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JOHN TUTCHIN'S OBSERVATOR, COMMENT SERIALS, AND THE ‘RAGE OF PARTY’ IN BRITAIN, 1678 – c. 1730

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 November 2019

EDWARD TAYLOR
EDWARD TAYLOR*
Affiliation:
University College London
*
Department of Greek and Latin, University College London, Gower Street, London, wc1e 6btedward.taylor@ucl.ac.uk
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Abstract

The importance of print in the ‘rage of party’ of late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century Britain is well known, but scholars have paid insufficient attention to the press phenomenon that provided the most persistent and undiluted partisan voices of the era, the comment serial. Comment serials – regular printed publications designed explicitly to present topical analysis, opinion, and advice – were fashioned as powerful weapons for partisan combat. Due to their regularity and flexibility, they could be more potent than other forms of topical print, especially pamphlets and newspapers. Although many publications have been individually recognized as comment serials, such as Roger L'Estrange's Observator (1681–7), Daniel Defoe's Review (1704–13), and Jonathan Swift and others’ Examiner (1710–14), their development as a holistic phenomenon has not been properly understood. They first appeared during the Succession Crisis (1678–82), and proliferated under Queen Anne (1702–14), supporting both tory and whig causes. Through widespread consumption, both direct and indirect, they shaped partisan culture in various ways, including by reinforcing and galvanizing partisan identities, facilitating the development of partisan ‘reading communities’, and manifesting and representing party divisions in public. This article focuses on John Tutchin's Observator (1702–12) as a case-study of a major comment serial.

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The Historical Journal , Volume 63 , Issue 4 , September 2020 , pp. 862 - 884
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019

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Footnotes

I am grateful to Mark Knights for commenting on earlier versions of this article, to the anonymous reviewers for their observations, and to the University of Warwick for funding the doctoral research that enabled this work to be produced.

References

1 Observator, 2.9 (8 May 1703). Serials are cited with volume and issue number, as, e.g., ‘1.1’. Quotations preserve italics, except where roman and italic are inverted, when they are quoted in non-inverted form. Footnote references to ‘Observator’ refer to Tutchin's Observator unless indicated. All pre-1800 works were printed in London unless otherwise stated.

2 Observator, 2.35 (7 Aug. 1703), 3.57 (7 Oct. 1704), 3.92 (3 Mar. 1705), 6.5 (19 Mar. 1707).

3 Historical Manuscripts Commission, The manuscripts of his grace the duke of Portland (10 vols., London, 1891–1931), iv, p. 338.

4 Observator, 2.9 (8 May 1703).

5 Ibid., 5.96 (15 Feb. 1707).

6 Ibid., 6.60 (27 Sept. 1707).

7 For Tutchin's death, see Horsley, L. S., ‘The trial of John Tutchin, author of the Observator’, Yearbook of English Studies, 3 (1973), pp. 124–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at pp. 139–40.

8 Tutchin was defensive about this, e.g. Observator, 1.21 (4 July 1702), 1.34 (19 Aug. 1702), 4.25 (27 June 1705).

9 E.g. De Krey, G. S., A fractured society: the politics of London in the first age of party, 1688–1715 (Oxford, 1985)Google Scholar; Harris, Tim, London crowds in the reign of Charles II: propaganda and politics from the Restoration until the Exclusion Crisis (Cambridge, 1987)Google Scholar; Peacey, Jason, Print and public politics in the English Revolution (Cambridge, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 For pamphlets, see especially Raymond, Joad, Pamphlets and pamphleteering in early modern Britain (Cambridge, 2003)Google Scholar.

11 Studies of newspapers with a strong emphasis on consumption and impact include Raymond, Joad, The invention of the newspaper: English newsbooks, 1641–1649 (Oxford, 1996)Google Scholar; Sommerville, C. John, The news revolution in England: cultural dynamics of daily information (New York, NY, and Oxford, 1996)Google Scholar; Raymond, Joad, ‘The newspaper, public opinion, and the public sphere in the seventeenth century’, in his News, newspapers, and society in early modern Britain (London, 1999), pp. 109–40Google Scholar; Barker, Hannah, Newspapers, politics and English society, 1695–1855 (Harlow, 2000)Google Scholar; Heyd, Uriel, Reading newspapers: press and public in eighteenth-century Britain and America (Oxford, 2012)Google Scholar.

