notwithstanding their Quality and the signal Services performed for their pretended King Many Instances might be given of this nature and a reasonable Man might have judged that the many Instances of those Slights and Contempts that have been put upon them should have convinced them of the Folly and Madness of any of those that pretend to the Protestant Religion and Church of England who should Espouse the Cause of a Man that hates their Religion and Liberties Can they think that the present Misfortunes that the late King James lies under would if he should be re-invested with Power frighten him to alter his Measures and Resolutions of invading our Laws and Liberties for time to come seeing that neither the abandoning of Wives Children and Estates nor the hazarding nay loss of Life in his Service can render him just and favourable to those Protestants who have made a Sacrifice of all these things to follow him and yet that these Men should be found in so Villanous a Conspiracy to Murder him that delivered the Nation What Tongue can speak for such brutish and sensless Wretches I must leave to the Judgments of wiser Men than my self And what can they expect from a Man whose Father's Misfortunes his Brothers Exile wherein he himself was a sharer have not wrought a Reformation in him Can we expect that ever he will be more cautious of violating our Laws intrenching upon our Liberties or subverting our Religion or that ever he will be made more pliable For if he denies Men that have followed him into France the Exercise of their Religion what hopes have they of obtaining and enjoying it whenever he shall return Nay what then must your Majesties Protestant Subjects expect who have renounced him and associated to defend your Majesty as our Lawful and Rightful King against this pretended King and all his Wicked and Trayterous Adherents But Sir give me leave a little further to plead with your Majesty concerning these People that certainly never give themselves leisure to think I am sure no Man in his right Wits but must judge it the highest degree of Stupidity and Folly that these very Men should expect good Terms from a Person who doth not only treat his Protestant Adherents very ill who have followed him in his Misfortunes but also whose Religion lays him under the necessity of using them thus What Obligations did our Church lay upon him when he was a Subject Did she not like a Prostitute save him from being Prosecuted for the Popish Plot and from being Excluded from the Succession to the Crown Who were so Hot in that point on his behalf as the then Prelates in the House of Peers and afterwards from being driven out of the Kingdom by the late Duke of Monmouth yet all those Obligations were of no more value with him than his Coronation-Oath which he violated without the least regret and spared not to invade the Protestant Religion in general but the Liberties of the Church of England in particular What wicked Traytors are these wretched Men that shall assist the Popish Party in their attempts to pervert the Church and to bring that about in effect which even to mention makes every Loyal Subject of your Majesties to tremble For certainly had these Conspirators been all of them avowed Papists your Majesties Person and Government had not been in that danger but some of them that have undertaken this Horrid Design are such as lye under no Temptations of Religion Men thought to be secure that these now the Mystery of Iniquity is revealed are found Men obliged by all the Sacred Ties of Malice and Ambition to assist in the advancing your Majesties Ruin and the Ruin of the three Kingdoms and much better qualified than others under the Name of Good Church of England Men nay Preachers of Passive Obedience and Non-Resistance will not be shut out of this Hellish Conspiracy for Wranglers but will have a hand against your Majesty's Person rather than so Eminent a piece of Service shall go unperfected Give me leave therefore Sir with the greatest Duty and Submission to observe to your most Excellent Majesty the Excellency of that Religion they would subvert by shewing the Vileness of that they would introduce and the happy Government they would destroy in the attempt they have made upon your Majesty's Person These Conspirators that say they are Protestants cannot but own that we are exceeding happy in relation to our Religion since by your Majesty's happy Accession to the Throne that we are once more freed from the Romish Yoke which so great a part of Europe do yet draw and labour under that Popery is such a thing as cannot but for want of a Word to express it be called Religion nor is it to be mentioned with that Civility which is otherwise decent to be used in speaking of Differences of Humane Opinion about Divine Matters were it open Judaism or plain Turcism or honest Paganism there is yet a certain Bonafides in the most extravagant Belief and the Sincerity of an Erroneous Profession may render it more pardonable But this Popery is a Compound of all the three an Extract of whatsoever is most Ridiculous and Impious in them incorporated with more peculiar Absurdities of its own in which those were deficient and all this deliberately contrived and knowingly carried on by the Rascally and Villainous Clergy under the Name of Christianity The Wisdom of this fifth Religion in this last and most Insolent Attempt upon the Credulity and Conspiracy against the Liberty of Mankind seems to all Understanding Men principally to have consisted in their owning the Scriptures to be the Word of God and the Rule of Faith and Manners but wickedly prohibiting at the same time their common Use or the Reading of them by those of their Communion there being no better or more rational way to frustrate the very design of our Lord Jesus Christ who first planted by the miraculous Power and extraordinary Gifts of the Holy-Ghost than to forbid the use of them in such a Language as the People could understand for having the Scripture which by all Christians are avowed to be of Divine Authority but appointing it to remain in such hands as were intrusted to undertake and carry on their holy Cheat they had the Opportunity to vitiate suppress or interpret to their own advantage for the support of their Villainous Priestcraft those admirable Evidences by which the common People hold their Salvation and they having by this Fraud gained their Point there was from that time nothing so monstrous to Reason and so abhorring from Morality or so contrary to Scripture which they might not in prudence venture on The Idolatry of Adoring and praying to Saints and Angels and worshipping Pictures Images and incredible Miracles and palpable Fables to promote that Veneration The whole Liturgy and Worship of the blessed Virgin the saying of Pater Nosters and Creeds the Honour of Saints and Ave-Maries too not to her
witness his being reconciled to that Church by Father Richard Huddleston who was related to John Huddleston of whom the said King Charles had such a tender care and not only so but Receiv'd the Sacrament from Father Ireland the Jesuit in the Duchess of Portsmouth's Lodgings and the same day afterwards he receiv'd it according to the Usage of the Church of England it being the Sunday called Easter-day In the last place witness those Papers that were found under his own hand in his Strong Box all which testify his inclinations were bent that way and therefore how can any man wonder at his being careless of supporting the Protestant Religion Nay Sir I must not forget one Instance more of his being of the Romish Persuasion that is that most Excellent Memorial that he put in by his Protestant Envoy to the Court at Poland wherein there was a passage to this effect That he had a great Esteem of the Roman-Catholick and Apostolick Religion as being most consistent with Monarchy give me leave to Cite a passage of a Letter of his to the Governor of St. Omers when it was by Conquest reduced to the Obedience of the French King which was That he should take care of the Jesuits according to the Contract he had made with his Master they being men upon whom the hopes of England did depend Give me leave Sir to put you in mind of his promises he made to the Jesuits in Spain after he was reconciled to the Church of Rome upon their Contributing Three thousand Pistols for his support of restoring the Catholick Religion when ever he should come to the Enjoyment of his Right in England and not only to them but to the Nuns in Ghent when he borrowed Money of them for which they waited several Years Then I say he declared he would restore their Religion when ever he should come to his Right When the Princess Henrietta came to Dover you know what her Errand was to press the King to restore the Romish Religion here in England and that the breach of the Peace with the Dutch was then and there contrived by you and your Conspirators and consented to by the King and all in order to the reducing those State to the Catholick Faith And it was determined to begin the Publick Exercise of the Romish Religion in Ireland and to facilitate that work you may well remember who was sent over Lord Lieutenant Upon all these Considerations a Man may not now wonder at King Charles's carelesness in the Support and Maintenance of the Protestant Religion You well remember that you your self and your other Conspirators had begot in the King your Brother a full persuasion of the Truth of this Proposition That the Roman-Catholicks were the greatest favourers of Monarchy therefore in his Letter to the French King bearing Date June 1676. that he resolved to be like his Neighbours in Religion but you know that he was prevented by the Lord Arlington and the Parliament for which you were pleased to tell Father Lacheise in your Letter of July 1676. that the Lord Arlington and others by a Thousand deceits endeavoured to break the good Intelligence that was betwixt the King your Brother and his most Christian Majesty and your self to the end they might deceive you all Three and therefore the Parliament and the said Lord Arlington and his party were by you declared in that Letter as useless and dangerous for that the said Arlington and his Friends did work incessantly to advance the Interest of the Prince of Orange and the Dutch and to lessen the Interest of the French King Now the King your Brother being a man unsteady in his resolutions he sometimes failed your Brother of France as well as your self and other Conspirators 9. We in his Life-time saw there was no likelihood of his having any legitimate Issue to Succeed him in the Government Truly Sir I think I may say that was contrived by your Father Clarendon and your self and in it you intended the hurt of the People of England but God who governs the World hath made his want of legitimate Issue to be the greatest Blessing that ever England saw for by that means we have a King that well knows that it is most certain and evident to all men that the publick Peace and Happiness of any State or Kingdom cannot be preserved where the Laws Liberties and Customs Established by the Lawful Authority in it are openly Transgressed and Annulled more especially when the alteration of Religion is endeavoured and that a Religion which is contrary to Law is endeavoured to be introduced Upon which those who are immediately concerned in it are indispensably bound to endeavour to Preserve and Maintain the Established Laws Liberties and Customs and above all the Religion and Worship of God that is Established among them and to take such an effectual care that the Inhabitants in that State or Kingdom may not be deprived of their Religion nor of their Civil Rights which is so much the more necessary because the Greatness and Security both of Kings and Royal Families and of all such as are in Authority as well as the Happiness of their Subjects and People depend in a most especial manner upon the exact Observation and Maintenance of these their Laws Liberties and Customs This Sir is the Sentiment and Blessed Resolution of King William and this he and his Ministers put in Execution which is a blessed Change which we could not have lived to enjoy had Charles your Brother left any Issue behind him that had been capable of the Crown but that which you contrived for our Mischief is turned to our greatest Good for we have the best of Kings upon the Throne and the worst of Men taking of the Air at St. Germains 10. The late King Charles your Brother did obstinately refuse to enter into a League with those who intended to uphold and maintain the Protestant Religion This I must say of the Dutch that ever since they delivered themselves from the intollerable Yoke of the Crown of Spain their great aim and design hath been to promote the Interest of the Reformed Religion and have endeavoured to make Alliances with those Princes that were and are of the Reformed Religion and have endeavoured to make good these Alliances but how King Charles your Brother your self and the rest of your Partisans treated the Dutch ever since his Restoration to the Crown it is well known and how he in the compass of Ten years made Two ungodly Wars but as I said before I must say again The Dutch did most commonly send us home with broken bones Our Cause was Wicked and God gave us Success suitable thereunto and for what ends and purposes these Wars were made you and your most Christian Brother can very well tell but least Sir you should have forgotten those Wars give me leave to give you a brief note of them In the year 1665. it is well known that
by the House of the Conspirators supplying the French King with Men not a few but considerable numbers to the great discouragement of the Confederates engaged in the Common Cause against that proud Monster of Mankind So the Vote of May 23 1677. Resolved That an humble Address be presented to His Majesty That he would be pleased to enter into a League Offensive and Defensive with the States-General of the United Provinces and to make such other Alliances with such other Confederates as His Majesty shall think fit against the Growth and Power of the French King and preservation of the Netherlands And what was done upon all these Addresses truly very little but up starts a League made with the Dutch that was not worth one Farthing and how that Sham-League was kept we all very well remember But as a further proof of your Brother's Being unwilling to enter into any firm and hearty League with the Confederates engaged against the French King remember this Thâ—â— through yours and the Power the rest of the Conspirators had over him he could never be brought to enter into and be engaged in an actual War with France notwitstanding all the humble Applications made to him by Parliaments nay tho he passed a Bill to enter into a War with France and had the benevolence given in that Bill in order to the same yet a firm League was made with France the Interest and Religion of the French King and the King your Brother and your self being all one In the first place be pleased Sir to remember that the Parliament that was adjourned to the Third of December 1677. and then put off till the Fifteenth of January 1677 78 but that day being come both Houses met but by a Message to the House of Commons they are ordered to adjourn till the Twenty eighth and the pretended reason the then King gave or rather you and your Conspirators that his Majesty had matters of great Importance in order to the satisfaction of their Addresses for the Preservation of Flanders but it so fell out that things were not then so ripe as in a few days they would be therefore it was his Majesties Royal Will and Pleasure that the House do immediately Adjourn till the Twenty eighth of the same Month. The Message was very Grateful to the House of Commons and to many others who understood not the Conspiracy for the design was clear another thing than what they had conceived The day of their meeting comes and they are entertained with a Speech full of good Words yet he Reprimands them for their distrust and to shew them how they were mistaken they are told what a great care the King had taken of the Protestant Religion And in order thereunto he had concluded a Match with the Lady Mary to the Prince of Orange but you know Sir thaâ— it was full sore against his and your Wills a Prince Professing the same Religion wâ—â—â— us which by King Charles's good leave was a great mistake for I dare say that the Prince of Orange now our King never Receiv'd the Sacrament from the Church of Rome in all his days which to my certain knowledge King Charles did and afterwards Receiv'd it from the hands of a Bishop of the Church of England the self-same day But to go on with his Speech he told them that the Prince of Orange was a Prince ingaged in Arms to Defend the Common Cause of Chridendom and so he goes on and talks of Alliances and forgets not to call for a fresh supply that he might carry on his Alliances made and to be made Well Sir What was the effect of this Most Gracious Speech I remember that the House in return made an humble but a sharp Address and the Speech was not answered with Thanks in General but only in Particular relating to the King's care he had of the Protestant Religion which Address was Concluded on January 31st following In that Address they promise the King Supplies provided he would enter into an actual War with France and join in with the Confederates and Exclaim against the growing Greatness of the French King and that if it must be Peace that they would have the French King left in no better condition than he was upon the Conclusion of the Pyrenean Treaty I remember when this Address was made I was at St. Omers but we had news from Coleman how you resented it nay Sir it 's well known that the Address stuck terribly in your stomach as well as the Match between the Prince of Orange and the Lady Mary our Late Gracious Queen by which Sir you could not but easily perceive that the House of Commons had got some scent of the Damnable Plot that was carrying on against our Religion Laws and Liberty and your underhand-dealing with France and the Popish Interest But that men might not understand you too well your Agents were busy both in City and Countrey to nâ—â—â—ish a Report of Alliances with the Confederates and a War with France and so big they pretended to be of the War with France that they avowed the certainty of it both in words and in Print all this I say was to keep the Nation in horrid Ignorance To this end Sir you hired a Tool that had pawned his Soul for Bread to write against the French King but all was not gold that glistered there was no Money like to come because that the House was resolved to be satisfied that the Alliances were made and the War proclaimed This Sir you and your Party looked upon as a great hardship put upon the King and that the House of Commons took too much upon them but your Rogues made use of this Address to be a poor Cripple to beg Money even from France it self you know who undertook in that Affair to get Money from France upon the strength of that Address and was in a fair way of succeeding had not something happened between the Cup and the Lip In a word Nothing but War with France is talked of the French is content it should be a Bill passed for a War and Money was given the French King concurred with you in it a Law passes against the Importation of French Goods he wills that too for you had so ordered the matter that notwithstanding that Act by the diligent care of the Officers of the Custom-House there was more French Goods brought into the Custom-House than before But Sir you were not idle all this time for while the People of England were talking of War and Alliances you and your Conspirators were busie both at home and abroad oh the multitude of Messages that were sent to Rome and France and you know what Advice was given you that upon the account of the pretended War you should raise Forces for the Priests doubted not through the assistance of the Saints the work would be done you raised Forces and got Money tho for other ends than the Parliament gave it
