to tell your lordships of the reasons why he writ this book:'Because he saw the number of the plays, play-books, playhaunters, and play-houses so exceedingly increased, there being about forty-thousand play-books now, more vendible than the choicest sermons.' And what saith he in the epistle dedicatory? They bear so big a price, and are printed on far better paper, than most octavo and quarto bibles, which hardly find so good a vent as they,' and then he putteth on the margin, Ben Johnson printed on better paper than most Bibles.' This monster, this huge mishapen monster, I say, it is nothing but lies and venom against all sorts of people. I beseech your lordships give me leave, Stage plays,' saith he, none are gainers and honoured by them but the devil and hell; and when they have taken their wills in lust here, their souls go to eternal torment hereafter,' and this must be the end of this monster's horrible sentence. He doth not only condemn all play writers, but all protectors of them, and all beholders of them, they are all damned, and that no less than to hell! I said it was a seditious libel! The good opinion, heart, will, and affections of the king's people and subjects, are the king's greatest treasure. Now, for any man cunningly to undermine these things, and bring the king into an ill opinion among his people, is a most damned offence, and if I were in my proper place, and Mr. Prynne before me, I should go another way to work. I protest it maketh my heart to swell, and my blood in my veins to boil-cold as I am-to see this, or any thing attempted, which may endanger my gracious sovereign." Then, after mentioning the other points of the sentence, "I fine him five thousand pounds, for, I know, he is as able to pay that as five hundred; perpetual imprisonment I do think fit for him, and to be restrained from writing, neither to have pen, ink, nor paper, yet, let him have some pretty prayer book, to pray to God to forgive him his sins, but to write, in good faith, I would not have him."

His lordship was seconded by the earl of Dorset, to this effect:-"The devil, who hates every man upon earth," played the divine, cited books, wrought miracles, and he will have his disciples too, as he had his confessors and martyrs.

No, my lords, this contempt, disloyalty, and despair, are the ropes which this emissary lets down to his great master's kingdom, for a general service. My lords, when God had made all his works, he looked upon them, and saw that they were good; this gentleman, the devil having put spectacles on his nose, says that all is bad; no recreation, vocation, no condition good, &c." His award was still more severe, “Mr. Prynne, I do declare you to be a schism-maker in the church, a sedition-sower in the commonwealth, a wolf in sheep's clothing, in a word, omnium malorum ne quissimus. I shall fine him ten thousand pounds, which is more than he is worth, yet less than he deserves. I will not set him at liberty, no more than a plagued man, or a mad dog, who, He is so far from though he cannot bite, he will foam. being a sociable soul, that he is not a rational soul! He is fit to live in dens, with such beasts of prey, as wolves and tigers, like himself! Therefore, I do condemn him to per petual imprisonment, as these monsters, that are no longer fit to live among men, nor to see light!" "Now, for corporal punishment, I would have him branded in the forehead, slit in the nose, and his ears cropt too!” *

Prynne, after undergoing the corporal and pecuniary part of his punishment, during his confinement in the tower, wrote some controversial works against the prelatical innovations, particularly one entitled the unbishoping of Timothy and Titus. For this he was again brought before the same

* Hume, after narrating some of the instances noticed in the text, adds, with true philosophical calmness, "The severity of the star chamber, which was generally ascribed to Laud's passionate disposition, was perhaps in itself somewhat blameable !" Had only one deist suffered a few months imprisonment for his opinions, how different would the solitary punishment have been noticed. Only one instance since the Reformation has occurred of a deist being executed for his creed, and all Europe has re-echoed with the sufferings of Servetus, while the same pack, who, full-mouthed upon the scent, have made every avenue of literature resound with their exccrations of Calvin-and Bayle has shown how falsely-have passed over, or extenuated the fires of Smithfield, and the scaffolds of the Grassmarket. But deists are an unfeeling, illiberal, intolerant sect, to all except themselves, whatever they may pretend. Hist. of Eng. 8vo. vol. vi. chap. 52. Rushworth, vol. ii. pp. 226, 240.

court, fined another five thousand pounds, condemned to lose the remainder of his ears, and to be strictly confined in a solitary and a distant dungeon. At the same time, Henry Burton, B. D. rector of St. Matthews, Friday-Street, London, for some expressions in a sermon preached in his parish church, and Dr. John Bastwick, an eminent physician, for two pamphlets respecting the supremacy of bishops, and a parity among ministers, were tried, and both sentenced to pay each five thousand pounds, and lose his ears, or suffer perpetual imprisonment, the one in the Scilly islands, and the other in Guernsey, and their wives were prohibited, under the severest penalties, to come near the places of their husbands' confinement.

