enjoying this patronage, he exerted his influence in favor of Laud, afterwards archbishop, who owed his first promotion to his good offices. Some disagreement having arisen between them, nothing could appease the vindictive spirit of the haughty archbishop but the ruin of the man to whom he owed his elevation. For some frivolous pretence he was brought before the Star Chamber, and fined £10,000, committed to the Tower during the king's pleasure, and suspended from office. In order to levy this fine, the officers seized the furniture and books of the palace of Bishop Williams, and found there, among some refuse papers, some letters from one Osbaldiston, a schoolmaster, directed to the bishop. In these the writer spoke of a little great man, and in one place of a little urchin. As Laud was diminutive in stature, it was conjectured that these expressions referred to him; whereupon the bishop was tried for receiving such scandalous letters, though he had never shown them to any one, and Osbaldiston for writing them; and the first was fined £8,000, and the other sentenced to pay a fine of £5,000, and to have his ears nailed to the pillory in sight of his own school.

These will suffice to show the nature of the offences of which this court took cognizance, and the character of the punishments which it imposed. The cases of Prynne and Lilburne, already mentioned, will serve to show the spirit and character which pervaded the proceedings, by which the court accomplished its purposes. Both these trials took place in the time of Charles. The Puritans had already obtained a strong foothold in England, and were making themselves felt, by their bold advocacy of civil as well as religious liberty. Whoever, therefore, was in any manner identified with this odious sect, was particularly obnoxious to the vengeance of the Star Chamber. Among the peculiarities of the Puritans was a strict observance of the Sabbath, as well as an aversion to stage plays and profane sports generally. To counteract this spirit, the clergy were required by proclamation to read what was called "the Book of Sports" in their churches, by which certain sports and pastimes were to be used by the people on Sundays, after the evening service. Add to this, that Charles and his queen at times were present at the exhibition of stage plays, and that she at times took part herself in masques and other like exhibitions at court.

In this state of public feeling, Prynne, who was a barrister-at

law of Lincoln's Inn, and a Puritan of the straitest sect, published his famous Histrio Mastyx, a huge volume of a thousand quarto pages, aimed at stage plays, music, dancing, public festivals, Christmas sports, bonfires, and May-poles. For this "libellous volume " he was arraigned before the Star Chamber. What made it a little more remarkable, he had been licensed by Abbott, Laud's predecessor, as Archbishop of Canterbury, to publish a considerable part of this work. In his address to the court, Mr. Noy, the Attorney-General, states several of the offensive parts of this work, and among other things states what it attacks: "witchery, church ceremonies, &c., indistinctly he falleth upon them; then upon altars, images, hair men and women, bishops and bonfires, cards and tables, do offend him, and perukes do fall within the compass of his theme." The trial occupied three days, and the fourth was consumed in pronouncing sentence against him. Among his judges was Richardson, the Chief Justice of the King's Bench, who began with this significant language: "Since I have had the honor to attend this court, writing and printing of books have been exceedingly found fault withal, and have received sharp censure, and it doth grow every day worse and worse; every man taketh upon him to understand what he conceiveth, and thinks he is nobody except he be in print. We are troubled here with a book,— a monster,— monstrum horrendum, informe, ingens!" &c. "I would to God in heaven the devil and all else that had their heads and hands therein, besides Mr. Prynne, were, &c.; for I think they are all ill willers to the State, and deserve severe punishment as well as Mr. Prynne doth." "For the book, I do hold it a most scandalous, infamous libel to the king's majesty, a most pious and religious king; to the queen's majesty, a most excellent and gracious queen, such a one as this kingdom never enjoyed the like, and I think the earth never had a better." 66 I say, eye never saw nor ear ever heard of such a scandalous and seditious thing as this misshapen monster is." He then proceeds to read sundry extracts from the book, drawing from them inferences the most forced and unnatural. Thus, in his general sweep for historical illustrations of the mischief of frequenting stage plays, Mr. Prynne had referred to Nero, and spoke of Flavius and others conspiring to murder him for the influence of his "lewd example" upon the magistrates and people. The Chief Justice concludes from this that the author intends to instigate

the people to murder the king. "If subjects have an ill prince, marry, what is the remedy? They must pray to God to forgive him, and not say they are worthy subjects that do kill him." He at last addressed the prisoner: "Mr. Prynne, I must now come to my sentence, though I am very sorry, for I have known you long, yet now I utterly forsake you." The Earl of Dorset, another of the court, was even more abusive. It is not, therefore, to be wondered at, that, in the exercise of their unlimited power, poor Prynne was made to feel the full measure of their indignation. He was deprived of his right to practise as a barrister; condemned to stand in the pillory at Westminster and in Cheapside; to lose his ears, one at one of these places, and the other at the other; to pay a fine of £5,000; and to be imprisoned during life. Dorset wished to add branding in the forehead, or slitting his nose, and to have his fine £10,000 instead of £5,000.

