down by a committee in writing both at the bar and in the House of Commons; 4. That he shall be suspended three years from the exercise of his ministry; 5. That he shall hereafter be disabled from any ecclesiastical dignity; 6. That he shall be for ever disabled to preach at the Court hereafter; and 7. That his Majesty be moved to grant a proclamation for the calling in of his books, that they may be burnt in London and both Universities. The King accordingly issues a proclamation, in which he declares that the Doctor had drawn himself the just censure and sentence of the high Court of Parliament." Mainwaring himself made a most abject apology to the House, and after the session was over, the fine was remitted, the Doctor himself released from prison, two livings given him, and in 1636 he became Bishop of St. David's.

' upon

'The disputes which agitated the Church in the times of Elizabeth were at first, in many instances, unpardonably foolish and trifling. Taking as indulgent a view as we can of the Puritans of her time it cannot be denied that they are eminently provoking. That sober and pious men should think themselves justified in convulsing, worrying, and distracting the young Church struggling towards maturity and strength amidst the greatest obstacles, on the miserable question of church vestments, or the insignificant matter of the use of the cross in baptism, seems to show a sufficiently bitter and litigious spirit, and with this, in fact, the Puritan clergy are justly chargeable. They fought factiously and they fought unfairly. They were most loud and troublesome when there was the greatest danger from the Papist and the Spaniard, and they suddenly assumed a quieter tone when the power of the foreign foe was broken.' *

One of their great objects was the overthrow of the Bishops, but even here, the ground they occupied at the beginning was shifted entirely as the dispute went on. They first desired 'only to shake down the leaves of Episcopacy,' says Fuller, misliking only some garments about them; then they came 'to strike at the branches, and last of all they did lay their axe unto the root of the tree.' By the time of Charles I. opinions had grown still further embittered, and it is in that reign that we find the severest examples of punishment incurred for any publications that reflected upon the third order of the ministry. In 1628 there appeared a very scurrilous work by a Scotch doctor of physic and divinity, Alexander Leighton, father of the Archbishop, entitled An Appeal to the Parliament; or Sion's Plea against the Prelacie. Printed the year and month in 'which Rochell was lost.' He calls bishops men of blood, ravens,

* Perry, vol. i. pp. 16, 17.

6

and magpies; he declares the institution of Episcopacy to be anti-christian and satanical; the Queen is a daughter of Heth, and the King is corrupted by bishops to the undoing of himself and people; and he approves of the murder of Buckingham. Language such as this could hardly have been passed over unnoticed. But it was not till June 4, 1630, that the author was brought before the Star Chamber. There was no difficulty in pronouncing him guilty of seditious and scandalous writings; and he was sentenced to a terrible and barbarous punishment. Besides a fine of 10,000l. and degradation from the ministry, he was publicly whipped in Palace Yard, made to stand two hours in the pillory; one ear was cut off, a nostril slit open, and one of his cheeks branded with the letters S. S. (Sower of Sedition). After this he was sent off to the Fleet Prison. At the end of a week, being not yet cured,' he was brought out again, underwent a second whipping, and a repetition of the former atrocities, and was then consigned to prison for life, where he actually spent eleven years. In April 1641 his sentence was reversed by the House of Commons, and he received such consolation as it could afford him, when it was decided that his former mutilation and imprisonment had been entirely illegal. There are few men whom a cacoethes scribendi ever brought into such trouble as William Prynne, utter barrister of Lin'coln's Inn.' Of his publications, nearly 200 in number, the first appeared in 1627, entitled The perpetuity of a regenerate man's estate, against the Saint's total and final Apostasy.' In the following year, besides other works he published A brief survey and censure of Mr. Cozens, his couzening 'devotions.' The burning of these two books by command of the High Commission Court is one of the charges Michael Sparkes brings against Archbishop Laud on his trial. 'But,' writes the Archbishop in the History of his Troubles,' he 'does not say absolutely burnt, but "as he is informed," and he may be informed amiss.' There is no doubt, however, about the treatment of another of his publications, which appeared in the early part of 1633. This was The Histriomastix, the player's scourge or actor's tragedies,' a book which, as we shall see presently, appears to have had the distinction of being the first publication burnt in England by the hands of the common hangman. Prynne showed no little courage in publishing this book at a time when the Court was not only very much addicted to dramatic representations, but had such easy means at hand for suppressing seditious and treasonable publications. Much, however, might have been overlooked in Prynne's book had he not spoken in such unmeasured terms of women actors.'

This was interpreted into a special attack upon the Queen, who had herself taken part in the performance of a pastoral at Somerset House. True, the book had been published at least six weeks before, but there was rank treason in it for all that, and Prynne accordingly was cited before the Star Chamber in February 1633, together with Michael Sparkes the printer, and W. Buckner, the licenser of the obnoxious book. It was no use for Prynne to say through his counsel, Hern-afterwards employed in the defence of Laud-that he was heartily sorry for the strong language he had employed; the judges vied with each other in condemning him to the most extreme penalties they could inflict. The Earl of Dorset was the most vehement, but it will be enough to quote the judgment of Lord Cottington, the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

'I do in the first place begin censure with his book. I condemn it to be burnt in the most public manner that can be. The manner in other countries is (where such books are), to be burnt by the hangman, though not used in England (yet I wish it may in respect of the strangeness and heinousness of the matter contained in it) to have a strange manner of burning, and therefore I shall desire it may burnt by the hand of the hangman.

be so

'If it may agree with the Court, I do adjudge Mr. Prynne to be put from the bar, and, to be for ever uncapable of his profession. I do adjudge him, my Lords, that the Society of Lincoln's Inn do put him out of the Society; and because he had his offspring from Oxford (now with a low voice said the Archbishop of Canterbury, "I am sorry that "ever Oxford bred such an evil member!"), there to be degraded. And I do condemn Mr. Prynne to stand in the pillory in two places, in Westminster and Cheapside, and that he shall lose both his ears, one in each place, and with a paper on his head declaring how foul an offence it is, viz., that it is for an infamous libel against both their Majesties' State and Government. And lastly (nay, not lastly), I do condemn him in 5,000l. fine to the King. And lastly, perpetual imprisonment.'

