Sunday 7 February 2016

The London Gazette August 1687

The London Gazette was first published as The Oxford Gazette on 7th November 1665.  Charles II and the Royal Court had moved to Oxford to escape the Great Plague of London, and courtiers were unwilling to touch, let alone hold to read, London newspapers for fear of contagion.  The Gazette was "Published by Authority" by Henry Muddiman, and its first publication is noted by Samuel Pepys in his diary.  The King returned to London as the plague dissipated, and the Gazette moved too, with the first issue of The London Gazette (labelled No. 24) being published on 5th  February 1666.

The London Gazette is one of the official journals of record of the British government, and the most important among such official journals in the United Kingdom, in which certain statutory notices are required to be published. The Gazette was not a newspaper in the modern sense: it was sent by post to subscribers, not printed for sale to the general public.

One of the items published in The Gazette was notices about the Post and the Post Office.  In August 1687 Queen Mary of Modena, second wife to James II, came to Bath in an endeavour to become pregnant, and as a result a special post to Bath was set up and announced in the London Gazette.

 



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