PRYNNE, William (c.1601-69), of Swainswick, Som. and Lincoln’s Inn, Mdx.

William Prynne was unquestionably one of the most controversial puritans of the seventeenth century – a man whose notoriety was such that he inspired satirical characters. His reputation rests upon his prolific track record as an author, who between 1626 and 1669 published over 200 titles, ranging from broadsides and short pamphlets to extremely lengthy polemics and treatises. Texts laden with scholarly references, from biblical citations to legal precedents and archival sources, quickly earned him the nickname of ‘Marginal’ Prynne, and the fiery and sometimes bitter nature of his work ensured that he fell foul of successive regimes, resulting in lengthy bouts of imprisonment and the loss of his ears on the pillory, twice. He was – and was referred to as – ‘famous’, and was loved and loathed in equal measure.31Mercurius Pragmaticus no. 7 (26 Oct.-2 Nov. 1647), sig. G2v (E.412.16); Ath. Ox. i. 481. Puritans were apt to call him ‘honest’ Prynne (George Thomason), ‘the greatest and truest sufferer against those evils of that time’ (Thomas Edwards).32W. Prynne, A Plea for Sr George Booth (1660, 669.f.23.1); T. Edwards, Gangraena (1646), ii. 107. Royalists, on the other hand, mocked him as ‘crop ear’, ‘a father of the faction’, complained about his ‘industrious malice’, and dismissed him as ‘an hot-brained and half-learned schismatical lawyer’ (Sir Philip Warwick*). What is striking, however, is Prynne’s ability to turn friends into enemies and enemies into (grudging) friends. It was a sometime ally who accused him of being ‘a malicious blood-thirsty-man’, while having demanded repentance for all the ink that he had ‘spattered on the face of majesty’, royalists eventually came to recognise that his political and religious beliefs were underpinned by a profound respect for monarchical authority, and to appreciate his energy on behalf of the Stuart cause.33J. Taylor, Crope-eare Curried (Oxford, 1644); Mercurius Pragmaticus no. 18 (11-18 Jan. 1648), sig. S2-v (E.423.1); P. Heylyn, A Briefe Relation of the Death and Sufferings (1645, E.269.20), 2; Warwick, Mems. Charles I, 183; Mercurius Pragmaticus no. 16 [40] (26 Dec.-9 Jan. 1649), np (E.421.29); [W. Fiennes], Vindiciae Veritatis (1646), 47. Energy was probably Prynne’s most remarkable trait, and his zeal as a public figure – lawyer, administrator and MP, as well as author and antiquarian – meant that few would have doubted that he was ‘busy Mr Prynne’, the ‘famous paper kite’.34Whitelocke, Mems. i. 226.

Early career

Prynne’s family traced its origins to Shropshire, but had settled in Bristol by the 1530s. His great-grandfathers included not just a subdean of Lincoln Cathedral, but also the prominent merchant Edward Prynne, who served as Bristol’s sheriff and as the first master of the Merchant Adventurers.35J. le Neve, Fasti Ecclesiae Anglicanae (Oxford, 1854), ii. 40, 90, 158, 186; P. McGrath, The Merchant Venturers of Bristol (Bristol, 1975), 10; D.H. Sacks, The Widening Gate. Bristol and the Atlantic Economy 1450-1700 (Oxford, 1991), 95-6; The Vis. of Som. ed. F. Weaver (Exeter, 1885), 125-6. By the late sixteenth century the family was loyal and Protestant. Prynne’s grandfather, Erasmus, offered £25 to help defeat the Spanish Armada in 1588.36PROB11/80/249; Glos. N and Q, i. 440-2. His father, Thomas, served as churchwarden at Swainswick near Bath, where he was a tenant farmer of Oriel College, Oxford, while Prynne’s mother was a daughter of a prominent Bath clothier, William Sherston†, who served as the town’s MP between 1584 and 1604.37E. Kirby, William Prynne, a Study in Puritanism (Cambridge, Mass. 1931), 4-5; Docs. Relating to the Procs. Against William Prynne ed. S.R. Gardiner (Cam. Soc. n.s. xviii), p. vi; HP Commons 1558-1603; PROB11/138/366 (William Sherston). Thereafter, Oriel and Bath both became central to Prynne’s own life: he studied under Thomas Shrewsbury and James Sharpe, an Oriel graduate, at Bath grammar school, where his contemporaries included a life-long associate, Humphrey Chambers, who subsequently became rector of nearby Claverton and a member of the Westminster Assembly.38Procs. Against Prynne ed. Gardiner, p. x; Peach, Swainswick, 48; K.E. Symons, The Grammar School of King Edward VI Bath (Bath, 1934), 107, 133-42, 194-5, 201-2; L. Inn Lib. Admiss. Bk. 5, f. 58v. Prynne then progressed to Oriel, and retained his links with the college – as both tenant and benefactor – for the rest of his life.39Peach, Swainswick, 58-9, 100, 130; Brown, Abstracts of Som. Wills, 35-6.

At Oriel, where Prynne was admitted as a commoner in 1616, he found an unpromising tutor in Giles Widdowes, a friend of Endymion Porter, chaplain to Katherine, duchess of Buckingham, and someone whose anti-sabbatarian views made him a favourite of Bishop William Laud.40C.L. Shadwell, Registrum Orielense (1893),152, 158, 228; G.C. Richards and L.L.Shadwell, The Provosts and Fellows of Oriel College Oxford (Oxford, 1922), 92-3; ‘Giles Widdowes’, Oxford DNB. The two men eventually fell out very publicly, and it seems likely that Prynne quickly aligned himself with noted puritans, including perhaps other Oriel alumni like Sir Robert Harley* and Richard Knightley*, and following his admission to Lincoln’s Inn he evidently became a ‘great follower’ of its preacher, John Preston. In 1630 Prynne edited one of Preston’s sermons, and dedicated it to Knightley, Sir Nathaniel Rich† and John Pym*.41Procs. Against Prynne ed. Gardiner, p. xxvi; P. Heylyn, Cyprianus Anglicus (1671), 149; J. Preston, A Sermon of Spirituall Life and Death (1630). Already a puritan polemicist by the time he was called to the bar in 1628, Prynne was not yet a Presbyterian, remaining comfortable with the kind of episcopalian regime that he associated with Archbishop John Whitgift.42W. Prynne, A Breviate of the Prelates Intollerable Usurpations (Amsterdam, 1637), 124. His opposition was to Arminianism, and his attack on Richard Montague, The Perpetuitie of a Regenerate Man’s Estate (1626), was dedicated to Archbishop George Abbot and licensed by Abbot’s chaplain, Daniel Featley.43W. Prynne, The Perpetuitie of a Regenerate Mans Estate (1626), sig. A2; Prynne, New Discovery, 103. Nevertheless, it landed Prynne in trouble, and following the proclamation against religious disputation (14 June 1626) Montague complained to John Cosin, then archdeacon of the West Riding, that Prynne was one of those who ‘so little … care for authority’.44The Corresp. of John Cosin ed. J. Ornsby (Surtees Soc. lii), i. 102. In October 1627 Prynne was called before the court of high commission to answer charges that his book contained ‘passages to great scandal of the Church of England and particular persons’, although in a sign of the defiance that would become a halmark of his career, Prynne responded with a legal prohibition, with the result that the book was merely burnt in private.45LI Black Bks. ii. 272-4; The Court and Times of Charles I ed. T. Birch (1841), i. 297.

Undeterred, Prynne produced further tracts, such as Healthes Sicknesse and The Unlovelinesse of Love-Lockes (both 1628), as well as the Briefe Survey and Censure of Mr Cozens his Couzening Devotions, which was dedicated to the House of Commons and apparently written at the request of certain MPs. This too was published with Featley’s support, but it led to the publisher being questioned, and prompted Cosin to complain about ‘barking libellers’.46CD 1628, iii. 151, 492; HMC Lords, xi. 429; W. Prynne, Canterburies Doom (1646), 185; Corresp. of John Cosin, i. 139-40. On this occasion the matter was taken up by the Commons, although Prynne once again responded to the threat of censure by securing a prohibition from the judges of common pleas (Nov. 1628), thereby provoking a complaint to Charles I, and prompting Laud to exclaim that Prynne deserved to be ‘laid by the heels’.47Add. 35331, f. 25v; Ct. and Times of Charles I, i. 431-2; HMC Lords, xi. 392-8; True Informer no. 27 (23-30 Mar. 1644), 192-3 (E.39.24). Since he refused to comply with further orders against public disputation, Prynne became a marked man. The pattern of reprisals and defiance continued following his tracts Anti-Arminianisme (1629), The Church of Englands Old Antithesis to New Arminianism (1629) and God No Imposter (1630). He was becoming the focus of rumours and news reports – that he was an associate of John Pym*, that he had engaged in loose talk about George Villiers, 1st duke of Buckingham, and that he had been imprisoned – the last of which turned out to be inaccurate.48SP16/141, ff. 10, 17; SP16/142, f. 22; SP16/144, f. 48; SP16/158, f. 49; CSP Dom. 1628-9, pp. 513, 519, 525, 538, 563, 569; 1629-31, p. 166; 1625-49, p. 341; Prynne, Canterburies Doom, 185; Harl. 980, f. 236v; Harl. 6383, f. 29; Diary of John Rous ed. M.A.E. Green (1856), pp. 37-8; Ct. and Times of Charles I, ii. 21.

That Prynne was not prosecuted at this stage is surprising, given Laud’s comment that ‘we must not sit here to punish poor snakes and let him go scot free’, but probably indicates that he was protected by Archbishop Abbot.49S.R. Gardiner, Reports of Cases in the Cts. of Star Chamber (1886), 270-1, 313-14. Prynne evaded censure for an attack upon his former tutor, even though it was considered to be ‘very abusive’, and despite his printer (William Turner) and publisher (Michael Sparke) being questioned.50Diary of Thomas Crosfield ed. F.S. Boas (1935), 50, 52; W. Prynne, Lame Giles his Haultings (1631), 3-4, 10-14, 19, 47; CSP Dom. 1631-3, pp. 3, 35, 39; SP16/188, f. 13; SP16/190, ff. 40, 64. In 1631, when, encouraged by Laud, William Page wrote a reposte, Abbot took action against him, despite acknowledging that Prynne had written ‘scurrilously’ and regretting that he refused to ‘sit down as an idle spectator’.51LPL, MS 943, p. 97. That Prynne had ‘grown very gracious’ with Abbot is clear: the two men discussed whether or not Prynne should respond to John Ailward’s anti-puritan Historical Relation, as recommended by a noted puritan, Sir Humphrey Lynde†. This friend of Featley believed that ‘none was so fit’ as Prynne, ‘who had perused more ancient writers, and was better versed in them than any man he knew’.52Prynne, Canterburies Doom, 168-71; P. Heylyn, Cyprianus (1671), pt. i. 217.

The relationship with Abbot exemplifies Prynne’s conformity to a certain kind of episcopalianism at this date. In 1632 he even served as a churchwarden at Swainswick.53Som. RO, D/P/swk 4/2/2. Nevertheless, he gained stature amongst the godly, who channelled his energies to puritan causes. In 1632 he apparently hosted meetings at Lincoln’s Inn with men like Richard Sibbes and Sir William Masham*, and he may also have been have been involved with them in the work of the feoffees for the purchase of impropriations.54Barrington Lttrs. 227-8; Eg. 2646, f. 7; G.I. Soden, Godfrey Goodman, Bishop of Gloucester 1583-1656, 179; G. Goodman, The Two Great Mysteries of Christian Religion (1653), sig. a3v (E.216.1). He helped Edward Stephens* to challenge knighthood fines in 1631, and in the same year defended Samuel Jemmat in star chamber, following a riot that broke out following his refusal to kneel during the sacrament.55Add. 12511, ff. 1-31; Add. 11674, ff. 53v-86; Bodl. Tanner 288, ff. 90-131v, esp. 112v-14v; Gardiner, Reports of Cases, 72-3. He also joined Sir Robert Phelips† and John Harington I* of Kelston in trying to uphold a controversial order against church ales, which was passed at the Somerset assizes and opposed by William Laud.56T.G. Barnes, ‘County politics and a puritan cause celebre’, TRHS 5th ser. ix. 110-19; SP16/255, f. 39; CSP Dom. 1633-4, p, 41; Prynne, Canterburies Doom, 147.

Tribulations of the 1630s

It was Prynne’s zeal and intemperate nature, more obviously than his radicalism, that eventually led to his prosecution. The trigger was the publication of Histriomastix, his ‘voluminous invective’ against public theatres; famously lengthy – over 1,000 pages – it was in many ways very conventional. Prynne had probably begun it in the mid-1620s, and contemporaries recognised that it was compiled from ‘the words and sentences of other approved authors’, who provided his ‘only arguments’.57Winthrop Pprs. iii. 355-63; Ct. and Times of Charles I, ii. 219. Nevertheless, its attack on female actors was read as a criticism of the queen, its publication coinciding with her appearance in Walter Montague’s Shepherd’s Paradise (Jan. 1633).58W. Prynne, Histrio-Mastix. The Players Scourge, or Actors Tragedie (1633), sigs. *-*v, *2v-3v, ***, ***2, Rrrrrr4. Prynne was arrested, even though the book may actually have appeared shortly before the queen’s performance, having been licensed and mostly printed by 1632. The licenser, Thomas Buckner, confessed to having struggled to read the passages given to him in 1631, and suggested that the finished text was somewhat different, not least because the table of contents referred to female actors as ‘notorious whores’, but Prynne’s fate was far from inevitable.59Ct. and Times of Charles I, ii. 196, 222-4; William Whiteway of Dorchester his Diary ed. T. Murphy (Dorset Rec. Soc. xii), 127; Prynne, New Discovery, 7-8; Whitelocke, Mems. i. 51-2; CSP Dom. 1633-4, pp. 135-6, 417; SP16/242, f. 50; SP16/258, f. 74; FSL, Add. 920; Northants. RO, IC205. He was examined in high commission by the attorney-general, William Noy, and despatched to the Tower pending a full investigation (Jan. 1633); cartloads of his books were seized and apparently sold.60Ct. and Times of Charles I, ii. 219, 222-3, 226; CSP Dom. 1631-3, p. 524; William Whiteway Diary, 130, 134; PC2/42, f. 198; PC2/43, ff. 272, 341; Prynne, New Discovery, 9-10; Sotheby’s, The Trumbull Papers (1989), 72-3; Diary of John Rous, 70; Winthrop Pprs. iii. 107; HMC Lords xi. 374-85; Laud, Works, iv. 107. However, Noy apparently did not consider the book to be scandalous, and neither the king nor the queen were enthusiastic about a trial. The impetus for legal proceedings instead came from William Laud, who commissioned his chaplain Peter Heylyn, who ‘bore a great malice to Prynne’, to ‘peruse’ his various books in search of ‘scandalous points’.61Whitelocke, Mems. i. 51-2; Prynne, New Discovery, 9-10.

