insisted upon both in this and the Lord Russel's Tryal and attested by so many Witnesses is so sufficiently answered by himself in the Lord Russel's Tryal and is so natural for any Person to conceal his own Guilt by Vouching the Innocency of his Accomplices that it looks like a very great Weakness in Mr. Sidney to repeat a thing which so easily brings its own Answer and is a greater Weakness or however wilfulness in those who will believe it lessens any thing of the Truth of the Lord Howard's Testimony For let any Person put himself under the Lord Howard's then Circumstances and his Heart will tell him he would have done the same thing in all Companies and not have run to the Earl of Bedford and before so many Witnesses have proclaimed his own Guilt when as yet he did not hear he was accused or his Name brought upon the Stage But Mr. Sidney forgot the most Material Witness against him which was himself his whole Life his Words his Actions his Writings evidence sufficiently his Guilt for 't is no wonder to see him in a Conspiracy who thinks a Revolt from the Magistrates cannot be called Rebellion and who hath Actually set in Judgment upon his Natural Liege Lord and Soveraign and helped to bring his Sacred Head to the impious Stroke of the Executioner And for the Bench which he saith was filled with such as were Blemishes to the Bar. I think the Tongue of Traytor not the least Slander and it is their Glory not their Shame that their Faith and Loyalty to their Prince and Country in opposing such as Mr. Sidney and his Common-wealth Faction when they began to be so Rampant as to be thinking of a Revolt from their Magistrates and hatching this Conspiracy are those Blemishes which Mr. Sidney is so much offended at and which have deservedly removed them from the Bar to the Bench. But that Period as before was intimated was intended through the Judges Coif to strike at the Crown For saith he lest the means of Destroying the best Protestants in England should fail the Bench must be filled c. Every Body knows who fills the Bench and 't is easie to Guess the meaning of this Malicious Paragraph but the barking of the Dogs does not hurt the Moon nor the Fools or Mad-man's throwing Dirt at it blacken the the Sun but returns upon the Face of him that throws it But if Mr. Sidney and such as he are the best Protestants bless me God! what a sort of People are the worst If Traitors Rebels and King-killers come to be the only Saints we are e'en in a fair way to set up the God of this World and the Moloch of the Old Cause for the Object of Religion for the Devil was the first Rebel against Monarchy and a Murderer from the beginning and truly the Old Cause is as like him as if She had been spit out of his Mouth And by the last Prayer of this Paper which is the third thing Considerable one would think this Idol of the Old Cause was the Object of Mr. Sidny's Religion for he may be a Turk a Jew or a Papist for any Account he here gives us of his Faith or Religion which is usual for dying men to do Protestant is a large Denomination for there are Presbyterian Independent Anabaptist Quaker and a matter of a hundred and fifty more sorts of People that call themselves so certainly he was not of the Church of England but it is to be supposed he was one of the best Protestants who were therefore as he tells you to be destroyed so that from hence we may infer that Traitors are Mr. Sidney's best Protestants which being as the Logicians say simply converted is that Mr. Sidney's best Protestants are Traitors Now let which of the dissenting Brethren like him upon these Terms take this Martyr for the Old Cause into the Calendar of their Church and much good may the Reputation they will get by it do them But because he prays so heartily for this Old Cause that he forgets to forgive or pray for this Enemies the King and Government as Christianity Commands and the true Martyrs always did Let us see the true Visage of this sweet Mistress of his Soul which he so Zealously recommends to God and the World praying God to defend his own Cause to defend those that defend it stir up such as are Faint direct those that are Willing confirm those that Waver And that we may take a short survey of it This Old Cause in which he was from his Youth ingaged was that Pretence of Reformation of Religion Defence of the Liberty of the Subject and Priviledge of Parliament which the Puritan Faction had been so long hamering in the latter end of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth the whole Reign of King Iames and which being accoutred with all her Formalities was set up in the Reign of King Charles the First like Nebuchadnezar's Golden Image in the Plain of Dura and all people Commanded to fall down and Worship 'T was this that taught the Scottish Presbyterians first to rebel or as they called it to Petition their King with Swords in their hands It was the Old Cause which with