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Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
cause_n	believe_v	good_a	great_a	1,387	5	2.5396	3	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A25601	An Answer to the Lord George Digbies apology for himself published Jan 4, Anno Dom. 1642 put in the great court of equity otherwise called the court of conscience, upon the 28th of the same moneth / by Theophilus Philanax Gerusiphilus Philalethes Decius.	Decius, Theophilus Philanax Gerusiphilus Philalethes.; Bristol, George Digby, Earl of, 1612-1677. Lord George Digbie's apology for himself.; Bristol, George Digby, Earl of, 1612-1677. Two letters, the one from the Lord Digby, to the Queens Majestie ; the other from Mr. Thomas Elliot.; Elliot, Thomas.	1642 (1642)	Wing A3421; ESTC R8961	70,751	74

much passion I desire to save a noble young Lord of such eminent abilities as may be of great use to the King and Kingdom from sincking in his reputation which will make them altogether uselesse to the publick I will adventure to take your Lordship by the hand and to try whether I can raise you out of this puddle also when I have first opened my selfe to be the same man that made the larger Answer to your Lps Speech to the Bil of Attainder of the sayd unhappy Lord which was intended to have been sent to you so timely that if your Lordship had thereby received satisfaction in your Scruples you might have acknowledged as much in the House of Commons whereof you were then a Member and so have escaped their censure in a fayrer way then you did by climbing up into the House of Peers at that time For so that is understood But the throng of lesser Pamphlets was so great that before this could passe the Presse which I am made believe it could not in a month and more your Lordships Speech ranne the fortune you know and another briefer Answer thereunto got through Of which misadventure I was much more sorry for your Lordships sake than mine own though by this meanes I also may possibly have been censured either for insulting upon a noble person cast down which I should hate my self for if it were true or for having taken the advantage of such a time to publish my Answer when it was not safe for your Lordship to make any Reply But since your Lordship hath adventured on other actions and writings more dangerous then your defence need to be as your Lordship may mannage it I humbly beseech your Lordship to take it into your consideration whether you may not do well to make a Replication thereunto for the reasons I shall now give your Lordship and which I am perswaded ought to have the same force with you which they have with me They are if that your Lordship do yet persist in your opinion that you had sufficient grounds to alter your first judgement of the Lord Straffords cause you ought to make a further clear deduction of them to the world partly for that unfortunate Lords sake partly for your owne a little for your servants and a great deale for your Countryes sake For to begin with the last as being of greatest concernment in it self and I beleeve in your Lordships esteem also If your Lordship who have now had good leisure and great cause to revolve all your late words and actions in your most serious thoughts and to bring all the stirrings of your conscience upon every one of them to a strict examination be still of the same mind you were when you so solemnly washed your hands from the blood of the Lord of Strafford which he at his death charged home upon this Kingdome (a) then it cannot be but you must needs fear that it lyes upon this Land and in your apprehension may be one cause of the present unhappy condition thereof which hath beene so well foreseen and expressed by my Lord your father (b) And may you then or can you in such a time as this keep the reason of your fears to your self which for ought you can know may have the same operation in the hearts of those to whom you then so lively represented the hainousnesse of the sin of committing murther with the sword of justice if you think you can convince them thereof I need not tell your Lordship the force of naked truth not to bee told when it comes armed with so compleat an eloquence as ●od hath given your Lordship And if you could thereby worke the like change in the rest of my Lord of Straffords Judges which was wrought in you have they not power to review their owne proceedings and to repeal the Bill of Attainder they passed in this cause your Lordship knowes this is usuall in the Republick of Venice and if there be no president in our State of any man restored to his blood by the same Parliament which attainted him which I am not learnd enough to know I conceive such a new president were well made as many other have been by the wisdom of this Parliament by 〈◊〉 and not by the examples of former every Parliament ought to be guided For me if your Lordship shall prove to me that your grouuds remain firm after all my endeavours to shake them and withall if with the helpe of the many great Lawyers were of your Lordships opinion you can make a satisfactory Answer to the learned argument of Mr. Solicitor by which I was much cleared and confirmed in the judgement unto which I was lead by meer reason without having the light of the Law I here professe that I shall hold my selfe much obliged to your Lordp. for disabusing me and bound in conscience to make a retraction of my Answer in Print since