In June 1633 Prynne was brought before star chamber on a charge of sedition.62Prynne, New Discovery, 10; D’Ewes (N), 130-2. Detained close prisoner upon refusing to submit an answer (Aug.), he sought help via another puritan lawyer, Henry Sherfield†, from the earl of Dorset (Sir Edward Sackville†) (Sept.).63CSP Dom. 1633-4, pp. 188, 225; HMC Portland iii. 32; Hants RO, 44M49/L39/88; Ct. and Times Charles I, ii. 230; FSL, Add. 920. When the trial commenced in February 1634, Noy described Prynne as ‘a malignant man to the state and government of the realm’, and although Prynne’s lawyers insisted that the book had been licensed, it was decreed that Prynne – ‘assisted by the devil himself’ – sought ‘a new church, new government, and new king’. Secretary of state John Coke† claimed that Prynne ‘read more than he studied, and … wrote more than he considered’. The sentence included a fine of £5,000, life imprisonment, expulsion from Lincoln’s Inn and degradation at Oxford (17 Feb.). Despite Prynne’s expression of contrition, the queen’s support, and the conviction of some observers that this was merely ‘in terrorem, without any intention at all of execution’, in May he was made to stand in the pillory at Westminster and Cheapside, to be branded and to have his ears cropped, punishment which he apparently bore with ‘much courage’; his speech was recorded.64Houghton Lib. Harvard, MS1359; HEHL, HM80; Laud, Works, vi. 234-7. His trial attracted considerable public attention: self-professed ‘country clowns’ scrabbled for news about his fate; men like Matthew Hale* and Samuel Hartlib expressed sympathy; Prynne achieved the status of a puritan hero.65Sheffield Univ. Lib. Hartlib Pprs. 29/2/19A, 22/1/5A-9B; HMC Gawdy, 146; Add. 36989, f. 72; Letters and Pprs. of the Verney Fam. ed. J. Bruce (Cam. Soc. ser. 1, lvii) 157-8; Exhibiting overt defiance, on his return to the Tower he sent Laud an inflammatory letter, which he then ‘tore into many pieces’ when confronted with it at a hearing before William Noy. For such brazen effrontery he was committed close prisoner.66Procs. Against Prynne ed. Gardiner, 1-57; Winthrop Pprs. iii. 145, 355-63; CSP Dom. 1633-4, pp. 477, 575; SP16/260.120; HMC 8th Rep. pt. ii, 51; HMC Portland iii. 253; HMC Cowper, iii. 149; Prynne, New Discovery, 10-13; Whitelocke, Mems. i. 62; Bramston, Autobiog. 62-3; Add. 5540, ff. 118-19; Add. 5994, ff. 187-96v; William Whiteway Diary, 139, 144; PC2/43, f. 341; LI Black Bks. ii. 317-19; Diary of Thomas Crosfield ed. Boas, 71; Strafforde Letters, i. 207, 266.

If Laud thought that Prynne had been silenced – he told Viscount Wentworth (Sir Thomas Wentworth†) that ‘you need not fear Mr Prynne or his mousetraps’ – he was mistaken.67Laud, Works, vii. 118. Prynne began working alongside other puritan authors like John Bastwick and Henry Burton, meeting the latter in the Tower, and he apparently benefited from the support of Sir Robert Harley and the wife of godly merchant Rowland Wilson*.68CSP Dom. 1634-5, p. 298; Add. 61989, ff. 5, 26; Add. 70002, ff. 44-6, 168, 184, 188, 219; Whitelocke, Diary, 590-1. He also continued to act as a lawyer for other puritans who were in trouble, including Ferdinando Adams, churchwarden of St Mary at the Tower in Ipswich, who was prosecuted for opposing Laudian reforms, and whose status as an excommunicate made finding legal counsel difficult.69CSP Dom. 1635-6, pp. 47, 502, 565; 1636-7, p. 420; The True Informer no. 26 (16-23 Mar. 1644), 188 (E.38.20); The Weekly Accompt no. 39 (22-28 Mar. 1644), sig. A2v (E.39.18); HMC Lords, xi. 390-1; Laud, Works, iv. 132. Prynne produced a string of pamphlets, mostly on Dutch and Scottish presses, including A Quench-Coale (1637), which represented his contribution to the controversy over Laud’s altar policy. Another tract, against Ship Money, circulated in manuscript.70W. Prynne, Certaine Quaeries (Amsterdam, 1636); A Looking-Glasse (1636); Newes from Ipswich (1636); The Unbishoping of Timothy and Titus (Amsterdam, 1636); A Breviate of the Prelates Intollerable Usurpations (Amsterdam, 1637); Brief Instructions (1637); A Catalogue of Such Testimonies (Leiden, 1637); A Quench-Coale (Amsterdam, 1637); XVI New Quaeries (Amsterdam, 1637); CSP Dom. 1625-49, p. 540; SP16/536, ff. 77-8. To the authorities, works alleging ‘innovation in the church’ were ‘exceeding scandalous’, and Laud’s determination to have them burnt by the hangman reflected recognition of their wide dissemination (reaching men like John Winthrop in New England); they were ‘full of sedition’ and ‘made to stir up some villainy’.71Laud, Works, vii. 300-302; Cen. Kent. Studs. U260/1/CB137; Winthrop Pprs. iii. 355-63, 375. It became clear that Prynne and his associates (including Rice Boy and Edmund Chillenden) had developed a network of sympathisers across the country, including John Ashe* of Freshford in Somerset, whose own contacts with clothiers and puritan ministers (like Richard Bernard of Batcombe) ensured the largest possible readership for such material.72Som. RO, DD/PH/221, f. 45; D/D/Ca 277, 308, 309, 317; HMC 3rd Rep. 191; Longleat, Whitelocke pprs. VII, ff. 86-92; CSP Dom. 1636-7, pp. 393-4, 427, 487; Ct. and Times of Charles I, ii. 273-4; SP16/346, f. 132; SP16/349, f. 99.

By early 1637, convinced that there was ‘a necessity that somewhat more be done’ to counter a plot ‘to stir up mutiny and sedition among the people’, Laud resolved to pursue further legal proceedings in star chamber, this time against the triumvirate of Burton, Bastwick and Prynne. He reflected rather ominously upon earlier puritans like Nicholas Udall and John Penry, who had received harsh sentences ‘for less that those men have done’, despite protesting to Wentworth that ‘I desire no blood’. Laud explained that ‘Prynne, Bastwick and Burton have increased their violence, and their railing in such sort as would weary patience itself’, adding that ‘if some speedy order be not taken … I shall have too much cause to think that my life is aimed at’.73Prynne, New Discovery, 16-17; Ct. and Times of Charles I, ii. 260-1, 273-4; Laud, Works, vii. 317, 329, 341-2; PC2/47, ff. 55, 61.

Attitudes towards Prynne were hardening. Sir Robert Phelips referred to the defendants as ‘those odd lunatics’, while William Hawkins noted that the accusations were ‘foul enough if it be proved’.74Kent Archives, U1107/O12; U951/Z11; Strafforde Letters, ii. 57; HMC Gawdy, 163; HMC De L’Isle and Dudley, vi. 96, 105; Som. RO, DD/PH/221/20. Prynne was accused of having contributed to the Divine Tragedy, and of having written News from Ipswich, ‘a pernicious, damnable, scurrilous invective and libel tending to the inciting of your people to use their power and force in factious and discontented ways’. Most importantly, he was alleged to have conspired with printers and supporters from a variety of mercantile backgrounds, who had ‘long envied and maligned’ the king’s ‘happy government and the good discipline of the church whereuonto they ought in all reason to yield obedience and reverence, forasmuch as it tends to peace, unity, and uniformity’. Specifically, they had, ‘by confederacy, among themselves out of some schismatical and factious humours … causelessly endeavoured as much as in them lieth to villify and defame’ Charles’s ‘ecclesiastical government and proceedings’, and raised ‘diverse false and scandalous imputations upon the proceedings of all’ these courts and ‘especially … high commission’.75Longleat, Whitelocke Pprs. VIII, ff. 209-13; CSP Dom. 1637, pp. 48-9; SP16/354. ff. 176, 180, 181; SP16/354, ff. 391-8; Add. 29606, f. 62; Bodl. Tanner 70, ff. 124-30; HMC 12th Rep. IX, 142. Prynne’s collaborators, including his servant Nathaniel Wickens, were interrogated repeatedly and subjected to additional proceedings in high commission, particularly regarding the logistical aspects of their propaganda campaign and their connections to stationers like Gregory Dexter.76CSP Dom. 1637, pp. 174-5; SP16/357, ff. 172-3; Bodl. Bankes 18, ff. 41-3.

In response, Prynne submitted a petition to the king, expressing sorrow for any offence caused, seeking clemency and professing loyalty, but also promising a vigorous challenge to the procedures against him and refusing to appear in court until he was granted counsel.77PC2/47, f. 116v; Procs. Against Prynne ed. Gardiner, 61; Prynne, New Discovery, 16-18; Add. 69915, f. 51. When this demand was met, moreover, Prynne prepared a cross-bill that charged Laud with having usurped the royal prerogative, with innovations in religion and with the licensing of popish books, although he was not allowed to submit this under his own name, and it was deemed to be ‘very scandalous and far exceeding all things this writer surreptitiously printed’. Again, his chamber in the Tower was searched and he was confined a close prisoner. He was then proceeded against pro confesso (May 1637). Some even believed that he might be ‘indicted for his life’.78Prynne, New Discovery, 19-34, 38-9, 45-6; Prynne, Canterburies Doom, 110; Strafforde Letters, ii. 74; PC2/47, f. 148; CSP Dom. 1636-7, p. 565; Add. 70002, ff. 60-1; HMC 7th Rep. 593; HMC De L‘Isle and Dudley, vi. 108; D’Ewes (N), 180-2; FSL, Add. 899. Such were the tensions that Viscount Conway (Sir Edward Conway II†) referred to an impending ‘war’ – or ‘bellum grammaticale’ – ‘between the bishops and the puritans’.79Add. 70002, f. 138.

The upshot of the subsequent trial was that Prynne was sentenced to be stigmatised and to have his ears cropped (again), to be fined £5,000, and to be subjected to perpetual imprisonment (14 June 1637).80CSP Dom. 1637, pp. 214, 218-9, 260; SP16/361, f. 92; Procs. Against Prynne ed. Gardiner, 75-6; Add. 28011, f. 38; Add. 61941, f. 189; Prynne, New Discovery, 35-7; CUL, Ee.II.1, ff. 4-8; HMC De L’Isle and Dudley, vi. 111; Laud, Works, vi. 35-70; vii. 355-6. Refused pen and paper, he nevertheless submitted a lengthy petition to the star chamber judges denouncing the proceedings. Execution of the sentence in Palace Yard – and later in Cheapside – provided drama subsequently related at length in print.81PC2/48, f. 31v; Procs. Against Prynne ed. Gardiner, 62; CSP Dom. 1637, pp. 249-50; Prynne, New Discovery, 67-74. Prynne lectured a substantial crowd about his treatment and the law of libel, reflecting upon ‘the times we are fallen into’, in which criticising bishops had become a more serious offence than libelling monarchs. He then encouraged his ‘friend’ the executioner to ‘come, burn me, cut me, I fear it not; I have learned to fear the fire of hell, and not what man can do unto me; come sear me, sear me, I shall bear in my body the marks of Lord Jesus’. He was duly branded on each cheek, and the attempt to remove the remainder of his ears was apparently done ‘very scurvily’, and nearly led to the severing of his jugular, although Prynne avowed that ‘the more I am beaten down, the more I am lift up’. According to Denis Bond*, Prynne and the others behaved ‘meekly’ but ‘resolutely’, while the bulk of the crowd – ‘except some ruffians’ – ‘shed many tears’.82Bramston, Autobiog. 62-3; Prynne, New Discovery, 64; D’Ewes (N), 180-2; CSP Dom. 1637, p. 287; SP16/363, f. 42; Procs. Against Prynne ed. Gardiner, 86-90; Diary of John Rous ed. Green, 82; Dorset RO, D.53/1, p. 27. Indeed, as Prynne returned to the Tower he composed an epigram in which he described the initials branded on his cheeks – intended to signify ‘seditious libeller’ – as ‘Stigmata Laudis’, the mark of Laud.83CSP Dom. 1637, p. 287; SP16/363, f. 42; W. Prynne, Comfortable Cordials (1641), 15.

This episode made a profound impact. Some who believed that the sentence had been ‘just’, like Sir Philip Warwick†, recognised that the ‘prosecution rather served to create envy, than deter any from their scandalous practices’.84Warwick, Mems. Charles I, 99. When Prynne was removed to a more remote prison, at Carnarvon, the Catholic courtier Sir Kenelm Digby, who noted the irony that some puritans kept ‘bloody sponges and handkerchiefs’ as relics of Prynne’s punishment, described his journey as a ‘pilgrimage’, involving ‘so great flocking of the people to see it’; many accompanied him along the route, prayed for him, dressed his wounds and even dined with him.85CSP Dom. 1637, pp. 332, 433-4; Procs. Against Prynne ed. Gardiner, 63; PC2/48, f. 71; SP16/364, f. 68; SP16/367, f. 129; SP 16/368, f. 14; Prynne, New Discovery, 76-7, 81; HMC De L’Isle and Dudley, vi. 120. A concerned government took legal action against prominent local puritans who feted Prynne at Chester, and even against the men who had been responsible for conveying him out of London.86Prynne, New Discovery, 92-107; CSP Dom. 1637, pp. 403, 414, 492; SP16/367, f. 18, 59; SP16/370, f. 31; PC2/48, ff. 102v, 142, 180; HMC Cowper, ii. 167; Procs. Against Prynne ed. Gardiner, 66-7; Strafforde Letters, ii. 115; Cheshire RO, ZAB/2, f. 42v. Within weeks, Prynne was removed to the seclusion of Mount Orgueil Castle on Jersey, not least in order to make it harder for him to engage in further writing and printing.87PC2/48, ff. 79, 93, 96-v, 106-v; PC2/49, f. 43v; Procs. Against Prynne ed. Gardiner, 63-9; D’Ewes (N), 180-2; Prynne, New Discovery, 85-8; Mount-Orgueil (1641), dedication; Comfortable Cordials; CSP Dom. 1636-7, p. 565; 1637, pp. 421-2; 1637-8, pp. 298-9; SP16/367, f. 192. In this regard, the authorities were more or less successful, although they certainly became concerned that Prynne was able to develop contacts with Scottish Covenanters.88W. Prynne, Lord Bishops none of the Lords Bishops (Amsterdam, 1640); CSP Dom. 1625-49, pp. 594-5.

The Long Parliament and rehabilitation

As perhaps the most famous victim of Laudian and Caroline policies, Prynne was rehabilitated in 1640, albeit only after the summoning of the Long Parliament, its short-lived predecessor having been dissolved before his case could be raised.89Prynne, New Discovery, 111. Following the reading of his petition on 7 November, the Commons ordered his release. Prynne and Burton made a triumphant ride from Dartmouth to London, entertained by well-wishers along the way and met at Brentford by 2,000 people on horseback and as many as 100 coaches (28 Nov.). The ringing of church bells accompanied their slow progress onwards. ‘A world of people’ appeared at Charing Cross, many wearing rosemary and bay as a sign of remembrance, and they were conducted to the City amid ‘great pomp’ and ‘great rejoicing’, as if ‘let down from heaven’. While the king expressed ‘disgust’ at such a ‘confluence of the vulgar’ and apparently contemplated punishing some of the ‘giddy zealots’ involved, to puritans like Robert Woodford, Burton and Prynne were ‘holy living martyrs’.90D’Ewes (N), 4-5, 18, 86; Harl. 379, f. 75; CJ ii. 22a; SO3/12, unfol.; SP16/473, f. 116; Prynne, New Discovery, 113-15; H. Burton, A Narration of the Life of Mr Henry Burton (1643), 39-43 (E.94.10); Whitelocke, Mems. i. 113; Add. 38490, f. 10v; HMC 9th Rep. pt. 2, p. 499 (Woodford); HMC Cowper, ii. 267; Brilliana Harley Letters, 104; Baillie Lttrs and Jnls. i. 277; HMC De L'Isle and Dudley, vi. 346; J.L. Englands Doxologie (1641), 10 (E.172.20); CSP Dom. 1640-1, p. 312; Diary of Henry Townshend ed. Willis Bund, i. 10; Salusbury Corresp. 114; All the Memorable & Wonder-strikinge, Parlamentary Mercies (1642, E.116.49).