12 E.g. scholars who treat comment serials simply as comment-heavy forms of ‘newspaper’ include Black, Jeremy, The English press in the eighteenth century (London and Sydney, 1987), p. xvGoogle Scholar; Raymond, Pamphlets and pamphleteering, p. 351; Hinds, Peter, ‘The horrid popish plot’: Roger L'Estrange and the circulation of political discourse in late seventeenth-century London (Oxford, 2010), p. 28CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 Newton, Theodore F. M., ‘The mask of Heraclitus: a problem in Restoration journalism’, Harvard Studies and Notes in Philology and Literature, 16 (1934), pp. 145–60Google Scholar, at p. 145.

14 E.g. Downie, J. A., ‘Stating facts right about Defoe's Review’, in Downie, J. A. and Corns, Thomas N., eds., Telling people what to think: early eighteenth-century periodicals from The Review to The Rambler (London, 1993), pp. 8–22Google Scholar, at p. 19.

15 Sutherland, James, The Restoration newspaper and its development (Cambridge, 1986), p. 18CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Walker, R. B., ‘The newspaper press in the reign of William III’, Historical Journal, 17 (1974), pp. 691–709CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sherman, Stuart, ‘Literature, 1701–1713’, in Womersley, David, ed., A companion to literature from Milton to Blake (Oxford, 2000), pp. 431–49Google Scholar, at p. 431.

16 E.g. Gentleman's Journal and Mist's Weekly Journal respectively.

17 ‘Comment’ is preferred to ‘opinion’ as being a more neutral and expansive term, encompassing both impartial and partial content. ‘Serial’ is better than ‘periodical’ as an overarching term for multi-instalment publications because it encompasses titles published irregularly as well as regularly, and because ‘periodical’ is sometimes used specifically for literary or moral serials.

18 Key older works include Graham, Walter, English literary periodicals (New York, NY, 1930)Google Scholar, and Bond, Richmond P., Studies in the early English periodical (Chapel Hill, NC, 1957)Google Scholar. More recent studies include Italia, Iona, The rise of literary journalism in the eighteenth century (London and New York, NY, 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; DeMaria, Robert, ‘The eighteenth-century periodical essay’, in Richetti, John, ed., The Cambridge history of English literature, 1660–1780 (Cambridge, 2005), pp. 527–48Google Scholar; Squibbs, Richard, Urban enlightenment and the eighteenth-century periodical essay: transatlantic retrospects (London, 2014)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 Aspects of Tutchin's Observator are discussed in Horsley, ‘Trial’; idem, ‘Rogues or honest gentlemen: the public characters of Queen Anne journalists’, Texas Studies in Literature and Language, 18 (1976), pp. 198–228; Kenyon, J. P., Revolution principles: the politics of party, 1689–1720 (Cambridge, 1977), pp. 105–11CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

20 McVeagh, John, ed., Defoe's Review (9 vols., London, 2003–11), i, pp. xiv–xvGoogle Scholar is typical.

21 This schedule was temporarily broken in late 1704. Three issues were published in the week preceding Tutchin's trial, and afterwards Tutchin did not resume the Observator for just over a month.

22 For Tutchin's biography, see especially J. A. Downie, ‘Tutchin, John (1660x64–1707)’, ODNB. Horsley, ‘Trial’, discusses Tutchin's legal troubles.

23 Slauter, Will, ‘The paragraph as information technology: how news traveled in the eighteenth-century Atlantic world’, Annales HSS, 67 (2012), pp. 253–78Google Scholar.

24 Daily Courant, 1 (11 Mar. 1702).

25 Observator, 1.5 (29 Apr. 1702).

26 Ibid., 1.19 (27 June 1702).

27 A recent discussion is Jake Halford, ‘“Of dialogue, that great and powerful art”: a study of the dialogue genre in seventeenth-century England’ (Ph.D. thesis, Warwick, 2016).

28 Observator, 3.41 (12 Aug. 1704), 3.98 (24 Mar. 1705).

29 For Civil War serials, see especially Frank, Joseph, The beginnings of the English newspaper, 1620–1660 (Cambridge, MA, 1961)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Raymond, Invention of the newspaper; McElligott, Jason, Royalism, print and censorship in revolutionary England (Woodbridge, 2007)Google Scholar.

30 A few serials that answered other serials (e.g. Britanicus Vapulans, Anti-Aulicus), and a few innovative serials of 1654 (John Streater's Observations and Politick Commentary, Marchamont Nedham's Observator).

