under the Sword when Jerusalem was taken by Storm and eleven Hundred Thousand perished by the Sword Famine and Pestilence during the Siege and at the taking of the City Some of the Prisoners were carried to Rome to grace their Triumph Others were slain in divers Places at the Conquerors Will Some were torn in pieces and devoured by wild Beasts Others were compelled to march in Troops against their Fellows and to kill one another to make the Spectators sport The Reliques of this wretched People were dispersed into all Nations under Heaven having no Magistrates of their own to protect them but were and still are altogether at the will and discretion of the Lords of those Countries where they sojourn So that no Nation under Heaven is so vile and contemtible as the Jews 26. Yet here was not an end of their misery For in the Reign of the Emperor Trojan these wretched People rebelled against the Romans in Egypt and Cyprus and falling upon the Inhabitants used unheard-of cruelties towards them whereupon Trajan sent against them Martius Turbo who slew many Thousands of them And fearing lest the Jews in Mesopotamia should break forth into the like Outrages he commanded Lucius Quintus to destroy them utterly who so diligently executed his Will that the Emperor to recompence his service made him President of Judaea Dion 27. After him Adrian the Emperour sent Severus his General against these wretched Jews who by reason of their multitude would not trie it out in a pitched Battle but proceeding more warily and taking his opportunities he by degrees took fifty of their Strong Castles razed nine Hundred and fourscore of their best Towns and slew five Hundred and eighty Thousand of them Besides multitudes that perished by Famine Diseases and Fire so that almost all Judea was made desolate He also by an Edict prohibited the Jews from coming near to Jerusalem or from any high place to look towards the same Dion 28. Salmaticensis testifieth that this Adrian destroyed twice as many Jews as Moses brought out of Egypt That he razed Jerusalem and not far from it built another City which after his own Name he called Aelia and over the Gates of it he placed Statues of Swine which were faithful Porters to prohibit the Superstitious Jews from entrance 29. St. Hierom tells us that in his time on that Day wherein Jerusalem was taken by the Romans you might see decrepit women and old ragged Women and old ragged men and many wretched People but pitied of none with blubbered cheeks black Arms dishivelled Hair howling and lamenting for the desolations of their Sanctuary in their Bodies and Habits bearing and wearing the sad Characters of Divine Vengeance of whom also the Soldiers exacted their Fees for granting them liberty of farther weeping So that they who formerly sold the Blood of Christ and his Members were then fain to buy their own Tears Gods Judgments on Persecutors during the ten Primitive Persecutions under the Heathen Emperors 30. Nero that monster of men that raised the first bloody Persecution against the Christians caused them to be clad in the skins of wild Beasts and torn in pieces with Dogs Others he Crucified Of some he made Bone-fires to light him in his Night-sports In brief such horrible cruelties he used against them as made them to be pitied of their very Enemies But God at last found out this wretched Persecutor For being adjudged by the Roman Senate to be an Enemy to mankind he was condemned to be whip'd to Death To avoid which shameful end he cut his own throat 31. Domitian the Author of the second Persecution against the Christians grew to that prodigious height of Pride that he would be adored as a God But God raised up his own houshold Servants against him who by the consent of his Wife slew him with Daggers in his privy Chamber His Body was buried without honour His memory accursed to all Posterities and his Arms and Ensigns were thrown down and defaced 32. Trajan though a prudent Prince and good civil Magistrate yet by the instigation of Satan and his Instruments raised the third Persecution against the Church For which the vengeance of God and his heavy hand fell upon him For first he fell into a grievous Palsie then lost the use of his Senses and lastly fell into a Dropsie and dyed in great anguish and misery 33. Adrian who raised the fourth Persecution causing ten thousand Christians to be crucified in Armenia and afterwards stirred up a hot and cruel Persecution against them in other places was stricken by God with an issue of blood from his Lungs which exceedingly disquieted and weakened him Then he fell into a Consumption of the Lungs which he spat out continually And in the mean time he was afflicted with an insatiable Dropsie whereupon finding himself so variously tormented he would have taken Poison or cut his throat with a Knife But his Friends preventing him he was