respect to Richard II. or the Earl of Marsh who had the Undoubted Right as being of the Eldest House without any Title unless what he had from the People or as Stow says was Ordained King more by Force than lawful Succession or Election so he held it in continued Trouble and Confusion saving only the last Year And 't is said he was well pleased that there were always Troubles that there might be no Calm or Interval for Reflection He was so jealous of his Crown that in his Sickness he would have it laid by him upon his Bolster for fear some body should Dispossess him of it as he had Richard the II d and his Son as readily took it up for fear of some other Interposition Though he had not leisure for Politicks yet he made a very useful Observation fit to be thought on by Kings viz. That of Englishmen so long as they have Wealth so long shalt thou have Obeysance but when they are Poor they are always ready to make Insurrection at every motion Here we have also a great Example of a King's Son submitting to the Laws and of a King protecting and countenancing a Judge in a due Execution of them and also of a Judge with a steady Gravity and Resolution puting the Ancient Laws of the Realm in Execution without Favour or Partiality HENRY V. THE Reign of this King was wholly taken up with the Wars in France and here may be seen what an English Prince can do when he himself is Brave and Generous and stands well in the Opinion of his Subjects they paid him Homage before he was Crown'd and voluntarily granted him a Subsidy without asking and he on the other hand ask'd but few By which it appears as Sir Richard Baker observes what great matters a moderate Prince may do and yet not grieve his Subjects with Taxations Under this King who was of English true Honour the Honour of the Nation was at the highest Character for in a Councel holden at Constance it was Decreed That England should have the Title of the English Nation and should be accounted one of the Five Principal Nations in Rank before Spain which often before had been moved but never till then Granted HENRY VI. I Know not what to say to the Reign of this unfortunate King only that it is an instance of the Impertinence of Fortune and of the Unsteadiness of Human Affairs although Philip de Comines says he was a very Silly Man and almost an Innocent yet this silly Innocence seems to be what we call Simplicity in the modest acceptation of the word and the Effect rather of Choice or Observation than Defect 'T is true he had a sort of Passive Understanding but he had Judgment enough to distinguish Good and Bad between Virtue and Vice Success and Misfortune to resent these as a Man but overlook them as a Christian and what Sir Francis Bacon reports of him upon the account of his being to be Canonized That the Pope who was jealous of his Honour and of the Dignity of the See of Rome knowing that Henry the VIth was reputed in the World abroad but for a Simple Man was afraid it would but diminish the Estimation of that kind of Honour if there were not a distance kept between Innocents and Saints seems to be brought in rather for the sake of the Jingle or Jest than Truth His greatest symptom of Weakness was suffering a Wife to be imposed upon him and then being ever after imposed upon by that Wife but I doubt this may have been the condition of some Wise Men and the Earl of Suffolk plaid the fool in the Match not the King any otherwise than by taking the Advice of a single Person without and contrary to the Counsel of his Other Peers c. And what have Wiser Kings done beset with a Favourite or a Wife Whereas he had both which shews that 't is not so much a King 's personal and private Wisdom as That of the General Council of a Nation is to be relied on The Ill-advised Tragedy of the Duke of Glocester made Room and open'd way for That of the King 's by letting in the Duke of York's pretensions to the Crown and soon ended in the Death of the Duke of Suffolk himself So unsafe is it for any Favourite how Great soever to presume on his Own strength against the Interest and Policy of the Commonwealth The Other Affairs of this Reign seem transacted upon a stage of Fortune or Fate rather than Prudence or Policy trod between a Headstrong People Ambitious Nobles and a Queen too apt to Rule and a King too easy and apt to Suffer If we may learn any thing from this Reign 't is only this That Virtue and Goodness without Policy and Justice nor Policy without Virtue and Resolution can Establish a Throne But after all Fate it self seems to weigh down the Scale his Father's Prophecy is said was not to be avoided which I leave in the Words of Howard's Defensative against the Poyson of supposed Prophesies viz. What Prophet could have picked out of Mars and Saturn the manifold Mishaps which befel the Prince of Blessed Memory King Henry the VIth sometimes Sleeping in a Port of Honour sometimes Floating in the Surges of Mishap sometimes Possessing Foreign Crowns sometimes Spoiled and Deprived of his Own sometimes a Prince sometimes a Prisoner sometimes in plight to give Succour to the Miserable sometimes a Fugitive amongst the Desperate Habington in his History of Edward the IVth says That this poor King in so many Turns and Vicissitudes never met with one fully to his Advantage And Cambden says