The Twice-Cropped Lawyer

William Prynne was a target of the notorious Court of Star Chamber, a body that operated without juries and held a disturbing penchant for physical mutilation. Prynne's crime was writing pamphlets that displeased the powerful, leading to a sentence that included life imprisonment and the brutal cropping of both ears.

• The ear-cropping took place in public at the pillory to ensure maximum humiliation.
• After being released, Prynne continued to write from prison, leading the court to haul him back for a second round of punishment.
• He survived these ordeals to become a figure of defiance against royal overreach.

His experience highlights the terrifying power of 17th-century authoritarian institutions. The Star Chamber sought to silence dissent by literally removing parts of the bodies of their critics. Prynne's refusal to be silenced, even after losing his ears, makes him a strange and persistent figure of early modern resistance, proving that the threat of physical violence is often insufficient to deter a man of extreme conviction.