_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."