Nathaniel Mist was an 18th-century British printer and journalist whose Mist's Weekly Journal was the central, most visible, and most explicit opposition newspaper to the whig administrations of Robert Walpole.
14 Facts About Nathaniel Mist
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Nathaniel Mist was a Jacobite of strong convictions and pugnacious determination who employed various authors writing under pseudonyms, from Lewis Theobald to Daniel Defoe, and was frequently tried by the government for sedition.
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Nathaniel Mist's Weekly Journal was an enormous success and reflected the editor's personal political vision.
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Professor Arne Bialuschewski showed that Nathaniel Mist probably wrote under the pseudonym "Captain Charles Johnson" to create A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pyrates.
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Nathaniel Mist's paper was frequently prosecuted, as was its owner and editor, for libel, and yet it published successfully from 1716 to 1737.
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Nathaniel Mist was able to stay in business, and at liberty, generally, by being very aware of the line between the allowable and the prohibited speech.
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Nathaniel Mist would discuss current scandals, literature, and events frankly, but when the subject was political or touching the affairs of the peerage, he would employ allegory or fictional history.
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Nathaniel Mist would have an account of a particular episode in history, such as the Restoration, and imply, of course, that the return of the Stuarts was appropriate.
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In 1718, Daniel Defoe claimed that he had personally spiked stories that Nathaniel Mist would have published and that Nathaniel Mist was under his control.
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Nathaniel Mist was supposed to give surety to ensure seven years of good behaviour.
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From France, Nathaniel Mist continued to control Mist's Weekly Journal for a time.
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Nathaniel Mist moved to Boulogne-sur-Mer in 1729 and began working for the Old Pretender.
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Nathaniel Mist's function was to plant news stories in the English presses that might be favourable to the Jacobite cause and to set up a covert correspondence with Jacobites in England.
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Nathaniel Mist died in Boulogne in 1737, and his wife had to pawn his personal effects to pay customs duties on his last shipment of wine.