ma ruine These rabble factious Tumults never mend A Nation but its ruine doth portend The Neapolitans will never forget the miseries brought upon them by a sordid Fisherman Thomas Anello And Munster and other parts of Germany do yet remember with sadness their Anabaptistical tumults The great Turk no sooner hears of the Seditious Rabble but he fears his own neck And Tyler with his rustick Clowns made King Richard submit to their unbounded impudence Nor can it be denyed but that the Londoners and others set up the first post of the Kings Scaffold when by these out-ragious Tumults they began the wicked Warr. The Tumults of which his Sacred Majesty gives the best character in his incomparable Book favour'd the Parliament with a twofold courtesie one was they forced him from London there being no safety for his Royal Person whilst such unbelieving miscreants did domineer The other was they having learn'd the knack to cry Thief first horribly exclaim'd that themselves were thereby only in danger and therefore desired not only a Guard to defend their Worships though they punish'd those appointed to protect them but very modestly to have the disposal of the whole Militia in England And this claim rather then desire of theirs they call just and necessary and for the ease benefit safety and security of the people and that his Majesty could neither in Honour Justice or Conscience deny he having it not legally before And this small request is but to command the Militia Thus the Wolf only desired the Dogs to be divided from the Sheep Thus Alexander would but command the whole World Thus would Calvin only have his Countrey-men and Creatures mingled with the Geneva Senate Thus did Nero desire that Rome might have but one neck And thus the crafty Fryer in the Sumpners tale desired to his dinner only the liver of a Capon and a roasted Pigs-head knowing full well that if he got those he should not want his part of the Pigg and Capon too And thus the Parliament only desired the Militia that they might only command the King and all England All small requests which might have been augmented if the modest Supplicants had had more confidence But an old Scotch Poet would have taught them better manners and discretion if their wicked policy would have given them leisure to have consulted either Morality or Divinity but what is in the Covenant Thou art ane gret fuil soune said he Thyng to desyre quhilk may nocht be This of the Militia though the King deny yet they seize upon it not only in London but in all England and Wales some Countries being so forward at the Parliaments beck that they had begun their Militia assoon as Petitioned for and this before the Queen imbarqued for Holland And what little account they made of the King is visible by their Ordinance for the Militia in which the People are commanded to act nothing but as the Parliament would and that if they did they should be tryed by none but the Parliament and that this should be as long and no longer then the Parliament pleas'd These actions the King might well wonder at which astonishment may be increast when they tell him they can endure no longer his denyals And the same day vindicate those who had armed themselves though contrary to the Kings express Command and Order the day before But the Kings Authority is of no force with these men who proceeded farther by Voting That all Commissions granted under the Great Seal and by the Kings Consent to the Lieutenants in several Counties are illegal and void and that those who act by them shall be disturbers of the Peace But yet that all such persons as shall be nominated by the Parliament shall be cock-sure in their Authority And that their former Ordinance by some Law or other doth oblige the People This the King the same day forbids to be obey'd because against his consent and this command of his the Parliament Votes to be a high breach of the Priviledges of Parliament Thus went or rather ran the sturdy members in opposition to the King as if their malice had exceld Hamilcar's the Carthagenian against the Romans And by this fury they engaged themselves so farre that they thought it not safe to retreat and so brought it to the tryal of the Bloud-thirsty Sword by which was miserably acted The Civil Wars tumultuous Broyls And bloudy Factions of a mighty Land Whose People haughty proud with forraign spoils Upon themselves turn back their conquering hand Whilst Kin their Kin Brother the Brother foils Like-Ensigns all against like-Ensigns Band Bows against Bows against the Crown Whilst all pretending right all Rights fall down Yet for all these and many more miseries of Warr the Parliament could not doubt of many partakers since the Commons had made themselves such a Bug-bear and Terror to the Nation that the power of the King was even shrunk into a Duke of Venice Nor were the Authority and Priviledge of the Peers regarded with any more favourable Aspect being now rather become an other House then a House of Lords If the Peers think it not convenient that the Protestation should be taken all England over the Commons will not only judge the contrary but command it to be done If the Lords Order the Common-Prayer and other Ceremonies confirm'd by act of Parliament to be us'd and read in all Churches in this the Commons will oppose both King and Lords and order the quite contrary and punish those who do not obey them If the Peers refuse to joyn with them to Petition the King for a Guard against the Tumults knowing them to be the fomenters of them They will Petition themselves and think much if the King do deny them though he knew If he gave them an Inch they would take an Ell. If the Lords at first refuse to join with them to obtain the Militia yet will the Commons not only demand it but threaten the dissenting Nobility one of them desiring that a Catalogue might be taken of their names who consented not to them that so they might be known to the Commons Goodly goodly hath not the Peers brought themselves unto a fine pass But I believe they know best whom they may thank for 't Certainly the dapper Commons thought they might as well spurn at King and Lords as the old Gyants fight against Jupiter for I believe from Ovid they took a Scheme of many of their mutations But these men wrought by action as well as words and thoughts which was a high token of the Commons strength who had so much influence amongst the Sectaries a word good enough for him Lord or Clown that takes exception at it and power over the Lords that they gott 9 of the Peers voted never to sit again in Parliament because they were obedient to his Majesty so that Mr. Pym's Item to the Earl of Dover one of
late have done Nor can I subscribe to till I be better informed that Priviledge given to the Commons by I know not whom yet I suppose of no vulgar apprehension viz. That the King may hold his Parliament for the Communalty of the Realm without Bishops Earls and Barons so that they have lawful Monitions or summons albeit they come not Yet the same Book affirms that the King with his Bishops Earls and Barons cannot hold a Parliament without the assistance of the Commons And his reason for all this assertion is because Sometime there was neither Bishop Earl ne Baron and yet the King did keep and hold his Parliaments To which I shall only answer in brief thus That if he mean that our Kings have kept Parliaments when there was no such thing as or distinction in this Nation of Priest or Nobility or some such Rank above the common People I shall utterly deny his Proposition Or if he understand that Parliaments have been held only by the King and Commons I shall not yield to him till I be assured where and when yet if both were allowed it can be no good consequence that it may be done so now if custom have any sway in England which is now a main Card of the Commons Game And because some of late more through malice than judgement have not only asserted the King to be one of the Estates by which plot they will equal themselves to him and so overthrow his Rule and Government of which Sir Edward Deering doth a little hint but also exclude the Clergy It will not be amiss in this place to right both by one or two authentick Instances The first shall be the Parliaments Bill presented to King Richard III. when but Duke of Glocester to desire him to take upon him the Kingship the which is very long but in it you shall find these words Vs the Lords Spiritual and Temporal and Commons of this Realm of England according to the Election of us the three Estates of this Land Therefore at the request and by the assent of the three Estates of this Realm That is to say the Lords Spiritual and Temporal and Commons of this Land assembled in this present Parliament Here we have Three Estates the Clergy being one and the King none My second Instance shall be taken out of one Titus Livius de Frulonisiis a Book quoted several times by Stow in Henry V. which Manuscript is also in Latin in St. Benit's Colledge Library in Cambridge where having related the life and death of Henry V. he tells us that After all these things and Ceremonies of his burying were solemnly finished as is to-fore rehersed the Three Estates of the Realm of England assembled them together in great number to take advice and deliberation amongst them what was most necessary to be done for the Regiment and Government of the said Realm of England where they concluded to take for their King the only Son of the late King Henry whose name was also Henry which was the VI. of that Name since the Conquest of England But because some may slight this as only the judgement of a private Historian we will strengthen our Assertion by the Laws of our Land In Queen Elizabeth's time an Act of Parliament affords us these words We your said most loving faithful and obedient subjects representing the Three Estates of your Realm of England as thereunto constrained by Law of God and Man c. Here are again Three Estates and the Queen none and that the Clergy are one another Act of Parliament will inform us in these words The State of the Clergy being one of the greatest States of this Realm And after this same manner was the Clergy in Scotland one of the Estates as may also appear by their own Acts of Parliament one of which runs thus That the Three Estates especially considering the persons exercising the Offices Titles and Dignities of Prelates which persons have ever represented one of the Estates And in another Parliament some thirteen years before this viz. 1584. it was thus Enacted That none presume to impugne the Dignity and Authority of the Three Estates or to seek or procure the innovation or diminution of their Power and Authority or any of them in time coming under pain of Treason And whether the Scots have of late behaved themselves according to these Laws is well known And it seems strange to me that they durst be so impudent against their King who considering his power in choosing Parliaments was one of the most absolute Monarchs in the World till the modern Rebellious Retrenchments These things are convincing to me that the King never was one or part of but above the Three Estates it being ridiculous that his Majesty should Petition himself and call himself subject to himself Nor see I any reason to doubt that the Clergy was one having Acts of Parliament for it who knew their own Constitution best 'T is true of late the Clergy have had no Representatives in Parliament the Reverend Lords Spiritual being I do not know how thrown out of the Upper-House and the action at last by threats and other villainies procured to be signed by the Royal Assent for which and seeing they are since happily restored again I shall not at this time presume to question though many who are learned in our Fundamental Laws suppose that reasons might be shewn and that grounded upon law of it's nullity to which purpose the learned Dr. Heylin hath given a short Essay both from the binding of Magna Charta the darling too of our Presbyterian Parliaments which especially provides for the Priviledges of the Clergy as also by the voiding of all actions done by the King by compulsion and not of his free-will And that Kings may be so wrought upon appears by King James who when King of Scotland was by his unruly Subjects constrained to declare several times quite contrary to his judgement and so was King Edward III. as appears by the Revocation of a Statute made the 15. year of his raign And how unwilling King Charles the first was to sign this Bill is not unknown the Parliament having got a new Art of getting their ends about viz. by Tumults and Threats so that the King was rather fought than reasoned out of it And what impudence the Commons were brasoned with to presume thus to extirpate the Spiritual Lords whose Antiquity in Parliament was double to theirs is experimentally beyond expression But they and so did the Puritanical Faction of the Nobility for such Animals were amongst them too know well enough that the King would not only be weakened but themselves strengthened by annihilation of 26. such sound Royal and Orthodox Votes for which qualifications the Schismatical Lords and Commons hated them But enough of this only I shall leave some Quaeries to the consideration of the Presbyterian mad-caps Lord or Common of the wicked
this Blake is summon'd before the Council which so incensed Andrew Melvill that he labour'd to make it a Publick Cause and did so much That they declare it would be ill to question Ministers and boldly told King James who asked them if they had seen the Conditions of Huntly's Pardon That both he and the rest should either satisfie the Church in every point or be pursued with all extremity so as they should have no reason to complain of the over-sight of Papists And as for Blake they gave him a Declinator affirming it was the Cause of God whereunto it concerned them to stand at all hazzard and this Declinator was sent to all the Presbyteries in the Kingdom who were desired not only to subscribe it but to commend the Cause in their private and publick Prayers to God by which means they fancyed themselves so strong that they deny the King to have power to judge a man for speaking in Pulpit and that the King in what he had already done had so wronged Christs Kingdom that the death of many men could not be so grievous to them And therefore they ordain a Fast for averting the Judgements then threatning the Kirk This action so vext his Majesty that he forbad all Convocatings and Meetings but they little cared for him or his Orders for Mr. Walter Balcanquall did not only forthwith rail against the Court naming several of the chief Courtiers but desired all the well-affected to meet in the Little Church to assist the Ministry who did accordingly and Petition the King in behalf of the Kirk But the King asking them who they were that durst convene against his Proclamation was worshipfully replyed by the Lord Lindesey That they durst do no more then so and that they would not suffer Religion to be over-thrown Multitudes unmannerly thronging into the room the King departed and they went to the little Church again where Lindesey told them No course but one let us stay together that are here and promise to take one part and advertise our friends and the favourers of Religion to come unto us for it shall be either theirs or ours Upon which great clamours shoutings and lifting up of hands followed some crying to Arms others to bring out Haman for whilst the Lords were with the King being sent as above-said from the Little-Church Mr. Cranstone read to the People that story others cryed out The Sword of the Lord and of Gideon and so great were the Peoples fury rais'd on a sodain That if the Provost by fair words and others by threats had not tamed them they had done some violence These actions of the Kirkers makes the King leave the Town go to Linlithgow whereupon they resolve for Warr the Ministers agitating them Amongst the rest one John Welsh in his Sermon rail'd pitifully against the King saying He was possest with a Devil and compared him to a Madd-man and affirmed That Subjects might lawfully rise and take the Sword out of his hand In this fiery zeal they write a Letter to the Lord Hamilton desiring him to be their General telling him in it That the People animated by the Word and Motion of Gods Spirit had gone to Arms. But all came to nothing Hamilton refusing such rebellious honour carryeth the Letter to the King who orders the guilty Ministers to be apprehended who escape by flying into England and the Magistrates of Edenburgh are pardoned The overthrow of this one business strengthened the Kings Authority mightily which was also confirmed by the Assembly at Perth now better known by the name of St. John's Town The Ministry being now pretty quiet Ruthen Earl of Gowry conspired to kill the King but to his own ruin His Majesty for this Preservation orders that Thanks should solemnly be render'd to God but in this he found the Presbyters cross-grain'd denying to do any such thing for such a deliverance whereupon they were silenced yet afterwards shewing their willingness were restored In this year was King James his third son his second viz. Robert dying young Charles born afterwards King of England The next year was kept an Assembly at Burnt-Island whither Mr. John Davidson wrote a rayling Letter checking them for their cowardise in not opposing the ungodly telling them that the King was not sound and that Warr was more commendable than a wicked Peace But the graver sort rather pittyed and smiled at the mans madd zeal then troubled themselves to vex at him And now Queen Elizabeth dying King James the undoubted next Heir to the English Crown is at London Proclaimed accordingly whither he went to receive his Crown having thus happily united the two Kingdoms And here I shall leave off from prosecuting the Presbyterian Story in Scotland any further though I might tell you of their calling against the Kings consent an Assembly at Aberdeen to rant against Episcopal Government nor would they dissolve at the Kings command till they were proclaimed Traytors and yet did some of them scorn to acknowledge their Error and were by some of their Brethren vindicated to King James face in England the next year And many more instances of their Waspish humour in denying the Kings Authority might be shewn out of their own Historians who abound in such examples but if Symmetry will tell us the stature of the man by the proportion of his foot these may serve so much at this time to satisfie that I fear they will rather nauseate And really those who thought it a hard case that Mr. Blake should be punished for affirming in a Sermon 1596. That all Kings were the Devils Barns that the Kings heart was treacherous and that the Devil was in the Court and the guiders of it That the Queen of England was an Atheist and a wicked Woman That the Nobility and Lords were miscreants bribers degenerated godless dissemblers and Enemies to the Church That the Council were Holliglasses Cormorants and men of no Religion And in his Prayer for Queen Anne he said We must pray for her for the fashion but we have no cause she will never do us good Nor did he word it only but also rais'd Arms both Horse and Foot against the Kings consent These men I say who thought it unjust to have him questioned for such rebellious actions may also for ought I know think it strange with Buchanan that our Laws do not provide ample and honourable rewards for those who can boldly murder their Prince And yet must this Buchanan and Knox be cryed up as valiant noble bold and publick-spirited men and this present world scorned because we have no such fire-brands And whether this title is rashly thrown upon them let any ingenious man judge not only by their fore-mentioned tenets and actions against their Kings but by the answerable nurturing up of their Disciples who at the University of St. Andrews instead of Divinity Lectures had these Political or rather a ruine to
party I could also tell you how Mr. White once a great Brother in Authority scandalized those who adhered to the King in the late Wars And what wicked Epithets another Brother threw upon the Book of Common-Prayer and severall others as Prynne Vicars Leyton and others mentioned in this Book But that it would be too tedious both for my self and Reader Should I tell you of the abominable railing scolding and brawling of Barlee Bagshaw and Baxter three noted B's you would bless your self to see these people who pretend to all Sanctity and Holiness to have so much of the Devil in their mouths Thus have I stopt their rage against me by making them more angry And if this do not satisfie them I shall treble it the next time yet might all this have been spared if they would as patiently permit others to tell them the Truth as they will impatiently throw Lyes and Scandals upon their betters But these People do not love to be touch'd on their sores though it be to cure them They say 't is one way to find a Thief to note who blusheth at the discourse of stealing but these men are farr from that sign of Grace Tell them but of the sins belonging to their Religion as Treason Schism Perjury c. they will presently fly in your face though take no great notice of other Peccadiglio's like the Baker in the Play who took all names and reproaches without any offence but being once by chance call'd Mealstealer was so inraged that he would have spoiled all their sport unless they had left off such close Reflections And thus much in part to pay them home with their own Coyn. As for the Author whilst a School-Boy he was too much sway'd to Presbytery and delighting in the Stories of our Times had none to peruse but May Vicars Ricraft and such like partial Relators By which means believing with the Ignorant all things in Print to be true was perswaded to incline to the wrong side But a little before his going to the University lighting by chance upon Dr. Bate's Judicious Book Elenchus Motuum he found the Laws and true Government to be opposite to his former Readings and therein the knavery and jugling of their Opposers strange things which he had never heard of before Which with some other assistance so farr prevail'd with him that in a short time he threw off Father Schism and ever since like little Loyal John in the Epitaph For the King Church and Bloud-Royal He went as true as any Sun-Dial As for the Learned in History neither Preface nor Book was intended for them And as for those who are not somewhat studied this way though they are not able of themselves to search out the Truth yet are they not obliged to believe all in Print If they finde something in these Papers not agreeable to the Canting Tales of every zealous Brother let them not censure mine as false because the other pretends himself to be a Saint These People though they make a great deal of noyse being commonly the most ignorant and partial in Humane Story To say no more If we believe every thing in Mr. Clarke's Story-Books we shall with him make wicked men Saints Rebels good Subjects and Schismaticks the best Church-men which all should desire to be really perform'd who wish the Honour of his Majesty Peace of the Church Prosperity and Happiness of the Nation St. George's day 1662. The Contents of the Chapters BOOK I. CHAP. I. Nothing so wicked but some will undertake and vindicate Pag. 1. CHAP. II. The Life of Ignatius Loyola the first founder of the Jesuits Pag. 6. CHAP. III. Some Observations of the Jesuits Political Constitution Temper and Actions especially relating to our late Troubles Pag. 10. CHAP. IV. The helps and assistance which the Calvinist Presbyterian and Jesuite afford one another for the ruine and alteration of Kingdomes with their Plots to destroy the Government and Tranquillity of England Pag. 15. CHAP. V. The Originall of the Commons in Parliament That the Clergy is one of the three Estates and the King supream above all Pag. 30. CHAP. VI. The Priviledges of Parliament and that in some Cases they are null and voyd Pag. 38. CHAP. VII The beginning of the Presbyterians with the wicked Principles of the Ring-leaders of that factious Sect. Pag. 42. CHAP. VIII The Rebellious Actions of the Presbyterians in Scotland till the death of King James Pag. 45. CHAP. IX The illegal malepert and impious plots and designs of our Schismatical Presbyterians in England in the Raigns of Q. Elizabeth King James and K. Charles till the beginning of the Wicked Long Parliament Pag. 59. BOOK II. CHAP. I. THe mischievous and impudent contrivances and innovations of the wicked Long Parliament 1. Their false slaunders thrown upon the Court and Church 2. Their affection to and siding with the chief of the Schismatical Incendiaries 3. The impudence and seditiousnesse of the Lecturers thrust amongst the simple people by the power and cunning of the Parliament 4. Their designs to alter the frame of the Civil Government 5. Their plots to overthrow Episcopacy Divine service and the Orthodox Clergy 6. Their stirring up the people to Tumults whereby they frighted the King and Queen from London 7. The small esteem which the Commons had of the King and Nobility whereby it is plain that it was not the King but the Parliament which occasioned and began the Warrs Pag. 73. CHAP. II. The Abominable Hypocrisie and jugling of the Parliament and Army till the horrid murder of his Majesty Pag. 106. CHAP. III. The inconstancy villany and monstrous Tyranny of the wicked Army till the happy Restauration of the King Pag. 119. CHAP. IV. The grand perjury of the Parliament and Army Pag. 130. CHAP. V. The wicked Sacriledge of the Parliament and Army Pag. 133. CHAP. VI. That some through ignorance and acredulous disposition prompting them to embrace their specious pretences might be charmed to side with the Parliament though really designed no dammage either to the Kings person or Authority Pag. 141. BOOK III. Â THat the Presbyterians were not willingly and actively instrumental for the uncapitulated Restauration of his Majesty Pag. 149 CHAP. II. The wickednesse of our Presbyterians in throwing Aspersions upon his Majesty and instigating the People to Rebellion by assuring them in the Lawfulnesse of Subjects fighting against their Kings Pag. 171. CHAP. III. The small or rather no Authority that the Presbyterians allow the King to have over them Pag. 197. CHAP. IV. THat the Presbyterians are but Conditional Subjects no longer obedient to their King or acknowledging Him then he serves their turns and is subservient to their fancies Pag. 207. CHAP. V. I. The wicked Reproaches the Presbyterians cast upon the present Episcopal Church 2. What small reason they have to desire Toleration from the King and Episcopal Party since they deny the same to them with their scandals upon the Church as Popish
