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Notes
See Cyprian Blagden, "The English Stock of the Stationers' Company in the Time of the Stuarts," Library, 5th ser., XII (1957), Table IV.
See Eustace F. Bosanquet, "English Seventeenth-Century Almanacks," Library, 4th ser., X (1930), 361-397, and the Short-Title Catalogues by Pollard and Redgrave and by Wing.
For the contribution of almanacs to the progress of the new astronomy see Francis R. Johnson, Astronomical Thought in Renaissance England (1937), pp. 249-257, and Marjorie Nicolson, "English Almanacs and the 'New Astronomy,'" Annals of Science, IV (1939), 1-33.
The account of Partridge and his career in the Nichols edition of the Tatler, 1786, V, 427-448 (not included in the 2nd edition, 1789) and the article by William Alfred Eddy, "The Wits vs. John Partridge, Astrologer," SP, XXIX (1932), 29-40, are both given to inaccuracies in fact and interpretation. George P. Mayhew, "The Early Life of John Partridge," SEL, I (1961), iii, 31-42, has expertly examined the topics of Partridge's true surname and the place and year of his birth and thus has been able to correct various errors.
See Blagden, "English Stock," Tables III, V, and The Stationers' Company: A History, 1403-1959 (1960).
This narration of the dispute between the Company of Stationers and Partridge is based principally on the Chancery archives in the Public Record Office, the archives of the Company of Stationers in Stationers' Hall, and advertisements in the current papers. References will be made by date to the minutes of the meetings of the Court of the Stationers in Court Book G, 1697-1717, and to the record of disbursements in the Warden's Accounts, 1663-1727. I am pleased to acknowledge here the kind cooperation of the officials of the Stationers' Company and of the Public Record Office in making these documents available. It is a privilege to state that the Master and Wardens of the Company of Stationers have given me permission to cite and quote material in the archives of the Company and that unpublished Crown Copyright material in the Public Record Office, London, has been reproduced by permission of the Controller of H. M. Stationery Office. Of course, there had been earlier suits by the Stationers for their almanac patents, e.g. those against Lee and Marlowe in the reign of Charles II. Perhaps the most significant case was that of John Seymour; see particularly Blagden, Stationers' Company, pp. 193-195.
Public Record Office, C. 7/ 299/ 3; 2 August 1709. On 8 December 1709 the Stationers decided that Robert Mawson, book-binder, should be made a party to the action, and his name was by order of the court inserted in the original bill: C. 33/ 314/ 81v; 9 December 1709. Mawson appeared twice in later orders (C. 33/ 314/ 167v, 257; 18 February, 21 April 1710) and his answer was dated 29 April 1710 (C. 7/ 299/ 3). He was never a major figure in the case.
Post Boy, No. 2246 (6 October 1709). Practically the same notice appeared one week later in the official London Gazette, No. 4599.
Whisperer, No. 1 (11 October 1709). Three days later the Female Tatler, No. 43, sold by B. Bragge, had this passage: ". . . or as the Rakes of the Town say; A Wife were a fine thing if she were an Almanack, that a Man might change her once a Year; which if once tolerated, how many Friends would John Partridge have met with at Court, to have kept up his Almanacks, in spight of Equity, which they would have turn'd over every day, in hopes of the expected moment of Turning off their Wives." Cf. a chapbook of 1708 — An Almanack-Husband: or, a Wife a Month.
P. R. O., C. 33/ 314/ 68v-69. Cowper was the eminent Whig who would the next year write A Letter to Isaac Bickerstaff in answer to St. John's Letter to the Examiner and to whom the third volume of the Tatler was to be dedicated.
Supplement, No. 296 (7 December 1709), Post Boy, No. 2273 (8 December), British Apollo, II, 74 (9 December); A Brief Historical Relation of State Affairs from September 1678 to April 1714 (1857), VI, 519.
The passages quoted from this pamphlet appear on pages 1, 1, 4, 2, 1. It was printed by codefendant Darby and quotes from another Letter to a Member of Parliament, 1698, also printed by Darby and also devoted to the liberty of the press. According to the History of the Works of the Learned Partridge's piece was published in November of 1709; it was advertised in the Post-Man, No. 1842 (12 January 1710). On 17 December the Stationers ordered the preparation of an answer.
