of the Page you will find something that truly concerns yourself and upon that score I have transcribed it There is a Spirit of Zeal and Faction the Principles of which if not restrained will ruin the best Princes and overturn the best Government in the World for they make little difference between Princes when they can find Pretence and Power Now Sir I say again have you not read or at least heard of these two Sermons And durst you then venture out into the World thus armed with hellish Revenge and black Malice to stab the Memory of and murther a-fresh a Prince for whom so great so wise a part of the Nation have so unspeakable and withal so just a Value and Veneration Good God! when Men are once hardned in Sin and by living long in it have contracted Habits and Customs what bold and impudent things will they not both say and do God Almighty open your Eyes and shew you the Evil of your ways before it be too late that so you may not perish in and by this your great Iniquity And now Sir I come to Examine your Letter it self The Title page is General Ludlow's Letter to Dr. Hollingworth Pray Sir how durst you assume this Name for we are not so ignorant who you are as it may be you think we are Pray Sir do not you know that Ludlow for the Name of General belongs not to him hath stood condemned for above Thirty Years as an execrable Traytor by Act of Parliament and that when he had the Confidence to come lately to London the Spirit of the Nation rose so up against him that the then Parliament addressed to the King to issue out his Proclamation in order to apprehend him that he might suffer that Death his Treason deserved and the Law had provided upon Notice of which you know he fled Now certainly Sir you are a very bold Man and 't is pity the Government does not take you at your Word and hang you up in his stead for there is a Debt due from Ludlow to the Justice of the Nation and I know no Man fitter to pay it than he that is so fond of the Traytor as to personate him and in his Name to vindicate those Actions for which he stands condemned There is one thing more I cannot but observe in your Title-page and that is your Quotation out of one of Bishop Burnet's Sermons and by which you would seem to justifie your calling the Thirtieth of Ianuary the Madding-day the Words are these which I transcribe on purpose to let the World see what a Cheat you are willing to put upon your Readers and thereby suppose them to be the most silly Persons in Nature I acknowledge it were better if we could have Iob's Wish That this Day should perish and the Shadow of Death should cover it that it should not see the dawning of the Day nor should the Light shine upon it it were better to strike it out of the Calender and make our Ianuary terminate at the 29th and add these remaining Days to February Now I appeal to any Man of Common Sence and Ingenuity whether he can wrest these words to your malicious Design when they appear at first fight only a Rhetorical Flight whereby that Right Reverend Person would express the detestableness and horridness of the Fact which he bewailed that Day a way that all Orators have given themselves the liberty to declaim against any thing that was notoriously bad in its Nature and Consequences and yet so fond are you of these words in hopes by them to impose upon your credulous Reader that you repeat them again pag. 9. and sillily tell me you hope by them to have offered something to cool my red-hot Zeal for the Observation of that day Poor Man how much are you mistaken when these very Words carry so much in them of the Bishop's abhorrence of the Fact that if it was possible to raise my Opinion of the necessity of still keeping that Day they would contribute towards it The next thing that offers in your Book is an Epistle Dedicatory and pray let us see who are the Persons that are thought worthy to Patronize this modest and harmless Book that tells the Truth the Whole Truth and nothing but the Truth sure either the King and Queen or else the Lords of the Council are only fit to have their Names prefixt to a Book that defends the Rights of the Nation their Laws and Liberties against the Encroachments and Usurpations of a proud Nimrod and hardened Pharaoh and in plain English a merciless Tyrant as you are pleased in your wonted mannerly way to stile King Charles the First pag. 68. No no Sir your Common-wealths-Men are always for encreasing their Party and courting the Populace and therefore this famous Tract must be dedicated To all sincere Lovers of Old England inhabiting in the Parish of St. Buttolphs Aldgate London tho' when we come to examine these Words well I believe you will find you have mistaken your Men and will miss of your Aim in this Dedication If indeed you mean Old England as I am sure you ought to do and which really I believe and that upon good grounds you do not namely the Government of England by King