Prince

The London Informer, July 1593
KING PHILIP AND A PRINCELY LIE

Fair reader, while London suffers the darkness of Satan’s foul pestilence, secure in the faith that the Lord’s light will prevail, we have at last a sunbeam of news. Sooth to say, it is news of no news, but it is a fine thing for all that. We have learned on the greatest authority that the recent scurrilous report of some Scottish prince is naught but perfidy, wrought by our enemies in Spain.

This fanciful princeling was but the fevered reverie of Senor Felipe and his cringing, timorous lickspittles. Their wish was to sow discord and unrest in England, but this enterprise, like the Armada before it, has failed in every degree. This imagined son of the devil Mary and her viperous partner in murder, Bothwell, is as substantial as the air itself. That is, no substance at all. He does not exist and never has. This prince was a fantasme, designed to stir the disaffected, be they Romish or atheistic, to insurrection. Puff, he is gone.

Of greater concern, dear readers, is the plague that daily weaves its evil amongst us. The aldermen of the twenty-six wards tell us that King Pest is spread through the air by cats and dogs, and that they must be destroyed. It is The London Informer ’s duty to spur the aldermen, the Lord Mayor and his marshals to action, for word has reached us of a rabid white dog that does spread his vile poison around the city. Is it not time to toss this white dog’s carcass into the Hounds Ditch, that honest men and women may sleep sound at night without fear of his savage bite?

God Save the Queen.

Walstan Glebe, publisher