Scotland by domestick dissentions stir'd up against him by Hay Creighton Bruce Graham and other Jesuites who furnished the Rebellious Nobility with moneys from Spain to carry on their designs Nor hath Ireland reason to rejoyce in their acquaintance where the Seminary Fryars of late dayes had gone so far as in Dublin it self not only to appear in their habits but also to affront the Archbishop and Maior of that City nor were they wanting to the erection of Colledges and Societies maintain'd by good Benefactors as appears by a Letter from the Council in England to that in Ireland Yet for all this hath their rebellious favourits dealt mildly with them though the Laws be severe enough and 20. years ago look'd upon this kind of mercy as a crime fit to be thrown in the face both of King and Bishop but how deservedly let any judge but Prynne whose malice and partiality is well enough known Nor need we much trouble our selves to prove the Jesuite somewhat medling their familiarity with the Anabaptists Quakers and such like Phanaticks being suspicious Of which many examples might here be shewn but that their common knowledge would make the Relation tedious only take notice that the very Weekly Gazet suspects Mr. Rogers and those of his Fraternity to have some Jesuite or Priest at the Helm with them And Mr. Rogers takes no good course to clear himself by endeavouring to vindicate the Jesuite from having any hand in our late Warrs which this following Story is sufficient to confute When the late King was murdered Mr. Henry Spotteswood riding casually that way just as his Head was cut off espyed the Queens Confessor there on Horse-back in the habit of a Trooper drawing forth his Sword and flourishing it over his own head in Tryumph as others then did At which Mr. Spotteswood being much amazed and being familiarly acquainted with the Confessor road up to him and said O Father I little thought to have found you here or any of your Profession at such a sad spectacle To which he answered that There were at least forty or more Priests and Jesuites there present on Horse-back besides himself The resultancy of this Story is home and pat and for the truth of it I referr you to Mr. Prynne Nor need we here relate the great correspondency betwixt the late Grandees and Cardinal Mazarini of which Mr. Walker gives us a hint and experience can proclaim the rest Nor is it probable that they should have no hand in the promotion of our late distractions as most beneficial to the Catholick Cause since they have been the chief fomenters of all other Wars in Christendom leaving nothing un-essay'd that may bring all into confusion as Ludovicus Lucius and others can inform you more at large Besides all this we might give some Extracts out of the Plot discovered by Andreas ab Habernfield 1640. September to Sir William Boswell the Kings Agent at the Hague and by him to the Archbishop and so to his Majesty A design managed abroad by the Pope and Cardinal Barbarino and in England chiefly by George Con a Scotch-man and the Pope's Nuncio The substance of which was that the Roman-Catholicks here should stirr up the Puritans to revenge themselves of the Bishops and the Scots should also be perswaded to Arms whence the English should so adhere that the King remaining Inferiour in Forces should be constrain'd to crave aid from the Papists which should be deny'd unless he favoured them with a Toleration which if absolutely deny'd it was contrived by sodain death to remove him But because we find the Reality of the Plot questioned by an understanding Gentleman we shall referr you to L'estrange and Prynne's Relation But let this Plot be as it will 't is more then suspicion that our Phanaticks have been beholden in many things to the Jesuite of which one example may somewhat satisfie They caus'd the Book written by Parsons Anno 1524. under the faigned name of Doleman and call'd A Conference about the Succession of the Crown which Book was condemned by Act of Parliament 35. Elizab. to be publish'd again under the title of Several Speeches delivered at a Conference concerning the Power of Parliaments to proceed against their King for Mis-government The Arguments and Precedents are meerly the same though the fashion of the Book be a little altered Parsons having made it a Dialogue and these men into Speeches And how agreeable to this Rule of King-killing they steer'd their course is impossible to be forgot as long as Memory or Record can be had in this World CHAP. IV. The helps and assistance which the Calvinist Presbyterian and Jesuite afford one another for the ruine and alteration of Kingdoms with their Plots to destroy the Government and Tranquillity of England THat the Independents should only be beholden to the Jesuits or these Fathers the sole Ingeneers of Wickedness would mainly over-cloud the Reputation of the Presbyterians who look upon themselves as active for any mischief and as cunning contrivers And therefore 't is best for them to go hand in hand each discovering to other what new Plots they have found out for the subversion of Governments By which Club they have afforded certain Rules to Politicians which have exactly been observed and followed by our late Schismaticks as is palpable by the following Observations And first we shall begin with the Plots of the Calvinists a people never negligent to promote their own Interests Of whose Sect as the Emperour Ferdinand affirm'd the proper genius is To hold nothing either Fraud or Wickedness which is undertaken for the Religion No sanctity of Oath nor fear of Dishonour hinders them A Chararacter like that given by the experienced King James to the Puritans the same with our Non-conforming Presbyterians of whom one gives this sentence Puritans and all other Sectaries who though scarce two of them agree in what they would have yet they all in general are haters of Government And to this purpose was the judgement of the wise Secretary Walsingham when to Monsieur Critoy Secretary of France he assured them to be dangerous and very popular not Zeal nor Conscience but meer Faction and Division and besides this gives a short description of their Cunning Jugling and Rebellion for which with the Jesuite they start strange Doctrines to be as an Umbrella to their Illegal proceeding Of which the learned Bancroft Mr. David Owen and an Ingenious Epistle Congratulatory under the Name of Lysimachus Nicanor will afford you many Instances Whereby you may see that the Presbyterians in their Principles and Actions have more of Rome than the late reverend Archbishop Land or his favorites Let Bayly and the spurious Irenaeus Philalethes or any others collect or steal out of him what they please The Calvinists being resolved to root the Lutherans out of the Palatinate took this following Method to bring their ends about as
of the Earl of Manchester In which two Universities there was a thorough Purge to the perpetual reproach and ignominy of the Undertakers many famous and learned Doctors Heads of Houses Masters of Arts and others were turned out of their Fellowships and Colledges because they would not submit to that which was contrary to their Oaths and the Priviledges of both places imposed upon them by those who had no more authority in such things than they had to behead or rebel against their Master IX Contzenus saith these Revolutions must be done moderately and with abundance of cunning the first step being to make the followers and abetters of the contrary Opinion odious and as it were a scorn in the Countrey and this by disgracing them especially with things which seem most ridiculous absurd and hate ful to the common people either by nick-naming or any way else The scandalous Reports and Pamphlets thrown against both King and Bishop as Popish though they thought nothing less may be some sign what good use hath been made of Contzen's Observation What disgrace cast upon the decent Habits of Church and University though the first according to the Canons and the other appointed by the Statutes of the place What unseemly Titles given to Organs as Bag-pipes and what irreverent names to Churches as Steeple-houses How were the Clergy nick-named with the title of Hirelings Humane Learning as Heathenish and Scholars as professing enmity against the Gospel How Cromwel's Faction spread abroad Pamphlets against King City and Parliament 1647. that the people might take the Army for honest men is somewhat pointed at by Mr. Walker And since that What scurrilous Books hath been contrived by Needham Goodwin Milton Rogers and such like Billingsgate Authors is not unknown to to any Nor is it forgot what impertinent Reports the Long-Parliament spread amongst the People to make the King odious as that he was a Favourite to the Catholicks and those call'd Arminians which sufficiently demonstrated a Presbyterian malice since the first was false and the other no crime And this must also be laid in the dish of Archbishop Laud though Prynne and they knew that he wrote more against the Romanists than all our Brittain Presbyterians who have spent more time in the commendation of Rebellion than in the Service of God And certainly I may as well call Prynne a Stage-Player for writing his Histriomastix as he the Archbishop Papistical because he wrote so learnedly against them And as if this were not mischief enough the People must now and then be alarum'd with strange Reports of Forces from Denmark Lorraign and other strange places as if the Nation were to be conquer'd and the Natifs throats cut which if we yield yet will the ignominy only fall upon the Presbyterian Party who by their want of Allegiance would bring the King to such straits that his own Subjects were not able to defend him from their Tyranny They thought it fit for us to send aid into the Palatinate and yet unlawful for Denmark to assist his own Kinsman against his Rebellious Subjects It was convenient they thought to give help to the French against their lawful King yet held it abominable for Forraigners to give a good wish to the King of England against his rebellious people The Covenanters in Scotland might with honesty crave aid from the French King though a Roman-Catholick against their Anointed Soveraign But so must not the King of England from the Duke of Lorraign though his life endangered by his bloud-thirsty Subjects The Parliament forsooth may make a Pacification with the Irish Catholicks but the King must not harbour such a thought without grand aspersions If the King but march towards Scotland the malignity of envious tongues endeavours to blast his Reputation as not fit to wear the Crown But many thousands of the Scotch-Covenanters may come into England fight against their King kill his faithful Subjects and inrich themselves by their plundering and stealing from the honest People and for their villainies receive large rewards with the Epithet of Brethren and so they were but in Iniquity being guilty of High-Treason because marched and acted against the Kings consent who is the Supreme Authority of the three Nations And that the Supream Head may when rebell'd against for his own security and defence desire help of his Neighbours though of a different perswasion in Religion I think needs no dispute He that would lose his Kingdom quietly is as simple as the Rebel 's wicked and if his own Sword be not long enough for the tryal he may lawfully borrow his Friends If the Parliament stood so much upon their Priviledges I know no reason but that the King might maintain his Prerogative and if any Contradiction be betwixt these two they are obliged to yield to their betters Nor doth it thwart the practise of former times for the Supream Authority to desire assistance from people of a contrary Religion as may be seen by the following examples as I find them set down to my hand in a late French Treatise Aza the good King of Judaea procured assistance from Benhadad the Idolatrous King Syria And so did the Great Constantine imploy in his Armies many Heathenish Goths So were the wicked Vandals call'd into Africa by good Boniface And after this manner did Narses under the Emperour Justinian imploy the Pagan Lombards The good Arcadius Emperour of Constantinople though a Christian delivered the tuition of his young son Theodosius and the Government of the Empire till his Son came to age into the hands of Isdigerdis King of Persia a Heathen who accordingly kept his promise with the Emperour Heraclius the Emperour was beholden to the Saracens as Basilius and Constantine's sons to John Emperour of Constantinople were to Ostelzi And by these people were also Henry and Frederick Brothers to the King of Castile mainly benefited in their Wars against the French Ludouick Sforza Duke of Milan and others begg'd assistance from the Turk against the French as Maximilian of Austria did against the Venetians And if it be lawful to procure aid from Heathens certainly a Christian may seek help from those who profess Jesus Christ though in every thing they cannot absolutely agree But enough of this since the Presbyterian commits ten times more sin in Rebelling than the wickedst man can do in defending his own right though by the assistance of Turks and Infidels X. What a great stickler Robert Parsons the Jesuite was to overthrow both England and the Protestant Religion in it is well known the great States-man Cardinal D'Ossat taketh notice several times of his designs against these Kingdoms Some of his Plots and Contrivances shall follow as they were publisht by some Roman Catholicks One of his means is to alter the Municipal Laws of the Land that the Civil Laws might have sway 'T is needless to relate how the Laws have been chopped and changed by diversity of Governments not
Long-Parliament I. Whether or no if the King and two Estates can extirpate the third then the King Lords Spiritual and Temporal cannot turn out the Commons as well as the King Lords Temporal and Commons exclude the Bishops II. Whether or no when the King and two Estates have turn'd out the third the King with another Estate cannot also turn out the second And lastly when only the King and one Estate remains the King as Supream cannot seclude that also III. And if these things will bear a good Consequence Whether the Presbyterians whose chiefest confidence was in the Long-Parliament but esecially the Commons have not brought their Hoggs to a fair Market But these People did not only overthrow Episcopacy but struck also at the root of Monarchy it self by their pleadings against the King's Supremacy making themselves not only equal to but above him And this not only when assembled in Parliament but when they are so far from having any Authority there there being no such thing then sitting that they are separately so many private Subjects obliged only to follow their own occasions for in this capacity I suppose they make themselves when they alledge for a Rule Rex est major singules minor Vniversis considering they place this in their Remonstrance as distinct from Parliaments But how weak this Position is let Parliaments themselves be our Judges And I do not love to reason against Authentick Records When God tells us expresly that Whoredom is a grievous sin 't was blasphemy in John de Casa to write in the vindication of Sodomy When Ignatius Irenaeus and other ancient and authentick Authors assure us that Presbytery was subordinate to Episcopacy in the first Century 't is folly in our late Schismaticks to dream of or introduce a Parity When Parliaments acknowledge themselves Subjects to his Majesty for any to conclude thence their Supremacy are in my judgement no less guilty of ignorance than that simpleton of Athens who fancied all the ships and other things to be his when he had no more interest in them then I have relation to the Crown of Castile The Lords and Commons tell us plainly what little signs they have of Superiority in these words Where by divers sundry old authentick Histories and Chronicles it is manifestly declared and exprest that this Realm of England is an Empire and so hath been accepted in the World governed by one Supream Head and King having the Dignity and Royal Estate of the Imperial Crown of the same unto whom a Body Politick compact of all sorts and degrees of people and divided in tearms and by names of Spiritualty and Temporally been bounden and ought to bear next to God a natural and humble obedience c. And in many other Statutes do they acknowledge themselves the King 's most humble faithful and obedient Subjects But more especially in those two of Supremacy and Allegiance in which they acknowledge the King the Supream under God both of Civil and Ecclesiastical affairs and so swear Allegiance to him each Parliament-man before he sit taking both the Oaths as all other Subjects do Whereby they clearly renounce not only Priority but Parity by which all their Cavils bring nothing upon themselves but Perjury Against this Supremacy of our Kings though it be under God and Christ John Calvin rants in his usual hot-spurr'd zeal calling them Blasphemers and Fools who durst first presume to give such a title to a King And in obedience to this Supream Head of Geneva and Presbytery doth his dear Subject and Disciple Anthony Gilby and others of that Fraternity shoot their Wild-fire against the same Statutes of England by which they shew their Schism and Madness more than Christian Prudence Besides all this our Laws make it Treason to compass or imagin the death of the King Queen or his eldest Son to leavy Warr against the King or any way adhere to or assist his Enemies But for any to commit Treason against the Parliament especially for those who have the King on their side I see little reason because I have express Law to the contrary which tells us that any one who shall attend upon the King in his Wars and for his Defence shall in no ways be convict or attaint of High Treason ne of other offences for that cause by Act of Parliament or otherwayes by any process of Law whereby he or any of them shall loose or forfeit Life Lands Tenements Rents Possessions Hereditaments Goods Chattels or any other things but to be for that deed and service utterly discharged of any vexation trouble or loss And if any Act or Acts or other process of the Law here after thereupon for the same happen to be made contrary to this Ordinance that then that Act or Acts or other process of the Law whatsoever they shall be stand and be utterly void How this Act hath been since violated Compounders Sequestrators and Decimators will best inform you And what a pitiful ridiculous and extorted Comment the Noddles of the Long-Parliament made upon this Act may be seen in their Declarations by which you may view both their ignorance and their malice These are Presidents enough to satisfie any man in the Parliaments subjection to the King it being in his power to constitute them not they him in him being the only Authority to call and dissolve them not any such being in themselves He can pardon Malefactors not they without his consent The death of the King dissolves the Parliament though their breaking up reflects nothing upon him He can call them where he pleaseth but they not remove his Court They Petition him by way of Subjects not he them The King of England can do no wrong and never dyeth being alwayes of full age the breath of the former being no sooner expired but the next Heir is de facto King without the Ceremony of Proclamation or Coronation And whether a Parliament can do no wrong or no I leave to many men now in England to judge The Kings power hath been such that he hath call'd a Parliament with what limitations he pleas'd as King Henry the fourth's Parliament at Coventry in which no Lawyer was to sit And whether too many Lawyers in a Parliament doth more good or bad hath been oft discours'd of in late times And 't is the King hath the power of the Sword not the Parliament as their own Laws tell us for in the year 1271. Octob. 30. We find this Statute To us i. e. the King it belongeth and our part is through our Royal Seignory straitly to defend i. e. to prohibit or stop force of Armour and all other force against our Peace at all times when it shall please us and to punish them who shall do contrary according to the Laws and Usages of our Realm And hereunto they are bound to aid us as their Soveraign Lord at all seasons when need shall be And the meaning
the Parliament in the 23. year of her raign for presuming to Vote a Fast to be solemnized at the Temple-Church for such of their own Members as could conveniently be present there telling them by her Messenger Sir Thomas Henneage then Vice-Chamberlain With what admiration she beheld that Incroachment on her Royal Authority in committing such an apparent Innovation without her privaty or pleasure first known Upon which they desired Sir Thomas to present their Submission to the Queen and to crave her pardon Nor would she suffer her Parliaments to meddle in Ecclesiastical affairs And plainly used to tell them that their Priviledges were but the free pronouncing these two words Yea and No. And King James perceiving his last Parliament but one to soar somewhat high told their Speaker Sir Thomas Richardson in a Letter from New-market That some fiery and popular spirits of the Lower-House did debate matters above their capacity to our dishonour and Prerogative Royal. These are therefore to make known to them That none shall hereafter presume to meddle with any thing concerning our Government or matters of State with our Sons match with the Daughter of Spain nor to touch the Honour of that King or any other our Friends or Confederates Nor with any mans particulars which have their due Motion in our Ordinary Courts of Justice But to put them out of doubt of any question hereafter of that nature We think our self very free and able to punish any mans misdemeanour in Parliament as well sitting there as after which we mean not to spare hereafter upon any occasions of any mans And that King James had good grounds for what he wrote I am apt to believe not only considering his own Learning and Knowledge in State-affairs But that if a Parliament man by their own Orders is not abusively to reflect upon any of their own Members to me it seems very irrational to think that they may openly vilifie the Crown and throw dirt upon Regal Authority Therefore I shall perswade my self that Sir Henry Ludlow who said there that King Charles was not worthy to be King of England was farr more unfit to live As for the other Priviledge which the Parliament doth vigorously demand as their due and right we shall find their clamour to be not unlike some Bills in Chancery where many thousand pounds are demanded when scarce twenty is due Or the towring expectations of Lambert Simnell a Bakers son who under a Princely Vizard required the Crown of England as his Birth-right yet after all the bloud-shed in his behalf was happy to be a Turn-spit to King Henry the Seventh 'T is true for Debt and such private and peculiar Engagements a Member cannot be Imprisoned for if so a plot might be framed to shrink the Houses again though in a more plausible method to a New Rump And this was the case of Mr. George Ferrers Burgess for Plymouth 1542. who being arrested for debt was at the desire of the Commons released and the Sheriff of London sent to the Tower for two dayes But yet the best of them may be imprisoned though then actually in Parliament either for Treason Felony or refusing to give security for the Peace And for this cause was Thomas Thorp Speaker to the Commons arrested and put into Prison in the 31. year of King Henry the Sixth And the learned Judges of the Land declared he was not capable of a Release which being made known to the Commons by Walter Moyle one of the Kings Serjeants at Law they presently chose themselves another Speaker viz. Sir Thomas Charleton and never clamour'd that the Priviledges of Parliament were broken In Queen Elizabeth's time nothing was more common then to serve Subpoena's upon and imprison extravagant Members Witness the two upon Mr. Knevet An. Reg. 39. one upon Mr. Coke An. Reg. 127. and Mr. Peter Wentworth was committed to the Tower and Sir Henry Bromley Mr. Stevens Mr. Welch to the Fleet 35. Elizab. for desiring the Intailment of the Crowns Succession And in the 35. of her raign she sent into the House of Commons and took out Mr. Morris and committed him to Prison with divers others for some speeches in the House and when the rest of the Commons petitioned her Majesty for their release she sent them a severe check telling them that they were not to discourse of things of such high nature And the same Answer did King James return them 1621. when they endeavoured to know the reason of Sir Edwin Sandis his restraint And though he was a merciful and peaceful King yet when they presumed to incroach upon him he would make them learn more manners in the Tower and other Prisons witness the committment of several of them in the 12. year of his raign And though never any King was more afflicted and bandied with Parliaments than the late King Charles yet the sweetness of his temper made him wink at many insolent Indiscretions till at last their Impudence grew so high as not to permit the Serjeant of the Mace to go to the King upon his Command to lock the Parliament-door and deny the Kings Messenger entrance to hold by force the Speaker in the Chair swearing deep Oaths that he should sit still as long as they pleas'd though the King command the contrary to deny the Kings Power to dissolve them by Proxy that they are not bound to give an account to the King but to their own House of their actions be they what they will in Parliament upon which several of them were imprisoned the Judges delivering their Opinions positively that their crimes were within cognizance out of Parliament affirming that if it were not so if a Parliament-man should commit murder in time of Parliament he could not be tryed and arraigned until a new Representative and for confirmation of their Opinions they alledged many Presidents as that of Plowden in Queen Mary's time who was fined in the Kings-Bench for words spoken in Parliament against the dignity of the Queen And to be brief though the Long-Parliament made great hubbubs and brags about the five Members yet afterwards when they were in their height of pride they in print did acknowledge and confess that Members might be arrested and detained for Treason Felony and other crimes though they would gladly smooth it up so farr as to make themselves Judges I shall say no more but that what Priviledge soever they have the Laws of our Land allow the same to the Clergy and their Servants and Familiars for that is the word in the Statute when call'd to a Convocation and this either in coming carrying or going home again CHAP. VII The beginning of the Presbyterians with the wicked Principles of the Ring-leaders of that Factious Sect. HAving thus hinted upon the Kings Prerogative the Origin of the Commons and their Priviledges by which 't is plain that the King is Supream and by
restrain'd the punishment of their disorders against her Person and Authority the more liberty they took to offend To this Knox impudently answers That his patience in suffering abominations made him not guilty of any fault and if his tongue took liberty in Pulpit she might take it as she pleas'd since in the Pulpit he had no Superiour but God and that his gifts made him equal to any of her Peers And as for her weeping he said He could better sustain her tears than the trouble of his Cause or to betray the Common-wealth Nor durst the Queen question him for his sawcy replyes knowing the strength of his Faction which being uot unhid to Knox made him more Insolent as afterwards publickly to affirm That For her sins the Land must lament and that it was absolute Rebellion in her not to turn Protestant and compared her to Simon Magus thinking it impossible that her sins could be forgiven her Nor did others of his Fraternity hold their peace And having got thus sure footing nothing would satisfie them but to have all for which purpose at a General Assembly at Edenburgh they draw up a Petition of several Heads the first of which was That the Queen her self with all her Family should not only forsake Mass and Popish Idolatry but that all none excepted should be punished who transgrest this Article To this she answered being then at St. Johnstons That as she freely gave every one Liberty of Conscience so she hoped that her Subjects would not press her to do against her Conscience and that she did not only think that there was no impiety in the Mass but that her Religion was true and grounded upon the Word of God But this gave them no full satisfaction Henry Stewart Lord Darnley being now marryed to the Queen July 1565. and proclaimed King the Knoxian Lords fly to their Arms and so doth the King also but before his march hears Knox preach at Edenburgh at St. Giles Kirk where he rail'd against the present Government reflectively saying That for the sins of the People God gives them Boyes the King was about 21. years old and Women to rule over them After which the King marcheth against the Lords who fly into England yet through Intercession all was reconciled Not long after this the Queen was brought to Bed in Edenburgh Castle betwixt 9. 10. at night July 19. of a Son which was afterwards Christned at Sterling and call'd James who became at last the happy Uniter of the two Crowns At the latter end of the same year John Knox intending to visit his sons at Cambridge moved the Assembly to write to the English Bishops in favour of the Non-conformists then buzzing in England The which they do but in their wonted language railing against the Surplice Square-Caps Tippets and calling them Badges and Garments of Idolatry Romish Raggs vain Trifles telling them as if the serious Bishops need take advice from such Hair-brains That they may boldly oppose all such Authority which dare command such things brave language and anew way of begging to get curtesies by Some few weeks after this the King was most barbarously murder'd 9 th February but by whom and how because History will not tell us the truth at large I think it not convenient to relate by peice-meal Then was the Queen whether willing or constrained is nothing to me marryed to Bothwell against whom the Lords raise an Army and forced him to fly into Denmark where he was imprisoned and they also seize on the forsaken Queen whom they secure in the Island of Lochlevin where by threats and fear they forced her to resign tears trickling down her face abundantly her Interest in the Crown to her young Son few days above a year old who was Crowned few days after at Sterling July 29. And if you will believe a late Historian Knox and other Ministers were not satisfied with this Resignation of hers but would have her also deprived of life nor is this Treasonable cruelty contradictory to his fore-mentioned Principles Now could the Knoxians desire nothing more having their King young in his Cradle and so capable of what impression they pleas'd and their Queen in close Prison so that they appeared Lords and Masters Yet she presently escapes out of Prison gets some Forces fights Murray the Regent but being beat fled into England where Queen Elizabeth imprisoned her till she was to the astonishment of many beheaded 1586. after 18. years close Imprisonment The next year the Regent Murray was slain at Lithgow by one Hamilton And then Lenox the Kings Grand-father obtained that dignity against whom the Lord Hamilton in behalf of the Queen raiseth a Warr in which Lenox was slain at Sterling Then was the Earl of Marre chosen who not long after dyed of a Feavour After whom the Earl of Morton succeeded as Regent after which the Queens Party by degrees lost all Authority In this year did John Knox dye at Edenburgh Novemb. 27. one that as I am apt to believe all things considered gained more esteem amongst the people by the reverence of his long-beard reaching down to his middle than any real wisdom or discretion that could be appropriated to him And now comes Andrew Melvil burning from Geneva against Bishops denying the lawfulness of their Function labouring for the absolute Presbyterial Discipline according to the Geneva mode which rais'd some Tempests in the Church insomuch that some of the Presbytery forbad Mr. Patrick Adamson lately by the Regent presented and by the Chapter chosen to the See of St. Andrews to Exercise any part of his Jurisdiction till he had acknowledged and satisfied them After this Argyle and Athol not affecting the Regent go to the young King at Sterling complaining against Morton and desiring him to take the Rule upon himself And so the King doth at 12. years old and thus the Regency fell The young King being brought up in the Reformed way confirms the Religion in Parliament but not their Discipline he affecting the Episcopal Government and ever since he was ten years old as himself confesseth disliked the Presbyterian way And truly Experience gave him good reason for it But to make all sure a Negative Oath by way of a Confession of Faith wherein all the Romish Ceremonies and Doctrines were abjured was drawn up by Mr. John Craig and this the King himself took and this he reflected upon in the Conference at Hampton-Court Having thus tyed his Conscience as they thought his Body must be secured too and so at Ruthen they seize upon him and that with so much inhumanity and irreverence that he burst forth into tears for which he got nothing but this Answer from the Master of Glammis It is no matter for his tears better that Barns should weep then Bearded-men Upon this the Earl of Arran going to know the Kings condition was secured and his Brother sore
