He used to lay about and stickle
Like ram or bull at conventicle
and Dryden, in The Medal (1682):—
A tyrant theirs; the heaven their priesthood paints
A conventicle of gloomy sullen saints.
[p. 363] Pryn. William Prynne (1600-69) had been sentenced to severe punishment in February, 1634, for the scandals and libels contained in his dull diatribe, Histriomastix. He lost both his ears in the pillory.
[p. 365] Needham. Marchamont Nedham, ‘the Commonwealth’s Didaper’, was a graduate of All Souls, Oxon, and sometime an usher at Merchant Taylors’ school. He also seems to have been connected with the legal profession. ‘The skip-jack of all fortunes’, neither side has a good word for this notorious pamphleteer, the very scum of our early journalism. When Mercurius Britannicus temporarily ceased publication with No. 50, 9 September, 1644, Nedham recommenced it on the 30th of the same month with No. 51 (not No. 52 as is sometimes stated). No. 92, 28 July-4 August, 1645, and the number 11-18 May, 1646, revile the King in such scurrilous terms that Nedham was haled to the bar of the House of Lords and imprisoned. Later he turned Royalist, but in 1650 published The Case of the Commonwealth Stated, a defence of the regicides, for which he received a pension of £100 a year. He fled to Holland, April, 1660, but being pardoned, returned to England. He died in Devereux Court, Temple Bar, November, 1678, and is buried in St. Clement Danes. Wood characterizes him as ‘a most seditious, mutable and railing author,’ whilst Cleveland terms him ‘that impudent and incorrigible reviler’.
[p. 365] Ireton, my best of Sons. Noble, in his Memoirs of the Cromwell Family, says that the fact Fleetwood had not the abilities of her first husband gave his wife much concern, as she saw with great regret the ruin his conduct must bring on herself and her children.
[p. 366] Richard’s Wife. Richard Cromwell at the age of 23 married Dorothy, daughter of Richard Major, of Hursley, Hampshire.
[p. 366] glorious Titles. Cromwell’s wife was, as a matter of fact, very averse to all grandeur and state. The satires of the time laugh at her homeliness and parsimony.