The Paper Chase: The Printer, the Spymaster, and the Hunt for the Rebel Pamphleteers

by Joseph Hone

In the summer of 1705, a masked woman knocked on the door of a London printer's workshop. She did not leave her name, only a package and the promise of protection. Soon after, an anonymous pamphlet was quietly distributed in the backstreets of the city. Entitled The Memorial of the Church of England, the argument it proposed threatened to topple the government. Fearing insurrection, parliament was in turmoil and government minister Robert Harley launched a hunt for all of those involved. The printer was eventually named, but could not be found... In this breakneck political adventure, Joseph Hone shows us a nation in crisis through the story of a single incendiary document.

Genres: Nonfiction, History

249 pages, Kindle Edition

Published November 5, 2020

Reviews

[Geevee · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Paper Chase takes place in the time of Queen Anne (reigned 1702-1714), the last of the Stuarts, as we follow the impact an anonymous and illegal pamphlet, The Memorial of the Church of England, had on the printer who took instructions from a veiled woman, and those tasked by a concerned and jumpy government, to investigate its author/s.

In London, Anne's reign follows that of her own father's, James II, and William and Mary. It is a reign and period of great and lasting change in England and Wales and enlightenment where science and discovery, war, trade and Union with Scotland (1707) make and shake the country and take the populace's attention. Religion continues to play centre stage to the lives and behaviours of the people and Government, and for many they recall first-hand those earlier decades where divisions caused between Catholicism and Protestantism and/or monarch and government led to Civil war, death, interregnum and restoration; for others it is the fear learnt or taken from those "first-handers" or through people they know and look up to such as churchmen, politicians and local leaders; many as part of underground groups who meet in private residences or private rooms in public houses.

At a time when the first daily newspaper was published (The Daily Courant 1702) and printed material in the form of news papers, pamphlets and hand papers (leaflets) were much in demand, being read in numerous Coffeehouses and public houses in London, the job of the printer is one of skill - whose members of The Worshipful Stationers' Company were needed and important - partly, as only members of the Company could print books/materials: being able to print and deliver high-quality messages easily and quickly (in relative terms for typesetting and production capabilities at that time) was much in demand.

And so we have a pamphlet requested to be printed by David Edwards by a woman in veil who acts for others. Edwards is a skilled and knowledgeable printer, who like many of his trade, act on the margins, or even beyond, the law to print material that is illegal. It's a dangerous trade with serious consequences including death by hanging, and as such printers will print anonymously, and as with those instructing the work, make to cover their tracks. In an age of growing enlightenment, censorship and what one can and can't say about one's monarch, church and government remains strict and tightly controlled.

Joseph Hone's The Paper Chase: The Printer, The Spymaster and the Hunt for the Rebel Pamphleteers takes us through the streets of London and the production of the pamphlet, and then the hunt for first the printer and then then the authors and sponsors, and naturally, the mysterious veiled woman.

It is a story that offers the reader an insight into London and the politics of the day, as well as how printing and printers operated, alongside the coffeehouse and public-house culture of 18th century metropolitan life. There are some fascinating characters within the story where famous names such as Daniel Defore and Jonathan Swift glide across the pages. There are also some, without suggesting anything to the tale, who are less well-described owing to extant sources. However, these sources, that Mr Hone has plumbed are enlightening and show how much rich history is archived in Britain and wider and helps make the story of what, why and who.

A worthwhile book that whilst not as pacy as one might hope for in what one might be seen as an 18th Century "Who-done-it" The Paper Chase: The Printer, The Spymaster and the Hunt for the Rebel Pamphleteers is a journey that will bring you close to the trade and impact printing had, and how one man's investigation/obsession saw people affected for the rest of their lives.

My copy is a first-edition hardback printed by Chatto & Windus 2020. There are 23 pages of notes and seven on further reading, and one map of London 1705.

More information on The Worshipful Company of Stationers and Newspaper Makers (commonly The Stationers' Company can be found here (I've used the link to their history page) https://www.stationers.org/company/hi...

For more information on Livery companies (Worshipful Company of...) Wikipedia has a good detailed overview and listing of all companies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Livery_...

[Jo-anne Atkinson · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the early years of the 18th century London was full of sedition. Pamphleteers walked a fine line between expressing opinion and outright treason and the ones to suffer were the publishers. In a business where most were only just above the poverty line, publishing a successful booklet could make one’s fortune. When Edwards publishes the ‘Histiry of the Church’ he falls foul of the law and the Queen’s agent Harley is determined to punish all involved but who are they and where have they gone.

This book is a fascinating insight into the early days of political journalism and publishing. The appetite for news and opinion was great and the authorities were ruthless in their attempts to stem the tide. This book takes a single case and explores the system as a whole. It is meticulously researched and very interesting.

[Andrew Norton · Rating 4 out of 5]

An enjoyable author mystery in a place and time - England in the late 1600s and early 1700s - of censorship and anonymous publications.

Ironically, however, Goodreads has attributed this book to the wrong Joseph Hone. Here is the right Joseph Hone: https://www.ncl.ac.uk/elll/people/pro...