Prynne met Bishop John Williams and attended a service at Edmund Calamy’s church before appearing before the Commons (30 Nov.) and submitting a formal petition (3 Dec.), whereupon his case was referred to a committee – chaired by Alexander Rigby* – also charged with considering the cases of his friends and sympathisers, and the very future of high commission and star chamber. Symbolically, it was in star chamber itself that the committee began its hearings, to which Prynne as well as Peter Heylyn were summoned.91HMC 9th Rep. pt. 2, p. 499 (Woodford); Burton, Narration, 43; Northcote Note Bk. 16, 27-8; D’Ewes (N), 86, 101-2, 107, 130-2, 136, 157-9, 180-2, 241, 251-2, 275-6, 288-9, 305-6, 310-11, 315-16, 470-1; CJ ii. 40a, 44b, 49a; The Humble Petition of Mr Prynne (1641); Prynne, New Discovery, 115-26, 146-217; Diary of Henry Townshend ed. Willis Bund, i. 18; Harl. 379, f. 75. Following Rigby’s report on Prynne’s case in April 1641, the latter was ordered to be restored at Oxford and Lincoln’s Inn, and granted £5,000, while the order transporting him to Jersey was declared illegal.92Harl. 163, ff. 41, 75-6; CJ ii. 120a, 123b-124a, 151b; HMC 6th Rep. 23-4; Prynne, New Discovery, 141-5; CSP Dom. 1640-1, p. 587; LI Black Bks. ii. 358. However, even a case like Prynne’s proved difficult to settle, and while the act for reversing his sentence was read in the Commons on 3 January 1642, he remained liable for the fines that had been imposed in the 1630s. Prynne raised this issue more than once, and as late as August 1644 he petitioned Parliament about it, but it was referred to the House of Lords (Oct. 1644), it was not finally resolved until December 1645. Even then, Prynne faced considerable difficulties in securing financial reparations for years to come, partly because ‘private’ business tended to lose out to more pressing issues, but also because Prynne became an increasingly controversial figure, even within Parliament.93CJ ii. 366a; iii. 126a; vi. 60a, 65b; PA, Main pprs. 20 Aug. 1644, 13 Dec. 1645, 1 June 1646; HMC 6th Rep. 23, 87, 119; LJ vi. 473a, 716b; vii. 18b, 26a, 30a, 34b, 273a, 282a, 352a; viii. 39b, 61a, 342a; ix. 38a.

The latter development reflected the particular version of parliamentarianism and puritanism that he espoused, usually with considerable vigour. Initially, however, he was extremely useful. He seems to have been involved in official investigations into the rise of Arminianism undertaken by Sir Robert Harley in early 1641, and his tireless efforts as a polemicist received support and encouragement from friends at Westminster.94D. Hoyle, ‘A Commons investigation of Arminianism and popery in Cambridge’, HJ xxix. 419-25; Harl. 7019, ff. 52-93; CUL, Univ. Archives, CUR 20.1 no. 6(22). In April 1641, for example, Rigby offered him 37 parcels of writings concerning the history of his own case, which presumably helped with the production of tracts like A New Discovery of the Prelates Tyranny, and he reprinted some of his earlier tracts, including his attack on Ship Money.95CSP Dom. 1640-1, p. 556; SP16/479.63; Prynne, New Discovery; Newes from Ipswich (1641, E.177.12); An Humble Remonstrance… Against the Tax of Ship-Money (1641, E.207.3). It quickly became apparent that Prynne had emerged from captivity as a much more radical figure, who not only accused Laud of being a traitor for seducing the king and trying to ‘alienate the hearts of the king’s liege people from his majesty’, but also displayed a new-found enthusiasm for root and branch reform, entailing the abolition of episcopacy.96W. Prynne, Rome for Canterbury (1641), 7-8 (E.208.10); Canterburies Tooles (1641); The Antipathie of the English Lordly Prelacie (1641). Beyond this, Prynne issued especially strident exposés of a ‘popish plot’ in tracts like The Popish Royal Favourite, which used official sources to document the favours shown towards Catholics during the 1630s.97W. Prynne, The Popish Royall Favourite (1643, E.251.9); A Pleasant Purge (1642); The Treachery and Disloyalty of Papists (1643, E.248.1). He enthusiastically supported the legitimacy of the parliamentarian cause during the civil wars, and although his arguments depended less upon resistance theory than upon the legitimacy of self-defence in the face of a regime that was in thrall to foreign powers, he advocated this position in many tracts – short works as well as his massive, multi-part account of the Soveraigne Power of Parliaments (1643).98W. Prynne, A Soveraigne Antidote (1642, E.239.6); A Moderate and Proper Reply (1642); Vox Populi (1642, E.239.5); A Vindication of Psalme 105.15 (1642, E.244.1); A Revindication of the Anoynting and Privileges of Faithfull Subjects (1643, E.244.40); The Opening of the Great Seale (1643, E.251.2); The Soveraigne Power of Parliaments and Kingdomes (1643, E.248.2). As Laud noted, this placed Prynne firmly within a ‘war party’ camp; Romes Masterpiece appeared – in August 1643 – ‘in the midst of this fury of the people’ over peace, and in order ‘to drive the people headlong into mischief’.99Laud, Works, iv. 31. Ultimately, Prynne came close to blaming the king – rather than just evil counsellors – for the country’s ills, suggesting that Charles, who had authorised the Irish rebellion, had ‘exposed himself’ to temptation, and concluding that while it was ‘far from my heart to wish or imprecate the least evil to His Majesty’, God would surely ‘break’ such men ‘with a rod of iron’.100Prynne, Popish Royal Favourite, Epistle, 35, 50-1.

By late 1643 Prynne had positioned himself, if not at the radical extreme of parliamentarianism, then at least against those for whom a swift compromise with the king was deemed possible and desirable. What really made him controversial within parliamentarian ranks, however, was his work as a lawyer, who used the courts and printing presses very obviously in tandem.

Prynne’s influence at Westminster attracted briefs from those who wished to capitalise upon it. He served Lincoln’s Inn in attending Parliament in May 1642, and also represented the interests of the Stationers’ Company.101LI Black Bks. ii. 362-3; I. Temple Lib. Petyt 511/23, ff. 14-25v; Ath. Ox. iii. 848. When Bartholomew Cable’s case was heard by the Lords in 1646, he requested – and was granted – Prynne as his counsel.102HMC 6th Rep. 113; LJ vii. 286b, 403b. In early 1644 Prynne acted as counsel for Edward Stephens* in the protracted Tewkesbury election dispute, claiming that all freemen ought to be able to vote, and that all inhabitants of the town were eligible to become freemen.103I. Temple Lib. Petyt 511/23, ff. 1-8. Such cases probably revealed Prynne’s personal interests and contacts, but attracted critical scrutiny. For example, probably early in 1642, Prynne defended Sir Philip Carteret from accusations regarding the government of Jersey, in part out of gratitude for the ‘extraordinary favours and respect’ that he had experienced as a prisoner on the island, but he was attacked by Carteret’s political enemies.104W. Prynne, The Lyar Confounded (1645), 33-41 (E.267.1); CSP Dom. 1640-1, p. 118; 1641-3, pp. 219, 308; D’Ewes (N), 208; PJ i. 474; ii. 93; HMC 5th Rep. 14, 43; SP16/490, f. 11; PA, Main pprs. 19 Aug. 1642, 9 and 26 Mar. 1642; M. Lemprière et al. ‘Pseudo-Mastix: the lyar's whipp’, Société Jersiaise, ii. 309-55; Articles Exhibited against Sir Philip Carteret (1642). John Lilburne accused him of defending malignant priests, although Prynne protested that he ‘refused to be of counsel’ with anyone that he knew to be malignant, and that he worked instead for ‘good ministers’, especially those who were ‘articled against’ by ‘separatists’.105Prynne, Lyar Confounded, 44; I. Temple Lib. Petyt 511/23. A case in point was Peter Smart, another victim of Laudian policies, for whom Prynne acted as counsel in March 1645.106LJ vii. 284b.

Legal counsel to Parliament and Laud’s trial

Prynne’s legal work for Parliament itself generated particular controversy. While his skills were highly prized, his services often served factional purposes and he was more than willing to publicise for political effect the trials with which he was involved. One clear example of this was the prosecution of Nathaniel Fiennes I* following the surrender of Bristol in July 1643. Initially, the matter was left to the adjudication of the lord general, Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex, but it quickly became a cause célèbre and intertwined with other high profile cases like those of the traitors, Sir John Hotham* and John Hotham*.107Vindiciae Veritatis, 45-7. Prynne collaborated with Clement Walker*, who had been with Fiennes in Bristol and who was sent to the Tower for publishing a response to Fiennes’s account of its surrender and for critical comments about his father, William Fiennes, 1st Viscount Saye and Sele.108C. Walker, An Answer to Col: Nathaniel Fiennes Relation (1643, E.67.36); The True Causes (1643); W. Prynne, True and Full Relation (1644), 4 (E.255.1). Both Prynne and Walker were summoned to attend the council of war appointed to consider Fiennes’s conduct. Prynne prepared for the hearing by publishing – in early November – The Doome of Cowardize and Treachery, which he styled a ‘looking glass for cowardly or corrupt governors’, and which referred explicitly to Fiennes’s behaviour in Bristol.109Prynne, True and Full Relation, 3, 6-7; CJ iii. 280b; Add. 31116, p. 169; Bodl. Carte 8, ff. 70-1. Prynne and Walker petitioned the Commons against Fiennes on 15 November (with the backing of Edward Bayntun*); their articles of accusation were read despite objections that they were ‘malicious’, ‘full of scandal’ and infringed parliamentary privilege, and then quickly reproduced in print.110CJ iii. 311a-b; Harl. 165, f. 209; Add. 31116, p. 183; Prynne, True and Full Relation, 5-6, 8-10, 14-28; Articles of impeachment and accusation…against Colonell Nathaniel Fiennes (1643, E.78.3). Fiennes complained about the ‘bitterness’ of both men, and sensed that the council of war – also designed to deal with the Hothams – was intended to acquit the former but to effect his own ‘ruin’. Others shared this view and the despatch of certain MPs to attend proceedings in St Albans in December 1643 proved to be extremely controversial.111Vindiciae Veritatis, 44, 47; CJ iii. 320b; Add. 31116, pp. 200, 203; Harl. 165, f. 245; Add. 18779, f. 14.

Fiennes’s trial was a fraught and tense affair. It was beset by niggles on a range of legal, procedural and military issues, and marked by rancour and ad hominem comments. Prynne insisted that Fiennes had requested his involvement, and he was certainly given access to official papers, but even sympathetic onlookers noted that he conducted proceedings with ‘vehemence and virulency’, and Fiennes called him a ‘malicious blood-thirsty man’, who was suffered to ‘plead and rail acccording to his usual known manner’. Fiennes went so far as to claim that Prynne was in ‘confederacy’ with Sir William Waller*, ‘his enemy’, and accused him of tampering with witnesses. Prynne, for his part, accused Fiennes of treason for surrendering ‘before utter extermity’, criticised Viscount Saye for leaning on witnesses, and insisted that Fiennes’s defence depended upon ‘kinsmen, servants, [and] footboys’, and upon ‘incompetent’ officers.112Prynne, True and Full Relation, 11-14, 37-9, 54-7, 58-9, 84-103, 107-8; Harl. 165, f. 245v; Vindiciae Veritatis, 47-8; Add. 18979, f. 14v. In the end, Fiennes was found guilty and sentenced to be executed (23 Dec.), a verdict that he dismissed as ‘predetermined’, and secured upon the evidence of ‘tapsters, children and mean persons’. In response, Prynne and Walker printed their petition to Parliament defending their actions and motivations. When they accused Mercurius Britanicus of being ‘bribed by the defendant or his partisans’ in order to defend Fiennes, the newspaper responded in kind (Feb. 1644), while Prynne produced A True and Full Relation of the whole affair in August.113Vindiciae Veritatis, 47-8; The Humble Petition of Clement Walker and William Prynne (1644, 669.f.8.44); W. Prynne, True and Full Relation, 114; A Checke to Brittanicus (1644, E.253.1); M. Nedham, A Check to the Checker of Britanicus (1644, E.34.18).

Prynne’s continuing commitment to the war effort is apparent from his involvement in the case of Colonel Edward King, summoned to the House of Lords to account for allegations he had made against his former commander, Francis Willoughby, 5th Baron Willoughby. Prynne served as King’s counsel, challenging the action against him on the basis that the case was under consideration in the Commons, and although he was unable to stop peers from declaring Colonel King ‘scandalous’ for having promoted a remonstrance against Willoughby, the incident probably signalled Prynne’s support for the more vigorous campaigning undertaken by Oliver Cromwell*, the earl of Manchester (Edward Montagu†) and the Eastern Association.114LJ vi. 573a. Prynne remained in favour as an official prosecutor. In October 1644, he was appointed – alongside Gabriel Becke* – to prosecute Connor, Lord Macguire for his part in the Irish Rebellion (2 Oct. 1644), and although the trial was subject to protracted delays, he oversaw proceedings in January and February 1645.115I. Temple Lib. Petyt 511/23, ff. 120v-115v (in reverse); CJ iii. 297a, 648b, 691b; iv. 50b; True Informer no. 48 (28 Sept.-5 Oct. 1644), 358, 360 (E.11.3); Parliament Scout no. 84 (23-30 Jan. 1645), 673 (E.26.12); Mercurius Civicus no. 89 (30 Jan.-6 Feb. 1645), 814 (E.268.9); Perfect Occurrences no. 6 (31 Jan.-7 Feb. 1645), sig. F4 (E.258.21); Perfect Diurnal no. 80 (3-10 Feb. 1645), 636 (E.258.22). Here too Prynne was both prosecutor and publicist: within weeks of Maguire’s execution he published The Whole Triall of Connor Lord Maguire (1645). Similar legal appointments followed. In December 1645, Prynne and Becke were ordered to search prisoners in the Tower, while in August 1646 Prynne was part of a legal team that planned the indictment of Sir John Stawell, a royalist, before the Somerset assizes, although that particular trial was delayed until 1650.116CSP Dom. 1645-7, p. 253; Western Circuit Assize Orders ed. Cockburn, 244. In October 1646 he was even considered for nomination as a commissioner of the great seal, although this was not pursued.117Harington’s Diary, 42. In June 1647, Prynne was among those appointed to prosecute in king’s bench another royalist, Judge David Jenkins, a particularly outspoken critic of parliamentarian jurisdiction, although this trial never took place.118Add. 31116, p. 628; Perfect Diurnall no. 204 (21-28 June 1647), 1623 (E.515.23).

