Roger L’Estrange and No Blinde Guides, 1660

Turnbull Library Record, Volume XVI, Issue 1, 1 May 1983, Page 21

Roger L’Estrange and No Blinde Guides , 1660

JOHN HETET

On 25 May 1660 Charles II returned to England. In the months prior to his return, a period of relative press freedom, a pamphlet war erupted which was marked by the publications of two figures who played vital roles in determining both the liberty and regulation of the press in seventeenth century England. John Milton, ‘Puritan revolutionary’, a major proponent of Commonwealth ideals and Roger L’Estrange, a royalist pamphleteer and advocate for the Restoration became two central figures in a war of words. Their publications, often anonymous, in the early months of 1660 argued for and against the restoration of the exiled monarch.

L’Estrange’s anonymous pamphlets prior to the Restoration were strongly partisan as he attacked republican writers and reassured his readers of the promised stability and unity the monarch would bring to a disparate country. His personal attacks on Milton and a range of dissenters under the label ‘seditious literature’, which may be traced through the pamphlets he wrote, are part of English press history; they highlight the contentious issues of the day, depict L’Estrange’s clearly defined ideas on seditious literature, provide an image of the booktrade and trade relationships and illuminate the manner in which polemical prose was exploited by the contesting philosophies. This pamphlet literature was being written in a period of transition where the movement from a Commonwealth republic to that of a monarchy was expressed in the anxieties of a defeated Puritanism, with lost political hopes, and the burgeoning confidence of a resurrected royalist cause.

Public opinion has always been an extremely malleable force open to the promises of security in times of economic stress and sensitive to the fluctuations of power on the political field. The early months of 1660 were no exception to this general principle as the competing parties vied for public support through the channels of the media. By discussing the issues of the day: monarchy, episcopacy, a free parliament and General Monck’s activities, the

various parties hoped to influence public attitudes and thereby gain popular support. The image of the king and the promised stability of a monarchy became the focus of discussion in the press. During the interregnum the clandestine royalist press kept the role of kingship alive for the public by publications such as Eikon Basilike ‘the Pourtraicture of His Sacred Majestie in His Solitudes and Sufferings’. With most copies containing a highly emblematic frontispiece of Charles I in prayer, the publication won favour in both literate and illiterate circles. The popularity of Eikon Basilike , much to the annoyance of the Council of State, was clearly evident in the 1650 s with thirty-five editions being printed in London within a year. 1 Despite Milton’s efforts to attack the publication in Eikonoklastes , interest in kingship was prevalent and by 1660 a conflation of political events, economic hardship and pamphlet literature had prepared the public for the Restoration. The printed word and rumours which circulated in the coffee houses and the streets of London endorsed the royalist appeal to the magic of kingship.

This was a period where the press was free not by statute, but by the inability of the Stationers’ Company and the Council of State to censor and enforce existing legislation which would regulate the activities of the press. Although General Monck and the Council of State had taken control of the newsbooks, the Parliamentary Intelligencer and Mercurius Politicus, pamphlets were in circulation which threatened the stability of the state. Monck’s brother-in-law Thomas Clarges had advised Monck to make use of the press in furthering his purposes and had recommended both Muddiman and Dury to be responsible for the printing of official news. 2 On 2 April 1660 Marchamont Nedham, the opportunist editor, was discharged from writing the official newsbook and the executive Council of State ordered:

That the Master and Wardens of the Stationers Company, London, be, and are hereby required to take care that no bookes of Intelligence be printed and published on Mundayes or Thursdayes weekly, other than such as are put forth by Mr. Henry Muddiman, and Mr. Giles Dury, who have an allowance in that behalf from the Council of State. 3

Monck now had control of domestic and foreign news and the readers of the newsbooks were kept informed of his activities; this enhanced the general’s growing esteem. From being the official organ of news which expressed anti-monarchy sentiments, the newsbooks prepared their readers for the King’s return. Booksellers and printers had enjoyed considerable freedom through most of 1659; however those openly allied to the Republican cause were threatened with arrest. As a warning to the

radical booksellers, one of John Milton’s publishers was asked to appear before the Council of State:

The Council of State being informed, that Livewell Chapman (Stationer of London) having caused several seditious and treasonable books to be printed and published, did withdraw and obscure himselfe, ordered a Proclamation to be issued forth, requiring the said Livewell Chapman to appear at the Council of State. 4

Chapman was prepared to take risks in publishing and circulating radical thought. His motives were not commercial but political: an expression of his abhorrence of kingship.

