calling. "I have made the gentlemen your sons two coats of frieze and this Saturday I carry them suits. If I find Mr. Edward desirous of another coat I will make him one trimmed with silver lace for Sundays, or some other garment that shall please him." It is to be hoped that "Mr. Edward" duly received his coat "trimmed with silver lace," and that in the peaceful seclusion of his beloved Boughton he found life pleasanter and sweeter than did Jack Dillingham in London a few months later, when Cromwell's army entered into occupation.

In spite of this, the Moderate Intelligencer continued to appear, and when the King's execution took place at Whitehall on the 30th January, 1649, Dillingham wrote a graphic and full account of the tragic event in the issue of February 1st. This account, vivid and pathetic as it is, reveals the composed and heroic figure of the King in his last hours, and was reprinted in The Times of 30th January, 1926.

The vicissitudes of the various news-books at this period are extremely difficult to follow, but the Moderate finally came to an end on 25th September, 1649. On the 1st of October in that year an Act came into force which suppressed the whole of the licensed press, and in their place two, and later three, official journals were issued by command of the Commonwealth. In consequence, October 4, 1649, was the last issue of Dillingham's news-book.

This suppression of the licensed press continued till the end of June, 1650, after which date the various news-books began to re-appear. As many of their authors and printers had suffered imprisonment, it is only natural that a certain reluctance should have been shown to re-entering the journalistic arena. At length, chafed by his own inactivity, and stung into action by the depths to which most of the press had sunk, Dillingham made an effort to revive his news-book in December, 1652. His leader on this occasion took the form of an apologia, in which he wrote :

Awakened once more by the sadnesse of the Times, I presume to thrust my impartial Mercury upon the stage of the World again. The

A letter written from Northampton expresses a hope for the "speedy conclusion of Peace . . . and that the Moderate Intelligencer may return to his trade, which I fear he hath almost forgotten." (Camb. Hist. Eng. Lit.; Vol. VII, 349.)

† No. 202.

No. 166. 1 Dec.-8th Dec., 1652.

abuses of the Intelligence are such, that my wearied pen could no longer forbear to run the hazard of its Truth, and castigate the looser transgressions of the Presse, which seemes enslaved to the drudgery of every mercenary relation. But the Age is so desperate an adorer of novelties, that it embracies newes in any language, or under any colour. Every man hath his peculiar fancy, and if that be tickled, no matter where the truth lies.

Though nearly three hundred years have passed since this sentence was penned, the truth of it is as pregnant to-day as it was under the regime of Cromwell. A concluding word of warning to his enemies is a typical example of the pugnacity with which the news-book of the period was conducted: "If a sequestrator fall into my sheet," Dillingham wrote, "let him not look to be wrapped up in innocency; if an oppressor drop into my compasse, let him expect his ten in the hundred."

In spite of the fact that Dillingham had altered the publication day of the Moderate Intelligencer to Wednesday, it only appears to have survived four issues, the last bearing the date December 29th. The reason for this is undoubtedly to be found in the passing of the Printing and Printers' Act in January, 1653, which dealt a heavy blow at the liberty of the press, and drove the printers almost out of existence, Dillingham's printer, Robert Wood, being among the many who suffered imprisonment. A final effort was made to revive the Moderate Intelligencer in May, 1653, its day being altered to Monday, this time with more success. The new issue (called No. 1) bore the date May 2ndMay 9th, and continued until 10th May, 1654, the latter issues, which appeared on Wednesdays, being "Printed for George Horton," who had been arrested under the Act of 1653, and imprisoned for five and a-half months.* The year 1654 evidently witnessed the end of Dillingham's journalistic career, and it is fitting that it should have closed at this period, for by an ordinance of August 28, 1655, (the inquisitorial methods of which it would be difficult to equal) Cromwell once again brought about the suppression of the whole of the licensed press.†

It is not until after the restoration of the monarchy that we

*Williams, 150-2; 255. The career of the Moderate Intelligencer during this period appears to have been uneventful.

+ C.S.P. Commonwealth 1655, pp. 300-1. The suppression continued until 1659.

meet with Dillingham again. On the 26th May, 1664, he sends to his friend Lord Montagu, from London, a long letter, from which we extract the following:

I have with my best eyes lookt over this great city, not, I think, inferior to any in Christendom for bigness, as now increased. I found nothing the same as of old but my friends still loving me; my relations so declined that my son and your honour's tailor not only worse 500l. than nought.