He was Four times taken Prisoner and in the End Despoiled both of his Kingdom and Life EDWARD IV. THE first Twelve Years of this King's Reign if I may so call it who came to the Kingdom as Biondi says not by Power or Justice but by the People's Inclination were passed in a ferment of Blood and the better part of his Two and twenty if I may so say were taken up in Wars and Executions not so much occasioned by Henry the VIth as by the Earl of Warwick so dangerous a thing it is to put an Affront upon a powerful Subject But especially King Edward shewed a very weak part in this Management who came to the Crown chiefly by the Earl of Warwick's Interest and with a confessed Election of his People when he had Married a Subject of no great Parentage or Interest to disoblige such a Subject Dishonourably who had so great a Stroke and made such a Figure in the Nation But all Rules of Policy they say must submit to Love therefore to pass that Oversight for which there is an Excuse made Certainly the Confidence and Trust afterwards by him repos'd in the Duke of Glocester was a manifest Infatuation not to be supported with any pretence of common Consideration or colour of Reason And though Philip de Comines says he was the
Goodliest Personage yet I doubt he was not the Wisest and he might well affirm that his Master Lewis of France exceeded Edward the IVth in Sense and Wisdom How idle and vitious was his Consideration upon that imagined Prophecy That G. should Disposse is his Children of the Crown to suffer it to influence him so far as to consent to the Murther as 't is said of G. Duke of Clarence on supposition foreign enough that That G. was intended him whereas it fell out to be Glocester to whose Tyranny he left them by this Foolish and Ungodly Fancy and such a prophane extravagant Application of Sorceries to which in truth that Age was every where too much addicted And 't was not his jealous practices with the Duke of Britaign against Henry Earl of Richmond could secure the Crown to his Children when he overlook'd the more immediate Danger EDWARD V. ONE would have thought Edward IV. might have without Sorcery or Prophecy foreseen what would become of the committing the Care of Edward the Vth to his Brother the Duke of Glocester who had before Killed Henry the VIth with his own Hand in all probability without Commandment or Knowledge of his Brother and his Son in his own presence and was suspected also to have a hand in the Death of his other Brother the Duke of Clarence besides the symptom of an ill-contrived Soul and Body Without taking notice of all the villanous popular Harangues Insinuations and Artifices used by the Duke of Glocester to get the King's Person into his Power out of the Hands of the Queen and her Friends In short this poor Prince was an Unhappy instance of a misplaced Guardianship and an Unnatural Uncle's Care A Youth made a Jest of Sovereignty for Ten Weeks and Sacrificed to Ambition at Eleven Years of Age and an instance of the fatal Credulity of a Woman too apt to be deceived as well as to deceive He and his poor Brother were Murthered in the Tower Betrayed by an Uncle and too easily delivered up by a Mother A Reign a fit Subject only for Poetry ' Twin-Brethren by their Death What had they done Aleyn Hist of Hen. VII Oh Richard sees a Fault that they were in It is not Actual but a Mortal One They Princes were 't was their Original Sin Why should so sweet a Pair of Princes lack Their Innocents Day i' th' English Almanack RICHARD III. THIS was so great a Monster in all Respects that he ought not for the Honour of England to have place amongst the Catalogue of Kings There ought to be nothing Recorded of him but only this That he died in the Field with his Sword in his Hand 'T is said he made Good Laws but I know of none Extraordinary but only One which is rather a Popular Declaration of what was so before and that was That the Subjects of this Realm shall not be charged by any Benevolence or such like Charge but it shall be damn'd and annull'd for ever Let his Laws be transferr'd to another Reign let us not acknowledge Mercy from the Hands of Blood Sir Francis Bacon saith That his Good Laws were but the Brocage of an Usurper thereby to win the hearts of the People as being Conscious to himself that the true Obligations of Sovereignty in him failed And if he had lived no doubt would have proved such a One as King James the First describes a Tyrant to be HENRY VII IT behoved Henry the Seventh having in himself but a slim sort of distant Title to support himself by Policy And here will appear what Single Prudence can do This maintain'd his Crown whilst he trim'd between Conquest Military Election Parliamentary Birth Donation and Marriage Though he did not care to be beholding to the Last and to take a precarious Right from a Wife Sir Walter Rawleigh says He was a Politick Prince who by the Engine of his Wisdom beat down and overturn'd as many Strong Oppositions both before and after he wore the Crown as ever King of Enggland did And Cambden Through whose Care Vigilancy and Policy and Forecasting Wisdom for times to come the State and Commonwealth of England hath to this day stood Establish'd and Invincible Henricus noster Septimus cum omnes Regni rectè Administrandi Artes calleret sic his