31 Usually known as ‘newsbooks’ because they were quarto pamphlets, unlike later folio half-sheet ‘newspapers’.

32 Raymond, Joad, Making the news: an anthology of the newsbooks of Revolutionary England, 1641–1660 (Moreton-in-Marsh, 1993), p. 19Google Scholar; Smith, Nigel, Literature and revolution in England, 1640–1660 (New Haven, CT, and London, 1994), p. 58Google Scholar.

33 Charles Leslie, Rehearsal, i (1704–7), preface, p. [i].

34 Guy Miege, The present state of Great Britain (2 vols., 1707), i, p. 137.

35 Roger L'Estrange, Observator, 1.325 (23 Apr. 1683); Daniel Defoe, Review, 5.1 (27 Mar. 1708).

36 E.g. the London Post and Flying Post had occasional comment sections in Anne's reign.

37 For licensing as a means to encourage as well as restrict print, see Peacey, Jason, Politicians and pamphleteers: propaganda during the English Civil Wars and interregnum (Aldershot, 2004), ch. 4Google Scholar.

38 I would like to thank the anonymous reviewer for this observation.

39 Full figures and lists are presented in my forthcoming doctoral thesis, ‘Commenting on the news: the serial press and political culture in Britain, c. 1641–1730’ (Warwick). 500+ issues: L'Estrange's Observator (1681–7, 931 issues), Tutchin's Observator (1702–12, 1,065 issues), Review (1704–13, 1,359 issues), Spectator (1711–12, 1714, 635 issues), Hyp Doctor (1730–41, 534 issues). 100–499 issues: Weekly Pacquet (1678–83), Mercurius Reformatus (1689–94?), Rehearsal (1704–9), Tatler (1709–11), Female Tatler (1709–10), Examiner (1710–14), Guardian (1713), Mercator (1713–14), British Merchant (1713–14), High-German Doctor (1714–15), Patriot (1714–15), Examiner (1714–16), Free-Thinker (1718–21), Pasquin (1722–4), Plain Dealer (1724–5), Free Briton (1729–35).

40 For Heraclitus Ridens, see Newton, ‘Mask’. The minor 1681 dialogues are Democritus Ridens, Democritus Flens, Observator Observ'd, and New Dialogue between Some Body and No Body. There were some non-dialogue comment serials in 1681 too, e.g., Weekly Discoverer Strip'd Naked (prose), Popish Mass Display'd (verse).

41 Observator, 1.69 (19 Dec. 1702), 4.16 (26 May 1705). For L'Estrange's Observator, see Goldie, Mark, ‘Roger L'Estrange's Observator and the exorcism of the plot’, in Dunan-Page, Anne and Lynch, Beth, eds., Roger L'Estrange and the making of Restoration culture (Aldershot, 2008), pp. 67–88Google Scholar.

42 For the Weekly Pacquet, see Schwoerer, Lois G., The ingenious Mr. Henry Care, Restoration publicist (Baltimore, MD, and London, 2001), ch. 3Google Scholar.

43 The ‘Popish Courant’ was not consistently a dialogue after April 1681.

44 Sutherland, Restoration newspaper, p. 18; Goldie, ‘Roger L'Estrange's Observator’, pp. 69–70.

45 Langley Curtis published the Weekly Pacquet, Benjamin Harris the Weekly Discoverer Strip'd Naked, and Francis Smith junior Democritus Ridens. For these whig publishers, see Timothy J. Crist, ‘Francis Smith and the opposition press in England, 1660–1688’ (Ph.D. thesis, Cambridge, 1977); Randall, Susannah, ‘Newspapers and their publishers during the popish plot and Exclusion Crisis’, in Hinks, John and Armstrong, Catherine, eds., Book trade connections from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries (London, 2008), pp. 45–70Google Scholar.

46 James Welwood, Mercurius Reformatus, i (1689), title-page. For Mercurius Reformatus, see Furdell, Elizabeth L., James Welwood: physician to the Glorious Revolution (Conshohocken, PA, 1998), ch. 4Google Scholar.

47 Three major newspapers were founded in 1695, the Flying Post, Post Boy, and Post Man, which all lasted into the 1730s.

