or some such Place he is yours dear Sir I pray take him to you and if he has any Hairs growing on the Palms of his Hands you may safely swear by the Lady of Loretto's old cast Smock that he is an honest Scot and as fit for your turn as the Deel can make him I have much wondred he did not face about in your Brother's time he might and would have serv'd to join with old Maple-face in the Trade of Book-cutting and have given you a Scots Palm for a tickling Sum and that in a more decent way than the Irish Bogtrotter did but the Truth of it is he was as one born out of due time for he came not into your Villanous Cause till Hanging came in fashion on your side and so he was forced for a time to take up his Quarters at the old College he has been an eminent Confessor but has not yet arrived at Martyrdom but in good time the Gallows may have its Due and then good night poor Robin the most excellent Manager of my Lady Wilkinson's Books I sometimes see Tumbledown Dick that is a pretty Fellow I assure you and very well shaped for he is almost as thick as he is long and very acceptable to your villanous Party and understands something of Heraldry as he pretends you put him into a pretty Imployment and made him a Colonel and he would have been Governour of a certain Place but was prevented by a seasonable Imprisonment tho the Rascal never understood any thing of military Discipline but what he learned from a certain Bookseller's Boy with whom he would have been very familiar but the Boy escaped his Love so that my Gentleman had not the Understanding requisite for a good Souldier He was once a Professor of a great deal of English Truth but your Brother and you had a cogent way of bringing over such Cattel to your Cause and Interest There was a Gentleman he would have been sweet upon but he courteously refused the Compliment notwithstanding the Offer of a good Place in the Band of Pensioners and the Enjoyment of his Wife into the Bargain I see him rump along the Court of Requests and straddle like a Pair of Compasses over a Map but looks as if he could not say bough to a Goose He hath sworn to this Government but you know that is nothing to him that could turn a Rogue get a good Place and had turned Papist to hold it had he not been prevented by the coming of our Protestant King for he can turn any thing nay I question not but if he could regain his lost Place he would be a true Williamite and would not for the best Jack of small Beer Whitehall can afford him quit it tho your Life and the â—â—ar Life of the Bookseller's Boy lay upon it I once called upon him for his Testimony to the Truth of Fact but the Villain having without reason abandon'd it forswore himself and so let him go like a Rogue as he is for he that once espoused an honest Cause without a Principle might quit it without a Reason Tho he hath sworn to this Government as several have done he is as much your humble Servant as the best of 'em all and looks very sorrowfully to see his Friends hang so decently and not yet see the desired Effect of so hopeful a Plot. But old Nick and John of Kent can never make him leave his old Conundrums unless the Bookseller's Boy now he is somewhat mannish do buffet him to some purpose this may chance to lay the Devil that hath been sometimes very unruly He is something older than when you left him but his long Face is just where it was and would be as ready to sneer upon you as ever I pray Sir send for him and let him have the Blessing of your Company I understand that when our honest Feversham-men met with you in your intended Passage to France they did not only make you show your Shapes but compelled you to part with your Gold in this lamentable Adventure your Friends say you lost your Crucifix which had in it a Piece of the Wood of the Cross on which our Saviour suffered truly I am mighty sorry for your Loss it seems you are more sensible of the Loss of that Relick than of the three Crowns you for a short time usurped Alas good Man what shall we do to make up this great Loss to you for a Piece of that Cross may easily be worth thirteen Crowns for ought I know But you may see what a trusty Card you had of Odescalchi that he did not furnish you with a Cross since for his Religion and the French Interest you parted with your Crown But now I think on 't I can tell how you may be supplied I understand you are going to Rome and if you repair to St. John of Lateran that was dedicated to St. Silvester a Pope God wot there is a good Gobbet of Christ's Cross where you may have a good Sliver for one of your Irish Crown Pieces and if the Rogues should be sawcy and refuse your Money because it is Brass then I pray repair to the Church of St. Eustathius and there you may be fitted with a Piece to your Heart 's Content where is a considerable Quantity and very good Penny worths may be had but those Rogues it may be may be stubborn and not make you as welcome as you made them the you had old Hodg with you to fiddle them into a good Humour But rather than you should want a good Piece of Wood what think you if we sent a Piece of Tyburn Tree or a Piece of the Pillory I stood upon in â—our time Or if that will not do what think you of a Piece of your Father's Scaffold or of Sir John Fenwick's Come come if you can't meet with what you