One Mr. Prynne, a man of most furiously scrupulous principles, who would have thought himself damned had he worn a cassock instead of a short cloak, and have been glad to see one-half of mankind cut the other to pieces for the glory of God and the _Propaganda Fide_, took it into his head to write a most wretched satire against some pretty good comedies, which were exhibited very innocently every night before their majesties. He quoted the authority of the Rabbis, and some passages from St. Bonaventura, to prove that the "Oedipus" of Sophocles was the work of the evil spirit; that Terence was excommunicated _ipso facto_; and added that doubtless Brutus, who was a very severe Jansenist, assassinated Julius Cæsar for no other reason but because he, who was Pontifex Maximus, presumed to write a tragedy the subject of which was "Oepidus." Lastly, he declared that all who frequented the theater were excommunicated, as they thereby renounced their baptism. This was casting the highest insult on the king and all the royal family; and as the English loved their prince at that time, they could not bear to hear a writer talk of excommunicating him, tho they themselves afterward cut his head off. Prynne was summoned to appear before the Star Chamber; his wonderful book, from which Father Lebrun stole his, was sentenced to be burned by the common hangman, and himself to lose his ears.[45] His trial is now extant. [Footnote 45: William Prynne, lawyer, pamphleteer, and statesman, was born in 1600, and died in 1669. Prynne in 1648 was released from imprisonment by the Long Parliament and obtained a seat in the House of Commons where he took up the cause of the king. Later, in the Cromwellian period, he was arrested and again imprisoned, but was released in 1652, and, after the accession of Charles II, was made keeper of the records in the Tower.]