_August, 1887._




PROLOGUE.


On a bright day in September of the year 1649 Mr. William Prynne, a
suspended Member of Parliament, sat at the window of his lodging in the
Strand, London, where the Thames at high water brimmed softly against
the lawn, bearing barges, wherries, and other small craft, and gleaming
very pleasantly in the slant brightness of an autumn noon.

The unprosperous politician looked upon the fair scene with quiet cheer.
He was a man of austere aspect, and looked farther advanced in middle
life than was actually the case. For he was bearing the unjust weight of
a double enmity; and though his after conduct showed that the world's
injustice by no means threw him off his moral balance, yet it is
impossible for a man to get into a position where every one but himself
seems wrong and not acquire a certain sense of solitude, which, with a
grave nature, will make him graver still. By the Cavaliers he had been
pilloried, mutilated, fined and imprisoned: expelled from the University
where he was a Master-of-Arts, driven out of the Inn-of-Court in which
he had been a Bencher. By the Roundheads, on the other hand, he had been
visited with a later and more intolerable wrong, exclusion from that
House of Commons which was the only surviving seat of sovereignty. Thus
excommunicated on all sides, Prynne still preserved his free and buoyant
nature. He had the voice and impulsive manner of a young man; while