to that of England Holland and the Reformed Churches of Europe to the Support of the Protestant Religion which You and the French King were to destroy by the Name and Title of the Northern Heresie I pray then what signifies a Nephew and a Son-in-law in such a Case as this Can any Man that ever knew you believe that natural Affection should interpose and prevent your destroying him since your natural Affection and Bigotry were and are still no Strangers in England or Holland Consider once more and then I have done with this Point You may remember that the French King did most generously offer you the use of his Purse to assist against the Designs of those that were Enemies to you and that Monarch Nay you know he protested That those that opposed you he should look on them his Enemies and you did as well protest That those who opposed him you would look upon them as your Enemies and it was the Opinion of the French King that the Parliament of England was neither in his Interest nor yours and you entirely agreed with him in that Thought of his so that it was your Opinion that it was necessary for you both to make use of your joint and utmost Credits to prevent the Success of the Parliaments Evil Designs against you both What Designs against you and the French King Yes Designs against you and the French King nay that which is more a dangerous Plot. Who are the Plotters And what was the Plot my Lord Arlington was at work without ceasing to advance the Interest of the Prince of Orange and the Hollanders and to lessen that of the French King And that he and several others were endeavouring to break the good Intelligence between Charles the Second the French King and your self wherefore you earnestly solicited the French King to assist with the Help of his Purse to prevent such Rogueries Thus Sir you make a Tripple League and set it up in Opposition to another In the one King Charles the French King and your sweet Self are engaged in the other the Parliament of England the States of Holland and the Prince of Orange are engaged The French is to furnish you with Money which is the Sinews of War the Parliament are declared Enemies King Charles stands as a Cypher only and therefore the French King and your self put your selves under the solemn Engagements to perform what was stipulated and strenuously to assist each other against the Designs of your and the French King's Enemies for that there was a dangerous and desperate Design on foot to advance the Prince of Orange and to lessen the French King And therefore can any think that it was unreasonable in you to endeavour to destroy him since his Advancement was of such a desperate and dangerous Consequence to the French King your Self and Romish Religion These things duly considered no Man that hath his Thoughts and Judgment keeping pace with each other but must from the Premisses rationally conclude That you and your Incendiaries must have a design of destroying the Prince and his Party and Protestant Interest in Holland notwithstanding any Excuses you may make to the contrary or your Party for you II. IRELAND Since Sir you have not left so good a Name in Holland as you might have pretended to it is much to be feared that upon enquiry your Name and Memory will not be very precious here in Ireland If you please to give me your Company thither I 'll assure you if you deserve it you shall have my good Word from thence for all the old Favours I receiv'd from you in the Day of your Power here amongst us but I suppose I shall find sad havock there made by you and your Plotters of the Protestant Religion and of the Civil Rights Liberties and Customs of the English and Protestant Interest Sir it pleased King Charles the Second to send the Lord Roberts as his Vicegerent into Ireland who was a warm Man and not at all Popishly affected and therefore not for your Turn or one that would gratifie the Conspirators in any one Point of countenancing Popery and therefore you procured him to be removed so that Ireland was put into such Hands as your Heart and Soul could wish for For whoever was Deputy or Lieutenant your Conspirator Boyle an Archbishop was the Governor a Fellow ' tho' of the Communion of the Church of England yet was a well-wisher to the Romish Mathematicks So Ireland was in a fair way to be Over-run and Ruined to all Intents and Purposes by yours and the Procurement of the Jesuites Upon the Removal of the Lord Robarts afterwards Earl of Radnor you remember who succeeded him and what Promises was made by this Successor and what Terms you required from him and how he complied and who it was that recommended this new Lieutenant as a Person fit to all Intents and Purposes to execute your Designs These things are worthy of consideration I assure you for we have considered them and what could be done in so little time as our King hath had many of those Abuses have been corrected and amended This Tool brought the Kingdom of Ireland into a sad condition by encouraging the Popish Recusants who are the profess'd Enemies to the Protestant Religion and English Interest by his or rather your Encouragement they grew more Insolent and Presumptuous than before that Tool of a Lieutenant came there which was of a dangerous Consequence to that Kingdom and the Protestant Religion and English Interest And it was like to have proved Fatal to that Kingdom had it not been in some measure prevented by the sending in his room that Great and never-to-be-forgotten Earl of Essex whom you and your Party procured to be Murthered in the Tower to make the Murther of the Good Lord Russel less difficult 1. For in the First Place in the Month of January 1672 3. you procured a Commission of Enquiry into Irish Affairs containing many Powers that were new and extraordinary not only Prejudicial to the English whose Estates and Titles were liable to be questioned but in a manner to Overthrow the King's Acts of Settlement which Commission you caused to be pursued to the great Charge and Attendance of many of the Protestants there And by this means you shook the Peace and Security of the whole Kingdom of Ireland It is well known Sir that you gave the Jesuites great Hopes of making a fair Step to establish the Romish Religion and old Gray the Jesuite in a Letter of February 1672. exhorts the Fathers at St. Omers to be very thankful to God that he had put it into the Hearts of the King and Duke to remember the sad Estate of the Catholick Religion in Ireland and that now there was some Hopes of Establishing it there since the Lord-Lieutenant was so well disposed towards it by the especial Care of His Royal Highness II. You were pleased to cause the Popish Party to be armed
cut him off whilst Hill slept in a Pocky Skin Now Sir to lay open to you and the whole World the truth of this matter I pray observe that this Hill and this Riggs were in your Pay to be Spies upon the Conversations of several Honest men as Butler and Seely was afterwards in your Brothers for the same purpose Riggs and Hill gets into the Company of several Dissenters and in their hearing did talk at a strange rate against the Government and what a secret Cabal there was meeting in London for the change of the same and how that the King your Brother and your self were for introducing Popery and Slavery But to prevent your Attempts of that sort the said Riggs and Hill told them That Arms and Ammunition were provided and that a number of honest men were left to rise and defend the true Religion Laws and Liberties of the Kingdom and that Deale Castle and Windsor Castle were to be surprized This sort of Talk they had with some few honest men who in the Integrity of their Hearts confessed that they heard Hill and Riggs talk at this rate Nay these Devils could not deny but that they did use this sort of talk and intimated that they had a License so to do Notwithstanding these poor Creatures denied that ever they had any hand in any such Conspiracy nor indeed was any thing proved but what Hill and Riggs swore they had talk'd to them yet they were condemn'd and basely murder'd and their Families ruin'd by your procurement and Hill and Riggs escaped with Impunity tho' not without Infamy Your Jesuites would have courted them both to the Church of Rome but they appearing to be such Rogues they were afraid they would be a Disgrace to them who from their rising up in the World had themselves been a Scandal and Disgrace to the Creation of God 5. You having some Success in this your Conspirators would not be idle but drew in some warm Men into another Conspiracy in the North. The then Sheriff of the County of York and a great man whose Name I will omit because he did in part afterwards make England some amends for that piece of Villany you know at that time to please the Court he was reconciled to the Church of Rome and no doubt whilst so he was a fit Tool to carry on so wicked a Design which was to discourse of the Oppression the Nation lay under thro' the Duties of Excise c. and the disturbance that the Lawyers had made in the Kingdom That your Brother and you were bringing in of Popery and Slavery at which these poor Creatures were enflam'd and being promis'd the supply of Mony and by the High Sheriff the Assistance of Posse Comitatus they were drawn in to engage But alas it was but a Trappan they were taken and executed upon the Evidence of some of them that were engaged with them but how you rewarded that Person of Quality afterwards it is well-enough known This was another of your Projects as the Person of Quality you employed hath told to several Friends with great Grief some of whom are alive to this day But not to forget one passage let me tell you that you and your Conspirators made at the Tryal of Mr. Alured two Witnesses of one Man first he appear'd in a strange disguise with one Eye and gave his Testimony under one Name and then withdrew and appear'd in his common Dress and gave his testimony by his own Name and so Alured was murder'd by the Conspirators This can be prov'd by good testimony 6. I will give you a short Truth of the Fire of London how that Eight Men were executed for having a design to fire the City of London on the third of September 1666. And great care was taken to lay it upon the Fifth-Monarchy-Men and the old Officers of the Army that served under the Parliament but in truth it was contrived by your self and your wicked Popish Party and by you and them carried on to destroy that great Protestant City that with more ease you and your Accomplices might introduce Popery and Slavery among us for London was the Bulwark of the Protestant Religion and English Liberties and therefore she must be made a Burnt-Offering to your self and Hellish Popish Crew 7. Another Instance of your Conspirators shamming their Plots upon poor innocent Protestants and that is the Case of the Lord Claypool and by this cast an Odium upon the whole body of Protestant Dissenters For in the Month of August just about the time that your Conspirators were to execute their wicked Design to destroy the King then you deal with Secretary Coventry to clap up that poor innocent Gentleman for designing to seize the King as he went to Newmarket and you had two Witnesses ready at hand to have sworn that Design against him the said Claypool who was by the Secretary's Warrant arrested for High Treason But he the said Claypool knowing nothing of the matter demanded to know his Accusers that was according to that Villain 's usual way deny'd him and he frown'd upon as if he had been the greatest Knave in England next to Coventry himself Claypool was as stout as that Knave of a Secretary was proud and insolent and as for Claypool he would scarce answer any Question so away he was sent to the Tower a close Prisoner This startled every one except the Conspirators and my self who was privy to the whole business by the repeated Orders Coleman receiv'd from Sir your self for his Prosecution that when the Blow was given upon the King it might be charg'd upon the Fanaticks And to that end Sing and Throgmorton two virulent Papists and Butler and Seely two Popish Spies of your Brother's and yours both pretended Fanaticks the last I think is a Cornish man and was a Major in the late Protector 's Army so that you and all your Popish Conspirators intended as one Man to revenge the Death of the King on the Dissenting Party concluding that the Vermin of the Church of England would strike in with the Popish Party since they hated a Dissenter worse than a Papist tho' differing from them only in a few scoundrel Ceremonies not worthy to wipe a Porter's Tail withal Therefore as a Prologue to that cursed Design you could not think of a man fitter than this Lord Claypool he being Son-in-Law to that Lord Protector Cromwell but you and your Villains were disappointed for a time from destroying the King for when the true Plot was discover'd your devilish Witnesses against the Protestant Party disappear'd And so much for Claypool 8. Another Instance of your implacable Hatred to the Protestants and of your designing to sham a Plot upon them was your old and very good Friend Mr. Thomas Blood whom you and your Brother set upon my self to bring me into a Conspiracy with Richard late Lord Protector and him the said Blood to dethrone your Brother and your self which Sir
was a great mistake for your Crimes were so plain and notorious that an honest man would have thought the Laws of the Land and publick Justice would have reach'd you both without such irregular Methods as these were but I discover'd the Letter and the Trappan escap'd for a while and then God cut him off with Infamy and Disgrace 9. I must entreat your patience to remember another Instance and that is the particular Case of Mr. Thomas Dangerfield who was maintained by you and your Conspirators with Twelve pounds per week to invent a Plot against the Protestants the better to colour or hide your own What Papers you and the rest of your Conspirators contrived to be put upon the Duke of Buckingham The Gentleman of his Horse was Mansfield and he was prepared to be a second Witness against the said Duke as Dangerfield was suborned to be the first so that you might have the Blood of that great man as being one in a Conspiracy to destroy the King your Brother But Dangerfield had not been so mindful of his Lesson as he ought and fixeth himself upon one Mansel who had been a Retainer to the Earl of Essex who at that time was carried away with the dissimulation of the Popishly-affected Party but instead of leaving them in Mansfield's Chamber left them in Mansel's Chamber In these Papers there was a List of Noblemen and Gentlemen that were to be sworn against as being in a Conspiracy against the Life of the King your Brother and your self and Church of England And to make the World believe that these Papers were not forged this Dangerfield repairs to Secretary Coventry your old League-breaker and informs the Secretary who was privy to the whole Concern of a dangerous Plot against the Government and that there were dangerous Papers in the Chamber of Coll. Mansel that would make the same out but the fellow tho' he had been a Rogue all his days as God would have it scrupl'd the Oath tho' if he had said in Mansfield's Chamber he should have had a Warrant without an Oath but mentioning the Name of Mansel the Secretary was startled because that Mansel was a Favourite of the Earl of Essex against whom this Conspiracy was not at first to appear therefore Coventry would do nothing without an Oath in relation to Mansel because of the Earl of Essex who was then actually a Privy Councillor therefore Dangerfield was resolv'd to have the papers brought to light and therefore gets an Officer or Officers of the Customhouse to search Mansel's Chamber for prohibited Goods and then these papers were seiz'd And Mansel hearing of what was done when he came to his Lodging and that papers of dangerous consequence was found in his Chamber behind his Beds-head where he had never laid any he immediately repairs to the Council and complains of his usage before Dangerfield had told his Story Well then what becomes of this Affair so foolishly miscarrying in its first birth I must observe to you that Dangerfield is called in question and tho' he had many Friends in the Council and many that knew the Design well enough yet the Blunder that Dangerfield made was so great and his Story hung so ill together that the Conspirators that were at the Board began to be confounded and were much dejected that their Tool had succeeded no better for besides all his self-contradictions shrewd proofs were brought against him Yet notwithstanding the aforesaid blunder and his being so confronted with Major Richardson and others Dangerfield was as bold as his Folly was great and stood in it that the Papers taken in Mansel's Lodgings were not put there by him till at last the proof of the Customhouse Officer that searched and Dangerfield's own words the Cheat and the Roguery was most manifest so that the Council tho' many of them your Conspirators and his intimate Friends were of necessity obliged to commit him to Newgate who being there was still upheld by that Whore Cellier and the rest of your Conspirators who had redeem'd him out of Newgate for this very end and purpose and had forbad him to discover but some Letters being discover'd and he being out of all hopes made his application to the then Lord Mayor to take his discovery which was done and upon that Discovery it plainly appear'd who set him on work to frame such a piece of Villany You were so nettl'd at the Discovery that instead of the Lord Mayor's having Thanks return'd him for his Service to the King and the Nation that he met with a Check at Court for meddling in that which concerned him not But by this Trick the Earl of Essex's Eyes were open'd and he fairly left you and the Council abhorring such Villanies as never was to be parallel'd in future nor heard of in past Ages Your Sham-Plot thus miscarrying and the Book found in the Meal-Tub shewing who they were that was to be sworn out of their Lives falsly appearing you know Sir that you were with your Accomplices at a stand for Sir you know that this Villany if it had been placed with Mansfield the Duke of Buckingham's Servant who was to have been a second Witness with Dangerfield and both these to have been corroborated by Blood Butler and Seely you would have cut off by a Form of Justice all such persons as had stood in opposition to your wicked Designs and Practices so that a new Parliament should have been open'd with the noise of a Presbyterian Plot therefore you know the Parliament was prorogued for a longer time and your self forced to part with a small Spell to get this thing done and the French King pressed for a bigger Seame which was happily prevented by the Duke of Buckingham 10. I must beg your Pardon if I put you in mind of another piece of Roguery your restless Conspirators undertook For a new Parliament being to meet at Oxford in the year 1680 1 they were resolved to welcom that Parliament with a Protestant Plot in good earnest to the end with more ease you might bring your cursed Designs to pass In order to this it was agreed by your Crew that Papers containing Treasonable Matters should be got to be written and lodg'd in the Houses of private men and shuffled into Gentlemen's Pockets at Oxford and before the meeting of the Parliament they should be seiz'd with such Papers about them and one Fitz-Harris who was to be their Tool was well acquainted with one Everard that was a Villain much of the said Fitz-Harris's stature or standard for it was a hard matter to know which was the greatest of the two This Everard had been countenanc'd by the Earl of Shaftsbury and therefore the said Everard was judg'd the most fit to joyn with him in the Roguery And Everard had agreed with this Fitz-Harris to be seized with these Papers about him when they had dispersed as many of them as would do the business but those that employ'd
the said Persecution were reduced almost to Beggery or to live upon the Charity of Friends Some were forced to fly the Nation and yet were more loyal under their Pressures and Provocations than your Cut-throat Papists were under their then Caresses and Favours received from your Brother and your self Nay a reverend Minister of the Gospel of Christ who had been very instrumental in your Restauration yea and ventur'd his Life for your Brother's Restauration in the year 1650 you suffer'd to perish in Newgate as a Reward for so great a piece of Service to your Brother and your self and Family and for no other reason but because he could not comply with some Rascally Ceremonies that our Ecclesiastical Vermin had borrow'd from the Church of Rome to Adorn our Protestant Worship and because he would not take the Oxford Oath lay'd upon the Nation to enslave it 8. Another Project you had for the ruining the Interest of the Protestant Religion and the Interest of England was the Advancing of Men that were Enemies to the Protestant Interest into the greatest Places of Trust As What a Sett of Villains had you made Judges of the Land by which means you brought all the Matters of Civil Justice into great Uncertainties by reason of the Tenour of their Commissions and the Ignorance of the Rogues you employ'd Therefore how miserable was the Nation who were obliged to Answer to such Judges that were forced to comply in all things with the Directions that were given by you and your Wicked Cut-throats or else to be turned out at yours and their Pleasure If we look further you had in your Brother's time the disposing of all Military Employments And how you did shew your Hatred to the Protestant Religion and the English Interest You did in his time raise a great many Persons to the greatest Military Trusts both by Sea and Land Strangers as well as Natives so that by these measures your Conspirators became Masters of the Affairs of the Government of the Nation and of the course of Justice and you had all the Church Vermin engag'd with you to subject the whole Kingdom to a despotick Arbitrary power and all these joyn'd together to execute your wicked Designs to enslave and debauch the People of the Land 9. To compleat the Work that nothing might stand in your way of Establishing your Popish Religion you murder'd your Brother who was uncertain in his Engagements in the Conspiracy for when he found it was not safe for him to appear in promoting Popery he soon left you Or if a Sum of Money could be gotten from a Parliament he commonly bless'd the Nation with a Proclamation or two against Popish Priests Jesuites and Popish Recusants or pass a Bill or so to the prejudice of the Popish Party as he did in 1673 when the Test-Bill passed as also another in 1678. This obliged you and your Conspirators to hasten his destruction which you had long contrived You found a fit Tool and as fit a Dose to do the Work in it you had your desired Ends and so you mounted the Throne Which brings me to the Second Point What you did in order to the Ruine of the Protestant Religion and the Government after your accession to the Crown II. Your Tyranny was very cruel but short yet full of strange and surprising Circumstances It was highly astonishing to see a Popish Prince ascending the Throne to rule a Protestant Nation and defend a Protestant Church but Sir you had no such Designs in your Head for you shew'd what you would do with our Laws when you could engage your Conspirators to dispense with part of the Oaths that you should have taken It is manifest and notorious that when you were upon the coming to the Crown you was receiv'd by all the People of England Scotland and Ireland as King without the least opposition for our Ecclesiastical Vermin had made your way clear by their Doctrine of Passive Obedience and Non-Resistance and the Divine Right of Succession and the possibility of preserving the Glory and Grandeur of their Church of England by a Popish Prince and that there was more danger from Fanaticks than from Papists and such-like scoundrel Notions You cannot but remember that King Charles your Brother having received the deadly Dose your Conspirators had prepar'd for him on February the 6th 1684 5 he went to his Place that very day Sir you were proclaim'd King to the sorrow of all that wish'd well to England and its Religion Liberties and Laws you then appear'd at the Council-Table as King and by all your Conspirators you was owned and saluted as such to whom you were pleas'd to make a sort of a Speech in which you were pleas'd to declare your self to this effect THat Since it hath pleased Almighty God to place you in that station and that you were now to succeed so Good and Gracious a King as well as so Kind a Brother you thought it fit to declare That you would follow his Example and more especially in that of his great Clemency and Tenderness to all his People That you had been reported to have been a man for Arbitrary Power tho' that had not been the only Story that had been made of you That you would make it your Endeavour to preserve Government both in Church and State as it was by Law establish'd That you knew the Principles of the Church of England were for Monarchy and that the Members of it had shewn themselves good and loyal Subjects and therefore you would take care to defend and support it That you knew the Laws of England were sufficient to make the King as great a Monarch as you could wish and therefore as you would never depart from the Just Rights and Prerogatives of the Crown so you would never invade any Man's Property And that you had ventur'd your Life very often in the defence of the Nation And that you would go as far as any Man in preserving it in all its Just Rights and Liberties This Sir is the sum and substance of what you were pleas'd to say at the Council board and one would have sworn that you would have taken up the Trade of being Speech wright-general to the whole Band of your Conspirators I am confident your old Friends the Jesuites that had been hang'd but a little before could not have outdone you though it had been to have saved their Lives Well it was a Speech and how true you were to this Speech you shall judge and your Conspirators too if you will but consider 1. You said You would not invade any man's Right and Property and that you would preserve the Nation in its Just Rights and Liberties And so you did for you the next day after your accession to the Crown publish'd a Proclamation for the continuing the payment of the Custom and Excise which were expir'd by the death of the King your Brother for several weeks after Did not this shew