Lords and Commons I do then assure you we have and I thank God for it abundance of those in Aldgate Parish who scorn to suffer themselves to be put upon by such insinuations as these are they love their Country and its Laws and Liberties and desire no more to see the Day wherein Ordinances supersede Acts of Parliament and Kings forced by Tumults from their Palaces and Subjects with armed Force assaulting their Natural Prince and Armies turning their Masters out of Doors and the Faithful and Loyal Nobility and Gentry thrown by the Hands of Violence and against all Law out of House and Home and many of them seeking their Bread in strange Countries who desire no more to see the Day when worthy Persons are forced up to London to compound for their Estates at Goldsmiths and Haber-dashers-Halls only for doing their Duties and standing by their Prince according to the Laws of the Land and the Oaths they had taken no more to see the Day wherein their King is Imprisoned denyed the Comfort of his Servants and Chaplains and at last murthered by a vile Brood a Generation of Vipers who neither fear God nor Man Sir If these be the Men you address to you have lost your Aim and your Letter will find no Welcome to my knowledge in the Parish of Aldgate as for others in my Parish and I know but few of them that are Lovers of Old England in your Sence that is Lovers of Old England as it consists of a very few Lords and half a House of Commons in opposition to and in an actual War with their Lawful Soveraign or as it consists of a Rump made up of Forty eight Persons assuming the Confidence to
their Heads And this is all I think good to say by way of Answer to your Scotch Affairs and truly I think it is enough of all reason to convince the World what Defenders of the Christian Faith and the Rights and Laws of their Country these Covenanters were God bless the Kingdom of Scotland I and England to from such Reformers as these are and I hope the greatest part of the People of both Nations will say Amen to it with all readiness and cheerfulness And thus Sir without any Obligations on my side for as I Told you in my Defence I only would concern myself with the last Eight Years of King Charles I have run through and proved your Accusations spiteful and false which you have so liberally vented to defame this Great and Good Man and I hope I have given the World a just satisfaction how much you are to be credited as to all the other things you assert you I say who rather than you will not serve your Cause will offer to the World the greatest Lyes and Untruths in Nature I come now Sir to apply myself Sir to the Defence of what I have said in my Book in the behalf of King Charles from your rude Impleadings of them and Reflections upon them And here Sir I will be plain with you I am not at leisure to play the Buffoon by making a Return to your Raillery and little Witticisms wherewith you entertain your Reader in the beginning of your Libel but will follow the Advice of a wiser and honester Man than either you or any of your Party are or will be that is King Solomon namely Not to answer a fool according to his folly least I be like unto him You say That those gracious Acts which I mention were bought of him And what then What hath been more usual ever since Parliaments had a Being in England Pray look into the Statute-Book and tell me what gracious Favours can you find bestowed by the several Kings of this Realm upon their People that those People have not made their Acknowledgments for them by presenting their Soveraigns with great Sums of Money And how comes this to be a fault in King Charles more than in all his Predecessors But buy these Acts did they Pray who had the disposal of the Money How was it laid out Was it given to the King to do what he lifted withal No Sir you know the contrary and that amongst the rest of the Uses it was put to you know a great part of it was bestowed upon the Scots for the good Service they did in rebelling against their King and putting two Kingdoms into a flame and they returned home by the Favour of your Friends loaden with the Nation 's Treasure when if they had had their deserts they had gone back with Halters about their Necks as a sign of what was due to them for so traiterously invading a Kingdom they had nothing to do withal But however to shew he did nothing willingly as to these condescending Acts you tell us when he past the Poll-Bill he demurred to the passing of the Bills for taking away the Star-Chamber and the High Commission And what then May not King's take time to consider as well as other Men Must they who considering the Charge God hath entrusted them withal ought to have better Eyes in their Heads than other Men must they I say only act like Bruits and do things without previous thoughts without a Why or Wherefore Who would sit in a Throne if the Condition of it must be the divesting himself