c. to forbear any Moleslation of his said Subjects in respect of their Religion To send them forth with as much speed as conveniently may be that his Majesty may be freed from the Complaints of the Ambassadors Thrice again he was charg'd with the same Command To all which he answer'd He could do nothing without a private Warrant for it and that it was not possible to be agreed upon till he spake with his Majesty On the 6th of September the same Secretary writes again That an Exemplification of the Pardon should be deliver'd to the Ambassadors under the Great Seal That 's not hard to be done But upon what Limits and Conditions So the Lord Keeper rejoyns Sir G. Calvert is troubled again to satisfie that Scruple That no Copy of it should go out to any of the Roman Catholicks nor any of them be permitted to sue out their Pardons until his Majesties Pleasure be further known This came Sept. 8. The Lord Keeper held back yet till he knew what Assurance he should have from the Ambassadors to keep those Conditions Which held a Contest till Sept. 19. When Mr. Secretary Conway writes from Theobalds His Majesties Pleasure is That you deliver unto the Marquiss Inoiosa an Exemplification of the Pardon and Dispensation And his Majesty would not that you should press him for a Note of his Hand for Secresie and Stanchness for giving of Copies of the Pardon or Dispensation but only by Word to refresh his Memory of the faithful Promises he hath made in that Point to the King upon which his Majesty will relie Indeed it was order'd at Windsor Sept. 7. as appears in a Letter of Secretary Conways that when Marquiss Iniosa had the Exemplication all the Crast was in Catching that he should communicate them to none nor give Copies of them till we had knowledge from Spain of the Marriage or Desponsories There was nothing about these days that mitigated the Embassador more than a Trick that in sine did him least good Properly and without Levity it may be called a Flop with a Fox-Tail The Lord Keeper closed in with him not to be so hasty for Exemplifications which the Clerks of the Crown must write over soft and fairly A Matter of more weight should presently be set on foot not of Words but of real Benefit and Performance to his Party and to the Choice of them a Pardon for the Romish Priests that were imprisoned about which there had been struggling and yet nothing effected As the Lord Keeper seemed forward so to see the ill Luck it was cramp'd by a Letter from Sir Edward Conway Sept. 6. Dat. Windsor Right Honorable HIS Majesty hath signed the Warrant that was sent for the enlarging of the Priests out of Prison that he may shew the Reality of Performance on his Part in all that is to be done Yet his Majesty commits the Warrant to your Keeping without further Use to be made save only to pass the Great Seal which you may be pleased to expedite till important Considerations be provided for and satisfied As First That his Majesty receive Advertisement of the Marriage or Desposories Secondly That Provision be taken for these Priests that have expressed their Duties to the King either in Writing in his Defence or in taking the Oaths whose Protection his Majesty holds himself bound to continue and not to suffer them to incur any Danger for that their Conformity Thirdly That Order be taken that such Priests enlarged be not left at Liberty to execute their Functions publickly or at their Pleasure but only under such Limitations and Restraints as by the Pardon and Dispensations are provided 166. Of these three Caveats entred to modifie the Liberty which was Petitioned for and promised to the Priests the middlemost was a brave one wherein the Lord Keeper revenged himself on Inoiosa for all his Forwardness It aimed at one man Mr. Preston a Secular Priest Honest and rarely Learned The Author of the Works under the Name of Roger Widrington for the Oath of Allegiance The Author of that solid Piece called The last Rejoynder to T. Fitzherbert Bellarmine's Sculckenius and Lessius his Singleton upon that Subject Printed An. 1619. This Man for his own Preservation lay quiet in the Marshalsea his Death being threatned by the rigid Papalins This was he that was set forth as the only Evidence of his Majesty's Royal Mercy toward those that were in Holy Orders of that Religion the present Pattern of his keeping Promise according to the Articles But such a Priest as that if Marq. Inoiosa had been consulted for his Release perhaps he would have cried out Not him but Barabbas Preston had Leave that Summer twice or thrice to come to the Lord Keeper at Nonsuch where I saw them together discoursing as long as Leisure and Business would permit That Interview procured the Warrant for his Pardon from the King as followeth James Rex TO the Reverend Father in God Our Right Trusty and Right Well-beloved Counsellor Jo. Lord Bishop of Lincoln Lord Keeper of Our Great Seal of England Right Trusty and Right Well-beloved Counsellor We Greet you well These are to will and require to pass one Pardon and Dispensation according unto the Warrant