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Notes
The authors of this article gratefully acknowledge the courtesy of the Guildhall Library in making available the text of its excellent file of the Chronicle and the cooperation of the British Museum, the Public Record Office, and the Yale University Library in providing reproductions of pertinent materials. The authors are particularly indebted to the Manuscripts department of the University of North Carolina Library, where a microfilm of the Minutes of the Proprietors and the Articles of Agreement, along with a compilation of their financial records, is available for interlibrary loan.
The date of the first issue has been recorded incorrectly: the Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature and the British Union-Catalogue of Periodicals give 12 March, and the Tercentenary Handlist gives 18 April.
Minutes, 26 June 1761, 25 March 1763, 25 April 1765; 5 July 1781. Nichols, III (1812), 281; Minutes, 1 April 1795.
Richard Brinsley Peake, Memoirs of the Colman Family (1841), I, 66-67; Eugene R. Page, George Colman the Elder, Essayist, Dramatist, and Theatrical Manager, 1732-1794 (1935), p. 71; Margaret Barton, Garrick (1948), pp. 191-192.
Minutes, 25 March 1773, 23 December 1773, 25 February 1778, 2 November 1779, 2 October 1783, 8 January 1784.
Minutes, 1 May 1799; 4 May 1808, 8 June 1808, 6 July 1808. For the death of Moody see the Gentleman's Magazine, 85 (1815), ii, 643. Captain Thompson and Arthur Murphy desired admission but for some reason were denied, and a Mr. O'Keefe was proposed but not admitted. Minutes, 8 January 1784, 7, 15 May 1788; 13 April 1785, 4 January 1786.
The bookseller was Peter Murray Hill Ltd. The Minute Books were carefully described in Catalogue 82, 1962, pages 46-49. They are now located in the Manuscripts department of the University of North Carolina Library.
The second volume has on the back end paper the circular label of "Jno. & Thos. Curtis, Booksellers & Stationers, at Shakespear's Head, opposite Fetter Lane, in Fleet Street, London."
For the Articles of the Gazetteer see Robert L. Haig, The Gazetteer, 1735-1797 (1960), pp. 270-276.
Richard Baldwin disposed of his share in the triweekly London Evening Post before his admission as a Proprietor of the Chronicle: Minutes, 25 October 1764. Becket, Thomas, Richard Baldwin, Garrick, and possibly Colman held shares in the daily Public Advertiser: B.M. Add. MS. 38,169, f. 24; Letters of David Garrick, ed. David M. Little and George M. Kahrl (1963), Letter 754; Lucyle Werkmeister, The London Daily Press (1963), pp. 65-66. A number of the Proprietors of the Chronicle were also Partners in the London Packet: see below, note 22. Apparently these two journals were closely related; in the Minutes of 28 December 1769 the Partners resolved "that the Deduction on Acct. of the London Packet be given Credit for on settling the Account for the Month of December."
Later the King's Head became the favorite location for many years and was finally and properly succeeded by the Queen's Head in Southampton Street. There were many other locations, including the Crown and Anchor in the Strand, Don Saltero's Coffeehouse in Chelsea, and the Shakespeare Tavern in Covent Garden. Toward the end a number of the Minutes were written at the Printer's house in Bridge Street.
Four years later the Public Advertiser of similar format paid £4/4/0 for the printing of 1950-2000 copies. B. M. Add. MS. 38,169, f. 3.
E.g., Minutes, 10 June 1761, 2 December 1795, 6 January 1796; 16 December 1761; 4 March 1771; 10 June 1761, 16 December 1761, 4 July 1782.
Among the few surviving minutes are those of the Gazetteer during 1788-96 and 1796-97 (P.R.O. C104/68, Bks. C and A) and of the Whitehall Evening Post during 1795-1802 (B.M. Egerton MS. 2236). There are minutes of four meetings of the London Packet in 1770 and 1773 (B.M. Add. MS. 38,728, ff. 130, 133; 38,729, ff. 165, 166). And Wilfrid Hindle in his The Morning Post, 1772-1937 (1937), pp. 43-44, refers to the minutes of a meeting in 1785; these minutes were then in the possession of Mr. James Greig.
Minutes, 24 February 1774. See John Ashton, A History of English Lotteries (1893), pp. 80-81, and C. L'Estrange Ewen, Lotteries and Sweepstakes (1932), pp. 281-282.
Minutes, 5 November 1788, 7 January 1789. Another lottery ticket, No. 48,867, was bought for the Proprietors 2 February 1791, again with no report of any prize.
P.R.O. K. B. 10/39/62, K. B. 28/296/63, and T. S. 11/1079/5383-4. Westminster Magazine, 5 (1777), 365-370, 605-608; State Trials, comp. T. B. Howell, XX (1814), 651-802.
An earlier Russian envoy had been accused of not paying his debts to London tradesmen: see The History of the Reign of Queen Anne, VII (1709), 233-242, 245, and VIII (1710), 141-158.
P.R.O. K. B. 10/42 and 28/318/9. Alexander Andrews, The History of British Journalism (1859), I, 224-225. Chronicle, 5 July 1781.
The Proprietors twice avoided lawsuits by Members of the House of Commons through the safe procedure of compromise. James Buller of Cornwall sought redress for a letter signed "Thousands" in the Chronicle of 24 December 1763 satirizing his efforts to strengthen the Game Law, but the Partners offered to "make up the Affair with Mr. Buller" and pay the costs. Apparently, a decade later, Sir George Cornewall of Herefordshire was also placated, but the Proprietors were very slow in paying the claim of their attorney. Minutes, 26 March 1764, 25 June 1764; 29 December 1774, 4 July 1782.
These three papers appear on the broadside of "The Newsman's Present to his worthy Customers, on the Entrance of the New Year, 1761," where a gentleman standing in a doorway receives a copy of the papers from three hawkers. The broadside was printed by the Britannia Printing Office, which would shortly issue the St. James's Chronicle.
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