wounded And none being suffered to speak with the King but whom they pleas'd he cryed out to some Noble-men whom the Duke of Lenox had sent to see him that he was a Captive and desired his good Subjects to release him But this his Jaylors forced him presently to recant by setting forth a Proclamation in his Name that all things were done according to his own desire Then is the King carryed to Edenburgh where the Estates and Assemblies of Ministers justifie this bold action singing in triumph as they went up the High-street the 124. Psalm Now Israel may say c. Whilst the King lay under this constraint from France came two Embassadours Monsieur la Motte and Menevel to get the King releas'd and a Treaty betwixt the two Crowns Against these the Ministers declaim in their Sermons most bitterly but especially against La Motte who being Knight of the Order du Sainct Esprit an Order constituted at Paris by Henry the third King of France and Poland 1579. did wear according to the custom of his Order the Badge of a White-Cross upon his shoulder This they call the Badge of Antichrist and him the Embassadour of a bloudy Murtherer brave language to those who knew the Authority of such Persons and whom they represented These dayly out-cryes and perceiving nothing to be done moved the Embassadours to depart But the King being willing to dismiss them with some content desired the Magistrates of Edenburgh to Feast them before their parting for he for his part was not suffered to do any thing the which they did the next next Munday But the Ministry to shew their rebellious Authority and Devillish crossness proclaim a Fast to be kept upon the next Munday the day appointed for the Embassadours Entertainment at this Fast the Ministers thundred out against the Magistrates and other Noble-men that waited upon the Embassadours by the Kings directions Nor was this all but they pursued the Magistrates with the Censures of the Church and could scarce be stay'd from Excommunicating them for not observing the Fast they proclaimed The King not liking his Restraint and perceiving how Imperious his Subjects grew whilst he was under hatches consults an Escape which was performed by the means of Col. Stewart Captain of the Guard upon which those who would not now submit to his Majesty were proclaimed Traytors he also declaring that however his Proclamation came forth yet it was extorted from him by violence and therefore of no validity But for all this the Ministers in their Pulpits vindicate the late Imprisoning of the King for which Andrew Melvil was charged to enter his person at Blackness but he instead of obedience fled to Barwick which proceedings against Melvil caused great grumblings amongst the Brethren who affirmed that neither King nor Council can censure men for words in Pulpit but their own Associates the Presbytery only The next year the Earl of Gowry with whom joyned some of the Ministers run into open Rebellion but the Earl being taken was beheaded and the Ministers fled for it The Nation being thus rent into distractions by a company of babling malepert Boute-feus the Parliament hoped by giving Caesar his due and gagging his Enemies mouths all things would then tend to Peace and Settlement For which purpose they confirm his Majesties Authority over all Persons and in all Causes And that to decline the Kings Judgement and the Councils in any thing should be High-Treason and that any thing whatsoever not approved of by the King and the Three Estates should be null And that no person whatsoever should either privately or publickly either in Sermon Declamation or Discourse utter any false untrue or slanderous speeches to the reproach dishonour hurt or prejudice of the King or any of his Parents or Progenitors or his Council nor meddle with the affairs of the King or State These good and honests Acts made the Presbyters Horn-madd who like our bordering Moss-Troopers are never content but when doing mischief to others They protest against these wholsom Statutes many of them fly away into England scorning to live in such subjection and Libels and Pamphlets fly plentifully against the King and Court And by Letter protest those Acts to be against the Word of God and therefore if they submit to them they should then be Traytors to God reviling Bishops whom they call Gross Libertines Belly-gods and Infamous and such like charitable stuff as this This turbulent spirit flowing amongst them made many of them be imprisoned and others suspended from their Livings But this lasted not long for the next year the Scales turned the banished Lords being come again into Scotland they joyn Forces and march to Sterling where they seize upon the Kings Person again whom they constrain by Proclamation to pardon them all Now did the Court put on a new face the old Officers are turn'd out and others put in This imboldens the Ministers who fled to return again but much of their intended malice was stopt by a Parliament who order that none shall reproach his Majesties Person State or Government This incensed the Ministry so much as to stir up one Watson in his Sermon to rail to the Kings face of his evil Government for which he was imprisoned at Blackness This mans mouth being thus stopt another of that gang call'd James Gibson in his Sermon at Edenburgh affirmed the King to be the Persecutour of the Church and calls him to his face Jeroboam pronouncing this Curse against him That He should dye childless and be the last of his Race For this because before the Council he maintained the same again he was committed yet afterwards 1587. upon better advice he acknowledged his fault and was ordered publickly to do the same in his next Sermon the which he promised to do yet did not whereupon being charged for breaking his promise he stubbornly answered That out of infirmity and weakness he had confess'd a fault but now his Conscience told him that his words were innocent The Chancellour perceiving the mans inconstancy put it to the Assembly whether Gibson had done well or no where though many were ready to vindicate him yet at last a majority found him slanderous and offensive but he not appearing in the afternoon to receive his censute after much bandying to and fro he was only suspended during the pleasure of the Assembly and this lasted but to the next August when without ever acquainting the King he was by his Brethren quitted the which Countenancing of such Seditious Actions did so incense his Majesty that Gibson was forced to fly into England where he was entertained by the hot-brain'd Non-conformists The Presbytery to shew themselves more formidable call a Synod at St. Andrews where they accuse the Bishop of the same place for having had a hand in the late Acts against the unruliness of the Brethren as Melvil accused him The Bishop appeals to the King and three Estates and
denyes their Judicatory not being call'd by the Kings consent but for all this they judge him fit to be Excommunicated yet none would pronounce the Sentence against him till at last many of them being departed a young fellow named Andrew Hunter said that he was warned by the Spirit to pronounce the sentence and so ascending the chair read the same out of a Book This boyling humour of the Ministers troubled King James not a little which greatly augmented when they insolently refused to pray for the Queen his Mother then near herend though he had earnestly commanded them But the greatest of all was the execution in England how handsomly I know not though he greatly endeavoured to stop it But the King thinking to put an end to all tumults thought fit to reconcile the Nobility which at last he did Feasting them all at Haly-rud-house thence causing them to walk hand in hand two and two to the Market Cross at Edinburg where they sealed their Concord by drinking one to another The same peace he thought to have made with the Ministers but this not fadging all fell to nothing After this Huntley Bothwell Crawford Montross and Athol agitated by the Jesuits rebell but upon thier submission were pardoned Yet though the King was so easie to shew favour so was not the Presbytery who deprive the Bishop of Saint Andrews of all spiritual function for marrying the King's Cozen the Duke of Lenox his Sister to the Earl of Huntly though he did it by the King 's express Command yet was the King forced to dissemble his dislike of their insolency knowing their power and stubborness and having another thing in hand viz. his marriage with Ann the King of Denmark's Daughter whom to to fetch he presently took ship and married her in Upslo in Norway thence through part of Swedeland and Denmark he returned with her into Scotland where she was crowned though the accustomary unction was much opposed by the Ministry calling it a Jewish Rite abolished at Christs coming and introduced by the Pope After this Bothwell and some others conspire against the King endeavouring to seize upon his person at Haly-rood-house and Faulkland but without success and so was glad to fly into England The Presbyterie taking advantage against the King in these troubles Petition that the Acts made 1584. to restrain the insolencies of these hot heads should be abrogated which the King was constrained fearing lest they should also rebell against him upon a denyal in some sort to consent to Though the next year he assures them that he would not suffer the Priviledges of his Crown to be lessen'd nor Assemblies to meet without his Order but this they slightly answer by telling him that they will keep to the benefit allowed them the year before Nor shall they hold their tongue in the Pulpit upon just and necessary causes Such small esteem had they for their Soveraign though they would humble themselves to inferiour people in greater matters For when they had with the consent of the Council of Edinburgh made an Act that the Munday Market in that City should be alter'd to Tuesday The Shoomakers whom it most concerned gathered together before the Ministers doors threatning to chase them out of Town if they harp'd upon that string any more which was the reason of this Saying there Rascals and Sowters can obtain from the Ministers what the King could not in matters more reasonable Bothwell as aforesaid having fled to England for Treason returns again and being assisted with other Nobles and by the cunning of the Lady Atholl seizeth upon the King at Haly-rood-house where he constrains the King to pardon all and that several persons of quality should be turned from the King's service But the King getting to Sterling the Estates there decreed Bothwels actions to be Treasonable and the King not obliged to performance because forced whereupon Bothwell falling to open Rebellion is pronounced Rebell If the King's Authority could do this the Kirk thought they had as much power to excommunicate the Catholick Lords which the King the Lord offering themselves to Tryal endeavoured to stop telling them that they had nothing to do in such affairs but this denial so troubled and vext the Assembly that they order all of their fraternity to be in Arms For this insolency the King checking them they replyed That it was the Cause of God and in the defence thereof they could not be deficient Hereupon the King puts forth a Proclamation prohibiting all meetings yet for all this they kept on their Course so that the King was forced to yield Yet this procured him no peace though the birth of Prince Henry rejoyced him For Bothwell falls again into Rebellion assisted by Argile Arrol c. Nay the Presbyterie were so active in this Treason as to carry on his designs they give him the monies collected for the relief of their then distressed Brethren at Geneva By this means having got some forces together he fights the King's Party in which though he was not beaten yet shifts for himself dissolving his Souldiers Yet after this having joyned himself with some Catholick Lords to surprize the King again but being discovered flyes to open Rebellion and having with nine hundred men under the Command of Huntly beat Argile who had above 10000. upon Composition are pardoned but banished And Bothwell gets himself to France thence to Naples where he dyed miserably poor about the year 1624. The King for peace-sake and good policy had a mind to pardon and call home the banished Lords to which at last Mr. Robert Bruce the Minister consents provided that Huntly should not return but the King reasoning with him for Huntly too he imperiously answered I see Sir that your resolution is to take Huntly into favour which if you do I will oppose and you shall choose whether you will lose Huntly or Me for us both you cannot keep This is that Bruce whose popularity outvyed the King's who seeing one time what a multitude conducted him into Edinburgh said By my sale Bruce puts me down in his Attendants And this is he who had preached many years without Ordination nor would he be ordained which was the occasion of some disputes 1598. Yet for all this self-conceited pratler the Lords return which mads the Ministry who meet about it proclaim a Fast order inquiry to be made into their Favourites against whom they proceed with Censures and clamour as if the Kirk had been singing her Requiem The King troubled at these turbulent actions under his very nose by Proclamation dissolves them Whereupon they Petition him not to incroach upon the Limits of Christs Kingdom And these hubbubs were the more heightned by the Sermon of Mr. David Blake in which he ranted against the King Queen and Lords and call'd Queen Elizabeth an Atheist and a Woman of no Religion of which the English Ambassador complain'd and demanded satisfaction Upon
Policy Questions used to be discust 1. Whether the Election or Succession of Kings were the better Form of Government 2. How farr the Royal Power extended 3. Whether Kings might be censured for abusing their Power and deposed by the Estates of the Kingdom And how they stated these Questions let their deeds be judge as they are most proper and then let any man tell me if men of such turbulent spirits can be good Subjects and by consequence good Christians for I believe the World can scarse parallel in one Kingdom so many treasonable and impudent actions in so short a time as less then fifty years let but our late English madness of which theirs and our Presbytery were the Original be at this time excepted And most of these Actions you will find confirm'd and owned though in a different style by the History of The Scots Reformation wrote by whom I know not for a late Reverend Authour denyes it to be Knox's And it is the custom of men of this perswasion to Father their Brats upon others witness Wilson's History of King James a Book not to be believed in all things Nor is it all the Nation hath these spots There is a Church as well as Kirk of Scots And to vilifie the whole Kingdom because it hath nurst up some hot-spurs would be implacable malice and to bring all the World into Ignomy If the Proverb assure us That it is a good Family which hath neither Whore nor Thief in it 't will be a difficult thing to expel Vice from a whole Nation The Virgin-City Venice esteem'd one of the Glories of the World and whose Government for Exactness yields to none abounds with more Venerian pleasures than any of her Christian Neighbours The Spaniards are famous for loyal Subjects yet a Rebel is no Monster in Castile her self Scotland hath been the Mother of as famous men as any other Kingdom if Denmark Germany Poland and the Low-Countries may testifie their valour whilest France will assure you of their fidelity whose Kings have altogether trusted their persons to their Guardship But enough since David Camerarius hath writ a whole Volume in the Commendation of the Scottish Nation CHAP. IX The illegal malepart and impious Plots and Designes of our Schismatical Presbyterians in England in the Raigns of Queen Elizabeth King James and King Charles till the beginning of the wicked Long-Parliament NOr was this hot-braind humour fostered alone in Scotland but England also tasted the fiery tryal of their madd pranks Queen Elizabeth no sooner setled in her Throne but the Zealots deface all Monuments and Pictures in Churches they met withall nor did the ashes of the dead lie undisturb'd which caus'd the Queen to set forth a Proclamation against such violations But these men having their malice stopt against Stones and Glasswindores will vent it against those who can be sensible of injuries Goodman Whittingham Gilbie and others having learn'd their lessons at Geneva came roring over against our English Church venting their venom not only by their Preachments and Conventicling but also in Print The latter of these viz. Anthony Gilby of whom formerly born in Lincolnshire and of Christs Colledge in Cambridge tearmed our Ceremonies Liveries of Antichrist accursed Leaven of the blasphemous Popish Priesthood cursed patches of Popery and Idolatry Nor must the Ceremonies alone suffer but the Reverend Bishops too by others of the same gang as Throgmorton Penry Fenner Udal and such like Bravado's calling them Antichristian Petty-Popes Bishops of the Devil cogging and cozening Knaves dumb Dogs Enemies of God c. And for our Worship they affirmed it to be an impious thing to hold any thing common with Rome and from this Argument they refused to come to Divine Service But at last such was the vigilancy of the Queens Council that the fautours of these seditious Non-conformists were found out and Sir Richard Knightly and Sir Wigston were fined in the Starr-Chamber for receiving the Printers and Publishers of such Schismatical Books the celler of one of the Gentlemen bringing forth like Lucian some foul mouth'd Pamphlets against the Church or other Neither do these men mount their Battery only against the Church but also throw their wild-fire and indignation against the Queen and their Supream Authority witness Mr. Edward Deering of Kent's Sermon in which how unworthily let others judge he compared her Highness to an untamed Heifer and Christopher Goodman in a Book publickly vindicated Wiat's Rebellion affirming All who took not his part were Traytors to God his People and their Countrey And as some Common-Lawyers towl'd away by inticing tongues and Gold of the Non-conformists wrote against the Authority of Bishops so some pretending to the Civil and Canon-Law were obliged to oppose and deny the Queens Supremacy in Causes Ecclesiastical Nor might these fore-mentioned things seem strange since they were easily to be vindicated from some of the Geneva Notes upon our Bible where you may find the Disciplinarians highly to complain against Asa because he did not kill his Mother furiously calling of it lack of zeal and foolish pity And maliciously to compare our Arch-bishops Bishops Doctors and such like degrees with the Locusts though they carelesly seem to quit themselves in the exit And yet these are the very same men who profest to Queen Elizabeth That their Applications are such as may most appertain to Gods glory though how hide-bound they were at the same time from Charity may appear by their then slandering the Reverend and Learned Bishops with the ignominious title of ambitious Thus was Authority begun to be blasted by the Puritans a name now almost an hundred years old beginning in 1564. as Fuller thinks though Dr. Heylin out of Genebrard makes it two years younger though in a later History he seems to moderate its original between both viz. 1565. And these were so denominated as the word implyes and Genebrard and experience tells us because they thought themselves so much purer then other Christians that they would not perform Divine Service with them utterly rejecting all Forms used in the Primitive Ages and looking upon all decent Garbes to be unlawful in Church-affairs if different from the common wear or rather if not according to the Geneva-cut The Antiquity of this Name is very ancient as we may see in the old Hereticks who presumptuously call'd themselves Caethari i. e. Puritans the same with the Novatiani with whom the Parmenianistae in supposed purity did something agree and by this Name of Cathari I find Johnstonus in his large History to signifie our Non-conformists The Queen perceiving these men to sleight both her and the Bishops and to act only by the advice of private persons as Mr. Tho. Cartwright who affirm'd That we ought rather to conform our selves in Orders and Ceremonies to the fashion of the Turks then to the Papists Mr. Travers c. who had
from this Swashbuckler These and many other innovating and cross grain'd actions you may find storied down by their almost-own Fuller for so may I well take the boldnesse to call him since they could never desire a more complyable Historian And therefore these may carry the more probability with the Reader let his education be either sound or rotten KING JAMES succeeding upon the death of Queen Elizabeth the Non-conformists thought to gain ground apace having to deal with a Prince as they thought bred up in their own way and a stranger not only to England but as they hoped to her government also 'T is true He had been nurst up in the Presbyterian way in Scotland but their insolencies and incroachments to get all the power into their own hands as a stiff Presbyterian under the fained name of Wilson doth confesse gave him so much experience as not only to allow of no alteration or that very small in the Church of England but also publickly to testifie his happinesse in ruling over and amongst people so sweetly united in such a Church-government whereas in Scotland He was a a King without State without Honour without Order where beardlesse boyes would brave him to his face As himself did word it Yet to satisfie their clamours He gave them a conference at Hampior-Court where their Objections seemed so trivial that Self will and an erronious Conscience was thought to be more predominant then Reason Upon which the King put forth a Proclamation for Uniformity to which all the Ministers in England and they are above nine thousand submitted except forty nine such a noise will a few disturbers cause in any society when tolerated Nor need this seem strange to those who know that in the first year of Queen Elizabeth the number of our Clergy-men who refused the Oath of Supremacy did not amount to 200. though they had all not only been bred up in the Romish Religion but also for some few years before had violently asserted the Pope's authority in England And we now see those who have been the Chief-tains of the Non-conformists to turn tail and acknowledge Episcopal government the which I hope they do more for Conscience then Covetousnesse Yet for all this though King Law and all things else were against the Disciplinarian Interest they grow resolute and as one saith starkmaa and send to their Brethren in Scotland informing them of all which had hapned and that they in Scotland must expect to conform too and then God wot would follow the utter destruction of Sion Upon which some of them take an Alarum and meet at Aberdeen in spight of the King and his Authority intending to declare against and root out all the foot-steps and memory of Episcopacy for which some of them afterwards were forced to acknowledge their fault And Andrew Melvil for writing Libels against our English Church he then being at London was called before the Council where behaving himself insolently and like a mad man he was committed to the Tower By these actions our Non-conformists easily perceived that they could gain nothing but their own shame and destruction whilst they acted only as private men whereupon they resolve under-hand to blow up the Parliaments against Prerogative to which purpose by their industry they never wanted a good party in the House who carried themselves so resolutely and cunningly that for the future Westminster only rung with the clamours of Grievancies liberty of Subject and Priviledge of Parliament A Parliament never sitting but some Member or other throwing dirt in his Majesties face and this conscionably done by freedom of speech never or very seldom satisfying the King in what he conveniently required for when his pleasure for any reasonable thing was any time made known to them then they grumble and reply that God must be served before man and then for a moneth or two nothing is done in the House but the uttering of long-winded speeches against Arminianism and Popery And this to as little purpose as Cardinal Rapacciolus his prayer that the Devils fins and transgressions might be forgiven him that so he might receive some comfort and be of good cheer For any thing or reason besides bitter Invectives is as difficult to be found amongst them as Coach horses at Venice or a Gondola in Themes as is obvious to any who have seen the Speeches in the two last Kings raigns 'T is true all were not carryed on with the same Spirit for the House was still composed of two different tempers Like Orense a Town in Gallaecia of Spain one side of which in Winter is covered with Snow and num'd by the fury of frozen blasts whilest the other side doth not only want these white Robes but is favoured with a continual warmth arising from the adjacent medicinal hot Baths yet the more wicked party obliged by being so to be more industrious will commonly gain advantages whilst the good People trusting in their honesty act altogether too supinely I shall not now trace the Extravagancies of private men but shew you some of their hot-headed prancks in Parliament because they have now made that the Stage on which they intended to act for the future and in this I shall study brevity and pass by many notorious insolencies In the first Parliament of King James which was drawn out into several Sessions one of the Members bid the rest take heed lest they gave too much to the King lest they endanger their own throats cutting when they went home Others bob'd his Majesty in his teeth for rewarding some of his own Countreymen affirming that their silver and gold abounded at Edenburgh And one Piggot after he had spoken disgracefully of the Scots added withall That it would never be well with England till a Sicilian Vesper was made of the Scotish Nation as if he had not known what Countrey-man the King was Words of such high nature that Queen Elizabeth would have shewn her Prerogative But having now to deal with a King whom they thought might have been trampled upon here as well as beyond the Tweed they left nothing unturn'd whereby they might strengthen their own Faction And this spirit of Contradiction and Contention ruling amongst them is pointed at by one of their own Brethren though clad in more favourable words these bickerings and the Members unrestless humour forced the King to dissolve the Parliament having sat long enough in all Conscience to do any good if they intended any Afterwards another Parliament being call'd and consisting of the same Temperature was presently dissolved In the next Parliament the King desires some Moneys having not had any assistance from his People for several years so that he was constrained to lessen his Houshold This necessary request the Parliament hears but never intend to grant And the better to lay it aside they first begin with the spacious and specious subject of Complaints and with a high hand
