Law Some of the Red-coats replyed Doth he so We will teach him another Lesson and make him leave those Popish Superstitions or he shall rue it Soon after they repair to the Church at Acton break open the Doors by force in the Chancel they find this Subscription on the Wall This Chancel was repaired and beautified such a year by Daniel Featly D.D. Rector which they utterly defaced Then laying hands on the Rails they dealt with them as Ducks do with a Frog tear them limbless and afterwards burnt them in the Street saying That if they had the Parson there they would burn him with his Popish Trinkets Soon after Colonel Urrey took up his Quarters at the Parsonage-house some of whose Soldiers whether willingly or by carelesness being in Drink is not certified lying in the Doctors Barn set it on Fire which burned the whole Barn full of Corn and two Stables down to the ground the loss being estimated by the Inhabitants at Two hundred and eleven pounds But to leave Acton and come to Lambeth where the Secretaries wrecked their spleen not upon Pales or Rails or the Fruits of the Earth as at Acton but upon the Bodies of Christs Servants on his own Day and in his own House and Court For February 19. 1642. even in the midst of Divine Service at the reading of the Te Deum laudamus four or five Soldiers rushed into the Church with Pistols and drawn Swords affrighted the whole Congregation out wounded one of the Inhabitants whereof he soon after died shot another dead as he hung by the hands on the Church-yard wall looking over to the Palace Court who might truly have said in the words of the Poet though in another sense Ut vidi ut perii It was gathered by many Circumstances especially by Depositions taken before the Coroner and by some Speeches that fell from their own mouths that their principal aim at that time was to have murdered the Doctor which 't is probable they had effected had not some honest Inhabitants premonished the Doctor who was at the same time on his way towards the Church intending to have Preached About the same time many of these Murderers were heard expressing their rancour against the Doctor thus Some said they would chop the Rogue as small as Herbs to the Pot for suffering Pottage for by that name they usually stile the Book of Common Prayer to be read in his Church Others said They would squeeze the Pope out of his Belly with such like scurrilous and malicious Language The Sunday sennight after this Outrage being the fifth of March the Doctor perceiving some Separatists at Sermon at Lambeth took occasion to speak as followeth IF ever Schismaticks and foul mouth'd Separatists were set forth in their native colours the Schismaticks of this age are Psal. 50.16 17 18 19 20. What hast thou to do to declare my Statutes or that thou should'st take my Covenant in thy mouth Seeing thou hatest instruction whatsoever thou pratest of Reformation and castest my words behind thee namely Prov. 14.21 Eccles. 10.20 Rom. 12.1 2 3 4. Heb. 13.8 9 17. 1 Pet. 2.13 When thou sawest a thief then thou consentedst with him and hast been partaker with Adulterers Thou givest thy mouth to lying and thy Tongue frameth deceit Thou sittest and speakest against thy Brother and slanderest thine own Mothers son For is not this their canting Language The Prelates of England are all Antichristian The Ministers Baals Priests The publick Service Idolatrous The Ceremonies Superstitious and the Sacraments corrupted with mans Inventions I take them at their word If this be true then is the Church of England no true Church of Christ then they which have received all the Religion they have from her are no better then Miscreants Pagans and Infidels in apparent peril of drowning in everlasting perdition because out of the Ark without God in this World because without his Church For as the Blessed Martyr Saint Cyprian soundly argueth against their Fore-fathers the Catharists Deum non potest habere Patrem qui Ecclesiam not habet Matrem And Church they have none for their Mother for they disclaim the true Protestant Church of England and the Popish disclaims them so they are mere A per se A's Independents like the horti pensiles in Lactantius and Mausolus his Sepulchre in Martial hanging and hovering in the Air. The Scripture sets forth the true visible Church of Christ upon Earth under the Emblem of a great Field a great Floor a great House a great Sheet a great Draw-net a great and large Foundation c. The Church shadowed out under these Similitudes cannot be their Congregation or rather Conventicles For as they brag and commend themselves wanting good Neighbors In their Field there are no Tares in their Floor there is no Chaff in their House no Vessels of Dishonor in their Sheet no Unclean Beasts in their Net no trash on their Foundation nothing built but Gold Silver and precious Stones They have not sate with vain Persons nor kept company with Dissemblers they have hated the assembly of Malignants and have not accompanied with the Ungodly they have not nor will not Christen in the same Font nor sit at the Holy Table for to kneel at the Sacrament is Idolatry nor drink Spiritually the Blood of our Redeemer in the same Chalice with the wicked Get ye packing then out of our Churches with your bags and baggages hoyse up Sail for New England or the Isle of Providence or rather Sir Thomas More 's Eutopia where Pluto's Commoner and Osorius his Nobleman and Castillio his Courtier and Vigetius his Soldier and Tully his Orator and Aristocles Felix and the Jews Bencohab and the Manichees Paraclet and the Gnosticks Illuminate ones and the Montanists Spiritual ones and the Pelagians perfect ones and the Catharists pure ones and their precise and holy ones are all met at Prince Arthurs round Table where every Guest like the Table is totus teres atque rotundus There are three Heads of Catechism and Grounds of Christianity The Apostles Creed the Lords Prayer and the Ten Commandments these may be more truly than Gorran his Postills termed aurea fundamenta which they go about to overthrow and cast down and when they have done it no place remaineth for them to build their Synagogues or Maria Rotunda's but the Sand in the Saw-pit where their Apostle Browne first taught most profoundly The Lords Prayer they have excluded out of their Liturgy the Apostles Creed out of their Confession and the Ten Commandments by the Antinomians their Disciples out of their rule of life They are too good to say the Lords Prayer better taught than to rehearse the Apostles Creed better liv'd than to hear the Decalogue read at their Service for God can see no Sin in them nor Man Honesty Tell me ye Bastard brood of Martius is it not sufficient for the conviction of your cauterized Consciences that ye wreck your spleen upon the