Millar v. Taylor, 4 Burr. 2402, King's Bench Division, English Reports, XCVIII, 254-255. Cf. 10 Modern 105, King's Bench Division, English Reports, LXXXVIII, 647. Harcourt was Lord Keeper; Parker was Lord Chief Justice of the Queen's Bench.
Alexandre Beljame, Men of Letters and the English Public in the Eighteenth Century, ed. Bonamy Dobrèe, trans. E. O. Lorimer (London, 1948; 1st ed. Paris, 1881), p. 260, n. 166. J. G. Muddiman, The King's Journalist 1659-1689 (1923), p. 254.
J. G. Muddiman, "Benjamin Harris, the First American Journalist," N&Q, CLXIII (1932), 129-133, 147-150, 166-170, 273-274; Frank Monaghan, "Benjamin Harris, Printer, Bookseller, and the First American Journalist," Colophon, xii (1932).
P. R. O., C. 5/ 270/ 20; 24 February 1708. Harris stated that his gain had been one farthing on each almanac.
The Company's counsel on 28 November 1710 conceded that Harris, being served with the injunction in 1708, desisted from publishing any more sheet almanacs or prognostications for 1708: P. R. O., C. 33/316/22-22v.
Daily Courant, No. 2515, repeated in No. 2517. Post-Man, No. 1822 (26 November 1709). The Female Tatler, No. 73 (23 December), printed the same notice, adding the phrase "with the same Freedom and Safety as formerly."
Daily Courant, No. 2536 (9 December 1709); also Tatler, No. 105 (10 December). Without the Harris parenthesis the advertisement was printed in the London Gazette, Nos. 4624, 4626 (10, 15 December) and Post-Man, No. 1838 (3 January 1710).
P. R. O., C. 7/ 299/ 3; 29 April 1710. Mawson's answer has special value for the student of the economics of the trade — he records the quantities and prices of a number of his purchases and sales of almanacs, bound and stitched, retail and wholesale. For example, he bought two hundred copies of a sheet almanac from the Stationers at two shillings a quire and a like number of the Merlinus Liberatus from Harris at one shilling sixpence a quire, of which he sold to one Jenks, a pedlar, sixteen copies bound at six shillings and nine copies stitched at one shilling sixpence.
P. R. O., C. 33/ 316/ 22-22v. The astrologer's name had of course been misspelled before, e.g. "Patrige" in Swift's Elegy and "Patrige" in his Accomplishment.
London Gazette, No. 4775 (28 November 1710). Stationers' Court Book G; 4 December 1710. At this same meeting the Court of the Company ordered that a copy of the writ of execution against Harris be sent to six booksellers, several of whom were known for dealing in cheap publications.
For announcements of the appearance of the 1710 almanacs on 22 November 1709 see the Post Boy, No. 2246 (6 October 1709), and Post-Man, No. 1815 (10 November). The former notice also stated that a list of the titles of all the almanacs might be had gratis at Stationers' Hall.
This letter has been reprinted and the title page reproduced in the Bickerstaff Papers, ed. Herbert Davis (1940), pp. 229, 231.
In Tatler No. 96 (19 November 1709) Bickerstaff ended his statement about true and worthy existence with an alleged note by Partridge once more informing the world he was alive, and introduced this repetition of the wellworn joke by calling these words by Partridge the conclusion to the "Advertisement of his next Year's Almanack." Steele or Addison could have known from the Courant of 15 November that the Merlinus Liberatus by J. Patridge was imminent. This reference in the Tatler may be only a part of the jest or an effort at ridiculing a potential rival of Bickerstaff's Almanack. Bickerstaff's name appeared also on numerous New England almanacs in the late eighteenth century, especially those by Benjamin West.
Wardens' Accounts, 1663-1727: 29 December 1712, 15 January, 4, 7 February 1713; 12, 13, 20, 24 January 1713 and later.
The Merlinus Liberatus was, it seems, discontinued in 1871; the name of Francis Moore is still in vogue.
The undated Dr. Flamstead's and Mr. Partridge's New Fortune Book contained a method of telling fortunes by cards with answers in fifty-two poems and also treatises on palmistry, physiognomy, dreams, and moles. It is pleasant to record that the philomath was briefly returned to his career by George Beaton in Doctor Partridge's Almanack for 1935. If this Partridge's purpose was denigration, "often of a rather uncertain and ill-directed kind, such as one would expect from a person who had spent so many years in retirement," we should recall that times have changed and Partridge was a lover of truth.
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