denyed and put in a large Declinator and Protestation against their proceedings By these and other cross-grain'd humours of the Presbyterie the Duke perceiving the longer they sat the wider the breaches would grow dissolved the Assembly they opposing the King in all things though he had granted them all convenient requests To the dissolving of this Assembly all the Council consented and subscribed but the Earl of Argtle who ever after proved an instrument of mischief to both Kingdoms Against this dissolution the Covenanters protest and act accordingly but especially against Bishops whom they afterwards by their goodly Authority deposed and alienate their Lands no great matter God wot the Rents of all the Bishops in Scotland not amounting to seven thousand pounds sterling per Annum as a Native informs us And yet this small pittance amongst so many grave and hospitable Bishops was a great eye-sore to the Covenanters though several private Presbyterians might be nominated whose estate surmount this And not content with these actions they began to gird themselves to their Arms. Against whom the King marcheth and both Armies draw up near Barwick where a peace was concluded by which means Aberdeen escaped a scouring the Earl of Montross then misled a General of the Covenanters marching then against it with a Commission to burn it This peace lasted not long the Covenanters not sticking close to the Articles of agreement and which was more a great part of the walls of Edinburgh-Castle falling one night down and the King ordering the Governour and others to see it rebuilt the Covenanters would not suffer it by forbidding any materials to be carryed to its reparation And which was most of all they perceiving the King incens'd at their actions and therefore fearing some checks address themselves to their old Ally the King of France from whom they desired aid and assistance an action so strange for subjects to appeal from their own King to Forrainers and that against their King too that it will easily silence the old story of the King 's German horse Yet whether their Letter and Messenger was sent or no it matters not that it was drawn up and subscribed to be sent is certain which is as much By these affronts the King being sufficiently provoked raiseth an Army and marcheth against the Scotch Covenanters who with a great force had entred England and that with cheerfulness having more friends than the King they having some twenty eight Lords and Earls Whereas the King had not above twenty besides they had the good wishes of the English Prebyterians who by their Sermons Discourses and Pamphlets had made the King's actions and friends so odious to the people that many of the Royal Army marched unwillingly against the Scots wishing them victorious hoping by that means to work their malice upon our Bishops and other persons of quality And accordingly it fell out a part of the English being routed the Scots possess all Northumberland and the Bishoprick of Durham with Newcastle This Prosperity of the Covenanters cheers up our Nonconformists who in this joyning themselves with the Scots presently get the King assaulted for a Parliament which was granted and to sit Novemb. 3. at London and a cessation between the two Armies was made and orders taken for a further Treaty In the mean time the Scots Army miserably tormenting the Northern Counties of Cumberland Westmorland Northamberland and the Bishoprick of Durham from which they raised a Contribution of 850. li. per diem for their assistance a thing by many thought very strange that an enemies Army should thus by compact be maintained by those who wisht them farther off This Covenanting Army kept correspondency with the Parliament having a safe convoy granted by the King for their Letters by which means many an odd design was probably nurst up the Parliament giving them thanks and monies to boot for their good service But must the Scotch Covenanters be only guilty in affronting their King No that would derogate much from the zeal and forwardness of our English Presbyterians who had so far countenanced their Caledonian brethren as to have beseeched them into a native conspiracy and then beckoned them to a Southern march And therefore to shew their answerable forwardness they bestirr'd themselves to the purpose to get non-conforming Members chosen which accordingly answered their expectation in the short Covenant sympathizing Parliament whose refractory humours occasioned their sudden dissolution Our English Presbyterians perceiving now what a great stroak they had in choosing members thought it fitting to see what mettal their Proselytes were made of to which purpose several were instigated to murther that great Prop of Learning the Arch-bishop of Canterbury then the main eye-sore to our factious splrits and to carry on this design more unanimously a Paper was posted upon the Old Exchange May 9. exhorting all Prentices to rise and sack his house at Lambeth the Munday following supposing they had as much authority to tumultuate against the Reverend Bishops as the Covenanters had Of this plot the Archbishop having intelligence prepared for his defence and well was it that he did so for accordingly on the following Munday in the dead time of the night above 500. men well armed for the purpose assaulted his Palace endeavouring by all the strength and force they had to break open his Gates thereby to come to his person but he had so well provided for his security that all their attempts only shewed their devilish malice and murtherous intentions which was also demonstrated by their railing and cursing tongues The next day several of them were apprehended and imprisoned in the White-Lion prison who were violently released within three days by some of their wicked complices by breaking open the prison so unanimous were some of the Anti-episcopal men to intolerable villainy Nevertheless one of their Chief-tains was re-taken and for this rebellious riot was condemned and for example-sake hang'd and quartered which so terrified the rest of the Non-conforming brethren that a kind of a peace was outwardly kept for a while And as no small incendiaries to these intolerable practices were the wicked Pamphlets spred abroad to delude the vulgar by divers seditious persons but especially by Prynn Burton Bastwick and John Lilburn people of such implacable spirits that no government could satisfie them And were so hot-headedly led by their erronious and spightful Principles that as they took a pride in their own deserved sufferings so nothing could satisfie them but the Confusion of others Yet these men afterwards took such opposite interests that they became utter enemies endeavouring what in them lay not only to vilifie but ruine one another though Prynn still held up his head above the rest Thus were these Presbyterians the authors of our after-miseries that I may well sob with a time serving Poet Eheu Turba rapax primique miserrima belli Perfida gens Auctrix Alas the first promoters of our stirs Were
the perfidious hot-spurr'd Presbyters THE HISTORY Of the Wicked PLOTS and CONSPIRACIES OF OUR Pretended Saints BOOK II. CHAP. I. The mischievous and impudent Contrivances and Innovations of the wicked long-Parliament 1. Their slandering of the Court and Church 2. Their Affection to the Schismaticall Incendiaries 3. The Impudence and seditiousnesse of their Lecturers 4. Their designes to alter the frame of Civil Government 5. Their Plots to overthrow Episeopacy 6. Their stirring up the people to Tumults 7. The small esteem the Commons had of the King and Nobility Whereby it appears that it was not the King but the Parliament that occasioned and began the Warres HAving now and that as succinctly as I could somewhat discovered the peace-consuming zeal of our Presbyterians I shall come to the subject intended to wit our late unhappy Distractions The seeds of which was not only before sown by the Nonconformists but began a little to take root and sprout forth through the temper of our English Parliament 1628. and the after actions of the Scottish Covenanters by whom the King was cajol'd to call a Parliament to fit November the third 1640. A day ominous to the Clergy by a former president upon that day the 20. year of King Henry the Eighth that Parliament beginning which began the ruine of Cardinal Woolsey the power of the Clergy and the dissolution of those famous Monuments of Charity the Abbeys and such like hospitable buildings England hath afforded us many Parliaments yet but one of them honoured with the Epithet of Good and that some hundred years agoe though since his Majesty hath been pleas'd to memorize one with the character of the healing and blessed Parliament as many of our former Representatives have had several names added to them as the Parliament that wrought wonders The great Parliament The marvellous Parliament The Laymens Parliament because no Lawyer was to be in it The unlearned Parliament either for the unlearnedness of the Members or for their malice to learned men Barebones Parliament The short Parliament and in the same year 1640. did our long wicked Parliament commence and I have heard of a Mad Parliament No sooner did the long Parliament sit but their proceedings were hurryed on with that fiery zeal that if distractions had not followed thereupon it would have been as strange to the discreeter sort as Margaret Countess of Hollands year-like birth at Lusdunen to our Country-women or the story of the womanly girle who at six years old was brought to bed of a son in Indostain For instantly they fell upon grievances abuses in Religion violation of laws liberties and what not Concerning which their speeches flew plentifully about and releas'd the grand Incendiaries Prynne Burton Bastwick and Dr. Leighton and giving them great rewards Some of them being triumphantly guarded into London by many thousands of horse and foot with rose-mary and bays in their hands and hats Novemb. 28. which was not only an high affront to the Kings Authority but a political glass to the Nonconformists through which they might see the strength and unanimity of their own Faction who were grown so valiant that a little before this upon the fast day Novemb. 17. where Dr. Burgess and Marshall preacht above 7 houres before the Commons and before the Lords two Bishops but as the second service was reading a Psalm was struck up by some of the Brethren which presently disturbd the Divine service to the amazement of the civill and orthodox Auditors who could little expect any such thing without an express order by authority But this is no great matter in respect of their after actions which are so many against the King and Kingdom and that too before his Majesty's horrid murther that it is impossible for me in this Compendium to decimate them into a relation their very printed Acts and Ordinances in that time amounting to above 530. Besides their Declarations Petitions Remonstrances Votes Proclamations Messages Speeches and such like passages and all stuft with some worshipful thing or other by which their pretty actions were confirmed Yet as farr as brevity will allow me I shall endeavour to speak out and as plain as I can yet must I not accuse all nor half it may be of the members many of them spur'd on by their Loyalty following his Majesty and sitting in Parliament in the Schools at Oxford after whose departure the House at Westminster seemed like Pandora's box from whence all our future mischiefs and diseases flew over the Nation The Parliament a little after its beginning having triumph'd over divers persons of quality whom they knew to be opposers of their intended Presbytery thought it fitting to seek some absolute way of security to themselves for the future And to this nothing could be thought more conducible considering how they had gul'd an odium of Reverend Episcopacy into the simple people than by the certainty of Parliaments for which purpose they procured of the King who dreamt nothing of their after-games and fetches an Act for Triennial Parliaments And that their own actions might appear of more grandure by the stability of their own foundation they also obtain'd from his Majesty who was never wanting to grant any thing to his Parliaments pretended to be for the good of his subjects an Act whereby themselves should not be dissolved prorogued or adjourn'd but by their own consent By which means they were fancied by many of the Kingdome to be of such high Authority that neither King law or any power else could have any influence over them let their actions be never so treasonable or wicked And so might Phaeton suppose when his Father had given him the command of his refulgent Chariot though his indiscreet authority brought ruine to himself and destruction to some parts of the world And well may any one in this turn their own weapons against themselves and yet not be deem'd too medling Such a continuing-Commission is freely given yet cunningly procured to the Captain of a ship But when this Governour falls so farr distracted as to indeavour nothing more then the ruine of his Vessel by their own popular consequence his Commission is void as being no more able to govern his charge to the best This instance I quote more because oft alledged against Regall authority than for any similitude it carrieth unlesse upon our perpetual Parliamentary account And therefore the reviving of this long-Parliament by a modern Writer seems to be to as small purpose as Don Quixot's martial endeavours to retrive the I know not what Knight-errantry by his paper helmet his wind-mill and claret-butts encounters or Hortensius the self-conceited School-master in du Parques Franchion to obtain the Crown and Kingdome of Poland The King having as he thought pacifyed his Subjects in England having granted them what they desired thought it likewise expedient to settle all things in Scotland in a peaceable temper for which purpose he put himself to the
trouble of a journy thither yet not without some notable observators No sooner he being departed but our Parliament ordering some members to go also into Scotland in notion of a Committee to inform them of all passages in Scotland Yet when the King went into Scotland the Parliament adjourn'd though appointed a Committee of the Commons consisting of 50 of and over which Mr. Pym was the chief Lord and Maister of mis-rule and him I find nominated at the very beginning of this Parliament with the Emphasis of the great parliament man And the truth of it is that he was so farre the dominus fac totum in this juncto that his words were laws all things being acted according to his desire Here many things of Church matters were by these Gentlemen purely innovated and then prosecuted with such violence that the Episcopal clergy durst not gainsay him as Dr. Fuller Mr. Hutton Mr. Fletcher and others of St. Giles Cripplegate Mr. Booth the Minister of St. Botolphs Aldersgate Dr. Heywood of St. Giles the Ministers of St. George Southwark of Margarets new Fish-street c. could very well testifie by experience Although the house of Lords would not consent in these things to join with the Commons yet did they so farre supinely wink at the others actions that their Authority was now so much intrench'd upon by the Commons that their priviledges slipt from them unperceived though without all question the presbyterian party both understood and smiled at such proceedings About this time there was a great deal of noise and clamour about a Letter forsooth against Mr. Pym with I know not what plaister in it and written God wot when and delivered by no body knows whom but a Gentleman forsooth in a gray-coat on horseback and great searching and inquiring for this man in the moon was made but all to as little purpose as the Northwest passage or the philosophers stone And many times hath it been printed and spread abroad to let the good people see the wickedness forsooth of Malignants and with such chaffe as this have many of our old fools been taken Yet when that impudent Libel stuft with as much malice as either this letter or hell could afford was vented against that great prop of learning the Lord Archbishop of Canterbury Laud no notice was in the least wise taken of it nor did he himself any thing regard it though it thus threatned his destruction Laud look to thy self be assured thy life is sought as thou art the fountain of wickedness Repent of thy monstrous sins before thou be taken out of the World c. And assure thy self neither God nor the world can endure such a vile Councellor or Whisperer to live Than this what more implacable destructive and abominable considering his nearness to the Kings person his trust and beneficial endeavours for the publick good Yet had he been better or if I may say here the best and the designes against him more devilish yet would our Non-conformists have hug'd and blest themselves at this opposition had it been as after malicious experience proved to his ruine and all this because he was an absolute opposer of the Presbyterian innovations who though but of a very little body yet had a soul more large and vast for the good of Church and Literature then a whole Parliament of Disciplinarians But let us now think of his Majesties return from Scotland in whose absence some of the Parliament had rais'd large reports of strange and terrible plots and designs against John an Oaks and John a Stiles by which means many people were endeavour'd to be whisper'd into dissatisfaction of the King and such a jealousie was grown by the noise of this Chimaera that many did according as they were bid think that things were not then well carryed and this was cunningly aimed at the King and his Favourites by those who had their Coy-ducks in such obedience that their Commands was not unlike that of Madam Fame to Aeolus in our ingenious Chaucer Bring eke his other claviown That hight Sclaunder in every Towne With which he wont is to diffame Hem that me lyst and do * hem shame But these Alarums served the Parliaments turn being a Cloak under which they might deceive the People in their pretences for raising a Guard the which they did and it may be to defend them from a Pedicularie disease of which possibly they saw some symptoms then in the House Of these Romantick Jealousies Frights Alarums and unheard of Plots and Designs his Majesty tells the Parliament and of the evil consequences of such slanders in his first Speech to them after his return from Scotland And in his next earnestly desires them to prosecute the Irish affairs and perceiving them considering about pressing of Souldiers with a check at his Prerogative He desires that the bounds of his ancient and undoubted Authority might not then fall into debate however that it may pass with a Salvo jure he is willing rather then such disputes should take up time in such an hour of extreamity for whilest the Grass groweth the Horse may sterve Upon this they clamour against his Majesties dealings professing the Priviledges of Parliament were broken by these his Exceptions for which they demand satisfaction and earnestly desire his Majesty not only to declare the names of but also to deliver up to punishment those persons who had given such counsel Nor was this mode of dealing one of their least Plots upon all occasions desiring the King to betray his faithful Counsellors by that means not only to leave him naked but to the discretion of the Houses But these things carryed no great shew of unhandsomness though like the Apples of Sodem beautiful without yet stuft with filthiness in respect of their after Thunder-claps which like Brutus shew'd their malice in their fronts For the next day after their Petition they welcome him home with a Remonstrance as they call it in which maliciously they endeavour to rip up all the faults and none is good but God of his Majesties Raign and that in as civil a way as their zeal could allow them as you may see in the Paper it self for in it through his actions they tax him with Cruelty Injustice Oppression Violence and what not They out-braid him for putting forth untrue scandalous false and impudent Declarations in it they highly commend the Schismatical Non-conformists blaming the King for punishing them Nor is this all but the Scotch Invasion of England too is extoll'd and defended and the King scandalized as if he endeavoured to root out the true Religion and bring in Popery nor are they silent against the Bishops and their Orthodox Divines by which it is plain the Presbyterian ruled the Parliament nor must the Innocent Ceremonies and forsooth Superstition escape a scouring And yet in this very same mogende-Paper they confess they must acknowledge that his Majesty hath
and Chapters Prebendaries c. So that in four dayes time the hasty Commons over-throw as much as in them lay the Reverend Church of England which had continued many hundreds of years a flourishing glory to the Nation The Commons for their parts having thus pull'd down the pale of our Church fastned and strengthened by so many Authentick and Fundamental Laws as old again as the House of Commons will not leave Religion without some Government No good souls they were more kind-hearted And therefore in the first place they Vote that all the Lands and Means belonging to Deans and Chapters Chancellors or Commissaries Archdeacons Deans Prebendaries Chapter Canon c. shall be taken away and disposed of to the advancement of Learning and Piety That is if their after-actions may be taken for Expositors to maintain Rebellion Heresie Sacriledge and ruine Universities for these mens promises like Hebrew must still be read backwards and after this rule did they send a request to the King by Secretary Vain That he would give them leave to look into his Revenues and Expences and they would make him the richest King in Christendom But the Parliament will not spend their time only in selling Lands but something must be considered of a Church-Government too and therefore they Vote that all Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction fit to be exercised in England shall be committed to such a number of persons and in such a manner as their Worships shall think fit Nor were they long without making the Nation happy with the discovery of their Intellectuals which was That six of the Clergy and six of the Laity should be appointed in every County for the setling of Church-Government But this was a little shaken by an after conclusion viz. That nine of the Laity and three of the Clergy in every Diocess should have power to exercise all Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction as shall be ordered by Parliament and to have their Monethly meetings for that purpose And the next day to make this hotch-potch Model more compleat they Vote That there shall be several select Committees of the Clergy appointed for the Ordination of Clergy-men into the Ministry But yet this Presbyterian Brat would not come to perfection And therefore to give more encouragement to the Covenanting-admirers they conclude That all Archiepiscopal and Episcopal Jurisdiction shall be exercised in this Kingdom by the Commissioners as there was by Bishops And the same day read the Bill for the using of Lectures taking away Cross in Baptism Surplis bowing at the Name of Jesus standing up at the Gospel Gloria Patri Pictures in Churches c. and conclude the day with the appointing of a Committee for the Propagation of the Gospel And the next day they give further power to their nine Commissioners to wit That after the first of August any five of them shall be a Quorum and have full power to try all Ecclesiastical Causes and to appoint Deputies under them in several places And after this they further agreed That if any of the nine Commissioners should dye that five or more of them are to choose another presently and so if any of them resign and that if any came to take Orders that these Commissioners shall appoint five Clergy men to grant Ordinations And for the more speedy putting of this medly in practise the Knights and Burgesses of every Shire are commanded to bring in the Names of the nine Commissioners for their several Counties to be appointed and that no Clergy-man be of the Commission Thus farr had the Commons thrown I cannot say built up this their confused Babylon when on a sodain an unexpected Remora was joyned to their further proceedings by some fallings out betwixt the Lords and them about the Protestation For the Commons having ordered that it should be taken all over the Kingdom were in this opposed by the Peers who threw it out of their House which so incensed the Commons that they presently Vote That what person soever shall not take the Protestation is unfit to bear Office in Church or Common-wealth And thinking that the Bishops were the reason of the Lords dissent appoint a Committee for impeaching them about the late Canons who accordingly Voted thirteen Bishops to be Delinquents whom the Lords also suspended their house till a further hearing And so violently were these good men persecuted by the Presbyters that they never left plotting till they had got them Voted Traytors and sent to the Tower Nor could they have any outward content any where considering the reproaches threats and curses daily thrown against them by the wicked the danger of their lives by Tumults and their Lands Voted from them long before by their and Religions Enemies the Non-conforming Commons though they agreed to allow them a liberal allowance during life and how unhandsomly the Parliament in this neglected this promise the Reverend Bishop Hall will satisfie you The Commons now having as they thought bridled the Bishops and their Party are resolved to root out the Common-Prayer Book too to which purpose some of them desire that it might be altered and some thing added to it the which after some speeches being put to the Vote it appear'd that there were then but 55. Disciplinarians in the House no more voting for Alterations so that the Book came off with credit the Orthodox Party knowing well enough that if that House once fell to alter it it rather belonging to able and lawful Divines they would equal the Tinker who made two holes for mending one The Anti-Episcopalians being thus baffled fall to it again getting it to be moved again in the House the next week where they came off with the like success And the next day being a Thanks-giving day for the Peace between the two Nations to shew their malice to Church-Government and countenance the Schismaticks the Commons would not go to St. Margarets Westminster as was by them appointed because the Bishop of Lincoln had caus'd a set Form of Prayer for that occasion to be printed and used in the Church the news of which so started their Worships that they turn'd tail and went to the preachment at Lincolns Inne But if the Commons were troubled at this they were after out of their wits and all stark-madd against the Lords Because they had put forth an Order and sent it all over the Nation strictly injoyning the reading of the Common-Prayer against which and many other Church-affairs the Commons the same day put forth a Declaration ordering it to be printed and sent over the Kingdom and with them they also got the nine dissenting Lords to protest against the Order made by the House of Peers This cross-graind action of the Commons so incensed the Lords that they left off sitting for a while causing the Hangings of their House to be taken down Nor did this any way vex the Commons
