1689, Feb. 13. The Revolution. William Prince of Orange, and the Princess Mary, a daughter of the abdicating monarch, are proclaimed on this day, (Wednesday) with the approbation of the lords and commons.
The most important period in the history of Great Britain, is that of the revolution under William III. Then it was that our constitution, after many fluctuations, and frequent struggles for power by the different members of it, (several of them attended by vast effusions of blood,) was finally settled. A revolution so remarkable, and attended with such happy consequences, has perhaps no parallel in the history of the world. This it was, says Hume, that cut off all pretensions to power founded on hereditary right; when a prince was chosen who received the crown on express conditions, and found his authority established on the same bottom with the privileges of the people; so that there have been no differences between our kings and parliament since. Indeed, all the danger we have reason to apprehend since that period, seems to be from the aid which the parliament itself may be induced, by indirect methods, to give the court, to encroach upon the liberties of the people; or as Montesquieu observes, when the executive shall be more corrupt than the crown.
1689, May 26. John White was a printer in the city of York, and at the landing of the prince of Orange, in 1688, printed his manifesto. It having been refused by all the printers in England, and for which he was sent prisoner to Hull castle, where he was confined till the place surrendered. He was afterwards rewarded by king William's appointing him his majesty's sole printer for the city of York, and the five northern counties, as appears by his majesty's grant, dated at Hampton court. May 26, 1689.
1689. John Dryden being unable both from religious and political prepossessions, to take the oaths to the government of William and Mary, this illustrious poet was compelled with an anguished heart to resign his offices. They were conferred, with a salary increased to £300, upon Thomas Shadwell, a person now only known to British literature through the immortal satire of Macflecnoe, in which Dryden had pilloried him as the prince of dullness.
But Shadwell never deviates into sense.
Some beams of wit on other souls may fall,
Strike through, and make a lucid interval;
But Shadwell's genuine night admits no ray.
A modern critic, reviewing the comedies of Thomas Shadwell, gives a judgment, which will be startling to those who have been content to take him upon the opinion of his great rival and antagonist. According to a writer, in the Retrospective Review, xvi. 56. " he was an accomplished observer of human nature, had a ready power of seizing the ridiculous in the manners of the times, was a man of sense and information, and displayed in his writings a very considerable fund of humour." Whatever truth there may be in this decision, it seems reasonable to conclude with sir Walter Scott, that, in his advocacy of whig principles, and the sufferings be bard endured under the old government, as a "non-conforming poet," he probably possessed merits with king William, which were deemed by that prince as of more importance than all the genius of Shakspeare, Milton, and Dryden, if it could have been united in one person.
1689. At the end of the Ninth Collection Papers relative to the present Juncture of Affairs in England, quarto, there is a curious advertismment, of which the following is nearly a verbatim copy:—Lately published, the Trial of Mr. Papillon; by which it is manifest that the (then) lord chief justice Jefferies[1] had neither learning, law, nor good manners, but great impudence, (as was said of him by Charles II.) in abusing all those worthy citizens who voted for Mr. Papillion and Mr. Dubois, calling them a parcel of factious, pragmatical, sneaking, canting, snivelling. prick-eared, crop-eared, atheistical fellows, rascals, and scoundrels, as in page 19 of that trial may be seen. Sold by Michael Janeway, and most booksellers.
1689. Susanna Lathum gave the company of stationers a silver tankard " The gift of Susanna Lathum," 31 oz. 15 dwts.
1698, June. Died, {[sc|Peter Palliot}}, historiographer, printer, and bookseller, to the king of France, and genealogist of the duchy of Burgundy, was born at Paris, March 19, 1608. In his youth he showed a taste for genealogy, and heraldic studies, in which he made great proficiency, by a relation who had published a work on armorial bearing. In his 25th year he settled at Dijon, where he married Vivanda Spirinx, the daughter of a printer and bookseller, with whoa he entered into business. At his leisure hours however, he pursued his heraldic studies, and laboured with so much perseverance as to produce five large works in folio. He left also thirteen volumes of manuscript collections, respecting the family of Burgundy. It is an additional and remarkable proof of his industry and ingenuity, that he engraved the whole of the plates in these volumes with his own hand. Palliot died at Dijon, at the age of 89.
1689, Jan. 10. England an. unlucky Soil for Popery, (no printer's name.) No. 1.
The same paper in French.
1689, Jan. 14. King James's Letter to the Lords and others of the Privy Councel, from St Germans en Laye.
1689, Jan. 15. London Intelligence, No. I.
1689, Jan. 19. Weekly Memorials; or, an Account of Books lately set forth ; with other Accounts relating to Learning; by authority. No. 1. This is the earliest specimen of an English Review.
- ↑ George Jefferies, baron Wem, commonly known by the name of Judge Jefferies, the infamous lord chancellor under James II., and one of the greatest advisers and promoters of all the opprresive and arbitrary measures of that unhappy tyrannical reign. His sanguinary and inhuman proceedings will ever render his name detested. He died a prisoner in the tower, April 18, 1689.
