Page "Daniel Defoe" Paragraph 10

purporting to argue for their extermination.

In it he ruthlessly satirised both the High church Tories and those Dissenters who hypocritically practised so-called " occasional conformity ", such as his Stoke Newington neighbour Sir Thomas Abney.

Though it was published anonymously, the true authorship was quickly discovered and Defoe was arrested.

He was charged with seditious libel.

After a trial at the Old Bailey in front of the notoriously sadistic judge Salathiel Lovell, Defoe was found guilty.

Lovell sentenced him to a punitive fine, to public humiliation in a pillory, and to an indeterminate length of imprisonment which would only end upon the discharge of the punitive fine.

According to legend, the publication of his poem Hymn to the Pillory caused his audience at the pillory to throw flowers instead of the customary harmful and noxious objects and to drink to his health.

The historicity of this story is questioned by most scholars, although John Robert Moore later said that " no man in England but Defoe ever stood in the pillory and later rose to eminence among his fellow men ".

( Thomas Cochrane, the 10th Earl of Dundonald and famous Royal Navy officer, was sentenced to the pillory but was excused for fear his popularity would cause a riot.