Life

Care edited a paper called the Weekly Pacquet of Advice from Rome. It began as a serial publication covering the history of the Protestant Reformation

Protestant Reformation

The Protestant Reformation was a 16th-century split within Western Christianity initiated by Martin Luther, John Calvin and other early Protestants. The efforts of the self-described "reformers", who objected to the doctrines, rituals and ecclesiastical structure of the Roman Catholic Church, led...

. After the publicity for the alleged Popish Plot

Popish Plot

The Popish Plot was a fictitious conspiracy concocted by Titus Oates that gripped England, Wales and Scotland in Anti-Catholic hysteria between 1678 and 1681. Oates alleged that there existed an extensive Catholic conspiracy to assassinate Charles II, accusations that led to the execution of at...

 of 1678, he wrote against the Church of England

Church of England

The Church of England is the officially established Christian church in England and the Mother Church of the worldwide Anglican Communion. The church considers itself within the tradition of Western Christianity and dates its formal establishment principally to the mission to England by St...

 and its members, then supposed by some to be deeply inclined towards popery. He was tried at Guildhall, 2 July 1680, on an information against him as the author of this journal, and more particularly for a clause against the lord chief justice, William Scroggs

William Scroggs

Sir William Scroggs , Lord Chief Justice of England, was the son of an Oxford landowner; an account of him being the son of a butcher of sufficient means to give his son a university education is merely a rumour....

, who himself sat as judge at the trial. The jury found him guilty, and Care was prohibited from printing his journal.

These proceedings then constituted one of the charges brought against Scroggs, who was removed from the bench some months later, and Care continued to publish. Care's last number of the Weekly Pacquet, which extended to five volumes, is dated 13 July 1683, at which time he fell ill. In 1682 Care fell out with Langley Curtis, the original publisher; Care, who lived at the time in the Great Old Bailey, continued to work on his own account. But at the start of the quarrel, Curtis, employed William Salmon, another writer, to publish a continuation of the Pacquets, and he did so from 25 August 1682, the same day as Care's fifth volume also began, until 4 May 1683.

Legacy

A two-volume adaptation of the Weekly Pacquet, under the title The History of Popery, appeared anonymously in 1735-6.