[AVid_D · Rating 3 out of 5]

Whilst there are some nice historical tidbits I picked up reading this non-fiction "who dunnit" about the authorship of a political/religious pamphlet, from a distance of 3 centuries the contents of the pamphlet were rather too uninteresting for me to care as to who wrote it.

At times the story did seem to be a bit messy in its structure, which surprised me from such an experienced author.

[Adam Stevenson · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Paper Chase by Joseph Hone is a work of thoroughly researched history (with full bibliography, notes and index) that reads something like a thriller. It’s about an incendiary book, the covert way it was created and the huge spy-hunt to track down the people connected with it.

Starting with a woman in a mask delivering a manuscript to publishers, David Edwards and his wife Mary. It’s titled The Memorial for the Church of England and it argues that the dissenters, those protestants who feel the Church of England didn’t go far enough in its reforms, are the real dangerous people in the nation and deserve persecution. This was a particularly dangerous message for the government, which was pursuing a moderate path, which could easily be shaken up by a rise in sectarian strife. The government’s man on the job is Robert Harley (who will incidentally be the person whose library catalogue brought Samuel to the attention of the publishers who’d commission the dictionary).

It was a dangerous time to be a printer. The lapse of press regulation which had given birth to a free press was being clamped down. Publishers found themselves hung-drawn-and-quartered for putting out dangerous works and, at the lower end of punishment, were being put in the pillory, sometimes to be beaten insensible. There was even a version of the pillory where a person’s earlobes were nailed to the wooden board and would be sliced off to free them at the end of the ordeal.

What’s more, the government had a system of officers called messengers, many of them ex-bookmen, who would go under-cover, smash doors down or even use honeytraps to find the publishers of dangerous books. While some were diligent, many were crooked, which could work to a bookseller’s advantage if they had the money for a bribe or well-connected support but also meant they could be damned with planted evidence or paid witnesses.

The central mystery in the book is an interesting one. There’s clearly a powerful set of people behind the Memorial and Edwards, as humble printer, is peripheral to their plot and an easy fall-guy. He goes on the run as his wife turns detective to find the culprits and force them to provide the safety and support they promised. She’s the best character in this book, putting together clues and creating false personas to get closer to the conspiracy while Harley and his state apparatus get nowhere.

One of the most interesting elements of this book is how it is framed. It’s the story of plucky printers avoiding the nasty government. Harley is frequently described as shifty with ‘little, dark, unfathomable eyes’. No one trusts him and he trusts no one. It’s strange, because the plucky heroes, the printers, put into the world a spite-filled invective that calls for oppression, suppression, persecution and death to dissenters. While the ‘evil’ government is seeking a moderate, centrist and tolerant approach.

The real villains turn out to be the writers of the book, who are trying to ferment hatred for political ends and have no qualms about throwing poor Edwards and his family under the bus. It’s strange for a history book to have heroes and villains though. This is a very opinionated book, various politicians and writers are variously described as ‘shrieking’ or ‘wearisome’. It’s clear that the author is no Whig, no centrist and has a rather pessimistic view on humanity that is more Hobbes than Shaftesbury. He has the most vicious takedown of Shaftesbury and his view of innate human goodness; “It was abundantly clear that Shaftesbury mixed in exclusive, urbane circles, with fellow Whigs with impeccable and turgid manners”.

This is a well-written and gripping book about the political and religious divides of the early eighteenth century and successfully dramatises it using the case of Edwards and the Memorial. A look under the bonnet of the book shows a lot of research but it’s never dry or slow. While it did wear its own personal opinions a little obviously, they gave a little spice to the book and also reminded the reader that such opinions are in all books.

I also learned there was a popular coffee house on Fleet Street called Nandos.

[Amy Louise · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 Stars. The intricacies of eighteenth-century printing might not, on the surface of it, sound like the most thrilling of topics but, as Dr Joseph Hone proves in The Paper Chase, publications that came out of the printer’s workshops had the potential to send men to the gallows, bring down governments, alter national policy, impact on the course of a war, and to threaten the security of the nation’s most revered institutions.

The Paper Chase follows the hunt for one particular anonymous pamphlet: a polemic entitled The Memorial of the Church of England. Printed by David Edwards – a Welsh printer with Jacobite sympathies and an established ‘radical’ press in Nevill’s Alley – the pamphlet was a High Church attack on the Godolphin administration and its policy of ‘moderation’. It implied that, by tolerating and working with Protestant dissenters, Queen Anne’s government – and, by implication, Anne herself – were not acting in the best interests of the Church of England.

The pamphlet, unsurprisingly, caused an outcry: Queen Anne was deeply upset by it, Parliament was outraged and, from the spires of Oxford to the streets of London, people were talking about the Memorial and trying to work out who its anonymous author(s) might be. Chief amongst these people was Robert Harley. A natural politician and prominent proponent of moderation, Harley started following the paper trail that led out of Nevill’s Alley, coaxing out the book’s secret’s and untangling the web of connections that would see his fate entwined with that of David Edwards in unexpected ways.

