A SECOND DEFENCE OF King Charles I. BY Way of Reply to an Infamous Libel CALLED LUDLOW'S LETTER to Dr. Hollingworth Let the lying lips be put to silence which cruelly disdainfully and despitefully speak against the righteous Psal. 31. As free and not using your liberty for a cloak of maliciousness 1 Pet. 2. LONDON Printed for S. Eddowes under the Piazza's of the Royal Exchange and are to be Sold by Randal Taylor near Stationers-Hall 1692. TO THE Most Reverend and Right Reverend Fathers in GOD the Lords Archbishops and Bishops of the Provinces of Canterbury and York to the Nobility Gentry Clergy and Commons of England who have any Honour for the Pious Memory of King CHARES the First My Lords and Gentlemen c. THE Dutiful and Devoted Children of the Church of England having in the late Reign with so much Zeal and Courage as well as with such variety of Learning defended the Doctrines and Reasons of the Reformation against all the Accusations of her Romish Adversaries and some of them also exposing themselves to great Dangers rather than truckle to Will and Power against the Laws and Liberties of their Country did together with many others think when their Present Majesties came to the Throne that great Numbers of those who had sucked in Prejudices against the Church by reason of their Education would either have come into her Communion as now being convinced the Clamours against her were false or else at least would have treated her and her Members with a greater Civility and Respect then through their false Conceits of Things they did before but we quickly found ourselves mistaken and that the AEthiopian could not change his Skin nor the Leopard his Spots for presently hoping they had an opportunity to play over their Old Game again out comes two Books the one against Diocesan Episcopaty and the other against Liturgies two things they themselves knew the most moderate amongst us that are honest will not part withal these Books were carried up and down in Triumph and the poor Church of England had met with a Blow that not only stunn'd her but quite knocked her on the Head but in a convenient time they had their just Doom and were I may with great Truth say unanswerably answered the one by Dr. Comber the present Dean of Durham the other by the late Dr. Maurice Professor of the Chair at Oxford After this that the State might have a state of their Civility and Breeding as well as the Church a leud Pamphlet against King Charles the First was sent out into the World under the name of Ludlow whom an Act of Parliament calls one of the most detestable Traytors that ever was and this dedicated to Sir E. S. Kt. which Libel was spread abroad and cried up with all the Zeal imaginable and according as it was designed it had its effects and the Party who have left the Communion of our Church in all Places and Companies opened their wide Mouths against the Name and Memory of that excellent Prince upon hearing of which both in my own private and accidental Conversation and from many of my Friends whose Reports I durst credit I having by Reading the Actions and Sufferings of that King received other Impressions of him was resolved if no better Pen prevented me to vindicate that Great Man and accordingly the latter end of the last Year put out a little Book in the Defence of that Prince having nothing more in my eye then by so doing to preserve the Honour and Safety of the Present Government in Church and State which Book no sooner was spread but I was loaden with a thousand Reproaches which I thank God I was the less affected withal because of the Cause I was engaged in and withal because I had provided myself against them and within three Months after as if Hell had broke loose out comes a Letter under the same Name of the Traytor Ludlow directed to myself and as pretended occasioned by my honest Defence which Letter when I seriously read over I could not contain myself from wonder and amazements yea I found myself in various Passions to wit of Anger and Grief I of Ioy too not I assure you for the sin of the Book for that I abhor but that by the Book the Government might see the Spirit of the Party and how far to trust and when to suspect them Now My Lords and Gentlemen c. you would admire to hear how this Libel was brought up lent from one hand to another with the Character of a delicate and unanswerable Book and the well-meaning Author of King Charles's Defence was a Knave and a Fool and utterly lost as to his Credit and Interest in the New and True Friends of King William and Queen Mary and the Good Old Cause was now revived and upon its Legs again and glorious Days are coming and all by Virtue of the Influence of this Letter from Ludlow Well in a few days I set myself to a more close Consideration of the Book and presently found the Author an Imposer upon his Reader and that he had belyed King Charles in plain Matters of Fact upon which I was resolved to expose him and in a convenient time by a close application I drew up this Reply which I now present to you hoping thereby to have done something to prevent the spreading of this vile Man's Poyson And now my Lords and Gentlemen c. give me leave to be so plain as to tell you That if this Spirit be not