little darknesse upon nature but thou by thy mercies and passion hast broke through the jawes of death So Lord receive my soul and have mercie upon me and blesse this Kingdom with peace and plenty and with brotherly love and charity that there may not be this effusion of Christian blood amongst them for Iesus Christ his sake if it be thy will Then laying his head upon the Block and praying silently to himself he said aloud Lord receive my soul which was the signal to the Executioner who very dexterously did his Office at a blow This one Note I may not forget as a truth from an Honourable person then present upon the Scaffold that though the Chinks were stopped yet there remained a small hole from a knot in the midst of a Board and in which his finger of the right hand happened to fall into and to stop that also that his desire might be fulfilled lest his blood might descend on the peoples head his soul ascending to Heaven and leaving his body on the Scaffold to the care of men imbalming it with their tears His body was accompanied to the earth afterwards with great multitudes of people whom love had drawn together to perform that Office and decently Interred in the Church of Allhallows-Barking a Church of his own Patronage and jurisdiction according to the Rites and â—eremonies of the Church England He deserved that honour at his death being the greatest Champion of the Common Prayer Book whilst he lived Nor need Posterity take care to provide his Monument It being well observed by Sir Edward Deering He who threw the first stone at him that St Pauls Church will be his principal Monument and his own Book against the Iesuite his lasting Epitaph and so I leave him to that comfort which the Psalmist gives him The righteous shall be had in everlasting remembrance and shall not be affraid of any evil report Psal. 112. 6 7. Take this though for the present Thy brave attempt on Pauls in time to come Shall be a Monument beyond a Tombe Thy Book shall be thy Statua where we finde The Image of thy Nobler part thy Minde Thy Name shall be thy Epitaph and he Who hears or reads of That shall publish Thee The Kings Party had Garisoned a repaired Castle at the Devises and Colonel Devereux had a Garison at Roudon House between the Devises and Malmsburie being set upon and Besieged Colonel Stephens in Wiltshire newly made by the Parliament Governour of Beverston Castle was willing to give aide to the Besieged at Roudon and sets upon the Besiegers with three Troopes of his own and some Malmsburie Foot without staying for Devereux assistance broke through the Cavaliers and Relieves the House with Provision and Powder and alighting would needs eate and refresh himself with his friends giving time to the Cavaliers Party to Rally and cast up a Brestwork before the passage and so he with 1400. Horse and Foot cooped up all together and so the Besieged more straitned then before News gets to Glocester from whence comes sixty Horse well commanded and were to joyn with one hundred Horse and Dragoons from Malmsburie to break through the Cavaliers and these added to the four hundred and thirty within the House were conceived to force a Passage through the first Sconce But then comes Sir Iacob Ashlie with three thousand Massie raises the County about Strodewater doing what he could to face the Garison at Cirencester and to divert the danger of the Besiegers but nothing prevailed and so they were faine to Surrender upon bad quarter The Cavaliers grow strong on all sides and a stream of ill success rushes in upon their enemies upon Colonel Hopton having raised sixty Horse and fourty Foot Garisoned Castle-ditch near Lidburie in Herefordshire a Party from thence of three hundred Horse and Foot in twenty four houres took him Horse and Foot Prisoners to Hereford Sir Iohn Winter hath Guards set round about upon him to straiten his Garison his own House in the Forest of Deane but they break out through all those Guards and joyn with a Party of Foot from Cheystow which Landed at Lancaught intending to make good the Passe over Wye and so to issue out of Wales at pleasure To oppose them all the Guards drew together thither Sir Iohn violently charged the Forlorn of Foot who gave back to let in their Foot and so both Horse and Foot fell upon him some were slain Colonel Gamne and Vangerris Colonel Pore of Berkley Castle drowned but Sir Iohn and his escaped being the industrious enemy to all his Parliament neighbours These things happened the latter end of the year February about the time of surprizing Shrewsburie by the Parliament Prince Rupert falls back out of Shropshire and comes upon Herefordshire with all his Army the greatest in the Kingdom being a confluence of these Forces his own formerly Prince Maurice Colonel Gerard Lord Hastings Lord Ashlie and Sir Marmaduke Langdale and yet impresse more men in aboundance in all the neighbouring Counties with store of Arms necessity casting them in such waies of violence and coercive power prest-men of suspected fidelity and lesse value often deceiving them in Battle yet the King was forced to these waies for conducing to the sudden forming of an Army when the Kings affairs became desperate and so thrust in with the old Volunteers made up the bulk of a great Body when the Parliament had no such necessity to enforce rather a more cunning way to win upon that party the City of London being the undrained Magazine of Men and Money the common Asse that bare the burden and so ends this year A continuance of the brief Narrative of the Kings Affairs Military in Scotland under Conduct of the Marquesse of Montrose Montrose with considerable Forces enters Scotland 13. April 1644. comes to Dunfrize seises that Town expecting Antrims Irish but being there in some danger returns to Carlisle with his men for the Earl of Calander had raised a new Army in Scotland to second General Leslie in England and now besieging York Montrose having beaten a Garison out of Morpith pillaged the Castle and took a Fort at the mouth of Tine He plentifully sent Victuals to Newcastle which come from Almwick And is now sent for by Prince Rupert then in his way to raise the siege of Yorke but could not possible get to him till the retreat from that unfortunate Battle of Marston-moor and so returned back to Carlisle with a few but faithful gallant men He sends the Lord Oglebie and Sir William Rollock into the heart of Scotland in disguise who return with sad news that all Strengths in Scotland were possessed by the Covenanters The Earl of Traquair contrary to his Oaths and promises to the King was an Agent for the Covenanters Yet this man was more in the Kings Favour then any Scotish except the Hamiltons Montrose in these Difficulties sends Oglebey with his earnest
sufficiently thinned and over-awed To which Partialitie while in all Reason Iustice and Religion my conscience forbids me by consenting to make up their Votes to Acts of Parliament I must now be urged with an Armie and constrained either to hazzard mine own and my Kingdoms ruine by my Defence or prostrate my conscience to the blinde obedience of those men whose zealous superstition thinks or pretends they cannot do God and the Church greater service than utterly to destroy that Primitive Apostolical and anciently universal Government of the Church by Bishops Which if other mens judgments binde them to maintain or forbid them to consent to the abolishing of mine much more who besides the grounds I have in my judgment have also a most strict and indispensible Oath upon my Conscience to preserve that Order and the Rights of the Church to which most sacrilegious and abhorred Perjurie most unbeseeming a Christian King should I ever by giving my consent be betraied I should account it infinitely greater miserie than any hath or can befall me in as much as the least sin hath more evil in it than the greatest affliction Had I gratified their Anti-Episcopal Faction at first in this point with my consent and sacrificed the Ecclesiastical Government and Revenues to the furie of their Covetousness Ambition and Revenge I believe they would then have found no colourable necessitie of raising an Armie to fetch in and punish Delinquents That I consented to the Bill of putting the Bishops out of the House of Peers was done with a firm perswasion of their contentedness to suffer a present diminution in their Rights and Honour for my sake and the Common-wealths which I was conâ—ident they would readily yield unto â—ather than occasion by the least obstruction on their part any Dangers to me or to my Kingdom That I cannot add my consent to the total Exâ—irpation of that Government which I have often offered to all fit Regulations hath so much further tie upon my conscience as what I think Religious and Apostolical and so very Sacred and Divine as not to be dispensed with or destroyed when what is onely of civil favour and privilege of Honour granted to men of that Order may with their consent who are concerned in it be annulled This is the true state of those obstructions pretended to be in point of Iustice and Authoritie of Parliament when I call God to witness I knew none of such consequence as was worth speaking of to make a War being onely such as Iustice Reason and Religion had made in mine own and other mens consciences Afterwards indeed a great shew of Delinquents was made which were but consequences necessarily following upon mine or others withdrawiâ—g from or defence against violence but those could not be the first occasion of raising an Armie against me Wherein I was so far from preventing them as they have declared often that they might seem to have the advantage and justice of the defensive part and load me with all the envie and injuries of first assaulting them when as God knows I had not so much as any hopes of an Armie in my thoughts Had the Tumults been honourably and effectually repressed by exemplarie justice and the libertie of the Houses so vindicated that all Members of either House â—ight with honour and freedom becoming such a Senate have come in and discharged their consciences I had obtained all that I designed by my with-drawing and had much more willingly and speedily returned than I retired this being my necessitie driving the other my choice desiring But some men knew I was like to bring the same judgment and constancie which I carried with me which would never fit their Designs and so while they invited me to come and grievously complained of my absence yet they could not but be pleased with it especially when they had found out that plausible and popular pretext of raising an Armie to fetch in Delinquents when all that while they never punished the greatest and most intolerable Delinquencie of the Tumults and their Exciters which drave my self and so many of both Houses from their places by most barbarous Indignities which yet in all Reason and Honour they were as loth to have deserted as those othâ—rs were willing they should thaâ— so they might have occasion to persecute them with the injuries of an Armie for not suffering more tamely the injuries of the Tumults That this is the true state and first drift and design in raising an Armie against me is by the â—â—quel so evident that all other pretences vanish For when they declared by Propositions or Treaties what they would have to appease them there was nothing of consequence offered to me or demanded of me as any original difference in any point of Law or order of justice But among other lesser Innovations this chiefly was urgâ—d The Abolition of Episcopal and the Establishment of Presbyterian Government All other things at any time propounded were either impertinent as to any ground of a War or easily granted by me and onely to make up a number or else they were meerly consequential and accessarie after the War was by them unjustly begun I cannot hinder other mens thoughts whom the noise and shew of pietie and heat for Reformation and Religion might easily so fill with prejudice that all equalitie and clearness of judgment might be obstructed But this was and is as to my best observation the true state of affairs between us when they first raised an Armie with this Design either to stop my mouth or to force my consent and in this truth as to my conscience who was God knows as far from meditating a War as I was in the eye of the world from having any preparations for one I finde that comfort that in the midst of all the unfortunate successes of this War on my side I do not think mine innocencie any whit prejudiced or darkened nor am I without that integritie and peace before God as with humble confidence to address my prayer to him And by Proclamation the King requires the aid and assistance of all his Subjects on the North side of Trent and within twenty miles Southward thereof for the suppressing of the Rebells now marching against him whose hearts God Almighty will 〈◊〉 up with a true sense and apprehension of his sufferings that according to their allegeance and as they tender the safety of his person the properties of their Estates and just liberties to attend his person upon the two and twentieth of this instant August at Nottingham where and when he intends to erect his Standard in his just defence c. and that with Arms and Furniture c. and who shall supply him with Money or Plate which he as God shall enable will repay and reward according to the measure of their love and affection to him and their Countrey York August 12. But to undeceive the people or to satisfie the more curious he
their eyes are wide open to see Heresies and Sects are so multiplied and Schism so much prevails that the Church after so many Miseries of a bloudy and long-lasting War will be in worse case than the former was From which it was pretended for a great happiness to be delivered And in a Treaty of the tenth of March 1641. the Scotish Commissioners had pressed unity and uniformity in matters of Religion in the three Kingdoms unto which the Parliament gave a hopefull Answer Thereafter Anno 1642. the general Assembly in Scotland renewed the same and received thanks for the Motives then further urged therein In fine the mutual Desires were concluded with a solemn League and Covenant and that translated in other Tongues as a Rule and Direction to other Reformed Churches All which considered the Commissioners did tell the Parliament That it would be a sin and shame to England that all sorts of Blasphemies Heresies and Sects now multiplied and liberty of conscience now pleaded for should have place nay that unity and uniformity so much preached should now be slighted and the Covenant it self wrested and perverted to speak any thing and the Churches further from uniformity and unity than ever before And they pray God that the Ruine of Religion and the consequence thereof do not forthwith follow There had been an Ordinance of Parliament March 14. 1645. and Directions thereupon August 19. then next following and now of late some Questions debated in the House of Commons and propounded to the Assembly of Divines at VVestminster touching the point of Ius Divinum as aforesaid the last of April in which the Commissioners of Scotland thought themselves concerned as being intrusted by the Church of Scotland first concerning The subordination of the Assemblies of the Church to the Parliament making no question but the Parliament to be superior to all Assemblies of the Church in place Dignity Honour and earthly power That civil powers are the Vicegerents of God on earth Ministers onely Servants and Ambassadours the Magistrate is Custos utriusque Tabulae and to compell the Ministers to perform their Duties and to account to the civil powers But yet somewhat troubled the Commissioners or rather Mr. Alexander Henderson First the expression of Subordination may be altered lest it should suppose that the relation of one Church-assembly to another and of the Assemblies to the Parliament and of appeals of one to another are of the same kinde and in the same line as if the civil power were not onely about matters of the Church and Religion but were formally Ecclesiastical to be exercised Ecclesiastically because some may interpret it such a Supremacy in the Church as sometimes was in the Pope and hath been as they pretend retained in substance in this Kingdom which they account to be the Fountain of the late High Commission and Foundation of other corruptions and because it is pretended against the Doctrine of the Reformed Churches which are next to the Scripture proposed they pretend in the Covenant as the Example of Reformation Secondly the provincial Commissioners for judging of Scandal there being no Warrant for such a mixture in Church-government from Christ who hath appointed his own Spiritual Officers to whom he hath committed the Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven and to whom the Reformed Churches conceive the judging of Offences and qualification of Communicants doth as properly belong as Preaching of the Word and Administration of the Sacraments Nor can it be supposed that some few civil men having no calling from God can be more able to judg of matters of this nature than the Assembly of the Church separated for the work of the Gospel The same Churches and particularly the Church of Scotland which all this time hath been in expectation of great purity and perfection of Reformation in the Church of England were in jealousies and fears that this may be the laying of a new Foundation of an High Commission Court or Episcopacie and so for a new partition-wall to divide the Church of England and Scotland into Schism and Separation Thirdly concerning the Meeting of the National Assemblie it was acknowledged that the supreme Magistrate may call a National Assemblie and the Church is to obey his call but then the Commissioners would have it withall acknowledged that this power of the Magistrate is accumulative or positive but it is not a privative or destructive power and therefore they would that the liberty of the Church from Christ be not restrained the safety of the Church being here the supreme Law And so they moved the Parliament to appoint fixed times for the Meeting of the National Assemblies otherwise what will become of the ill administration of Provincial Synods and of Appeals from them to the National Assemblies These considerations were discoursed and considered by them as being bound they say to endeavour the Reformation of the Discipline and Government of the Church of England and Ireland according to the Word of God and the Example of the best Reformed Churches And with these and the like Discourses Considerations and Exceptions was the Propositions of long time hammering and modelling into some kinde of Agreement without which the Commissioners themselves concluded and however we finde by the sequel all their Labours and our Sufferings were in vain the long consultations of the Divines of both Kingdoms fruitless and the Commissioners in a Labyrinth what to answer to the Church and Kingdom of Scotland returned home afterwards as wise as they were when they came hither of these Arrands So then we see that the Propositions of Peace have been seemingly a long time in preparation and several Debates thereupon evermore referring to the knowledg and consent of the Commissioners of Scotland here who must be allowed convenient time to send to the Assemblie and Parliament of Scotland and to stay for their Return of Answer but now that the Parliament of England were so prosperous not having hardly an Enemy left unless that of the Scots Army began to neglect their former dependence and concordance with Scotland which their Commissioners here well observing and that their Papers of reasonable Exceptions to some points of the Propositions would not take with the Parliament the Commissioners caused them to be printed published and justified they contained four papers of consequence 1. Their Answer upon the whole Propositions of Peace 2. Reasons touching the Militia 3. The Citations of several passages out of the Declaration of the Houses of Parliament concerning the Militia and Uniformitie in Religion 4. Reasons why the Result of the Committee of both Kingdoms at Edinburgh Novemb. 28. 1643. is a Treaty These were the Heads but the matter was accounted exactly satisfactory and reasonable to all indifferent apprehensions truly stating the several cases comprehended in these papers Which so troubled the Houses that out comes the Declaration concerning the Scotish Papers by the Commons onely for they were now entered and could do things
France and Charles the Emperour and King of Spain shews them so provident as between themselves to keep the ballance of Europe upright Not one to edge upon the other and herein not to stay for the first blow or to be the last to be eaten up The Crown of Spain hath enlarged her bounds these last sixty years more then the Ottamans Did not England assist the French to keep him from Britany Picardy and Piedmont and enable the Netherlands not to be swallowed up these are our outworks Nay hath he not twice invaded England Once under the Popes Banner next in his own Name and hath more than a months minde to it again These grounds are causes sufficient for a War with Spain But what ere the King had said as to the matter and form of Argument the Parliament forgot not their old Mode with his Father Not too hastily to resolve and his death left much business in the deck which now they take up to engage his son And in truth all Parliaments commence with Petition from the People Reasons of Religion and Complaints of their suffering came to his Father in the close of his last Session and so unanswered which they are resolved now to dispatch and did so To that of Religion the King assured them his pious resolution to effect their desires with all convenient speed and as that business of weight required And for their Greivances they were distinctly separate and satisfactory answers he gave to each apart And so accounting to them the disbursement of his Land and Naval Forces with a clear and even audit of the Charge and Expence to come they were so candid that the Laity gave him without conditions Two Subsidies from Protestants four from Papists and the Clergy three Richard Mountague Doctor of Divinity and Chaplain to the King was summoned this Session for certain Tenents supposed prejudicial to the Protestants faith but were only against the Calvinist and was from the Commons Bar without Tryal committed to the Serjeant of their House untill two thousand pound Bail be procured for him to appear the next Session which the King had reason to resent being his antient Chaplain and ought to have his Masters protection sooner than the Servants of an Ordinary Burgess which at last was granted but not his bail-bond excused Of which he complains to the Duke of Buckingham and that the Parliament had not in right to do with him for that which King Iames commanded and King Charles authorized and challenges any Accusers if he may answer for himself It seems he was summoned and committed without any Tryal Iuly 29. And hereupon three Bishops Rochester Oxford and St. Davids being tender not of his Person but of his cause meerly the Church of Englands upon this Ground That the Church being reformed from the Roman refused the apparent and dangerous errours but was tender of every School point as not expedient in the unity of Christians to subscribe to each particular And so though some of his opinions are the resolved Doctrine of the Church of England which he is bound to maintain So some others are School points and there to be discussed but not to distract the Church nor for any man to be bound to subscribe unto which if inforced would hazard their former subscription in Orthodox Tenents and was indeed one great Fault of the Council of Trent But the Clergy submitted in Henry the eighths time with this caution That for differences Doctrinal the King and the Bishops were to be Judges in a National Synod and that with the Kings leave under his hand and seal else not Nor did ever the Church or can submit but so which is the constant practice of the Church For if the Church be brought down beneath her self Schism will follow And King Iames allowed of each point of Doctrine in Mountagues Book who was able of most men to judge thereof There can be little use of Civil Government or of Preaching and external Ministery in the Church if such fatal opinions as are contrary to Mountagues shall be publickly taught and maintained All or most of the contrary opinions were treated of at Lambeth and then ready to be published but Queen Elizabeth upon knowledge how little they agreed with the practice in Piety and obedience to Government suppressed them and so continued ever since till of late some of them received countenance at the Synod of Dort but that being a Synod of that Nation cannot give authority to any other National Church till publique authority and it is to be hoped that this Church will advise before they submit to a foreigne Synod especially of such a Church that condemneth our Discipline and manner of Government And therefore the King referred the consideration to the course of the Church Then for the person of Mountague they affirmed him to be an able Scholar right honest and fit to do God and the Church and his Majesty great service 2 August 1625. And after the next session he was consecrate Bishop of Chichester The Books in question were these His answer to the Romish Gagger And his Defence thereof afterwards styled Apello Caesarem formerly opposed by Information prepared against him of which he was discharged by King Iames with leave to appeal to his Majesty from his defamators and Doctor White then Dean of Carlisle was ordered to authorize the Imprimatur But two years after Ianuary 1628. it was called in by Proclamation to please the then Parliament not charged with any false doctrine but for being the first cause of those disputes and differences which hath since much troubled the quiet of the Church it seems with such unnecessary questions And to humour that time also Doctor Potter a zealous Calvinian was preferred to be Bishop of Carlisle to please the Parliament and and yet for all these passages the Parliament lookt asquint at the Kings actions as hereafter followes anno 1628. The Lord Mordant afterwards Earl of Peterborough being a Papist and willing to winne his wife from Protestancy offered the combate of his Confessor with a fair dispute against any This Confident was a cunning Iesuite Beaumona but his right name Rookwood his brother executed in the Gun-powder-Treason 1605. and the Lady elected Doctor Usher Primate of Ireland at this time in England the place Drayton in Northampton shire but after three dayes controversie concerning Transubstantiation Invocation to Saints Images visibility of the Church the Iesuite directly confessed he was so deficient in his memory that Gods just judgement had infatuated him to this desertion and put his excuse upon his presumption to dispute with so eminent a Protestant without leave of his Superiour But the good effect was the conversion of the Lord Mordant and confirmation of his Lady Whereupon a Secular-Priest Chaloner in a jeer to Beaumond bids him beware of coming to Drayton for fear that Usher foil him again These Lawes are enacted this Session
all retired to Bugden where he lived very Hospitably and in manner and order of the good Bishops not without an eye and ear over him of such as were Intelligencers of Court And at Westminster Hall the Ceremony begun towards the Abbey Church in order thus 1. The Aldermen of London by couples ushered by an Herauld 2. Eighty Knights of the Bath in their Robes each one having an Esquire to support and a Page to attend him 3. The Kings Serjeants at Law Solicitor Atturney Masters of Request and Iudges 4. Privy Councellors that were Knights and the chief Officers of the Kings Houshold 5. Barons of the Kingdome bare-headed in their Parliament Robes with Swords by their sides 6. The Bishops with Scarlet Gowns and Lawn sleeves bare-headed 7. The Vice-Counts and Earls not in their Parliament but in their Coronation Robes with coronetted Caps on their Heads 8. The Officers of State for the day whereof these are the Principal Sir Richard Winn Sir George Goring The Lord Privy Seal The Archbishop of Canterbury The Earl of Dorset carrying the first Sword The Earl of Essex carrying the second Sword The Earl of Kent carrying the third Sword The Earl of Mountgomery carrying the Spurs The Earl of Sussex carrying the Globe and Cross upon it The Bishop of London carrying the Golden Cup for the Communion The Bishop of Winchester carrying the Golden Plate for the Communion The Earl of Rutland carrying the Scepter The Marquess Hamilton carrying the Sword of State naked The Earl of Pembroke carrying the Crown The Lord Maior in a Crimson Velvet Gown carried a Short Scepter before the King amongst the Serjeants The Earl of Arundel as Earl Marshall of England and the Duke of Buckingham as Lord High Constable of England for that day went next before his Majesty The King entred at the West Gate of the Church under a rich Canopy carried by the Barons of the Cinque Ports His own Person supported by Doctor Neil Bishop of Durham on the one hand and Doctorâ— Lake Bishop of Bath and Wells on the other His train six yards long of Purpleâ—Velvet held up by the Lord Compton Master of the Robes and the Lord Viscount Doncaster Master of the Wardrobe Here he was met by the Prebends of Westminster Bishop Lawd supplying the Deans Place in their rich Copes who delivered into the Kings hands the Staff of King Edward the Confessor with which he walked up to the Throne Which was framed from the Quire to the Altar the King mounted upon it none under the degree of a Baron standing therein save only the Prebends of Westminster who attended on the Altar Three Chairs for the King in several places first of Repose the second the antient Chair of Coronation and the third placed on an high square of five steps ascent being the Chair of State All settled and reposed the Arch-bishop of Canterbury presented his Majesty to the Lords and Commons East West North and South asking them if they did consent to the Coronation of K. Charles their lawful Soveraign The King in the mean time presented himself bareheaded the consent being given four times with great acclamation the King took his Chair of Repose The Sermon being done the Arch-Bishop invested in a rich Cope goeth to the King kneeling upon Cushions at the Communion Table and askes his willingness to take the Oath usually taken by his Predecessors The King is willing ariseth and goeth to the Altar and is interrogated and thus answereth Coronation Oath Sir Sayes the Arch-bishop will you grant and keep and by your Oath confirm to the People of England the Laws and Customes to them granted by the Kings of England your lawful and Religious Predecessours and namely the Laws Customs and Franchises granted to the Clergy by the glorious King St. Edward your Predecessor according to the Lawes of God the true profession of the Gospel established in this Kingdome agreeable to the Prerogative of the Kings thereof and the antient Customes of the Realm The Kings answer I grant and promise to keep them Sir Will you keep Peace and Godly agreement according to your power both to God the holy Church the Clergy and the people I will keep it Sir Will you to your power cause Law Iustice and discretion to mercy and truth to be executed to your Iudgement I will Sir will you grant to hold and keep the Laws and Rightfull Customes which the Comminalty of this your Kingdome have and will you defend and uphold them to the honour of God so much as in you lieth I grant and promise so to do Then one of the Bishops read this Admonition to the King before the people with a lowd voice Our Lord and King wee beseech you to pardon and to grant and to preserve unto Vs and to the Churches committed to your charge all Canonical privileges and do Law and Iustice and that you would protect and defend Vs as every good King to his Kingdomes ought to be Protector and Defendor of the Bishops and the Churches under their Government The King answereth With a willing and devout heart I promise and grant my Pardon and that I will preserve and maintain to you and the Churches committed to your charge all Canonical privileges and due Law and Iustice and that I will be your Protector and Defender to my Power by the Assistance of God as every good King in his Kingdom in right ought to protect and defend the Bishops and Churches under their Government Then the King ariseth and is led to the Communion Table where he makes a solemn Oath in sight of all the people to observe the premisses and laying his hand upon the Bible saith The Oath The things which I have here promised I shall perform and keep So help me God and the Contents of this Book Then were his Robes taken off and were offered at the Altar He stood a while stripped to his Doublet and Hose of White Sattin Then led by the Arch Bishop and Doctor Lawd the Bishopâ—of St. Davids he was placed in the Chair of Coronation a Close Canopy spread over him the Arch-bishop anointing his Head Shoulders Arms and Hands with a costly ointment the Quire singing an Anthem of these words Zadook the Priest anointed King Solomon Hence he was led up in his Doublet and Hose with a White Coife on his head to the Communion Table where the Bishop of St. Davids Deputy for the Dean brought forth the antient Abiliments of King Edward the Confessor and put them upon him Then brought back to the Chair of Coronation he received the Crown of King Edward presented by the Bishop of Saint Davids and put on his Head by the Archâ— Bishop of Canterbury the Quire singing an Anthem Thou shalt put a Crown of pure Gold upon his head whereupon the Earls and Viscounts put on their Crimson Velvet Caps with Coronets about them the
and so quit the place for we think it a hatefull thing that any mans leaâ—ing the Bishoprick should almost undoe the Successor And if any man shall presume to break this Order we will refuse him at our Royall assent and keep him at the place which he hath so abused Ninthly Lastly we command you to give us an Accompt every year the second of Ianuary of the performance of this our Command Dorchester Our Naval forces now Compleat the Duke of Buckingham is resolved to satisfy their expectation who heretofore complained of his great neglect being Admiral of England in committing the late Expeditions at Sea to other Commanders and stay behind himself He is now therefore made General also of six thousand Horse and foot in ten ships royall ad ninety Merchant-men and set sail from Portsmouth the 27. of Iune and his MANIFESTO came out the one and twentieth of Iuly following as it was there published in France declaring The emergent causes of his Majesties present Arming What part the Kings of Great Britain have alwaies taken in the affairs of the reformed Churches of France and with what care and zeal they have laboured for them is manifest to all and the Examples of it are also as ordinary as the occasions have been The now King my most honored Lord and Master comes nothing short of his Predecessors therein if his good and laudable Designs for their Good had not bin perverted to their Ruin by those who had the most interest for their accomplishment What advantages hath he refused VVhat parties hath he not sought unto that by his alliance with France he might work more profitably and powerfully the restitution of those Churches into their antient liberty and splendour And what could be best hoped by so strick an alliance and from so many reiterated promises by the mouth of a great Prince but effects truly royall and sorting with his Greatness But so far fails it therein that his Majesty in so many promises and so strait obligations of Friendship hath found means to obtain Liberty and surety for the Churches and to restore peace to France by the reconciliation of those whose breath utters nothing else but all manner of obedience to their King under the liberty of the Edicts that contrarywise they have prevailed by the interest he had in those of the Religion to deceive them and by this means not only to unty him from them but also to make him if not odious to them at the lest suspected in perverting the means which he had ordained for good to a quite contrary end VVitness the English Ships not designed for the extirpation of these of the Religion but to the Contrary express promise was made That they should not be used against them which notwithstanding were brought before Rochel and were imployed against them in the last Sea-fight what then may be suspected from so puissant a King as the King my Master so openly eluded but thorough feeling equal and proportioned to the Injuries received But his Patience hath gone beyond Patience and as long as he had hope that he could benefit the Churches by any other means he had no recourse by way of Arms so far that having been made an Instrument and Worker of the late Peace upon Conditions disadvantagious enough and which would never have been accepted without his Majesty's Intervention who interposed his credit and interest to the Churches to receive them even with threatnings to the end to shelter the honour of the most Christian King under assurance of his part not onely for the accomplishment but also for the bettering the said conditions for which he sends caution to the Churches But what hath been the issue of all this but only an abuse of his goodness and that which his Majesty thought a Soverain remedy For all their forces hath it not brought almost the last blow to the ruin of the Churches It wanted but little by continuing the Fort before Rochel the demolishing whereof was promised by the violence of the Souldiers and Garrisons of the said Fort and Isles as well upon the Inhabitants of the said Town as strangers In lieu whereas they should wholly have retired they have daily been augmented and other Forts built and by the stay of Commissioners in the said Town beyond their Term agreed on to the end to make broils and by the means of the Division which they made to open the gates to the Neighbouring Troops and by other withstandings and infractions of Peace Little I say failed it that the said Town and in it all the Churches had not drawn their last breath And in the mean while his Majesty hath yet continued and not opposed so many Injuries so many faith-breakings but by Plaints and Treatings until he had received certain advise confirmed by intercepted Letters of the great Preparation that the most Christian King made to showr upon Rochel And then what could his Majesty do less but to vindicate his Honor by a quick arming against those who had made him a Party in their Deceit and to give Testimony of his Integritie and zeal which he hath alwayes had for the re-establishing of the Churches which shall be dear and precious to him above any other thing This was not published until the first assault of the Castle of Saint Martins in the Isle of Rhe about the 21. of Iuly following And because I have laboured the Truth of this Expedition from the calumnies of our Adversaries I shall name them now to direct the Reader in the examination and crave the patience to excuse the length of the story in some measure to vindicate our Honour The first is Anonymus and the Title Ladiscente des Anglois somewhat ingenious The French Mercury or Vulgar Fragmentarian herein despicable the brand of Malice and Immodesty The third was Isnardus the Parisian Advocate whose contumelies even the best of them were censured culpable as being published after a perfect Peace was established by the polite Polititian Cardinal Richlieu And the last of them was Monetus a Iesuit more close and wary yet blasting the beauties of our best Martialists But because this Action of the English might not lodge upon mistakes of our too hasty quarrelling without just cause I shall enter the Reader by remembring former passages and state the cause as it now stood between Us and France King Iames succeeding Q. Eliz. his Neighbors and Him courted each other into friendship and confederacy so that no plot or frame of domination invaded each other by jealousie or envy and so soon as Henry 4. was murthered how often and sundry waies did King Iames assist Lewis the 13. his Son and Successor quieting his Civil Wars and after such a League entred into with the Emperour as neither affinity with the Palsgrave utility with aiding the Spaniard or Religion by assisting the Hugonotes could in him any way dissolve and so became Arbiter and Umpire of Europe Yet cause we had
