I hope you know that Daniel Defoe was much more than the author of one of the formative novels of the English language.
Okay first and this is a bit of an aside. But, it is my blog. Me, I’m one of those who like to find co-religionists when I can. (For me that means a couple of things. Buddhist and Zen Buddhist. And, Unitarian. Okay, and Universalist) While he was a Presbyterian, this was in a time when the Unitarians had not yet institutionally differentiated from that body (in England, in America Unitarianism derived principally out of Congregationalism), and this was during a time of repression so details are uncertain, but it appears he was raised attending the Newington Green Unitarian chapel. His broad liberalism in later years certainly mirrored the more advanced perspectives found among the Unitarians of his day. And it seems fair enough to claim him. Aside over…
And. To today’s point.
Turns out it was this day in 1703 that Daniel Defoe was put into the stocks for once again offending those in authority and the culture that supported them with about the worst weapon of all, satire. As it turns out it wouldn’t be the last, either. But, not to get ahead of the story.
He was already famous, or, I guess the real word is infamous for offending English sensibilities around xenophobia and its accompanying evil the idea of some racial purity. He knew how to use a pamphlet to good effect. But it was in this year that one of those, The Shortest-Way with the Dissenters; Or, Proposals for the Establishment of the Church, where anticipating by nearly thirty years Jonathan Swift’s devastating “modest proposal” for the Irish, he suggested religious dissent could best be dealt with by simply killing all the dissenters.
In writing this pamphlet, his using the voice of one in authority seemed to annoy those in authority.
He was dragged before one of the hanging judges, Salathiel Lovell, today mainly recalled for this single incident, who found Defoe guilty of seditious libel, and ordered the writer to spend three days in the stocks to be followed by a substantial fine and imprisonment until that fine was paid.
Here’s where we get to the good part. Okay, the details are in fact in dispute. But the version I’m going with is the one that shows the better side of the human heart.
The general practice of the day for someone in stocks was to pelt them with noxious things.
It does appear that Defoe was pelted with flowers.
Would that all satirists and artists and poets and writers who are driven to present reality as best they see it as best they can, were similarly treated. Instead of the world that the prophet Mohammed was living in when he advised those who would speak truths to have one foot in the stirup of a very fast horse.
Might be a bit different world.
Garlands of flowers for those who think freely and in doing so offer new directions, new hope…
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In