James I., by his craft and guile, accomplished several notable and surprising matters, and nothing more remarkable than actually to persuade the Pope to punish an Italian writer, named Reboul, for publishing an apology for the English Roman Catholics who refused to take the oath of allegiance required by the English monarch in 1606, after the discovery of the gunpowder plot. This certainly was a singular and remarkable performance, and must have required much tact and diplomacy. It is conjectured that the artful King so flattered the Pope as to induce him to protect the English sovereign from the attacks of his foes. Reboul's production was very virulent, exhorting all Catholics to go constantly to England to excite a rising against the King, and to strangle the tyrant with their hands. The Pope ordered the furious writer to be hanged, and an account of his execution, written by a Venetian senator, is found among Casaubon's collection of letters. The most famous victim of the Star Chamber was William Prynne, whose work _Histriomastix, or the Player's Scourge_, directed against the sinfulness of play-acting, masques, and revels, aroused the indignation of the Court. This volume of more than a thousand closely printed quarto pages contains almost all that was ever written against plays and players; not even the Queen was spared, who specially delighted in such pastimes, and occasionally took part in the performances at Court. Prynne was ejected from his profession, condemned to stand in the pillory at Westminster and Cheapside, to lose both his ears, one in each place, to pay a fine of £5,000, and to be kept in perpetual imprisonment. A few years later, on account of his _News from Ipswich_, he was again fined £5,000, deprived of the rest of his ears, which a merciful executioner had partially spared, branded on both cheeks with S.L. (Schismatical Libeller), and condemned to imprisonment for life in Carnarvon Castle. He was subsequently removed to the Castle of Mont Orgueil, in Jersey, where he received kind treatment from his jailor, Sir Philip de Carteret. Prynne was conducted in triumph to London after the victory of the Parliamentarian party, and became a member of the Commons. His pen was ever active, and he left behind him forty volumes of his works, a grand monument of literary activity.