continuance and Repeal of divers Statutes 5. For the establishing of the Estates of the Tenants of Brumfield and Yale in the County of Denbigh and of the Tenures Rents and services thereupon reserved according to a late composition made for the same with the King then Prince of Wales 6 For the confirmation of the Subsidies granted by the Clergy 7. For the grant of five intire Subsidies granted by the Temporality There was a Design in the King to lay it up under deck amongst other Crimes fit for Star-chamber Censure that when the State should have been at leasure their Charter might have paid for all and I know the Attorney Generall had Order in these In Iuly dies Doctor Preston an excellent Preacher of whom something hath been said in the Historie of the Church which concludes his Character A subtile Disputant and great Polititian having large parts of sufficient Receipt to mannage the broad Seal which if the Condition had pleased was proffered unto him and might have been the Dukes right hand Or rather lesse then his little finger who despairing of being Patriarch of the Presbyterian party used the Duke no longer Excellent parts no doubt he had His pieces are in Print His Posthumus And his Pupil left nothing unsaid of his life to give him merit and eternall memory Somewhat must be said as to his Politiques He was esteemed indeed a proper Patron for the Puritan Presbyter which now got head to prick up And all the Plot was to bring him in forsooth to make the Duke in that Ministery which they durst intrust to his Management And first to appear aloof the manner of Court observers his addresse must be to the Dukes Confident rhe Earl of Holland made easie to him by favour of that family But yet a Remembrancer was thought upon to move by the by a dependant of that Lords who in truth dealt Ingeniously Intimating to the Duke Doctor Prestons power and interest with the Presbyters in that time more necessary to be sought unto then to be put by To which the Duke answered with an Oath The King knows him too well and hath no good opinion of him If so replied the Other and already known the advantage the better to make alike use of him so they did In which truly the Dukes head was not too easie for the Doctors for in shew he was carressed to undo him which wrought the effects suspected of his own followers lest he should be not onely besprinkled but drencht in Court Holy-water And in very earnest somewhat tainted he was and tempted with ambitious hopes and if I may speak it himself was brought to accept it But it was very necessary for him to undeceive his Disciples and there to intrust One in whom Obedience and Blindnesse met together A being made to do as he was bidden To him the Doctor writes a Letter under hand to be communicated onely unto special friends wherein to blazon himself he relates what he thought fitting to be believed more to his own glory and disparagement of the weaknesse of Court wits as he stiled them then many vain men might be thought to imagine That not enough he vents therein his own policy working upon the witlesse Statists at Court bestowing on each of them by Name such characters as he conceived would caresse his Pupils with a Stanza or two short and Satyrical This Letter sealed was found in Smithfield broken open and carried to the Duke But by a noble friend of his handsomly descried to him How witty he was in Rhimes and bidden to look about him Of which when he had but a hint He clapt his hand on his heart and confessed he was undone But his party to procure their Patrons peace of minde and to silence such a Witnesse they dealt subtilly indeed down-right Bribes to the Dukes Barber to finger the Letter out of the Dukes pocket and so being brought to the Doctor to bury the obloquie before his death not much time after This I say to shew how partially Mens pens put down private Actions which they guesse at Other such I could unravel And for this with the Testimony to boot of a Person then his disciple and since of that eminency in honour and justice as we shall fail to finde out his example Sithence the return home of the second unfortunate Fleet designed to relieve Rochel this whole vacation took up the time with those ships and others appointed for a fresh Expedition thither The most accomplished Armado that was set out by England And the Duke designed himself to be the General Commander once more to give adventure for the fatal effects or final end to their languishing misery And because the Earl of Marlborough had been a dull and unactive Treasurer for raising money to the Exchequer he was removed to be President of the Privy Counsel And Sr Richard Weston lately created Baron supposed more solid for the weight of that Staffe And in truth the King was put upon it to seek for such men whose abilities might recover him from the hazzard and defection he was fallen into both in his Purse and power He for the one and Sr. Thomas Wentworth of the North was made a Lord ready for the next Session to sit with the Peers He had been too heavy against Prerogative and this was a way to bring them in for the King The Fleet now in readinesse the King draws down his Guests of Progresse towards Portsmouth where the Ships were and from thence to dis-embogue The Town so full of Gallants and so pestered with lodgings that the King kept aloof and made his Court four miles distant The Duke very diligent to hasten his designe treating daily with the Commissioners of Rochel and Soubize in Portsmouth with his Duchesse and Family when He took his last leave of this life And because the Historian is much mistaken in relation of the Dukes Murder I shall ingeniously and truly not upon surmize or Hear-say resolve all the particular That fatall morning the three and twentieth of August the Duke having fitted himself to wait upon the King he hastily called for Breakfast His servants attending the sewer to bring in the meat the Duke came down stairs from his upper Chamber to eat in a lower Parlour turning in at the foot of the Stairs in a narrow Entry And Sir Thomas Friar one of his Colonels following him to the Parlour door stooping to take his leave the Duke declining imbraced Friar with these words Honest Tom. and so turning into the Room one Iohn Felton at that instant shadowed behinde them stabbed him to the heart with a back-blow of a Coutel-knife which stuck in his body till the Duke dragg'd it out and so enlarged the orifice that streamed with the effusion of so much bloud and spirit that instantly he died not able it seems to utter a syllable and certainly no soul there present for he fell backward into the Parlour and the Assassinate
Reprobates and therefore believes our Churches regeneration is by infusion of Grace by sowing the good seed But to answer him in this Let all Christians religiously pray and live according to the grace of Restitution and humbly submit their judgements concerning the secresie of personal Election and so this man sins against the 17. Article 4 The Anabaptist His purenesse is a supposed birth without Original sin and his Tenet that Infants must not be baptized and this believer opposeth the 9. and 27. Articles 5. The Brownists purenesse is to serve God in Woods and Fields and his opinion is that Idolatry cannot be reformed without pulling down of Churches Christ indeed whipt the buyers and sellers out of the Temple though it was prophaned yet without any pulling down and this man is against the 35. Article 6. Loves familist serves God as well at his neighbours charge as at his own omnia sunt communia the things which they possesse are not their own but all are Common He teacheth that unlawful swearing is worse than murther and this is against the 39. Article 7. The Precisian will not swear before a Magistrate That unlawful swearing is a greater sin than murther God indeed is greater then man here is the compare but then the effect destructive is greater by murther God commands that the murtherer die blood for blood he deals not so severely with the swearer See the 39. Article 8 The Sabbatarian preaches down Holy dayes preaching that the Instrumental directing cause to keep holy the sabbath day he makes to be the keeping holy the sabbath But Gods holy Worship prayer is keeping holy the sabbath day for preaching the holy direction teacheth holy worship prayer to be the holy practise of that day to praise the Lord for our Redemption the sole principal end of preaching on the Lords day His preaching is a Sylva synonymorum Tautologies Iterations His praying much erroneous and this is against the 35. Article 9. The Anti-disciplinarian is above the Kings supremacy Imperious Imagination his highnesse is the Churches greatest Authority and he saith this is as good a rule to know the reformed true faith is the holy Writ He is a strict observer of the Law therefore he accounts it the best Religion His tenet is That Kings must be subject to the Puritan To the Puritans Presbyters Censure submit their Scepters throw down their Crowns lick up the dust of their feet This Mr. Rogers in his eleventh page of his Preface to the 39. Articles And T. Cartwright teacheth in his Reply page 1080. And here the Oaths of Supremacy and Allegiance are broken against the 21. Article His tenet that all Priests should be equal See Varellus and Vivetus sermons two Geneva Presbyters against the â—3 33. and 36. Articles and against the twentieth Article 10. The presuming Predestinatist hath an inspired knowledge to be saved by Gods absolute Election as sure as it were now in Heaven no life in him but Gods essential glory against the 17. Article and the 3. Article Thus was it then amongst us Reformed and since it hath increased ten times worse But the Papist is not clear from Crimes schismes and sins The contest between Iesuites Priests and Secular Priests have evermore their debates and now grounded upon this occasion Richard Smith titular Bishop of Calcedon his honour there in Greece but his profit from England over all the Romish Catholicques especially for ordaining of Priests and confirmations of persons Baptized But when he came hither we cannot finde till now we have caught him here Yet Pope Gregory the thirteenth delegated one William Bishop to Calcedon who died 1624. After him succeeded another by Mission of Urbane the eighth 1625. this Richard Smith to the same Title But why to a foreign Title and not at as easie a rate to English as in Ireland he had to all Sees there the reason is He had in Ireland a Counter-party of People for Number and Quality in every Diocesse and Parish not so in England where it had been ridiculous in the Granter and dangerous in the Accepter To oppose his power up starts Nicholas Smith a Regular in malice to his advancement and quarrelled also against Doctor Kelson President of the Colledge of Doway who had printed a Treatise of the dignity and necessity of Bishop and secular Clergy Nicholas Smith's Reasons were for the Regulars first such Bishops uselesse in England in times of persecution Either for Ordination which might be supplied by foreign Bishops Or Confirmation of children which any Priest might perform by Commission from the Pope Secondly Burthensom to the already pressures of the English Catholicques And Thirdly the Person of Calcedon not lawfully called Kelson undertakes Answers to all these and the Insolency of the Regulars seemed more secular And indeed the Irish Regular exceeded such in England maintaining That the superiours of Regulars were more worthy than Bishops which caused the Doctors of Sorborn in Paris to censure the Proposition and the Arch-Bishop of Paris to condemn Nicholas Smiths Book and other Tractates of that sense But Bishop Smith would take upon him to approve of such Regulars Priests as were to be constant Confessors which the Jesuites opposed as an usurpation upon them And being the better Polititians contrive a Declaration under the name of the most noble and eminent Catholiques against his pretended Authority which Declaration was offered to the Spanish Ambassadour Don Carlos de Coloma together with the Kings Proclamations to ferret his person He declined both his power and presence to seek safety in France The Bishop fled the dogs bark Knot vice provincial of the English Jesuites and Flood another of St. Omers undertake him and Kelson also but were censured and silenced though not their several factions unto this day But this bickering is lodged under the product of the peace with Spain as if to encourage the Catholiques to rant it in Ireland also towards a Toleration The Lords Justices at Dublin at Church in one Parish the Priests at Masse in another who were seized by the Arch-Bishop and Major and all the City Officers their Trinkets taken away Images hewen down the Priests and Fryers delivered up to the Souldiers and yet rescued by the people from whom a strong power enforced them and eight Popish Aldermen clapt in prison for being remisse to attend their Major upon which mis-behaviour and mutiny fifteen Houses were seized to the Kings use and the Fryers and Priests persecuted and Two of them to save publique Execution hang'd themselves in their hose-garters The Earl of Essex would needs try Mastery with a fresh Mistresse being over born by his first Wife as their story is truly told in the life of King Iames 18. years since He then but a stripling but ever since getting strength and being falsely fram'd for Martial Exploits in the Low-Conntries where he Disciplin'd himself but without any high renown or feats of Arms or any extraordinary
Proctors deprived and others partakers check't for engaging But the Expulsion of these Preachers Expelled not their Schism which inwardly burnt the more for blazing the lesse many complaining of the two edged sword of justice too penal for some to touch then others to break the Kings Declaration And in this controversie died the Arch Bishop of York Dr. Harsnet a discreet Assertor of these necessary and useful Ceremonies and complained even against the Conformable Puritan who preached it in policy but diffented in judgement His Epitaph sets forth his Bishopricks Indignus Episcopus Cicestrensis Indignior Norvicensis Indignissimus Archiepiscopus Eboracensis enjoying them all three And now they revive the Sabbatarian controversie which was begun five years since 1628. Bradburn on the Sabbath day and directed to the King maintaining First The fourth Commandment simply and intirely Moral and Christians obliged as well as the Iews to observe everlastingly that day That the Lords day is an ordinary working day it being Will-worship to make it a Sabbath by vertue of the fourth Commandment But the High Commission Court soon made this man a Convert which opinions begat controversies of five heads What is the fittest name of that day when to begin and end Upon what authority grounded Whether alterable or no Whether any recreations and what kinds on that day And then these disputants were distinguished into Sabbatarians Moderate men and Anti-Sabbatarians and their preaching and pamphlets so quarrelous as made the poor distracted people to seek what to do And at the Temple It was Explained by Learned Dr. Micklethwait That the richer fort were more obliged to the strictnesse of the day than the poor workman such as have no diversion by labour all the week need no Recreation on One day the Labourer having some title to Liberty But from the Pen they fall to Pikes and Somersetshire the Stage and fieâ—y Scene First keeping their Church-Ales and Wakes of meetings on that day evening which upon complaint to Richardson Chief Justice that Circuit he suppressed them totally by Order of the nineteenth of March. This being an usurpation of a Lay Judg on Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction the Arch-bishop Laud procures from the King a Commission to two Bishops and other Divines to examine the Judges carriage therein which Order at last he was fain to revoke the next Assize and so the quarrel on foot and petition troubling the King to settle this difference it procured reason of State in the King to revive his Fathers Declaration for Sports set out in the fifteenth of King Iames upon the like occasion in Lancashire which refer to the subsequent time 1654. And indeed though the State was induced with much prudence to afford some liberty to labouring people carving to some freedom on that day cut most for others and leave least for themselves The Declaration was not pressed on the Minister to publish more proper for a Lay Officer or Constable but because Judg Richardson had enjoyned his Order to the contrary and the Minister obeyed it Now the Declaration was put upon them also by the Order of the Bishops Some Schismaticks were forward to read it and forthwith the fourth Commandment setting as they meant God and the King at odds that so themselves might escape in the fray Nor was the reading absolutely urged upon any unless under the Bishop of Norwich too severe there Many men out of breath observe this as the concurring cause of our sad events and Civil War 'T is true our fights were often forced upon the King on that day as pointing at the punishing of profaneness but our Battels have been rubrick'd each day in the Week with English bloud and therefore to pick a solemn Providence out of a common Casualty savours more of Curiosity than Conscience though indeed Edg-hill Fight fell on that day which entred us into so much misery And truly had we all of us strictand duly observed the holy keeping that Holy Day we might be happy there still I mean the due measure but we have wrested it awry from the right way reeling into extremes afterwards neglecters now contemners Transcendents above common piety they need not keep any because they observe all days we call them Levellers equalling all Times Places Persons nay to our Lands in common a general confusion they make to be Gospel perfection for having supprest all due observation of festival Saints days and their Eves Wednesdays and Fridays Service and Letanies now our Hypocrites out of errour or worse perfect prâ—faness take away the Lords day also The famous Fabrick of Saint Pauls Church and Steeple made so in process of time from the pâ—ety of primitive Christians their devout zeal to good works and since by several additions of Benefactours raised to a structure of admiration a Pile huge and honourable not the like left to our last Age to be sampled in the whole World What the hands of good men had made wonderfull the hand of wasting had extremely decayed Onely the hand of Heaven by accident of Lightning had burnt down the high Spire in the time of Queen Elizabeth who then had designed not onely to rebuild that but to repair the whole Church and to that end some Materials were then prepared Afterwards in the time of King Iames the religious Patriot Sir Paul Pindar of worthy memory returning into England some years since from his Ambassie Lieger in Constantinople and afterwards one of the great Farmers of the Kings Customes and of ample fortune the most in money became the great Example of Charity to many and the Patern of Piety to all in his magnificent re-edifyfying of this Church First he repaired the Entry front and Porches to all the upper Church Quire and Chancel and enriched them with Marble Structures and Figures of the Apostles with Carvings and Guildings far exceeding their former beauty which cost above two thousand pounds the act of a good man as King Iames said But the main Fabrick fit for the work of a King And therefore King Charls having a pious resolution to begin the Repair of the whole Church and Steeple made his humble entry at the West end of the Isles up to the Body Quire and Chancel where after a Sermon of Exhortation to that Christian intention he made his pious Procession about the inside Circumvelation thereof and viewing the Decays gave up his promise with his Devotions speedâ—ly to settle the beginning of the work And this year issued out his Commissions under his Great Seal to the Lord Maior Sir Robert Drewry the two Arch-bishops the Chancellour Treasurer Privy Seal some Bishops Secretaries and Councellours of State Deans Aldermen and others or any six of them whereof three to be of the Privy Council and always the Bishop of London for the time being to be one who was then William Laud and the first man but not the chief Promoter being promoved and attempted by others before he was of
note yet indeed he became a diligent and powerfull Actor therein and the first Benefactour who gave a hundred pounds per annum whilest he should be Bishop of London by whose pious endeavours and forward Example and sundry Contributions of good and godly men and by Commissions of Protection for Breves and Collections in all Churches of England and Wales there was gathered in time the sum of fourscore thousand pounds in all A large consideration was had to begin with the Steeple and Body and so to descend to the Isles presuming that when the Steeple should be finished the Contributions would necessarily invite the compleating of the whole But it was otherwise resolved and they began at the West end and first the out-walls which being cluttered with petty Tenements even to the stopping of the Church-lights that clouded the beauty of the first Foundation those Houses by Lease or Rents were purchased and pulled down and the little Church called Saint Gregories builded up at the West end South of the Foundation was willingly taken down to the ground and a very necessary place ordered for the erection of another Church for that Parish And to this excellent good Work the fore remembred Sir Paul Pindar besides his former Expences took upon him also at his own proper cost and charge and did effect it before he died to repair or rather new build the great South Isle far more beautifull than it had been at the first eâ—ection which 〈◊〉 him above seventeen thousand pounds The Contribution-money was intrusted to the Chamber of London then supposed the safest Chest from thence to be issued out for Materials and Workmanship The West end or Enterance was finished more sumptuous and stately than at first A gracefull stately Porch was raised the whole breadth of the West end upon Pillars of Stone of the Ionick work supporting the Roof on the top whereof in seemly distance was erected the Figures and excellent Postures of King Iames and King Charls mounted on Pedestals leaving room aud spaces for other succeeding Sovereigns Then they had new cased the whole intire out-walls more nobly to the Roof with large Figures of Pomegranates set upon Pedestals at equal distances to grace the Roof which was all overlaid with Lead The Windows with admirable painted Glass of Figures of the Fathers Prophets and Apostles with several historical pieces of Scripture Then they had vaulted the Roofs with massie Supporters of Timber and Scaffolds raised for re-edifying and beautifying the Roof Lastly they had raised outward Scaffolding from the body of the Church to the very top of the Steeple and were going on with the Spire and some Moneys in stock towards the finishing of all which most Artisans supposed might be finished for forty thousand pounds When on the sudden William Laud late Arch-bishop of Canterbury was impeached by the late House of Commons in their long Parliament and our Civil uncivil Dissentions seized the whole stock of Money and so the Work ceased The Church forthwith turned into a Prison or Goal of Malignants then into a Garrison of Foot-soldiers then into a Stable of unclean Beasts and then to the sale of all Materials Stone Lead Glass Iron and last of all the very Scaffolding of Timber which cost forty thousand pounds sold for six thousand the Money never paid the end and ruine of that most glorious and Christian Design After-ages may conceive this final and horrid ruine to be the effects of a cruel War which devastates all But at the beginning of this Design of Repair it is most true that many had no fancy thereto the whole gang of Presbyterians utterly disliked of it And when the Earl of Holland Chancellour of the University of Cambridg was commanded by the King to write his Letters to that University for Contributions of the Heads Fellows and Students a wonder it was what plots and devices of some afterwards busie-bodies in Parliament for a time obstructed those Letters and other pious intentions of sundry Contributions and were the onely causers of that desolation and earnestly urged the ruine to all Cathedrals as it is well observed that Doctor Bastwick whom he examples for one and a known Schismatick grudging at the great expence in the Repair observes his base and irreverend expression alluding to the name Cathedral That all the mighty mass of money must be spent in making a Seat for a Priest's Arse to sit in See Bastwick's second Part of his Letany But as that repaired London Bridg burned the North-part to the first open distance which secured the rest an ugly patcht unformed Building it was part of the ruine is since repaired a handsome well-piled Patern for rebuilding all the rest The King took the infection of the Small Pox to the great grief of the Subjects in general and because many had suffered extremely in that Sickness the Pulpits Prayers and private Devotions of all good and well-affected People were frequently offered to the Divine Majesty who in mercy soon restored him to health again without any marks or blemish of usual Spots to others in the like Sickness The military affairs of Europe were now come to the miserable effects of a cruel War on all sides we shall enter the story of the the Eastern part Sigismund King of Poland and Swethland the Bulwark of Christendom against the Turks tyranny had been heretofore enforced to sue for succour of neighbour Princes by several Embassies of King Iames by Ossolinsky Count Palatine of Sendomeria who so well performed his eloquent Oration and excellent behaviour that he procured from hence two thousand men and money Voluntiers for the Guards of that Kings Person This Count was initiated a Civilian bred up in Court to become Chancellour and now a Commander in this War certainly a man of singular merit and to boot very handsome and of most obliging demeanor which took with the King and all our Court of high concernment to chuse a Person proper for his Arrand And because the Quarrel came to mighty execution of both parties I may not omit the occasion so much concerning those miserable neighbour Nations bordering the Turks Dominions specially the Pole who it seemed in those days deserved better of all Princes than to be worried out of his own Inheritance by a Christian now of late 1655 more cruel now than the Turk was then And so by this entrance we shall bring the brief History to our time Mahâ—met the Authour of their Alcoran enjoyned the Race of Othomans two special things To propagate the Empire by some mighty Attempts of War The other to glorifie their Religion by some wondrous Action in Peace or stupendous Structure of Amazement to the World For the first Their Terâ—itories extend to the Asian and African shores from Trebizond the bottome of the Black-sea to Argier neighbouring the Straits of Gibralter 6000. English miles besides the possession of Greece and her Islands with his intrusion into Hungary
Designs he passed into Silesia after Galasso with the Body of his Army surprized him near Stenaw defeated his numerous Horse and surrounded the Foot which yielded with sixscore Colours Baggage and Artillery and so all Silesia submitted And now by his following progress gave more than suspition what he had hatched for his own ambition and revenge of former disgraces for having collected his Forces at Egnar in Bohemia paid them three Moneths Money and took their Oath to himself without 〈…〉 〈…〉 Two of his Colonels Gordon and Lesly Scots and Butler an Irish Officer invite his chief Generals his Creatures to a Supper at Egnor where they were soon dispatched for their Masters sake the Emperour Butler comes to Wallestein thrusts open his Chamber-door he dressed for his Bed so staggered and hared him with this Reproach O Traitor to the Emperour and Empire Art thou there and therewith â—an him through with his Partizan stark dead and threw him out at the Window Thus ended that ambitious ungratefull Servant raised to this height from an ordinary Gentleman to be Prince of the Empire and Gâ—neralissimo of all his Forces in Germany Ambitious persons falling into perfidy are justly thus served which we mention here to close up the story though it happened the next year And so this Year remarkable for the Death of three Kings Sigismund of Poland who pâ—ously departed the nine and twentieth of April Gustave of Swede who was slain on the Bed of Honour the sixteenth of November And Frederick of Boheme who died of the Infection the nineteenth of November The Fundamental Laws of the Dane give a double Portion to the eldest Children of either Sex and to the rest equal shares and so by the death of Sophia Queen Dowager of Denmark our Kings Grand-mother there was due to him and his Sister Elizabeth in right of Queen Ann their Mother one hundred and fifty thousand pounds which was promised to our Ambassador the Earl of Leicester sent to that King partly to condole the old Queens death and by the way to demand his Portion The Complement of asking of him received another of owning to him being he was remembred of that Contract made with him 1625. of thirty thousand pounds a Moâ—â—th unpaid and yet due for support of his Army yet it seems was thus boldly concluded to draw on other Subscribers Confederates in that War and as usual not fully paid by any and so we may well be then in Arrear as I am sure the Dutch and French are to this day with him and us also The King had been very humbly solicited by the Scots earnest and affectionate supplications to chear and comfort them with his Court and to honour them with his Personal Coronation which he now resolves Not that that Crown was of 〈…〉 But the King to make good his own Inclination and Reason of State the main Arguments He sets out the thirteenth of May with a Princely Train the best of Nobility of England and all those here of Scotland and with them remarkable the English Treasurer and Secretary of State His motions were most certain not foreslowed His Guests were setled to their time and places otherwise He had made a mad Moneths Progress and many Entertainments would have been too sudden without such lawfull warning specially that of the Earl of Newcastles at Welbeck which he says cost the Earl six thousand pounds No such time place or provision But what he means was in Iuly the next year at Balfour Castle in Derby shire for the King Queen and their several Courts most sumptuous indeed And the King comes to Edenburgh the tenth of Iune and the eighth after designed for the solemn Celebrating of His Coronation glorious and bravely attended A little Metropolitan City God knows a long street rather But for a show It sets it forth at length from the Castle still descending to the Kings Palace Holy-rood House at a view the whole Triumphant Train a Mile and more where He was Crowned with all possible outward affection to his Person dissimulative for so it soon discovered And from this time we shall sum up the Scots perfidies smothered heretofore For now they begun secretly to consult and so to vent their â—islike of the Kings former Innocent Râ—vocation of Things scrambled from the Crown in his Fathers minority and his beneficial Commission of surrenders of Superiorities and Titles as before remembred But these Two Exceptions not sufficient to ground a Mutiny they mustered many such and feigned more And fell foul on some fears suggestions Innovation of Religion to be attempted this Parliament now assigned And withal politickly assured that nothing but calumnies could soil with suspicious jealousie or interrupt or relaxe the present joy of the common people grounding it on nothing more or other than a New Ratisioation of old Acts concerning the present Religion the Churches Liberties and priveledges assented unto by most voyces yet a wonder to many that soon dissented such as from that time became the great promoters of the after-Covenant shewing then the distemper of the heart that boyled out with too much heat at their mouth which seriously resolved it self into sedition soon after for having little more to do the King gratifies the greatest suitors with new Titles of Honour and no doubt consented unto by such as seemed disloyal to his just proceedings in Parliament there And yet these began to mutter but not as yet to mutiny till his departure which was not long after his visitation of Falkland Sterling Dumferling and other places eminent for any pleasure though none of them deserving the hazard the King had from danger of drowning in his passage over the Frith from Brunt-Island to Edenburgh and so came home to the Queen at Greenwich the 20. of Iuly But we may not forget whilest he was in Scotland the condition and behaviour of Sr. Iohn Stuart of Trahair lately made Baron Trahair Privy Councellor and Deputy Treasurer upon the resignation of the Lord Nappier a worthy states man Grand-childe to the afterwards renowned Matcheston and brother in law to the right famous Earl of Montrosse being in dislike of the times and aged and yet not without a considerable reward But Trahair acted his game more cunningly than honestly and now came into much favour with the King at this time He was created Earl of Trahair and in some years after Lord Treasurer of Scotland for upon the Earl of Mairs death Lord Treasurer Trahair was substituted in his place Marr was a Man of little Action and loving the Court of England was the lesse skilful to manage the affair of the Treasury But Trahair managing all tripled his own Estate in few years so faithful he was to himself not without complaint of the people And now in this Parliament There was a Tax granted to the King to be paid as formerly in four years amounting to one hundred thousand pounds Scots per
fire-coales into a flame the French being then upon a War with Spain and the Cardinal a great Statist knew that Englands best policy was ever to side with the weakest to ballance the biggest power neither of them to increase above the measure of moderation To that end Monsieur Montril was sent Emissary and Agent to work out the Design in England and Scotland as may appear by the Scots Letter to the French King as hereafter follows and that they had great incouragement from Richelieu but what assistance under hand I could never finde out fair promises and no doubt never to engage against them But Balmerino his great Enemy the Earl of Kinnol Lord Chancellour of Scotland took his leave of this life and left his Office to Spotswood Son to the first Superintendent formerly Arch-bishop of Glasgow and now Arch-bishop of St. Andrews aged above sixty years a learned moderate wise man as by his History appears the first of his Coat since the Reformation of that Dignity and that for the great advantage of the Church if rightly apprehended without that mistaken Vote never known before for three hundred years a Clergy-man to bear that Dignity I shall remember those that were Andrew Foreman 15 Iac. 4. James Stuart Brother to James the fourth James Beaton 10 Jac. 5. and Queen Maries Reign David Beaton Cardinal succeeded him Jo Hamilton Brother to the Duke of Chattleheralt was the last of the Popish Bishops and many more before those and all of them Arch-bishops of St. Andrews and Chancellours Then there were Willam Lowater anno 1412. Andrew Foreman Iac. 4. Gawin Dunbar Praeceptor to James 5 and after him James Beaton And these following were Arch-bishops of Glasgow and Chancellours Adam and Patrick Bishops of Brocher Chancellours annis 1360 1370. Thomas Spence Bishop of Galloway and Chancellour to Jac. 2. William Elphinston Bishop of Aberdene Chancellour to Jac. 3. Indeed in Scotland heretofore Justice was perâ—ormed by Itinerarie Courts like to the Judicature of Courts in England fifteen Judges in all seven Churchmen and seven Laymen and the President also a Churchman and the best offices of State were formerly in Bishops and Abbots which gave them abilities in purse to perform those great and pious works of charity honour and common benefit Abbies Churches Hospitals Bridges Causewayes and the like all Acts of the Clergy heretofore which now their successours destroy Death indeed was more indifferent with two Great Ones in England two Eminent Men of several factions the One Sr. Richard Weston Earl of Portland Lord High Treasurer of England the Kings great Favourite for his Abilities at this time the more useful in promoting Prerogatives and all advantages of raising money with some regret of the Commons for such services His place was therefore for the present put under power of Commissioners for some time after The other was Sr. Edward Cook a Common Lawyer and so bred up himself to please the people Increasing esteem on that score from his first rise Queen Elizabeths Attorney General chief Iustice of the Kings Bench under King Iames where he lost himself by too much liberty of Eloquence or Impudence and removed from that Court to his Countrey retirement in the County of Buckingham made high Sheriff to humble him towards this King with a clause in his Commission to avoyd his Election of being a Burgesse in Parliament of which he was the more ambitious because thereby the better able to shew his Enmity but he got it in Norfolk his birth-place and he a Law-wrangler was voted legally chosen notwithstanding his Commission of Restraint We may not forget the Affairs of Germany the Swede having a continued confederacy with the protestant Princes and the French assistance against the Emperour and Spain for although they fought and treated for a conjunction Duke Barnard had been so often bafled by former promises of Wallestien before his Murther that now he trusted to fair words no longer And the good Duke Francis Albert of Saxony Leumburgh the Instrument chosen to tye these two different dispositions into a Ligament was not his crafts master but was carried prisoner for many years to Vienna The King of Hungary for the Imperial party having cured the Army with good gold after the disorder of Wallestiens murther and taken new Oath of the souldiers when News came to his camp of a notable victory gotten by Arnem upon the Imperialists in Silesia and of his marching towards Prague whither the King sent so strong a supply Arnem was constrained to retire into Saxony at the same time that the Town of Ratisbone was regained for the Emperour in Iuly the brave and famous General Aldring being slain a little before at Lanshut He was of Luxenburgh obâ—curely born whose virtues and valour had raised thus high and eminent in many battels against Iohn de Wiert with successe And the businesse Military in Germany requiring all assistance for the Emperour against such a confederacy of friends Thither comes the Cardinal Infanto from Milan with the old Spanish Italian and Burgundian Bands through all Switâ—zerland soon reforming the riotous Swedes by their example into a true Military Discipline These forces joyning with the Imperialists marched into the Duchy of Weitemburgh but first must passe the fiery Tryal of a strong Town Norlington The Swedes and their Allies are likewise summoned together from all parts Horn joyns with Duke Barnard and advises to spare the Enemy a Town or two than to hazzard the publicque cause But the Duke would fight for it and designed the day the sixth of September and the rather because some private offer had been for Overtures of a Peace which the Swedes took for a good Augure what ere it presaged It procured to both Armies the most horred bloody fight that had been between Christians To the Protestants party were already arrived the forces of the Duke of Weitemburgh the Lantgrave of Hassia and Count Cratz He who was for Bavaria and should have betrayed Ingolstade to the Enemy and so being discovered was fled hither wanting none but the Rhingrave and his four thousand men The fight began early the most furious first shock was for a Hillock the storming of a mined fort lost many of the Swedes Infantry The Canon hidden behinde some bushes did mighty Execution also and the Swedes constrained to fly and their Cavalry pursued by the Duke of Lorain and Iohn de Wiert were utterly defeated eighty pieces of Canon three hundred colours and twelve thousand men slain and six thousand prisoners amongst whom that brave man Gustave Horn Nobly received by the King The fruit of this Battel began a peace short and sweet onely to let that miserable Countrey taste of the blessing which lasted not long when the revenger of blood opens the veins to let out more evil fumes This Victory might answer for their Eminent successe heretofore at Leipsick and Lutzen and as the Swedes did then so does