material Temples of God by breaking down Organs burning Rails and defacing the Monuments of the Dead but will ye go about to destroy the Spiritual Temple of the Holy Ghost not fearing that dreadful Sentence of the Apostle He that destroyeth the Temple of God him shall God destroy Could they not be content to tear the Book of Common Prayer in pieces and scatter the leaves all about the Church but will they also rend and dilacerate the living Members of Christs mystical Body Will they charge the Cannon with murthering Shot to destroy and dissipate whole Assemblies of Gods Servants met together upon his own Day to Worship him in his own House Do they think that their bare opposition to Popery will save them If that alone would give a Man a good Title to Heaven not only the Socinians Libertines Familists Antinomians and other damnable Hereticks but even the Jews and Turks would snatch Heaven from them and take it by force for these are as vehement Opposers of Popery as they are And howsoever the violent Opposition to Popish Superstition is all the Religion some of them have yet are they not at so deadly fewd with Papists as they would bear the World in hand for they shake hands with them in many of their Tenets and Practices both of them condemn our English Liturgy and profess Recusancy both of them Idolize their Teachers c. Who hath bewitched them that they should believe Bedlam shall be so far enlarged and the Spirit of Frenzy possess Old England that they should have the like success here as their cousin-germans the Anabaptists had at Munster though we envy them not their high preferment in the end After these fits of Convulsion are over and Peace setled in the Body of the Kingdom do they think the wisdom of the State will ever change our Holy Churches into their prophane Barns and Stables our Pulpits into their Tubs our linnen Ephods into their Aprons our Liturgy into their extemporary Enthusiasms our Learned Pastors into their ignorant Hirelings and our Apostolical Hierarchy into their Apostolical Anarchy But I will restrain my self and confine my Discourse Soon after this Sermon seven Articles were preferred against the Doctor to the Committee for Plundered Ministers by three Mechanicks who had formerly been Indicted for Brownists at the Sessions for the County of Surrey but after long attendance the Doctor was acquitted of them Yet at length these Sectaries wrought so powerfully that the Doctor must be committed to Prison how unjustly soever 't was enough that he was a Doctor and maintained the Religion established in the Church of England And accordingly on the 30 th of September 1643. he is committed to Peter-house his own House Library and Goods being first seized on and his Estate sequestred The Sunday after his commitment and for divers other Lords-days he Preached to his Fellow-Prisoners but after a while he was prohibited by Isaac-Pennington the pretended Mayor of London And though Sir George Sands Sir John Butler Master Nevile and other Prisoners of Quality Petitioned that he might continue his so doing yet it would not be granted See how this unjust Imprisonment is relished by a Forein Divine in these very words I Am sorry to hear of the close Imprisonment of that worthy Dr. Featly What He who is and ever hath been so stout a Champion for Religion to be so used by the Reformers thereof But let not the Disciple think it strange when his Master suffered so much cruelty from the great Rabbins of Israel Yours from my heart J. S. After the Doctor had been many Months stifled up in Prison and having a Certificate from his Physitian that he could not live long if he had not some fresh Air he Petitioned these Soul-enthralling Tyrants and at last obtained leave to go to Chelsey-Colledge for six Weeks upon good Bail to recover his Health but it pleased God to take him out of this World upon the 17. day of April 1645. being the very last day of the six Weeks limited for his return During his Sickness he gave himself wholly to Divine Meditations often bewailing with Tears the present state of the Church of England he made a Confession of his Faith to Doctor Leo and the Dutch Ambassadors Chaplain saying That the Doctrine which he had always Preached and the Books which he had always Printed against Anabaptists and other Sectaries were agreeable to Gods Word and that he would Seal the Protestant Religion as it was established and confirmed by the Acts of three Pious Princes with his Blood And being asked by some that came to visit him What he thought of the Covenant he said It was a damnable and execrable Oath made purposely to insnare poor Souls and full of Malice and Treason against our Gracious Soveraign And said he For Church-Government a thing now much controverted I dare boldly affirm That the Hierarchy of Bishops is most agreeable to the Word of God as being of Apostolical Institution the taking away whereof is damnable and that by consequence both the Presbyterian and Independent Governments are absurd and erroneous neither of them being ever heard of in the Church of God till of late at Geneva nor is there so much as any colour for them in Holy Writ It is evident said he that as the Priests in the Old Testament were above the Levites so in the New the Apostles were above the Disciples and that the seven Angels of the seven Churches in the Apocalypse were seven Bishops and that Polycarpus was Bishop of Smyrna and Timotheus of Ephesus And for the Laity no pregnant proof can be produced That they ever medled with the Priests Function or had any Power to ordain Ministers And these things said he I intended to have published to the World if God had spared me longer life which I might through his goodness have enjoyed had I not been unjustly Imprisoned which he several times reiterated to his Friends Anon after he Prayed thus Lord strike through the reins of them that rise against the Church and King and let them be as chaff before the Wind and as stubble before the Fire let them be scattered as Patridges upon the Mountains and let the breath of the Lord consume them but upon our Gracious Soveraign and his Posterity let the Crown flourish This said he is the hearty and earnest Prayer of a poor sick Creature With which and other such spiritual Ejaculations he expired FINIS MERCURIUS RUSTICUS OR The Countries Complaint of the Sacrileges Prophanations and Plunderings Committed by the SCHISMATIQUES ON THE Cathedral Churches of this Kingdom MATTH xxi 13. My House shall be called the House of Prayer but ye have made it a Den of Thieves LONDON Printed in the Year 1685. The Preface THE Author of the French History relating that horrid Rebellion of the Holy League in France the Prototype of the present Rebellion in England gives this definition or Character of one of those Zealots
was to know and foresee in him what end attends those who forgetting all Religion and Loyalty shall lift up their hands against their God in Sacrilege and against their Sovereign in Rebellion Mercurius Rusticus c. II. The Cathedral Church of Rochester violated the Sacrilege and prophaneness of the Rebels under Command of Sir William Waller and Sir Arthur Haslerig acted on the Cathedral Church of Chichester c. AS when the Spirit brought the Prophet Ezekiel into the holy Temple he led him from place to place and each place entertained him with greater Abominations than the former so that the farewel to the last Vision and the invitation to the next is Turn thee yet again and thou shalt see greater Abominations than these so having brought you in the Cathedrals of this Kingdom Temples in despite of Atheists Rebels and Anabaptists of God too and having shewed you the Abomination of desolation in one of them viz. in Canterbury the first instance of their accursed rage and having viewed that I must now lead you on as the Spirit did the Prophet from place to place and the incitement may be the same for though you have seen great prophanations in the former relation yet you shall see greater Abominations than these The next instance of the Rebels profaneness which I shall offer unto you is in the Cathedral of Rochester recompensed for the smalness of ' its revenue with the honour of ' its antiquity as boasting of Ethelbert King of Kent a common Founder to this Church with those of Canterbury and London The unhappy loss of Earnulphus History the thirty second Bishop of this See deprives us of that light which discovered the various condition of this Church how long in the beginning it struggled with ' its own poverty and in after ages with the injuries of time and War remaining some Years in a kind of widowhood without the government and superintendency of a Bishop till at last Gundulfus the thirtieth Bishop of