SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.
489
Mr. Prynne ? I had thought Mr. Prynne had no ears ; but methinks he hath ears, and it is fit the court should take order that their decrees should be better executed,* and see whether Mr. Prynne hath ears or no." Prynne being con- veyed through Chester to be imprisoned in Car- narvon he was met on his approach by numbers of the citizens, who paid so much respect to the sufferer for the liberty of conscience, as to give offence to the government. Manv of them were therefore fin^, some £900, j^300, and jC250. Mr. Peter luce, a stationer, and one of the offenders, made a public recantation before the bishop, in the cathedral. In the following year, (1634,) four portraits of Prynne, painted in Chester, were buried at the High Cross, in the presence of the magistracy; but at the beginning of the civil wars, they were trium- phantly brought to London.
Prynne was an arrogant bigot, who wrote a book in barbarous taste; moreover, he loved neither nower nor the trappings of royalty; in- dulged himself in unseemly invectives, and manifested altogether a most unmanageable temper. But Prynne was a brave and conscien- tious bigot, and bis honest endeavours, in after- life, to save king Charles from the block, should, though it was late and unavailing, be admitted as evidence in his favour. Remembering, too, the savage treatment he had experienced at the hands of Charles's ministers, his conduct de- serves to be called generous ; for he wrote on the king's behalf when so to write involved personal risk, Prynne has written a library, amounting, perhaps, to nearly two hundred books. Our un- lucky author, whose life was involved in author- ship, and his happiness, no doubt, in the habitual exuberance of bis pen, seems to have considered the being debarred from- pen, ink, and books, during his imprisonment, as an act more barba- rous than the loss of his ears. The extraordi- nary perseverance of Prynne in this fever of the pen appears in the following title of one of his extraordinary volumes. Comfortable Cordials against ditcomfortable Fears of Imprisonment; containing some Latin Verses, Sentences, and Texts of Scripture. Written by Mr. William Prynne on his Chamber Walls, in the Tower of London, during his imprisonment there; trans- lated by him into English verse, 1641. ' Prynne literally verified Pope's description :
Is tbere, who, lock'd from ink and paiper, Krawla, With desperate charcoal round his darkened walls.
William Prynne took upon himself the office to correct every enormity in church and state. He wrote against bishops, players, long hair and love-locks; and was in consequence dignified by his party with the appellation of Cato : he was a man of great reading ; and Mr. Wood sup- poses that ne wrote a sheet for every day of his life, computing from the time of his arrival at man's estate. He says, " His custom was, when he studied, to put on a long quilted cap, which
- AccoidiDK to a fonner sentence. «
came an inch over his eyes, serving as an um- brella to defend them from too much light; and seldom eating a dinner, would, every three hours or more, be maunching a roll of bread, and now and then refresh his exhausted spirits with ale. He gave his works, in forty volumes folio and quarto, to the Society of Gray's Inn. There is a catalogue of them in the Athente Ottonienses. He died Oct. 23, 1666, and was buried in Lincoln's Inn chapel.
We have also a catalogue of printed books written by William Prynne, esq., of Lincoln's Inn, in these classes,
Before, During
and Since
'VAuti
mpruonment.
with this motto, " Jocundi acti labores," 1643. The secret history of this voluminous author concludes with a characteristic event : a cotempo- rary who saw Prynne in the pillory at Cheapside, says, that while he stood there " they burnt his huge volumes under his nose, which bad almost suffocated him."
Another sufferer for conscience sake was a clergyman named Leighton, who, in a book entitled An Appeal to Parliament, or Sioti't Plea against Prelacy, used language so inflam- matory as to attract the notice of Laud. He was brought before the peers, who adjudged him to undergo the following extraordinary punishment : — ^he was degraded from the minis- try, was publicly whipped in the palace-yard, stood two hours m the pillory, and had an ear cut off, a nostril slit open, and a cheek branded with S. S. to denote a sower of sedition. At the end of one week Leighton had a second whipping, and was again placed in the pillory ; he then lost the other ear, had the other nostril slit, and was branded on the other cheek. Thus degraded and mutilated, he was conducted back to prison ; and, not finding mercy from Charles, he remained in confinement ten years, and was then liberated by the parliament when it was in arms against the king.
1637. Thieves falling out True-men come h/ their Goods, or the Bel-man wanted a Clapper. A Peele of new villanies rung out, being mu- sicall to gentlemen, lawyers, farmers, and all sorts of people that come iip to the tearme. Shewing that the villanies of lewd women by many degrees excell those of men. By Robert Greene.
Goc not b^ me, bat by me, and set by me.
Printed for Henry and Moses Bell.
1637. A collection of the best Latin poetical compositions of Scotchmen which had appeared in this and the preceding century, was printed at Amsterdam, entitled Delita Poetanim Seoto- rum, 2 vols. Dr. Johnson says this work reflects great credit on the country. Latin poetry was more extensively cultivated in Scouand than either English or Scotch. The principal poets
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