The Mercurius Aulicus was chiefly conducted by Sir John Birkenhead, at Oxford, “communicating the intelligence and affairs of the court to the rest of the kingdom.” Sir John was a great wag, and excelled in sarcasm and invective; his facility is equal to repartee, and his spirit often reaches to wit: a great forger of tales, who probably considered that a romance was a better thing than a newspaper.[330] The royal 417 party were so delighted with his witty buffoonery, that Sir John was recommended to be Professor of Moral Philosophy at Oxford. Did political lying seem to be a kind of moral philosophy to the feelings of a party? The originality of Birkenhead’s happy manner consists in his adroit use of sarcasm: he strikes it off by means of a parenthesis. I shall give, as a specimen, one of his summaries of what the Parliamentary Journals had been detailing during the week.
“The Londoners in print this week have been pretty copious. They say that a troop of the Marquess of Newcastle’s horse have submitted to the Lord Fairfax. (They were part of the German horse which came over in the Danish fleet.)[331] That the Lord Wilmot hath been dead five weeks, but the Cavaliers concealed his death. (Remember this!) That Sir John Urrey[332] is dead and buried at Oxford. (He died the same day with the Lord Wilmot.) That the 418 Cavaliers, before they have done, will Hurrey all men into misery. (This quibble hath been six times printed, and nobody would take notice of it; now let’s hear of it no more!) That all the Cavaliers which Sir William Waller took prisoners (besides 500) tooke the National Covenant. (Yes, all he took (besides 500) tooke the Covenant.) That 2000 Irish Rebels landed in Wales. (You called them English Protestants till you cheated them of their money.) That Sir William Brereton left 140 good able men in Hawarden Castle. (’Tis the better for Sir Michael Earnley, who hath taken the Castle.) That the Queen hath a great deafnesse. (Thou hast a great blister on thy tongue.) That the Cavaliers burned all the suburbs of Chester, that Sir William Brereton might find no shelter to besiedge it. (There was no hayrick, and Sir William cares for no other shelter.)[333] The Scottish Dove says (there are Doves in Scotland!) that Hawarden Castle had but forty men in it when the Cavaliers took it. (Another told you there were 140 lusty stout fellows in it: for shame, gentlemen! conferre Notes!) That Colonel Norton at Rumsey took 200 prisoners. (I saw them counted: they were just two millions.) Then the Dove hath this sweet passage: O Aulicus, thou profane wretch, that darest scandalize God’s saints, darest thou call that loyal subject Master Pym a 419 traitor? (Yes, pretty Pigeon,[334] he was charged with six articles by his Majesty’s Atturney Generall.) Next he says, that Master Pym died like Moses upon the Mount. (He did not die upon the mount, but should have done.) Then he says Master Pym died in a good old age, like Jacob in Egypt. (Not like Jacob, yet just as those died in Egypt in the days of Pharaoh.”)[335]
As Sir John was frequently the propagator of false intelligence, it was necessary at times to seem scrupulous, and to correct some slight errors. He does this very adroitly, without diminishing his invectives.
“We must correct a mistake or two in our two last weeks. We advertised you of certain money speeches made by Master John Sedgwick: on better information, it was not John, but Obadiah, Presbyter of Bread-street, who in the pulpit in hot weather used to unbutton his doublet, which John, who wanteth a thumbe, forbears to practise. And when we told you last week of a committee of Lawyers appointed to put their new Seale in execution, we named, among others, Master George Peard.[336] I confess this was no small errour to reckon 420 Master Peard among the Lawyers, because he now lies sicke, and so farre from being their new Lord Keeper, that he now despairs to become their Door Keeper, which office he performed heretofore. But since Master Peard has become desperately sick; and so his vote, his law, and haire have all forsook him, his corporation of Barnstable have been in perfect health and loyalty. The town of Barnstable having submitted to the King, this will no doubt be a special cordial for their languishing Burgess. And yet the man may grow hearty again when he hears of the late defeat given to his Majesty’s forces in Lincolnshire.”
This paper was immediately answered by Marchmont Needham, in his “Mercurius Britannicus,” who cannot boast the playful and sarcastic bitterness of Sir John; yet is not the dullest of his tribe. He opens his reply thus:
“Aulicus will needs venture his soule upon the other half-sheet; and this week he lies, as completely as ever he did in two full sheets; full of as many scandals and fictions, full of as much stupidity and ignorance, full of as many tedious untruths as ever. And because he would recrute the reputation of his wit, he falls into the company of our Diurnals very furiously, and there lays about him in the midst of our weekly pamphlets; and he casts in the few squibs, and the little wildfire he hath, dashing out his conceits; and he takes it ill that the poore scribblers should tell a story for their living; and after a whole week spent at Oxford, in inke and paper, to as little purpose as Maurice spent his shot and powder at Plimouth, he gets up, about Saturday, into a jingle or two, for he cannot reach to a full jest; and I am informed that the three-quarter conceits in the last leafe of his Diurnall cost him fourteen pence in aqua vitæ.”
Sir John never condescends formally to reply to Needham, for which he gives this singular reason:—“As for this libeller, we are still resolved to take no notice till we find him able to spell his own name, which to this hour Britannicus never did.”
In the next number of Needham, who had always written it Brittanicus, the correction was silently adopted. There was no crying down the etymology of an Oxford malignant.
I give a short narrative of the political temper of the times, in their unparalleled gazettes.
At the first breaking out of the parliament’s separation from the royal party, when the public mind, full of consternation 421 in that new anarchy, shook with the infirmity of childish terrors, the most extravagant reports were as eagerly caught up as the most probable, and served much better the purposes of their inventors. They had daily discoveries of new conspiracies, which appeared in a pretended correspondence written from Spain, France, Italy, or Denmark: they had their amusing literature, mixed with their grave politics; and a dialogue between “a Dutch mariner and an English ostler,” could alarm the nation as much as the last letter from their “private correspondent.” That the wildest rumours were acceptable appears from their contemporary Fuller. Armies were talked of, concealed under ground by the king, to cut the throats of all the Protestants in a night. He assures us that one of the most prevailing dangers among the Londoners was “a design laid for a mine of powder under the Thames, to cause the river to drown the city.” This desperate expedient, it seems, was discovered just in time to prevent its execution; and the people were devout enough to have a public thanksgiving, and watched with a little more care that the Thames might not be blown up. However, the plot was really not so much at the bottom of the Thames as at the bottom of their purses. Whenever they wanted 100,000l. they raised a plot, they terrified the people, they appointed a thanksgiving-day, and while their ministers addressed to God himself all the news of the week, and even reproached him for the rumours against their cause, all ended, as is usual at such times, with the gulled multitude contributing more heavily to the adventurers who ruled them than the legal authorities had exacted in their greatest wants. “The Diurnals” had propagated thirty-nine of these “Treasons, or new Taxes,” according to one of the members of the House of Commons, who had watched their patriotic designs.