THE LATE MR. JOHN BRUCE ON WILLIAM PRYNNE.* WE think
that the Camden Society have, on the whole, judged rightly in deciding to publish these documents relating to the character and career of one of the most singular persons of those whom the Civil Wars of Charles I. brought into prominence, not- withstanding the death of the man best calculated to have done justice to the subject. It does not appear, indeed, that Mr. Bruce intended to have associated his biography of Prynne with any pub- lication in the series of the Camden Society, for the fragment which be has left seems to have been written as part of a separate and independent work. Still, as fate has determined that it should remain a fragment, it was a fitting com- pliment to the memory of one who has contributed so much and so well to the publications of the Society, that what he has left behind him should in its turn appear under similar editorial supervision. It is impossible to speak of Mr. John Bruce as one of those who have gone away from us, without referring to his great and special services to the interests of correct historical knowledge, and especially in connection with the times of Charles I. We are the more called upon to do this, because beyond the circle of historical students the great value and high authority of Mr. Bruce's labours are little known. His remark- able modesty and self-sacrificing devotion to what he considered to be most for the permanent advantage of historical literature, led him to postpone the publication of any large and continuous work from his own pen on a period with which be had an un- rivalled acquaintance, and to prefer presenting some of the fruits of his research in the form of editorial introductions and notes to such materials as he thought it important that the public should have before them as speedily as possible, so that other students than himself might possess them in an accessible volume. He thus deliberately preferred the toil of building the foundation for other men's reputation, and acting as their pioneer, until ad- vancing age and a consciousness of the shortness of the career remaining to him, which none but himself possessed, led him to say more than once that he was too old now to commence the writing of a large original work, and must leave that to others. Had be lived, to write such a book, all those who are at all acquainted with the period will agree that his work would have been the standard history of the earlier English Stuarts. Such being the qualifications of Mr. Bruce, we are grateful to the Camden Society for placing before us anything proceeding from his pen, and brief as the fragment on Prynne is, we can refer to it with confidence as a specimen of what the work when com- pleted would have been. Even such as it remains, it is a clear, judicious, and concise account of the first years of the life of Prynne, before he involved himself in controversy and persecu- tion, and while be and his implacable enemy, Laud, were still separately preparing their minds for what proved to be their deadly contest. It is pleasant to meet with one who is associated in our minds almost entirely with religious and political war- fare in the quiet paths of private life. And we only regret that even the research of Mr. Bruce should have been able to discover so little of what may be strictly called the private history of his hero. Almost all that falls under this category is deduced from one or two documents which give us an insight into the household arrangements and social habits of the family. The Prynnes, as we gather from Mr. Bruce's sketch, have no authentic * Documents Rektling to the Proceedings Agana Wm. Prime in 1634 and 1037. With a Biographical Fragment by the late John Bruoe. Edited by Samuel Ramon. Gardiner. Printed for the Camden Society, 1877.
pedigree before the thnea of the Tudors. The career of a merchant at Bristol seems to have been the source of such wealth as they possessed.
William Prynne's father, Thomas, became the farmer, i.e., the agent as well as the cultivator, of some land at Swainswick, a few miles from Bath, belonging to Oriel College, Oxford. Another and closer connection with Bath, was created by the marriage of the Swainswick farmer with the daughter of William Sheraton, to whom that city was principally indebted for the charter of incorporation which it obtained from Queen Elizabeth, and who represented it in Parliament. William Prynne was born probably at Swainswick in the year 1600; and the circumstances of his family being easy, though not affluent, he was sent to the grammar-school at Bath, and there acquired suffi- cient learning and showed enough promise to entitle him to enter at the College with which his father was connected by the lands that he farmed. During these early years he must have become familiar with the civic lifmof Bath, through his visits to his grandfather, Mr. Sheraton, who possessed a mansion in the city. All his early associations on both sides of his family had been with Puritanism in the shape which it then bore,—of hatred and dread of Popery, and of antagonism to the beginnings of Sacerdotalism in its Anglican form. On his entry at Oriel, he found Laud embarking in his enterprise against Calvinistic Pro- testantism, and throwing the whole University into a turmoil by his attempt to supersede the old-established routine of scholastic learning and discipline ; and there can be no doubt as to the side which the young student roust have taken, although we have no specific account of his personal action. The same may be said of the commencement of his career in London, where we find him entering as a student of the law in Lincoln's Inn, in 1621, having taken his degree of B.A. in the January of that year. Here as well as at Oriel College, we have reason to believe, from the facts supplied to us by Mr. Bruce, that the authorities under whose influence he was placed belonged to the Puritan party, or at least were disposed to prefer Calvinistic tendencies to those which were becoming known as the New Court doctrine, which Laud had succeeded in introducing into the Royal Councils. At Lincoln's inn, too, Prynne became acquainted with more than one of those who were to become conspicuous sin subsequent times as party leaders. Among these may be mentioned Oliver St. John, one of the future leaders of that section of the Puritan party to whom Prynne eventually transferred that hatred which he at first expressed more especially to
