fear of too much contradicting thee May it not be as well said in the next Catholick Kings Reign that the Duke of Guise and Cardinal Heads of the League were killed for their Religion also Now no body is ignorant but 't was their Factious Authority which made that jealous Prince design their Deaths though by unwarrantable means The Duke of Guise and his Brother were not killed for their Religion for they were killed by one of the same Religion and one that was bent against the Protestants as much as they Only because he spared the blood of the Protestants your Zealots hated him and so much the more because a Protestant being his Heir he would not declare him uncapable of the Succession For these causes by the Popes consent these Guises whom he called the Maccabes of the Church entred into an Holy League against their King and called in the Succors of Spain and Savoy which they paid for with the Rights of the Crown they maintained a sharp War against him and did all that was in their power to deprive him of his Kingdom and Life Whereupon that jealous Prince as you favourably call him for his own preservation was urged to deal with them as they had dealt with the Protestants from whose case this of the Guises is so vastly different that one would wonder why you should mention it But since you have led us thus far out of the way let us invite you a little farther The Pope Excommunicated the King for this Action and granted 9 Years of true Indulgence to any of his Subjects that would bear Arms against him and foretold as a Pope might do without Astrology that e're long he should come to a fearful Death The Subjects took Arms and earned the Indulgence A Friar took his Knife and fulfilled the Prediction by ripping up those Bowels that were always most tenderly affected with kindness to the Monkish Orders But what joy was there at Rome for this as if the news of another Massacre had come to Town one would think so by the Popes Oration to his Cardinals in which he sets forth this work of God the Kings Murther for its wonderfulness to be compared with Christs Incarnation and Resurrection And the Friars Vertue and Courage and fervent Love of God he prefers before that of Eleazar in the Maccabees or of Judith killing Holofernes and the murthered King who had profest himself to dye in the Faith of the Roman Catholick Apostolick Church he declared to have died in the Sin against the Holy Ghost Pray Sir may it not well be said that Papists cannot live without persecuting Protestants when we see a Popish King stabb'd and damned for not persecuting them enough or for doing the work of the Lord negligently If it were for Doctrine that Hugonots suffered in France this Haughty Monarch would soon destroy them now having neither Force nor Town to resist his Might and Puissance They yet live free enough being even Members of Parliament and may convert the Kings Brother too if he think fit to be so Thus you see how well Protestants may live in a Popish Country under a Popish King nor was Charlemain more Catholick than this for though he contends something with the Pope 't is not of Faith but about Gallicane Priviledges which perchance he may very lawfully do Iudge then worthy Tatriots who are the best used and consider our hardship here in England where it is not only a Fine for hearing Mass but death to the Master for having a Priest in his House and so far we are from preserment That by Law we cannot come within 10 miles of London all which we know your great mercy will never permit you to exact You say if this were true then this Hanghty Monarch would soon destroy his Hugonots now No such consequence Sir for he may persecute them and not destroy them he may destroy them but not so soon Princes use to go their own pace whilst they are upon their legs but if any misfortune throws them upon all four then the Pope gets up and rides them what pace he pleaseth Nor is this Monarch yet so Catholick as Charlemain was if he were he would do as Charlemain did He would be Patron of all the Bishopricks in his Empire even of Rome it self if it were there He would make the Pope himself know the distance between a Prelate and an Emperor He would maintain the Rights of his Crown and not chop Logick about Gallicane Priviledges which you say like a sly Jesuite that perchance he may lawfully do He would call a Council when he pleased to separate Errors from the Faith as Charlemain himself called a Council against Image-Worship which was then creeping into the Church This were a good way of destroying the Hugonots by taking away all causes of strife amongst Christians By any other way than this he cannot destroy them without the violation of his Laws which as they are the only Forces and Towers whereby Subjects ought to be secured against their King so since he is pleased to allow them no other these Laws backt with his puissance are forces enough to secure them against their fellow-Subjects We cannot pass this Paragraph without observing your Jesuitical ingenuity how you slight those favours that you have how you complain of those hardships that you have not and how you insult over the poor Hugonots by comparing with them who generally would mend their condition by changing