let out the priories themselves with all their rands and tenements, at his pleasure, for twentythree years; at the end of which term, peace being concluded between the two nations, he restored their estates in 1361, as appears by his letters patent to that of Montacute, county of Somerset, printed at large in Rymer, vol. vi. p. 311, and translated in Weever's Funeral Monuments, p. 339. At other times he granted their lands, or lay pensions out of them, to divers noblemen. They were also sequestered during Richard II.'s reign, and the head monasteries abroad had the king's licence to sell their lands to other religious houses here, or to any particular persons who wanted to endow others. Henry IV. began his reign with showing some favor to the alien priories, restoring all the conventual ones, only reserving to himself in time of war what they paid in time of peace to the foreign abbeys. They were all dissolved by act 2, Henry V., and all their estates vested in the crown, except some lands granted to the college of Fotheringay. The act of dissolution is not printed in the statute books, but it is be found entire in Rymer's Fædera, and in the Parliament Rolls, vol. iv. p. 22. In general, these lands were appropriated to religious uses. Henry VI. endowed his foundations at Eton and Cambridge with the lands of the alien priories. Others were granted in fee to the prelates, nobility, or private persons. Such as remained in the crown were granted by Henry VI., 1440, to archbishop Chicheley, &c., and they became part of his and the royal foundations. PRI'SAGE, n. s. From prise. See the ex tract. Prisage, now called butlerage, is a custom whereby the prince challenges out of every bark loaden with wine, two tuns of wine at his price. Cowell. PRISCIANUS, an eminent grammarian, born at Cæsarea, who taught at Constantinople with great reputation about the year 525. He composed a work De Arte Grammatica, which was first printed by Aldus at Venice in 1476; and another, De Naturalibus Questionibus, which he dedicated to Chosroes king of Persia; besides which he translated Dionysius's description of the world into Latin verse. PRISM, n. s. French prisme; Gr. PRISMATIC, adj. piopa. See Sir I. PRISMATICALLY, adv. Newton's definition below: the adjective and adverb correspond. Take notice of the pleasing variety of colours exhibited by the triangular glass, and demand what addition or decrement of either salt, sulphur, or mercury befalls the glass, by being prismatically gured; and yet it is known that, without that shape, it would not afford those colours as it does. The face of nature we no more survey, and calcined for about half an hour, and then brought If oyster-shells were thrown into a common fire in a dark room, that many of them would exhibit to a person who had previously been some minutes beautiful irises of prismatic colours. Darwin. more than four planes, whose bases are equal, Fr. prison. A strong hold in which per sons are confined; a gaol: to confine or captivate prisonis a kind of rural play, described in the extract: house is synonymous with prison: prison-base Prisoner, one confined in a prison; a captive: prisonment, confinement; captivity. The spachies of the court play every Friday at giocho di canni, which is no other than prisonbase upon horseback, hitting one another with darts, as the others do with their hands. Sandys. I So oft as homeward I from her depart, go like one that, having lost the field, Is prisoner led away with heavy heart. He hath commission Spenser. To hang Cordelia in the prison. Shakspeare. Id. To whose flint bosom my condemed lord I am forbid to tell the secrets of my prisonhouse. Shakspeare. May be he will not touch young Arthur's life, But hold himself safe in his prisonment. Id. There succeeded an absolute victory for the English, the taking of the Spanish general d'Ocampo prisoner, with the loss of few of the English. Then did the king enlarge Bacon. The spleen he prisoned. Chapman's Iliad. A prisoner is an impatient patient, lingering under the rough hands of a cruele physitian; his creditor knowes his disease, and hath power to cure him, but takes more pleasure to kill him. Essayes and Characters, 1638. He that is tied with one slender string, such as one resolute struggle would break, he is prisoner only at his own sloth, and who will pity his thraldom? Decay of Piety. For those rebellious here their prison ordained." Milton. Culling their potent herbs and baleful drugs, They, as they sung, would take the prisoned soul, And lap it in Elysium. The tyrant Eolus, He yielded on my word, Id. Dryden. And, as my prisoner, I restore his sword. Id. A prisoner is troubled, that he cannot go whither he would; and he that is at large is troubled that he does not know whither to go. L'Estrange. He, that has his chains knocked off, and the prison doors set open to him, is presently at liberty. Locke. A PRISON, lord Coke observes, is only a place of safe custody, salva custodia, not a place of punishment. Any place where a person is confined may be said to be a prison; and, when a process is issued against one, he must, when arrested thereon, either be committed to prison, or be bound in a recognizance with sureties, or else give bail according to the nature of the case, to appear at a certain day in court, there to make answer to what is alleged against him. Where a person is taken and sent to prison in a civil case, he may be released by the plaintiff in the suit; but, if it be for treason or felony, he may not regularly be discharged, until he