On the 2nd of September, 1644, Archbishop Laud, then a man of more than threescore years and ten, but still with intellect vigorous, active, and unimpaired by age or trouble, appeared at the bar of the House of Lords, to recapitulate in one address the various points of his defence, which had been made at intervals during the six months previous, as the trial had gone on, from time to time, since the 12th of the preceding March. On coming to the bar, he was for the moment staggered by seeing, in the hands of each of his judges, a blue book, containing, as he had just learnt, great part of his own most secret memoranda and most private thoughts, extracted by the bitterest of his opponents out of his Diary and MS. book of devotions. This was Prynne's _Breviate of the Life of William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury; extracted (for the most part)_ verbatim _out of his own Diary, and other writings, under his own hand_. "So soon as I came to the bar," (this is his own account,) "I saw every Lord present with a new thin book in folio, in a blue coat. I heard that morning that Mr. Pryn had printed my Diary, and published it to the world, to disgrace me. Some notes of his own are made upon it. The first and the last are two desperate untruths, beside some others. This was the book then in the Lords' hands, and I assure myself, that time picked for it, that the sight of it might damp me, and disinable me to speak. I confess I was a little troubled at it. But after I had gathered up myself, and looked up to God, I went on to the business of the day, and thus I spake."--_History of Troubles and Trial_, c. xlii. pp. 411, 412. In his defence he turned this circumstance, and the use previously made of his Diary and Devotions during the course of his trial, very happily to account. After speaking of the means which had been used to frame the charges against him, how he had been "sifted to the very bran," he says: "My very pockets searched; and my Diary, nay, my very Prayer Book taken from me, and after used against me; and that, in some cases, not to prove, but to make a charge. Yet I am thus far glad, even for this sad accident. For by my Diary your Lordships have seen the passages of my life; and by my Prayer Book, the greatest secrets between God and my soul: so that you may be sure you have me at the very bottom. Yet, blessed be God, no disloyalty is found in the one; no Popery in the other."--_Ibid._ c. xliii. p. 413. The recapitulation over, the Archbishop was remanded to the Tower, and prosecuted the work on which he had been long engaged, _The History of his Troubles and Tryal_: intending, when that was finished, to publish a reply to this _Breviate_. His words are: "For this _Breviate_ of his, if God lend me life and strength to end this (the History) first, I shall discover to the world the base and malitious slanders with which it is fraught."--_Ibid._ c. xx. p. 254.