the 9 Lords was not unsignificant viz. That if he look'd for any preferment he must comply with them in their waies and not hope to have it by serving the King Words of such a Mandrake-sound that they would have astonished a Roman ear whose generosity and vertue made them raise a Temple to Fidelity But all bonds of obedience and loyalty were hurld off by these sons of contradiction and Majesty it self so farr disrepected that Martin could with confidence wipe his lips with the whore in the Proverb and think he had done no wrong when he affirmd that the Kings Office is forfeitable and that the happiness of this Kingdome doth not depend upon him or any of the Royall branches of that stock and this was seconded by that worshipful Champion Sir Henry Ludlow who peremptorily said that he was not worthie to be King of England Nor are these words unbefitting the Father of such a known Son as Edmud Ludlow one of the Kings noted Tryers and an immortal Enemy to all goodnesse Church-government and literature Nor did the whole Parliament speak little lesse then the former when they affirmed he had no negative vote call'd all his Actions illegall and his Letters Declarations and Proclamations scandalous and false forbidding people to be obedient to him upon pain of displeasure declaring all such as did to be Traitors Taxing him with an intention towards Popery O implacable Malice foisted into the world by these his back-friends and spread abroad with abundance of impudence and malice by their zealous Myrmidon and Journy-work-jobber Prynne one that if he had lived amongst the Malabars in the East-Indies where long eares is a Token of honour comlinesse and bravery would have been held a man of no great credit But the best on 't is Pryn's scandalous pamphlet call'd the Popish Royall Favourite i. e. the King was many years ago learnedly and industriously answer'd to the Honour of his Majesty honesty of the undertaker and discredit and confusion of the Mercury-admiring accuser And therefore Mr. Baxter was somewhat to blame to cull such false trifles out of Prynne to prove the King reconcileable to Rome though he believes he was no Papist and this ten years after the Kings Beheading But to return to the Parliament who will yeild to none in bitterness against his Majesty who protest to him when no nearer York then New-Market That they would make use of that power which they had for their security and professing in the same paper that it was not words that could secure them And what their intention was in this may be gathered by voting some few daies before That the Nation should be put into a posture of Defence and only by Authority of Parliament And all those Extravagancies were acted by the Parliament in opposition and discredit to the King before his Majesty had so much as one man either in offensive or defensive Armes in a publick way So that he might well admire at those who charg'd him to be the first beginner and raiser of this Warre Thus the Kings mildnesse gave encouragement to those furious spirits who never left plotting till they had fill'd England with more villanies then Rome is in the vacancy of her Popedome or Tacitus could reckon up in the front of his History and this by their unjust dealings with him by warre and such like wickednesses though they might have consulted the Apothegm of that great Goth Athanaricus being good Divinity Law and Reason that A King is a earthly God and whosoever rebels against him is guiltie of his own death Nor doth the great Father of the Church intimate to us lesse obedience to our Kings then the former But these men cared little for reason or authority in any but themselves as appears by those impudent and irrational Propositions sent to the King at New Castle when they were Masters and had him in hold whereby he would be but a King of clouts and the Nobility and Gentry of his party bound to hop headlesse Articles so palpably wicked that an Italian through his Majesty looks upon them as distructive both to Church and State Nor could lesse be expected from these men in the height of their Pride and prosperity when at the beginning of these wicked Warres long before the stroak at Edghill The good King weeping as it were over the approaching ruine of his Subjects earnestly endeavours to perswade the Parliament to a Reconciliation in the lamentable breathings of Tancredi to the violent Rinaldo Dimmi che pensi far vorrai le mani Del civil sangue tu dunque bruttarte E con le piaghe ind egnede ' Christiani Trafiger Cristo ond'ei son membra e perte c. Ah non per Dio vinci te stesso Tell me what mean you now Will you yet stain Your hands in your friends bloud by Civill Warre And by your killing Christians now again Pierce Christ his side of whom we members are c. Ah no for Gods sake conquer your passion Desiring that they might both lay down their Armes and recall all their papers against each other upon an appointed day and so enter into a Treaty But they being carryed along with a Spirit of contradiction like the Scotch Presbyter who railing against King Church and Government and being commanded by King James to speak either sense or come down replyed like himself I say man I 'se nowther speak sense nor come down They I say resolved to run counter absolutely declare that they will not think of peace till the King have taken down his Standard left his Armies repair'd to the Parliament that so justice might be done upon those who had adhear'd to them and how by this his Majesty himself could escape they having some few daies before taxed him with most mischievous Tyranny I know not And in the same paper the lands of all those who were of the Kings party were forfeited and I think it is not unknown how they were disposed on afterwards Nor need we doubt but those men who without Blushing could Vote the Queen a Traitor would not care to draw up some blood into their faces soe they might have their revenge on his Majesty And whether this clause For the preservation of his Majesties person was voted to be left out in the New modled Commission the Commons and my Lord Fairfaz know best and what the meaning of such a seclusion was the revolution of a few years did fully import Thus did the English use the King as the Scots did their James the third who hated him as Mr. Drummond informes us because he got the love of his people by Piety and Justice and having taken up armes against him would not hearken to any termes of reconciliation unlesse he freely resigned the title of his Crown and Realm in favour of his Son then in theirs Hands and voluntarily deposed himself
to the contrary who as story saith is true to his promise with those Miscreants who contract with him so that his Majesty might now be dumb with astonishment when six years before he cryed out with grief And are all the specious promises and loud professions of making us a great and glorious King Of setling a greater Revenue upon us then any of our Ancestors have enjoyed of making us to be honour'd at home and fear'd abroad resolved into this Yet doth the King yet live as a Saint as well as a Martyr in the memory of good men and as long as Learning or Piety are permitted to adorn the world his divine meditations will be had by every one in greater esteem then Alexander had of Homer Antonius Caracalla of Oppians Verses or the Lord Burleigh of Tully's Offices Such is the excellency of the style the strength of its reason the noblenesse of its Subject that malice it self cannot deny but that the Royall Composer hath excell'd all other humane pen-men Nor was the fame of his quil only made known to this Island but forraigners allow him the priority of all others in this virtue But I shall conclude this sad Tragedie and Murther with the Stanza's of a good Historian and Poet. What dissolute proceedings have we here What strange presumptuous disobedience What unheard fury void of awe or fear With monstrous unexampled insolence Durst Subjects ever here or any where Thus impiously presume so fowle offence To violate the power commanding all And into judgment Majesty to call Fame hide it close and do not carry word To after-coming ages of our shame Blot out of Books and rase out of Record All Monuments memorials of the same Forget to tell how we did lift our sword And envious idle accusations frame Against our lawful Soveraign when we ought His end and our release have stay'd not sought CHAP. III The Inconstancy villany and monstrous Tyranny of the wicked Army till the Restauration of his Majesty THus did the Rump tryumph when separated from the secluded Members The which outing was as great a Providence as any that hath hapned to the distracted Kingdoms these many years the miraculous restauration of his Majesty excepted For if they had admitted the King to his Title again yet had it been so qualified that his Authority and honour had lain in the dust his friends and our ancient Church utterly distroyed and discredited and an abused Nation trampled upon by a tyrannizing and schismatical Presbytery The Rump being thus a Cock-horse acted on with more wickedness then the 30 Athenian Tyrants there being no good Theramenes at Westminster as there was at Athens honestly to oppose our unheard of Villanies who presently Vote the House of Lords uselesse and dangerous and the Kingly-Office unnecessary and burthensome And for the better carrying on of their designes order a Committee of Estates consisting of several Lords and Commons who were to sit in White-Hall and rule the Militia and Navy and look after the Trade and safety and peace of the Nation and this to continue a year and no longer And makes it treason for any to proclaim the King vote themselves a Free State and a Common-wealth and order an Engagement to be taken all England over to be true and faithful to them And having thus secured themselves they ruled the roast till 1653. In which year they were pul'd out by the eares by their Generall and darling Cromwel and his hireling Red-coats who affirm'd Wisedome and direction being sought from the Lord it seem'd to be a duty incumbent upon us who had seen so much of the power and presence of God going along with us And that we were bound by necessity and providence to act as we have done even beyond and above our own thoughts and desires The Rump being thus squeezed out Oliver began to be all in all and so for some daies the Nation remain'd without any Government but what reflected from the beams of his Orient Nose in which time the Fleet and the Army in Scotland with others congratulate his valour against the Beasts at Westminster and resolve to stick to him as was formerly concluded upon amongst themselves Yet at last after some consultation a Councill of State was order'd to sit till another Representative be call'd he and his Officers acting at pleasure At last as the King doth with the Peers so did he with his confiding Commons sending out his Letters to every man who should sit whereby none were permitted but such as he pleas'd The men that were summon'd by his particular writs above a hundred in number accordingly met at White-Hall where their Patron Cromwell made a canting Speech to them and then gave them an Instrument under his own fist and seal whereby he constituted them the Supreme authority of the Nation taking himself to be Don Quixot's Knighterrant to whom all things were common This conventicle puts me in mind of that Parliament kept at Coventry in Henry the sixths time which was afterwards declared a devilish Councill and only celebrated for the distruction of the Nobility and no lawful Parliament Because they which were return'd were never elected according to the due order of the Law but secretly named by them which desired rather the destruction then the advancement of the Common-wealth The majority of these men were according to Olivers own heart being of his own fraternity by whose compliablenesse he knew was the only way to make himself more great To bring which to pass upon some instinct or other they and he together dissolve themselves A great part of them with their gray headed Speaker going to Oliver and deliver'd him the power that they pretended to have receav'd from him whose wicked working-noddle was not unlike Ismens in Tasso who I suoi Demon negli empi uffici impiega Pur come servi egli discioglie elega Could Devills imploy to act what he design'd And them as if his slaves could loose and bind Now were we again left without any shew of Government but what lay in the sword and breasts of Cromwell and his dissembling adherents who after three days seeking God as they said and their devilish Hypocrisie verified the old saying In nomine Domini incipit omne malum It was resolved upon that Cromwell should be chosen Lord Protector of the three Nations And was accordingly sworn and after proclaimed Thus Oliver Cromwel from a low estate yet a Gentleman rais'd himself to the Supremacy in England not unlike the Macedonian Nabin thus related by the Poetical Monck of Saint Edmunds-Bury Having no title save title of robbrye Only by force himself to magnefye Which with stronge honde toke full possession For to be crowny'd in thilke region To obtain this Height his naturall dissimulation was none of his least assistants who with his eyes lift up to heaven and his hands clapt upon his breast
commenced thinking by the terror of these Forces to reduce those in Scotland having had formeely good luck there to his Obedience But in this he ruined himself for London more then could be expected from that Monster of Wood and Stone considering their former proneness to and complyance with intolerable mischief and when many of them will really be honest and dutiful to the Laws considering the multitude of their Schismatical Presbyterian-Pulpitiers I know not this City I say opposing the Committee of Safety in the City and the Rumpers playing their Cards well at Portsmouth and other places and General Monk politickly droling Lambert to delays Fleetwood and the rest of his seeming sanctified Associates fell to durt By which means the indefatigable Rump was restored again and with a seeming joy received by the Time-serving Army their former stiff Enemies now protesting themselves their especial friends Nor need this Hypocrisie appear any strange matter from such like Hirelings as they were who are Masters of their own tongues and humours and can commend and vilifie according as their own Interest leads of which their actions towards this very Rump will testifie sufficiently For when they dissolved them 1653. 20. April they then call'd them a corrupt Party having an aversion to things conducible to the good of the Common-wealth and opposition to the people of God And that through the corruption of some and jealousie of others the non-attendance and negligence of many would never answer those ends which God his People and the whole Nation expected from them This is an Indictment black enough to make any man odious to all the World yet few years after the Scene was altered and those aspersions quite forgot For when their Interest ingaged them to restore the Rump again Good God! how they Stroak them on the head Call them good Boys and buy them Ginger-bread Then they look upon them as people faln from Heaven and think nothing can be too good for such white Boys professing That the want of them is one cause of the Lords with-drawing his wonted presence for they were eminent Asserters of the Good Cause and had a special presence of God with them and were signally blest in that work And with this same Legerdemain was the poor Rump gull'd the third time For but some six dayes before they were again cast out by these Souldiers the very Army call themselves several times the Parliaments Army and humble and faithful Servants protesting through the help of God that they would be found notwithstanding all endeavours to the contrary faithful to them But Experience proved that this their Protestation lasted no longer then that the Rump acknowledged them or rather five or six Chieftains in Authority so that I may say of the Army as was formerly sung of the Pope by one of our own Poets Nulla non concessa potestas Illius Imperium fasque nefasque facit Dat rapit exarmat ditat depauperat ornat Foedera rescindit bella cruenta ciet Cuncta tamen licitè quoniam generale Imperium nil nisi jure facit These have all power and by their Swords can cause Things to be good or bad though ' gainst all Laws Can make us poor or rich can give or take Raise cruel Wars and all Agreements break Yet all these things are legal cause their might So frames their Rule that what they do is right By which means we seem'd to be return'd to the first Chaos of Government where people were ruled by no Laws but the will and lust of their Chieftains as Justin informs us And probably that people under no Laws live more happy than those whose Laws and Government are so apt to change that they know not what to trust to next day The Rump being thus restored thought nothing but that all would fall down and worship them But in this they quickly found that they reckon'd without their Hoast For General Monke perceiving the inconsistency of these self-ended erroneous popular Governments with the good of the Nations resolved to crush the proceedings of any more such like wickedness For which purpose with his small Army he moved towards London by any easie and tedious motion by which means he sounded the hearts of all the Nation by their Address to him where he found all the clamour for a Free-Parliament and through it the Restauration of their desired King And to bring this about after some complements with the Rump who now fear'd him for a blind and fashion sake he restored the long-banish'd Secluded Members A piece of a Parliament being now drawn together by the addition of the Secluded Members to the Rump the good Nobility and Gentry of the Nation began to be valiant once more and to utter some thoughts of Kingship Knowing that the animosity of the two parties in the House against each other would be the Rump's destruction and the occasion of a New-representative for which they nominated a Council of State consisting of thirty Members and the next Moneth Dissolved themselves from being a Parliament leaving the Government of the Nation to the aforesaid Council till the New-representative met The New-Parliament being met according to their Writs received his Majesties Gratious Letters to them by Sir John Greenvill and unanimously acknowledge him for their King and Soveraign with desires of his return to receive his Crown And having prepar'd all things for his reception he accordingly return'd to England where long may he raign to the unspeakable joy and benefit of the good and Loyal people and the confusion of Rebellion and Schism Thus in the space of eleven years have we run the Gant-lope through the series of seventeen Governments of which take this following scheme 1. King Charles the first 2. Rump 3. Oliver and his Officers 20. April 1653. 4. Council of State 30. April 5. Barebones Parliament 4. July 6. Oliver and his Officers 12. Decemb. 7. O. Cromwell Protectour 16. Decemb. 8. Richard Protectour 3. Septem 1658. 9. Rump the second time 6. May 1659. 10. Wallingford-house Junto with Lambert and Fleetwood 13. Octob. 11. Council of ten men 19. Octob. 12. Committee of Safety 26. Octob. 13. Rump the third time 26. Decemb. 14. Secluded Members and Rump 21. Feb. 1659 60. 15. Council of State 16. March 16. Parliament 25. Apr. 1660. 17. King Charles the second And what miseries the Nation underwent in these chopping and changing of Models is not yet forgot This thing was to day High-treason which to morrow was good law and the seduced people swore to maintain that the contrary to which the next week they were constrain'd to defend So that old Chaucer's complaint may well be here revived O sterne people unsad and untrewe Aye undiscrete and chaungying as a fane Delyting ever in rumur that is new For like the Moon ever waxe ye and wane Ever full of clappying dere enough a iane Your dome is false your
constaunce evel preveth A full great fool is he that on you leveth And all this by the power of a faithless rebellious schismatical and heretical Army compos'd of people betwixt whose hearts and tongues was a certain Antipathy so that it had been more credit to them had they been framed like the people of Quinbaia not unlike those Wywaypanamyans and other parts of Peru with their heads in their brests for then their tongues had been so near their hearts that they could not have given their tongues the lye But these were agreeable to the wicked man complained on by David who did not onely break his Covenants but was also full of deceit But this wickedness of theirs they indeavour to wipe out by affirming they did but follow the steps of the Parliament who swore to maintain the King yet cut off his head though 't is no excuse to save a thief from the gallows to plead that the knack of stealing was invented before his time This jugling is odious in any man but especially for a Souldier whose profession like our Knight errants is to right all people punish the wicked and relieve the opprest And thus taken no man can but honour his calling knowing that in a good cause none deserves his wages or pay better ventring life limbs and all that is dear to him for his Countries benefit But for your Souldiers of fortune who censure the goodness of their cause by the greatness of their pay and booty who venture their lives onely for their own private interests and fight meerly because they hate peace or because their former villanies in time of tranquillity would be brought to question who know no Conscience and acknowledge no Law but that call'd Martial the which though the severest yet so seldome put in practise or at least runs by partiallity witness the condemning and quitting the same once great man about the same falt that like the Rack in England 't is rather talk'd of then known As for these Banditi or rather wild Canables they are so much the Pest of a Nation that they were not unlike that antient plague call'd by the Northern-people the Grace of God yet for all it 's good name the effects of it was destructive And as they pray'd against the graces of God meaning that sickness so might we against our Army said to be composed of Saints though their actions and intentions were altogether wicked being constant to nothing but Gain whereby the Poets observation may more especially be appropriated to this Army Nulla fides pietásque viris qui castra sequuntur Venalésque manus ibi fas ubi maxima merces Nor faith nor piety these hirelings sway Thinking there is most right where is most pay These men were more fit to fight under the Banner of the one eyed Arimaspi who formerly used to wage war against the Gryffens meerly for the greediness of gold or the aviritious Syrians who like these men will perpitrate any thing for money then to list themselves amongst Christians who should first know the reason of the war before they enter into it and then act wholly for the publick good Not fighting pro and con according as their Officers prompted by private opens please to lead them on as if like Bull-rushes they ought to be obedient to every blast of their rotten-hearted Commanders And if cowardice a thing not to be separate from all honest men let the Philosopher think the contrary have been thought by the best Souldiers worthy of death what punishment is fit for these Needhamites who have no end or reason for their supposed valour but the destruction of those who are better then themselves as if like Envy in the Poet they repined at the flourishing of good things So that truly it may be said of them as the Long-Parliament usher'd on by their own confidence was pleas'd to affirm of the King That notwithstanding all the Vows and Protestations to govern by Laws which have been disperst throughout the Kingdom to blind and decieve the people the most mischievous principles of Tyranny are practised that ever were invented For if Le Sieur Colletet doth give us a true discription of Tyranny and he was both learn'd and ingenious enough to understand it we may easily conceive that it was never more practised then in these late times in England Ravir la paix le repos Accabler la France d'impos Rire du peuple qui soûpire Sons le joug d'un cruel Empire Remplir d'infames Garnisons Jousque au foger de nos maisons Vouloir qu' en nos propres familles Le soldat caresse nos filles Forcer en tout temps en tout lieu Les Loix de l'Estat de Dieu Sage Conrart c'est la manie De la nouuelle Tyrannie To over-cloud our peace and rest The Land with Taxes to infest To ' Abuse the people who do groan Under a Curst bloud-shedding Throne To cumber mankind with a Croud Of Garrisons base-born yet proud To let the Souldiers 'fore our eyes Abuse our Daughters as their prise Always to violate and withstand The laws of God and of the Land Is Sir if I can right define Of Tyranny the onely sign And this description agrees with those villanies to make up a Tyrant mentioned by the learned and amongst the rest that ever famous Saravia the Mauller of Beza And really the arrogancy of every beggerly Red-coat and intolerable pride and insolency of every upstart dung-hill-bred Commander many of their extractions being little better was such that we had cause to think as was formerly said of the days of King Stephen that there were in England as many Tyrants as Governours of Towns and Castles And I fear nor doth my doubt argue want of charity that many of them by their arrogant wickedness have not crost the Proverb Set a Begger on horse back and he will ride to the Devil For we know that such upstarts are naturally most proud which hath been held above an ordinary sin and what sign of repentance they have yet shewn I am altogether ignorant How our Nation was reformed after so much fighting for it's pretended happiness when our Kings Nobility Clergy and Gentry were thrown by as useless and Coblers Draymen and such Mechanicks set up in authority to domineer over us will make posterity blush to consider as it hath done Forraigners rather to abuse then pity us And will remain as a sign to posterity of the Armie 's abominable hypocrisie and falshood When they had the confidence to assert their first cause the just rights and liberties of all honest and good men in their peaceable and quiet living and not at all indulged either themselves or others in the troubling suppressing or abridging any though keen and froward against the Army in the free use and enjoyment of their just rights and liberties and all this and much more with simplicity impartiallity
and this also the Protestation and Covenant bound them to keep But how these were observed and that by the Parliament itself every Member therein having taken the two Oaths is not unknown And if these allow'd them to fight against the King or at least to kill him I shall lament my Baptism and put no more trust in my Creed When the Rump had perjured themselves by beheading their King they frame an Engagement obliging all to take it or else to have no benefit of an English-man the words of which were these I do declare and promise that I will be true and faithful to the Common-wealth of England as it is now established without a King or House of Lords This was taken by all the Officers and Souldiers of the Armies who return'd their Subscriptions in Parchment-Rolles to make the work more sure and lasting and besides them many others took it But the Army kept not long to this their Solemn Engagement for they not only rooted out the Rump but alter'd the Government again to a single Person by making Oliver Cromwell Protector whose Council by Order of his Parliament was to swear Fidelity and Allegiance to him and every Member of Parliament both then and for the future did and was to swear Failty to him thus I A. B. Do in the presence and by the Name of God Almighty promise and swear That I will be true and faithful to the Lord Protector of the Common-wealth of England Scotland and Ireland and the Dominios and Territories thereunto belonging as Chief Magistrate thereof and shall not contrive design or attempt any thing against the Person or lawful Authority of the Lord Protector This Oath in behalf of Protectorship and a single Person lasted not long for the Army having overthrown Richard and again restored the Rump another Oath was ordered to be taken in these words You shall swear That you will be true faithful and constant to this Common-wealth without a single Person Kingship or House of Lords And after all this as if one Oath signified nothing some of them took a new-found-out Oath of Abjuration against Kingship though poor Souls only to their own shame and confusion And this was the pretty invention of the hot-headed Knight Don Haslerigo one of Burges's Principles to abominate and hate all Bishops but to imbrace and love their Lands dearly but this fault is not only incident to them it being the main reason that there is such a skip-jack as an English Presbytery Such horrid Perjury as this and such abominable Villanies committed by our late Parliaments made them not a little guilty of the highest Sacriledge The Parliament-House where the Commons now sit being formerly St. Steven's Chappel built by King Steven The consideration of which might have moved honest men to have acted more religiously though these men only sate there to ruine both it and the Church It being a knack amongst our new Saints to pull down Churches for the Propagation of Religion an action of more malice than reason being as ridiculous as the wise-men of Gotham to put Saltfish into a Pond to multiply or to hedge in the Cookow and as simple as Maestro Nun̄o Divinity Professor in Valladolid who made a great deal of clutter to borrow Boots and Spurs because he was to ride in a Coach But of this no more only if those men be not perjured who swallowed these contradictory Oaths I shall allow my self not only irrational but bemoan my condition because not born one of the old Aegyptian Heathens whose Religion punish'd such sins with severe death CHAP. V. The wicked Sacriledge of the Parliament and Army THe Schoolmen and others make a threefold Sacriledge viz. either by taking away from or violating in a holy place a holy thing or secondly an holy thing from or in a place not holy or fanctified or lastly a thing not holy in or from a holy place And that there are some places and things holy I suppose few but those who are wickedly interested in Church-Lands will plead ignorance For though this or that originally be not really holy of it self yet the Dedication and Consecration of them by the Church to holy uses makes them holy to the Lord. For saith God devoted things that a man shall devote unto the Lord. every devoted thing is most holy unto the Lord. And these things once offer'd unto the Lord are not to be profaned And if any through ignorance sin against this He shall make amends for the harm that he hath done in the holy thing Belshazzar's sin was not so much for being drunk with Wine but his sacrilegious drinking out of the Vessels of the Temple Those who rob God of his Tithes and Offerings are severely curst and an express command against exchanging or alienating those things which are holy to the Lord as the Lands of his Church How highly did God punish those who regarded not his Temple every man running unto his own House and what little impression hath this made upon England where most forsook the Church drawing themselves to illegal Conventicles and such private Houses never intended for such publick duties 'T is noted as a great aggravation of King Ahaz iniquities for destroying the holy Vessels and shutting up the doors of the Temple though amongst our late rebellious Reformers such actions were esteem'd a true token of holiness Jehoash King of Judah took all the treasure and holy things out of the Temple and sent them to Hazael King of Syria for a bribe and was recompenced by being slain by his Servants But our Innocent King was murdered by those who had fed their Brethern with Monies impiously rent from Church-Lands whereby their Villanies were doubled to make them more serviceable to their cloven-footed Master who set them on work The wisest man that ever was assureth us That it is a snare to a man who devoureth that which is holy and after vows to make enquiry Out of which words a learned Writer observes That he is guilty of death who sins against God either by alienating taking away or keeping back those things which are holy or consecrated to the Lord. Ananias and Saphiras act is held by Divines as a true pattern of Sacriledge for which they suffer'd death by a special judgement of God as Achan in the old time was stoned to death St. Paul admires that any man should be so wicked as to commit Sacriledge and our late Sectaries wonder that any should stand in aw of it Our Saviours whipping the buyers and sellers and such like out of the Temple is no small sign what respect should be held to our Churches not to be turn'd into Exchanges as is well known the once famous Cathedral of St. Pauls was For Confirmation of this many heavy examples of Gods judgements against those who have either violated his Church or alienated his Messengers Lands might be drawn
