carry'd it for your going therefore a Command was sent to you all of a sudden That it was your Brother's pleasure you should be gone This Sir fill'd many with amazement who knew not for what ends such Counsels had been taken and it filled others with great Joy they now believing that the King your Brother and his Court would have been purg'd from Popery and his Popish Councels and the Popish Fabrick which had been so long a building would again tumble down when they saw you that were the chief supporter of it had left your station Well Sir away you go for Flanders as if you had been going into another World but your Conspirators were not a whit daunted but resolv'd to stick as faithfully to you as you had done before to them And tho' by this departure of yours many of your Conspirators for whom the Kingdoms were too hot and who ought to have danced a Gambrel at Tyburn under the pretence of being your Servants yet notwithstanding the hardiest and boldest of your impudent Crew staid behind and watch'd Affairs at home letting nothing be done that was material but what was done by your Advice and Direction and theirs and by your being abroad they had the opportunity of studying and advising what was fit to be done at home This Sir I must observe to you by the way that before you could be prevail'd upon to go you were faithfully promised that nothing of value or moment should be done or acted without you nay the Speech that was to be made at the Opening of the Parliament was concluded on before you went Yet for all this at the Meeting of the New Parliament which was now become almost a Wonder in this Nation a great panick Fear was struck in all or most of your Crew and they certainly had so much Fear upon them from the least to the greatest that they were even ready to cry Quarter or at least to offer terms of accommodation the Nation being in a very great ferment and your Party that had rely'd so much upon the mighty Mind of the French King for Mony began to curse him for driving them upon these Extremities nay you your self did not spare to revile him for the same The King your Brother happening to be indispos'd at Windsor which being posted over to you you return with all speed and unexpectedly and being here you had but a little inclination to return to Flanders again but the King pleasing you with some private Resolutions of his you did submit to return again to Flanders where you was as coldly received as at first but your stay was not long there for the Coast being then clear you resolved upon returning home and did accordingly return and the design you know was then to fix the Sham Protestant Plot you and your Conspirators had contriv'd But that would not keep you in England for it was resolv'd that you should go to Scotland to settle the Protestant Religion there where you receiv'd the sad News of the baffling the Sham-Plot that you and yours had thought to charge upon some Protestants which made you take new Measures and you resolv'd to part with a small spell of Mony to get the Parliament prorogued for some longer time and a greater Sum was pressed from France but without success for the Duke of Bucks spoil'd that Design for which piece of service you owed him a Cake and was resolv'd if it had not been timely prevented you would have bestow'd upon him a whole Loaf But that by the way Well you arrive in Scotland I pray how were you receiv'd with great Joy to your Banditti there Nay the most excellent Protestant Bishops receiv'd you with tokens of Welcome and highly resented the Affront that the Parliament of England had put upon you when they went about to exclude you and very honestly declar'd against it and tho' the Commons of England were so dim sighted as not to see that the only way to settle the Protestant Religion was by a Popish King yet they could see it and declare it as an undoubted Truth Now Sir it was expected that you should admire the Fabrick that your old Friend Lauderdale had so delicately contrived and in reward of his good Service advance his Interest No no you no sooner got into Scotland but you were designing against Lauderdale he being the great Instrument of sending you thither for you never forgave him that Affront so that after your arrival in Scotland his Interest much dwindl'd away Thus you rewarded one of your old Friends who had sold Body and Soul and all to the Devil to serve you and your Cause he is gone to his place I fear in sure and certain expectation of Wrath and Vengeance for the many Villanies he had committed against the Religion Laws and Liberties of his Country Whilst Sir you were in Scotland you and your Conspirators made your Designs to go on to your full content tho' much diligence was us'd and pains were taken in the point and to give you and your Accomplices that which is your due you never did spare your Pains for the bringing on your wicked Devices to perfection and you thought it good Policy and your best way to make sure of something that if England should be too