Help


from Wikipedia
« »  
After his three days in the pillory, Defoe went into Newgate Prison.
Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford and Earl Mortimer, brokered his release in exchange for Defoe's co-operation as an intelligence agent for the Tories.
In exchange for such cooperation with the rival political side, Harley paid some of Defoe's outstanding debts, improving his financial situation considerably.
Within a week of his release from prison, Defoe witnessed the Great Storm of 1703 which raged from 26 to 27 November.
It caused severe damage to London and Bristol and uprooted millions of trees and killed over 8, 000 people, mostly at sea.
The event became the subject of Defoe's The Storm ( 1704 ), a collection of witness accounts of the tempest.
Many regard it as one of the world's first examples of modern journalism.
In the same year he set up his periodical A Review of the Affairs of France which supported the Harley Ministry, chronicling the events of the War of the Spanish Succession ( 1702 – 1714 ).
The Review ran three times a week without interruption until 1713.
Defoe was amazed that a man as gifted as Harley left vital state papers lying in the open, and warned that he was almost inviting an unscrupulous clerk to commit treason ; his warnings were fully justified by the William Gregg affair.
When Harley was ousted from the ministry in 1708 Defoe continued writing it to support Godolphin, then again to support Harley and the Tories in the Tory ministry of 1710 to 1714.
After the Tories fell from power with the death of Queen Anne, Defoe continued doing intelligence work for the Whig government, writing " Tory " pamphlets that actually undermined the Tory point of view.

1.811 seconds.