lit. After enduring these punishments, he was sent to the
Fleet prison. At the end of the week, he underwent a second course of
cruelty, and was consigned to prison for life. After eleven weary years
passed in prison, Leighton was liberated, the House of Commons having
reversed his sentence. He was told that his mutilation and imprisonment
had been illegal! At that period in our history, a book or pamphlet
could not be printed without a license from the Archbishop of
Canterbury, the Bishop of London, or the authorities of the two
universities. Only authorised printers were permitted to set up printing
presses in the city of London. Any one printing without the necessary
authority subjected himself to the risk of being placed in the pillory
and whipped through the City.

Lilburne and Warton disregarded the foregoing order, and printed and
published libellous and seditious works. They refused to appear before
the court where such offences were tried. The authorities found them
guilty, and fined each man L500, and ordered them to be whipped from
Fleet Prison to the pillory at Westminster. The sentence was carried out
on April the 18th, 1638. Lilburne appears to have been a man of
dauntless courage, and when in the pillory, he gave away copies of his
obnoxious works to the crowd, and addressed them on the tyranny of his
persecutors. He was gagged to stop his speech.

William Prynne lost his ears for writing "Histrio-Mastix: the Player's
Scourge, or Actor's Tragedie" (1633.) His pillory experiences were of
the most painful character.

According to an entry in the annals of Hull, in the year 1645, all the
books of Common Prayer were burned by the Parliamentary soldiers, in
the market-place.

One of the late Mr. C. H. Spurgeon's predecessors, named Benjamin Keach,
a Baptist Minister, of Winslow, in the County of Bucks, issued a work
entitled, "The Child's Instructor; or, a New and Easy Primmer." The book
was regarded as seditious, and the authorities had him tried for writing
and publishing it, at the Aylesbury Assizes, on the 8th October, 1664.
The judge passed on him the following sentence:

"Benjamin Keach, you are here convicted of writing and publishing a
seditious and scandalous Book, for which the Court's judgment is
this, and the Court doth award, That you shall go to gaol for a
fortnight, without bail or mainprise; and the next Saturday to stand
upon the pillory at Ailsbury for the space of tw