the "Prelatists," as he would call them. But for the time there must have been the elements of considerable con- geniality between these two men, both of them steeped in learning, ecclesiastical as well as legal. Lincoln's inn was then in a state of vigorous renovation. It was rebuilding its chapel, and among the arms of the members of the Tan inserted in the stained windows, we find those of Prynne himself, so that he was not long before he identified himself with this place of learning, with which he continued to consider himself as closely bound up—not- withstanding the sentence of deprivation passed on him in the Star Chamber—and to which he ultimately left a complete collec- tion of his works. What was the exact cause of his preference of the legal profession to the Church, for which he would seem to have been equally qualified, we can only conjecture. Probably the prospect of a more independent career in the Law than was likely in the Church, vfith the prospect of Laud's ascendency, may have determined the point, if his friends had any weight in the decision. With Prynno himself, the prospect of a personal antagonism would be more likely to attract than deter. His father had died on July 5,
1620, and he was left by him in full power to continue, if he chose, the agricultural career at Swainswick. But of course such
a man was not likely to do this. From this time, until we find him entering the House of Commons as a " Recruiter" in the Long Parliament, Bath ceases to be the centre of his life, and we are launched on the political career with the main featurds of which we are already well acquainted as part of the history of England. Here we lose the services of Mr. Bruce, and all that
is left to Us is such use as we may be able to make of a few
documents from the State Paper Office, &c., which were found among Mr. Brace's papers, and which, from their connection with Prynne, have been thought, with one or two others added by Mr. Gardiner himself, to be a fitting supplement to the present volume.
We need not now enter on the matter of the Ilislriomastrix, more than to say that Mr. Gardiner seems to us rather over-
refining in his criticism when he remarks, "At p. 62 we have Prynne's own statement of the dates at which his book was
licensed and printed. These dates confirm the usually re- ceived opinion that it is impossible that the scandalous words about female actors in the index to the Ilistriontastrix should have been used with an intention of reflecting upon the public performance of the Queen's Masque, which took place many weeks after the whole book had been printed. But they do not prove that Prynne had not in his mind the rehearsal of that Masque, which, as we know from Salvette's news-letters, took place almost precisely at the time when the index was passing- through the press." One of the documents here intro- duced from the State Paper Office must be looked upon as an attempt on the part of Prynne's friends to conciliate the Lords of the Council, and if possible avert the execution of the rather than as embodying the feelings of the prisoner himself, which are shown unmistakably in a subsequent letter to Laud. This, which is too long for quotation, is most character- istic, and certainly shows that Prynne was one of the most aggressive of martyrs, rivalling in that respect the accounts handed down to Us of the demeanour of the early Christian sufferers during the tortures that preceded their death. No doubt the affectation of moderation on the part of Laud, in declining to act formally as one of Prynne's Judges, while devoting himself through his secretary to the aggravation, if not the perversion of the evidence offered, and afterwards thanking the Council for- their sentence, was eminently calculated to rouse all that was violent and impatient in the character of Prynne. There must have been a bitter personal animosity between the men, which rendered both of them wholly unfit to act as public prosecutor in the case of the other. One sentence, taken at random from the letter, will sufficiently demonstrate this ;--" This, my Lord, I must profess to be a notorious untruth, unbeseeming an Archbishop's sacred lippes, who should be ashamed to be a false accuser or slanderer of any man, especially in a public court of justice, as a Judge, where- nothing should be affirmed but what is undoubtedly true." The news-letters, from which copious extracts are given, are chiefly remarkable as giving in detail the execution of the second sentence against Prynne and his fellow-sufferers, under which the remains of their ears were cut off, and are unmistakably expressive of the feeling of sorrow and disgust rousedin the minds of the spectators. After reading such barbarities, the simple execution of Laud himself in subsequent years seems a mild and merciful retribution..
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