forced to die a lingering and painful Death 34. Marcus Antonius Verus who continued the fourth Persecution exercising exceeding great cruelties against the Christians in all parts of his Empire especially at Lions and Viene in Dalphine For which cause the Lord struck him with a grievous Apoplexy of which after he had lain speechless three days he dyed 35. Comodus the Emperor who continued also this fourth Persecution against the Christians was given over to such abominable wickedness that he kept three hundred Concubines and as many boys for unnatural and delectable uses and for his cruelty was poisoned by his Friend Marcia which caused him to fall into extreme and deadly vomiting in which he was slain by Narcissus one of his Chamberlains 36. Severus the Author of the fifth Persecution never prospered after he began the same but fell into diverse calamities And at length was stricken by God with such an extreme pain through all the parts of his Body that being in misery therewith he would fain have poisoned himself but being prevented by his Friends he dyed a languishing and painful death 37. Under him Claudius Herminianus Governour of Cappadocia out of hatred to his wife who was a Christian extremely persecuted and afflicted many of Gods children he was stricken by God with a Pestilential Carbuncle and had Vermine bred in his bowels which devoured him alive after a most horrible manner which extorted a confession from him that those Plagues fell justly upon him for his persecuting the Christians 38. Maximianus the Empreor who raised the sixth Persecution against the people of God especially against the Pastors of the Church was himself together with his Son slain by his own Soldiers 39. Decius who raised the seventh Persecution labouring by all means utterly to destroy the Church of Christ exercising all the cruelty and torments that the wit of man could invent against them For this cause God raised up the Scythians against him who in a bloody battel routed and overthrew his Army and himself and Son
and destroy them The same Council was again held in the house of Hieronimo de Gondy at S. Clou and the time and order of the bloody Marriage Banquet to be served in at the Nuptials of the King of Navar with the Lady Margaret the French Kings Sister almost in the same manner and order as it was afterwards put in execution on Bartholomews Day Anno Christi 1572. In which were most inhumanely murthered of men women and children many also of them being great and honourable Personages of either Sex about thirty thousand And while the Duke of Guise was prosecuting that most inhumane Butchery a Cabinet Council was held in the Queen-Mothers Chamber whether it were not necessary that both the Duke and the rest of his Family who were then present should not be dispatched at the same time in that disorderly tumult King Charles himself never saw good day after this bloody Massacre though the Court-Sycophants had promised him that it should prove the first happy day of his absolute Monarchy For though he had been long drenched in Lust a sin seldom separated from a Persecutor by his ordinary Adultery with a mean Wench of Orleance of whom he begat Charles of Engolism afterwards Earl of Auvern And though he had been trained up by his Mother to see the slaughter of Beasts and ever in his Chases had been accustomed to bath his hands in the Blood of the slain Game which might have served to stupifie his Conscience as they did inflame his fierce and cruel nature yet a very stinging remorse in his Conscience did ever pursue and haunt him after that merciless slaughter brought about chiefly by his own swearing and forswearing by which the King of Navar and the Admiral Coligni were deceived His eyes ever rolled up and down uncertainly in the Day-time with fear and suspition and his sleep was usually interrupted in the night with dismal Dreams and Apparitions like our King Richard the Third of England after he had murthered his two Nephews in the Tower Nay though he survived that Massacre not fully two years yet had he in that time plotted the death of the said Henry Duke of Guise and the removal of the Queen-Mother and her Instruments from the Helm of State But as he a little before the Massacre had poisoned that incomparable Princess for Learning and Piety Joan Queen of Navar So did his Mother or the Duke of Guise by way of prevention or anticipation minister to him his fatal sharp Phisick of which after many and grievous torments he deceased upon Whitsunday Anno Christi 1574. being not full twenty five years old 150. The Queen-Mother the Kings two Brethren the Cardinal and the Duke of Guise that had not only joined with him in his Persecution but encouraged him to it they still survived and for ought men saw were firmly setled in Peace and Prosperity Though Guise might have taken warning by the Death of Claude Duke of Aumal his Brother slain with a Musket-Bullet from the walls of Rochel as he lay in Siege before it Anno Christi 1573. 