went on its way rejoicing when that dynasty passed away. It gained new life under the House of Hanover, whose accession it recorded in its faithful columns for the information of posterity. And on it has lived ever since, through the reigns of all the Georges, recording in lamentation the deaths of Kings, and announcing in joy their births. It is the one official thing still left to us which links the living present to the dead past before the Plague. It covers the great period between the closing years of the Victorian era and the closing years of Oliver Cromwell. Only one thing has changed. Oliver Cromwell had two papers, which afterwards married and became one and took a new name—the Gazette.
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A copy of the "London Gazette" published just before the Great Plague of London.
The two papers were Mercurius Politicus and the Publigue Intelligencer, and they appeared with official news on different days of the week, and the control the Government exercised over them is seen in an announcement issued by the Council of State in 1659, four years after the first number of the Intelligencer appeared. The announcement ran: "Whereas Marchmont Nedham, the author of the weekly news-boks, called Mercurius Politicus and the Publique Intelligencer, is, by order of the Council of State, discharged from writing or publishing any publique intelligence; the reader is desired to the notice that, by order of the said Council, Giles Dury and Hy. Muddiman are authorized henceforth to write and publish the said intelligence, the one upon the Thursday and the other upon the Monday, which they do intend to set out under the titles of the Parliamentary Intelligencer and of Mercurius Publicus."
The two papers afterwards became conjointly the foundation of the London Gazette, which was launched on its long and interesting career in 1665. Its babyhood seems to have been of a somewhat stormy kind. The exchequer of the Intelligencer appears to have fallen very low, for we find its editor appealing pathetically to Lord Arlington for help. The charge for "entertaining Royal spies for information" was five hundred pounds in the first year, the editor wrote to his lordship, but, being a man of evident genius, he had raised the price of the paper
