he father of an archbishop!

By an unexplained law of our nature the very severity of
punishment seems to invite men to incur it; and Leighton's fate,
like most penal warnings, rather incited to its imitation than
deterred from it. The next to feel the grip of the Star Chamber
was the famous William Prynne, barrister of Lincoln's Inn, and
one of the most erudite as well as most voluminous writers our
country has ever produced.

He was only thirty-three when in 1633 he published his
_Histriomastix; or, the Player's Scourge_. His labour had taken
him seven years, nor was it the first work of his that had
attracted the notice of authority. In a thousand closely printed
pages, he argued, by an appeal to fifty-five councils,
seventy-one fathers and Christian writers, one hundred and fifty
Protestant and Catholic authors, and forty heathen philosophers
into the bargain, that stage-plays, besides being sinful and
heathenish, were "intolerable mischiefs to churches, to
republics, to the manners, minds, and souls of men." Little as we
think so now, this opinion, which was afterwards also Defoe's,
was not without justification in those days. But Prynne's crusade
did not stop at theatres; and Heylin's account reveals the
feeling of contemporaries: "Neither the hospitality of the gentry
in the time of Christmas, nor the music in cathedrals and the
chapels royal, nor the pomps and gallantries of the Court, nor
the Queen's harmless recreations, nor the King's solacing himself
sometimes in masques and dances could escape the venom of his
pen." "He seemed to breathe nothing but disgrace to the nation,
infamy to the Church, reproaches to the Court, dishonour to the
Queen." For his remarks against female actors were thought to be
aimed at Henrietta Maria, though the pastoral in which she took
part was posterior by six weeks to the publication of the
book![78:1] The four legal societies "presented their Majesties
with a pompous and magnificent masque, to let them see that
Prynne's leaven had not soured them all, and that they were not
poisoned with the same infection."[79:1]

This surely might have been enough; but by the time the matter
had come before the Star Chamber, Laud had succeeded Abbot (with
whom Prynne was on friendly terms) as Archbishop of Canterbury
(August 1633); and Laud was in favour of rigorous measures. So
was Lord Dorset, and Lord Cottington, Chancellor of the
Exchequer, whose judgment is of importance as showing