Buckner, who had been domestic chaplain to Abbot the Puritanical Archbishop of Canterbury, was to be fined 507.; Sparkes 5007., and to stand at the pillory, without touching of 'his ears,' in St. Paul's Churchyard. It is a consecrated place,' saith the Archbishop of Canterbury. I cry your Grace's 'mercy,' said my Lord, then let it be in Cheapside.'

Prynne's sufferings by no means ended here. On the 14th of June, 1637, we find him a second time before the Star Chamber, this time in company with Dr. J. Bastwick and H. Burton, for writing and publishing seditious, schisma'tical, and libellous books against the hierarchy of the Church.' Bastwick, though he called himself M.D. apparently without

any claim to the title, seems to have had few if any patients, and tried literature. He had his book printed in Leyden in 1624, and its title was Elenchus religionis Papisticæ, in quo probatur neque Apostolicam, neque Catholicam, neque Ro6 manam esse.' It was written in answer to a book by Richard Short, which defended the Papal supremacy, the doctrine of the mass, and the Romish religion in general. In the year 1635, at the request of a friend, he published an epitome of this book, called Flagellum Pontificis et Episcoporum Latialium.' Though professing to be directed against the Church ' of Rome, 'tis more than manifest,' Laud says, 'that it was purposely written and divulged against the Bishops and Church of England.' For this he was cited before the High Commission Court, when thirty-seven articles were charged against him. He was acquitted of all the charges except one, and that was his maintaining bishops and priests to be the same order of ministers, or, as he expressed it himself, ' Impingitur horrendum crimen quod infulis et apicibus jus divinum negaverim, quod Episcopi et Presbyteri paritatem 'asseruerim.' For this he was condemned to pay a fine of 1,000l., to be excommunicated, to be debarred from the practice of his profession, his book to be burnt, and he himself to pay the costs and remain in prison till he recanted; and that is,' he says, 'till domesday in the afternoone.' Whilst in the Gate House he published, in 1636, another book called 'Πράξεις τῶν ἐπισκόπων: sive Apologeticus ad præ'sules Anglicanos criminum Ecclesiasticorum in Curia Celsæ Commissionis,' written, he tells us in the Petition he afterwards presented to the House of Commons, in answer to a book by Thomas Chowney, a Sussex gentleman, who maintained that the Church of Rome was a true church, and had not erred in fundamentals. The year following appeared a far more infamous book entitled The Letany of John Bast'wicke, being now full of devotion as well as in respect of the common calamities of plague and pestilence, as also of his ' own particular misirie: lying at this instant in Limbo 'patrum. Printed by the speciall procurement and for the espe' ciall use of our English prelats in the yeare of Remembrance 'Anno 1637.' At first it was only shown to a few friends in manuscript, but afterwards it came to be printed in this way. John Lilburne, afterwards a lieutenant-colonel in the Parliamentary army, and who behaved with such gallantry at Marston Moor, got introduced to Dr. Bastwick in 1637, and was so much pleased at hearing the Letany, that having a little ready money at command, he undertook to get it printed in

Holland. Bastwick was at first averse to this, as he distrusted a friend of Lilburne's, who would have to assist in disposing of the impression. His scruples, however, were overcome, and the Letany, together with another libellous publication, entitled Answers to the Information of Sir John Banks, Kt., Atturney Universall,' committed to the press. The first edition realised a handsome profit; but now Laud got scent of the publication, laid hold upon the disperser, and made him confess who the main culprit in the business was. Accordingly when Lilburne landed with another impression, he was seized along with his cargo, and the books burnt by the hands of the common hangman.

H. Burton, B.D., was the incumbent of St. Matthew's, Friday Street, the church in which Pepys tells us of a disturbance in his time; a great many young people knotting 'together and crying Porridge, often and seditiously in the 'church; and they took the Common Prayer Book, they say, away, and some say did tear it.' Burton had been clerk of the closet to Prince Henry, and afterwards to Prince Charles; a position in which he was not continued when Charles became King. In this bitter disappointment we find an obvious explanation of his appearing in the company of such men as Bastwick and Prynne. The book which brought him into trouble was An apology for an appeal to the King's Most Excellent 'Majesty, with 2 Sermons for God and the King, preached on 'the 5th of November last [1636]. Another of the libels complained of was mainly, if not altogether, from his hand. This was The Divine Tragedy recording God's fearful judgments against Sabbath breakers; a book directed against Noye, the Attorney-General, who, it was made out, was visited with a judgment from heaven whilst laughing at Prynne as he stood in the pillory. These two books of Burton's, two of Bastwick's, the Apologeticus,' and the Letany,' and a fifth called 'News 'from Ipswich,' were the libels which were proceeded against. Laud, however, tells us that the book for which they were sentenced was one written by Burton, and printed and sent by himself to the Lords sitting in Council, entitled 'A letter to 'the true-hearted nobility.' Prynne, so far as the evidence went, had not been guilty of any fresh offence; for the Court was not aware that he was really the author of the News 'from Ipswich,' which had been published under the name of W. White. But there is little doubt that he was really answerable for the contents of the libels, and that Laud's account is substantially correct, when he says that Prynne makes 'Burton and Bastwick utter law, which God knows they un