William Prynne, pamphleteer and politician, born at Swanswick, Somersetshire, in 1600, and educated at Oxford, where he took his degree in 1620. He then removed to Lincoln's Inn, where be became a barrister, and in 1627 began with Puritan severity to attack prevailing fashions. For a volume denouncing stage-playing, entitled Histrio-Mastix, which was supposed to be levelled at the queen, he was condemned by the Star-chamber to pay a fine of £5000, to stand in the pillory and have both ears cut off, and to remain a prisoner for life. While in prison he wrote another book, News from Ipswich against Laud, and being condemned again to another fine of £5000. and to lose the remainder of his ears, had the stumps cut off, and was branded on both cheeks. The Long Parliament in 1640 granted his release. Soon after he entered parliament and took, a prominent part in the trial of Laud . After the fall of Charles I. Prynne opposed Cromwell, who had him again imprisoned . At the Restoration he was appointed keeper of the records of the Tower, and died in 1669.
William Prynne A Puritan who campaigned against the King		He was a most voluminous writer, with much learning and indefatigable industry, but was deficient in his judgment .

John Pym, English statesman and leader of the popular party during the reigns of James I. and Charles I., was born in Somersetshire 1584; studied at Oxford and became famous as a lawyer. He entered parliament in 1614, and during the reign of James he attained great influence by his opposition to the arbitrary measures of the king. He sat for Tavistock in all the parliaments of Charles's reign. In 1626 he took part in the impeachment of Buckingham and was imprisoned. In the short parliament of 1640 Pym and Hampden were exceedingly active as leaders of the popular party. and in 1641 Pym was offered the chancellorship of the exchequer. He impeached Stratford, and at his trial appeared as accuser. He was the main author of the Grand Remonstrance, the final appeal presented in 1641, and one of the five members to arrest whom the king went to the House of Commons in Jan. 1642.

When civil war became inevitable Pym was appointed one of the committee of safety, and while he lived was active in resisting the negotiation of any peace with the king which did not secure the liberties of the subject and the supremacy of parliament. It was mainly his financial skill that enabled the parliamentary army to keep the field. In Nov. 1648, he was made lieutenant-general of ordnance, and in the following month he died, and was buried in Westminster Abbey.

John Selden, a distinguished jurist, legal antiquary, and Oriental scholar, was born 1584 at Salvington, near Worthing, Sussex, where his father held a small farm, and was educated at the free grammar school, Chichester, and at Hart Hall, Oxford, whence he proceeded to London to Clement's Inn and the Inner Temple. On being called to the bar he practised principally as a chamber counsel, devoting his leisure to the study of constitutional history.
		John Seldon - Lawyer

The fruits of his studies he gave to the world in several valuable works, including the Analecton Anglo-Britannicon, a treatise on the civil government of Britain before the coming of the Normans; Janus Anglorum, Facies altera (1610), a treatise on the progress of English law down to Henry II..; and Titles of Honour (1614), still a standard authority in regard to all that concerns the degrees of nobility and gentry in England. His De Diis Syriis (1617), on Syrian mythology, at once established his fame as an Oriental scholar; and his History of Tithes (1618) brought him into collision with the clergy.

In 1621 he suffered a short imprisonment for having advised the House of Commons to resist King James's claim that their privileges were derived from royal grant.; in 1628 he aided in drawing up the Petition of Right; and the following year he was again committed to the Tower, remaining in prison a considerable time. After his liberation he published a celebrated work, Mare CLausum (1635), upholding the rights of England to sovereignty over the 'narrow seas.'

In 1640 he sat in the Long Parliament for the University of Oxford, and espoused the popular cause, but with great moderation. He sat as a lay member of the Westminster Assembly (1643), was named one of the parliamentary commissioners of the admiralty (1645), subscribed the Solemn League and Covenant (1646), and was voted £5000 by parliament in recompense of his losses and as a reward for his services to the state. He died in 1654, and was buried in the Temple Church, London. His Table Talk was published in 1689 by his amanuensis, Richard Milward.