this See reedified this Church from the ground and brought it into that magnificence in which we now see it to which pious work he brought so good so vigorous affections that as Maelmesbury records of him Praevenerat vivacitas Gundulfi omnium successorum diligentiam Gundulphus alacrity in that work did so prevent the piety of his successors that he hardly left them any place in this kind wherein to exercise their bounty Little did the overflowing zeal of our Ancestours to the house of God like that of the old Israelites pouring out their wealth and precious things to adorn the Tabernacle in so great measure that Moses was fain to publish a Proclamation to restrain their liberality for the stuff they had was sufficient for the work to make it and too much Exod. 36.6 7. little I say did they thnik when they did this that what they thus bountifully gave unto God should ever while this Kingdom remained Christian become a prey to those which as Tertullian speaks Gentes agunt Christi nomine have not so much as a form but the bare usurped name of Christianity which they fully and pollute with those worse than heathenish crimes of Sacrilege and Prophaneness had the Sacrilege lately commited at Canterbury been applauded by the People to gain whom no arts though never so repugnant either to Religion or common honesty were left unattempted certainly this Church which next stood in their way and immediately after Canterbury tasted of their fury had been utterly demolished and offered up a sacrifice to Popularity But Plundering being then but a stranger in England newly arrived here from desolate Germany especially Plundering of Churches which heretofore were held inviolable Sanctuaries for offenders but much more for their own innocent ornaments this made a general outcry every man detested so foul impiety nay their own party some of them not yet so deeply leavened with their Anabaptistical Doctrines nor given up to so reprobate a sense to believe monstrous lyes for truth did not onely not approve but sparingly condemn the Fact and the general vote of the People awakened by Doctor Paske his Letter declared it barbarous and wicked nay the dislike of such proceedings grew to so great a height that some wise men were deceived into an opinion that the Houses would punish the offenders for the present and publish an Order to restrain the like outrages for the future and indeed though some good men Members of both Houses did earnestly desire it yet by experience they quickly found how unequal they were to effect any thing in which they had not the concurrence of the heads of the Faction which ruled in both Houses but much less when they rowed against the stream and had them for their adversaries The Rebels therefore coming to Rochester brought the same affections along with them which they express'd at Canterbury but in wisdom thought it not safe to give them the same scope here as there for the multitude though mad enough yet were not so mad nor stood yet so prepar'd to approve such heathenish practices by this means the Monuments of the Dead which elsewhere they brake up and violated stood untouched Escutcheons and Arms of the Nobility and Gentry upbraiding eye-fores to broken mean Citizens and vulgar Rebels remained undefaced the Seats and Stalls of the Quire escaped breaking down onely those things which were wont to stuff up Parliament Petitions and were branded by the Leaders of the Faction for Popery and Innovation in these they took liberty to let loose their wild zeal they brake down the rail about the Lords Table or Altar call it which you please and not only so but most basely reviled a now Reverend Prelate who being lately Dean of that Church had for the more uniform and reverend receiving of the blessed Sacrament set it up with the odious name of Rogue often repeated they seized upon the Velvet Covering of the holy Table and in contempt of those holy Mysteries which were Celebrated on the Table removed the Table it self into a lower place of the Church in this perfect Disciples of that profane Author of the Book called Altare Damascenum who in the 718. p. devoutly resolves thus De loco ubi consistat cur solliciti cum quovis loco vel Angulo extra Tempus Administrationis collocari possit Concerning the place where the Lords Table shall stand what need we to be sollicitous when out of the time of administration of the Sacrament it may be set aside in any place or obscure corner And to shew what Members they are of the Church of England they strewed the Pavement with the torn mangled leaves of the Book of Common-Prayer which with the Book of Homilies and the 39 Articles makes up the third Book wherein the Doctrin of the Church of England is fully containad understanding that the Dean that then was was to Preach on Sunday morning Colonel Sandys and Sir John Seaton that false Traiterous Scot sent unto him
now made passive Instruments of more than heathenish Sacrilege and prophaneness those Windows which they could not reach with their Swords Muskets or Rests they brake to pieces by throwing at them the bones of Kings Queens Bishops Confessors and Saints So that the spoil done on the Windows will not be repaired for a Thousand Pounds nor did the Living find better measure from them than the dead for whereas our Dread Sovereign that now is the best of King was gratiously pleased as a pledg of his princely favour to this Church to honour it with the gift of his own Statue together with the Statue of his dear Father King James of ever blessed memory both of massy brass both which Statues were erected at the front of the entrance into the Quire These Atheistical Rebels as if they would not have so much of the Militia to remain with the King as the bare Image and representation of of a Sword by his side They break off the Swords from the sides of both the Statues they break the Cross from off the Globe in the hand of the Statue of our gratious Sovereign now living and with their Swords hacked and hewed the Crown on the headof it swearing they would bring him back to his Parliament A most flagitious crime and such as that for the like S. Chrysostome Hom 2. ad populum Antioch With many tears complains he much feared the City of Antioch the Metropolis and head as he calls it of the East would have been destroyed from the face of the earth for when in a Tumult the seditious Citizens of Antioch had done the like affront to Theodosius the Emperour in overturning his Statutes How doth that holy Bishop bemoan how doth he bewail that City which fearing the severe effects of the abused Emperours just Indignation of a Populous City a Mother boasting of a Numerous Issue was on the sudden become a Widow left desolate and forsaken of her Inhabitants some out of the sense and horror of the guilt abandoning the City and flying into the desolate Wilderness others lurking in holes and confining themselves to the dark corners of their own houses thereby hoping to escape the vengeance due to so disloyal so Traiterous a fact because of this foul injury offered the Emperours Statue He as that Father speaks was wronged that was the sepreme head of all men and had no equal on Earth But what wonder is it that these miscreants should offer such scornful indignities to the Representation of his Royal Person and the Emblems of his Sacred power when the heads of this damnable Rebellion who set these their Agents on work offer worse affronts to his Sacred person himself and by their Rebellions Votes and Illegal Ordinances daily strike at the Substance of that power of which the Crown the Sword and Scepter are but Emblems and shadows which yet notwithstanding ought to have been venerable and aweful to these men in respect of their Relation After all this as