While Monck was asserting an influence over the press he was playing a prominent role in the politics of the day by insisting that the members of Parliament excluded in 1648 be reinstated. He called for the elections to a new Parliament which was to sit on 25 April 1660. These events gave the royalist pamphleteers cause for elation and they could rightfully predict the demise of the ‘Good Old Cause’ and quietly prepare for the return of Charles Stuart. The printed items for the first four months of 1660 express the changes in the fortunes of the respective parties and vividly illustrate the laurels heaped upon General Monck, the renewed interest in monarchy and in a few tracts the bitter feeling against kingship. 5 Although writers were willing to argue the particular virtues of their avowed causes they were generally reluctant to identify themselves on the titlepages of the published pamphlets. As the tide of support moved from the ‘idealistic’ community of the Commonwealth to the hierarchical edifice of monarchy there were fewer stationers willing to take the risks involved with radical publications; they were silenced not only by the gestures made by the Council of State but also by nervous publishers weighing their commercial interests ahead of their political beliefs. Exceptions to this trend did occur and John Milton and Livewell Chapman stand out for their solitary and resonant protests against power being vested in a king and Church.

Milton was one of the most respected and forceful writers for the ‘Good Old Cause’ constantly appealing to the rational faculty of man and the need for those who assumed power to preserve liberty and virtue. His cogent and apposite arguments were a compelling aspect of his works prior to the Restoration. On 3 March 1660, with the help of Livewell Chapman, he had printed The Readie & Easie Way to Establish A Free Commonwealth, And the Excellence there of, Compared with the Inconveniences and Dangers of Readmitting Kingship in this Nation. The pamphlet was addressed to a majority of the nation who shared ‘the vain and groundless apprehension that

nothing but kingship can restore trade’. 6 Milton was clearly alarmed that the people were willing to compromise the ideals encapsulated in the ‘Good Old Cause’ for the elitist policies of monarchy.

The Readie & Easie Way is a political document responding to the Rump readmitting those members of the Long Parliament, mostly Presbyterian, who had been opposed to regicide and had been consequently excluded in December 1648. With the writs for electing a ‘new’ Parliament gaining approval on 16 March and the sitting of this Parliament timed for 25 April 1660, Milton decided to revise the pamphlet and an enlarged second edition was brought out in time for the members of the ‘new’ parliament to read. There was now an obvious danger in attacking the motives and political manoeuvres of those in power. Livewell Chapman was hiding to avoid arrest and Ralph Davenport was to be imprisoned for printing libellous and seditious books against the state. However, this did not silence Milton’s political and moral objections to the pragmatic desires of those who would support the return of the King.

Despite the dangers, Milton’s second edition of The Readie & Easie Way appeared between 9 and 24 April 1660, bravely carrying his name on the title page but without a bookseller’s or printer’s name. But these strong warnings of the nation becoming a servile state where spiritual and civil freedoms would be truncated only brought forth a battery of derisive counter-statements from the royalist scribes. They were not slow in recognising the changed prose style and the elitist content of his argument. Milton’s attempt at appealing to a larger audience, possibly Levellers, was now condemned as ‘printed for the Chandlers and Tobaccomen’ who would never read them. His earlier proposals were castigated as ‘the attempts of your stiff formal eloquence, which you arm accordingly with anything that lies in your way’, and his desired government was ‘inevitably arbitrary and tyrannical’. 7

Amongst the royalist polemicists the anonymous writings of Roger L’Estrange stand out, not only for their attacks against Milton but also for their statements against a type of pamphlet which he thought endangered the well-being of the state and which he branded ‘libellous and seditious’. L’Estrange was a discreet polemicist in the early months of 1660. Although he was a champion for episcopacy and monarchy he concealed his identity in all of the 32 publications we attribute to him before the Restoration. Fortunately, Kitchin, Wing, Parker and more recently Coleridge have enabled us to determine the pamphlets which L’Estrange wrote during this period. 8 The identification of these tracts has been based upon prose style and L’Estrange’s references to some of these

works in later pamphlets. The publication injune 1660 o {L’Estrange His Apology, in which he brought together earlier works, thereby identifying them as his own, has enabled scholars to make definite attributions.

Central to these works is L’Estrange’s preoccupation with the political debates of the day. His arguments were to buttress royalist beliefs and to win support amongst the merchants and gentry. He was always fully aware of the dangers of certain political ideas gaining a general circulation and it became a declared duty for him to discredit those who posed a threat to his cherished but antiquated belief in monarchy and episcopacy. His early plea for limited monarchy was to flower into a more confident espousal of royalist principles. L’Estrange had adopted the role of an unofficial propagandist making an analysis of the factors which determined the support of the present government and why they were faulty, while providing answers to alarmist pamphlets. It was the panic-mongers who bore the brunt of his invective, being labelled ‘trayterous’ and ‘seditious’.

The question of law and order both in the church and state was once again before the public during the months before and after the Restoration. The royalists argued that only monarchy could assure tradespeople and men of property a continuity of government and thus stability. The commonwealthmen, discovering a general undercutting of their support, had appealed to the army to overthrow their elected leaders. It was around the army that the battle for support would rage and ultimately determine the successful Restoration.

