The Butcher of Smithfield (57 page)

Besides editing the newsbooks, L’Estrange was also Surveyor of the Press, which meant nothing could be printed without his
permission, and he did indeed hire spies to look for booksellers who sold unlicensed tomes. It was also rumoured that some
authors were granted licenses if they had pretty wives willing to spend a little time in his company.

L’Estrange was assisted in his work by a man called Henry Brome. Brome had a bookshop in Ivy Lane, and L’Estrange’s office
was above it. Brome’s wife was Joanna, who was said by contemporaries to be proud. The newsbooks were printed by Richard
Hodgkinson, whose premises were on Thames Street, at the back of Baynard Castle. Baynard Castle was destroyed in the Great
Fire of 1666, along with Hodgkinson’s print-house.

Muddiman, meanwhile, was not about to take his dismissal lying down, and immediately exploited a loophole in the law. L’Estrange
had a monopoly of all
printed
news, but handwritten ‘newsletters’ were another matter. Muddiman’s weekly manuscript sheets (which had a circulation of
about 150 at an annual charge of between £5 and £20 each) contained plenty of home news and were very well received. Because
he did not have a government telling him what to write, and because he was not a censor, his letters were generally regarded
as a far more reliable source of news than the official rags. They quickly became a huge financial success, allowing Muddiman
to purchase Coldhern, an elegant country mansion at Earl’s Court (an echo of it survives today in streets called Coleherne
in the Earl’s Court area).

Williamson was furious and jealous, and hired James Hickes, a clerk at the Letter Office, to spy on and attempt to circumvent
Muddiman. Williamson’s correspondence at this time also suggests he commissioned the services of mercenary gangs, perhaps
for intercepting the letters; he may even have hired members of the famous gang called the Hectors. As Muddiman’s enterprise
grew, Hickes used increasingly more brazen methods to destroy him. He even stole the addresses of the people who subscribed
to the newsletters and wrote to them himself,
offering to sell them circulars of his own. Although Hickes was promised great rewards for his shady activities, Williamson
weaselled his way out of them all, and Hickes slid out of the public records a bitter and disappointed man.

In 1665, public disapproval of L’Estrange’s management of the newsbooks became so great that Williamson was obliged to act.
In his usual sleazy manner, he waited until the Court was in Oxford, where it had gone to escape the plague, and founded
The Oxford Gazette
as the official government’s mouthpiece. He asked Muddiman to edit it. L’Estrange, who had loyally remained at his post in
the disease-ravaged capital, suddenly found himself deposed, and wrote several letters of dismay to Williamson, which the
Spymaster probably ignored. It was not long before Williamson and his new editor fell out, though, and Muddiman soon resigned
and reverted to his more popular newsletters. Muddiman’s early assistant was named Giles Dury.

Court records of 1663 describe a devious character called Anne Pettis, who stole silver from the linen-draper Richard Bridges,
and was sentenced to hang. Her aliases included Cade, Petwer and Reade, suggesting she had had previous trouble with the law.
She was later acquitted.

There is no record of William Leybourn marrying, and eventually, he moved out of his bookshop on Monkwell Street in Cripplegate,
and went to live in Southall, between Uxbridge and Acton. In 1667, he wrote a book on the use of Gunter’s Quadrant.

John Thurloe, Cromwell’s Spymaster General and Secretary of State, was living quietly in Lincoln’s Inn in 1663, and the Earl
of Clarendon’s secretary was named John Bulteel. Court musicians in the 1660s included
Thomas Maylord (or Mallard), William Smegergill (a Frenchman whose alias really
was
Caesar), John Hingston and Thomas Greeting, the latter of whom may also have been involved in espionage.

In 1663, the diarist Samuel Pepys recorded that two men were dead from eating ‘cowcumbers’. It was generally acknowledged
that ingesting raw fruit and vegetables could be dangerous, and both the apothecary Nicholas Culpeper and the ancient Greek
physician Galen warned against the perils of cucumbers in particular. One of the deaths was Thomas Newburne, a corrupt solicitor
who lived in Old Jewry, and the other was Ellis Crisp. ‘Arise, Tom Newburne’ was apparently a ‘nick-word’ associated with
the lawyer, although its meaning has been lost in the mists of time.