151. Henry his Brother who succeeded King Charles was not long before chosen King of Poland where he then was but hearing of the Death of his Brother he clandestinly stole away from that Kingdom to return to France In his return the good Emperor Maximilian the Second and the Venetian State earnestly advised him to maintain the former Edicts of Pacification inviolably and not force the Consciences of men in matters of Religion Of the same Opinion also were all his wisest Councellors who saw plainly that the encreasing of the Protestants was the only means now left under Heaven to draw the Pope and his Conclave to yield some Reformation of the Church which it needed exceedingly But his Mother advised him by all means to root out the Professors of the truth by Fire and Sword And others there were of loose and Atheistical Lives as Henry Duke of Guise Lewis the Cardinal of Guise Renalt Villoclare A man saith the incomparable Monsieur de Thou fatally preferr'd to be an attendant upon this King by his Mother and diverse others who perswaded the King to break the aforesaid Edicts for Pacification and never to sheath his Sword till he had utterly ruined all the Protestants in France And the King being of a weak and degenerate Spirit the House of Guise being the Arch-enemies of the Gospel became at length so potent and triumphed so notoriously over the impotency of the King that at last they forced him to seek to those very Protestants for support against whom he had taken a Solemn Oath for their utter destruction Infinite almost were the Treasures which he spent upon his Minions and Pleasures His expenses upon his Dogs only amounted in those times to twenty thousand pounds yearly at the least but most was exhausted in the prosecution of his Wars against the Protestants 152. Guise and his Faction now grown strong and assured of support from King Philip the Second of Spain after he had expelled his King out of Paris and heaped a world of other insolent affronts upon him was drawn by him Anno Christi 1588. to the Assembly then held at Blois He came thither with his Brother Lewis Lorainer Cardinal of Guise and Charles Prince of Ionvile his Son upon the same Royal Assurance of safety with which Charles the Ninth had by his advise deceived the Protestants before the abhorred Massacre in the year 1572. But during this Assembly this Duke of Guise was slain against the Publick Faith given him not only within the Castle of Blois but in that very room wherein sixteen years before he had advised the bloody Massacre of Paris to be executed Two circumstances also do add much horror to the punishment it self One was that he was but newly risen from the bed of his adulterate Lust having not been able before this night to conquer the chastity of a Gentlewoman that waited on the Queen-Mother and therefore was so eager in reaping the fruits of his long Siege that he came not to the Council Chamber till he was oft sent for and even then scarcely ready The other was in the manner of his first wound which was given him in his Throat and immediately caused the Blood so abundantly to stream out of his Mouth as he never had time so much as to call upon God for mercy or forgiveness but spent his last minute in endeavouring to revenge himself upon his Murtherers 153. A while after the Cardinal of Guise his Brother who had been a great Gamester at Cards and Dice perished also in the same Castle of Blois by a violent Death Katherine de Medices the Queen-Mother who had been the chief cause for thirty years together of the shedding of so much innocent Blood being present at the same time in the said Castle stormed secretly that so great an action should be entred into and effected without her advice And when she heard that
in the mean time those very Enemies of the Truth themselves cannot deny that the lives of such as profess this Doctrine which they so hate are full of integrity and virtue And therefore although the profane and bloody Prelates could never be drawn to pity Gods Children much less to love them for their piety and innocency being therein more inhumane than diverse of the Heathen Emperors themselves who upon the information of the virtuous and harmless deportment of the Christians by their Governours of Provinces caused their Persecutions to be slacked and ceased Yet diverse Princes and moderate Pontificians have been moved by the upright and honest lives of Gods Children to further their Liberty of Conscience and to abhor the cruelties which other Papists have practised upon them 175. Maximilian the Emperour son of Ferdinand the Second and Francis the First the French King were hence perswaded to grant unto their own subjects freedom of Conscience 176. The Earl of