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
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
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
growing Hemp and there lay on the Ground almost 20 Hours without Meat or any sustenance so that what with fright and dampness of the Earth some of them contracted dangerous Sicknesses and hardly escaped with Life The Terrour which fell upon the Country thereabout was so great that the neighbouring Justice of Peace durst not grant his Warrant to search after any of Sir Richard's Goods though earnestly intreated to it And the Neighbours were so ill used and threatned to extort confession from them where Sir Richard was or where any of his Goods were conveyed that some swooned for fear some fell mad and some died Certain it is their carriage was so barbarous that it inforced Mr. Jo. Crew one of the Company to profess his dislike and to tell the Lord Brooks and the rest That they being Law-makers should not be Law-breakers nor make such precedents as would discover their intentions and render them odious unto the Country Since that knowing Sir Richard to have put himself for preservation of his Life under his Majesties Protection they have caused his Pond-heads to be digged down and have destroyed all his Fish they have cut down his Woods and seised on all his Lands or made them utterly unprofitable unto him for they will not suffer any Bayliff or Servant of his to take any care of his Estate but have often sent parties of Horse to seise on them or kill them At a place called Kings-harbour near Hounslow-heath three Soldiers under the Command of the Lord Wharton came into a House to drink going away they of the House demand Money for their Drink So unexpected an affront did so incense the Soldiers that one of them told his Companions he would shew them how they set Houses on fire in Ireland and so put his Carbine into the Thatch and discharged it set the House on fire and departed The General ESSEX returning from London came by as the House was on fire complaint is made unto him that the owner of the House was undone but all in vain his Excellency was not at leisure to do Justice The Countess of Rivers who as you heard in the second Weeks Relation was Plundered to the value of an Hundred thousand or an Hundred and fifty thousand pounds finding her abode here unsafe having lost her Goods and her Person in danger to secure her self resolved for a time to abandon her Country and rather expose her self to the hazard of Travel than commit her self to that protection which the contemned Laws now afford To this purpose she obtained a Pass to go beyond Seas While she was in preparing for her Voyage Mr. Martin Plunder-master General he that so familiarly speaks Treason and steals the King's Horses or doth any thing plunders the Countess of her Coach Horses notwithstanding a Warrant from the Lords House to secure them And when this Warrant was produced to stave off this Parliament Horse-taker he replied That if the Warrant had been from both Houses he would obey it as coming from the highest authority in England sure this man was born with Treason in his Mouth but since it came But from the Lords he did not value it When this Warrant could not prevail the Countess obtains a Warrant from the Earl of Essex to have the Horses restored unto her again but Mr. Martin to overbear all procures an Order from the House of Commons to keep them This Honourable Ladies Goods were seised on though Licensed to pass by the Lords and searched and allowed by the Custome-House At Pebmarsh in the same County of Essex on the Lords Day divers of the Parliament Voluntiers came into the Church while the Parson Mr. Wiborow was in his Prayer before Sermon and placed themselves near the Pulpit and when he was in his Prayer one of them struck divers times with his Staff against the Pulpit to interrupt him and while he was in his Sermon in contempt of the place where they were and the sacred action in doing they were almost as loud as the Preacher to the great disturbance of the Congregation No sooner was the Sermon ended and the Parson come out of the Pulpit as far as the Reading-desk but they lay violent hands upon him rent his Clothes threaten to pull him in pieces in the Church With much intreaty they spare him there and permit him to go into the Church-yard he is no sooner come thither but they assault him more violently than before Mr. Wiborow seeing the Constable who all this while stood a spectator of his hard usage calls unto him and charges him in the King's Name to keep the Kings Peace At his request they did a little forbear him But before he could get half ways Home they assault him again and demand the Book of Common-Prayer which he used in the Church That which was found by the Parish being torn in pieces before which he refusing to deliver up unto them they reek their fury on him They tug and hale him and vow to kill him unless he deliver up the Book of Common-Prayer to their pleasure he stoutly refuseth Hereupon they fall upon him strike up his Heels and take it from him by force and so carry it away in triumph Mr. Blakerby a silenced Minister heretofore preaching at Halstead in the same County told them That to bow at the Name of Jesus was to thrust a Spear into Christ's side and such Ministers as signed Children with the sign of the Cross did as much as in them lay to send such Children unto the Devil When the Earl of Essex and the rest went from Reading to London after the unhappy to say no more surrender of that town they left there a Committee consisting of none but City Captains and Tradesmen these according to the authority committed unto them summon all the able men of the Parishes thereabout to appear before them at Reading and Assessed them at their pleasure In Marlow they Assessed one Mr. Drue at 1000 l. they fell to 500 l. he refusing to pay was Imprisoned but the Prison being most nasty and loathsom denied the accommodation of Bedding was forced to pay 300 l. Mr. Horcepoole they assessed at 200 l. Mr. Chase a man plundered before at 40 l. 20 pound was offered but nothing will be abated of 30. Eliot a Butcher at an 100 l. and Imprisoned Cocke a Baker at 20 l. Mr. Fornace the Vicar not suffered to speak for himself because a Malignant at 10 l. and paid seven John Langley 10 l. Thomas Langley 20 l. William Langley 5 l. and Wilmot his Servant 5 l. John More 80 l. Hoskins a Shoomaker 5 l. Cane an Innkeeper 7 l. Rates so Illegal or had they been Legal so unequally proportioned to these mens Estates that had Ship-money been still on foot it would not have drawn so much Money out of their Purses in forty or fifty years as this Blew-Apron Committee at Reading removed some seven or eight Degrees from the Close Committee at Westminster
