Daniel Defoe put in the pillory: July 29th/31st 1703. (Months Past).

AT THE END OF 1702 Daniel Defoe was in his early forties, a London dissenter born and bred, a married man with eight children, the owner of a brickworks in Tilbury and a government spin doctor, paid to write in praise of the administration's policies--an activity that aroused the same contempt then as it does now. He also wrote tracts advocating greater toleration for dissenters and at this juncture he made a serious mistake. He wrote an anonymous pamphlet called The Shortest Way with the Dissenters.

Written as if by a foaming High Anglican zealot of the most bigoted stamp, ...

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