Ornamentis Instructus venit ut cum Pacem Exulantem Exul exterremque Extorris concomitatus esset reducem quoque Redux aportaret Win. Com. de rebus Brit. But perhaps the Tyranny of his Predecessor might make his first Steps more easy However I take Henry the Seventh's Master-piece of Wisdom to be That he used That of other Mens also He call'd his Parliament and consulted with it upon all Occasions especially when he had any Provocations to War from France or Scotland Not insisting on but ever waving that impertinent piece of Prerogative of Declaring War upon a King 's own Head This Method open'd his Subjects Purses This procured even a Benevolence as odious as it had been heretofore and Great Sums of Money were soon collected by it The Commotions which happen'd in the North and West upon gathering the Subsidies were but slight Exceptions taken on the Occasion of the Extravagancies and Passions of particular Persons And the Business of Lambert Simnell and the greater Attempt of Perkin Warbeck were but the Effect of a Woman's Malice and promoted by the Dutchess of Burgundy who was an Avowed Enemy to the House of Lancaster Sir Francis Bacon tells us His Time did excel for Good Commonwealth Laws so that he may be justly celebrated for the Best Law-giver to this Nation after King Edward the First For his Laws whoso marks them well are deep and not Vulgar not made upon the Spur of a particular Occasion for the present but out of providence for the future to make the State of his People still more and more happy after the manner of the Legislators in Ancient and Heroical Times I suppose he means the State-Laws against Retainers and Riots these seem more properly to be made on his own Account and that no Person assisting a King de Facto should be attainted therefore by course of Law or Act of Parliament and that if any such Act should be made it should be void which seems also calculated for a particular purpose though it hath since made so much noise in the World as the Act to take away the Writ De Haeretico Comburendo was in King Charles the Second's Time And this de Facto Act seems to have no foundation at that time unless it were for fear of the Earl of Warwick who was the last Heir-Male of the Plantagenets for the King and People most certainly knew that Richard the Younger Brother of Edward the Fifth was Dead and Safe whom Perkin pretended to represent And methinks after all this Act seems to have but a Weak and Dishonourabble Foundation and leaves an ill Savour and will cast a Reflection some-where For Fears and Jealousies
There are particular Histories of the Reformation enow and fresh in every one's Memory having had an occasion not long since to review them and consider them afresh There are Plays and Novels also of the other to gratify the Female Politicians who whether they ought to be severe upon him or not I know not and leave to them to determine This is besides my Design as being out of all Ordinary Rules of Civil Policy Therefore waving all Enquiry into the Reasons or Provocations of one or t'other though I know some are assign'd and remark'd to his Disadvantage others to his Advantage I shall dismiss my self with this general Remark upon the Qualities of a Man or King That when Either have once broke through the first Obligations of Justice or Virtue he makes but little difficulty in the proceeding upon Attempts of the same Nature Though after all to speak impartially and without Reflection I am not satisfied but the first Occasion of Divorce and Reformation too was in its self justifiable though the Circumstances inducing it are suspected and it was concluded a Reason sought not offer'd But certainly Sir Walter Raleigh's Character of him is not to be justified who says That if all the Pictures and Paterns of a Merciless Prince were lost in the World they might all again be painted to the life out of the Story of this King And that of Sir Robert Naunton is as ill-natur'd viz. Having a Design to marry within the Degrees Unlawful he set his Learned Men at work to prove it lawful and after a while being cloy'd and desiring Change set them again on work to prove it unlawful He never spared Man in his Anger or Woman in his Lust This is Satyrically said but not truly For he had no mind to marry at first where he did but did it in Obedience to his Father's Will and against the Grain with himself And he liv'd with this first Wife Twenty Years and never took notice of the Unlawfulness of that Marriage till it was objected against him again and the President of Paris started and moved it on the Proposal of Marriage between the Lady Mary his Daughter by Katherine and the Duke of Orleance the second Son to the French King And as to the Cruelty towards Men the Death of the Lord Cromwell and that of the Duke of Norfolk's Son Henry Earl of Surry sound most of Severity yet as to the first he had rais'd him from a Smith's Son he was Cardinal Woolsey's Pupil and trod in his Steps He was Attainted by Parliament and the Record says for Crimes of Heresy and Treason perhaps the Advice of the Match with the Lady Ann of Cleve but I think it doth not argue Cruelty in the King neither towards him or her He dismiss'd her with a gentle Farewel after her Marriage was declared Unlawful by the Convocation and adjudged so in