BOOKS BURNED BY THE COMMON HANGMAN.
(Vol. viii., pp. 272. 346. 625.; Vol. ix., p. 78.)
The well-known law dictionary, entitled The Interpreter, by John Cowel, LL.D., was burned (1610) under a proclamation of James I. (D'Israeli's Calamities of Authors, ed. 1840, p. 133.)
In June, 1622, the Commentary of David Pare, or Paræus On the Epistle to the Romans, was burned at London, Oxford, and Cambridge, by order of the Privy Council. (Wood's Hist. and Antiq. of Univ. of Oxford, ed. Gutch, vol. ii. pp. 341-345.; Cooper's Annals of Cambridge, vol. iii. pp. 143, 144.)
On the 12th of February, 1634, Elenchus Religionis Papisticæ, by John Bastwicke, M.D., was ordered to be burned by the High Commission Court. (Prynne's New Discovery of the Prelates' Tyranny, p. 132.)
On the 10th of February, 1640-1 the House of Lords ordered that two books published by John Pocklington, D.D., entitled Altare Christianum, and Sunday no Sabbath, should be publicly burned in the city of London and the two Universities, by the hands of the common executioner; and on the 10th of March the House ordered the Sheriffs of London and the Vice-Chancellors of both the Universities, forthwith to take care and see the order of the House carried into execution. (Lords' Journals, vol. iv. pp. 161. 180.)
On the 13th of August, 1660, Charles II. issued a proclamation against Milton's Defensio pro Populo Anglicano, his Answer to the Portraiture of his Sacred Majesty in his Solitude and Sufferings, and a book by John Goodwin, late of Coleman Street, London, Clerk, entitled The Obstructors of Justice. All copies of these books were to be brought to the sheriffs of counties, who were to cause the same to be publicly burned by the hands of the common hangman at the next assizes. (Kennett's Register and Chronicle, p. 207.) This proclamation is also printed in Collet's Relics of Literature, with the inaccurate date 1672, and the absurd statement that no copy of the proclamation was discovered till 1797.
In January, 1692-3, a pamphlet by Charles Blount, Esq., entitled King William and Queen Mary, Conquerors, &c., was burned by the common hangman in Palace Yard, Westminster. (Bohun's Autobiography, ed. S. W. Rix, vol. xxiv. pp. 106, 109. 113.; Wilson's Life of De Foe, vol. i. p. 179 n.)
The same parliament consigned to the flames Bishop Burnet's Pastoral Letter, which had been published 1689. (Wilson's Life of De Foe, vol. i. p. 179.)
On the 31st of July, 1693, the second volume of Anthony à Wood's Athenæ Oxonienses was burned in the Theatre Yard at Oxford by the Apparitor of the University, in pursuance of the sentence of the University Court in a prosecution for a libel on the memory of Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon. (Life of Mr. Anthony à Wood, ed. 1772, p. 377.)
On the 25th of February, 1702-3, the House of Commons ordered De Foe's Shortest Way with the Dissenters to be burned by the hands of the common hangman on the morrow in New Palace Yard. (Wilson's Life of De Foe, vol. ii. p. 62.)
In or about 1709, John Humphrey, an aged non-conformist minister, having published a pamphlet against the Test, and circulated it amongst the members of parliament, was cited before a committee, and his work was ordered to be burned by the common hangman. (Wilson's Life of De Foe, vol. iii. p. 52.)
The North Briton, No. 45., was on the 3rd of December, 1763, burned by the common hangman at the Royal Exchange, by order of the House of
Commons. The following account is from Malcolm's Anecdotes of London, 4to., 1808, p. 282.:
"The 3rd of December was appointed for this silly ceremony, which took place before the Royal Exchange, amidst the hisses and execrations of the mob, not directed at the obnoxious paper, but at Alderman Harley, the sheriffs, and constables, the latter of whom were compelled to fight furiously through the whole business. The instant the hangman held the work to a lighted link it was beat to the ground, and the populace, seizing the faggots prepared to complete its destruction, fell upon the peace-officers and fairly threshed them from the field; nor did the alderman escape without a contusion on the head, inflicted by a bullet thrown through the glass of his coach; and several other persons had reason to repent the attempt to burn that publicly which the sovereign people determined to approve, who afterwards exhibited a large jack-boot at Temple Bar, and burnt it in triumph, unmolested, as a species of retaliation."
