His treatment of Mr. Prynne may also be added, as another instance of this prelate’s exemplary love of virtue, and pious zeal for the service of God. [349]That gentleman published in the year 1632 his Histrio-Mastix, or book against stage-plays; in which, with very large collections, he exposed the liberties of the stage, and condemned the lawfulness of acting. Now, because the court became greatly addicted to these entertainments, and the queen was so fond of them, as meanly to submit to act a part herself in a pastoral; therefore this treatise against plays “was suspected” to be levelled against the court and the queen; and it “was supposed an innuendo,” that in the table of the book this reference was put, “women actors notorious whores.” Now mark the christian spirit, the burning zeal of the pious Laud. Prynne was prosecuted in the star chamber by Laud’s procurement, who shewed the book to the king, and pointed at the offensive parts of it; and employed Heylin to pick out all the virulent passages, and “N. B. to give the severest turn to them;” and carried these notes to the attorney general for matter of information, and urged him earnestly to proceed against the author. ----- Footnote 349: Com. Hist. p. 67. ----- Prynne was accordingly prosecuted; and being sufficiently convicted by suspicions, suppositions, and innuendoes, he was sentenced, Laud sitting as one of his judges, to have his book burnt in the most public manner; to be himself put from the bar, and made for ever incapable of his profession; to be excluded from the society of Lincoln’s Inn, and degraded in Oxford; to stand in the pillory in Westminster and Cheapside, and lose both his ears, one in each place; with a paper on his head, declaring his offence to be “an infamous libel” against both their majesties, the state and the government; to pay a fine of five thousand pounds, and to suffer perpetual imprisonment. Good God! what cruelty and barbarity is here? what insolent sporting with men’s fortunes, liberties, and bodies? What was the occasion of this bloody severity? A gentleman’s writing against the abuses of plays. Who ordered the prosecution against him for writing against plays? Archbishop Laud. Who sat at the head of his judges, who pronounced this infamous sentence? Archbishop Laud. Excellent archbishop! how christian, how commendable his zeal! How gloriously must religion flourish under his archiepiscopal inspection, and by his becoming “the most reverend” abettor, encourager, and great patron of plays on week days, and revels on sundays?