vain they inveighed against Gondomar because he had informed the King and State that the Prince had a Disposition easie to be wrought upon to be made a Catholick Caba p. 329. But Sir these are real Truths and therefore not fit for the Pen of such a designing Demigogue as you are your business is by degrees to destroy the Monarchy and hope the wounding of this Great and Good Man's Reputation will contribute toward it and therefore no wonder we hear of none of his Vertues and in particular that of his constancy to the Religious Perswasions of his Mind It may be now you expect I should give myself the trouble to answer your first Letter but I will spare my self the labour because I understand it is recommended to a better Hand who understands the Records and Transactions of those times thoroughly and who I do not doubt in time will do you and your leud Book Justice for so I will still call it because it was leudly designed and had as leud an effect for it was the occasion of most of those unmannerly and undutiful Reflections that have been lately made against this excellent Prince both in City and Country which indeed was the only thing that provoked me to the Defence of that King and therefore Sir you that unprovoked began the Quarrel and stirred the Coles are the Makebate and not I who honestly defended a wronged and injured Person which is the Duty of every good Christian Man and will have the Answer of a good Conscience let such as you are rage and foam at Mouth never so much at it The next thing I shall take Notice of is the punishment of Doctor Leighton by representing of which in the blackest Colours you would beget in your Readers bad Thoughts of this excellent Prince and his Reign Sir It may be I am something of your mind that he met with hard Fate and such as if I had been in the World and one of his Judges with my present sence of things I should not have consented to But after all this Sir let me tell you Dr. Leighton was a great Transgressor and deserved a severe Punishment if it be true what Mr. Whitlock writes as I do not in the least question but it is for Mem. p. 14. he tells you his Crimes in these words Dr. Leighton a Scotchman for his Book entituled Sion's Plea dedicated to the last Parliament counselling them to kill all the Bishops by smiting them under the Fifth Rib and railing against the Queen calling her a Canaanite and Idolatress had the Sentence of the Star-Chamber Good Sir must it be Persecution to call such a foul-mouthed Person to an Account and to punish him Why truly then Laws and Governments are very silly and precarious things and Men may say and do what they lift which will certainly make a blessed World and the King's Reign must be bloody that secures itself against the Violence and Railing of the worst of Malefactors Sir Had any Man said or writ at this rate against your beloved Rump I know what Fate he must have met withal and you yourself would have called it Justice and not Persecution And now Sir before I come to your Scotch Affair a few words with you about Pryn Bastwick and Burton whose Story you recite at large in your Book and all with a design to blacken this Prince Sir I have looked into the Story of these three Men with some care and here if you please I will make you my Confessor And I must tell you it is no Credit to you for if I was to choose one for Modesty and Honesty I would as soon pitch upon a Jesuit as your self I do upon a full Consideration of the whole wish from my Heart that their Punishment had been some other way I do not think if it be lawful for a private Person as I am to pass a Judgment upon the Publick Actions of a then Legal Court that the way of punishing those Persons was not at all politick or prudent because not for the Interest as things then stood either of the King or the Church it gave too great an occasion for the designing Men of that Age to open their mouths and thereby to alienate the Hearts of the Common People from the Government and consequently prepared them to joyn with them in any Action of Revenge when time and opportunity should serve and if Bishop Laud had kept in his Study at that time and not appeared at all either to hear the Tryal or assist in the Sentence it had been better both for him and those Designs of Uniformity he had so much set his Heart upon Yet Sir for all that I do not think these three Men were wholly to be passed by because of their several Characters and Professions or that the Justice of the Nation ought to have been afraid of accounting with such bold Men as they shewed themselves Pray let any Man read over their several Writings which were the occasion of those severe Censures and if he be an unprejudiced and undesigning Person and yet commend them I will forfeit a great deal more than I am willing to lose Certainly more violent rude and unbecoming Reflections were never uttered such Sarcasms and Invectives such bare-faced Abuses as if they had got a Pattent from the Powers below to speak evil of Dignities Mr. Burton speaking of the Bishops instead of Pillars calls them Catterpillars instead of Fathers Step-Fathers with abundance of other Aspersions that truly are not fit to be named Dr. Bastwick breathes nothing but Fire and Brimstone and throws down his