of what they had confess'd against themselves others that had been in actual Arms hundreds of them were hang'd in the principal Towns and their Quarters hang'd up in the Highways as lasting Monuments of your Grace and Compassion And you being glutted with Blood you then thought of other Punishments for some other of those Offenders many Men and Women were order'd to be whip'd publickly in the Market-Towns others had their Estates seiz'd and a great number were sold into America to serve all days of their Lives so that there was nothing but the Voice of lamentation and weeping to be heard In a word your Grace Clemency and Tenderness was such that several of the Western Counties were made so many Fields of Blood and Butchery Nay Sir those who escaped your Mercy by vertue of your Proclamation were forced to retire to the Woods and desolate places their nearest and dearest Relations not daring so much as to harbour or relieve them so that several starved to death or perish'd with cold for want of things necessary for the preservation of Human Nature Some fled to the Dutch for shelter and were not only kindly receiv'd but as civily entertain'd till you began to have some Shame in you and pardon'd some in hopes that they would be of use to you and others came over with the Prince of Orange who by the Just Judgment of God upon you and your Adherents banish'd you the Kingdom and the Lords and Commons of England deposed you as useless to God and Man But Sir this is notorious that you never entertain'd the least Remorse of Conscience for the murther of these men in the West for those you pardon'd paid a Price sufficient for their Pardons or if you gave them Pardon freely it was to prevent their setting up their Trades in other Countries And Jefferies your Tool that you ought to have hang'd you let him go off with no other Punishment than to be made Lord High Chancellor of England who also did enrich himself with the Sum of 15000 l. extorted from one person who wanted a Pardon for nothing else but the not delivering his Country which he might have done for half the Mony I am more sorry that Jefferies got the Mony than for that Gentleman 's losing that Sum. Truly Sir I was in hopes that the Time of that Villain Jefferies had been come in which he should not only have paid his Debt to Nature but to his Faults too but he is gone to his Place and thereby he hath sav'd the Hangman a Labour but had he liv'd he would in my opinion have been made an Example for all his Villanies that he had committed both as a corrupt Judge and a trayterous Chancellor 3. You were pleased in the years 1687 1688 to publish a Declaration for Liberty of Conscience and professed in both the said Declarations That it was always your Judgment that no man's Conscience should be restrain'd in Matters of Religion Now Sir if that were true why then did you persecute the Protestant Dissenters for their Conscience from Feb. 6. 1684 till the latter end of the year 1686 And if it were not your Judgment why then did you proclaim Liberty of Conscience as your Judgment But Sir to deal truly in the point you had a Popish Fabrick to erect and you wanted Liberty of Conscience to be the Scaffold and when you had done your business of settling Popery you would have laid Liberty of Conscience aside as your Brethren abroad of the Popish Religion have always done And this was the Clemency your Brother was pleas'd to shew to Dissenters and afterwards he and you could with great Tenderness suffer them to perish in Prison and you your self when you were in the Chair persecuted them to the ruine of some Thousands of Families you surfeited your self and Party with the murder and ruine of so many Men and yet you pretend to Clemency and Tenderness To conclude this particular your Brother and you made two Declarations for Liberty of Conscience for no other intent but to cheat the People of England into Slavery and Popery to the end that you might damn the Body and Soul of the Nation at once From such Clemency and Tenderness I trust God hath deliver'd this Nation and will preserve her under the present Government all your pretences to the contrary notwithstanding 4. What shall I say of those worthy persons that you kept in Jayl for the pretended Damages of 100000 l. and others of 10000 l. and others for one Fine or another What shall I say of the Murther of the Lady Lisle and Alderman Cornish Mr. Ayliff and Mr. Nelthrope and poor Disney These were Monuments of your Clemency and Tenderness 3. You promis'd in your Speech to the Council That you would maintain the Church of England as it was establish'd by Law Nay I think if you had not wrong done you you swore it too at your Coronation And Sir if you please call to mind how you kept your Promise and Oath in relation to the Church of England and the Protestant Interest nay you gave a reason for your Promise it being the only Reason that you ever gave in your Life I will put you in mind of it Because said you Her Members had shew'd themselves Loyal Subjects and that the Principles of the Church of England had been for Monarchy Therefore 1. How did you maintain the Church of England as by Law establish'd Were there not Laws in force for the preservation of the Church of England that had been enacted in the Reigns of several Princes that were your Predecessors amongst which Laws as a security of the Church of England against Popery That all persons whatsoever that were advanced to any Ecclesiastical Dignity or to bear Office in either University as likewise all Civil and Military Officers should declare they were not Papists but of the Protestant Religion and that by taking the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy and the Test yet you and your Conspirators annulled all those Laws that were made to secure the Protestant Religion against Popery Was this to defend the Church of England and to maintain Her Laws I leave it to all men to judge But you and your villanous Commissioners thought your selves so wise as to reconcile Contradictions and therefore you were resolv'd to try your Skill upon the Church and the Nurseries of Learning which prov'd fatal to you and your Party by the Just Vengeance of Almighty God 2. Did you not against express Law and against the Promise of your maintaining the Church of England set up an Ecclesiastical Commission and impower the Persons named in that illegal Commission to take cognizance and to give arbitrary directions in matters Ecclesiastical in which Commission there was one who profess'd the Popish Religion and others that were Abettors of Popery and Popish Superstition therefore to what deplorable condition was the Church of England reduc'd that a Commissioner for the Church
of your Brother's time and in the beginning of your time they were given up to such a secure state and judicial blindness that the Protestant Religion was in greater danger of being supprest than ever it was since the Reformation notwithstanding your Promise of maintaining and preserving it 7. Another Indication of your Care for the maintenance of the Ch. of England was the breaking thro' those Laws which forbid the erecting Churches and Chappels for the exercise of the Popish Religion and also against Monasteries and Convents and more particularly against the Order of the Jesuites for you did contrary to your Oath and Promise made to support the Ch. of England give out arbitrary and illegal Orders to erect Monasteries and in contempt of the Law you set up several Colledges of Jesuites to corrupt the Youth of the Nation Nay Sir that you might not leave your self without Witness of your stedfast Resolution of maintaining supporting and defending the Ch. of England you rais'd up a Jesuite that was in the Popish Plot in which the death of the King your kind and loving Brother was plotted and contriv'd and the subversion of the Government both in Church and State to be a Privy Councillor and a Minister of State By all which you did evidently shew that you were restrain'd by no Laws and therefore the Ch. of England must perish you being so well seconded in your Popish Progress by your most excellent Commissioners of Ecclesiastical Affairs But to conclude this Paragraph how those Villains that acted in that Commission of yours can look Mankind in the Face after they have done so many things against all Law Honour and Conscience I do not understand The truth is those that are yet alive have with the Whore in the Proverbs wiped their Mouths and say They have done no wickedness and without all doubt if they might be trusted would with as great earnestness appear against your Cause and Interest as they did wickedly in your time espouse it but they would be such a Reproach to an honest Government as would render the best and most honest Cause suspicious if engag'd in it IV. I come now to consider a 4th Passage in your Speech to the Council wherein you were pleas'd to say That you had been reported to have been a man for Arbitrary Power but you did assure them that you would preserve the Government in Church and State as by Law establish'd And That you knew that the Laws of England were sufficient to make the King as great a Monarch as he could wish How you preserv'd the Government of the Church is plain enough nothing indeed is more plain than this that you intended its Destruction and utter Subversion and that nothing less would serve your turn notwithstanding its Principles were for Monarchy and its Members had shew'd themselves Loyal Subjects How fared it then with the State Surely the Civil Government was preserv'd since the Laws of England were sufficient to make the King as great a Monarch as he could wish In truth Sir there was but a lamentable account to be given to your more than Glorious Successor of your management of Affairs in the Civil Government all things were out of order at his accession to the Crown which you may have forgotten therefore Sir be pleas'd to remember in the first place your Villains of your Council and of your Ecclesiastical Commission As they were in a Conspiracy against the Ch. of England to turn our Religion into downright Popery so they were in a Conspiracy against the State to turn the well establish'd Government of this Land into downright Slavery and this not secretly as if those Rascals were not asham'd of what they did for they had that matchless Impudence to act in an open and undisguis'd manner and to carry on your villanous purposes you and your Accomplices set up the Dispensing Power by vertue of which you might suspend and dispense with the execution of the Laws at your pleasure and in order to give this devilish Maxim of yours and your Conspirators countenance and credit you so manag'd that matter that you obtain'd an Opinion from the Judges most of which were mercenary Rogues who declar'd their opinion That this Dispensing Power was in the Kings of England as if it were in the power of these Villains to offer up the Laws and Liberties of the whole Nation to your self to be dispos'd of by you arbitrarily at your pleasure and expresly contrary to those Laws that were enacted for the liberty of the Subject In order to obtain this Judgment your Conspirators did before hand examine secretly the Sentiments of the Judges and procur'd such of them as could not in Conscience concur in so villanous an opinion or sentence to be turn'd out and others that had neither Law nor Conscience were substituted in their rooms so that by changing of hands they found out 12 matchless Rogues from whom you obtain'd that wicked Judgment which if my Memory fail me not was laid down in these 5 particulars 1. That the Kings of England are Soveraign Princes 2. That the Laws of England are the King's Laws 3. That it is an inseparable Prerogative of the K. of Engl. to dispense with Penal Laws upon necessity and urgent occasions 4. That the K. is the sole Judge of that necessity 5. That this is not in Trust given to the K. but 't is the ancient Remains of the Crown which ne'r was nor can be taken from him Give me leave Sir to examin these Particulars and let the world see how you were abus'd and how you abus'd the Government by the Opinions of these 12 mercenary Rogues 1. That the Kings of England were Soveraign Princes What then Must you by a Dispensing Power do what you list were you not subject to those Laws which you were sworn to keep And if you had not fled might you not have been call'd to an account Might not the People from whom you deriv'd your Authority have had any Power over you And was it not dangerous both to Church and State to have a Popish Prince so mighty that no Protestant House of Peers or Commons dare controul him Truly Sir I own that the Kings of England are soveraign Princes yet the Nation by their Representatives did ne'r allow the Kings of England to do what 12 mercenary Judges should deliver as their Opinions for Sir it was ne'r intended when you assumed the Government that your Will and Pleasure should stand for a Law for the Laws that support the Grandeur of the Crown limited your Will to Reason and ty'd your Commands to the Word of God the Laws of the Realm and the Weal of the People And since Sir you regarded not these things but follow'd the Sentiments of your corrupt Judges your Will was unlawful and Commands unjust The Kings of England always have been and still are Soveraign Princes but what makes them so Is it not the Law of the Land And
that necessity I never took you so much behind hand in Sense and Reason but that you might plainly see that this is but a bantre of these Rogues for they neither stated the necessity and the urgent occasions you had to forswear your self and never inquired whether any necessity or any urgent occasions could excuse you from lying under the guilt of Perjury Then they came off with an impudent lye and say the King is sole Judge of that necessity He is sole Judge of nothing but what he is intitled to by the Law where the Law makes him a sole Judge there I do and own my self bound to obey him as such But once more Sir Where was this necessity of which you were to be sole Judge When did it spring Out of what part of the World I believe if you could have convinced the Nation of this necessity and these urgent occasions they would not so readily concurred to your going to St. Germains were your Popish Friends oppressed And did the necessity arise from thence If it did Why did you not tell the Parliament of this Oppression Were they in want of Places at Court and Imployments under you which they could not hold Truly a great many Protestants went without them notwithstanding their being qualified Oh! but the Priests of the Church of Rome were in danger of the Law I never could yet see that day If they would be quiet and the Religion of the Church of Rome was your Religion Well if it was Had you not better to have refused the Crown rather than to have taken it with such Incumbrances and Clogs as should expose you to such necessities and urgent occasions of Perjuring your self and Damning your Soul and Ruining of three Kingdoms It was well you were the sole Judge of the necessity for if an honest English Parliament had sat in the time of your necessity and urgent occasions they would have made these Rogues have swung for their villainous Advice 5. That this is not in Trust given to the King but the Antient Remains of the Crown which never was nor can be taken from him you nor no King in England ever had any thing but what you received in Trust from the People of England in Parliament assembled therefore this was the greatest of Impudence that these Twelve ignorant Devils could be guilty of for what Authority Power or Riches have the Kings of England but what they received from the People and it is plain the Power and Authority that you received was for the benefit of the People and not for the ruin and destruction of the Laws you consented to you were intrusted with the Conservation of them not to Suspend or Dispense with them at your will and pleasure But what King of England was there since the pretended Conqest that was not Sworn to keep the Laws and defend the Rights and Liberties of the Church and People of England and who Administred this Oath to them but one or more in the behalf of themselves and all the People of England Your Brother though bad enough took the Government as a trust reposed in him by his good People of England what part was it then that was not a Trust they trusted him with vast sums of money they trusted you but with a very little I pray Sir would your Scoundril Conspirators but tell me what parts were the Remains of the Crown and how they came so to be if they cannot it is all Cheat and Nonsence By your management notwithstanding all that might have been said to the contrary even in your Reign without the danger of being hanged you obtained from your Judges this wicked Opinion I suppose you were not Idle but was resolved to proceed according to this Judgment of theirs for you presently invaded the Liberties both of Church and State I have given you some instances of your Invasion upon the Rights of the People of England in relation to Matters of the Church Now let us proceed to see how you carried your self in reference to the Civil Rights and Liberties of the People of England which brings me to a second Instance of your invading our Civil Rights 2. As your Brother did begin and made a very great Progress in so you went on to invade Priviledges and to seize the Charters of the Towns that had a right to be represented in Parliament and by your Tools procured Surrenders of them to be made to you especially where they were poor and not able to defend them And a Gentleman that valued himself upon his Oath that he had made to a Corporation whereof he was a Magistrate and therefore refused to deliver the same you rewarded him with a two or three years imprisonment and had not God interposed it had been to the ruin of himself his Wife and Children By these Surrenders Sir you caused all the Magistrates to give up their Rights and Priviledges to be disposed of at your pleasure and the pleasure of your Villains the Conspirators and by this means you placed in several of these Towns Popish Magistrates notwithstanding their incapacity or such as were Popishly affected and willing to concur with you in all your evil Designs and Purposes assuring your self that when necessity or your urgent Occasions should force you to call a Parliament you might have such a Parliament returned as should at once set up Popery and Arbitrary Power Nay Sir our danger in your time and in the time of your loving and kind Brother did most and doth still arise from those Beggarly and Paltry Borroughs that either are by Charter or Prescription enabled to send Members to Parliament 3. That you might not fail in the Counties of obtaining your wicked ends you gave Orders to Examin all Lords Lieutenants Deputy Lieutenants Sheriffs Justices of the Peace and all other that were in any Publick Employments if they would Concur with you in the Repealing the Test and Penal Laws and those whose Consciences would not permit them to comply with your wicked Designs and Purposes were turned out and others who you found would be more compliant to you in your intentions in defeating the End and Execution of those Laws which had been made with so much Care and Caution to preserve not only the Protestant Religion but also our Civil Rights and Liberties and into many of those places you put in Papists and other persons of Arbitrary Principles notwithstanding the Law had incapacitated the former and the other for want of Reputation and Interest could do their Country but little Service unless like Devils they could do mischief by serving your Designs and the Purposes of your Conspirators so that this Nation was in a deplorable Condition and must have perished had not God raised up the Prince of Orange now our King to come over and deliver us out of your Hands 4. As your Brother in his time hated the Peoples Petitioning him for the redress of their Grievances and had a