hard for you yet you resolved to make sure of Scotland And to repeal those Laws that were in force which did debar a Popish Prince from inheriting that Crown therefore you got a Parliament call'd and your self made High Commissioner Upon this you labour the Point for the choice of the Commoners that should be fit for the purpose and to cajole some of the Lords you entice Hamilton to come into your Interest You mounted the Throne as High Commissioner without regarding the Law or due Qualifications necessary in taking the Oaths for that was below you And the King having furnish'd you with Letters you are admitted into the Council without taking the Oaths But being got into the House you carried all before you and got your Succession to the Crown of Scotland secured by an Act and you got a Test passed by which all were to swear not to endeavour to alter that Government either in Church or State and all such as refused were to lose their Employments In a word you made every thing to pass that you and your Crew had a mind to As you were a Privy Councillor in that Kingdom you wheedled in the Duke of Hamilton and admitted him one of the Council who was very zealous for the Protestant Religion formerly but then began to be very cool And so were the rest of the cajoled Lords they all put on the Temper that Scotchmen usually are attended withal that is to be false to the Cause that is persecuted for upon the rising of the Parliament they suffer'd the poor Dissenters to be squeezed to death and suffer'd all imaginable Severities to be used towards them You succeeding so well in
Liberties of your Subjects since they profess an Allegiance out of Conscience to a contrary Sovereign who destroy'd our Laws and Liberties and made them sharers in his many Designs and Conspiracies against us Or how can your Majesty expect Truth and Sincerity from these Conspirators where Treason and Lies are Virtues and Merits You have in this Tract many Tragical Instances within fresh Memory of their Wicked Purposes and Designs look back but to the beginning of your Majesties Reign since which time your Majesty cannot but remember how many Proofs they have given out of their own Mouths of their more than Villainous Disaffection to your Majesty and Government and Trayterous Intentions against your Royal Person both at Home and Abroad nay before your happy Accession to the Throne I may without offence to your Majesty take notice to you of your being abandoned by King Charles in Compliance with the French King at the Instigation of the then Duke of York and his Popish Adherents and not only so but your Ruin and Destruction when you only had the Title of Prince of Orange was designed by the Popish Party my Affection and Respects to you then though wholly a Stranger to your Person made me then discover the Conspiracy against you but none of the Council took any notice of what related to your Self but Prince Rupert and the Earl of Arlington and another considerable Peer who I suppose did transmit the same to you when in Holland But blessed be God your Majesty as a Monument of the Mercies of the most High is once more delivered out of their Hands and in your Deliverance we that have Espoused you are delivered and we question not but you will remember to distinguish between those that have testified their Sincere Loyalty to your Majesty and those that have openly appeared Traytors to your Royal Person and Government and question not Great Sir but that God who hath now so Miraculously delivered you and in whose hand are the Hearts of all Kings and Princes will fully Convince your Majesty of all the unworthy Principles of your secret Enemies and of my Integrity too how strange soever they have endeavour'd to represent me to your Majesty till then with all Patience and Humility I shall commend my Cause to the All-seeing Judge with a Resolution to persevere through his Assistance in my Truth Integrity and Loyalty against all Discouragements or Terrors or Neglects or Blandishments either to my last gasp What Peace can these Brutes have in their Souls and Consciences that do surrender their Liberties and Religion to the Mercy of a Person that would have inslaved them and being through the Mercy of God to us driven out from these Kingdoms for his Tyranny he neither can nor will he own them if he were to return It is strange to any thinking Man that of these Conspirators who profess the Protestant Religion that they should not consider the whole Series or Course of Life of that pretended King for whom they venture Body and Soul hath been a continued Conspiracy against them and their Religion Why should they not sit down and consider his Contriving the Burning of London his instigating a Confederacy with France and two ungodly Wars with Holland his fomenting the Popish Plot and contriving the Murther of Justice Godfrey to stifle it his forging of Treason against Protestants and suborning Witnesses to swear the Patriots of our Religion and Liberties out of their Lives his