and increased the profit from two hundred pounds to more than double. And hardly had the name been changed when the Great Plague broke out and drove the Court to Oxford.
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The "London Gazette" was removed to Oxford during the Great Plague, and changed its tile accordingly.
The Gazette followed the Court, being known temporarily as the Oxford Gazette. Nor did its misfortunes cease in its youth. It was a staid old centenarian when Lord Weymouth appealed on its behalf to the British representatives abroad. "The writer of the Gazette," said his lordship, "has represented that the reputation of that paper has greatly lessened, and the sale diminished, from the small portion of foreign news with which it is supplied." Lord Weymouth desired the British representatives to send regularly all such items of foreign intelligence as might appear proper for the paper, warning them to take care that, as the Gazette was the only paper of authority published in England, nothing should be sent concerning the authenticity of which there could be the smallest doubt.
But since those days the Gazette has had little to complain of. It has become regularized as a part of the British Constitution now, but time was when the editorship of the Gazette was one of the spoils of office, worth eight hundred pounds a year. It was the recognised reward of party services in the Press, and was held at different times by old editors of the Observer and the Daily News. The Government is more economical to-day in its journalism. Under the old régime the Gazette had, besides its editor, a staff of five clerks appointed by the Treasury, but in 1889 the Treasury remodelled the management of the paper, found the staff employment elsewhere, and left the whole responsibility of the Gazette on its present publishers, Messrs. Harrison and Sons, of St. Martin's Lane. As the printing of the paper has been in the Harrison family for practically one hundred and thirty years, the Government has little fear in entrusting the Gazette to them, and as Mr. Bernard Harrison now fulfils the duties of the former editorial staff the Government may be said to have the best of the bargain.
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The "London Gazette" in its 18th century form.
The great days of the Gazette have gone for ever. In the olden time, before the days of telegraphs and "special editions," the Gazette offices were besieged by anxious crowds, who had no other channel through which to learn the news. The picture we are able to reproduce, showing an incident outside the offices at that time, is not in the least exaggerated. Mr. James Harrison, who printed the Gazette fifty years ago, has a vivid recollection of such scenes.
Mr. Harrison, who still takes an active interest in the work, has given me a strange chapter from his book of memories, which helps us to realize the place the Gazette filled in the days before newspapers and telegraphs