Parliament and she lived sixteen Years after and died in the Fourth Year of Queen Mary As to the other It is plain it was not to gratify his Personal Cruelty For being no Lord of Parliament he was Arraigned at Guildhall before a Special Commission and found guilty by a Jury the Charge of bearing Arms which belonged to the King and Prince may seem somewhat slight yet it is always dangerous to play with Edged Tools and the Ragion di stato may in part excuse it In the main he appears a King of a great deal of Honour not without a Good-natur'd Generosity He was careful also to maintain the Civil Constitution and devout to the Privileges of Parliament He carried it fair with his Subjects in the general and was never Ill-natur'd or Froward as far as I can perceive without some Colour of Justice I know not whether I can justify him in his Politicks so well in his contradicting by the Will the Disposition of the Crown and its Succession which he had before Established in Parliament especially to bring in Queen Mary after his Subjects had sworn to the Parliamentary Succession of his Daughter Elizabeth Besides That this was subsequently by Implication to affirm the Legitimacy of his Mariage with Katharine of Spain which was with so much Solemnity laboured and declared Unlawful All that can be said is That he might in respect to the Mother be unwilling to suffer the Daughter to be Bastardised And we always ought to construe the Actions of Princes in mitiori sensu and to take them by the best part of the Handle in History To speak well of them if we can any ways justify it and to be silent in Doubtful Characters if we cannot Commend EDWARD VI. I Am at a loss in speaking to the Short Reign of Edward the Sixth He seems born and design'd for the Advancement of Ecclesiastical and Civil Polity and to be snatched away to the Disappointment of Human Expectations to intimate That there is no Establishment of Happiness to be relied on here below However that Government which might have come to something in himself was Unfortunate in the Administration of the Councel which his Father with so much Care had assign'd him and impertinently enough shuffled between the Aspiring Conduct of the Great Men and the Foolish Ambition of Pretending Women These interrupted the Wisdom of Councels though the Protector did his part well enough at first till he came to pull down a Church and two Bishops Houses in the Strand to make him a Mansion-House c. For after the Disturbances of the Nation on the Account of Religion and the Inclosures at Home and with relation to the French and Scots Abroad had been managed with Prudence and Honour and the Kingdom began to appear with a Face of Peace and Satisfaction How vain are Mortal Considerations Behold the whole Oeconomy is on a sudden Discomposed and the Frame of Government Subverted And a Frivolous Pretence of Place between two Women Unhinges the Constitution and first exposes and then destroys and ruins the Husbands by vertue of the False Designs of a Third Person behind the Curtain who grafted Villany artificially upon their Follies and at last as was suspected brought in the King himself whose Death also is laid at the same Door What the Sense of our Neighbours was concerning it you may read in Mezeray France and England held pretty good Correspondence when Death cut the Thread of Young King Edward's Days It was believ'd to proceed from a slow Poyson and John Dudley Duke of Northumberland was suspected guilty of the Crime he having suggested to him to Institute Jane of Suffolk for Heiress to the Crown However it were it prov'd a Fatal Policy to the poor Lady Jane and himself too I confess I cannot see why Edward the Sixth might not make bold with Mary as well as his Father had done before him and dispose of the Crown by Will as he did especially for the Propagating and Establishing the Infant Reformation if that Age had been serious and well agreed in the
Government in such State of picqueering Misunderstanding King James left his Crown to King Charles and in a War for Recovery of the Palatinate without any Money and in a fair way of Quarrel at Home as well as Abroad Besides the People had it in their Memories and Consideration his Complaisant Behaviour in Spain his Letter to and Tampering with the Pope in Order to that Match which rais'd new Jealousies on Account of Religion and his Compleating himself the Match with France with as Frank Articles for Popery as had before been offer'd to Spain in Conjunction with his Father confirm'd them in them These Reasons and Considerations took possession justly enough in the Minds of Men which made them ever after stand upon their guard And setting aside all those Scurrilous Authors on the One hand who have pretended to give us a Narrative of his Actions and also those Fulsome Ones on the Other all those who would Depress or Advance his Character with Art certainly a great many Actions of his Administration are not to be justified in a Court of Honour or Wisdom Such as Dissolving the First Parliament meerly in Complaisance to the Duke of Buckingham A King must necessarily Disoblige and Affront the Community when he Espouseth the Interest of a Single Person against the Publick and it shews a Weakness to put one Man no better than the rest in the Scales