PRYNNE, WiLi,iAn, noted as a pamphleteer and active politician during the reign of Charles I., and the subsequent period of the commonwealth, was born near Bath in the year 1600. He received his early education there, and was afterward transferred to Oriel college, Oxford, where, in 1620, be took his bachelor's degree. Selecting the law as his profession, he entered himself at Lincoln's inn, where he became a bendier and reader; but it does not appear that lie ever very seriously endeavored to obtain practice at the bar. He was early drawn into the vortex of ecclesiastical controversy, and speedily made himself heard of as a champion of the puritan party. In 1632 appeared his Histriamas tir, or a Scourge for Stage-Players, a tasteless and scurrilous attack on the popular amusements of the period, which procured him the attention of the authorities. For this performance he underwent prosecution in the star chamber, with results sufficiently unpleasant. His sentence involved him in a fine of £3,000, degradation from the bar, expulsion from Oxford and Lincoln's inn, the loss of both his ears in the pillory, and the shock to his vanity as an author of seeing his book burned in public by the hangman. He was, moreover, condemned to perpetual imprisonment, and immured in the tower accordingly. If the severity of the punishment seems, at first sight, astounding in its disproportion to the nature and amount of the offense, it -is perhaps sufficiently explained by the fact that Prynne, by his i_revious issue of a series of anti-prelatical tracts, as by other indications of hostility, had made himself most obnoxious to archbishop Laud and the clergy. Three,years after, the pertinacious offender found means to publish from his prison another pamphlet, in which he fiercely attacked the hierarchy, and was unsparing in his personal abuse of Laud and certain other bishops. For this he was again prosecuted:, a fine of £5,000 was imposed upon him; he was once more pilloried, losing such stumps of ears as the executioner had before spared; and was branded on both cheeks with the letters S. L.'(seditious libeler). Ile was then removed to Caernarvon
castle, and afterward to that of ment Orgueil, Jersey,where he remained a close prisoner, till, in- 1641—the long parliament then sitting—he was released by a warrant of the house of commons, and a tumultuous expression of popular sympathy celebrated Ms restora tion to liberty. Shortly afterward lie was sent to parliament as member for Newport, in Cornwall, and for some years was actively, and at times even prominently engaged on the popular side in the proceedings of the house of commons. In the extreme measures, however, leading to the deposition and death of the king, he declined all share; and being one of those of whom Cromwell shortly after " purged" the house of commons, he pro ceeded to assail him in print with an asperity not inferior to that with which he had before made war upon the bishops, as a consequence of which imprudence he was once more subjected to Several years' imprisonment. On Cromwell's death he returned to his place in parliament, interesting himself in the royal cause; and after the restor ation, the office was bestowed on him of keeper of the records in the tower. Subse quently his inveterate habit of envenomed pamphleteering involved him in difficulties with the house of commons, from which, on a charge of seditious libel, he narrowly escaped expulsion. He died at Lincoln's inn in Oct., 1669. The continuous stream of writings on the perilous topics of the day, which brought him so constantly into trouble, represents but a fraction of Prynne's literary activity. He busied himself chiefly as a compiler of matter illustrative of constitutional and parliainentary history. Ills most valuable works in this field are the Calendar of Parliamentary Writs, and his Records, both of which contain much that is useful and important.