II. BURTON. 47 impertinent; for it was as libellous as your book : so that your answer deserved a censure alone. L. Keeper. What say you, Mr. Burton, are' you guilty or not ? Burton. My lord, I desire you to peruse my book, not only here and there, but every passage of it. L. Keeper. Mr. Burton, time is short. Are you guilty, or not guilty ? What say you to that which was read ? Doth it become a minister to deliver himself in such a railing and scandalous way? Burton. In my judgment, and as I can prove it, it was neither railing nor scandalous. I conceive, that a minister bath a larger liberty than always to go in a mild strain. I being a pastor of my people, whom I had in charge, and was to instruct, I supposed it was my duty to inform them of those innovations that are crept into the church, as like- wise of the danger and ill consequences of them. As for my answer, ye blotted out what ye would, and then the rest, which made best for your own ends, you would have to stand ; and now for me to tender only what will serve for your own turns, and renounce the rest, were to desert my cause ; which, before I will do, or desert my conscience, will rather desert my body, and deliver it up to yourlord- ships to do with it what you will. L. Keeper. This is a place where you should crave mercy and favour, Mr. Burton, and not stand on such terms as you do. Burton. Wherein I have offended through human frailty, I crave pardon of God and man. And I pray God, that, in your sentence, you may so censure us that you may not sin ' against the Lord.. Thus, while Mr. Burton and his fellow-prisoners desired to say more for themselves, they were interrupted, and com- manded silence ; when the following dreadful sentence was passed upon them : " That Burton shall be deprived of his ecclesiastical benefice, degraded from his ministerial func- tion and degrees in the university, as Prynne and Bastvvick have been from their professions of law and physic they Harleian Miscellany, vol. iv. p. 17. Edit. 1745. 1- Mr. Prynne having published his " Histrio-Mastia," a book against plays, masquerades, &c. it gave great offence to Archbishop Laud, who, in the year 1633, procured a sentence against him in the star-chamber, "That he should be disabled from the practice of the law, be degraded from his degree in the university, be set in the pillory, have both his ears cut off, his book burnt by the common hangman, to pay a Site of five thousand ',Quads, and to be imprisoned during life ;" which sentence was rigorously
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