with you Pray Sir do not Popish-Peers sit in our English Parliaments as well as Protestants in the French or have you not as free access to our Kings Brother as they have to theirs or would you have his Highness to Catechise as the Abbot had the Duke of Glocester perhaps that you would have Otherwise we know nothing but His Highness's Wisdom and care of his Conscience that guards him from you Of the Laws you complain hideously Worthy Patriots consider our hardship And yet those very Laws you complain of you never knew executed in your life and you tell us soon after that you know they never will be For what cause then were they enacted Plainly for this cause to guard the lives of our Princes against your traiterous practices It hath often been urged that our Misdemeanors in Queen Elizabeth's days and King James's time was the cause of our Panishment Your Misdemeanors We cry you mercy if they were no more but that comes next to be argued Whether they were Misdemeanors or Treasons We earnestly wish that the Party had more patience under that Princess But pray consider though we excuse not their faults whether it was not a question harder than that of York and Lancaster the cause of a War of such length and death of so many Princes who had most right Q Elizabeth or Mary Stuart for since the whole Kingdom had crowned and sworn Allegiance to Q. Mary they had owned her
we do verily believe it was never said wisht or thought of by any one that lov'd the King and the peace of the Nation But what trick had this Jesuite in his head when he fram'd this One may guess at his design But let it pass Perhaps he only imagined this to heighten his Fancy that he might think and write the more Tragically toward the end of his Oration We know your Wisdom and Generosity and therefore cannot imagine such a thing nor do we doubt when you shew favour unto these but you will use mercy to us who are both your fellow Subjects and your own flesh and blood also if you forsake us we must say the world decayes and its final transmutation must needs follow quickly Here you un-imagine for the Souldiers and imagine for your self and as if you really thought your self in danger you beg for mercy of the Royalists in such words as your Predecessor us'd to the Rebels Only for the last strain we do not know that any one hit upon it before nor do believe that any one will ever use it again Little do you think the insolencies we shall suffer by Commitee men c. whom chance and lot hath put into petty Power Nor will it chuse but grieve you to see them abused whom formerly you loved even by the common enemies of us both It seems Committee-men are intrusted with his Majesties Authority or that none must use it against Papists for fear of being accounted Committee-men It is time to have done when we are come to the dregs of your Rhetorick When they punish how will they triumph and say take This poor Romanists for your love to Kingship and again This for your long doting on the Royal Party all which you shall receive from us Commissioned by your dearest Friends and under this Cloak we will gladly vent our private spleen and malice Sir though you set your self before to speak Tragically this does rather seem a piece of Drollery But you Have your design either way For no man can read it but he must either Laugh or Shake his head We know my Lords and Gentlemen that from your hearts you do deplore our condition yet permit us to tell you your bravery must extend thus far as not to sit still with pity only but each is to labour for the distressed as far as in reallity his ability will reach Some must beseech our Gracious Sovereign for us others again must undeceive the good though deluded multitude therefore all are to remember who are the prime raisers of the storm and how through our sides they would wound both the King and you for though their hatred to us our selves is great yet the enmity out out of all measure increases because we have been yours and so shall continue even in the fiery day of tryal Protect us we beseech you then upon all your former promises or if that be not sufficient for the sakes of those that lost their Estates with you many of which are now fallen asleep But if this be still too weak we must conjure you by the sight of this bloody Catalogue which contains the names of your murthered Friends and Relations who in the heat of the Battle perchance saved many of your lives even with the joyful lofs of their own Sir in answer to this Paragraph you oblige us to speak plainer what before we only intimated to you It was the policy of the Rebels in the beginning of the late War to harrass the Papists in all parts of the Kingdom One Reason of it was to make his Majesty Odious for the Papists being his Subjects and having none but him to fly to it was certain he would do what he could to Protect them and this would make many Zealous People believe that what the Rebels pretended was true viz. that his Majesty was a Friend to Popery Another Reason was to enrich themselves with their Spoils and to invite the Needy Rabble with a Prospect of Booty among which if they found a string of Beads or a Crucifix it serv'd them upon both Accounts both to fill their Pockets and to