Selected quad for the lemma: england_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
england_n	earl_n	lord_n	sir_n	21,670	5	6.9416	4	true

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ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A25428	A letter from a person of honour in the countrey written to the Earl of Castlehaven : being observations and reflections upon His Lordships memoires concerning the wars of Ireland.	Anglesey, Arthur Annesley, Earl of, 1614-1686.	1681 (1681)	Wing A3170; ESTC R613	23,258	78

bloody and guilty men that ever were under the Sun and fly the Kings Justice with reflection and scorn upon the State that was pursuing them for their Crimes and to avoid the inward stings of Guilt or Apprehensions of Punishment run head-long into open and a vowed Guilt among those who were under Gods Vengeance and the Kings I leave this to your Lordships more serious second thoughts Being out of the danger of Justice though your Lordship cared little for the Justices as how could your Lordship when you were associated with those who had bid defiance to God and the King yet your Lordship quickly saw a proof how civil and merciful they had been to you hitherto when they upon your escape shewed you they had power enough to pursue you and pillage and burn your House in your Mountain view and use your Family as Enemies which they might have done before but their constant course was to endeavour the re-gaining those who had faltered in their Allegiance and not to increase the number which was too heavy upon them already Your Lordship at length arrived to the beloved place designed the City of Kilkenny Head Quarters of the Confederate Rebels where you found many of your acquaintance preparing for their natural defence seeing no distinction made or safety but in Arms. Your Lordships heart was now at rest among your Friends and Relations to whom indeed after committing all the wickedness their hand of violence could reach to being defeated in several Battels by his Majesties Forces and driven into their Holds defence became natural their Crimes having left them no hopes but in Arms and who could expect no distinction to be made where they were universally involved in the same black guilt For this end your Lordship saith they had chosen a Council formed an Oath of Association made Four Generals of the Four Provinces caused a Seal to be made raised Monys constituted a General Assembly c. all ensigns of the more than Regal Power they had usurped To this Council your Lordship was sent for and being well prepared by those inclinations which made you forsake the Kings Government and the Laws you quickly closed with them upon the grounds before expressed and upon consideration of their model of Government and very reasonable as your Lordship judged it Oath of Association which your Lordship prints at large and their desiring your conjunction with thanks returned your Lordship engaged your self to run a Fortune with them upon very ill principles if anger and revenge inclined you to it as much as any other consideration which you intimate though you say you cannot resolve It s strange how the Earl of Castlehaven and Lord Audley in England could close so cordially with the Irish who had shed so much innocent English Blood in full peace and think himself justified by such an account of his ingagement as this unless he had been resolved in the justice of their cause from the beginning however he carried it with seeming fairness to the Lords Justices till he got out of their reach But ingaged your Lordship was and being thus Confederate and having taken the Oath of Association becoming one of their Council and General of the Horse under Preston and giving the most specious account you can of your proceedings in that quality Truth being the greatest and best friend I had rather one or several Persons and Families should lie under the Consequences of its impartiality than that the English Nation and Protestant Religion should suffer by a timorous unworthy concealing or withholding any part of it And since your Lordship to palliate or justifie your own Actions and the Confederate Irish Cause endeavours to render the generality of the English Protestants Criminal your Lordship must not think it much that I one of English Race and for Religion of the Church of England should be a little plain in their Justification and Defence and for that end remove the mask your Lordship hath put upon the face of Affairs by continuing my Remarques upon your Lordships Memoires And first to the constitution of a Council it was made up of Members uncapable of that trust by Law In the Oath of Association and Propositions grounded thereon there is not a word but breaths high Treason except the first thirteen lines which set up the Kings Name and Authority only in pagentry and mockery to be crucified and contradicted by all that follows and yet this Oath your Lordship held very reasonable as the case then stood that is when you and your Confederates were incouraged or heightned with a Power able as you fancied to make good what you had sworn And suitable to this ungodly trayterous Oath where all the subsequent proceedings of the Confederates their Councils at home and their Actions abroad their Cessations and pretended Peaces which I shall take notice of more particularly in their respective series of time The general Assembly met the 24th of October 1642 your Lordship saith it differ'd nothing from a Parliament but that the Lords and Commons sate together and not in two Houses Was this so inconsiderable a difference in the Opinion of a Peer of England as well as Ireland or fit for one of so noble Extraction to be submitted to against Honour Law and right Reason But the truth is and I speak it for the honour of the Nobility of Ireland the Rebels had not debauched enough of them either for interest or number to bear the Countenance of a House of Peers or to be of any considerable figure among that People who having cast off Majesty could not be warmed by the beams thereof which I count the Nobility but they resolved of course into common persons again and had but single Votes among the Croud instead of those Honourable Priviledges and Negative Voice which their Ancestors had acquired as the just reward of their faithfulness to the Crown in former times and in all Defections and Rebellions since the subjection of that Nation to England And this your Lordship ingeniously confesseth and saith we see it was a force-put upon you and you hoped in time the storm being passed to return to your old Government under the King Here you own the being fallen from it but could your Lordship imagine or any others believe this Cob-web pretence possible were you not all ingaged by the bond of an Oath to the contrary and to preserve your new upstart treasonable Model and Constitution and that the storm should never cease till you had by Arms attained a confirmation of all that you had done for which by the said Oath you renounced the receiving any Pardon or Protection but by your own Sword But that Assembly differed also from a Parliament in this That it was called by a packt party of bloody Papists in Rebellion and Confederacy and had neither Legal nor Regal Authority But to conciliate credit and belief you add That there were many learned in the Law amongst you whom

