I might also relate how he once carried skull caps made of printing
balls stuffed with wool to his brother printers, who were to exhibit
their faces in that wooden frame called the pillory; in which frame
nevertheless he seems to think they were properly set; and the mob
were of the same opinion, for these skull caps proved but weak helmets
against the missiles wherewith they were assailed. Moreover further to
exemplify the perils which in those days environed the men who meddled
with printer's types, I might proceed to say how, after a strange
dream, poor Gent was in the dead of the night alarmed by a strange
thundering noise at the door, and his door broken open, and himself
seized in his bed by two king's messengers upon a false information
that he had been engaged in printing some lines concerning the
imprisoned Bishop of Rochester, which had given offence; and how he
was carried to a public house near St. Sepulchre's Church, whither his
two employers Mr. Midwinter and Mr. Clifton were also brought
prisoners, and how they were taken to Westminster and there imprisoned
in a very fine house in Manchester Court which had nevertheless within
the fusty smell of a prison; and how from the high window of his
humble back apartment he could behold the Thames, and hear the dashing
of the flowing waters against the walls that kept it within due
bounds: and how in the next room to him was confined that unhappy
young Irish clergyman Mr. Neynoe, (not Naypoe as the name in these
memoirs is erroneously given.) “I used,” says Gent, “to hear him talk
to himself when his raving fits came on; and now and then would he
sing psalms with such a melodious voice as produced both admiration
and pity from me, who was an object of commiseration myself, in being
awhile debarred from friends to see me, or the use of pen, ink, and
paper to write to them.” And how after five days he was honourably
discharged, and took boat from Palace Yard stairs, in which he says
“my head seemed to be affected with a strange giddiness; and when I
safely arrived at home, some of my kinder neighbours appeared very
joyful at my return. And my poor linnet, whose death I very much
feared would come to pass, saluted me with her long, pleasant,
chirping notes; and indeed the poor creature had occasion to be the
most joyful, for her necessary stock was almost exhausted, and I was
come just in the critical time to yield her a fresh supply.” It was
some compensation for his fright on this occasion that he printed the
Bishop of Rochester's Effigy “with some inoffensive verses that
pleased all parties,” which sold very well; and that he formed some
observations upon the few dying words of Counsellor Layer, in nature
of a large speech, which for about three days had such a run of sale
that the unruly hawkers were ready to pull his press in pieces for the
goods.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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