Off with His Head!

“Defoe was then a poet and pamphleteer who sold his writing by the sheet. He was also just out of prison. For his most recent pamphlet, a satire on the religious intolerance of high-church Anglicans, he was charged with seditious libel. He was fined two hundred marks, locked in an elevated public pillory — the old wooden chokey with holes for head and hands — and jailed for four months.”

—Cynthia Barnett, author, Rain: A Natural and Cultural History, 2015. (Thanks to alert WORDster Annie Reid)

• Editorial Comment: Beware, snarky pamphleteers! Today's crop of sanctimonious meddlers make high-church Anglicans look benign.

 

 

PeezPIX 

Rhodie Season

 

 

 

 

 

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Edward C. Pease, Ph.D.
Professor & Department Head Emeritus
Department of Journalism & Communication
Utah State University
Today's WORD on Journalism