SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.
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in Buckiughamsbire. He wrote a comedy, called the Pragmatical Jesuit, and changed his religion once more, dying a Catholic at last.
1665, Nov. 7—14. The Oxford Gazette, No. 1 . This Cfazette began to be published twice a week, by Leonard Litchfield, in a folio half- sheet, the first of which (undated) contains the news of Nor. 7 — 14, 1665, the king and queen, with the court, being then at Oxford ; and was reprinted in London, by Thomas Newcomb, " for the use of some members and g^ntlemea who desired them :" but upon the remoral of the court to Loudon, it was called the London Ga- zette ; the first of which (No. 24, Feb. 1 — 5,) was pnblished on a Monday, the Oxford one having been published on a Tuesday. The Oxford and lAmdon Gazette! were for several years entered in the stationers' register as the' property of Thomas Newcomb in the Savoy, who had for- merly published for Thurloe, and whose name continues as printer till July 19, 1688.
Richard Allen, a clergyman of the church of England, who was ejected from the living of Batcomb, in Dorsetshire, for nonconformity, published a religious tract, entitled a Vindication of Godlineu, which was, and is, in high re- putation among persons of Calvanistic senti- ments. It consists of three parts, published in 1664 — 6. As it was printea without a license, the king's bookseller, Richard Royston, caused the copies to be seized, but afterwards purchased them uom the king's kitchen, where they were sent as waste paper, and bound them up and sold them ; being, nowever, discovered, he was obliged to make subversion to the privy council, and the books were ordered to be destroyed.
1666. H. Hall, printer to the universiw of Oxford, Printed an edition of the New Testa- ment in the Turkish language. 4to. This tnms- lation appears to have been first suggested to the translator, Mr. William Seaman, by sir Cyril Wiche, and to have been completed under the patronage of the hon. Robert Boyle ; who pro- posed to print it at his own expense, but relin- quished tnat honour to the Levant company, at their request, though he contributed £60 to- wards the publication of it
1666. Miles Flesher gave to the stationers' company two silver salts. — " This bowle And collar was made in the year 1721 out of two large saltes the gift of MUes Flesher, printer to the worshipful company of stationers in the year 1666." To this gentleman the elder Mr. Bowyer was an apprentice.
1666. About this period, under the adminis- tration of the duke of Buckingham, the follow- ing extraordinary prosecution, for a singular libel, occurred. Some fiddlers, at Staines, were indicted for singing scandalous songs of the duke. The songs also did not fail to libel both the king and his brother the duke of York. The bench were puzzled how to proceed. The of- fensive passages they would not permit to be openly read in court, lest the scandals should spread. It was a difficult point to turn. The judges were anxious that the people should see
that they did not condemn these songs without due examination. They hit upon this expedient. Conies of the songs were furnished to every lord ana judge present; and the attorney-general in his chaise, when touching on the ofiending passages, did not, as usual, read them out, but noticed them by only repeating the first and final lines, and when he had closed, they were handed to the fiddlers at the bar, interrogating them whether these were not the songs which they had sung of the duke? To this they confessed, and were condemned in a heavy fine of £500, and to be pilloried and whipped. This novel and covert mode of trial excited great dis- content among the friends of civil freedom.
1666, Sent. 2. The hall of the company of stationers shared in the dreadful conflagration of the great fire of London,* and the first court, October 2, was held at Cooks' Hall ; and after- wards at St. Bartholomew's hospital, in the lame liotpital hall. On December 21, all the ruined ground, as well belonging to the hall,t as to the other tenements of the company of stationers destroyed bv the late dreadful fire, was ordered to be forthwith cleared away, and measured. By this calamity, the booksellers dwelling about St. Paul's lost an immense stock of books in quires, amounting, according to Evelyn and lord Clarendon, to £200,000, which they were accustomed to stow in the vaults of the cathedral, and other churches.
1666, Oct. 23. A paper entitled The Case and Proposal* of the Free Journeymen Printers in and about London, was published this day, from which it appears that the entire number of work- ing printers, who had served a regular appren- ticesnip, then resident in and about London, was no more than 140,| There were, to be sure, in addition, some " foreigners," as they were called, that is, workmen who had not obtained their freedom by their serving a regular apprentice-
- This visitation consomed 400 streets, 13,S0O dwellin;-
hooses, and 89 churches, with the city gates, &c. It began at the house of the king's baliei (FteToer), at two o'docli of the morning, in Pudding-lane, and stopped at the Temple, called Pye-corner. The Jlre destroyed the pJoyiK most righteously. On the S3nt of October William Lilly, the astrologer, was examined before a comuiittee of the house o( commons, respecting the emua of the fire of London, which he had pr«iicted in hieroglypUc. At this time religious pr^udices warped the mindsiof the people, and they listened eagerly to the malicious reports that were circulated ; and as popery was then the alleged object on which alander could rest her suspicions, on the monu- ment which perpetuates this sad event, it stands recorded, (Tom the pen of Dr. Iliomaa Gale, afterwards dean of York, that " the burning of this Protestant city was begun and carried on by the treachery and malice of the popish factioli." Next to the guilt of him who perpetrates an atrocious crime, is the guilt of those who cfaai^ it on the innocent
t Mr. Hansard, in his TfpatrapUa, has preserved a curious relic, the real ortginof block of StaUonera' Hall before the fire ; and, says that gentleman, "while it pre- sents a resemblance of the old elevation, furnishes at the same time, a specimen of wood engraving of former days."
t According to the population returns for 18S1, the number of printers then in the metropolis was S6!IS, or probably more than twenty times the number it contained in \6K; and by the same census the population of Ire- land amonnted to 7,787,401, of which there were engaged in paper making about dOO persons, and in letter-press printing DM.
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