Among the superstitious observances objected to in these publications, was bowing at the altar, a practice which Laud religiously enforced, both on himself and others."For my own part," said his grace, "I take myself bound to worship with body, as well as in soul, whenever I come where God is worshipped; and were this kingdom such as would allow no holy table standing in its proper place—and such places some there are-yet I would worship God when I came into his house; and were the times such as should beat down churches, and all the curious carved work thereof, with axes and hammers, as in Psalm 74-and such times have been-yet would I worship in what place soever I came, and pray though there were not so much as a stone laid for Bethel. But this is the misery! 'tis superstition now-a-days, for any man to come with more reverence into a church, than a tinker and his bitch come into an ale-house !" *

Dr. Alexander Leighton, a Scottishman, for a publication, entitled Zion's plea against prelacy, was still more cruelly used, he was arrested by two officers belonging to the star chamber, hurried to a wretched low damp cell in Newgate, without light, but what entered from a broken roof, and overrun with rats and other vermin. Here he lay from Tuesday night, till Thursday at noon, without food, and for fourteen

* The whole of the archbishop's elegant speech, is in Rushworth's Appendix, vol. iii. p. 116-33.

days endured solitary confinement in this miserable hole. In his absence, his house was rifled, his books destroyed, and his papers carried off. After sixteen weeks' imprisonment, he was served with an information of the crimes with which he was charged; but he was sick and unable to attend, and from the nature of his disorder, a fitter object of compassion than punishment, for the skin and hair had almost wholly come off his body, yet, absent and sick, this aged, infirm divine, was condemned to a punishment which the stoutest ruffian could hardly have endured, which some of the lords of court conceived could never be inflicted on a dying man, and was pronounced only as a terror to others. But it was mercilessly inflicted. On the 29th of November, on a cold frosty day, he was stripped, and received thirty-six lashes with a treble cord, after which, he stood during a snow storm, two hours half naked on the pillory, was branded on one cheek with a red hot iron, had one ear cut off, and one side of his nose slit. In a week, before the sores on his back were near healed, he was again whipped at the pillory in Cheapside, and had the remainder of his sentence executed, by slitting his other nostril, cutting off his other ear, and branding his other cheek. He was then carried back to prison, till he should pay a fine of one thousand pounds, or endure, as his persecutors imagined, perpetual imprisonment.

Such punishments, so arbitrarily inflicted, by courts where Laud had the chief direction, and where opposition to episcopacy was the most prominent crime, inflicted too, on gentlemen whose birth, education, rank, and professions should have exempted them from such odious punishments, except for odious crimes, instead of inspiring terror, inspired indignation. Accounts of these tragedies, confirmed the Scots in their detestation of a hierarchy, whose highest dignitary could authorize cruelties of that kind, exasperated the English puritans, who were adverse to the discipline and rites of the church, and alienated even the most moderate, who had not yet abjured her communion;-these are

* It was alleged he had been poisoned, from the strangeness of the disease, but there was no other proof.

only a few of the higher, numbers of humbler delinquents were unrecorded, but their sufferings were not less severe, nor the impression they made in their narrower circles less indelible.

To a parliament the nation had long looked forward as their only hope, and they depended upon the co-operation of the Scottish army for its duration, who, in return, relied on it for satisfaction to their demands. The flagrant abuses in the state, had called into action, an opposition from a numerous and respectable class of men, whose importance the government seems entirely to have overlooked-the substantial yeomanry, who were directed by the leading country gentlemen. * These, whose discontents originated chiefly from civil causes, from the arbitrary stretches of power, the levying of illegal taxes, and various oppressive measures, the detail of which, properly belongs to English history, were denominated political puritans, and, could they have secured their privileges in other respects, would not have entered very deeply into any discussions respecting the rites and ceremonies of the church; but Charles and his advisers, had contrived so to interweave the grievances of church and state, that he united in the closest bonds, both the religious and political puritans, and as both suffered from the tyranny of the same courts, they combined their efforts against them, and, in the course of their operations, imbibed or respected the principles of each other. In consequence, when a parliament was summoned, the elections fell upon the most pious, or the most patriotic country gentlemen, and they formed an irresistible majority in the house of commons, of virtuous, able, and zealous representatives.

At length this parliament, so long eagerly expected, met on the 3d of November, 1640. The king's opening speech was in a very modified tone, he threw himself entirely on the love and affection of his English subjects, nor would he mention his own interest, or the support he might justly expect from them, till the common safety were secured. The first object to which he directed their attention, was the

VOL. IV.

* Memoirs of Col. Hutchison, Quarto Edit.

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