justifie the Cause By this Means you were driven into his Majesties Garrisons where besides those that Voluntarily offer'd themselves to his Service many of you were Necessitated to it for a subsistance and many more of you did not serve him at all but only shrowded your selves under his Protection Whereas the Protestant Royallists had no such Necessity for they might have been welcome to the Rebels to do as They did or they might have been Permitted to live quietly at their home But they chose to do otherwise and were hated the more for it by the Rebels because they preferr'd their duty before those Considerations From this account of the Motives that brought us together it is easie to Judge how far we are in Debt to one another First As for them which lost their Estates with us We remember those things were alledged in their Defence which we would have been loth to have admitted in ours But possibly it was not their Fault that these things were Alledg'd nor was it to our Advantage that they were not Accepted For the Rebels having devour'd these Gentlemens Estates fell to ours with the more Colour and never the less Appetite In your Catolague of those Papists which were Slain in the Service you have Omitted some names which we are able to Reckon But perhaps you did this in Design that you might the more excusably Reckon some names that you ought to have Omitted So you begin with my Lord of Carnarvon the onely noble man in your Catalogue who was indeed too negligent of his Religion till he came to be in view of Death But then in his extremities he Refus'd a Priest of yours and Ordered the Chaplain of his Regiment to pray with him If you take this libert of stealing Martyrs we have Reason to wonder that you had not taken in one that would have adorn'd your Cause indeed viz. his Majesty himself since Militiere was not asham'd to publish that that Blessed and Glorious Prince died of your Religion Him alone we might weigh against All that ever was good in your Church But besides we could reckon you a far greater number of Protestants than you pretend to do of Papists that lost their lives also in the Day of Battle They lost them joyfully in hopes to have sav'd his Majesty's Life and 't was an Accession to their Joy if perchance they sav'd any of yours But did they ever intend their sufferings should go for nothing or become Ciphers to yours in the day of Reckoning or that their blood should be made use of to stop the Execution of those Laws for which they shed it Did they think your condition was so deplorable or their own was superfluously fenced and secured against you before the late troubles Pray Sir do not perswade us to believe a thing so
Legitimate Daughter to Henry the Eighth and therefore it was thought necessarily to follow by many That if Mary was the true Child Elizabeth was the Natural which must then needs give way to the thrice Noble Queen of Scots Under Queen Elizabeth you wish your Party had more patience and we think they Needed none for in the first ten Years of her Reign they had no Business for it In all that space of time which was twice as long as Queen Maries Reign though it was fresh in memory what the Papists had done yet not one of them suffered Death till the Northern Rebellion which being raised against her only upon the account of her Religion it appears that She was the persecuted person She had the occasion for Patience and you would have wished Them more Loyalty if any such thing had been in your thoughts But perhaps you wish they had so much patience as not to have discovered their design before it was fully ripe for execution Not unlike For it appears you account Rebellion no fault by this that you say you excuse not their faults and yet you do excuse their Rebellion You excuse them by saying it was a very hard Question whether the Right of the Crown lay in her or in the Queen of Scots for that many thought Queen Elizabeth Illegitimate Pray Sir who Thought it or when arose that Question The Arch-Bishop of York though a Papist in his Speech at the publishing of Queen Maries Death said No man could doubt of the justness of the Lady Elizabeths Title to the Succession The whole Kingdom received her and owned her as Queen more generally and freely than eyer they did Queen Mary The Neighbour Kings of Spain and France and the Emperor offered Marriage to her in hopes to have got the Crown by her The Queen of Scots her self did acknowledge her and claimed nothing more than to be Heir to her and so did King James that was her Successor So that whosoever opposed Queen Elizabeths Right if they were English 'c is apparent they were Rebels and if they were Papists we may guess what led them to it For the first that Questioned her Title was Pope Paul IV. who would not acknowledge her for sundry causes the chief that he alledged were these First Because this Kingdom is a Fee of the Papacy and it was audaciously done of her to assume it without his leave The second was because she was Illegitimate for if her Fathers Marriage were good the Pope must let down his Mill. But after all this his Successor Pius IV did own her and would have done any thing for her so she would have owned him Which because she would not the next