I gave way to the printing thereof And I believe Master Saint-Iohn will be of the same mind the fame I have heard of his Religion being no lesse then that of his Law and the alteration of his opinion may prove a principall verb in the● construction of the Parliament concerning that case Your Lordp hath therefore no want of forreign inducements to imploy your best thoughts in this disquisition By the same labour your Lordp. may rectifie your own reputation in this matter which ought to be more tender to you now then ever as I see it is And if you can make it appear that you were in the right you shall wrong the Parliament more then yet you have done by entertaining the least doubt that you may thereby hinder your repatriation with them which I wish you had not done by other courses It is ever better for the wisest Counsells and States as well as men to retract an error then to maintain it But if on the other side your Lordship doth now perceive that you might have condemned the Earl os Strafford with as free a heart as you accused or prosecuted him for a Traytor then my Lord a good conscience will need no prompter to tell you that you owe the King and Kingdom a publique confession of your judgement as now informed in reparation of that high wrong you did His Majestie and the Parliament by publishing your Protestation in print when you were of another minde nor that you have much worke to do at home which can be done by no other and which it doth infinitely concern you not to slubber over I need not tell you my reason yet because the most watchfull conscience may need jogging sometimes I most humbly beseech your Lordship to give me leave without offence to entreat you first to take a re-view of your Speech by the light you now have from Master Solicitor and then to set before your eyes that part of the preface wherin you wished peace of conscience to your selfe and the

most and generally all other of whose affection to his service the King believeth well and who have ability to serve the State into a good reputation with his Parliament and people and every good man must put his hand and his tongue and his heart to this work without delay and cry mightily and incessantly to God for a blessing upon it or else in humane reason the s●n of our happy dayes is going down in a dismall cloud of blood I shall begin to others by doing my own duty upon the occasion of your Lordships Apology when I have first humbly prayed you to give me leave throughout to tell you plainl● for this work will never be done with dawbing how far I am satisfied therewith and what in my poor conceit remaineth further to be done by your Lordship that you may be firmly redintegrated in that esteem with your Countrey which you once had in so high a degree and I find knew how to value at a due rate And truely my Lord for ought that ever I have heard your Lordship hath rightly observed the time of the first declination you suffered in the favour of the representative body of the Kingdom which so long as matters are carryed there in the open manner they have bin in your time and mine for I have heard old very old men say it hath not bin alwayes so was to your Lordship and will ever be to all other an infallible indication of their proportionable declension in the good will of their Countrey But I beseech your Lordship to excuse me for asking whether you made this observation at that time For if you did I believe you will find cause to blame your self for publishing the Speech you then made touching Episcopacy in print which I have been told is a part of the late innovation in the proceedings of Parliament from the practise of ancient times and I doubt to no advantage of that high Senate or of the Members thereof the variety of whose opinions and their reasons for them it may be were better kept within the walls of the respective Houses or at least within the cognizance of wise men of their acquaintance then made the discourse of every idle youth silly woman and mean fellow that can but read English to the last of which our wise Ancestors found inconvenience in allowing so much as a voice in Elections and I believe it cannot be shewed that any of the first sort were elected in that time though in this latter age we have varyed from them in that point also for considerations I understand well enough but whether for the better or the worse I refer me to the Testimony of two dead men of known wisdom who they say are the best Councellors (a) But to return to your Lordship I pray reflect a little upon the censure of at least fifteen thousand goo● wo●en of London you then passed by the printing of that Speech wher●in you have dissected their husbands Petition with so keen a kni●e and shewed your opinion of many ●●mor● and other diseases abounding therein and then imagine what a report such a clamor raysed upon you in the City would have and I assure you had in the Country Whereas if the noyse of that Speech had remained in the ears of them that heard it only I am not able to apprehend why or how the date of your before so well merited favours in that House whereof you were then a Member shou●d begin to expire thereupon For having perused it again exactly upon this occasion I do here make publike profession that I could readily observe many things in it much to the prayse of your Lordships excellent wisdom singular ingenuity precise honesty and of that tender care which every Parliament