The Copy of a LETTER To a Countrey Collonel OR A serious Dissuasive from joyning with those Officers now in Rebellion against the PARLIAMENT Par novum fortuna videt concurrere bellum Atque virum SIR I Am informed that you are invited again into armes Before you do it I desire you to look round about you and consider well The Call The Cause The Company you are to engage with and the Enemies you are to oppose For if it be true that war is never just but when 't is necessary which is never so but when there is no other remedy That armes are never warrantable but when they are taken up for preventing or repelling ruining mischiefs evils of the first magnitude and for preserving recovering or acquiring such good things as every eye may see and every tongue will confesse are essentially necessary to the being or universally desirable to the better being of a people or cause concerned therein and lastly That the authority which calls to armes and can only make killing no murder and triumphing no treason must be unquestionable A man had need of more then good company and a good perswasion concerning his friends and enemies respectively to induce him to this extreme and worst of remedies But before I come to search the Cause or dispute the Call which stands first in order of nature to be considered let me intreat you to look well into the quality of your company because I fear your greatest temptation lyes on that hand I confesse some years since there was an Army and there were Officers that did worthily in Ephratah and were famous in Bethlehem But sure you are much mistaken if you think this that Army these those Officers who fought so gloriously for our liberties as men Christians who jeoparded their lives so often so honourably and through grace so successefully in the high places of the field in all the three Nations against a violent and vindictive King and his son in nothing unlike his father but that he is more vicious This certainly is not that Army or thâ—se are not those Officers which thought those Members onely worthy to sit as the Leg stators of three Nations by whose counsels chiefly they had conquer'd two and rescued the third out of the pawes of the Lyon and when they had done it wanted not courage to sit upon him in judgement and cut off his head a terrible and eternall example to all that should thereafter usurpe or abuse a power over a generous and free-born people But indeed this is that Army or very like it and these those Officers who when they had done those great things under the Parliaments authority and conduct had been duly paid by them as the best of servants owned by them as brethren tendred and provided for as children honoured and rewarded as the very saviours of their country deserted their masters their brethren their fathers and their patrons and layd their conquering weapons at the foot of their fellow servant planting the laurel I had almost said the crown but in that I had said lesse upon his temples who possibly if he had been born to it or had never taken it might have been thought worthy of one but having so taken it by diseasing his Masters and putting a violence upon that authority which he owned and served while he commanded their forces got nothing thereby more then a sad and deplorable reproach upon religion unparalell'd losses and oppressions on the people a general frustration of all his designes wounds and a lasting dishonour upon his name a spirit so broken by unprosperous infidelity and an heart and life so constantly assaulted with fears and terrours that he needed not amongst men any greater punishment then a longer time of holding and suffering those splendid horrors At his end leaving the Nation ready to expire with him under the weight of it's own confusions and an unsupportable debt a dishonourable peace and a war not more improvident then unprofitable These Officers Sir are something like those who gave their single person a lowder negative then ever any King of England was entituled or pretended to and a larger purse then any Sovereign before either had or needed and which was worst therein exempted him from the fear of ever needing any Parliaments if he could have kept his ambition within any bounds and the people from the hopes of receiving any benefit by them And 't is most like so like that Army as if it were the very same which very lately interrupted that Parliament whom they had not six months before owned with self-shame and repentance for their former injurious actings against them the only lawfull authority of the Nation and that at a time when they were industriously studying to settle the government disjoyned by former usurpations and not yet as it seems settled to general satisfacton resupplying their treasuries miserably exhausted by mismanagements of the late governments with as little charge or grievance as might be to the people and solely if possibly out of the Estates of Sir George Booth and other traitors and Apostates for the pay of the Army and that most just but almost forgotten debt of the Publick faith and not to be infinite when they were providing against that dangerous combination of those two great and Malignant constellations of France and Spain united as is credibly reported and universally believed to our ruine in the Scottish Kings restitution and when malice it self being judge they were not doing any thing that had the least tendency to infringe or weaken that good and righteous cause they and the Army had been so long engaged in This Sir is the company that you are to keep those are the men you are to be allied to in bloud My soul enter not thou into their secret for their wrath is cruel But you will say or they no doubt will say Is there not a Cause and sure there had need be an hugely great one for such furious and destructive proceedings a Cause-destroying Cause or a complication of causes and mischiefs intollerable and otherwise incurable for such an over-turning violence Why read their own Declaration weigh the matters therein alledged well take them all for granted and then give righteous judgement and say or let themselves when they are themselves say if they have a righteous cause for such unrighteous actings In the year 1648 they held forth that the greater number of Members in Parliament were apostatized and had made defection to the King's interest after they had declared they would make no more addresses to him having plainly discovered that in the preservation of his person and authority they could not preserve our religion and liberty And therefore they secluded them from their share of the government is there any thing that has the resemblance to that so much as charg'd upon the Parliament now or can they instance in any one debate vote or resolution which did in the