In March 1660 A Plea for Limited Monarchy was published in which L’Estrange analysed the motives behind the influential groups who opposed the return of Charles. He believed, correctly, that those who wanted a Commonwealth had vested interests, although they were amenable to the idea of a restored monarchy. L’Estrange believed that they felt anxious about their possible loss of crown lands acquired during the interregnum and their general belief that only a Commonwealth could sort out the entangled interests, including religious, of the nation. A change of government and the flexible allegiances of the army might well leave a king insecure and threaten another war. However, L’Estrange answered such fears and argued ‘that our former Government, eminently, included all the perfections of a Free State, and was the Kernel, as it were, of a Common-wealth, in the Shell of Monarchy’. 9 It was clear that the fate of the nation was in the hands of General Monck, and L’Estrange in recognition of this had prefaced the pamphlet with a ‘humble addresse to his Excellency General Monck’. These overtures to Monck did not please the

general, who was becoming the focus of much speculation in the pamphlets of the various factions. In an attempt to quell the rise in anonymous unlicensed works Secretary Scott was asked to look after the press and a notice was sent to the Lord Mayor and Common Council of London reminding them of the Act passed 20 September 1649 censoring the distribution of scandalous books and papers. The Lord Mayor was to suppress all news-hawkers, mercury women, and ballad singers. Likewise the Stationers’ Company was asked to make diligent searches of all presses involved in unlicensed work and to report back on their surveillance. However, the list of pamphlets and books which were printed during this period is a testament to the ineffective governance of the press. There was an accepted belief that the press was free. Prior to his concealment, Livewell Chapman had been encouraged in his activities by John Desborough: ‘We fix on you as the faithfullest man, to convey our thoughts to our brethren about London. The Press is free enough for it, there is no restraint on that as yet.’ 10 Thus, the work of L’Estrange and Milton continued unabated.

A characteristic feature of this period of debate in the press was the speed with which the royalists would answer the publications of their opponents. Milton proved a highly provocative pamphleteer whom the royalists regarded with a mixture of scorn and begrudging respect. He had made his mark by countering Salmasius, held to be Europe’s greatest scholar, in the Defence of the People of England. The Readie & Easie Way appeared and provoked a number of replies from the royalist camp. The opportunity to belittle Milton in a changing political context was an incentive for attacks such as The Censure of the Rota upon Mr. Milton’s Readie and Easie Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth, The Dignity of Kingship Asserted, and L’Estrange’s Be Merry and Wise, or, A Seasonable Word. This was L’Estrange’s first published answer to the arguments Milton promoted. The changing political fortunes were openly exploited to discredit his rival:

I could only wish his Excellency [Monck] had been a little civiller to Mr. Milton; for, just as he had finished his model of a commonwealth directing in these very terms, the choyce; men not addicted to a single person, or House of Lords, and the work is done. Income the secluded members and spoyl his project . . . 11

Because of the speed with which those pamphlets were w ritten and their general anonymous nature, mistaken attributions were made. These attributions, whether right or wrong, were often used by the royalists to condemn major figures such as Milton, Marchamont Nedham and Livewell Chapman for works in which they had not participated. It was better to give the ‘seditious’ work

an author of public repute than allow it anonymity. The polemicists forged a web of seditious odium around the Republican authors and their works both real and imaginary. In April 1660 L’Estrange wrote Treason Arraigned in answer to the virulent pamphlet Plain English and The Readie & Easie Way. Plain English abused the Royalist party for encouraging the people back to their ‘old bondage’. L’Estrange either conveniently or mistakenly attributed the work to Milton:

It is a piece, drawn by no Fool, and it deserves a serious answer. —By the Design;—the subject,—Malice, and stile; I should suspect it for a Blot of the same pen that wrote ICONOCLASTES. It runs foule; tends to Tumult—and, not content, Barely to Applaud the Murther of the king, the execrable Author ofit vomits upon his Ashes; with a Pedantique, and Envenom’d scorn, pursuing still his sacred Memory. 12

He believed that the pamphlet had been written ‘to Tumultuate the Army, and the People’ and he exposes, in a proleptic manner, the way in which he would ‘suppresse it, were no more copies of it extant: but ’tis too late for that. The Countries are already Furnish’d; and the Town yet full of them ... so that it rests now, only to lay open the vile Interests of this bloody Faction, and Antidote the people against the danger’. 13 Indeed, these were to be the two major roles L’Estrange was actively to play in the following twenty years: suppressing works which threatened the State, Crown and Church as Surveyor and Licenser of the press and offering an ‘antidote’ through his numerous writings when either out of office or when licensing was no longer effective.