man ought to have of the honor of Parliaments as well as of the weale of his Country if I had a mind to flatter you But I can observe very little more then nothing in it either justly offensive or unseasonable or any other way unfit to have bin delivered by a man of your Lordships opinion And though I therein differ from your Lordship as much as that House hath yet declard it self to do yet as that diversity in my judgement doth not so much as tempt me to honor your Lordship any whit the lesse so your Lordship should wrong the Worthies of that Honourable Ass●mbly if you should entertain the least suspition that any of them might for that reason be in any measure alienated in affection from your Lordship for this passage in that Speech of your Lordships deserveth to be written in letters of Gold What ever be the event I shall discharge my conscience concerning this Petition freely and uprightly unbiast by popularity as by Court respects Sir I could never flatter the sense of this House which I reverence so farre as to suppresse a single No that my heart dictated though I knew the venting of it might cast pr●judices upon m● Had my fortune placed me neer a King I could not have flattered a King and I do not intend now to flatter a multitude Thus your Lordship I adde whosoever being of a contrary judgement at any time to that which he observeth to be the sense of the major part of that House and having some reason that swayeth him which hath not been put into the Ballance by any one of the minor part that hath spoken and yet doth notwithstanding sit still and not rise up boldly as your Lordship did to deliver his reason with modesty and submission for any respect whatsoever whosoever doth give any manner of interruption or but the least discountenance to such a person in the discharge of his duty And whosoever when the question is put in any matter of such importance as this of Episcopacy not to say in any the least businesse whatsoever doth either give other vote then according to his heart or doth give none at all for any consideration whatsoever doth as much as in him is to betray the honour of that House and something else he ought to maintain and defend and if he take a full view of the extent of the Protestation perhaps will hardly find how to acquit himselfe well of a willfull breach of that voluntary vow which is a crying sin and such a one as God who is alwayes true of his word will surely require So little ground is there for your Lordship to doubt as you seem to do that what you spoke in the businesse of the Church touching Episcopacy upon occasion of the London-Petition might in any measure diminish your interest in that House though the printing of it might well have such an influence upon vulgar minds as might be of force to turne the tide of your reputation among them I wish it were as well in my power to direct your Lordship to the doing of any thing that might cause a reflux of the strong curr●̄t now runneth against you so strong indeed

blessing of Almighty God to you and your posterity according as your judgement of the life of the Earl of Strafford should be consonant with your heart in all integrity which I do not with any intention on my part to give occasion to any other to inferre that your Lordship went one hairs breadth beyond your own beliefe of the integrity of your heart therein I thank God I have learned my duty better and as I ought do confidently believe your Lordship hath too much of the fear of God in your heart to transgresse so much as a Mathematicall point willingly and wittingly in so solemne an execration But withall I know the danger of making such imprecations before his face who is greater then our hearts and knoweth more by us then they do And if it be true which I have heard from persons of honor that there was a time when Sir Thomas Wentworth solemnly wished that if ever he gave his consent to the levying of monyes on the Subject without their own consent in Parliament He might be set up as a Beacon on a hill for people to gaze at We all have occasion given us in this protesting Age diligently to call to remembrance and sadly to reflect upon what ever we may have inconsiderately uttered in that kinde having all I suppose seen or heard how his rash words have been verified upon him by the Bonefires were made on the tops of many hills in some Countries for his execution and this by a kinde of instinct in the vulgar sort of people without any direction from wiser men the like whereunto upon the like occasion I beleeve was never done in the World before Your Lordship will therefore I hope forgive me if out of my desire to make sure of keeping your Lordship from being hereafter scorched with the like flames I presume to advise you to enter into your own heart being I suppose like mine own deceitfull above all things and there to make the strictest enquiry all your wit and memory can whether the lying of one thing or other in the way did not hinder you from going to the bottome when you made that execration and so from discerning somewhat then which you may now possibly see in this businesse For to be plaine with your Lordship I am therefore a little jealous there might be some pretincture in your Lordshipps own eye because I observe you could so clearly see and distinctly describe all that might bloud-shot other mens eys in this case and yet for ought appears in your Speech never once took notice of any