incidents connected with the impeachment of the Bishops, and the King's dramatic attempt to arrest the Five Members, are vividly described in a further letter to Lord Montagu. On the 4th January, 1642, Dillingham wrote :

The Commons came to the House, and the Five Men with them, and when it was about twelve o'clock, they had notice that the King would come with some hundreds to take those men by force. They understanding, went away, and presently the King came with some four hundred, about a hundred of his own servants, and all the rest captains and other broken and desperate fortuned men. These accompanied His Majesty, who for haste went in a hackney coach, but when he came into the Commons' House, he looked about, and found none of them. What," said he," are all the birds flown? Well I will find them," and so departed.

On learning that they had sought refuge in the City, Charles set out in search of them, and in this same letter Dillingham furnishes a graphic description of the King's last appearance in the City, where his Majesty "had the worst day in London that ever he had, the people crying 'privilege of parliament' by thousands, and prayed God to turn the heart of the King, shutting up their shops, and standing at their doors with swords and halberds." The unfortunate Lord Mayor, for his complaisant conduct on this occasion, Dillingham informs us, was severely maltreated"the citizens' wives fell upon him, and pulled his chain from his neck, and called him traitor to the City, and to the liberties of it, and had like to have torn him and the Recorder in pieces.'

The historical value of Dillingham's letters is enhanced when we remember that in describing events such as these he was probably an eyewitness, for at that time he was living in Bolt and Tun Yard, in Fleet Street-then, as now, evidently the home of journalism. At the end of January, 1642, the Commons passed a stringent order levelled against the liberty of the press, and in April, Dillingham reported that "the printers being frighted, the diurnals cease, which though to me trouble yet joy, for I endure not news common"; meaning that with the suspension of the journals, his own news-letters (which, of course, were outside the activities of the censor) would be more eagerly sought after by his friends and patrons in the country.

Like many other Englishmen, Dillingham had fervent hopes

Montagu MSS., 139-141.

that the differences between King and Parliament might be amicably settled, and that the catastrophe of Civil War would be averted. Even at the eleventh hour he thus closes a gossipy letter to his friend, Lord Montagu: "I think," he writes, "the future times will be as a family in which is a froward wife; we may brale and scold, but there will be few blows, only a continual dropping, so that little will grow, but were we shut of our scandalous ministers, and rotten heads of colleges, we should grow unanimous and much better." A month later, however, he is not so sanguine. The King's message to Parliament on May 7th, he reported,

was high, and higher than any before. He demands justice against Hotham,* quotes Pim in several places, and appeals to them whether ever any of his predecessors were used as he hath been, and said they talked of a malignant party, but it was sure with them.

This was the momentous occasion when Charles concluded his address to the House with an extract from Pym's famous speech at the trial of Strafford: "If the prerogative of the King overwhelm the liberty of the people, it will be turned into tyranny; if liberty undermine the prerogative, it will grow into anarchy; and," added Charles," so we say into confusion." In the debate which followed, Dillingham states "that the Commons fell not short, but one of them said sure this message was from some ordinary man, not from the King, and if [it was] it were not fit he wore the Crown longer." This attack on Charles was made by Sir Henry Ludlow, the member for Wiltshire, who was rebuked by the Speaker for his remarks. In the same letter Dillingham states that the House "resolved upon an answer, and some moved that the answer give His Majesty to know what hath been done to other Kings for less faults than his, and that if he comply not, they must be constrained to proceed to a new Election."+

It will be seen from the tone of the House that the crisis was fast approaching to a head. The long struggle between Charles and his Parliament, for the command of the Militia, ended on the 5th of May by the passing of the Militia ordinance, and on May

* Sir John Hotham who refused to open the gates of Hull. † Montagu MSS., 151-152.

10th, Dillingham informs us that both Houses adjourned" to see the first fruits of the Militia of London in Finsbury Fields "-a review of the London trained bands, 8,000 strong.

A month later he reports still further military measures in consequence of the success attending the King's activities in the North. At the beginning of June a committee of both Houses was appointed:

To consider of a way, which, as I am informed, is to raise voluntary horse, and that as many as come in, and they under the command of my Lord of Essex, to march and take to them the trained bands of Lincoln, Yorkshire, and other near counties, and there to do what you may guess. Yesterday (June 8) certain propositions were made from the Commons to the Lords for raising of horse and foot for defence of the Parliament and Kingdom, and that because preparations and arms were multiplied in a secret way by the ill-affected to the Parliament, and his Majesty did persist in his way of raising men, etc.*

With this letter, Dillingham's correspondence with Lord Montagu unfortunately ceases, and during the Civil War his letters give place to his news-books, the name by which all English periodicals were known during the seventeenth century. These were really small quarto pamphlets, usually consisting of eight pages, and appearing once a week. On the 14th June, 1643, an ordinance was passed establishing a board of licensers to deal with their supervision,† and it is of particular interest to note that the first news-book to be licensed under the new Act was written by Dillingham and entitled, The Parliament Scout; Communicating his Intelligence to the Kingdome. This was printed by G. Bishop and R. White, and bore the date 20th-27th June, 1643.