if what they had already done were all too little they goonin their horrible wickedness they seize upon all the Communion Plate the Bibles and service-Service-books rich Hangings large Cushions of velvet all the Pulpit-Clothes some whereof were of Cloth of Silver some of Cloth of Gold They break up the Muniment House and take away the common Seal of the Church supposing it to be Silver and a fair piece of gilt Plate given by Bishop Cotton they tear the Evidences of their Lands and cancel their Charter in a word what ever they found in the Church of any value and portable they take it with them what was neither they either deface or destroy it And now having Ransacked the Church having defied God in his own house and the King in his own Statue having violated the Urns of the dead having abused the bones and scattered the Ashes of deceased Monarchs Bishops Saints and Confessors they return in Triumph bearing their spoils with them The Troopers because they were most conspicuous ride through the streets in Surplesses with such Hoods and Tippets as they found and that they might boast to the World how glorious a victory they had atchieved they hold out their Trophies to all spectators for the Troopers thus clad in the Priests Vestments rode carrying Common Prayer-Books in one hand and some broken Organ pipes together with the mangled pieces of Carved work but now mentioned containing some Histories of both Testaments in the other In all this giving too just occasion to all good Christians to complain with the Psalmist O God the Heathen are come into thine Inheritance Thy holy Temples have they defiled The dead Bodies of thy Servants have they abused and scattered their bones as one heweth wood upon the Earth Help us O God of our Salvation for the glory of thy Name Psal. 79. Mercurius Rusticus c. IV. The Rebels prophanation and horrible abuse of the Abby Church of Westminster Together with their several outrages and abominations committed on the Cathedral Church of Exeter c. IF in the Catalogue of Plundered Cathedrals we inroul the now Collegiat Church of Westminster I hope I shall not be thought to make my discourse no more of kin to my Title than Mountain doth some of his Essaies for if we look back on the various condition of this Church no place set apart for Religious Persons having so often shifted its owners we shall find that amongst many changes it had the honour of a Bishops Sec. On the dissolution of the Abbies amongst the rest Henry the Eighth suppressed this Monastery and in the place thereof founded a Deanery Anno 1536. And two years after added a Bishoprick to the Deanery The Bishop sate here but nine Years and again resigned his dilapidated Revenue into the hands of a Dean Middlesex which was the Diocess of the Bishoprick being devolved to London yet though this Bishoprick of Westminster as it relates to the Saxons was but of modern Erection yet in the time of the Ancient Britains it was no less than the See of the Arch-Bishop of London and therefore it is more than probable that that record which tells us that the Arch-Bishop of Londons See was planted in S. Peters in Cornhil was either corrupted or mistaken for S Peters in Thorney for Sic olim à spinis as learned Cambden and other Antiquaries affirm from the great crop of thorns which heretofore grew there that which we now call Westminster was then called Thorney This Church so famous for its Antiquity so admired for its Elegancy of Structure especially by the addition of Henry the Seventh's Chappel a Pile of that polished magnificence ut omnem Elegantiam in illo acervatam dicas as if art and bounty had conspired to raise it to a wonder of the World Lastly a Church so venerable as being once the seat of an Arch-Bishop and a Bishop and now a long time the place where the Kings of England receive their sacred Unction and Crowns
Chelmsford well governed 25. and taught 26 Mr. Chestlen unjustly ejected and Imprisoned 170 Child hanged for not betraying his Father 112 Children taken from their Parents 54 Church Prophaned 67 110 193. Colchester 1. their justice 14 Mr. Cornelius Plundered 33 Dr. Cox most inhumanely used against the Law of Arms. 71 D Mr. Dalton Plundered and his Wife hardly used 144 Darke a Rebel makes his Servants plough on the Fast day without reproof 127 The Dead violated 67 69 105 147 Divine Service disturbed 29 42 108 192. E Sir Walter Earles creeping valour 12C Evidences and Books destroyed 39 Embassadour Robbed 90 F Father starves his Son because he will not be a Rebel 101 Fear of Cruelty makes some run mad others die 41 Dr. Featley Persecuted to Death 193 Nath. Fiennes his Warrant 160 Mr. Flint murthered 65 Mr. Flower Lamed and Imprisoned his house Plundered his Wife and Children barbarously used 181 182 G Gentry to be rooted out 111 Giffords form of Burial 97 Mr. Gibb persecuted for Loyalty 98 99 A Goose strained at a Mare swallowed 191 Mr. Gray plundered and imprisoned 59 H Sir Arthur Haslerig 's dance 143 Mr. Haynes robbed and imprisoned 57 58 Sir Tho. Hides compliance with the Rebels rewarded 155 Mr. Hinson imprisoned and inhumanly used 165 Mr. Honifold plundered imprisoned and rudely hanled 14 House Burnt to pay a reckoning 41 Mr. Hutchinson and Mr Hiliard imprisoned on Ship-board 161 I Infant robbed 131 Mr. Jones imprisoned 92. famished 97 Mr. Jones another persecuted 125 126 Jury perjured 34 The Justice of the Earl of Essex 42 K The Kings Picture abused 38 129. and his Statue 149 Kirles Cruelty 84 L Mr. Laud plundered for his name sake 13 Mr. Losse barbarously used 108 Sir John Lucas plundered and imprisoned his Mother Wife and Family abused 1 M Dr. Martin imprisoned and inhumanly used on Ship-board 132 Mercy forbidden to be shewed 88 Dr. Michelson persecuted and most inhumanly handled for Loyalty and his Wife and Children undone 27 Sir Richard Minshull plundered 36 17 N Mr. Newcomin rudely handled and imprisoned 2 Mr. Nowel plundered and imprisoned 78 O Oath of implicit Obedience 48 P Parliaments Justice 12 46 47 58 67 171 Parliament the Lords Anointed how 36 Prisoner's forbidden their Devotions 100 Pyms lowzie ashes 156 R Rape threatned 16. attempted 78. with Murder 98 Reading taxed 44 Rebels lay their own Robberies on the Cavalliers and cozen the Londoners 90 Countess of Rivers plundered 15 41 Robber released by the Commons 16 S Col. Sandes a cruel plunderer 7. his Travels 79. indicted of Rape ib. his Repentance Relapse and miserable Death 131 A Scot defends the stealing of a Chalice and holds a wooden dish good enough for the Sacrament 143 Servent Treacherous 1 A Soldier hanged for Loyalty 129 Soldiers made drunk to bring them on 122 Soldier brags of cruelty 191 Spoil of goods 38 51 Mr. Squire plundered of 4000 l. 159 Mr. Swift plundered his Wife and Children barbarously used 83 84 Mr. Stevens his neighbour murthered for concealing his goods 17 Mr. Simons sequestered and persecuted for Loyalty and a scandalous man put in his place 18 T Thanks given for Sedition 5 Mr. Thorne unjustly imprisoned 45 Treason preached and encouraged 17 Mr. Tyringham wounded and inhumanly used 136 V Mr. Udal and his Wife cruelly used 153 154 Vens traitenous sauciness and cruelty 100 W Wellingborow plundered 59 Whoredom on the Altar 154 Mr. Wiborow abused 42. and his Wife and Children 139 140 Women in labour cruelly used 77 Woman whipt to death 167 Mr. Wright plundered and his servants murthered 132 THE TABLE OF Querela Cantabrigiensis A ANcient Coins plundered 191 Ash and Good two Camp-Chaplains eject and banish whom they please 202 B Mr. Baldero imprisoned to satisfie his Conscience 246 Banishment 201 Bishop of Exeter deprived and banished 184 Book of Common Prayer torn in St. Maries Church 190 Bridges broken down 193 C Cambridge made a