of those many other causes of vitiation of judgement which it concerned your Lordship more to have looked after Such were personall respects as the inclination of one great wit to take part with another of one Peere apparent to take compassion of another in being complying with the judgement of the King at that time hope of favour from His Majesty from thence feare of His Maiesties dislike of a person so able so willing and then as was believed in so neere expectance of opportunity to do service to the King and State For I will not wrong your Lordships Noblenesse by the lightest imagination that your eye saw the worse by looking a squint at any private advantage in a publike employment And I will forbeare the mention of something might be of more force with you then all I have yet touched because if it were so your Lordship must needs know it and I cannot minde you of it without preiudice to a third Person your nimble phansie will quickly represent all other to your memory by the hint of these I have set before you And they they my Lord and such other were the corruptive of iudgement of which you should have discharged your selfe to the uttermost of your power and not Lapwing like have made so great a cry with so many awayes there where your conscience was in no danger (a) Mistake me not I do not say but some other might have need of the warnings you gave and may yet have cause to reflect upon what you then sayd though they then gave right iudgement Neither do I thinke the worse of you for differing from so great a number of religious and conscionable Patriots Nay I should not have thought so well of you as I do if not having your understanding subdued you should have captivated your iudgement to theirs or if after you had wiped your heart on the side I have now shewed you and it may be you onely forgot to mention not to thinke on by your selfe upon the hearing of the Diametrall opposition between great Lawyers of the House in their opinions your Lordships mind stood in aequilibrio though this were an imperfection of iudgement I should do wrong to suppose in you yet if in truth it were so I pronounce you ought to have done as you did at least I should have done the same had I been in your place For I conceive that a minde in that posture is bound or at least hath liberty to encline to the safer side for it self though it may be the more unsafe for the State because a mans own soule is of more value to him then all the world And I humbly conceive that in all cases either of Counsell or of Judicature to one of which it may be all that come within the walls of either House may be reduced it is ever safest to encline to that side which goeth with him that is in possession which in this case of the Lord of Strafford was that which was against the Bill of Attainder After I had written thus much and more in answer to your Lordships Apologie the Kingdoms weekly Intelligencer his accompt of the last week came to my hands wherein he taketh notice of your Apologie and saith your Lordship therein forgot to mention the first matter by which your Honour was questioned in the House of Commons while you served there And then telleth a strange story which I cannot wonder enough I should never have heard of before Thus There were sayth he foure beside your Lordship of the close Committee concerning the Earle of Strafford There was a paper of much importance concerning the sayd Earle mislayd on a sodaine in a private roome where they were which was mist before they departed but could not be found yet next day they had it at Court Those foure Members particularly made their protestation in the presence of God and of the House of Commons that they were not privy to the conveying away of that paper His Lordship did the like and wished a curse upon him if he knew any thing of it Whether this writer were not to blame in concluding this story with this Epiphonema God is iust and its observable that this Lord hath not had many blessings befalne him since that his imprecation and asseveration I leave to the judgement of Divines As I do also whether that Writer himselfe if he

and innocence with so much passion as may keep them company may well be allowed to breath it self with so much freedom as to present to the world with a true and sensible life my sufferings upon whomsoever the injustice and inhumanity may light of having opprest and bowed down to the earth a young man and all his hopes by such undeserved calamities ANSWER The next misfortune your Lordship insisteth on is your having been charged in generalll with High-Treason the impeachment in particular bearing onely that you had appeared in a warlike manner to the terror of the Kings Subjects at Kingstone upon Thames and the amendment of that charge by putting in that you had levyed War against the King upon a question raysed by a Lord or two learned in the Law whether that former accusation would amount to Treason or no To this I need to say little because I may well presume that the two Houses of Parliament in some sort interessed in this your Lordships complaint though not of them yet of the persons trusted by them will not faile to give convenient satisfaction unto your Lordship and the world at the sollicitation of those persons to me unknowne concerning whom your Lordship thinketh you may as you doe put a question whether they be so full of Honour ingenuitie or integritie or so free from passion malice