the Hypocritical Promises of making him the most Glorious King in Christendom wrought upon the most excellent Temper of King Charles the First to pass the Act for perpetuating the Factious Parliament of November the 3 d. 1640. It was the Old Cause which by popular Tumults brought the Noble Earl of Strafford to the Block It was the Old Cause that inspired the Schismatical Rabble to those Insolencies and Tumults which first banished the King from the City of London It was this Cause that seized the Kings Navy Forts Magazines and the Militia of the Kingdom that wrested the Sword out of his hands and then turned the point of it against his Royal Breast It was the Cause that purged the two Houses of all their Loyal Members and that inspired the remaining Dregs of a Parliament to raise Arms Men and Money against the King It was the Cause that led those brutish Rebels into the Field where with flying Colours Drums beating Trumpets sounding Cannons roaring they fought with their Soveraign It was this Old Cause that taught these Rebels to enter into Protestations Vows Covenants Confederacies and Associations contrary to their repeated Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy It was the Cause that under Pretence of Reformation abolished the Apostolical Government of Episcopacy turned St. Paul's Cathedral into a Horse-Guard robbed and defaced Churches turned the Lawful Pastors out of Doors and Committed the poor Sheep to the Care and keeping of the Wolves of Sectaries Schismaticks and Hereticks It was this Cause that first brought up those Taxes Excise Monthly Weekly Assessments before wholly unknown to us and our Ancestors It was this Cause that set up the Bankrupt publick Faith to pick the Pockets of the Nation to maintain this Bloody and unnatural Rebellion It was this Cause that murdered the admirable Prelate the Archbishop of Canterbury and so many of the Nobility and Gentry and in Conclusion that Illustrious Martyr King Charles the First before the Gate of his own Royal Palace of White-Hall It was the Cause that sequestred plundred oppressed the whole Nation with free quarter Military and the most Arbitrary Government of the Sword that consumed Forty Millions of Treasure and above two Hundred Thousand Lives that subverted Monarchy and Parliaments Church and State that set up a Democratick Common-wealth that rolled us from that to the absolute Tyranny and Slavery under the Usurper Oliver whose Will was the only Magna Charta and Law of the three Nations It was this same Old Cause that banished our present Soveraign and the whole Royal Family that Bandied the Government from Pillar to Post till we were all in Confusion from which Providence rescued us by the Miraculous Restauration of his Sacred Majesty under whose Auspicious Raign how happy were we till this Old Cause began again about Coll. Sidney's return into England in the Year 1677 to Discompose the Peace and Tranquility both of Church and State and by this happily detected Conspiracy to indeavour the Ruin of them both In short this Old Cause of Mr. Sidneys is the Daughter of the old Serpent who was for a Reformation in Heaven made the first Conspiracy against the Almighty Monarch She is the Mother of Sedition Hypocrisie Perjury Rebellion Murder Rapine Sacriledge War Slaughter Tyranny Oppression Slavery Confusion and Ruin and if these Qualifications and all that can be said that is Wicked and Impious on this side Hell which may litterally to a tittle be Justified against Her be not sufficient to recommend this Old Beldam to the Eternal Detestation of all Mankind Lucifer Belzebub Satan and all the Infernal Crue may in due time hope too to be recommended to the World for certainly they are the Great Patriots of this Old Cause For let Men call themselves by what Names they please best Protestants or true Protestants or what other Titles of Reputation they can Coin to gain Popular Applause the Rule of the Eternal Son of God will be of perpetual Truth and Conviction which assures us from what Stem we ought to derive the Pettegree of all such vaâ—â— Pretenders to Sanctimony and this Old Cause That most infallibly they have the Devil for their father who do his Works FINIS
