I've just submitted the following to Historic England in the hope they will put up a blue plaque to Marchamont Nedham:
Marchamont Nedham (1620-1678) wrote more than 30
books and pamphlets and was the -pre-eminent newspaperman during the English
Civil War from 1642 to 1660.
Eminent American historian Prof Paul Rahe
describes him as ‘the world’s first great journalist’ and ‘one of the minor
wonders of the age’. He also says: ‘If we live in secular republics
distinguished by a separation of church and state, if we are no longer in
thrall to princes and priests, it is in part because of the challenge laid down
in the 1640s and 1650s by a disreputable journalist who shifted his political
loyalties almost as often as he changed his shirts.’
Nedham is not much remembered these days, partly
because he switched sides several times. His first paper, “Mercurius
Britanicus” supported Parliament’s rebellion against the King; his second,
“Mercurius Pragmaticus”, was written on behalf of King Charles I and, later
King Charles II; his third, “Mercurius Politicus”, backed Oliver Cromwell and
the King-killers. Finally, after the Restoration, he wrote political pamphlets
attacking the King’s political rivals.
Nedham was jailed three times – twice for
attacking the King, once for supporting him – before fleeing the country in
fear for his life at the restoration.
An Oxford graduate, in the years he was not
earning a living as a journalist, he worked as a doctor. He was the first to
describe the era’s dissidents as ‘the Levellers’, he coined the phase ‘New
Model Army’ and re-introduced the doctors’ maxim ‘first do no harm’.
He was born and brought up in Burford,
Oxfordshire and a plaque could be placed at what was then the George inn, his
probable birthplace, the old Vicarage, where he lived throughout his youth, or
at Burford School, where he was educated and his step-father was head.