48 Overall, there were over twenty ‘Observator’ comment serials between 1681 and 1725, including minor titles.

49 Daniel Defoe, A supplementary journal to the advice from the Scandal. Club (Sept. 1704), pp. 5–6.

50 For the Review, see e.g. Downie, J. A., Robert Harley and the press: propaganda and public opinion in the age of Swift and Defoe (Cambridge, 1979)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem, ‘Stating facts right’; McVeagh, ed., Defoe's Review; Seager, Nicholas, ‘“He reviews without fear, and acts without fainting”: Defoe's Review’, Eighteenth Century Studies, 46 (2012), pp. 131–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cowan, Brian, ‘Daniel Defoe's Review and the transformation of the English periodical’, Huntington Library Quarterly, 77 (2014), pp. 79–110Google Scholar; Marshall, Ashley, ‘Robert Harley and the politics of Daniel Defoe's Review, 1710–13’, 1650–1850, 24 (2019), pp. 54–97Google Scholar. The Review was not always straightforwardly whig, but was arguably more moderate in its early and late years.

51 For the Rehearsal, see Frank, Bruce, ‘“The excellent Rehearser”: Charles Leslie and the tory party, 1688–1714’, in Browning, J. D., ed., Biography in the 18th century (New York, NY, and London, 1980), pp. 43–68Google Scholar.

52 For the Examiner, see e.g. Ellis, Frank H., ‘“A quill worn to the pith in the service of the state”: Swift's Examiner’, in Real, Hermann J. and Vienken, Heinz J., eds., Proceedings of the first Münster symposium on Jonathan Swift (Munich, 1985), pp. 73–82Google Scholar; William A. Speck, ‘The Examiner re-examined’, in Downie and Corns, eds., Telling people, pp. 34–43; Marshall, Ashley, ‘Swift, Oldisworth, and the politics of the Examiner, 1710–1714’, in Bischof, Janika et al. , eds., Reading Swift: papers from the seventh Münster symposium on Jonathan Swift (Paderborn, 2019), pp. 401–31Google Scholar.

53 Downie, Harley and the press, ch. 8.

54 For a traditional account of the Tatler’s generic origins, see DeMaria, ‘Periodical essay’.

55 The Tatler was initially a miscellany in the form of a parody newspaper, but later became an essay.

56 Moderator (1710), Examiner (1710–14), Medley (1710–12), Mercator (1713–14), British Merchant (1713–14), Englishman (1713), High-German Doctor (1714–15), Patriot (1714–15), Monitor (1714), Englishman (1715), Free-Holder (1715–16), Grumbler (1715), Occasional Courant (1716–17), Scourge (1717), Heraclitus Ridens (1718), Manufacturer (1719–21), Independent Whig (1720–1), Commentator (1720), Director (1720–1).

57 Tatler (1709–11), Female Tatler (1709–10), Visions of Sir Heister Ryley (1710–11), Spectator (1711–12, 1714), Tatler (Edinburgh, 1711), Hermit (1711–12), Rhapsody (1712), Guardian (1713), Lay-Monk (1713–14), Lover (1714), Spectator (1715), Censor (1715–17), Entertainer (1717–18), Free-Thinker (1718–21).

58 Sullivan, Alvin, British literary magazines: the Augustan age and the age of Johnson, 1698–1788 (Westport, CT, 1983)Google Scholar; Cowan, Brian, ‘Mr. Spectator and the coffeehouse public sphere’, Eighteenth-Century Studies, 37 (2004), pp. 345–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

59 E.g. the Craftsman (from its forty-fifth issue), the Champion, and Common Sense.

60 Terrae Filius (1721), Pasquin (1722–4), True Briton (1723–4), Visiter (1723–4), Briton (1723–4), Tea Table (1724), Honest True Briton (1724), Plain Dealer (1724–5), Country Gentleman (1726), Craftsman (a comment serial for its first forty-four issues, 1726–7, before becoming a newspaper with an introductory comment section), Senator (1728), Free Briton (1729–35), Hyp Doctor (1730–41), Auditor (1733–4), Prompter (1734–6).