out of the Macchabees Sir Henry Spelman and other Historians but that the certainty of such punishments are unquestionable Nor did the Reverend Fathers of the Primitive Church led by the example of Gods severe threatnings and chastisements of such horrid wickedness wink at such faults as this A Reverend Asserter of the truth positively assures us that he who commits Sacriledge by taking or stealing any thing from the Church may be placed beside Judas who betray'd our Saviour And not much disconsonant from this is the opinion of the Ancient Popes Anacletus and Lucius who affirm that those who rob and abuse the Church are sacrilegious and as much guilty as if they had slain a man How lamentably do the two old Fathers Gregory Nazianzen and Theodoret complain of the violation of Churches and Church-plate and Treasure How earnestly doth Boniface dehort King Aethelbold from acting Sacriledge And How plainly doth Innocent the third tell us that he commits that sin who layeth violent hands on a Bishop Then miserable were those tumultuous wretches at Westminster by their wicked assaults but farr more those who destroy'd the Reveren'd Arch-bishop Laud one of more Integrity and Religion than Prynne Gage Burton Hornius and the rest of his railing Enemies Nor are the single Fathers only testifying the hainousness of this sin but also the whole Church And he that neglects to hear the Church let him be unto thee as an Heathen-man and a Publican represented by their Council have after much seeking God solemnly curst those who perpetrate this Iniquity In one of them it was concluded upon That if any one teach that the House of God or those who meet in it are to be despised let him be accursed And with this doth another Council also agree affirming That the sin was so intolerable that they should not only be excommunicated but that they should dye accursed And with these agree several other forraign Councils too tedious here to be related being all to the same purpose which are enough to demonstrate how the Fathers and props of the Primitive Innocent Church did look upon this sin as most abominable which might easily perswade any that dare pretend to honest principles to keep themselves from such Iniquity But because some may look upon these instances as only extranious or forraign and so not binding to the people of England Though the Laws of our Land affirm the contrary allowing and receiving as proper all such Canons Constitutions c. which are not repugnant to our Laws and the Kings Prerogative I shall shew you with as much brevity as I can what care hath been had by the State of England over the Church and her priviledges for many hundred years past King Edgar about an hundred years before the Conquest ordain'd That Churches should be imploy'd to no other use then Divine Service and that with all honour and respect every thing to be done in all decency all babling and such vain discourses to be banish'd thence with all manner of bousing and tipling Nay that a Dog shall not be permitted to enter the Church-yard or a Swine if they can possibly be kept out And many other Canons commanding reverence and respect to the Clergy and Church may be seen in the same place Besides these there is another ancient Order of the Church of England wherein it is strictly forbidden to imploy the Vessels belonging to the Church to any other use whatsoever then Divine Worship In which Canon is also set before their eyes as a warning-piece Gods judgement upon Belshazzar for carousing in the Vessels dedicated to God and the Church And formerly the Kings of England were so careful of these things that they have put heavy fines upon those who either rob'd God or his Church as may appear by the Decrees of King Aethelbert above a thousand years ago and several other English Councils as the industrious and learned Sir Henry Spelman will inform you Nor have these Sacrilegious Verlets only escapt with a fine but have been loaded with the severe and just Curse and Excommunication of the Church Of which form for example take this following pronounced by Boniface Archbishop of Canterbury assisted with other Bishops in their Pontificals against all Church-spoilers and breakers of Church-liberties By the Authority of Almighty God the Father the Son and the Holy Ghost we Excommunicate Accurse and from the benefits of our holy Mother the Church we sequester all those who hereafter willingly and maliciously deprave or spoil the Church of her right And all those that by any craft or wiliness do violate break diminish or change the Church-Liberties and free Customs contain'd in the Charters of the Common Liberties c. And besides this many other instances might be given of the heavy Imprecations laid upon the sacrilegious person by authority of the Church For few there are which have been Founders or Benefactors but in their deed of gift some heavy curse or other is denounced against those who shall either alienate or take away their charity and liberality Nor hath this Sacrilegious Villany been only fined curst or excommunicated but as a reward for their wickedness have suffer'd death by Law amongst others our Chronicles assure us of five who suffer'd at one time three of them being hang'd and burnt and the other two prest to death And to them may I add the hanging of William Mandevil Baily of Abington who under pretence of holiness had rais'd a Tumult but especially against the Priests whose heads he vow'd to make as cheap as Sheep-heads which were then as some say ten a peny And how any man could think to escape without severe punishment for alienating the Church-Lands I know nor Since former Parliaments how wicked soever the latter have been have been so careful of the Priviledges and Maintenance of the Clergy that they have confirm'd them by many Statutes But these men care no more for what the Laws of the Land say then Oliver who used to call Magna Charta Magna Farta For if they had they then had never so Sacrilegiously and Trayterously violated the Statutes both of God and Man yet for all this hath this wickedness been perpetrated by those who pretended the greatest ostentation and shew of holiness as if to vilifie Gods House were the only way to do him most service It is not I suppose unknown to any in Warwick how sacrilegiously the Parliamentarians behaved themselves in St. Marie's Church and the Chappel adjoyning to the Quire beating down and defacing the ancient and curious Monuments of the Beauchamps Nor can Colchester forget how inhumanly they used the Corps of Lady Lucas and Lady Kelligrew dismembring and disjoynting their Trunks and wearing their hair in their Hats by way of Triumph Never dreaming for all their Saint-ships how God doth punish the violaters of the Dead How was
the Church in Sudly Castle at the beginning of these Wars profaned Not only the Monuments of the Chandoises spoil'd but one part of the Church converted to a Stable whilst the other was little better than a Shambles the Pulpit being made the chief stall where the meat was hung up and the communion-table served for a board to joynt upon The Inhabitants of Weden-Pinkney in Northamptonshire cannot yet forget how Mr. Losse their Minister was abused whilest he was officiating by the souldiers who rid into the Church and wounded the Minister because he would not go along with them they refusing to tell him by what authority they commanded him An action so wicked that the very heathens will rise up in judgment against them And those of Chelmsford in Essex need no remembrancer how their Church-windows having the History of Christ and the Scutchions of Bene factors painted in them were batter'd down by the instigated rabble who not content with this layd violent hands on Dr. Michelson their Parson and rent the Common Prayer Book with a great deal of joy This reformed town as my Author saith was govern'd by a Tinker two Coblers two Taylors and two Pedlers How miserably was the ancient Cathedral Church at Winchester dealt withall the famous Monuments of the Dead utterly defaced the bones of Kings Bishops c. thrown about the Church the two famous Brazen Statues of King James and King Charles erected at the entrance into the Quire pulled down the Communion-Plate books hangings cushions c. seis'd upon and made away the Church-vestments put on by the heathenish soldiers riding in that posture in derision about the streets some scornfully singing pieces of the Common-prayer whilst others tooted upon the broken pieces of Organs The stories of the old and new Testament curiously beautified with colours and cut out in carved work they utterly destroy'd against which wickednesse the Prophet David of old complained Nor did the famous Organs escape their fury being pull'd to pieces and imployed to private uses As one in York something advanced his houses if my memory fail me not with Organ and Church-wood which if he had turn'd into Looms and Shuttles had been more proper for his trade And of the brasse torn from violated Monuments might have been built a house as strong as the brazen Towers in some old Romances And after this manner was the Cathedral of Exceter served where the Commandements were defaced the Common-Prayer Book burnt the glasse-windows monuments statues and organs broke and the name of Jesus over the Communion table blotted out as superstitious Nor can some honest people of London yet forget the intolerable actions of the saint-like soldiers at St. Peter's Pauls-wharf sunday 9 Sept. 1649 who rode into the said Church with swords drawn and pistols spann'd crying out Knock the Rogues on the head shoot them kill them which was accordingly done an old woman being shot into the head and above 40 more grievously wounded and the Minister Mr. Williams hurried Prisoner to White-Hall And all this because the Common prayer establisht by the true Laws of the Land was read whence my Author observes that these Hereticks though they loudly cry up Liberty of Conscience yet will allow none to others but take all to themselves the better to cloak their villanies with pretended Religion and reformation The Cathedral of Chichester was sufficiently violated being robb'd of all her vestments and plate and not so much as a Cushion left in the pulpit the Organs and ten Commandements broke down and spoil'd the Pictures of the Kings of England and Bishops of that See defaced with the monuments seats stalls and painted walls And after the same manner was the Cathedral of Peterborough used and how Lichfield escaped is not unknown And their fury being once begun no man can expect that the Metropolitan Church of Canterbury could escape where Coll. Sandys soldidiers barbarously overthrew the Communion-Table tearing the velvet cloth from before it defacing the goodly Screen violating the monuments of the dead spoiling the organs breaking down the ancient rails and seats with the brazen Eagle which supported the Bible tearing the surplices gowns bibles and Arras hanging in the Quire representing the whole story of our Saviour wherein observing divers figures of Christ one said that here is Christ and swore that he would stab him another said here is Christ and swore that he would rip up his Bowels which they did accordingly so farre as the figures were capable and not content with this finding another Statue of our Saviour in the Frontispiece of the south-gate shot about forty shots at it tryumphing much when they had hit the head or face The ancient Cathedral of Durham can yet shew her ruines and can tell with what unspeakable tyranny the Kings poor friends were used in it And that of Carlisle deplores the want of a part of its body being ruined to be imployed in wicked Warre whilest it was intended a house of prayer and peace Nor is it unknown how sacrilegiously that excellent structure of St. Pauls in London was abused making of it an Exchange where things may be bought and sould not only contrary to the Laws of God but also of man and that not only of our own but forraign Churches as may appear by several Canons against such violations The laws of our Nation expresly forbidding any Fair or market to be held in Church-yards and by consequence not in the Church it self so that a late writer said not amisse that one might well be amazed at the genius of this age that suffered this goodly and venerable fabrick to be built about and converted into rascally ware-houses and so sordidly abused and defaced that an Argument of greater avarice malice meanesse and deformity of mind cannot possibly be exprest England is the sole spot in all the world where amongst Christians their Churches are made jakes and stables markets and tipling houses and where there were more need of Scorpions than Thongs to drive out the Publicans and Money changers And that St. Pauls by the wicked reformers was converted into a stable is not unknown to it's Neighbours which iniquities and such like occasioned the Saying That we had now a thorough Reformation in England since our horses also went to Church Yet some not content to have their horses in the Church unlesse some other villanie were done witnesse the damnable wickednesse of one Captain Beamont who at Yakesly in Huntingtonshire Anno. 1644. having pist in the Font fetched his bold horse from Mr. Finnemores stable and in derision of Baptism sprinkled it on the horse calling of him Ball Esau because he was hairy and in scorn to the Church of England crost him on the forehead and to make their villany compleat one Robert Rayner Corporal acted the part of the Minister and would also have God-Fathers one Bartly Ward but nick-named Widdow Shropshire acting the part of
a God-Mother And thus did they also baptise a Pig and were so farre from repenting at these villanies that they boasted they had done the same in many other places This unheard of impiety would make Martinus de Olave dumb with astonishment when many years ago he bitterly exclaimed against those who turn'd out the Reverend Divines and kept the Church only to be stables for horses and such like Beasts Nor did Westminster under the very nose of the Parliament escape scot-free The souldiers breaking down the Organs pawning the pipes of them for Ale eating drinking smoaking Tobacco at the Communion Table and easing themselves in most parts of the Church Nor was this all but keeping their whores in the Church and lying with them upon the very Altar it self if you will believe the learned Author of Mercurius rusticus who will inform you more at large concerning some of the fore-mentioned passages And here I shall not speak of the wicked selling of Church-lands by the Parliament who had no authority to do so And this is the happy Reformation begun and intended by the wicked long-Parliament a pack of such impious Varlets that they were forced to call themselves Saints because their neighbours could not Yet for all their Saint-ship several of their Members were not only instigators but high Actors of this Sacriledge who though not here named yet I suppose are as conscious to themselves as a great Lord was when the word Sectary was spoken by Arch-Bishop Land Nor were the Members altogether devested of Sacriledge when they acted and voted so furiously against the King Church and good of the Nation in their house which was formerly St. Stephens Chappel And how well many of them have feather'd their nests in Bishops lands is not unknown But goods thus got as the Proverb saith will never prosper Of which none of the least examples is King Henry the eighth who although besides the vast summe of Abby Lands and the 5100000 l. left him by his father in ready mony received more from his Subjects by loans taxes and subsidies then all the Kings of England had in 500 years before yet what King was ever prest with so much poverty all things considered as he was who about the 36 year of his raign as one observes of all the Kings of England was forced to coyn not only base Tinne and Copper but leather monies And it is observed as the same Author saith since the accession of Abbies and Impropriations to the Crown even the Crown-lands which formerly have been thought sufficient to support the ordinary charge of the Crown are since so wasted though I hope the Loyalty of our Parliaments will augment them that they will scarce defray the ordinary charge of the Kings houshold Nor hath it happened otherwise with our wicked Long-Parliament and their sacrilegious adherents who could never keep their accounts straight for though in the heat of the warre they demanded not much above 50000 l. a month to carry on their designes yet in time of peace they could not observe just scores though they had 90000 l. 100000 l. per mensem and sold all the Kings and Bishops and such like lands which amounted to a vast summe besides taxes excise customes and such like commings in Nor was this all but they had the composition moneys of those they call'd Delinquents which consisted of many thousand Loyal Subjects and to what a vast summe this came to may somewhat be collected from this If ten thousand men at two hundred pounds per annum pay two years for Composition for so the ordinance appointed which amounts to two Millions to what an incredible summe will it amount when several of the Compounders estates were 2 4 6 8 10. and some above thousand pounds a year But if this summe was great what was the Decimation Sequestration and such like knacks of procuring monyes And yet poverty still pleaded so that their Armies and Navies could not be paid till our Gracious Majesty did it for them who though they hoorded up much monies and lands to themselves yet the ever blessed divine Providence hath now brought them to give an account to the Loyall Royall and Rightful owners And such or a worse Exit let there alwaies fall upon all sacrilegious persons To whom as man hath appointed severe judgments so will not the all seeing and ever-just Almighty be backward in requiting such prefidious and sacrilegious villains according to their iniquity who I hope will swallow down the Ophiusian herb as fast as the Church patrimony that the dread or terrour of their consciences shall either force them to restore the unjustly detain'd Lands and riches or Hoyl-like to swing their own requiem for the better example and terror of posterity CHAP. VI. That some through ignorance and a credulous disposition prompting them to embrace their specious Pretences might be charmed to side with the Parliament though really they designed no damage either to the King's Person nor Authority TO vindicate Rebellion as hath been the unhappy mode of late is the worst office that can be done to a Nation yet to make all it's partakers of equal guilt will be a token of no great share of charity I am apt to believe that hitherto there hath never been any war but some men as well of honest intentions as others knavishly-designed have been of both sides It is not all men that rightly understand the frame by which they are govern'd either the Prerogative of the Supream or their own Priviledges and it is but few can see into the contriving hearts of their neighbours A harmless woman may be deceived into the reality of the Actors at the Hostel de Bourgogue in Paris or an English Play-house and 't is no difficult thing under the specious vail of Religion and Common good to make many people believe that actions which are really the most wicked tend to the best like the Physician in the Fable who made his Patient think that every Temper he was in was still for his health By these insinuations increaseth the number of Hereticks and Rebels many being rather misled then acting out of design being not so much used for any benefit to themselves as ignorant instruments to promote their flattering Grandees to the desired Haven of Supremacy and this once obtain'd are either thrown by as Day-labourers when the work is done as needless and impertinent or as ingratefully rewarded as Trebellius King of Bulgaria was by the most unfortunate Emperour Justinian the second As I shew'd before that the pretended squeamish stomacks of the Non-conformists were as Peter the Hermit the first Trumpet to sound Alarum to this supposed holy war setting the Lecturers up to teach Non-conformity schism and disobedience the forerunners of Rebellion so were the tongues and pens of this Novel Covenanting fraternity the main instruments that infused disloyalty into the peoples hearts which the Parliament did not
upon this last change have call'd those irrational who questioned the jus divinum of Episcopacy And how many of our Presbyterians have declared their perpetual adhearing to their Covenant against our present Church-government yet since the Change have taken contrary preferments with a pretty distinction that they onely swore against the wickedness accidentally happening to such forms These Non-conformists have been originally the main enemies as far as sword would go against the late King and This present yet now that he is restored none courts the rising Sun-more then they and that with thwacking Rodomantado's of their activity for his Restauration and what danger and jeopardy they have incurr'd for his cause which puts me in mind of the first Reformation in Scotland When the Scriptures were allowed to be read in English then those who had ever scarce read ten sentences of it would chop their acquaintances on the cheek with it and say This hath lain under my beds feet these ten years Others would glory O! how oft have I been in danger for this book How secretly have I stoln from my wife at midnight to read upon it All which was done meerly to curry favour the Governour being then held one of the most servent Protestants in Europe And how far this story quadrates with our Presbyterian temper may be seen by the sequel discourse I have seen some men in the Rump's time when condemn'd to death for Felony by the then Judges earnestly plead their former siding with and activity for the Parliament thinking thereby to gain so much favour from the Judge who had been formerly brothers in one and the same iniquity as the procurement of a Reprieve if not a pardon But now the plea is so much alter'd that the same Faction pretends to hold forth some small favours to the present King as a badge to denote the bearers so stuft with Loyalty as to be capable of the greatest trust When the Father was alive then they fought against him to make him more glorious And now that the Son 's restored they onely sent the Earl of Warwick to pelt him beyond seas to learn humility because Affliction and Presbytery are the best Tutors to that vertue For rather then He or his Father should suffer any real damage or hurt they would do just nothing Which calâ—s to my remembrance the flatterer Afranius who swore to Caligula then sick that he would willingly dye so the Emperour might recover who upon Caligula's restoration to health was by command slain that he might not be for sworn Whether Afranius meant really or no I know not but this I am confident of That our Presbyterians take little care of any oaths tending to the safety and peace of King and Country and therefore take what liberty they please to protest knowing his Majesties mercy is such that he had rather give them time to repent for their former wickedness and perjury then put a period to their beings by the mode of Trussing as they had done formerly to many of his most faithful Subjects Americus Vespacian the Florentine had the confidence to denominate the best Continent of the West-Indies by his name though if he had not had the benefit of Colono or Colombo of Genua his observations he might as soon it's probable have found out Nigra Rupis or the certain Station of Ophir as have seen that other world And if the ever to be honour'd Duke of Albermarle had not contrived and as I may say of himself wrought out the happy Restauration of his Majesty The Brethren alas would as soon have found out the ten tribes as of themselves endeavoured the King's return unless upon Tyrannical Conditions So that if Virgil took it ill that Bathyllus had robb'd him of the honour but of one Distick the Duke of Albermarle hath no reason to favour those people who would pluck from him the greatest glory that in possibility could be thrown upon a Subject If the Presbyterians did any thing advance his Majesties Restauration it must either be by Chance or Industry As for the first they cannot expect any thanks since this event proceeded not from resolution but rather contrary to their desire or at least expectation The Ape little thought by putting on his Master's Cap to cure him of a Pluresy and he who wrote to the Lord Monteagle did not think thereby to discover the Gun-powder plot The Surgion had no intention to destroy Charles II. King of Navarre by burning the thread too carelesly and what resolutions the Presbyterians had to restore our Charles II I must yet plead ignorance till better informed but I am confident they would never willingly have this way pleasured King Charles the first And that they ever so much troubled their thoughts with the King as to make his Restauration a part of their business is hitherto as far from my discovery as the true situation of the old Towns in Ptolemy or the Northern bounders of America I hear not of any of their actions in England when his Majesty was beyond seas before his agreement with the Scots I hear of none of their designs here to assist the King or their own Brethren for him in Scotland I know of no assistance that they afforded or brought to the King when he marched for Worcester but have heard of some who have then opposed him with all their might Nor am I informed of their activeness in any of the many Plots against Oliver and if in none of these things they have been stirring their Grand Plea of Loyalty must fall to the ground unless they did his Majesty good service by being obedient and faithfull subjects to the Rump and Oliver sworn enemies to the King and in this case their plea cannot be so ingenious as that of the immortal Poet John Cleaveland I remember Antonio de Torquemeda tells a story of some men and their horses that were carried to Granada in Spain by the advantage of one Cloak though they thought they had onely been getting their dinners not thinking of such a journey And if the Presbytery did any service for the King it was I suppose after this manner when they never dreamed of it Nay I do not so much as hear the whispering of any relief till the other day of monies or such like conveniencies that they assisted the King with or any of his distressed followers Major General Massey and Captain Titus excepted and that but a poor pittance too some 400l between them not for any design but a supply of personal necessities And the reason of this beggerly liberality was not so much because they were sufferers for the King as that the former had done good services for the Presbyterian Parliament as Master Love himself doth more then hint besides this we will not forget the huge summe of 40l to Coll. Bampfield and his man Yet as a pretty token of their Loyalty they keep a great deal of clutter concerning the