England which received opposition and intermissions till the year 1616. where at Aberdine their general assembly of Clergy made an act authorizing some of their Bishops to compile a form of Liturgie or book of Common-Prayer first for the King to approve which was so considerately there revised and returned for that Kingdome to practice which same service book was now sent for by this King and committed to some Bishops here of their own to review and finding the difference not much from the English He gave command in Scotland to be read twice a day in the Kings Chappel at Holyrood-house at Edenburgh that Communion should be administred in that form and taking on their knees once a month the Bishop to wear his Rocket the Minister his surplice and so to inure the people by president of his own Chappel therâ— first and afterward in all parts for the publique The Scottish Bishops liked it reasonable well for the matter but the manner of imposing it from hence upon them was conceived somewhat too much dependancie of theirs on our English Church therefore excepting against the Psalms Epistles and Gospels and other sentences of Scriptures in the English book beeing of a different translation from that of King Iames they desired a Liturgie of their own and to alter the English answerable to that and so peculiar to the Church of Scotland which indeed was more liker that of King Edward the sixth which the Papist better approved and so was the rather permitted by the King as to win them the better to our Church And so had it been accustomed to the Scottish several Churches for some years without any great regret and now particularly proclaimed to be used in all Churches to begin on Easter sunday which was respited to Sunday the three and twentieth of Iuly being then to be countenanced at Edenburgh by the Lords of Session then sitting as it had been before commanded in publique Sermons to the people by divers Ministers by Rallock that Covenanter afterwards and others of the same And accordingly in St. Giles Church the chief of Edenburgh the Dean in presence of the Counsell Bishops Lords and Magistrates beginning to read the women first and meaner men began the Mutiny clapping their hands and cursing with their tongues raising such a hubbub that none could be heard but themselves The Bishop designed for the Sermon stepâ— up into the Pulpit to interpose their madness and minding them of their irreverence and horrible prophanation of that sacred place which incensed them into fury flinging what came to hand Stones Seats Stooles and cordgells almost to his murther Then the Arch Bishop St. Andrews Lord Chancellor and others offering to a peace were no better handled untill the Provost Bayliffs and civill Magistrates were forced to shut the multitude out of the Church And so the Service-book was read throughout though with the rage of the people hollowing knocking and battering of the windows without with staves and stones and watching for the Preachers the Bishops he was incompassed with the cominalty of the baser sort and hardly escaped their intent to smother him to death And so in sundry other Churches in the City with the like clamour and disorder which moved the Councill further to assemble at the Chancellors and there to command the Lord Revall and Officers to order the people into a more quiet for the afternoon which was done with some moderation in the Churches but after Sermon endangering the Earl of Roxborough Lord Privy seal to be the first Martyr St. Stephen for but having the Bishop of Edenburgh put in the Coach with him And in outward shew Magistrates dissembled their resentment of those disorders and pronounced an order of the Councill to themselves to advice upon anobligatory Act of security to the Ministers persons that did or hereafter that should undertake to read the Book and maintenance also for them And afterwards in shew some of the most unruly were slightly punished as being therefore under hand encouraged to do so again for which at first had they been hanged the example might have discovered all others from falling into the like folly the King having thâ—n force enough at Sea to have blocked up their Haven he might soon have brought the Edenburghts to obedience and after them the whole Nation But by his suffering of them then and of such like following after he was come to that misery as one saies well cum vel excedenda sit natura minuenda dignitas either out go his own nature or forgoe his own Authority And the Scots were so well assured of the Kings Levity as that with a couple of Letters from them to the Arch Bishop of Canterbury to palliate the practice and to promise their paines to the compleat effecting of his Majesties desire in the Service-book and so signed by all the Bayliffs who proved afterwards the onely Actors in the like mutinie The Stage indeed became afterwards better hanged and the Schemes better set out their intended Tragedy with a specious Title â—f Piety and Religion The next Moneth of businesse abroad Vacation and Harvest employed them from their confluence of acting until October when all such came to Edinburgh of all conditions and from all Counties of that Kingdom which looked so like a Muster for Insurrection that the Councel was put to prevent it by three Proclamations the 17. of October 1 That no Church matters should be resolved but that all persons depart home unlesse they shew good cause to the Councel upon pain of Rebellion 2. For removing the Session or Term from Edingburgh to Lithgow for the present and afterwards the succeeding Sessions to Dundee till further pleasure 3. And the third for calling in and burning a seditious Book intituled A Dispute against the English Popish Convention obtruded upon the Kirk of Scotland These proceedings prevailed not to appease them for the next day the Councel Chamber being the place appointed â—o Examination of a Judicial Tryal before Sr. William Elphingstone and the Bishop of Galloway passing thither was suddenly surrounded with the tumult of disordered people to the very Councel House where he was again assaulted with a fresh Troop to the hazzard of his life had he not been defended and pulled in whom yet they demanded with such outrage as necessarily called to his succour the Earl of Trahair then Treasurer and the Earl of Wiggon of the Councel who got in and were then in worse case being all besieged and enforced to send for aid to the Provost and Officers assembled at the City Councel They also in the like extremity sent word by their Messenger Sr. Thomas Thomson of the same mischief to themselves and that to save their lives from fury were forced to subscribe 1. To joyn in opposition to the Service-Book and in Petitioning to that purpose 2. To restore Ramsey and Rollock two silenced Ministers 3. And to receive Henderson again their
habit and with a great Train wherewith they are disguised from notice yet are Jesuits and Members of the Conspiracy All the Papists of England contribute to this Assembly lest any thing should be wanting to promote the Enterprise upon whose Treasury a Widow Owner of the Houses where now Secretary Windebank dwelleth and dead above three years since conferred forty thousand pounds and for the driving on of the business others contribute as they are able Besides the foresaid Houses there are also other close Conventicles kept but very distrustfull of themselves lest they should be discovered First every of them one not knowing of the other are directed to certain Inns and thence led by Spies to the place of meeting being otherwise ignorant of the place for fear of surprise The Countess of Arundel a strenuous she-champion of the Romish Faith bends all her powers for this Universal Reformation nothing is done secretly or openly at Court but she imparts it to the Legate with whom she meets thrice a day sometimes at Arundel's house now at Court or at Tart-Hall The Earl himself being called about three years since this year must go to Rome without doubt to consult there of matters pertinent to the Design At Greenwich at the Earls cost a feminine School is erected which is but a Monastery of Nuns for the young Girls therein are sent forth hither and thither into foreign Monasteries beyond the Seas Master Porter of the Kings Bed-chamber most addicted to the Popish Religion is an utter Enemy of the Kings revealing all his Secrets to the Legate by his Wife for he rarely meets with him himself In all his actions he is nothing inferiour to Toby Matthew it is unexpressible how diligently he intends this business His Sons are secretly principled in the Romish Belief but open Professours of the Reformed the Eldest is now to receive his Fathers Place under the future King A Cardinals Hat is provided for the other if the Plot takes Three years since Master Porter was to be sent away by the King to Morocco but was prohibited by the Society lest the business should suffer delay He is a Patron of the Jesuits providing Chappels for them to exercise their Religion in both at home and abroad Secretary Windebank a fierce Papist is the greatest Traitour to the King of all He not onely revealeth the Kings greatest Secrets but also communicates Counsels by which the Design may be best advanced He at least thrice every Week converseth with the Legate in the Nocturnal Conventicles and revealeth what is â—it to be known to which end he hireth an House near to the Popes Legate to whom he often resorts through the Garden-door for by this vicinity the Meeting is facilitated He is bribed with Gifts to be a Partner in the Conspiracy by whom he is sustained that he may more sedulously attend his Charge His son is sent expresly to Rome on purpose to insinuate himself into his holinesse Digby and Winter Knights Mr. Mountague who hath been at Rome the Lord Sterlin a Kinsman of the Earl of Arundel a Knight the Countesse of New-port the Dutchesse of Buckingham and many others who hath sworn to this Conspiracy are all most vigilant in the plot Some are enticed with hope of Court others of Political Offices others attended to the sixteen Cardinals caps vacant which are detained so to feed with vain hopes those who expect them The president of the said Society was the Lord Gage a Jesuited Priest dead some three years since He had a palace adorned with wanton pictures as pretending to profaneness but palliating thereby a Monastery wherein fourty Nunns were maintained concealed in so spacious a Palace It is situated in Queens street The Jesuits have bought all this street and have reduced it to a quadrangle where a Jesuiticall Colledge is tacitely built with this hope that it might be openly finisht assoon as the General Reformation was accomplisht The Popes Legate useth a threefold Character one common to all Nuncio's Another peculiar to himself and Cardinal Barbarino A third wherewith he covers some greater secrets to be imparted Whatsoever things he receiveth from the Society or spies he packeth up in one bundle with this addresse To Monsieur Stravio Archdeacon of Cambrai from whom they are sent to Rome These particulars considered it will be evident to all 1. That the Conspiracy against the King and Lord Archbishop is detected and the means threatning ruin to them both is demonstrated 2. The imminent Dangers to both Kingdoms is declared 3. The Rise and Progress of the Scotish Fire is related 4. Means are suggested whereby their Troubles may be appeased for after the Scots shall see by whom and to what intents their Spirits are provoked they will speedily look to themselves neither will they suffer the Forces of both Kingdoms to be subdued lest a middle party interpose which seek the ruine of both 5. With what Sword the Kings Throat is assaulted even when these Stirs shall be ended Con's Confession and visible Demonstration sheweth 6. The place of Assembly in Captain Read's House is named 7. The eight Days Dispatch by Read and the Legate is described 8. How the names of the Conspiratours may be known 9. Where this whole Congregation may be circumvented 10. Some of the principal unfaithfull ones of the Kings party are notified by name and many whose Names occur not yet their Habitations being known their Names may be easily extorted from Read If these things be warily proceeded in the strength of the whole business will be brought to light so the Arrow being foreseen the Danger shall be avoided which that it may prosperously succeed the Almighty Creatour grant The matter of this Information is conform to their old practices in all former Times and in some respects to be likely enough but truly far from any wise mans faith to give it too much credit in the particulars which is so notoriously mistaken as it marrs the story And for that Objection and Result thereon that the Arch-bishop of Canterbury had too much favoured the Romish Faction not their Faith is his own opinion the Information says quite contrary But his Observatour and others have shewed how and upon what account King Iames and King Charls too had Reasons and in what manner to connive at the Popish Faction in reference to the favours afforded the foreign Reformed Churches And so the great Ministers and Officers in State doing but their duty therein might be thought to favour their Faith See History complete Mary Queen of Scots and King Iames. And to ballance the Puritan Non-conformist the ancient usefull Ceremonies of the Primitive Church were fuller restored in this Arch-bishops Time than of late before but not so thereby for the Arch-bishop to be forthwith cried up by the Romanists for their Proselyte for they know that this Reformation did in Ceremonies rather undo them No Sir it was the Scots first and Presbytery
to call one which his candid and ingenious consideration of necessity grounded upon such Reasons as himself expresseth in his most admired Treatise his excellent Book EIKON BASILIKH which we hereafter shall have several occasions in some Particulars to mention it being the Portraicture of his Sacred Majesty in his Solitudes and Sufferings with his spiritual Meditations upon each Chapter and Occasion written no doubt from the truth of a troubled Soul and indisputable to be of his own compiling And although an industrious malignant Pen hath laboured to wrest that honour from his Sacred memory he cannot fix it in likelihood upon any other person in the World the majesty and manner of the style onely his and unimitable by any other None but the same sad sorrowfull Soul could be able to compose so much upon several occasions so evenly concurring but he himself the true Sufferer Besides if you please to observe it is not unlike the gravity of Master Hooker's style in his Ecclesiastical Policy which the King often perused and was a sufficient Master of Defence thereby and which Book in his last words to his Children he recommends to them to reade Nay more observe his publick Declarations and Answers following when other helps very often failed him compare their styles and see how they agree in the dialect This Book whilest in loose Papers ere it was complete and secured into his Cabinet and that being lost was seized by the Enemy at Naseby Fight but these Papers happily rescued and so came to his Majesties hands again who in the end commended them to his faithfull Servant that Minister of Gods Word Master Symonds with command to see them imprinted And his Study being searched they were by good Providence secured about him in his Bosom and though the industry of the Adversary had been to prevent it the Book came forth some time after the Kings death with so incredible an esteem as that it hath been since translated into all modern Tongues but Spanish the Iesuits malice and envy suppressing it there and into all manner of Folio's for bigness And a learned Traveller Macedonian by birth being here read it over and translated it into Greek and carried it over beyond Seas where it was so imprinted from his Copy The first beginning of this Book enters upon his Majesties calling this Parliament THis last Parliament I called says the King not more by others advice and necessity of my affairs than by mine own choice and inclination who have always thought the right way of Parliaments most safe for my Crown as best pleasing to my People and although I was not forgetfull of those sparks which some mens Distâ—mpers formerly studied to kindle in Parliaments which by forbearing to convene for some years I hoped to have extinguished yet resolving with my self to give all just satisfaction to modest and sober Desires and to redress all publick Grievances in Church and State I hoped by my Freedom and their Moderation to prevent all misunderstandings and miscarriages in this In which I feared affairs would meet with some passion and prejudice in other men so I resolved they should finde least of them in my self not doubting but by the weight of Reason I should counterpoize the over-ballancings of any Factions I was indeed sorry to hear with what partiality and popular heat Elections were carried in many places yet hoping that the gravity and discretion of other Gentlemen would allay and fix the Commons to a due temperament guiding some mens well-meaning Zeal by such Rules of Moderation as are best both to preserve and restore the health of all States and Kingdoms No man was better pleased with the convening of this Parliament than my self who knowing best the largeness of mine own heart toward my Peoples good and just contentment pleased my self most in that good and firm understanding which would hence grow between me and my People All jealousies being laid aside mine own and my Childrens Interests gave me many obligations to seek and preserve the love and welfare of my Subjects the onely temporal blessing that is left to the ambition of just Monarchs as their greatest honour and safety next Gods protection I cared not to lessen my self in some things of my wonted Prerogative since I knew I could be no Loser if I might gain but a Recompense in my Subjects affections I intended not onely to oblige my Friends but mine Enemies also exceeding even the Desires of those that were factiously discontented if they did but pretend to any modest and sober sense The odium and offences which some mens rigour or remisness in Church and State had contracted upon my Government I resolved to have expiated by such Laws and Regulations for the future as might not onely rectifie what was amiss in practice but supply what was defective in the constitution No man having a greater Zeal to see Religion settled and preserved in Truth Unity and Order than my self whom it most concerns both in Piety and Policy as knowing that No flames of eivil Dissentions are more dangerous than those which make religious Pretensions the Grounds of Factions I resolved to reform what I should by free and full advice in Parliament be convinced to be amiss and to grant whatever my Reason and Conscience told me was fit to be desired I wish I had kept my self within those Bounds and not suffered mine own Iudgment to have been overborn in some things more by others Importunities than their Arguments my confidence had less betrayed my self and my Kingdoms to those Advantages which some men sought for who wanted nothing but Power and Occasion to do mischief But our sins being ripe there was no preventing of Gods Iustice from reaping that glory in our Calamities which we robb'd him of in our Prosperity And this Parliament must be summoned to appear at Westminster which Assembly being there it is observed as a greater prejudice to the Kings affairs than when he was at York not to have held it there which was nearer to the danger and occasion of this Scotish Parliament for the Scots War take to boot his former knowledg of this City Londons disaffection to his service and the President of Edward the first before in the Conquest of Wales kept his Assemblies and Parliament near the Scene of Action at Acton Barnell the Marches of that County And when he turned his Forces to the Conquest of Scotland he called his Parliament to Carlile on the Borders of Scotland Indeed King Charls considered thus much and it was thought would have changed his place for another accordingly but then it was too late So then he followed the Fate which by admitting the Treaty also at London the Scots Commissioners had that opportunity and they were not nice to make the good use to themselves here to inflame this City into a capacity of the worst Impression which those of the Scotish Nation were cunning to imprint
of York Restitutus of London and Adelphius of Golchester called in that Council Colonia Londinensium And so the Arch-bishop concludes that the Angels of the seven Churches in the Revelation were seven singular Bishops and that Saint Iohn being removed from his Exile by the Sentence of Nerva he betook himself to the Metropolis of Ephesus and being assisted with the presence of the seven Bishops he took upon him the Government of the Metropolis of the Ephesians and continued preaching the Word of Piety untill the Empire of Trajan That during that time he published the Gospel as saith Irenaeus Eusebius and Hierom at the intreaty of the Bishops of Asia and there did ordain divers Bishops in several Churches All which may suffice for the deduction To which was added by another the Thesis THESIS 1. That our English Episcopacy hath been justified by the confession of the most learned Protestants of remote Churches in special by the Church of Geneva 2. That there was never any visibly constituted Church in all Christendom since the Apostles time for fifteen hundred years and more which held Episcopacy in it self to be unlawfull 3. That Episcopal Prelacy is acknowledged by Protestant Divines of remote Churches to be according to the Word of God and their consent therein unto primitive Antiquity 4. That Episcopal Government in the Church is in respect of the necessary use thereof the best by the consent of Protestant Divines of other reformed Churches 5. That the most Protestant Churches do profess and practise a Prelacy over Presbyters 6. That the former Reasons of Confessions of Protestant Divines concerning the necessity of Episcopal Prelacy for preservation of concord and preventing of Schism is correspondent to the judgment of Antiquity 7. That Bishops primitively were not onely the chiefest Champions for the Christian Faith but also the greatest Adversaries to Romish Popedom as have also our English 8. That to be of Apostolical institution argueth in it a divine Right by the confession of excellent Divines of the Reformed Churches 9. That no ancient Father absolutely denied the Apostolical Original of Episcopacy no not the objected Hierom who will shew himself a manifest Patron thereof 10. That Clement an Apostolical Disciple to whose arbitrement both our Opposites and we offer to yield our selves doth patronize Episcopacy as being Apostolical 11. That other primitive Fathers before Hierom did unanimously testifie an Apostolical Right of Episcopacy 12. That the Apostolical Antiquity of Episcopacy is confessedly proved out of Ignatius 13. That Antiquity hath given us Rules of Resolution by the knowledg of any Apostolical practice which may serve in the case of Episcopacy 14. That Protestant Divines of other reformed Churches have held it most equal to be directed by the judgments of Ancients for a proof of a practise Apostolical 15. That Beza himself is challengeable to yield unto an Apostolical Right of Episcopacy from his own former confession 16. That the testimony of Nazianzen and Augustine are unworthily objected to the contrary 17. That Timothy and Titus both had a Prelacy over Presbyters notwithstanding the Objection of the community of Names of Bishops and Presbyters is sufficiently confessed by Protestant Divines of remote Churches 18. That Timothy and Titus have had a Prelacy as Bishops over Presbyters in the Apostles times notwithstanding the Objection that they were called Evangelists according to consent of Protestants of Reformed Churches 19. That Antiquity taught an Episcopacy both in Timothy and Titus 20. That our Opposites first Exposition which interpreteth the Angeâ— to mean the whole Church and Congregation is notably extravagant 21. That our Opposites second Exposition of the word Angel to signifie onely the Order and College of Presbyters is erroneous notwithstanding the Arguments of our Opposites to the contrary 22. That our Opposites third Exposition of the word Angel to signifie one onely Pastour in the Church of Ephesus is extremely new and naught 23. That by the word Angel of Ephesus to signifie a singular and individual Pastour having a Prelacy over Presbyters proved by a large consent of Protestant Divines without exception is judicious and ingenious 24. That Antiquity held not the word Angel whereof we treat to be taken collectively for a multitude of Pastours 25. That the word Angel in other places of the Revelation is commonly if not always individually taken 26. That by Angel is meant individually one Bishop is demonstrated by historical learning without contradiction 27. That Christ himself shewed his approbation of Prelacy which the foresaid Angels had in their several Churches We have been so busie at home that no time nor place can be spared to mention fo reign affairs yet such were the affictions of the Spaniard by fomer Losses Plots and Treasons as we need not wish an Enemy to suffer more much less one in amity with us Indeed Spain was at the very brink of destruction likely to lose the Low-countreys and her States in Italy also but as the mighty Oak resists the several Storms from all the corners of the Earth so she in greatest mis-fortunes fixes by degrees and brings her self to this height and growth she is since recovered It appears now from this year almost fatal by the defection of Catalonia Portugal and part of the Indies the loss of Arras and the ill success of his Army in Italy besides the approach of the Swedish War to the back of the Danube Philip 4. now King of Spain milde and more affected to his pleasure than to State-affairs lest all Government to his Favourite Olivares who became odious to all the People and from the Low-Countreys themselves which advantages to the Grandees desires were by them fomented to a general Insurrection and Revolt the very Garrisons of Strangers in Catalonia incited the Natives there to rebell who suddenly rose in Arms â—lew their Governour the very Bishops and Priests Incendiaries therein and Don Ioseph of Margarita made them renounce their King and Town to the Protection of France for their Privileges a Nation who in truth make Profession to observe none themselves and by the Marshal of Schonebergh they had assistance of Forces to advance a Treaty with their King The like mischief happened to his Territories in Italy where the Marquess of Legantz besieging Cassal that fatal place to the Spaniard was by brave Count Harcourt Brother to the Duke d' Elbeuf and of the generous Bloud of the Guisars defeated in their Trenches and above four thousand men killed relieved the Town and raised the Siege which may disprove that Maxime that the French are onely furious in their first Assault and therein more than Men and in continuance less than Women for they endured two Repulses but became Conquerours in the third And afterward Harcourt takes Turin in spite of Prince Thomas the Dukes Uncle who commanded there In the Low-countreys likewise they did more by the management of three Marshals of Chaunts Chatillon and Meilleray making shew to
taken a latitude in affirming that the whole Book of Articles of Ireland was called in and in the place thereof the Articles of the Church of England confirmed by Parliament in that Kings name Anno. 1634. whom the Observator hath followed in the like terms pag. 241. and so both imagined to be from the same Person for there was no such motion made and indeed no likelyhood to have taken place there being then so many Papists of both Houses who would have received neither For the further clearing of which this part of a Letter will evidence being written by the late Primate in Answer to an Honourable person of this Kingdom upon the first coming forth of that Book As for Dr. Heylens relation concerning our Articles of Ireland it is much mistaken For first where he saith they did pass when his Majesties Commissioners were imployed about the settling of the Church Anno. 1615. and chargeth them with this strict aâ—sterity as he termeth it in the prescript and observation of the Lords day he sheweth himself very weak there having been no such Commissioners here at that time and our Articles having been published in Print divers years before that the Commissioners whom he meaneth came hither as Sir Nathaniel Rich who was one of them himself can sufficiently inform you Secondly where he saith he is sure that till that time the Lords day had never attained such credit as to be thought an Article of faith he speaks very idely He that would confound the ten Commandements whereof this must be accounted for one unless he will leave us but nine with the Articles of the faith had need be put to learn his Catechism again and he that would have every thing which is put into the Articles of Religion agreed upon in the Synod for the avoyding of diversity of opinions and for the maintenance of peace and uniformity in the Church to be held for an Article of the faith should do well to tell us whether he hath as yet admitted these two here instanced were not by way of diminution for he did highly approve of both as being most excellent composures but because they are either for the most part to be reckoned among the Agenda rather than the Credenda or that in both there are some circumstantials observed and exhorted unto onely for decency and order according to the wisdom of the Church which come not within the compass of the Creed as upon the view of them without descending to Particulars may easily appear the Book of the Ordination of Bishops and the two volums of Homilies into his creed for sure I am he shall finde these in the Articles of Religion agreed upon in the Synod held at London 1562. To which Dr. Heylin himself having subscribed I wonder with what face he can oppose the conclusion which he findeth directly laid down in the Homily of the time and place of prayer in the fourth Commandement God hath given express charge to all men that upon the Sabbath day which is now our Sunday for these are the plain words of the Homily which the Doctor with all his sophistry will never be able to elude they shall cease from all week-day labour to the intent that like as God himself wrought six daies and rested the seventh and blessed it and Sanctified it and consecrated it to quietness and rest from labour even so Gods obedient people should use the Sunday and rest from their common and dayly business and also give themselves wholly to heavenly exercise of Gods true Religion and service By the verdict of the Church of England I am sure the Lords day had attained such a pitch of credit as nothing more could be left to the Church of Ireland in their Articles afterward to adde unto it Thirdly he shameth not to affirm that the whole book of the Articles of Ireland is now called in which is a notorious untruth and lastly the Articles of the Church of England were confirmed by Parliament in this Kingdom Anno. 1634. which it is well known that they were not so much as once propounded to either house of Parliament or ever intended to be propounded the truth is that the house of convocation in the beginning of their Canons for the manifestation of their agreement with the Church of England in the confession of the same Christian faith and the Doctrine of the Sacraments as they themselves profess and for no other end in the world did receive and approve of the Articles of England but that either the Articles of Ireland were ever called in or any Articles or Canons at all were ever here confirmed by act of Parliament may well be reckoned among Dr. Heylins fancies who sheweth how little credit he deserveth in his Geography when he bringeth us news of the remote parts of the world that telleth us so many untruths of things so lately and so publiquely acted in his neighbour nation Now although this of that most Reverend Primate writ many years since with the said Certificate of Dr. Barnard and Dr. Pullein may be satisfactory that the said Articles were not repealed or abrogated for we must keep the Authors own terms who is so precise that he hath at large contended for it yet I shall further confirm it by this brief Narrative of the whole matter as I had it from such as were present First in the house of the Clergie which was then in the Cathedral of St. Patricks Dublin there was a motion made for the reception a new of the Articles of Ireland and all unanimous were for the affirmative excepting two who went out Another time the whole house of the Clergie being called into the Quire where the Bishops sat and the same thing again propounded to them they all stuck to their former vote excepting seven The intent of the whole Clergie being by this sufficiently understood and it appearing there was no need of any such confirmation having been Anno. 1615. fully and formally established that motion was no more repealed only the Primate was consulted conâ—erning the approving and receiving of the Articles of England also to which he readily consented therein being no substantial difference between them which he had subscribed himself voluntarily long before in England and conceiving it to be without any prejudice to the other Hereupon the first Canon being all that was done in relation to them was drawn up the Primate approved it and proposed it himself as president of the Synod in the House of the Bishops commended it to the House of the Clergie where by his motion many assented the more readily they all gave their Votes man by man excepting one person who suspended his out of the suspition that some might make that construction which is the Observators conclusion to whose Arguments somewhat may be answered His chief is from the words of the Canon where they do not onely approve but receive the Articles of England from this must infer a super inducing
and so an abrogation of those of Ireland Now there was not a reception of the one instead of the other but the one with the other there being no difference in substance but onely in method number of subjects determined and other circumstantials argue no more an abrogation then that doth of the Apostles Creed by our reception of the Nicene Creed and Athanasius's wherein some points are more enlarged Or that the reception into our use the form of the Lords prayer according to S. Matthew abrogates that of S. Luke being the shorter Neither do I see but if for the manifestation of the union of the whole Reformed Churches We then should approve and receive the Articles of Religion agreed in other Reformed Churches and they receive ours it were no abrogating of either And the difference in them being onely in Circumstantials and not in substance all might be called one confession That as of many Seas one Ocean of many National Churches one Catholique Church so of many formes of Confessions but one faith amongst them That Argument from the Apostles speech of making void the old Covenant by speaking of a new or taking in the first day of the week to be the Sabbath instead of the last when but one in seven was to be kept doth not fit the Case for in these there was a superinduction and reception of the one for the other but in the Canon the Articles of England are received not instead but with those of Ireland And the practise of divers Bishops confirms it who many years after that upon an Ordination examined the persons as formerly according to the Articles of Ireland and took their subscription of them And in this I shall give you the sence of a most eminent learned and judicious person upon the view of what the Observator rescued had written of it I have received saies he the Book you sent me and have perused it I see he will have the allowance of our Articles of England by the Synod in Ireland to be a virtual disanulling of the Irish Confession which I conceive saith nomore but that both Confessions were consistent And the Act of that Synod not a revocation of the Irish Articles but an approbation of ours as agreeing with them He hath his flings at the Sermon preached at the Lord Primates Funeral but in truth he wrongs himself and our Church in those detractions from him Now this being so that the Articles of Ireland were not abrogated nor by the Primate so apprehended where was the ground of any displeasure disaffection or former grudge pretended very uncharitably by the Observator to be the cause of the Lord Primates carrying a sharp tooth against the Earl of Strafford It could not be for the first Canons passing which was all that was done in it for himself proposed and commended it and such as were intimate with him never heard him express any displeasure to the Earl upon that account And what Arguments soever may now be picked out of the draught of the Canon to imply an abrogation virtually or legally which is the last refuge the Observator flies unto are of no force to prove his displeasure then who did not so apprehend it and if he had then taken any such offence they are strangers to that holy man that can believe he could smother a grudge so many years but for such as have so aspersed him I shall pray that the thoughts of their hearts may be forgiven them So much for the clearing of that mistake concerning the Articles of Ireland which being made the Foundation of that other Building we are next to enter upon must accordingly fall with it also viz. The second Scandal in putting forward of the Earl of Strafford 's death But first to the whole matter which I shall lay down as plainly and briefly as the business will bear it The House of Commons having voted the Bill of Attainder against the Earl of Strafford which with some difficulty passed at last the House of Lords also and so tendered to the King for his royal assent He refused it for the present as not being satisfied upon his Hearing the Charge and Defence with the Evidence on both sides of which himself was witness That no sufficient proof was made nor any Law then in force whereby the Earl could be guilty of high Treason It was therefore necessary that Judges for the Law and Divines for his Conscience should satisfie him therein and they were with him to that end sent for by him and not sent to him The Houses of Parliament already really assured that their Proceedings and Votes for the Earl's condemnation ought to be sufficient satisfaction for the King without scruple of his own conscience to sign to their judgment the King being a party in Life and Death of a Delinquent ought to confide in the Verdict of the Iury. Nor was the King present as to satisfie his own conscience but his curiosity and it had been a strange President in the Parliament to consent unto much less to send any persons to the King to clear his conscience contrary to the Parliaments sentence especially such persons not having Vote in the House as the Judges have not Nor are the Bishops so much as assistant in cause of bloud or death by the fourth Canon of the Council of Toledo And it is confessed by both Authours that the Judges and Divines also were not willing to give their Opinions point blank against the Vote in Parliament And certainly if they had they might well have expected to be further questioned for it But in truth the Judges told the King that in point of Law the Oath made by Sir Henry Vane of the Earls advice to raise Horse to aw this Nation the Earl was guilty of Treason which though but singularis testis and which circumstances have been taken for sufficient testimony in Treason and more the King could not draw from the Judges as to any other particular but they flew to their general Opinion that super totam materiam he was guilty The King then starts his last Doubt that in his conscience he could not pass the Bill although the Earl were guilty having promised him under his hand that his Prerogative should save him never to pass that Bill nor to consent to the acting of any thing to take away his life And this was now that point of conscience Breach of Promise mostly insisted upon wherein the Divines were to satisfie And we have heard what hath been said of them And now let us see what the Arch-bishop of Armagh is pleased to say and that under his own hand-writing The Arch-bishop of Armagh's Testimony in Answer to the Historian pag. 257. l. 29. That Sunday morning writes he wherein the King consulted with the four Bishops London Durham Lincoln and Carlile the Arch-bishop of Armagh was not present being then Preaching as he then accustomed every Lords day to do in the Church of
