Free Speech: A History from Socrates to Social Media

by Jacob Mchangama

Tired of bickering over taxes and religion, Charles dissolved Parliament in 1629, instituting eleven years of personal rule. During this period, the infamous Star Chamber, a dreaded court of law, became nearly synonymous with the Inquisition among Charles’s detractors.51 In 1634, the Puritan writer William Prynne was put on trial because of his book Histrio-mastix, a thinly veiled attack on the king and his Catholic queen, Henrietta Maria. Prynne was found guilty of seditious libel and sentenced to having his ears cropped, the pillory, imprisonment, and the burning of his books.52 Prynne found himself in a new sadistic drama in 1637, when he was put on trial again, this time for “divers scandalous bookes & libels, against the whole clergie of the kingdome, & against the Government of the Church of England,” and once more sentenced to have his ears cut off.53 Since they had already been reduced to stumps, he also had the letters “S. L.” (for “Seditious Libeller”) burned into his cheeks.