A Seasonable Warning and Caution Against the Insinuations of Papists and Jacobites In Favour of the Pretender

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Of A Seasonable Warning Against the Pretender

Daniel Defoe had operated as a spy in the early 1700s, primarily in support of the Act of Union, and a propagandist through the periodical The Review. As the war of Spanish Succession dragged on, the specter of the Old Pretender rose again with the growing power of the Whigs. In this environment, Defoe continued to ply his pen in service to the Harley, with pamphlets such as these.

With Seasonable Warning, Defoe calls on the rich history of England as a bulwark against tyranny and defender of protestant Christianity in Europe, in order to turn the English people away from returning the pretender to the throne. Using copious footnote, Defoe is able to keep a lofty perspective in the main text, which reads as a sonnet or speech rather than an epistle.

“This tract is addressed to “England,” asking how a nation so devoted to liberty and to bringing down tyrants, a friend and champion of Protestantism, could even consider allowing the Pretender to claim her throne. He admonishes all British people to be wary of the “Swarms of Popish Priests from Abroad, and Jacobite Emissaries at Home, …spread about among us” who try to convince the ignorant that the Pretender is a Protestant at heart and would be a wise ruler. His entreaties are earnest. He tells the people, “The Work is before you; your Deliverance, your Safety is in your own Hands, and therefore these Things are now Written: None can give you up; None can Betray you but your selves” Indiana University Defoe Exhibition.