Daily entries from the 17th century London diary
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Wikipedia
William Prynne (1600 – 24 October 1669) was a seventeenth-century English author, polemicist, and political figure. He was a prominent Puritan opponent of the church policy of the Archbishop of Canterbury, William Laud.
Born at Swainswick, near Bath, Somerset, he was educated at Bath Grammar School and Oriel College, Oxford. In 1621 he entered Lincoln's Inn, one of the Inns of Court, to study law. Early in his life, Prynne began writing a series of attacks on the current Arminian high church policies of the government, and on the (by Puritan standards) lax morals prevalent at Court. Like many Puritans he was strongly opposed to stage plays and he included in his Histriomastix (1632) a denunciation of actresses which was widely felt to be an attack of Queen Henrietta Maria. He was tried in the Star Chamber in 1633 and sentenced to imprisonment, a £5000 fine, and the removal of part of his ears. He was, however, able to continue his activities from prison, and in 1637 he was sentenced (along with John Bastwick and Henry Burton) [1] to the removal of the rest of his ears and to be branded with letters S L (seditious libeller). He affected that these in fact stood for stigmata Laudis (the marks of Laud).
He was released by the Long Parliament in 1640, and supported the Parliamentary cause in the English Civil War. He was able to have the satisfaction of overseeing the trial of William Laud, which eventually ended in the latter's execution. In the rapidly shifting climate of opinion of the time, Prynne, having been at the forefront of radical opposition, soon found himself a conservative figure, defending Presbyterianism against the Independents favoured by Oliver Cromwell and the army. He was for a time a member of Parliament, but was expelled in Pride's Purge.
He became a thorn in Cromwell's side, and was imprisoned from 1650 to 1653 for his opposition to military government. Eventually, he supported the Restoration of the English monarchy, and was rewarded with public office: he became the Keeper of Records in the Tower of London.
Prynne died in London in May 1669. In his lifetime he wrote some 200 books and pamphlets, though Histriomastix is the one of his works that receives most attention from modern scholars, for its relevance to English Renaissance theatre.
[edit] References
- Kirby, Ethyn WIlliams. William Prynne: A Study in Puritanism. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1931.
- Lamont, William M. Puritanism and Historical Controversy. Montreal, McGill-Queen's Press, 1996.
[edit] External links
- Works by or about William Prynne in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
Annotations
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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.
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portrait of William Prynne
http://www.npg.org.uk/live/search/portrait.asp?LinkID=mp03672&rNo=0&role=sit
bio:
http://home.btclick.com/esoft6/dance/people/Prynne.html
———-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
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“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.”
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William Prynne article in two online encyclopedias: