Nathaniel Mist
Encyclopedia
Nathaniel Mist was an 18th century British
printer
and journalist
whose Mist's Weekly Journal was the central, most visible, and most explicit opposition newspaper to the whig
administrations of Robert Walpole
. Where other opposition papers would defer, Mist's would explicitly attack the government of Robert Walpole
and the entire House of Hanover
. He was a Jacobite
of strong convictions and pugnacious determination who employed various authors writing under pseudonym
s, from Lewis Theobald
to Daniel Defoe
, and was frequently tried by the government for sedition
.
His early years are obscure, and he first enters the public record and public eye as the owner of a successful printing press in 1716. As owner and master of the press, he began immediately to publish his own journals. His first effort, The Citizen, ran to only nine issues in 1716. His second effort was to take over Weekly Journal, or, Saturday's Post in December of 1716. This would later, in May of 1725, become Mist's Weekly Journal (the Weekly Journal published by Mist). In 1717, he attempted Wednesday's Journal, but that ran to only five issues, and The Entertainer in 1718 ran successfully to 38 issues before being taken over by another press. Mist's Weekly Journal, however, was an enormous success and reflected the editor's personal political vision.
, he would employ allegory
or fictional history. He would print authors talking about lands far away, for example, but readers would understand that the land was actually England
. He would have an account of a particular episode in history, such as the Restoration
, and imply, of course, that the return of the Stuarts was appropriate. He would publish an account of famous regicide
s, where the king was a tyrant, and imply that the public needed to take action against the Hanoverian "usurper." Fictions of corrupt ministers would be commentaries on Robert Walpole. Informative stories about how pirates organize their ships would be an analogy to Walpole's running of the British House of Commons
. Furthermore, as the government found out (and complained of in 1722), every time they arrested and tried Mist, the popularity of his Journal would increase geometrically. There is no way to know what Mist's average weekly circulation was, but it may have been around 8,000 - 10,000 copies a week (Chapman 379).
Among the various arrests and convictions of Nathaniel Mist for Mist's Weekly Journal were three in 1717 and two in 1718. In 1720, he was convicted by the House of Lords
, and he was fined £50, spent three months in jail, and was sent to the pillory
, where the crowds were gentle with him. He was also supposed to give surety (bond) to ensure seven years of good behavior. Eleven months later, he called George I "a cruel ill-bred uneducated old Tyrant, and the driveling Fool his Son" and was imprisoned for not revealing the author of the libel. In 1723 and 1724 he was tried and imprisoned for a year, after a £100 fine. Finally, in 1727 he was tried for a libel on George I himself, and he was ordered to be imprisoned until he could offer up a surety for a lifetime of good behavior. This forced Mist to flee to France
.
, and in August of 1728 (the same time as public disaffection over the ministry was peaking with the popularity of The Beggar's Opera
in London
), Mist's Weekly Journal published "The Persian Letter" by "Amos Drudge" (Wharton). It explained the corruption and loss of liberties in "Persia" after a usurpation. Over twenty people were arrested for this publication. Copies of the issue went for as much as half a guinea
. In September of 1728 another issue again made too explicit an attack on the Walpole ministry and the royals, and so the presses were destroyed.
After the destruction of the presses, the journal was renamed Fog's Journal and passed over to the printing of Charles Molloy
. Also in 1728, there were criticisms of Alexander Pope
in issues of Mist's, and so Pope responded by citing Mist's Weekly Journal as a symptom of intellectual and political decline in The Dunciad
.
Mist moved to Boulogne-sur-Mer
in 1729 and began working for the Old Pretender. His function was to plant news stories in the English presses that might be favorable to the Jacobite cause and to set up a covert correspondence with Jacobites in England. In 1730, he set up a joint venture with Charles Molloy to ship wine
from France to England and to use these shipments as a way of passing secret messages. By 1734, however, he appears to have been out of favor among the exiled Jacobites, and in 1737 he received permission to return to England. He died in Boulogne in 1737, and his wife had to pawn his personal effects to pay customs duties on his last shipment of wine.
British people
The British are citizens of the United Kingdom, of the Isle of Man, any of the Channel Islands, or of any of the British overseas territories, and their descendants...
printer
Printer (publisher)
In publishing, printers are both companies providing printing services and individuals who directly operate printing presses. With the invention of the moveable type printing press by Johannes Gutenberg around 1450, printing—and printers—proliferated throughout Europe.Today, printers are found...
and journalist
Journalist
A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...
whose Mist's Weekly Journal was the central, most visible, and most explicit opposition newspaper to the whig
British Whig Party
The Whigs were a party in the Parliament of England, Parliament of Great Britain, and Parliament of the United Kingdom, who contested power with the rival Tories from the 1680s to the 1850s. The Whigs' origin lay in constitutional monarchism and opposition to absolute rule...
administrations of Robert Walpole
Robert Walpole
Robert Walpole, 1st Earl of Orford, KG, KB, PC , known before 1742 as Sir Robert Walpole, was a British statesman who is generally regarded as having been the first Prime Minister of Great Britain....
