Page:Books Condemned to be Burnt - James Anson Farrer.djvu/119

Rh £7,000, which, though falling far short of the Star Chamber fines, were very considerable sums in those days. Lilburne, on this occasion, was also sentenced to be banished, and to be deemed guilty of felony if he returned; but this part of the sentence was never enforced, for Lilburne remained, to continue to the very end, by speech and writing, that perpetual warfare with the party in power which constituted his political life.

John Fry, M.P., who sat in the High Court of Justice for the trial of Charles I., wrote in 1648 his Accuser Shamed against Colonel Downes, a fellow-member, who had most unfairly charged him before the House with blasphemy for certain expressions used in private conversation, and thereby caused his temporary suspension. Dr. Cheynel, President of St. John's at Oxford, printed an answer to this, and Fry rejoined in his Clergy in their True Colours (1650), a pamphlet singularly expressive of the general dislike at that time entertained for the English clergy. He complains of the strange postures assumed by the clergy in their prayers before the sermon, and says: "Whether the fools and knaves in stage plays took their pattern from these men, or these from them, I cannot determine; but sure one is the