61 William Arnall, Opposition no proof of patriotism (1735), p. 27.

62 Observator, 1.16 (17 June 1702).

63 Ibid., 3.57 (7 Oct. 1704).

64 Ibid., 2.74 (22 Dec. 1703).

65 Ibid., 6 (1707–8), preface.

66 See especially Kenyon, Revolution principles.

67 Observator, 1.28 (29 July 1702).

68 Ibid., 3.99 (28 Mar. 1705).

69 Ibid., 2.54 (13 Oct. 1703).

70 Ibid., 2.37 (14 Aug. 1703), 2.48 (22 Sept. 1703).

71 Ibid., 1.100 (7 Apr. 1703).

72 Ibid., 3.9–14 (22 Apr. – 10 May 1704).

73 E.g. Ibid., 2.41ff (from 28 Aug. 1703, from Care), 3.9ff (from 22 Apr. 1704, from Selden). Tutchin may have accessed these through reprints: English liberties was reprinted many times, including in 1700 and 1703; Historicall discourse was reprinted in 1682 and 1689.

74 Ibid., 1.25 (18 July 1702).

75 ‘Perkinites’: Jacobites (referring to Perkin Warbeck, a fifteenth-century Pretender). ‘Tackers’: extreme tories who ‘tacked’ anti-dissenter legislation to a taxation bill in 1704 to try to force it through parliament. ‘Memorialists’: supporters of James Drake's Memorial of the Church of England (1705), which declared the church in danger under the present ministry.

76 Observator, 2.78 (5 Jan. 1704).

77 Ibid., 4.91 (13 Feb. 1706).

78 Ibid., 3.83 (31 Jan. 1705). Nonjurors accepted post-Revolution monarchs on a de facto but not de jure basis.

79 Ibid., 3.67 (6 Dec. 1704).

80 Ibid., 3.50 (13 Sept. 1704).

81 L'Estrange, Observator, 1.1 (13 Apr. 1681); William King et al., Examiner, 1.1 (3 Aug. 1710).

82 Observator, 3.95 (14 Mar. 1705), 5.1 (20 Mar. 1706).

83 Ibid., 3.51 (16 Sept. 1704), 4.9 (2 May 1705).

84 E.g. Ibid., 4.41 (22 Aug. 1705).

85 Richards, James O., Party propaganda under Queen Anne: the general elections of 1702–1713 (Athens, GA, 1972), p. 64Google Scholar; Harris, Tim, Politics under the later Stuarts: party conflict in a divided society, 1660–1715 (London, 1993), p. 186Google Scholar.

86 Observator, 3.24 (14 June 1704), 4.39 (15 Aug. 1705).

87 Ibid., 1.76 (13 Jan. 1703). See also ibid., 1.73 (2 Jan. 1703), 1.87 (20 Feb. 1703), 2.19 (12 June 1703), 6.61 (1 Oct. 1707).

88 William Fuller, The whole life of Mr. William Fuller (1703), pp. 62–3.

89 The authenticity of readers’ letters is hard to prove, but certainly many were sent to comment serials: see Observator, 3.2 (29 Mar. 1704); William Pittis, Heraclitus Ridens, 1.24 (23 Oct. 1703); James Drake, Mercurius Politicus, 1.9 (10 July 1705). At least one letter to the Observator survives in manuscript: Historical Manuscripts Commission, The manuscripts of his grace the duke of Portland, iv, p. 92, addressed to Tutchin's printer, John How.

90 Observator, 2.97 (11 Mar. 1704).

91 A hue and cry, after the Observators honesty (1705?).

92 Observator, 3.17 (20 May 1704).

93 Leslie, Rehearsal, i, preface.

94 Drake, Mercurius Politicus, 1.2 (16 June 1705).

95 Horsley, ‘Trial’, p. 124 n. 1, estimates ‘at least seventeen’ pamphlet attacks on Tutchin. See Observator, 6.5 (19 Mar. 1707), for Tutchin's estimate. I have counted forty-four books and pamphlets answering Tutchin between 1702 and 1707, including supportive publications, but excluding serial responses.

96 Defoe, Review, 1.39 (18 July 1704).

97 Leslie, Rehearsal, i, preface.

98 Drake, Mercurius Politicus, 1.1 (12 June 1705).

99 Horsley, ‘Trial’.

100 Sutherland, James R., ‘The circulation of newspapers and literary periodicals, 1700–30’, Library, 4th ser., 15 (1934), pp. 110–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at p. 111.

101 Raymond, Pamphlets and pamphleteering, p. 80.

102 Joseph Addison, Spectator, 10 (12 Mar. 1711).

103 Qu. in Downie, Harley and the press, p. 9.

104 (Respectively) Observator, 4.51 (26 Sep. 1705), 1.48 (7 Oct. 1702), 2.97 (11 Mar. 1704).