Most of the year was occupied with maritime preparations, for war with the Dutch was imminent, and Dillingham furnished Lord Montagu with a graphic account of the proceedings:

..

His Majesty is returned from his first visit of his navy, having ordered thirteen sail to be forthwith at sea, and thirty after. The preparations are represented great beyond imagination. . . . We take on ten thousand sea and land soldiers, as if we intended a Lepanto fight. Ten of old Noll's [Cromwell's] captains are entertained. My Lord of Sandwicht [Lord Montagu's cousin] wisheth the fight better than ribbons or feathers. If we go on you will see Hinchingbrooke topped gallantly.

He then concludes this letter-the last that has been preserved, and the only one in which he mentions his family or any personal details-with the following:

It was so hot in London, and my purse so near empty, that I shift down this week, and in regard the carrier was full, I pass with Oundle coach, and Sunday will visit all my kindred. My servant will Monday morning bring me a horse from Boughton that I may come back upon [it] to kiss your honour's hand before I pass North.

And so passes John Dillingham from the busy turmoil of the metropolis on his journey north. We may assume that the last few years of his life were spent in peaceful seclusion among his kith and kin in the neighbourhood of Barnwell. What pursuits he indulged in, or where he died, we do not know, but we should like to associate his name with a project which reveals its donor as a man of kindly personality, whose interests in calmer days were far removed from the troubled waters of journalism. This was the foundation of a Riding Academy in Leicester, by John

*Lord Montagu of Beaulieu MSS., 166.

Sandwich was appointed Rear-Admiral in this fleet, and greatly distinguished himself. He was killed in the Battle of Sole Bay, 1672.

Dillingham, who towards the end of January, 1672, gave to the Mayor and Aldermen of Leicester a sum of "£185 per annum (upon which is £500 Mortgage), which is to be taken of and the remainder to be disposed of for erecting an Academy in Leicester for to teach young gentlemen to Ryde the Great Horse; fence; vault and other exercises."* Among those appointed to see the project carried through was Lord Montagu, and his brother-inlaw, the Earl of Rutland, a circumstance which is strongly in favour of the donor being John Dillingham, sometime tailor, letterwriter, and journalist of the Civil War and Commonwealth.

G. E. MANWARING

* Leicester Records; Vol. IV., 525.

THE AUTHOR OF THE “ELEGY”

1. Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Mr. Gray. By the Rev. WILLIAM MASON. 1775.

2. The Letters of Thomas Gray. Edited by the Rev. D. C. ToVEY. George Bell & Sons. 3 vols. 1900-1912.

3. The Correspondence of Gray, Walpole, West and Ashton, 1734-1771. Edited by Dr. PAGET TOYNBEE. Clarendon Press. 2 vols.

1915. 4. Poems of Thomas Gray. Edited by AUSTIN LANE POOLE. Oxford University Press. 1917.

LOSE on two centuries ago-to be exact, on March 29, 1739,

CLOSE

at 12 noon-two travellers might have been seen embarking at Dover in the pacquet boat for Calais. They were young men, not long down from Cambridge, distinctly charming in appearance, very fond of one another, far from unconceited with themselves, sufficiently in love with life, and in short altogether attractive. They were treated with every mark of respect, for one of the young men was a son of the most powerful person in England, and his companion was doubtless supposed to be a person of some consequence. If, indeed, the sailors on the pacquet boat supposed this they were wrong, for, apart from the fact that he had been at Eton and at Peterhouse, Cambridge, Thomas Gray was not a person of consequence in the social sense, and he had not as yet shown any public signs of genius. Nor, at the date of which we are speaking, had his friend become the Horace Walpole of fame; he was just Horace Walpole, the son of Sir Robert Walpole, Prime Minister of England, but on that ground alone a person to be treated with customary marks of deference. The pacquet boat took five hours to reach Calais, and Gray at least was extremely sick; they entered the harbour in a snowstorm, got into a little boat, and so ashore.

At Calais it is necessary to leave the travellers for a moment, in order to answer a question which the reader may not unfairly be asking why should an essay about Gray of the "Elegy begin on the pacquet boat between Dover and Calais ?

The answer is that, time and space being limited, it is desirable to apprehend speedily the main characteristics of the person under consideration. The two and a-half years abroad, which begin at this point, were a decisive epoch in the career of Gray; during