least threaten that Good old Cause Themselves as little ingenuous as they are and as little our friends do not pretend it and which could onely have justified their putting a period as much as in them is not onely to all the present visible lawfull authority of the nation but destroying the very root of all civil power and from whence onely future representatives if ever they intend us any can be regularly derived and safely provided for But we will not search for what we are sure not â—o find a just full and competent cause Themselves have stated it upon the Parliaments Votes for taking away some Officers commissions and the ruine as they imply of their families thereby a mighty cause sure and very honourably held forth by them who made no conscience to designe and which they now endeavour to carry on the ruine or hazard of three Nations rather then suffer an eclipse in the power and profits of nine boysterous genâ—lemen who yet are very far from being ruined by this deserved reducement having such estates for which not long since some of them deemed themselves fit to sit in an house of Peers who before the wars were scarcely qualified for an election into the House of Commons Little remembring it seems that to make them way whole brigades whole Armies who had born the first brunt and a great part of the heat of the war held it their duty at the Parliament's command to disband and to be reduc'd not onely from your commands but some of them that had been eminent in service to a morsel of bread and little lesse then beggery Whereas now if a cheap and unbloudy victory be not recompenc't not onely with pay but titles and salaries to general Officers and if marks of favour besides titles salaries be not conferred upon those that appeared forward in this late action it must not be born no not in a Parliament but stand as an unpardonable crime and worthy to be punisht with the losse of their authority as if a 1000 l. to the Commander in chief of that Brigade 500 l. beeween two Officers that seem to have signalized themselves in that expedition an 100 l. to the Captain that brought up the newes and 3. hundred to that worthy Gentleman that kept the Cittadel till relief came to him were not convenient gratuitâ—es for a Commonwealth sunk to so great a degree and almost extremity of want by means of a Government themselves had set up and asserted which beside the losse of many millions in shipps and trade had involved the Nation in a debt of more then two to the souldiery by sea and land And was it not a good mark of favour to ingage the proceed of all Delinquents Estates new and old for the satisfaction of the souldiers whole arrears though incurr'd from the time that they turn'd them out and during the time they kept them out of the exercise of their lawfull authority the Parliament so indulgent were they to them that now requite them so ill resolving to pay them if not for yet while they held the pikes at their breasts and chose to own a single person before and against a whole Nation yea three Nations and their Represâ—ntatives from which satisfaction they did not exempt any even the most active of these Officers the authors of all their wrong and the peoples miseries after which all reasonable men will be to seek what favours and rewards can be proportionable to the unlimited opinion which these men hold of their own unmatchable deservings But by these things we begin to understand the meaning of that negative character that so often they stile themselves by boast themselves in as that they are no Mercenary Army It appears now though not now first that besides their pay they must have honourable gratuities and that themselves must be the onely judges of what are enough so 'T is not enough that they were payed to a penny while they were faithfull and suffered the Parliament to sit and if they have wanted since whom have they to blame but themselves 'T is not enough that their Commanders have been more eminently and plentifully rewarded then any under Heaven for services wherein for the most part the private souldiers suffer most in life and limb without any other consideration then a little pillage and a letter of thanks scatterd amongst them but they must carve out their own gratuities proporâ—ionable to their avarice and ambition or else they are not pleas'd and over and above all must have also an indefeizable estate of fee-simple in those commands and offices and hold no longer at will of their Masters a tenure which the best skill'd armies in the trade of war and the military Discipline never understood or pretended to in former times And yet all this is not enough to compleat the meaning of Unmercenary but they must thereby also be intitled to a share in the Legislature not as members some of them of Parliament but as the body of an army by stating Proposals which must not be deny'd hardly debated or disputed nor without a high offence delayd or which is more to have a total negative upon all the authority of the Nation or which is most and most unsupportable themselves to possesse the Legislative power and a right to make and make voyd to repeal and institute Lawes not onely martial but of a civil nature also which none but the people or their deputies can without much arrogance or ignorance pretend unto and which no people ever suffered but such as could not help it were borne under it or cheated or conquered to it But what talk we of such petty powers such low preheminences such inferior prerogatives of nulling repealing or making Lawes nay Governments for a