105 Ibid., 1.37 (29 Aug. 1702).

106 Snyder, Henry L., ed., The Marlborough–Godolphin correspondence (3 vols., Oxford, 1975), i, p. 344Google Scholar; Observator, 6.14 (19 Apr. 1707), 6.17 (30 Apr. 1707), 6.34 (28 June 1707).

107 Observator, 2.1 (10 Apr. 1703), 2.3 (17 Apr. 1703), 4.2 (7 Apr. 1705).

108 Ibid., 3.87 (14 Feb. 1705), 4.9 (2 May 1705), 4.16 (26 May 1705), 4.17 (30 May 1705), 4.34 (29 July 1705).

109 E.g. ibid., 4.1 (4 Apr. 1705): an elixir available in ‘most Cities and great Towns in England, and some in Scotland and Ireland’.

110 On female readership and serials, see Berry, Helen, Gender, society and print culture in late-Stuart England: the cultural world of the Athenian Mercury (Aldershot, 2003)Google Scholar.

111 A complete collection of state-trials (6 vols., 1730 edn), v, p. 534.

112 Observator, 2.80 (12 Jan. 1704).

113 E.g. Harris, London crowds, ch. 5; Zwicker, Steven, ‘Reading the margins: politics and the habits of appropriation’, in Sharpe, Kevin and Zwicker, Steven, eds., Refiguring revolutions: aesthetics and politics from the English revolution to the romantic revolution (Berkeley, CA, and London, 1998), pp. 101–15Google Scholar; Sharpe, Kevin, Reading revolutions: the politics of reading in early modern England (New Haven, CT, and London, 2000)Google Scholar; Sharpe, Kevin and Zwicker, Steven, ‘Introduction: discovering the Renaissance reader’, in their Reading, society and politics in early modern England (Cambridge, 2003), pp. 1–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Steven Zwicker, ‘The constitution of opinion and the pacification of reading’, in ibid., pp. 295–316; Matthew Green, ‘Londoners and the news: responses to the political press, 1695–1742’ (D.Phil. thesis, Oxford, 2011), ch. 5.

114 Observator, 5.10 (20 Apr. 1706).

115 Ibid., 3.24 (14 June 1704).

116 Ibid., 5.6 (6 Apr. 1706).

117 Reflections on the management of Sir George Rooke (1704), p. 2.

118 Charles Leslie, Cassandra (2 parts, 1704), part 2, pp. 21–2.

119 Doble, C. E., ed., Remarks and collections of Thomas Hearne (11 vols., Oxford, 1885–1921), ii, p. 53Google Scholar; Historical Manuscripts Commission, The manuscripts of his grace the duke of Portland, iv, p. 454.

120 Stanley Fish's concept of ‘interpretive communities’, which posits clusters of readers as the key factor determining textual meaning, is useful. See Sharpe and Zwicker, ‘Introduction’, pp. 8–9.

121 Observator, 1.48 (7 Oct. 1702).

122 Ibid., 1.56 (4 Nov. 1702).

123 This point was famously argued for newspaper-reading and national identity in Anderson, Benedict, Imagined communities (London and New York, 1991 edn), p. 35Google Scholar.

124 Observator, 2.98 (15 Mar. 1704).

125 Ibid., 4.9 (2 May 1705).

126 Leslie, Cassandra, part 2, p. 12; William Pittis, Last new prologues and epilogues relating to the life of the Observator (1703), p. 17; Rehearsal, 1.2 (12 Aug. 1704).

127 The examination, tryal, and condemnation of Rebellion Ob—r (1703), p. 7.

128 Pittis, Heraclitus Ridens, 1.4 (14 Aug. 1703).

129 These examples identify these serials as whig mouthpieces alongside the Observator. Review: e.g. The republican bullies (1705), p. 1. Tatler: e.g. Henry St John, A letter to the Examiner (1710), p. 4. Medley: e.g. Delariviere Manley, The D. of M—h's vindication (1711), p. 4. Englishman: e.g. John Tutchin's ghost to Richard St—le (1714), pp. 7–8.

130 John Perks, The rights of the Church of England asserted and prov'd (1705), appendix (this has been transposed to the front of the pamphlet in the BL copy, 4106.e.29); The memorial of the Presbyterians, exemplified in the Solemn League and Covenant (1706), sig. A2v; The no-Church catechism (1710), p. 7.