Treason Arraigned contains a host of ideas, attitudes and examples which L’Estrange would use with varying skill and success during his lengthy career. He used the history of the civil war and the intervening interregnum to support his belief that only the Restoration would bring back order, economic prosperity and stability. His distrust of the press would be long standing: ‘But ’tis to Shew the World, how much our Pamphlet Merchand is steer’d by interest, and passion, and how little by Reason, and Truth.’ 14 He would openly confront his rivals in the press condemning their attempts to alarm the public and their appeals to the ‘phanatiques in England’. Milton was singled out for special treatment not only by the printer’s use of italics in full capitals: ‘ Milton ’ but also by L’Estrange’s continued attack on the author’s writings over a long period of time.

Eikonoklastes was continually selected by L’Estrange as the epitome of seditious pamphlets. Milton had been commissioned by the Council of State to write the pamphlet following the unprecedented success of the secretly published Eikon Basilike.

Milton’s attack upon Charles I seemed to L’Estrange a heinous and sacriligious act. In 1681 he used it as an example in Dissenters Sayings to illustrate the type of seditious statements printed after the Civil War. Likewise, on 19 March 1683 the Observator reminded its readers of‘those Execrable Libels of Eiconoclastes’. ‘Sedition’ and ‘seditious’ are liberally used throughout L’Estrange’s work and they require some definition before we proceed. The Oxford English Dictionary provides two definitions of‘seditious’ which would, perhaps, find L’Estrange’s approval: T. Of a person or body of persons: Given to or guilty of sedition; in early use, “Factious with tumult, turbulent”; now chiefly engaged in promoting disaffection or inciting to revolt against constituted authority. 2. Of, pertaining to, or of the nature of sedition; tending to incite to or provoke sedition’. From L’Estrange’s work ‘constituted authority’ meant the King and the Church of England. To challenge or even question these institutions with their established traditions and privileges, either in the press or the pulpit, was to promote disaffection and ‘to delude the people’. Milton’s attack on Eikon Basilike and L’Estrange’s attack on Milton emphasise the essentially different political, religious and cultural interests of these men.

L’Estrange’s sensitivity to the ‘seditious’ statements of Milton continued through his unswerving perusal of numerous pamphlets as he ferreted out the offending statements and cautioned the supposedly unsuspecting reading public. Pamphlets such as Plain English not only challenged the growing support for Charles Stuart by reminding the readers of the spiritual and political liberties to be lost by restoring him, but also appealed to both the man who held ultimate power at the time, General Monck, and the army with its varied interests. Open appeal to the army through the press was condemned as a seditious and mutinous act. An Alarum to the Armies of England, Scotland and Ireland and An Eye-salve for the English Armie urged the army to take the law into their own hands. These ranting publications set a dangerous precedent and the Council of State issued a proclamation ordering the arrest of such persons as ‘do attempt the debauching and alienating the affections of some in the Army’. 15 L’Estrange, likewise, had his answer prepared for publication after reading these tracts, once again pointing out their seditious content. Physician Cure Thyself, or, An Answer to a Seditious Pamphlet, Entitled Eye Salve for the English Army was written to allay the soldiers’ fears of persecution under a new king. Charles had promised to respect religious liberty and only those who opposed ‘constituted’ authority would be in any danger. While desperate attempts were made through the press for the army to prevent the restoration, the pulpit was being used by a

former chaplain to Charles I to encourage support amongst his congregation for the exiled monarch. The pulpit, like the press, was an avenue which could be used to gain and mould public support. A sermon could be given which would comment upon the politics of the day through the clever use of biblical analogies. The Church of England had been a powerful ally to previous monarchs, and had buttressed the myth of the divine right of kings. The civil war had destroyed the very fabric of that myth but it was now, in the early months of 1660, winning favour amongst some of the clergy and the people. However, if one was to offer a sermon with some political content one had to be prepared for the consequences. Matthew Griffith had reminded his congregation, on Sunday 25 March 1660, that to usurp the divine relationship of God and King was to court destruction. The sermon delivered by Griffith would bring into conflict, once again, John Milton and Roger L’Estrange. Griffith had chosen Proverbs XXIV: 21 as the text for his sermon on the 25 March: ‘My son, fear God and the King, and meddle not with them that be seditious or desirous of change.’ Solomon’s statement was the pretext for Griffith’s extended commentary on the nation’s problems lightly veiled by a tissue of biblical and mythological references. His intent was obvious when the ‘seditious’ were stated to be the party responsible for:

first kindling the coals and their blowing up the quarrel betwixt king and Parliament: till to gratifie their own factions, and satisfie themselves and their own friends, they had brought us to this generall want, & woes, through want of Religion . . . 16 Griffith’s confidence exceeded his tact and on 31 March he registered the sermon for publication in Stationers’ Hall. However, the clearly political sermon carried a dedicatory epistle to General Monck and appended The Samaritan Revived in which he offered remedies and ‘speedy healing of our present dangerous Distractions’. The opening Epistle must have been an unwanted embarrassment to General Monck:

My Lord, as it must needs grieve you to see these three distressed kingdoms lye like a Body without a Head . . .You may by this one Act [the restoration of Charles] ennoble and eternize your selfe more in the hearts and chronicles of these three kingdoms ... It is greater to make a King; then to be one. 17 The premature and tactless pronouncement seen alongside the contents of his pamphlet made Griffith an unwitting danger and in order to placate the anger of powerful Republicans he was arrested and placed in Newgate ‘for writing and publishing a seditious and libellous book’. 18 Four days later Serjant Northfolk was issued with

a warrant to apprehend Thomas Johnson, Griffith’s printer, at the Golden Key in St. Paul’s Churchyard. 19 Milton relished the confinement of the royalist divine and noted it with some satisfaction in his Brief Notes upon a Late Sermon Titl’d, The Fear of God and the King, Preachd and Since Published, by Matthew Griffith. Nevertheless, the Council of State had been able to act against Griffith and Johnson because they had graced the title page with their names. The challenge of anonymous pamphlets discussing political issues continued unabated from the clandestine presses. In Brief Notes Milton mounted one of his final prose attacks against the growing wave of royalist support and, in particular, against Matthew Griffith. He argued that Griffith had charged General Monck ‘most audaciously and falsly with the renouncing of his own public promises and declarations both to the Parlament and the Army’. 20 Likewise, the inept dedication was cause for censure:

He begins in his Epistle to the General; and moves cunningly for a licence to be admitted Physitian both to the Church and State; then sets out his practice . . . commencing his address with an impudent calumnie and affront to his Excellence, that he would be pleased to carry on what he had so happily begun in the name and cause not of God onely. 21

The king was not the anointed agent of God and Milton recalled God’s unwillingness to grant the Hebrews a king. Kingship, Milton insisted, had been abolished by the law of the land. His aversion to the nation reverting to monarchy had been stated on six occasions between October 1659 and April 1660; and his argument was reiterated in Brief Notes: ‘Free Commonwealths have bin ever counted fittest and properest for civil, vertuous and industrious Nations, abounding with prudent men worthie to govern: monarchic fittest to curb degenerate, corrupt, idle proud luxurious people.’ 22 But Monck and the Council of State were secretly negotiating with Charles Stuart for his return and it seemed inevitable that Milton’s fondest hopes would lie in ruins. There is a telling hint of his own loss of hope when he conceded that if the people must condemn themselves to thraldom,

despairing of our own vertue, industrie and the number of our able men, we may then, conscious of our own unworthiness to be governd better, sadly betake us to our befitting thraldom: yet chusing out of our own number one who hath best aided the people. 23

Milton concluded the tract by discrediting Griffith’s loose biblical citations and classical analogies. Brief Notes came to the attention of Roger L’Estrange not long after its printing and he did not hesitate in replying to the pamphlet. No Blinde Guides admonished Milton’s pamphlet as seditious and

L’Estrange avoided the appeal and claims of Griffith stating that he was: not bold enough to be his Champion, in all particulars; not yet so Rude, as to take an Office most properly to him Belonging, out of his Hand; Let him acquit himself, in what concerns the Divine; and I’ll adventure upon the most material parts of the Rest . . , 24

The ‘most material parts of the Rest’ was to be L’Estrange’s discussion of kingship. Having read extensively in the corpus of Milton’s prose work L’Estrange would not only attack Brief Notes and The Readie & Easie Way but also remind the reader that Milton was the author of such infamous propaganda pieces as Eikonoklastes and Pro Populo Anglicano Defensio Secunda. With considerable verve and a wicked sense of wit L’Estrange opened his address to Milton: ‘Mr Milton, Although in your Life and Doctrine, you have resolved one great Question; by evidencing that Devils may indue Humane shapes; and proving your self, even to your wife, an Incubus: you have yet started Another. . . .’ 25 By carefully selecting passages from Milton’s pamphlets and offering an analysis against a background of political facts L’Estrange could articulate the dangers inherent in his opponent’s work. To enliven his polemical prose L’Estrange couched his arguments in a colloquial language and a barbed humour:

KINGSHIP is your old Bondage; RUMPSHIP, OURS: (Forgive the Term) you were then, Past the one: we are now (God be thanked) past the Other: and should be as loth to Return, as You. Yet you are Tampering to delude the People, and to withdraw them from a Peaceable, and Rational expectancy of good, into a mutinous, and hopeless attempt of mischief. By your own Rule now, who are the Deceivers: we, that will not Return to our old Bondage; or you, that would perswade us to’t. 26