or the thing real when I think on a Prince in such an Age as we live in to be converted to such a degree of Zeal and Piety as not to regard any thing in the World in comparison of Christ These are the Discoveries of your Old Servant Mr. Coleman but to rivet the Matter I pray consider what Discoveries you were pleased to make of the Union of your Interest with that of the French King which Sir will put the Matter out of dispute Give me leave to put you in mind of your Letter you wrote to the French King's Confessour wherein you were pleased to own that the Interests of the French King and yours were so clearly linck'd together that those that opposed the one should be looked on as Enemies to the other and that the French King had told you that he was of the Opinion that neither the Lord Arlington nor the Parliament were in his Interest nor yours 2. As it is as clear as the Day that your Interest is not an English but a French Interest so now I must tell you in the second place that your Interest being a French Interest it will render your return impossible and the attempt in order to it very foolish and irrational You know that the English Nation is never safe unless a check be put upon the growing Greatness of France Therefore do but observe the Address of the House of Commons March 10. 1676 they put the King your Brother in mind of the great Danger that the Nation was exposed to by reason of the growth of the French King's Power and Greatness Now any Man that is in the Interest of the French King his Interest is no ways reconcileable to the Interest of England 1. As to its Peace 2. As to its Trade And the Consequence of both these are the Riches of the Nation which must be consumed by a Prince that is of an Interest different from that of the People 't is true the present War with France hath proved very chargable to the Nation but here is our Happiness that we have a King that advanceth the Interest of our Trade his People and He go Hand in Hand Their Interests are the same with His and His the same with Theirs which to me is an Argument that when it shall have pleased God by His Arms to reduce the French King to Reason that then no Nation under the Heavens can or will be more happy than the English Nation But if a Prince shall instead of pursuing the Interest of his People pursue their Destruction by setting up and advancing the Interest of a Foreign Power his Government cannot stand This Sir was that which lost you your Crown And can you then expect by that Interest to regain the Crown of England by which you strangely lost it Therefore to conclude this Head let not your Conspirators think that it is either probable or possible that ever the People of England will ever be brought into a French Interest or ever admit you to resume the Throne and Government since that you purely lost it for the sake of that Interest Your Scoundrel Abettors here at Home are such a sort of Animals that the Reformed Nations Abroad are at a stand and cannot tell what to make of them their Carriages of late Years have been so unaccountable and since it hath pleased God to put it into the Hearts of most of the Princes of Europe though of the Romish Communion heartily to embrace the late Revolution in England as the last Effort for the Common Liberty of Europe and have entered into the strictest Alliance with our King though of a different Religion to support it it looks like a Dream to meet with Men that call themselves English Protestants embarqued in your Interest in opposition to the Interest of their Native Countrey A little Priest of the Church of England in a Sermon of his on the Day your Father made his Exit was pleased to threaten us with an endless War that would be entailed on the Nation he is a mighty Votary for your Cause and Interest notwithstanding his Oath to King William to the contrary But Sir a thousand such Fellows can never reconcile your Interest with that of England nor would your Restoration put an end to his supposed War for it is not reasonable to imagine that so many Noblemen and Gentlemen who have associated and by their Association have engaged to support the Interest and Cause of our King will tamely submit to your Restoration Or that King William will ever abandon his Throne or that its possible that the Common Cause of Europe will ever be suffered to sink in such a manner as to comply with the Pride and Ambition of your Self or of him whose Cause you have espoused and whose Interest is the very same with yours When you were upon the Throne your Aim was to destroy the Interest of England but we have been too many for you and the Throne is filled up with one that will maintain and support our Interest notwithstanding the vain Efforts of your Crew both at Home and Abroad to the contrary And therefore that Loggerhead of a Cathedral Priest hath not made one single Convert to your Cause and Interest by the Noise he made of disputed Titles and endless Wars I will observe this to you that the Rascal hath more Preferment than Learning or Honesty but what can we expect of an Apostate 4. We are Freemen and therefore we can never be supposed ever to admit you who have always been a Person of Arbitrary Principles to govern this Nation You cannot but remember that the English Nation hath a very great Security for its Liberties and that is the Government it self with a good King at the head thereof and that is our present Happiness for our King Rules not upon the same Terms as your Brother of France doth for he by Force Usurps that share which his People ought to have in the Government and for several Ages past hath been in possession of an Arbitrary Power which yet no prescription can make Legal and he exerciseth it over the Persons and Estates of his People in a most Tyrannical manner And this your loving and kind Brother and you aimed at Witness your Dispensing Power that you took upon you when you ascended the Throne But our King hath so ordered it that his Subjects shall retain their Proportion in the Legislature the very meanest Commoner of England is represented in Parliament and is a Party to those Laws by which our King is Sworn to govern himself and his People 'T is true you Swore but you made no Conscience of your Oath nor did you in the least boggle at the Violation of our Laws you hated that way of Government which you had solemnly promised to maintain and defend Witness the Names you used to give the Parliament of England Now according to the Laws of the Realm no Money is raised but by
a Field as any of external Felicity wherein to exercise their own Virtue and to reward and encourage it in others In a word your Majesty hath enlarged our Liberties in consenting to the Bill to Regulate Tryals in Cases of High-Treason in which there are large Immunities granted to any that fall under that black Circumstance that their Lives may not be at the mercy of a Mercenary Judge or Judges if God should in his Judgment leave poor England to such Men But your Majesty hath begun and I question not but your Royal inclination will carry you on to compleat our security from such Vermin Therefore to conclude what a Government is this we enjoy than which nothing can come nearer the Divine Perfection The Monarch enjoys a capacity of doing all the good imaginable to Mankind but under a disability of doing any thing that is Evil. This Scheme of the Civil Government the Late King did well know and therefore in Council on the day of his Accession to the Crown he was pleased to say That the Laws of England were sufficient to make the King of England as great a Monarch as he could wish or desire so that your Majesty may see that he could own that the Greatness of the English Monarchy had its Birth and rise from the Laws Who then would have lessened himself as he did by breaking in upon those very Laws that had made him Great And who would have broken so excellent a Government as made him Secure and Happy And what Subject of England Papist or Protestant that would lose such Immunities and Privileges by joyning in with that unhappy Man to destroy themselves Were they so in love with King James that they were not satisfied till they had him Nay he and they waded through King Charles's Blood that he might Reign Why then did they not keep the terms of the Government which would have been the most effectual way of continuing him on the Throne Besides all this we cannot forget that the Parliaments under Queen Elizabeth King James King Charles the First and King Charles the Second made it Treason in whosoever that should attempt to Seduce any one of the meanest of your Majesty's Subjects to the Church of Rome And the Long Parliament held in the time of Charles the Second to all Penalties of the Statute Law added an incapacity for any Man to say that that King was a Papist or an introducer of Popery What Lawless and incapable Miscreants were these What wicked Traytors were those Men who did indeavour to pervert the whole Body of Protestants and to bring that about in effect which even to mention was penal at one Italian stroke attempting to subvert the Government and Religion to kill the Body and damn the Soul of the Nation Your Majesty finds to this day there are such a Set of Men in this Nation who have undertaken and have made it their business under your Majesties happy legal and perfect Government by the intended destruction of your Royal Person to introduce a French Slavery and instead of so pure a Religion that your Majesty ventured hard to preserve to establish the Roman Idolatry either of which Crimes are of the highest nature for if we look upon the Government if the Murther of your Royal Person be a fact so horrid as no Man can find words enough to declare his detestation and abhorrence of it how much more then is the Murther of your Royal Person with an intent to Assassinate the Kingdom And Sir none will deny but that to alter the Monarchy of these Kingdoms into a Republick is High Treason So by the same fundamental Rule the Crime is no less to Murther your Royal Person in order to make the Monarchy Absolute Sir I beg your Majesty's leave to tell you that my Heart is much enlarged to your Majesty I beseech your Majesty that your Royal Heart may be for this one time enlarged to me in your Grace and Pardon for this trouble I now give your most excellent Majesty Let me undertake upon serious inquiry to give your Majesty some satisfaction who these Men are that have from the Year 1660 to this day attempted to Subvert our Government and our Religion Had these Men been the old honest Cavaleers that fought for Charles the I. or suffered much in the time of Charles II. it would have been allowable in them as oft as their Wound did break out at Spring or Fall to think of a more Arbitrary Government as a sovereign Balsom for their Aches or to imagin that no Weapon-Salve but that of the Moss that Grows on an Enemies Skull could cure them or could they to have kept their Hands in ure have fought their Cause over again since they saw they were neglected and left to Starve yet their Age and times they lived in and their unjust usage they met with from two Kings might have pleaded something on their behalf in mitigation of Damages But Sir give me leave to make this Remark to your Majesty concerning those Gentlemen that they were and are still if any of them remain too Generous too good Christians and Subjects too affectionate to the English legal Government to be capable of such an Impression whereas these Conspirators that carried on the design of subverting our Religion into Popery and changing the Government into downright Slavery are such as have not one drop of Cavaleer Blood or no Bowels at least of a Cavaleer in them but such as starved the Cavaleers to revel and surfeit upon their Calamities making their Persons and the very Cause by pretending to it themselves almost Ridiculous Or had these Villains been all of the Popish communion and avowed so to be give me leave to say it over again to your Majesty your danger would have been the less their Religion would in some measure have been answerable for the Errors and Extravgancies they might have been guilty of to promote it but these render their intended Villany more black they were Protestants and of the Church of England too that joyned with Papists to Assassinate your Royal Person What can any Man say for them Your Majesty knows what to do with them These Villains because I perceive they lye under a great difficulty to find Accomplices enough at home to Mutiny and Rebel and Murther your Majesties true and loyal Subjects therefore they put themselves under the Banner and Pay of the French King to compleat their wicked designs and purposes to bring a foreign Enemy to Invade us that King being endowed with all those which in a French Prince or in an Abdicated King may pass for Vertues but in any private Man they would be Capital and moreover so abounding in Zeal for Popery and Slavery above all other Princes that none else could engage both Body and Soul in such a Villanous Undertaking to which Consideration adding that their Interests are both one and the one is and the other would be the Master of
your self in a different stile In some of your Papers you write your Heart and Soul in words at length and not in figures then it 's your pleasure that we are to know to what we are to trust when ever you shall return to your Native Countrey and enjoy your pretended Right Sometimes you intimate as if England were to be the Field of Blood and that Man Woman and Child should be a Sacrifice to your Revenge which made your little scoundrel Party here to prick up their Ears and look as if a Leg or an Arm were not sufficient to appease your Wrath or a Carts Arse or a Pillory could not make satisfaction to your self and Party for the wrong you and your Friends have suffered from us nothing less than death and damnation of the Honest Nobility Gentry and Commons of England can attone for the delivering themselves from your Tyranny and the Oppression they suffered from you and you Insolent Party Nay the poor Fishermen men of Feversham must not escape your Fury and Vengeance But in your latter Papers you are pleased to express your self in softer terms and the Vengeance threatned in one Year's Papers is hushed up and fairly laid to sleep and I remember in the last you are pleased to give us a French Grimass and smile upon us as if you were made up of nothing but Grace Mercy and Peace and unparallell'd Humility in order to create in us a good thought of the bitterness of death being past notwithstanding you have in some of your former Papers given us to understand That in regard you have sustained such Affronts from the People of England you might justly have proceeded severely with us yet in your younger Papers you think fit by a more gentle Method to use means to regain us to your self which is the first Born of all the Cunning you and your Friends at St. Germains have been pleased to bless this Nation withal But Sir it hath been your will and pleasure not to give your self the trouble of emitting any more Declarations of your good Intentions towards us for these two or three Years last past therefore I do think fit to acquaint you and your Trusty Friends and Councellors at your Court at St. Germains that are now with you for I understand some of your old Partisans have sometime since left you that you must have but a very mean and low opinion of the English Nation if you think ever to return hither again upon the strength of your last Bantering Paper called A Gracious Declaration to all your loving Subjects For the People of England have not forgot but very well remember That for divers Years in the Reign of King Charles the Second your dear Brother that there was a horrid Design carried on by him your self and your Party to change the Lawful Government of England into an Absolute Tyranny and to convert the Established Protestant Religion into down-right Popery than both which there can be nothing more destructive and contrary to the Law and well-being of this Nation And whilst you your self was pleased to usurp the Throne these Three Kingdoms were highly sensible with what violence you and your wicked Party overthrew our Laws Liberties and Religion and what Ruin and Vengeance attended these poor Nations notwithstanding all your Oaths and Promises made to the contrary in Council and in a Packt Parliament that met in May 1685. which as bad as it was it could not keep pace with you and your Popish Cut-throats in your Intentions of enslaving the People of these Kingdoms and of totally overturning our Laws Liberties and Religion Before I begin my designed Method of laying before you yours and the Practices of your Accomplices to put you in mind of some Passages in your Brother's Reign of which the Parliaments of England had just cause to complain as worthy of your Consideration and when they did address they found it was to very little or no purpose for no redress could be obtained from him And by whose Advice and Counsel such Misdemeanors were committed your self can best tell that it was your self King Charles the Second was no sooner restored but contrary to the Expectation of all those good men that were the Instruments of his Restauration they found to their sorrow 1. That Justice was corruptly administred and Offices appertaining to Justice dearly bought and sold 2. Benefices and Ecclesiastical Dignities unworthily collated upon Men that deserved no other Titles than of common Rogues and Cheats Men that were many of them unskilful in the Word of Righteousness and others that were Persons of unsound Principles and of worse Morals their Doctrines tending highly to enslave the Nation and their Morals to debauch it This was the Advice of an old Friend of yours and a great-Prop of the Church of Rome Cardinal Mazarine whose Counsel and Advice it was To debauch the Kingdom of England and make them Atheists and then they would be soon good Papists This was in the Year 1654. at which time you and your Party were but at a low ebb but how much you pursued the Counsel of the old Cardinal I leave all reasonable and unbyassed Men to judge and how your sneaking Eccleastical Parasites contributed towards it It is plain enough to any man that will look back into those Times There was one Jones your Chaplain who you ruined because he would have contributed to the advancing the Protestant Religion in your Family according to his Office and Calling of a Minister in the Church of God You may remember by whom Bishopricks and other Ecclesiastical Dignities were thus procured truly by your Popish self and Popish Whores Popish Pimps and Popish Bowds and not without Money or some Promise to favour your Catholick Designs and how they suffered your quondam Consort to apostatize to the Church of Rome it is well known But they poor Prelates are gone to their Places and there let them remain till God shall reckon with them and others of that Oorder for betraying of God's Cause which they pretended to espouse tho in truth they were Enemies to him and his Gospel 3. In the third place They saw new Impositions daily invented and levied and the Publick Treasure of the Nation and the Revenues prodigally consum'd Sir you know how 200000 l. was spent and in order to what and the Parties that receiv'd the same were in a Conspiracy against our Laws Liberties and Religion And did not you your self join in the wasting of the King's Treasure and procured great Summs of Money to be issued out of His Majesty's Exchequer to keep your Priests Jesuits Monks and to find your Irish Officers with Subsistence-money till that you should have occasion to make use of them for those Ends and Purposes that might advance your Cause and wicked Purposes against the English Interest and the Protestant Religion Well therefore might you in your Speech to the Council Feb. 6. 1684. call Charles the Second your