Egmont and Horn though zealous Papists laboured with the Dutchess of Parma that the Low-Country Protestants might be free from Fines imprisonments and all other manner â—f Persecutions in respect of Religion 177. Under Francis the Second the French King Anno Christi 1560. by the excellent and learned speeches of Charles Marillack Arch-Bishop of Vienne and John de Monlu Bishop of Valence freely spoken before the King himself in behalf of the French Protestants all Persecution against them was restrained The said Bishop among other particulars affirming boldly that a great encrease of the Sectaries proceeded from the ignorance and evil lives of the Bishops who having laid aside the care of their Flocks had for many years made it their business to enhanse their Fines and Rents and to live deliciously and loosely so as there were sometimes forty of them seen at once together wasting their time in Luxury and idleness in Paris the care of their Churches being in the mean time turned over to young and ignorant Fellows And so the Bishops becoming blind and useless the Parish Priests also following the Example of their Diocesans were only intent upon spoiling and vexing their people about their Tithes but were wholly unskilful and negligent in preaching to them And that therefore it was no wonder though diverse of the Nobility as well as of the common people did so readily hearken to new Opinions and Doctrines The same Counsel that the Conscience ought not to be forced nor any to be persecuted for matters of Religion meerly did Michael Hospitalius Chancellour of France give unto Charles the Ninth the same year that he succeded to the Crown after the death of the said Francis his Brother 178. By these foregoing Examples we may plainly see that their self-love and wallowing in all manner of sensuality is the great cause of their hatred to the godly whose lives and principles oppose their wickedness and errors The persecutions of the Arrians against the Orthodox exceeded the cruelty of the Heathen Emperours but this of the Romanists far surpasseth and exceeds them both being joined together 179. Pope Paul the Third left this bloody Legacy to his Conclave when he dyed Anno Christi 1359. as is testified by Mounsieur de Thou For having called diverse of the Cardinals into his Bed-chamber he exhorted them by all means to continue and maintain the Office of the Inquisition as the only means left upon earth to establish the Romane Religion 180. It may cause wonder in any serious man to consider that amongst the Turks Jews Indians yea and the Papists themselves the most zealous strict and precise in their several Religions are the most esteemed and honoured and only in the greater part of the Protestant Churches the most knowing and resolute retainer of the truth and the most strict and godly in their lives are most hated nick-named disgraced and persecuted And Grace which should add a lustre to Learning Riches Honours Noble Extraction and all other outward endowments whether natural or acquired that alone obscures all the rest and brings the contempt not only of great ones but even of the scum and dregs of the multitude upon the persons so qualified 181. Sir John Oldcastle Lord Cobham in the Reign of our King Henry the Fifth being convented before Thomas Arundel Arch-Bishop of Canterbury and diverse other lustful and bloody Bishops spake thus unto them Whilest I was said he a Swearer a Rioter and every way else vicious you never reproved me nor questioned me But since I have embraced this despised Doctrine of John Wickliff which hath taught me how to conquer my Sins and to lead an honest and a godly life now you are enraged against me with malice and seek my destruction 182. The same observation was made by Annas du Bourg that brave Senator of Paris Anno Christi 1559. under King Henry the Second of France That there were many Adulteries Perjuries Oaths and other infamous offences dayly committed and already punishable by the Laws and yet such as were guilty of all or any of those crimes were countenanced and advanced But against the Professors of the Truth all cruelty was practised who were guilty of no other offence but of embracing the truth of the Gospel revealed unto them by the Spirit and Word of God and of discovering by the same Light the horrible vices and errors of the Popish power that so there might follow an amendment 183. Experience sufficiently manifests that Persecution hath never been a way to suppress the Truth and surely it s against the Dictates of Charity and Christianity to enforce the conscience without a full and clear conviction This was confessed by King Henry the Third of France one of the most impotent Princes saith a learned Gentleman that ever swayed that Scepter and the most inveterate Enemy that ever the Protestants had having been instructed to hate betray and