Given that my PhD is in eighteenth-century literature, many of the political intrigues and prominent figures in The Paper Chase were familiar to me. The politics of the period – especially in the earlier part of the century – are endlessly fascinating but, without a crash course in its terminology and structures (Whig, Tory, Churchmen, Toleration, Moderation etc), it can be overwhelmingly confusing for the general reader. It is to Hone’s credit, therefore, that he conveys a complex political environment – one that encompasses religious, political, and literary figures and factions – in a succinct yet through manner, guiding the reader into the knotty world of Harley, the Memorial, and the tangled connections that existed between press and Parliament.

Written with an academic’s eye for detail and told with vigour, The Paper Chase offers a blend of scholarship and detection that is sure to appeal to fans of narrative non-fiction in the vein of Kate Summerscale. That said, The Paper Chase is, in essence, a book about printing and pamphleteering: readers heading into it expecting a detective-style chase across London will be left sorely disappointed. Harley’s investigation into the Memorial was painstaking and thorough and the book follows the fates and fortunes of its central protagonists over several years. Whilst it has its thrilling moments – including night time raids on coffee houses and the hunt for a mysterious masked woman – the pleasure of The Paper Chase is in Hone’s gradual untangling of connections and his patient explanations of the wider implications of seemingly minor events.

Offering an insight into a period of history that remains under-represented in the arena of ‘popular’ print, The Paper Chase is an insightful and immersive tale of eighteenth-century politics and printing that is perfectly pitched for both general and academic readers alike. Combining scholarly precision with an engaging and accessible style, it’s a highly recommended read for fans of unusual mysteries, narrative non-fiction, and all things bookish.

NB: This review appears on my blog at https://theshelfofunreadbooks.wordpre.... My thanks go to the publisher of the book and to NetGalley UK for providing an e-copy in return for an honest and unbiased review.

[Michael Reilly · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a history which tries to explain an era by telling one story in detail. The era is England in the first decade of the 1700s. The story is about a pamphlet secretly published in London by an obscure printer. "The Memorial of the Church of England" was an attack on the leaders of the Church of England.

Queen Anne ruled over a religiously divided nation. On the one hand the Puritans and various dissenting groups believed in a strictly Protestant religion which rejected ornament and ceremony and looked to personal faith over Church hierarchy. At the other extreme the remaining Catholics and high Anglicans believed in traditional Catholic values and practices, including elaborate church services, and the importance of Church faith over individual conscience.

The Government tried to keep to a middle path. The Puritans where tolerated unless they challenged the Queen, her government or her church. The Catholics were oppressed and kept out of public life, but not prosecuted.

The "Memorial" argued that a cabal of Church of England leaders were secretly supporters of the dissenters and were disloyal to the Anglican Church. In the atmosphere of the day, this was a dangerous accusation. It's goal was to split the Tory high church supporters from the Government and encourage attacks on the dissenters.

Hone fills in all of this background while telling his story. In 1705 a mysterious masked woman appears at the London printing shop run by David Edwards. She gives him a manuscript and asks him to print 250 copies for her. He could print and sell as many as he wanted for himself.

Edwards' wife was Catholic. He was sympathetic and it appears he had previously printed pro-Catholic writings.

The "Memorial" hit a nerve. It was the talk of London. David realized he was probably in trouble. He shut his office and went on the lam.

Robert Harley, later Earl of Oxford, was the Secretary of State. He immediately began an investigation. Edwards' wife and apprentice were arrested and questioned. The Government had an army of informers and agents. Horne has fun telling the stories of the assorted crooks and scallywags who were getting paid for tips about who wrote and published the pamphlet and where to find David.

The Government was never able to prove who wrote the "Memorial". There were several strong suspects and Hone outlines the investigation and case against them.

Horne shows that the idea of Freedom of the Press was not even considered. This pamphlet was a threat to public peace and the Government had the obligation to find and punish the wrongdoers.

The story gets complicated and the biggest problem with the book is that it peters out at the end. There is not a neat ending with either David being vindicated or his being a martyr to free speech.

Horne bases the book on some extensive surviving files from the investigation and he uses them well to give a feel for the political world of this tumultuous time.

[Peter Fox · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a book about a period of history that many people know little about and so it's welcome to see something on it.

The meat of this work concerns the publication of a seditious pamphlet and the subsequent fall out and then hunt for the perpetrators. It does this pretty well, with the background of the age being fitted around these events.

However, as the case was never fully resolved at the time, this does leave the book feeling pretty hollow and that's a shame. I can't help but wonder if it might have been more satisfactory to have based the book around the period with the seditious pamphlet playing a lesser role, as a book going into the wider issues at stake would be very interesting.

[Beth Younge · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an interesting look to a specific moment in British history. The writing was good and generally accessible to read. There were a few chapters i did think that were a bit dry and they needed to edit it aa bit as it didn't read as good as it could have. I did like this but it was a little bit underwhelming for me.

I received this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

[Erik Hildinger · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fascinating look at the printing trade in England of the 17th and 18th centuries and at the political and religious turmoil of the time. Both were closely intertwined. The fast-moving narrative describes the efforts of the Crown to suppress a troublesome religious tract with political implications. A real lesson in power politics.