Rendezvouz to ruin the University 185 Chappels abused 196 197 Colleges defaced 193 194. made a Prison 193 Dr. Collins deprived of his places 184 Dr. Comber and Dr. Cosin deprived 185 Covenant with Hell 204. a cause of Persecution like the six Articles 205. The number of the Beast ibid. Cromwels malice to the University 182 Curd a confiding Taylor 192 D Doctors of Divinity carried Prisoners to London in triumph 182. designed to be sold for slaves to Argiers 183 E Ejection of those for absence who had not time given to return or were kept Prisoners at London 198 F Fellow of a College pluck'd from the Communion to hinder an Election 197 Fortune a decayed Hatter Plunder-master General 192 G Goods and Books taken from Scholars 192 H Dr. Holdsworth deprived and imprisoned 185 Homes a lubberly Scottish Major trampled in the kennel by a Chamber-maid 195 St. Johns College Fellows there ejected 202 Jordan a small sneaking Captain his Tyranny 190 L Dr. Lany deprived 185 M Earl of Manchesters Chaplain will not resolve mens Consciences 246. his Warrants 201 Materials for College building taken away 193 Meat taken from College Tables 191 Musquets shot against Scholars windows 182 G Oath of discovery Treacherous perjury 199 200 P Dr. Pask deprived 185. Pictures burnt 192 Mr. Power not suffered to preach Ad Clerum 189 Q Queens College extirpated Root and Branch 202 Regent house besieged to force the Congregation to confer a Degree upon an unworthy man 188 Rents taken from Colleges 191 S Scholars thrust out of their Beds 191. knock'd down for relieving Prisoners 195 Soldiers Quartered in Colleges 194 195 T Taxes imposed on the University by the Town 165 Training in Kings College Chappel 196 197 V Vice-chancelor and Heads kept Prisoners in the Consistory 186 University their Contribution to the King justified 179 W Walks Woods and Orchards of Colleges cut down 192 Dr. Wards Loyalty to death 187 Whores kept in Colleges by the Rebels 194 * Mark It was not for scandalous acts but for opposing Vid Mercur. Rustic 2. This particular appeareth by a Paper delivered into the Registers Office under the hands if not also upon the Oaths of Master Christopher Terne and Master Anthony Walker both of S. Johns Colledge who had Musquets several times discharged in at their windows as also divers others Alex. Rigby the Lawyer Vide Declar. of the Parl. at Oxf. Mar. 19. 1643. On Good Fiday Mar. 30. 1643. * Imperator Valens Grammaticos Sophistas Legum Professores qui per vigliti annos probe munere docendi suncti sunt annumerari honorari cum iis qui ex vicaria sint principis dignitate jubet inter Comites Greg. Tho. losan Syntag. lib. 19. c. 1. § 8. ubi citat l. uni de Professor qui in urbe Constantinop lib. 12. C. tit 1. juncta rub gl M. Power Lord Gray of Warke See the Preface M. Cromwell Jordan So at S. Johns College * So was Jo. Bullock of S. Johns * So at S. Johns College whence they took in Ancient Coyn's to the value of 22. l. according to weight Fortune Parrell Curd So at Jesus College Clare-Hall S. Johns Trin. Kings Garret Hostle and 2. at Queens * Kings College S. Johns Coll. Pembr Hall Pembr Hall Mistris Cumbers maid Homes M. Cromwell D. Ward * Master Pawson of Sidney College though since he hath proved himself an arrant honest man and is rewarded for it with a fellowship in S. Johns Kings Coll. Crawford See the Pref. * Master Pawson of Sidney College though since he hath proved himself an arrant honest man and is rewarded for it with a fellowship in S. Johns S. Johns See Pref. * M. Ash and M. Good Queens Coll. * See Mr. Fox Act. and Mon. Vol. 2. p. 443. Edit London 1631. Mr. Geast Mr. Baldero
MERCURIUS RUSTICUS THE COUNTRYS COMPLAINT Recovnting the sad Events of the late unparalleld REBELLION Christ Church Coll Ox Canterbury Minster Trinn Colledge Comb Countess of Rivers plundered pag 11 S r John Lucas house plundered pag ◠〈◊〉 〈◊〉 hous plundered pag 31. A Bonfire for the voting downe Episcopacy pag. â—6 〈…〉 pag 81. Warder Castle defended by a Lady pag 41. Mercurius Rusticus OR The COUNTRIES Complaint of the barbarous Outrages committed by the SECTARIES of this late flourishing KINGDOM Together with A brief CHRONOLOGY of the Battels Sieges Conflicts and other most remarkable Passages from the beginning of this unnatural War to the 25 th of March 1646. Together with A brief CHRONOLOGY of the Battels Sieges Conflicts and other most remarkable Passages from the beginning of this unnatural War to the 25 th of March 1646. Jer. 15.13 Thy substance and thy treasure will I give to the spoil without price and that for all thy sins even in all thy borders LONDON Printed for R. Royston Book-seller to the King 's Most Excellent Majesty and are to be sold by R. Green Book-seller in Cambridge 1685. THE PREFACE VVHen the sins of this Kingdom were ripe for punishment the Divine Justice permitted a great part of it to be besotted with Discontents either wholly causeless or such as His Majesty was pleased to remedy with Grants so unmeasurably gracious as could not otherwise be justified than by their importunity that demanded them and His Majesties Royall tenderness of his Subjects peace and safety These Grants were so far from satisfying those whose broken fortunes and boundless desires would not permit them to live without a Civil War that they make of them no other use than thereby to strengthen themselves to demand more till at last they broke out into a most unnatural Rebellion The people alwaies apt to cherish murmurs and invectives against their Princes and now grown wanton with the fruits of a long peace incline to Abners mind and think the war which yet they knew not but a sport Therefore with a great facility they imbrace the design and the baits to cover the Hooks with are the preservation of Religion and the vindication of Liberty And howsoever they cannot reconcile their practise with Gods command which under pain of damnation forbids all Subjects to resist their King yet they are so wedded to that interest which they challenge in Religion and Liberty that for Gods command if they cannot untie the Knot they resolve to cut it Do but assure them that the forbidden fruit will make them as Gods and they will eat it though it be forbidden do but perswade them that to take up arms against their Sovereign is the way to secure their Religion and Liberty and they make bold with God for once to choose their own way for so good an end From so desperate Resolution had they had but Morall justice they might have been kept back by the improbability of those calumnies whereby His Majesty was traduced as intending to alter Religion and infringe their Liberties Or had Religion to which they do so Zealously pretend had that potent influence upon them it might have taught them that Religion cannot be defended by transgressing Gods commands which are the Rule of it But if nothing else yet even regard to their own pretensions the defence of Religion and Liberty should have wrought in them a detestation of Rebellion which is so contrary to both For as an eye had to Gods dominion over us should exact obedience to his commands though never so much to our prejudice So the meditation of his infinite goodness ought to win it from us because his commands enjoyn us onely what is for our good if we could see it He would not have forbidden Subjects to defend Religion against their King by force of Arms but that he knew as Rebels can be no friends to Religion so it gaines love and admiration by the innocent patience of those that profess it whereas Bloodshed Force and Rapine the fruits of Rebellion procure Hatred or Hypocrisie And for Liberty it is for the good of mankind to forbid the assertion of it by Subjects Arms taken up against their Prince both because that pretence would