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A86163 An admonition to my Lord Protector and his Council, of their present danger, with the means to secure him and his posterity in their present greatnesse: with the generall applause and lasting tranquility of the nation,. J. H.; Heath, James, 1629-1664, attributed name.; Howell, James, 1594?-1666, attributed name. 1654 (1654) Wing H1317; Thomason E813_2; ESTC R207329 8,665 15

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hungry Prince with his necessitous kindred and dependents So that I must conclude that every Election doth certainly threaten the worst of evils and that the inconveniences of a succession are farre lesse and do very seldome happen by the concurrents of many ill accidents together And I think this may serve for demonstration of the peoples exceptions who judge by the pressures they feel And now let us examine the distasts of the souldiery and people together to your Highnesse person and I doubt we shall finde that the greater their love and admiration once was the more is now their hatred and your Highnesse danger for they both looked upon you as a zealous reformer not only of Tyranny but of the very causes of it and though you acted beyond their reasons they thought it was because you had more reason then they and so with an implicite faith they expected from your Highnesse such a settlement as should recompence their great expence of blood and treasure But after the spirir had moved you to break your Oathes of allegiance and supremacy which you took with all the Members at your first entrance into Parliament and after that your trust from the two houses upon the score of the Covenant and since again to destroy the King weed the Parliament and at last ●ear it up by the roots and they in the end see no other fruits of bloud and perjury but the giving laws like a Conqueror and imposing that kind of Government upon the souldiery which they have fought against and indeed a worse what can be feared from such a deluded Army and people but that they should as boldly draw their swords together against a Protector as the Presbyterians and all sorts of Independents did formerly against the King notwithstanding their own differences in opinion Certainly they will be as little scrupulous of murthering Monarch by his own law as one by all the Laws of the Land established and will think your Highness as guilty of the bloodshed of the Nation as they once thought the King and there is no question but the people who finde their Taxes and Dangers perpetuated which were inconsiderable when they first quarrelled with them will be as forward to assist the souldiery as they can wish them And I think this general disaffection of the people was so evident to your Highnesse before they were exasperated by the death of the King or Parliament that you need not doubt their unanimous insurrection if they shall be prepared and countenanced in it when the people of single Counties ventured their lives and fortunes so freely as they did before the Kings death where it is remarkable that a remnant of the broken and discouraged people of Kent with some small additions in Essex were able to divert my Lord Fairfax's Army at Colchester three moneths together if the Nation had been then prepared for a generall insurrection in a day it is probable your Highnesse glories had been nipped in the bud notwithstanding your renowned victories against the Scots at that time But it may be asked why the people did not shew this readinesse when the Scots with their King came to Worcester and the Answer is that their comming was unexpected and in such haste as shewed they rather came to seek then give protection and the for-laid designes if there were any were as was then pretended discovered But howsoever there was little more then was requisite for dispersing of Orders between the day of their arrivall at Worcester and that of their defeat But the grand Objection is that the fear of the Common Enemy the King will alwayes keep the Souldiery at unity in their Obedience under your Highness but I answer that if a few of them should but resolve to murther your Highness and one or two more of your principall Officers which no doubt they may easily and securely do they would find time enough to settle any form of Government they pleased before the Common Enemy who hath neither Money Shipping Arms nor Friends abroad nor any footing in this Nation could give them any disturbance And how far zeal may prompt those who are religious and the ambition of sharing the Government those of no Religion a wise man ought to fear but admit the King were landed and considerable the Souldiery very well known by experience how welcome even particular men are that revolt to an enemy in a doubtful condition much more great bodies which may not onely make what advantagious conditions they please for themselves But may impose upon him stricter limitations of his power than your Highness is now tied to by your Protectorship and no doubt may retain any places of benefit or strength they shall then be possessed of for security of performance of conditions But if the worst should happen that he should come in a Conquerer without their help they know that a few of the great Ones will onely be punished for reason will lead any conquering Tyrant for his own security to sweeten the multitude with a general pardon and Act of Oblivion and for any scruples they may have of betraying your Highness Trust I doubt they will be wiped away by their apprehensions of your first breaking yours with King Parliament and Army and so they may probably render you a bloody requitall for the destruction of their Fellow souldiers whom you call Levellers Lastly Consider the fondnesse of the people to their Old Forms of Religion as well as Government which you have abolished without giving the liberty to tender consciences they expected and your Highness will conclude with me that the world affords you few others than Enemies at home and Emulators abroad And if I have told you nothing but truth I doubt not but your generosity will think me more worthy of thanks then any of your Flatterers especially if I propose a just safe and honourable remedy for the mischiefs that threaten your Highness and the Nation And now having sufficiently opened the wounds I shall apply the promised Cure And it is not the lessening of your Highnesse in any thing for I am one of those that believe Monarchy to be the best form of Government so as it be hereditary for admit a Monarch be a Tyrant his Tyranny is mortal and his care will be greater not to offend than of a multitude of Governors who may lay faults upon one another and are as subject to cruelty and avarice as the single person so that it is better to be preyed upon by one Family with its dependents than by three or four hundred with theirs and we may easier please the one and have justice of him than of the slow and factious great Body who must most of them joyn to oblige and yet any one can by his mis-information disobliege because the accused shall be branded with the Title of a Malignant when they have not so much as leisure to hear him And since an arbitrary power will be in all
