After “The Good and the Bad” published in 1616, came, in 1618, “Essays and Characters of a Prison and Prisoners, by G. M. of Grayes Inn, Gent.”  G.M. signed his name in full—­Geffray Minshul—­after the Dedication to his uncle, Mr. Matthew Mainwaring of Nantwich, Cheshire, and he dates from the King’s Bench Prison.  Philip Bliss found record in a History of Nantwich of a monument there in St. Mary’s Church, erected by Geoffrey Minshull of Stoke, Esq., to the memory of his ancestors.  He quotes also from Geoffrey Minshull’s Characters the folloiuing passage from the Dedication, and the Character of a Prisoner.

FROM THE DEDICATION OF “ESSAYS AND CHARACTERS OF A PRISON AND PRISONERS.”

“Since my coming into this prison, what with the strangeness of the place and strictness of my liberty, I am so transported that I could not follow that study wherein I took great delight and chief pleasure, and to spend my time idly would but add more discontentments to my troubled breast, and being in this chaos of discontentments, fantasies must arise, which will bring forth the fruits of an idle brain, for e malis minimum.  It is far better to give some account of time, though to little purpose, than none at all.  To which end I gathered a handful of essays, and few characters of such things as by my own experience I could say Probatum est: not that thereby I should either please the reader, or show exquisiteness of invention, or curious style; seeing what I write of is but the child of sorrow, bred by discontentments and nourished up with misfortunes, to whose help melancholy Saturn gave his judgment, the night-bird her invention, and the ominous raven brought a quill taken from his own wing, dipped in the ink of misery, as chief aiders in this architect of sorrow.”

A CHARACTER OF A PRISONER.

A prisoner is an impatient patient, lingering under the rough hands of a cruel physician:  his creditor having cast his water knows his disease, and hath power to cure him, but takes more pleasure to kill him.  He is like Tantalus, who hath freedom running by his door, yet cannot enjoy the least benefit thereof.  His greatest grief is that his credit was so good and now no better.  His land is drawn within the compass of a sheep’s skin, and his own hand the fornication that bars him of entrance:  he is fortune’s tossing-ball, an object that would make mirth melancholy:  to his friends an abject, and a subject of nine days’ wonder in every barber’s shop, and a mouthful of pity (that he had no better fortune) to midwives and talkative gossips; and all the content that this transitory life can give him seems but to flout him, in respect the restraint of liberty bars the true use.  To his familiars he is like a plague, whom they dare scarce come nigh for fear of infection; he is a monument ruined by those which raised him, he spends the day with a hei mihi! vae miserum! and the night with a nullis est medicabilis herbis.