Pope Pius V. issued out his Bull against her and deposed her not for Bastardy but for Heresie that is for being a Protestant for which Heresie it was that the Northern men Rebelled against her and many more of her Subjects disowned her and some or other were every foot plotting how to take away her life True it is that some of these pretended to do it in favour of the Queen of Scots But how if that Queen had not been a Catholick or Queen Elizabeth had not Been thought Illegitimate would a legitimate Protestant have been so contended for or would a Popish Bastard have been rejected by them Pope Gregory XIII had occasion to consider this For his Holiness had a Bastard of his own to provide for and another of the Emperors no doubt good Catholicks both of them To one he gave the Kingdom of Ireland and set out Stukely with Forces to win it for him To the other he gave the Kingdom of England and gave him leave to win it for himself But what was all this to the thrice Noble Queen of Scots Possibly she might have been preferred to have married one of the rwo but then it must have been expresly with this condition That her Son King James who was a Heretick should have nothing to do with the Succession When their bubbles were broken and she was dead all her Right descended to King James who being as little to the Pope's mind as Q. Elizabeth was Sixtus V. only took no publick notice of Him but he proceeded with all his might against Her He curst her afresh and publisht a Croysade against her and gave the whole Right of Her Kingdoms to Philip the II. King of Spain But neither that Popes Bounty nor his three Successors Blessings nor the Spanish Arms nor the Italian Arts for no way was left untried could ever prevail against Gods Providence which till the end of her days kept that Queen always fast in her Possessions At last Pope Clement VIII seeing there was nothing to be done against her resolv'd to let her go like a Heretick as she was and to take the more care that another Heretick should not succeed her For which cause he sent over two Breves into England one to the Clergy and the other to the Laity commanding them not to admit any other but a Catholick though never so near in Blood to the Succession that is to say in plain words not to admit King James to Reign after Queen Elizabeths death So 't is clear that your Popes never stuck at that hard Question that you speak of Let us see what our Country-men did who as you say suffered for it in those days They did like obsequious Members at every turn as their Head directed them They acted for the Papal Interest as far as they were able They made the House of Scotland the Cloak for it as far as it would reach And it reacht pretty well as long as the Title was in Queen Mary But after the Title came to be in King James Pray Sir name us those Papists or but one single person of them that either died or suffered for Him and then you bless us with a discovery What then were they idle for so many years as past between the commencing of his Title and the Death of Queen Elizabeth Nothing less For they were as busie as Bees in contriving how to hasten her Death and how to put him by the Succession And if it were for his Service that they would have destroyed Her pray for whose service was it that they would have defeated Him but that will be known by the story Soon after his Mothers Death was the Spanish Invasion which would have defeated him with a Witness if it had sped and yet our Papists both Negotiated it and writ in Defence of it Afterwards in Scotland your Jesuites procured the Earl of Huntley and others to raise a powerful Rebellion against him In England they endeavoured to perswade the Earl of Derby to set up a Title to the Crown who honestly revealing it was poisoned soon after according to the prophetical threatning of Hesket whom they had made use of to perswade him When
after they had vastly paid for their security and quiet We have answer'd your Instances of the French Protestants and the Dutch Papists and your unjust upbraiding us with the greatness of your Duty and with our want of compassion and pity And yet as if all these were Unanswerable you come over with them again and again These barbarous people you say sequester none for their Faith but pray what did you when you govern'd the Civiliz'd World you hang'd and burn'd men for no other cause but their Faith and this you did with abundance of Civility so it seems we may be worse than Barbarous and yet much better than you But that were little for our credit unless we had this to say more that not the worst of you suffers any otherwise than by known Laws or any more than is of pure Necessity For we hold it Necessary to maintain the Authority of the King and the Peace of the Nation If you call any thing Religion that is contrary to these must we therefore alter our Laws or ought you to mend your Religion You put the Effigies of Cromwel upon any thing that you would render odious as your Inquisition bedresses one with Pictures of Devils whom they are about to burn for his Religion For such Disguizes are apt to work much upon the weak judgements of the multitude But he must be very weak indeed that cannot perceive the wide Difference between