actions of Master Love and a few of his associates as if this were sufficient to afford scraps of Loyalty to every particular Member of that Faction But to this may be answered First that if the story were as absolute Royal as man could imagine yet will it onely demonstrate that there were some three or four and twenty Presbyterians which were active for the good of his Majesty no more stirring in it as Master Love himself doth confess being utterly unknown to the rest of their party professing upon the Scaffold that the saying the contrary is onely a politick Engine to make the Presbyterian party odious so that the actions of these men are nothing to the vindication of the rest Besides compleat Loyalty they looked upon as odious But secondly the compleat honour of the story may upon very good grounds in the main be questioned For though they did sometimes meet at Master Love's house yet their Consultations were rather for the misery then benefit of King Church or Kingdome The main of their contrivances being to send to some about his Majesty advising them by all means to use their interests to Provoke Him i. e. the King to agree with the Scots and to take the Covenant as also to advise the Scots Commissioners that in their agreement with their King they should have a special respect to the Interest of Religion and Terms of the Covenant and to this purpose they must tumble out their prayers and send into Scotland to know whether they did maintain Religion and Covenant Interest So that the Scots were not onely guilty of their after Covenanting Tyranny with their betters but the English Brethren also by their thus thrusting on the design Hitherto we see all the Loyalty and affection by these men shew'd to their Soveraign was meerly conditionally and that upon a Covenant-account little beneficial to the King or his Party as may appear by the acknowledgement of one of their Patrons viz. Mr. Love I do retain as vehement a detestation of Malignancy whether in England or in Scotland as ever I did and shall in my place and calling oppose such a Design and Interest with as much zeal and faithfulness as ever Nor was his rancour towards the Kings best friends staid here but even upon the Scaffold just before his death as if thereby he intended to proclaim them odious to Posterity he thus endeavours to charm his Auditours I dye with my judgement set against Malignity I do hate both name and thing I shall retain as vehement a detestation of a Malignant Interest as ever I did And what he meant by a Malignant himself shall declare though 't is well enough understood I do not count the godly party our Covenanting Brethren in Scotland I do not count them a Malignant Party But who then he presently thus tells you My judgement then was and still is for bringing Malignants who did seduce him i. e. King Charles the first and draw him from the Parliament to condign punishment And the best friends his Majesty had beyond-Sea with him he calls desperate Malignants and bad Council so that I believe little honour can be attributed to this Conventicle for what they did However if through civility though not any share of merit we should grant that this little meeting was of a greater consequence for the benefit of the King than it either was or could be imagined though Mr. Love doth protest in the presence of God the searcher of all hearts that he knoweth no Plot or Design against the present Government i. e. Rump nor is he privy in the least to any preparations for or intendments towards any intestine Insurrections or forraign Invasions or to any Correspondencies now held with any in or of the Scottish Nation or any other whatsoever Though I say some credit were given to this Design yet will it not advance the reputation of the contrivers considering their after-submission to the Rump calling them the Supream Authority the Parliament of the Common-wealth of England c. Mr. Love professing That he is unfaignedly sorry for his so acting and promiseth never to plot contrive or design any thing to the hurt of this present Government Rump and that he is sorrowful for his high crimes and offences against the Parliament in his late and great miscarriages and desires them to pass by these sundry and great offences and at last thus fairly concludes That I shall devote the remainder of my dayes to the glory of God and good of his people the peace and safety of this Common-wealth against all the Malignant Enemies and opposers thereof Nor did he alone recant but also Jenkins Case and others of the same Club. Here we see a Company of Penitents hanging down their heads as if upon a Scottish-stool of Repentance acknowledging their Iniquity and sins for talking of the King with a great deal of remorse and sorrow faithfully promising for the future to live obedient subjects to their Rumpships and al this to procure the favour and love of those Usurping and King-killing Tyrants Yet when Love saw that all his whining and puleing would not work his Pardon but that they were resolved to let him bloud Then forsooth he thought it best to put a good face upon the business and so being on the Scaffold and perceiving no hopes of life he plucks up his courage and for the credit of himself and Brethren he begins to â—ant dapperly against the Rump affirming for all his former repentance That for the things I am condemn'd neither God nor mine own Conscience condemn me and I would not be look'd upon as a man owning this present Government I dye with my judgement against it and at last calls himself a Martyr Though he had a little before acknowledged himself guilty of the sentence of death justly passed on him And affirmed that he was insnared into the business and that through unadvisedness and weakness yet this complyance he boldly denyeth upon the Scaffold I am accused to be an Apostate to be a Turn-coat to be this to be that to be any thing but what I am but a long Sword a bloudy Scaffold hath not made me in the least to alter my Principles The truth of which I must leave to the Reader only telling him that the Margaiates in America scorn to submit to their Enemies because they know that it will not save their lives though probably if repentance would be an advantage they might be as ready as others If Mr. Love dyed a Martyr it was as unwillingly as ever man did it being the Rumps resolution for example sake not his constancy that brought him to the Block In plain English the man was of a hasty and violent spirit which seldom hath a rational or sound foundation and by many is accused to be the breaker up of the Uxbridge-Treaty by his ranting
Sermon of which Preachment the Kings Commissioners complained though to small purpose as appears by the Answers yet I shall willingly quit him from this knowing that neither the Parliament nor their Commissioners would be guided by his pratling and being fully satisfied that the Parliament never really intended a Peace unless they had thereby reduced the King to a Royal slave or worse and have got liberty for themselves to have acted Treason and Tyrannized over the poor Nation cum Privilegio and this was the design of all their counterfeited Treaties Yet I must needs acknowledge that Mr. Love did what in him lay to dissolve the Peace as is palpable from the wicked and malicious assertions and admonitions laid down by him in that Sermon concluding it Whiles our Enemies go on in their wicked practises and whiles we keep our Principles we may assoon make Fire and Water to agree and I had almost said reconcile Heaven and Hell as their spirits and ours either they must grow better or we must grow worse before it is possible for us to agree Words denoting such a malignant principle that I am willing to quit those whom he and the rest of his gang are pleas'd to call so by putting the Saddle on the right Horse and attributing the Epithet to himself I might here also intimate some of his sacrilegious vapours by discoursing upon his extravagant reproaches thrown upon the Church of England which I am confident might lawfully defend herself by force of Arms against the impious actions of her spurious Antagonists if that be true which Mr. Love affirms viz. That it is an hurtful Opinion to imagine that the people might not do so against their Soveraign I shall conclude with our supposed Martyr by asserting that he who had the ignorance blind-zeal and impudence to tearm Episcopacy and the Common-Prayer-Book the two Plague-sores several times in one Preachment had need have set-Forms of Sermons enjoyned him as well as Prayers And the Presbyterian House of Commons who cleared Mr. Love from any slander for pratling such stuff did plainly demonstrate what little desire they had for Peace and thereby intimated their abominable hypocrisie to the whole world since the Sermon pardon the giving it so good a Title seemed more like an Harangue to encourage the People to a bloudy slaughter and it is not unknown how oft he mentioned the necessity of drawing bloud than the imbracement of a happy and setled Peace Having thus sufficiently proved Mr. Love to be no such Martyr as his Fraternity flab out though much more might be enlarged upon this Subject and upon every discourse fly to him as a sufficient Asylum where they think they may handsomly secure a Reputation I shall now say something to another Objection whose main force lyeth upon the credit of the Covenant and so may with its Dam sleep with ignominy rather than be held forth as a badge of honesty In this plea they boast much in their taking the Covenant in which there is one clause for the Preservation of the Kings Person to which League one of their Chieftains brags that above 600. Ministers did subscribe To which I shall answer that if he glory in the number 600. is but a poor Bed-role in respect of 10000. for about so many Ministers are there in England But again the taking of this Covenant is no consequence of a good and loyal Subject but rather the contrary being against the Kings express command But again It is not the taking of an Oath provided it be a lawful one but the keeping of it that may demand commendations And when Subjects break Allegiance at pleasure as they are a trouble to their King and Countrey so are they wicked before God and so merit no commendation no good being entended either to King or Countrey by this knack of Perjury What benefit was it for Ataulphus Sigericus Thurismundus Theudesilus Agila and Luyba those Goths in Spain or for Friola and Sancho Kings of Leon to confide in their people and expect obedience since they were slain by their own Subjects What advantage was it for St. Wenceslaw Jaromirus and Wenceslaw the V. Dukes and Kings of Bohemia or for Gotrick and the three Eric's of Denmark to trust to the obedience which Law and Nature might assure them of since contrary to all fidelity they were murdered by their own People Those of Swedland cannot handsomly boast of their Loyalty by killing Ingevallus Eric Aorsel or Stanchil and Swercherus their Kings Nor could the Queen of the same Countrey expect Commendations by affirming her subjection and love to her King and Husband Ingemarus since she broak both by hanging him in a Gold Chain as Queen Fredegunde did hers by procuring the murder of Chilperic King of France as Fergusius III. and Malvinus Kings of Scotland were thus assassinated by their Queens Will any man quit the Treasons of Zedechias for saying that he was sworn Physitian to the Emperour or pardon Jaques Clement Jean Chastel or Francis Ravaillac if they should say Their Religion obliged them to obedience since the first poysoned Charles le Chauve the second stabbed Henry III. of France Chastel assaulted Henry IV. and the last man murdered him Would it not heighten the wickedness of Dowall the three Donalds and the two Fidlers by pleading that they were Subjects when they were so farr from observing their Allegiance that they impiously murdered their Soveraigns Nothatus Ethodius I. Findocus Fethelmacus Conranus or Goranus and Duffus Kings of Scotland and to these I may add the Assassinators of James I. of the same Nation But to return home passing by the disobedience shewn to some of our own Kings of former ages will it any way diminish the crimes of the Presbyterian Ministry with the rest of the Schismaticks if they should plead that they formerly subscribed the Articles of the Church of England but especially the 36. Canon when they took their Degrees as appears by their own hands in the two Universities a Catalogue of which might be produced to the eternal ignomy and perjury of the Brotherhood since they violently broke all their promises to the destruction of our Church and State Can any quit the long Parliament of Hypocrisie when they affirm that they all took the Protestation for the Kings Preservation and therefore wonder'd that he should think much at their actions though they were in actual rebellion against him Would it not be a pretty plea for the Kings Enemies to say Alas How could we intend any harm against him since we all took the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy Or can any man give any credit to the wicked Long-Parliament when they affirm that they never rejected the Common-Prayer-Book nor do intend only to alter it When the enmity of those then in the Houses against that Book both before and after is well enough known But truth in those dayes was not used to be spoken within those walls
to them by their own fears they skud to their Dam with all speed and secure themselves in the same paunch whence they first proceeded At this time I dare boldly say that there is none pleads more in behalf and toleration of the Phanaticks then their Presbyterian Mother doth under the specious and whining pretence of Tender Conscience though when they were on Cock-horse none did more oppose that plea than themselves as I shall shew hereafter Which abominable jugling with many others used by this Fraternity prompts me to so much indignation that I can scarce allow the Foundation of Presbytery so charitable a thought as I do that poor miserable fellow who being accused of Bestiality at his Arraignment confessed it yet that it was not out of any evill intention he had done it but only to procreate a Monster with which having nothing to sustain his life he might win his bread by going about the Country to shew it These Puritans having formerly stirr'd up the Rabble by their seditious Pamphlets and Lectures to Rebellion against King Charles the Father are now driving the same way against the Son as a preparative to which they are daily instilling into the peoples Noddles Principles of disobedience schisme discontent and Rebellion for they Still find it good To keep th' infection high i th' peoples blood For Active Treason must be doing still Lest she unlearn her Art of doing ill I shall not tell the Londoners how King Henry III and King Richard II used them nor how Frederick Barbarossa the German Emperour clawd the Milanois and their City but it will not be amisse to hint to our factious Presbytery how the same Emperour made Hermon the Elector Palatine with his associates carry dogs upon their backs then held a punishment and disgrace for being disturbers of the peace And were the same inflicted upon our Boute-feu's Good God! what snarling would there be at Christ-Church in London and the lecturing junctos how zealously would the sister-hood meditate on the Temple-Barre Off-spring of Lay-Elders how would it puzzle the tender-hearted souls to decide the grand controversies which ears were longest or which animal best conditioned Thus would the Pulpit be guarded like St. Malo And our Non-conformists would have another plea against Tobit as Apocryphal because not agreeable to their practise his Dog running before but these lugd behind By this means dogs would be used to smell out a Presbyter as the Italian dog could Fornicators and Adulterers and it may be by this conjunction the Brethren might smell Popery in Obedience and Decencie as they do Idolatry in kneeling and loyalty in opposing the King For Monsieur Borel tells us of a man that by the biting of a dog had his common smelling rais'd to the sagacity of a hound or spaniel And possibly the presence of those crafty and cruel Hyena's might make the dogs as silent as those found in Africa and the East-indies or those in Virginia which cannot bark but howle and since fair means and gentlenesse will not work upon the churlish humour of the men they should blame themselves if severity like a Wolfe should appear to silence them otherwaies if the dog and man should be thus coupled together our Curs at London and other places would in time be brought to be as devout at Lectures and Conventicles as the Lisboan dog Tudesco so call'd I suppose in hatred to the Dutch as a Lancashire Gentlewoman call'd her three Cats having no ears Pryn Burton and Bastwick was serious and zealous for the Romish Church But because they may grumble and call this railing though you see how merry I make my self at their Worships I shall since they will not give me leave to anger them make them so odious to posterity that a sign of Jack Presbyters head would intice no Customers but Fauxes Ravilliacks Olivers and such like detestable animals And for these things in this and the following Chapters I shall go no higher than our late times which may serve as part of a Supplement to the Reverend Bishop Bancroft But it may be said To what purpose is all this since they themselves do not deny it and all the world knows it 'T is true However a few hints will not be amiss if it be only to tell the people that these Blades are still of the same mettall So that I dare boldly affirm that if this Loyall Parliament or the Reverend Bishops would make these Incendiaries recant their former Rebellious and seditious speeches formerly affirm'd in Pulpit and Writings it would be the greatest blow that ever the enemies of Church or State received and the only way to make the simple people see how they have been misled and abused If they refuse such Recantations it must either be through scorn and contempt or that they are still of the same Rebellious humour for both which the Laws provide punishment and I hope their interest would not be so great as to stop This. I need not tell you who they were who Rebell'd lately against his Majesty yet would I gladly have the Consistory to enform me in these three Quaeries First Why the Non-conformists and only the Non-conformists did oppose fight and rebel against the King Secondly Why the Episcopal part of the Lords and Commons with the Judges Lawyers and others who followed his Majesty should not did not or could not understand the Prerogative of the King Priviledges of Parliament and Liberty of the Subject as well as the Puritanical party which opposed his Majesty Thirdly Why since the Reformation None of the Reformed Episcopal perswasion have in Arms Rebelled against their Soveraigns Whereas ever now and anon we are alarm'd with some Presbyterian Rebellion or other The Proverb assures us that There is no smoak without some fire And why all these men should be seditious as experience assureth us I shall leave to the consideration of Dr. Burges being one of the oldest amongst them But it may be some of them in answer to these Quaeries will say in the seditious Tenent of that Scotch-firebrand Mr. Robert Blair who taught his Schollers in his Lectures upon Aristotle That Monarchial Government was unlawful And were not the blew-capt Covenanting Brethren pretty birds that could finde no fitter man to make Professor of Divinity in the University of St. Andrews then this furious Orestes Some it might be would affirm that they only fought to obtain the desire of that Scotch Bully who in his sermon thus stirr'd up his Auditors Let us never give over 'till we have the King in our power and then he shall see how good Subjects we are Others it might be were weary of the Kings ruling over them and so might act for England as others belcht out concerning a neighbour-Kingdome viz. That Scotland had been too long a Monarchy and that they would never do well so long as one of the Stuarts was alive And possibly some
and spent in these late distractions Nor did I as yet ever hear of any godly men that desired wert it possible to purchase their FRIENDS or money again at so dear a rate as with the return of these to have those soul-burdening Anti-Christian yokes re-imposed upon us And if any such there be I am sure that desire is no part of their Godlinesse and I professe my self in that to be none of the number Would not this man be a fit Chaplain to an Army of Cannabals whose delight is to devoure one another Well I shall desire to ask Mr. William one or two Questions which will be worth his answering I. Is Episcopacy such a devilish Government and Presbytery so good and necessary that the first ought to be null'd and the latter set up though the doing of it will cost an hundred thousand mens lives and the destruction of three Kingdoms and the King to boot II. Had not the King some friends that were truly Godly who wisht the Restauration of his Life Crown Throne Authority Supremacy and Prerogative and the Episcopal Church-Government too Or could no man that was Godly desire these things If not then III. Would the Brethren wish this King upon the Scaffold too provided that would free them from our Episcopacy Or do they think it fitting or lawful to rebell again and destroy so many families for the rooting out of our Bishops Though Mr. L'estrange will not shame the man by concealing his name Yet because I am pretty confident of no alteration in his judgment unlesse it be according to his custome from worse to worse I shall tell thee where thou maist find him out After thou hast put on a mortified countenance and obtain'd the art of a counterfeited cough but muster all the wickednesse thou canst hear of into thine heart foot it demurely to Mr. Jenkin's house I mean the very same man of Christ Church London the very same man that petitioned and recanted with a breath and if thou canst meet with him he may tell thee who was the utterer of that Sermon But not to trouble you any longer with particular instances I shall give you the Vote of a whole Club of London Levites where you may see what good opinion they had of the King The wofull miscarriages of the King himself which we cannot but acknowledge to be many and very great in his Government that have cost the three Kingdomes so dear and cast him down from his Excellency into an horrid Pit of misery almost beyond example Pray that God would give him effectual Repentance For subjects to give such a Character upon their Soveraign is the highest piece of impudence but for them to throw such aspersions upon the most vertuous of men is a malitious slander not to be found in Christians Yet was this piece of falshood approved of and subscribed to by 59 Presbyterian cushion-dusters about London all which in the same paper acknowledge the legality of the Rebellion If the King be such a wicked man as these Brethren make of him what must then be done with him Some of them say 't is no great matter if execution be done upon him However it may be most of them will agree with their Champion Mr. Baxter who decrees that he must be deposed Nor are the subjects afterwards to trouble themselves for his Restauration Nor is the Injured Prince himself to seek his re-settlement if the Common Wealth may prosper without him and so he is obliged to resigne his Government And thus the people being free from any obedience to him may choose another King Or if a Common-Wealth be pitcht upon it is not at all displeasing to Baxter who is not fond that is his word of any one Government above another only his desire is that the Parliaments may be Holy and this ascertained from Generation to Generation by such a necessary Regulation of Elections as I have after here at large described and that all those that by wickednesse have †forfeited their †liberties may neither choose nor be chosen But I shall leave Mr. Baxter to his own Repentance only I would put him in mind that once he thus magnied a Government of Traytors which were his Majesties profest Enemies If that Nation that is most happy of any upon Earth in a Government suited to the highest Interest and to Gods description Rom. 3. 3. should yet murmure and despise that Government It would be a most hainous sin and a terrible Prognostick especially to the guilty souls These men must be brave Subjects that make it their whole business to study Rebellion and where they cannot execute the King will imprison and spit upon the face of the person like those beyond Seas that hang the Effigies when they cannot ruine the life Of which Presbyterian wickednesse and policy thus a good Poet. By this self-pregnant sin improves to rh ' full Affront at London Treason growes at Hull A bold Repulse succeeds perplext abode Despis'd at home thrives to refus'd abroad Place tutors Place on Cities Cities call He may not here be safe nor there at all When lo the spreading mischief not content To force up breaches in One Element Invades his Navy doth insulting stand O're the joint-Trophies both of Sea and Land To gild this Rapine for the Vulgar eies They chase him through all His Capacities Shift lights and distances untill they see Another self in him which is not He. Vex Stills and Crucibles the Furnace ply To soft and drain a Chymick Majesty At last their careful sweats auspicious howr Drops him apart distinguisht from his Power I cannot but smile when I see the Independent girding at the Presbyterians and vindicate their own actions by the Disciplinarian Principles proving them to be as great enemies to the King as those who cut off his head as the laws of the land makes the Trespass as great felloniously to lop off the noble branches as to root up the whole body of the Royall Oak To which purpose one of the Presbyterian seconds though at last their Interest were differently bottom'd thus twits the Brethren If by the Covenant we were indispensably obliged to preserve his Person i. e. the Kings How comes it to pass that we were oblig'd by the same Covenant to wage Warr against him I have heard of a distinction betwixt his Power and his Person but never of any betwixt his Person and Himself So that if the Covenant would have dispenc'd any Souldier of England or Scotland to kill his Person by an accident of Wars as his life was oft in danger before he came to the Scaffold his death had been violent and the Obligation to preserve him had ended and yet according to this Argument the Covenant had not been broken Why then should these men think the World so dull as not to understand plainly enough that The Covenant provided for his Death more ways than one Though
summoned to the effect aforesaid presume to take in hand to decline the judgement of his Highness his Heirs and Successors or their Council in the Premises under the pain of Treason To make this way of Appealing more plausible to the People they are very willing to make a separation betwixt the two words Sacred and Majesty sticking close to Calvin who calls it blasphemy to yield the King a Supremacy in the Church under God and Christ to which purpose thus the Zealot Henderson delivered himself to his Majesty Such an Headship as the Kings of England have claimed and such a Supremacy as the Houses of Parliament crave with Appeals from the Supream Ecclesiastical Judicature to them as set over the Church in the same line of subordination I do utterly disclaim upon such reasons as give my self satisfaction And to this purpose against the Kings Supremacy in Church affairs he ranted before the House of Lords the year before Yet when he was Moderator of the Assembly of Glasgow in one of his Speeches there he attributed very much to the Kings Power in Ecclesiastical Causes and Assemblies and at last affirm'd That the King was Universal Bishop over all his Kingdom A Copy of this Speech his Majesties Commissioner James then Marquess of Hamilton used means to obtain but could not get it presently because those expressions had offended the Covenanters yet at last a Copy was sent him but with all those Expressions left out which were spoak in favour of the Kings Power in Ecclesiastical businesses by which one may guess at their jugling Another of these Brethren is very furious against the giving these Titles to the King and must call it Blasphemy too But this man is not only against this but also against the attributing any such Epithets as Vertuous Pious or Religious to our Superiours as if he had borrowed his breeding from Buchanan who rants against those who give the Titles of Majesty Lordship Illustrious c. And these two also agree very well together in slaundering those who will not fight against their Kings since they say Dame Nature knows no such distinction And this is agreeable to our Long-Parliament-Worthies who gravely declared it a fit Foundation for all Tyranny and a most distructive Maxim or Principle for the King to avow That He oweth an account of his Actions to none but God alone And that the Houses of Parliament joynt or separate have no power either to make or declare any Law And this power over the King Henderson doth not only give to the Representatives but also to the People over both them and the King especially in Reforming and so by consequence must make them also judges too and then shall we have a mad world my Masters If the Prince or Supreme Magistrate be unwilling then may the Inferiour Magistrate and the People being before rightly inform'd in the grounds of Religion lawfully reform within their own sphere and if the light shine upon all or the major part they may after all other means assayed make a publick Reformation And a few lines after thus to the same purpose It is not to be deny'd but the prime Reforming Power is in Kings and Princes quibus deficientibus it comes to the Inferior Magistrate quibus deficientibus it descends to the body of the People And this you must suppose to be a pretty Rule to make the People believe that no Religion can be true but the Presbyterians and the Covenanters and so a necessity of Reforming to their Directory For if not how will they answer the common Quaere How came they then or how durst they alter the Church Government against his Majesties express command Well necessity or no necessity the English Presbyterians will swear that they have power to Reforme and in that the King signifyeth but a Cypher For Could not they null Episcopacy against the Kings command Could not they devide their Lands amongst themselves against the Kings command Could not they Ruine the Common-Prayer-Book against the Kings command Could not they call a Pye-bald Assembly against his command Could they not swear a wicked Covenant against his command Could they not set up the Directory against his command Could they not set up Classical Provincial and National Assemblies against his command Could they not Murther and begger an Archbishop and others of the Orthodox and Loyal Clergy against his command Could they not destroy Cathedrals against his command Could they not make Perjury lawful against his command Could they not commit Sacriledge against his command Could they not turn the Kings Loyal Subjects out of both the Universities against his command Could they not make Schismatical Presbyterian Ordinations against his command Could they not make what they pleased to be Idolatry and Superstition against his command Could they not make Treason a Rule of Christianity against his command Nay could they not do any thing but make a man a woman and a woman a man according to Pembrokes oath and judgement For those who vote Loyalty Treason and cloak Rebellion with high Commendations and Religion will fancy a Legal Power into themselves obliging them to oppose their Prince And puft on with this perswasion a Puritanical Committee of our long Parliament order this to be Printed and Dispers'd in behalf of their Associates They have only used that Legal Power which was in them for the punishment of Delinquents and for the prevention and restraint of the Power of Tyranny of all which they are the legal Judges and all the Subjects of this Kingdom are bound by the Laws to obey them herein And this Opinion might be the reason why Prinne and his Fellows were so angry against that Murther'd Archbishop Laud for not suffering such seditious expressions as these to be used to the people in their Sermons It is lawful for the Inferior and subordinate Magistrates to defend the Church and Common-wealth when the Supreme Magistrate degenerates and falleth into Tyranny or Idolatry for Kings are subject to their Common-wealths And that Subjects may lawfully take up Armes against their Kings command and in their Sermons revile the Kings Court with Pride Avarice Idleness Flattery Folly Wickedness and such like Yet had a man in London but hinted half so much against the Parliament he had been claw'd for it to the purpose But it is not the English Puritans alone that would thus trample upon their Kings Nay the Scots too will be as wicked as them or else they could not handsomely call one another Brethren And this is especially practised by their zealous Hinters who deny the King to have no more to do in or with their Assemblies than the meanest Cobler amongst them whilst they thus Impudently told his Majesties Commissioner That if the King himself were amongst them he should have but one voice and that not Negative neither nor more affirmative than any one Member of their Assembly had Nor