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
able to give any other answer to their Query protests his ignorance and that if the discovery might save his life yet he could not redeem it so for he knew nothing concerning what they asked him inraged that the man could not Prophecy for without that gift he could not resolve them they suddenly hoise him up to the top of the house and letting go their hold they let him as suddenly fall to the ground Being fallen there he lay for dead without any expression of life but these barbarous Rebels hoping that there may yet remain some life in him whereon to practise further cruelty stand by the man and watch him and at last perceiving that he was not dead but that he began to stir and breath presently they put burning matches between his fingers hoping by this way of Torment to extort a discovery from him but in vain the extremity of this Torment indeed though half dead as he was made him cry out and roar in a very lamentable manner which a Maid-servant of the house hearing and affrighted at the noise ran to her Master and told him that certainly the Rebels were murthering the man in the house of Office hereupon Mr. Walker hastened out and when he came to the place found the conjecture of his Servant true and amazed at so horrid so inhumane a spectacle interceded for the poor man and earnestly desired them not to defile his ground and habitation with innocent blood instead of desisting they return the Aegyptians answer to Moses Who made thee a Ruler and a Judg bad him be silent and withdraw or else they threatned to use him in like manner Mr. Walker fearing that those perjured persidious Villains which keep their words in nothing else might yet be punctual in performance of mischief not daring to commit himself to their mercy left them and went imto his house where the Quarter-Master to the Rebels lay sleeping while the Troopers were acting this cruelty him he raiseth from sleep and tells him what the Troopers were doing without who something moved at the Relation went out unto them and took them off from farther prosecuting their barbarous intentions But whether or no the man on whom all this cruelty was acted survived this barbarous usage is uncertain As amongst the many blessings wherewith it pleased God to advance the City of London far above all other Cities either of this or other Nations of the Christian World one was their Clergy for a more pious learned and laborious Ministry no people ever enjoyed even their Enemies themselves being Judges So amongst the many crying sins whereby that proud rebellious City hath provoked God to give them up to a Reprobate sense and hardness of heart to their own destruction certainly the contempt and oppression of their Clergy are none of the least as before the lest Parliament began a main part of their Religion was to strive with their Priests and to rob them of their maintenance by all possible arts of deceit and fraud so as soon as the Parliament was sate and the basest of the People were set loose to worrey their Ministers though never so blameless never so Orthodox if they did not conspire with them to innovate both Church and State the Citizens of London shewed themselves most forward in Petitioning against their Ministers yet at first pretended to molest such only who had expressed greatest zeal to the Order and decency of Gods worship professing that for the rest there was no thought to trouble them but at last having put to flight or imprisoned those they go and discover plainly that whatsoever is a Friend to the Protestant Religion as it is established in the Church of England is their Enemy how many have they silenced imprisoned or banished from their Cures whom heretofore they did magnifie for the undaunted Champions of the Protestant Religion and stout opposers of those supposed pretended innovations which they vainly imagined were the eager endeavours of some men to impose upon the Church he that knows London and hath frequented the most thronged Congregations there cannot be ignorant that Mr. Ephraim Udall Parson of S. Austins in the Old Change near S. Austines Gate is a man of eminent Piety exemplary Conversation profound Learning indefatigable Industry Preaching constantly every Lords Day twice and for the Winter half year if not the whole year preaching a Lecture at his own Parish every Tuesday in the Afternoon and if I am not mistaken every Saturday before the first Sunday in the month a Preparatory Sermon to the blessed Sacrament of the Sords Supper and besides all this he is a man of an affable courteous peaceable Conversation amongst his Neighbours in a word he was a man of their own vote and is without prophanation be it spoken a shining and burning light and his people for a while much pleased themselves in their choice and were content to walk by his light but when he found himself mistaken in the ends and intentions of the heads of this Rebellion when he saw that the zeal of some did degenerate into madness and frenzie and that the endeavours of others under the pretence of Reformation was to bring in Anarchy and Sacriledg to