Similar conclusions about Prynne’s factional alignment emerge from his most important legal and polemical role during the 1640s: the prosecution of Archbishop William Laud. For Prynne this began with an order from the Committee of Safety* that he should search Laud’s chamber in the Tower of London (May 1643), apparently with muskets cocked while the archbishop was still in bed; this led to the retrieval of 21 bundles of papers, including Laud’s diary and prayer book, and material he had tried in vain to protect or destroy.119CSP Dom. 1641-3, pp. 463, 522; SP16/497, f. 91; SP16/499, f. 19; Laud, Works, iv. 24-5, 28-9, 31, 371; Burnet’s History of My Own Time ed. O. Airy (Oxford, 1897), i. 52; Sloane 2035B, f. 12; Certain Informations no. 20 (29 May-5 June 1643), 158 (E.105.2); Mercurius Civicus no. 5 (1-8 June 1643), 35-6 (E.105.17). That Laud then struggled to secure the return of his papers, or at least to get sight of them, indicates their perceived value, and when Prynne sent some documents to the keeper of the records in the Tower in March 1644 he explicitly noted that other material had been retained ‘for the archbishop’s trial of public use’.120Laud, Works, iv. 35-6; LJ vi. 272b; Sloane 2035B, f. 12. In the months that followed Prynne made searches of Laud’s study in Lambeth Palace and other places, in ways which suggest that he may have been working at cross purposes with some of the other prosecutors.121LJ vi. 583b; Laud, Works, iv. 399. Laud’s papers were then deployed in a variety of ways, including to inform tracts like Romes Masterpiece.122Laud, Works, iv. 31, 379-80. While the management of evidence for the trial was delegated to John Wylde* and Sir Robert Harley, Prynne clearly played a leading role. The archbishop assumed that he was behind the process by which the charges were ‘hammered out’ in October 1643, suggesting that ‘there was not a man whose malice would make him diligent enough to search into such a forsaken business, till Mr Prynne offered himself to that service’.123Laud, Works, iv. 33, 55. He claimed that Prynne was ‘trusted with providing all the evidence’, that he was both ‘relater and prompter’, and that the start of the trial was delayed until Prynne had ‘prepared his witnesses’. Laud even pronounced Prynne was guilty of ‘tampering’ with the witnesses; that he ‘kept a school of instruction for such of the witnesses as he durst trust, that they might be sure to speak home to the purpose he would have them’.124Laud, Works, iv. 46-8, 51-2.

Prynne was indeed both prosecutor and star witness.125Laud, Works, iv. 373. According to one report, the trial began (12 Mar. 1644) with Laud being brought to the bar flanked by Burton and Prynne, ‘so that he could not look on either hand, but see objects of his cruelty’.126Britaines Remembrancer no. 1 (12-19 Mar. 1644), 1-2 (E.38.1). Thereafter, Prynne was present throughout the hearings, at the side of Wylde and ‘often at his ear’, and he was apparently able to ‘put Mr Robert Nicholas* in mind’ to make specific points. On numerous occasions he appeared – or intervened – as a witness, and sometimes, as Laud pointed out, he was ‘the single witness’.127CSP Dom. 1644, p. 48; SP16/501, f. 19; HMC Lords, xi. 365-457; Laud, Works, iv. 68-117, 132, 137, 143, 176, 206, 209, 228, 247, 286, 288-90, 297, 333-6. Some of his speeches, like one on 18 March 1644 described by Laud as ‘full of bitterness’, were reported favourably in the parliamentarian press, and Laud recognised that the aim was ‘to represent me as odious as he could’.128Continuation of Certain Speciall and Remarkable Passages no. 12 (14-21 Mar. 1644), 4-6 (E.38.15); Mercurius Civicus no. 43 (14-21 Mar. 1644), 438-42 (E.38.14); Britaines Remembrancer no. 1 (12-19 Mar. 1644), sig. A4v (E.38.1); True Informer no. 27 (23-30 Mar. 1644), 192-3 (E.39.24); Laud, Works, iv. 107-10. This was doubtless why Prynne also served as the key publicist for the trial. When Laud appeared in September to present his final defence, he ‘saw every lord present with a new thin book in folio, in a blue coat’, which turned out to be Prynne’s edition of his diary, ‘published … to the world to disgrace me’. One pamphlet claimed that the aim was ‘to defame him and render him more odious to the common people’, and that Prynne had doctored the text. Mercurius Aulicus insisted that it was ‘interlaced … with several fictions’, while Henry Wharton would later claim that the diary was ‘altered, mangled, corrupted and glossed in a most shameful manner’.129Laud, Works, iii. 113; Heylyn, Briefe Relation, 2; Mercurius Aulicus no. 101 (5-12 Jan. 1645), 1332-3 (E.27.7). The result, however, was that, as extracts were printed in the weeks that followed, recommendations for the new book – ‘by that living martyr Mr Prynne’ – received as much attention in the press as Laud’s speech.130Laud, Works, iii. 240; iv. 363-4, 369; Kingdomes Weekly Intelligencer no. 70 (27 Aug.-3 Sept. 1644), 566 (E.8.6); no. 71 (3-10 Sept. 1644), 568-70 (E.8.24). Laud even blamed Prynne for a petition that ‘went up and down all about London and the suburbs’ in October ‘for the bringing of all delinquents to justice’.131Laud, Works, iv. 399. Prynne certainly supported the controversial decision, taken to cement the Anglo-Scottish alliance (Jan. 1645), that the archbishop should be executed. As that fate approached he published Hidden Works of Darkness, presented as ‘a necessary introduction’ to the history of Laud’s trial, and trailed in the press by friendly journalists.132Mercurius Civicus no. 85 (2-9 Jan. 1645), 777-80 (E.24.9). Finally, in March 1645, Prynne was asked by the Commons to ‘print and publish proceedings concerning Laud’s trial’, under the guidance of a parliamentary committee, which resulted in Canterburies Doom.133CJ iv. 68b; Perfect Diurnall no. 84 (3-10 March 1645), 663 (E.258.33); Prynne, Canterburies Doom.

Erastian Presbyterian and factional conflict

Originally aligned with a group of MPs and peers becoming known as the Independents, Prynne himself was now becoming a particularly outspoken Presbyterian, albeit of a fairly distinct kind. From September 1644 a stream of his pamphlets, including Independency Examined and Twelve Considerable Serious Questions Touching Church Government, led to clashes – both in print and in parliamentary committees – with Independents like John Goodwin, Henry Robinson, William Walwyn and his old accomplice, Henry Burton.134W. Prynne, Independency Examined (1644, E.257.3); Twelve Considerable Serious Questions (1644, E.257.1); Faces About (1644, E.13.17); H. Robinson, An Answer to Mr William Prynn’s Twelve Questions (1644); Certain briefe Observations (1644, E.10.33); The Falsehood of Mr William Pryn’s Truth Triumphing (1645, E.273.16); H. Burton, A Vindication of Churches, commonly called Independent (1644, E.17.5); J. Goodwin, Innocencies Triumph (1644, E.14.10), Goodwin, Calumny Arraign’d and Cast (1645, E.26.18); W. Walwyn, A Helpe to the right understanding (1644, E.259.2). By the middle of 1645, Prynne was not only a key critic of Independency, but assisted the publication of other attacks on sectarians, by friends like Richard Norwood who reported on religious tensions in places like the Somers Islands (Bermuda).135CO1/11, ff. 19-20; CSP Col. 1574-1660, p. 328; Bodl. Tanner 58, ff. 102-3v. In late 1645 he was made one of the triers for the elders of Serjeants’ Inn.136Add. 18778, f. 138; LJ vii. 652b; A. and O.; Shaw, Hist. Eng. Church, ii. 404. Eventually, however, it became clear that his aim was to challenge both Independents and ‘over-rigid’ Presbyterians, both of whom claimed ‘divine right’ for their different attempts to undermine the power of the civil magistrate over ecclesiastical matters.137W. Prynne, Foure Serious Questions (1645, E.261.8); A Fresh Discovery Of some Prodigious New Wandring-Blasing-Stars (1645, E.261.5); A Vindication of foure Serious Questions (1645, E.265.5); Diotrephes Catechised (1646, E.510.2); Suspention Suspended (1646, E.510.12). Prynne thereby found himself out of step not just with radicals like John Saltmarsh and William Dell, but also with the Scots, and in September 1645 Robert Baillie famously remarked that ‘Mr Prynne and the Erastian lawyers are now our remora [obstacle]’, while other commentators saw him as ‘the state presbyter’.138W. Prynne, The Sword of Christian Magistracy (1648); Baillie Lttrs. and Jnls. ii. 315; A Letter from an Ejected Member (1648, E.463.18). Here, tension seems to have been political as well as religious: following the flight of the king to the Scots in 1646, Prynne published a tract evoking Scotlands Ancient Obligation to England, for the help that they had received in securing deliverance from ‘the bondage of the French’ in 1560.139W. Prynne, Scotlands Ancient Obligation to England (1646, E.510.5).

The acrimonious nature of these disputes was apparent when one of Prynne’s responses to Goodwin, Truth Triumphing (Jan. 1645) prompted John Lilburne to produce an open letter advocating freedom of conscience and freedom of the press, which he claimed was being muzzled by a Presbyterian faction. This led to the instigation of proceedings by the Committee for Examinations, the arrest of Lilburne’s printer (Nicholas Tew), Lilburne’s appearance before the committee on 14 May, and yet more tracts and hearings. Lilburne accused Prynne and other Presbyterians of trying to silence him on account of the support that he offered to Oliver Cromwell in his dispute with the earl of Manchester. Following Lilburne’s imprisonment (Aug. 1645), he claimed that Prynne – along with Bastwick and Colonel Edward King – sought ‘to make an uproar in the City by framing, posting and dispersing scandalous paper libels, concerning myself, thereby to make me odious and destroy me’. On the day of Lilburne’s release (14 Oct. 1645), Prynne issued The Lyar Confounded, his response to Lilburne’s claims, and a defence of his own reputation against a range of allegations.140J. Lilburne, A Copie of a Letter (1645, E.24.22), 7; The Reasons of Lieu Col: Lilburnes (1645, E.288.12); Innocency and Truth Justified (1645, E.314.21), 10, 28, 34; The Copy of a Letter (n.d.), 20 (E.296.5); The Resolved Mans Resolution [1647], 30 (E.387.4); HMC 5th Rep. 46; Prynne, Lyar Confounded.

Increasingly, Prynne’s activities as lawyer, official and author, which had always between intertwined, served the cause of an Erastian brand of Presbyterianism and vehement opposition to radical Independency. In early 1646, for example, he intervened in the recruiter elections with a pamphlet called Minors No Senators, presumably in response to the return of William Wray*, who had not yet come of age. The politics of this particular election were fraught: Wray’s father – and backer – was a prominent Presbyterian, but he was also an enemy of Prynne’s friend, Colonel Edward King, another Presbyterian, by whom Wray had been defeated. More straightforward was Prynne’s antipathy towards radicals like Lilburne, one of those ‘ignoramusses’ who opposed the election of lawyers, and Hugh Peter, ‘the ubiquitary perturber of, solicitor and stickler at most of our late elections’.141W. Prynne, Minors No Senators (1646), 2, 16 (E.506.33). Consequently, while Prynne continued to serve Parliament assiduously in a range of official capacities, his appointments and his work became increasingly controversial. The decision to name him as one of the contractors for the sale of bishops’ lands (Nov. 1646) generated debate and division in the House of Lords before he was finally approved.142LJ viii. 560a; A. and O.

Committee of Accounts

Nowhere was this clearer, however, than in relation to the non-parliamentary Committee for taking the Accounts of the Kingdom*. The legislation that established the Committee of Accounts in February 1644 apparently had the backing of the war-party grandees and may well have been part of a broader campaign, culminating in the creation of the Committee of Both Kingdoms*, to strengthen their hand against the earl of Essex and the anti-Scottish alliance interest. When Prynne was nominated as a member of the Committee of Accounts in early 1644, the lord general’s allies, supported in this instance by Saye and Sele, attempted to block it.143Supra, ‘Committee of Accounts’; ‘Committee of Both Kingdoms’. As he himself realised, Prynne had made a formidable enemy in the person of Fiennes’s father, Saye and Sele.144Harl. 166, ff. 16, 17; PA, Main pprs. 22 Feb. 1644; Prynne, Checke to Brittanicus, 3, 7, 8; Nedham, Check to the Checker, sig. E; CJ iii. 402a; LJ vi. 437b, 438a; Parliament Scout no. 35 (16-23 Feb. 1644), 298 (E.34.4). Nevertheless, as a prominent and controversial figure in the war-party interest since 1642, Prynne would have been disliked not only by Saye (who shared his win-the-war militancy) but also by the Essexian peace-party lords, who probably recognised that the new committee would be hobbled if deprived of Prynne’s tenacity and influence. The Commons evidently took much the same view, and overcame the Lords’ objections to Prynne’s inclusion on the committee.145Supra, ‘Committee of Accounts’.

The early work of the Committee of Accounts was controversial largely for the zeal with which its task was pursued, against a range of officials and parliamentarian bodies, including Essex’s leading staff officer Lionel Copley*, whose beligerent response to claims about financial impropriety eventually led to his imprisonment.146Supra, ‘Committee of Accounts’; ‘Lionel Copley’; SP28/255, unfol.; SP28/18, ff. 335-46; Add. 31116, pp. 363, 416; Bodl. Tanner 61, ff. 90, 96, 98, 126. Objections to the committee’s work from within the army, meanwhile, raised questions about its remit, and prompted attempts to clarify its role (June 1644).147Supra, ‘Committee of Accounts’; A. and O. i. 468-70; CSP Dom. 1644, pp. 339-40, 449; SP16/502, ff. 100-105v; SP28/255, unfol.; Add. 18779, f. 101a. A mixture of jurisdictional confusion and obstruction by those whose accounts needed to be audited soon generated numerous complaints to Parliament from the committee and its sub-committees across the country. Such complaints, however, served to reveal the bind in which the committee found itself: on the one hand its awareness of having ‘proceeded slowly’ with its work led to claims of obstruction; on the other hand such complaints ‘were by many conceived to entrench very high upon the privileges of the House’.148Harl. 166, f. 197; Add. 31116, p. 354. Indeed, the assertiveness of Prynne and his associates during late 1644 and early 1645 seems to have stiffened the resolve of those who sought to limit the committee’s power.149Supra, ‘Committee of Accounts’; CSP Dom. 1644, pp. 48, 73, 96, 106, 115, 119, 139; Mercurius Aulicus no. 32 (4-10 Aug. 1644), 1114; Warws. RO CR2017/C10/42; SP28/255, unfol.; SP28/64, ff. 776-7; Perfect Diurnal no. 88 (31 Mar.-7 Apr. 1645), 701 (E.260.10); Add. 31116, p. 354; A. and O. i. 617, 633. The result was that Prynne’s attempts to introduce a new ordinance were initially resisted and prompted efforts to investigate the activity of the Accounts Committee, to introduce appeals procedures and to ensure a degree of immunity for MPs. This fostered a perception – within the committee and among at least some onlookers – that the committee’s work was deliberately being undermined by ‘manifold oppositions’.150Supra, ‘Committee of Accounts’; CJ v. 61b-62a; Harl. 166, f. 205; A. and O. i. 717-22; Add. 31116, p. 426; Mercurius Aulicus (20-27 Apr. 1645), 1555-6 (E.284.20); Warws. RO CR2017/C10/88; Bodl. Nalson V, f. 165; SP28/256, unfol.

