beyed by Christian men. As to the rest,
Bohun was a man of some learning, mean understanding and unpopular
manners. He had no sooner entered on his functions than all Paternoster
Row and Little Britain were in a ferment. The Whigs had, under Fraser's
administration, enjoyed almost as entire a liberty as if there had been
no censorship. But they were now as severely treated as in the days of
Lestrange. A History of the Bloody Assizes was about to be published,
and was expected to have as great a run as the Pilgrim's Progress. But
the new licenser refused his Imprimatur. The book, he said, represented
rebels and schismatics as heroes and martyrs; and he would not sanction
it for its weight in gold. A charge delivered by Lord Warrington to the
grand jury of Cheshire was not permitted to appear, because His Lordship
had spoken contemptuously of divine right and passive obedience.
Julian Johnson found that, if he wished to promulgate his notions of
government, he must again have recourse, as in the evil times of King
James, to a secret press. [382] Such restraint as this, coming
after several years of unbounded freedom, naturally produced violent
exasperation. Some Whigs began to think that the censorship itself was a
grievance; all Whigs agreed in pronouncing the new censor unfit for his
post, and were prepared to join in an effort to get rid of him.

Of the transactions which terminated in Bohun's dismission, and which
produced the first parliamentary struggle for the liberty of unlicensed
printing, we have accounts written by Bohun himself and by others; but
there are strong reasons for believing that in none of those accounts is
the whole truth to be found. It may perhaps not be impossible, even at
this distance of time, to put together dispersed fragments of evidence
in such a manner as to produce an authentic narrative which would have
astonished the unfortunate licenser himself.

There was then about town a man of good family, of some reading, and of
some small literary talent, named Charles Blount. [383] In politics he
belonged to the extreme section of the Whig party. In the days of the
Exclusion Bill he had been one of Shaftesbury's brisk boys, and had,
under the signature of Junius Brutus, magnified the virtues and public
services of Titus Oates, and exhorted the Protestants to take signal
vengeance on the Papists for the fire of London and for the murder
of Godfrey. [384] As to the theological questions which wer