accidents as might happen in full peace and when the course of Justice is free But your Lordship saith that on this partly and partly on other occasions that preceded and some too that followed but you enumerate none the whole Nation finding themselves concerned took Arms for their own defence and partlcularly the Lords of the Pale did so who yet at the same time desired the Justices to send their Petition to the King which was refused This being the chief ground by which your Lordship would justifie the most formed and dangerous Conspiracy and Rebellion that ever was in that Kingdom since the Crown of Englands first Title thereunto which your Lordship being a Peer of England should have distinguished from a just and a lawful War but do not I must observe to your Lordship that its an ill way to acquaint the King with their pretended Grievances La main a lespe they should have done that if they had any before their treacherous and bloody Massacres and open Rebellion but indeed they had none to offer but what was the just return of their own black Actions for your Lordship knows as I have said before that by Committees of both Houses of Parliament in Ireland whereof most were Papists they had just before their Rebellion returned loaden with such Graces and Condescentions of Favour from the Crown as had been sufficient meeting with the least ingenuity gratitude and humanity to have made wavering Persons good Subjects but the Lord Macguires and others Confessions manifested that they had laid their Design of Treason too deep to retreat easily when they had once struck the stroak till finding their error not from remorse but from sense of danger imminent which must inevitably follow unless they could subdue England too At the first they made a loud cry of Grievances and at length bid fair as they had made Ireland a field of Blood and Desolation to disturb England also Concerning the further discouragement the Rebels received by Sir John Reads treatment and what that was and upon what grounds though I have all the passages thereof by me and will by no means allow of Racking any Man as being contrary to the Law of England yet I must observe that it was a very jealous time after so many thousands slaughtered barbarously in cold blood the Rebellion increasing every day too great a curiosity arising to know the bottom of the design that remedies proportionable might be applied and Sir John Read being one of the Kings Servants and a designing Papist being there so unseasonably without being able to give a good account of himself or business and going away Agent for the Rebels in Arms without leave of the State might make them exceed the strict bounds of Law in his Examination Your Lordship in the next place taking notice that you had tryed this and other ways to acquaint the King with your Grievances which I have shewed before were none and all failing an open War broke forth generally throughout the Kingdom this being a meer colour and pretence your Lordship unfortunately puts the effect before the pretended cause for by what you had said before and what the truth of the cause is the horrid Rebellion for it never merited the name of a War was universal before they so much as alleadged any Grievance Your next Memoire is of your entertaining my Lord of Ormond at Dinner after the Battle of Kilrush which you were a Spectator of and that some who came with him turned it another way publishing through the Army that it was a Feast for my Lord Mountgarret and the Rebels which through the English Quarters past for currant Here your Lordship by your own shewing intimates that though you were a Spectator from your own House of a Battle wherein the Crown lay at stake and had formerly discovered you had force enough to recover your Cat el taken away by the Rebels and apprehend some of their Leaders which you call Rogues yet though a Peer of both Kingdoms you would be no Actor though the Kings General was at your Gate doubting it seems the event of Battle but the success rendring my Lord of Ormond Victorious you set before him that Dinner which you had not strength to keep from him And indeed it was generally then held by the English that if the Rebels had gained the day your Lordship would more frankly have bid the Lord Mountgarret their General and a Butler also welcome to that Dinner than you did my Lord of Ormond and this is what passeth rant in this particular to this day which you believe was much the cause of that villainous proceeding as you call it fore-mentioned whereas it seems you were so far from being ill dealt with in the least that my Lord of Ormond your Guest though he might have justified his carrying you Prisoner with him to Dublin who would not assist him in Fight as your Tenure required left you as some think by a blameable omission Master of your own House and without the least damage done you though much happened after to the Kingdom by your liberty of which you were for some time restrained in the Sheriffs hands and after ordered to be removed to the Castle of Dublin which you say startled you and it brought to your thoughts the proceedings against the Earl of Strafford c. whereupon you made an escape probably in the manner related But here your Lordship not distinguishing times and I not having Papers by me am so doubtful of an intermixture of Affairs to your advantage that I must reserve the unfolding thereof to another tfme when I shall be able exactly to shew you the times of your Lordships appearing and joyning with the Rebels and of the proceeding against the Earl of Strafford and how they preceded on the other I shall only for the present observe how that great personage though more innocent than your Lordship could pretend to never sled his Tryal well knowing that would have fixed more guilt upon him in construction of Law than could be proved against him and judged it more honourable to hazard the losing of his Head than his Innocency Your Lordships Wisdom took a contrary course and concluding that Innocency was a scurvy plea in an angry time as in deed it is in any times where it is so thin laid that gross guilt appears under it you find it safer to arraign the state than to abide a Tryal and accordingly taxing them for passion and partiality and to be of the Parliaments perswasion when your Lordship would have had them and the whole Kingdom of yours and by what means time hath manifested you resolved to attempt an escape and save your self in the Irish Quarters which your Lordship did to the Mountains of Wicklow where being come you cared little for the Justices Is it possible if your Lordship had thought your self innocent that you would seek safety or count your self safe among the most enormously