Gradually, during the course of the mid-1640s, the committee emerged as a bastion of the Presbyterian interest, and it seems clear that its work became factionalised as regards who was targetted and who was treated more leniently. Prynne worked closely with friends and allies in the localities, including Edward King, who proved to be dogged in pursuit of financial maladministration by Lincolnshire Independents. Lincolnshire may not have been the only county where factional battles over accounts became intertwined with contested recruiter elections.151Supra, ‘Committee of Accounts’; C. Holmes, ‘Colonel King and Lincs. Politics, 1642-1646, HJ xvi. 460, 463, 473-5; Add. 31116, p. 445; Add. 18780, f. 89. Similarly, enemies like Lilburne claimed that Prynne abused his power on the committee by submitting critical assessments of his accounts at moments that were likely to cause most political damage.152Lilburne, Innocency, 64-5, 68-72; Lilburne, Resolved Mans Resolution, 31, 39. Over time, therefore, Prynne’s enemies took further steps to challenge the committee’s power: by limiting its power to ‘intermeddle’ with financial matters relating to the Irish campaign of Philip Sidney*, Viscount Lisle; by giving the Army Committee* and the county committees a greater role in the auditing process; and by ensuring more effective parliamentary oversight of the committee’s work.153Supra, ‘Committee of Accounts’; A. and O. i. 852; CSP Ire. 1633-47, pp. 448-50, 452, 486-7.

Eventually, the linkage between Prynne’s work on the Committee of Accounts and his wider battles – and between his skills as an official and a polemicist – became even more marked. Prynne seems to have been instrumental, for example, in the Presbyterian campaign against county committees. A detailed report to the Commons in October 1646 related ‘manifold oppositions’ that the committee and its agents had faced from local committees, and Prynne and his allies repeatedly submitted detailed critiques of local administration, and even made explicit reference to the fact that the ordinance for abolishing county committees – first introduced on 1 October 1646 – had been ‘drawn’ by Prynne himself.154Supra, ‘Committee of Accounts’; Longleat, Whitelocke Pprs. IX, ff. 85-6; SP28/256, unfol.; SP28/253A, pt. 1, ff. 10, 38. As a polemicist, meanwhile, Prynne drew attention to financial issues in print using the papers at his disposal, and may also have had a hand in pamphlets by other men, including friends like Edward King and Clement Walker.155W. Prynne, An Account of the Kings Late Revenue (1647, E.388.3); E. King, A Discovery of the Arbitrary, Tyrannicall, and illegal Actions of…the Committee…of Lincoln (1647, E.373.3); [C. Walker], An Eye-Salve for the Armie (1647, E.407.16); The Grand Account (Oxford, 1647, E.400.18). These political and polemical strands most obviously came together, however, in 1647, as Prynne became a vocal opponent of the army. In pamphlets like New Presbyterian Light and Twelve Queries of Publick Concernment he attacked specific elements of the army’s demands – such as the repeal of the Presbyterian militia ordinance – and linked a range of different ideas from law reform and the need for a new coronation oath to the regulation of parliamentary elections and the abolition of county committees.156W. Prynne, New Presbyterian Light (1647, E.400.24); Twelve Queries of Publick Concernment (1647, E.514.2). He also produced a series of short tracts which directly responded to the army’s declarations and manifestos, not least in order to criticise – and expose what he saw as the hypocrisy of – their Irish policy, all of which provoked defences of the army from a range of different sources.157W. Prynne, IX Proposals by Way of Interrogation (1647, E.396.8); The Hypocrites Unmasking (1647); VIII Queries Upon the Late Declarations (1647, E.392.22); D. Jenkins, An Apology for the Army (1647, E.396.18); Eight Antiqueries (1647, E.393.37); The Integrity of the Parliaments Army Justified (1647, E.398.24).

Most importantly, Prynne led the defence – both legally and polemically – of the ‘Eleven Members’ who were impeached by the army in June 1647. Prynne was appointed one of their counsel on 14 July, and helped to present their formal defence five days later.158Perfect Diurnall no. 207 (12-19 July 1647), sig. 10A, p. 1645 (E.518.6); Kingdomes Weekly Intelligencer no. 218 (13-20 July 1647), 600-603 (E.399.13); Perfect Summary no. 1 (19-26 July 1647), 2-4 (E.518.9). He had actually been helping at least one of them – Sir John Clotworthy* – to deal with claims about financial impropriety since 1645.159The State of the Irish Affairs (1645), 18 (E.314.7); SP28/255, unfol. He quickly produced no fewer than five tracts in their cause, utilising the evidence that he could muster from the files of the Committee of Accounts, once again provoking replies from old sparring partners like Marchamont Nedham.160W. Prynne, A Vindication of Sir William Lewis (1647, E.387.14); A Brief Justification of the XI Accused Members (1647, E.398.3); A Declaration of the Officers and Armies (1647, E.397.8); A full Vindication and Answer of the XI Accused Members (1647, E.398.17); IX Queries upon the Printed Charge (1647, E.394.1); M. Nedham, The Lawyer of Lincolnes-Inne Reformed (1647, E.395.4). One author went so far as to accuse Prynne of accepting bribes in order to pass the accounts of men like Clotworthy and Sir William Lewis*.161A two-inch Board for M. Prynne (1647), 16. Ultimately, as the Presbyterian ‘counter-revolution’ faltered in mid-July, Prynne claimed that measures that were passed in the army’s favour resulted from ‘a dangerous panic, fear and terror’ of their power, and that they were effectively illegal.162W. Prynne, A Counterplea to the Cowards Apologie (1647), 2-3 (E.400.3). Needless to say, Prynne left London upon the army’s march into the capital on 4 August.163Harington’s Diary, 56.

According to certain hostile journalists, Prynne responded to the army’s intervention by heading north, and one tract claimed that he, alongside other ‘new modelled reformadoes’ – who had been guilty of ‘countenancing plots, betraying their trust … plotting and contriving a most horrid and bloody design of prosecuting a new war’ – had ‘fled unto Scotland’ with a view to ‘levying an army against Sir Thomas Fairfax*’. According to this ‘hue and cry’, Prynne was easily recognisable ‘by a long meagre face (like envy itself), ears cropped close to his head, which is stopped with plots, queries, works of darkness and the like, he is slit in the nose, marked in both cheeks, and the forehead with S for schismatical slanderer’.164Perfect Diurnall no. 210 (2-9 Aug. 1647), 1691 (E.518.16); A Speedy Hue and Crie (1647), 4, 6.

In fact, Prynne returned to Somerset, where he became an increasingly active – and controversial – member of the commission of the peace.165Perfect Occurrences no. 43 [34] (20-27 Aug. 1647), sig. Ll4v (E.518.23); QS Recs. Som. Commonwealth, 45; Western Circuit Assize Orders ed. Cockburn 252, 267; Som. Assize Orders ed. Cockburn, 15, 18; A. and O. i. 974. He was also elected recorder of Bath (28 Feb. 1648), following the controversial removal of Serjeant Robert Hyde*, a sequestered royalist.166Bath and NE Som. RO, Bath council bk. 1631-49, pp. 286, 291, 296, 301. For his services – which included preparing petitions to Parliament – Prynne received a salary of £2, as well as a sugar loaf, a gallon of sack and a bottle of claret.167Bath and NE Som. RO, Chamberlain's Accts. transcript, p. 91. During this period, he confronted those who withheld tithes from local ministers, like Mr Sugden of Claverton, despite complaints by local churchwardens that they had been burdened by free quarter and abused by soldiers.168CSP Dom. 1648-9, pp. 30-1; SP16/516, f. 36v. He was also active in attempts to establish a classical Presbyterian system in the county, promoting his scheme – in which he become an elder for the classis of Bath and Wrington – in a printed tract.169Add. 10114, f. 23; The County of Som. Divided into severall Classes (1648, E.430.16). Perhaps inevitably, he clashed with local Independents on the county committee, trying to take control of the local subcommittee of accounts and complaining – in January 1648 – about their ‘spleen and malice’ towards him and the ‘mischief’ done to his friends. The latter included men who were harrassed by sequestrators and soldiers, as well as ministers who were removed from office, such as Benjamin Tanner of Swainswick, of whom Prynne had been a patron, and who was accused of royalism. In the face of such pressure Prynne threatened to use his influence at Westminster to secure redress and reparations, and to ‘publish your malicious actions and proceedings to the world that others may blush at them if you will not’.170CSP Dom. 1648-9, pp. 4, 12-13; SP16/516.5, 10; SP28/175, 200, 214, 242; Mems. of the Great Civil War ed. Cary, i. 368-75; Bodl. Tanner 58, ff. 667-8v, 687. Although Prynne did not follow through on this particular promise, the eventual decision by his opponents – like John Pyne* – to remove him from the county bench (May 1648) prompted complaints from those who regretted that he was unable to obstruct malignants who promoted bear-baiting and the Prayer Book in Bath, and led Prynne to produce a pamphlet against such purges of magistrates.171Perfect Weekly Account no. 9 (3-10 May 1648), sigs. Lv-L2v (E.441.22); CJ v. 548; W. Prynne, Irenarches Redivivus (1648, E.452.23).

Such evidence indicates very clearly that Prynne did not withdraw from public life following the army’s march on London, and that he continued to court controversy and utilise his skills as a polemicist. Having apparently returned to London for Michaelmas term in 1647, Prynne took aim at radical Independents and the Levellers.172Perfect Occurrences no. 43 (22-29 Oct. 1647), 300-301 (E.518.48). While he wrote a tract in November 1647 which advocated appointing a protector or viceroy, and ‘securing the king’s person in a safe and honourable way ‘til he shall ... fully comply with the desires both of his parliaments and kingdoms’, he more obviously berated his parliamentarian rivals – both military and civilian – by accusing them of betraying the ideals of the Petition of Right with ‘manifold encroachments on and violations of these our our undoubted privileges, rights and franchises’.173W. Prynne, A Plain, Short and Probable Expedient (1647), 8 (E.412.28); The Petition of Right of the Free-holders and Free-men (1648), 7 (E.422.9). He compared the treatment of impeached MPs with the attempted arrest of the Five Members in 1642, and even with the army plot, and attacked free quarter as an ‘intolerable undoing grievance’.174W. Prynne, The Lords and Commons First Love To…their Injuriously Accused and Impeached Members (1647, E.422.10); A Publike Declaration and Solemne Protestation (1648, E.426.3). Other tracts analysed and critiqued the political tactics of the ‘Independent confederacy’ – their manipulation of elections, abuse of parliamentary proceedures (such as a ‘thin’ house), and domination of committees, as well as their willingness to mobilise crowds of apprentices and to resort to martial law.175W. Prynne, The Machivilian Cromwellist (1648), 3-7 (E.422.12); A New Magna Charta (1648, E.427.15); Ardua Regni (1648, E.429.5). The Levellers, meanwhile, were attacked for their ‘writing and petitioning’, which were said to have mobilised ‘many thousands of ignorant simple people’.176W. Prynne, The Levellers Levelled (1648), 1.

In early 1648, Prynne resumed activity on behalf of Parliament. Part of his animus against the Levellers derived from their hostility towards the House of Lords; his willingness to defend it was manifest in his appointment to the legal team assigned to the impeached peers (11 Feb. 1648). Although he may have found it difficult to fulfil these duties, given his need to go on circuit, he supported their cause in print, thereby provoking a response from Lilburne.177Perfect Occurrences no. 59 (11-18 Feb. 1648), 411-2 (E.520.38); W. Prynne, A Plea for the Lords (1648, E.430.8); L. Hurbin [Lilburne], A Plea, or Protest (1648, E.432.18). Prynne was also an active participant in the visitation of Oxford University, a role for which he had first been suggested in February 1647, and in which he attracted media scrutiny.178CJ v. 83a; CSP Dom. 1645-7, p. 550; SP16/515.52; A. and O. i. 925; Perfect Diurnall no. 197 (3-10 May 1647), 1576 (E.515.11); Bodl. Wood f.35, ff. 6, 215; Wood 514, f. 28; Mercurius Pragmaticus no. 4 (18-25 Apr. 1648), sig. D3v (E.437.4). He confronted Gilbert Sheldon, warden of All Souls’, who refused to agree to the visitors’ demands (Apr. 1648), and he published a response to the objections that the university submitted against the visitation process.179Mercurius Veridicus no. 1 (14-21 Apr. 1648), sig. A2v (E.436.18); W. Prynne, The University of Oxfords Plea Refuted (1647).

MP for Newport and the Newport Treaty

Eventually, Prynne’s prominence within Presbyterian circles resulted in his election to the Commons, apparently ‘without my privity or seeking and against my judgment’.180W. Prynne, The Substance of a Speech (1649), 3 (E.539.11*); Signal Loyalty (1660), sig. *v (E.772.5). Following an order on 1 March 1648 for the issue of a writ, he was returned at Newport in Cornwall, where the two recruiter MPs, Sir Philip Percivalle* and Nicholas Leach*, had died.181W. Prynne, A Brief Necessary Vindication (1659), 6. Prynne later claimed that the election took place in August, and that he took his seat on 7 November; his first recorded attendance was on 10 November. Notwithstanding this delay, he immediately became heavily involved in some of the weightest issues before the House. He was first named, for example, to a committee to prepare legislation for the banishment of royalist grandees including the 1st earl of Holland (Henry Rich†), the 1st earl of Norwich (George Goring†) and Lord Capell (Arthur Capell*) (15 Nov.), and sat on the committee that scrutinised the draft ordinance.182Prynne, Brief Necessary Vindication, 6; CJ vi. 77b. He also sat on a committee relating to the sale of bishops’ lands (21 Nov.), and was given special responsibility for an ordinance relating to fee farm rents that were owed by plundered parliamentarians (17 Nov). Some such appointments would almost certainly have raised eyebrows amongst his enemies, including his nomination to the committees to consider assessments for the army (22 Nov.) and military garrisons (25 Nov.), not to mention his being given special responsibility for considering the petition of a Leveller sympathiser like Joseph Poyntz, who had been accused of forging an act of Parliament (25 Nov.).183CJ vi. 78b, 81b, 83b, 86b-87a. One of Poyntz’s co-defendants certainly accused Prynne of abusing his power to protect friends like John Browne, clerk of Parliament.184HMC 7th Rep. 65.