could never learn But Sir was it not hard that they should be incapable of Offices and Employments since they had purchased them at so dear a rate but these Arguments prevailed not so the Bills were passed and the Parliament was dismissed till the 27th of October 1673. and good reason there was for their dismission for their sitting was grown very uneasy to your Popish Conspirators But Sir we could not but laugh in our Sleeves to see some of the Conspirators take up the Cross and quit their Imployments as the Lord Clifford the Lord Bellasis and Sir Thomas Strickland and others who had long appeared zealous Sons of our Church yet discovered to be of the Synagogue of Rome as soon as the Test or Purgatory Bill passed and truly Sir we were not sorry when you appeared to be of the same Complexion with those other Conspirators tho at the same time I must tell you That your going off did astonish many men there being no Record in History of any Prince that changed his Religion in your Circumstances But did your Conspirators stand still and put up the Sword that was drawn against the Dutch No they had got 1250000 l. therefore you and they strove with all imaginable strength to regain by the War that part of the Cursed Design that was lost by Parliament tho some of you forsook your Places rather than your Consciences yet Sir you never wanted some double-dy'd Sons of the Church of England to succeed in your Places upon the same Terms your Popish Conspirators held them so that they were but your Conspirators Deputies who followed the same Councels and carried on the same Design for this Year was a fruitful Year of Engagements with the Dutch the French carries all before him by Land but we got nothing from the Dutch but maimed Ships and broken Bones we had indeed changed our General but our Success was the same For you remember with whom we were in Conjunction we may thank our selves for keeping such ill Company So that in a word I may say those Heretick Dogs as they were termed by the Great Lewis were too many for our English Popish Conspirators What then Did we nothing by land had we not an Army at Black-Heath and General Schomberg at the head of them Yes we had but that good Gentleman when he saw the Army and understood that they were not an Army against the Dutch but were designed against London he fairly quitted his Post and the Kingdom at the same time as being ashamed of your Conspirators Intentions in the raising that Army He being a French-man you imagined he would join with you in bringing in the French mode of Government and your Irish Papist that was Major-General was to have brought in the Irish Religion the latter would have been true to the uttermost of his power and Irish Discretion but the former was a Protestant and so washed his hands of the business You will say that the French were on our side yes Sir they were but it is as plain as the Sun shining at Noon-day that the French in this second War against the Dutch intended nothing less than really to assist us for he was no Changeling for he had practised the same Art at Sea in the first War the Conspirators had against the Dutch when he was in league with them for his Navy never did them any service for his business was only to see us batter one another and it 's well known that when he pretended to be on our side and to assist us they then only took an opportunity to sound our Seas to spy our Ports and to learn our Building and contemplate our way of Fight to consume our Navy and preserve his own to increase his own Commerce and to order all so that the two great Naval Powers of Europe being crushed together that he might remain Prince and Lord of the Ocean and by consequence Master of all the Isles and the Continent into the bargain To which purpose you and your Banditti furnished him with all possible Opportunities as I shall by and by relate as well to put you in mind of what you and the rest of the Conspirators did do as to inform those of your Party here that are still ignorant of the Transactions of those Times Notwithstanding that we were always worsted by the Dutch yet they having a regard to the preservation of our Religion and Liberties which you had agreed to part withal to the French Court made strong Applications for a Peace and the Conspirators for a Supply to carry on the War and all Endeavours were by you and your Friends used to render the Dutch odious to the Parliament witness the Importunities that were used and great Assurances given In a word nothing but the Voice of War was in their Mouths But you know that there was an unhappy Accident fell out which I shall show you in its proper place that made the King put off the Parliament that sat down the 27th of October till the 7th of January following and in the mean time what Artifices your Accomplices used for to prepare the Parliament to have an ill Opinion of the Dutch you may see in the Speech made by that Villain of a Keeper who was your Tool to all intents and purposes you may remember how he represented the Dutch how averse they were to Peace and Reason and how uncivil and indirect in their Overtures of Treaty with His Majesty and therefore a demand was made of a proportionable and speedy Supply But the Dutch who sound themselves abused and obstructed and hitherto in a manner excluded from all manner of Application and whatever means they had used was still misinterpreted and ill represented they were so wise and industrious as by this time to have undeceived most of the Members of Parliament therefore the House of Commons were for a Peace to be made with the Dutch and in order thereunto would not part with one Penny judging that to be the best means for a Peace to follow and began to call some of your Rogues to an account that had been principal Contrivers of that most ungodly War this was an excellent but a new way of negotiating a Peace with the States-General I well remember that some of your Friends began to look blew upon the business looking every day to be called to an account for their Conspiracy against our Laws Liberties and Religion in the contriving and carrying on this War as aforesaid By this means Sir but full against your will I can tell how it grieved your Soul to see the general bent of the whole Nation to be against the War especially because the French were engaged in it In a word The House of Commons advised your Brother to a Just and an Honourable Peace with the States-General which the King put off till it could be no longer opposed then a Peace was concluded with the Dutch and when that was done the
shame and disgrace if ever they were capable of any that King was himself informed a little before he was executed that the Jesuits at a general Meeting at Paris in revenge for his condescending in the Treaty at the Isle of Wight to pass some Bills in prejudice of them and the Romish Religion had unanimously resolved by the Power and Interest and Influence that they had in and upon the Army to bring him to Justice and get him executed and accordingly when the stroke was given both one that was a Romish Priest and Confessor brandished his Sword and proclaimed that now their greatest Enemy was cut off and destroyed I suppose Sir you and your Party will be convinced if you observe a Passage from one that knew those Transanctions and see what he saith in his Letter to a Reverend Divine of the Church of England it bears date Aug. 9.1673 This I may safely say and will do it confidently That many Arguments did create a violent suspicion very near convincing Evidences that the Irreligion of the Papists was chiefly the occasion of the murther of that Prince the odium whereof they would file to the Account of the Protestant Religion However Sir your Popish Conspirators having not only escaped the legal Arraignments upon this account but having since the Restoration of K. Charles the IId been esteemed by your self and some other pretended Friends of that King they have thereupon arrived at more respect and to carry on your damnable Designs they have enjoyed more peace in their Persons and Estates than they were in possession of at any time since the Reformation 4. But how little they deserved this Honour and Peace both in their Persons and Estates you may see in a fourth Particular and that was in the Escape of the King your Brother from Worcester 1651. how did they above all men endeavour to betray and sacrifice that King unto the hands of his Enemies And who was to pay the 1000 l. promised for his being discovered and taken but Father Joseph Symmonds and Father Carleton Compton both Jesuits and whence that Money came Sir you well know as did the Queen your Mother for you know that your Mother and your self was in a plot against his Life that you might wear the Name and Title of a King as being the more likely to perform what your Brother had so lustily promised to the Popish Party It is true Sir that one or two of the Romish Persuasion amongst many loyal and faithful Protestants both Male and Femâ—le might then have contributed to that King's Deliverance but such Sir have been by your self and Party well chidden reproached and discountenanced and called Fools for this grain of Loyalty more owing to their English Blood than Romish Principles 5. Since my hand is in give me leave to add a fifth Instance of their Loyalty to your Family That Popish Lord is not unknown nor yet forgotten who brought a Petition to the late Protector signed by about 500 Principal Papists in England wherein they promised upon condition of a Toleration of the Popish Religion here by a Law their joint Resolution to abjure and exclude the Family of the Stewarts for ever from enjoying the Crown This Sir you know startled you when you heard of that Attempt a man that hath but an Irish Understanding may easily judge from hence of the Loyalty of that Party of men I would willingly Sir appear to any one of your dear Joys and stand by his Judgment in that Case 6. One Point more and then Sir I shall have done upon this Head and that is the Loyalty of your Popish Conspirators who to ingratiate themselves with the Government of the said Protector procured Manning to be a Spy upon your Brother and he was not only allowed well by that Party by your direction but also had a very Bountiful Pension too by the said Protector but he was in due time found out and executed by your Brother he was of the same Red Letter with your self and therefore when dead he had Masses sung for him as the usual Reward and Playster There were other Specimens of their Loyalty but I forbear to mention them now because there are some other things to be discoursed with you but this I say That we should have forgotten and forgiven all these soul Proceedings of your dearly beloved Popish Party and we should not have envied the Security they enjoyed or the Favours through your procurement they had attained to provided they had not abused them in joining with you to subvert the Protestant Religion and Government in turning the one into downright Popery and the other into French Slavery but alas good men and true such an opportunity of promoting the Catholick Religion was not to be lost they having a Prince converted to such a degree of Zeal and Piety as not to regard any thing in the World in comparison of the Conversion of England that hath a long time been oppressed and miserably harassed with Herery and Schism to accomplish which you would assassinate the King's Person destroy our City murther his Majesty's Subjects subvert our Religion and disturb the Peace of Mankind and your present Design that is discovered doth prove beyond all manner of objection and doubt That that Sir throw your Brother's and your grace and favour they did then carry on their Designs for advancing the Power of the Pope and French King to advance the Religion of the one and the Interest and Government of the other none daring to suggest the least thing to bring them under jealousie who would not be aspersed for being Maligners of the King 's best Friends and your Fellow-Conspirators till one appeared and took the Popish and French Interest by the Collar and gave it such a deadly wound that it could not recover it self to this day but you were even with him for it when you usurped the Government and so I conclude this Head 2. A second thing that gave you and your Popish Conspirators such an advantage for the carrying on you wicked Designs and Purposes was the unhappy Divisions amongst us poor Protestants for as the Conspirators improved that little Stock of Credit they had by being for Charles the First in the Civil War against himself and Parliament and the Priests Jesuits and Fryars made use of that Credit to reduce us to the Obedience of the See of Rome so you and the rest of the Popish Crew made use of our Divisions amongst our selves to carry on the same Design Now Sir there were two main things which did greatly administer to this unhappy Division 1. The Parties divided were come to a more equal Ballance as to numbers on each side respectively than at any Season heretofore For Sir consider this That during the Reigns of Q. Elizabeth K. James I. and K. Charles I. the Dissenters from the Established way of the Church of England were but few in comparison of those who were for Prelacy
and the Rites and Ceremonies required by Law in their Worship and Service of God so that there being little or no jealousy of any danger to the Church of England from the Protestant Dissenters how zealous soever they might be in their way yet the watchfulness of the Prelates and their Curates were chiefly exercised upon those of the Romish Communion But the Protestant Dissenters since are like to the People of Israel in the Land of Egypt very much multiplied to that degree that they are come nearer to the other Party than heretofore they did the main care therefore of the Prelates and their inferior Clergy together with old Roger their Guide did much abate towards their old Friends of the Church of Rome and exerted the same to the Protestant Dissenters 2. But another great Cause of the dividing the Protestant Interest was the very severe but just Entertainment the Prelates with the Scandalous and Ignorant Clergy met with from the Protestant Dissenters in the late Times of Reformation when they were restored by the return of your Brother from Exile they measured the same again to the Protestant Dissenters when they had the Law on their side and your Grace and Favour into the bargain they remembred all the old Scores by which great Animosities and Heats have been between Party and Party the Prelates aiming then at the ruin of the Dissenters for aiming at the reformation of Prelacy and Superstition By this I say a difference is risen that in all humane probability can never be made up We cannot but from hence very easily not only by Reason but by Experience gather the great use you and the rest of the Popish Party made of them to carry on their Designs for the subverting the Religion and Government of this Nation For as the pretence of these Divisions hath been made use of as an Argument to pervert such as knew not that the Divisions of your Synagogue of Rome are more numerous and their Fewds more irreconcileable than ours so subtile have your Conspirators been by winding themselves into all Companies nay mustering themselves in all Parties endeavoured both to heighten the Differences to make their Annimosities not only hotter but more immortal and while the one Party of Protestants have been crying out against the other for their Schism and the other crying out against them for their Superstition and Persecution you and your Party to the reproach of both were undermining that holy Faith which they equally center in and carrying a Design of destroying the one as well as the other they being in you esteem both equally Hereticks 3. A third thing that contributed much to your bringing of Popery and Slavery into these Kingdoms was the general Prophaneness and Debauchery which had overspread these Nations beyond what in any former Reign had been observed Sir You in this by and with the Consent Advice and Example of the King your Brother and your Conspirators followed the Counsel of Cardinal Mazarine in the Year 1654. at Paris when the Popish Party were but at a low ebb in England That the only way to accomplish the Work in England was to debauch them first and make them Atheists and when that was done they would soon make good Papists for this you well knew and so did your Popish Party That a prophane debauched Person is truly of no Religion and therefore indifferent to seem to be of any as Interest and Temptation sways him so it is plain that no man cares to be of that Religion which condemns all those Ways and Practices which he is resolved to pursue with his utmost vigour Do but take notice that the Popish Religion was such as would allow them in all those wicked ways to which their vicious Inclinations led them and doth secure them from the horror and dread of Eternal Wrath and Vengeance for your Religion maketh those to be no Sins tho committed by some against the express Command of Christ himself If they are such things as the Word of God hath set a mark upon as enormous then they are made Venial Offences only and if they are Sins which your Synagogue calls Mortal which are indeed the most daring and prodigious Enormities through their Doctrines of Pennance and Absolutions and Papal Indulgences you are secure from the Pains of the damned in the other World By this means Sir you and your Conspirators increased the number of your Converts and strengthened your hands so far that you boasted to Beddingfield your Confessor That you did not doubt but in a very few years to have such a number of Catholick Gentlemen and others tha you feared not but to have a Catholick Army sufficient to suppress the Factious Protestant Party in case they should rebel this saying of yours Beddingfield the Jesuite communicated to the Jesuites at Wild-House upon the 24th of April 1678. Nay Your Zeal was such for the Popish Religion that poor Mr. Jones your Chaplain-Naval and Domestick for opposing Popery was by you turned out of his Imploy and left as a Sacrifice to that wicked Prelate of Winchester Dr. Morlay for saying That it was his fault that your Dutchess turnest Papist and that the said Morlay might have prevented the Dutchess of York 's being seduced to Popery if he pleased and that her turning Papist was to be laid at his door You therefore would not for a long time pay him his Wages tho that most Christian Prelate had sued him upon the Statute de Scandulis Magnatum to the poor man's utter ruin for his Living was extended and he left to perish for want of Bread And he had never received his Arrears due to him in your Service had I not shamed old Sir Allen Apsley publickly in Westminster-Hall for it you pretending it was referred to him Moreover I told him If he did not pay Jones I would fetch it out of his old Bones it was a time Sir when Men began to observe your steps and perceive your Designs so Jones much against your Will got his Money and after that Jones had suffered several years Famine from that Villanons Old Priest of our Church and he could not hold his Living from him any longer he most Graciously delivered Jones from the extent but Jones being so ill used by Morley he died within a year or two after he had his Living restored but by the way Sir by the Dutchess of York I mean her that was the Daughter of the Earl of Clarendon sometimes Lord Chancellor but the two Ladies your Daughters were by God's Providence saved from being corrupted by you and your Conspirators Now Sir it remains that I tell you or rather put you in mind what Steps your Conspirators took to ruin these Nations they were Sir your Favourites and of the same Religion and of the same Interest with your self for you having made such Advantages from the three Heads before-mentioned and by these means strengthened you Hands to dispose you to do the Three
