Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 3.djvu/548

534 daring philippic he was prosecuted and imprisoned in the King's Bench, but this did not prevent him from still making war on the popish prince. Julian Johnson, as he was called, had found, while imprisoned in the King's Bench, congenial society in the companionship of a fellow-prisoner, whose name was Hugh Speke. This man, Speke, being of a gloomy, seditious temperament, furnished Julian Johnson with money to print, and encouraged him by every kind of argument in endeavouring to excite in the Hounslow camp an active spirit of hostility to the Romish schemers. Thereupon Johnson wrote and published a stirring address to the soldiers, which was distributed in thousands amongst the army There could be no mistake concerning the style of this document, even if the writer and his friend had kept their counsel, as they did not. The publication was speedily traced to Johnson, who was thereupon brought up to the bar of the King's Bench, and, after a long examination, condemned to stand three times in the pillory, to be whipped from Newgate to Tyburn, and to pay a fine of five hundred marks.

William of Orange.

Johnson was one of those sturdy, uncompromising reformers—always found, like the petrel, just before the occurrence of a storm—who are regarded with almost more terror and aversion by men of more moderate views or weaker nerves than by the national offenders whom they attack. When assured by the judge that he might be thankful to the attorney-general that he had not arraigned him of high treason, he indignantly replied that he thanked him not; that he did not consider himself favoured by being degraded and whipped like a hound, when popish writers disseminated with impunity what they pleased. This was denied by the attorney-general and the bench; but Johnson was prepared for them, and pulling a whole mass of such publications from his pocket, which were issued by per-