BOOKS BURNED BY THE COMMON HANGMAN.
(Vol. viii., p. 272.)
Your correspondent Balliolensis should remember that at the time Dr. Drake published his
Historia Anglo-Scotica, 1703, there were no bounds to the angry passions and jealousies evoked by the discussion of the projected union; consequently, what may appear to as in the present day an insufficient reason for the treatment the book met with in the northern metropolis, wore a very different aspect to the Scots, who, under the popular belief that they were to be sold to their enemies, saw every movement with distrust, and tortured everything said or written on this side the Tweed, upon the impending question, to discover an attack upon their national independence, their church, and their valour.
Looking at Dr. Drake's book, then, for the data upon which it was condemned, we find that it opens with a prefatory dedication to Sir E. Seymour, one of Queen Anne's Commissioners for the Union, and a high churchman, wherein the author distinctly ventures a blow at Presbytery when he says to his patron:
"The languishing oppressed Church of Scotland is not without hopes of finding in you hereafter the same successful champion and restorer that her sister of England has already experienced."
He farther calculated upon Sir Edward inspiring the neighbouring nation "with as great a respect for the generosity of the English as they have heretofore had to dread their valour." Now the Scots neither acknowledged the Episcopacy which Seymour is here urged to press upon them, nor had they any such slavish fear of the vaunted English prowess with which Dr. Drake would have them intimidated; without going farther, therefore, into the book, it appears to me that the Scots parliament had a right to consider it written in a bad spirit, and to pacify the people by condemning it.
Defoe, in his History of the Union (G. Chalmers' edition, London, 1786), says:
"One Dr. Drake writes a preface to an abridgment of the Scots History, wherein, speaking something reflecting upon the freedom and independence of Scotland, the Scots parliament caused it to be burned by the hangman in Edinburgh."
In his Northern Memoirs, 1715, Oldmixon observes:
"They (the Jacobites) therefore put Dr. Drake, author of the High Church Memorials, upon publishing an antiquated Scotch history, on purpose to vilify the whole nation in the preface, and create more ill blood. This had the desired effect. The Scots parliament highly resented the affront, and ordered it to be burnt by the common hangman at Edinburgh."
D'Israeli, in his Calamities of Authors, has the following interesting notice of Drake:
"I must add one more striking example of a political author in the case of Dr. James Drake, a man of genius and an excellent writer. He resigned an honorable profession, that of medicine, to adopt a very contrary one, that of becoming an author by profession for a party. As a Tory writer he dared every extremity of the law, while he evaded it by every subtlety of artifice; he sent a masked lady with his MSS. to the printer, who was never discovered; and was once saved by a flaw in the indictment, from the simple change of an r for a t, or nor for not, one of those shameful evasions by which the law, to its perpetual disgrace, so often protects the criminal from punishment. Dr. Drake had the honor of hearing himself censured from the throne, of being imprisoned, of seeing his Memorials of the Church of England burned at (the Royal Exchange) London, and his Hist. Angl. Scot. at Edinburgh. Having enlisted himself in the pay of the booksellers, among other works, I suspect, he condescended to practise some literary impositions; for he has reprinted Father Parsons famous libel against the Earl of Leicester, under the title of Secret Memoirs of Robert Dudley, E. of L., 1706, with a preface pretending it was printed from an old MS."
The same instructive writer adds:
"Drake was a lover of literature; he left behind him a version of Herodotus, and a system of anatomy, once the most popular and curious of its kind. After all this turmoil of his literary life, neither his masked lady nor the flaws in his indictments availed him; government brought a writ of error, severely prosecuted him; and abandoned, as usual, by those for whom he had annihilated a genius which deserved a better fate, his perturbed spirit broke out into a fever, and he died raving against cruel persecutors, and patrons not much more humane."
Another book before me, and one which shared the fate of Drake's in Edinburgh, is The Superiority and Direct Dominion of the Imperial Crown of England over the Crown and Kingdom of Scotland, the true Foundation of a compleat Union reasserted; 4to. London, 1705. This had appeared the year before, but was reproduced to answer the objections to it from the other side. It was written by William Attwood, Esq. If it required a nice discrimination to discover the offence of Drake, there was no such dubiety about this book, which goes the whole length of Scottish vassalage; and Mr. Attwood would lead us to believe that he knocks over the arguments of Hodges and Anderson[[6]] for Scottish independence with as much ease as he would ninepins.
Unfortunately these subjects are again forced upon us, and a reference to some of the books I have cited will enable gentlemen who are curious upon the point to judge for themselves in the matter of the present agitation of "Justice to Scotland."
J. O.
Footnote 6:[(return)]
Jas. Hodges, a Scotch gentleman, who supported the Independency in a work entitled War betwixt the Two Kingdoms considered, for which, says Attwood, "he had 4800 Scots Punds given him for nothing but begging the question, and bullying England with the terror of her arms."
"An Historical Essay, showing that the Crown of Scotland is Independent; wherein the gross Errors of a late book, entitled 'The Superiority and Direct Dominion,' &c., and some other books for that purpose, are exposed by Jas. Anderson, A.M., Writer to His Majesty's Signet," Edin. 1705. For this work Anderson received the thanks of the Scottish parliament, as well as some pecuniary reward. (Chalmers' Life of Ruddiman.) The authors of these books having made out a case which was adopted as the national one, it is nowise surprising that they should hand over Drake and Attwood to the hangman for attempting to demolish it.
On May 5, 1686, M. Claude's account of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew was burnt in the Old Exchange, "so mighty a power and ascendant here had the French ambassador." (Evelyn's Memoirs.)
John S. Burn.