Prynne

Prynne, William (1600-69), Puritan pamphleteer, entered at Lincoln's Inn in 1620, and soon became known for his controversial and legal writings. In 1632 he published Histrimnastix (The "Actor's Scourge), reflecting on the immorality of the stage. For words contained in this supposed to refer to the queen he was degraded from his profession by the Star Chamber, fined, pilloried, and mutilated. For attacking the bishops in News from Ipswich (1637) he was condemned to imprisonment for life, but both his sentences were declared illegal by the Long Parliament. Prynne, however, subsequently opposed the king's trial, and was one of the "purged." At the Restoration he was made Keeper of the Tower Records.