the Edicts of Cromwel that were design'd to Ruine men for their Loyalty and those Laws that our Princes have made to Restrain them from Treason and Rebellion We have no other study but the glory of our Sovereign and just liberty of the Subjects Sir if we may judge by your Works there is nothing less studied in your Colledge Nor was it a mean Argument of our Duty when every Catholick Lord gave his voice for the Restauration of Bishops by which we could pretend no other advantage but that 26 Votes subsisting wholly by the Crown were added to the defence of Kingship and consequently a check to all Anarchy and Confusion This is no Argument of Your Duty for sure You are no Lord. Nor is it likely that these Lords follow'd Your direction in the doing of this Duty 'T is morally impossible but that we who approve of Monarchy in the Church must ever be fond of it in the State also If you mean this of Papists in General that which you call morally impossible is Experimentally True For in Venice Genoa Lucca and the Popish Cantons of Switzerland where they very well approve of Monarchy in the Church yet they are not fond of it in the State also But if you mean this of the Jesuitical Party then it may be true in this sense that you would have the Pope to be sole Monarch both in Spirituals and Temporals Yet this is a misfortune we now plainly feel that the longer the late Transgressors live the more forgotten are their Crimes whiles distance in time calls the faults of our Fathers to remembrance and buries our own Allegiance in eternal oblivion and forgetfulness We can now allow you to complain and commend your selves without Measure having prov'd already that you do it without cause My Lords and Gentlemen consider we beseech you the sad condition of the Irish Soldiers now in England the worst of which Nation could be but intentionally so wicked as the acted Villany of many English whom your admired Clemency pardoned Remember how they left the Spanish Service when they heard their King was in France and how they forsook the Employment of that unnatural Prince after he had committed the never to be forgotten Act of banishing his distressed Kinsman out of his Dominions These poor men left all again to bring their Monarch to his home and shall they then be forgotten by you or shall my Lord Douglas and his brave Scots be left to their shifts who scorned to receive wages of those who have declared War against England To swell up the Bill of the Merits of your Party you take in the Services of the Irish and Scottish Soldiers as if they were a part of the English Catholicks whom you profess to plead for in the Title of your Apology And that you may seem to have done this in kindness to Them and not to your Selves you exhort us to Consider them in such terms as if You were the first that had ever thought of them God forbid but they should be consider'd as they deserve and he is neither good Christian nor good Subject that would grudge to contribute his proportion toward it But you seem to have a farther drift in the mentioning of these Loyal Irish. For you immediately mingle them with the worst of that Nation namely with those infamous Butchers that in times of as great Peace and Liberty as ever that Nation enjoyed and in the Name of that gracious King under whom they enjoyed these cut the throats of above an hundred thousand of his Protestant Subjects of all Sexes and Ages It was so black a Villany that You the Apologist of such Actions knew not how to mention in its proper place viz. after the French Massacre because you had not wherewith to colour it And yet being conscious to your self that this lay as a blot upon your Cause you thought fit to place it among these brave Men as if their Names would mend the hue of an Action that will make the Names of all that had to do in it look black and detestable to Mankind throughout all Generations Nor do you deal much better with our Royallists themselves of whom you do not stick to affirm that in their admired Clemency and if this were true who would not admire it they pardon'd Many English whose Acted Villanies were so wicked that the worst of the Irish Nation could be but Intentionally so wicked in their Villanies How commonly is it said that the Oath of Renouncing their Religion is intended for these which will needs bring this loss to the King and you that either you will force all of our Faith to lay down their Arms though by experience of great Integrity and Worth or else if some few you retain they are such whom necessity hath made to swear against Conscience and who therefore will certainly betray you when a greater advantage shall be offered By this Test then you can have none but whom with Caution you ought to shun And thus must you drive away those who truly would serve you for had they the least thought of being false they would gladly take the advantage of gain and pay to deceive you You proceed concerning the Irish and Scottish Soldiers in these words How commonly is it said that the Oath of Renouncing their Religion is intended for them Pray Sir can you tell who are said to intend this For if they are such as have no Authority it is frivilous If they are such as have Authority it is false And