otherwise be used by those that have a design to make the abused people their own slaves and because Rebellion doth more violate the Subjects liberty than is morally possible for the worst Prince in times of peace to do This truth was known before by speculation to a few whose endeavours to infuse it into the distempered peoples minds had the fate of Cassandraes predictions to hit the truth and want belief till these sad times have at last verified it by a costly experience That this may be more universally beneficial you have too plentifull a harvest of Instances collected in the insuing Relations wherein may evidently be seen that this War which the multitude was so fond of as the only means to preserve Religion and Liberty hath been almost the utter ruin of them both Here you shall find these great pretenders to Religion suppressing that which themselves confess to be Divine Truth Debarring poor prisoners the comfort of joyning their prayers together enforcing men to take Oaths of blind Obedience to whatsoever they should afterwards command them turning out Clergy-men above all exception and placing most scandalous and insufficient wretches in their rooms darting from their invenomed mouths most horrid Blasphemies against our blessed Lord and Saviour abusing the service of God and profaning not only the Form of it the Book of Common Prayer against which they have a professed quarrel but even Gods own Word the holy Bible which they pretend to reverence Here shall you behold them not only like those Canes Sepulchrales violating the bones and ashes of the dead to make the world know that they believe what some of their fellows openly profess that of those sometime living Temples of the holy Ghost there shall be no resurrection but exercising their fury on the Churches of God which they have defaced with Barbarous rudeness defiled with more than beastly nastiness and as if contrary to their wont they had studied the Book of Maccabees to find out and out-do the most Heathenish wickednesses therein related they have polluted the very Altar with their whoredoms The Independents at whose door the most part of these profanations of the Houses of God must lye will hardly make the world believe they are in earnest when they plead for Liberty of Conscience in Religion while they thus deface the places where it should be taught and practiced And as ill can the Presbyterians make good their pretended zeal to Religion and the Nurse of it Learning having almost extirpated one of the most flourishing Universities of Christendom Then for the other point the Subjects Liberty the following Narrations will plainly shew that it hath not been spared by those that would be accounted the Champions of it when the violation of
Gospel by the same creature as those offered to a Prophet under the Law Or lastly why may not the blood of him that owned this Beast be required by this Beast of him that had his hand in shedding it This was not the first time that God gave commission to the Brute to execute his vengeance But I forget my self my business is to relate things done not to encounter Objections against their probability of doing To go on therefore Having brought Mr. Jones to Northampton his entertainment there was as bad as his usage in the way thither though it were in the depth of Winter when old age needed good fortifications of Lodging and Diet against the incursions of cold and wet yet they afforded him nothing but a hard mat with a little straw under him and to cover him and to keep him warm nothing but one blanket and his own wearing cloaths As for his food they give him the Bread of Affliction denying his own friends leave to supply him with competent diet to sustein nature and his growing infirmities yet to shew that Man lives not by bread only but by every word which proceedeth out of the mouth of God it pleased his good providence to preserve him like the young Children in Daniel fed only with Pulse so that he was in good plight and semed to want nothing though he continued in this distressed condition from Christmas to almost Easter about which time not remorse of conscience for so much cruelty practised on a decrepid old man but an Orthodox Reverend Divine but importunity of friends prevailed with the Rebels to release him of his imprisonment in Northampton and to remit him to a neighbour Minister of his one Mr. Walters Bachelor in Divinity Vicar of Doddington near Wellingborow a very learned and industrious Preacher and permitted him to Officiate in his own Cure at Easter there being but one Parish Church in the Town but no less than two thousand Communicants Having licence to visit his Charge not awed by that tyrannous usage which he had undergone Conscience of his duty doth press him to a punctual observance of the Orders and Canons of the Church he celebrates Divine Service according to the Book of Common Prayer preacheth Obedience as boldly as if there had been no Rebels in Northamptonshire administreth the Sacraments with the same Reverence Decency and Devotion as if there had been no Puritans in Wellingborow Nor doth the undaunted old man remit any thing enjoyned by Canon or Rubrick This constancy of his so incensed the Schismatical Puritanical Party of the Town that complaint is made at Northampton that Mr. Jones is the same man he was as much a true Son and Minister of the Church of England as ever Upon this information he is apprehended in Easter week and carried Prisoner to Northampton a second time where they use him with more inhumanity if it be possible than before they will not permit his Wife to visit him and kept him so short in his diet not suffering his Wife or friends to relieve him that most barbarously they starved him to death for about Whitsontide his spirits exhausted and his body pined by famine the good old Martyr resigned his Soul to God There is in Northampton one John Gifford for his extraction the Hog-herds Son of Little-Hougton for his education a Knitter afterwards a Hose-buyer now Mayor of Northampton and Colonel of the Town Regiment This man to his power Civil and Martial assumes an Ecclesiastical Superintendency too and orders what forms shall be used in Baptism the Lords Supper Burial of the Dead and the like When therefore they came to interr the skin and bones of this starved Martyr for flesh he had none the form enjoyned by this Gifford was the same which one Brooks a London Lecturer used at the burial of John Gough of S. James Dukes Place within Aldgate in London viz. Ashes to Ashes Dust to Dust Here 's the Pit and in thou must The World may in this see what devout Liturgies we are like to have when a Mayor of a Town shall suppress the Ancient pious forms and introduce rime Doggerels fitter for a painted Cloth in an Alehouse than the Church of Christ. Before I leave this particular Relation I must not forget to tell you one act of these Religious Reformers being at Willingborow at the Sign of the Swan two maid Servants making a bed some of these Rebels did sollicite them to incontinency but the Maids refusing to hearken to their beastly sollicitations they began to offer violence and to enforce what they could not perswade they still making resistance they shot one of them dead in the place and shot the other through the wrist such Monuments of Religion and Purity do these blessed Reformers leave at all places where they come Mr. Frederick Gibb Parson of Hartist in Suffolke in Morning Prayer before his Sermon desired his Parishoners to give attention to one of His Majesties Declarations newly set forth with an express Command to have it published in all Parish Churches thereby to rectifie the People and to wipe off those false Impressions which the Incendiaries of the Kingdom