WHEREAS it was mentioned in the last “Intelligence” that Mr Langhorn was buried in the Temple Church, there was a mistake in it, for it was a Loyal Gentleman, one Colonel Acton, who was at that time buried by his near relations there: And Mr Langhorn was buried that day in the Churchyard of St Giles-in-the-Fields, very near the five Jesuits who were executed last.
John Playford, Clerke to the Temple Church.
Here is intolerance with a vengeance, but in the year 1679 reverence for persons or things was conspicuously absent, and this is best shown by the advertisement which was issued for the purpose of discovering the ruffians, or their patron, who committed the brutal assault upon John Dryden. It appears in the London Gazette of December 22, 1679:—
WHEREAS John Dryden, Esq., was on Monday, the 18th instant, at night, barbarously assaulted and wounded, in Rose Street in Covent Garden, by divers men unknown; if any person shall make discovery of the said offenders to the said Mr Dryden, or to any Justice of the Peace, he shall not only receive Fifty Pounds, which is deposited in the hands of Mr Blanchard, Goldsmith, next door to Temple Bar, for the said purpose, but if he be a principal or an accessory in the said fact, his Majesty is graciously pleased to promise him his pardon for the same.
Notwithstanding the offer of this money, it was never discovered who were the perpetrators, or who was the instigator of this cudgelling. Some fancy its promoter was Rochester, who was offended at some allusions to him in an “Essay on Satire,” written jointly by Dryden and Lord Mulgrove; while others declare that the vanity of the Duchess of Portsmouth, one of the King’s many mistresses, having been offended by a jeu d’esprit of the poet’s, she procured him a rough specimen of her favours. Others, again, have suspected Buckingham, who was never on the best of terms with Dryden, and who sat for the portrait drawn in Zimri (“Absalom and Achitophel”); but profligate and heartless libertine as Villiers was, he was above such a ruffianly reprisal. In the Domestick Intelligence of December 23, 1679, the assault is thus described: “Upon the 17th instant in the evening Mr Dryden the great poet, was set upon in Rose Street in Covent Garden, by three persons, who, calling him rogue, and son of a whore, knockt him down and dangerously wounded him, but upon his crying out murther, they made their escape; it is conceived that they had their pay beforehand, and designed not to rob him but to execute on him some Feminine, if not Popish, vengeance.” In a subsequent number of the same paper there is the following advertisement:—
WHEREAS there has been printed of late an Advertisement about the Discovery of those who assaulted Mr Dryden, with a promise of pardon and reward to the Discoverer; For his further encouragement, this is to give notice, that if the said Discoverer shall make known the Person who incited them to that unlawful action, not only the Discoverer himself but any of those who committed the fact, shall be freed from all manner of prosecution.
As a seasonable illustration we present an exact [facsimile] of a newspaper containing reference to the attack. It is complete as it appears, being simply a single leaf printed back and front, and so the stories of men repeating a whole newspaper from memory are not so wonderful after all. This year (1679) is memorable among journalists as being the first which saw a rising press emancipated, a fact which is sufficiently interesting to be chronicled here, although our subject is not newspapers, but only the advertisements contained in them.[27]
During all this time it must not be supposed that the vendors of quack medicines were at all idle. No political or religious disturbance was ever allowed to interfere with them, and their notices appeared as regularly as, or if possible more regularly than, ever. In a paper we have not before met, the Mercurius Anglicus, date March 6-10, 1679-80, we are introduced for the first time to the cordial which was destined to become so popular among nurses with whom neither the natural milk nor that of human kindness was plentiful, viz., Daffy’s Elixir:—
WHEREAS divers Persons have lately exposed to sale a counterfeit drink called Elixir Salutis, the true drink so called being first published by Mr Anthony Daffy, who is the only person that rightly and truly prepares it, he having experienced its virtues for above 20 years past, by God’s blessing curing multitudes of people afflicted with various distempers therewith, the receit whereof he never communicated to any person living; and that these persons the better to colour their deceit, have reported Mr Anthony Daffy to be dead, these are to certify That the said Mr Anthony Daffy is still living and in good health, at his house in Prujean court in the old Bailey, and that only there and at such places as he has appointed in his printed sheets of his Elixir’s virtues (which printed sheets are sealed with his seal) the true Elixir Salutis or choice Cordial Drink of Health is to be sold.
It is noticeable that about this time people were never sure what year they were in until March, and often during that month; and this is not only so in the dates on newspapers, but is found in Pepys and other writers of the period. Some journals do not give the double date as above, for we have before us as we write two copies of the Domestick Intelligence; or, News both from City and Country, “Published to prevent false Reports,” No. 49 being dated “Tuesday, Decemb. 23, 1679;” and No. 52, “Friday, January 2, 1679.” This has not, as many people have imagined, anything to do with the difference between the New Calendar and the Old, as our alteration of style did not take place till the middle of the next century. It must have been a relic of the old Ecclesiastical year which still affects the financial budget.