even with murdering his Vice-gerants in Pageantry and that it is dangerous jesting with the Mis-fortunes of innocent Majesty during the late execrable Rebellion when Justice was turned into Worm-wood and Loyalty was accounted the most Capital Offence one Mr. Wimpew an Orthodox Loyal Minister of the Church of England was as Thousands more of the Clergy then were sequestred and ejected from his Benefice of Totnam-High-Cross and one Lewis a Factious and Pragmatical Presbyterian intruded into his Living This Lewis being a notable Zealous stickler for the Cause was so high in Reputation with many great Men of the Rebellious Faction that they intrusted him with the Education and Principling of their Children and among others it was the unhappiness of the late Lord Russell to be trained up under his Care and Government and that vile Wretch that he might enter their tender and easie Minds with those Traiterous Impressions which were then esteemed those Truths which Mr. Sidney now saith pass for Treason to divert his Scholars he composed a Farce wherein he and they were all Actors there was all the Formalities of a High Court of Justice President Sollicitor Witnesses c. the Criminal was an Old Shock-Water-dog upon whom the impudent Villain bestowed the Name of Charles Stuart who was there Arraigned Tryed Condemned and Executed by cutting off his Head The Profligate Wretch thereby with the highest Degree of contempt instilling the deadly Poyson of the Lawfulness of Deposing and Murdering Soveraign Princes and inspiring those tender Minds with mean contemptable Thoughts of Majesty the most sacred thing on Earth as of the Murdering a King were no more then the cutting off a Dogs Neck I confess I am not much addicted to that Presbyterian Humour of making every Extraordinary accident that happens to any Person a Judgment and presently according to their Proud Familiarity with Eternal Decrees and Purposes Assigning Reasons for the strange Dispensations of the Omnipotent Will but yet I cannot but make some such Reflections as the foregoing when there appears such a Resemblance between the Crimes and Punishments And however since we live in such an Incredulous Age wherein Men can very difficultly be persuaded to believe even their own Eyes and Ears especially the Factious and Dissenting Party who live like Moles continually working under Ground to undermine the Government but have no Eyes to see the brightest Beams of Truth I think it is a fair Presumption to introduce the Belief of Mens future Actions when it makes it apparent that they bear an exact Conformity to their very almost innate Principles for it is a most rational Inference that if Mr. Sidney by his own Confession was from his Youth ingaged for that Old Cause which was the most damnable Conspiracy that ever was formed not only against the Person of the King then Reigning but against the very Monarchy and the Fundamental Constitution of the Government and Mr. Sidney is known to Persist in and obstinately adhere to the very same Principles I say it makes it more then probable that he should be ready upon the first opportunity to ingage himself in the very same Counsels and with such Confederates as in his opinion might again remount that Old Cause into the Triumphant Chariot of Government which could never be Effected but by the Rush of the King and Monarchy And if my Lord Russel was so early taught the Doctrine of Contempt and Murdering Kings and hath in the following Course of his Life ever since he Writ Man and entred upon Publique Affairs Associated himself with those who were Notoriously disaffected to his Majesties Person and the Government both in Church and State if he made himself one of the Popular Patrons of the Discontented Factious and Disaffected Party if in all things of Publique concern he set himself in the Front of those who for these late Years have opposed the King and by giving Countenance to the Dissenters the known Enemies of the King and Government indeavoured the Subversion of it no Rational Man can look upon it as strange or unaccountable upon the detecting of a Conspiracy against the King and Government to find him ingaged in it I confess it is much more Surprizing to me that after the clearest Evidence in the World of this wicked and damnable conspiracy so fortified with the falling in of so many Circumstances known to the whole Nation there should be found any unbelievers so Audacious as not only to doubt but to endeavour to perswade others to a disbelief of it And truly they who do of which there are too many have a greater Proportion by far of Malice then either of Honesty or Policy for certainly whoever indeavours to perswade the Nation that this Conspiracy is false or those who have fallen by the Stroke of Justice dyed Innocent declares himself an open and avowed Enemy to the Kings Life Person and Government all which were at Stake and to Ridicule this Plot as a Sham and Forgery is the best way they can possibly contrive to cover another and to prepare the People for it by perswading them into the worst Opinion that can possibly be entertained of any King or Government viz. That they are so far from preserving that they lay Trains to destroy the best of their Subjects But let these confident Traiterous Bigots for the Old Cause be assured that they do but lay Snares for themselves and that one time or another their busie Tongues will be their Ruin for Kings have long Hands and the Justice of God and Men will certainly find out and punish these Common Enemies of our Peace the Tranquility of the Nation and the Safety of the best Government under the Sun But there is nothing