Page:History of Journalism in the United States.djvu/33

Rh publication and the free press that King Charles fanned the flames that he would fain have quenched. He appointed, in 1663, Sir Roger L'Estrange as licensor of the press and surveyor of the printing offices.

Americans are not accustomed to think of this remarkable cavalier and journalist as connected with the newspaper history of this country; yet connected he is in the most interesting way—directly through Benjamin Harris, as we shall see in another chapter, and indirectly through his persecutions and general whacking of heads, both of editors and publishers, toughening the fiber of those who were founding the Fourth Estate, and providing examples of heroism for those editors in this country who in their turn went to jail as part of the routine of a not over-respected profession.

It was L'Estrange who was selected to answer Milton's "Areopagitica," which he did under the brutal title, "No Blind Guides Needed," a fair sample of his wit. From pamphleteer he became, on his appointment as licensor of the press, a full-fledged journalist, issuing in 1663 the Public Intelligencer. For this posterity is indebted to him, for an able journalist he was; considering that his business was to suppress printing and prosecute printers, he set about it in the very best way calculated to encourage the one and stiffen the other.

The Public Intelligencer gave way in 1665 to the London Gazette, the first official newspaper in English, a purely governmental publication, containing in the most meager and formal fashion such news as the government wished to publish. But the damage was done, for what the government could do others could do, and despite the licensor, pillories and prisons, the printers became busy with their defense of a free press and popular rights. When it is realized that thirty thousand of these pam-