Crossword-Solution: PIPSQUEAK 9 letters, 23 clues 🏆 scrabble score: 26

Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks._) In the good old days when that royal pipsqueak, our FIRST JAMES, came to the throne, if you were a physician of a little more than common skill and furnished with theological opinions of a modernist complexion, or a lonely woman with (or without) some cunning in the matter of herbs, who cherished a peculiar (or normal) pussy-cat, you were quite likely to be burnt out of hand.

There would be hell to pay if anyone ever let that out." Then he had added, trying to get the reporter to understand enough to change his cynical unimpressed expression, "You understand, germs are cheap--there would be a new plague to spread every time some pipsqueak biologist mutated a new germ.