in the World more remarkable in my opinion nor more Convictive then that the Conspirators themselves have every Man of them given Evidence of the Truth of it in their last and dying words Nay even those Papers which have been written with a perfect design to put a Fucus and Varnish over the ugly Face of that deformed Hag the Old Cause have yet contrary to their Intention given the clearest Proof of the Truth of this Execrable Conspiracy insomuch that there needs little more to manifest their Guilt and the Justice of their Sufferings then those very Papers which were by them intended as a Vindication of their pretended Innocence Much of this Nature hath been made appear by several Hands both upon the Speech of the late Lord Russel and this Paper of Mr. Sidney's I shall not therefore take it in Pieces and Examine every Period but rather indeavour to shew what the main Scope and Design of the Writer was and truly this is to be said of him that his Life and Death were all of a Piece for he Lived a Rebel and a Regicide and 't is no wonder to find a Person that is such out of Principle dye a Traytor in Fact nor is it strange that he who breathed nothing but Hatred
of Crowned Heads should indeavour to spread the Poyson wherewith his very Soul was infected and with his Expiring Words convey the Contagion unto others but like the Viper the most Noxious and Poysonous Animal whilest living there is an excellent Counterpoyson to be found in this Dying Speech For the very End Scope Aim and Drift of this odd Address to Men Brethren and Fathers Friends Country-men and Strangers is first an appeal ad Populum that Soveraign Tribunal of all People Kindreds Languages Tongues and Nations which his crazed Imagination had set up in his Fancy as the dernier resort the last High Court of Justice from which like that whereof he was a Member there was no Appeal being the ultimate Authority of Mankind in Nature 2 ly It is an Arraignment of the Justice of the Nation as pressing the Innocent and denying Justice which is in Effect a most severe Charge against the King who is the Fountain of Justice and a calling upon the People with the powerful Voyce of a dying Martyr for their Cause to re-asume their Soveraign Power of judging their Soveraign for the Breach of that Fundamental Contract which he wildly talks of Thirdly It is a magnifying of the Old Cause to make the People inclinable to it An Enthusiastick Incentive to a new Rebellion upon the Old score of Reformation And what is the Result of all this but to set us all together by the Ears to Embroyl these Nations again in all the Calamities of a Civil War and to reduce us to those deplorable Extremities of unavoidably falling either under Tyranny or Anarchy the two greatest Mischiefs that can possibly happen to any People Indeed he makes a mighty flutter about those Treasonable Papers found in his Study as being only some private things written in Answer to Sr. Robert Filmer's Book which yet remains unanswerable and lays down that wild Position of the Soveraignty of the People as the Foundation of all Governments which is not only in it's own Nature perfect Non-sense but destructive of all Government For it confounds the Relata of Governors and Governed making the Governors and Governed the same which is an Error contrary to the most easie and natural Logick For I may as well be said to be my own Father and my own Son too as that I or the Collective Body of People or Nations can be said to be at the same time the Sovereign Power and yet Subjects to that Soveraign Power And besides this lays an eternal Foundation for perpetual Changes and Alterations in Government for by this Position which how true a Protestant soever Mr. Sydney was is the perfect Spawn of Bellarmine and the Popish Doctors all Governments ought to be Elective and there can be no such thing as any Heriditary or successive Right to Crowns and Governments And then there will never fail to be as many Aspiring Pretenders to the Delegation of this Sovereign Power as there are Popular and Ambitious Men who will not have the Patience to attend the Regular and common Course of making a Vacancy in the Throne but will indeavour to remove the present Possessor by all ways per fas nefas to instate themselves in the Sovereign Authority This we see in the declining State of the Roman Empire when the Military men undertook this Sovereign Power of chusing and creating Emperors which is exactly the Case before us and in this Principle as in the very Materia Prima the Mother Cause is to be found the Root of all the Rebellions Plots Conspiracies Faction Sedition and Disorders with which this Anti-monarchical Faction have of those late Years so miserably distracted these three Kingdoms which if there were no other Arguments to confute it is certainly sufficient to render it detestable not only to Sober Wise and judicious Persons but to all Degrees Estates and