Selections from the Observator (1681-1687)

I fancy, Trimmer, that if You and I could but get leave to peep out of our Graves again a matter of a hundred and fifty year hence, we should find these Papers in Bodlies Library, among the Memorialls of State; and Celebrated for the Only Warrantable Remains concerning this Juncture of Affairs. (Observator No. 259, 16 December 1682) When the first of 931 single, folio sheets of the Observator appeared on 13 April 1681, the sixty-five-year-old Roger L'Estrange, their sole author, had been a controversial London Royalist for over twenty years. As Crown protégé, he had served intermittently as Surveyor of the Press, Chief Licenser, and Justice of the King's Peace Commission; as a writer, he had produced two newspapers, the Intelligencer and the Newes (1663-1666), dozens of political pamphlets, and seven translations from Spanish, Latin, and French.[1] Rightly nicknamed "bloodhound of the press," L'Estrange was notorious for his ruthless ferreting out of illegal presses and seditious publishers, as well as for his tireless warfare against the powerful Stationers' Company.[2] No less well known were his intransigent reactionary views, for we can estimate that some 64,000 copies of pamphlets bearing his name were circulating in the City during the two years preceding the Observator.[3] Thus the Observator papers represent not only the official propaganda of the restored monarchy, but also the intellectual temper of a powerful, influential man whose London fame was sufficiently demonstrated in the winter of 1680, when he was publicly burned in effigy during that year's Pope-burning festivities.