But a man of Prynne's temperament and nerve was not to be silenced by mere corporal punishment, and some four years afterwards we find him again before this court, for publishing what they chose to call libels. It was at this time he was condemned unheard, as has been before stated, because he could not find counsel bold enough to sign his answer to the information against him. Upon his being placed at the bar to receive his sentence, Finch, the Chief Justice, looking carefully at him, remarked that he thought Mr. Prynne had no ears, but it seemed to him he had. The usher of the court was ordered to raise his hair and show his ears, when the lords were angry to find that only a part of them had been cut off, to which Prynne wittily replied: "There was never one of their honors but would be sorry to have his ears as his were." Laud was particularly bitter and severe in pronouncing sentence. The books alleged to be libellous were religious works, and fell under the Archbishop's special censure; and the sentence pronounced upon him was that he should pay a fine of £5,000, stand in the pillory, lose the remaining part of his ears, be branded "S. L." on each cheek, and be perpetually imprisoned in what he calls a "nasty dog-hole," at Carnarvon Castle in Wales. All of which was rigidly inflicted until the revolution, which deprived these prelates of their power.

The case of Lilburne was equally cruel and outrageous with that of Prynne, though, from the temperament of the man and the

almost eagerness with which he courted martyrdom, we are not apt to regard it with the sense of indignation that we feel in reading that of Prynne. Lilburne was a young man, only twenty years old, when arraigned for being concerned in printing and publishing certain controversial works upon the Litany and other like subjects alleged to be seditious. He was put to the bar with an old man eighty-five years of age, charged with the same offence. As they refused to ke the oath when interrogated by the court, they were for this both sentenced to pay a fine and stand in the pillory; and he, being a young man, to be whipped through the streets from the Fleet prison unto the pillory, wherever the court should erect that. He was kept in prison from February to April, when he was placed in a cart, stripped, and whipped with a treble-corded whip, all the way from the Fleet to Westminster, where the pillory was placed, at least five hundred strokes in all. The tipstaff of the Star Chamber was then sent to know if he would acknowledge his fault. This he refused to do, although by so doing he would have saved standing in the pillory. He was accordingly placed in this, and remained there two hours, with head uncovered, in a hot sun, his back dreadfully lacerated by the blows he had received; and he improved the occasion by addressing the people around him, and scattering pamphlets amongst them. After continuing this at a great length, he says "There came a fat lawyer, I do not know his name, and commanded me to hold my peace and leave my preaching." This, of course, he refused to do, and went on with his discourse to the people. After continuing this a while, the warden of the Fleet came with the same fat lawyer, and commanded him to hold his peace. But he refusing again, they gagged him, and kept him an hour and a half in that condition, but in no measure subdued or disposed to compromise, but, on the contrary, manifested his feelings by stamping and gesticulations. The Star Chamber then, in order to subdue him, ordered him to be shut up in solitary confinement, with irons on his hands and legs, in the wards of the Fleet, where the basest and meanest sort of prisoners were placed. Here a severe fever seized him; but no physician was permitted to visit him till late the next day, even to dress his wounds. His sickness continued for six months, during which he was still kept in close prison; and, as soon as able to bear them, was again put in irons, and

denied any communication with his friends, suffering every indignity the court could inflict upon him. After enduring this for nearly three years, he petitioned Parliament, and was liberated, and became a lieutenant-colonel in the parliamentary army. It will be recollected that this was not in pursuance of a sentence for any crime, since he had never been called to answer to any charge, but for simply refusing to answer interrogatories tending to criminate himself, and that under oath. It was, moreover, "commanded to be executed," in the words of the narrator, "by an eminent court of justice professing Christianity, pessima est injustitia, quæ sit sub colore justitiæ."

Want of space forbids extending this account, or that of Mr. Prynne, and we have only room to add that the ridding of the body politic of such a plague-spot as this infamous tribunal had grown to be, was one of the early acts of the Long Parliament, so famed in the history of England. A bill for abolishing this court was moved by Lord Andover in the House of Lords, March 5, 1641. It contains a long preamble, referring to the Magna Charta, the act of Edward III., already mentioned, and sundry other acts designed to secure to parties charged with crimes a full and fair trial, together with the act of 3 Henry VII., creating the officers of this court, and recites: "But the said judges have not kept themselves to the points limited by said statute, but have undertaken to punish where no law doth warrant, and to make decrees for things having no such authority, and to inflict heavier punishments than by any law is warranted; and forasmuch, among other things, as "the proceedings, censures, and decrees of that court have, by experience, been found to be an intolerable burden to the subjects, and the means to introduce an arbitrary power and government," it proceeds to declare that the Court of Star Chamber should be clearly and absolutely dissolved from the 1st August, 1641, and all power and authority thereof absolutely revoked and made void. Almost concurrent with this was an act repealing the Court of High Commission, and one declaring the proceedings touching ship-money void, for which Hampden had suffered.

An English writer, Carr, has embodied this act abolishing the Star Chamber with the Magna Charta, the Act of Treasons of 25 Edward III., the Habeas Corpus, and some other acts of a like character, in what he calls "English Liberties;" and, in