Governments in those that have the possession of the Militia it is better both for defence and offence that the General and civil Magistrate should be all one than that a gallant Army and Nation should be ruined as Hannibal and his Carthaginians were by the delatory and malicious practises of Hanno a Senator with his faction But to return to our purpose for the satisfaction of all interests and first for the souldiery because they have fought hard for it I should propose to your Highnesse to have all officers of the Army above the degree of Captaines to have votes in your Highnesse Councill of State at those times that they are free from their more urgent imployments in the field So will each souldier of the Army be sure to endeavour by his extraordinary deserts to rise by degrees to the State preferment he sees his officers so justly rewarded with Then for this next Parliament though they should not have power to alter the Government I could wish your Highnesse and Councill would consult with them about your late establishment and hear what objections they have against it And if the Parliament and Army should joyn in a petition to this purpose I presume you would not deny it And it were better to offer at acts of Grace before they were asked Lastly if my reasons for an hereditary Monarchy be satisfactory I most humbly beseech your Highnesse and Council to consider whether the establishment of the succession after your Highnesse in an usurping line will not expose the Nation to all the miseries I have mentioned in an elective government and if this be doubted be pleased to look over our own Chronicles and you shall find variety of examples without going further then the time of the conquest For first Harrold by his usurpation encouraged and occasioned the Conquest of England then was there another deluge of blood occasioned by the usurpation of Henry the first and again what slaughters and rapines did this miserable Nation endure by the unjust ambition of King Stephen in detaining the Crown from Maud the Empresse which fire could not be quenched but by the succession of her son the right heir which was at last agreed to by King Stephen But to come nearer home you shall find that Henry the fourth saw his country bleed in his life-time for his usurpation though he came in with the generall good liking of the people and thought he ha● secured himself by the Kings murther But though his industry secured the Crown to his son yet was his sons death conspired by his principall friends just as he was setting out for the invasion of France but that conspiracy being detected he by his unparallelled vertues and successes and the weaknesse of the true heir avoided during his short life any storms at home But they fell most heavily upon our flourishing Countrey in his Successor Henry the sixths time who could never have lost the Crown by his weaknesse if his title had been good as appeareth by the notable contention between him and Edward the fourth but between them were many thousands of Orphans and widows left weeping over their own and their Countreys desolate and bloudy ruines and at last the ambition of Henry the fourth was justly punished in the ruine of his Grandchild and a hatefull memory for his unjust Ambition and the sad consequences of it But if these examples do not sufficiently convince the reason of the thing doth for there will alwayes be a conscientious and a necessitous party for the true heir in any Nation against an Usurper besides malecontents which are still the greatest number because many must necessarily be injured and more unrewarded that think they deserve it and even all men that are unconcerned will be for the true Heir and be pretended lovers of Justice and with much reason must hate presidents of wrong least they should time other time suffer it And so I may conclude we are as certain of a civill warre from an unjust succession as from an Elective Government And the incomparable miseries and ill consequences of that I have already declared though our own experience might partly have saved me the labour But your Highnesse may think an invincible Fleet a sufficient security for an Island against a Forreign Nation that may interpose at such a time of our destructions But I answer that if none of your shipping should revolt yet might our next neighbours the French if they should then make peace with their other enemies take the opportunity of the same storm that shall force your Fleet in the Winter into Harbors to blow them over the short passage into England if they have any party to secure their Landing here But if this be thought frivolous I suppose I have said enough besides to make it appear that the true interest of your Highnesse and your posterity with that of this Kingdome to think of a treaty with Charles Stuart if he will accept of the Crown after your decease upon the same terms you now hold it I mean the same Councill and limitation of power with a competent maintenance for him in the mean time in some such remote place as you shall need lesse to fear him then you do now if he should incline to the breach of such an agreement as may be secured by Oaths Hostages and by the mediation of such States whose interest it is in respect of their greater neighbours to be alwayes friends to the peace of England and by stricter ties then are here necessary to be mentioned besides the honesty discretion and temper of the young man who notwithstanding his great courage shews he inherits the mildnesse of his Father and Grandfather on the one side and of his Mother and Grandfather on the other side which great King Henry the fourth of France after he had victoriously broken the heart of that great Rebellion called the Catholique League notwithstanding received the only head of it then living the Duke of Main into his protection and favour and never took the least revenge of him or any other of that Rebellious crew in all the time of his reign But above all things the Kings own interest and the good of his Countrey will oblige him to bury his resentments and both to accept and keep such conditions as redeem him and his followers from misery at the present and secure him and his posterity in the end to the re-enjoyments of all their rights without the slaughter or destruction of any part of his Kingdomes which he is most tenderly sensible of and what doubt can there be but that he will rather expect quietly the decease of an old man as your Highnesse is then run an improbable hazard of all his fortunes for a few years which he must have stayed for till his fathers death if he had not been untimely cut off and that he was willing to do so your Highness knowes by his pious and earnest sollicitation then to you
