Defoe’s disguise was so complete, his caricature of the ferocious High-flier so near to life, that at first, people doubted whether the Shortest Way was the work of a satirist or a fanatic.  When the truth leaked out, as it soon did, the Dissenters were hardly better pleased than while they feared that the proposal was serious.  With the natural timidity of precariously situated minorities, they could not enter into the humour of it.  The very title was enough to make them shrink and tremble.  The only people who were really in a position to enjoy the jest were the Whigs.  The High-Churchmen, some of whom, it is said, were at first so far taken in as to express their warm approval, were furious when they discovered the trick that had been played upon them.  The Tory ministers of the Queen felt themselves bound to take proceedings against the author, whose identity seems to have soon become an open secret.  Learning this, Defoe went into concealment.  A proclamation offering a reward for his discovery was advertised in the Gazette.  The description of the fugitive is interesting; it is the only extant record of Defoe’s personal appearance, except the portrait prefixed to his collected works, in which the mole is faithfully reproduced:—­

“He is a middle-aged, spare man, about forty years old, of a brown complexion, and dark-brown coloured hair, but wears a wig; a hooked nose, a sharp chin, grey eyes, and a large mole near his mouth:  was born in London, and for many years was a hose-factor in Freeman’s Yard in Cornhill, and now is the owner of the brick and pantile works near Tilbury Fort in Essex.”

This advertisement was issued on the 10th of January, 1703.  Meantime the printer and the publisher were seized.  From his safe hiding, Defoe put forth an explanation, protesting, as we have seen, that his pamphlet had not the least retrospect to or concern in the public bills in Parliament now depending, or any other proceeding of either House or of the Government relating to the Dissenters, whose occasional conformity the author has constantly opposed.  It was merely, he pleaded, the cant of the Non-juring party exposed; and he mentioned several printed books in which the same objects were expressed, though not in words so plain, and at length.  But the Government would not take this view; he had represented virulent partisans as being supreme in the Queen’s counsels, and his design was manifest “to blacken the Church party as men of a persecuting spirit, and to prepare the mob for what further service he had for them to do.”  Finding that they would not listen to him, Defoe surrendered himself, in order that others might not suffer for his offence.  He was indicted on the 24th of February.  On the 25th, the Shortest Way was brought under the notice of the House of Commons, and ordered to be burnt by the common hangman.  His trial came on in July.  He was found guilty of a seditious libel, and sentenced to pay a fine of 200 marks to the Queen, stand three times in the pillory, be imprisoned during the Queen’s pleasure, and find sureties for his good behaviour for seven years.