would you must take what you can If you would send Scotch Robin he might as easily rob some Church or other for the Good of yours or his own Soul as he cheated Madam Wilkinson of her Books If you once get to Rome you may be furnished with Crosses enough but where you will find a Crown God knows unless it be one of Thorns and there you may meet with good Store It may be honest Robin may be afraid to steal then I think you may send him to beg a Piece â—â— this Cross you make such a Stir about I could be content you had a House full of Crosses so we were certainly shear'd clear of you and your Villains But what need you make such a Stir for a little Cross when you have my old Landlady so near you If that good Lady has not been a great Cross to you the Devil 's in the Dice but in my poor Judgment you had more need get clear of these Articles if you can and get a good Name if possible than go whining about for a lowzy Cross I have offered you my Thoughts
which means in a great measure they lost their old brave English Courage When our Seamen grow Effeminate and lose that Courage which with God's Blessing made them victorious England is but in a lamentable Condition 7. You punished or at least discountenanced such Officers as stood for the Honour of the Flag How often did the French refuse it And when some Broad-sides were exchanged and the French came off by the Lee their Ambassador used to complain and the Captain was severely check'd if not turned out For you were converted to such a Degree of Zeal to the French King that we must lose the Dominion of the Seas rather than the Holy Alliance with that Monster should in the least be intrenched and in the Private League your Brother made with that King the Business of the Flag was not mentioned and how indifferent your Brother and you were in the Case when it was in relation to the French is not yet forgotten Article XXV YOU stand charged with refusing the Test that was provided by Parliament and passed tho very unwillingly by your Brother to prevent Popery Truly we could not but laugh in our Sleeves when we saw your self with a sort of Irish Magnanimity quit your great Imployments for a Religion that makes Men Fools and renders them as the Sport of the Age But great Examples go a great way in such Cases When the Popish Party saw your Resolution to quit all rather than your Religion scarce worth the keeping several of them took up the Cross and quitted their Imployments also rather than be false to your Cause and Interest They did not do as your Brother did retain the Popish Religion and yet ever and anon to get a little Money of the Parliament was content to pass a Bill or emit a Proclamation or two to the Prejudice of that Religion his Soul was most affected with if with any Alas good Man he was for securing the main Chance If he had not complied for a little Money the Noble Fleet at Whitehall must have lain by the Walls without rigging to the great Disparagement of the old Trade of Whoring But as for your part you were resolved to give up your self to Rome and the French King which you could not have done if you had swallowed the Test Therefore as a great piece of Self-denial away go all Imployments by which you had ruined the Nation for you question'd not but to carry on your Conspiracy against the Protestant Religion and Interest by the help of your good and loving Brother notwithstanding your acquittal of them And 1. You engaged the French King to a closer Friendship with you by which you were sure not only of his Interest but his Purse to assist you against your Enemies and his even that Parliament that advanced this new State-Purgatory in opposition to you and your cursed Villains by which they had declared themselves the French King 's and your mortal Enemies who both of you drove on so furiously to have that Parliament dissolved in revenge for their laying such a Stumbling-block in the way of your Self and Party For as long as these Purgatory-makers were in being it was scarce possible for you to subdue the Northern Heresy that had so long domineer'd in the World And he and you proposed by that Method to be put into such a Condition as should enable you to give the Protestant Religion such a Blow as it had not received since its first Birth and to give you your due your Design of ruining the Protestant Religion was not ill laid and had you not over-done your Design would not have been so soon undone 2. By your not taking the Test you engaged a Party of Case-hardned Villains to espouse your Cause and Interest and for true proof of their Integrity they entered with you into a strict Conspiracy against our Religion Laws and Liberties For seeing they had met with such a terrible Blow from that Parliament they were resolved to try what they could recover by way of Reprisal from the Dutch and hoped some good would come of continuing the War with them but finding themselves defeated there you and they resolved with the gracious Consent of your Brother that England it self rather than fail should be made a Reprisal Which Design prospered so well upon your Hands that you went on as merrily as might be in your Plous Work and accordingly exposed the Nation to the Fury of the French And had old Clifford had the Grace not to have hang'd himself he would have appeared