AN ADMONITION TO MY LORD PROTECTOR AND HIS COUNCIL Of their present Danger WITH The means to secure him and his POSTERITY in the present Greatnesse With the generall Applause and lasting Tranquility of the NATION London Printed in the Yeer 1654. THE PREFACE MY LORD MY passionate inclinations to the lasting peace of my Countrey have made me so presumptuous as to prescribe to your Highness and Council a more perfect remedy for its ill healed wounds than I have se●en yet applied But I would not be thought so impudent as to offer at the instruction of so great Masters in the Art of Government but onely to put you in mind of those things that the multiplicity of your greater Affairs have made you forget to consider And lest your Highness should want leasure to peruse the papers of an obscure and unknown person I thought fit to commit them to the Press that some of your Council or Friends at least may inform your Highness how much is pertinent in them not doubting but you will think those more your friends that give you a timely notice of your own and your Countreys danger than those who by a servile flattery becalm you to your ruine which none shall be more ambitious to prevent then My Lord Your most humble and faithfull Servant J. H. AN ADMONITION TO MY LORD PROTECTOR and his Council of their present danger c. TO begin such a businesse as this methodically we are first to shew the just Exceptions the people and Souldiery have to this plausible elective form of Government so well intended by your Highnesse and Councill next those to your persons with the dangers ensuing thereupon to your selves and the Nation And lastly the onely means of a totall and lasting prevention And I must ingenuously confesse that there is so much seeming reason to preferre the continuall Election of wise and gallant men before the Succession of Kings or Protectors who may possibly prove Children or Fools or Tyrants or Cowards that it may seem a wonder that the experience of all Nations hath not driven them to the specious forme of Elective Monarchies But the tryals they have had have beaten them to the contrary for though the renown of your Highness's many victories and great abilities with your long and prosperous prepossession of the Generalship did silence the ambitious pretences of any Competitours in your Election yet we must no more look for a man that hath no Equals after your Highnesse for the most eminent sort of men are as near of a size in wit and courage as they are in stature and as they are equals in virtue so will they be in interest at least their factions will be so near an equality that the weaker in an Army may by his cunning and industry draw in other factions from amongst the people to increase his numbers upon the common specious pretences of a Reformation in Religion and Government agreeable to those peoples humours whom he courts and so prepare himself to decide his pretentions by a Civil War which I may justly call the great Sea of calamities that swallows up all the streams of other petty tyrannies as not worth a name in respect of the ruinous inundations of that many headed Monster which commonly ushers in a Forraigner with it to make our miseries almost immortall And that this is like to be our sad fate upon the Election of every Protector is as certain as that all men whether honest or dishonest have naturally an ambition to get as much power as they can to oblige or disoblige and considering how naturall men overvalue themselves I think the designs of ambitious men to be commonly just in their own thoughts out of the Confidence they have of themselvs of excelling others in good Government But that those gallant men who run so many hazards to build up your Highnesse greatnesse should not adventure as far for themselves apart after your Highnesse death were the greatest miracle that I have known And to confirm this by an ancient example or two of the wisest and most civillized people then in reputation in the world we will begin with the great Alexander who at his death it seems intending an Election amongst themselves told his great Officers that he would leave his Empire to the worthiest but they could so ill agree who that was that they divided that invincible Army and each seizing upon what he could fought it out till they were all destroyed but Seleucus and Ptolomy And so after the death of Julus Caesar was the Roman Empire rent by the dissentions of Augustus Anthony and Lepidus till the fortune of Augustus prevailed And in the declining of the Roman Empire there were severall times as many Emperours as the Legions in severall Provinces were pleased to set up which were sometimes three or four together for want of a due succession And to come home to the present German Empire though it be in effect Hereditary to the House of Austria yet the very pretence to a free election was the principall Cause of calling in the King of Sweden and reducing that strong and flourishing Empire to such a wildernesse as now it is And doubtlesse all Governments were to be rejected as pernitious tyrannies were it not for avoiding the tyrannie of Confusion which subjects the Lives and Fortunes of every particular man to any small number of Rogues that shall assemble at such a time of Liberty If then the publick peace be the chief end of all Governments those Forms must needs be the worst which are most subject to decline to Factions though they do not immediately do so and of Monarchies no doubt but the elective is most liable to this Confusion And though it may be objected that the follies of a weak hereditary King may introduce the same inconvenience I shall first answer that there is seldome such a King for their extraordinary educations make them knowing men if it findes them not such But if he be a fool or coward he hath subjects under him fit to command Armies and no doubt a wise Council of his predecessors who knows how to Humor and govern him as well as any of his fellow fools And if he be a child his minority most commonly proves peaceable if his Title be unquestionable But it may be said he may prove a Tyrant and that I must confess but so may an Elective Monarch though he seem a lamb at his first entry I am sure he hath more reason to be so because he hath more of his equals or superiors in birth to fear And if we look upon other differences of these two kinds of Kings we shall finde the Elective King more necessitated to exhaust the people both in respect of the charge of gaining and securing his present power and leaving his posterity like the children of a Monarch and so the Treasury shall be alwaies emptied into private purses and the people a new exhausted by the next