Sir Roger L'Estrange (1616-1704) was a pamphleteer, author, courtier, press censor and an MP for Winchester - one of the most significant figures in seventeenth-century England and one of a handful of politicians active from Civil War to Glorious Revolution.
L’Estrange’s colourful career epitomised the drama and vitriol of Restoration politics, as he fell in and out of favour with the Monarchy and Parliament.
Imprisoned for treason in Newgate (later pardoned) by Cromwell for his support of Charles I, L’Estrange energetically campaigned for the return of the King in the months preceding the Restoration and was a staunch ideological defender of King Charles II's regime.
As Licenser for the Press under Charles II, he was charged with preventing the printing and publication of dissenting writing; his additional role as Surveyor of the Press authorised him to search the premises of printers and booksellers on the mere suspicion of such activity.
With these official roles ending at the lapsing of the Licensing of the Press Act in 1679, just as The Exclusion Crisis and the so-called Popish Plot were gathering momentum, L’Estrange focused his attention on writing his own polemic to try to defend the monarchy he held dear, attacking Whiggish tolerance and nonconformism.
A Tory and High Anglican, he was also a fierce opponent of Titus Oates’ fictitious Popish Plot, regularly lambasting Oates’ in his pamphlets and publications such as ‘The Observator’ and arguing (correctly as it later emerged) that the plot was a hoax. Such a stance, against the popular Anti-Catholic sentiment of the time, led to accusations that L’Estrange was a Catholic and he fled to safety in Edinburgh and The Hague in 1680. An anonymous woodcut of the time mocked L'Estrange as 'Towzer', the Court's attack dog fleeing to his master the Pope.
In 1685, under James II, L’Estrange was knighted and made MP for Winchester, a role he held until 1689. L’Estrange’s opposition to James’ religious tolerance and tacit promotion of Catholicism put him at odds with the establishment however and after the Glorious Revolution he lost his titles and offices, retiring to the family home Hunstanton Hall, Norfolk.
Aside from politics, throughout his career L’Estrange produced translations of Classic works, including Seneca the Younger's Morals and Cicero's Offices, besides his master-work of this period, Fables of Aesop and Other Eminent Mythologists (1669).[31] In 1702, he completed his acclaimed English translation of The Works of Flavius Josephus.
L’Estrange was also a keen musician and viol (viola da gamba) player - known as ‘Noll’s Fiddler’ after accusations that he played for Oliver Cromwell before 1658. L’Estrange is noted for assisting Thomas Britton in launching his Clerkenwell concert series in 1678, playing the viol at the first event.
Note: The L'Estrange family arrived in England at the time of the Conquest - according to William Dugdale's Baronage of England Guy L'Estrange arrived with William the Conqueror as an officer in the service of Flaald and was granted lands in Norfolk. The ancestral home of Hunstanton Hall dates to the 15th century and remained in the family until 1948.