in that Kingdom and some of them were Commanders to others Instructions were given from Richard Talbot then your Agent there by your Order for those of the Roman Catholick Party to furnish themselves with quantities of Arms and this your Conspirators said were to keep the English in order This Sir can be proved whenever there is occasion No Man can think that Sir Ellis Leyton a Papist that was Secretary to the Government by your especial Grace and Favour should not pursue the same Instructions that your Agent Talbot had received Nay give me leave to tell you That your dear Brother was highly engaged to reduce that Kingdom to a Popish Establishment according to the Agreement he had made with Madam your Sister to whom he had promised to begin the Establishing the Roman Catholick Religion in Ireland and that High-Mass should in a short time be sung at St. Patrick's in the City of Dublin the Metropolis of that Kingdom It is true Sir Ellis Layton was a lewd Fellow but there was none that did your Business in jest so well as he did for the time of his residence in Ireland For under the Notion of Ridiculing the Irish he promoted every Man that was a Papist if he had but common Sense and a Place open And it is well remembred what vast Quantities of Arms and Ammunition were daily sent from England to that Place and considerable Quantities both from France and Spain which your Party used to say would do more good towards the Establishing the Catholick Religion than so many Bibles And great care Sir was taken by you to secure the poor Irish Catholicks in the North that the Planters of Ulster and the Scotch should give them no disturbance that is in plain English they should themselves stand still and be peaceably murthered by your Irish Cut-throats 3. How many Popish Judges Justices of the Peace Sheriffs Coroners Mayors Sovereigns and Portriffs were made by your Princely Care in that Kingdom And was this for the Preservation of the Protestant Religion and the English Interest there No certainly it is well known by several Letters of yours to Richard Talbot and Sir Ellis Layton that the Reason why you gave such Instructions was to crush and ruine the Protestant Religion and the English Interest in that Kingdom for you having Popish Judges and Popish Sheriffs you would quickly find Popish Juries and Irish Witnesses to swear any thing against the Protestant Nobility and Gentry that stood in opposition to your Proceedings in that Kingdom Then Sir what Security had a Gentleman of his Estate when Judges Sheriffs and Witnesses were against him The many Instances of the Wrongs and Oppressions done to the Protestant English Gentlemen the Records of your Villainous Court of Claims can tell how they were sworn out of their Estates and Fortunes by your Rogues and Banditti I am certain that this Point being gained by You and your Conspirators it proved very Fatal to Ireland 4. You took great care of the Church too not of the Protestant Church but of your Popish Titular Archbishops Bishops Vicar-Generals Abbots and others that had Power from Rome to exercise Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction that they should be established in particular Sir your old Friend Peter Talbot the pretended Archbishop of Dublin and your old Friend James Lynce Archbishop of Tuam both of them had been notoriously disloyal to the King your Brother in that they had long lived in Disobedience to him and in Contempt of his Laws But to cure that you procured a Pardon for them both which Boyle the Chancellor passed under the Great Seal by your special Command and Direction nay you hectored your Brother when he was unwilling to pass Talbot's Pardon and challenged his Promise and Agreement made at Dover at the Interview with Madam his Sister and yours And Sir that all things might appear with some Face of Grandeur a Meeting of all the Popish Archbishops Bishops Vicar-Generals Abbots Priors and Priests for the settling and establishing their Clergy both secular and regular which was connived at by your Tool of a Lieutenant upon which the Popish Party grew so insolent that a Protestant went in danger of his Life amongst them nay to preserve their Stock in many Places they were forced to pay Tythes to the Popish Priest as well as to the Protestant Minister But when the Earl of Essex was sent over with much difficulty some small Check was put to these insolent Carriages of the Irish Papists Tuam fled and Talbot withdrew for a while or rather absconded themselves and the Publick Popish Schools were put down and many secular and regular Priests did depart the Land For which Sir you hated the Earl of Essex and Plunket you also despised because he said It was not Prudence for Catholicks to live in Contempt of Law and therefore you may remember how and by whom his end was promoted and with what zeal you and your Party sent him out of the World he was of the same Opinion with Cardinal Howard that in whatsoever Business Talbot was engaged he ever spoiled it and he was impudent and false to his Party for which the Jesuites turned him out of the Society but that he might not in discontent leave the Church of Rome the General of the Jesuites procured of the Pope that he might be made a Bishop But this Sir I will assure you That if Talbot when he was taken in Ireland had been taken in England he would have done You and your Party a signal Piece of Service for Coleman had certainly given Evidence with him against you So that your traiterous Correspondency with France and Intentions to destroy the Prince of Orange and the Protestant Religion within these Realms and all over Europe would have been so fully detected that it had been almost impossible for you to have escaped the hand of Justice Of this Sir I can give a particular Account if ever there should be occasion And Plunket himself gave you such an Item of Talbot's Intentions in that Point that Coleman's Death was hastened and Talbot dy'd strangely in Prison and so you escaped to do more Mischief And how well you rewarded Plunket for his Good will towards you is well known and all to oblige your Cut-throat Jesuits to whom they were mortal Enemies 5. On the 26th of Febr. 1671. It is remembred that for the better Encouragement of the Irish Papists and that they might many of them live in greater Bodies together you procured Letters from King Charles your Brother and a Proclamation to give Liberty in General to all Irish Papists to live in Corporations against the Act of Settlement and to be excused from all those Oaths that were required from those who were duly licensed according to the true intent and meaning of that Act And your Agents Siâ— Ellys Leyton and Richard Talbot were very vigorous to see those Letters and Proclamations put in Execution Then the Irish flocked into Towns
that the King your Brother was brought to that state of Security that if any Male-content among them should not prove true to them and their Design his Majesty would not give ear to their Information and therefore prayed them to be diligent for now was the time or never and accordingly Messengers were sent to Father La Chaise viz. Edward Nevil your Confessor and William Busby to carry the aforesaid Letters to La Chaise and these did bring home La Chaise's Answer and withal several Letters that Coleman had written to him upon that Affair in your Name and by your Command that bore date in the month of January as these also did in the month of January 1677 8. some little time before the Parliament sat down And then Sir there was a Pension obtained for Coleman your diligent Secretary of 2000 Crowns a Year and another from Rome but what that was I do not so well remember But this is not to be forgotten that the Fathers of S. Omers had great Assurance of considerable Sums from the Pope and from the General of the Jesuits if any Progress were made in that Glorious Attempt Here Sir you and your Party signalize your selves in several particulars worthy of your being put in mind of 1. The great Preparations that were made for the Rising of the Irish Papists 2. That the great Design of Rising was for the Defence of their Liberties and Religion 3. You were not certain but that your Brother might engage in earnest with the Parliament for entring into an actual War with France 4. That in case he should your Conspirators would let in French Forces into Ireland 5. That your Brother was brought to such a state of Security that if any Malecontent amongst you should not prove true to you or your Design he would not give ear to their Information 1. The great Preparations that were made for the Rising of the Irish Papists and this your Agent Talbot was engaged in and your Secretary Coleman was privy to it and you too by the Letters that Coleman wrote by your Order to the said La Chaise with whom you your self left this Jesuit to correspond Coleman being a Servant to you and a trusty one too But there were many Protestants that had their Eyes opened and made their Observations of the Carriage of your Teagues how imprudently insolent they had been and how they were Armed and Countenanced by some in the Government and therefore they can attest the Truth of this Proposition of mine and they are Men of unexceptionable Credit So that if you will try the Merits of the Cause you may come forth and be heard 2. That the great Design of Rising was for the Defence of their Liberties and Religion and the Recovery of their Estates You know Sir that you were converted to the Religion of the Church of Rome and you were so zealous for it even to a Miracle that you regarded nothing in the World in Comparison of your Religion And so it was with your Friends here in Ireland and whilst the English Protestants were uppermost you had instilled this Principle in them by your Jesuites and other Conspirators that they were but Slaves And as for those that could not recover their Estates forfeited by Rebellion by the dint of Perjury they must try by the dint of the Sword to destroy the English Protestant Interest or else they were not only Slaves but Beggars too into the bargain 3. They were not certain but that the King your Brother might engage in earnest with the Parliament in an actual War against France you know Sir he had been but uncertain in his Proceedings with you in this damnable Conspiracy for he had broke the Engagements that he had made with Madam your Sister in the Establishing the Popish Religion in Ireland and that he had passed the Test Bill in England and that he refused to sign Coleman's Declaration for the dissolving the Parliament notwithstanding his solemn Engagements to you and your Party to do it and that he received the Sacrament in his Chappel according to the Usage of the Church of England though he had received the same but that morning from Ireland the Jesuit according to the Rites of the Church of Rome and therefore neither Teague nor your self were sure of him 4. In Case he should heartily engage with the Parliament in an actual War against France your Conspirators would let in French Forces into Ireland and so they did when you Trayterously Invaded that Kingdom and what they did for you then they would have done as much for you eight or ten Years before They were zealous for the Popish Religion and so were you and your Interests were both one and they are to this day I think I need not go further to prove that Point 5. The King your Brother was brought to such a state of Security that if any Malecontent amongst you should not be true to you or your Design he would not give ear to their Information you know who it was that so governed the King and led him by the Nose but you supposed your selves safe But this remember that when Information was made of this Hellish Conspiracy the King your Brother heard it and the Evidence was so strong and the Plot made so plain that he could not gainsay it he being in every part of it himself excepting that of his own Life and was convinced that the Parliament ought to have the Examination of the same put into their hands which was accordingly done And what the Parliament that was within some few days after the Discovery thereof to sit did do and what Credit they gave to it and three other Parliaments you and your Followers cannot forget 9. Your Conspirators the Jesuites from St. Omer's were made acquainted by Letters from those of London in conjunction with your Servant Coleman That William Morgan and one Lovel Jesuites were dispatched as Messengers into Ireland to see how Affairs stood there and this Morgan's and his Companion 's Charges were paid by the said Coleman who gave them Instructions in your Name to encourage the Irish Papists to defend their Religion and Liberties And Coleman and the Jesuites transmitted 2000 Pound for the Supply of their present Wants and a Promise of 4000 Pound was in your Name made by Coleman and the Jesuites in case there should be any Action But Sir these Messengers Morgan and Lovel they went away on the last of January 1677 8. and returned the latter part of March following and gave such a melancholy Account of Peter Talbot's lavishing the Money that you had in a special manner entrusted him withal and not applying the same for the use of the Irish as you had directed that it strook a great Damp upon the Minds of your Conspirators here in London and That the said Talbot had forged Receipts of several Summs of Money by him pay'd to several of their Officers though the same were
one all their days Of these Sir you made most excellent Papists in process of time or at least Favourers of the Popish Party Your Conspirators had an Eye upon the City of London and therefore that none might stand in your way of debauching that City all the sober old Officers of the Army was not to come within 20 miles of it This was done by the Advice of your old Friends the Priests who visited all your soured Cavaliers and your Conspiring Villains and never left urging to them the danger the Government was in till they were disarm'd and banish'd London 'T is true the great Argument was the Safety of the Government but the true one was your making your progress in perverting the People to the Popish Religion for all Virtue being discourag'd both in Church and State they had the fairer opportunity of proselyting the prophaner part of Mankind to the Religion of the Church of Rome I must confess that some few that were sober men had the fortune to be prefer'd both in Church and State but what Joy you and your Conspirators conceiv'd when they were remov'd either by Death or Age is not forgotten Those Statesmen that oppos'd Popery or Arbitrary Power were soon remov'd and if they had the hap to dye in their Offices they could do no more against Popery and Arbitrary Power than tell their Friends what Care you took to bring it in But this I say if any were but zealous he was commonly laid aside as useless and dangerous to the Government for as long as they lived or continued in Power you and your Party could not go on so smoothly in your Practices against our Religion Laws and Liberties 2. It is well remember'd how your Conspirators carried a Villanous Design of putting on Sham Plots upon Men in order to take away their Lives and Estates to the utter ruine of their Families and Posterity for ever These were so many that to enter into the Particulars of them would be enough to fill a Volume but I will therefore reckon these that follow as the Chief of them 1. If you please I pray you Sir to call to mind the rising of the Fifth-Monarchy-men on the 6th of Jan. 1660 1. Who drew in those men to that foolish and wicked Attempt but your old Acquaintance Dr. Goff and Strange the Jesuite and Gray and another Jesuite that went by the name of St. George and Ashby that was afterwards Rector at St. Omer's who counterfeited themselves Fifth Monarchy-men For an Uncle of mine one Mr. Thomas Buttivant was engag'd with them and had been in the Rising if the Three hundred Horse had come they promised should joyn Fifteen hundred Foot and this Buttivant was to have been Commander in chief of the Horse He was so intimately acquainted with this Gray that they called Brothers this Gray I having seen so often with that Uncle of mine that when I came to be acquainted with the Jesuits notwithstanding it was so many years after I found this Gray to be a Jesuite who had pretended to Fifth Monarchy Principles and renewing my acquaintance with him he told me That he and Strange and others of the Society with this Goff used to preach to them in Swan-Alley in Coleman-street and at Mr. Buttivant's House in Cobb's Yard in Petticoat-lane and that they had drawn in several of those poor Dogs as they termed them to be hang'd but they themselves were protected by you at St. James's and in Whitehall and 't is true that Gray had the Fifth-Monarchy Notions to a Hairs-breadth In this Affair the Society were at some Hundreds of pounds charge for they were liberal of their Mony and possessed these poor Creatures of your Brother's and your being Papists and that your design was to destroy the Interest of Christ in the three Nations and to set up Popery and Slavery and so drew them into that Folly of Rising and all with this intent that they might obtain some severe Laws against the Protestant Dissenters in order to weaken the Protestant Interest within these three Nations and boasted very much of your being privy to the whole Design And by your Carriage in other Affairs you will be by all sober Protestants judged guilty of This. Against such strange Practices the poor Dissenters did at that time in their Addresses and Declarations to the Government positively without any Equivocation or Mental Reservation declare and protest their abhorrence and disavowed all such Principles as might tend to such irregular and disorderly Practises as tending highly to the dishonour of GOD and the Protestant Religion yet you and your Jesuites and Priests made great use of this to beget a disesteem of them in the future Parliament 2. Another Conspiracy was formed and contrived by you and your Banditti against Protestants and this was in November 1661. A doubty Knight of your Friendship forged several Letters from several Ministers of the Gospel about Worcestershire and several other Counties and in conjunction with this Villain several Jesuites acted amongst whom was Father Fitz Patrick and Father Peter Talbot afterwards the pretended Archbishop of Dublin and old Courtney all of these were employ'd by your self as I have seen in several Letters wherein they complained of your delaying their being satisfied for that Service But the Intrigue did not hold Water tho' several honest men suffer'd Imprisonment for the same But the Forgers and Framers of this Hellish Conspiracy in this pretended Plot had an aim at the rewarding Mr. Baxter for the great Service he did in your Brother's Restauration and yours 3. Another of the same nature was invented by your Conspirators in Oxford wherein the Names of several men of note and value to the number of above a Hundred whose Lives were design'd to have been made Sacrifices to Hell and Rome but neither did that Cheat take any other effect than to continue the then Parliament exasperated against poor Protestant Dissenters as men of restless Spirits that were always disturbing the Government So that by these Artifices you did not only find a way to throw them out of their Livings but endanger'd their Lives also 4. Your Priests and Jesuites not making their Sham-Plots to hold upon the Dissenters your Conspirators try what they could do with two Pillars of the Church of England one Hill and Riggs both highly carress'd by three special Guardians of the Church of England's Interest that is old Cosens old Hinchman and Sheldon three of the Devil's Brokers These two Villains Hill and Riggs both Parsons they pretend to discover a Fanatick Plot as they call'd it against the King's Yours and old Monk's and Turncoat Brown's Lives and this Plot was sworn against several Honest Men for which some lost their Lives the one got a preferment to a Living and the other was preferred to eat Salt Beef and Pork and Pease at Sea and sometimes he acted as a Chaplain in a Ship with great Promises of being preferred but God
long and large Attestations therein made against the Merchants of the several Factories concerning the Matter of Fact before mentioned and other Letters were dispatch'd to Daniel Armstrong at Valladolyd and John Cross then at Madrid in which they were order'd to confirm this Attestation made or to be made by the Fathers in England and of the English Seminary at St. Omer's and of the said Stapleton together with that of the said Fonseca the abovenamed Spanish Agent who then lived at Bruges in Flanders Therefore 1. In this Villanous Contrivance to disturb the Nation in the Spanish Trade your Servant Coleman was very active in your Name and on your behalf and engaged that your Letter to Villa Hermosa should be procured 2. It is well known that your Brother and your self were so engag'd with the French King that it was all one to you what became of the King of Spain's Concerns in Flanders but you were both grieved to see the English Nation enrich'd with the Trade it had with Spain for during the time of the Riches and Plenty of England it would be very difficult for you and your Conspirators to bring in Popery and Slavery upon us 3. What Agents you make use of to carry on this Wicked Design to ruine Trade Even Fonseca that hated the English Nation and much envied her Greatness and that she might be in a condition to be brought under the French Yoke you tamper with him that tho' a Spaniard by Nation yet he was wholly in the French Interest 3. A third Instance that I shall remember you of by which you intended to ruine our Trade and that was in the adulterating debasing and clipping the Coin of this Kingdom It may be said by you and your Partisans That it is very hard you should be charged with this vile Act but Sir it can be prov'd that the Merchants Goldsmiths Brokers Bankers and the other Traders that the Jesuites dealt with all was by your Advice and Direction and that your Servant Coleman had in your Name promised them the management of the Mint So that your Conspirators were to be the Judges of good and bad Mony and were to manage the same to the best advantage for your Cause and several Materials for Coining was provided by Smith your Agent and lodged at Mr. Longhorn's Chambers in the Temple And this Sir I must observe to you for publick Good that there hath been few or none that ever hath been executed but hath been of your Religion or Interest That our Mony hath been abused is notorious And all this you did in order to impoverish the Kingdom and destroy its Trade 4. A fourth Instance of you and your Traytors to disturb the Trade of the Kingdom was the Fire of London I have treated of that already As it was the Habitation for several Thousands of good Protestants that stood in opposition to Popery and Slavery and as by the destroying this City you endeavoured to weaken the Protestant Interest so now give me leave to tell you it was with this design to ruine the Trade of the Nation for you know that London was the Metropolis and Fountain of Trade and when she was destroy'd you could not but conclude that the Trade must be disturbed with which the other parts of the Kingdom were made happy through the great devastation that the Fire that was carried on by your Wicked Instruments had made IV. A fourth Project that you had to accomplish your Wicked Designs was the Attempt of maintaining of a standing Army contrary to the Laws and Liberties of England in the times of Peace and labour'd that point much with the King your Brother to lay down the legal Force of this Kingdom viz. the Militia as useless to the Government and therefore you and your Party advis'd him to lay them down and to have Forces in every County under Pay and they were to be your Conservators of the Peace And Sir had the Revenue of the Crown been able to have born the Charge you your self projected a standing Army to keep the People in due Obedience Now what that due Obedience was I shall not need to explain to you for it was a standing Army alamode de France nay they were to have the Power of the Civil Watch in the Night which you said would excuse many ancient useless Men from that Service And for the accomplishment of your wicked Enterprize you advis'd that the greater part of the Army should consist of French and Irish and that the Officers of this Army should consist of as many Roman Catholicks as could well be gotten to serve in that Army and you had several of that sort of Cattel that you kept in half-pay in readiness whenever your Brother should have agreed to your Advice It was not for want of Good will but for want of Mony that your Design did not then take 5. A fifth Project that you had on foot to enslave the Nation and that was the advising and contriving with your damnable Conspirators the seizure of the Charters Franchises and Liberties of the Cities Towns and ancient Corporations of the Kingdom It was Sir your self and your Conspirators that invaded the Privileges and seized on the Charters of most of the Towns that had a Right to be represented by their Burgesses in Parliament and by over awing some of them you procur'd Surrenders of them to be made to the King your Brother by which the Magistrates deliver'd up all their Rights and Privileges to be dispos'd of at his pleasure and the pleasure of your self and Conspirators Upon this you procur'd new Magistrates to be placed in those Places as would carry on your wicked designs and purposes of advancing Popery and Slavery 6. It was your Advice together with your Conspirators that put the late King your Brother to turn out of the Commission of the Peace and the Lieutenancy of the Counties all such who had been zealous for the defence of the Protestant Religion and Liberty and had appear'd vigorously against Popery and Arbitrary Power as persons disaffected to the Government both in Church and State and represented them as Fanaticks and Favourers of such by which means you got in Men of Villanous Morals and such heartily joyned in with your Conspirators to ruine the Protestant Interest and to overthrow the Laws and Liberties of England This was done in the year 1679. 7. Notwithstanding some of your Conspirators represented you as a person whose Judgment was for Liberty of Conscience yet because the Protestant Dissenters appear'd earnestly in the asserting the Laws and Liberties of England and gave Countenance to the Discovery of the Popish Plot to King Charles your Brother who was in it in every part and particular thereof excepting that of his own Murther you and your Conspirators stirred up that King to raise a terrible Persecution against those men by which means you were the ruine of some Thousands of Families who by the severity of