be evil because mine were good And having signed both these Bills the King sent Sir Dudley Carleton Secretary of State to the Earl to acquaint him what he had finished the necessity urging him so to do together with the Earls free consent and the return of his Paper-promise which ballanced all The Earl amazed seriously asked him whether his Majesty had passed the Bill as not believing without some astonishment that the King would have done it And being again assured that it was passed He arose from his Chair and standing up lift his eyes to Heaven clapt his hand upon his heart and said Put not your trust in Princes nor in the sons of men for in them there is no salvation I have been assured from him that heard the King speak it and others confirming that the Bishop of London did not disswade nor perswade the King in the passing of the Bill but wisely or cunningly said nothing at all Nor does it appear that any of the other Bishops Lincoln onely excepted did any way press the King to his death And for satisfaction of all the world that the Arch-bishop of Armagh did not urge his death but rather the contrary I was present when it was diâ—â—â—ursed by a person of honour and honesty one that in these times and in these particulars thus controverted would not be positive but in the truth And as willingly as necessarily he hath set it under his hand and ready to justifie it with his Oath and Honour in these words and so witnessed by those that were present That the late King being in the Garison of Oxford a publick rumour passed that the Arch-bishop of Armagh was then dead and so intimated to the King in his Bed-chamber who was pleased to resent the news with much sorrow and with very high expression of the Prelates remarkable piety and learning and so said all that were present in confidence of his great endowments of exemplary virtues Except Sir said one in his advice to your Majestie to the hasty resolution of the Lord Strafford's death To which the King in some passion replied It was false protesting with an Oath his innocencie therein and that after the Bill was passed said the King the Arch-bishop came to me with much regret and sorrow and that the Arch-bishop wept bitterly This as a great truth I am ready to aver says the Relator by my Oath and Honour as I do now under my hand this eighth day of May 1656. W. L. Hereupon having this under his hand and witness I urged the question with another person of like Honour who said that himself was present at that time relating the very same words in effect as the former and both of them I spake with apart many miles asunder and neither of them witting of the use which I now make thereof they mentioned each other to be present And this also is certified upon his Oath and Honour and under his hand also and witnesses G. K. And now we shall see what the Arch-bishop of Armagh hath been pleased to signifie as to the Observatours pag. 240. concerning the result of the Bishops That Sunday morning the five Bishops writes he for so many they were London being one of them were sent for by the King himself and not sent to him by the Houses of Parliament amongst whom the Bishop of Durham and Carlile were so far from depending wholly upon the judgment of the other two whom the Observatour accounts Politicians that they argued the case themselves as fully as did any other To the Argument of one of them the King also returned this Answer that his Syllogism was faulty because it had in it four terms And for that most uncharitable surmise writes he concerning the Arch-bishop of Armagh as if the displeasure he had conceived against the Lord Lieutenant were so great that it could not be satisfied but by the seeking of his very bloud It is hard to say whethâ—â—hat calumny be more malicious or ridiculous for both the ground of that conceited grudg is utterly false the Articles of Religion established in the Church of Ireland having been never abrogated by him or any other And in the ordering of this his the Earls last business there was no man with whom he held greater correspondency than with the Primate himself whereof this may be sufficient proof that as before his condemnation he did from time to time consult with him touching his answer to their present charge so also afterwards having obtained from the Parliament that the Primate might be sent unto him to prepare him for his death He chearfully imbraced his spiritual instructions prayed with him sent messages to the King by him and by no means would dispense with him for being absent from his Execution But taking him by the hand led him along to the Scaffold where with incomparable courage and as himself professed even then ready to lay hown his head without the least touch of any passion or fear he rendered up the spirit to him that gave it And as to the Historian's Paragraph pag. 263. l. 33. The Earl proceeding c. This Paragraph says the Arch-bishop is wholly to be left out for at his passing to the Scaffold there was a great silence amongst the people all of them universally commiserating his case in an extraordinary manner and with great passion lifting up their hands to heaven for him And to the Historian pag. 263. l. 38. The Earl being brought c. The Earl says the Arch-bishop being brought to the Scaffold his Chaplains prayed with him and himself remaining still upon his knee rehearsing with great reverence the five and twenty Psalm Afterwards arising he addrest his Speech unto the people to this effect after following But the occasion of the mistakes of the addressing of his Speech unto the Lords as the Historian hath My Lords It should be My Lord which the Earl used in the Singular Number turning himself to the Arch-bishop who stood by him as appears by the Pamphlet presently published concerning his suffering where the tenour of his Speech which he then used is to be taken as agreeing almost with the very syllable by him used and not as the Historian hath it for thus in truth it was My Lord Primate c. as hereafter in due place But to return to the tenth of May the King having the day before signed both Bills that of the continuation of the Parliament and this for the execution of the Earl and with one Pen of Ink and at one instant he sets his hand to the loss of himself and to the destruction of his faithfull and most able Counsellour and Servant The next day eleventh of May he being extremely troubled at what he had done concerning the Earl he vouchsafes to write to the Lords and sends this Letter by his Son the Prince of Wales My Lords I did yesterday satisfie the justice of the Kingdom by passing the Bill of Attainder
so many forward to engage against me who had made great Professions of singular pietie For this gave to vulgar mindes so bad a reflection upon me and my Cause as if it had been impossible to adhere to me and not withall part from God to think or speak well of me and not to blaspheme him so many were perswaded that these two were utterly inconsistent to be at once Loyal to me and truly Religious toward God Not but that I had I thank God many with me which were both Learned and Religious much above that ordinrie size and that vulgar proportion wherein some men glorie so much who were so well satisfied in the cause of my Sufferings that they chose rather to suffer with me than forsake me Nor is it strange that so Religious Preâ—ensions as were used against me should be to many well-minded men a great tempâ—ation to oppose me especially being urged by such popular Preachers as think it no sin to lie for God and what they please to call Gods cause cursing all that will not curse with them looking so much at and crying up the goodness of the end propounded that they consider not the lawfulness of the means used nor the depth of the mischief chiefly plotted and intended The weakness of these mens judgments must be made up by their clamours and activitie It was a great part of some mens Religion to scandalize me and mine they thought theirs could not be true if they cried not down mine as false I thank God I have had more trial of his grace as to the constancie of my Religion in the Protestant Profession of the Church of England both abroad and at home than ever they are like to have Nor do I know any Exception I am so liable to in their opinion as too great a fixedness in that Religion whose judicious and solid Grounds both from Scripture and Antiquitie will not give my Conscience leave to approve or consent to those many dangerous and divided Innovations which the bold Ignorance of some men would needs obtrude upon me and my People Contrarie to those wel-tried Foundations both of Truth and Order which men of far greater Learning and clearer Zeal have settled in the Confession and Constitution of this Church in England which many former Parliaments in the most calm and unpassionate times have oft confirmed in which I shall ever by Gods help persevere as believing it hath most of Primitive Truth and Order Nor did my using the assistance of some Papists which were my Subjects any way fight against my Religion as some men would needs interpret it especially those who least of all men cared whom they imploied or what they said and did so they might prevail 'T is strange that so wise men as they would be esteemed should not conceive That Differences of perswasion in matters of Religion may easily fall out where there is the sameness of Dutie Allegiance and Subjection The first they own as men and Christians to God The second they ow to me in common as their King Different Professions in point of Religion cannot any more than in civil Trades take away the communitte of Relations either to Parents or to Princes And where is there such an Oglio or Medley of various Religions in the World again as those men entertain in their service who finde most fault with me without any scruple as to the diversitie of their Sects and Opinions It was indeed a foul and indelible shame for such as would be counted Protestants to enforce me a declared Protestant their Lord and King to a necessarie use of Papists or any other who did but their Dutie to help me to defend my self Nor did I more than is lawfull for any King in such Exigents to use the aid of any his Subjects I am sorrie the Papists should have a greater sense of their Allegiance than many Protestant Professours who seem to have learned and to practise the worst Principles of the worst Papists Indeed it had been a verie impertinent and unseasonable scruple in me and verie pleasing no doubt to mine Enemies to have been then disputing the Points of different Beliefs in my Subjects when I was disputed with by Swords points and when I needed the help of my Subjects as men no less than their praiers as Christians The noise of my Evil Counsellours was another usefull Devise for those who were impatient any mens counsel but their own should be followed in Church and State who were so eager in giving me better counsel that they would not give me leave to take it with freedom as a Man or Honour as a King making their counsels more like a Drench that must be poured down than a Draught which might be fairly and leisurely drunk if I liked it I will not justifie beyond humane Errours and Frailties my self or my Counsellours they might be subject to some Miscarriages yet such as were far more reparable by second and better thoughts than those enormous Extravagancies wherewith some men have now wildered and almost quite lost both Church and State The event of things at last will make it evident to my Subjects that had I followed the worst counsels that my worst Counsellours ever had the boldness to offer to me or my self any inclination to use I could not so soon have brought both Church and State in three flourishing Kingdoms to such a Chaos of Confusions and Hell of Miseries as some have done out of which they cannot or will not in the midst of their many great Advantages redeem either me or my Subjects No men were more willing to complain than I was to redress what I saw in Reason was either done or advised amiss and this I thought I had done even beyond the expectation of moderate men who were sorrie to see me prone even to injure my self out of a zeal to relieve my Subjects But other mens insatiable Desire of Revenge upon me my Court and my Clergie hath wholly beguiled both Church and State of the benefit of all my either Retractations or Concessions and withall hath deprived all those now so zealous Persecutours both of the comfort and reward of their former pretended Persecutions wherein they so much gloried among the vulgar and which indeed a truly humble Christian will so highly prize as rather not to be relieved than be revenged so as to be bereaved of that Crown of Christian Patience which attends humble and injured Sufferers Another Artifice used to with-draw my Peoples Affections from me to their Designs was the noise and ostentation of Libertie which men are not more prone to desire than unapt to bear in the popular sense which is to do what every man liketh best If the divinest Libertie be to will what men should and to do what they so will according to Reason Laws and Religion I envie not my Subjects that Libertie which is all I desire to enjoy my self so far am I from the desire of
oppressing theirs nor were those Lords and Gentlemen which assisted me so prodigal of their Liberties as with their Lives and Fortunes to help on the enslaving of themselves and their Posterities As to Civil Immunities none but such as desire to drive on their ambitious and covetous Designs over the Ruines of Church and State Prince Peers and People will ever desire greater Freedoms than the Laws allow whose Bounds good men count their Ornament and Protection others their Manacles and Oppression Nor is it just any man should expect the Reward and Benefit of the Law who despiseth its Rule and Direction losing justly his Safetie while he seeks an unreasonable Libertie Time will best inform my Subjects that those are the best Preservers of their true Liberties who allow themselves the least licentiousness against or beyond the Laws They will feel it at last to their cost that it is impossible those men should be really tender of their Fellow-subjects Libertie who have the hardness to use their King with so severe Restraints against all Laws both Divine and Humane under which yet I will rather perish than complain to those who want nothing to complete their mirth and triumph but such Musick In point of true consciencious tenderness attended with humilitie and meekness not with proud and arrogant activitie which seeks to hatch every Egg of different opinion to a Faction or Schism I have oft declared how little I desire my Laws and Scepter should intrench on Gods Sovereigntie which is the onely King of mens consciences and yet he hath laid such Restraints upon men as command them to be subject for conscience sake giving no men libertie to break the Law established further than with meekness and patience they are content to suffer the Penalties annexed rather than perturb the publick Peace The truth is some mens thirst after Novelties others despair to relieve the Necessities of their Fortunes or satisfie their Ambition in peaceable times distrusting Gods Providence as well as their own merits were the secret but principal Impulsives to these popular Commotions by which Subjects have been perswaded to expend much of those plentifull Estates they got and enjoyed under my Government in peaceable times which yet must now be blasted with all the odious Reproaches which impotent malice can invent and my self exposed to all those Contempts which may most diminish the Majestie of a King and increase the ungratefull Insolencies of my People For mine Honour I am well assured that as mine Innocencie is clear before God in point of any Calumnies they object so my Reputation shall like the Sun after Owls and Bats have had their freedom in the Night and darker times rise and recover it self to such a degree of splendour as those feral Birds shall be grieved to behold and unable to bear For never were any Princes more glorious than those whom God hath suffered to be tried in the Fornace of Afflictions by their injurious Subjects And who knows but the just and mercifull God will do me good for some mens hard false and evil speeches against me wherein they speak rather what they wish than what they believe or know Nor can I suffer so much in point of Honour by those rude and scandalous Pamphlets which like Fire in great conflagrations flie up and down to set all places in like flames as those men do who pretending to so much pietie are so forgetfull of their Dutie to God and me By no way ever vindicating the Majestie of their King against any of those who contrary to the Precept of God and President of Angels speak evil of Dignities and bring railing Accusations against those who are honoured with the name of Gods But 't is no wonder if men not fearing God should not honour their King They will easily contemn such Shadows of God who reverence not that Supreme and Adorable Majestie in comparison of whom all the glorie of Men and Angels is but obscuritie yet hath he graven such Characters of Divine Authoritie and Sacred Power upon Kings as none may without sin seek to blot them out Nor shall their black Veils be able to hide the shining of my Face while God gives me an heart frequently and humbly to converse with him from whom alone are all the Irradiations of true Glorie and Majestie There was ever and anon some occasions offered in the Commons House against Bishops and I finde one Master Thomas to start up in confirmation of what was said there before when they voted the Bishops out of the Upper House and now he explains himself whose Speech in some Points may be observed He takes a View and Examination of all the former Actions of Bishops in Parliament from the Year 1116. to this this time in the several Reigns of three and twenty Kings and Queens of this Kingdom how obnoxious they have been to Prince and People and therefore not fit or convenient that they should continue Members of the Higher House in which they have been said he so disloyally and traiterously affected to Regality and no less mischievous and pernicious to Church and Common-wealth Then he ravels into all foreign Records whereout he could pick any personal Delinquency of any Bishop and from thence falls upon such others in the Reigns of English Sovereigns But as to their Interest in Parliament he acknowledges them from the first Parliament Anno 1116. but he would have them now considered not an fuerunt but an profuerunt and so not to debate an factum but an fieri debuit if bad the longer the worse Antiquity without Truth is but ancient Errour for Henry 1. an Usurper upon Robert his elder Brother admitted them in the Upper House to justifie hisTitle to the Crown They advanced King Stephen another Usurper though they had formerly sworn to Maud the Empress endeavouring to salve it by bringing in the Salique Law into this Kingdom And tells the story of Thomas Becket against Henry 2. that although the Papists adored him as a Saint Martyr yet the Doctours in Paris did debate whether he were damned therefore avowing that he deserved Damnation for his Contumacy towards the King being the Minister of God That Bishop Longchamp Governour or Viceroy for Richard 1. absent in the Holy War Rex Sacerdos who for his Sacrilege and barbarous Misdemeanours being taken in Womans Apparel velâ—t delicata Muliercula was banished And remember the story of the Bishop of Bavois in France taken Prisoner in his Coat of Mail was by that King sent to the Pope with a Vide an tunica filii tui sit an non That Arch-bishop Hubert advanced the Usurper King Iohn rejecting Arthur his eldest Brothers Son and yet at last deprived Iohn of his Life and Kingdom But herein Mr. Thomas is mistaken for Hubert died ten years before King John That Henry 3. and his eldest Son the Prince were forced by Stephen Arch-bishop of Canterbury to swear to be governed by four and twenty Noble-men
allowing to the King onely Primus accubitus in coenis And why onely Stephen Was it not voted by Act of the Parliament at Oxford and concluded in several Articles That Edward 2. life was taken away by Bishop Thorlton The story is that this Man Adam de Orlton was Bishop of Hereford took a Text 2 Kings 4. Caput meum aegrotat My head my head aketh whereby he advised the cure of a sick head of the Kingdom to be cut off and therefore must be guilty of his Murder afterwards Indeed there was an enigmatical Verse fathered also upon him Edvardum occidere nolite timere bonum est which Verse the Bishop utterly denied Then comes he to Edward 3. that Iohn Arch-bishop of Canterbury incited the King and Parliament to a bloudy War with France And why John Was it not voted in Parliament where all the Peers were as hot upon it as he Indeed because the Clergie in those days spake better sense than an ignorant unlearned Lord many Historians father the ill success of former actions upon them Promotors of the Designs as if in re stulta sapientes and in malo publico facundi That in Parliament the Laity offered Richard 2. a Fifteenth if the Clergy would also give a Tenth and a half which William le â—ourtney Arch-bishop opposed as not to be taxed by the Laity and thereupon the Lords besought the King to deprive them of their Temporalities thereby says he to humble them to humble them and damn the Authours of Sacrilege and cruelty yet were they mercifull not to take away all Spiritualities also Then follows H. 4. an Usurper he says and that the Bish. of Carlile opposes him in a Speech and therein so reasonable was the cause just I cannot say that the Lords combined to depose him for there were living of the House of Clarence Title to precede his of Mortimer for whom five other Bishops went Ambassadours abroad to get assistance and those Bishops also scape not the censure of doing evil by justifying this others Right to the Crown and deposed him also but then it was so voted in Parliament and therefore not all the blame to be laid upon those Bishops that acted but their part and it is true that in a Parliament in that Kings Reign a Bill was exhibited against the Temporalities of the Clergie but not passed Parliamentum indoctorum says one and the Commons fitter to enter Common with their Cattle Henry 5. succeeds he says who was incited by Arch-bishop Chidley to revive his Title to France with the effusion of much bloud and ill success And was it not true that the King had good Title to France And the same cause had Edward 3. And as just was it against the domestick Title of Henry 4. and so in sum in either of the Bishops by their Council You say it was not the Office of Bishops to incense Wars either Domestick or Foreign But then Policy is pickt up for a Reason being you say to divert the King from reforming the Clergy That in the time of Henry 6. the Protectour Duke of Glocester accused Beaufort Cardinal of Winchester But then take all the story he was also Chancellour of England great Uncle to this King Son to John of Gaunt and his Brother Cardinal of York and the greatest Crime intended was because of his greatness which the Protectour durst not trust and therefore devised a Charge of which he was not guilty but acquitted by Parliament Edward 4. follows who was taken Prisoner he says by Arch-Bishop Nevil declaring him an Usurper and entailed the Crowns of England and France upon Henry and his Issue male and in default upon Clarence disabling King Edward's eldest Brother He was a party in the Plot if there were any but then take the Junto of the Authours it was the power of that great Warwick and others that did create and unmake Kings at pleasure the confusion of the right submitting to power whether right or wrong Edward 5. his Crown was by the Prelates placed on his murderous Uncle Richard 3. the Cardinal Archbishop taking the Brother Richard out of Sanctuary that so both of them might be taken away That Cardinal was a great Actour therein but the Duke of Bukingham did the business upon whose head the Cardinal would have set the Crown who had no right thereto Henry 7. he says was perswaded by the same Cardinal Morton and prevailed to the Crown He might assist therein what honest English man would not have done so But to say that the Cardinal was the main Instrument we shall want the force of all Arguments but Gods good Providence Henry 8. called the Bishops half Subjects to him Wolsey and Campeius refused to give Judgment for his Divorce Numbring up against them the Petitions Supplications and Complaints of godly Ministers Doctour Barns Latimer Tyndal Bean and others And were not some of these godly men Bishops also That the Statutes of 31 Henry 8. yet in force against them That in Anno 37. Letters Patents were granted to Lay-men to exercise all manner of Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction as the Kings Officers not the Bishops Let us never deduce Reason or Iustice from that Kings Actions more like an Atheist than a Christian either Ecclesiastical or Temporal besides the Mutation and Change of Religion then not affording any good President in either kinde But thus much as in excuse was in time of Popery He proceeds to others no less detestable he says nay more heinous since the Reformation but with this Proviso that in the Reigns of all the succeeding Sovereigns to this present he charging those reverend Bishops good men chief Pillars of the Church great Lights of Learning they doing those things as Bishops which he believes they would not have done as private Ministers to hold their Bishopricks to please great Lords Princes Kings and Emperours have not onely yielded but perswaded to introduce Idolatry to dis-inherit right Heirs to Kingdoms and force good Princes to Acts unnatural and unjust But he is not against Episcopacy or a Church-government but so much degenerate it is from the first substance Vox praeterea nihil yet would not have it demolished till a better Model be found out God-a-mercy for that And presently he charges Arch-bishop Cranmer and Bishop Ridley for perswading Edward 6. that the Lady Mary might be permitted Mass in her own Chapel more like Politicians than Divines though not prevailing with that pious Prince She was the right Heir apparent to her Brother and the onely right Issue to the Crown begotten no doubt in lawfull Matrimony bred up in Romish and the might of Charls the Emperour would and did in Reason and Policy afford her liberty of her Profession without any scandal upon those Bishops for their opinion therein her Mother had suffered too much injustice and it was no justice to have denied to her Daughter this desire After Edward 6. those two Bishops Cranmer and Ridley says he
a several Circuit and Diocess excepting York-shire which is to be divided into three 2. A constant Presbytery of twelve choice Divines to be selected in every Shire or Diocess 3. A constant President to be established as a Bishop over this Presbytery 4 And he to ordain suspend deprive degrade Excommunicate by and with the assistance of several divines of this Presbytery and that four times of the year He to reside within his Diocess in some one prime place To have one special particular Congregation and the richest in value and there to preach Never to be translated to any other Bishoprick And after his death the King to grant a Conge d' elire to the Clergy of that Diocess they to present them Presbyters out of which the King to elect one the first Presbyter of every shire to be named by the Parliament and upon his avoidance the remaining Presbyters to chuse another out of the Parish Ministers No Bishop or Clergy-man to exercise any temporal office Once a year to summon a Diocesan Synod to regulate the scandal in life and doctrine among the Clergy-men Every third year a National Synod of all the Bishops in the Land with two Presbyters and two Clerks of every Diocess to be chosen This Synod to ordain Canons of Government of the Church but not to be binding till confirmed by Parliament c. A man would have Imagined that all this a doe would have produced something like an Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction but the House of Commons were puzzeled as much more to devise a presbyterial Discipline for the Church Government and being thus at large and in high distraction The Arch Bishop of Armagh to put them in a way of accommodation considering the general consent for matters of doctrine he composed some heads for conjunction in point of Discipline that so Episcopal and Presbyterial Government might not be by circumstances at a far distance Reducing Episcopacy unto the form of Synodical Government in the Antient Church Which he offered as an expedient hereupon for the prevention of future troubles in likelyhood henceforth to arise about Church Government Not improper to be mentioned now paralel to these times when we have none at all BY order of the Church of England saies the Arch Bishop all Presbyters are charged to administer the Doctrine and Sacraments and the Discipline of Christ as the Lord hath commanded and as this Realm hath received the same And that they might the better understand what the Lord had commanded therein the exhortation of St. Paul to the Elders of the Church of Ephesus is appointed to be read unto them at the time of their Ordination Take heed unto your selves and to all the flock among whom the Holy-Ghost hath made you overseers to Rule the Congregation of God which he hath purchased with his Bloud Of the many Elders who in common thus ruled the Church of Ephesus there was one President whom our Saviour in his Epistle unto this Church in a peculiar manner styleth c the Angel of the Church of Ephesus and Ignatâ—us in another Epistle wriâ—ten about twelve years after unto the same Church calleth the Bishop thereof Betwixt the Bishop and the Presbytery of that Church what an harmonious consent there was iâ— the ordering of the Church Government the same Ignatius doth fully there declare by the Presbytery with St. Paul understanding the community of the rest of the Presbyters or Elders who then had a hand not only in the delivery of the Doctrine and Sacraments but also in the Administration of the Discipline of Christ for further proof of which we have that known testimony of Tertullian in his general Apology for Christians In the Church are used exhortations chastisements and divine censure for Judgement is given with great advice as among those who are certain they are in the sight of God and it is the chiefest foreshewing of the Judgement which is to come if any man have so offended that he be banished from the Communion of Prayer and of the Assembly and of all holy fellowship The Presidents that bear rule therein are certain approved Elders who have obtained this honour not by reward but by good report who were no other as he himself intimates elsewhere but those from whose hand they used to receive the Sacrament of the Eucharist For with the B. who was the chief President and therefore styled by the same Tertullian in another place Summus Sacerdos for distinction sake the rest of the dispensers of the word and Sacraments joyned in the common government of the Church and therefore where in matters of Ecclesi astical Iudicature Cornelius Bishop of Rome used the received form of gathering together the Presbytery of what persons that did consist Cyprian sufficiently declareth when he wisheth him to read his Letters to the flourishing Clergy which there did preside or rule with him The presence of the Clergy being thought to be so requisite in matters of Episcopal audiencâ— that in the fourth Councel of Carthage it was concluded That the Bishop might hear no mans cause without the presence of the Clergy and that otherwise the Bishops sentence should be void unless it were confirmed by the presence of the Clergy which we finde also to be inserted into the Canons of Egbert who was Arch-bishop of York in the Saxon times and afterwards into the body of the Canon Law it self True it is that in our Church this kinde of Presbyterial Government hath been long dis-used yet seeing it still professeth that every Pastor hath a right to rule the Church from whence the name of Rector also was given at first unto him and to administer the Discipline of Christ as well as to dispence the Doctrine and Sacraments and the restraint of the exercise of that right proceedeth only from the custome now received in this Realm no man can doubt but by another Law of the Land this hindrance may be well removed And how easily this ancient form of government by the united suffrages of the Clergy might be revived again and with what little shew of alteration the Synodical conventions of the Pastors of every Parish might be accorded with the Presidency of the Bishops of each Diocess and Province the indifferent Reader may quickly perceive by the perusal of the ensuing Propositions 1. In every Parish the Rector or Incumbent Pastor together with the Churchwardens and Sidesmen may every week take notice of such as live scandalously in that Congregation who are to receive such several admonitions and reproofs as the quality of their offence shall deserve And if by this means they cannot be reclaimed they may be presented to the next monethly Synod and in the mean time debarred by the Pastor from access unto the Lords Table 2. Whereas by a Statute in the 26 year of Henry 8. revived 1 Eliz. Suffragans are appointed to be erected in 26 several places of this
Kingdom the number of them might very well be conformed unto the number of the several Rural Deanries into which every Diocess is subdivided which being done the Suffragan supplying the place of those who in the ancient Church were called Chorepiscopi might every moneth Assemble a Synod of all the Rectors or Incumbent Pastors within the Precinct and according to the Major part of their voices conclude all matters that shall be brought into debate before them To this Synod the Rector and Churchwardens might present such impenitent persons as by admonitions and supension from the Sacrament would not be reformed who if they should still remain contumacious and incorrigible the sentence of Excommunication might be decreed against them by the Synod and accordingly be executed in the Parish where they lived Hitherto also all things that concerned the Parochial Ministers might be referred whether they did touch their Doctrine or their conversation as also the censure of all new Opinions Heresies and Schisms which did arise within that Circuit with liberty of Appeal if need require unto the Diocesan Synod 3. The Diocesan Synod might be held once or twice in the year as it should be thought most convenient Therein all the Suffragans and the rest of the Rectors or Incumbent Pastors or a certain select number of every Deanry within the Diocese might meet with whose consent or the major part of them all things might be concluded by the Bishop or Superintendent call him whether you will or in his absence by one of the Suffragans whom he shall depute in his stead to be Moderator of that Assembly Here all matters of greater moment might be taken into consideration and the Orders of the monethly Synods revised and if need be reformed and if here also any matter of difficulty could not receive a full determination it might be referred to the next Provincial or National Synod 4 The Provincial Synod might consist of all the Bishops and Suffragans and such other of the Clergy as should be elected out of every Diocess within the Province the Arch-bishop of either Province might be the Moderator of this meeting or in his room some one of the Bishops appointed by him and all matters be ordered therein by common consent as in the former Assemblies This Synod might be held every third year and if the Parliament do then sit according to the act of a Triennial Parliament both the Archbishops and Provincial Synods of the Land might joyn together and make up a National Councel Wherein all Appeals from inferior Synods might be received all their Acts examined and all Ecclesiasticall constitutions which concern the estate of the Church of the whole Nation established The House of Commons could not digest the paiment of Tunnage and Poundage as a duty but as an Act durante some limited time of necessity and in 1628. had drawn up a smart Remonstrance therein which was prevented by Proroguing that Parliament then and continual hammering upon it ever since brought by Bill to pass it away from himself which Bill was brought up by Mr. Speaker to the Lords House and said thus to the King the two and twentieth of Iune That Policy most gracious and dread Soveraign which weighs prerogative and Propriety in the same scales and increases the plenty of the Crown and contentment of the People the even paising of the Beam enables both A principle creating belief in the Subject that not only their wills are bound to Allegiance but their Fortunes and Estates must bend to the Commands of their Soveraign Compulsory obedience by the Transcendent power of Prerogative will not support Government Affections and estates of the people tied with the threads of obedience by rules of Law fastens safety and prosperity to the Crown former Presidents of puissant Princes conclude the glory of their greatness to command the hearts of free-men That several Parliaments hove stampt the Character of a free guift upon the fore front of this aid as a Sacrifice of Thanksgiving for safe conduct of the Merchants and provision of the Navy Our hopes were long since to have settled this for the measure and the time and so to have presented it But as a Ship floting on a Rough sea and cast upon Rocks of fear and dangers tossed upon billowes of distraction and distrust of Church and Common-wealth hopeless ever to pass to the Haven without the hand of that sacred providence yet no division had power to distract any one of us from our duty to your Person To that end I am sent saies he by the Commons to present this as a Mark only of their inward duties untill a further expression of their affections The acceptation of this gift the largest ever given will joyn wings to our desires and hopes to our hearts never to return without that Olive leaf which may declare that the waters are abated and your Majesty may have full assurance of our faith and loyalty The King presently replies I do accept this office as a Testimony and beginning of your dutiful affections and that in due time you will perform your promises when you have leasure And I doubt not but you will see by the passing this Bill the trust I have in your affections and wish it reciprocal so yours to me By this I freely and franckly give over the right of my Predecessors and challenged and though disputed in their times but never yielded till now By which you see how I put my self upon my people for subsistance Rumors of Iealousies and suspitions by flying and Idle discourses have come to my ears But he understands them as having relation to the Scotish Army and preventing Insinuations which vanished in their birth which he leaves to them having of himself no design but to return the affection of his people by Justice and truth After many debates the Commons now resolving to be rid of the Scotish Army and the Charge of the English also passed a Bill of Imposing the Tax of Poll-Mony upon the people for having now the power of an everlasting Parliament they would by degrees inure the people to the Taxes and points which they meant in time hereafter to press upon them The Parliament therefore besides the grant of six subsidies had imposed a Tax seldome or never known which was that of the Pol-Mony wherein the whole Kingdome was to be assessed every Duke at 100. l. a Marquess at 80. l. Earls 60. l. Viscounts and Barons at 40. l. Knights of the Bath 30. l. Knights Bachelirs at 20. l. Esquires 10. l. and every Gentleman dispending 100. l. perannum at 5. l. and all others of ability a competent proportion the meanest head through the whole Kingdom was not excused under six pence which mony the Parliament made use of after This Bill of Poll-mony was offered by the House to the King with two other of great concernment the one for putting down the High Commission Court
