ABSTRACT
Writing in the early 1680s, the lawyer Sir Peter Pett reflected on the political and religious strife of recent years. The Jesuits, he believed, had helped make calumny and lying commonplace, but Protestants, too, had done their fair share. The situation had been further aggravated by
the many swarms of those who offer at Wit, and think they merit the being call’d Witts, by doing the exercise in a Coffey-house, Call’d Baldring, that is, with a serious grave face, telling idle feign’d Stories farced with particular Circumstances to ensnare the Belief of the Credulous.
