The characters of Prynne and De Thou are drawn in the following Letters[14]. De Thou was a parliamentarian. Of Prynne I shall farther observe, that, besides his notoriety as a factious agent, lord Clarendon informs us, that he had been looked upon as a man of reproachful character previous to the infamous severities of the star chamber, which was the means of his obtaining consideration, for those of his profession, and others, thought, that persons, in his situation of life, should not be treated so ignominiously[15]. His character may be viewed in Hume's History[16]; and here let me observe, that {36} it was not only the catholics he attacked, but the manners of the times and the church; for which he was punished. Prynne was a thorough-paced puritan: through him and others of the same stamp the existing house of commons were glad to debase the government, and they absolutely reversed the sentence, which had been passed on him and other libellers. "The more ignoble these men were," says Hume, "the more sensible was the insult upon royal authority[17]." What writer, valuing his own respectability, would cite such a creature as this? One of a sect, who, the writer of the pamphlet himself tells us, were united with the Jesuits, to whom their pulpits were open, for the purpose of overawing the parliament, and compelling it to destroy the king. This too is cited from Prynne, to whom he refers for _much valuable evidence_. The pamphlet says, "see Rapin." The name has something less barbarous in the sound than {37} most of the others cited by the writer. Let us see Rapin. We find, in the pages of this historian, the names of Jesuit and catholic indiscriminately used, as accused of plots, suffering the rack, and confuting the accusations brought against them by the most persuasive simplicity of their protestations of innocence, and the intrepidity of their deaths. The pretended plots, in the days of Elizabeth and of the Stuarts, cited by a writer in 1815, against the toleration of the catholics[18]! Well, but see the _state trials,_ the _actio in proditores_, drawn up by our own judges, &c.[19] "Nothing," says {38} Hume, "can be a stronger proof of the fury of the times, than that lord Russel, notwithstanding {39} the virtue and humanity of his character, seconded the house of commons in the barbarous scruple of the sheriffs" on the power of the king to remit the hanging and quartering of {40} lord Stafford, that innocent victim to his pure attachment to God. Afterwards, when lord Russel was himself condemned, the king, in remitting the same part of the sentence for treason, said, "he shall find, that I am possessed of that prerogative, which, in the case of lord Stafford, he thought proper to deny me."