Proofs and therefore to avoid more Mistakes that it be resolved whether his Majestie be bound in respect of Privileges to proceed by Impeachment in Parliament or be at libertie to proffer an Inditement at the Common Law or to have his choice in either thereupon he will speedily give Direction to proceed to the business Jan. 24. The Attourney General in fear to be grinded between these Disputes and finding his the hardest bargain supplicates the King for his Authority to take him off which he did by his Letter to the Lord Keeper from Roiston the fourth of March. Certifying That the third of January last he did deliver to the Attourney General certain Articles of Accusation ingrossed in Paper the Câ—pie being inclosed and commanded him to acquaint the house of Peers That divers great and treasonable Designs against Us and the State had come to the Kings knowledg of which he was commanded to accuse those six Persons of high Treason by delivering the Paper to them and to desire to have it read and that a Committee of Lords might examine such Witnesses as the King would produce and they to be under a command of secrecie and for the King to add or alter if there be cause And declares the Attourney General clear as to his Answer And had he refused the Kings command herein he would have questioned him for Breach of Oath Dutie and Trust to which he was obliged This as to the truth and the Attourneys defence but being weary of the business and finding no relief to be expected nor leave to proceed in his way against them he adds a clause to the Letter But having declared that we finde cause wholly to desist from proceeding against the Persons accused we have commanded our Attourney General to proceed no further there nor to produce nor discover any Proof concerning the same And so this Breach between the King and Parliament was stitched up but the Seam not well sewed the Rent grew the wider and either party more nicely concerning Prerogative and Privileges And because this Action of the Kings was often taken up as a Breach of Privilege unpardonable we may examine the Kings Reasons from his own Relation in his Eikon Basilike cap. 3. My going to the House of Commons says the King to demand Iustice upon the five Members was an act which mine Enemies loaded with all the obloquies and exasperations they could I filled indifferent men with great Iealousies and Fears yea and manie of my Friends resented it as a motion rising rather from Passion than from Reason and not guided with such Discretion as the touchiness of those Times required But these men knew not the just Motives and pregnant Grounds with which I thought my self so furnished that there needed nothing to such Evidence as I could have produced against those I charged save onely a free and legal Trial which was all I desired Nor had I anie temptation of Displeasure or Revenge against those mens Persons further than I had discovered those as I thought unlawfull correspondencies they had used and engagements they had made to embroil my Kingdoms of all which I missed but little to have produced Writings under some mens own hands who were the chief Contrivers of the following Innovations Providence would not have it so yet I wanted not such Probabilitie as were sufficient to raise Iealousies in anie Kings heart who is not wholly stupid and neglective of the publick Peace which to preserve by calling in question half a Dozen men in a fair and legal way which God knows was all my Design could have amounted to no worse effect had it succeeded than either to do me and my Kingdoms right in case they had been found guiltie or else to have cleared their Innocencie and removed my suspition which as they were not raised out of any malice so neither were they in Reason to be smothered What Flames of Discontent this spark though I sought by all speedie and possible means to quench it soon kindled all the World is witness The aspersion which some men cast upon that Action as if I had designed by force to assault the House of Commons and invade their Privilege is so false that as God best knows I had no such intent so none that attended could justly gather from anie thing I then said or did the least intimation of anie such thoughts That I went attended with some Gentlemen as it was no unwonted thing for the Majestie and safetie of a King so to be attended especially in discontented times so were my Followers at that time short of mine ordinarie Guard and no waie proportionable to hazzard a tumultuarie Conflict Nor were they more scared at my coming than I was unassured of not having some Affronts cast upon me if I had none with me to preserve a reverence to me for many people had at that time learned to think those hard thoughts which they have since abundantly vented against me both by Words and Deeds The Sum of that Business was this Those men and their Adherents were then looked upon by the affrighted Vulgar as greater Protectours of their Laws and Liberties than my self and worthier of their protection I leave them to God and their own Consciences who if guiltie of evil machinations no present impunitie or popular vindications of them will be subterfuge sufficient to rescue them from those exact Tribunals To which in the obstructions of Iustice among men we must religiously appeal as being an Argument to us Christians of that after-unavoidable Iudgment which shall rejudg what among men is but corruptly decided or not at all I endeavoured to have prevented if God had seen sit those future Commotions which I fore-saw would in all likelihood follow some mens activitie if not restrained and so now hath done to the undoing of many thousands the more is the pitie But to over-aw the freedom of the Houses or to weaken their just Authoritie by anie violent impressions upon them was not at all my Design I thought I had so much Iustice and Reason on my side as should not have needed so rough assistance and I was resolved rather to bear the Repulse with patience than to use such hazzardous Extremities The King evermore very sensible of the necessity of State proposeth unto them to consider of all those particulars necessary for his Majesties just Right and regal Authority and for settling of his Revenue And as for the settlement of their Privileges free enjoyment of their Estates the liberties of their persons the security of Religion and the settling of Ceremonies in the Church as may take away all just offence which when they shall have digested it shall then appear what his Majesty shall do protesting his innocency from intending any Design to cause their Fears or Jealousies and how ready he will be to exceed the greatest Examples of the most indulgent Princes to their People and calls Heaven and Earth God and Man to
denied to some men lest he should seem not to dare to denie any thing and give too much encouragement to unreasonable demands or importunities But to binde my self to a general and implicite consent to what ever they shall desire or propound for such is one of their Propositions were such a latitude of blinde obedience as never was expected from any Free-man nor fit to be required of any man much less of a King by his own Subjects any of whom he may possibly exceed as much in wisdom as he doth in place and power This were as if Sampson should have consented not onely to binde his own hands and cut off his own hair but to put out his own eys that the Philistines might with the more safetie mock and abuse him which they chose rather to do than quite to destroy him when he was become so tame an object and fit occasion for their sport and scorn Certainly to exclude all power of denial seems an arrogancie least of all becoming those who pretend to make their Addresses in an humble and loyal way of petitioning who by that sufficiently confess their own inferioritie which obligeth them to rest if not satisfied yet quieted with such an Answer as the will and reason of their Superiour thinks fit to give who is acknowledged to have a freedom and power of Reason to consent or dissent else it were very foolish and absurd to ask what another having not libertie to denie neither hath power to grant But if this be my Right belonging to me in reason as a man and in honour as a Sovereign King as undoubtedly it doth how can it be other than extreme injurie to confine my Reason to a nâ—â—essitie of granting all they have a minde to ask whose mindes may be as differing from mine both in Reason and Honour as their Aims may be and their Qualities are which last God and the Laws have sufficiently distinguished making me their Sovereign and them my Subjects whose Propositions may soon prove violent oppositions if once they gain to be necessarie Impositions upon the Regal Authoritie Since no man seeks to limit and confine his King in Reason who hath not a secret Aim to share with him or usurp upon him in power and dominion But they would have me trust to their moderation and abandon mine own discretion that so I might verifie what representations some have made of me to the world that I am fitter to be their Pupil than their Prince Truly I am not so confident of mine own sufficiencie as not willingly to admit the counsel of others but yet I am not so diffident of my self as brutishly to submit to any mens dictates and at once to betray the Sovereigntie of Reason in my soul and the majestie of mine own Crown to any of my Subjects Least of all have I any ground of credulitie to induce me fully to submit to all the desires of those men who will not admit or do refuse and neglect to vindicate the freedom of their own and others sitting and voting in Parliament Besides all men that know them know this how young States-men the most part of these propounders are so that till experience of one seven years hath shewed me how well they can govern themselves and so much power as is wrested from me I should be very foolish indeed and unfaithfull in my Trust to put the Reins of both Reason and Government wholly out of mine own into their hands whose driving is already too much like Jehu's and whose forwardness to ascend the Throne of Supremacie portends more of Phaeton than of Phoebus God divert the Omen if it be his will They may remember that at best they sit in Parliament as my Subjects not my Superiours called to be my Counsellours not Dictatours their Summons extends to recommend their Advice not to command my Dutie When I first heard of Propositions to be sent me I expected either some good Laws which had been antiquated by the course of time or over-laid by the corruption of manners had been desired to a restauration of their vigour and due execution or some evil customes preter-legal and abuses personal had been to be removed or some injuries done by my self and others to the Common-weal were to be repaired or some equable offertures were to be tendred to me wherein the advantages of my Crown being considered by them might fairly induce mâ— to condescend to what tended to my Subjects good without any great diminution of my self whom Nature Law Reason and Religion binde me in the first place to preserve without which 't is impossible to preserve my people according to my place Or at least I looked for such moderate desires of due Reformation of what was indeed amiss in Church and State as might still preserve the foundation and essentials of Government in both not shake and quite over-throw either of them without any regard to the Laws in force the wisdom and pietie of former Parliaments the antient and universal practice of Christian Churches the Rights and Privileges of particular men nor yet any thing offered in lieu or in the room of what must be destroied which might at once teach the good end of the others institution and also supplie its pretended defects reform its abuses and satisfie sober and wise men not with soft and specious words pretending zeal and special pietie but with pregnant and solid Reasons both divine and humane which might justifie the abruptness and necessitie of such vast alterations But in all their Propositions I can observe little of these kindes or to these ends nothing of any Laws dis-jointed which are to be restored of any right invaded of any justice to be un-obstructed of any compensations to be made of any impartial Reformation to be granted to all or any of which Reason Religion true policie or any other humane motives might induce me But as to the main matters propounded by them at any time in which is either great noveltie or difficultie I perceive that what were formerly looked upon as Factions in the State and Schisms in the Church and so punishable by the Laws have now the confidence by vulgar clamours and assistance chiefly to demand not onely Tolerations of themselves in their vanitie noveltie and confusion but also Abolition of the Laws against them and a total extirpation of that Government whose Rights they have a minde to invade This as to the main other Propositions are for the most part but as waste paper in which those are wrapped up to present them somewhat more handsomly Nor do I so much wonder at the varietie and horrible noveltie of some Propositions there being nothing so monstrous which some fancies are not prone to long for This casts me into not an Admiration but an Extasie how such things should have the fortune to be propounded in the name of the two Houses of the Parliament of England among whom I am very confident there was not
publishes a very ample Declaration concerning the whole proceedings of this present Parliament in effect thus It being more than time now after so many indignities to his person affronts to his Kingly Office and traiterous Pamphlets against his Government to vindicate himself from those damnable Combinations and Conspiracies contrived against him That he resolved to summon this Parliament before his great Council met at York and uncompelled by any violence but of his love to peace That at the beginning thereof he quickly discerned they meant not to confine within the path of their Predecessours but by the combination of several persons for alteration of Government in the Church and State also To that end they expelled a very great number of Members in Parliament duly elected upon pretence that they had some hand in Monopolies without any crime objected or other proceedings and yet continued Sir Henry Mildmay though a notorious promotor of the Monopoly of Gold and Silver Thread as also Mr. Lawrence Whitaker and others Commissioners in matters of the like nature or worse which he mentions to them their partiality of that Faction The remedy which they proposed was a Bill for a Triennial Parliament against which though he had many Reasons to except yet he passed it which seemed so to work upon their sense as never to be forgot in the return of their duty and affections yet all he could do did not satisfie the factious contrivement and disguise of subverting the Government And because most of the Grievances seemed to proceed from the great liberty of his Council Board he admitted seven or eight of those Lords eminently in esteem with the people and passionately dis-â—nclined both the civil affairs and Government of the Church and so hoping by a free communication they might be excellent Instruments of a blessed Reformation in Church and State Thus for the Court Then he applied visible Remedies proportionable to the desires of both Houses and pressed not the Reformation of the Arbitrary power of the Star-chamber but utterly abolished it He pressed not the Review of that Statute by which the High Commission Court was erected but in compliance to the pretended sufferings of the people thereby he consented to repeal the Branch of that Statute The Writs for Ship-money whereby several sums of money had been received from his Subjects and judged legal he was contented should be void and disannulled and the Judgment vacated The bounds and limits of executing the Forest Laws and keeping the Iustices and Eires seat he passed an Act for the Subjects ease as was desired As also an Act against Incroachments and Oppressions in the Stannery Courts and regulated the Clerk of the Market And parted from his right and duty in the business of Knighthood But also which is the highest trust that ever King gave his Subjects he passed the Act for continuance of this Parliament untill the peace of England and Scotland and all their desires in reference thereto were provided for All the time in which those Acts of grace were passed he lay under the burthen of extreme want without any fruit of relief and they the mean while contrived advantages of Offices and places of profit and power to themselves changing Religion and Fundamental Laws raising Aspersions upon his very Acts of Grace and Favours upon them that no security could be of the effects of all he could or should do without a through-alteration of Church and State Hereupon they oppose the disbanding of the Armies delay the Scots Treaty although the Scots Commissioners hastened it and in plain English the Parliament declared That they could not yet spare them for that the sons of Zerviah were too strong for them ingaging this Kingdom in so vast a Debt that there might be no way of paying it but by the Lands of the Church disguising that Design pretending onely to remove the Bishops from their Votes in the Upper House though upon three Debates absolutely rejected by the Lords by which they took advantage and produced a Bill in the House of Commons for abolition of Bishops Root and Branch out of the Church as Mr. Pym said to a Member It was not enough to be against the persons of Bishops if he were not against the Function And for extirpation of Deans and Chapters and reducing that admirable Frame of Government into a Chaos of confusion that out of it they might mould an Utopia which no six of them had or yet hath agreed upon whereby they have raised Estates to repair their own broken Fortunes And two Armies must be kept to eat out the heart of this Kingdom at the charge of fourscore thousand pounds a Moneth Then they devised false Reports created spread and countenanced by themselves of Designs dangerous plots against them hereupon a Protestation is so framed and devised to oblige them to any unlawfull action and taken by all the Members of the Commons but the Lords refusing it it is recommended to the City of London and to all the Kingdom by Order of the Lower House onely a strange and unheard of usurpation a Declaration followed as peremptory and like a Law without the King Then came out a new Fright of a Design in the English Army to face the Parliament and of the Kings consenting to it of which he calls God to witness to be ignorant And that the Affairs in Scotland necessarily requiring the Kings Journey thither for a small time he returned and found things far more out of order with their Orders against the Book of Common Prayer and Divine Service contrary to the Lords Ordinance and therefore the Commons Declaration of the ninth of September was such a notorious violation of the privilege of the House of Peers as was never heard of before and an apparent evidence of their intended legislative power by the House of Commons without King or Lords and such as did not submit thereto were imprisoned and fined Then they erect Lecturers men of no learning or conscience but furious promotors of the most dangerous Innovations that ever were induced into any State men of no Orders onely such as boldly and seditiously would preach or prate against the Liturgy royal power and authority and persons of learning and eminency in preaching and of good conversation were put out That all licence had been given to any lewd persons to publish seditious Pamphlets against Church and State or scorns upon the Kings person or Office filling the peoples eaâ—s with lies and monstrous discourses and those to be dedicated to the Parliament and whatever the rancour or venome of any infamous person could digest were published without controul And thus prepared and the King absent in Scotland they frame a Remonstrance of the state of the Kingdom and present it to him at his return to Hampton Court December 15. 1641. laying before him all the mishaps and misfortunes that have been since his Reign to that hour reproaching him with actions beyond his
at last The King in the head of his Army between Stafford and Wellington after the reading of his Orders military himself tells them Gentlemen I shall be very severe in punishing every person offending without distinction He cannot suspect their courage and resolution their conscience and loyaltie having brought them hither for their Religion their King and the Laws of the Land against their Enemies none but Traitors most of them Brownists Anabaptists and Atheists such as desire to destroy both Church and State and who have already condemned you to ruine for being loyal to him And makes this Protestation I do promise in the presence of Almightie God and as I hope for his blessing and protection that I will to the utmost of my power defend and maintain the true Reformed Protestant Religion established in the Church of England and by the grace of God in the same will live and die I desire to govern by the known Laws of the Land and that the Liberty and Propriety of the Subject may be by them preserved with the same care as mine own just Rights And if it please God by his blessing upon this Armie raised for my necessarie Defence to preserve me from this Rebellion I do solemnly and faithfully promise in the sight of God to maintain the just Privilege and Freedom of Parliament and to govern by the known Laws of the Land to my utmost power and particularly to observe inviolably the Laws consented unto by me this Parliament In the mean while if this time of War and the great necessitie and straits I am now driven unto beget any violation of these I hope it shall be imputed by God and Man to the Authours of this War and not to me who have so earnestly laboured for the peace of this Kingdom When I willingly fail in these particulars I will expect no Aid or Relief from any man or protection from Heaven But in this resolution I hope for the chearful assistance of all good men and am confident of Gods blessing Septemb. 19. And that the several Armies might not over-start each other the Parl. declares That all their Foot and Horse in London and all parts in England shall within eight and fourty hours march to their General the Earl of Essex for defence of the King and Kingdom the Privilege of Parliament and Liberty of the Subjects and such Regiments as are not four hundred and Troops not fourty shall be cashiered and disposed to recruit others excepting the Regiments of Colonel Essex and Ballard being in the States service Sept. 23. And order that Delinquents houses shall be preserved as houses of the Common-wealth for publick service or Prisons And because the Earl of Essex may be assured upon what Basis he is called to be their General they sent to him the Parliaments Petition to the King to be presented by him which tells his Majesty That his loyal Subjects the Lords and Commons in Parliament can not without tenderness of compassion behold the pressing calamities of England and Ireland by the practices of a prevailing partie with his Majestie to alter true Religion the ancient Government of this Kingdom introducing superstition in the Church and confusion in the State exciting incouraging and fostering the Rebellion in Ireland and as there so here begin the like Massacre by drawing on a War against the Parliament leading his Person against them as if by conquest to establish an unlimited power over the people seeking to bring over the Rebells of Ireland to joyn with them and all these evil Counsellours are defended and protected by him against the justice of Parliament who have for their just defence of Religion the King Crown and Dignitie of the Laws Liberties and power of Parliament taken up Arms and authorized the Earl of Essex their Captain General against these Rebells and Traitors And pray the King to with-draw his person and leave them to be supprest by this power and to return to his Parliament and that they will receive him with honour yield him obedience secure his person and establish him and his people with all the blessings of a glorious and happie Reign I cannot finde that this Petition was presented but I am assured that the General Essex twice sent to the King for a safe Conduct for those who should be imployed therein and it was refused they say to be received that humble and dutifull Petition as they stiled it 'T is strange for the King had never refused any Message or Petition from either or both Houses not onely with safety but candoâ—r when their Errand hath been full of reproach and scorn as the King says and the bringers bold arrogant seditious in their demeanour and therefore there needed to have been no more scruple in this But it was thus that the King being at Shrewsbury the Earl of Dorset receives a Letter from the Earl of Essex intimating that he had a Petition from both Houses to that purpose asking a safe Conduct for those that should be sent To whom the King answered That as he had never refused to receive any so he should be ready to give a fitting Reception and Answer to this and the Bringers of it should have safe Conduct excepting onely such persons as he had particularly accused of high Treason A fortnight after comes a second Letter to Dorset declaring That the Kings former Answer was voted a Breach of Privilege This second Answer differing but little from the former insisting That the Address should not be made by any whom he had accused of high Treason amongst whom the Earl of Essex was one but that his Ear should be ever open to hear any Petition from his Parliament Indeed the Petition was framed more fit to be delivered after a Battel and full Conquest of the King than in the Head of his Army thirty thousand men when it might seem somewhat in his power whether he would be deposed or no. For we finde the King in Wales caressing the Inhabitants of Denbigh and Flintshire Septemb. 27. And tells them That he is willing to take all occasions to visit all his good Subjects and hath cause to reckon them for their loyaltie expressed in their late Levies sent to him at their own charges against such a Malignant partie whose Designs are to destroy him his Crown Laws and Government of Church and State raising Tumults at London to drive from thence him and the greatest part of the Members of Parliament He is robbed of his Towns Forts Castles Goods Navie Revenue and at this time a powerfull Armie marching against him and among a thousand Scandals they have cast upon him the impious Rebellion in Ireland which he abhors and hath endeavoured by all possible ways and means to suppress but is obstructed by them And refers the naming of these Contrivers and their particular actions to his Declaration of the twelfth of August being supprest by them as all other his Protestations and
goodness of Almighty God Accusing that Malignant party to poison the hearts and corrupt the Allegeance of his Subjects by a false Imputation of his favouring Papists imploying them in his Army when he saith that numbers of Popish Commanders and others serve in the Army of the Earl of Essex being privately promised that if they would assist against the King all the Laws made in their prejudice should be repealed Another Scandal he mentioneth to be very senseless that the King should raise an Army against the Parliament to take away their priviledges when in truth it is raised to have some particular Members of this Parliament to be delivered up to Iustice. He being as tender of their priviledges and conform thereto which his Army never intends to violate That the Parliaments Army is raised to Murther and depose the King to alter the frame of Government and the established Laws of the Land That the greatest part of the Parliaments Members are driven away from their Houses by violence That the Book of Common Prayer is rejected and no countenance given but to Anabaptists Brownists and such Schismaticks That the contrivers hereof endeavour to raise an Implacable malice between the Gentry and the Commonalty of the Kingdome A common charge upon the King it had been and so continued to the end of his publique Actings That he favoured Papists and entertained them in his Army and so they were and might be in both subtilly and cunningly by practice on both sides conveyed thither under the masque and profession of Protestants which is a truth of no great wonder and yet in general those of Lancashire Recusants petition the King That being disarmed and so not able either to defend his Royal Person according to their duties nor to secure themselves and families they may be received into his gracious protection from violence being menaced by all kindes of people to whose malice they are subject and must submit And indeed great and heavy pressures were put upon them by both Armies notwithstanding Orders and Declarations to the contrary had been published by either Army And hereupon the King had given Warrant to Sir William Gerard Baronet Sir Cicil Trafford Knight Thomas Clifton Charls Townby Christopher Anderton and Io. Clumsfield c. Recusants in the County of Lancaster That although by Statutes all Recusants convict are to be disarmed to prevent danger in time of peace but now Armies being raised against the King and his Subjects are by them plundered and robbed and their Arms taken and used offensive against his Person His will and command therefore is and they are charged upon their Allegeance and as they tender the safetie of his Person and the peace of the Kingdom with all possible speed to provide Arms for themselves servants and Tenants during the time of open War raised against him and no longer to keep and use for his defence Yet the Parliament prepare Heads of an humble Address unto his Majesty for composing difference and â—â—â—ling a Peace but withall to prevent mis-constructions whereby their just defence may be hindered they do declare That their preparations of Forces for their defence shall be prosecuted with all violence And accordingly Letters are directed from the Lords To the Right Honourable the Lord Viscount Faulkland principal Secretarie to his Majestie or in his absence for Mr. Secretarie Nicholas or any of the Lords or Peers attending the King Grey of Wark My Lord I am commanded by the Lords the Peers and Commons assembled in Parliament to address by you their humble desires to his Majestie that he would â—e pleased to grant his safe Conduct to the Commiâ—tee of Lords and Commons to pass and repass to his Majestie that are directed to attend him with an humble Petition from his Parliament This being all I have in Commission I rest Your assured Friend and Servant Grey of Wark Speaker of the House of Peers pro tempore Westminster Nov. 3. 1642. Which is granted so as the said Committee consist not of persons either by name declared Traitors or otherwise in some of his Declarations or Proclamations excepted against by name as Traitors and so as they come not with more than thirty persons and give notice before hand upon signification they shall have safe conduct Your Lordships most humble Servant Edward Nicholas Reading Nov. 4. Hereupon these Names are sent Algernon Earl of Northumberland Philip Earl of Pembroke and Montgomerie and four Members of the Commons Mr. Perpoint the Lord Wainman Sir Iohn Evelin of Wilts and Sir Io. Hippislie being the Committee of both Houses and desire his Majesties Pass and Repass under his Royal Hand and Signet Nov. 5. The safe Conduct is inclosed for all but Sir Io Evelin who is excepted being proclamed Traitor at Oxford and that if the Houses will send any other person not so excepted in his place His Majesty commands all his Officers to suffer him to pass as if his Name had been particularly comprised herein Reading Nov. 6. To recruit the Parliaments Army it is declared That all Apprentices that will list themselves in their service for the publick cause shall be secured from indemnitie of their Masters during their service and their time included to go on towards their Freedom and all their respective Masters are to receive them again when they shall return This Liberty made Holy-day with the Prentices and they were listed thick and threefold and now spoiled for being Trades-men ever after But it is time to consider what out dear Brethren of Scotland intended to do in this Distraction and therefore they are put in minde by a fresh Declaration of the Parliament How and with what wisdom and publick affection our Brethren of Scotland did concur with the desires of this Kingdom in establishing a peace between both Nations and how lovingly they have since invited the Parliament into a nearer degree of union concerning Religion and Church-government wherefore as the Parliament did for them a year since in their Troubles so now the same obligation lies upon our Brethren by force of their Kingdom to assist us Telling them that Commissions are given by the King to divers Papists to compose an Armie in the North which is to joyn with foreign Forces to be transported hither for the destruction of this Parliament and of Religion and Liberties of the people That the Prelatical partie have raised another Armie which his Majestie doth conduct against the Parliament and Citie of London And hereupon this Parliament desire their Brethren of Scotland to raise Forces for securing their own Borders and to assist here against the Popish and Foreign Forces according to that Act agreed upon in the Parliaments of both Kingdoms for the comfort and relief not onely of our selves but of all the Reformed Churches beyond Seas Nov. 7. 1642. The King as quick sends his Message to the Lords of his Privy Council in Scotland stating the condition between him and the
Companies of Horse under command of Sir Charls Cavendish Brother to the Earl of Newcastle the Enemy having left within Nottingham a thousand Foot The Queen marched with three thousand Foot thirty Companies of Horse and Dragoons six Pieces of Cannon and two Morters Mr. Iermin commanding all these Forces as Colonel of her Guard and Sir Alexander Lesley a traiterous cowardly murderous Scot ordered the Foot and Sir Gerard the Horse and Captain Leg the Artillery and her Majesty Generalissima extremely diligent with an hundred and fifty Wagons The King and Queen met at Edg-hill the first time since she landed out of Holland and so to Oxford where she continued till the seventeenth of April the next year and then she took her last leave of the King at Abington for the West and was brought to Bed at Exeter of a Daughter the sixteenth of Iune named Henrieta Maria and afterwards in Cornwall she passed over to France lands at Brest the fifteenth of Iuly and so to Paris where she since continues a sad sorrowfull afflicted Princess with incomparable sufferings which she hath undergone And now comes over an Ambassadour from France Monsieur Harcourt to mediate an Accommodation between the King and Parliament but prevailed not and so returned it being rather a flourish from the policy of Cardinal Mazarine to pry into the Actions of this great Difference and so to set them at a greater distance for it was Richlien's Master-piece to frame the Quarrel first and now for Mazarine not unlike to put them far asunder And presently after is Sir William Armin sent to Edinburgh from the Parliament to hasten the Scots Army hither having first sworn to the Solemn League and Covenant each to other The English Presbyters now scotiâ—ied throughout take Example by the Brethrens Principles in their former Insurrections of Scotland and therefore as they did heretofore so now the Parliament engage that Nation in a strict solemn League by Vow Oath and Covenant taken by the Parliament and afterwards sent down to all the Counties in England and Wales upon which the King observes That the Presbyterian Scots are not to be hired at the ordinary Rate of Auxiliaries nothing will induce them to engage till those that call them in have pawned their Souls to them by a solemn League and Covenant Where many Engines of religious and fair pretensions are brought chiefly to batter or rase Episcopacy This they make the grand evil Spirit which with some other Imps purposely added to make it more odious and terrible to the Vulgar must by so solemn a Charm and Exorcism be cast out of this Church after more than a thousand years possession here from the first plantation of Christianity in this Island and an universal prescription of time and practice in all other Churches since the Apostle's times till this last Century But no Antiquity must plead for it Presbytery like a young Heir thinks the Father hath lived long enough and impatient not to be in the Bishop's Chair and Authority though Lay-men go away with the Revenues all Art is used to sink Episcopacy and lanch Presbytery in England which was lately buoyed up in Scotland by the like artifice of a Covenant Although I am unsatisfied with many passages in that Covenant some referring to my self with very dubious and dangerous limitations yet I chiefly wonder at the Design and drift touching the Discipline and Governmet of the Church and such a manner of carrying them on to new ways by Oaths and Covenants where it is hard for men to be engaged by no less than swearing for or against those things which are of no clear moral necessity but very disputable and controverted among learned and godly men whereto the application of Oaths can hardly be made and enjoyned with that judgment and certainty in one's self or that charity and candour to others of different opinion as I think Religion requires which never refuses fair and equable Deliberations yea and Dissentings too in matters onely probable The enjoining of Oaths upon People must needs in things doubtfull be dangerous as in things unlawfull damnable and no less superfluous where former religious and legal Engagements bound men sufficiently to all necessary duties Nor can I see how they will reconcile such an Innovating Oath and Covenant with that former Protestation which was so lately taken to maintain the Religion established in the Church of England since they account Discipline so great a part of Religion Bâ—t ambitious mindes never think they have laid Snares and Gins enough to catch and hold the Vulgar credulity for by such politick and seemingly pious Stratagems they think to keep the populacie fast to their parties under the terrour of perjurie Whereas certainly all honest and wise men ever thought themselves sufficiently bound by former ties of Religion Allegiance and Laws to God and Man Nor can such after-contracts devised and imposed by a few men in a declared partie without my consent and without any like power or precedent from God's or Man's Laws be ever thought by judicious men sufficient either to absolve or slacken those moral and eternal bonds of dutie which lie upon all my Subjects consciences both to God and me Yet as things now stand good men shall least offend God or me by keeping their Covenant in honest and lawfull ways since I have the charity to think that the chief end of the Covenant in such mens intentions was to preserve Religion in purity and the Kingdoms in peace To other than such ends and means they cannot think themselves engaged nor will those that have any true touches of conscience endeavour to carry on the best Designs much less such as are and will be daily more apparently factious and ambitious by any unlawfull means under that title of the Covenant unless they dare prefer ambiguous dangerous and un-authorized novelties before their known and sworn Duties which are indispensible both to God and my self I am prone to believe and hope That many who took the Covenant are yet firm to this judgment That such later Vows Oaths or Leagues can never blot out those former Gravings and Characters which by just and lawfull Oaths were made upon their Souls That which makes such Confederations by way of solemn Leagues and Covenants more to be suspected is That they are the common Road used in all factious and powerfull perturbations of State or Church where formalities of extraordinary zeal and piety are never more studied and elaborate than when Politicians most agitate desperate Designs against all that is setled or sacred in Religion and Laws which by such Scrâ—â—es are cunningly yet forcibly wrested by secret steps and less sensible degrees from their known Rule and wonted Practice to comply with the humours of those men who aim to subdue all to their own will and power under the Disguises of holy Combinations Which Cords and Wit hs will hold mens Consciences no longer than force
attends and twists them for every man soon grows his own Pope and easily absolves himself of those ties which not the commands of God's Word or the Laws of the Land but onely the subtilty and terrour of a party casts upon him either superfluous and vain when they were sufficiently tied before or fraudulent and injurious if by such after-ligaments they finde the Imposers really aiming to dissolve or suspend their former just and necessary obligation Indeed such illegal ways seldom or never intend the engaging men more to Duties but onely to Parties therefore it is not regarded how they keep their Covenants in point of piety pretended provided they adhere firmly to the Party and Design intended I see the Imposers of it are content to make their Covenant like Manna not that it came from Heaven as this did agreeable to every man's palate and relish who will but swallow it They admit any mens senses of it though divers or contrary with any Salvo's Cautions and Reservations so as they cross not the chief Design which is laid against the Church and me It is enough if they get but the Reputation of a seeming increase to their party so little men remember that God is not mocked In such latitudes of sense I believe many that love me and the Church well may have taken the Covenant who yet are not so fondly and superstitiously taken by it as now to act clearly against both all piety and loyalty who first yielded to it more to prevent that imminent violence and ruine which hung over their heads in case they wholly refused it than for any value of it or devotion to it Wherein the latitude of some general Clauses may perhaps serve somewhat to relieve them as of Doing and endeavouring what lawfully they may in their Places and Callings and according to the Word of God for these indeed carry no man beyond those bounds of good Conscience which are certain and fixed either in God's Laws as to the general or the Laws of the State and Kingdom as to the particular Regulation and Exercise of mens duties I would to God such as glory most in the name of Covenanters would keep themselves within those lawfull bounds to which God hath called them Surely it were the best way to expiate the rashness of taking it which must needs then appear when besides the want of a full and lawfull Authority at first to enjoyn it it shall actually be carried on beyond and against those ends which were in it specified and pretended I willingly forgive such mens taking the Covenant who keep it within such bounds of Piety Law and Loyalty as can never hurt either the Church myself or the Publick Peace Against which no man's lawfull Calling can engage him As for that Reformation of the Church which the Covenant pretends I cannot think it just or comely that by the partial advice of a few Divines of so soft and servile tempers as disposed them to so sudden acting and compliance contrary to their former judgments profession and practice such foul scandals and suspitions shouldbe cast upon the Doctrine and Government of the Church of England as was never done that I have heard by any that deserved the name of Reformed Churches abroad nor by any men of learning and candour at home all whose judgments I cannot but prefer before any mens now factiously engaged No man can be more forward than my self to carry on all due Reformations with mature judgment and a good Conscience in what things I shall after impartial advice be by God's Word and right Reason convinced to be amise I have offered more than ever the fullest freest and wisest Parliaments did desire But the sequel of some mens actions makes it evident that the main Reformation intended is the abasing of Episcopaâ—ie into Presbyterie and the Robbing the Church of its Lands and Revenues For no men have been more injuriously used as to their legal Rights than the Bishops and Church-men These as the fattest Deer must be destroyed the other Rascal herd of Schisms Heresies c. being lean may enjoy the benefit of a Toleration Thus Naboth's Vineyard made him the onely Blasphemer of his Citie and fit to die Still I see while the breath of Religion fills the Sails Profit is the Compass by which Factious men steer their Course in all seditious Commotions I thank God as no man lay more open to the sacrilegious temptation of usurping the Churches Lands and Revenues which issuing chiefly from the Crown are held of it and legally can revert onely to the Crown with my consent so I have always had such a perfect abhorrence of it in my Soul that I never found the least inclination to suâ—â— sacrilegious Reformings yet no man hath a greater desire to have Bishops and all Church-men so reformed that they may best deserve and use not onely what the pious Munificence of my Predeâ—essours hath given to God and the Church but all other additions of Christian bountie But no necessitie shall ever I hope drive me or mine to invade or sell the Priests Lands which both Pharaoh's divinitie and Joseph's true pietie abhorred to do so unjust I think it both in the eye of Reason and Religion to deprive the most sacred Emploiment of all due Encouragements and like that other hard-hearted Pharaoh to with-draw the Straw and increase the Task so pursuing the oppressed Church as some have done to the Red Sea of a Civil War where nothing but a Miracle can save either It or Him who esteems it his greatest Title to be called and his chiefest glorie to be The Defender of the Church both in its true Faith and its just Fruitions equally abhorring Sacrilege and Apostacy I had rather live as my Predecessour Henry the third sometime did on the Churches Alms than violently to take the Bread out of the Bishops and Ministers mouths The next work will be Jerboam's Reformation consecrating the meanest of the People to be Priests in Israel to serve those golden Calves who have enriched themselves with the Churches Patrimoniâ— and Dowrie which how it thrived both with Prince Priests and People is well enough known And so it will be here when from the tuition of Kings and Queens which have been nursing Fathers and Mothers of this Church it shall be at their allowance who have already discovered what hard Fathers and Step-mothers they will be If the povertie of Scotland might yet the plentie of England cannot excuse the Envie and Rapine of the Churches Rights and Revenues I cannot so much as pray God to prevent those sad consequences which will inevitably follow the paritie and povertie of Ministers both in Church and State since I think it no less than a mocking and tempting of God to desire him to hinder those Mischiefs whose Occasions and Remedies are in our own power it being every man's sin not to avoid the one and not to use the other There are ways enough to repair