of the Reason and Consideration of a Rational Creature But Sir I will answer this Aspersion in the King 's own Words to the Two Houses and then leave the Reader to judge whether you have done fairly to lessen his Grace upon this Account his Words are these I must tell you That I cannot but be very sensible of those Reports of Discontent that I hear some have taken for not giving my Consent on Saturday Methinks it seems strange that any one should think I could pass two Bills of that importance as these were without taking some fit time to consider of them for it is no less than to alter in a great measure those Fundamental Laws Ecclesiastical and Civil which many of my Predecessors have established And truly I hope this will satisfie tho' not you and such as you are yet any good Man who is not resolved for a Party as to this paticular Reflection Another thing you reflect upon me for is saying That his signing the Bill for taking away my Lord Strafford's Life offered violence to the peace and quiet of his Mind all the Days of his Life And here Sir I cannot but take Notice how you endeavour to make sport with this good Man's Conscience but let me tell you I have always observed that those Men who make sport with other Mens Consciences have none of their own and I am sure you have shewn none throughout this scurrilous Letter unless Lying ad Slandering be the signs of Grace ad Good Conscience in a Common-wealth's-man Pray Sir why might not the King scruple this Do not you know what unusual Arts and Methods were made use of before they could agree upon a Bill to take away this Great Man's Life Do not you know how many of the House of Commons protested against it how thin the House of Lords was when it passed there how the Rabble were brought down to threaten the House and in a clamorous way which you call peaceable to cry Iustice Iustice and how they posted up the Names of the Protestors in order to expose them to the fury ad danger of the discontented and designing part of the City And do not you know after all they were so little satisfied with the Legality of their Proceedings that they in the very Bill itself inferred a Clause that this should not be made use of as a Precedent for the time to come and after all this might not a pious and compassionate King scruple the signing of such a Bill from a very good Conscience Come Sir to answer this to the full and vindicate the King's scruple I will here present to the World for their satisfaction the Sence not of a House of Peers consisting of Seventeen or Eighteen Members nor of a House of Commons consisting of not many above an Hundred but the Sence of two full Houses of Lords and Commons who took off the Attainder of that Noble Earl the Words in the Act are those WHereas Thomas late Earl of Strafford was Impeached of high-High-Treason upon pretence of endeavouring to subvert the Fundamental Laws and called to a Publick and Solemn Arraignment and Tryal before the Peers in Parliament where he made a paticular Defence to every Article objected against him insomuch that the Turbulent Party then seeing no hopes to effect their unjust Designs by any ordinary way and method of proceedings did at last resolve to
attempt the Destruction and Attainder of the said Earl by an Act of Parliament to be therefore purposely made to condemn him upon Accumulative Treason none of the pretended Crimes being Treason apart and so could not be in the whole if they had been proved as they were not and also adjudged him guilty of Constructive Treason that is of Levying War against the King though it was only the Commanding an Order of the Council-Board in Ireland to be executed by a Serjeant at Arms and three or four Soldiers which was the constant Practice of the Deputies there for a long time to which end they having first presented a Bill for this intent to the House of Commons and finding there more opposition than they expected they caused a multitude of tumultuous Persons to come down to Westminster armed with Swords and Staves to fill both the Palace-Yards and all the Approaches to both Houses of Parliament with fury and clamour and to require Justice speedy Justice against the Earl of Strafford And having by these and other undue Practices obtained that Bill to pass in the House of Commons they caused the Name of those resolute Gentlemen who in a Case of innocent Blood had freely discharged their Consciences being Fifty Nine to be posted up in several Places about the Cities of London and Westminster and stiled them Staffordians and Enemies to their Country hoping thereby to deliver them up to the Fury of the People whom they had endeavoured to incense against them and then procured the said Bill to be sent up to the House of Peers where it having sometime rested under great Deliberation at last in a time when a great part of the Peers were absent by reason of the Tumults and many of those