Dogget forthwith applied to the Lord Chief Justice Holt
for his discharge under the Habeas Corpus Act, and readily obtained
it, with, it may be gathered, liberal compensation for the violence to
which he had been subjected.
The proceedings of the Lord Chamberlain had, indeed, become most
oppressive. Early in 1720, the Duke of Newcastle, then Lord
Chamberlain, took upon himself to close Drury Lane Theatre. Steele,
then one of the patentees, addressed the public upon the subject. He
had lived in friendship with the duke; he owed his seat in Parliament
to the duke's influence. He commenced with saying: "The injury which I
have received, great as it is, has nothing in it so painful as that it
comes from whence it does. When I complained of it in a private letter
to the Chamberlain, he was pleased to send his secretary to me with a
message to forbid me writing, speaking, corresponding, or applying to
him in any manner whatsoever. Since he has been pleased to send an
English gentleman a banishment from his person and counsels in a style
thus royal, I doubt not but that the reader will justify me in the
method I take to explain this matter to the town.
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