their affairs and was resolved to be relieved the recruit of the Parliaments Army was too slow for the service the London trained bands must do the deed and shop-windows must be shut up and trading suspended the expedition cried up out of every Pulpit and an Army was raised in an instant and upon their March Against whom Prince Rupert is sent from the siege at Glocester to retard their speed untill the King might rise and be gon which was upon the fifth of September and the Rear guard had fired their huts The Earl of Essex came to the brow of the Hills seven miles from the City and gave his warning piece but the Town had no minde to hinder the King being glad of his departing when all his indeavours were now prepared ready for a storm the besieged in want their Amunition consumed to three Barrels of powder but the Towns loss of men were not many not one hundred say they and two or three Officers Captain Harcus and his Ensign the King lost many more and especialy his precious time to no purpose had he waved Glocester and Marched to London directly whilst the Parliament had no Army in the Field London full of discontent and disorder and their actions of Council unresolved The Kings Northern Army under the Earl of Newcastle there also prevailing but it was his fate to be overtaken with this idle siege Sir Nicholas Crisp One of the Farmers of the Kings Customs of England had a high command also both in the Army by Land and afterwards in the Navy by Sea He being Colonel of a Regiment of Horse and his first service took the charge of Convoy of the train of Artillery sent from Oxford to the siege of Glocester and brought it in safety to the Kings Camp and there very much esteemed He was quartered in Rouslidge near Glocester at a Knights house where finding Sir Iames Enyon and other Gentlemen of no Command in the Army and had taken up so much of the house as was Incommode to the Colonel yet he continued then there with much civility Not long it was that the Guests had some horses missing out of the Pastures and so charged upon default the Colonels Souldiers and indeed very ruffly demanding the accompt from the Colonel himself who promised indeavours to finde them out buâ— refused to draw out his Regiment for that purpose onely to satisfie Sir Iames who urged it for his friend himself no otherwise concerned But being a person of eminency and of a Spirit answerable impatient of any delay or orderly proceedings departs and sends a Gentleman with this summon to Sir Nicholas Crisp to meet him with his sword in a field near the Quarters and with this express addition That if he did refuse upon any pretence he would pistoll him against the wall Upon which sharp and suddain summons of an hours warning the Colonel accompanied with a Gentleman findes Sir Iames at the place with him that brought the challenge and as it became a Christian desired to understand the true reason of the meeting professing that his Duty to the King in the charge he had there of present service might justifie his refusal to fight Yet he told him he was come to give him all satisfaction first as a Christian if he had done him Injury of which he professed ignorance Sir Iames shortly replied He came thither to receive no other satisfaction but by the sword which instantly he drew out and as soon so don by the other whose fortune was at an encounter to give a pass that pierced Sir Iames about the rim of the belly of which he was caried off to the same house in eminent danger But whilst he had life and memory the Colonel gave him a visit beseeching him to put by all passions and receive him infinitely afflicted at this misfortune unwillingly provoked to this mischief and so with Christian reconciliation they parted and he died two daies after Hereupon a legal trial was offered for any complainant to prosecute the matter And after some time on Munday the second of October a Council of war being set thereupon gave their opinion and sentence thus In the cause depending against Sir Nicholas Crisp Knight concerning the death of Sir James Enyon Knight slain by him in a Duel in September last The Court being informed that an Affixer was duly set up upon the Court house door according to their Order of the eight and tewentieth of September last and the affixer afterwards taken down and brought into the Court and Proclamation being made and no man appearing against him according to the Affixer yet upon examination of all the matter and difference between them and that the friends of the slain taking notice thereof The Court proceeded to sentence That although the Court doth condemn all manner of Duels and utterly disallow them yet in this particular case of Sir Nicholas Crisp in consideration of the great injury he received in his own Quarter and how much he was provoked and challenged the Court hath thought fit to acquit him from any punishment in this Court and doth leave and recommend him to his Majesties mercy for his gracious pardon the second of October 1643. Forth Lord Lieutenant general and President Dorset Bristol Northampton Andover Dunsmore Jacob Astley Arthur Aston William Brumchard John Byron Who all reported to the King the whole matter and brought him to kiss his hand and received a Pardon under the great feal of England and to confirm him in the Kings affection He had a Commission to be Admiral of a Fleet at Sea set out by himself and was undon for his Masters service The solemn League by Oath and Covenant being ordered to be sworn unto by all and divers consciencious persons excepting against the same and refusing were therefore committed and sequestred to their utter undoing Amongst many Doctor Featly that excellent and learned Divine and Minister at Lambeth had given by Letter to the Lord Arch-Bishop of Armagh Primate of all Ireland an accompt of his demeanour in this business of the Scotish Covenant and was therefore committed to the prison in the Lord Peters house in Aldersgate Street as many other noble houses turned into Jayles both his livings given away and his books bestowed upon White of Dorchester It was the Doctors reasons that raised all this stir He first excepted against these words We will indeavour the true reformedâ— Protestant Religion in the Church of Scotland in Doctrine Discipline worship and Government according to the word of God These words said the Doctor imply that the Worship Discipline and Government of the Church of Scotland is according to the word of God which said he is more than I dare subscribe unto much less confirm by an Oath for first I am not perswaded that any Plat form of Government in each particular circumstance is Jure Divino Secondly admit some were yet I doubt whether the Scots Presbytery be
that Thirdly although somewhat may seem to be urged out of Scripture for the Scots Government with some shew of probability yet far from such evidence as may convince a mans conscience to swear it is agreeable to Gods word Next the Doctor excepted against that passage I shall endeavour the extirpationâ— of Prelacy in the Church of England c. I saith he dare not swear to that First In regard that I believe Episcopacy is an Apostolical Institution Secondly That the Church never so flourished as within five hundred years after Christ when it was governed by Bishops Thirdly That our English Episcopacy is justified by the prime Divines of the Reformed Churches beyond the Seas Fourthly That our English Bishops now and ever since the Reformation have disclaimed all Papal dependency Fifthly That the four General Councils confirmed in England by Act of Parliament 1 Eliz. assert Episcopacie And sixthly vvhich all men need to consider the Ministers of the Church of England ordained according to a Form confirmed by Act of Parliament at their Ordination take an Oath that they will reverendly obey their Ordinary and other chief Ministers of the Church and them to whom Government and charge is committed over them This Oath I and all Clergie men have taken and if we shall swear the Extirpation of Prelacie we shall swear to forswear our selves Lastly he excepted against that passage I will defend the Rights and Privileges of Parliament and defend his Majesties Person and Authoritie in defence of the true Religion and Liberties of the Kingdom Here said he the Members are put before the Head the Parliaments Privileges before the Kings Prerogative and the restraint of defending the King onely in such and such cases seems to implie something which I fear may be drawn to an ill consequence The Doctor urged that the intent of this Covenant vvas to bring in the Scots and to continue this horrid War the taking up Arms against the King being a thing supposed vvhich must not be contradicted In the end of the Letter the Doctor subscribed tvvo Greek Letters for his Name Delta and Phi the phi vvritten within the Delta which troubled the Parliament to interpret till Sir Walter Earl told them that Phi Delta stood for Fidelity yet because Delta stood above Phi it signified Malignancy and so the Doctor was punished accordingly for being afterwards convened before the Committee where the Counsellour at Law Mr. White the others Kinsman was Chairman not much better at Bar than able to dispute Arguments with that excellent School Divine but Mr. White went another way to work down-right conclusion to the Doctors last words who said I am of this minde and unalterable herein To whom the Chairman said If you will not be of another you must suffer The Doctor modestly made Reply Sir I must give you an Answer out of St. Chrysostome upon the like Censure Nec mihi ignominiosum est pati quod passus est Christus Nec tibi gloriosum est facere quod fecit Iudas And so he was sent back to their Gaol when not long after the learned Synod at Westminster were put upon a piece of work somewhat difficult for them and therefore writ a courteous Letter to him beseeching his pains and sufficiency in that excellent Comment upon Paul's Epistles which at their instance and for their honour he admirably performed in Prison yet for that service to them and his excellent merit of our Church these men of Westminster never moved Tongue Pen or Hands to help him out of Prison there he sacrificed the remain of his days and died a Martyr upon that score of the Scots Covenant Sir Robert Harloe moved in the House that the Popes Bull to the Irish might forthwith be printed For said he it will draw on the Covenant A pretty Spectacle said another to see a Bull draw a Covenant The Covenant Money Money War War Liberty and Liberty Rebellion for such were the Links of this Chain the City making this Order for the speedy raising of Money for the sudden advancing of the Scotish Armie And together with the pretence of Religion and Liberty there is now added a more eminent Danger assuring the Citizens That unless they sent in Money not onely these Islands will be ruined but the true Religion will be destroyed in all Protestant Churches c. And therefore the Ministers and Lecturers are to stir up their Congregations thereunto and to subscribe their Sums of Money c. for which they shall have the Publick Faith of both Kingdoms of England and Scotland together with such other Securitie as shall give content to all true lovers of their Religion and Countrey These ways hastened on the Scots Army whilest they cunningly lingred for their Salary a good Sum of Money And to let you see what that was take the particles of this Speech Our Brethren of Scotland says one are now moving to relieve us out of captivitie That the Cities great Honours and Privileges were conferred by Parliament and not by the King That the Cities chiefest glorie had ever been to cleave to the Common-wealth when Kings were seduced c. That the Scots coming would regain Newcastle whereby they might set a Rate upon Coals and raise great Sumâ— of Money c. That the Scots did not value Money as the end of their coming because we owed to them above two hundred thousand pounds And so be that they might have but this one hundred thousand pounds the Sum proposed they would demand no more but will assist us with twenty thousand Horse and Foot to free us from that popish plundering Armie c. But the King to undeceive his people not to swear to be forsworn publishes his Proclamation against the Covenant That whereas there is a Printed Paper intituled A Solemn League and Covenant for Reformation and Defence of Religion the Honour and happiness of the King and the Peace and Safety of the three Kingdoms of England Scotland and Ireland pretended to be ordered by the Commons in Parliament on the one and twentieth Day of September last to be printed and published which Covenant though it seems to make specious expressions of Pietie and Religion is in truth nothing else but a traiterous and seditious Combination against him and against the established Religion and Laws of this Kingdom in pursuance of a traiterous Design and Endeavour to bring in foreign Forces to invade this Kingdom His Majestie doth therefore straitly charge and command all his loving Subjects of what degree or qualitie soever upon their Allegeance that they presume not to take the said seditious and traiterous Covenant most straitly forbidding all his Subjects to tender the said Covenant as they will answer the contrary at their extremest peril Aâ—d this Proclamation came to the hands of the new Mayor of London Mr. Wollaston who succeeded Isaac Pennington and was sworn by Baron Trevor on Munday the last of October 1643. And yet that one of
Eccleshal Castle surrounded with the Enemies Garisons the Governour the more wary adds to his former number of Men and gets in good Provisions and prepares for a Siege And long it was not ere Sir William Brereton Colonel Gell Colonel Greeves Colonel Ridgby and Colonel Iackson joyning Forces with the Counties of Stafford and Derby fell suddenly into Eccleshal Town and with easie bickering got possession of it standing in guard within the Church which faces the Castle The Governour burns all about not an Out-house Barn or Stable affords them other shelter The next day Brereton summons the Castle for the King and Parliament Bird makes present Answer That his Commission was to keep it for the King and unless the other could produce his Majesties Warrant to the contrary it would be labour lost to expect any other Reply but what power and strength should enforce Immediately the Besiegers with two Pieces of Cannon of four and twenty pound Bullet played all day against the Wall without any effect the next day they battered a Turret which at the last fell down and hurt three men and so their Ordnance continued their utmost force for a Week vvhen by so long trial they could not make any Breach they drevv off their Guns and made a Line to surround the Castle not so soon done but that they vvere fain to endure the good effects of several Sallies out of the Castle whereby he lost a Lieutenant and others and some hurt with greater execution on the Enemy And thus it continued for some Moneths with extremity to whose Relief the King sends in September the Lord Capel and the Lord Loughborough with considerable Forces against whom the Besiegers not able to withstand quit their Trenches and retire to the Church and there fortified themselves Then forthwith the Governour sends out what Forces he could spare joyning with the Lords sufficient now to attempt upon the Church by straitning or storming But it seems they had order onely to relieve the Castle not to fight afterwards and force the Enemy away but to be gon themselves and so to leave the business to desperation which the Governour knew would be destruction which he could not prevent and therefore with long dispute and many reasons offered and nothing prevailing he delivered it up to the Lords who put in one Captain Abel a Dane to command there But the old Souldiers not pleased with their New Governour and a stranger to them and a Foreign most of them immediately quit their service and marched away with Captain Bird. The Castle thus relieved the Parliament Commanders call a Council and now resolve to draw off and quit the Siege but a false brother discovering the weakness of the Castle and the discontent with their New Governour the Enemy attempts the battery again and after two daies the Dane surrenders it upon reasonable quarter Thus while the fight they Parliaments Ordinance commands all men to pay nothing to his Majesty the Queen or Prince which is due or ought to be paid unto them whereas the Lords and Commons in September last passed an Ordinance for seizing upon all his Majesties the Queens and Princes Revenues and for receiving all and all manner of Rents certain or casual in England and Wales with all the Arrears and Debts any way due to his Majesty Queen or Prince shall be paid to the Receivers of the Committee for the Revenue c. whose Acquittances shall be sufficient discharge There was late news from Virginia that the Plantation there denied contribution to the Emissaries of the Parliament complaining of the obstruction of their trade at London whereupon an Ordinance of Moderation came forth For abating the Excise upon Virginia Tobacco that the Protestants their brethren in other Countries may not suffer among Malignants and Delinquents in England endeavouring to gain upon Foreign Plantations which in truth were first setled mostly by such as could not indure Discipline at home Sir William Waller having deserved well of the Houses had a new Commission to be Sergeant Major General of Hampshire Surrey Sussex and Kent having layen long before Arundel Castle and this Commission being promised heretofore the General Essex obstructed it being suspected to play his own game with much vanity It was wonderfull how much the Lectures were frequented in London the Town so full of Schollars calling themselves plundred Ministers and so began the coloured Leaguer long Cloak Boots and Spurs as constantly in the Pulpit as heretofore the Gown Canonical Cloak or Cassock but then the Independant a new name for such as liked neither were working to set up themselves or rather thaâ— spirit that set the other at work plaies tricks with them and scatters them into thoughts and factions grinning on each other but yet not setled into tenents neither so that moderate men could not as yet tell what to make of either The Parliament therefore publish their Manifest in effect That it belongs to Christian Magistrates to be Leaders in Reformation of the Church That it is the dutyâ— of all people to pray for them and wait upon them That the Parliament have required the Assembly of Divines to make the VVord of God their own Rule That nothing can be more destructive against the cause of Religion than to be divided amongst themselves That the Assembly and Parliament for so it runs will not onely reform Religion throughout the Nation but will concur to whatsoever shall appear to be the Rights of particular Congregations That all people forbear till they see whether the right Rule will not be commended to them in this orderly way we enjoying more Liberty to serve God than ever was seen in England Here 's fast and loose the People in doubt what Profession to undertake or by this Declaration of what Religion was the Parliament then began Iack Presbyter so styled to be baffled in every Pamphlet and they again to return encounters the people had sport enough to be for neither and in truth of no profession at all but went a wool-gathering to pick up the flieces pilled from the Orthodox Ministry now in much misery mourning for the fall of Sion The Committee for Innovations appointed Workmen to pull down that famous Organ in St. Paul's Church at London and it was imprinted the like they did in King Henry the Seventh's Chapell at VVestminster and all other parochial Churches in and about London and so by degrees the whole Church of Paul's not repairing but uncovering the Roof whereby in time the whole Church and Steeple will fall down after so great a Sum of Money that had been heretofore contributed to the Repair or rather re-edifying thereof more gracefull than the first erecting And now the Parliament do publish That whereas his Majesty doth make a VVar against his Parliament for the promoting thereof divers Forces both of Horse and Foot have been and are levied therefore that no man be mislead through ignorance the
ten times over Here they remained pretending a Peace but in earnest to settle Trade and to see which way the Game went and having leave to go to the King they caress him with their Masters the States great inclination to cement these Differences but the King knew their mindes not to engage for him and so they returned in the end of this year The Marquess of Newcastle had been besieged above nine Weeks by the Parliaments Forces in the North for the raising of which Prince Rupert advances out of Shropshire marching with his Army through Lancashire raises the Siege of Latham House takes three Garisons Stopford Bolton and Leverpool he came forward towards York and on Sunday last of Iune enquartered at Knaresburgh fourteen Miles off the next morning over Burrough-bridg and that night along the River to York upon whose approach the Besiegers quit their Quarters and those in York pursue the Rear and seize some Provisions the next morning Iâ—lie 2. the Prince advances after them resolving to give them Battel by noon yet was it almost seven a clock ere they began and upon disadvantage enough for the Parliaments Forces had choice of the Ground and stood it on a Corn Hill on the South side of Marston Moor four Miles from York and so the Prince taking their leavings fell on upon their Horse who began to shrink and their right Wing of Horse and Foot were routed by the Princes left Wing commanded by General Goring Sir Charls Lucas and Major General Porter And thus confessed by themselves Our right VVing of Foot say they had several mis-fortunes for our right VVing of Horse consisting of Sir Thomas Fairfax 's Horse in the Van and the Scots Horse in the Rear wheeled about and being hotly pursued by the Enemies left VVing came disorderly upon the Lord Fairfax his Foot and the Reserve of Scotish Foot broke them wholly and trod the most of them under foot The Fight was sharp for three hours till night put a period Some of the Prince's Horse followed execution too far and none advancing to supply their absence the Enemy rallied and did the work and many slain on both sides and Prisoners also taken three Prisoners of quality on the Cavaliers party Lucas Porter and Colonel Tilliard The Scots were the Reserve in all their three Armies but smarted at last because their Van both of Horse and Foot not standing brought execution upon them The Parliament printed two Relations the one a Scotish Captain says That Prince Rupert had got the Ground with VVinde and Sun of the Scots when it is certain it was late in the Evening that the loss of men of qualitie upon their parts was but one Lieutenant Colonel and some few Captains And yet he says that the Earl of Eglinton's Regiment lost four Lieutenants the Major the Lieutenant Colonel and the Earls Son mortally wounded that the number of their slain about three hundred and that of the Cavaliers almost three thousand that Prince Rupert took all the Ordnance out of York and lost them in this Fight which Sir William VVallar says were eight and twentie Pieces Another Relation five and twentie And another says twentie That in this Fight were taken ten thousand Arms. Sir VVilliam Waller says six thousand Another Scots Captain says three thousand For Colours they shew a Scene of 47. Colours The truth is that the Horse of both Armies were sufficiently scattered by night next morning the Prince marched towards Thursk and can onely say That he relieved York with some Cattel raised the Siege and was soundly beaten Yet from thence he marched with six thousand Horse and three thousand Dragoons into Lancashire But from the last Fight divers of the Kings party took leave to depart the Kingdom and landed at Hamburgh the Letters from thence names them the Earl of Newcastle lately made Marquess with his two Sons and his Brother Sir Charls Cavendish General King the Lord Falconbridg the Lord VViddrington the Earl of Cranworth the Bishop of London Derrie Sir Edward VViddrington Colonel Carnabie Colonel Basset Colonel Mozon Sir VVillam Vavasor Sir Francis Mackworth with about eighty other persons Sir Thomas Glenham was Governour of York a gallant Gentleman maintaining it against the Siege of all the main Northern Forces of the Parliament the Earl of Manchester the Lord Fairfax and his Son And although Prince Rupert had so far relieved the City as to send them in some Cattel but neither Men nor Amunition so that after his fatal Blow at Marston Moor and now marched away the City left utterly from further expectation of assistance and the Parliaments Forces now resolving to fall upon the storming which the Governour opposed with as much gallantry as his necessitous condition could afford but being over-powered and his wants increasing he was inforced to surrender the City upon honourable terms on the sixteenth of Iulie 1. That all Officers and Souldiers â—hall march out on Horse back with their Arms flying Colours Drums beating Matches lighted Bullets in Mouth with Bag and Baggage 2. VVith a Convoy to Skipton 3. The Sick to depart at pleasure 4. That no Souldier be plundered or enticed away 5. The Citie to enjoy their Trade 6. The Garison to be two parts of three Yorkshire men 7. The Citie to bear Charges with the Countie as usual 8. To dispose and enjoy their Estates according to the Laws of the Land without molestation 9. The Gentlemen there to dispose and carrie away their Goods at pleasure 10. That the Churches be not defaced no man plundered justice to be administred by the Magistrate as before 11. That all persons whose Habitations are within the Citie though now absent shall enjoy the benefit of these Articles The Parliament ordain new Levies to be raised ten thousand Foot and fifteen hundred Horse and one thousand three hundred Dragoons out of nineteen Counties South Counties Suffolk Norfolk Huntington Oxford Berks c. Not only to raise these thousands but must advance as much money as will pay them during their imployment so as it was said that the two Houses at Westminster would devour all the Houses in London It was murmured that as these two had ruined all the rest so ere long they would pull down one the other for the Lords were daily baited by the Commons as Peers which yet doe but should not sit above them so as Mr. Blaston lately told the Lower Members That the Lords had been allowed too long to domineer and we see said he how often they have been defective the Lower stickling to heave out the Higher by the strength of whose Votes and Number the Committee of State is newly reared up which at long running will be too hard for them both and then that very Committee will perchance split into two Factions when our Northern Brethren may prove the better Gamesters because the Elder at this kinde of Contract untill at the last the whole Cause will appear in its
Forms of constant Praiers must be not amended in what upon free and publick advice might seem to sober men inconvenient for matter or manner to which I should easily consent but wholly cashiered and abolished and after many popular contempts offered to the Book and those that used it according to their Consciences and the Laws in force it must be crucified by an Ordinance the better to please either those men who gloried in their extemporarie vein and fluency or others who conscious to their own formalitie in the use of it thought they fully expâ—ated their sin of not using it aright by laying all the blame upon it and a total rejection of it as a dead letter thereby to excuse the deadness of their hearts As for the matter contained in the Book sober and learned men have sufficiently vindicated it against the cavils and exceptions of those who thought it a part of piety to make what prophane objections they could against it especially for Poperie and Superstition whereas no doubt the Liturgie was exactly conformed to the doctrine of the Church of England and this by all Reformed Churches is confessed to be most sound and Orthodox For the manner of using Set and Prescribed Forms there is no doubt but that wholsom words being known and fitted to mens understandings are soonest received into their hearts and aptest to excite and carrie along with them Iudicious and Fervent Affections Nor do I see any reason why Christians should be weary of a well-composed Liturgie as I hold this to be more then of all other things wherein the Constancie abates nothing of the excellencie and usefulness I could never see any Reason why any Christian should abhor or be forbidden to use the same Forms of Praier since he praies to the same God believes in the same Saviour professeth the same truths reads the same Scriptures hath the same duties upon him and feels the same daily wants for the most part both inward and outward which are common to the whole Church Sure we may as well before-hand know what we pray as to whom we pray and in what words as to what sence when we desire the same things what hinders we may not use the same words our appetite and digestion too may be good when we use as we pray for Our daily bread Some men I hear are so impatient not to use in all their devotions their own invention and gifts that they not only dis-use as too many but wholly cast away and contemn the Lord's Prayer whose great guilt is that it is the warrant and original pattern of all set Liturgies in the Christian Church I ever thought that the proud ostentation of mens abilities for invention and the vain affectations of variety for expressions in Publick Praier or any Sacred Administrations merits a greater brand of sin then that which they call Coldness and Barrenness Nor are men in those Novelties lesse subject to formal and superficial tempers as to their hearts then in the use of constant Forms where not the words but mens hearts are to blame I make no doubt but a man may be very formal in the most extemporary variety and very fervently devout in the most wonted expressions Nor is God more a God of variety then of constancy Nor are constant Forms of Praiers more likely to flat and hinder the Spirit of Praier and Devotion then un-premeditated and confused variety to distract and lose it Though I am not against a grave modest discreet and humble use of Ministers gifts even in Publick the better to fit and excite their own and the peoples affections to the present occasions yet I know no necessity why private and single abilities should quite justle out and deprive the Church of the joynt abilities and concurrent gifts of many learned and godly men such as the Composers of the Service-Book were who may in all reason be thought to have more of gifts and graces enabling them to compose with serious deliberation and concurrent advise such Forms of Praiers as may best fit the Churches common wants inform the Hearers understanding and stir up that fiduciarie and fervent application of their Spirits wherein consists the very life and soul of Praier and that so much pretended Spirit of Praier then any private man by his solitary abilities can be presumed to have which what they are many times even there where they made a great noise and shew the affectations emptiness impertinencie rudeness confusions flatness levity obscurity vain and ridiculous repetitions the senslesse and oft-times blasphemous expressions all these burthened with a most tedious and intolerable length do sufficiently convince all men but those who glory in that Pharisaick way Wherein men must be strangly impudent and flatterers of themselves not to have an infinite shame of what they 〈◊〉 do and say in things of so sacred a nature before God and the Church after so ridiculous and indeed profane a manner Nor can it be expected but that in duties of frequent performance as Sacramental administrations and the like which are still the same Ministers must either come to use their own Forms constantly which are not like to be so sound or comprehensive of the nature of the duty as Forms of Publick composure or else they must every time affect new expressions when the subject is the same which can hardly be presumed in any mans greatest sufficiencies not to want many times much of that compleatness order and gravity becoming those duties which by this means are exposed at every celebration to every Ministers private infirmities indispositions errors disorders and defects both for â—udgement and expression A serious sense of which inconvenience in the Church unavoidably following every mans several manner of officiating no doubt first occasioned the wisdome and piety of the Antient Churches to remedy those mischiefs by the use of constant Liturgies of Publick composure The want of which I believe this Church will sufficiently feel when the unhappie fruits of many mens ungovern'd Ignorance and confident Defects shall be discovered in more Errours Schisms Disorders and uncharitable Distractions in Religion which are alreadie but too many the more pitie However if violence must needs bring in and abet those Innovations that men may not seem to have nothing to do which Law Reason and Religion forbid at least to be so obtruded as wholly to justle out the publick Liturgie Yet nothing can excuse that most unjust and partial severitie of those men who either lately had subscribed to used and maintained the Service Book or refusing to use it cried out of the Rigour of Laws and Bishops which suffered them not to use the Libertie of their Consciences in not using it That these men I say should so suddenly change the Liturgy into a Directorie as if the Spirit needed help for Invention though not for expressions or as if matter prescribed did not as much stint and obstruct the Spirit as if it were clothed in and
in the sight of Almighty God that I will not disclose nor reveale unto any Person or Persons whatsoever who is not a Commissioner any matter or thing that shall be spoken of during the Treaty by any one or more of his Majesties Commissioners in any private Debate amongst our selves concerning the said Treaty so as to name or describe directly or indirectly the person or persons that shall speak any such matter or thing unlesse by the consent of all the said Commissioners that shall be then living Memorandum That it is by all the said Commissioners agreed that this shall not binde where any ten of the Commissioners shall agree to certifie his Majesty the number of the Assenters or Dissenters upon any particular result in this Treaty not naming or describing the persons Upon the Kings former Message from Evesham Iuly 4. And his second Message from Tavestock Septem 8. and the consideration of the Parliaments late Propositions sent to the King at Oxford Novem. 23. which he Answered in the general the effect whereof produced an offer of the King for a Treaty so that at last it was assented unto and Commissioners appointed on all sides for the King and for the Parliament of England and the Parliament of Scotland to Treat at Uxbridge the 30. of Ianuary The day came and after eithers Commission was assented unto the Kings Commissioners complain against one Mr. Love who preached in Uxbridge to the people that very day Thursday Market day Telling them that the Kings Commissioners came with hearts full of bloud and that there is as great distance between this Treaty and Peace as between Heaven and Hell With divers other seditious passages against the King and his Treaty It was Answered that Mr. Love was none of their Train and that they would present this Complaint to the Parliament who will no doubt proceed in justice therein who was sent to the Parliament and slightly blamed but grew into so much favour with a Faction and therein very bold that we shall finde him hereafter a Traitor and sentenced to be hanged drawn and quartered but had the favour of the Ax. The observable end of many such in these times Commissioners pro Rege Duke of Richmond and Lenox Marquess of Hertford Earl of Southampton Earl of Kingston Earl of Chichester Lord Capel Lord Seamour Lord Hatton Lord Culpepper Sir Edward Nicholas Sir Edward Hide Sir Richard Lane Sir Thomas Grandure Sir Orlando Bridgeman Mr. Io. Ashburnham Mr. Ieffery Palmer Doctor Stuard Commissioners pro Parl. Earl of Northumberland Earl of Pembroke Montgomery Earl of Salisbury Earl of Denbigh Lord Wenman Mr. Hollis Mr. Pierpoint Sir Hen. Vane Iunior Mr. Crew Mr. Whitlock Mr. St. Iohns Mr. Prideaux Lord Loudon Sir Charles Ersken Scots Commissioners Mr. Doudas Mr. Brackley Mr. Henderson Then they proceed to their Order of Treaty 1. concerning Religion 2. Militia 3. Ireland But ere the Treaty began this Paper was delivered in to the Commissioners of Parliament from the other for reconciling all differences in the Matter of Religion and procuring a Peace we are willing 1. That freedom be left to all Persons of what opinion soever in Matters of Ceremony and that all the penalties of the Lawes and Customs which enjoyn these penalties be suspended 2. That the Bishops shall exercise no Act of Iurisdiction or Ordination without the consent and Councel of the Presbyters who shall be chosen by the Clergy of each Diocess out of the Learned'st and gravest Ministers of that Diocess 3. That the Bishop keep his constant Residence in his Diocess except when he shall be required by his Majesty to attend him on any occasion and that if he be not hindered by the Infirmity of old age or sickness he preach every Sunday in some Church within his Diocess 4. That the Ordination on Ministers shall be alwayes in the Publick and Solemn Manner and very strict rules observed concerning the sufficience and other qualifications of those men who shall be received into holy Orders And the Bishop shall not receive any into holy Orders without the Approbation and consent of the Presbyters or the Major part of them 5. That competent Maintenance be established by Parliament to such Vicarages as belong to Bishops Deans and Chapters out of the Impropriations according to their value of the several Parishes 6. That no Man shall be capable of two Parsonages or Vicarages with cure of Souls 7. That toward the setling of the Publick peace a hundred thousand pounds shall be raised by Parliament out of the estates of Bishops Deans and Chapters in such manner as the King and Parliament shall think fit without the Alienation of any of the said Lands 8. That the Iurisdiction in causes Testamentary Decimals and Matrimonials be setled in such a manner as shall seem most convenient by the King and Parliament And likewise that Acts to be passed for regulating of Visitations and against immoderate Fees in Ecclesiastical Courts and abuses by frivolous Excommunications and all other abuses in Ecclesiastical Iurisdictions as shall be agreed upon by King and Parliament And if the Parliaments Commissioners will insist upon any other things which they shall think necessary for Religion the Kings Commissioners shall very willingly apply themselves to the consideration thereof But no Answer was given thereto The Parliaments Commissioners paper concerning Religion That the Bill be passed for Abolishing and taking away of all Archbishops Bishops c. according to the third Proposition That the Ordinances concerning the calling and sitting of the Assembly of Divines be confirmed by Act of Parliament That the Directory for Publick Worship already passed both Houses and the Propositions concerning Church Government annexed and passed both Houses be Enacted as a part of Reformation of Religion and Vniformity according to the first Proposition That His Majesty take the Solemn League and Covenant and that the Covenants be enjoyned to be taken according to the second Proposition To this was annexed the following Paper That the ordinary way of dividing Christians into distinct Congregations and most expedient for edification is by the respective bounds of their dwellings That the Minister and the Church Officers in each Congregation shall joyn in the Government of the Church as shall be established by Parliament That many particular Congregations shall be under one Presbyterial Government That the Church be Governed by Congregational Classical and Synodical Assemblies to be established by Parliament That Synodical Assemblies shall consist both of Provincial and National Assemblies Which Papers suffered three dayes of the Treaty in dispute The next three dayes were ordered for the Militia and was afterwards resumed for other three dayes Propositions concerning the Militia 4 February We desire that the Subject of England may be Armed Trained and Disciplined as the Parliament shall think fit That the like for Scotland as the Parliament there shall think fit An Act for setling the Admiralty and forces at Sea and