. Where other opposition papers would defer, Mist's would explicitly attack the government of Robert Walpole
Robert Walpole
Robert Walpole, 1st Earl of Orford, KG, KB, PC , known before 1742 as Sir Robert Walpole, was a British statesman who is generally regarded as having been the first Prime Minister of Great Britain....
and the entire House of Hanover
House of Hanover
The House of Hanover is a deposed German royal dynasty which has ruled the Duchy of Brunswick-Lüneburg , the Kingdom of Hanover, the Kingdom of Great Britain, the Kingdom of Ireland and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland...
. He was a Jacobite
Jacobitism
Jacobitism was the political movement in Britain dedicated to the restoration of the Stuart kings to the thrones of England, Scotland, later the Kingdom of Great Britain, and the Kingdom of Ireland...
of strong convictions and pugnacious determination who employed various authors writing under pseudonym
Pseudonym
A pseudonym is a name that a person assumes for a particular purpose and that differs from his or her original orthonym...
s, from Lewis Theobald
Lewis Theobald
Lewis Theobald , British textual editor and author, was a landmark figure both in the history of Shakespearean editing and in literary satire...
to Daniel Defoe
Daniel Defoe
Daniel Defoe , born Daniel Foe, was an English trader, writer, journalist, and pamphleteer, who gained fame for his novel Robinson Crusoe. Defoe is notable for being one of the earliest proponents of the novel, as he helped to popularise the form in Britain and along with others such as Richardson,...
, and was frequently tried by the government for sedition
Sedition
In law, sedition is overt conduct, such as speech and organization, that is deemed by the legal authority to tend toward insurrection against the established order. Sedition often includes subversion of a constitution and incitement of discontent to lawful authority. Sedition may include any...
.
His early years are obscure, and he first enters the public record and public eye as the owner of a successful printing press in 1716. As owner and master of the press, he began immediately to publish his own journals. His first effort, The Citizen, ran to only nine issues in 1716. His second effort was to take over Weekly Journal, or, Saturday's Post in December of 1716. This would later, in May of 1725, become Mist's Weekly Journal (the Weekly Journal published by Mist). In 1717, he attempted Wednesday's Journal, but that ran to only five issues, and The Entertainer in 1718 ran successfully to 38 issues before being taken over by another press. Mist's Weekly Journal, however, was an enormous success and reflected the editor's personal political vision.
Mist's Weekly Journal
Nathaniel Mist's paper was frequently prosecuted, as was its owner and editor, for libel, and yet it published successfully from 1716 to 1737 (without Mist himself for the last three years). Mist was able to stay in business, and at liberty, generally, by being very aware of the line between the allowable and the prohibited speech. He would discuss current scandals, literature, and events frankly, but when the subject was political or touching the affairs of the peeragePeerage
The Peerage is a legal system of largely hereditary titles in the United Kingdom, which constitute the ranks of British nobility and is part of the British honours system...
, he would employ allegory
Allegory
Allegory is a demonstrative form of representation explaining meaning other than the words that are spoken. Allegory communicates its message by means of symbolic figures, actions or symbolic representation...
or fictional history. He would print authors talking about lands far away, for example, but readers would understand that the land was actually England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
. He would have an account of a particular episode in history, such as the Restoration
English Restoration
The Restoration of the English monarchy began in 1660 when the English, Scottish and Irish monarchies were all restored under Charles II after the Interregnum that followed the Wars of the Three Kingdoms...
, and imply, of course, that the return of the Stuarts was appropriate. He would publish an account of famous regicide
Regicide
The broad definition of regicide is the deliberate killing of a monarch, or the person responsible for the killing of a monarch. In a narrower sense, in the British tradition, it refers to the judicial execution of a king after a trial...
s, where the king was a tyrant, and imply that the public needed to take action against the Hanoverian "usurper." Fictions of corrupt ministers would be commentaries on Robert Walpole. Informative stories about how pirates organize their ships would be an analogy to Walpole's running of the British House of Commons
British House of Commons
The House of Commons is the lower house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, which also comprises the Sovereign and the House of Lords . Both Commons and Lords meet in the Palace of Westminster. The Commons is a democratically elected body, consisting of 650 members , who are known as Members...
. Furthermore, as the government found out (and complained of in 1722), every time they arrested and tried Mist, the popularity of his Journal would increase geometrically. There is no way to know what Mist's average weekly circulation was, but it may have been around 8,000 - 10,000 copies a week (Chapman 379).
