L'Estrange, Sir Roger (1616-1704), author and press censor

L’Estrange was born into landed gentry in Norfolk in 1616. He proceeded to Sidney Sussex College (1634) and thereafter Gray’s Inn (1637). Having fought on the Royalist side in the English Civil War, L'Estrange was arrested by the Commonwealth in 1644 and sentenced to death. This sentence was commuted to imprisonment in Newgate, from where he absconded in 1648. Following his involvement in the abortive Kentish uprising of May that year, he fled to Holland. In August 1653 he took advantage of an amnesty offered by Cromwell and returned to England. Cromwell's death in 1658 allowed L'Estrange to establish himself as a political pamphleteer for the Royalist cause. The Stuart Restoration of 1660 brought increased surveillance of the press, in the form of the 1662 Licensing Act, and in 1663 L'Estrange was appointed Royal Surveyor and Licenser. When the Act lapsed in 1679, he returned to political journalism. The changing political climate prompted him to flee England again that year, first for Edinburgh and then for the Hague. He returned in 1681, at a time when the Stuart dynasty was enjoying a brief respite from Whig opposition. L’Estrange experienced renewed royal favour under James II and was elected MP for Winchester and knighted in 1685. However, after the revolution of 1688, he was removed from government service, and his last years were blighted by poverty and failing health.

Birth: Hunstanton Hall, Norfolk (17 December 1616); death: St Giles-in-the-Field, London (11 December 1704). 1648-1653: political exile in Holland, Antwerp, and Germany.

Surveyor of the Press (1663-1679, 1685-1688), Justice of the Peace (1680), Member of Parliament for Winchester (1685-1689)

Sir Hamon L’Estrange (father), author; Alice L’Estrange (mother); Sir Nicholas L’Estrange (brother); Hamon L’Estrange (brother), theological writer and historian; Anne Doleman (wife)

English Civil War, 1642-1651; Commonwealth of England, 1649-1660; Stuart Restoration, May 1660; Glorious Revolution, 1688.
The English Civil War was in fact a series of conflicts between Royalist and Parliamentarian forces, culminating in the execution of the Stuart King Charles I and the establishment of the Protectorate, or Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland, under Oliver Cromwell. After Cromwell's death in 1658, his son Richard briefly took over as Lord Protector of the Commonwealth. Richard Cromwell resigned in May 1659, and in 1660, the monarchy was restored with the crown claimed by Charles II, son of the executed king. The restored Stuart dynasty grew increasingly unpopular, with a vocal anti-Catholic Whig faction leading the opposition. In 1688, the Stuart monarch James II and VII was deposed, and replaced by his daughter Mary II and her husband William III of Orange.

International Standard Archival Authority Record for Corporate Bodies, Persons and Families - ISAAR(CPF) 2nd edition - ICA 2004 ISBN 2-9521932-2-3

• English

• Latin

Oxford Dictionarly of National Biography
Sir George Kitchin, Sir Roger L’Estrange: A Contribution to the History of the Press in the Seventeenth Century (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., 1913)