monies thereto for maintenance may be as the Parliament shall think fit The like for Scotland An Act for setling all forces by Sea and Land in Commissioners to be named by Parliament and as both Kingdoms shall confide in and to Suppresse all powers and forces contrary hereto and to act as they shall be directed by Parliament So for the Kingdom of Scotland That the Militia of the City London and of the Parishes without London and the Liberties within the weekly Bills of Mortality be in the Lord Mayor Aldermen and Common-council That the Tower of London may be in the Government of the City and the Chief Officers those be nominated and removable by the Common-council That the Citizens or forces of London may not be drawn out of the City without their own consent and that the example in these distracted times may be no Precedent for the future The next three dayes began the 7. of February and the same was also taken up again Feb. 18. for other three dayes for Ireland That an Act of Parliament be passed to make void the Cessation of Ireland and all Treaties of the Rebells without Consent of Parliment and to settle the prosecution of the War of Ireland in the Parliament to be managed by the joynt advice of both Kingdoms and his Majesty to assist and to do no act to discountenance or molest them therein But the Kings Commissioners were so far from yeilding to this Proposition that they had intimation from the King how he was ingaged for Ireland having two dayes before in great earnest writ to hasten the Peace in Ireland in these words Ormond I cannot but mention the necessity of hastning the Irish Peace But in case against all expectation and reason Peace cannot be had you must not by any means fall into a new rupture with them but continue the Cessation c. for a year for which you shall promise them if you can have it no cheaper to joyn with them against the Scots and Inchequin for I hope by that time my condition may be such as the Irish may be glad to accept lesse or I be able to grant more 16 February 1644. Oxford By those Letters the mystery is opened why the King is so violent for Peace with the Irish but this was tenderly treated by the Kings Commissioners and well they might be willing to shadow these designs if they were acquainted with the bottom which few could fathom In general the Kings Commissioners had upon the matter of the Parliaments Propositions consented unto many particulars and alterations of great Importance and complain that the other have not abated one title of the most severe of their Propositions nor have offered any prospect towards Peace but by submitting totally to those Propositions which would dissolve the Frame of Government Ecclesiastical and Civil In the matter of Religion the Kings Commissioners offered all such alterations as they conceived might give satisfaction to any Objection that hath or can be made against that government with their reasons why they cannot consent to the Propositions but if consented unto could not be in Order to Reformation or publique Peace And though in the Parliaments Covenant enjoyned to be taken by the King and all his Subjects they undertake the Reformation in Government and in Doctrine too thereby laying an imputation of Religion it self yet the Parliaments Commissioners have not given the other the least Argument nor the least prejudice to the Doctrine of the Church of England Nor given any view in particular of what they would propose to be abolished And therefore the Kings Commissioners offered That if the Articles proposed by them did not give satisfaction that then so great an alteration as the total abolishment of a Government established by Law may for the imparlance of it and any reformation in Doctrine for the scandal of it be suspended till after the Disbanding of all Armies the King may be present with the Parliament and calling a National Synod may receive such advice both from the one and the other as may be necessary and as any Reformation thus calmly made must needs prove for the singular benefit so whether the contrary that is an alteration even to things though in themselves good can by the principles of Christian Religion be enforced upon the King or Kingdom In that of the Militia Though the Parliaments Commissioners did not deny that the apprehensions of danger are mutual and that the chief end of depositing the Militia into the hands of certain persons is for securitie against possible dangers Yet they did insist that those persons should be nominated by the Parliaments of England and Scotland and that the time of that great unheard of Trust shall be in such manner that though it seems limited for seven years yet in truth it shall not be otherwise exercised then as the King and Parliament shall agree and he may thereby be totallie divested of the Sword without which he cannot defend himself from Foreign or Domestick or protect his Subjects Add to all that Scotland professing distinct and different Laws shall yet have a great share in the Government of this Kingdom Instead of consenting to these Changes the Kings Commissioners proposed That the persons to be Trusted with the Militia may be Nominated between them or that an equal number the one half by the King the other by the Parliament and all those to take Oath for the due discharge of that Trust so their securitie being mutual neither can be supposed to violate the agreement the whole Kingdom being eye-witnesses of the failing And as it is reasonable that for this security the King parting with so much of his own power as makes him unable to break the Agreements so it is most necessary when the apprehension of all danger of that breach be over that then the Soverain power of the Militia should revert and be as it hath alwaies been in the Kings proper Charge And therefore the Kings Commissioners proposed that the Trust should be for three years a time sufficient to produce a right understanding of both sides and if any thing else material may be necessary to be done that the same may be considered after the Peace setled But in all that this Kingdom may depend of it self and not of Scotland as Scotland shall without advice of this Kingdom Concerning Ireland The Parliaments Commissioners proposed that the King Nul this Cessation made by Royal Authority The Lords Justices and Councels desires and for the preservation of the remain of the poor Protestants there from Famine and Sword And to put the whole War Militia and Government of Ireland into the hands of the Scots General by advice of a Ioint Committee of both Kingdoms wherein each to have a Negative voice To which the Kings Commissioners acquainted them with the just Grounds of the Kings proceedings in that businesse of Ireland which they conceived might satisfie all men of his
Prosper speakes in his second Book De vitae contemptu cap. 4. Men that introduce prophanesse are cloaked with the name of Imaginary Religion for we have left the Substance and dwell too much in Opinion and that Church which all the Iesuits could not ruine is fallen into danger by her own The last particular for I am not willing to be long is my self I was born and Baptized in the Bosome of the Church of England established by Law in that profession I have ever since lived and in that I come now to dye what Clamours and Slanders I have endured for labouring to keep a Conformity in the external service of God according to the doctrine and Discipline of the Church all men know and I have abundantly felt Now at last I am accused of High Treason in Parliament a Crime which my soul ever abhorred this Treason was charged to consist of two parts An endeavour to subvert the Lawes of the Land and a like endeavour to overthrow the true Protestant Religion established by Law Besides my answers which I gave to the several Charges I protested my innocencie in both Houses It was said Prisoner's protestations at the Bar must not be taken I can bring no other witnesse of my heart and the intentions thereof I must therefore come now to it upon my death being instantly to give God an account for the truth of it I do therefore here in the presence of God and his holy Angels take it upon my death that I never endeavoured the subversion either of Law or Religion and I desire that you would all remember this Protestation of mine for my innocency in these and from all Treasons whatsoever whereof I would not for all the World be so guiltie as some are I have been accused likewise as an enemie to Parliaments No I understand them and the benefit that comes by them too well to be so But I did dislike the misgovernment of some Parliaments many waies and I had good reasons for it Corruptio optimi est pessima and that being the highest Court over which no other hath jurisdiction when That is misinformed or misgoverned the Subject is left without all remedy But I have done I forgive all the World and everie of those bitter Enemies which have persecuted me and humblie desire to be forgiven of God first and then of every man and so I heartilie desire you to joyn in prayer with me O Eternal God and Merciful Father look down upon me in mercy in the Riches and fulnesse of thy mercies look down upon me but not until thou hast nailed my sins to the Crosse of Christ not till thou hast bathed me in the Blood of Christ not till I have hid my self in the wounds of Christ that so the punishment due unto my sins may pâ—sse ove me And since thou art pleased to try me to the uttermost I humbly beseech thee to give me now in this great instant full Patience Proportionable Comfort and a heart ready to dy for thy Honour the Kings happinesse and this Churches preservation My Zeal to these far from Arrogancy be it spoken is all the sin humane frailty excepted and all incidents thereunto which is yet known to me in this particular for which I now come to suffer I say in this particular of Treason but otherwise my sins are many and great Lord pardon them all and those especially whatsoever they are which have drawn down this present Judgment upon me and when thou hast given me strength to bear it do with me as seems best in thine own eyes Amen And that there may be a stop of this Issue of Blood in this more then miserable Kingdom O Lord I beseech thee give grace of Repentance to all Blood-thirsty people but if they will not repent O Lord confound all their devices Defeat and Frustrate all their Designs and endeavours which are or shall be contrary to the Glory of thy great Name the truth and sincerity of Religion the establishment of the King and His Posterity after Him in their Just Rights and Priviledges the Honour and Conservation of Parliaments in their Just power the preservation of this poor Church in its Truth Peace and Patrimony and the settlement of this distracted and distressed people under their ancient Lawes and in their native Liberties And when thou hast done all this in meere mercy for them O Lord fill their hearts with thankfulnesse and Religious Dutiful obedience to thee and thy Commandements all their dayes So Amen Lord Jesus Amen and receive my Soul into thy Bosome Amen Our Father which art in Heaven c. This Speech and Prayer ended he gave the Paper written as he spake it desiring Doctor Sterne to shew it to his other Chaplains that they might know how he departed and so prayed God to shew his mercies and blessings on them all Then he applyed himself to the Fatal Block as to the Haven of his Rest but finding the people pressing upon the Scaffold he desired that he might have room to dye beseeching them to let him have an end of his miseries which he had endured very long Being now neer the Block he put off his Dublet and used words to this effect Gods will be done I am willing to go out of this world no man can be more willing to send me out of it And spying through the chinks of the Boards that some people were got under the Scaffold and the place of the Block he called to the Officers for some dust to stop them or to remove the people thence saying It was no part of his desires that his bloud shall fall upon the heads of the people When he was somewhat interrupted by one Sir Iohn Clotworthy who would needs try what he could doe with his Spunge and Vineger and stepping neer the Block asked him not to learn by him but to tempt him what was the comfortablest saying which a dying man could have in his mouth To which he mildly answered Cupio dissolvi esse cum Christo. Being asked again what was the fittest speech a man could use to expresse his confidence and assurance He answered meekly That such assurance was to be found within and that no words were able to expresse it rightly which when it would not satisfie the impertinent man unlesse he gave some place of Scripture whereupon such assurance might be truly founded He replyed to this effect That it was the word of God concerning Christ and his dying for us And so without expecting further questions he turned to the Executioner and gave him money saying here honest friend God forgive thee doe thy Office upon me with mercy and having given a sign when the blow should come he kneeled down upon his knees and prayed Lord I am coming as fast as I can I know I must passe through the shadow of death before I can come to see thee But it is but Umbra mortis a mâ—er shadow of death a
please your Honour to admit us with safe conduct to impart some matters to your Honour c. August 14. 1644. From the Generals Quarter Herbert Westfalling Roger Hereford Ja. Newton The wise men were admitted and their secret counsel and advice was To render up all to the valiant Scots and so they parted And the good Doctor bringing them out of the Port had an unfortunate Shot from the Scot that killed him The fifteenth the face of their Battery against Frene-gate was discovered with five several Guns-ports and playing four Cannon jointly at the Wall and made a Breach which was soon made up again and the like on the other side with the same success The seventeenth was a notable Sally at Owen's Church with great execution and divers Prisoners taken they say within their own loss being but one man This is certain the very Boys came out and fired the Scots Works to some purpose and twice they had such success at this Port. At the Castle there were four several Sallies to very great effect and little loss to the Attempters who took many Prisoners and slew more beat them out of their Works with shame and anger Then they raise Batteries against Owen's Church but to little purpose for from the twentieth of August to the seven and twentieth they were weary from shooting but plied their Mine at Owen's and prepared for Scaling which was countermined from within fired their Works and what was not done by burning was effected by Water breaking in and drowning The nine and twentieth Leven assays again by Summons to surrender and is answered with slighting and therefore in terrour the Ladders are prepared the first of September playing with their Cannon upon Bistane-gate and the Half-moon by Owen's Gate but the same Night at the very Noise of the King coming from Worcester they prepared for Flight and the next Morning not a Scot to be seen felt or heard of they were all fled So you see after a Moneths Siege the Scots wasting their Men Money and time march away through Glocester and so to Warwick from thence they pretended to go homewards Indeed they were displeased for want of their Arrears And Leven was somewhat too strictly observed by the English Committee in his Army Besides there was ill News from Scotland Montrose there mightily prevailing for the King even to the hazzard of Edingburgh and so of that Nation Therefore the Scotish Estates call home Sir David Lesly with his Body of Horse and in a snuff the Scots General in England will be gone also with his Army and by leasurely Marches gets Northward and ever and anon he clamours for Money but no Work no Money for he will not be as yet intreated to besiege Newark And Leven being a General in England though an Hireling takes upon him to grant Commissions to English for new Levies against which the Parliament vote That the Scotish Armie in England hath no power to grant Commissions to any person for raising Forces within this Kingdome and that such Commissions are and shall be void And because they will not do as they are bidden the House of Commons vote That if the Scotish Armie in this Kingdom shall sit down before Newark by the first of November next the sum of thirty thousand pounds will be advanced for them else not Nay the Scots General is curbed in his own Quarters concerning Mr. Case who was to be tried by a Council of War of the Scots Army and after much debate thereof in the Parliament It is voted That the Scotish Armie in this Kingdom have no power to trie an English man by Martial Law and that Mr. Case ought to have satisfaction herein Now indeed it began to work and a Committee appointed to examine the Differences arising between the Parliament and Scotish Army who were gotten Northwards into Yorkshire where was no need of their Service and neglected Newark a piece projected for their regaining and therefore a Declaration is drawn up upon these Votes That the Houses will observe and desire to continue the assistance amitie and friendship betwixt both Kingdoms according to the Solemn League and Covenant c. That the residing of the Scots Armie in Yorkshire where they now are is not so usefull to this Kingdom as if they sate down before Newark neither ought they to lay Taxes on the Countrey where they come without making satisfaction That Carlisle Tinby Castle Hartlepool and other Garisons in the North now in the possession of the Scots were to be disposed of according to the directions of the Parliament That if the Scots Armie sate down before Newark according to a former Vote of the House by the first of November next they should have forthwith thirty thousand pounds towards their Pay c. And Commissioners appointed to treat with the Scotish Armie to deliver up all their English Garisons in their hands to the Parliaments Commanders which was obeyed These passages the Scots resent and take time to consider but to meet with their Masters they press the Parliament with Letters and Messages from the Scots Army to setle Church-matters according to the National League and Covenant Nor would they budge from the North parts though they are called Southward for the Kingdoms security and service And after some moneths solicitation and money to pay Arears Shooes and Stockings to boot they are intreated to march to the siege of Newark There they stayed not long but in a pet march Northward to Newcastle where they stuck till they got the King into their clutches sold him and so went home again as the particulars shall mention hereafter We left Fairfax before Sherburn Castle a fortnight since we stood out his Storms Underminings Breaches and what not that Valiant Defendants could doe for their honour But Sir Thomas was potent and prosperous and the Kings condition so low that it was hardly able to give relief to any besieged And therefore Fairfax falls to works with his Cannon shot and makes a breach in the wall thirty foot wide and then sends a second Summons but the Noble Governour Sir Lewis Dives returns a peremptory denial Hereupon he endures a furious storm with as much courage as man could doe But his Souldiers felt the Smart and Terrour and would needs call for Quarter the Governour told them their best security was to fight for absolutely he would receive no quarter and so both parties fall to a cruel encounter and many slain on both sides untill the Defendants were overpowred with numbers and forced to yield upon Quarter Those within were the Governour Sir Io. Strangwain a son of the Lord Paulet Captain Fussil sometime Sub-Governour of Weymouth for the King and many other prisoners And take the Thanksgiving-day for these together Bath Bridgwater Scarborough Pontefract and Sherburn 14. August The King this while marches up and down Wales upon defence and to raise Supplies then comes to Litchfield and by the way fights
without the House of Lords We the Commons c. remembering that in the beginning of this War divers Protestations Declarations Suggestions c. were spread abroad by the King whereby the sincere Intentions of the Parliament for the publick good were mis-represented and so no need of a present War which is otherwise apparant by discoverie of the Enemies secrets and Gods immediate Blessings and Successes upon the Parliaments affairs and which Mistakes for some time had blemished the justice of this cause that if the Enemie had prevailed how dangerous the consequence would have been is now apparant And now notwithstanding Gods blessing on all our Endeavours Forces and Armies c. there are still the same spirits though under Disguise putting false constructions upon what hath already passed the Parliament as upon the thing under present Debate begetting a belief That we now desire to swerve from our first grounds aims and principles in the undertaking this War to recede from the solemn League and Covenant and Treaties between us and Scotland and that we would prolong these uncomfortable Troubles and bleeding Distractions to alter the fundamental constitution and frame of this Kingdom to leave all Government of the Church loose and unsetled and our selves to exercise the same arbitrary power over the persons and estates of the Subjects which this present Parliament thought fit to abolish by taking away the Star-chamber High Commission and other arbitrary Courts and the exorbitant power of the Council Table All which c. though our former actions are the best Demonstrations of our faithfulness to the publick yet if mis-believed may involve us into new Imbroilments We do declare our Endeavours are to setle Religion according to the Covenant to maintain the fundamental Rights of the Kingdom the Liberties of the Subject to desire a well-grounded peace in the three Kingdoms c. In effect Concerning Church-government we having so fully declared for a Presbyterial Government having spent so much pains taken up so much time for setling of it passed most of the particulars brought to us from the Assemblie of Divines called onely by us to advise of such things as shall be required of them by the Parliament and having published several Ordinances for putting the same in execution because we cannot consent to the granting of an arbitrary and unlimited power and jurisdiction to near ten thousand Iudicatories to be erected within this Kingdom and this demanded in a way inconsistent with the Fundamentals of Government excluding the power of Parliaments in the exercise of that Iurisdiction nor have we yet resolved how a due regard may be had that tender consciences which differ not in any Fundamentals in Religion may be so provided for as may stand with the Word of God and the peace of the Kingdom And let it be observed that we have had the more reason not to part with the power out of our hands since all by-past Ages manifest that the Reformation and purity of Religion and the preservation and protection of the people hath been by Parliament and the exercise of this power our Endeavours being to setle the Reformation in these Kingdoms of England and Ireland in Doctrine Worship Discipline and Government according to the Word of God and the Example of the best Reformed Churches and according to our Covenant Concerning a peace which is the right end of a just VVar to that purpose both Houses of Parliament have framed several Propositions to be sent to the King such as they hold necessary for the present and future safety of this Kingdom some of which are transmitted to our Brethren of Scotland where they now remain whose consent we doubt not to obtain since the Parliament of England is and ought to be sole and proper Iudg for the good of this Kingdom wherein we are so far from altering the fundamental constitution and Government of this Kingdom by King Lords and Commons that we onely have desired that by the consent of the King such powers may be setled in the two Houses to prevent a second and more destructive VVar not judging it wise or safe for the pretended power of the Militia in the King to have any authoritie in the same for the future introducing an arbitrary Government over this Nation and protecting Delinquents by force from the justice of Parliaments the chiefest grounds of the Parliaments taking up Arms in this Cause We do declare we will not interrupt the ordinary course of Iustice nor intermeddle in cases of private interest And as the Parliament have already for the benefit of the people taken away the Court of Wards and Liveries and all Tenures in capite and by Knights Service so we will take special care for the peoples ease in Levies of Moneys and in reducing Garisons Lastly whereas both Nations have entered into a solemn League and Covenant and Treaties between us concluded which we shall and have duly performed that nothing be done to the prejudice of either of them presuming that the good people of England will not receive prejudicate opinions by any forced constructions of that Covenant which is only to be expounded by them by whose authority it was established in this Kingdom April 18. But in great regret the Parliament order that the Preface to the Pamphlet intituled The Scots Commissioners Papers and the stating of the Question about the Propositions of Peace was this day burnt by the Hangman April 21. At length of time the eleventh of Iuly the tedious Propositions are finished and sent to the King by the Committee Earl of Pembroke and Montgomery and the Earl of Suffolk Mr. Goodwin Sir Iohn Hippesley Mr. Robinson and Sir Walter Earl The Propositions in general are these 1. That his Majesty would pass an Act for the Nulling of all Oaths Declarations and Proclamations against the Parliament of England of Scotland their Ordinances or their Adherents 2. The King to swear and sign the Covenant and an Act for the three Kingdoms to swear unto 3. An Act to take away Bishops and their Dependents 4. To confirm by Act the Assembly of Divines at Westminster 5. To settle Religion as the Parliament shall agree 6. In unity and uniformity with Scotland as shall be agreed upon by both Parliaments 7. An Act to be confirmed against Papists 8. Their Childâ—en to be educated in the Protestant Religion 9. And for Levies against their Estates 10. Against saying of Mass in this Kingdom 11. And in Scotland if they think fit 12. For observation of the Lords Day against Pluralities Non-Residents and for Regulating the Universities 13. That the Militia of England Ireland and Wales by Sea and Land be in the hands of the Parliament for twenty years and the like for Scotland and to raise Moneys for the same and to suppress all Forces raised in that time without their authority against all foreign Invasion Provided that the City of London may enjoy their Privileges to raise and imploy their
rule as King I was alwaies bred to more modest and I think more pious Principles The consciousnesse to my Spiritual defects makes me more prize and desire those pious assistances which holy and good Ministers either Bishops or Presbyters may afford me especially in these extremities to which God hath been pleased to suffer some of my Subjects to reduce me so as to leave them nothing more but my Life to take from me and to leave me nothing to desire which I thought might lesse provoke their jealousie and offence to deny me then this of having some means afforded me for my Souls comfort and support To which end I made choice of men as no way that I know scandalous so every way eminent for their Learning and Piety no lesse then for their Loialty Nor can I imagine any exceptions to be made against them but only this That they may seem too able and too wel-affected toward me and my service But this is not the first service as I count it the best in which they have forced me to serve my self though I must confesse I bear with more grief and impatience the want of my Chaplains then of any other my servants and next if not beyond in some things to the being sequestred from my Wife and Children since from these indeed more of humane and temporary affections but from those more of heavenly and eternal improvements may be expected My comfort is that in the enforced not neglected want of ordinarie means God is wont to afford extraordinary supplies of his gifts and graces If his Spirit will teach me and help my infirmities in praier reading and meditation as I hope he will I shall need no other either Orator or Instructer The general inquirie was whether now we shall have Peace or a new War Most men imagine the old quarrel at an end but another between Presbyters and Independent We will have Uniformity saies the one and all to submit to the Covenant Liberty of Conscience saies the other and that in his sense is agreeable to the Covenant and Gods Word to back is But as the Quarrel grew high Pamphlets were published for either party Another to settle the brains of either of them or any besides offers the Reconciliation in his advice Intituled The Temple measured wherein are discussed the Questions about Constitution and Government of the visible Church the solution of such questions which he propounds and numbers them all the Objections against the Model of Ecclesiastical policie and particularly there is debated the unity of the Church the Members thereof the form of the Church and Church Government the power of the Church the Officers of the Church and their power The powers of Magistrates about the Church some Church Acts as admission of Members c. Tedious enough and all this set out for the final satisfaction of all differences by that Orthodox Divine the Lecturer at Newbery in New-England Mr. Noyes What a pretty pass we were come unto to fetch our Church-government from the West Indies And although Mr. Symson was silenced by Order of Parliament for dissenting from the Assembly of Divines it was now held fit to Null that Order and Symson admitted and why for his zeal it is said to the glory of God and edification of his Church and so upon this general ground he and others of any strain became admitted to the Pulpit We grow near an end of this year now the 19. of Mar. he Parliament Voting the Modeling of the Army into less Many Garisons dismantled some Forces Disbanded rather to be rid of the men than to spare the expences Much muttering there had been by the Officers and Souldiers very high in the esteem of their own power which increased as the Parliament lessened And therefore the Forces at their own dispose draw near together towards the City of London and Westminster which put the Citizens to advise at their Guid-hall and the whole number in Common Councel conclude of a Petition to either House but both alike To settle the Affairs of this long distracted Kingdom That his Majesty being come nearer in person to his Parliament they hope he will come home to their desires in the Propositions National and solemn League and Covenant That Malignants may be removed out of the City And here say they we should have ceased but that the Army which they hoped ere this should have been disbanded is now drawn so suddenly and quartered neer the Parliament and this City Besides that in this same juncture of time a most dangerous and seditious Petition is set on foot to be presented to this Parliament the Copy thereof is annexed which doth exact this addition from the Petitioners And pray That the Parliament would give command that the Army be forthwith removed and after with all speed to be disbanded the annexed Petition suppressed and that the City may make annual Election of the Members of their own Militia Soft and fair the Citizens ride post 'T is true the Petitioners had thanks of both Houses but they reckon without their Host the Army which we shall hear of to another tune The old Prince Henry of Orange died the 14. of March of a Fever sixty three years of age the most approved Commander in the Christian world and answerable in wisdom for State Government of an infirme body with the disease of the Gout the pain whereof increasing he fell into a Fever His only Son succeeded General and Admiral of the Forces of the united Provinces A faithful friend he had been in the assistance of the King contracted in the Mariage of his Son with the Kings Eldest Daughter and great sums of money and Ammunition had been sent to him in these Civil Wars of England and when he sees the King undone he dies deplored of all leaving his Son the hopefull Issue of such a Father And so we end this year 1646. The Scots Army is gone and left us the Bone to gnaw their Ecclesiastical Presbytery to which Reformation we were forward in forming of our selves This Discipline of Government in the Scotish Kirk had been long time a framing in Scotland according to the Tenets of the Church of Geneva and devised and setled there as afterwards in Scotland by treasonable practices against the power of Magistracie and Soveraignty The Prerogative of a King and the liberty of Subjects are consistent and dependent the one from the other Certainly the Kings power is primarily derived from God for the Subject He to establish good Lawes for Church and State they to obey them And it is true too that the chief of the Church Bishop or Presbyter have a power which the Supream Power hath not in Spiritualibus resting only in their persons But the King is in the External Affairs of the Church to call Synods Assemble Divines for ordering of the Church by Canons and Edicts and he hath a power also to punish the Ministers offending
at Carisbroke Castle The King not to be wanting to the Common-wealth sends his Message to the Parliament and therein Concessions even beyond the hopes of most men and Arguments also why he could not assent to the late Propositions and desires a personal Treaty resolving to neglect any thing of his own Right to redeem the Peace of his people C. R. His Majesty is confident that before this time his two Houses of Parliament have received the Message which he left behind him at Hampton Court the eleventh of this moneth by which they will have understood the Reasons which enforced him to go from thence as likewise his constant endeavours for the setling of a safe and well-grounded Peace wheresoever he should be And being now in a place where he conceives himself to be at much more freedom and security than formerly he thinks it necessary not only for making good of his own professions but also for the speedy procuring of a peace in these languishing and distressed Kingdoms at this time to offer such grounds to his two Houses for that effect which upon due examination of all Interests may best conduce thereunto And because Religion is the best and chiefest foundation of peace his Majestie will begin with that particular That for the abolishing Arch-bishops c. his Majesty clearly professeth that he cannot give his consent thereunto both in Relation as he is a Christian and a King For the first he avows that he is satisfied in his judgement that this order was placed in the Church by the Apostles themselves and ever since that time hath continued in all Christian Churches throughout the World untill this last century of years and in this Church in all times of change and Reformation it hath been upheld by the wisdom of his Ancestors as the great preserver of Doctrine Discipline and Order in the Service of God as a King at his Coronation he hath not only taken a solemn oath to maintain this Order but his Majesty and his Predecessors in their confirmations of the great Charter have inseparably woven the right of the Church into the Liberties of the rest of the Subjects and yet he is willing it be provided that the particular Bishops perform the several duties of their callings both by their personal residence and frequent Preachings in their Diocesses as also that they exercise no act of Iurisdiction or Ordination without the consent of their Presbyter and will consent that their powers in all things be so limited that they be not grievous to tender consciences Wherefore since his Majestie is willing to give ease to the consciences of others he sees no reason why he alone and those of his judgement should be pressed to a violation of theirs Nor can his Majestie consent to the alienation of Church Lands because it cannot be denied to be a sin of the highest Sacrilege as also that it subverts the intentions of so many pious Donors who have laid a heavy curse upon all such profane violations which his Majestie is very unwilling to undergo And besides the matter of conscience his Majestie believes it to be a prejudice to the publick good many of his Subjects having the benefit of renewing Leases at much easier Rates than if those possessions were in the hands of private men not omitting the discouragement which it will be to all Learning and Industry when such eminent rewards shall be taken away which now lye open to the Children of meanest persons Yet his Majestie considering the great present distempers concerning Church Discipline and that the Presbyterian Government is now in practice his Majestie to eschew confusion as much as may be and for the satisfaction of his two Houses is content that the said Government be Legally permitted to stand in the same condition it is in for three years provided that his Majestie and those of his judgement or any other who cannot in conscience submit thereunto be not obliged to comply with the Presbyterial Government but have free practice of their own profession without receiving any prejudice thereby and that a free consultation and debate be had with the Divines at Westminster twenty of his Majesties nomination being added unto them whereby it may be determined by his Majesty and the two Houses how the Church Government after the said time shall be setled or sooner if differences may be agreed as is most agreeable to the Word of God with full libertie to all those who shall differ upon Conscientious grounds from that settlement alwaies provided that nothing aforesaid be understood to tolerate those of the popish profession nor the exempting of any Popish Recusant from the penalties of the Laws or to tolerate the publick profession of Atheism or Blasphemy contrary to the Doctrine of the Apostles Nicene and Athanasian Creeds they having been received by and had in reverence of all the Christian Churches and more particularly by this of England ever since the Reformation Next the Militia being that Right which is inseparably and undoubtedly inherent in the Crown by the Laws of this Nation and that which former Parliaments as likewise this hath acknowledged so to be his Majestie cannot so much wrong that trust which the Laws of God and this Land have annexed to the Crown for the protection and security of his people as to divest himself and Successors of the power of the Sword yet to give an infallible evidence of his desire to secure the performance of such agreements as shall be made in order to a peace his Majesty will consent to an Act of Parliament that the whole power of the Militia both by Sea and Land for and during his whole reign shall be ordered and disposed by the two Houses of Parliament or by such persons as they shall appoint with powers limited for suppressing of Forces within this Kingdom to the disturbance of the publick peace and against Foreign invasions and that they shall have power during his said reign to raise monies for the purposes aforesaid and that neither his Majesty that now is or any other by any Authoritie derived only from him shall execute any of the said Powers during his Majesties said reign but such as shall Act by the consent and approbation of the two Houses of Parliament nevertheless his Majestie intends that all Patents Commissions and other Acts concerning the Militia be made and Acted as formerly and that after his Majesties Reign all the power of the Militia shall return intirely to the Crown as it was in the times of Queen Elizabeth and King James of blessed memory After this head of the Militia the consideration of the Arrears due to the Army is not improper to follow for the payment whereof and the ease of his people his Majesty is willing to concur in any thing that can be done without the violation of his conscience and honour Wherefore if his two Houses shall consent to remit unto him such benefit out of Sequestrations