I am not aware that what Mr. Malcolm terms a "silly ceremony" has been repeated since 1763.
C. H. Cooper.
Cambridge.
I know not whether you have noticed the following:
"Droit le Roy; or, A Digest of the Rights and Prerogatives of the Imperial Crown of Great Britain. By a Member of the Society of Lincoln's Inn. 'Dieu et Mon Droit.' [Royal Arms, with G. R.] London: printed and sold by W. Griffin, in Fetter Lane, MDCCLXIV."
Lord Mahon (History of England, vol. v. p. 175.) says:
"It was also observed, and condemned as a shallow artifice, that the House of Lords, to counterbalance their condemnation of Wilkes's violent democracy, took similar measures against a book of exactly opposite principles. This was a treatise or collection of precedents lately published under the title of Droit le Roy, to uphold the prerogative of the crown against the rights of the people. The Peers, on the motion of Lord Lyttleton, seconded by the Duke of Grafton, voted this book 'a false, malicious, and traitorous libel, inconsistent with the principles of the Revolution to which we owe the present happy establishment;' they ordered that it should be burned by the hands of the common hangman, and that the author should be taken into custody. The latter part of the sentence, however, no one took any pains to execute. The author was one Timothy Brecknock, a hack scribbler, who, twenty years afterwards, was hanged for being accessary to an atrocious murder in Ireland."
A copy of the book (an octavo of xii. and 95 pages) is in my possession. It was apparently a presentation copy, and formerly belonged to Dr. Disney; at whose sale it was purchased by the late Richard Heber, as his MS. note testifies. Against the political views which this book advocates, I say not one word; as a legal treatise it is simply despicable.
H. Gough.
Lincoln's Inn.
The following extract is at the service of Balliolensis:
"In the seventh year of King James I., Dr. Cowel's Interpreter was censured by the two Houses, as asserting several points to the overthrow and destruction of Parliaments and of the fundamental laws and government of the kingdom. And one of the articles charged upon him to this purpose by the Commons, in their complaint to the Lords, was, as Mr. Petyt says, out of the Journal, this that follows:
"'4thly. The Doctor draws his arguments from the imperial laws of the Roman Emperors, an argument which may be urged with as great reason, and with as great authority, for the reduction of the state and the clergy of England to the polity and laws in the time of those Emperors; as also to make the laws and customs of Rome and Constantinople to be binding and obligatory in the cities of London and York.'
"The issue of which complaint was, that the author, for these his outlandish politics, was taken into custody, and his book condemned to the flames: nor could the dedication of it to his then grace of Canterbury save it."—Atterbury's Rights, Powers, and Privileges of Convocation, p. 7. of Preface.
Wm. Fraser, B.C.L.
Tor-Mohun.
I possess a copy of The Case of Ireland being bound by Acts of Parliament in England stated, by William Molyneux of Dublin, Esq., which appears to have been literally "plucked as brand from the burning," as a considerable portion of it is consumed by fire. I have cut the following from a sale catalogue just sent to me from Dublin:
"Smith's (Matthew) Memoirs of Secret Service, Lond. 1696. Written by Charles, Earl of Peterborough, and is very scarce, being burnt by the hangman. MS. note."
James Graves.
Kilkenny.
A decree of the University of Oxford, made July 21, 1683, condemning George Buchanan's treatise De jure regni apud Scotos, and certain other books, the names of which I do not know, was on March 25, 1710, ordered by the House of Lords to be burned by the hangman. This was shortly after the trial of Dr. Sacheverel.
W. P. Storer.
Olney, Bucks.