who were present protested against it the said Bill passed in the House of Peers and at length his late Majesty King Charles the First of Glorious Memory granted a Commission for giving his Royal Assent thereunto which nevertheless was done by his said Majesty with exceeding great sorrow then and ever remembred by him with unexpressible Grief of Heart and out of his Majesty's great Piety he did publickly express it when his own Sacred Life was taken away by the most detestable Traytors that ever were And I hope when this is read and considered it will sufficiently vindicate the King and his Conscience and stop the Mouths of such clamorous and seditious Persons as you are You tell us in another place to lessen the King's Grace in granting the Triennial Act that it did not extend so far as by Law the Parliament might have required there being at that time two Acts of Edward the Third for a Parliament to be holden once a Year And what then was it no Act of Grace to grant over and above that if the King did not call a Parliament within such a time that then the Lords Lieutenants the Deputy Lieutenants and so on might do it nay if they neglected their Duty it should at last be in the Power of the very Constables to do it Pray Sir do Justice to the King and let not such an unparalell'd Act of Grace and Favour be buried and hid from the People and therefore I say again and do you reproach me for it as long as you please that the granting this Bill with so many additional Clauses was certainly a greater Condescension than ever was made by any of his Predecessors Another thing you accuse this Good Man for is his tampering with the Officers of the Army to curb the Parliament and to subdue them to his Will and here you tell a long Story of Piercy and Goring c. such a Story indeed as the Faction was wont to make use of upon all occasions to amuse and heat the People against their Prince but the best of it is there are so many incredible things in your Account that I must tell you it hath not gained upon my Belief at all and I hope before I have done with it it will find as great a difficulty to be believed by others Amongst the rest you tell us that two of the Parties concern'd confess that all the French that were about the Town were to be mounted I suppose it was upon Hobby-Horses and were to joyn with the Party but that which is the Nicker is That the Clergy would raise a Thousand Horse to assist them and yet this Conspiracy was under an Oath of Secresie and very likely indeed when so many of the Clergy must be acquainted with it as to raise by their own and their Brethrens Purses a thousand Horse Surely Sir you have a mighty Opinion of your self and fancy the World so very silly as to believe every thing upon your Say so Come Sir give me leave to undeceive the World and to expose your Honesty your Knavery I mean by letting them know the King's Account in this Matter whose Words I must tell you notwithstanding all your barbarous Reproaches ought to find Credit with the World Husband 's Exact Coll. Pag. 523. A New Fright was now found to startle the People and to bring us into Hatred and Jealousie with them the general Rumours of Treasons and Conspiracies began to lose Credit with all Men who began to consider what they felt more than what others feared and therefore they had now found out a Treason indeed even ready to be put in Execution upon the whole Kingdom in the representative Body thereof a Plot to bring up the whole Army out of the Northern Parts to London A strange Plot indeed which considering the Constitution of the Time no Man can believe Us guilty of And though they made great Use of it for the filling the Minds of Our People with Fears and Apprehensions they seemed not then to Charge Us with any Knowledge of or Privity to it What they have done since all the World knows notwithstanding Our many Protestations in that Point and We cannot but say that by those Examinations of Collonel Goring Sir Iacob Ashly and Sir Iohn Conyers and Mr. Piercy's Letter which is all the Evidence we have seen and by which they seem principally to be guided We cannot satisfie Our own private Conscience that there ever was a Resolution of bringing up the Army to London and upon the strictest Examination We can make of that Business we can find it to be no other than this Observation being made of the great Tumults about Westminister which seem'd to threaten the Safety of the Members of both Houses at least of those who were not known to agree with the Designs of the Faction We have before spoken of and the Manner of delivering Petitions by Multitudes of People attested or pretended to be so by the Hands of many Thousands against the known Laws and the Establish'd Government of this Kingdom which yet seem'd to receive some Countenance and to carry some Authority as Instances of the Affections of so many Persons it fell into the Thoughts