Conditions of Men who must of necessity feel the Dismal Effects of this Horrid Principle wherever it prevails But after all this Popular flourish of Mr. Sidneys and tickling the People with their imaginary Sovereignty over their King after all his mighty Care for settling the Title of Kings upon the sure Basis of being the willing Nations and Peoples Trustees and Slaves to their Subjects and after all his Traversing his Ground and fencing off the Treason while he tells us that what was said in his Book of Nero Domitian c. That it was applyed to him by Invendo's he very fairly slurs his false Die upon the Credulous and tells us not a Word of what was proved upon him at his Tryal out of the same Papers and concerned the King without an Invendo viz. That the General revolt of a Nation from its own Magistrates is not Rebellion that the Power of calling and dissolving Parliaments is not in the King Tryal of Algernon Sidney Esq Pag. 26. Here 's the King dethron'd and no way to help himself for this Revolt of the People he says can never be called Rebellion here 's Treason by Whole-Sale without Inveâ—â—do's or Constructions at which he seems to be so much offended as contrary to the stat 25. Ed. 3. Sidneys Paper pag. 3. And if this be not plain down right Treason without any straining or Construing and Writing it an overt Act and far beyond Compassing or imagining which that Act makes Treason truly People may both do and say what they will break the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy without Perjury call Parliaments without the Kings Writ continue them against his Will and not dissolve them but at their own Pleasure they may shake off all Obligations of Obedience Associate Covenant Arm Fight against him Subdue him Dethrone and Murder him if they prosper in the Attempt and yet be no Rebels for all this is included in this Teeming Expression of Peoples Revolting from their Magistrates which he saith can never be called Rebellion and by consequence is no Crime but on the contrary Lawful and Commendable Nay this is not a Fiction a Story of a Possibility of such Consequences from this Principle but a Series of sad Truths all which were to the Everlasting Infamy of the Actors of which Mr. Sidney was no small one having from his Youth by his own Confession been ingaged in them Acted here in these Nations upon the late King and his Loyal Adherents by those Bloody Rebels Traitors and Regicides this Gentlemans Confederates and Accomplices in the late Execrable and dreadful Rebellion In the next place the Paper aims chiefly at his own Vindication which he indeavours by lessening the Reputation of the Witnesses the Jury and his Judges Now though the Printed Tryal is a sufficient Vindication of the whole proceeding which was Managed with much Coolness and Temper as any Tryal I have seen yet it is worth our while to observe that such as were Saints whilest Traytors and Conspirators become Devils and Perjured when once they become Discoverers and Witnesses and that Point of the Lord Howard so much
REFLECTIONS UPON Coll. Sidney's ARCADIA THE OLD CAUSE BEING SOME Observations Upon his Last PAPER Given to the Sheriffs at his Execution LONDON Printed for Thomas Dring at the Sign of the Harrow at the end of Chancery-Lane in Fleet-Street 1684. REFLECTIONS UPON Coll. Sidney's LAST PAPER THere can certainly be nothing which doth more clearly Evidence the truth of an Almighty Providence by whose wondrous Power the whole System of this Lower World is guided and strangely directed then those remarkable Retaliations of Divine Vengeance which are most commonly in this Life repaid to those unfortunate Persons who have been guilty of Notorious and Flagitious Crimes It is the common Observation that Murder the blackest of all Sins will out And if Common Murders of inconsiderable Persons have afforded such remarkable Instances of wonderful Discoveries whereby the Bloody Actors have been as it were by the immediate Finger of God brought to the deserved Stroke of Justice how much more reasonable is it to expect that when wicked Men advance to those daring Heights as to commit the most Execrable of all Murders upon the Sacred Persons of Sovereign Kings who are Gods anointed Gods Vice-gerents and Representatives and as he himself styles them Dij hominibus I have said ye are Gods that Vengeance should rouse up its Almighty Arm to punish the Criminals For if Kings bear the most immediate Character of the Almighty Monarch of the Universe the Sacrilegious Hands that are lifted up against them do so far as it is in the Power of their Feeble Malice offer Violence to that Supreme Majesty whose Substitutes they are and who hath intrusted them with the Government of the People and Nations over whom he hath placed them It was a smart salutation with which that ill woman Iezebel accosted the furious Iehu at his Triumphant Entrance into Iezreel after he had clear'd his way