Now! Then! On communicating with Nathaniel Johnston, hidden historian of Yorkshire

Excerpt

Doctor Johnston, after thirty years labour in compiling his history of Yorkshire, gives us now some hopes to see it brought to light. He has collected, for the time, all that ever he can find in most ancient authors, and has lately sent several volumes thereof down into the country to crave anyone’s additions or corrections… The Doctor is exceeding poor, and one chief thing that has made him so was this great undertaking of his. He has been forced to skulk a great many years, and now he lives privately with the Earl of Peterborough, who maintains him. He dare not let it be openly known where he is, and the letters are directed for other people that goes to him. When I write to him he desired me superscribe his letter only thus, “For the Doctor,” and then to wrap it in another paper, and sealing it, to superscribe it thus:

This for the right reverend father in God,
Tho[mas] Lord Bishop of St. David’s, to be left with
Mr. Monah, postmaster, over against
Ax Yard, in King’s Street, Westminster.

And then, under all, he desired me to make two strokes, thus, ═══════════════ which was a private mark.

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To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.

Abbreviations

Comment

I assume he was in hiding for fear of political persecution, but he may also have been ashamed of his poverty, and, perhaps, according to some, his handwriting: James Raine writes of his collections that they “contain much that is of great interest, but they are, most unfortunately, written in a hand so crabbed and obnoxious that even the most practised eye must look upon them with horror and amazement” (Raine 1870).

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Original

Doctor Johnston, after thirty years labour in compiling his history of Yorkshire, gives us now some hopes to see it brought to light. He has collected, for the time, all that ever he can find in most ancient authors, and has lately sent several volumes thereof down into the country to crave anyone’s additions or corrections… The Doctor is exceeding poor, and one chief thing that has made him so was this great undertaking of his. He has been forced to skulk a great many years, and now he lives privately with the Earl of Peterborough, who maintains him. He dare not let it be openly known where he is, and the letters are directed for other people that goes to him. When I write to him he desired me superscribe his letter only thus, “For the Doctor,” and then to wrap it in another paper, and sealing it, to superscribe it thus:

This for the right reverend father in God,
Tho[mas] Lord Bishop of St. David’s, to be left with
Mr. Monah, postmaster, over against
Ax Yard, in King’s Street, Westminster.

And then, under all, he desired me to make two strokes, thus, ═══════════════ which was a private mark.

214 words.