Item NN/3/44 - A compendious history of the most remarkable passages of the last fourteen years : with an account of the Plot

L’ESTRANGE, SIR ROGER, second son of Sir Hamon L’Estrange, Kt, Hunstanton, Norfolk, and Alice, dau. of Richard Stubbe, Sedgeford, Norfolk; b. 17 Dec 1616; at school under Osbaldeston one year, having previously been two years at Eton (Sidney Sussex Coll. Camb. admissions); Sidney Sussex Coll. Cambridge, adm. fellow commoner 6 Nov 1634; adm. Gray’s Inn 6 Feb 1636/7; an ardent royalist; formed a plan for the recapture of King’s Lynn from Parliament in 1644, but was caught and sentenced to death; escapred from Newgate 1648 and attempted to start a royalist rising in Kent, but had to flee to Netherlands; returned to England 1653; published a number of anonymous broadsides attacking Lambert and the leaders of the army in 1659; after the Restoration vehemently denounced the liberty of the press, and was appointed Surveyor of “The Imprimery” 15 Aug 1663; started two weekly news sheets, The Intelligencer and The News; became notorious for the severity of his literary censorship and for his vigilance in the suppression of unlicenced presses; endeavoured to disprove the existence of the Popish Plot, but had to flee the country Nov 1680 and was burnt in effigy by a London mob; returned to England Feb 1681; started The Observator in Question and Answer, dealing unsparingly with dissenters and Whigs, Apr 1681; MP Winchester 1685-7; knighted 30 Apr 1685; deprived of his office of licenser at the revolution of 1688; committed to prison for short periods 1688, 1691, 1696; author, The Fables of Aesop and Other Mythologists with Moral Reflections, 1692, The Works of Flavius Josephus compared with the Original Greek, 1702, and other works; m. Mary, dau. of Sir Thomas Doleman, Kt, Shaw, Berks.; d. 11 Dec 1704. DNB.