benefactor, but
harassed his retirement by repeated persecutions. It will sufficiently
illustrate the spirit of these times to mention that the sole offence
imputed to the Bishop of Lincoln in the last information against him in
the Star-chamber was that he had received certain letters from one
Osbaldiston, master of Westminster school, wherein some contemptuous
nickname was used to denote Laud.

It did not appear that Williams had ever divulged these letters; but it
was held that the concealment of a libellous letter was a high
misdemeanor. Williams was therefore adjudged to pay five thousand pounds
to the King and three thousand to the Archbishop, to be imprisoned
during pleasure, and to make a submission; Osbaldiston to pay a still
heavier fine, to be deprived of all his benefices, to be imprisoned and
make submission, and, moreover, to stand in the pillory before his
school in Dean's yard, with his ears nailed to it. This man had the good
fortune to conceal himself; but the Bishop of Lincoln, refusing to make
the required apology, lay about three years in the Tower, till released
at the beginning of the Long Parliament.

It might detain me too long to dwell particularly on the punishments
inflicted by the Court of Star-chamber in this reign. Such historians as
have not written in order to palliate the tyranny of Charles, and
especially Rushworth, will furnish abundant details, with all those
circumstances that portray the barbarous and tyrannical spirit of those
who composed that tribunal. Two or three instances are so celebrated
that I cannot pass them over. Leighton, a Scots divine, having published
an angry libel against the hierarchy, was sentenced to be publicly
whipped at Westminster and set in the pillory, to have one side of his
nose slit, one ear cut off, and one side of his cheek branded with a hot
iron; to have the whole of this repeated the next week at Cheapside, and
to suffer perpetual imprisonment in the Fleet. Lilburne, for dispersing
pamphlets against the bishops, was whipped from the Fleet prison to
Westminster, there set in the pillory, and treated afterward with great
cruelty. Prynne, a lawyer of uncommon erudition and a zealous Puritan,
had printed a bulky volume, called _Histriomastix_, full of invectives
against the theatre, which he sustained by a profusion of learning. In
the course of this he adverted to the appearance of courtesans on the
Roman stage, and, by a satirical reference in his