Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 38.djvu/61

Mist profane libel. In January 1719 Defoe again began to write for the paper on the condition that its tone was to be very moderate (, i. 289).

Early in 1719 Mist published ‘The History of the Reign of King George, from the Death of her late Majesty Queen Anne to the First of August 1718; to be continued yearly.’ James Crossley [q. v.] was of opinion that Defoe compiled this volume. No subsequent issues seem to have appeared.

In June 1720 Mist published news articles reflecting on the aid rendered to the protestants in the Palatinate by the interposition of the English government; and Dr. Willis, bishop of Gloucester, having brought the matter before the House of Lords, Mist was ordered to be prosecuted by the attorney-general. He was accordingly arrested, and committed to the King's Bench prison. Defoe, who was ill at the time, found it necessary to protest his innocence of any share in Mist's present excesses. On 3 Dec. Mist was tried before Lord Chief-justice Pratt, at the Guildhall, and was found guilty of scandalously reflecting on the king's interposition in favour of the protestants abroad. On 13 Feb. 1721 he was brought up upon his recognisance for judgment, and sentenced to stand in the pillory at Charing Cross and the Royal Exchange, to pay a fine of 50l., to suffer three months' imprisonment in the King's Bench, and to give security for good behaviour for seven years. Both at the Royal Exchange, on the 20th, and at Charing Cross, on the 23rd, Mist was very well treated by the mob ( Journal, 25 Feb.;, Political State; Notes and Queries, 4th ser. v. 2). Unable to pay the fine, Mist remained in prison, and in May, owing to the publication in his ‘Journal’ of articles which reflected upon the king and the Duke of Marlborough, he was placed at the bar of the House of Commons, and, as he would not give up the names of the writers of the letters, committed to Newgate, together with several persons who sold the paper. Defoe, writing in ‘Applebee's Journal,’ urged the government to show clemency towards the offenders, visited Mist in prison, and helped him to prepare a selection, in two volumes, of the letters that had appeared in the ‘Journal.’ Illness, brought on by anxiety and the unhealthy conditions of prison life, made it necessary to postpone Mist's trial from 9 Oct. to 9 Dec., when, no evidence being brought against him, he was discharged.

The ‘Collection of Miscellany Letters, selected out of Mist's Weekly Journal,’ appeared on 9 Jan. 1722, in two volumes, with dedications dated from the King's Bench prison, 29 Sept. and 10 Nov. 1721 respectively, in which Mist explained the cause of the delay in the publication of the book, and said that his troubles had cost him more than 1,000l. From 16 Dec. 1721 to 29 Sept. 1722 the ‘Journal’ was ‘printed by Dr. Gayland for N. Mist.’

On 8 June 1723 Mist again printed a libel upon the government, and was again in trouble at the end of the month (Journal, 6 July), but he was liberated on a recognisance of 1,400l. On 24 Feb. 1724 he was tried at the King's Bench and found guilty. The recognisance was estreated (ib. 29 Feb.) He was brought up for judgment on 18 May, and was sentenced to pay a fine of 100l., to suffer a year's imprisonment, and to find sureties for good behaviour during life. Mr. Abel Kettelby of the Middle Temple was counsel both for Mist and for Payne of the ‘True Briton,’ but though he pleaded eloquently, the court ‘thought their offences too great to allow of any mitigation’ (Parker's London News, 20 May 1724). One number of the ‘Journal’ (20 June) was ‘printed by W. Wilkins, at the Dolphin in Little Britain, and sold by J. Peele, Paternoster Row.’ The new Stamp Act of 1725 brought the original series to an end (24 April), but a new series was begun on 1 May, with the title ‘Mist's Weekly Journal.’ The price was raised from three halfpence to twopence, and the paper reduced to a quarto sheet of four pages. The size of the page was enlarged on 30 April 1726. On 25 March 1727 Mist brought out third and fourth volumes of ‘Miscellany Letters,’ taken from the ‘Journal.’ From 2 Dec. 1727 to 31 Aug. 1728 the ‘Journal’ was printed by John Wolfe, Great Carter Lane.

In 1727 Mist was again tried at the court of king's bench for a libel on George I, and was sentenced to pay a fine of 100l., to give security for good behaviour during life, and to be imprisoned till the sentence was fulfilled. The sentence remained in abeyance till 15 Sept., when an escape warrant was issued for seizing Mist at the King's Arms Tavern on Ludgate Hill. Mist's friends are said to have turned out the lights and thrust him out in the confusion that ensued (Citizen, 25 Sept.); but he surrendered on the following day. Mist afterwards, however, denied this story (Journal, 30 Sept.), saying that when the messenger appeared he went with him into another room, and, after examining the warrant (the force of which he at first disputed, because it was signed in the reign of the late King George I), surrendered himself, and was, he added, still in custody.