a very deserving Person and eminent in that Holy Confederacy However you did not fail of your Enterprize in some measure of ruining the Nation because of the Protestant Purgatory that was found out for its Service tho you could not find such a one in all your Romish Library 3. By this Example you engaged a great number of Priests and Jesuits to infest the Kingdom in order to storm the Church of England and would have ravished her poor Gentlewoman had she not held up her Smock to save them the trouble and these Varlots with the Argument of your Stedfastness to the Catholick Religion perverted very many of the lewder sort of People both Male and Female And seeing such a Number brought into your Ark you used to say you doubted not of an Army of Roman Catholicks to establish the Popish Religion 4. You made these Villains thus perverted so bold and daring that they drove on with such Fury as it was scarce possible for a Protestant that was any ways known to be zealous for his Religion and for the Interest of his Country to walk near Whitehall or St. James's without the danger at least of being affronted or beaten Whence it was that even that Purgatory-making Parliament thought they had not done enough to expel that Religion whose Professors in all Kingdoms stuck at nothing to establish their Superstition and to that End have troubled the Peace of the Christian World and had at that time by your espousing their Cause sufficiently strengthned as was feared their villanous Party to the overthrow of the Protestant Interest but resolved to use farther means to prevent the Practices of these Rascals that were so notoriously wicked as not any longer to be born One would have thought this Purgatory-Act should have done the Business yet it was backt with a multitude of Gracious Assurances to the Nation from your Brother a Person of great Integrity and Honour in his Promises to maintain and defend the Protestant Religion for a Testimony whereof observe and remember that the Cliffordian and French Designs were carried on notwithstanding the Test-Act in 1673 74 75 76 77 and part of 78 in as pernicious tho different manner from your first Design whose Method you were forc'd to change by reason of that Act which was so made as to execute it self And the Means of introducing that Religion seeming then at a stand you thought of a new Project
Inclination you had for any Parliament for certain you nor your rascally Party could never expect to see a Parliament more ready to assist you in all your wicked Designs 3. Your Inclination to Parliaments was seen by the Notions and Practices of your Party in relation to Parliaments especially from those of them that knew you best Were not Coleman Beddingfield Whitebread Strange Nevil and several other Villains of your Privy Council at St. James's and did not these study to find out your Inclinations and to imitate you exactly And how these and the rest of your villanous Crew stood affected to Parliaments in general is not yet forgotten by some that knew them Was it not their common discourse that they hoped there would be no more need of Parliaments did not your Popish Priests and Jesuits go from Coffee-house to Coffee-house and ridicule Parliaments Alas Sir this was but the Copy which your Villains took from your own Words who sometimes when they wanted a Supply for their extraordinary Occasions would be seemingly content that a Parliament should meet and sit to raise such a Supply but never to redress Grievances nay some of them have said that a King's Proclamation ought to be sufficient to raise Money and that it would never be well with us till the whole Government was reduced to the Model of that of France 4. Your Inclinations to a Parliament were seen in your daily Breaches upon the Laws and Customs of the Kingdom You knew the Parliament had made an Act of Uniformity and several Laws against Dissenters in 1663 and several Laws were made against Papists in former Kings Reigns yet to oblige the Popish Party you broke in upon all these Laws at once and procured your Brother in the said Year to put forth an Indulgence for tender Consciences not for the Encouragement of Protestant Dissenters but the Increase and Growth of Popery And as a necessary thing to usher in your second wicked War against the Dutch you put your Brother upon issuing forth another Declaration of Indulgence in 1671. Many other Instances I could give of this Matter but this shall suffice Now how this could consist with an innate Love to English Parliaments I must leave to better Judgments 5. Your Inclinations to Parliaments were seen in your Unwillingness to let that Parliament meet and sit in which you had so great a Band of Pensioners To my certain Knowledg Messenger after Messenger has been sent to France with begging Letters to get Money from the French King to put off the Sitting of the Parliament Give your Brother his due he never cared for their Sitting unless it was to get a Supply that he might exercise his Talent you know where without Molestation which he could not well do at a Session of Parliament Sir when the Parliament was by Prorogation to have met in Feb. 1672 3 O what Interest was used to put it off till October following and it had been done if your Party had brought in a Million as they promised but bringing in but 356000 l. there was no help but a Parliament must meet who I think made up the Defect in the Supply you expected from the Popish Party You know the Parliament was put off from Octob. 