directed unto you concerning the Roman Catholicks of this Kingdom in general for the Use and Benefit of Preston a Secular Priest now a Prisoner in our Prison of the Marshalsea And delivering unto the Spanish Embassador an Exemplification of the same Pardon under the Great Seal to keep the Original so Sealed under your own Custody untill you shall receive from Us some further Order Given at Our Court at Windsor Sept. 8. c. The Releasment of Preston was accordingly dispatched the first Fruits of the Common Grace expected by others sent as a Present to Don Inoiosa nay a Precedent for consequent Releasments So Secretary Conway to the Lord Keeper Sep. 17. His Majesty's Order to your Lordship was That the Pardon for this one Man should be exemplified as the Limitation and Rule to the Form of all the rest So as without Dispute or Controversie that was a present Possâ—ssion an Act performed by the King to be executed alike to each one to whom it appertains at the Time and upon the Conditions before specified the Sight whereof might give the Embassador Contentment But it was far from that Don John the Marquiss durst not say he was mocked but he fum'd like Lime that is slack'd with Water to see of all the Priesthood that man only enlarged whom above all he most hated Therefore his Violence augmented press'd the King so far that his Majesty caused the same Secretary to write again very roundly the next day to the Lord Keeper Right Honorable HIS Majest hath received from the Spanish Embassador a large Declaration of his Grievance by the great Delays he finds from your Lordship in point of the Pardon and Dispensation an Exemplification of which your Lordship hath Order to deliver
Cook in his Jurisdiction of Courts looks no higher than 28. of Edw. 3. This Lord Keeper cites a Precedent out of his own Search of Records of a Baron Fin'd and Imprison'd by it in the 16th of Edw. 2. as it is quoted Cabal P. 58. Of what standing it was before for the Evidence doth not run as if then it were newly born to me is uncertain For the Dignity that famous Judge I mentioned lifts up his Style that it is the most honourable Court our Parliament excepted that is in the Christian World Jurisdic P. 65. The Citations of it are to cause to appear Coram Rege Concilio for the King in Judgment of Law is always in the Court when it fits and King James did twice in Person give Sentence in it The Lords and others of the Privy Council with the two Chief Justices or two other Justices or Barons of the Exchequer in their Absence are standing Judges of that Court. For in Matters of Right and Law some of the Judges are always presum'd to be of the King's Counsel The other Lords of Parliament who are properly De magno Concilio Regis are only in Proximâ poteentiâ of this Council and are actually Assessors when they are specially called These Grandees of the Realm who cannot fit to hear a Cause under the Number of Eight at the least ennoble this Court with their Presence and Wisdom to the Admiration of Foreign Nations and to the great Satisfaction of our selves for none can think himself too great to be Try'd for his Misdemeanors before a Convention of such Illustrious Senators And as Livy says Nihil tam aequandae libertati prodest quà m potentissimum quemque posse causam dicere As touching the Benefit that the Star-Chamber did bring thus that Atlas of the Law the Lord Cook Et cujus pars magna fuit says in the same Place That the right Institution and ancient Orders thereof being observed it keepeth all England in Quiet Which he maintains by two Reasons First Seeing the Proceeding according to the Laws and Customs of this Realm cannot by one Rule of Law suffice to punish in every Case the Enormity of some great and horrible Crimes this Court dealeth with them to the end the Medicine may be according to the Disease and the Punishment according to the Offence Secondly To curb Oppression and Exorbitancies of great Men whom inferior Judges and Jurors though they should not would in respect of their Greatness be afraid to offend Indeed in every Society of Men there will be some Bashawes who presume that there are many Rules of Law from which they should be exempted Aristotle writes it as it were by Feeling not by Guess Polit. 4. c. 11. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 They that were at the Top among the Greeks nor would be rul'd nor would be taught to be rul'd Therefore this Court profest the right Art of Justice to teach the Greatest as well as the Meanest the due Construction of Good Behaviour I may justly say that it was a Sea most proper for Whale-Fishing little Busses might cast out Nets for Smelts and Herring So says the great Lawyer Ordinary Offences which may sufficiently be punished by the Proceeding of the Common Laws this Court leaveth to the ordinary Courts of Justice Ne dignitas hujus Curiae vilesceret 96. Accordingly the Lord Keeper Williams having Ascended by his Office to be the first Star in the Constellation to illuminate that Court he was very Nice I might say prudent to measure the