had made in them concerning the Kings Actions and Intentions whereupon one Mr. Coleman a Parishioner being present impudently replied unto him openly in the Church that he might be ashamed to abuse the People by Reading his Majesties Declarations unto them and therefore he would fetch him some Parliament Declarations which were a great deal better to be published unto them while this railing Rabshekeh reviled his Sovereign Mr. Gibb as if he had received the Command in that case given answer him not made no reply at all but as not heeding this snarler calls on the Congregation a second time to give attention Coleman interrupts him again and in a scoffing manner saies Well then Sir you mean to be an obedient Servant to his Majesty Mr. Gibb then thinking it not only seasonable but necessary to profess his Loyalty replied Yes Sir I am and hope to continue a faithful Servant unto Him as long as I live and so proceeds to read the Declaration the People notwithstanding all this Incouragement from Coleman to contradict with them standing very attentive to hear it The main drift of the Kings Declaration was to assure all His loving Subjects That as He expected that they should make the Laws the rule of their obedience so He would make the Laws the guide of His Government Mr. Gibb having published the Declaration Coleman stands up and most Traitorously replied to his Parson Well Sir the King neither is nor shall be Judge of the Law whatever such prating fellows as you would have him after this being inraged as the rest of that Faction are that the Peoples eyes should be opened or that they should being truly informed conceive of the King as he is a most just and pious Prince but still to look on him and all his actions through those
their pleasure upon disarmed wounded men they rob Mr. Tyringham of his Cassock rifle all their pockets and take from them what they please and to palliate their cruelty they send two Dragooners back to tell their Captains and their Companies that the Prisoners committed to their Custody and Conduct made resistence Upon this false Alarm given presently the Captains and their Companies make up to them to assist a strong Guard against three disarmed and of them two wounded men being come where they were they encompass them about and without any examination of the business presuming the suggestion to be undoubted truth one of the Rebels Capt. Pollard by name with a full blow strikes at Mr. Tyringham and with his Sword cuts his Arme and Cubit-bones cross the elbow almost asunder Mr. Tyringham almost threescore years of age within two bore this barbarous usage with undaunted Courage and hearing this bloody Villain called Captain Pollard in a pleasant indignation expressed the sense of the injury but thus That now he had made him a Pollard indeed A Metophor easily understood by Wood-men who usually call a Tree whose limbs or branches are lopped off a Pollard Mr. Tyringhams Arm thus miserably wounded and hanging dangling from his shoulder without any government from the nerves or sinews one of his Nephews having a mourning Ribband tendred it to his Uncle to bind up his Arm but the Rebels will not permit it tho Mr. Tyringham intreat the favour to have his wounds bound up and the very spectacle before their eyes was argument enough to extort this mercy from them yet they remain inexorable nor would they be perswaded until a long time after having now made sure work with their Prisoners and rendred them so far unable to resist that some were hardly able to sit the jades on which they were mounted they again set forward for Ailesbury The Dragooners horses on which they were set being tired made the way very tedious especially to Mr. Tyringham who lost much blood all the way as they went While these Gentlemen were in this miserable condition Captain Pollard not troubled at all for so bloody a fact barbarously committed by himself on an aged Gentleman and a Minister of that Gospel which they falsly pretend to maintain but indeed deny and blaspheme in all their actions turned aside to Whaddon Chase and sported himself in killing some of His Majesties Deer which he carried along with him to Ailesbury after almost four hours riding tired out with tired Jades and fainting with loss of blood the Prisoners were again commanded to alight at a Town called Whitchurch within two miles of Ailesbury Here they fall on Mr. Tyringham afresh and plunder him as eagerly as if he had been new come into their hands and not touched by them before They pluck off his Boots and take from him his Jerkin his Hat and Cap all the fences provided for cold and weather and the usual Fortifications against the injuries of wind and rain and so made a pattern of the man wounded between Jerusalem and Jericho they mount him on his Spittle again and drive on and after an hours riding in cold and darkness at last they arrived at Ailesbury that night the Chirurgions as soon as they could be found viewed and dressed the wound but concluded unanimously that they must cut off his Arm the next day or else it would Gangreen and infallaby kill him which next day was done accordingly Mr. Tyringham bore the loss of his Arm with incredible resolution and courage as knowing the Justice of that Cause for which he suffered and as willing to lay down his Life in testimony of his Loyalty as his Brother Mr. Edward Tyringham one of the Gentlemen of the Kings Privy Chamber had done before him who the last Winter being imployed in his Majesties service and set on by a Party of Rebels fought valiantly but oppressed with multitudes received so many wounds that he died of them But it hath pleased God so to bless the means used for this Gentlemans recovery that there are great hopes he will survive these maimes and as himself undauntedly told the Rebels to their faces Live to see them hanged Amen In the fourth Week of this Mercury you heard of the cruel usage of Mr. Wiborow Parson of Pebmarsh in the County of Essex by the Rebels in those parts how they abused him in the Church beat him in the fields and took from him the Book of Common Prayer having before torn another of his in pieces After this the Brownists and Anabaptists of that place with which that Country swarms threaten to kill him Mr. Wiborow not daring to trust himself amongst these cruel blood-thirsty men to preserve his life was compelled to leave his Cure his Wife and Children some seven Months since and to put himself under the Kings protection hoping that his absence might be a means to secure his Wife and Children and prevail with these Monsters to permit them to enjoy that which he left behind him for their sustenance but his absence was so far from working this good effect in them that they made use of it to eject him out of the possession of the Profits of his Parsonage and his Wife and Children out of their house exposing them harbourless to the wide World for taking advantage of his absence they accuse him to the pretended Parliament and frame a Bill of Falshood and Lies against him thereby to gain a Sequestration of his Living A business not of any great difficulty they being more ready to grant such illegal oppressive ejections than the People to ask them for upon the Accusation John White that fornicating Brownist sitting in the Chair Mr. Wiborows Living was sequestred and the Profits of it given to one Burrows though the Cure was never neglected but supplied by Mr. Wiborows friends to the content and satisfaction of all moderate peaceable men yet though they had robb'd him of his livelyhood and given his Wives and Childrens bread to strangers by most unjust practices yet his hopes were that his poor Wife and Children should enjoy the accommodation of their dwelling in the Parsonage house but such is the implacable cruelty and malice of these Sectaries that on the tenth of June 1643. a Troop of the Rebels came to the Parsonage house and demanded entrance Mrs. Wiborow and her Children being alone in the house she barr'd up the doors against them and for her better safety retired to an upper room to which the passage was through a Trap-door which likewise she made as fast as she could all this fortification could not keep these Rebels out they break open the doors and make way to the room where Mrs. Wiborow and her Children thought to secure themselves when they came thither three of these Rebels set their Pistols at her breast threatning to shoot her if she and her Children would not suddenly depart the house and leave it to a new Master Mrs. Wiborow replied