1670 till Feb. 1672 3. by which long Interval you had a competent Scope for the mighty Work you had upon your Hands that you and the rest of the Architects of our Ruine might be so long free from their odious and busy Inspection till it were finished A drinking Companion of your Brother's telling you that the Session of Parliament drew near and asking you what you thought of the Humour the Parliament-men would be in at next Session you answered you trusted there might be no Occasion for their meeting any more for you had hopes to bring the Cause to bear without a Parliament and took it as a great Affront that the Question was asked You know the old Squire your Brother laughed at you for that Capricio of yours tho your Jesuits thought it a piece of Impudence in that Gentleman so much as to mention the name of a Parliament in your Presence he knowing your Opinion as to that way of Government I must conclude that Man to be at a perpetual War with Mankind that will not admit of the sight of either Friends or Enemies If Sir you could not bear the Congress of your Friends that had been so loyal and bountiful you must certainly be averse to the meeting of a Parliament that would call you and your wicked Party to account for your many traiterous Designs against our Laws and Liberties 6. And lastly Your Inclination to Parliaments was seen in your Opinion of the Affection which your Band of Pensioners did bear to you and your Cause You know Sir you had put your self under the Protection of the French King and therefore it was scarce possible for you to engage any more in a Parliamentary way for all English Parliaments are haters of the French Interest Your Friend Coleman in his Letter to La Chaise Sept. 29. says That in Father Ferier 's time he had inculcated the great danger the Catholick Religion and the Interest of his most Christian Majesty would be in at the next Session of Parliament which was to be in Oct 1673. at which I fore saw that the King my Master would be forced to do somewhat in Prejudice to his Alliance with his most Christian Majesty which I saw so evidently and particularly that we should make Peace with Holland that I urged all the Arguments I could which to me were Demonstrations to convince your Court of that Mischief and pressed all I could to perswade his most Christian Majesty to use his utmost Endeavours to prevent that Session of our Parliament Again you find him pressing him for the Dissolution of the Parliament in order to bring the Confederates to a Peace upon the French King's Terms Then he plainly tells you That the Parliament as it was managed by the then Ministry was both unuseful to England and France and the Catholick Religion In another Part he tells you That Prorogations were but loss of time and a means to strengthen those who opposed the Crown and therefore still presses for a Dissolution which would give the Protestant Religion the greatest Blow that ever it receiv'd since its first Birth So that we may see by your Servant Coleman what Opinion you had of the then Parliament But that we may rivet the Matter I pray Sir take but a Note or two of your own Letter to La Chaise wherein you express your self extreamly pleased That the French King was satisfied of the unusefulness of the Parliament in order to the Service of the King your Brother and his most Christian Majesty In another place you say that his Christian Majesty was of Opinion that the Parliament was neither in his Interest nor yours Pray let me know what Parliament would be in your Interest
Popish Adversaries which they could not do but by inflaming the Differences between the Conforming and Non-conforming Protestants that we might not unite our Forces against the Common Enemy 2. You and your Party by this means weakened the Protestant Interest There can be nothing more plain than this for upon the Dissolution of the Oxford Parliament Swarms of Priests and Popish Conspirators returned home and fell to work to pervert the People to the Obedience and Communion of the See of Rome What Pensions then you got for some and Imployments for others and with what care you maintain'd their Interest and defended their Cause and Quarrel against those that pursued them for their many Treasons against the Government we all saw to our great Sorrow And what help was there since you and your Party had so much countenance from your Brother who was ingaged with you in the whole Popish Conspiracy saving that of his own Life 3. You procured a severe Persecution against Protestant Dissenters which you nor none of your rascally Crew durst do during the Session of Parliament but immediately upon their Dissolution you fell upon them either because they had occasioned the sending of good Men to Parliament or because they were zealous Assertors of the Protestant Religion against Popery and of our English Liberties against Slavery these were indeed high Crimes for which you and your Villains made them smart to the ruine of several thousand Families and had you continued somewhat longer in that glorious Adventure you might have made poor