A Scottish divine, Dr. Leighton, the father of the illustrious Archbishop, incurred the vengeance of the Star Chamber in 1630 on account of his treatise entitled Syon's Plea against Prelacy (1628), and received the following punishment: "To be committed to the Fleet Prison for life, and to pay a fine of ten thousand pounds to the king's use; to be degraded from the ministry; to be brought to the pillory at Westminster, while the court was sitting, and be whipped, and after the whipping to have one of his ears cut, one side of his nose slit, and be branded in the face with the letters S.S., signifying Sower of Sedition: after a few days to be carried to the pillory in Cheapside on a market-day, and be there likewise whipped, and have the other ear cut off, and the other side of his nose slit, and then to be shut up in prison for the remainder of his life, unless his Majesty be graciously pleased to enlarge him." A sentence quite sufficiently severe to deter any rash scribe from venturing upon authorship! Maiming an author, cutting off his hands, or ears, or nose, seems to have been a favourite method of criticism in the sixteenth century. One John Stubbs had his right hand cut off for protesting against the proposed marriage of Queen Elizabeth with the Duke of Anjou, which bold act he committed in his work entitled Discoverie of a Gaping Gulf whereinto England is like to be swallowed by another French marriage, if the Lord forbid not the banes by letting her Majestie see the sin and punishment thereof (1579). Hallam states that the book was far from being a libel on the Virgin Queen, but that it was written with great affection. However, it was pronounced to be "a fardell of false reports, suggestions, and manifest lies." Its author and Page, the bookseller, were brought into the open market at Westminster, and their right hands were cut off with a butcher's knife and mallet. With amazing loyalty, Stubbs took off his cap with his left hand and shouted, "Long live Queen Elizabeth!"
The autocratic Queen had a ready method of dealing with obnoxious authors, as poor Peter Wentworth discovered, who wrote A Pithy Exhortation to Her Majesty for establishing her Successor to the Crown, and for his pains was committed to the Tower, where he pined and died. This work advocated the claims of James VI. of Scotland, and was written in answer to a pamphlet entitled A Conference about the Next Succession to the Crown of England, published by R. Doleman (1594). The Jesuit R. Parsons, Cardinal Allen, and Sir Francis Englefield were the authors, who advocated the claims of Lord Hertford's second son, or the children of the Countess of Derby, or the Infanta of Spain. The authors were safe beyond seas, but the printer was hung, drawn, and quartered.
John Hales wrote A Declaration of Succession of the Crown of England, in support of Lord Hertford's children by Lady Catherine Grey, and was sent to the Tower.
James I., by his craft and guile, accomplished several notable and surprising matters, and nothing more remarkable than actually to persuade the Pope to punish an Italian writer, named Reboul, for publishing an apology for the English Roman Catholics who refused to take the oath of allegiance required by the English monarch in 1606, after the discovery of the gunpowder plot. This certainly was a singular and remarkable performance, and must have required much tact and diplomacy. It is conjectured that the artful King so flattered the Pope as to induce him to protect the English sovereign from the attacks of his foes. Reboul's production was very virulent, exhorting all Catholics to go constantly to England to excite a rising against the King, and to strangle the tyrant with their hands. The Pope ordered the furious writer to be hanged, and an account of his execution, written by a Venetian senator, is found among Casaubon's collection of letters.
The most famous victim of the Star Chamber was William Prynne, whose work Histriomastix, or the Player's Scourge, directed against the sinfulness of play-acting, masques, and revels, aroused the indignation of the Court. This volume of more than a thousand closely printed quarto pages contains almost all that was ever written against plays and players; not even the Queen was spared, who specially delighted in such pastimes, and occasionally took part in the performances at Court.
Prynne was ejected from his profession, condemned to stand in the pillory at Westminster and Cheapside, to lose both his ears, one in each place, to pay a fine of £5,000, and to be kept in perpetual imprisonment. A few years later, on account of his News from Ipswich, he was again fined £5,000, deprived of the rest of his ears, which a merciful executioner had partially spared, branded on both cheeks with S.L. (Schismatical Libeller), and condemned to imprisonment for life in Carnarvon Castle. He was subsequently removed to the Castle of Mont Orgueil, in Jersey, where he received kind treatment from his jailor, Sir Philip de Carteret. Prynne was conducted in triumph to London after the victory of the Parliamentarian party, and became a member of the Commons. His pen was ever active, and he left behind him forty volumes of his works, a grand monument of literary activity.