Essential form saies he of a Zealous Catholick in the Holy League was to Rob and Prophane Churches to Ravish Wives and Virgins to murther Men against the Altars to spoyl the Clergy not to be the Kings Servants which that Age held for a Crime but to vomit out against him all the indignities and all the wickednesses which Irreligion and Injustice could invent in mad Soldiers do change Zealous Catholick into Zealous Puritan and no Pencil ever limm'd a Rebell of this present Rebellion so exactly to the life as this and though they have out-done all examples presidents of wickedness cruelty disloyalty sacrilege and prophanation as if in them the Devil meant to shew his Master-piece raging in them horribly because he knows that he hath but a short time yet to their dishonouring of God their vilifying his holy worship prophaning his Temples blaspheming the footsteps of his Anointed affronting and contemning his Priests and Ministers to their rending rearing and trampling underfoot all Hallowed Ornaments and Vtensils provided for the reverend and decent worship of God I know nothing that they have left undone which remaines yet to be added to their accursed impieties So that what the old Eustathians Meslalians Fratricelli and the rest of those wild Hereticks who placed their Religion in Contempt of Consecrated Churches Temples and Oratories places Consecrated and set apart for the publick worship of God durst not do these Schismatical Rebels having wilfully smothered not only their Consciences but the dictate of common reason putting no difference between Holy and Prophane have acted with greediness whatsoever things they are whereon the name of God is called whether Persons times or places in the Judgment of venerable Antiquity whether Councils Fathers or Historians those things were ever held Sacred and Inviolable always habenda cum Discrimine and that extra Usum Sacrum to be regarded with a reverential and discriminative usance that is with a select and different respect from other things of the same kind but not imployed to Holy uses nay the honouring Gods House was ever held an Ingredient of that Petition of the Lords Prayer Sanctificetur Nomen tuum Hallowed be thy Name what opinion the Ancient Fathers both Greek and Latine had of such places may be collected from those Magnificent and honourable Names whereby they commended them to the due esteem of several Ages in which they lived Some in regard of their use and imployment called them the Lords House some the Patrimony of Christ some the Dowry of the Spouse of Christ some a Consecrated Possession of God and a Holy Soil others in respect of their Magnificence of Structure and Costliness of Ornaments called them Palaces Royal or Kingly Houses Nay would we but sharpen our Goads at a Philistines Forge or weave the Woollen Yarn of the Gentiles with Linnen webb of the Christians I mean call in the Testimony and practice of the Heathen in what vener ation and esteem they had their Idol Temples which was in them the dictate of Nature mistaken only in the Object and they would stand up as so many witnesses and certainly in the day of Judgment shall condemn-this prophane Generation who under an Hypocritical pretence of worshiping God in Spirit in a true Anabaptistical fury have laid wast the Sanctuaries of God polluted his Temples and broken down all their carved work with Axes and Hammers And though these Rebellious Schismaticks have in all places which have been plagued with their presence Roared in the midst of our Congregations set up their Banners for tokens and left some infamous memorial of their frenzie and hatred of the beauty and magnificence of Gods Houses and therefore in every place made it their first business as an introduction to the rest to rob and deface Churches and violate the Sepulchres and Monuments of the dead so they have exprest their greatest hatred against the Mother Churches and Cathedrals of this Kingdom because in them the primitive Order and decency prescribed in the Rubrick of the Book of Common Prayer and ratified by Act of Parliament have been best preserved from those Omissions Neglects and Contempts which had almost banished them out of private Parochial Congregations and rendered them obnoxious to sinister interpretations and suspected of no less than Popery Superstition and Innovation in those places wherein they were retained and practised when therefore our Posterity shall see this Abomination of desolation which the Rebels have brought into these Temples of God and by Tradition hear of those costly Vtensils and Ornaments which most Sacrilegiously they have carried out and shall with wonder and astonishment inquire what Lunacy what Frenzy what accursed madness possessed the hearts of the men of this present Age to lay wast the places where Gods honour dwells where God vouchsafes to meet with his People and the People with united devotion to propitiate their God and impiously as much as in them is to turne these Beauties of Holiness into desolate places for Ziim and Ochim as the Prophet speaks and the Satyrs to dance in Esay 13.12 Let them know that the Puritans Brownists and Anabaptists Rebels marching under the Banners of a faction in the two pretended Houses of Parliament which yet some have the impudence to call the Great and Highest Court the Supreame Judicature and the most zealous Protectors and Assertors of the Established Protestant Religion have brought this desolation upon us And because this Tempest raged first the East and so spread it self into all parts of the Kingdom West North and South I shall in the Relation keep the same Method if so great confusion can be ranged into a method whereby we shall give as is due Precedency to the famous Metropolitan Church of Canterbury which as it is in respect of her lesser Sisters first in Order and Dignity so was it then and now shall be the first instance of the Rebels Sacrilege Mercurius Rusticus c. I. The Cathedral Church of Canterbury horribly abused and defaced by the Rebels under the Conduct of Col. Sandys and Sir Michael Livesey Together with the miserable end of the said Col. at Worcester c. THe City of Canterbury the Ancient seat of the Kings of Kent while the Saxon Heptarchy flourished in this Island was by King Ethelbert given together which the Royalty thereof to Augustine the first consecrated Arch-Bishop of the English Nation who there fixed his seat for himself and his Successors for whose sake Gregory the great then Bishop of Rome translated the Motropolitan dignity together with the Honour of the Pall from London to Canterbury this City as the rest had ' its share in that spoyl and devastation which War and the sword in the Innovations of Foreign Nations and domestick broyls brought upon it the greatest impressions of desolation made on it were in the Danish Wars but the Normans succeeding through the Piety of Godly Religious men residing there and the bounty and liberality of the Bishops it did