Prynne retorted promptly, entitling his reply, “Lame Giles his Haltings.”  Soon afterwards, being cited to appear and defend himself for having used intemperate language in a book against plays and players, he was sentenced to have his ears shorn off.  As many copies of his book as were forthcoming were burned by his side as he sat in the pillory.  He was degraded and prevented from pleading as a lawyer.  He only wrote the more.  The titles of his book are ingenious, and would ensure their sale at any time.  As for their contents, odious as was the language he used, Prynne always hit the nail he intended, and was very good at a blow.  In Rome’s Masterpiece, he declared that the archbishop was a “middle-man, between an absolute Papist and a real Protestant, who will far sooner hug a Popish priest in his bosom than take a Puritan by the little finger.”

Prynne’s fellow pamphleteers, Bastwick and Burton, were not far behind him in the violence of their invectives, but the lawyer must be admitted to bear the palm for sharp sayings.

In John Bastwick’s Litany, instead of “from plague, pestilence, and famine,” we have “from bishops, priests, and deacons, good Lord, deliver us.”

In 1637, Laud summoned the three men before the Star Chamber, to answer to a charge of libel.  Bastwick’s crime was for writing against the “Pope of Canterbury.”  They were all three found guilty, fined 5000 pounds each, condemned to lose their ears, and to be imprisoned for life, an astoundingly heavy sentence.  But in addition Prynne was to be branded on both cheeks with the letters S L for slanderous libeller.  Chief Justice Finch ordered the scars left by his former punishment to be laid bare.  “I had thought,” said he, “that Mr. Prynne had no ears but methinks he hath ears.”  Three years before, the executioner had only clipped off the outer rims; but now Prynne was to suffer the full rigour of the sentence.  A contemporary thus describes the process:—­

“Having burnt one cheek with a letter the wrong way, the hangman burnt that again, and presently a surgeon clapped on a plaster to take out the fire.  The hangman hewed off Prynne’s ears very scurvily, which put him to much pain, and after, he stood long in the pillory before his head could be got out, but that was a chance.” *

* Documents relating to Prynne, Camden Papers.

He seems to have borne this martyrdom with great coolness, for on his way back to prison, he composed a Latin distich on the letters S L, which he interpreted “Stigmata Laudis”—­the scars of Laud.

Although the sentence had been imprisonment for life, Prynne and Burton entered London in triumph three years later; and if revenge is sweet, Prynne was yet to swim in a sea of sweetness.  When by a strange irony of fate he was hired to search the imprisoned archbishop for papers, he carried off Laud’s diary.

If Panzani could have seen this strange record of the archbishop’s dreams, desires, and impressions, he would doubtless have ceased to look upon Laud as an important factor in his scheme of the corporate re-union of the nation with Rome.