discouraged but once again get within the Walls of St. Stephen's Chappel back'd and assisted with Power it will my Lords Spiritual Vote you presently out of the House of Peers and soon after out of your Bishopricks and afterwards will vindicate its barbarous usage of you by declaring you the Catterpillars of the Earth and the Locissts that ascend out of the bottomless Pit And for you my Lords Temporal Gentry Clergy and honest Commoners it will after it has branded you with the Names of Malignants Popish Counsellors and Adherents to the Interest of the Beast this Spirit I say when in the Chair will force you to Compositions Sequestrations Decimations Banishment Imprisonment and some of you to a Scaffold at Tower-hill or the Palace-yard and therefore I cannot but upon this Account open my whole Heart to you and tell you and I care not what Censures I undergo for it that next to the Eternal Laws of Nature and the Reasonableness and Excellency of the Christian Religion founded in and purchased by the Blood of Christ God Man I think we ought to be zealous in the Defence of this Great King upon whose Reputation or Dishonour and the Principles that maintain the one or those that propagate the other depend the Being and Well-being of our present Church and State and consequently of the Life and Preservation of our present King and Queen together with all their Successors in the English Throne and
vain they inveighed against Gondomar because he had informed the King and State that the Prince had a Disposition easie to be wrought upon to be made a Catholick Caba p. 329. But Sir these are real Truths and therefore not fit for the Pen of such a designing Demigogue as you are your business is by degrees to destroy the Monarchy and hope the wounding of this Great and Good Man's Reputation will contribute toward it and therefore no wonder we hear of none of his Vertues and in particular that of his constancy to the Religious Perswasions of his Mind It may be now you expect I should give myself the trouble to answer your first Letter but I will spare my self the labour because I understand it is recommended to a better Hand who understands the Records and Transactions of those times thoroughly and who I do not doubt in time will do you and your leud Book Justice for so I will still call it because it was leudly designed and had as leud an effect for it was the occasion of most of those unmannerly and undutiful Reflections that have been lately made against this excellent Prince both in City and Country which indeed was the only thing that provoked me to the Defence of that King and therefore Sir you that unprovoked began the Quarrel and stirred the Coles are the Makebate and not I who honestly defended a wronged and injured Person which is the Duty of every good Christian Man and will have the Answer of a good Conscience let such as you are rage and foam at Mouth never so much at it The next thing I shall take Notice of is the punishment of Doctor Leighton by representing of which in the blackest Colours you would beget in your Readers bad Thoughts of this excellent Prince and his Reign Sir It may be I am something of your mind that he met with hard Fate and such as if I had been in the World and one of his Judges with my present sence of things I should not have consented to But after all this Sir let me tell you Dr. Leighton was a great Transgressor and deserved a severe Punishment if it be true what Mr. Whitlock writes as I do not in the least question but it is for Mem. p. 14. he tells you his Crimes in these words Dr. Leighton a Scotchman for his Book entituled Sion's Plea dedicated to the last Parliament counselling them to kill all the Bishops by smiting them under the Fifth Rib and railing against the Queen calling her a Canaanite and Idolatress had the Sentence of the Star-Chamber Good Sir must it be Persecution to call such a foul-mouthed Person to an Account and to punish him Why truly then Laws and Governments are very silly and precarious things and Men may say and do what they lift which will certainly make a blessed World and the King's Reign must be bloody that secures itself against the Violence and Railing of the worst of Malefactors Sir Had any Man said or writ at this rate against your beloved Rump I know what Fate he must have met withal and you yourself would have called it Justice and not Persecution And now Sir before I come to your Scotch Affair a few words with you about Pryn Bastwick and Burton whose Story you recite at large in your Book and all with a design to blacken this Prince Sir I have looked into the Story of these three Men with some care and here if you please I will make you my Confessor And I must tell you it is no Credit to you for if I was to choose one for Modesty and Honesty I would as soon pitch upon a Jesuit as your self I do upon a full Consideration of the whole wish from my Heart that their Punishment had been some other way I do not think if it be lawful for a private Person as I am to pass a Judgment upon the Publick Actions of a then Legal Court that the way of punishing those Persons was not at all politick or prudent because not for the Interest as things then stood either of the King or the Church it gave