrimony of opposition. " States men had a scrutiny to endure which was becoming day by day more severe. The extreme violence of opinions abated. The Whigs learned moderation in office ; the Tories learned the principles of liberty in opposition. The parties almost constantly approxi mated, often met, and sometimes crossed each other. There were occasional bursts of violence ; but, from the time of the Revolution, those bursts were constantly becoming less and less terrible. "t
The press, though enjoying more liberty, was still occasionally brought in contact with the law when the
Government chose to regard its productions as danger ous. Thus, before the expiration of the licensing act, a publication, entitled " King William and Queen Mary Conquerors," said to have been written by C. Blount, was ordered (1693), by the two Houses of Parliament, to be burned by the common hangman, whilst the licenser, Mr. Bohun, was removed from his office for allowing it to be printed. ! In 1744 Sir John Knight's speech in Parliament against the bill for naturalizing Protestant foreigners having been
* Somer's Tracts passim. John Dunton the bookseller, in the History of his Life and Errors, hints that unlicensed books could be published by a douceur to Robert Stephens, the messenger of the press, whose business it was to inform against them. —Note to Hallam.
t Macaulay's Essays, Vol. p. 204. Tindal's Rapin, Book XXV.
L 2
X
I. ,
in i THE FOURTH ESTATE.
printed and circulated by the Tory party, it was ordered by the House, that the speech contained false and scandalous and seditious expressions and reflec tions, and that it be burnt by the hangman. The
attended in Palace Yard to see this order executed. At the end of the same year,* a complaint was made to the House of Commons that a
News-writer, named Dyer, had presumed to take notice of their proceedings in one of his productions, and an order was issued that this offender against the privileges of Parliament, should be summoned by the Serjeant- at-Arms, to attend at the sitting of the House ; a command which he obeyed, and after an examination he acknowledged his offence, and was ordered to kneel at the bar, whilst the Speaker reprimanded him "for
his great presumption. " The Commons afterwards came to a resolution " that no News-letter writers do, in their letters or other papers that they disperse, presume to intermeddle with the debates, or any other proceedings of this House. "t Here was a direct avowal of a determination to keep all their proceedings out of print. The Parliament objected, in fact, to the scrutiny of the people ; but some of their debates were printed, nevertheless, from time to time. Dyer appears not to have been altogether intimidated by the Speaker's censure, for we find on record a story which shows that he still continued to issue his News-letters, and
to mention in them the names of peers of Parliament. " One Dyer," says Kennet, "was justly reprimanded by
the Speaker for presuming to represent the proceed ings of the House. But such a gentle rebuke could
* Dec. 21, 1694. t Pari. Hist, Vol. V. , p. 363.
Serjeant-at-Arms
THE FLYING POST. 165
not reform a fellow who wrote for two very necessitous causes, for the Jacobite party and for bread. But the Lord Mohun rebuked him more effectually some time after; for finding him at one of his factious coffee houses, and showing him a letter, wherein his lordship was named, Dyer owned not knowing my lord; who immediately laid on him with cudgel he had
provided for that purpose, and made him swear to have no more to say of the Lord Mohun. "
In 1697 the Parliament set about the task of re trieving the public credit, and to supply the want of
money the currency of exchequer bills. The News paper known as the Flying Post* thus referred to the
proceedings: — "We hear that when the exchequer notes are given out upon the capilation fund, who soever shall desire specie on them, will have at 5j per cent, of the society of gentlemen that have sub scribed to advance some hundred thousands of pounds, "t The House voted this passage to be malicious insinuation, in order to destroy the credit and currency of the exchequer bills. They ordered the printer, John Salisbury, to be sent for in custody and they
gave leave to bring in bill to prevent the writing, printing, or publishing any News without license. But when such bill was presented by Mr Pulteney
was thrown out before the second reading. " Here was the attempt to revive the licensing act which Hallam refers to. It was, as we have seen, defeated in an early stage of its progress, and this result may be partially attributed to the circulation of tract,! written
Published April 1697. Pari. Hist. , Vol. V. , p.