devour Gods Portion and the poor remainder of the Patrimony of the Church he did strongly and powerfully bend both his tongue and pen against them against Sacriledg he published that learned Tract called A Coal from the Altar against Anarchy he declared himself for Episcopacy and the established Lyturgy and published another Book called Communion Comeliness in which by many impregnable Arguments he proves a high Conveniency if not a necessity for that most laudable custom of having Rails about the Lords Table These were in the Schismatiques opinion Crimes enough to unsaint a man nay had S. Paul himself been now in the flesh and preached against Sacriledg and Anarchy there is no doubt but there would have been some found to petition against him and John White sitting in the Chair as undoubtedly he had been voted a scandalous Minister at a Committee but because when these Books were published Injustice and oppression did not march so furiously nor were grown so frontless and impudent to seize on innocency it self not slurr'd with slanders and calumnies Mr. Udall sate something quiet some murmurings there were but his former Reputation in the City bore him up against the Obloquy of private discontent the Faction found it no easie matter to brand Mr. Udall with Popery or Popishly affected or these slanders to make any impression in that estimation which the people had of him but at last when they came openly to defie their Sovereign the Lords Anointed and it was almost Treason but to name the 13. Chapter to the Romans it was a fit time to silence and remove Mr. Udall for neither Doctor Gouge his Church at Black Fryers or Mr. Goodwins in Coleman-street were half so full before this Parliament began as Mr. Udalls hath been since
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
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
to command him to forbear the wearing of the Surpless and Hood to which Message the Dean stoutly and like himself returned this answer that if they would expect any Sermon from him they must permit him to appear in such Ornaments as the Church and his degree required and accordingly did so afterwards Sandys and Seaton coming towards the Church and hearing the Organs Seaton started back and in the usual blessing of some of his Country cryed A Devil on those Bag-pipes perhaps he never read so far in Davids Psalms where it is written Praise God upon the Srrings and Pipe Psalm 150.4 or if he had it is more than probable that it had been all one to him however this served them both as a pretence to cloke their Irreligion and refusal to joyn with that true Protestant Congregation While the Rebels were pulling down the Rails about the Communion-Table one of the Prebends of the Church Master Larken interposed and attempted to stay their madness by reason and perswasion but he quickly found that he did not only prophane Reason by urging it to S. Pauls Absurd unreasonable wicked men men made up of Incongruities but that he did it to the hazard of his life for one of the Rebels instead of returning a reasonable answer discharged a Pistol or Carbine at him to have murdered him at the very Altar but by the good providence of God he miss'd his mark Thus having done some spoil that they might render themselves not altogether unprofitable to their party and not daring for the present to do any more for fear of losing that party which they hoped to gain for that reason they left the Church but into what further outragious Impieties their Schismatical fury hath since transported them or what else they have practised on this Church to compleat their Monstrous Reformation is not yet made known unto us The third instance which I shall give of the Rebels Sacrilege and Profaneness is in the Cathedral Church of Chichester Successour in the honour of being the seat of the Bishops Residence to Sealesey for Wilfrid Arch-Bishop of York being driven into Exile by Egfrid King of Northumberland retiring himself into Sussex and finding the South Saxons wholly given up to Idolatry his Spirit like S. Pauls at Athens was stirred within him and knowing the unprofitable servants doom that Buried his Talent he Preached unto them the Gospel of Christ and Edilwalch King of those parts not long before converted to the faith by the perswasion of Wolfhere King of the Mercians willing that the same saving knowledg which he himself had imbraced should be imparted to his People seconded the pious endeavours of Wilfrid and therefore amongst other acts of bounty he gave the Arch-Bishop Sealesey for the palce of his residence Not long after Cedwalla Conquering Edilwalch built here a Monastery to the honour as Malmsbury saies of S. Peter and erected the Episcopal Chair where it stood fixt the succession of 22. Bishops or as others say reckoning Wilfrid Arch-Bishop of York for the first the succession of 23 Bishops from the year 711. the Reign of William the Conquerour 1070. at which time Stiganeus translated his Chair from Sealesey to Chichester and so became the last Bishop of Sealesey and the first of Chichester where the Episcopal power did flourish ever since until now in these last and worst days wherein while the heads of a Rebellious Schismatical Faction Vote down the sacred Function and Order of Bishops their Emissaries are mad to deface if not utterly to demolish their Churches To this purpose the Rebels under the Conduct of Sir William Waller entering the City of Chichester on Innocents day 1642. the next day their first business was to Plunder the Cathedral Church the Marshal therefore and some other Officers having entred the Church went unto the Vestery there they seize upon the Vestments and ornaments of the Church together with the Consecrated Plate serving for the Altar and administration of the Lords Supper they left not so much as a Cushion for the Pulpit nor a Chalice for the Blessed Sacrament the Commanders having in person executed the covetous part of Sacrilege