people whom they dare not say they have conquered they claim something higher and more absolute non est mortale quod optant 't is not enough to be above all that is called man but they must judge and punish as God himself does as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 they know the meaning of the Parliament and by a God-like authority they will punish the iniquity of their intentions though never discovered or drawn forth into ouert-act for do not they and their parasites charge that the Parliament meant to bring in the King to acquit Sr George Booth who rebell'd for him and in order thereunto to discompose and alter the constitution of the Army which surely they needed not to have done upon that occasion most of them being but too well acquainted with the trade of King-making or which is all one of setting up single persons above and in place of Kings But certainly of all calumnies in the world this though suggested with never so much impudence can never stick for let the Army be if they will more and wiser then men is the Parliament lesse or worse then beasts have they not by all their experience and that stock of reason
that 's left them yet learnt the dictates of nature and the princples of self-preservation can they be supposed willing to trust a King whose father they beheaded and having destroyed so many Cavaliers at last prove felones de se and trust themselves and their security upon the crazy faith of those not yet reconciled enemies more enraged and exasperated by so many defeats and ruines But there are some who are pleas'd to think more charitably of the Parliament as to the care of our civil liberties who will yet suspect them of a rigid Presbyterian spirit gendring to persecution in matters of conscience to all such we submit to consideration the votes of the Committee for government so often alledged by others and made publick in many papers in which was granted more then the Army saw reason to ask in their Proposals but perhaps they meant more and 't is the Parliaments crime that they were not Gods too and could not be able to know the secret recesses of their hearts and their thoughts afar off was there not then yielded at least as much as any sober Christian can wish or bear that owns a God in Christ That there is a pattern of wholesome words and some clear fundamental truths to be contended for that there are some damnable heresies and doctrines of devils to be opposed and that would not themselves live as without God in the world or have the Magistrates while he gives equal protection to all Christians himself be none or no more then an heathen You see then the quarrell and the cause you are to fight for which principally is the discharging of nine officers from their commands who had some of them as nominators removed nine score guilty of no other crime then what themselves had not long before been only deeplyer dyed in and for this you are to fight against the Parliament and the assertors of their authority because they were so bold as to refuse their chief Commander a Commission illimited in power and time and so good husbands for a poor beggarly Commonwealth as to deny the unnecessary chargeable and dangerous qualityes of move generall Officers in a time of peace and after they had suppress't a dangerous insurrection without them and lastly because they presumed to be so wise as not to remit the removing of officers to the pleasure of a Councell of war Which they saw not long before had discharged Col. Okey Alured and other faithfull Commanders for opposing that which themselves shortly after pretended to repent of nor to trust the supplying of officers to those nominators who were so late so imprudent or so unhappy as to present to the Parliament such as some of these nine were and now more fully discover themselves to be By all which propositions 't is plain they designed to make their Army a new modell with a witness an in tire self subsisting body perfectly independant of the civill and Soveraigne â—ower the only representative of the only good people of the refined interest unaccountable for any of their actions but qualified to call all others to account wanting nothing of omnipotency but this that though they can doe all things else they cannot make the people believe them just and honest And no wonder if upon this principle they were angry at the Parliament for giving and at themselves for taking commissions from them whom they resolved to obey no further or longer then themselves should think fit Things standing on these terms can your heart endure or will your hands be strong to fight Generall Monck on such a quarrell when he shall advance to restore such a Parliament to the just exercise of their power which they have improved hitherto with so much reason and resolution to publick advantage and is he become your enemy for telling you the truth and standing for the right and justice of their cause O tell it not in Gath least the uncircumcised rejoice nor in Iudah least our best friends be forc't to say this Northern Star outshines the brightest Southern worthyes though many of them have done worthily this one excells them all I know other causes are alledged towards the justifying this transaction of the Army which are rather occasions then causes or consequents then occasions as namely the hasty passing of some acts which at another seasoÌ„ would have had a maturer and more deliberate consideration But 't is not well remembred that they had an Army hanging over their heads ready to turn them out of doors and sure they had need make hast who must run the gandelope through an Army beside that by those suddain votes they vacuated nothing but was void in thâ—â—ery making as done without a due legislative authority which if not in one prinâ—â—â—â—â— act made void must have given the single person a plausible pretence to return upon us with 1300000 l. by the year and an Army to support him If thereby the deserving ministry that were plac't in delinquents livings during their interruption were in danger to suffer providence and the carefull sedulity of the Parliaments Committee has made even since their disturbance and yet