Page:Celebrated Trials - Volume 1.djvu/463

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With respect to the other charges of this nature, he had been acquitted from them by the presidial of Poictiers, and the Archbishop of Bourdeaux; and, in order to null their sentence, the attorney-general of the com-mission ought to have appealed from them, which we do not find he did. It is, therefore, still certain, that Grandier was condemned unjustly, and that the judges espoused the quarrel of a cabal madly bent upon his ruin.

Grandier's death did not silence the devils of Lou-dun the gambols were continued in several scenes exhibited to the public. Father Lactantius died the 18th of September, precisely a month after Grandier's death, as he had foretold. This event was, in the general opinion, deemed a strong confirmation of Grandier's innocence.

WILLIAM PRYNN, ESQ.

IN, THE STAR-CHAMBER, FOR WRITING AND PUB- LISHING A BOOK ENTITLED, "HISTRIO-MASTIX, OR A SCOURGE FOR STAGE-PLAYERS," &c.; AND ALSO MICHAEL SPARKES, FOR PRINTING, AND WILLIAM BUCKNER, FOR LICENSING THE SAID BOOK: 9 CHARLES I. A.D. 1632-3.

MR. WILLIAM PRYNN having published his "Histrio-Mastix," or book against stage-plays, licensed by the chaplain of Archbishop Abbot, wherein, with much indecent abuse, he exposed the liberties of the stage, and condemned the very lawfulness of acting. In his way of writing he could not refrain from over-doing any subject. And because the court became now more addicted to these ludicrous entertainments, and the queen herself was so fond of the amusement that she had bore the part of a pastoral in her own royal person; therefore, this treatise against plays was suspected to be levelled against the practice of the court, and the example of the queen: and it was supposed an inuendo, that in the table of

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