Here is an advertisement that brings one back to the Great Fire: "All that wish to provide this city with timber, bricks, stones, glass, tiles and other material for building houses, are referred to the Committee of the Common Council in Gresham House, London" (No. 12, Dec. 1666). Another may be quoted: "An engineer has brought to this city the model in relief of the splendid Versailles Palace, with gardens and waterworks, the whole being 24 feet long and 18 wide" (No. 2222, Feb. 1687).
To Thomas Newcombe succeeded as printer, in 1688, Edward Jones, who till his death in 1705 published the Gazette, which then passed to his widow, and ultimately to the famous bookseller Tonson.
The French edition met with some mishaps. Volume ix. of the Journals of the House of Commons records a dramatic incident. On 6th Nov. 1676 a member rose in the House to point out the singular discrepancies between the Royal proclamations against the Papists printed in the London Gazette and the French translation in the Gazette de Londres. The terms had been softened down not to cause offence to the French Court.
AT VERSAILLES
After Bonnart
Immediately the House took fire, and summoned Newcombe and Moranville to appear on the very next day. "Mr. Newcombe being called in to give an account of the translation of the Gazette into French, informed the House that he was only concerned in the setting the press, and that he understood not the French tongue! And that Mons. Moranville had been employed in that affair for many years and was only the corrector of it. Mons. Moranville being called in, acknowledged himself guilty of the mistake, but he endeavoured to excuse it, alleging it was through inadvertency."[279]
Assemblies have abundance of energy, but seldom persevere in one course of action: since no more is heard of the case, we may suppose that both delinquents got off at little cost. Moreover, there is nothing very heroical in the Gazette de Londres. Next to the editor of the Nouvelles ordinaires, Moranville sinks into insignificance. He was most probably a refugee reduced by poverty to write for a bookseller. What could an exiled Frenchman do but teach or write French? So Moranville found many to follow his example. As late as Queen Anne's time, French journalists earned a scanty livelihood in London. The Postman was edited in English, mind! by Fonvive; the Postboy by Boyer, whom Swift derisively called a "French dog."[280]
The refugees were but continuators of Théophraste Renaudot, the father of the modern press. The very name of Mercury given to the early English papers, came from France; what wonder then that French journalists should be found in London? Why some should write in French, the forewords to the Nouvelles ordinaires set forth in an illuminating phrase: French was in the seventeenth century "a language that extended and was understood throughout Europe."