hiring execrable Villains to Assassinate and Murther the Great Earl of Essex and causing several others to be clandestinely Murthered in hopes to conceal it his advising and procuring the Prorogation and Dissolution of Parliaments in order to prevent inquiry into his Crimes so that he might escape the Justice of the Nation Why should not these Protestant Professors remember his Poysoning the King his Brother in order to his Invading the Throne his Murdering Algernoon Sydney Esq upon the Deposition of one scandalous Witness and the cutting off the late Loyal and Brave Lord Russel and Murdering him for Crimes alledged against him in reference to which if all had been Truth which was sworn against him yet there was nothing that according to Law could have reached his Life Give me leave Great Sir to acquaint your Majesty that none murmured more against the Proceedings of the late King than the Protestant Jacobites did I can remember how confounded they were when he began his Reign with a bare-fac'd avowing himself of the Romish Religion and calling into the Nation a multitude of Priests and Jesuits and empowered them to Exercise their Idolatries Nay who were so much concern'd as some of these Men and in my own hearing have owned that he was ill advised to trample upon those Laws which concern our Property seeing that by two Proclamations whereof the one required the Collecting of the Customs and the other the continuing the Excise which was to expire at King Charles's Death he violently and against all the Laws of the Land broke in upon the Estates of many of the People of England and they did own that the seven or eight suborn'd and forsworn Judges that countenanc'd him in doing so vile a Thing ought to have been hanged and they have often said that if he proceeded thus he would soon bring the Kingdom about his Ears and he must take it for his pains How can these Men look Mankind in the Face who have been in a barbarous Conspiracy for the restoring of a King that had thus acted in oppressing his People and for the Murdering of your Majesties Person that had delivered the Nation from these Oppressions When I reflect upon the Reign of that late King I cannot but be filled with the greatest Horror to think that there should be a number of Men left in England that should so much as attempt his Restoration when they well knew that he had precluded his Subjects of all hopes of Redress in Westminster-Hall and deprived us of all Succour where our Ancestors found it I thought that all Men would have joined with your Majesty to have declared the late King James a Tyrant Traytor and Murderer and all that did adhere to him should have been treated as Banditti and Freebooters and not as Gentlemen and English Men but instead of this that in the compass of seven Years behold two or three Conspiracies against your Majesties Person and Government detected and proved and yet these People will scarce so much as blush at the self-contradicting Carriage of themselves and Party Some of these Protestant Jacobites have been at St. Germains and then they must Experience the late King's usage of his Protestant Friends there and if a certain Writer may be depended upon their usage is hard and severe first he denied them a Protestant Chappel and Chaplain nay if a Protestant be any thing zealous for his Religion they want not Irish Papists to swear a Plot upon them and so they are confined
them and you could not have added to or detracted from any thing in such a manner perfected without the consent of the people with whom you made this Contract for we were to have been benefited by this Oath and Contract of yours and not deceived again If Princes may break their Oaths and Contracts made to and with their Subjects How can we deal with such a King How can we tell when we obey We must be then at great uncertainties and so by consequenue we cannot be safe Furthermore Did it not lye at your door to have preserved your self from Scandal and Fraud Of which you took no care therefore you made no Conscience of of your Oaths and Contracts Again Sir we must suppose you to be a reasonable Creature and if so we must also conclude you ought to have submitted to Reason that you might have at least have had the reputation of a Man and not be signalized with the Character of a filthy Monstrous Beast Hence it is that Tyrants in sacred Writ are called Beasts because they will not submit to nor be governed by the Rules of right Reason In the last place Sir other Men may in their Oaths and Contracts have an Eye to their Profit but you ought to have had an Eye to your Honour and to have had an especial regard thereof Now what can be more Dishonourable in a King than to break his Word falsifie his Faith and violate his Contract And was not your Word Faith and Contract confirmed by a solemn Oath 3. There was a third Doctrine that was much promoted by your Conspirators that although Kings should be strictly bound to stand to their Contracts and their Oaths yet if they were