A series of tracts written in the character of a Quaker quickly followed, one rebuking a Dissenting preacher for inciting the new Government to vindictive severities, another rebuking Sacheverell for hypocrisy and perjury in taking the oath of abjuration, a third rebuking the Duke of Ormond for encouraging Jacobite and High-Church mobs.

In March, Defoe published his _Family Instructor_, a book of 450 pages; in July, his _History, by a Scots Gentleman in the Swedish Service, of the Wars of Charles XII_.
Formidable as the list of these works seems, it does not represent more than Defoe's average rate of production for thirty years of his life.
With grave anxieties added to the strain of such incessant toil, it is no wonder that nature should have raised its protest in an apoplectic fit.

Even nature must have owned herself vanquished, when she saw this very protest pressed into the service of the irresistible and triumphant worker.

All the time he was at large upon bail, awaiting his trial.

The trial took place in July, 1715, and he was found guilty.