Associated with Prynne was Burton, the author of two sermons For God and King, who wrote against Laud and his party, and endeavoured to uphold the authority of Charles, upon which he imagined the bishops were encroaching. Burton suffered the same punishment as Prynne; and Bastwick, a physician, incurred a like sentence on account of his Letany, and another work entitled Apologeticus ad Praesules Anglicanos, which were written while the author was a prisoner in the Gatehouse of Westminster, and contained a severe attack upon the Laudian party, the High Commission, and the Church of England. He had previously been imprisoned and fined 1,000 pounds for his former works Elenchus Papisticae Religionis and Flagellum Pontificis.
During this period of severe literary criticism lived John Selden, an author of much industry and varied learning. He was a just, upright, and fearless man, who spoke his mind, upheld what he deemed to be right in the conduct of either King or Parliament, and was one of the best characters in that strange drama of the Great Rebellion. He was the friend and companion of Littleton, the Lord Keeper of the Great Seal, and together they studied the Records, and were expert in the Books of Law, being the greatest antiquaries in the profession. Selden had a great affection for Charles; but the latter was exceedingly enraged because Selden in an able speech in the House of Commons declared the unlawfulness of the Commission of Array, for calling out the Militia in the King's name, founded upon an ancient Act of Parliament in the reign of Henry IV., which Selden said had been repealed. When Lord Falkland wrote a friendly letter to remonstrate with him, he replied courteously and frankly, recapitulating his arguments, and expressing himself equally opposed to the ordinance of the Parliamentarians, who wished to summon the Militia without the authority of the King. With equal impartiality and vigour Selden declared the illegality of this measure, and expected that the Commons would have rejected it, but he found that "they who suffered themselves to be entirely governed by his Reason when those conclusions resulted from it which contributed to their own designs, would not be at all guided by it, or submit to it, when it persuaded that which contradicted and would disappoint those designs." [Footnote: Clarendon's History of the Rebellion, vol. i., p. 667.] His work De Decimis, in which he tried to prove that the giving of tithes was not ordered by any Divine command, excited much contention, and aroused the animosity of the clergy. In consequence of this in 1621 he was imprisoned, and remained in custody for five years. On the dissolution of Parliament in 1629, being obnoxious to the royal party, he was sent to the Tower, and then confined in a house of correction for pirates. But as a compensation for his injuries in 1647 he received £5,000 from the public purse and became a member of the Long Parliament. He was by no means a strong partisan of the Puritan party, and when asked by Cromwell to reply to the published works in favour of the martyred King he refused. He lived until 1654 and wrote several works, amongst which are Mare clausum, which was opposed to the Mare liberum of the learned Dutch historian Grotius, Commentaries on the Arundel Marbles (1629), and Researches into the History of the Legislation of the Hebrews.
John Tutchin, afterwards editor of the Observator, was punished by the merciless Jeffreys in his Bloody Assize for writing seditious verses, and sentenced to seven years' imprisonment and to be flogged every year through a town in Dorsetshire. The court was filled with indignation at this cruel sentence, and Tutchin prayed rather to be hanged at once. This privilege was refused, but as the poor prisoner, a mere youth, was taken ill with smallpox, his sentence was remitted. Tutchin became one of the most pertinacious and vehement enemies of the House of Stuart.
Delaune's Plea for the Nonconformists was very fatal to its author, and landed him in Newgate, where the poor man died. Some account of this book and its author is given in a previous volume of the Book-Lover's Library (Books Condemned to be Burnt), and the writer founds upon it an attack upon the Church of England, whereas the Church had about as much to do with the persecution of poor Delaune as the writer of Condemned Books! There are other conclusions and statements also propounded by the writer of that book, which to one less intolerant than himself would appear entirely unwarrantable. But this is not the place for controversy.