The same parliament consigned to the flames Bishop Burnet's Pastoral Letter, which had been published 1689. (Wilson's Life of De Foe, vol. i. p. 179.)
On the 31st of July, 1693, the second volume of Anthony à Wood's Athenæ Oxonienses was burned in the Theatre Yard at Oxford by the Apparitor of the University, in pursuance of the sentence of the University Court in a prosecution for a libel on the memory of Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon. (Life of Mr. Anthony à Wood, ed. 1772, p. 377.)
On the 25th of February, 1702-3, the House of Commons ordered De Foe's Shortest Way with the Dissenters to be burned by the hands of the common hangman on the morrow in New Palace Yard. (Wilson's Life of De Foe, vol. ii. p. 62.)
In or about 1709, John Humphrey, an aged non-conformist minister, having published a pamphlet against the Test, and circulated it amongst the members of parliament, was cited before a committee, and his work was ordered to be burned by the common hangman. (Wilson's Life of De Foe, vol. iii. p. 52.)
The North Briton, No. 45., was on the 3rd of December, 1763, burned by the common hangman at the Royal Exchange, by order of the House of
Commons. The following account is from Malcolm's Anecdotes of London, 4to., 1808, p. 282.:
"The 3rd of December was appointed for this silly ceremony, which took place before the Royal Exchange, amidst the hisses and execrations of the mob, not directed at the obnoxious paper, but at Alderman Harley, the sheriffs, and constables, the latter of whom were compelled to fight furiously through the whole business. The instant the hangman held the work to a lighted link it was beat to the ground, and the populace, seizing the faggots prepared to complete its destruction, fell upon the peace-officers and fairly threshed them from the field; nor did the alderman escape without a contusion on the head, inflicted by a bullet thrown through the glass of his coach; and several other persons had reason to repent the attempt to burn that publicly which the sovereign people determined to approve, who afterwards exhibited a large jack-boot at Temple Bar, and burnt it in triumph, unmolested, as a species of retaliation."
I am not aware that what Mr. Malcolm terms a "silly ceremony" has been repeated since 1763.
C. H. Cooper.
Cambridge.