of England's Affairs should publickly abjure the Protestant Religion by which means he was not only very unfit but also uncapable of holding any publick Employment And did not the Banditti give you such proof of their submission to your Popish Directions you gave them that they had continued in their Places to this day had not God of his Infinite Mercy deliver'd us from them and your self For they were men of an agreeable disposition to have furthered your designs of Popery notwithstanding all your Promises to maintain the Church of England for they took care that none should be prefer'd that had any zeal for the Protestant Religion for if you will be serious in considering who they were that you prefer'd to the Dignities in the Church and upon what terms you must own that they were men of such Morals and Principles as render'd them a very scandal to that villanous Design that you and your Conspirators were carrying on against the Church of England 3. I pray Sir was the suspension of the Bishop of London another demonstration of your Purpose and Resolution to maintain the Church of England Let any of your trayterous Crew stand forth and answer for you Was not that Prelate suspended for refusing to obey an Arbitrary Order sent to him by your Banditti Commissioners for the suspending of Dr. Sharp now Archbishop of York for preaching against Popery according to his Office and Calling without so much as citing the said Dr. Sharp before him to make his defence or observing any common forms of Process commonly us'd in such cases The Bishop comply'd with your Suspension and what damage it was to him he can tell better than I but it did work for our Good and hasten'd our Deliverance but it shew'd that you had but little regard to your Oath and Promise to maintain the Church of England 4. Another Specimen you gave us of your pious Resolution of maintaining the Ch. of England as by Law establish'd was the dealing with Magdalen Colledge in Oxford In the first place you turn'd out the President who was legally chosen by the Fellows of the Colledge who if I mistake not are sworn to chuse one from among themselves to bear that Office then you turn'd out all the Fellows for refusing to chuse one of your recommendation without so much as citing them to appear before any Court that could take legal cognizance in that affair or obtaining any Sentence against them by a competent Judge and the only reason you gave for the turning them out was because they had refus'd a person that was a Papist who was not only uncapable by the Laws of the Land but also by the Statutes of that Colledge of bearing the Office of a President or Fellow of that Community And having expel'd both President and Fellows you put the said Colledge into the hands of Papists that you might the better maintain the Rights and Liberties of the Ch. of England as by Law establish'd But I hope it may be a warning to that Community and to all others of that University how they advance the Prerogative of the Crown so high and nourish those two pestilent Doctrins of Passive Obedience and Non-Resistance and the Divine Right of Succession lesâ— those Doctrins do expose them to a greater Danger than the last 5. Another demonstration that was given by you of your stedfast Purposes of standing by and maintaining of the Ch. of England was your proceeding against the Vice Chancellor of Cambridge 1687. You had a great Favour for one Francis a Benedictine Monk a Rogue that was fit for any Villany that you could put him upon to act him you sent to Cambridge to corrupt the Youth there and no doubt but for his time he did the business for which you sent him You planted him in Sidney Colledge where you had placed one Basset a Papist in that House as Master but your Monk had an Apartment wherein he perform'd the Office of a Priest according to the Ch. of Rome but being a Fellow that had taken no Degrees in any University either at home or abroad you were resolv'd that he should be a Master of Arts in the University of Cambridge and in order to this you sent a Letter to the said Vice-Chancellor to admit the said Father Francis to be a Master of Arts without taking the Oaths which the Vice-Chancellor refus'd as contrary to the Law of the Land and the Statutes of the University Upon this you caus'd the Vice-Chancellor and the Delegates of the University to be summoned before your Commissioners of Ecclesiastical Affairs where that Villain Jefferies contrary to all Law or Reason pronounced Sentence that the Vice-Chancellor being guilty of great Disobedience to the King's Commands and other Crimes and Contempts should be depriv'd of the Office of Vice-Chancellor and suspended of his headship of Magdalen Colledge in the said University of Cambridge Thus Sir you were pleas'd to maintain the Ch. of England by suffering the Learning and Gravity of that University to be trampl'd upon and by letting in a parcel of silly impudent and illiterate Popish Priests and Fryers who were to joyn with you in supporting the Protestant Religion as it was then by Law establish'd Unless your Commissioners of Ecclesiastical Affairs judg'd that to destroy the two Universities as to Learning and to break in upon their Laws made to preserve their Communities would be a means to preserve the Church of England I cannot but wonder at those extravagant Proceedings in the last years of your Tyranny against them since they had so highly espoused your Cause when you were Duke of York against the Sence of the whole Nation 6. Another Reason you give us to believe that you did design to stand by and support and maintain the Ch. of England was your proceeding and causing to be summoned before your Ecclesiastical Commissioners all the Chancellors and Archdeacons of England and requiring them to certifie the Names of those Clergymen who had read the Declaration for Liberty of Conscience as well as the Names of those who had refused the same without considering that the reading of it was not enjoyn'd the Clergy by the Bishops who are their Ordinaries So that this was another way you intended even by these extrajudicial Proceedings in your Court of Commissioners Ecclesiastical to maintain the Liberties of the Ch. of England This was one great cause why several Persons of Quality both in Church and State refused to be concern'd in this Commission for they at last clearly saw that this damnable Commission tended to nothing less than the total Subversion of the Protestant Religion for you us'd it to no other end and purpose than to oppress such persons as were eminent for Learning and Virtue that should at any time or season preach against Popery Superstition And it was God's great Mercy to the Protestant Interest that they did at last see for sure I am that in the latter part
Set of Men ready to Abhor and Detest such Popular Petitions though it was the Subjects Right to Petition the King for the redress of Grievances under which they groaned in his Reign So you was pleased to shew your aversness to Petitioning witness your proceeding against the Archbishop of Canterbury and the other Bishops who offered a most humble Petition to you in terms full of Respect and exceeded not the number limited by Law in which they set forth their Reasons for which they could not obey a certain Order which you by the Advice of your Popish Villains sent them to appoint their Clergy to Read in their Chruches the Declaration for Liberty of Conscience they were sent to Prison and afterwards brought to a Tryal as if they had been guilty of some enormous Crime they were not only obliged to defend themselves under this Persecution but also to appear before four Villains one Professed Papist and the other three had not taken the Test and by Consequence were Men whose Interest and Inclination too led them to Condemn them And the Judges that gave their Opinion in favour of those Prelates were turned out thus you may see a fourth Instance you have given us of your invading our Civil Rights But Sir while I speak to you of these things give me leave to plead with you What King was there that ever reigned that was too great to be petitioned by the meanest of his Subjects It cannot be pretended that any Kings how great soever their Power hath been and how Arbitrary and Dispotick they have been in the exercise of this Power have ever reckoned it a Crime for their Subjects to come with all submission and respect in a due number not exceeding the limits of the Law to represent Reasons why they could not execute such or such an Order Deal freely with the World send to your Dispensing Rogues and ask them whether it were one of the remains of the Crown that impowered you to wrest out of the Hands of the Subject this undoubted Right of Petitioning the Prince for theredress of Grieveances 5. How did you treat a Peer of this Realm Was he not used by you and your villanious Conspirators as a Criminal only because he said That the Subjects were not bound to obey the Orders of a Popish Justice of the Peace Tho it was evident that such being by Law rendred uncapable of all such Trusts No regard was due to any of their Orders This being the security which the People of England had and still have by the Law for their Lives Liberties Honours and Estates that they are not subjected to the Arbitrary Proceedings of Papists that were contrary to Law put into any Imployment Civil or Military This was another instance of the invasion you made upon us in respect of our Civil Rights and Liberties and manifested your self to be a Man for Arbitrary Government in subjecting our Persons and Estates to the Arbitrary Proceedings of Popish Magistrates and Officers under you 6. You apprehending that the great Remedy of your Grievances and Security of our Religion was a Free Parliament and least you might lie under a necessity of calling one you and your Accomplices did endeavour to make it impossible or at least very difficult to be obtained for you could not but apprehend that a Lawful Parliament being once Assembled would call you and your Villains to an account for all your open Violations of the Law and for your Plots and Conspiracies against the Protestant Religion and the Lives and Liberties of the People of England you endeavoured under the specious pretence of Liberty of Conscience first to sow Divisions between the Protestants of the Church of England and Protestant Dissenters the Design being laid to engage all Protestants that are equally concerned to preserve themselves from Popish Oppression into mutual Quarrellings So that by these some Advantages might be taken by you to bring about your Villainous Designs and Purposes and that both in the Election of Members of Parliament and afterwards in the Parliament it self for you could not but see that if all Protestants did enter into a mutual good understanding one with another and concur together in the preserving our Civil Rights and Liberties that it would have been possible for you and your Banditti to accomplish your wicked Ends. What could we expect from you when you struck at the Foundation of all our Civil Rights and Liberties in the hindring the Nation of the Choice of a Free and Lawful Parliament For did you not require all Persons in the several Counties of England that either were in any Imployment or were in any considerable Esteem to declare before hand that they would concur in the repeal of the Test and the Penal Laws and that they would give their Voices in the Elections to Parliament only for such as would concur in it such as would not thus pre-engage themselves were turned out of all Imployments and others who entred into these Engagements were put into their Places many of which are Papists and contrary to the Charters and Priviledges of those Burroughs that have a right to send Burgesses to Parliament You ordered such Regulations to be made as you thought fit and necessary for the assuring your self and your villainous Conspirators of all the Members that were to be chosen by those Corporations and by this means you gave your self and Tribe hope to avoid the being called to an account for your Villanies though it was then and is still apparent that all Acts made by Popish Magistrates are Null and Void of themselves so that no Parliament could have been lawful for which Elections and Returns had been made by your Popish Sheriffs and Mayors of Towns and therefore as long as the Authority and Magistracy was in such Hands it was impossible for us to have had a Lawful and a Free Parliament You might have known that the Constitution of the English Government and Custom time out of mind All Elections of Parliament Men ought to be made with an intire Liberty without any sort of force or the requiring the Electors to choose such persons as should be named to them and the persons thus freely Elected ought to give their Opinions freely upon all Matters that are brought before them they having the good of the Nation before their Eyes and following in all things the dictates of their Consciences Therefore you having usurped an illegal Authority and resolving upon the utmost Violations of our Laws you would not give us the least hopes of having our Grievances redressed by a Free Parliament legally called and chosen It is true you would have called one in which all Elections should have been carried by Fraud and Force and might have been composed of such persons of whom you and your Trayterous Crew would have been well assured in which all things would have been carried on by their Direction and Interest without any regard to the Good and Welfare of
them and you could not have added to or detracted from any thing in such a manner perfected without the consent of the people with whom you made this Contract for we were to have been benefited by this Oath and Contract of yours and not deceived again If Princes may break their Oaths and Contracts made to and with their Subjects How can we deal with such a King How can we tell when we obey We must be then at great uncertainties and so by consequenue we cannot be safe Furthermore Did it not lye at your door to have preserved your self from Scandal and Fraud Of which you took no care therefore you made no Conscience of of your Oaths and Contracts Again Sir we must suppose you to be a reasonable Creature and if so we must also conclude you ought to have submitted to Reason that you might have at least have had the reputation of a Man and not be signalized with the Character of a filthy Monstrous Beast Hence it is that Tyrants in sacred Writ are called Beasts because they will not submit to nor be governed by the Rules of right Reason In the last place Sir other Men may in their Oaths and Contracts have an Eye to their Profit but you ought to have had an Eye to your Honour and to have had an especial regard thereof Now what can be more Dishonourable in a King than to break his Word falsifie his Faith and violate his Contract And was not your Word Faith and Contract confirmed by a solemn Oath 3. There was a third Doctrine that was much promoted by your Conspirators that although Kings should be strictly bound to stand to their Contracts and their Oaths yet if they were induced to make a Contract and to take an Oath in things wherein they were not well informed or if the Contract and Oath do contain things too much derogating or diminishing their Jurisdiction or Authority Royal or if they have made a Promise that may be prejudicial to their Greatness they may then lawfully break their Contract Faith and Oath This Doctrine was very industriously spread about by your Party especially by your Jesuits and your Jesuited Papists and Passive Obedience Men. But certainly Sir your Conspirators represented your understanding to be but of Irish Standard and to be of the same Scantling with their Honesty Give me leave to ask you this one fair Question Was you not well informed what you were to do and what you did promise to do when you took the Coronation Oath to defend the Protestant Religion and preserve and maintain the Laws of the Realm and by them to govern this great People you took the Charge of Can any Man think Sir that you should be the only Man that was Ignorant of that which all the Nation knew and what your Grand-father Father and Brother had done before you Where Sir was the Dishonour or Blemish that might fall upon you if you had kept your Oath and made the Laws of the Land the Rule of your Government If you had been a good King you would have delighted to have been bound by the Laws of the Land and have rejoyced the Hearts of the People of England and then you would not have at this time have been obliged to France for your Subsistance But Sir God in his just Judgment gave you up to believe these lies and therefore you violated those Laws by which you were Sworn to govern to gratifie your Popish Hellborn Crew they have got you to themselves We have a King that thinks it no Blemish to his Regal Authority to maintain and keep our Laws he judges it no Dishonour to preserve the Liberties of his People and their Honours and Estates You have the reward of your Unrighteousness I wish you much Joy of it 4. Some of the Doctors and Casuists of your Synagogue of Rome say that Princes who may dispense with others may give a sufficient Dispensation to themselves and so revoke their Contracts and break their Oaths for that they have Might and Power and Authority there is no Law no Judge that can compel them to keep their Oaths and observe their Contracts It is manifest that you did take upon you to dispense with others and to give your self a Dispensation too and we own that we were not then in a Condition to call you to an Account but you were Admonished very often by the best and greatest of your Subjects to reform all that was amiss But after all this Admonition you did remain incorrigible then what could we do but make your Actions Cruelties and Tyrannies and Perjury known to the World And we implored the Aid and Help not of the French King but William Prince of Orange who came and suppressed you as an incorrigible Oppressor and Tyrant And your Party appearing bare-faced to murther our King and invade the Kingdom with a Foreign Force in order to enslave us will be treated as Villains and Common Rogues and receive the just recompence of Reward for all their Treasonable Conspiracies against our King and the well established Government of the Kingdom and the Protestant Religion To conclude this point How detestable and odious hath your Perjury made you it hath excluded you from that great Honour to which you arrived and it hath removed you from your native Country in a word it hath clothed you with so much infamy that it is impossible for you to attain that Honour Power and Authority and Majesty you have lost And therefore it is highly unreasonable for you or your Conspirators ever to attempt your Restauration 2. As your Perjur is an argument why it is not only impossible for you to be restored and folly for you to attempt it so in the second place we are Protestants And what can a Popish Apostate do at the head of a Protestant Interest The Popish Queen Mary she no sooner obtained the Crown by a Protestant Interest but she destroyed that very Interest by which she was advanced to the Throne This we well remember Sir and we need not burn our Fingers again the third time Suppose Sir that we should have so little sense as to try you once more and should succeed What Monsters must we appear to the World a Body of Protestants with a Popish Head This doth much astonish me that our little Prick-ear'd Priests of the Church of England have so much admired your Cause and pleaded it with such earnestness when as they cannot but conclude that you must of necessity deal by the Church of England as you would with an impudent Harlot Your Brother was careless in the maintenance of our Religion because he was a Papist though a loose one And can we otherwise conclude but you who have at all times and in all places whereever you have come shewed your self a bigotted Papist will not only discountenance the Protestant Religion but destroy it with all that Zeal that is consistent with the Principles of a perverse
