How much of this learning Defoe acquired at school, and how much he picked up afterwards under the pressure of the necessities of his business, it is impossible to determine, but at any rate it was at least as good a qualification for writing on public affairs as the more limited and accurate scholarship of his academic rivals.  Whatever may have been the extent of his knowledge when he passed from Mr. Morton’s tuition, qualified but no longer willing to become a Dissenting preacher, he did not allow it to rust unused; he at once mobilised his forces for active service.  They were keen politicians, naturally, at the Newington Academy, and the times furnished ample materials for their discussions.  As Nonconformists they were very closely affected by the struggle between Charles II. and the defenders of Protestantism and popular liberties.  What part Defoe took in the excitement of the closing years of the reign of Charles must be matter of conjecture, but there can be little doubt that he was active on the popular side.  He had but one difference then, he afterwards said in one of his tracts, with his party.  He would not join them in wishing for the success of the Turks in besieging Vienna, because, though the Austrians were Papists, and though the Turks were ostensibly on the side of the Hungarian reformers whom the Austrian Government had persecuted, he had read the history of the Turks and could not pray for their victory over Christians of any denomination.  “Though then but a young man, and a younger author” (this was in 1683), “he opposed it and wrote against it, which was taken very unkindly indeed.”  From these words it would seem that Defoe had thus early begun to write pamphlets on questions of the hour.  As he was on the weaker side, and any writing might have cost him his life, it is probable that he did not put his name to any of these tracts; none of them have been identified; but his youth was strangely unlike his mature manhood if he was not justified in speaking of himself as having been then an “author.”  Nor was he content merely with writing.  It would have been little short of a miracle if his restless energy had allowed him to lie quiet while the air was thick with political intrigue.  We may be sure that he had a voice in some of the secret associations in which plans were discussed of armed resistance to the tyranny of the King.  We have his own word for it that he took part in the Duke of Monmouth’s rising, when the whips of Charles were exchanged for the scorpions of James.  He boasted of this when it became safe to do so, and the truth of the boast derives incidental confirmation from the fact that the names of three of his fellow-students at Newington appear in the list of the victims of Jeffreys and Kirke.