they leave the destructive and spoyling part to be finished by the Common Soldiers brake down the Organs and dashing the Pipes with their Pole-axes scoffingly said hark how the Organs go They break the Rail about the Communion-Table which was done with that fury that the Table it self escaped not their madness but tasted of the same fare with the Rail and was broken in pieces by them At the East end of the Quire did hang a very fair Table wherein were written the Ten Commendments with the Pictures of Moses and Aaron on each side of the Table possessed with a zeal but not like that of Moses they pull down the Table and break it into small Shivers 'T was no wonder that they should break the Commandments in their representation that had before broken them all over in their Substance and Sanction they force open all the locks either of doors or desks wherein the singing men laid up their Common-Prayer-Books their singing Books their Gowns and Surplesses they rent the Books in pieces and scatter the torn leaves all over the Church even to the covering of the Pavement but against the Gowns and Surplesses their anger was not so hot these were not amongst the Anathemata but might be reserved to secular uses in the South cross I le on the one side the History of the Churches Foundation was very artificially pourtrayed with the Pictures of the Kings of England on the other side over against them are the Pictures of the Bishops as well of Sealsey as Chichester began by Robert Sherborn the 37 Bishop of that See and the Series brought down by him to his own times at his own Charges who as he made that of the Psalmist Dilexi decorum domus tui domine Lord I have loved the beauty of thy house his imprease and Motto so he made it his work and endeavour These Monuments they deface and mangle with their hands and swords as high as they could reach and to shew their love and Zeal to the Protestant Religion established in the Church of England one of those Miscreants picked out the eyes of King Edward the sixth's Picture saying That all this mischief came from him when he established the Book of Common-Prayer On the Tuesday following they had a solemn Thanksgiving for their success in gaining that City Men of Cauterized Consciences and given up to a Reprobate sense thus not only to take the name of God in vain but damnably to Blaspheme it as if he were the Patron of Rapine Blood and Sacrilege After the Sermon was ended as men not inspired by the holy Spirit of which they so much boast but possessed and transported by a Bachanalian fury they ran up and down the Church with their swords drawn defacing the Monuments of the dead hacking and hewing the Seats and
Stalls scratching and scraping the painted Walls Sir William Waller and the rest of the Commanders standing by as spectators and approvers of these Barbarous Impieties yet for fear lest in the Schismatical frenzy the sword in mad mens hands might mistake Sir William Waller a wary man as he is and well known not to be too apt to expose himself to danger stood all the while with his sword drawn and being asked by one of his Troopers what he meant to stand in that Posture He answered that it was to secure himself you know it is written the wicked are afraid where no fear is for though the People made him an Idol in London yet being no Popish but a Puritanical Idol for they have their Idols and their Idolatry as much as the Church of Rome there was no danger to his person to be mistaken for an object of their Reformation at Chichester The same Trooper added also That if his Colonel in the Low-Countries were there and Commanded in cheif he would hang up half a dozen of the Soldiers for examples sake it not being the custom of the Low-Countries though long time hath made their enmity inviterate and added much to the animosity of the parties to Plunder Churches it being a mutual stipulation between the Spaniard and the Hollander that what Town soever should by Conquest pass from the possession of one Nation to the other though the Conquerour had the free Plunder of the Town yet Churches with their ornaments and what ever was conveyed into them should be Inviolable the Church being Sanctuary to whatsoever was under its Roofe and if they would have any thing thence it was to be purchased at a valuable Price These good intimations of moderation from a man of less Command but more Religion than Sir William prevailed nothing with him to restrain the outragious madness of his fellow Rebels Having therefore made what spoyl they could in the Cathedral they rush out thence and break upen a parish-Parish-Church standing on the North side of the Cathedral called the Subdeanery there they tear the Common-Prayer Books both those belonging to the Church and likewise those which were left there by devout persons which did usually frequent divine service and because many things in the Holy Bible make strongly against them one did contradict and condemn their impious practices they marked it in divers places with a black cole 't is more than probable that the 13. Chapter to the Romans did not escape their Index Expurgatorious for certainly if that be the word of God as undoubtedly it is they cannot so far withhold the truth in unrighteousness as not to read their doom in that word they shall judg them at the last day here they stole the Ministers Surpless and Hood and all the linnen serving for the Communion and finding no more Plate but the Chalice they steal that too which they brake in pieces to make a just and equal divident amongst themselves for an Engineer of theirs Robert Prince a French man with a wooden leg afterwards shewed the foot thereof broken off and when complaint was made of these barbarous outrages Capt. Keely replyed that he knew not whether all this were not done by Order or no. About 5. or 6. days after Sir Arthur Haslerig demanded the Keys of the Chapterhouse being entered the place and having Intelligence by a treacherous Officer of the Church where the remainder of the Church Plate was he commanded his servants to break down the Wainscot round about the room which was quickly done they having brought Crows of Iron for that purpose along with them while they were knocking down the Wainscot Sir Arthurs Tongue was not enough to express his joy it was operative at his very heels for dancing and skipping pray mark what Musick that is to which it is lawful for a Puritan to dance he cryed out there Boys there Boys heark heark it Rattles it Rattles and being much importuned by some members of that Church to leave the Church but a Cup for administration of the blessed Sacrament answer was returned by a Scotch man standing by that they should take a wooden-dish and now tell me which was farthest from a Christian either this impure Scot or that blasphemous Atheist who seeing the massy Plate and rich ornaments wherewith the Christian Altars were adorned in the Primitive Church in indignation and scorn of Christ belched out En quam preciosis vasis Mariae ministratur Behold with what costly vessels the Son of Mary is served what further spoyl and Indignity they have since done to that House of God and the habitation where his honour dwelt is yet uncertain Mercurius Rusticus c. III. The Rebels defying God in his own House their Sacrilege in stealing Church Plate and goods their irreverence towards the King by abusing his Statue their heathenish barbarity in violating the bones and ashes of dead Monarchs Bishops Saints and Confessors in the Cathedral Church of Winchester c. THE next instance which I shall give of the Rebels Sacrilege and Profaneness is in the Cathedral Church of Winchester which City as it was the Royal Seat of the King of the West Saxons in the time of the Heptarchy so was it the Seat of the Bishops of that People after Kenwalchus King of the West-Saxons not brooking the Barbarous broken expressions of Agilbertus his Bishop divided this large Diocess between Agilbertus and Wina and leaving Agilbertus to reside at Dorchester caused Wina to be consecrated Bishop of Winchester Before we tell you by whom and in what manner this Church was robbed and spoyled of its ornaments and beauty it will not be impertient while it may serve as an aggravation of their impiety briefly to set down by whom this Church was built and so richly adorned as lately we saw it This magnificent Structure which now stands was began by Walkelinus the thirty fifth Bishop of this Sea which work left imperfect and but begun by him was but coldly prosecuted by the succeeding Bishops untill William Wickham the magnificent Sole founder of two S. Mary Colledges the one in Oxford commonly called New Colledge the other a Nurcery to this near Winchester came to possess this See He amongst many other works of Piety built the whole Nave or body of this Church from the Quire to the West-end the Chappels on the East-end beyond the Quire had their several Founders The hallowed Ornaments and utensils of this Church being many rich and costly were the gifts of several benefactors who tho their Names perhaps are not recorded in earth have found their reward in Heaven This Church was first differenced by the Name of S. Amphibalus who received a Crown of Martyrdom under the Persecution of Dioclesian Next it exchanged this name for that of S. Peter and again this for that of S. Swithin the eighteenth Bishop of this See Last of all it was dedicated to the Holy Trinity whose blessed name is now called
upon it which Holy name though it could not but put the Rebels in mind whose possession and House it was did not at all afford it patronage and protection from their accursed rage and madness The Rebels under the Conduct of Sir William Waller sate down before the City of Winchester on Tuesday the 12. of December 1642. about twelve of the Clock and entered the City that afternoon between two and three being Masters of the City they instantly fall upon the Close under a pretence to search for Cavaliers They seize upon the Prebends Horses and demand their Persons with many threatning words That night they break into some of the Prebends Houses such Houses as they were directed unto by their Brethren the Seditious Schismaticks of the City and Plundered their goods But the Castle not yet surrendred into the Rebels hands something awed their insolency which being the next day delivered up to their power did not only take away the Restraint which was upon them but incouraged them without check or controul to rob and defiâ—e both God and all good men Wednesday therefore and Wednesday night being spent in Plundering the City and Close on Thursday Morning between nine and ten of the Clock hours set apart for better imployments and therefore purposely in probability chosen by them being resolved to prophane every thing that was Canonical they violently break open the Cathedral Church and being entred to let in the Tyde they presently open the great West doors where the Barbarous Soldiers stood ready nay greedy to rob God and pollute his Temple The doors being open as if they meant to invade God himself as well as his possession they enter the Church with Colours flying their Drums beating their Matches fired and that all might have their part in so horrid an attempt some of their Troops of Horse also accompanied them in their march and rode up through the body of the Church and Quire until they came to the Altar there they begin their work they rudely pluck down the Table and break the Rail and afterwards carrying it to an Ale-house they set it on fire and in that fire burnt the Books of Common-Prayer and all the Singing Books belonging to the Quire they throw down the Organ and break the Stories of the Old and New Testament curiously cut out in carved work beautified with Colours and set round about the top of the Stalls of the Quire from hence they turn to the Monument of the Dead some they utterly demolish others they deface They begin with Bishop Fox his Chappel which they utterly deface the break all the glass windows of this Chappel not because they had any Pictures in them either of Patriarch Prophet Apostle or Saint but because they were of painted Coloured Glass they demolish and overturn the Monuments of Cardinal Beaufort Son to John of Gaunt Duke of Lancaster by Katharine Swinfort founder of the Hospital of S. Cross near Winchester who sate Bishop of this See forty three years They deface the Monument of William of Wainflet Bishop likewise of Winchester Lord Chancellor of England and the Magnificent Founder of Magdalen Colledge in Oxford which Monument in a grateful Piety being lately beautified by some that have or lately had Relation to that Foundation made these Rebels more eager upon it to deface it but while that Colledge the unparralleld example of his bounty stands in despight of the malice of these inhuman Rebels William of Wainflet cannot want a more lasting Monument to transmit his memory to Posterity from hence they go into Queen Maries Chappel so called because in it she was Married to King Philip of Spain here they brake the Communion Table in pieces and the Velvet Chair whereon she sate when she was Married They attempted to deface the Monument of the late Lord Treasurer the Earl of Portland but being in Brass their violence made small impression on it therefore they leave that and turn to his Fathers Monument which being of Stone was more obnoxious to their fury here mistaking a Judg for a Bishop led into the error by the resemblance or counterfeit of a Square cap on the head of the Statue they strike off not only the Cap but the head too of the Statue and so leave it Amongst other acts of Bounty and Piety done by Richard Fox the fifty seventh Bishop of this See he covered the Quire the Presbytery and the Iles adjoyning with a goodly vault and new glased all the Windows of that part of the Church and caused the bones of such Kings Princes and Prelates as had been Buried in this Church and lay dispersed and scattered in several parts of the Cathedral to be collected and put into several Chests of lead with inscriptions on each Chest whose bones lodged in them These Chests to preserve them from rude and prophane hands he caused to be placed on the top of a Wall of exquisite workmanship built by him to inclose the Presbytery there never to be removed as a man might think but by the last Trump did rest the bones of many Kings and Queens as of Alfredus Edwardus Senior Eadredus the Brother of Athelstane Edwinus Canutus Hardecanutus Emma the Mother and Edward the Confessor her Son Kiniglissus the first founder of the Cathedral of Winchester Egbert who abolishing the Heptarchy of the Saxons was the first English Monarch William Rufus and divers others with these in the Chests were deposited the bones of many Godly Bishops and Confessors as of Birinus Hedda Swithinus Frithestanus S. Elphegus the Confessor Stigandus Wina and others Had not the barbarous Inhuman impiety of these Schismaticks and Rebels shewed the contrary we could not have imagined that any thing but the like Piety that here inshrined them or a Resurrection should ever have disturbed the repose of these venerable yet not Popish Reliques But these monsters of men to whom nothing is holy nothing is Sacred did not stick to prophane and violate these Cabinets of the dead and to scatter their bones all over the pavement of the Church for on the North side of the Quire they threw down the Chests wherein were deposited the bones of the Bishops the like they did to the bones of William Rufus of Queen Emma of Hardecanutus and Edward the Confessor and were going on to practise the like impiety on the bones of all the rest of the West Saxon Kings But the Outcry of the People detesting so great inhumanity caused some of their Commanders more Compassionate to these Ancient Monuments of the dead then the Rest to come in amongst them and to restrain their madness But that devilish malice which was not permitted to rage and overflow to the spurning and trampling on the bones of all did satiate it self even to a prodigious kind of wantonness on those which were already in their power And therefore as if they meant if it had been possible to make these bones contract a Posthume guilt by being
the Church might be answerable to the beauty of the Structure itself Bishop of Grandesson bestowed upon it vessels of God and vessels of Silver Books and all other kinds of rich furniture Copiâ Immensâ Immensi pretij in exceeding great measure of exceeding great price All which with many other things of necessary use and publick Ornament became a prey to the Schismatical Rebels whose sin was so much the greater because being neither inraged by Opposition nor made insolent by conquest Apologies that may possibly be taken up for other Rebels in other places as Chichester and Winchester but which was a main aggravation of their crime Citizens within their own Wall in coole Blood not provoked spoil and lay wast their Mother Church for after this City now most unworthy of those Priviledges and honorary rewards once purchased by their Loyalty now forfeited by ingratitude and Rebellion had once shut up their Gates against their King it was not long before they shut up the Gates likewise of Gods house denying all access to devout Persons there to make their Prayers and Supplications so near bordering upon Rebellion against the King is Atheism and Contempt of God for having demanded the Keys of the Cathedral and taken them into their own Custody they presently interdict divine service to be celebrated so that for the space of three quarters of a year the Holy Liturgy lay totally silenced Nor was the restraint upon the Reading Desk only the Pulpit was made Inaccessible to all Orthodox Loyal Ministers and was open only to Factious Schismatical Preachers whose Doctrin was Rebellion and their Exhortation Treason that so the People might hear nothing but what might soment their disloyalty and confirm them in their unnatural revolt from their duty and Obedience Having the Church in their possession in a most Puritanical beastly manner they make it a common Jakes for the Exonerations of Nature sparing no place neither the Altar nor the Pulpit though this last finds a better place in their estimation than the former yet prophaned it was nay so prophaned that it remains a doubt yet undetermined which prophaned it most in their Kinds either the Common-Soldiers or their Lecturers Over the Communion Table in fair letters of Cold was written the Holy and blessed name of Jesus this they expunge as Superstitious and Execrable On each side of the Commandmants the Pictures of Moses and Aaron were drawn in full proportion these they deface they tear the Books of Common-Prayers to pieces and as if this had been too small a contempt and despite done to that form of Gods holy worship they use them as if they had been a second sacrifice of Curious Arts and burn them at the Altar with exceeding great Exultation and expressions of joy They made the Church their Storehouse where they kept their Ammunition and powder and planted a Court of Guard to attend it who used the Church with the same reverence that they would an Ale-house and defiled it with tipling and taking Tobacco they brake and deface all the Glass windows of the Church which cannot be repaired for many hundred pounds and left all those ancient Monuments being painted glass and containing matter of story only a miserable spectacle of Commiseration to all well-affected hearts that behold them They strook off the heads of all the Statues on all Monuments in the Church especially they deface the Bishops Tombs leaving one without a Head another without a Nose one without a Hand and another without an Arm. A sad Emblem of that Trunk of Episcopacy which the accursed Atheists of these times have fancied to themselves and endeavoured a poor deformed mangled mutilated thing having neither head of Prelation nor face of Honour nor arm nor hand nor finger of power and jurisdiction they pluck down and deface the Statue of an Ancient Queen the Wife of Edward the Confessor the first Founder of this Church mistaking it for the Statue of the blessed Virgin Mary the Mother of God So she was stiled by the holy Catholick Church many years before it was in danger to be voted Blasphemy in that Committee where learned Miles Corbet sate in the Chair They brake down the Organs and taking two or three hundred Pipes with them in a most scornful contemptuous manner went up and down the street Piping with them and meeting with some of the Choristers of the Church whose surplesses they had stoln before and imployed them to base servile Offices scoffingly told them Boys we have spoild your trade you must go and sing hot Pudding Pyes By the absoluteness of their power they send forth their warrants to take away the Lead off a Conduit and a great Cistern that stood in the middest of the Close giving plentiful supplies of water to many hundreds of Inhabitants and by vertue of the same warrant they give their agents power to take a great quantity of Timber which was laid up and designed for the repairing of the Church such Timber as that it will be a very hard matter to procure the like all Timber not being fit for that use and with these a great stock of Lead out of the Common Store-house reserved there for the same purpose which warrants were accordingly put in execution to the full They did enter into a Consultation about taking down the Bells and all the Lead that covered the Church to convert them into Warlike Ammunition the Bells might be cast into Cannon the Lead into Bullets both would serve towards the effecting their Traiterous designs They took down the Gates of the Close which the Dean and Chapter had set up and kept locked every night for their security which Gates they imployed to help forward and strengthen their Fortifications They lay intolerabe taxes on most of the Members of the Church and whosoever refused to submit to those most unjust Illegal Impositions were threatned to have their Houses Plundered and their Persons sent on shipboard where they must expect usage as bad as at Argier or the Gallies Doctor Burnell a grave learned man and Canon of that Church refusing to submit to their Taxations they gave Command though he were at that time sick and confined not only to his Chamber but to his bed to take him in the night and bring him away to Prison though they brought him in his bed but upon much importunity some of the best rank of the Citizens being tendered his security to render himself a true Prisoner for that time they left him For the like refusal they took Doctor Hutchenson another Canon of the Church a man of a weak infirm Body but of a vigorous knowing Soul and violently carried him towards the Ship there to imprison him by the way as they carried him along he was not only by the permission but by the incouragement of those that led him Captive blasted and abused and howted at by the Boys and exposed to the affronts and revilings of the base Insolent Multitude at
