Besides editing the newsbooks, L’Estrange was also Surveyor of the Press, which meant nothing could be printed without his permission, and he did indeed hire spies to look for booksellers who sold unlicensed tomes. It was also rumoured that some authors were granted licenses if they had pretty wives willing to spend a little time in his company.
L’Estrange was assisted in his work by a man called Henry Brome. Brome had a bookshop in Ivy Lane, and L’Estrange’s office was above it. Brome’s wife was Joanna, who was said by contemporaries to be proud. The newsbooks were printed by Richard Hodgkinson, whose premises were on Thames Street, at the back of Baynard Castle. Baynard Castle was destroyed in the Great Fire of 1666, along with Hodgkinson’s print-house.
Muddiman, meanwhile, was not about to take his dismissal lying down, and immediately exploited a loophole in the law. L’Estrange had a monopoly of all printed news, but handwritten ‘newsletters’ were another matter. Muddiman’s weekly manuscript sheets (which had a circulation of about 150 at an annual charge of between £5 and £20 each) contained plenty of home news and were very well received. Because he did not have a government telling him what to write, and because he was not a censor, his letters were generally regarded as a far more reliable source of news than the official rags. They quickly became a huge financial success, allowing Muddiman to purchase Coldhern, an elegant country mansion at Earl’s Court (an echo of it survives today in streets called Coleherne in the Earl’s Court area).
Williamson was furious and jealous, and hired James Hickes, a clerk at the Letter Office, to spy on and attempt to circumvent Muddiman. Williamson’s correspondence at this time also suggests he commissioned the services of mercenary gangs, perhaps for intercepting the letters; he may even have hired members of the famous gang called the Hectors. As Muddiman’s enterprise grew, Hickes used increasingly more brazen methods to destroy him. He even stole the addresses of the people who subscribed to the newsletters and wrote to them himself, offering to sell them circulars of his own. Although Hickes was promised great rewards for his shady activities, Williamson weaselled his way out of them all, and Hickes slid out of the public records a bitter and disappointed man.
In 1665, public disapproval of L’Estrange’s management of the newsbooks became so great that Williamson was obliged to act. In his usual sleazy manner, he waited until the Court was in Oxford, where it had gone to escape the plague, and founded The Oxford Gazette as the official government’s mouthpiece. He asked Muddiman to edit it. L’Estrange, who had loyally remained at his post in the disease-ravaged capital, suddenly found himself deposed, and wrote several letters of dismay to Williamson, which the Spymaster probably ignored. It was not long before Williamson and his new editor fell out, though, and Muddiman soon resigned and reverted to his more popular newsletters. Muddiman’s early assistant was named Giles Dury.
Court records of 1663 describe a devious character called Anne Pettis, who stole silver from the linen-draper Richard Bridges, and was sentenced to hang. Her aliases included Cade, Petwer and Reade, suggesting she had had previous trouble with the law. She was later acquitted.
There is no record of William Leybourn marrying, and eventually, he moved out of his bookshop on Monkwell Street in Cripplegate, and went to live in Southall, between Uxbridge and Acton. In 1667, he wrote a book on the use of Gunter’s Quadrant.
John Thurloe, Cromwell’s Spymaster General and Secretary of State, was living quietly in Lincoln’s Inn in 1663, and the Earl of Clarendon’s secretary was named John Bulteel. Court musicians in the 1660s included Thomas Maylord (or Mallard), William Smegergill (a Frenchman whose alias really was Caesar), John Hingston and Thomas Greeting, the latter of whom may also have been involved in espionage.
In 1663, the diarist Samuel Pepys recorded that two men were dead from eating ‘cowcumbers’. It was generally acknowledged that ingesting raw fruit and vegetables could be dangerous, and both the apothecary Nicholas Culpeper and the ancient Greek physician Galen warned against the perils of cucumbers in particular. One of the deaths was Thomas Newburne, a corrupt solicitor who lived in Old Jewry, and the other was Ellis Crisp. ‘Arise, Tom Newburne’ was apparently a ‘nick-word’ associated with the lawyer, although its meaning has been lost in the mists of time.
The Butcher Of Smithfield: Chaloner's Third Exploit in Restoration London (Thomas Chaloner Book 3) Page 44
