[Rarebooks] fa: London Gazette 1686 - SAMUEL JOHNSON PILLORIED & WHIPPED FOR SEDITION

[Ardwight Chamberlain]

Listed now, auction ending Sunday, September 28. More details and images can be found at the URL below or by searching under the seller name arch_in_la.

http://tinyurl.com/nkezzuv

Thanks,
Ardwight Chamberlain
L.A.


The London Gazette. Numb. 2191. From Monday November 15. to Thursday November 18. 1686. [AND] Numb. 2192. From Thursday December [i.e., November] 18. to Monday December [November] 22. 1686. [London:] Printed by Tho. Newcomb in the Savoy, 1686. Two consecutive issues comprising two sheets, small folios, (19 x 8 cm.), printed on both sides. The first issue somewhat browned, with a (removable) paper repair or binding stub on the verso, partially obscuring several words; the second issue with a damp-stain to the bottom corner.

Both issues with notices regarding the sentencing and punishment of the *other* Samuel Johnson (1649-1703), political divine, controversialist, and implacable foe of popery in general and James II in particular. Johnson had been convicted of sedition once before, in 1683, for publishing a pamphlet which characterized James, then Duke of York, as a religious apostate. Here he is in trouble again, this time for "Writing and Publishing Two most Scandalous and Seditious Libels, to stir up His Majesties Subjects to Rebellion." The earlier offense had earned him a brief stay in prison; this time the punishment was more aggressive: "that he stand in the Pillory on Monday next at Westminster, Wednesday following at Charing-Cross, and the Monday after at the Royal Exchange; …and that he be Whipt from Newgate to Tyburn." He was also fined 500 marks and ordered to be degraded from the priesthood. The second notice here describes the session of the Ecclesiastical Court at the Chapter-House of St. Paul's whereat he was "Degraded and Devested, and Delivered over as a mere Lay-Person into the hands of the Secular Officer to undergo the Punishments abovementioned." Ultimately, James got the worst of the feud. Within two years he would be deposed, and Johnson, who had undergone his punishment (including 317 stripes "with a whip of nine cords knotted") with a fortitude that redounded to his credit, "was by many thought to have done more towards paving the way for King William's revolution than any man in England besides" (DNB).

These issues also contain much on the ongoing Great Turkish War, or War of the Holy League, with dispatches and reports from Leghorne, Constantinople, Venice, Vienna, and elsewhere; news from the court of Louis XIV in Paris; advertisements for lost watches, cloaks and spaniels, as well as for Poems, &c. Written Upon several Occasions, by Edmund Waller; etc.