University of Virginia Library

Mr. Abel Boyer Stops the Press
by
G. L. Anderson

A major source for the history of the reign of Queen Anne is The History of the Reign of Queen Anne Digested into Annals (1703-13) by the indefatigable Abel Boyer. Everything about this work suggests that Boyer thought he was writing for the ages. The format is attractive, the style is dignified and objective, and the detail is considerable. The activities of the ministry and the parliament are given elaborate treatment—bills are

summarized, speeches are often quoted apparently verbatim, memorials to the Queen and her responses are reported, and the engagements of British forces in Europe are carefully chronicled, complete with battle maps and lists of casualties (officers by name, and enlisted men by numbers). Appendices to each volume add yet more detail. Although Boyer's Whig bias is apparent (though not as apparent in the early volumes as in the last ones), Boyer is a skillful enough propagandist to present the reader with both sides of the issue—what slanting there is is subtle. Typographically the volumes have an air of permanence, and though the page is crowded, marginal glosses cue the reader to the substance of the material. The dedicatees include Harley and Godolphin, the Dukes of Somerset and Ormonde, the Earl of Portland, and Prince Eugene of Savoy. The volumes were issued annually, in the spring, covering the events of the previous year. The slimmest volume runs to nearly three hundred pages and the fattest runs to over five hundred.

Despite the air of finality that hangs over this venture, Boyer decided in 1705 to stop the press and add a considerable body of new material which necessitated reimposition of some pages, rearrangement of the signature letters, and repagination. The first issue of the 1705 volume[1] (for 1704) collates as follows: A4 B-S8 T4, 2A-E8 F2; pagination [viii] 1-112 97-112 repeated 113-264, 21-76 [viii] [104 mispaged 101, 107 mispaged 1]. The second issue collates: A4 B-Z8, 2A-B8 2C2; pagination: [viii] 1-284, 21-96 [viii] [128 mispaged 188, 255 mispaged 455]. The two volumes are in the same setting of type and the alignment is remarkably well kept even where changes are made. Three additions occur in the second issue: an addition in the middle of the text expanding material on the Aylesbury election issue, and, near the end, immediately preceding the table of contents, an attack on the tack or rider attached to the Occasional Conformity Bill, and an exposé of the Duke of Orford's covetousness.

The first change occurs beginning with sig. O2v (p. 196 in the second issue, 180 in the first) and runs on to sig. O5v, which necessitates switching the rectos and versos from sig. O6v to sig. S5r, after which begins a new section of subject matter. Also, beginning with sig. O2r two lines are added to the bottom of the page from the top of the following page to the point where the new material begins, to accommodate it and to avoid rearrangement after O6v. The other additions come together near the end, at sig. 2A5v-2B6v (pp. 77ff, second series), followed by the "Contents," identical in both issues except for the signature letter. The reimposition also gave the printer the occasion to correct the pagination.

The reasons for two of these additions are obvious. The Aylesbury men were much in the news in the closing weeks of 1704. The case began during the General Election of 1700 when the Tory mayor of Aylesbury struck several Whigs off the voting register, including a cobbler named Ashby. Lord Wharton's interests considered this an affront, and persuaded Ashby to bring an action, which resulted in his being restored by the Assize Court. This was a direct challenge to the House of Commons, the members of which (at least the Tory members) held that no law court had jurisdiction in any electoral matter. The case of cobbler Ashby became a matter of dispute for years. It was argued that, while election petitions were indeed exclusively in the domain of the House of Commons, an individual's right to vote was a piece of his property, and that he could not be deprived of property without the right of recourse to the courts. Ashby was upheld by the House of Lords as the Supreme Court of Appeal. Flushed with victory, in the winter of 1704 Wharton put up five more humble citizens to sue for their voting rights in the courts, an act which infuriated the Commons. These litigants were promptly called to the Bar of the House and arrested on warrants signed by a presumably reluctant Speaker Harley. In Newgate, they were entertained by Whig supporters to the extent that the government had them moved to a less accessible place of confinement. The case of the Aylesbury men was not really resolved. The proroguing of Parliament in March 1705 freed the prisoners, and neither party wished to revive the case in the next session. But in December 1704 the case occupied the attention of all Englishmen, and Boyer, in the early spring of 1705, saw that he had not given the affair as much detailed attention as it merited.[2]

The second addition is a separate section entitled "An Answer to Mr. B-----'s Speech. In Relation to the Conformity Bill and Tack. In a Letter to a Friend." This relates to the efforts of the high church Tories to attach as a rider or tack the very important Land Tax bill to the Occasional Conformity bill. The Land Tax bill was essential to raise revenues for the war effort and especially for the support of England's allies, and by threatening it, the Tories threatened the ministry itself. The several attempts to tack the Occasional Conformity bill begin in the fall of 1704 and engender a great deal of heat in all political quarters through 1705. Defoe in his Review returns again and again to the subject.[3] John Toland contributed a poem, The Tackers (1705), to the cause. Even Thomas Hearne, in his academic ivy-tower in Oxford, records a poem defending the tack.[4] Eventually, the tack was defeated. The "Mr. B-----" of Boyer's address

is Bromley, who stood for the tack and was later defeated for the speakership because of his stand. Boyer first attacks the Occasional Conformity bill and then the tack, with a lofty dignity we occasionally get from Swift but not from the Review. Boyer ends his case with the words of the Queen herself on the prospect of a lasting peace, "if we do not disappoint it by our own Unreasonable Humours and Animosity" (p. 90). Here again Boyer underestimated the value of a news event.

The third addition to the volume is an attack on Edward Russell, Earl of Orford, one of the most powerful and certainly the least loved member of the Whig junto. Unlike his associates and especially unlike Charles Montagu, Lord Halifax, Orford had neither social graces nor administrative ability, but he was a ruthless politician with a strong following, especially in the Navy, and he returned again and again to power after humiliating setbacks. In 1701 he was impeached for his part in the Partition Treaty but the matter came to nothing. Orford was a notorious Jacobite and in the reign of William his defeat of the French fleet was twice blessed—because he won and because doubts about his loyalty were so strong that many believed he would refuse to fight. In 1704 he was accused of profiteering in commissary accounts while Treasurer of the Navy, and it is on this issue that Boyer attacks him. The piece is entitled "The Appointments of Edward R----l, Esq; (now E--- of O----) when he was Ad---l of the Blue, and Ad---l of the F----t explained, and set in a clearer View." There follow four and a half pages (pp. 92-96) listing items of income paid Orford from the Treasury and elsewhere to a total of £293,615, without editorial comment, but certainly giving us a "clearer View." There are various reasons why Boyer might have attacked Orford, even though he was a Whig. He was generally unliked and a strange bedfellow to the others of the junto. William Shippen in Faction Display'd (1704)[5] characterizes him as "Triton, who like the vast Leviathan, | Long wallow'd in the Treasures of the Main." But a specific incitement for Boyer and other Whigs may have been the occasion of Orford and the other members of the junto dining with Queen Anne on 7 April 1705. Boyer may have felt that the Whig cause was in danger of a compromise with the ministry. This conjecture depends on when Boyer's second issue was published, but I have been unable to find any conclusive evidence here. The Annals is advertised early in April 1705,[6] but it is not apparent whether this is the first or second issue.

It would be interesting to collate a number of sets of Boyer's History of the Reign of Queen Anne and similar multi-volume works to determine whether or not changes were regularly made during the press run as they so often are with briefer works, but even research libraries do not feel compelled to gather multiple copies of such works, and such a project must await either a wandering scholar or a group effort.

Notes