Mackenzie Walcott, M.A.
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.)