While the anger excited by this attack on pastimes favoured by the King was yet hot, the assault itself was met by a defiance. The gentlemen of the Inns of Court closed their law-books, got up a masque, and played it at Whitehall, in the presence of a delighted audience, consisting of royal and noble personages. The most play-loving of the lords followed the example afforded by the lawyers, and the King himself assumed the buskin, and turned actor, for the nonce. Tom Carew was busy with superintending the rehearsals of his "Coelum Britannicum," and in urging honest and melodious Will Lawes to progress more rapidly with the music. Cavalier Will was not to be hurried, but did his work steadily; and Prynne might have heard him and his brother Harry humming the airs over as they walked together across the park to Whitehall. When the day of representation arrived, great was the excitement and intense the delight of some, and the scorn of others. Among the noble actors who rode down to the palace was Rich, Earl of Holland. All passed off so pleasantly that no one dreamed it was the inauguration of a struggle in which Prynne was to lose his estate, his freedom, and his ears; the King and the earl their heads; while gallant Will Lawes, as honest a man as any of them, was, a dozen years after, to be found among the valiant dead who fell at the siege of Chester. Ere this _dénouement_ to a tragedy so mirthfully commenced had been reached, there were other defiances cast in the teeth of audacious, but too harshly-treated Prynne. There was a reverend playwright about town, whom Eton loved and Oxford highly prized; Ben Jonson called him his "son," and Bishop Fell, who presumed to give an opinion on subjects of which he was ignorant, pronounced the Rev. William Cartwright to be "the utmost that man could come to!" For the Christ Church students at Oxford, Cartwright wrote the "Royal Slave," one of three out of his four plays which sleep under a righteous oblivion. The King and Queen went down to witness the performance of the scholastic amateurs; and, considering that a main incident of the piece comprises a revolt in order to achieve some reasonable liberty for an oppressed people, the subject may be considered more suggestive than felicitous. The fortunes of many of the audience were about to undergo mutation, but there was an actor there whose prosperity commenced from that day. All the actors played with spirit, but this especial one manifested such self-possession, displayed such judgment, and exhibited such powers of conception and execution, that King, Queen, and all the illustrious audience showered down upon him applauses--hearty, loud, and long. His name was Busby. He had been so poor that he received £5 to enable him to take his degree of B.A. Westminster was soon to possess him, for nearly three-score years the most famous of her "masters." "A very great man!" said Sir Roger de Coverley; "he whipped my grandfather!"