In a leading article, Dillingham thus sets out the object of his news-book :

Having perused an Ordinance of Parliament, I perceive a generall prohibiting of printing anything but what is licensed, which had it been agreed unto sooner, would have prevented many inconveniences that have befallen the Parliament. . . . And considering withall the condition the Kingdome now stands in, when the Times is the only study, and that then I finde a necessity, that a right intelligence be kept and imparted throughout the Kingdome, of the proceedings of the Parliament, and their Armies, to the end the well-affected party, who are willing to sacrifice life and fortune for their Religion and Liberty, and

* Montagu MSS., p. 153. + Williams Eng. Journalism, 45.

the good of the King and Kingdome, may from time to time be informed and receive encouragement.

By virtue of his news-book, Dillingham for the time being became leader of the Parliamentary press, and for a period of eighteen months the Parliament Scout was published regularly every Thursday, and does not appear to have had any serious rival. From his letters we have seen that Dillingham was an outspoken critic on matters of national importance, and the same fearless and independent spirit was shown in the production of the Parliament Scout. A Presbyterian, and a bitter enemy of Laud, he was unfortunately unorthodox in his views, and a contemporary Presbyterian critic, with a certain degree of truth, said of him that he was "so pragmaticall, that he thinks he can teach Parliament how to order State affairs, the Ministry how to frame their prayers and begin their sermons."*

His extreme views naturally brought him into conflict with the authorities, and within a fortnight of Laud's execution in 1645, he devoted a leading article to the debate on Church government, in which he wrote :

This day (23rd January) the House of Commons debated the business of Church Government . . . but the great debate was whether this Church Government is Jure Divino, and whether subject to the Civill power. The first was resolved in the negative, the latter in the affirmative; and indeed it were sad if discipline should once be strecht to Jure Divino. Its true, we had dayes in which sometimes this, then that, was Jure Divino, but now we are grown wiser, and set upon a form of Church government that is alterable.†

Compared with modern-day journalism such language may seem absurdly mild, but not so in Cromwell's day. On the 30th January, complaint was made to the House of Lords "of a scandalous pamphlet entitled the Parliament Scout, wherein is a great defamation of the Honour of the Lord General," and in consequence it was "ordered that the Printer and Author should be found, taken into custody, and brought before the House."‡

Dillingham made no effort to evade the order, and on the following day it was ordered that both "the author and printer should remain in custody till to-morrow morning, and then this House will take the business into consideration.' The House,

* Cambridge Hist. of Eng. Lit.; Vol. VII., 349.

+No. 84; 23-30 Jan., 1645.

Lords Journals; Vol. VII., 164.

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however, had other and more urgent business to attend to, and three weeks later we find Dillingham and his printer still in custody and petitioning the Lords for their discharge. In his petition, Dillingham states that he "was summoned some weeks since to attend the House to his prejudice in his employment," and that he was "very sorry that anything said by him should cause offence." The decision of the House is not recorded, but it is evident that Dillingham was released immediately afterwards, although the Parliament Scout was suppressed.

Before giving an account of its successor, The Moderate Intelligencer, we must briefly mention another important periodical which Dillingham helped to start in 1644. This was Le Mercure Anglois, a news-book (or, to be more precise, a newspaper), which occupies a prominent position in the literature of the Civil War, and incidentally marks a journalistic development of considerable importance between England and France. Associated with Dillingham in the enterprise was one John Cotgrave,† (probably a nephew of Randle Cotgrave the famous lexicographer) a man of undoubted literary ability. The principal object of Le Mercure Anglois was to provide a weekly account in French of English affairs for the benefit of foreigners and merchants desirous of sending news overseas. Consisting of four small, closely printed pages, it was published on the same day as the Parliament Scout, and printed by the same printer. At first there was some doubt whether the enterprise would prove successful, and trial numbers appeared on the 7th and 13th June, 1644. The result entirely justified the experiment, and on the 10th July, the day before the publication of No. 3, the printer placarded the City with the following notice. A copy of the original bill, the actual printing on which only occupies about four square inches, is still in existence, and on account of its unique character, being probably the earliest known newsagent's bill, it is worthy of being given in full-t

Hist. MSS. Comm. Rept., 6, p. 48.

†The Royalist periodical, Man in the Moon, No. 26, Oct., 1649, speaks of Dillingham as "coupled to another of the same breed, called Codgrave, that can read French and translate Foreign news." Cotgrave was the author of "The English Treasury of Wit" and Wit's Interpreter," both published in 1655.

British Museum, E. 54 (13).