The title No Blinde Guides held a twofold meaning for the reader. Firstly, Milton’s attempt ‘to delude the People’ from a ‘rational expectancy of good’: the believed failure of Milton to see the encroaching political defeat; and secondly the highly personal attack on the writer’s loss of vision. Both readings are exploited throughout L’Estrange’s work and while attacking Milton’s millenary sympathies he states: ‘Doe you then, really expect to see Christ, Reigning upon Earth, even with those very eyes you Lost (as ’tis reported) with staring too long, and too sawcily upon the Portraiture of his Viceregent, to breake the Image.’ 27 Returning to the titlcpage, the epigram: ‘lf the Blinde lead the Blinde both shall fall in the ditch’ appears as a warning to the English people, even though there is an implicit criticism of its populace. Indeed, in the writings of both L’Estrange and Milton, certain assumptions emerge on their relationship as writers to the society

which they wish to mould and influence. Milton had been an active participant in the revolutionary movement which attempted to win friends amongst the various alienated factions to support the ‘Good Old Cause’. His publications in the early months of 1660 adopted a simpler prose style than that of his previous works. He realised that he would need the support of the Levellers if the restoration was to be thwarted and this may account for his change in style. However, his audience was not prepared to accept his world vision and we sense his perception of a contrasting readership, fit but few, in his epic Paradise Lost. L’Estrange likewise attempted to cater for a varied audience. Throughout his career it is evident that the people represented a ‘multitude’ whose reading had to be carefully censored so that they would not meddle with government. No Blinde Guides followed a principle that pervades all of L’Estrange’s writing:

The Common people are Poyson’d, and will run Stark Mad, if they be not Lur’d: Offer them Reason, without Fooling, and it will never Down with them: And give them Fooling, without Argument, they’re never the Better for’t. Let ’em Alone, and All’s Lost. So that the Mixture is become as Necessary, as the office; And it has been My part, only to Season the one with the Other. 28 We are aware that L’Estrange is humouring an undefined group of readers and boasting to a more learned elite. His polemical prose is endowed with various rhetorical devices but never laboured or fettered by his question and answer address. The language is brisk and forthright and lapses into moments of common speech in the hope of capturing the popular ear:

Is it possible to read your Proposals of the benefits of a Free-State, without Reflecting upon your Tutours —All this will I give thee if thow wilt fall down, and worship me? Come, come sir, lay the Devil aside; do not proceed with so much malice and against knowledge:—Act like a man; —that a good Christian may not be afraid to pray for you. 29 The final paragraph of the pamphlet is pitched at the learned of his audience:

Once more; You say, That the Kings principall Oath was to maintein those Laws which the People SHOULD chuse. (Consuetudines quas Vulgus Elegerit) Reconcile Consuetudines (referring necessarily to what is Past) to Elegerit, in the Future Tense, and I have done. 30 Nevertheless, critical opinion towards No Blinde Guides has been largely negative. Following the Restoration, Milton embarked on his poetic ventures which were to assure him of future esteem: ‘a life beyond life’. This respect, which is well deserved, has however clouded many of the assessments of No Blinde Guides. Sidney Lee

condemned it as ‘a very scurrilous and personal attack’ 31 and L’Estrange’s only biographer George Kitchin called it ‘a tract his biographer must feel some shame in mentioning. The little restraint observed in his first attack on the poet has entirely disappeared, and the most venomous spirit discovered’. 32 Even William Riley Parker has tentatively stated that ‘when one reads some of his other pamphlets, this one seems restrained and impersonal by comparison’. 33 But we must remember that these were polemical tracts vying for much needed support from the uncommitted factions. One did not only discredit an opponent’s opinions but also his personal credibility. Indeed, these pamphlets were written in a time of relative press freedom and published with great speed. These unlicensed tracts of controversy were for an audience which desired a pamphlet which was topical, often irreverent, and accessible. This was a field in which there was no prescribed decorum and the quality of the writing was highly variable.

It is possible to see No Blinde Guides as a paradigm; an early example of the path L’Estrange’s work would take in 1660-61 and later in 1680-81. It is also the juncture which brought two major polemicists together: John Milton the intellectual embodiment of the English revolutionary bourgeoisie and Roger L’Estrange the royalist spokesman for privilege and tradition. The pattern which we perceive in No Blinde Guides is one of methodical damning of Milton’s work by selective quotation. Any residual coherence in Milton’s arguments is destroyed by L’Estrange’s eliciting component elements and putting them into a new context. The integrity of the text was now destroyed and this was amplified by besmirching the author personally. Two audiences were catered for: those looking for humour and the odd laugh and those who might, perhaps, enjoy the textual debate on matters both classical and biblical. L’Estrange no doubt would have suppressed Milton’s works had he had the power he was later to be given. But, failing this censorial post, he turned to his other role and offered an ‘antidote’ to the people. When Charles returned to England and gradually brought in people to offices which were to fit the needs of the time, L’Estrange would eventually become Surveyor of the Press: the knowledge which he had acquired during this period would be used with varying effect upon those printers, booksellers and authors who chose to traduce constituted authority.

