370 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[2'"» S. VI. 140., Nov. 6. '58. 



ierrarum emporium" celebrated, as an old Latinist 

 says, for all the excellencies of life, " Aiiglia, 

 7noiis, pons, fons, ecclesiu, fcemina, lana." 



The Cheshire Knight of Birkenhead became 

 amanuensis and secretary to Archbishop Laud, 

 was chosen a Fellow of All-Souls' College, Ox- 

 ford, and assisted the before-mentioned Dr. Peter 

 Heylin in the weekly newspaper the Mercurius 

 Aulicus, then published at Oxford in support of 

 the royal cause. He devoted himself to subjects 

 of drollery and burlesque, with the exception of 

 a few lyric poems set to music by Henry Lawes. 

 He was deprived of his fellowship during Crom- 

 well's Protectorate, but was restored by Charles II. 

 and made one of the Masters of Requests with a 

 salary of 3000/. a year. Anthony Wood accuses 

 him of baseness of spirit by neglecting those who 

 had been bis benefactors in his necessities. Dr. 

 Sprat * in a letter to Sir Christopher Wren, on 

 his poetical abilities, and on his metrical version 

 of Horace's epistle " ad Lollium," wherein he 

 says, " It seems to be an English original, and if 

 you have not adorned the fat droll, as you most 

 pleasantly call him, with feathers, yet you have 

 with jewels," speaks in the same letter, familiarly, 

 of " Jack Birkenhead," and commends his pen. 

 Aubrey, however (see his Lives of Eminent Men, 

 vol. ii. p. 239.), speaks of him with even more 

 asperity than Wood, and knew him well ; de- 

 scribing him as " exceedingly confident, witty, 

 not very grateful to his benefactors, and would 

 lie damnably." 



Mr. D'Israeli says : — 



" He was the fertile parent of numerous political 

 pamphlets, which abound in banter, wit and satire. His 

 'Paul's Church Yard' is a bantering pamphlet, con- 

 taining fictitious titles of books and acts of parliament, 

 reflecting on the mad reformers of those times. One of 

 his poems is entitled ' Tlie Jolt,' on the Protector falling 

 oU his own coach-box. Cromwell had received a present 

 from the German Count Oldenburg f of six German 



folio, with plates. London, 1838. In this curious pro- 

 jection London is made the centre : and as Sir John 

 Horschel observes, " It is a fact not a little interesting 

 to Engli.slimen, and, combined with our insular station in 

 that great highway of nations, the Atlantic, not a little 

 explanatory of our commercial eminence, that Lonbon 

 occupies nearly the centre of the terrestrial hemisphere !" 



* 8ee Elmes' Life of Wren, p. 121. 4to. Lond. 1823. 



t This Oldenburg (see Elmes' Life of Wren, p. 39. n.) 

 Avas a younger son of the noble family of that name in 

 Westphalia, which had removed into the duchy of Bre- 

 men. Henr}-, the subject of this anecdote, was sent to 

 England as the representative of his countrymen as their 

 consul in England. He served this office both under 

 Charles I. and Cromwell, with equal fidelitj'. He was 

 always considered by Wren, Hooke, Boyle and other 

 Fellows of the Royal Society, as a spy, and communi- 

 cater of their proceedings to foreigners. His conduct 

 to.vards Hooke in the aliair of his spring watch is well 

 known, and was the cause of their adopting a cj'pher to 

 prevent liis treacheries. After this, in order that he 

 might obtain access to the Bodleian and other libraries 

 of Oxford, he entered himself a student in thnt Uni- 



horses, and attempted to drive them himself in Hyde 

 Park, when the great political phaeton met with the 

 accident, of which Sir John Birkenhead was not slow to 

 comprehend the benefit, and hints how unfortunately for 

 the country it turned out." 



During the Protectorate, Sir John, instead of 

 truckling to his adversary, as Needham, Olden- 

 burg, and others of their class did, remained like 

 Heylin, his colleague in the Mercurius Aulicus, 

 faithful to his principles, and became an author 

 by profession, and endured many imprisonments 

 and persecutions in the cause of royalty. An- 

 thony Wood says, sneeringly, that " he lived by 

 his wits, in helping young gentlemen out at dead 

 lifts in making poems, songs and epistles on and 

 to their mistresses ; as also in translating and 

 other petty employments." Better this, than being 

 a renegade, like Needham and the noble Saxon 

 Oldenburg. Perhaps some of these songs were 

 among those honoured by the music of Lawes. 

 At any rate he was consistent, and no turncoat. 



To complete the triad comes the idiomatic, the 

 coarse, the factious Sir Roger L'Estrange, whom 

 Mr. D'Israeli considers " among his rivals was 

 esteemed the most |)erfeot model of political 

 writing ; " and that his jEsop's Fables are " curi- 

 ous specimens of familiar style." 



He suffered long imprisonment, and lay under 

 sentence of death for his zeal in the cause of 

 royalty. On the Restoration, he was made Li- 

 censer of the Press. In 1663 he set up his Public 

 Lntelligencer, which he discontinued in 1665 on 

 the publication of the London Gazette, the first 

 number of which appeared on February 4, 1665. 

 He resumed journalism in 1679 in a paper called 

 The Observator, in defence of the measures of the 

 court, but gave it up in 1687, the year before the 

 Revolution, on a dispute with James II. (who 

 had knighted him) on the doctrine of toleration. 

 On the accession of William and Mary he was 

 left out of the commission of the peace, and 

 otherwise treated as disaffected to the new govern- 

 ment. Queen Mary, says Mr. D'Israeli, showed 

 her contempt of him by the following anagram : — 



" Roger L'Estrange, 

 Lye strange Roger." 



This Prince of Gazetteers, this Patriarch of 

 Newspapers, died in 1704, at the advanced age of 

 eighty-eight, when the nation was rejoicing for 

 the glorious battle of Blenheim ; after giving to 

 the world translationsofJosephus, Cicero's Offices, 

 Seneca's Morals, Erasmus' Colloquies, and his 

 still admired Fables of ^sop, and their quaint 

 morals. 



Granger says he was one of the great cor- 

 rupters of the English language ; but Mr. D'Israeli 



versity in 165G by the name of " Henricus Oldenburg, 

 Bremensis, nobilis Sa.xo." See Martin's Biographia Phi- 

 losophica, p. 100. His conduct towards the Royal Society 

 was alwaj's suspicious and treacherous, faithless to all. 