Size of Complaints that were preferred to it whether they were knots fit for such Axes A number of contentious Squabbles he made the Attorney's Pocket up again which might better be compounded at home by Country Justices It was not meet that the Flower of the Nobility should be call'd together to determine upon Trifles Such long Wing'd Hawks were not to be cast off to fly after Field-Fares The Causes which he designed to hear were Grave and Weighty wherein it concern'd some to be made Examples for Grievous Defamations Perjuries Riots Extortions and the like Upon which Occasions his Speeches were much heeded and taken by divers in Ciphers which are extent to this day in their Paper Cabinets To which I Appeal that they were neither long nor Virulent For though he had Scope on those Ocasions to give his Auditors more then a Tast of his Eloquence which was clear sententious fraught with Sacred and Moral Allusions yet he detested nothing more then to insult upon the Offendor with girds of Wit He foresaw that Insolencies and Oppressions are publick provocations to bury a Court in it's own Shame And what could exasperate more then when an unfortunate man hath run into a Fault to shew him no humane Respect Nay to make him pass through the two malignant Signs of the Zodiaque Sagitary and Scorpio That is to wound him first with Arrows of sharp-pointed Words and then to Sting him with a Scorpiack censure Indeed if there be an extreme in shewing too much mercy I cannot Absolve the Lord Keeper For many I confess censur'd him for want of deeper censures said he was a Friend to Publicans and Sinners to all delinquents and rather their Patron then their Judge 〈◊〉 was so oftentimes when he scented Malice in the Prosecution It was so sometimes when he laid his Finger upon the Pulse of humane Frailty Brethren if a Man be overtaken in a Fault we which are Spiritual Restore such a one in the Spirit of meekness considering thy self least thou also be Tempted Galat. 6.1 Pliny the younger had been faulted that he had excus'd some more then they deserv'd Whereupon he Writes to Septitius lib. 7. Ep. Quid mihi invident felicissimum Errorem Ut enim non sint tales quales à me praedicantur ego tamen Beatus quod mihi videntur Which is to this meaning Why do you grudg me this Error they are not so good as I accounted them but I am happy in my Candor that I account them better then they are But first he never condemn'd an Offender to be Branded to be Scourg'd to have his Ears cut Though that Court hath proceeded to such censure in time old enough to make Prescription yet my Lörd Cook adviseth it should be done sparingly upon this Reason Quod Arbitrio judicis relinquitur non facile trahit ad effusionem Sanguinis They that judge by the light of Arbitrary Wisdom should seldom give their sentence to spill Blood He would never do it and declin'd it with this plausible avoidance as the Arch-Bishop Whitgift and Bancroft and the Bishop of Winton the Learned Andrews had done before him that the Canons of Councils had forbidden Bishops to Act any thing to the drawing of blood in a judicial Form Once I call to mind he dispens'd with himself and the manner was pretty One Floud a Railing Libelling Varlet bred in the Seminaries beyond Seas had vented Contumelies bitterer then Gall against many
Commons which your Majesly was pleas'd most graciously to intimate unto me at Woodstock for which Goodness I am oblig'd to serve you faithfully and industriously as long as I live and am able and to pray for you when I can do no more as I remonstrated before so I vow again to Almighty God I never spake directly or indirectly to above three of them in my Life nor to any one of them that one time to Philips excepted with the Privity and as I hoped for the Service of my Lord-Duke during the Continuance of the Sitting at Oxford Were it otherwise it were impossible in a Family of Sixty Persons as mine was to have it conceal'd I add farther That if it can be proved that I let fall the least word to any Person of the one or other House opposite to any known or revealed end of your Majesties I am content to remain guilty of whatever the Malice or Suspicion of any Man shall suggest against me Secondly If I have offended your Majesty in that bumble Motion I made at Christ-Church that your Majesty would say in your Speech unto the Parliament that in your Actions of Importance and in the Dispositions of what Sums of Monies your People should bestow upon you you would take the Advice of a settled and a constant Council I do humbly submit my self to your Royal Judgment therein and do beg your gracious Pardon for any thing I said amiss in matter or manner But I take God in Heaven to witness I had no aim at all to draw your Majesty to asperse thereby either the times past for that was now past all Counsel or the time present for your Majesty is but entred into your Reign Or to admonish your Majesty for I take God to witness I held it no ways necessary but did and do believe it is your absolute Resolution to govern by Council And much less was