With Charles back in power in June 1660 the Cavaliers lobbied for appointments in his court. Amongst those who drew attention to the dangers and services they had undertaken for the monarch during the interregnum was Roger L’Estrange. He gathered together unsold copies of No Blinde Guides and Physician Cure thy Self, and reprinted A Seasonable Word, Treason Arraigned and Double

your Guards with an accompanying account of the period in which they were written: 34

the whole Nation was as vigilant as possible to disappoint the Grand Conspiracy of the Phanaticks. About this time they made several Attempts in order to a general rising; but by care and conduct of the Council, the General, and the Militia, all came to nothing; the heart of the Design was almost broken; and yet they would not leave their Pamphleting. Particularly Milton put forth a bawling piece against Dr. Griffith and somebody else another scurrilous Libel, entituled EYE-SALVE 35

This testament to the past was also strangely prophetic as L’Estrange was to find out when he discovered that, though he could gain a marked degree of control in the press, there were always those who ‘would not leave their Pamphleting’ and circulate their unorthodox opinions.

Despite the timely release of L’Estrange His Apology the author would languish in the corridors of power before gaining that much desired preferment. Like many of his companions L’Estrange was extremely disillusioned as Charles appointed men from once dubious parties to office. He now used his knowledge of the press and the literature printed after the Civil War to warn Charles of the former activities cff these newly appointed men. It was also during this period that L’Estrange turned his polemical skills on the outspoken Presbyterian prelates. He was aware of the tenuous control of power Charles now held and that this nervousness on the part of Crown and government could be exploited. By becoming an outspoken critic of the liberties which the Presbyterians had taken and by exposing the range of seditious publications available to the reading public, L’Estrange became both an embarrassing nuisance and a useful surveyor. The functions of the pulpit and the press were always closely allied according to L’Estrange. Unlimited freedom of the press and the pulpit was to invite dissension and uproar:

Nothing more certain than the Freedom of the presse and the Pulpit is sufficient to embroyl the best ordered Government in the world . . . Add but to this distemper, Licentious Pamphlets, and seditious sermons, the world shall never keep the people quiet. Wherefore since on all hands it is agreed that Printing, and Preaching in opposition to a publick establishment, are of so dangerous consequence. 36 It is in L’Estrange’s reply to John Corbet’s The Interest of England in the Matter of Religion that he castigated Presbyterians as a group of conspirators working against the King and the Church of England while being responsible for: ‘Swarms of pestilent papers. . . Some of the sharpest of them, I delivered to several members . . . with the stationers name for whom they were printed, (Smith at the Bible in Cornhill, Croftons Agent)’. 37 The familiar scrutiny ofL’Estrangeis

evidenced in the pamphlet as he cites authors, publications and sermons which the Presbyterian faction had promulgated. During his attack on Richard Baxter’s A Petition for Peace he had the audacity to deny: ‘printing ... a general list of all those persons now in imployment, which formerly bare Arms or Office against the King.’ 38 Nevertheless, a list did appear in the following year with the names of Stationers whom L’Estrange identified as working against the King both during his exile and following his restoration. Francis Tyton, for example, became the focus of considerable attention in L’Estrange’s pamphlets and was identified as a printer responsible for a range of seditious publications. 39 However, L’Estrange wasn’t satisfied with unveiling the author or printer of anonymous publications; he set about unravelling the network of connections behind the printed item. While examining Baxter’s proposals he stated:

this same schismatical piece of Holynesse, was delivered to the Presse by one Mr. Baxter, or by his Order. Ibbitson in Smithfield was the Printer ... he that printed the Adjutators Proposals . . . and The petition to the army against the maior ... in October 1647. 40

Throughout his publications for 1661 L’Estrange supported his arguments with the aid of Renaissance authorities: Machiavelli, Montaigne and Francis Bacon all figured. From Bacon’s essay on sedition he would pronounce: ‘Sir Francis Bacon . . . tells us, That the multiplying of Nobility, and other degrees of Quality, in an over-degree of proportion to the Common people, doth speedily bring a state to Necessity . . .’ 41 This was the foundation of L’Estrange’s inflexible idea that to grant concessions to the ‘common people’ would bring about changes in the traditional powers of Church and Crown which would only encourage sedition in the state. He believed that stability of the state was maintained by the prohibition of conventicles and the regulation of the press. For L’Estrange the Civil War provided a case study and Bacon’s essay a base upon which to build his arguments against allowing greater freedoms to the press and pulpit. As he stated in A Memento:

Libells were not only the Forerunners, but, in a high Degree, the causes of our late Troubles: and what were the frequent, open, and licentious Discourses of Clokemen in Pulpits, but the ill boding Play of Porcpisces before a Tempest? We may remember also the false Newes of Plotts against the Religion, and Liberties of the Nation. 42

The press in 1661 provided him with ample material to attack the factions: ‘The Presse as Busie, and as Bold; Sermons as factious; Pamphlets as seditious; the Government defam’d, and the

Defamers of it (if Presbyterians) scayse better then their Accusers . . .’ 43 Nevertheless, it wasn’t until L’Estrange began taking an active part in hunting out seditious presses in 1662 and gaining the official position of Surveyor of the Press following the publication of Considerations and Proposals to the Regulation of the Press in 1663 that he made his mark on the press of the day.

A revised and expanded text of a paper read to members of the Bibliographical Society of Australia and New Zealand, Christchurch, 24 January 1981.

REFERENCES 1 F. F. Madan, A New Bibliography of Eikon Basilike of King Charles the First (London, 1950), p.2. 2 J. G. Muddiman, The King’sfoumalist 1659-1689 (London, 1923), chap. 6;J. B. Williams, A History of English Journalism (London, 1908), p. 175. 3 Parliamentary Intelligencer, No. 14, 26 March-2 April, 1660. 4 Ibid., No. 14, 28 March-2 April, 1660. Three warrants were issued for Serjeant Norfolk to apprehend Livewell Chapman on 27 March, 3 April and 28 April. C. Warrants of the Council of State, 1660, I. 116. 5 The Thomason Tracts (Ann Arbor, Mich.: University Microfilms) and a collection of tracts bound together in the Turnbull Library (REng/MIL/Brief). 6 J. Milton, The Readie & Easie Way (London, 1660), p. 16. 7 The Censure of the Rota, upon Mr Milton ’s Book Entituled, The Ready and Easie Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth (London, 1660), pp. 4, 16. 8 George Kitchin, Sir Roger L’Estrange (London, 1913), Appendix 1, pp. 41 1—418; D. G. Wing, Short Title Catalogue of Books Printed in England . . . 1641-1700, (New York, 1945-1957); William R. Parker, Milton’s Contemporary Reputation (Columbus, 1940); Kathleen Coleridge, A Descriptive Catalogue of the Milton Collection in the Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand (Oxford, 1980). 9 Roger L’Estrange, A Plea for Limited Monarchy (London, 1660), p. 5 (Wing LI 285). 10 George Kitchin, Sir Roger L’Estrange, p.62n. 11 Roger L’Estrange, L’Estrange His Apology (London, 1660), p. 86 (Wing L 1200). 12 Roger L’Estrange, Treason Arraigned (London, 1660), pp. 2-3 (Wing T 2073). 13 Ibid., p. 3. 14 Ibid., p.ll. 15 A Proclamation Ordering the Arrest of Such Persons as do Attempt the Debauching and Alienating the Affections of Some in the Army (London, 24 March, 1660). 16 Matthew Griffith, The Fear of God and the King (London, 1660), p. 49. 17 Ibid., p.[vii]. 18 C.S.P.D. Warrants of the Council of State, 1.116.12. 19 Ibid. 20 John Milton, Brief Notes (London, 1660), p.2. 21 Ibid., pp.l-2. 22 Ibid., p.lO. 23 Ibid., p.lO. 24 Roger L’Estrange, No Blinde Guides (London, 1660), p.2 (Wing L 1279). 25 Ibid., p.l. 26 Ibid., p. 3. 27 Ibid., p.B. 28 Roger L’Estrange, The Observator (London, 1684), p.[iv], 29 Roger L’Estrange, No Blinde Guides, p.l.

30 Ibid., p. 14. 31 Sidney Lee, D.N.8., vol. 33 (London, 1893), p. 63. 32 George Kitchin, Sir Roger L’Estrange, p. 63. 33 William Riley Parker, Milton: a Biography (Oxford, 1968), p. 562. 34 Kathleen Coleridge, A Descriptive Catalogue of the Milton Collection . . ~ pp. 411-21. 35 Roger L’Estrange, L’Estrange His Apology (London, 1660), p. 157 (Wing LI 200). 36 Roger L’Estrange, Interest Mistaken (London, 1661), p. 128 (Wing L 1261). 37 Ibid., pp.[iv-v], 38 Roger L’Estrange, The Relaps’d Apostate (London, 1661), p.[ix] (WingLl294). 39 Roger L’Estrange, A Modest Plea (London, 1661), p. 7 (Wing L 1272). 40 Roger L’Estrange, The Relaps’d Apostate (London, 1661), p.[xii], 41 Roger L’Estrange, A Caveat, p. 17 (Wing L 1211). 42 Roger L’Estrange, A Memento (London, 1662), p. 6. 43 Ibid., p. 6.