University of Virginia Library

Harris the Pirate

Related to the dispute between Partridge and the Stationers was Benjamin Harris, a prime rascal who spread his deeds over the several careers of author, printer, bookseller, journalist, pirate, and salesman. He spent a term of years in New England and by issuing in Boston the sole number of Publick Occurrences became in 1690 the "first American journalist."[16] Harris returned to London, where he acquired a very poor reputation in the trade as well as a degree of shrewd effectiveness.

In the Merlinus Liberatus for 1706 Partridge warned the reader against "a Supplement added to my Almanack, forged and contriv'd by Benj. Harris and his Son, and Printed as mine, tho' I knew nothing of it till it was printed"; the next year he repeated his warnings against additions made by Harris to his almanac "either in the Middle or End of it."

In February of 1708 the Company of Stationers filed a bill in Chancery against Harris and his sons Benjamin and Vavasour, all freemen of the Company, accusing them of subverting the letters patent "lately within these ffour Years last past" and particularly of printing the almanacs of Partridge and others for 1708, and prayed for an injunction restraining the Harrises from any unauthorized use of the Calendar (P.R.O., C. 5/ 270/ 20; 9 February 1708). In their joint answers the father admitted that he "did in his own Right & sayd way of Trade print or cause to be printed in London some Thousands a Sheet Almanacks goeing under the borrowed Name of one Vincent Wing."[17] On 4 October 1708 the Court of the Company ordered its committee to advise with counsel and move the court for an injunction; the officers spent considerable time away from the Hall in conferences about Harris, with at least three on the 19th; and on the 21st the Lord Chancellor awarded an injunction against the unauthorized publication and sale by Harris of any more almanacs until the hearing (P.R.O., C. 33/ 310/ 490). On 18 November the Courant carried an advertisement announcing that Harris the bookseller had at his shop, the Golden Boar's Head in Grace Church Street, all kinds of almanacs for 1709 "Bound or Stitcht, Wholesale or Retale" and that annexed to the Partridge almanac there would be a printed list of the current members of Parliament at no extra cost.[18]

After this, Harris apparently rested dormant for a year as an open enemy of the Stationers, or else crafty without record.[19] However, on 15 November of 1709, when the suit against Partridge was in full stride and the injunction in operation, the Courant had an advertisement of a Merlinus Liberatus for 1710 by J. Patridge, "Printed for the Author, and Sold by most Booksellers," etc. with no reference to Harris at all. Shortly a notice was published in the Post-Man that the Merlinus Liberatus by Patridge (again so spelled) had been published on the

24th "with an ALMANACK for the said Year, Printed by Allowance, and Conformable to an Injunction in Chancery," price bound 6 d.[20]

On the 5th of December at a Court of the Company "A ffalse Almanack of Partridges was produced wherein is a Kallendr. and suspected to be Printed and Published by Benja. Harris." The Stationers apparently knew Harris well, so the Master and Wardens were directed to investigate. Three days later the Court ordered that an advertisement concerning this publication by Harris of Partridge's almanac with the Company's Calendar "be put into the Gazett and several other publick News Papers," and also that advice be taken as to whether this action by Harris constituted a breach of the injunction against him. The proposed advertisement appeared in the Courant the next day to say that the Merlinus Liberatus was "pretended to be made by J. Partridge, but in Truth was patched together by Benjamin Harris (famous for Practices of this Nature)" and that there would be no almanac for 1710 by Partridge because of the injunction by the Lord Chancellor. This notice got wide distribution.[21] Later in the same month of December Robert Mawson, codefendant with Partridge and Darby in the Stationers' suit of 1709, bought copies of a sheet almanac from the Company's warehouse keeper and of the 1710 Merlinus Liberatus from Harris; he said in his formal answer to the charges of the Company that he had never to his knowledge disposed of any almanac "which had not been printed according to the said priviledge and having only bought a different Title containing noe part of a Calendar and therefore noe essentiall part of an Almanack, and for which hee humbly hopes if any person is Answerable it ought to be the said Benjamin Harris."[22]

The method used by Harris is best described in a Chancery record of 28 November 1710. The counsel for the Stationers alleged:

At this time in 1710 the Stationers prayed that the injunction formerly granted be extended to enjoin Harris from publishing the Merlinus Liberatus by J. Patridge, and the Court of Chancery so ordered.[24] The clerk of the Stationers refused to register in the Hall Book the copy of the 1711 Merlinus Liberatus by Harris, and this refusal was publicly recorded.[25] The Company promptly disclaimed in print the new Merlinus Liberatus as published by Harris "with an Almanack printed by Allowance" and pretended to be written by Partridge; the Company further denied that Harris's almanac had been registered at Stationers' Hall, announced that the High Court of Chancery had granted an injunction prohibiting the printing and sale of the said book, and stated that there would be no almanac by Partridge for 1711.[26] A year later the Company again requested an extension of the injunction against Harris, this time to prohibit his printing three certain almanacs for 1712, and again Chancery so ordered (P.R.O., C. 33/ 318/ 49-49v; 10 December 1711). And when Partridge prepared a 1714 almanac for the Stationers entitled Merlinus Redivivus, he said he could not doubt "that those beggarly Villains that have scarce Bread to eat without being Rogues, two or three poor Printers and a Bookbinder, with honest Ben, will be at their old Trade again, of Prophesying in my name," and gave a similar warning in his almanac for 1715 without naming the offender.

Such is the incomplete and varied evidence about Harris from the documents of Chancery, the records of the Stationers, and the advertisements in the periodic press. An additional archive of his piratical activity is the almanac itself that he succeeded in publishing, the

Merlinus Liberatus for 1710 and 1711, copies of which have quite recently become known and now confirm what may be surmised from the official records. The title page of each of these two almanacs is a close imitation of that of the legitimate Merlinus, but the subtitle has been altered from "Being an ALMANACK" to "(With an ALMANACK Printed by Allowance.)" The compiler's name is spelled Patridge. Each almanac was "Printed for the Author," not for the Company of Stationers, and the 1711 pamphlet contradicted the statement of the Stationers about registry at the Hall with the claim that it had been "Register'd in the HALL-BOOK of the Company of Stationers, pursuant to Act of Parliament." The first three leaves and the last five contain matter, in verse and prose, of a sort common to almanacs of the time or to Partridge's anti-French diatribes. Between the miscellaneous features are six leaves in which one page is devoted to each month and filled with a few lines of verse, some "Monthly Observations," and for 1710 "Remarkable Occurrences this Month" chosen from previous years and for 1711 "An Astrological Judgment."

The distinctive component is the Calendar. The year's quarters were cut from a folio sheet almanac, verso blank, of the kind that bore the name of Vincent Wing, and each section, measuring about 5 by 6½ inches, was folded down the middle and pasted at the folded edge to the inner margin of one of the three appropriate pages, i.e. in these copies the pages for the months of March, June, September, and November. The scissors and paste were clumsily applied, and the tipped-in portions are smaller than the book, so these factitious enterprises have a rather shoddy appearance. Obviously, Harris argued that by using a Calendar actually printed by allowance he might evade the injunction against his publication of the almanac.

At the end of the 1710 Merlinus there appears this particularly interesting sentence, signed J. P.: "Whereas it has been industriously given out by Bickerstaff Esq. and others, to prevent the Sale of this Years Almanac that John Partridge is Dead: This may inform all his Loving Countrymen that (blessed be God) he is still Living, in Health and they are Knaves that Reported otherwise." Such an advice in this place provides of course no sign of participation by Partridge himself. Harris permitted only one use of his own name in the two pamphlets — in the 1711 almanac advertisements were entered for four items sold by him, one devotional publication and three nostrums.

The manifest conclusion from these almanacs and from the official records is that Harris was certainly a nuisance to the Stationers. It is possible that his unauthorized work in 1708 or earlier somehow gave

Partridge and Darby the idea, or strengthened the notion, of establishing the Merlinus Liberatus as their own property despite the Stationers' monopoly, but it is not likely that his work in 1709 came in time to influence such a decision. During the closing months of 1709, when Partridge was restrained by Chancery and the conditions in the almanac business were somewhat confused, Harris, who was already an experienced pirate, captured this special opportunity to use Partridge's name and the title of his almanac, and he repeated the performance the following year. Under legal restriction himself, he bought legally published sheet almanacs, from which he extracted the essential Calendar and attached it to other pertinent matter, gave the almanac the popular title of Merlinus Liberatus, and signed it with the name of J. Patridge, a name close enough to that of the eminent astrologer to cheat the careless or unlettered eye. Thus honest Ben employed a real title and a near-name to escape the court and turn a bad penny. We may be reasonably certain that no almanac prepared by Partridge and sponsored by the Company was issued for 1710 or 1711, and without further testimony we must suppose that Partridge had no hand in the juggleries of Benjamin Harris, a knave of all trades.