persecute them by Katherine de Medices his bloody Mother even from his very cradle yet when James Clement a Jesuited Monk had sheathed a knife in his Bowels and that he saw himself near to the Minute in which he was to give an account of all his cruelties to the supreme Judge of Heaven and Earth he made an effectual speech to the chief Commanders of his Army being most of them Papists wherein he exhorted them to acknowledge and obey the King of Navar then a Protestant as their lawful Soveraign and the undoubted Heir of the French Crown and to know this undoubted truth for the future That Religion which is instilled into the Souls of men by God himself cannot be forced by man 184. The same Truth also and almost in the same words did the Lord Brederode and the other Protestants in the Low-Countries alledge for their just excuse in their joint Apology published in the year 1566 and farther added That if the Papists did conceive their Religion to be the Truth they should instead of Blood Fines Imprisonings and Banishments take the good and seasonable
Second of France was meanly married to Katherine de Medices the Niece of Pope Clement the Seventh during the Life of the Dolphin his elder Brother who was afterwards poisoned And Francis the first his Father deceasing he succeeded and swayd the French Scepter for diverse years with much Tranquility and happiness till loathing the Coiture of his Queen unfit indeed for a Princes bed he grew highly enamoured on Piciavia of Valence a woman of exquisite Beauty and good extraction with whom he long after lived in continual Adultery and was by her enticed to persecute and slay the Protestants Anno Ghristi 1553. that so by the confiscation of their Lands and Goods she might enrich her self and her Kindred This Persecution put a Period to all his former Victories and the next year was followed with the loss of the City of Seins in Italy to the Spaniard The Death of the old gallant General Leo Strozzi by a base hand and the overthrow of his French Army by James de Medices 147. Anno Christi 1556. The violence of persecution was again renewed against the Protestants and the very next year after as before God again gave up the French Army to the slaughter of the Spaniards and Dutch at the Siege and Battel of S. Quintins in which were above three thousand slain upon the place and many of them men of note and soon after the Town was taken by Storm Also Annas Duke de Memorancy himself the Constable of France The Marshal of S. Andrew the Duke of Longevile Gaspar de Coligne Earl of Castilion and Admiral of France and a number others of the great Peers were all taken Prisoners In sum the loss and slaughter was so great and fatal to the French as it well-near equalled that Victory obtained by the Duke of Bourbon at the Battel of Pavia in Italy against Francis the first his Father Yet Henry the Second still shut his eyes against the cause of these losses and having his heart cauterized by his Lusts he not only caused the godly to be committed to the Flames but himself would needs be a Spectator of their Torments as a pleasing sight and had combined with Philip King of Spain his new Son in Law for the utter ruine and final subversion of Geneva Nay but a few hours before his Death Anno 1559. Lodovick Faber and Annas Burgus two Senators of Paris because they had spoken a little freely in defence of the innocency and piety of the Protestants in the open Senate were cast into Prison by his special Command in the Bastile of the same City by Gabriel Earl of Mongomery one of the Captains of his Guard And the persecution of all others of the same Profession grew so hot and furious when the King June the nine and twentieth the same year running at Tilt with the very same Earl of Mongomery and near the very Bastile where the said Senators were Prisoners was struck with a splinter of Mongomery's Spear through the Eye into his Brain and never had the happiness to speak one word after though he survived the wound a few days Nor to acknowledge his former Lust and Cruelty 148. And if we farther look to Gods Hand that followed this Prince in his Posterity it will yet seem the greater miracle For of five Sons that he had all save one dyed without lawful Issue to survive them ad three of them by violent Deaths and in his Posterity ended the Valetian Line the Crown thereupon devolving to the Royal Branch of Cleremont commonly called Bourbon whom his Sons had most bitterly hated and persecuted And of all his five Daughters three dyed issueless and the eldest the Queen of Spain aforementioned that had Issue was cut off by poison Nay his very Bastard Son Henry of Engolism a great Actor in the Parisian Massacre perished also by the stab of Philip Altovit a Florentine his old and mortal Enemy Anno Christi 1586. during the Reign of Henry the Third his Brother 149. Charles the Ninth