they are all Saints thereby inticing the Countrey to choose them for their future Representees that under their protection the Non-conformists might have more work to do or else by having a good opinion of them may stick close to them upon all occasions and pitty that the Cause these good men undertook had no better success but the discredit and ignominy of the Contrivers not forgetting the large sums of Money and Lands they cheated the King Church and State of If Rebellion Murther Sacriledge Schism Perjury Knavery and such like sins can make a man wicked and 't is well known where all these and many more vices were met together the Epithet will keep its ground secure against the fume and range of all the Schismaticks in England or Scotland Yet even since the King came in have they had many good wishes not unknown to the whole Nation and therefore I shall give you but one Instance and that of one old enough to know what they were but that he spake through a Covenanting Interest and these commendations of them are as they were 1644. when all those who were Loyal and good had left the House and followed his Majesty his Encomium is this A House full and free and these the best that ever England had for Piety towards God and Loyalty to their Soveraign A Parliament of Lords and Commons so pious so prudent so loyal and faithful to God and their King These Commendations are but like Libanius the Sophister's applauding and praising Julian the Apostate who amongst the many moral vertues that there are might possibly have a tincture of some What goodness these people had I know not yet can I guess at a large portion of their mischief Only one shall be mine instance viz. That they were the first Contrivers of these Wars they consulted the Rebellion they broach'd it and gave it life by their Votes and Declarations whereby they cunningly inveagled others into their sin yet being degrees in wickedness the worst of their Souldiers was not the tenth part so bad as these Members the first being knavishly inticed to act the others Command they contriv'd and plotted the Rebellion and drol'd on the Countrey to be obedient to their Orders under the specious shew of Reformation and Religion knowing the consequence of the old Rule never fails Quoties vis fallere Plebem Finge Deum They cannot be good Subjects to King Charles I. that commend his Enemies and they deserve no thanks from King Charles II. who praise those who did and voted and declared it lawful to fight against his Father thereby proclaiming to the World the legality of acting the same if they could get occasion against the Son 'T is needless to tell you how they violently made it their business to clip and pare the Kings Prerogative and Authority and amongst many other frivolously plucking away the Militia allowing the King through civility to carry a Sword by his side because he 's a Gentleman but not upon any occasion whatsoever to draw it that being forsooth the office and priviledge of their hands by which hanging a lock at his hilt but they keeping the Keys using him as they used their children giving them Gold in a Box which they must not finger only please themselves with its ratling by which means they will make themselves a Negative Vote in Peace and Warr. And after this fashion did their Covenanting Brethren of Scotland abuse their King taking all power of Arms into their own hands their reason being because The Kings Castles and Strengths are the Keys of the Realm and they knew no reason to the contrary but that they might keep their own Keys Thus would they make their King meerly Titular and a perfect Slave and Captive to their Wills Not unlike Sancho Panco who for sport-sake was made Governour of the Islands but had no Authority nay scarce liberty to eat his Victuals The rustick Biscayners cry up their priviledges so much that the King of Spain dare not go amongst them but well armed and guarded And good reason for they think their King to have so small Authority over them that he must bare one of his legs when he cometh upon the Frontiers of their Countrey and though they meet him as their King with what bravery they can and proffer him some few Maravidi's small brass-pieces each of them about the value of a Scotch Turner or Bodel somewhat less than our English farthing in a Leathern Bag hung at the end of a Lance yet for all this shew of great kindness they fairly tell him that he must not take them This Nation hath long enough felt the smart of crying Priviledges and Majesty it self hath been dar'd by that specious pretence Though they give him the Name of King yet they take all its Attributes to themselves though they call themselves Subjects yet like the Scots they do not Petition but with their Swords in their hands at the first denyal sounding an Alarum and at the second run themselves so farr into Rebellion that if something be not granted them they will destroy all As if they had swallowed up their Obedience with that ravenous Whirl-pool in Pentland Frith in the North of Scotland with which if either Ship or Boat shall happen to encroach they must quickly either throw over something into it as a Barrel a piece of Timber and such like or that fatal Euripus shall then suddenly become their swallowing Sepulcher Thus the Presbyterians make their Obedience a Bargain and if Interest out-bid the King He need not trouble himself by being a customer to these men who allow him no power but what they suppose he derived from them and which they can take to themselves again when they see occasion or please CHAP. IV. That the Presbyterians are but Conditional Subjects no longer obedient to their King or acknowledging Him than he serves their turn and is subservient to their fancies A Conditional Subject is the worst Animal in a Kingdom being the first Creature that shrinks from Government and always ready to destroy the Peace of the Nation for which and other things he will never want a reason grateful to the Rabble as long as he can cry out that his Subjection is but Conditional and the Magistrate having broke his part he 's no more oblig'd to his duty And this the people believing to be each mans case will make themselves Judges by which means the Authority of a single Person will ever be out-voted or over-worded That the King of England is Supream is certain That the greatest wickedness in the World cannot un-King him is as true The Law of the Land obligeth us to submit and makes it Treason to resist and the Scriptures bids us Obey but never Rebel for Conscience sake Every man is born with the Oath of Allegiance and is as much obliged to its observance before as after his taking it Though the Prince were Turk or
is seconded by his Brother in malice that hocus pocus and jugler in Divinity and Policy Dick Baxter Too many Congregations have none but insufficient or scandalous Teachers or no preaching Ministers at all And then bravely bids his friends at Kiderminster never to join themselves with the Episcopal Government but to stick close to those destructive and seditious rules he taught them Let none draw you from Catholick unity to a Faction though the declaming against Faction and Schism should be the device by which they should accomplish it Is not the world well mended when Episcopacy must be call'd Faction and Schism and Presbytery only held to be Catholick But this is just like the other actions of the same man who used to call Rebellion Loyalty and Loyalty Rebellion with such fury doth his distempered zeal make him continually run counter Nor is this all but they impudently tell the Bishops to their very faces of their cruelty pride and covetousnesse uncharitable censoriousnesse unmerciful opposition and such like And then declare to the world of strange Persecution of many hundred worthy men laid by and that conformity is the means to strip these Nations of the glory in which they have excell'd all the rest of the world even a learned able holy Ministry and a people sincere and serious and understanding in matters of their salvation And also that the readiest way to bring the Gospel into contempt in the World and cause all Religion to dwindle away into Formality first and then to barbarism and brutishnesse is to let in an ignorant idle vitious Ministry Thus do they vilifie all that are not of their Gang really making it their businesse to make the people believe that none can be good but a Presbyterian though I hope in this Book that their knavery is sufficiently made visible In another of their ridiculous Pamphlets they perswade the Nation again to believe strange things that some hundreds of able holy faithful ministers are of late cast out and not only very many of their families in great distresse but aboundance of Congregations in England Ireland and Wales are overspread with lamentable ignorance and are destitute of able faithful Teachers Thousands of the Servants of the Lord that are either deprived of their Faithful Teachers or in fears of losing them And that there are few Nations under the Heavens of God as farre as we can learn that have more able holy faithful laborious and truly peaceable Preachers of the Gospell proportionably than those are that are now cast out in England and are like in England Scotland and Ireland to be cast out if the old conformity be urg'd This course of unmerciful opposition is the greatest wrong to it that you can easily be drawn to unawares while so many truly fearing God are cast or trodden down and tempted to think ill of that which themselves and the Church thus suffer by And when so many of the worst befriend this way because it gratifieth them it tends to make your cause judged of according to the quality of its friends and adversaries Well said self-conceipt And in another place hints to the world that if the Presbyterians be turnd out there will not be honest men enough in the Nation to supply their places And having thus told the Bishops the wickednesse of their party and the honesty and goodnesse of a Puritan they boldly appeal to the King and after a great many good morrows thus pittifully conclude And shall wait in hope that so great a Calamity of your people as will follow the losse of so many able faithful Ministers as the rigorous imposition would cast out should never be recorded in the History of your Raign Thus these simpring Brethren are highly against liberty of conscience in others yet would they have it themselves Though they will so farr comply as not to be against an unimpos'd Liturgy yet are they expresly against our Common-Prayer Book Nay were it alter'd according to their own desires yet would they not be obliged by the Laws to use it Though in Queen Elizabeths time they amongst themselves having compos'd A Book of the form of Common Prayer c. they presented it to the Parliament earnestly desiring that by Act of Parliament that Book might be confirm'd and used all the Kingdome over Yet about 1585. four Presbyterian Classes made complaint to the Lord Burleigh against the Liturgy though they would not have it all taken away his Lordship bid them make a better upon which the first Classis fram'd a new one somewhat neer the Geneva mode but this the second Classis dislik'd and alter'd in 600 particulars that again had the fate to be quarrel'd at by the III Classis and what the third resolved upon the fourth would not Thus would these men have somewhat but they cannot agree amongst themselves a sufficient sign of their inconstancy altering this way and that according to the weather sometimes they will have a form impos'd anon they will have it at liberty and another time they will have none at all of whom I shall say with a late Characterizer That they are bold Gentlemen that cannot speak to man without notes and yet prate to God ex tempore The African Scipio conquerd the wild and heathenish Spaniards by his courtesie St. Francis if you will believe the Legend brought a mad Wolfe to such civility that he could behave himself a la mode and live friendly with his Neighbours A furious Buck and a pack of Hounds were miraculously brought to devotion by worshipping a Sea-toss'd Relique And an Elephant at Adsmeer in Indostain in the height of his fury remembred the courtesie receiv'd from an Herb-woman as St. Hieromes Lyon requited the cure of his foot by the keeping of his Masters Asse which being lost by his negligence the meek Lyon did penance by bearing home the wood 'T is said that a Wolfe at the command of St. Blase restored the hogg which it had taken from a poor woman Nor would the birds depart from the same man till he had laid his hands on them and blest them A sheep is storyed to have bleated in the Thief 's belly at the command of St. Patrick and the stones to have said Amen to St. Bedes Preachment as the Marble yielded to St. James body and an high Tower at the command of the same St. bowd down its Top equal to the ground to let a Merchant escape Thus monsters and stocks and stones if you believe the Legends can obey but no courtesie can win over these Non-conforming men still they will be opposite still seditious never complying to Authority unlesse that submitt to them first and as men neer drowning still catching hold of any thing for a pretence to cover their obstinacy When the Parliament and Queen inact conformity they deny obedience to that law when King James by Proclamation
upon the wicked CHAP. VI. Some short Observations upon their Covenant AN understanding Gentleman assures us that A league amongst Subjects giveth law to a King breaks all bonds of Soveraignty and invites a people to seek for a New Maister And this dear-bought experience hath prov'd true to both Nations yet were the events of these Agreements more mischievous they would be courted by the seditious thinking such pieces of Perjury to be the best works of their Holy-days Since the reformation this mode of swearing against Authority hath been commonly practis'd in Scotland In their first Covenant 3 Decemb 1557. An Earl of Argile was the first subscriber and chief promoter and how active an Earl of Argile hath been in our days about such wickednesse need not here be related but I hope as the other was the first so this shall be the last Yet in this way hath the English been as faulty as the worst of them though I believe at first drol'd in by their Neighbours For when at the beginning of the Warres the English Commissioners went from the Parliament into Scotland to desire their assistance against the King and having addres'd themselvs to the Scotch Assembly delivering them a letter subscribed by some Presbyterian Ministers in which they complaind that their blood was shed like water upon the grouud for defence of the Protestant Religion they receiv'd a negative answer The Assembly telling them amongst other things That you cannot say you fight for the Reform'd Religion since you have not begun to reform your Church ye had thriven better if you had don as we did Begun at the Church and thereafter striven to have gotten the civil sanction to what ye had don in the Church A few days after Sir W. Ermin Mr. Hamden and the rest of the Commissioners were invited by some of their friends to make a new Address to the Assembly which they did the second time desiring a gracious Answer Upon this request the Assembly propounded to them this Will ye join in Covenant with us to reform Doctrine and Discipline conform to this of Scotland and ye shall have a better Answer Sir W. Ermin and the rest answered that they had not that in their Instructions but thank'd the Assembly and said they would represent it to the Parliament of England The Assembly replyd that there would be much time loosed ere they could go to the Parliament for their resolutions and thereafter to return to Scotland to draw up a Solemn League and COVENANT The danger was great and they were not able to resist the King But we shall draw up the Covenant here and send up with you some Noble men Gentlemen and Ministers that shall see it subscrib'd which accordingly was don only two or three words altered Thus was this spurious Wretch illegally begotten and brought forth by unlawful Parents by the Scots worship'd and ador'd as the only Idol fit to bless their undertakings and by their Brothers in mischief the English Long Parliament embraced who peremptorily enjoyn all people to swear Allegiance to it as their only supream Law and authentick Shibuleth to distinguish Treason from Loyalty Though what authority they had to impose such an Oath being against the Command both of King and Law must be left for Mr. Prynne to discover in some Terra incognita since we have no such custome amongst us Yet for all this Mr. Simeon Ash had the confidence in the Pulpit to wonder that any man should think that the Covenant was made here only to bring in the Scots when the Presbyterian Parliament and party was low in England Having thus seen the Birth of this Monster it might quickly be desected and the poison and mischief lodg'd in it might evidently be manifested to the whole world but that it hath formerly been don by more able pens However it cannot but seem strange to any that these men should swear to extirpate the Government of the Church by Archbishops Bishops c. which have been confirmd by 32 Acts of Parliament And they could never yet tell who made them Rulers over Israel and gave them power to such actions quite contrary to Magna Charta the laws of the Land and the Kings express command The first two are known to any one who hath heard any thing of the laws of the land and the latter is as true Yet because I have heard some deny and others question its truth I shall give you his Majesties own Proclamation against it 1643. By the KING His Majesties Proclamation forbidding the Tendering or taking of a late Covenant called a Solemn League and Covenant for Reformation c. WHEREAS there is a Printed paper intituled a Solemn League and Covenant for Reformation and Defence of Religin The honour and happinesse of the King and the peace and safety of the three Kingdomes of England Scotland and Ireland pretended to be Ordered by the Commons in Parliament on the twenty first day of September last to be Printed and published Which Covenant though it seems to make specious expressions of Piety and Religion is in Truth nothing else but a Traiterous and Seditious Combination against us and against the Established Religion and Laws of this Kingdome in pursuance of a Traiterous Design and endeavour to bring in Forraign Force to invade this Kingdome We do therefore straightly Charge and Command all Our Loving Subjects of what Degree of Quality soever Upon their Allegiance That they presume not to take the said Seditious and Traiterous Covenant And We do likewise hereby Forbid and Inhibit all Our Subjects to Impose Administer or Tender the said Covenant as they and every one of them will answer to the Contrary at their Utmost and Extremest Perils Given at our Court at Oxford this Ninth day of October in the Nineteenth year of our Raign GOD SAVE THE KING Than this what could be more plain and authentick yet a furious Presbyterian is pleas'd to tearm this action of the King Satanical slander and abuse a most impious and audacious Paper Atheistical boldness Impious and Platonical pleasure c. Besides the unlawfulness of its making and Imposition the qualities and conditions of the Brat were so impious that an honest man could never take it for several reasons amongst many other take these two or three 1. § They swear to extirpate Popery without respect of persons In which they might be ask'd What they would do with the Queen If they forced her Religion 't was Treason If they did not they are perjur'd 2. § This Oath makes them to be but Conditional Subjects swearing to preserve the Rights and Priviledges of Parliament and the Liberties of the Kingdom before the King or his Authority few of the takers understanding any of these things by which means they swore they knew not what And that this Oath obligeth them to be but conditional Subjects is plain they swearing To preserve and defend the Kings Majesties Person and Authority
and the Switzers for a Cart-load of Sheeps-skins And if the Antipathy betwixt the French and Spaniards began upon so slight occasion if you believe mine Authours as because the French were not so gloriously clad as the other at an Interview betwixt Lewis XI and the King of Castile If all this trouble and bloudshed for such trifles why may they not stand stoutly to their Covenant But if they be so stiff for that Oath against all Laws and honesty why may not the Orthodox stick to their King Laws and Church-government by Bishops since the swarving from these things is High-Treason and Schism But enough of this perjur'd and condemn'd Traytor since the judicious Reasons of the famous University of Oxford and that miracle of Learning too untimely snatch'd away the Reverend Dr. Langbaine have put it and its part-takers to a perpetual confusion against whom though I think none of them ever yet durst undertake the Doctor nor could the other be answer'd but with Treason of which enquire more of Mr. Crofton their scribling will not be unlike the Pigmies fighting against Hercules and their crying Victoria to as little purpose as Falstaf's vapouring of his own valour at Gads-Hill Yet since they stand so stifly to the literal sense of this Brat I shall leave one or two Quaeries to their consideration I. Whether those who took the Covenant and there sware to extirpate all Schism do not thereby engage to be like Hoyle their own Executioners II. Whether when they sware to preserve and defend the Kings Majesties Person and Authority and not to diminish his just power and greatness they did keep their Oaths by Voting no more Address to him the Scots by selling him the English by buying him hurrying him from Prison to Prison Imposing upon him strange Conditions contrary to his Prerogative taking from him the Militia acting all without and against his Commands c. If they say they did according to the Covenant Then III. Whether such a wicked Oath is to be allow'd in a Kingdom which permitteth nay I may say commandeth such affronts to be done to Majesty contrary to all the Laws of the Land And if these Actions were against the Covenant then are they perjur'd But it may be I have gone too farr against these People who in their Scotch Assembly at Glasgow by Act forbad any to write or speak against their Covenant And the same did the English Leaguers and what danger it may be to write against their Laws since our own cannot be in force I know not And since a man must not speak ill of the dead whose flaming exspiration was a Type of the Reward befitting to the Imposers This I retort upon that Presbyterian who would have all May-Pole dancers hang'd I shall leave this wicked Covenant only tell them that the Lord Ravenstein under pretence of the binding of his Oath ran into a great Rebellion against his Masters the Emperour Frederick and Maximilian as our Zealots have against their King To conclude the words of James II. King of Scotland are worth your reading Could there be any greater surety for you than to rely on the Laws of the Common-wealth and Countrey especially in a Countrey where Laws and not Faction rule and where a man 's own goodness is able to preserve him But such men as you are raise these Factions to the subversion of all Laws and Authority And for Subjects to make an Offensive and Defensive League against all Persons is to disclaim all Government and do what they please without controlement commit Treason in the highest degree and make your own Swords and Power justifie your proceedings which though you first use against mean persons and conceal the progress of your Actions for there are degrees in evil and wicked men begin at that which seems the least of evils or not an evil at all at the first your last aim is likely to be the Robbing upon the Crown Consider you are born under a Monarchy which admitteth of no Soveraignty but it self and it is natural to Princes to hold it in highest esteem and in no case to suffer it to be shaken by their Subjects Take your Prince for your best protection and an Innocent life Renounce that Union and League and let it not be heard any longer that ever such an unjust Confederation was and so wonted Clemency shall be prefer'd before deserved Justice But 't was the wickedness of this action which made the Zealots love it and therefore order'd that in the Prayers after every Sermon the Minister should give God thanks for the Covenant like John Becold a Taylor of Leyden better known by the Name of John of Leyden who having cruelly cut off the head of one of his Wives made others with himself prayse God and rejoyce for such wickedness The Brethren having thus laid their ground-work for a further Rebellion earnestly exhorts the people to stick close to their former seditious Principles and to be resolute in them Then they advise their Associates in the Parliament to be valiant for their Cause and to endeavour what in them lyeth to oppose and overthrow any thing whatsoever Sacred or Civil which thwarts their Principles And for the better carrying on this Rebellion they engage their Ministry to use what Interest they can with their Parishioners for the affecting of their designs concerning which you shall hear Mr. Crofton himself speak If private men and individual persons who have sworn the Covenant will make Conscience of the Oath of God upon them there can be no probability of a Return and Re-establishment within the compasse of this age of the evils we have sworn to extirpate They being lock'd under a moral impossibility of re-admission or continuance by that publick Parliamentary capacity into which many who have sworn the Covenant are at this time resolved and in which they cannot but know themselves bonnd to endeavour in their places and callings with all sincerity and reality and constancy to extirpate the same and for that others and those not a few as Ministers of the Gospel are bound to the same in their Capacity I am sure the Ministerial rebukes and confutations of the one and publick Parliamentary Debates of the other will lay a very great Remora unto their return Here we have a Peter the Hermit blowing a Trumpet to his Holy-warre And that in such an hasty and resolute fashion that our Presbytery seem to stand upon the very brink of Rabicon only wanting some ill spirit or other to head them and lead them over into a Warr against their own King and Countrymen so prone are they to distruction as if they were again turnd to Heathenism and worship'd the spears those primitive Instruments of Warre as their only God And the Reverend Church of England hath little reason to expect peace at these mens hands now that they cannot obtain their ends when they protest that if they had