Prynne’s most important and contentious work related to the ongoing Newport treaty. His very first appointment involved him in drafting legislation in response to the king’s concessions (10 Nov.), and he was also named to a predominanrly Presbyterian committee that was charged with preparing answers to the king’s propositions (13 Nov.).185CJ vi. 73b, 75b, 77b. Probably associated with this, he was given particular responsibility for considering draft legislation justifying Parliament’s proceedings in the civil wars (17 Nov.).186CJ vi. 79a. By this stage, Prynne was recognised as a leading advocate of accommodation with the king, and was considered by royalists to have ‘grown such a worthy’, and by some radicals as ‘an apostate’.187Add. 78221, ff. 26, 27. He was widely understood to be a leading opponent of the army Remonstrance, against which he himself claimed to have made ‘three several ex tempore speeches’.188Add. 78221, f. 24. Well-placed onlookers claimed that he ‘put to silence’ Independent MP Sir James Harington, and that he urged the Commons to declare Colonel Robert Hammond*, the king’s ‘gaoler’ on the Isle of Wight, a traitor for ‘deserting his trust’ by obeying the army, and even that he wanted to ‘recall’ commissions from the army.189Add. 78221, f. 26. Such ‘resolute’, ‘bold’ and ‘honest’ speeches naturally attracted considerable attention from royalist commentators, and Mercurius Pragmaticus noted with approval that Prynne had ‘put the remonstrance in the pillory’.190CCSP i. 447; Prynne, Signal Loyalty, sig. *v; Bodl. Clarendon 31, ff. 312, 313; Mercurius Elencticus no. 53 (22-29 Nov. 1648), Dd4v (E.473.39); Mercurius Pragmaticus no. 35 (21-28 Nov. 1648), sig. Bbb2 (E.473.35). Similarly, he also attracted attention for a speech, on 1 or 2 December, in which he declared that it was difficult to proceed with debates on the negotiations, given that the threat from the army meant that there was no longer a ‘free parliament’, and in which he also offered to draft a declaration against the former’s power.191Bodl. Clarendon 34, ff. 7-8v; Clarendon SP ii. app. p. xlviii; Mercurius Pragmaticus no. 36/7 (5-12 Dec. 1648), sig. Ccc2v (E.476.2).

On Monday 4 December Prynne made a very substantial three-hour speech, in which he defended the idea that the king’s concessions represented a viable basis for a settlement, decried the Army remonstrance, and attacked the idea of subjecting the king to ‘justice’, which he interpreted as involving plans for the execution of Charles I, characterised as a ‘Jesuit’ plot.192W. Prynne, Part of the Famous Speech (1648); Substance of a Speech. This too was widely reported in the press, as Prynne’s ‘tedious’ but ‘learned and simple speech’, and even his enemies applauded its ‘invective against this army-monster’.193The Moderate no. 22 (5-12 Dec. 1648), 197 (E.476.5); Mercurius Impartialis no. 1 (5-12 Dec. 1648), 4 (E.476.3). Subsequently, Prynne claimed it had been provoked in part by the appearance that very day of a tract that bore his name but that was written by ‘some implacable enemies to the king’, who ‘falsely and maliciously published and printed a charge against the king … purposely to defame me and stop my mouth from speaking my conscience freely in the great debate then on foot’. On Prynne’s account, he complained to the Commons that this tract was ‘a malicious forgery’.194Prynne, Signal Loyalty, sig. *2.

Whether or not Prynne was correct to claim that many MPs were ‘convinced and concerted’ by his speech, it certainly proved to be one of the catalysts for Pride’s Purge (6 Dec.), and as ‘the firebrand of England’ he was one of the army’s prime targets. Indeed, Prynne’s own account of the occasion and of the treatment he received, is one of the most important that we have.195Clarke Pprs. ii. 68; Prynne, Substance of a Speech, 113; CJ vi. 93b; Stowe 1519, f. 188. He claimed to have been ‘seized’ as he attempted to enter the Commons, and told ‘you must not go into the House’, after which he was pulled ‘forcibly … to the court of requests’; he also noted that an order demanding his presence in the Commons was ‘slighted and disobeyed’. He was then kept prisoner in Hell, one of the palace’s taverns, ‘without either bedding or other needful accommodations’, and on 7 December he was taken by guards to Whitehall, where he and others waited in vain for a meeting with Sir Thomas Fairfax*, without food or drink, before being incarcerated in the King’s Head on the Strand.196Prynne, Substance of a Speech, 113-16; Mems. of the Verney Family, i. 443.

Defender of liberties and critic of radicalism, 1648-59

Thereafter, of course, Prynne assumed the role of the purged members’ chief advocate, both in person and in print, and one onlooker perceived that he did ‘much mischief’.197Add. 78221, f. 30. He almost certainly produced the ‘solemn protestation’ of the secluded MPs, which Parliament declared scandalous, and then printed A True and Full Relation of the purge (13 Dec.), before producing a string of other pamphlets about the affair in the weeks that followed, including A Briefe Memento to the Present Unparliamentary Junto, with the help of friendly licensers like James Cranford and John Langley.198The Moderate 23 (12-19 Dec. 48), 205-6 (E.477.4); Perfect Weekly Account (13-20 Dec. 1648), 316 (E.477.13); Moderate Intelligencer no. 196 (14-21 Dec. 1648), sig. 9M2 (E.477.14); CJ vi. 97b; W. Prynne, A True and ful Relation (1648, E.476.14); A Declaration to the City and Kingdom (1648, E.476.33); A Briefe Memento to the Present Unparliamentary Junto (1648, E.537.7); Mr Prynnes Letter to the General (1649); Mr Pryn's last and finall Declaration to the Commons of England (1648, E.537.12); A Vindication of the Imprisoned and Secluded Members (1649, E.539.5); A Declaration and Protestation of Will: Prynne and Cle: Walker (1649, 669.f.13.72); HMC Portland, iii. 166; Add. 70006, f. 62. To these he also added more general attacks on the new regime, as well as on radical ideas, as embodied in versions of the Agreement of the People.199W. Prynne, New-Babels Confusion (1649, E.540.19). He also joined a group of purged MPs who went to Whitehall on 21 December, only to be attacked by Henry Ireton*, to whom he responded by ‘railing at the army’ and delivering a protestation against the army’s ‘illegal, traiterous and destructive’ actions. According to one newspaper report, Prynne told Ireton

that the army had endeavoured utterly to subvert the fundamental laws, and the privileges of Parliament, and that they had no power over him, nor any Member thereof, but that the late force acted upon them, and their other proceedings, were illegal and traiterous, and that all men ought to endeavour to bring them to condign punishment, as rebels and traitors against both king and Parliament.

This was said to have enraged Ireton, causing him to ‘start’ and ‘change colour’.200CCSP i. 459; Clarendon SP, ii, app. p. xlix; Bodl. Clarendon 34, ff. 12-13v; Mercurius Pragmaticus no. 39 (19-26 Dec. 1648), sig. Eee3v. Needless to say, as attempts were made to characterise different victims of the purge, Prynne was regarded as one of the ‘assertors’, who was likely to ‘stand out to the utmost’.201CCSP 460; Clarendon SP, ii. app. p. xlix; Bodl. Clarendon 34, ff. 17-18v; Mercurius Pragmaticus no. 39, sig. Eee4. As such, he remained in detention at the King’s Head, and his attacks upon the army and upon Fairfax – to whom he penned a long letter on 3 January – were widely reported in the press, where he elicited at least a degree of support from royalist journalists and onlookers.202Eg. 2618, f. 31; Kingdomes Weekly Intelligencer no. 292 (26 Dec. 1648-2 Jan. 1649), 1202 (E.536.33); Mercurius Elencticus no. 58 (26 Dec. 1648-2 Jan. 1649), 549-50 (E.536.31); Heads of a Diarie no. 6 (2-9 Jan. 1649), 46 (E.537.25); Mems. of the Great Civil War ed. Cary, ii. 103-4. This defiant stance involved threatening to bring a case in king’s bench for false imprisonment, and when he was questioned for having published A Briefe Memento he refused to answer until commanded to do so by what he regarded as a legitimate authority.203CJ vi. 111b, 112b; The Examination of Mr Wil Prynne (1649), 5-6; Perfect Occurrences no. 106 (5-12 Jan. 1649), sig. Nnnnnv-2 (E.527.5); Abbott, Writings and Speeches, i. 731; Mercurius Pragmaticus no. 40/41 (26 Dec.1648-9 Jan. 1649), sig. Ff4v (E.537.20); The Moderate no. 26 (2-9 Jan. 1649), sig. ccv (E.537.26); Perfect Weekly Account (3-10 Jan. 1649), 344 (E.537.32). Indeed, when Prynne secured a habeas corpus – which Bulstode Whitelocke* claimed to have supported – and ‘challenged the general to appear in court … for falsely imprisoning him’, the Commons responded with an order for him to be taken into custody by the serjeant-at-arms (10 Jan.).204CJ vi. 115b; Add. 78221, f. 31; Perfect Diurnall no. 285 (8-15 Jan. 1649), 2236, 2272-3 (E.527.6); The Vindication of William Prynne [1649, 669.f.13.67]; The Moderate no. 27 (9-16 Jan. 1649), 251 (E.538.15); Moderate Intelligencer no. 200 (11-18 Jan. 1649), 1838 (E.538.21); Whitelocke, Diary, 228; Whitelocke, Mems. ii. 493-4. Prynne also faced attempts to blacken his reputation in print, with attacks on him and his ‘violent writings’ from men like Henry Marten*, William Purefoy* and John Goodwin, some of which sought to turn his old arguments against him. And he continued to confront the problem of forged pamphlets that appeared in his name, which he was quick to disown.205The Joynt Resolution and Declaration (1649), 2 (E.538.1*); Mr William Prynn His Defence of Stage-Plays (1649, E.537.31); Mr Prinns Charge Against the King (1648, E.526.37); H. Marten, A Word to Mr Wil. Prynn (1649, E.537.16); W. Purefoy, Prynn Against Prinn (1649, E.540.6); Prynne, Vindication of William Prynne. Such attacks prompted Prynne to publish – from his King’s Head prison – a full edition of his speech on the eve of Pride’s Purge (25 Jan.), and then further defences of himself and his position.206Prynne, Substance of A Speech, sigs. *2, ***4v; W. Prynne, Prynne the Member Reconciled to Prynne the Barrester (1649, E.558.5).

It is not clear at what point Prynne was released from prison, although he told Charles II in 1660 that ‘the very next day’ after the execution of Charles I (‘your royal father’s bloody butchery’) he had published and ‘dispersed’ hundreds of copies of one proclamation ‘throughout your kingdom’, at a time ‘when none durst own your right’.207Bodl. Carte 30, f. 592. He was certainly back in Swainswick by early June 1649, because he became embroiled in a dispute with local soldiers, who not only expected free quarter but also used violent means to levy an assessment upon his estate. Prynne inevitably responded by decrying such behaviour in print, and since he did so by making allegations against Henry Marten over his failure to account for public money, and by renewing his dispute with John Lilburne, this merely provoked the Leveller leader to respond in kind.208W. Prynne, Reasons Assigned by William Prynne (1649); A Legall Vindication of the Liberties of England, Against Illegall Taxes (1649, E.565.3); J. Lilburne, The Legal Fundamental Liberties (1649, E.567.1). Indeed, so troubling was Prynne’s attack upon the new regime, in books like the Legall Vindication of the Liberties of England (16 July) and the First Part of an Historical Collection of the Ancient Parliaments of England (20 Aug), that the council of state commissioned a response from one of its favoured authors, John Hall, 500 copies of which were also ordered in Latin translation (17 Oct.).209W. Prynne, The First Part of an Historical Collection (1649, E.569.23); Mercurius Aulicus (for King Charls II) no. 2 (21-28 Aug. 1649), sigs. B-v (E.572.2); J. Hall, A Serious Epistle to Mr William Prynne (1649, E.575.4); CSP Dom. 1649-50, p. 345. Ultimately, action was also taken against Prynne himself, and following further ‘seditious’ attacks upon the republican regime, upon the Engagement and upon its chief exponent (John Dury), as well as upon the military campaign in Scotland, the council of state responded by ordering John Milton to seize Prynne’s papers fom Lincoln’s Inn, while Prynne himself was arrested and despatched to Dunster Castle in Somerset (25 June). Prynne, who claimed that he was detained without accusation or hearing, recognised that this was done ‘to debar me from publishing’, and he sent a string of long letters to John Bradshawe* to protest about his treatment.210W. Prynne, Summary Reasons against the New Oath & Engagement (1649, E.585.9); The Arraignment, Conviction and condemnation of the Westminsterian Junto’s Engagement (1650); A Brief Apologie for all Non-Subscribers (1650, E.593.12); Sad and Serious Political Considerations (1650); The Time-serving Proteus (1650); The First Part of a Brief Register (1659), sig. B3v; A New Discovery of Free-State Tyranny (1655), 1-43 (E.488.2); CSP Dom. 1650, p. 550; Mercurius Politicus no. 5 (4-11 July 1650), 79 (E.607.12).

Although this move almost succeeded in preventing Prynne from producing new tracts, incarceration did not keep him out of trouble entirely.211W. Prynne, Independency Examined, Unmasked, Refuted (1651, E.625.7). Thus, while he spent some time cataloguing the castle’s archives, by January 1651 concerns surfaced that Prynne was corresponding with enemies of the regime; a search of his chamber was instigated on 20 May.212Som. RO, DD/L(P), 32/100; HMC 1st Rep. 56; CSP Dom. 1651, pp. 3, 20-1, 208, 210-11. Soon afterwards the confession of Thomas Coke, a prisoner in the Tower, alleged that Prynne had offered his services to Charles Stuart, and, learning of a letter from Prynne to the Presbyterian plotter, Christopher Love, the council ordered Prynne’s removal to Taunton Castle, and then to Pendennis Castle in Cornwall (21 June).213CSP Dom. 1651, pp. 222, 238, 263; HMC Portland, i. 586, 592-4; Prynne, New Discovery, 8, 10 (second pagination). Inevitably he lost his place as recorder of Bath (27 Sept. 1652), and he continued to complain about his treatment in a remonstrance directed to John Bradshawe (26 Sept. 1652) and in a long letter to John Disbrowe* (16 Dec. 1652), alongside further writing, notably a tract against standing forts eventually published in 1657.214Prynne, New Discovery, 1-49 (second pagination); Pendennis (1657), sig. A3v; Add. 8127, ff. 49-52. His imprisonment was reconsidered on more than one occasion in 1652 and he was finally discharged in February 1653, even though he refused to enter a bond which was intended to prevent him from doing anything prejudicial to the regime.215CSP Dom. 1651-2, pp. 224, 352; 1652-3, pp. 138, 172; Harington’s Diary, 80-4; Prynne, New Discovery, 49-51 (second pagination).