England a howling Wilderness tho when your Brother and you came home you found it a Land flowing with Milk and Honey Nay you had rather all should have run into Confusion than the Dissenters should not be ruined because they could not comply with a few Ceremonies for which your Party had no other Authority than a few Acts of Parliaments 4. You advanced Arbitrary Proceedings in Westminster-Hall where you had a Set of rognish Judges exactly of a size for that turn who had as much Impudence for the Court as they had had Dread of being called to Account in Parliament for all their Villanies And tho it was a standing Constitution that if any Man stood impeached by the Commons of England before the Lords in Parliament no inferiour Court could take Cognizance of that Cause or try him for that Treason in Westminster-Hall for which he stood impeached in Parliament which upon the Dissolution of the Oxford-Parliament was Fitz-Harris his Case yet for all this you found out your Pemberton your Jones and your Raymond that had Impudence enough to try the said Fitz-Harris and condemn him for alas good Men they were not to lose their Places for every small Peccadillo if it were to serve the Government especially to do a Job for you and your Crew 5. Upon the Dissolution of the 3 last Parliaments to alienate the King from his People you and your Party did industriously revive the Memory of the late unhappy Civil War between your Father and the Parliament which was your Brother's Interest as well as the Nation 's to have buried in oblivion the mentioning that unhappy War serv'd only to put us in mind of the sudden Dissolution of 3 Parliaments and the 12 years want of one and what the Villains had done in your Father's Reign and the better to colour your procuring the Dissolution of those three Parliaments you had your Parties abroad to asperse and brand the Members as being of the same Complexion with those that met Nov. 3. 1640 but none of your Cut-throats did ever mention the bloody Massacre in 1641 because begun and carried on by your Father's Command and for his Service But Sir let me tell you that none lived more peaceably under your Brother's Government than they who were engaged in that War on the Parliament's side therefore I cannot tell by what prudent Topick you went when you discourag'd those Men in their obedient living by such villanous Reflections and upbraided them with what the Law had pardoned and they had expiated by their Loyalty since supposing they had been Criminals which yet I think they were not But this is plain beyond all dispute that the Parliament that restored your Brother to his Throne and you to be a constant Plague to this Nation made an Act of Indemnity wherein many things were enacted which they judged necessary for the Settlement of the Nation they prohibited under a Penalty one Man's reproaching another with being concerned in that War for the space of three years after the Date of the said Act sure then they never intended Men should afterwards take the liberty to upbraid one another with it 6. Another ill Consequence of dissolving those three Parliaments was that by this means you made a way to succeed your Brother in the Government If those Parliaments had sat and their Counsels not been defeated by their unexpected Dissolutions you must have been disabled from ever inheriting the Imperial Crown of these Realms and it was plain those Whores and other Traitors that procured the Dissolution of those Parliaments aim'd at your coming to the Throne But Sir I think your Party should have shown so much Ingenuity and Candour as to have owned that all the People of England particularly those that were for your Exclusion were as zealous for Monarchy even in the Royal Line as any of your clamorous Bullies durst for their Ears be I am sure nothing so much endanger'd the legal Monarchy of England as your coming to the Crown which the Wisdom of the Nation foresaw and therefore that it might be preserved resolved to pass you by and let it descend to another Heir Nay Sir if you had continued James Duke of York I am sure you might have lived with more Honour and Comfort than you can propose by putting your Feet under the French King's Table but God having ordained you to be a Plague to us for our Sins I think you let us see what you aimed at in your four Years Tyranny There are some blind Puppies whose Eyes are not yet opened I could wish you had their Company at St. Germains being confident you would soon lick them open 7. Another Consequence of the Dissolution of those three Parliaments was the possessing the King of a Design carried on by the dissenting Party for his Destruction and to introduce a Democratical Power which they called a Common-wealth nay that you might hasten the Dissolution of the Oxford-Parliament you made use of this Lie for an Argument which your Brother was willing to believe that he might have some Pretence for quitting that way of Government There were two sorts of Persons charged 1. The Parliaments themselves 2. Those who stedfastly asserted the Power and Privileges of Parliaments the Protestant Religion and Liberties of the People in opposition to Popery and Slavery 1. These Parliaments were charged with a Design against his Majesty's Person and Government Now Sir let us