Another of Pope’s examples is “old Prynne,” cropped (in 1632) in the Pillory for his _Histriomastic_, or Players’ Scourge, which was held to reflect on Charles I.’s Queen. Again he stood there in 1637, when the executioner cruelly mangled the ancient stumps. A quite incorrigible person was this same William Prynne, described by Marchmont Needham as “one of the greatest paper worms that ever crept about a library.” He wrote some forty works remarkable for virulence even in that age of bitter polemics. He strenuously supported the Restoration, and the new Government was at its wit’s end what to do with him till Charles himself solved the difficulty with happy humour. “Let him amuse himself with writing against the Catholics and poring over the records in the Tower,” said the king; and silenced him with the Keepership of the Records and £500 a year. Prynne’s second appearance was for a bitter attack on Laud; and he had as fellow-sufferers John Bastwick, who had written a sort of mock _Litanie_, and Henry Burton. Bastwick was “very merrie.” His wife “got on a stool and kissed him;” and, “his ears being cut off, she called for them, put them in a clean handkerchief, and carried them away with her.” There was a great crowd, which “cried and howled terribly, especially when Burton was cropped.” Being angered by the jeers and execrations of the mob, the executioner did his work very brutally. Pope’s Billingsgate is classic, but it remains Billingsgate. The Pillory shows often in his verse. Edmund Curl was a pet aversion of his, and for publishing the _Memoirs of Ker of Kersland_ Curl suffered the punishment at Charing Cross on Feb. 23, 1728. Pope hints (_Dunciad_, II. 3 and 4) that he was badly handled by the mob. In truth he came off very well, owing, it seems, to an explanatory circular he got distributed among the spectators.