regularly so good a provision that no worthy Minister will have cause to complain of the Parliaments over hasty resolutions I wish their Tythes and maintenance be not more endangered by the Army then their pulpits by the Parliament and yet that 's not all their defence They declared and enacted that nothing done in the time of their interruption should be deemed lawfull or binding but was it not with this salvo unlesse it had been or should be enacted confirmed by them And now I pray who hindred the Parliament from sitting to enact and confirm whatever of those lawes or ordinances should be found of advantage and for the reall good of the people If they had past such an Act the 6. of May next things in fumo jure it must have been just it would hardly have past for prudent or safe but to do it when in their own both right and expectation they were to have sate 6. moneths longer where was the danger and therefore I know no fault it has but that it was altogether contrary as their declaration speaks to what was desired in the third proposall of the Petition and Addresse of the 12. of May a soare crime not to understand the pleasure of the Army which yet it 's hoped the nation may forgive though the Army doe not Howsoever sure enough they will thank the Parliament for the other half of that Act prohibiting the leavies of any money otherwise then by authority of Parliament by which it will be in their power to save their purses if they have as much courage as cause till they be opened by their own consent in themselves or their deputies But woe is me I had forgot that which was indeed a cause for this action and a very important one the Parliaments Act of indemnity was too narrow
the plaister would not reach that soare place but that Lambert is still in danger of refunding the profits of the Aulâ—age and the thousands which were discharged by privy seals of money due upon a second moity and others for their Salaries as Treasurers and Councellors all which they acquired by setting up standing by an unlawfull power when as the simple Commonwealths men were so easy as to serve 4. years and upwards that interest gratis and now again upon their return returned into the same practise with the same principles but I confesse they that hazard their cause and their conscience had need have their penny for their penny worth And now let themselves say whither from this time forward they did not watch all occasion to destroy the Parliament One word more and then I have done tell me how shall the Regiments you are to raise or call together be provided Must you not by the Armies authority or will you by your own which is as good leavy money upon the Countrey for their subsistance If so do but consider if ever England see a lawfull power again whither they can assert their authority and secure their sitting if they doe not severely execute the penalties of those lawes both old and new which call it treason to tax the people and take their money without common consent in Parliament or if you designe free quartet think well of it whither Sâ— Bricies night may not be acted over again or which is more Christian and more adviseable the people may not see reason in their own defence even without the help of a Parliament to disarm and reduce such insolent Lurdans who shall so eat up the people like bread without a lawfull authority and drink the sweat of their browes without remorse not satisfied till by fleecing the poore Commons they seat themselves again as Lords on wolsacks and there with a more then Popelike arrogance pretend to 3 swords military civill and spirituall as the peoples Soveraigns and yet contending with them for pay as the meanest of servants who while they deny Ministers tythes and a forced maintenance continue to enforce their own pay till they leave us not a ninth who by a more Magisteriall then cunning Chymistry are drawing all the wealth and power of the Nation into a refined interest whereof themselves must be the only judges and members least when they come again into the Peers House or which is the same the Sanâ—edâ—â—â—n or Senate it should be again objected to them that their interest in the Nation is not considerable because their estates are not Yet in all this that I say I would not be understood to speak against the Army in its general and aggregate body I doe in part mean the generall councell of Officers as now constituted and distempered or I mean those Officers that principally head this rebellion against the Parliament nay perhaps I mean principally if not Solely Colonell Lambert the head and great engine of this great defection I know an Army is necessary I judge well of many in this those who have refused Commissions from this new self created authority and many others And am not without an hopefull persuasion that of those who are now marcht Northward many doe go with that mind that when they are come where they may doe it with effect and advantage they will deliver up their most obstinate Officers to him who knows how to obey the Parliament fight Rebells and maintain a good cause with an honest sincerity and sutable courage To conclude I should speak something of your call but upon due search I find you have none unlesse you reckon that for one which you find in the first of the Proverbs 10.11.12.13.14.15.16 verses which speaks thus viz. 10. My Son if sinners entice thee consent thou not 11. If they say come with us let us lay wait for blood let us lurk privily for the innocent without cause 12. Let us swallow you up alive as the grave and whole as those that goe down into the pit 13. We shall find all precious substance we shall fill our houses with spoil 14. cast in thy lot among us let us all have one purse 15. My Son walk not thou in the way with them refraine thy foot from their path 16. For their feet run to evill and make hast to shed blood and if you think fit to answer such a call upon your perill be it I have justified my friendship and delivered my soul by this to you But take heed misery overtake you not as an armed man and the justice of God number you amongst the workers of iniquity to which he deprecates in your behalf who is Yours FINIS