d capacities than the world
had ever seen united in one individual, a man "born for council and
fitted to command the world." Another number of the _Flying Post_, a few
days afterwards, contained an attack on one of the few Tories among the
Lords of the Regency, nominated for the management of affairs till the
King's arrival. During Bolingbroke's brief term of ascendency, he had
despatched the Earl of Anglesey on a mission to Ireland. The Earl had
hardly landed at Dublin when news followed him of the Queen's death, and
he returned to act as one of the Lords Regent. In the _Flying Post_
Defoe asserted that the object of his journey to Ireland was "to new
model the Forces there, and particularly to break no less than seventy
of the honest officers of the army, and to fill up their places with the
tools and creatures of Con. Phipps, and such a rabble of cut-throats as
were fit for the work that they had for them to do." That there was some
truth in the allegation is likely enough; Sir Constantine Phipps was, at
least, shortly afterwards dismissed from his offices. But Lord Anglesey
at once took action against it as a scandalous libel. Defoe was brought
before the Lords Justices, and committed for trial.

He was liberated, however, on bail, and in spite of what he says about
his resolution not to meddle on either side, made an energetic use of
his liberty. He wrote _The Secret History of One Year_--the year after
William's accession--vindicating the King's clemency towards the
abettors of the arbitrary government of James, and explaining that he
was compelled to employ many of them by the rapacious scrambling of his
own adherents for places and pensions. The indirect bearing of this
tract is obvious. In October three pamphlets came from Defoe's fertile
pen; an _Advice to the People of England_ to lay aside feuds and
faction, and live together under the new King like good Christians; and
two parts, in quick succession, of a _Secret History of the White
Staff_. This last work was an account of the circumstances under which
the Treasurer's White Staff was taken from the Earl of Oxford, and put
his conduct in a favourable light, exonerating him from the suspicion of
Jacobitism, and affirming--not quite accurately, as other accounts of
the transaction seem to imply--that it was by Harley's advice that the
Staff was committed to the Earl of Shrewsbury. One would be glad to
accept this as proof of Defoe's attachment to the cause of