Nathaniel Mist - Government Responses

Government Responses

Nevertheless, the government did, indeed, worry about Nathaniel Mist, and they worried about him so much that they put Daniel Defoe in his employ to be his friend and spy on him, write for him, and persuade him away from the most damaging articles. In 1718, Daniel Defoe claimed that he had personally spiked stories that Mist would have published and that Mist was under his control. Although this was almost certainly an exaggeration, Defoe said later that he had gotten Mist out of jail on at least three occasions. When Defoe left off working with Mist entirely in 1724, he complained in Applebee's Journal that Mist had fought with him (physically) and insulted him, and in 1730 he complained that Mist had harmed his career (probably by revealing Defoe's acting as a government agent to other printers).

Among the various arrests and convictions of Nathaniel Mist for Mist's Weekly Journal were three in 1717 and two in 1718. In 1720, he was convicted by the House of Lords, and he was fined £50, spent three months in jail, and was sent to the pillory, where the crowds were gentle with him. He was also supposed to give surety (bond) to ensure seven years of good behavior. Eleven months later, he called George I "a cruel ill-bred uneducated old Tyrant, and the driveling Fool his Son" and was imprisoned for not revealing the author of the libel. In 1723 and 1724 he was tried and imprisoned for a year, after a £100 fine. Finally, in 1727 he was tried for a libel on George I himself, and he was ordered to be imprisoned until he could offer up a surety for a lifetime of good behavior. This forced Mist to flee to France.