Sanderson Shelden Hamond Oldsworth Turner Haywood Lawyers Sir Tho. Gardner Sir Orlando Bridgman Sir R. Holburn Mr. Ieffery Palmer Mr. Tho. Cook Mr. Io. Vaughan Clerks and Writers Sir Edward Walker Mr. Phil. Warwick Mr. Nich. Oudart Mr. Charles Whittane To make ready the House for Treating Peter Newton The Commissioners nominated to attend the Treaty for the Parliament were the Earls of Salisbury Pembroke Middlesex Northumberland and the Lord Say And of the Commons were the Lord Wainman Mr. Hollis lately re-admitted into the House Mr. Perpoint Sir Harry Vane Jun. Sir Harbotel Grimston Mr. Brown Mr. Crew Mr. â—lin lately re-admitted into the House Sir Io. Pots and Mr. Bulkley And the King desired a safe conduct for Commissioners to come out of Scotland to joyn in the Treaty with him viz. the Lord Carnagy Sir Alexander Gibson the Lord Clerk Register and Sir Iames Carmichel The two first were refused as having been in arms against the Parliament of England And that four Bishops might attend him Armagh Exeter Rochester and Worcester and for Doctor Ferne and Doctor Morley And for his Advocate Sir Thomas Reves and for Doctor Duck Civil Lawyers but none of these aforesaid the Kings friends were intromitted into the Scene or to speech but to stand behind the Hangings and in the Tâ—ring-room so that the Kings single solitary self opposed all the other party And Order is given to Colonel Hamond to free the King of his imprisonment to ride abroad where he pleaseth upon his engagement to return at night to Sir William Hodges House the place appointed to Treat where galloppiâ—g down a steep Hill 14 Septem and reining his Horse too hard the Bridle broke and he without a Curb ran with speed endangering the King whose excellent Horsemanship saved him from the terrible effects which amazed the beholders And it is remarkable that long before this Lilly had foretold in his Astrological Predictions pag 15. lin 31. And were his Majesty at liberty it shews or threatens danger to his person by inordinate Horsmanship or some fall from on high Friday the 15. of September the Commissioners of Parliament are come to the King and Saturday was kept a fast by him and all his Family and Friends assistant with the ancient service of the Book of Common Prayer and preaching with this particular Prayer for a blessing on the Treaty O Most merciful Father Lord God of Peace and truth we a people sorely afflicted by the scourge of an unnatural war do here earnestly beseâ—ch thee to command a blessing from Heaven upon this Treaty brought about by thy providence and the only visible remedy left for the establishment of an happy peace Soften the most obdurate hearts with a true Christian desire of saving those mens blood for whom Christ himself hath shed his O Lord let not the guilt of our sins cause this Treaty to break off but let the Truth of thy Spirit so clearly shine in our mindes that all private ends laid a side we may every one of us heartily and sincerely pursue the publick good and that thy people may be no longer so blindly miserable as not 〈◊〉 see at least in this their day the things that belong unto their peace Grant this gracious God for his sake who is our peace it self even Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen The King told the Commissioners that he was glad of their coming to treat with him for a Peace and desired God to perfect that good work professing that he was in charity with all men not willing to revenge upon any nor to delay the hopes of a blessed issue and concludes to begin the Treaty on Munday morning 9. a clock 18. Septemb. The Treaty begins and to make it more difficult to Peace Occasion is given to oppose four Demands or Bills to the Kings demands which as a pledge of trust should be granted before whereto if the King assent they promise to commence a Treaty to the rest 1. To order for the future the Militia without the Kings consent to raise what Arms they please and that all others upon the pain of Treason shall not assemble to the number of thirty persons without the Authority of Parliament 2. That the Houses may sit and adjourn and assemble to what place and at what time at their own discretion 3. All Oaths Interdictions and declarations against the Parliament to be declared void 4. Whomsoever the King had dignified with Titles from the time himself departed and conveyed away the great Seal of England be degraded of their honours And these must be first ratified and to command them to be passed into Laws Then they go on with the Preface the matter of the Treaty For as much as both Houses of Parliament have been necessitated to undertake a War for their just defence and for the prosecuting thereof have bound themselves in a Covenant be it enacted by the Kings command The Propositions were in number eleven 1. That all Declarations and Proclamations against the two Houses of Parliament or their Adherents and all Judgments and Indictments c. against them be declared Null 2. That a Satute be Enacted for abolishing of all Arch Bishops and Bishops out of the Churches of England and Ireland for the selling of their Lands and Revenues As also that the calling and sitting in Synod of the Divines be approved 〈◊〉 the Royal assent the Reformation of Religion for England and Ireland according to such Models as the Members of Parliament have or shall decree consultations first had with the said Divines In particular that the King grant his assent that the Act of both Houses formerly made concerning the Directory as concerning the publick Celebration of Gods worship throughout England and Ireland for the abolishing the Ancient Liturgie for the form of Church Government and Articles of Religion with the Catechisms the great and the less for the more Religious observation of the Lords day for supressing of Innovations in Churches and Chappels for the incouraging of the publick Preachers to their duties by a just reward for prohibiting of Pluralities of Benefices and non-residence to Clergy-men henceforth pass into Statutes or Laws That the King would set his hand to the National League and Covenant and suffer himself to be bound by the same that by publick Act it be enjoyned all the Subjects of both the Kingdoms of England and Scotland to be bound thereby under a penalty to be imposed at the pleasure of both Houses That it may belong to the Houses of Parliament to visit and reform the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge the Colledges also of Westminster Winchester and Eaton That it be provided by Statutes that Jesuites Priests and Papists disturb not the Common-wealth nor elude the Laws as also for the discriminating of them an Oath be administred to them wherein they shall abjure the Pope of Romes Supremacie Transubstantiation Purgatory Image-worship and other Superstitious errors of the Church of Rome That
according to the prescript of his word which hath long since been miserably convulst and disjoynted And this a National Synod duly called and freely debating will best effectuate To the King namely my Successor you will render full right if you restore those things which by the clear letter of the Law stands expressed Lastly you will put the people in their rights and due Liberties not by listing them in the consort of the Throne and sway of the Scepter but by recovering unto the Laws their Authority and the peoples observance to the abrogating of which by the enormous power of the Sword when as by no means I could be induced I was brought hither to undergoe a Martyrdom for my people So his last breath gently dissolving into a most meek prayer the Bishop of London promps him â—hat if his most excellent Majesty pleased he would openly profess what he thought touching his Religion not that any one alive could suspect it of which himself at all times throughout the whole space of his life had given manifest testimony but for custom and the peoples satisfaction Hereupon saies the King That he deposited the testimony of his faith with that holy man meaning the Bishop or else expected defence on this behalf of all men who well knew his Life and profession Namely That I dye saith he in the Christian faith according to the profession of the Church of England as the same was left me by my Father of most blessed memory Then looking about upon the Officers Having saies he a most gracious God and most just Cause that I shall by and by â—â—â—ange this corruptible Crown for an Immarcessible one I both trust and exult and that I shall depart hence into another Kingdom altogether exempt and free from all manner of disturbance Then preparing towards the Circumstances the Bishop put on his night-cap and unclothed him to his Sky-colour Satten Wastecoat He said I have a good Cause and a gracious God and gave his George Order to the Bishop bidding him remember to give it to the Prince There is but one Stage more Sir saies the Bishop this is turbulent and troublesome and but a short one but it will soon dismiss you to a way further even from Earth to Heaven there you are assured of joy and comfort I go saies the King from a Corruptible to an Incorruptible Crown where no disturbance can be but peace and joy for evermore Then lifting up his eyes and hands to Heaven mildly praying to himself he stooped down to the Block as to a Prayer Desk and most humbly bowed down his generous neck to God to be cut off by the vizarded Executioner which was suddenly done at one blow Thus fell Charles and thus all Britain with him Tuesday 30. of Ianuary about the minute of two a clock afternoon There are those persons who have seriously observed some passasages afterwards against the Corps which they stile barbarous in relation to his blood shed thereabouts nay to the Block and to the Sand distained therewith and to his Hair the ground whereof was 〈◊〉 those things were procured by the Royal party well-affected even for a price Certainly there were very many such that coveted any thing as a Relique which evidenced his Martyrdom as they esteemed it And to this day there are divers Devoters that affirm the effects of Cure by application of those things distained with his bloud we need not go farre to finde out the truth hereof if we take the Narrative of the Woman-patient at Dedford near the City of London being thereby cured of her blindness and many others of like infirmities His Head and Trunk was instantly put into a Coffin covered with black Velvet and conveyed into the Lodgings at Whitehall There it was imbowelled by Chirurgions of their own but a Physitian privately thrusting himself into the dissection of the body relates that Nature had designed him above the most of Mortal men for a long life And all sides manifested by those that beheld the admirable temperature almost all ad pondus of his body and mind Then they bear it to St. Iames's House and Coffin it there in Lead About a fortnight after some of the Kings Friends the greatest of Nobility and Honour the Duke of Lenox Marquess of Hartford the Earl of Southampton and the Bishop of London begged the Body to bury it which they conducted to Windsor Chappel Royal and interred it there in the Vault of King Henry the eighth having only this Inscription upon the Coffin Charls King of England From the Bishop of London long time kept Prisoner they take away all the Kings Papers ransack his Coffers and clothes for Scripts and Scroles but Almighty God in his providence hath preserved a Volume of the Kings own a Posthume work of which if any man or Broughton shall impartially weigh the matter the Elegancy of the Stile the nerves of Reason the ardour of Piety even envy it self will confess he deserved the Kingdom amongst Writers and though his own is wrested from him the mercy of his Lord and Saviour hath given 〈◊〉 Crown of Erernal Glory He was a King worthy to be numbred amongst the best of Princes in al-beading ages a strength of will but of more and greater Endowments of vertue of a most strict temperature in the natural disposition of flesh and blood and by the effects of Divine grace the most exact observer of Conjugal Rites and therein for his continency much admired His personage comely of an even well timber'd tallness which assisted him to be excellent in all exercises and therein to be indefatigable for the minde or body None of the Kings no not one not of Britain only but also all as many as any where sat on Throne ever left the world with more sorrow for his his luck women miscarried men fell into melancholly some with Consternations expired men women and children then and yet unborn suffering in him and for him The Pulpit places of all Sects and Opinions lamented even the same men in vain bewailing the losse of him whom they strove heretofore who should first undoe now they extoll and compare to Iob for patience to David for piety to Solomon for prudence most worthy he was of Government if otherwise it had not been his due to Govern herein he performed that great piece to Act one man in every place with the same Tenor of Vertue and condition The same Mean in the most different fortunes without any mutation of the temperature of the mind He addulced as with Charms his Enemies to be made his adorers Reproaches he converted into Praises He in a word excelled in goodness of whom this world was not worthy and therefore the Heavens have him there He had his failings of perfection in the first years of his Reign not so well versed in the affairs of State but that he being put to it trusted too much to others
afterwards recovering that inconvenience he was so constant to himself and over-weaning that his opinions became resolves In all his defects we may more reasonably fix the occasions rather upon others who had their influence from him then upon his own defect for the mis-choice of fit and able persons to be his best and dearest friends proved fatal to him to them and to us all The King left his Queen a miserable disconsolate Lady the Daughter of France and therefore while he suffered she was there supported with their three Sons Charls Prince of Wales Iames Duke of York and Henry Duke of Glocester Princes of high eminent and Heroick vertue 〈◊〉 Two daughters also the one Elizabeth the Relict Princess of Orange the other Mary an Infant all of them are banished Orphanes This Letter came to hand since the Kings death intrusted to the Bishop of London with his blessing to the Prince of Wales To the Prince of Wales Son if these Papers with some others wherein I have set down the private reflections of my conscience and my most impartial thoughts touching the chief passages which have been most remarkable or disputed in my late Troubles come to your hands to whom they are chiesly design'd they may be so far usefull to you as to state your judgment aright in what hath passed 〈◊〉 whereof a pious is the best use can be made and they may also give you some directions how to remedy the present distempers and prevent if God will the like for time to come It is some kind of deceiving and lessening the injury of my long restraint when I finde my leisure and solitude have produced something worthy of my self and usefull to you that neither you nor any other may hereafter measure my Cause by the success nor my judgment of things by my misfortunes which I count the greater by far because they have so far lighted upon you and some others whom I have most cause to love as well as my self and of whose unmerited sufferings I have a greater sense then of my own But this advantage of Wisdom you have above most Princes that you have begun and now spent some years of discretion in the experience of troubles and exercise of patience wherein Piety and all Vertues both Moral and Political are commonly better planted to a thriving as Trees set in Winter then in warmth and serenity of times or amidst those delights which usually attend Princes Courts in times of peace and plenty which are prone either to root up all Plants of true vertue and Honour or to be contented only with some leaves and withering formalities of them without any real fruits such as tend to the publick good for which Princes should alwaies remember they are born and by providence designed The evidence of which different education the holy Writ affords us in the contemplation of David and Rehoboam the one prepared by many afflictions for a flourishing Kingdom the other softned by the unparalleld prosperity of Solomons Court and so corrupted to the great diminution both for Peace Honour and Kingdom by those flatteries which are as unseparable from prosperous Princes as Flies are from fruit in Summer whom adversitie like cold weather drives away I had rather you should be Charls le Bon then le Grand good then great I hope God hath designed you to be both having so early put you into that exercise of his Graces and Giâ—â—â—estowed upon you which may best weed out all vitious inclinations and dispose you to those Princely indowments and employments which will most gain the love and intend the welfare of those over whom God shall place you With God I would have you begin and end who is King of Kings the Sovereign disposer of the Kingdoms of the World who pulleth down one and setteth up another The best Government and highest Soveraignty you can attain to is to be subject to him that the Scepter of his word and Spirit may rule in your heart The true glory of Princes consists in advancing Gods glory in the maintenance of true Religion and the Churches good also in the dispensation of civil power with Iustice and honour to the publick peace Piety will make you prosperous at least it will keep you from being miserable nor is he much a loser that loseth all yet saveth his own soul at last To which center of true happiness God I trust hath and will graciously direct all these black lines of affliction which he hath been pleased to draw on me and by which he hath I hope drawn me nearer to himself You have already tasted of that cup whereof I have liberally drunk which I look upon as Gods Physick having that in healthfulness which it wants in pleasure Above all I would have you as I hope you are already well-grounded and settled in your Religion the best profession of which I have ever esteemed that of the Church of England in which you have been educated yet I would have your own Iudgment and Reason now seal to that sacred bond which education hath written that it may be judiciously your own Religion and not other mens custom or tradition which you profess In this I charge you to persevere as coming nearest to Gods word for Doctrine and to the Primitive examples for government with some little amendment which I have otherwhere expressed and often offered though in vain Your fixation in matters of Religion will not be more necessary for your souls then your Kingdoms peace when God shall bring you to them For I have observed that the Devil of Rebellion doth commonly turn himself into an Angel of Reformation and the old Serpent can pretend new Lights when some mens Consciences accuse them for Sedition and Faction they stop its mouth with the name and noise of Religion when Piety pleads for peace and patience they cry out Zeal So that unless in this point you be well settled you shall never want temptations to destroy you and yours under pretension of Reforming matters of Religion for that seems even to the worst of men as the best and most auspicious beginning of their worst designs Where besides the novelty which is taken enough with the Vulgar every one hath an affectation by seeming forward to an outward Reformation of Religion to be thought zealous hoping to cover those irreligious deformities whereto they are conscious by a severity of censuring other mens opinions or actions Take heed of abetting any Factions or applying to any publick Discriminations in matters of Religion contrary to what is in your judgment and the Churches well settled your partial adhering as head to any one side gains you not so great advantages in some mens hearts who are prone to be of their Kings 's Religion as it loseth you in others who think themselves and their profession first despised then persecuted by you take such a course as may either with calmness and charity quite remove the seeming
and thither comes Tilly and whilst they melt themselves at Magdeburgh Gustave marches up the Oder and beats the Emperialist at Frankfurt slew 3000 and forced the rest to pace it to Silesia and so he marches to succour the besieged The Duke of Saxony head of the Protestants Assembly at Leipsick and confederate to succour Magdenburgh to joyn with Swede and to resist the Emperour and Gustave to be Captain General for them all and so forfeited as you have heard before with all the confederate foreign Princes and States promising to himself the Empire if but fortunate in one Battel Papenheim and Tilly though beaten abroad yet ply their siege mastered all the out-works forced into the Town then repulsed and on again fired the first house and in four hours He consumed all to ashes and the people to death the reproach of Tilly for so much innocent blood And having done there he marches into Saxony being beaten at Werben the confederates resolve to face him who having taken the Town of Leipsick encamped hard by and so gives occasion to fight a Battel the hazzard of Two Electoral Caps the liberty of Germany the hopes of the Catholiques the effects so bloudy as made the old Banes to fly for it But this Battel we must refer to its time and place the next year and see what is done in England This foreign newes flew hither which hastened forward the Marquesse Hamilton in his intended designe to wait upon that Kings fortunes That was his outward aim though his ambition had an eye homeward in that undertaking for he having sent thither David Ramsey a Gentleman of the Kings privy Chamber a most turbulent boutefeau Sr. Iames and Alexander Hamilton and Robert Meldram and also to endear the Marquesse to the Scots Officers in that Army to proffer his service to the King with the aid of some Regiments of foot This madman more like an Ambassadour from a great Prince then a Messenger from a Peer took his place before the Lord Rey his Countreyman and a Colonel in Arms who to honour him the more procured the other Scots Officers to make addresses and to attend him discovering thereby that the Marquesse his aim was of deeper consequence not to fight under the Swede And following his apprehension with prudent observations he won upon Ramsâ—y to history out the mystery of the Marquesses designe By this means to raise forces under a formal colour but in earnest to make himself King of Scotland and thereof he draws a Pedigree of his Right and Title from King Iames the first and in several froliques of mirth and wine to ascribe unto him Soveraignty Of which Rey returning into England told it to the Lord Uchiltry yet living who forthwith acquainted the Lord Treasurer Weston and he the King And at the same time Major Borthick accused the said Meldram to have under oath of secrecy communicated to him the whole designe the grounds and reasons which he justified before the King and Councel and Meldram faintly denied but was committed to the Fleet prisoner two years and then released by the Marquesse Some time before this discovery S. William Elphiston Cup-bearer to the King was sent over Convoy to the King of Denmark and with him the Marquesse would enforce a companion Meldram who had private Instrustions to the principal Scots officers in the armies and thereby more respected then the Kings Messenger Elphiston but at their return to Gravesend a Scots man dependant of the Marquesse gave Intelligence to Meldram that all was discovered but was imboldned to come to Court where he was accused The Lord Uchiltry for reporting the discovery to Weston was afterwards sent prisoner to Scotland where the Marquesses power was more dreaded and there coming to examination and tryal Ucheltry spake out so plainly but without further hearing he was conveyed close prisoner to the Castle of Blacknesse where he remained till the English set him free Meldram was after preferred Secretary to General Lesly at New-Castle Alexander Hamilton with a pension of 500 l. and afterwards General of the Covenanters Artillery But as to the Marquesse and his small Army impoysoned with secret Treasons at home got over to the King of Swede but so distressed with hunger and want of all necessaries for War that the Marquesse being neglected and his forces falling to decay he returned home again till some other designe might set up his Treasons again Having much to say concerning Non-conformists generally noted under the Title Puritan as also some good men being scandalously included We shall therefore distinguish his Name render his Esence in the very property and whose several kindes Essentially differ The Name Puritan is ambiguous so it is falacious The good Puritans are pure in heart and so blessed that they shall see God The evil Puritans desire to seem to be so but in their Doctrine and Discipline are the underminers of our True Protestant Reverend Church The Essential definition of him is A Protestant Non conformist A Protestant is his Genus his kinde of being A Non-conformist his differentia his essential difference or quality Non-conformist contradictist to the Scripture sence in three things The first is in the 39. Articles of our Churches Reformed Faith Secondly Our Common Prayer Book Thirdly The Canons of our Church All which three are contained in the deduceable sence of holy Scripture The several Articles which he opposeth are the 3. 6. 9. 16. 17. 20. 21. 23. 26. 27. 33. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. The selected Prayers in the Common Prayer Book he rejecteth which were collected though corrected and purged out of the Masse book Against the several Canons from the 1. to the 15. 24. 29. 30. 31. 48. 49. from 54. to 58. 60. 61. 73. 127. But who is this Puritan Mr Rogers in his Preface to the 39. Article saith that since the suppression of Puritans by Arch-Bishops Parker Grindal and Whitguift none will seem to be such Read the Survay of the pretended holy Discipline and here it is evident that himself knows not what he is nor what he would be The Species Specifical kinds of this Puritan are numbred First The Perfectist Secondly the factious Sermonist Thirdly the Seperatist Fourthly the Anabaptist Fifthly the Brownist Sixthly Loves familist Seventhly the Precisian Eighthly the Sabbatarian Ninthly the Antidisciplinarian Tenthly presuming Predestinatists Every one of them differing in his proper essential quality yet the same subject of inhesion may be all Ten. 1. The Perfectist His purenesse is continuata perseverandi actio significans never to sin after Baptism the Novatian Catharist and this man sins against the 16. Article 2. The factious Sermonist He serves God with sermons and extemporary prayers according to his suppositious Iusjuration This professor is against the 26. Article and his opinion is that Preaching is better then Prayer 3. The Separatist is the Pharisee That onely he is Elect Regenerate and Faithful all others not so are
confirmed by Parliament did after add two shillings per pound without leave of the Parliament We began to be great Practitioners in the School of Revolting in Tumults and Insurrections following the Rules of our Neighbour Brethren in their pretences of Liberty and as it is truly brought into parallel with the Scots former Proceedings in their Discipline of Reformation even from their first Murder upon their Arch-bishop of Saint Andrews Anno And so by that and other Examples we are set on work to begin violation upon our Arch-bishop of Canterbury A Paper being poasted up at the Old Exchange the ninth of May exhorting Prentices to rise and â—ack the Arch-bishop house at Lambeth the Munday following when in the dead time of Night the number of five hundred beset his Palace and endeavour to force their Entrance but were repulsed by such power as he had prepared to oppose them who parted without more hurt than the Glass Windows for which attempt many of them the next day being narrowly observed were seized and sent to Prison to the White-Lion but three days after some of their former Companions in the open day-time beset the Prison force the Doors and delivered them to liberty for which and for Example onely one of them a Captain Cobler was apprehended tried in Southwark and condemned and hanged drawn and quartered and his Limbs set upon London-bridg The King in very great earnest for his Expedition to the North cals a Iovento of select Counsellors where Secretary Vane was conceived so trusty as not to be left out who yet took such Heads of the Debate as he and his Son made use of afterwards towards the destruction of the Earl of Strafford The Heads were thus in brief as they are recorded No danger in undertaking this War Whether the Scots are to be reduced or no To reduce them by force as the state of this Kingdom stands If his Majesty had not declared himself so soon he would have declared himself so no War with Scotland they would have given him plentifully The City to be called immediately and questioned to lend an hundred thousand pounds The Ship-money to be put rigorously upon Collection and by these two ways will furnish his Majesty plentifully to go on with Armies and War against Scotland The manner of the War Shipping of the Trade of Scotland to be detained prejudice so they had the Trade free with England for their Castle A defensive War to sally against offensive War into the Kingdom his opinion is that few Moneths will make and end of the War do you invade the Scots strongly If no more Money than what proposed how then to make an offensive War a difficulty Whether to do nothing or to let them alone Or to go on with a rigorous War Go on rigorously or let them alone No defensive War love of Honour and reputation the quiet of England will not hold out long your might will languish as betwixt Saul and David Go on with an offensive War as you first de signed loose and absolute from all Rulers and Governments being returned to extreme necessity every thing will be done as power will admit and that you are to do They refused you are acquitted towards God and Man you have an Army in Ireland you may imploy it to reduce the Kingdom I am confident as any thing under Heaven Scotland shall not hold out five Moneths One Summer well imployed will do it I venture all I have I would carry it or lose all Whether a defensive War as impossible as an offensive or whether to let them alone Tried always Refused always By the Laws of God you should have subsistence and ought to have it and lawfull to take it Leagues they make abroad and we will do so for the defence of this Kingdom The Lower House are weary both of King and Church Commission of Array to be put in execution they are to bring them to the Borders In reason of State you have power when they are to use them at the Kings pay If any of the Lords can shew them a better way let them do it The Town full of the Nobility who will talk of it he will make them smart first These were the Notes taken thus by Vane and to the Design and general opinion for War the Londoners are summoned to lend Money but the Citizens were sullen indeed no Trading made them poor they who had injoyed such a length of time in peace and commerce just fourty years as never any City could boast of more happiness nor truly of more wealth their bliss Luxury and Pride and Plenty with all Vices answerable unfaithfull to their Sovereign unstable in Religion ungratefull to their own Members and Friends We cannot finde other than this the onely cause that this City might justly regret upon unkindness from the King was the account of their Plantation of London Derry in Ireland a slender occasion their usurpation of more liberty than their Patent would impower was here questioned in Star-chamber and sentenced to be forfeited to the King and Fines imposed upon the Undertakers which though very justly deserving correction yet they proposed reasonable overtures of satisfaction and more honourable for the King to have accepted which was to have contributed a very ample Sum of Money by way of Composition towards the erecting of a Royal Palace for his Majesties Court in Saint Iames's Park according to a Model drawn by Inigo Iones his excellent Architectour and to have taken down White-hall towards the Thames carrying the common way in the room thereof directly from Charing-cross straight through Cannons-row to Westminster-hall leaving the River-side an open Wharf quite along And although their offer in Money came short of the Sum to finish such a Fabrick yet so noble a Design might have found many well-affected to have offered to the supply besides sundry other occasions of raising Money sufficient to have perfected that Work whereas this Fine producing a considerable Sum was begged and squandred away to the Kings small advantage But neither the City nor Nation could pretend to want the Kingdom became the envy of Europe Mollia securae peragebant otia Gentes The Court never so glorious the Gentry no where more gallant the Citizens so abounding with Treasure Bullion and Buildings that no Age can parallel Commerce inward and outward never at that height before the Custome increasing to admiration the Narrow Seas never better guarded with braver Ships nor the Navy Royal for number of Vessels and Magazine the Vniversity replenished with learned men and for the Church among all the Reformed she was esteemed as in truth she was justly stiled the Church Triumphant And Ireland was arrived almost to the like degree of prospertiy All the Arrerages of the Crown were paid there without a Penny sent from hence for some years past to maintain that standing Army Traffique there to that
height as the Crown-customes increased five times greater in fine not onely to subsist of our self but to contribute to the English Exchequer and to make some retribution of those vast expenses from hence for four hundred years past The main assistance to this War came from the Gentry of England all Knights and Gentlemen holding Lands in capite of the King were to send Horse and Men answerable to their abilities so that the Aids completed the royal Army where of the Earl of Northumberland was appointed General and the Earl of Strafford his Lieutenant General but in truth Northumber land fell extreme sick and therefore not to disorder the form of the other Officers the King took the Command upon himself Generalissimo for I never read of a Royal Army and the King present but himself was chief the Earl of Northumberland his General and the Earl of Strafford Lieutenant General and having seen the Queens safe delivery of a Son born the twentieth of Iuly and christened Henry after created Duke of Glocester He hastens his Rendezvouz and the twentieth of August takes leave of London Two days after he declares the Scots to be Rebells by Proclamation That by all ways of mildness and clemency he hath endeavoured to appease the rebellious courses of his Subjects of Scotland who upon pretences of Religion have sought to shake off his Regal Government and now do take up Arms and invade his Kingdom of England and therefore his Majesty doth now declare that all those who have already entered or shall presume to enter in war like manner in any part of England and their Adherents and Assistants shall be adjudged and are hereby denounced Rebels and Traitours against his Majesty nevertheless if they will yet acknowledg their former crimes and crave pardon and yield obedience for the time to come he tenders them his gracious pardon they retiring home and demeaning themselves as loyal Subjects for the future August 22. 1640. And a Prayer is published for the Kings Majesty in his Expedition against the Rebells of Scotland to be said in all Churches c. viz. O Eternal God and mercifull Father by whom alone Kings reign thou Lord of Hosts and Giver of all Victory we humbly beseech thee both now and ever to guide and preserve our most gracious Sovereign Lord King Charls to bless him in his Person with health and safety in his Counsels with wisdom and prudence and in all his Actions with honour and good success especially against those his traiterous Subjects who having cast off all obedience to their Anointed Sovereign do 〈…〉 His Army was marched before hastening to meet the Scots who were entered England already for being come to North-alerton in the way to New-castle he was met by the Lord Conway with the ill News of a Defeat at Newburn upon Tine the Day before which was thus The Lord Conway Commander there in chief advising to secure the most considerable Passes had upon August 27 drawn out 1200. Horse and 3000. Foot placing the Infantry under shadow of a Breast-work to gall the Scots in theirâ— Pass over the River Tine near Newburn but their General Lesly over night had planted nine Pieces of Ordnance on his side of the River and blinded them with Bushes from sight of the English and in the morning craves leave of the Lord Conway to pass with his Petition to his Majesty he was admitted to pass with a considerable number but not with his Army but Lesly must not divide his Forces and so fords over 300. Horse which were by those behinde the Breast-work enforced to retire and Lesly to acquit them plaid his Cannon from the Blinde so furiouâ—ly as drove them from their Poast and like raw Souldiers cast down their Arms and fled Then their Cavalry re-advanced upon Mr. Wilmot Commissary General of the Horse accompanied with prime Gentlemen and stood to the Charge of Horse and Cannon also which so galled them and over powred by number as they retired in disorder 300. slain and imprisoned and Conway fain to retreat with this ill News to the King and because New-castle was not tenable against the Scots Army Sir Iacob Ashley the Governour was forced to desert it and two days after they possessed Durham And now comes the Earl of Strafford who brought up the Rear of the Army retreating to York whom the King staid and where there was time afforded to examine and conclude this Miscarriage upon Conway notwithstanding his best art of flourish and stout animosity to vindicate his either Cowardice or Treachery or both for so he was accused During this time the English Garison at Barwick issued out and recovered some Pieces of Cannon which had been left by Lesly at Dunse as over-usefull for his Train which gave Allarm to the Earl of Hadington commanding in Loâ—thian and the Merse with two thousand Horse and 〈◊〉 to pursue and rescue the Cannon and carried them to Dâ—nglass but the next day Hadington and twenty more â—nights and Gentlemen in an instant were all slain by an accident of â—ire which blew up the Magazine of Vaâ—lt that lay in a 〈◊〉 on the other side of the Court twelve score from his Lodging not slain therein very frolick and merry but were come out into the midst of the Court and there killed by the Stones that flew from the Vault which made it the more miraculous but whether by Accident or Design was never known But during these military actions the Scots gaining ground upon the English and now â—eated where they would be in warm Quarters with New-castle Coal good Fires Meat Drink and Lodging of the best and all these in great plenty They now take time to petition the King intâ—tuling it The humble Petition of the Lords of the last Parliament and others his Majesties loyal Subjects of Scotland Complaining in general of their sufferings for relief whereof they are constrained to come without prejudice to the peace of England or any the Subjects therein untill they are pressed with strength of Arms to oppose their Passage at Newburn and now present themselves to his Majesties goodness for satisfaction of their full demands and repair of their wrongs and losses with the advice of the Parliament of England to be convented To all the King answers by his Secretary of Scotland the Earl of Limrick that the King expects their particular Demands having already summoned the Peers of England to meet at York September 24. and commands them to advance no farther York September 5. LIMRICK Three days after comes their Demands directed to the Earl of Limrick in terms humble enough but very peremptory as to the Points Right Honourable As nothing on earth is more desired of us than his Majesties favour so we shall desire nothing herein but what may suit to his Majesties honour and peace of his Dominions The Particulars we should have expressed in our Petition but that they