is indicted of the fact and acquitted. See LAW. PRISON DISCIPLINE. This is a topic upon which every patriotic feeling of the Christian moralist will be exercised; and has been exercised in this country, very salutarily, we may add, for the last ten years. If no second Howard has arisen, investigations into the state of prisons more extensive than his have been successfully carried on in every part of Great Britain during this period, and, in the Society for the Improvement of Prison Discipline, an important centre of communication has been established for the benefit of the civilised world. In the retrospect of their proceedings much that is humiliating to our national pride will appear; but as the exposure of the evils in question has led to a very important diminution of them by legislative enactments, and to the full understanding of the chief causes of the rest, they may be adverted to with considerable satisfaction. Mr. Buxton's Enquiry whether Crime and Misery are produced or prevented by our present System of Prison Discipline, and his personal exertions in this cause both in and out of parliament, were the first great means of arousing the late attention of the benevolent to the subject. There is a singular honesty in the fabrication of his book; and it is one of those rare cases in which no victory has been gained over the candor and veracity of the writer, by the strong persuasions of a mind under the fullest conviction and most glowing impressions upon the subject of his publication. For the truth of the facts, as they stand in his statements, Mr. Buxton declares himself to require no indulgence. 'Nothing is stated,' says he, (with the exception of the account of the Philadelphia gaol), which has not come within my own observation, and which has not been confirmed by the concurrent testimony of the gentlemen who have been my companions. The description of the Borough Compter, Tothill Fields, the Penitentiary, the gaols at St. Alban's, at Bury, at Ghent, and at Bristol, have been read to their respective gaolers; and that of Guildford was handed to a magistrate of the county of Surrey, with a request that he would point out any mistakes.' Mr. Buxton adds, I have generally mentioned the-days on which I visited the gaols, the persons with whom I went, and, where I could do it with propriety, the names of any prisoners whose case attracted my particular attention. I have done this as inviting enquiry, as placing my statements in a more tangible shape, and as furnishing a facility for the detection of errors.' For the honor of the writer of the severe censures on our past proceedings which this book contains, such proofs of authenticity speak very forcibly; but, for the honor of the British character, we have only to regret that they carry so high his pretensions to be believed. Of the reasoning in the introductory chapter, we do not hesitate to say that it is in a high degree moral, acute, and manly. We are not of opinion that prisoners should be indulged with Turkey carpets; and we agree in the positions of the committee of aldermen, that debtors should not be placed within the walls of a prison, with greater comparative comforts than the families of the citizens whom they have wronged, or perhaps ruined; neither do we feel any of that contumacious compassion for prisoners because authority and the law have made them such, which, we are persuaded, many do; but we cordially join with Mr. Buxton opinion, that, where imprisonment is the legal consequence of debt, it should be only imprisonment, without any aggravations, or superadded sufferings; for it is not to be disputed that all beyond mere confinement is beyond the law, which has nowhere authorised any infliction for this cause beyond the evil necessarily implied in the suspension of personal liberty. It is still more plainly evident, that persons under confinement for imputed offences ought not to be subjected to any rigors beyond what may be necessary to secure their detention. Even on convicted delinquents, where safe custody is all that the law has in contemplation, any annexation of unnecessary hardship carries the punishment beyond the law; and, where imprisonment is part or the whole of the punishment, all that is inflicted of suffering or privation, beyond what the sentence has defined, or the common regulations of the prison require, is excess and abuse, so much the more to be dreaded, because it takes place where the eye of the public does not often pierce. It is quite evident that as little as possible of judicial punishment should be submitted to the discretion or disposition of the gaoler, however necessary it may be to invest him with some degree of coercive authority to preserve the order and peace of the prison. A system of general rules only may and ought to be maintained, in which at least ordinary humanity suffers nothing suppliciary beyond the sentence of the court, in which respect should be had, as far as justice towards all will allow, to the common presumable differences of sentiment arising from previous habits, and in which all mischiefs that may affect the prisoner consequentially and permanently, after the law is satisfied, may, as far as possible, be prevented. No language can better state the rights of a prisoner accused even of serious crimes than the following: You have no right to abridge him of pure air, wholesome and sufficient food, and opportunities of exercise. You have no right to debar him from the craft on which his family depends, if it can be exercised in prison. You |