Thunderbolts upon the Heads of the Bishops as if he was the great Commander of the Clouds And I beg the Reader to take a taste of all the rest from one particular passage which I find in Mr. Whitlock Mem. p. 25. in his Answer to the Information against him in the Star-Chamber you have these words That the Prelates are Invaders of the King's Prerogative Contemners and Despisers of the Holy Scripture Advancers of Popery and Superstition Idolatry and Prophaneness also they abuse the King's Authority to the Oppression of his Loyal Subjects and therein exercise great Cruelty Tyranny and Injustice and in execution of those impious Performances they shew neither Wit Honesty nor Temperance nor are they either Servants of God or the King but of the Devil being Enemies to God and of every living thing that is good Which the said Dr. Bastwick is ready to maintain and Mr. Whitlock adds immediately to shew the wilfulness of the Man That none of his Friends could prevail with him to expunge this and other-like passages out of his Answer Now Sir pray tell me who can plead for such a Spirit as this is or what Government can suffer such Indignities and Provocations as these are As for Mr. Pryn he lived to see and rectifie a great many of his Errors and to be a Thorn in the sides of such Men as
you who had overturned the Government and violated all the Laws of the Land and I wish he had seen them before that he might have escaped those Punishments which made such a noise and turned to so bad an Account in the Kingdom and therefore I shall say no more upon this matter but this That the great mistake the Nation was then in and many are to this very day is that these three Men suffered for pure Religion for being severe Christians in their Lives and Conversations and standing up for the Cause of Christ whereas it appears throughout the whole Story it was for Libelling the Government and putting Indignities and Affronts upon the then Legal Administrators such as no Government that values itsself and its Honour upon the face of the Earth would bear without just Resentments and sutable Punishments Christian Religion teaches Men to be modest and peaceable and with all patience to suffer for well doing and to acknowledge God's Justice when his Rod is laid upon their Backs for evil doing And so much by way of Answer to that part of your Book by which you have endeavoured to blacken the good King's Reign and to run down the Reputation of Bishop Laud and to express your Indignation against me for saying other ways he was a good Man which I still say and have a very good Man to back me namely Judge Whitlock a Man of a clear Credit and sound Judgment who as his Son tells us in his Mem. said of him That he had too much fire but was a just and good Man And truly Sir I think it is more like a Christian to speak well of a Christian Bishop than to call him by such spiteful and reproachful Names as you have done in your scurrilous Book I come now to make some Reflections upon your Scotch Story which you have told with so much Venome and Partiality that you have every ways acted like your malicious and ungodly self and shewn you are a Man so resolved for a Party that rather than not serve it to purpose you will call Darkness Light and Light Darkness You begin with a Relation of Bishop Laud's composing a Common-Prayer-Book for them and tell us how the Mutinies and Disturbances in Scotland sprung from thence which truly I am very sorry for for I am sure it had been better for them and the Christian Religion professed amongst them if they had submitted to the Usage of the Book and continued it ever since The Worship of God would have been performed with Order and Decency and in a way suitable to his Divine Nature and Perfections and consequently could not have been exposed to the Contempt and Scorn of Men wickedly and atheistically inclined nor yet have been nauseous to the soberly wise and seriously devout part of that Kingdom as now it is by reason of those rude and undigested Addresses those extempore and unpremeditated Expostulations with God those bold and saucy Applications that for want of a good Book or a well framed Form of Prayer of their own before-hand and committed to Memory are so commonly made use of in their Pulpits too many of the Accounts of which we have lately since the Great Turn in Scotland received from very good Hands and undeniable Testimonies I but this bold-face says This Liturgy was not only composed by Bishop Laud but sent by him to the Pope and Cardinals for their approbation and this Story I must not dare to deny But with your good leave Mr. Modesty I will venture upon the piece of Confidence as to tell you I do not believe it and that because you assert it you whom I have proved already to falsifie and misrepresent every thing that you pretend written Authority for What! Bishop Laud send to the Pope and Cardinals for their Approbation of a Liturgy almost the same with our own Sure Sir you have forgot the hatred the Popes of Rome as well as the Dissenters have to our Church Common-Prayer-Book You have forgot the Bull of the Pope in the Tenth of Queen Elizabeth which commands all his pretended Catholick Children not to attend upon the Publick Liturgical Devotions of our Church and