third Son of the said Henry the Second who succeeded his Brother Francis the Second Anno Christi 1560. had he continued his Reign with as much Mercy and Wilsdom as he began it when he followed the grave and seasonable advise of Michael Hospitalius his Chancellor probably he had lived more virtuously and dyed less miserably But he had scarce raigned two years in Peace and Plenty when Katherine de Medices his Mother desiring to get the Regency into her own Hands by raising combustions in the Kingdom perswaded this her Son to revive those Persecutions against the Protestants which his Father had begun She also reconciled Her self to Charles Lorainer Duke of Guise whom a little before she had feared and hated being a secret Enemy to Lewis de Cleremont Prince of Conde He and the Marshal of S. Andrew having gained Annas Momorancy Constable of France to their party they all conspired together for the ruine of the Truth The Protestants in the mean time seeing the King in his minority held as it were captivated by this Triumvirate took up Arms by the Queen-Mothers own instigation to maintain the Kings Edict of Pacification which was published Anno Christi 1561. commonly called The Edict of January The year following by the instigation of the said Triumvirate not only the Queen-Mother but Anthony de Cleremont King of Navar also who yet dyed a Protestant was drawn on to assail those of the Religion with open force they in the mean time filling the Queen-Mothers ear with these vain Flatteries that she should soon see the utter ruine of all the Hereticks in France From which time that goodly rich peaceable and flourishing Kingdom for almost forty years together some short pauses excepted was filled with Cruelties Ravages Ravishments Murthers Battles Fires Slaughters and all other calamities that attend a civil War In the end of all which the Protestants being increased in their strength and numbers obtained a more firm and advantagious peace than ever they had before whereas those three incendiaries who had been the Authors of all these miseries perished within a few years after by the just Judgment of God in the very act when they were pursuing the godly party For the Marshal of S. Andrew was slain in the Battle of Dreux Annas de Momorancy under the very walls of Paris and Francis Lorainer Duke of Guise was pistoled by John Poltrot whilest he besieged Orleans King Charles seeing that by open force he could not eradicate and destroy the truth nor root out the Professors of it about two years before the hellish Massacre begun at Paris and prosecuted to the perpetual infamy of France in diverse other Cities held a secret Council in the Castle of Blois with Katherine de Medices his Mother Alexander and Hercules called also Henry and Francis his Brothers and Henry Lorainer Heir to the said Duke Francis aforementioned by what means they might best draw the Protestants into their toil to murther
Charles Lorainer Duke of Main was escaped being the younger Brother to the murthered Duke of Guise she presaged to the King her Son the sad Issue of that rash attempt which he as it seems interpreting to be rather the expression of her wishes than her fears and having by many woful experiences seen the effects of her revengful Italian Spirit took a course to pacify her wrath For not long after she there ended her unhappy Life by poison saith Elias Reusner in the same Castle also where she held the first secret and bloody Council for the execution of the aforesaid bloody Massacre Francis her youngest Son dyed before her June the tenth Anno 1584. in the one and thirtieth year of his Age of a violent poison probably ministred to him by some of the Hispaniolized Guisards so that it caused very much Blood to issue out of his Body in several places the sight of which purple streams might well call upon him to remember with what inhumane Pride he trampled upon the bloody streets of Paris in the great slaughter committed upon Gods Saints and Martyrs about twelve years before 154. There now only remained Henry the Third the French King alive of all the first contrivers and principal Executioners of that inhumane Massacre which no Age no Time no Action of the most Barbarous Nations of the world could ever parallel till that horrid Massacre of the bloody Irish upon the English Protestants in the year 1641. October 23. wherin above one hundred and fifty thousand perished in one of the four Provinces of that Kingdom after the most savage and barbarous manner that ever was read of 155. Charles Lorainer Duke of Main was presently upon the death of his Brother made General of the Holy League as they stiled it And Paris it self and in a manner all the Popish Cities beyond the Loiâ— giving up their Names and Forces to that Faction supported from Rome by Pope Sixtus the Fifth and from Spain by Philip the Second 156. When