too great an occasion for the designing Men of that Age to open their mouths and thereby to alienate the Hearts of the Common People from the Government and consequently prepared them to joyn with them in any Action of Revenge when time and opportunity should serve and if Bishop Laud had kept in his Study at that time and not appeared at all either to hear the Tryal or assist in the Sentence it had been better both for him and those Designs of Uniformity he had so much set his Heart upon Yet Sir for all that I do not think these three Men were wholly to be passed by because of their several Characters and Professions or that the Justice of the Nation ought to have been afraid of accounting with such bold Men as they shewed themselves Pray let any Man read over their several Writings which were the occasion of those severe Censures and if he be an unprejudiced and undesigning Person and yet commend them I will forfeit a great deal more than I am willing to lose Certainly more violent rude and unbecoming Reflections were never uttered such Sarcasms and Invectives such bare-faced Abuses as if they had got a Pattent from the Powers below to speak evil of Dignities Mr. Burton speaking of the Bishops instead of Pillars calls them Catterpillars instead of Fathers Step-Fathers with abundance of other Aspersions that truly are not fit to be named Dr. Bastwick breathes nothing but Fire and Brimstone and throws down his Thunderbolts upon the Heads of the Bishops as if he was the great Commander of the Clouds And I beg the Reader to take a taste of all the rest from one particular passage which I find in Mr. Whitlock Mem. p. 25. in his Answer to the Information against him in the Star-Chamber you have these words That the Prelates are Invaders of the King's Prerogative Contemners and Despisers of the Holy Scripture Advancers of Popery and Superstition Idolatry and Prophaneness also they abuse the King's Authority to the Oppression of his Loyal Subjects and therein exercise great Cruelty Tyranny and Injustice and in execution of those impious Performances they shew neither Wit Honesty nor Temperance nor are they either Servants of God or the King but of the Devil being Enemies to God and of every living thing that is good Which the said Dr. Bastwick is ready to maintain and Mr. Whitlock adds immediately to shew the wilfulness of the Man That none of his Friends could prevail with him to expunge this and other-like passages out of his Answer Now Sir pray tell me who can plead for such a Spirit as this is or what Government can suffer such Indignities and Provocations as these are As for Mr. Pryn he lived to see and rectifie a great many of his Errors and to be a Thorn in the sides of such Men as
their Heads And this is all I think good to say by way of Answer to your Scotch Affairs and truly I think it is enough of all reason to convince the World what Defenders of the Christian Faith and the Rights and Laws of their Country these Covenanters were God bless the Kingdom of Scotland I and England to from such Reformers as these are and I hope the greatest part of the People of both Nations will say Amen to it with all readiness and cheerfulness And thus Sir without any Obligations on my side for as I Told you in my Defence I only would concern myself with the last Eight Years of King Charles I have run through and proved your Accusations spiteful and false which you have so liberally vented to defame this Great and Good Man and I hope I have given the World a just satisfaction how much you are to be credited as to all the other things you assert you I say who rather than you will not serve your Cause will offer to the World the greatest Lyes and Untruths in Nature I come now Sir to apply myself Sir to the Defence of what I have said in my Book in the behalf of King Charles from your rude Impleadings of them and Reflections upon them And here Sir I will be plain with you I am not at leisure to play the Buffoon by making a Return to your Raillery and little Witticisms wherewith you entertain your Reader in the beginning of your Libel but will follow the Advice of a wiser and honester Man than either you or any of your Party are or will be that is King Solomon namely Not to answer a fool according to his folly least I be like unto him You say That those gracious Acts which I mention were bought of him And what then What hath been more usual ever since Parliaments had a Being in England Pray look into the Statute-Book and tell me what gracious Favours can you find bestowed by the several Kings of this Realm upon their People that those People have not made their Acknowledgments for them by presenting their Soveraigns with great Sums of Money And how comes this to be a fault in King Charles more than in all his Predecessors But buy these Acts did they Pray who had the disposal of the Money How was it laid out Was it given to the King to do what he lifted withal No Sir you know the contrary and that amongst the rest of the Uses it was put to you know a great part of it was bestowed upon the Scots for the good Service they did in rebelling against their King and putting two Kingdoms into a flame and they returned home by the Favour of your Friends loaden with the