Henry Care (1646–1688) was an English political writer and journalist, or " Whig propagandist", whose speciality was anti-Catholicism.

Life

Care edited a paper called the ''Weekly Pacquet of Advice from Rome''. It began as a

serial publication In publishing and library and information science, the term serial is applied to materials "in any medium issued under the same title in a succession of discrete parts, usually numbered (or dated) and appearing at regular or irregular intervals wi ...

covering the history of the

Protestant Reformation The Reformation (alternatively named the Protestant Reformation or the European Reformation) was a major movement within Western Christianity in 16th-century Europe that posed a religious and political challenge to the Catholic Church and i ...

. After the publicity for the alleged

Popish Plot The Popish Plot was a fictitious conspiracy invented by Titus Oates that between 1678 and 1681 gripped the Kingdoms of England and Scotland in anti-Catholic hysteria. Oates alleged that there was an extensive Catholic conspiracy to assassinate ...

of 1678, he wrote against the

Church of England The Church of England (C of E) is the established Christian church in England and the mother church of the international Anglican Communion. It traces its history to the Christian church recorded as existing in the Roman province of Brit ...

and its members, then supposed by some to be deeply inclined towards

popery The words Popery (adjective Popish) and Papism (adjective Papist, also used to refer to an individual) are mainly historical pejorative words in the English language for Roman Catholicism, once frequently used by Protestants and Eastern Orthodox ...

. He was tried at Guildhall, 2 July 1680, on an information against him as the author of this journal, and more particularly for a clause against the lord chief justice,

William Scroggs Sir William Scroggs (c. 162325 October 1683) was Lord Chief Justice of England from 1678 to 1681. He is best remembered for presiding over the Popish Plot trials, where he was accused of showing bias against the accused. Youth and early career S ...

, who himself sat as judge at the trial. The jury found him guilty, and Care was prohibited from printing his journal. These proceedings then constituted one of the charges brought against Scroggs, who was removed from the bench some months later, and Care continued to publish. Care's last number of the ''Weekly Pacquet'', which extended to five volumes, is dated 13 July 1683, at which time he fell ill. In 1682 Care fell out with Langley Curtis, the original publisher; Care, who lived at the time in the Great Old Bailey, continued to work on his own account. But at the start of the quarrel, Curtis, employed William Salmon, another writer, to publish a continuation of the ''Pacquets'', and he did so from 25 August 1682, the same day as Care's fifth volume also began, until 4 May 1683. The ''English Liberties'' (1680, in later versions often ''British Liberties'') was a cheap polemical book that was influential and much-reprinted, in the American colonies as well as Britain, and made

Magna Carta (Medieval Latin for "Great Charter of Freedoms"), commonly called (also ''Magna Charta''; "Great Charter"), is a royal charter of rights agreed to by King John of England at Runnymede, near Windsor, on 15 June 1215. First drafted by t ...

central to the history and the contemporary legitimacy of its subject. ''The Excellent Priviledge of Liberty'' (1687), an American book generally attributed to

William Penn William Penn ( – ) was an English writer and religious thinker belonging to the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), and founder of the Province of Pennsylvania, a North American colony of England. He was an early advocate of democracy a ...

, reprinted the text of both Magna Carta (its first American printing) and (without attributing it) ''English Liberties''.

Legacy

The ''English Liberties'' continued to be reprinted until the late 18th century. A two-volume adaptation of the ''Weekly Pacquet'', under the title ''The History of Popery'', appeared anonymously in 1735–6. Lois G. Schwoerer, ''The Ingenious Mr. Henry Care, Restoration Publicist'' (2001), p. 226.

Notes

References

*Breay, Claire, Harrison, Julian (eds.), ''Magna Carta: Law, Liberty, Legacy'', 2015, The British Library, ;Attribution {{DEFAULTSORT:Care, Henry 1646 births 1688 deaths English male journalists English male non-fiction writers