Prynne’s refusal to make such a promise presumably reflected his determination to return to polemical pamphleteering, exhibited in a steady stream of publications relating to church government, the sacrament of communion and tithes.216W. Prynne, A Gospel Plea (1653, E.713.12); The Sword of Christian Magistracy Supported (1653); Jus Patronatus (1654, E.735.1); A Briefe Polemicall Dissertation (1655, E.814.11); A Legal Resolution (1656, E.495.1); A Seasonable Vindication of Free-Admission (1656, E.495.3); An Appendix to A Seasonable Vindication (1657, E.916.1); The Lords Supper briefly vindicated (1658); The Remainder (1659); Ten Considerable Quaeries (1659, E.767.2); Theodidactus (1659). More importantly, in the opening weeks of the first protectoral Parliament Prynne courted controversy by publishing an attack on the excise, and an account of his own very recent confrontation with excise officers in Bath.217W. Prynne, A Declaration and Protestation (1654), 7 (E.813.16); Faithful Scout no. 201 (13-20 Oct. 1654), 1606 (E.235.19). Prynne also turned to old records to offer illumination of ‘abortive nulled Parliaments’ in English history and a vindication of fundamental liberties, which were now being ‘dangerously undermined and almost totally subverted’.218W. Prynne, An Old Parliamentary Prognostication (1655, E.818.11); A Seasonable, Legall and Historicall Vindication (1654, E.812.10). The latter proved to be the first in a series of fairly substantial works in which Prynne published the fruits of his historical research, most obviously in the Tower of London, to advance his views on Parliament and English liberties, some of which – like the Summary Collection – were timed to coincide with the opening of new parliaments, and some of which were reprinted repeatedly in the late 1650s.219W. Prynne, The Second Part of a Seasonable, Legal and Historical Vindication (1655, E.820.11); A Summary Collection (1656, E.892.3); An Exact Abridgement of the Records in the Tower of London (1657); The Third Part of a Seasonable, Legal, and Historical Vindication (1657, E.905.1); Demophilos (1658, E.936.3); Historiarchos (1659); The First Part of a Brief Register (1659); HMC 5th Rep. 177. More provocatively, he also published A New Discovery of Free-state Tyranny, in which he reproduced his correspondence with John Bradshawe since 1650, as well as the proceedings of a conference between the two men in December 1654, as Prynne sought explanations for his recent treatment.220Prynne, New Discovery, 51-63 (second pagination).

Beyond this, Prynne engaged in a range of other controversies – both religious and constitutional – during the protectorate, including attacks on Quakers as ‘Romish emissaries’ and opposition to the readmission of the Jews.221W. Prynne, A New Discovery of Some Romish Emissaries (1656, E.495.2); A Short Demurrer to the Jewes (1656, E.483.1); The Second Part of a Short Demurrer (1656, E.483.2); Some Popish Errors (1658). His tract against the idea of Cromwell taking the crown in March 1657 consisted of a document from the reign of Richard III with marginal notes that explicitly refered to the Humble Petition and Advice as ‘the new device of this bloody usurper’, and warned Cromwell’s supporters to heed the ‘tragical ends’ of King Richard.222W. Prynne, King Richard the Third Revived (1657), 2-9 (E.903.9). Subsequently, Prynne also published an expanded version of his defence of the House of Lords in March 1658, in response to the ‘late loud unexpected votes at Westminster of a new king and House of Lords under the name, notion of another House’.223W. Prynne, A Plea for the Lords (1658), sig. a2 (E.749.1). What all this signalled, of course, was the extent of Prynne’s hostility towards the protectoral regime. This was widely appreciated, although it did not lead to any official action against him, even when Prynne decried the ‘illegality’ of the regime’s treatment of Dr John Hewitt, a royalist plotter who was tried and executed in June 1658. Although it is unclear whether Prynne was formally employed as Hewitt’s counsel – there is some evidence that Hewitt struggled to get legal assistance – he may have offered informal advice. His Beheaded Dr John Hewytts Ghost, published in March 1659, contained an account of Hewitt’s defence arguments, and represented an attempt to demonstrate the ‘arbitrary’ nature of the justice involved. It explicitly contrasted this trial with the proceedings against Connor Maguire in the 1640s, as devised by Prynne.224CCSP iii. 147, 153; Nicholas Pprs. iv. 41; The Tryals of Sir Henry Slingsby and John Hewit (1658), 9-20 (E.753.5); The True and Exact Speech and Prayer of Doctor John Hewytt (1658); W. Prynne, Beheaded Dr John Hewytts Ghost (1659), 5-6 (E.974.2).

Resisting the Rump, 1659-60

With the revival of the Rump in 1659 Prynne returned to his previous prominence and notoriety, and to prolific pamphleteering, in ways that eventually led to his being fêted – however grudgingly – by royalist grandees. At the end of April he published an anonymous tract called The True Good Old Cause Rightly Stated, which offered a full-frontal attack upon the ‘Jesuitical’ army, and an argument in favour of a constitution that consisted of king, Lords and Commons, and which attracted favourable attention from royalist grandees as well as concerted criticism from republicans like Henry Stubbe.225W. Prynne, The True Good Old Cause Rightly Stated (1659, E.983.6*); Mercurius Democritus no. 2 (26 Apr.-3 May 1659), 15 (E.979.2); Faithfull Scout no. 3 (6-13 May 1659), 24 (E.980.19); Eg. 2536, f. 413; H. Stubbe, The Common-wealth of Israel (1659, E.983.11). As soon as the Rump reassembled, Prynne joined other victims of Pride’s Purge in attempting to take what they considered to be their rightful places in the Commons, only to find that, having gained entry into the lobby, they were prevented by guards from entering the chamber itself, and then ‘repulsed’. According to Prynne’s account, quickly published, he lectured the guards on the illegality of their actions, before retreating to Lincoln’s Inn, where he helped to compile a list of other secluded MPs who were still living (promptly printed), and prepared to return to Westminster on 9 May. On that occasion the former MPs found the House unguarded, enabling Prynne to retake his familiar seat. His aim was apparently to provoke a debate, ‘in a full and free house’, about whether ‘the old Parliament was not determined [ended] by the king’s death’, but he inevitably met with stiff resistance. Sir Arthur Hesilrige* said that ‘he had nothing to do to sit there as a Member, being formerly secluded’, to which Prynne apparently replied that ‘he had as good a right to sit there as himself, or any other Member’. Sir Henry Vane II* is said to have told Prynne that he ‘ought not to come into this House’, and asked him ‘as a friend, quietly to depart hence, or else some course will be presently taken with you, for your presumption’. In the end, the matter was resolved by adjourning the House, and Prynne’s entry was then blocked when sittings resumed later that day, prompting him and others to submit a written protest to the Speaker, William Lenthall.226Prynne, True and Perfect Narrative, 1-17, The Curtaine Drawne (1659); Loyalty Banished (1659), 3-8 (E.986.20); [A. Annesley*], England's Confusion (1659), 11-15 (E.985.1); Faithfull Scout no. 8 (10-17 June 1659), 48-9 (E.985.27); Weekly Post no. 5 (31 May-7 June 1659), 39 (E.985.3); no. 6 (7-14 June 1659), 46-7 (E.985.20); Worcester Coll. Clarke MS XXXI, ff. 109v-10v; Lansd. 823, f. 312.

This episode attracted considerable attention. Royalist grandee Sir Edward Nicholas was told that Prynne ‘spoke boldy’ in the lobby. As such men predicted, Prynne responded with a flurry of short tracts, including the True and Perfect Narrative, which reported the incident and also offered more general criticism of ‘time-serving saints’, the ‘confederated triumverate of republicans, sectaries and soldiers’, and ‘this whorish bastard good old cause’.227Nicholas Pprs. iv. 134-5; W. Prynne, The Re-publicans (1659), 1, 3, 5, 14 (E.983.6); Loyalty Banished (1659, E.986.20); A true and perfect Narrative of What was done (1659, E.767.1); Concordia Discors (1659, E.767.3). Prynne’s tracts and his defence of a monarchical constitution were read enthusiastically and approvingly by royalist onlookers, who argued that he had given ‘full satisfaction for former erratas’, and that ‘his quill doth the best’, but they also attracted criticism, satire and forged pamphlets, including Samuel Butler’s Mola Asinaria.228Nicholas Pprs. iv. 139, 145, 157; Eg. 2536, f. 428; The Character or Ear-Mark of Mr William Prynne (1659); S. Butler, Mola Asinaria (1659, E.985.4); One Sheet, Or, if you will A Winding Sheet (1659, E.984.12). According to one bizarre story that surfaced at this time, Prynne was even said to have had a premonition of Cromwell’s death, having apparently dreamt about meeting a dying lord protector in Bath and lecturing him on the need to restore free parliaments and the people’s liberties in order to secure remission for his sins.229Weekly Post no. 7 (14-21 June 1659), 54-5 (E.986.14); Faithfull Scout no. 9 (17-24 June 1659), 88 (E.986.25). When Prynne denounced such tracts in The New Cheaters Forgeries, he was merely attacked for a ‘pitiful railing paper’, and as ‘a constant opposer of all government’.230W. Prynne, The New Cheaters Forgeries (1659, 669.f.21.42); Mercurius Democritus no. 5 (31 May-7 June 1659), 36 (E.985.5).

Nevertheless, for all the opposition that Prynne generated, royalists clearly believed that his ideas were gaining traction. They picked up on reports that ‘this city is so bold as to design a petition to the House for the calling in of the Members secluded in [16]48’, while others noted that such pamphlets had made ‘a great impression upon the hearts of many, tending much to insurrection’.231J. Osborne, An Indictment Against Tythes (1659, E.989.28); Nicholas Pprs. iv. 171; Weekly Post no. 13 (26 July-2 Aug. 1659), 109 (E.993.7). As Prynne continued to reply to his numerous critics – including John Rogers and Marchamont Nedham – in the second half of 1659, tracts that defended the secluded Members, attacked the ‘Jesuitical’ nature of the ‘anti-parliamentary Westminster juncto’ and advocated a free parliament and a return to a traditional constitution received attention not just from journalists but also from Charles Stuart himself.232J. Rogers, A Christian Concertation (1659); M. Nedham, Interest will not Lie (1659, E.763.5); W. Prynne, A Brief, Necessary Vindication (1659, E.772.2); A Short, Legal, Medicinal (1659, E.772.1); Loyall Scout (20 Oct.-4 Nov. 1659), 414 (E.1001.11); A Reply to Mr William Prinne (1659, E.1010.8); The Grand Concernments of England (1659), sig. A3v, 9-10, 18, 28 (E.1001.6); Thomas Campanella… his Advice ed. Prynne (1660, E.1012.1). The latter wrote from the continent to Prynne, having received ‘particular information of your great services and indefatigable endeavours to awaken my people’, having read some of his pamphlets, and having reflected on ‘the efficacy of your pen’. He promised to reward Prynne’s ‘zealous undertakings’.233Mordaunt Letter-Bk. 126, 133. Like other royalists, Charles perhaps came to recognise that pressure from men like Prynne and divisions amongst old parliamentarians were likely to prove more effective than ‘the multiplicity of designs’ involving old cavaliers.234E. Suss. RO, ASH 2015/10-11. Indeed, Prynne became central to the efforts of those who opposed the army in late 1659, and in November and December 1659 he helped to produce and promulgate petitions from divers groups across the country who demand a ‘free parliament’, including at least some of London’s watermen.235W. Prynne, The Remonstrance of the Noble-men (1659, 669.f.22.11); The Humble Petition and Address of the Seamen and Watermen (1659); Buller Pprs. 115-16; The Diurnal of Thomas Rugg ed. W.L. Sachse (Cam. Soc. ser. 3, xci), 33.

As in May 1659, the revival of the Rump in late December 1659 saw Prynne supplement words with actions. On 27 December he joined other secluded MPs in another attempt to enter the Commons. Again they were thwarted by the guards, and by men like Matthew Alured*. Although a debate on the matter was promised for 5 January 1660, Prynne again responded by narrating the episode in print, denouncing ‘these self-made lordlings’, who took care to ‘disguise and conceal this affair’, and to omit it from the official record.236W. Prynne, A Brief Narrative of the manner how divers Members (1659), 2-7 (E.1011.4); Six Important Quaeres (1659, 669.f.22.43). Prynne prepared for the debate in brief tracts which drew parallels between recent events and the attempted arrest of the Five Members in 1642, and by reprinting the orders and declarations that had been issued by Parliament in response.237W. Prynne, Seven Additional Quaeries (1660, E.765.1); The Privileges of Parliament… Reprinted (1660). Then, when the Commons voted on 5 January against readmitting the secluded MPs, Prynne rushed to publish more pamphlets asserting their cases, appealing to those constituencies that remained unrepresented as result of ‘abitrary and tyrannical’ behaviour, offering further instalments of old records regarding parliamentary writs, and claiming that an attempt had been made to arrest him on 9 January.238W. Prynne, The Case of the old Secured, Secluded, and now Excluded Members (1660, E.765.2); The Second Part of a Brief Register (1660); Three Seasonable Quaeries (1660, 669.f.23.3); A Full Declaration of the true State of the Secluded Members (1660), 28 (E.1013.22). When the Rump passed orders to raise new assessments (26 Jan.), Prynne also reprinted his old complaints about illegal taxation, and published the text of a letter that he had sent to Sir Arthur Hesilrige in defence of Sir George Boothe*, who had been imprisoned following an abortive rising in August 1659.239W. Prynne, A Legal Vindication of the Liberties of England (1660, E.772.4); A Plea for Sr George Booth (1660, 669.f.23.1).

Since by this time George Monck* had arrived in London, Prynne’s public pronouncements were almost certainly intended to facilitate the readmission of the secluded Members. That decision (on 21 Feb.) was prefaced not just by denunciations of the ‘anti-parliamentary Westminster juncto’ and ‘new republicans’ as ‘old Egyptian pharoahs and task masters’, and by the indictment of Colonels Alured and John Okey* for their part in events on 27 December, but also by professions of loyalty to the crown, even extending to support for ‘jure divino’ titles.240W. Prynne, Conscientious, Serious Theological and Legal Quaeres (1660, E.772.3); A Copy of the Presentment (1660); The Title of Kings proved to be Jure Devino (1660). He made such protestations in response to the old ‘calumny’ – revived in recent royalist histories – that he was ‘a professed enemy to the late king’s person, to kingly government and a justifier and encourager of regicides and exciter of subjects to lay violent hands upon their prince’s sacred persons in some cases’.241Prynne, Signal Loyalty, sigs. *, *2v.

Return of the Long Parliament

Given his political and polemical campaigning during the protectorate and the revived Rump, as well as his legal expertise, Prynne naturally played a prominent part in the brief final session of the Long Parliament (21 Feb.-16 Mar. 1660). His entry into the House was noted by contemporaries, because of the speech that he made and an incident where his long sword tripped up Sir William Waller.242HMC Bath, ii. 141; Aubrey, Brief Lives ed. O. Lawson Dick (1949), 414. Subsequently, he was widely recognised as having spoken ‘very stoutly’ on the ‘ticklish subject’ of the ‘ancient government’ of king, Lords and Commons, and in favour of dissolving Parliament; his boldness provoked ‘an universal silence’ in the chamber (8 Mar.).243CUL, Buxton pprs. 102/76; Add. 15750, ff. 55v-56; CCSP iv. 592-3, 603, 615; TSP vii. 854-6, 867. According to the Journal, Prynne was involved in ensuring that entries relating to impeached and secluded MPs, and to the Engagement, were expunged from the official record.244CJ vii. 847a, 859b, 872b. He was also named to a committee to consider which prisoners who had been detained for political offences might be released.245CJ vii. 854a. He was charged with preparing a new council of state, with considering provision for widows, orphans, maimed soldiers and distressed mariners, and with the management of Trinity House, where he later served as an ‘elder brother’.246CJ vii. 847a-b, 857a-b; PRO30/24/3/75/14, 19; HMC 8th Rep. pt. 1 (1881), 254. More revealing about his political views, was his involvement in the appointment of Monck as commander-in-chief, and the award to him of £20,000 – a proposal that forced a division within the House.247CJ vii. 850b, 877b. Likewise, his involvement with bill for the continuance of customs and excise provided a chance to implement reforms, and to remove certain prominent commissioners, like Adam Baynes* and Luke Robinson*, who were too closely associated with the army and the Rump.248CJ vii. 848a.