Nation 's Treasure when if they had had their deserts they had gone back with Halters about their Necks as a sign of what was due to them for so traiterously invading a Kingdom they had nothing to do withal But however to shew he did nothing willingly as to these condescending Acts you tell us when he past the Poll-Bill he demurred to the passing of the Bills for taking away the Star-Chamber and the High Commission And what then May not King's take time to consider as well as other Men Must they who considering the Charge God hath entrusted them withal ought to have better Eyes in their Heads than other Men must they I say only act like Bruits and do things without previous thoughts without a Why or Wherefore Who would sit in a Throne if the Condition of it must be the divesting himself of the Reason and Consideration of a Rational Creature But Sir I will answer this Aspersion in the King 's own Words to the Two Houses and then leave the Reader to judge whether you have done fairly to lessen his Grace upon this Account his Words are these I must tell you That I cannot but be very sensible of those Reports of Discontent that I hear some have taken for not giving my Consent on Saturday Methinks it seems strange that any one should think I could pass two Bills of that importance as these were without taking some fit time to consider of them for it is no less than to alter in a great measure those Fundamental Laws Ecclesiastical and Civil which many of my Predecessors have established And truly I hope this will satisfie tho' not you and such as you are yet any good Man who is not resolved for a Party as to this paticular Reflection Another thing you reflect upon me for is saying That his signing the Bill for taking away my Lord Strafford's Life offered violence to the peace and quiet of his Mind all the Days of his Life And here Sir I cannot but take Notice how you endeavour to make sport with this good Man's Conscience but let me tell you I have always observed that those Men who make sport with other Mens Consciences have none of their own and I am sure you have shewn none throughout this scurrilous Letter unless Lying ad Slandering be the signs of Grace ad Good Conscience in a Common-wealth's-man Pray Sir why might not the King scruple this Do not you know what unusual Arts and Methods were made use of before they could agree upon a Bill to take away this Great Man's Life Do not you know how many of the House of Commons protested against it how thin the House of Lords was when it passed there how the Rabble were brought down to threaten the House and in a clamorous way which you call peaceable to cry Iustice Iustice and how they posted up the Names of the Protestors in order to expose them to the fury ad danger of the discontented and designing part of the City And do not you know after all they were so little satisfied with the Legality of their Proceedings that they in the very Bill itself inferred a Clause that this should not be made use of as a Precedent for the time to come and after all this might not a pious and compassionate King scruple the signing of such a Bill from a very good Conscience Come Sir to answer this to the full and vindicate the King's scruple I will here present to the World for their satisfaction the Sence not of a House of Peers consisting of Seventeen or Eighteen Members nor of a House of Commons consisting of not many above an Hundred but the Sence of two full Houses of Lords and Commons who took off the Attainder of that Noble Earl the Words in the Act are those WHereas Thomas late Earl of Strafford was Impeached of High-Treason upon pretence of endeavouring to subvert the Fundamental Laws and called to a Publick and Solemn Arraignment and Tryal before the Peers in Parliament where he made a paticular Defence to every Article objected against him insomuch that the Turbulent Party then seeing no hopes to effect their unjust Designs by any ordinary way and method of proceedings did at last resolve to
the more to answer if they forbore to express it at the passing of this Declaration and if they forbore to express it we have the greater reason to complain that so envious an Aspersion should be cast on us to our People when they knew well how to answer their own Objection And now let the Reader judge what this piece of Impudence deserves for laying such a groundless flander at the Door of such a Person as King Charles was I could be very severe upon you for this horrid Lye and the more because your Party all over the Town hug this Falshood and make great use of it to reak their Malice upon the Name and Memory of this blessed Prince and Martyr I have but one thing more of this nature to take Notice of and that is who were the first Beginners of the War I know very well you and your whole Party have always vindicated the Justice of your Proceedings as if you were necessitated to take up Arms against the King because he first raised an Army to bring in Arbitrary Power Sir I have read over the Story as well as you and according to the best Information I can give myself from the best Authors the Parliament did really and indeed first draw the Sword and sound the Trumpet to Battel Was not mustering the Militia and seizing