Page:The Library, volume 5, series 3.djvu/220

208 HENRY CROSS-GROVE, JACOBITE, whig counties. Norfolk has a very ancient con- nexion with the newspaper press. Nathaniel Butter was born near King's Lynn (according to the 'General History'), and so was Dr. William Watts, the Royalist clergyman who translated most of Butter's later ' Corantos ' for him. Above all, if we except the Oxford ' Aulicus ' and 'Gazette' (afterwards the 'London Gazette'), for which special circumstances accounted, Norwich itself was the first provincial town to possess a newspaper, in the shape of the ' Norwich Post,' commenced in September, 1700, by Francis Burges. 1 Cross-Grove did not start his 'Gazette' (as it was at first styled) until 1706, and his paper must have brought him into touch in later years with the famous Dr. Johnson, through the cele- brated Edward Cave, who founded the ' Gentle- man's Magazine' in 1731. When Cave died in 1754, Dr. Johnson, as his chief contributor, wrote his life. In this the Dodlor says that while Cave was ' bound prentice to Mr. Collins,' the deputy alderman and printer in London, ' he was sent without any superintendant, to conduct a printing house at Norwich, and publish a weekly paper. In this he met with some opposition, which pro- 1 There are two claimants to an earlier origin. c Berrow's Worcester Journal ' asserts that it commenced in 1690 it may be able to trace its descent from the Jacobite ' Worcester Post- Man/ founded in 1709, but it was certainly not founded in 1690 and the * Lincoln Rutland and Stamford Mercury ' claims to have commenced in 1695. This latter paper commenced as the 'Stamford Mercury ' as late as 1732, and has no connexion even with an earlier 'Stamford Mercury,' commenced also in the eighteenth century.