the King saw that neither his acting the Monk with the Flagellators nor his playing the Devil against the Prostants could secure him from a speedy ruine by the violent hands of Rebels He sent to the victorious King of Navar his Brother in Law and to the Protestant Army before whose known valour the Popish Forces hastened back from the Loyer to the Seine Henry the Third pursued them and pitched his Royal Pavilion at S. Clou not far from the Gates of Paris But his former cruelties and persecutions of the godly were doubtless the hinderances of his new expected Victories and the Divine Providence so ordered it that in the very place where the last resolution was taken by himself his Mother his Brethren and others for the speedy Execution of that brutish Massacre about seventeen years before nay in the very same House of Jerom de Gondy and in the very same Room and Chamber saith John de Serres was murthered by James Clement a Jesuited Monk Anno Christi 1589. and in the nine and thirtieth year of his Age. This Assasination was promoted by Pope Sixtus the Fifth by the seditious Sermons of Jesuits Priests and Friars and by the persecution of Katherine Mary Duchess of Mompensier Sister of the slain Duke of Guise who was so horribly transported with malice against the Protestants and with desire of revenge upon the King as she prostitued her Body to that Jesuited Goat to encourage him the more to that horrid murther and by that means to stupify and harden his Soul by his filthy Lust that it might not startle at any other wickedness whatsoever Yet as this King some Months before his Death had altered his former bloody resolution against the Protestants so did the Divine Providence at his Death afford him some hours of Repentance after the bloody knife had been sheathed in his Belly in which time he acknowledged his sin and his error in having been so long miss-lead by his ambitious and malicious Counsellors and his sin in having persecuted his Protestant Subjects and for having enforced the Conscience of many to submit to Popery against the known Truth by threats and cruelty 157. Our Queen Mary began her Reign with the breach of her Publick Faith For whereas the Crown was set upon her head by the Gentry and Commons of Suffolk although they knew her to be a Papist which shews that the godly Protestants whatsoever is suggested to the contrary by Lustful Prophane and Popishly affected Persons are the best Subjects that any Sovereign can be happy in yet she in one of her first Acts of Council took order for their restraint long before the Mass and Latine Service were generally received in London and caused that Diocess to tast the sharpest Inquisition and Persecution that raged during her Reign which was happily shortened by her Husbands contemning her Person and her Enemies conquering her Dominions neither of which she had power either to recover or revenge So that though she dyed not by any outward violence yet was her end as inglorious and miserable as her Reign had been turbulent and bloody She might have taken warning by the sudden and immature Death of King James the Fifth of Scotland her Cousin German who raising a persecution there against his Loyal and innocent Subjects that were Protestants Anno Christi 1539. burning some exiling and imprisoning others and forcing many to blaspheme in abjuring the known truth and all by advice and procurement of James Beaton Arch-Bishop of S. Andrews and David Beaton Abbot of Arbroth his Brother never saw good day after For two brave young Princes his Sons were the year following cut off by untimely ends in their Cradles Wars to his great disadvantage and loss were raised between him and our King Henry the Eighth his Uncle and all things fell out so cross to his haughty and vast mind as that it hastened his Death which fell out Anno Christi 1542. See more of him before Many also are the Examples of Gods severe but righteous Judgments of God upon Popish persecuting Prelates whereof you have store of instances in my two Martyrologies and in my two Vollumes of Examples I shall content my self for the present with two or three which though briefly set down there yet here more largely 158. Thomas Arundal Arch-Bishop of Canterbury having been the successful Traytor by the help of his Reverend Follow-Bishops to estabish Henry the Fourth in the Throne of King Richard the Second his Liege Lord and Cousin German pressed the new King whose broken Title needed the supportments of his Prelates to use his temporal Sword for the destruction of the Disciples of John Wickliff whose numbers at that time were so encreased that they even filled the Kingdom The King assented and having by their cruel instigation shed the blood of many of Gods Saints his Reign proved neither long nor prosperous 159. King Henry the Fifth his Son a brave and marshal Prince succeeding him