that under the severest Censure of the Apostolical Chair and you have also forgot but you have always a bad Memory for any thing that makes either for Monarchy or Episcopacy that the Papists upon that Account and by Virtue of the Authority of that Bull have declined our Publick Service ever since And therefore 't is very likely Bishop Laud should send a Liturgy to Rome for its approbation which hath so long stood condemned by the highest Authority that presides there In short Sir I cannot but conclude from this Story that you have got a Secret or else you would have blushed to have vented such an altogether improbable and yet so designedly a malicious Tale as this is and therefore notwithstanding your Marginal Caution I will say Leave your fooling and think not to abuse the good People of England with such Insinuations as will gain a belief from none but those who are resolved to believe all you boldly assert as Oracle against the clearest and brightest Reasons to the contrary Well Sir you say it was sent into Scotland pray let me ask you one Question In whose Name and by whole Authority was it sent Was it put upon them by a Rump Parliament an usurping Protector or by their lawful and undoubted Soveraign If by their Soveraign pray then Sir why if they did not like it did they not first submissively petition their lawful King and let him know how disgustful the Liturgy was to many of his Subjects in that Kingdom What must nothing serve these pure and refined Reformers but Fire presently called from Heaven must Clubs and Staffs and Old Womens Joynt-stools decide the Controversie betwixt their Soveraign and them Must they presently assault one of the Bishops the Earl of Traquaire the Lord Provost and Council of the City and threw down the Lord Treasurer going to the Council taking from him his Hat Cloak and White Staffe by violent Hands Good God! what dutiful what harmless and peaceable Subjects are these How much do they deserve such an Advocate as our Letter-Writer And what worst of things will not a Seditious Commonwealth's-man plead for when he will vindicate such Barbarities as these are But to go further with you Sir Must these Men of their own heads without any Warrant from the Legal Authority of the Nation enter into a Covenant without the King nay against his Will and Pleasure As they could not but know and that because they had entered into one with King Iames's Consent in 1580 to defend the Purity of Religion and the King's Person and Rights against the Church of Rome What are these two Covenants of one and the same Nature entred into by one and the same Authority a Covenant entred into by King Iames's Consent under his Hand and Seal and a Covenant entred
their Heads And this is all I think good to say by way of Answer to your Scotch Affairs and truly I think it is enough of all reason to convince the World what Defenders of the Christian Faith and the Rights and Laws of their Country these Covenanters were God bless the Kingdom of Scotland I and England to from such Reformers as these are and I hope the greatest part of the People of both Nations will say Amen to it with all readiness and cheerfulness And thus Sir without any Obligations on my side for as I Told you in my Defence I only would concern myself with the last Eight Years of King Charles I have run through and proved your Accusations spiteful and false which you have so liberally vented to defame this Great and Good Man and I hope I have given the World a just satisfaction how much you are to be credited as to all the other things you assert you I say who rather than you will not serve your Cause will offer to the World the greatest Lyes and Untruths in Nature I come now Sir to apply myself Sir to the Defence of what I have said in my Book in the behalf of King Charles from your rude Impleadings of them and Reflections upon them And here Sir I will be plain with you I am not at leisure to play the Buffoon by making a Return to your Raillery and little Witticisms wherewith you entertain your Reader in the beginning of your Libel but will follow the Advice of a wiser and honester Man than either you or any of your Party are or will be that is King Solomon namely Not to answer a fool according to his folly least I be like unto him You say That those gracious Acts which I mention were bought of him And what then What hath been more usual ever since Parliaments had a Being in England Pray look into the Statute-Book and tell me what gracious Favours can you find bestowed by the several Kings of this Realm upon their People that those People have not made their Acknowledgments for them by presenting their Soveraigns with great Sums of Money And how comes this to be a fault in King Charles more than in all his Predecessors But buy these Acts did they Pray who had the disposal of the Money How was it laid out Was it given to the King to do what he lifted withal No Sir you know the contrary and that amongst the rest of the Uses it was put to you know a great part of it was bestowed upon the Scots for the good Service they did in rebelling against their King and putting two Kingdoms into a flame and they returned home by the Favour of your Friends loaden with the Nation 's Treasure when if they had had their