Book excerpt: Excerpt from Essayes and Characters of a Prison and Prisoners The personal history of the author is altogether unknown. A Dedication, however, to his most loving and ever respective kind uncle, Mr Mathew Mainwaring of Namptwich, in Chesshire, suggests the county of which we may reasonably presume Mynshul to have been a native, and this again affords a clue for ascertaining the family from which, in all probability, he must have been descended. There appear to have been originally two distinguished families in Chesshire of the name of Mynshul, or Minshull, according to a more usual orthography. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.