Protestant Religion Neither is their wild fury confinable within those banks it swells yet higher for as the Tyrant wished that Rome had but one neck that he might cut it off at one stroke so these having got the opportunity imprisoned the whole University March 23. 1643. which day the whole Senate the Representative Body of it being solemnly assembled in the Regent house were there violently invironed with great Bands of Armed Soldiers who wanted nothing but the Word to dispatch us because we would not vote in a matter as they would have us though that matter did not any whit concern them or their Cause more than the conferring of a Degree upon such a man as the whole University in their consciences judged unworthy of it And one Master Danes General of that famous Expedition but formerly a Member of that house which he then so abused adding Perjury to his former sins came in a terrible manner contrary to his Oath formerly taken to his Mother the University and flatly denyed the Vice-chancellour leave to dissolve the Congregation unless he would first promise that the matter should be voted as they required whereupon sundry Members of that Senate being observed to make use of that Statute-liberty and freedom which was essential to that assembly were forthwith seised on and imprisoned by the Committee in no better Lodgings than the common Court of Guard which strange and violent perverting of our Universities proceedings we wonder at the less for that this Captain had not done more to us than Captain Ven with his Raggamuffins had done formerly to the sacred Senate of the whole Kingdom And that all Academical Exercises might expire and so the face of an University be quite taken away a grave Divine the Lady Margarets publick Preacher going to Preach Ad Clerum according to his Office pridie Termini was furiously pursued over the market place by a confused number of Soldiers who in a barbarous uncivil manner cryed out A Pope A Pope and vowed high revenge if he offered to go into the Pulpit whereupon the Church was straightways filled with great multitudes and when some who accompanied the Preacher told them it was an University Exercise and to be by Statute performed in Latin they replyed They knew no reason why all Sermons should not be performed in English that all might be edified threatning withal totear the Hoods and Habits which Graduats then wore according to the University Statute Yet all this may perhaps be extenuated as a sudden uproar of undisciplin'd Soldiers but which is the aggravation of all and makes us believe that these petty Reformers were but the sensless instruments of higher Agents when all this was related to their then General of the Association no course was taken at all to prevent these growing mischiefs but the Divine appointed by Statute to Preach Ad Clerum was inforced to return Re infectâ and glad he could escape so And this is the great protection which Learning is like to find from these grand pretenders to advance it And that Religion might fare no better than Learning in the University Church for perhaps it may be Idolatry now to call it S. Maries in the presence of the then General our common-prayer-Common-Prayer-book was torn before our faces notwithstanding our Protection from the House of Peers for the free use of it some now great one encouraging them in it and openly rebuking the University Clerk who complained of it before his Soldiers Thus those Reverend Fathers the Compilers of it who sealed the truth thereof with their dearest Blood being content to burn at a stake for the light of the Gospel are now this second time Martyred and torn in pieces in their Liturgy yet all this under pretence of Religion It will not be strange now to hear how our Persons have been abused seeing Religion and Learning have suffered so deeply amongst us how divers of us have been imprisoned without so much as pretending any cause but snatcht up in the streets and thrown into Prison at the pleasure of a small sneaking Captain where we have lain three or four months together not so much as accused much less heard but quite and clean forgotten as if their had been no such thing in nature How some of us and many others with us have been thrust out of bed in the night that our Chambers might forthwith be converted into Prison Lodgings how our young Scholars with terrour have been commanded to accuse and cut out the names of their own Tutors and some of them thrown into Prison for not being old enough to take their Covenant But to pass higher how often have our Colleges been beset and broken open and Guards thrust into them sometimes at midnight while we were asleep in our beds How often our Libraries and Treasuries ransackt and rifled not sparing so much as our Ancient Coyns which those that know any thing know to be a great light to the understanding of History How often hath that small pittance of Commons which our Founders and Benefactors allotted for our sustenance been taken from off our Tables by the wanton Soldier How often have our Rents been extorted from our Tenants or if received re-manded of our Bursars and Stewards and by force taken from them And all this under the old odious title of Plundering which word though they cannot endure to hear of since that new term of Sequestration was invented yet the thing is the same and more practised than ever they having for above two years together set themselves upon little else than to seise and take away our goods and furniture belonging to our Chambers prizing and selling away our Books at a tenth part of their value which are our only tools and instruments whereby the trade and profession of Learning should be holden up And to this end they have constituted a decay'd Hatter Plunder-master General who together with a Conventicling Barber and a Confiding Taylor hath full Comission for our propriety sake to Lord over us and dispose of our goods as they please So despicable a thing to them is an University or any that belong unto it But their malice is unsatiable and cannot be contained within the Line of their Fortifications and therefore to propagate their own wickedness and make us odious and abominable to the whole Country as we were already though most undeservedly to some of themselves they have invented a pretty device to reserve out of their Plunder all sorts of pictures were they but Paper Prints of the twelve Apostles and every market day to burn ihem openly in the market place proclaiming them the Popish Idols of the University until we became so hated by the weaker sort of the deceived People that a Scholar could have small security from being stoned or affronted as he walked the streets But why do we insist so long upon particular mens Plundering when whole Colleges wherein not only