Government responses
Nevertheless, the government did, indeed, worry about Nathaniel Mist, and they worried about him so much that they put Daniel Defoe in his employ to be his friend and spy on him, write for him, and persuade him away from the most damaging articles. In 1718, Daniel Defoe claimed that he had personally spiked stories that Mist would have published and that Mist was under his control. Although this was almost certainly an exaggeration, Defoe said later that he had gotten Mist out of jail on at least three occasions. When Defoe left off working with Mist entirely in 1724, he complained in Applebee's Journal that Mist had fought with him (physically) and insulted him, and in 1730 he complained that Mist had harmed his career (probably by revealing Defoe's acting as a government agent to other printers).Among the various arrests and convictions of Nathaniel Mist for Mist's Weekly Journal were three in 1717 and two in 1718. In 1720, he was convicted by the House of Lords
House of Lords
The House of Lords is the upper house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Like the House of Commons, it meets in the Palace of Westminster....
, and he was fined £50, spent three months in jail, and was sent to the pillory
Pillory
The pillory was a device made of a wooden or metal framework erected on a post, with holes for securing the head and hands, formerly used for punishment by public humiliation and often further physical abuse, sometimes lethal...
, where the crowds were gentle with him. He was also supposed to give surety (bond) to ensure seven years of good behavior. Eleven months later, he called George I "a cruel ill-bred uneducated old Tyrant, and the driveling Fool his Son" and was imprisoned for not revealing the author of the libel. In 1723 and 1724 he was tried and imprisoned for a year, after a £100 fine. Finally, in 1727 he was tried for a libel on George I himself, and he was ordered to be imprisoned until he could offer up a surety for a lifetime of good behavior. This forced Mist to flee to France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
.
After exile
From France, Nathaniel Mist continued to control Mist's Weekly Journal for a time. He joined the household of Philip Wharton, 1st Duke of WhartonPhilip Wharton, 1st Duke of Wharton
Philip Wharton, 1st Duke of Wharton , powerful Jacobite politician, notorious libertine and rake, profligate, and alcoholic, was one of the few people in English history, and the first since the 15th century, to have been raised to a Dukedom whilst still a minor and not closely related to the...
, and in August of 1728 (the same time as public disaffection over the ministry was peaking with the popularity of The Beggar's Opera
The Beggar's Opera
The Beggar's Opera is a ballad opera in three acts written in 1728 by John Gay with music arranged by Johann Christoph Pepusch. It is one of the watershed plays in Augustan drama and is the only example of the once thriving genre of satirical ballad opera to remain popular today...
in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
), Mist's Weekly Journal published "The Persian Letter" by "Amos Drudge" (Wharton). It explained the corruption and loss of liberties in "Persia" after a usurpation. Over twenty people were arrested for this publication. Copies of the issue went for as much as half a guinea
Guinea
Guinea , officially the Republic of Guinea , is a country in West Africa. Formerly known as French Guinea , it is today sometimes called Guinea-Conakry to distinguish it from its neighbour Guinea-Bissau. Guinea is divided into eight administrative regions and subdivided into thirty-three prefectures...
. In September of 1728 another issue again made too explicit an attack on the Walpole ministry and the royals, and so the presses were destroyed.
After the destruction of the presses, the journal was renamed Fog's Journal and passed over to the printing of Charles Molloy
Charles Molloy
Charles Molloy was a British, probably Irish, journalist and political activist on the jacobite side, as well as a minor playwright. The 18th century Biographia dramatica says that Molloy attended Trinity College, Dublin before moving to London and writing plays.His three known plays were...
. Also in 1728, there were criticisms of Alexander Pope
Alexander Pope
Alexander Pope was an 18th-century English poet, best known for his satirical verse and for his translation of Homer. He is the third-most frequently quoted writer in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, after Shakespeare and Tennyson...
in issues of Mist's, and so Pope responded by citing Mist's Weekly Journal as a symptom of intellectual and political decline in The Dunciad
The Dunciad
The Dunciad is a landmark literary satire by Alexander Pope published in three different versions at different times. The first version was published in 1728 anonymously. The second version, the Dunciad Variorum was published anonymously in 1729. The New Dunciad, in four books and with a...
.
Mist moved to Boulogne-sur-Mer
Boulogne-sur-Mer
-Road:* Metropolitan bus services are operated by the TCRB* Coach services to Calais and Dunkerque* A16 motorway-Rail:* The main railway station is Gare de Boulogne-Ville and located in the south of the city....
in 1729 and began working for the Old Pretender. His function was to plant news stories in the English presses that might be favorable to the Jacobite cause and to set up a covert correspondence with Jacobites in England. In 1730, he set up a joint venture with Charles Molloy to ship wine
Wine
Wine is an alcoholic beverage, made of fermented fruit juice, usually from grapes. The natural chemical balance of grapes lets them ferment without the addition of sugars, acids, enzymes, or other nutrients. Grape wine is produced by fermenting crushed grapes using various types of yeast. Yeast...
from France to England and to use these shipments as a way of passing secret messages. By 1734, however, he appears to have been out of favor among the exiled Jacobites, and in 1737 he received permission to return to England. He died in Boulogne in 1737, and his wife had to pawn his personal effects to pay customs duties on his last shipment of wine.