ABSTRACT

The Moors Baffled was published in 1681, but the events it describes are restricted to the first three years of the English occupation of Tangier. There are at least two other editions of this pamphlet. One, bearing the same title, was published in Edinburgh in 1738 followed by a genealogy of the Earl of Teviot. The other edition came out in 1685 under a different title, A Discourse of Tangier under the Government of the Earl of Teviot . The author of the pamphlet, Reverend Lancelot Addison (1632–1703), father of the celebrated poet and essayist Joseph Addison, began his career as chaplain of the Dunkirk garrison until the town was sold to the French in 1662. His association with Dunkirk’s last governor, Lord Andrew Rutherford (Earl of Teviot), continued in Tangier, and it was in his memory that he composed this narrative.