Nathaniel Mist - After Exile

After Exile

From France, Nathaniel Mist continued to control Mist's Weekly Journal for a time. He joined the household of Philip Wharton, 1st Duke of Wharton, and in August 1728 (the same time as public disaffection over the ministry was peaking with the popularity of The Beggar's Opera in London), Mist's Weekly Journal published "The Persian Letter" by "Amos Drudge" (Wharton). It explained the corruption and loss of liberties in "Persia" after a usurpation. Over twenty people were arrested for this publication. Copies of the issue went for as much as half a guinea. In September 1728 another issue again made too explicit an attack on the Walpole ministry and the royals, and so the presses were destroyed.

After the destruction of the presses, the journal was renamed Fog's Journal and passed over to the printing of Charles Molloy. Also in 1728, there were criticisms of Alexander Pope in issues of Mist's, and so Pope responded by citing Mist's Weekly Journal as a symptom of intellectual and political decline in The Dunciad.

Mist moved to Boulogne-sur-Mer in 1729 and began working for the Old Pretender. His function was to plant news stories in the English presses that might be favorable to the Jacobite cause and to set up a covert correspondence with Jacobites in England. In 1730, he set up a joint venture with Charles Molloy to ship wine from France to England and to use these shipments as a way of passing secret messages. By 1734, however, he appears to have been out of favor among the exiled Jacobites, and in 1737 he received permission to return to England. He died in Boulogne in 1737, and his wife had to pawn his personal effects to pay customs duties on his last shipment of wine.