of Hull and denying the King Entrance into his own Garrison and the Command of his own Magazine entring into a State of Hostility and bidding Defiance to all just Subjection to their lawful Soveraign Did not they Vote before the King levied Men any other wise than to have a Guard of Gentlemen about his Person which any King in the World ought to have especially in such dangerous Times as those were That he intended to wage War against his People And afterwards did not they Vote an Actual War with him which I think implies a necessity or else it was done without Reason as I am very well satisfied it was And you need not have fallen so scurrilously upon me for the mistake of a word as to give me the Lye but good Manners I will never expect from a Man of your turbulent Temper and Principles And whereas the King set up his Standard at Nottingham in August did not the Lords and Commons in Iune before make an Order for bringing in of Money or Plate to maintain Horses Horse-men and Arms naming a General and other subordinate Officers which I think was beginning the War to purpose And truly Sir let me tell you I will believe that pious Prince and afterwards patient and couragious Martyr before Ten thousand such pestilent Persons as you by this Letter appear a Person of so venemous a nature that you turn every thing to Poyson you touch which good King tells us upon their voting his Intentions to enter into a State of War with his Parliament that he had no more Intentions to do any such thing than he had to make War with his own Children And who further when he came to look Death in the face with all his Holy Solemn and Divine Thoughts about him which is a time when we are ready and that upon good grounds to give Credit to the Assertions of Men who have lived very bad Lives much more of a Person whose Life in his Retirements had been so much with God as we may be satisfied from his heavenly Soliloquies and Meditations I say who even then discourses of this thing namely who were the Beginners of the War at this rate upon the mournful and dismal Scaffold I think it is my Duty to God first and then to my Country to clear myself both as an honest Man a good King and a good Christian I shall begin first with my Innocency All the World knows I did never begin a War with the Two Houses of Parliament and I call God to witness unto whom I shall shortly give an Account that I did never intend to encroach upon their Priviledges they began upon me it is the Militia they began upon they confessed the Militia was mine but they thought it fit to have it from me And to be short if any Body will look to the Date of Commissions of their Commissions and mine and likewise to the Declaration he will see clearly they began these unhappy Troubles and not I. And now all you Nations and Kindreds upon the Earth I appeal to you all whether a King just going to appear before the Great God of Heaven and Earth so prepared and so assured within himself of an incorruptible Crown is not to be believed before such a foul-mouthed such a scandalous and leud Miscreant as this Letter-writer is who values not the Reputation of Innocence itself if it stand in the way of his Lusts and Passions of his Revenge against Monarchy and Episcopacy And thus Sir I have answered and I hope to satisfaction your grand Impeachments and Accusations of this great and excellent Prince As for the other things with which you have stufft your Libel as The giving up the City for a Spoil to the Army c. tho' I wonder you missed the blowing up the Thames to drown the City I say alas Sir you must not think to catch some Birds and there are thanks be to God great Numbers of them in the Kingdom with such Chaff as this is And for the several Petitions and Addresses they made to His Majesty which you quote at large why all the World knows that the worst Undertakings have always been covered with the most specious and glittering Pretences that is a very bad Cause indeed that a Man of Wit and Parts a Man of Interest and Design cannot paint out in seemingly fair and taking colours But pray Sir how comes it to pass that we hear not one word from you of the King's Answers and the Noble Defences he made for himself against all those Pretences of Glory and Honour to him and of Peace and Happiness to the Kingdom No Sir your business was not to do Right to his Memory but to draw him out in the blackest hue that so you might serve the future Designs of your Party namely to extirpate Monarchy and overthrow the Ancient Constitution of the Kingdom And therefore I desire some good Man would with the leave of him who has Mr. Royston's Right to those famous Works of King Charles print some of those Declarations of his and especially that large one of August 1642 wherein all his Enemies Cheats and Tricks are display'd and discovered to the full Or else I wish That every Parish in England at the Publick Charge of the Parish would buy the whole Book itself and chain it up in some Publick Place so that all good Men might have recourse to it in order to inform their Minds of the true Merits of the Cause betwixt this great Prince and his Enemies which if done I am sure the good People of England would quickly be convinced what little reason