in competition with Mankind as it were But especially a King ought to be sure the Subject-matter of such Protection and Preference is good and justifiable otherwise he commits a double Error It will be thought Ill-natur'd to Argue against Favourites but I must Argue against the Argument for them It is a very odd Inference That because our Saviour had his Favourite-Disciple therefore Kings must have their Favourites I suppose No body will pretend there is any parity of Reason To return therefore to the Duke of Buckingham who without Dispute had betrayed the Vantguard c. to the French after the King and he knew both that they were to be employed against the Rochellers this was in it self a great Abuse to the Honour of the English Nation and a manifest Injustice and Injury to the Protestant Religion And 't was from this King's Reign that the French began to Date their Strength at Sea This only Action bred such ill Blood and created so great a Misunderstanding at first between the King and his Subjects as stuck to the Duke of Buckingham till his Death whom Felton kill'd and I doubt till the King 's too His next Proceeding was Extraordinary when he had thus Dissolv'd the First Parliament To Levy Money by Privy Seals which had so ill a savour in his Father's Time and then to call a Parliament presently on the neck of that Miscarriage and to side with the D. of B. against the E. of B. and the denying the latter his Writ to Parliament this lookt inconsiderate and a little mean and the interposing so much on behalf of the former even with passion as well as partiality had but an ill grace I pass by the Business of the Earl of Arundel which also could not but breed ill Blood in the House of Peers By the King's Obstinacy in these Affairs though I do not pretend to justify the House of Commons in theirs instead of preserving one Friend in the mean time he sacrifices all the rest to his Humour For the King of Denmark who at his Instance chiefly had taken up Arms in his Quarrel was beaten and reduced to great Distress for want of Succors from England which the King had thus disabled himself to supply according to his Promise That Necessity put him again upon Indirect Courses for Raising of Money by Commissions of Loan and seising all Duties of Customs Privy-Seals Benevolences c. as if he would shew he design'd if he had prevail'd to live on himself without a Parliament But the Imprisoning the Gentlemen for refusing the Loan and the Suspending and Disgracing Archbishop Abbot for refusing to License Sibthorp's Book were Strains of Arbitrary Power which exposed Religion as well as Law into a Jest and seem to profane the Sacred Title of a King as well as that of an Archbishop as appears especially in that Archbishop's Narrative and Dialogue with the Passages therein express'd if it be true which exposes that whole Transaction as a plain Rhodomontade and Defiance to all Rules of Justice and Reason I will take notice only of the Observation of the Archbishop upon the Fourth Objection to Sibthorp's Sermon by which you may guess at the rest To the Fourth Let the Largeness of those words be well consider'd says the Archbishop yea all Antiquity to be absolutely for Absolute Obedience to Princes in all Civil or Temporal things for such Cases as Naboth's Vineyard may fall within this and if I had allow'd this for Doctrine I had been justly beaten with my own Rod If the King the next day had commanded me to send him all the Money and Goods I had I must by my own Rule have obey'd him And if he had commanded the like to all the Clergy of England by Sibthorp's Proposition and the Archbishop of Canterbury's allowing of the same they must have sent in all and left their Wives and Children in a Miserable Case yea the Words extend so far and are so absolutely deliver'd that by this Divinity If the King should send to the City of London and the Inhabitants thereof commanding them to give unto him all the Wealth they have they were bound to do it There is a Meum Tuum in Christian Commonwealths and according to Laws and Customs Princes may dispose of it That Saying being true Ad Reges Potestas omnium pertinet ad singulos proprietas This was the Sense of the Archbishop on this Matter and yet the King espoused the Fancies of a Sibthorp against him who was not so much as a Batchellour of Arts only for the merit of his Flattering Divinity And in truth the whole Proceeding is apt to turn one's Stomach besides that the King in Exposing the Dignity of a Person of such a Figure in the Church did also make bold with his own Character at second hand who stood but one Remove Higher And what was it but to intimate to the Lay-Gentlemen that neither of them were so sacred or inviolable as was pretended And by the by 't is not safe to make too Light of a Spiritual Person they can't be held too sacred on this side of Infallibility But how like a Prophet did the Archbishop talk How did he Reason like a Statesman concerning the King and Duke of Buckingham How did the Event but too well justify the Predictions What could the King expect from his Next Parliament which he was in a manner forc'd to Call after the Imprisonment of so many Gentlemen and the Poor-spirited Way of Releasing them which lookt almost as bad as the Imprisoning them What could he say