e, who kept a
grammar school, was weak enough to take him at his word, and so
wrote his _Plea_, a book of wondrous learning, and to this day
one of the best to read concerning the origin and growth of the
various rites of the Church. Thereupon he was whisked off to herd
with the commonest felons in Newgate, whence he wrote repeatedly
to Dr. Calamy, to beg him, as the cause of his unjust arrest, to
procure his release. Delaune disclaimed all malignity against the
English Church, or any member of it, and, with grim humour,
entreated to be convinced of his errors "by something more like
divinity than Newgate." But the Church has not always dealt in
more convincing divinity, and accordingly the cowardly
ecclesiastic held his peace and left his victim to suffer.

It is difficult even now to tell the rest of Delaune's story with
patience. He was indicted for intending to disturb the peace of
the kingdom, to bring the King into the greatest hatred and
contempt, and for printing and publishing, by force of arms, a
scandalous libel against the King and the Prayer-Book. Of course
it was extravagantly absurd, but these indictments were the legal
forms under which the luckless Dissenters experienced sufferings
that were to them the sternest realities. Delaune was, in
consequence, fined a sum he could not possibly pay; his books
(for he also wrote _The Image of the Beast_, wherein he showed,
in three parallel columns, the far greater resemblance of the
Catholic rites to those of Pagan Rome than to those of the New
Testament) were condemned to be burnt; and his judges, humane
enough to let him off the pillory in consideration of his
education, sent him back to Newgate notwithstanding it. There, in
that noisome atmosphere and in that foul company, he was obliged
to shelter his wife and two small children; and there, after
fifteen months, he died, having first seen all he loved on earth
pine and die before him. And he was only one of eight thousand
other Protestant Dissenters who died in prison during the merry,
miserable reign of Charles II.! Of a truth, Dissent has something
to forgive the Church; for persecution in Protestant England was
very much the same as in Catholic France, with, if possible, less
justification.

The main argument of Delaune's book was, that the Church of
England agreed more in its rites and doctrines with the Church of
Rome, and both Churches with Pagan or pre-Christian Rome, than
either did with the prim