CHAPTER VIII
French Gazettes in London (1650-1700)
By a strange coincidence, Milton as well as Shakespeare had the opportunity of meeting Frenchmen in London. His connection with William Du Gard, schoolmaster and printer, dates from the time of the Civil War.
Born in 1606 in Worcestershire, William Du Gard came, as his name implies, of a family of French or Jerseyan extraction.[267] His father, Henry Du Gard, was a clergyman; his uncle, Richard, a tutor in Cambridge; his younger brother, Thomas, took orders and became rector of Barford. William devoted himself to teaching and was appointed in 1644 headmaster of Merchant Taylors' School.
The minds of the people were then in an extraordinary ferment, as ever happens when a crisis is at hand. A far-reaching change loomed over England. No sheet-anchor could long withstand the heaving seas. Both in Church and State, the old Elizabethan settlement was breaking up. No wonder that new, unlooked-for thoughts rose in the minds of men and that pamphlets unceasingly flowed from the printers' presses. Perhaps the prevalent rage of idealism caught Du Gard in his turn, or maybe he acted out of ambition or mere vulgar hope of gain. About 1648, schoolmaster as he was, he set up a private press.
His first venture in this new capacity was that of a royalist. After helping to print Eikon Basiliké, he undertook to publish in England Claude Saumaise's treatise against the regicides, Defensio Regia pro Carolo Primo. But the authorities quickly took alarm and the Council of State on the same day (1st February 1649-50) deprived Du Gard of his headmastership, confined him to Newgate, confiscated his press, imprisoned his corrector Armstrong.[268]
Then the unforeseen happened: a few weeks only had elapsed when Du Gard was set free, reinstated at Merchant Taylors' School, and, having recovered press, forms, and type, professed himself a Puritan and assumed the title of "printer to the Council of State." It is alleged that his freedom was due to the friendship of Secretary Milton. We think it more simple to believe that the Council wished to conciliate the only printer at the time whose literary attainments entitled him to publish abroad the answer to Saumaise's treatise which Milton was then commissioned to write. That the Council were anxious to counteract the efforts of the royalist party to inflame Continental opinion against the Parliament, we repeatedly gather from the State Papers; nor is it venturesome to assert that, when compared with the printers of Amsterdam, Cologne, or Rouen, the printers of London were mostly hacks.[269]
The sudden conversion of Du Gard seems to have had lasting effects. In 1659, the Council still trusted him.[270] In ten years' time, he had made only one mistake when, in 1652, overlooking Parliamentary zeal for orthodoxy, he printed the Racovian Catechism. Needless to add that the book was burnt by the common hangman.
At the Restoration, William Du Gard was finally deprived of his headmastership and died in 1662, having after all little cause to regret his adventures as a printer; he enjoyed a large competence, being wealthy enough to act as surety for his friend Harrington, the author of Oceana, in no less than £5000.[271]