deserts they had gone back with Halters about their Necks as a sign of what was due to them for so traiterously invading a Kingdom they had nothing to do withal But however to shew he did nothing willingly as to these condescending Acts you tell us when he past the Poll-Bill he demurred to the passing of the Bills for taking away the Star-Chamber and the High Commission And what then May not King's take time to consider as well as other Men Must they who considering the Charge God hath entrusted them withal ought to have better Eyes in their Heads than other Men must they I say only act like Bruits and do things without previous thoughts without a Why or Wherefore Who would sit in a Throne if the Condition of it must be the divesting himself of the Reason and Consideration of a Rational Creature But Sir I will answer this Aspersion in the King 's own Words to the Two Houses and then leave the Reader to judge whether you have done fairly to lessen his Grace upon this Account his Words are these I must tell you That I cannot but be very sensible of those Reports of Discontent that I hear some have taken for not giving my Consent on Saturday Methinks it seems strange that any one should think I could pass two Bills of that importance as these were without taking some fit time to consider of them for it is no less than to alter in a great measure those Fundamental Laws Ecclesiastical and Civil which many of my Predecessors have established And truly I hope this will satisfie tho' not you and such as you are yet any good Man who is not resolved for a Party as to this paticular Reflection Another thing you reflect upon me for is saying That his signing the Bill for taking away my Lord Strafford's Life offered violence to the peace and quiet of his Mind all the Days of his Life And here Sir I cannot but take Notice how you endeavour to make sport with this good Man's Conscience but let me tell you I have always observed that those Men who make sport with other Mens Consciences have none of their own and I am sure you have shewn none throughout this scurrilous Letter unless Lying ad Slandering be the signs of Grace ad Good Conscience in a Common-wealth's-man Pray Sir why might not the King scruple this Do not you know what unusual Arts and Methods were made use of before they could agree upon a Bill to take away this Great Man's Life Do not you know how many of the House of Commons protested against it how thin the House of Lords was when it passed there how the Rabble were brought down to threaten the House and in a clamorous way which you call peaceable to cry Iustice Iustice and how they posted up the Names of the Protestors in order to expose them to the fury ad danger of the discontented and designing part of the City And do not you know after all they were so little satisfied with the Legality of their Proceedings that they in the very Bill itself inferred a Clause that this should not be made use of as a Precedent for the time to come and after all this might not a pious and compassionate King scruple the signing of such a Bill from a very good Conscience Come Sir to answer this to the full and vindicate the King's scruple I will here present to the World for their satisfaction the Sence not of a House of Peers consisting of Seventeen or Eighteen Members nor of a House of Commons consisting of not many above an Hundred but the Sence of two full Houses of Lords and Commons who took off the Attainder of that Noble Earl the Words in the Act are those WHereas Thomas late Earl of Strafford was Impeached of High-Treason upon pretence of endeavouring to subvert the Fundamental Laws and called to a Publick and Solemn Arraignment and Tryal before the Peers in Parliament where he made a paticular Defence to every Article objected against him insomuch that the Turbulent Party then seeing no hopes to effect their unjust Designs by any ordinary way and method of proceedings did at last resolve to
there was for a War with so condescending and gracious a Prince and how little the Nation was beholden to those pretended Patriots who commenced a War which hath proved so destructive and fatal to the Nation the Effects of which not only we but our Posterity will feel also I fear for many Generations And now Sir I am ready to take my leave of you but before we part I must needs reckon with you upon the score of a Reflection you have made upon my self You are pleased to say You understand before I came to my Dotage I was a Presbyterian Minister in Essex which Words as often as I have read in the midst of my Sorrows for your scurrilous usage of King Charles have almost forced me to a smile and I cannot but believe that some crafty Knave finding you ready to pick up any Story whereby you might serve your Cause had a mind to put a trick upon you and to expose the Truth of the rest of your Books by this one so well known a Falshood And Sir let me tell you because since the late Persecution in Scotland by that Party of Men it is a greater Scandal to be called a Presbyterian than it was before and because I find abundance of Men have run away with such a Belief of me I will therefore give the World a true Account of myself I was betwixt four and five Years of Age when the Covenant was taken and