Member of the Romish Synagogue You in the time of your short Tyranny made a sad Havock with the Protestant Religion and can we expect better usuage from you seeing you having Seven Devils more within you rageing against the Protestant Interest than you had before you left us What I say to you in this particular I speak not without Witness for it is most certain that you have and do to this very day entertain a very great aversness to any Man that bears the name of a Protestant Therefore since by your late behaviour to those whose Principles have led them to espouse your Interest and have followed you into France if they have any Sense of their English Liberties and of the Protestant Religion will abhor the thoughts of your return hither For if you appear so violent against our Religion now you are under so great an estate of Sufferings What will your declared Hatred be against Protestants here in England if we should admit you to reign over us For if you can presume to that degree of Malice as to deny your Protestant Tools your Grace and Favour at St. Germains What can we that are Protestants expect from you whenever you shall return Do you think that any of us should be so stupid to expect fair Quarter from you since your very Religion lays you under the necessity of Converting us with a Fagot and bringing us to your Obedience with the dint of a Dagger Nay Sir your Passive Obedience Curs fare not much better though they saved you from your being prosecuted for your being deeply interested in the Popish Plot and from being excluded from the Succession to the Imperial Crown of this Realm and also from being beaten out of the Kingdom by the late Duke of MONMOVTH What reason than have we not to believe that you will not only in general invade the Protestant Religion but also once again attempt the depressing the Church of England In your short Reign you sent Seven Bishops to the Tower but if ever you should return I will not excuse the whole Twenty Six from being more hardly used Upon which consideration I will appeal then Sir to your Judgment or the Judgment of your Friends here or those with you at St. Germains whether or no it is impossible for you to gain so great a Point as to be received again as a King And whether it would not be the greatest Folly or Madness in you or any of your Party to attempt it For have you any that are with you that are Protestants upon a Principle of Conscience How have you used and treated them and if they have no better usage from you since they follow you in their Afflictions and are contented to share with you in your Hardships as not to enjoy the Liberty of serving God according to their Dictates of their own Conscience How must it fare with them if you should arrive to that State and Condition in which you should stand in no need of them And if so What can we expect from you that have hated your Person and do hunt down your Cause and Interest out of the Nation Therefore the Duty that we owe to Almighty God and the Affection and Zeal we have for the Protestant Religion will oblige us to pursue you as a Murderer and an Assassin of the People of England and a Traytor to the Nation and those who shall be found fighting under your Banner will be used as Banditti and Robbers and Protestants that shall not have the benefit of Repentance 3. Consider we are English Men and that very Consideration might satisfie any Man that will but consult his Reason of the impossibility of your being restored to your pretended Right and of the folly of your many attempt in order thereunto Had your Interest been an English interest than your Conspirators might have had some colour for their attempt of this Nature but your Interest is a French Interst and therefore your Interest that you have espoused is incompatible or inconsistent with your being restored Here are two Points that must be considered 1. That your Interest is a French Interest 2. That a French Interest is not consistent with your Endeavours after a Restoration and both these Points fairly proved will justifie the refusal of the Kingdom of Englands admitting you to act and execute the Office of a King here again amongst us 1. Your Interest is not an English but a French Interest for as you followed your loving and kind Brother in most of his Vertues so you persued the same Interest that he pursued For was not the Interest of your Brother and the Interest of the French King and yours inseperably united Knowing saith your Quondam Secretary the Interest of our King and in a more particular manner of my immediate Master the Duke and his Most Christian Majesty to be so inseperably united that it was impossible to divide them without destroying them all Again his Majesty the French King was pleased to give Order to signifie to his R. H. my Master that his Majesty was fully satisfied of his R. H's good Intentions towards him and that he esteemed both their Interests but as one and the same and that my Lord Arlington and the Parliament were both looked upon as very unuseful to their Interests And again Father Ferier begged his R. H. to propose to his Most Christian Majesty what he thought necessary for his own Concern and the advantage of Religion and his Majesty would certainly do all that he could to advance both or either of them I communicated it to his R. H. to which his R. H. commanded me to answer as I did the 29th of the same Month. That his R. H. was very sensible of his Most Christian Majesty's Friendship and that he would labour to cultivate it with all the good Offices he was capable of doing his Most Christian Majesty That he was fully convinced that their Interests were both one That my Lord Arlington and the Parliament were not only unuseful but dangerous both to England and France and therefore it was necessary they should do all they could to dissolve it I did communicate this Design of mine to Monsieur Ravigney who agreed with me that it would be the greatest Advantage to his Master to have the Duke's Power and Credit so far Advanced Again If we can advance the Duke's Interest one step forward we shall put him out of the reach of Chance for ever Then would Catholicks be at rest and his Most Christian Majesty's Interest secured with us in England beyond all apprehensions whatsoever Our prevailing in these things would give the greatest blow to the Protestant Religion here that ever it received from his Birth If the Duke should once get above them after all the Tricks they have plaied with him they are not sure he will totally forget the usage he hath had at their Hands For my part saith he I can scarce believe my self awake
common Consent But you were pleased to raise Money upon the People by your Proclamation The very Day after you had promised to invade no Mans Property Now no Man is for Life Limb Goods or Liberty at the Sovereigns Direction but how soon it would have been had not a period been put to your Tyranny For your Sycophant Parasites were very zealous to have delivered up those Priviledges in to your Hands judging it would not be well with England till you were as Absolute as the Monster of France by which we might easily understand your Intentions For Sir who knows not that the inclination of a Prince is best known either by those that are about him and most Favour with him or by the current of his own Actions Those who were nearest to you and most your Favourites were your Irish and French Courtiers and your Popish Priests and Prelates who these Men stood affected to Your Discretionary Dispotick Power can never be forgotten No Man but may remember that in their common Discourse were for advancing your Will and Pleasure over your Subjects to be equal with that of the King of France is over his This was but a Copy which those Villains had industriously taken from your own Words and Actions In Scotland you did publickly set up for that Power and openly declared you would be obeyed without reserve The attempt you and your Conspirators made in the time of the Lord Chancellor Hyde upon our Liberties is never to be forgetten a Bill was prepared to enable the King your Brother in the time of any interval of Parliament to raise what Money he pleased upon an extraordinary occasion as the Dutch War was pretended to be This had taken its much desired effect had not that Lord Chancellor been awakened by an intimate Friend of his who understanding what was doing in the House of Commons came to him and shewed him what the Consequences were which such an unheard thing would produce and he using one Argument above all the rest in telling him he came to his Honour and Greatness by the Gown and not by the Sword and if that Bill passed he advised him to consider what his Gown or all the Lawyers Gowns in England were worth which that Lord Chancellor though one of the Actors with you to enslave the Nation being a Man of Sense had that Honor as to think it no Dishonor to retreat from that Devilish Invention which he to comply with your Ambition and Pride had set on foot to destroy us at once So that Bill though once read in the House for enabling the King your Brother to raise Money at pleasure was by the Providence of God and the Prudence of that Noble Penitent Lord droped so far as that it dwindled into a Bill of 75000 l. not exceeding a Months Tax No doubt but you had procured this Bill to be dressed in the French Mode for emergent Occasions yet had it passed in the same manner as you and your Accomplices designed there would not have wanted emergent Occasions and extraordinary Services to have given Colour for keeping that Power on foot until Dooms Day in the Afternoon The French King whose Example you followed in this particular got his Power by such a villainous Stratagem but he hath not been at leisure yet to call his Parliament to dispute that Point I question not but that your loving Brother and you would have found other Matters of moment to have diverted you from that way of raising Money so England must have taken leave of Parliaments for ever and we must have submitted all we had to your French Discretion But through the Blessing of Heaven and the Care of our Legislators we are delivered not only from your Government and your intended French way of Governing for we continue to have the same Right modestly understood in our Propriety that our Prince hath in his Royalty and in all Cases where the King himself is concerned we have our just Remedy as against any private Person in the Nation in the Courts of Westminster-hall or in the High Court of Parliament for his Prerogative is not like that you would have usurped but what the Law hath only determined His great Seal which is the legitimate Stamp of his Royal Will and Pleasure yet it is no longer currant than upon the Tryal it is found to be according to Law and Justice The King cannot commit any Man by his own particular Warrant he cannot be himself a Witness in any Cause whatever tho your Brother would have been one against me The Ballance of publick Justice being so delicate that not the Head only but even the Breath of the King would turn the Scale nothing is left to the Win of the King but every thing is subject to his legal Authority by which means it follows that as he can do no Wrong nor can he receive Wrong But you by your Dispensing Power put your self in a state of Wronging the Nation and destroying your self and Government but had you kept to the Measures of an English King you might have remained to this Day to have been the only intelligent Ruler over a rational People your Person had been Sacred and Inviolable and whatever Excess had been committed in your Reigh would not have been imputed to you as being free from the Necessity and Temptations Your Ministers would have been only accountable for all and must have Answered it at their Perils You had a vast Revenue and if any emergency of Affair should have appeared you had at your Call a number of Men to have advised with a supply would have been readily granted You were the Fountain of Honour the disposer of many profitable Places both in Church and State but this would not serve your turn for you would not be abridged the Power of injuring the People of England but against all Law invaded our Rights and designed nothing so much as enslaving us and our Posterity for ever And we that have tasted so much of the sweetness of Liberty and on the other hand have smarted under your short but cruel Tyranny will never be intangled again with the French Popish Yoke of Bondage but stand in defence of the King we have chosen and the Liberty we have recovered as long as we have a Being in this World Therefore consider with your self the impossibility of your return to that Government you abused to the Administration of those Laws you violated to a Nation that you made a Field of Blood and if you had remained for ought I know England might have been a Howling Wilderness In fine then I am sure if you should make any attempt to return it will be in vain and appear very rediculous 5. We have Sworn Allegiance to King William who is of the same Religion and Interest with us who delivered us out of your Hands and the Hands of your villainous Conspirators and hath fixed us upon those Foundations against which France Rome nor
Hell shall prevail he hath secured us our Liberties Laws and Religion he hath brought himself and Government to that Perfection notwithstanding the vexatious War which lies hard upon us that he is capable of doing good to all Mankind and he hath totally disabled himself from doing hurt to any he wants not the French King's Purse nor his Friendship he wants not his Interest for his Interest is his Peoples and his Peoples his by which they are so united that the attempts of your Scoundrel Crew for your Restoration will be in vain the Hearts of the Nation are set against you and for your perfidious dealing both in Church and State the People of England will trust you no more Sir We have Sworn Allegiance to this King we chose in your stead and we are bound to stand by him our choise of him was from a Principle of Love to God and the Protestant Religion which he hath asserted You kept not your Faith with us and therefore our Allegiance ceased to you your Actions have been very plain and open and so pernitious that it was a Wonder of Wonders thaâ— we and our Religion have been delivered from Blood and Oppression And Sir I would let you know that we are not afraid of you and your Adherents for I believe the Protestant Religion and Protestant King will stand notwithstanding alâ— your Attempts and if you had brought your French Dragooning Apostles oâ—er to us yet we would and should have maintained our Ground and destroyed â—â—em and you We value not your little Two-penny Stuff that you have left â—â—hind you to plead your Cause your impertinent ignorant Non-juring Clergy-men can never preach us out of love to that Loyalty that we owe to K. William â—e have scarce a Williamite Cobler but can baffle them all These things consiâ—ered How can you ever expect any thing less than that Judgment the Psalmist â—rays for to be inflicted upon his Enemies Hath not God already set a wicked Tyrant over you Have you not been Judged by the Lords and Commons of England and Condemned Was not your Reign short And hath not another taken your Office In time Sir the Judgment may be compleated upon you There is of your Issue that have had no Hand in our Miseries and for this Cause our Eyes are set upon them for good and we shall pray for their long Life But as for you that God would cloth you with Shame and Confusion of Face and that he would upon the Head of our Protestant King let the Crown long florish And I do not question but God will hear the Prayers of his Faithful Subjects and will by his means bring the Nation to such a Settlement that our Allegiance will be firm to him and his Successors notwithstanding all those villainous Attempts that you and that Monster of Mankind your Brother of France by his and your Traiterous Accomplices have made to deprive us of so great a Blessing Which brings me to a Sixth Consideration 6. The last Reason I shall give you why it will be impossible for you to return to the Administration of the English Government and that all Attempts of that nature will be in vain because of your late barbarous and villainous Attempt you by your Conspirators have made upon the Person of our King and your purpose of backing that intended Murder by an unnatural Invasion you had some that pittied you but now our Hearts are shut up against you and are hardned against all your Cursed Adherents For now your Plot is discovered and it is a Plot and a Villainous One nothing can be plainer no Man of Common Understanding but must see your Conspiracy to bring in Popery and Slavery and to destroy the Protestant Religion and the Liberties of England We know Sir the Doctrine of your Popish and Non-juring Priests too well and your wicked Practices and we are now assured that you will not stick at any thing that may bring your wicked Designs about You must excuse me if I am plain with you I would not asperse you with hard Words if they were not very true I should not have been so Hot if you had not been concerned in the late wicked Design of murthering our King but if you had succeeded it would have been no more than you did to your Loving and Kind Brother but all this as well as the other is owing to you and your Popish Traiterous Crew who have debauched Mens Understandings overturned all Morals and destroyed all Divinity What shall I say of you and your villainour Party What is your Charity such as to destroy Kings And where was the Humility of insulting over the Nation The Mystery of Iniquity is revealed and you are disappointed The Nation sees that you are no Changeling as to yâ—â—r Vices and you will find that English-men are no Changelings Therefore it wâ—ll be in vain to make any more attempts to be Restored again for the future To conclude this Memorial Sir give me leave to tell you that I have thus fâ—â— laid open the Conspiracy against our Religion and Government and indeed it waâ— more than time it should be discovered for I think here hath been nothing asserteâ— but what hath been and can be made out we see how the French have been courted by you and your Party with what Ease have they been assisted and witâ— what Difficulty the Dutch both in your Brothers and your Reign We see your Brother and you abandon the Prince of Orange now our King in compliance with his and the Nations Enemies How can any Man think upon the French Depredations and Cruelties exercised at Sea upon the Subjects of England without Regret Call to mind your notorious Treacheries in that Affair Remember the constant Irregularities and Injustice from term to term of those who should have administred Justice between King and People Remember the search you made throughout the whole Kingdom to find Men of Arbitrary Principles that would bow the Knee to Baal in order to their being promoted to all publick Commissions and Employments and disgracing and displacing all those that durst in so universal a Depravation be honest and faithful in their Trust and Offices We saw to our great Grief the Defection of considerable Persons both Male and Female to the Popish Religion as if they enter'd by Couples Clean and Unclean into the Ark of that Cursed Synagogue not more in order to their Salvation than for their Temporal Advantage and Safety Sir the State of Ireland managed by your Brother and you would require a Volume to represent it and in your Time we could not but observe that all your Affairs and Councils in the Nation tended to a Popish Revolution And by the Foresight and Civility of the Man of Sin there was an English Cardinal prepared like Cardinal Pool to give us Absolution Benediction and to receive us to the Obedience of the See of Rome It is true your Conspiracy had taken effect had you not met with many Disappointments but the last Disappointment was the overturn of all your Designs at once which was occasioned by the Arrival of the Prince of Orange Guilt made you to flee The Sense the Nation had of your wicked Intentions against our Laws and Liberties caused the People of England to make choice of our Deliverer to reign over us He is anointed our King and as God hath set a Crown of pure Gold upon his Head so we question not but the same God will satisfy him with long Life and Happiness and that he will give him the Spirit of Wisdom Knowledge Zeal and Faithfulness to do what in him lies to the bringing on the New Heavens and the New Earth wherein Righteousness and Peace shall dwell by repairing the Breaches and decayed Places that you have made and caused amongst us And from hence Sir remember that though Hand join in Hand yet the Wicked shall not go unpunished they are Gods own Words who hath also declared with the greatest Solemnity that there shall be no Peace to the Wicked Isa 57.21 You have leisure to consider of these things and so Farewell FINIS