William Prynne (MP Bath, Somerset) (Pepys' Diary)

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Paul Brightwell on 4 Mar 2003 Link to this

Mr Prin, with the old fashioned basket-hilt sword, is probably the Bath lawyer, MP and indefatigable pamphleteer William Prynne (1600-1669). His reception when he takes his seat in the House, the ‘great many great shouts’, show, with Pepys’ several other references to him, what a famous figure he was at the time.

Prynne first made his name as a hardline Puritan & a particular enemy of the theatre. His furious 'Histriomastix The Players Scourge' of 1632 ran to more than a thousand pages and personally offended the King, leading to the Star Chamber, prison & mutilation (having both ears cut off and ‘SL’ for ‘seditious libeller’ branded on his cheeks, for which reasons he thereafter wore his hair very long).

The Long Parliament freed Prynne in 1640 and in 1648 he entered the Commons himself, but took side against Cromwell and the Independents. He opposed Army demands for the execution of Charles I and was expelled in Pride’s Purge. He damned the Rump as an ‘unParliamentary Junto’ and throughout the 1650s was an irrepressible (& appallingly long-winded) propagandist for the secluded members. He was imprisoned again in the 1650s and came round to supporting Restoration. In 1660 he was rewarded with the post of official archivist to the Tower.

vicente on 27 May 2004 Link to this

portrait of William Prynne

http://www.npg.org.uk/live/search/portrait.asp?...
bio:
http://home.btclick.com/esoft6/dance/people/Pry...
-------1600-1669, English political figure and Puritan pamphleteer. Beginning his attacks on Arminian doctrine in 1627, he soon earned the enmity of William Laud . When Prynne's strictures on the theater in his book, Historiomastix (1632), were interpreted as an attack on Charles I and his queen, he was fined, imprisoned (1633), pilloried (1634), and partly shorn of his ears.
http://www.encyclopedia.com/html/P/Prynne-W1.asp

Pedro on 4 Jul 2006 Link to this

“In 1660 he was rewarded with the post of official archivist to the Tower.”

In her biography of Catherine, Mackay says…

… He had been transformed into a monarchist, by the insight of the King. When complaints had been made against him, Charles had replied: “Odds fish! He wants something to do. I’ll make him Keeper of the Tower Records, and set him to putting them in order. That will keep him busy for the next twenty years.”