Henry Burton (Puritan) - Star Chamber Conviction

Star Chamber Conviction

In prison Burton was soon joined by William Prynne and John Bastwick, a parishioner who had also written books against the Church hierarchy, and the three were proceeded against in the Star-chamber (11 March) and included in a common indictment. An attempt was made on 6 June to get the judges to treat the publications of Bastwick and Burton (who had added to his offence by publishing, from his prison, An Apology for an Appeale, 1636 consisting of epistles to the king, the judges, and the nobility) as presenting a primâ facie case of treason, but this fell through. The defendants prepared answers to the indictment, but it was necessary that these should be signed by two counsel. Burton was the only one who got at length the signature of a counsel, one Holt, an aged bencher of Gray's Inn, and Holt drew back, until the court agreed to accept his single signature.

Burton's answer lay in court about three weeks, when on 19 May the attorney-general, Sir John Bankes, denouncing it as scandalous, referred it to the chief justices, Sir John Bramston and Sir John Finch. They made short work of it, striking out sixty-four sheets, and leaving no more than six lines at the beginning and twenty-four at the end. Thus mutilated, Burton, would not own it; he was not allowed to frame a new answer, and on 2 June it was ordered that he, like the rest, should be proceeded against pro confesso. Sentence was passed on 14 June, the defendants crying out for justice, and demanding that they should not be condemned without examination of their answers. Burton, when interrogated as to his plea by the lord keeper Thomas Coventry, 1st Baron Coventry, maintained that 'a minister hath a larger liberty than always to go in a mild strain'. His defence was stopped. He was condemned to be deprived of his benefice, to be degraded from the ministry and from his academical degrees, to be fined £5,000, to be set in the pillory at Westminster and his ears to be cut off, and to be perpetually imprisoned in Lancaster Castle, without access of his wife or any friends, or use of pen, ink, and paper. For this sentence Laud thanked the court.

Burton's parishioners signed a petition to the king for his pardon; the two who presented it committed to prison. His ears were cropped so close, according to Thomas Fuller, that the temporal artery was cut. When his wounds were healed, and he was conveyed northward on 28 July, people lined the road at Highgate to take leave of him. His wife followed in a coach, and 500 on horseback accompanied him as far as St. Albans. At Lancaster, Burton was confined in a large smoky room without furniture; the gaps between the planks of the floor made it dangerous to walk, and underneath was a dark room in which were kept five witches. The allowance for diet was not paid. Dr. Augustine Wildbore, vicar of Lancaster, kept a watchful eye over Burton's reading; Lord Clarendon says that despite precautions, papers from Burton were circulated in London.

A pamphlet giving an account of his censure in the Star-chamber was published in 1637. On 1 November he was sent to Guernsey, where he arrived on 15 December and was shut up in a cell at Castle Cornet. Here he had no books except his bibles in Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and French, and an ecclesiastical history in Greek, but he managed to get pen, ink, and paper, and wrote two books, which were not printed. His wife was not allowed to see him, though his only daughter died during his imprisonment.