Twenty one when the King was restored at which time I was a Student in Cambridge in 62 after I had taken time to consider the Nature and Terms of Conformity which by my former Education I was wholly a Stranger to I was Ordained by the Sacred Hands of Bishop Sanderson in the same Church in which I was baptized in 63 I was Licensed by the Bishop of London Dr. Sheldon to a Lecture in London upon the Personal Recommendation of the late Arch-bishop of York Dr. Dolben in which City I continued till 71 when I was presented by King Charles the Second to the Vicarage of Westham in Essex where how I acted like a Presbyterian let the four Tracts I writ and all in the Defence of the Church of England testifie from this place I was removed by Letters Pattents under the Broad Seal of England from King King Charles the Second to the Chaplain-ship of Aldgate which is so called in the Original Deed upon Record in the Rolls and for the Service of which the King has reserved out of the Impropriation an Annual Stipend where how I have lived and discharged my Duty in some sort I leave to the whole Parish to declare It is true Sir I have always been kind to Dissenters and have conversed with all sorts of Men with an equal Freedom and when the great Storm Eight and Nine Years ago fell upon the Dissenters in City and Country I preserved my own Parish from Charge and Trouble to the great endangering of myself which many of them have a grateful Sence of to this day tho' some others have quite forgot it but that is because they are too like your dear self for I never found Gratitude together with many other necessary Vertues amongst Men of your Kidney 't is no part of your Religion And now Sir what satisfaction will you make me for this scandalous Reflection Why truly all I expect is nothing but further Calumnies and Reproaches Backbiting and Slandering of me for that is the proper Trade and Employment of Antimonarchial Men but however Sir let me beg of you but to let the Memory of King Charles the First alone and then I will pardon as well as patiently bear all you can say against me and the more willingly because I think it an Honour to be abused by such Persons as you are Sir I am just upon concluding only spare me one word or two more Whereas you call me in your Epistle An hungry Levite I would have you know I scorn it and here tell you That the Goodness of the Cause I am engaged in carries me above the hopes of adding to what I have and above the fears of losing it all and whereas you say Mr. Love lost his Head upon Tower-hill which you are confident I will never do for any Cause Sir I tell you that by the Grace and Assistance of God had I a thousand Lives I would lose them all at Tower-hill or at another place which you have so long deserved before I would either compose or publish such an infamous Libel against the Piety the Honour and Memory of King Charles the First a Libel which I cannot think you could have writ unless you had been acted by Seven Devils worse than yourself and then I am sure they are Devils indeed And so Sir I take my leave of you praying the God of Heaven if he has not given you over for your past Sins and Provocations to a Reprobate Sence that he would open your Eyes and soften your Heart and cause you to see the evil of your ways that so you may return to him with weeping and fasting and more particularly if you live so long upon the next Thirtieth of Ianuary And hoping this Prayer will not be in vain I subscribe myself Your Soul's Well-wisher Richard Hollingworth Postscript READER WHen thou meetest with any Expressions or Reflections that look too sharp and severe in this Reply I must beg of thee to consider who it is I write against one that has behaved himself thoroughout his whole Libel rather like a Beast of Prey or an infernal Fiend than either a Man or a Christian And what Man can avoid Indignation and suitable Resentments when he accounts with a Monster who is so lost both to Truth and Good Manners as to call that Excellent and Pious Prince and Martyr a proud Nimrod an hardened Pharaoh and a merciless Tyrant READER There is an excellent Book called Vindicae Carolinae an Answer to Milton's scurrilous Book against K. Charles which came out the last Year worthy to be in every good and true English-man's hand And withal there is another Book called A Vindication of King Charles Printed in 48 by that true and steady Divine Mr. Edward Symmonds to whom the King committed the Correcting and Publishing his Incomperable Book which deserves a new Edition and which if no Man's Property for there is none mentioned in the Title-page I will take care to see it Re-printed in which Book there is an admirable Defence of the King and Queens Letters taken at Naseby from p. 174 to p. 185 which I will take care if the Executor of Mr. Royston or any other who has the Right to the King's Works will give me leave to Print some of the King's Declarations to Print with them And Reader I hope I shall have the Assistance of some better Pens than my own for this Cause must not be starved for I am sure upon it depends the Being and Well-being of King and Queen Church and State and every thing else that belongs to a true Lover of Old England indeed FINIS The Armies Petition Ibid. p. 563.