"_Pinece with a stink._"--In Archbishop Bramhall's _Schism Guarded_
(written against Serjeant) there is a passage in which the above curious
expression occurs, and of which I can find no satisfactory, nor indeed any
explanation whatever. The passage is this (_Works_, vol. ii. p. 545., edit.
Ox.):
"But when he is baffled in the cause, he hath a reserve,--that
Venerable Bede, and Gildas, and Foxe in his Acts and Monuments, do
brand the Britons for wicked men, making them 'as good as Atheists; of
which gang if this Dinoth were one,' he 'will neither wish the Pope
such friends, nor envy them to the Protestants.'
"What needeth this, when he hath got the worst of the cause, to defend
himself like a _pinece with a stink_? We read no other character of
Dinoth, but as of a pious, learned, and prudent man."
Can any of your readers furnish an explanation?