induced to make a Contract and to take an Oath in things wherein they were not well informed or if the Contract and Oath do contain things too much derogating or diminishing their Jurisdiction or Authority Royal or if they have made a Promise that may be prejudicial to their Greatness they may then lawfully break their Contract Faith and Oath This Doctrine was very industriously spread about by your Party especially by your Jesuits and your Jesuited Papists and Passive Obedience Men. But certainly Sir your Conspirators represented your understanding to be but of Irish Standard and to be of the same Scantling with their Honesty Give me leave to ask you this one fair Question Was you not well informed what you were to do and what you did promise to do when you took the Coronation Oath to defend the Protestant Religion and preserve and maintain the Laws of the Realm and by them to govern this great People you took the Charge of Can any Man think Sir that you should be the only Man that was Ignorant of that which all the Nation knew and what your Grand-father Father and Brother had done before you Where Sir was the Dishonour or Blemish that might fall upon you if you had kept your Oath and made the Laws of the Land the Rule of your Government If you had been a good King you would have delighted to have been bound by the Laws of the Land and have rejoyced the Hearts of the People of England and then you would not have at this time have been obliged to France for your Subsistance But Sir God in his just Judgment gave you up to believe these lies and therefore you violated those Laws by which you were Sworn to govern to gratifie your Popish Hellborn Crew they have got you to themselves We have a King that thinks it no Blemish to his Regal Authority to maintain and keep our Laws he judges it no Dishonour to preserve the Liberties of his People and their Honours and Estates You have the reward of your Unrighteousness I wish you much Joy of it 4. Some of the Doctors and Casuists of your Synagogue of Rome say that Princes who may dispense with others may give a sufficient Dispensation to themselves and so revoke their Contracts and break their Oaths for that they have Might and Power and Authority there is no Law no Judge that can compel them to keep their Oaths and observe their Contracts It is manifest that you did take upon you to dispense with others and to give your self a Dispensation too and we own that we were not then in a Condition to call you to an Account but you were Admonished very often by the best and greatest of your Subjects to reform all that was amiss But after all this Admonition you did remain incorrigible then what could we do but make your Actions Cruelties and Tyrannies and Perjury known to the World And we implored the Aid and Help not of the French King but William Prince of Orange who came and suppressed you as an incorrigible Oppressor and Tyrant And your Party appearing bare-faced to murther our King and invade the Kingdom with a Foreign Force in order to enslave us will be treated as Villains and Common Rogues and receive the just recompence of Reward for all their Treasonable Conspiracies against our King and the well established Government of the Kingdom and the Protestant Religion To conclude this point How detestable and odious hath your Perjury made you it hath excluded you from that great Honour to which you arrived and it hath removed you from your native Country in a word it hath clothed you with so much infamy that it is impossible for you to attain that Honour Power and Authority and Majesty you have lost And therefore it is highly unreasonable for you or your Conspirators ever to attempt your Restauration 2. As your Perjur is an argument why it is not only impossible for you to be restored and folly for you to attempt it so in the second place we are Protestants And what can a Popish Apostate do at the head of a Protestant Interest The Popish Queen Mary she no sooner obtained the Crown by a Protestant Interest but she destroyed that very Interest by which she was advanced to the Throne This we well remember Sir and we need not burn our Fingers again the third time Suppose Sir that we should have so little sense as to try you once more and should succeed What Monsters must we appear to the World a Body of Protestants with a Popish Head This doth much astonish me that our little Prick-ear'd Priests of the Church of England have so much admired your Cause and pleaded it with such earnestness when as they cannot but conclude that you must of necessity deal by the Church of England as you would with an impudent Harlot Your Brother was careless in the maintenance of our Religion because he was a Papist though a loose one And can we otherwise conclude but you who have at all times and in all places whereever you have come shewed your self a bigotted Papist will not only discountenance the Protestant Religion but destroy it with all that Zeal that is consistent with the Principles of a perverse