to the Throne by the Death of his Soveraign Had Zimri Peace who slew his Master And though the Execution which he did was by the immediate direction of Heaven and he and his Posterity to the Fourth Generation were by Promise secured as well against the Crime as the Punishment of Traitors and Usurpers yet whoever will or hath consulted the Histories of the World will easily receive Satisfaction that very few of those Audacious Men who have by Treasons and Murders attempted to Establish their own Usurpations upon the Blood and Ruin of Lawful Kings and Governments have escaped the Signal Stroke of Divine Vengeance and humane Justice and indeed who ever writes his Title to a Crown in the Blood of his Lawful Prince and Predecessors does at the same time set his own Head and Crown at the same rate to the next bold adventurer for the Prize and Purchase There cannot be a clearer Demonstrative Instance then in this very unfortunate Gentleman Mr. Sidney For this very Gentleman was not only an Actor in that Unatural Rebellion which with the Effusion of so much Blood was carried on against his late Majesty by his Traiterous and Disloyal Subjects of both Houses assisted by the Presbyterians Independents Anabaptists and other wild Enthusiast Dissenters from the Church of England but he was also one in that infamous Commission for the pretended High Court of Iustice by which they Tryed Condemned and put to Death one of the most Excellent Men and most admirable Princes for Learning Virtue and Piety that ever wore a Royal Diadem He was not only Named in this Execrable Commission but was actually in the Court and upon the Bench as a Coassessor with that Villain Bradshaw and the rest at the Tryal of that Illustrious Sufferer as I am able to make appear from a true Transcript of every several days Proceeding in the Tryal the Original whereof is attested under Phelps the Clerk of that pretended Courts own hand and was by him drawn up and the Names of all that were Present each Day entred By order from the Jaylors or as they termed themselves the Keepers of the Liberties of England that so it might be kept in perpetuam Rei memoriam It is true he was not present when the Sentence was passed nor the execrable Warrant for the barbarous Execution signed but for what reason I am not able to say doubtless the Passion he expresses for that Old Cause which was then in the Meridian of its Glory did not permit him out of Remorse of Conscience to withdraw himself However merciful Heaven gave him a long time of Repentance almost forty Years but when he was become so obdurate to be so far from Repenting of his being Accessary to the execrable Murder of one King as upon the Resurrection of his Good Old Cause to become a Conspirator how to effect that Horrid Crime upon another lingering Justice was turned into Fury and he was taken in the Pit which he had digged for others And truly to me this appears very Remarkable and though I can hardly hope it yet I wish the Dissenters would not as sure those foolish People did who made such haste after his Execution to get Hand-kerchiefs dip't in his Blood look upon him as a Martyr but as he really is a Monument of that Divine Justice which ever pursues and will certainly overtake Traitors Murderers and impenitent Rebels and Regicides And let them be assured who makes Saints and Martyrs of such Monsters of Men that Hell is crowded with them and indeed Heaven being a Monarchy a republican Rebel cannot be thought a Friend to that Glorious Government or capable of being Happy under the Divine Right there which is so odious to him here below It were Happy for those murmuring Tribes of our Factious and Anti-monarchical Dissenters if at last either the severe or merciful Proceedings of God and the King were capable of opening their Eyes and truly if they will not see such Wrondrous and Miraculous Providences and Preservations such a Resurrection of this Monarchy from the Grave and such visible Demonstrations of the immediate care of Heaven to support it against all its Enemies and Opposers they must wilfully seal up their Eyes against the clearest Beams of Truth and Wonder and most certainly where Old Sinners and Rebels will not see the Finger of God to bring them to Conviction and Repentance for their former Guilt but will still be running further upon the Score they shall feel the Terrible weight of his avenging Hand of Justice who has told us Vengeance is mine and I will repay it and whoever sheds the Blood of man by man shall his Blood be shed Much less then can any man lift up his hand against the Lords anointed and be Guiltless There is a pretty odd Passage in the Life of the late Lord Russel which upon this occasion I cannot but recount both because I have it from credible Authority and that it shews his Lordship was unfortunately tinctured with this King killing Principle from his early Years as also that God Almighty is displeased