interest or affection as they are thought without offence of both or either House of Parliament or any reflection upon the opinion or resolution of either of them All I will or indeed can say as to the matter above recited is but this That whether your Lordp. appeared there with six Coach-horses or six score horses whether your Lordships businesse to that place where those many Souldiers and Commanders who waited on their Majesties to Hampton Court and from thence went to Kingston upon Tham●s for lodging were only upon a message of the Kings to 40 or 50 Gentlemen among them expressing his Majesties good acceptance of their service Whether those forty or fifty were totally strangers to your Lordp. to which point also the Intelligencer telleth an unhappy tale and by name whether Colonell Lunsford were till then so great a stranger to your Lordp. that you had never exchanged twenty words with him in all your life are all matters of fact and the truth of them must remain upon proof For if there can be no more proved against your Lordship then you write then admitting it to be true which I find in the Remonstrance of the Lords and Commons prepared long before but ordered to be published upon the second of November last That there were at Kingston at that time waggons loaden with Pistolls Carbines and Ammunition great horses armed with Pistolls And though the Officers to whom it seemeth your Lordship was sent together with the Souldiers and Cavaliers were some hundreds your Lordp. in this Apology avoweth they were many And though they were listed and taken into pay and an invitation made to such Gentlemen as would mount and maintain themselves for a month by a promise that afterwards they should be taken into pay and be his Majesties Guard for their lives And though the unr●ly company assembled there discharged their Pistolls and threatned the Inhabitants that they would have the heads of some of them within four dayes to the great terror and amazement of the poor people And though all this put together may amount to a warlike appearance and preparation which that Remonstrance leaveth every man to judge yet how it should concerne your Lordp if you had no further hand in all this or in any part thereof then you have confessed under the favour and correction of both Houses of Parliament I must here prosesse as yet informed I am not able to comprehend And if your Lordship have misinsormed me and the world therein I think you have done your self as ill a turn as the worst of your supposed enemies could have done you But whereas your Lordship complayneth that the examination of these things were referred to a Committee of your sharpest enemies and that the great mistake of six Coach horses turned into six score horses was not suffered to be rectified by other witnesses there who affirmed the truth to these two parts of your Lordships complaint I have one Answer to make which is that if in them both your Lordp. had any wrong it ought not to be imputed either to any prevalence of your particular unhappinesse or to the credit of your enemies but to be reputed among the common calamities which may befall any subject of this Kingdom by reason of the ancient customes thereof which seem exceeding strange to all strangers that hear of them among whom I have often had much a do to maintain their fitnesse and equity and yet the wisdom of this State hath not hitherto found sufficient cause to alter so ancient constitutions The one of them is the manner of naming Committees in Parliament in which all men see there is exceeding great inequality and too much left to the care of the Clearke who hath more power by much therein then any Member of the House of Commons But how to remedy this without running the hazard of other as great or greater inconveniencies it may be is not so easie to devise Which notwithstanding I have often heretofore and upon this occasion do now wish that honourable House to whom nothing that can be better ordered by humane prudence is impossible would take into mature deliberation The other is that ancient Maxime of our Law Non accipitur juramentum contra Regem by reason whereof if it be rigorously observed as for ought I know it is ever in all tryalls upon life and death in inferiour Courts the honour life and estate of the greatest subject how innocent soever may be in danger if two of the meanest men in the whole Kingdom shall combine so secretly to take it away that there can be no discovery of their conspiracy whereat strangers use to hold up their hands and blesse themselves For it seemeth the Committee above mentioned had the equity of that rule of Law in their eye for their direction and that your Lordship had not all the favour shewed you to the Earl of Strafford who was allowed to produce witnesses and crosse examine such as were produced against him and in troth I believe had as much favour as was ever shewed to any subject in his case which is and will ever be one great justification of the proceedings against him whatsoever may break forth in time to shew his innocence But my Lord lesse favour may be shewed to divers persons accused of the same crime without any ingredient of private malice or revenge to the one of them And yet he that feeleth the hurt of the difference is under a strong temptation to apprehend those to be his private enemies whom he observeth to be keen in pursuing him although their consciences may bear them