Much more controversial, of course, were issues relating to the political and religious settlement that Prynne and his allies sought to promote. In part, this was a matter of signalling a return to conventional patterns and processes of governance, and Prynne was nominated to committees on issues like the legal circuit and the revival of palatine jurisdictions, and he was also given particular responsibility for considering what had been done in Parliament about the House of Lords (13 Mar.).249CJ vii. 851b, 854a, 860b, 872b. In pursuance of a return to a traditional constitution, Prynne’s expertise ensured that he was appointed to committees to set a date for the next Parliament, to consider the form of election writs that would be issued, and, most importantly of all, to set out the qualifications needed for prospective MPs. Eventually, it was Prynne who prepared and reported several clauses of the bill for the new Parliament (14 Mar.), and he then served on the committee to which they were referred.250CJ vii. 848a-b, 852b, 868b, 875a. Key here was the question of how to treat former royalists, and those who had been in arms against Parliament, and the proposals that emerged inevitably proved divisive, because they opened up the possibility for Parliament to ‘restore’ former enemies, in ways that proved anathema to republicans.251CJ vii. 873b-874a.

Equally revealing about Prynne’s inclinations was his membership of, and presumably active involvement in, what came to be known as the committee for religion (29 Feb.), the deliberations of which were sufficiently important to be discussed – as first business – for an hour every morning.252CJ vii. 855b. The committee produced a bill regarding the approbation of ministers and its intention of returning to the system introduced in August 1648 inevitably provoked debate. Its complementary bill to confirm the appointments of incumbent ministers also proved controversial, since it proposed to reappoint men who had been ejected and sequestered, even though they were considered to be ‘blameless’ in their ‘conversation’, and ‘sound in doctrine’.253CJ vii. 858a, 874a-855a, 877a, 880a. Beyond this, the committee for religion sought to revive the Presbyterian Confession of Faith passed in September 1646, as well as the Solemn League and Covenant, the latter of which was ordered to be printed, published and posted. On such issues Prynne looked for leadership to Edward Reynolds, the leader of moderate Presbyterian divines, who favoured an accommodation with episcopalians, and who was restored – with the help of a committee to which Prynne was also appointed – to the deanery of Christ Church, Oxford.254CJ vii. 860b, 862b, 872b. At the same time Prynne drafted with Robert Reynolds* a proclamation for enforcing all statutes against recusants, priests and Jesuits, although when he reported this to the House a committee was promptly appointed to make it both ‘effectual’ and ‘short’.255CJ vii. 862b, 867a.

Perhaps the most controversial of the issues with which Prynne was involved was the reform of the militia. Nominated to the committee that hastily issued, printed and dispersed orders to abolish existing bodies of commissioners across the country (23 Feb.), he was then named to committees to choose their replacements, both nationally and in London, and was given responsibility for amending the legislation regarding the latter, not least to ensure the appointment of the Presbyterian alderman Richard Browne* (10 Mar.).256CJ vii. 849a, 856a, 867, 868b. That the militia legislation and nominations for commissioners took so long to pass reflected the seriousness of divisions within the House, and there was clear evidence of impatience on the part of Presbyterians that debates on the matter were being protracted, as a string of new provisos and ‘riders’ were introduced.257CJ vii. 855b, 862b-863a, 865, 866b, 869-871a. That Presbyterians feared foul play is evident from the appointment of a committee (including Prynne) to investigate reports that the list of commissioners for Bristol had been amended in an underhand fashion after it had been approved by the House (13 Mar.).258CJ vii. 873a. Especially contentious was a proposed clause (which Prynne was among those considering) that all new militia commissioners would be expected to acknowledge that the civil war had been ‘just and legal’, something that was presumably introduced as a rearguard action by republicans, and certainly provoked debate. Edmund Ludlowe II*, for one, reflected that the secluded Members could not consider themselves ‘secure’ until ‘they had put the militia into the hands of … enemies to the commonwealth’, and recognised that Prynne was amongst those who ‘hastened to the press to quicken the printer’ once the bill was passed, suspecting that attempts were being made to introduce an ‘obstruction’. On this occasion – the final day of Parliament’s sitting – Prynne was doubtless happy to be able to report that he found no fault in the printers, or any delay in their work.259CJ vii. 879a; Ludlow, Mems. ii. 248; Ludlow, Voyce, 98.

Asserting the king’s right

With elections for the new Parliament imminent in the spring of 1660, Prynne published what he styled ‘seasonable and healing instructions’ that voters should give to those that they elected; these included advocacy of the recall of the ‘ancient nobility’.260W. Prynne, Seasonable and Healing Instructions (1660, 669.f.24.32); Ludlow, Voyce, 96. By this stage, royalists like Sir Edward Hyde* were doubtless cheered to hear that Prynne ‘in all things asserts the king’s right, as without whom this kingdom can have no settlements’.261TSP vii. 855, 867. Prynne himself was solicited to serve for as many as nine cities or boroughs, including Wells, but declined all of these offers in favour of a seat at Bath, alongside Alexander Popham*, and chose to accept that constituency ahead of Ludgershall, for which he was also returned, even though he lost his position as Bath’s recorder.262E. Suss. RO, ASH 2015/8; Bath and NE Som. RO, Bath council bk. 1649-84, pp. 239-40, 242; W. Prynne, Brevia Parliamentaria Rediviva (1662), 331-2; CCSP iv. 656. Prynne quickly wrote to Charles II to thank him for the ‘favour’ shown to ‘such a despicable worm as myself’, to promise his help towards a restoration (2 May). He also took pains to remind Charles of his efforts to prevent the regicide, and subsequently presented Bath’s loyal address to the king in order to mark his ‘miraculous restoration’ (16 June).263Bodl. Carte 30, f. 592; W. Prynne, Bathonia Rediviva (1660); Brevia, 334-6; The Second Part of the Signal Loyalty (1660, E.1037.3). Needless to say, in the Convention – where he was an extremely active MP – Prynne was recognised as one of the king’s most vigorous supporters, and as such was condemned by Ludlowe for ‘flattering’ Charles II with speeches that ‘made my ears tingle and my heart ache’. He was also mocked as a ‘boutefeu’ for adopting a hardline policy against the recigides, and for presuming to name those who should be excluded from pardon.264CCSP v. 7; Ludlow, Voyce, 123, 153-4, 160; Ludlow, Mems. ii. 272, 277-8; Whitelocke, Diary, 591-2; LJ xi. 52a; CJ viii. 61a. Other reports claimed that Prynne ‘fell on’ Anthony Ashley Cooper* for his role in preparing the Instrument of Government in 1653, and then demanded that William Lenthall should be hanged.265Staffs. RO, D868/9/9; Diary of Henry Townshend ed. Willis Bund, i. 40. Whitelocke too claimed to have suffered at Prynne’s hands, despite the pleading of his wife, who had apparently helped him ‘when he was in distress’ in the 1630s. According to Whitelocke, Prynne ‘railed to her against her husband, who never did half as much against the king as Prynne had done’, and ‘used her more like a kitchen wench than a gentlewoman’.266Whitelocke, Diary, 590-1.

Prynne’s aim during this period was clearly to try and influence the shape of the Restoration settlement. Nevertheless, he managed to provoke consternation by reprinting some old tracts from the 1620s and 1630s, in which he set out puritan and Presbyterian argments that were critical, if not necessarily dismissive, of episcopacy.267W. Prynne, Mr Pryns Letter and Proposals (1660, E.1040.4); The Unbishoping of Timothy and Titus (1660, E.190.1); CSP Dom. 1660-1, p. 308. As in earlier decades, Prynne’s vision was Erastian, and what he feared was ‘the extravagencies of some of our reviving English bishops’, especially in rejecting ordinations made during the interregnum. He also criticised the ‘unseasonable motions’ that had begun to emerge in the Commons, not to mention the ‘covetousness’ of churchmen who sought to recover lands that had been sold, and who indulged in ‘violent and vexatious proceedings’ that he considered to be ‘contrary’ to the Declaration of Breda. However, while he did so by exalting royal authority, Prynne quickly came to recognise that a moderate settlement was slipping from the Presbyterians’ grasp.268Prynne, Unbishoping, 27-8; A Seasonable Vindication of the Supream Authority (1660), sigs. *v, *2 (E.190.3); Ludlow, Voyce, 171. Indeed, while Prynne remained involved in zealous work to disband the army, and claimed that this ‘ingrossed all my time from morning till night’ for months on end, Ludlowe claimed that Prynne soon began to ‘discover himself fooled in his hopes’.269W. Prynne, A Short, Sober, Pacific Examination (1661), sig. A2; Ludlow, Voyce, 271; Ludlow, Mems. ii. 326. He continued to print tracts against ceremonial ‘exuberances’ that imposed upon the ‘tender consciences’ of ‘sober-minded Protestant subjects’.270Prynne, Short, Sober, Pacific Examination, sig. A2; A Briefe, Pithy Discourse (1661).

That the political and religious landscape was shifting became perfectly clear during the elections for the Cavalier Parliament (March-May 1661), for which Prynne prepared by reissuing his electoral advice tract from 1646.271W. Prynne, Minors no Senators (1661, E.1084.11). Although he was returned again at Bath, with the support of the mayor, the city witnessed a notable backlash against both Prynne and Popham on account of their ‘notorious’ activity during the civil wars. This even extended to agitation by local royalists like Henry Chapman, who seized some of the aldermen in order to prevent a free election, provoked a disturbance and then harrangued Prynne himself, saying that he ‘deserved to lose his head when he lost something else, and that he was a public enemy to the king and kingdom’. Prynne also claimed that efforts were made to prevent him and his allies from undertaking their duties at the quarter sessions, and the affair eventually led to an inquiry by the privy council, which perhaps explains his decision to publish an account of the celebrations that were held in Bath to mark the king’s coronation.272CSP Dom. 1660-1, p. 544; 1661-2, p. 544; App. 1660-85, pp. 30-1; Houghton Library, MS Eng. 1301; Peach, Swainswick, 41-5; PC2/55, pp. 192, 385, 419; Bristol RO, AC/02/10-12; Bath and NE Som. RO, Bath council bk. 1649-84, pp. 239, 257-9, 269-77; W. Prynne, A Narrative of the Manner of Celebrating (1661); Brevia, 313-50. Having secured his seat, Prynne also recovered his place as Bath’s recorder (Aug. 1661), although he and his allies in the city soon fell foul of the Corporation Act in 1662, despite Prynne presenting the king with a gift of £100 on behalf of the corporation.273Bath and NE Som. RO, Bath council bk. 1649-84, p. 265.

Prynne remained an active MP for the rest of the Parliament, and a high profile Presbyterian, who once refused to kneel at communion in St Margaret’s church, but who only occasionally found himself censured for words and actions that were deemed unacceptable.274Staffs. RO, D868/2/73. The most famous of these occasions involved his publication of a vigorous denunciation of the Corporation Act, for which he was made to make a humble apology to the House (July 1661).275W. Prynne, Summary Reasons (1661); Votes and Resolves of the Commons-House (1661); Add. 10116, f. 229; HMC 12th Rep. IX, 50-1; CJ viii. 301b-302a. When he became reader at Lincoln’s Inn he lectured, almost inevitably, on the Petition of Right.276Hargrave 98, ff. 31-55v. His more outspoken moments, such as the occasion when he complained about Catholic meetings in Bath, prompted derisory comments from men like Joseph Williamson†, who claimed that ‘some men were born in a tempest, can see mountains through millstones, take alarm at the creeping of a snail, and throw upon the gates to let in Tartars’. For Williamson, Prynne was someone who could ‘find high treason in a bulrush, and innocence in a scorpion’.277CSP Dom. 1667, p. 550; SP29/221.57. Neverthless, Prynne’s ongoing service to the city ensured that he was reappointed as its recorder in March 1669.278Bath and NE Som. RO, Bath council bk. 1649-84, pp. 341, 359, 491-2, 512, 515; Chamberlains’ Accts. pp. 106-7, 110.

Whatever his zeal for parliamentary and civic service, Prynne’s most important work during the Restoration involved his role as keeper of the records in the Tower, a post to which he was appointed in August 1660. His salary of £500, although mostly not paid (to the extent that his arrears were £2,375 by 1668), was expressly referred to as a ‘free gift’, and according to Prynne this was done by the king himself, ‘for my services and sufferings for him under the late usurpers, and strenuous endeavours, by printing and otherwise, to restore His Majesty to the actual possession of his royal government and kingdom without opposition or effusion of blood’.279E403/2525, ff. 187-8; SO3/14, unfol.; HMC Laing I, 367; PROB11/331/455. Prynne’s archival work, the challenges of which he described at some length, meant that he only rarely engaged in polemical pamphleteering after 1661, instead issuing a series of very substantial publications on parliamentary and constitutional history, which developed his anti-Cokean ideas about the power of the king, the Commons and the ancient laws of England, and which served as a lasting legacy of his skills as an antiquarian scholar.280CSP Dom. 1661-2, p. 627; 1665-6, p. 346; W. Prynne, Brevia Parliamentaria Rediviva (1662), sigs. A2-A4v; The Fourth Part of a Brief Register (1664); An Exact Chronological Vindication (4 pts. 1665-6); Aurum Reginae (1668); Brief Animadversions… to the Fourth part of the Institutes (1669).

Prynne died on 24 October 1669, and was buried in the chapel at Lincoln’s Inn. His estate was not particularly substantial, and he described himself as someone ‘never coveting the uncertain transient treasures, honours or preferments of this world’, who was instead devoted to ‘my God, king, country, all the best public services I could, with the loss of my liberty, expenses of my mean estate, and hazard of my life’. Having never married, his property – involving cash and the lease of Oriel property in Swainswick – passed to his brother and sister, and to various nephews and nieces. Other bequests went to churches that had been damaged in the Fire of London, as well as to his clerks, to William Ryley at the Tower, and to Dr John Tillotson, the future archbishop of Canterbury, who served as preacher at Lincoln’s Inn and to whose brand of moderate episcopalianism – subject to the royal supremacy – Prynne had reverted since the Restoration. Certain books and manuscripts were given to Lincoln’s Inn and to Oriel College, while the bulk of his library was given to his brother, the clergyman Thomas Prynne, and a nephew, William Clarke, the latter of whom was enjoined not to sell them.281Ath. Ox. iii. 876; PROB11/331/455. Prynne’s death was widely reported, and it also prompted inquiries after his private papers, by antiquaries such as Anthony Wood and Sir William Dugdale, as well as by churchmen like Gilbert Sheldon, archbishop of Canterbury, albeit without success. They seem still to have been in the hands of his descendants at Swainswick in 1740, when one document – a copy of the articles against Archbishop Laud in Prynne’s hand – was presented as a gift, but aside from a few stray volumes the bulk of the archive remains elusive.282E. Suss. RO, ASH 2015/35; HMC 7th Rep. 488; HMC Hastings II, 313; Dugdale, Diary and Corresp. 390-1; HMC Portland, i. 594; Canterbury Cathedral Lib. Add. 63.