27 Facts About Roger L'Estrange

Sir Roger L'Estrange was an English pamphleteer, author, courtier and press censor.

Roger L'Estrange was born at Hunstanton Hall, Hunstanton, Norfolk, the youngest son of Alice L'Estrange and Sir Hamon L'Estrange.

Roger L'Estrange's mother ran the estate and his father served as Sheriff and Deputy Lieutenant of Norfolk, and was allied to the dukes of Norfolk, serving as a Member of Parliament in a seat under their control.

Roger L'Estrange was probably home-schooled for a time before attending Eton College and then Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, with his time spent being home-schooled acting as a major formative influence which generated his interest in Humanistic literature and his lifelong passion for playing the viol.

Roger L'Estrange later played a leading role in the 1648 Royalist uprising in Kent.

Roger L'Estrange spent the first two years of the Restoration settling old scores against figures associated with the previous regime and bolstering his credentials as a Royalist writer and courtier.

Roger L'Estrange waged a struggle for official titles and courtly influence with the journalist Sir John Berkenhead during this period.

Roger L'Estrange excelled at this, hunting down hidden presses and enlisting peace officers and soldiers to suppress their activities.

Roger L'Estrange lacked Berkenhead's independence and owed his position to Bennet's patronage.

Roger L'Estrange's diatribes gave free publicity to Nonconformist printers, but he achieved some success in suppressing the prints after around 1664, particularly after the Nonconformist publishers Thomas Brewster and Nathan Dover died in prison.

The Second Anglo-Dutch War led to a huge increase in demand for accurate and detailed news reporting from the literate public, which Roger L'Estrange failed to satisfy.

Roger L'Estrange's publications were dominated by anti-Nonconformist rants and advertising, with readers believing his use of a large typeface covered up a lack of substance.

Muddiman had worked under Roger L'Estrange and used his free use of the postal service to send copies of his unofficial newsletters alongside the two official titles.

The viol remained a lifelong love and throughout his career Roger L'Estrange was known as 'Noll's Fiddler' after accusations he had played music for Oliver Cromwell before 1658, with the implication he was an unprincipled 'hack'.

Roger L'Estrange inverted the language of Whiggish opposition to the Court.

Roger L'Estrange's most striking work was Popery in Masquerade which directly adopted the language of Whig anti-Catholicism by depicting Nonconformists as agents of the Pope who sought to attack the existing social order and introduce their own tyrannical regime, invoking memories of the Rule of the Major-Generals.

Prance's accusation that Roger L'Estrange was a Catholic led to a genuine fear for his safety and contributed towards his brief exile in Edinburgh and The Hague during 1680.

Roger L'Estrange had damaged his case with works such as Citt and Bumpkin which employed the language of anti-Court rhetoric for his own ends, and ultimately a 1680 Council of State hearing focused more on his reputation than on the substance of the Popish Plot.

In 1681 Roger L'Estrange founded The Observator, a single sheet printed in double columns on both sides.

The Observator was no longer a mouthpiece for the Court, but represented a provincial Toryism appealing to staunch former Cavaliers like Roger L'Estrange who felt embittered by the Court's pandering to Oates, equivocation towards Whigs, and failure to reward their loyalty.

Roger L'Estrange maintained an educational and paternalistic stance, arguing the paper was necessary to 'set the masses right' after seditious printings had turned them against their natural superiors.

The execution in 1681 of the hardline Whig pamphleteer Stephen College filled Roger L'Estrange with ill-concealed glee and emboldened him to settle old scores as Titus Oates was increasingly the prime subject of his attacks.

Roger L'Estrange had long feared 'moderate' Presbyterians who enabled extremists and this represented a natural culmination of them.

In 1685, Roger L'Estrange was knighted by James II and became a member of parliament for Winchester from 1685 to 1689.

Roger L'Estrange now turned to writing again, and published translations of Seneca the Younger's Morals and Cicero's Offices, besides his master-work of this period, Fables of Aesop and Other Eminent Mythologists.

Roger L'Estrange married Anne, daughter of Sir Thomas Dolman of Shaw, Berkshire.

Roger L'Estrange followed the Whig historian Thomas Babington Macaulay who characterised L'Estrange as little more than a bully and apologist for the Restoration court with a talent for abuse.