This T. Fleet, according to Isaiah Thomas[*], was a man of considerable
talent and of great wit and humor. He was born in England, and
was brought up in a printing office in the city of Bristol, where
he afterwards worked as a journeyman. Although he was considered
a man of sense, he was never thought to be overburdened with
religious sentiments; he certainly was not in his latter days. Yet
he was MORE than suspected of being actively engaged in the riotous
proceedings connected with the trial of Dr. Sacheverell, in Queen
Ann's time. In London, Bristol, and many other places, the mobs
and riots were of a very serious nature. In London several meeting
houses were sacked and pulled down, and the materials and contents
made into bonfires, and much valuable property destroyed. Several
of the rioters were arrested, tried and convicted. The trials of
some of them are now before me. How deeply Fleet was implicated
in these disturbances was never known, but being of the same mind
with Jack Falstaff, that "the better part of valor is discretion,"
thought it prudent to put the Ocean between himself and danger. He
made his way to this country and arrived in Boston, 1712. Being
a man of some enterprise he soon established a printing office in
Pudding Lane (now Devonshire Street), where he printed small books,
pamphlets, ballads, and such matter as offered. Being industrious
and prudent, he gradually accumulated property. It was not long
before he became acquainted with the "wealthy family of Goose,"
a branch of which he had before known in Bristol, and was shortly
married to the eldest daughter.
[*][Note from Brett: Publisher of an American volume of Mother
Goose in 1787, "Mother Goose's Melody: or Sonnets for the cradle."
This is a reprint of the collection put together by John Newbury
(known for the Newbury medal).]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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