it to make you go less in your Power For many Kings in Parliament have said as much Se actumoâ— majora negotia per assensum Magnatum de Conciliis who intended not to turn Dukes of Venice but as they proved indeed great and mighty Monarchs at home and abroad But my only aim was as I shall answer it at the last day to save my Lord of Buckingham from those Invectives in this kind which I saw falling upon hiâ—â— and to dispose the Commons by that Clause of your Majesty's Speech to a short and a giving Session If I had not been free herein from all Sinister ends I had never dealt so earnestly with my Lord-Duke the night before that he himself would be pleased to move it to your Majesty Lastly what Protestation I have made for your Majesty I do now before God and you make the like for my Lord-Duke's Service a Person so much and so deservedly favour'd by your Majesty that I have not run any way at all with any Person of the one or the other House for the stirring fometâ—ing or countenancing of any Accusation Aspersion or other disservice whatsoever against his Lordship either in the first or the second Access of this last sitting Nor have I ever wish'd his Grace any more hurt than to my own Soul from that very hour your Majesty's most blessed Father sent me unto his Grace at Royston to this very instant And this I avow to be true as I desire to find Favour from God and my King I write unto your Majesty under these Protestations to give your Majesty only not any Man else all fitting satisfaction to whose Goodness I confess my self unexpressibly bound Les me not I beseech your Majesty in point of Justice lose your Favour upon groundless Suspicious of other Mâ—n who may themselves hereafter be better informed But let me stand or fall upon year Majesty own Knowledge derived from the Information of indifferent and dis-interossed Persons upon which I will most willingly and thankfully repose my part in your Favour and mine own Happiness In Confidence whereof I cast my self at your Majesty's Feet c. 23. This came to Salisbury and was shewn to my Lord-Duke which put his Cabinet to meet together again And 't was a notable Shift which came into their Heads and wrought upon the King's Judgment as that which had likelihood of Reason Which was thus that as the Keeper had been complain'd of so he should be charg'd home with his own Words nay with his own Letters But none durst accuse him till he was out of his Greatness Upon the Expiration of that the Proofs should be brought in who coming about the first Week in October to Salisbury and hearing this told such as were desired to carry it to the King and the great Lord that he would not sly the Tilt nor start from any colour of Accusation That the World would see how preposterous it was first to punish and then to bring to Judgment Multis minatur qui uni facit injuriam The wrong that was done to one Man would affright all others with that Oppression What Lord or Gentleman in England that had Place and Means would think himself safe upon the Example of such Proceedings From the hour that the Keeper committed this Message to trusty Friends to deliver it the Gorgen's Head had a Veil drawn before it and it never confronted him either at the Council-Table or in any Court of Justice but was laid still for ever Yet was not a jot the better for it The Suspicion was smother'd and yet liv'd and wrought as much to his prejudice as if he had been tried before the Court of Areopagites and convicted by their Verdict Only this Happiness did live with him and doth survive him that such as have no Interest in it but the discovery of Truth do see it was Crimen sine accusatore Sententia sine Concilio damnatio sine defensione Tul. Act. 7. in Verrem He that was degraded without hearing Tryal Proof Witness Judges is overthrown by Calumny not by Accusation For Accusation admits a fair and a legal Process Calumny is believed without a Contestation After this it was not long before some quick Eye espied a way to execute the King's Resolution for divesting the Party of his honourable Place but with such Moderation as would load him with no impeachment of his Service but barely recalling the Great-Seal from his Custody because it was committed to him at first upon triennial Trust and no longer Which was no unwonted Revocation says the great and learned Luminary of Records Sir Henry Spelman in his Glossary upon the word Cancellarius Non perpetuus olim fuit honor sed triennalis vel quadriennalis This device struck the Tally for all Debts and Claims and left the loser a more light Heart though he parted with a heavy Purse For he took his farewel without the least Charge of Trespass or Miscarriage he was cast down but fell not in the Dirt. Sua vulnera ridet Germanam comitata fidem as Pruden
new Chancellor and that His Majesty would constrain him to hold it whosoever it were that the Congregation agreed upon The Heads were yet in a Quandary and knew not well what to do because the King was not more Particular and seemed to be ill pleased with the Proctor that he had dived no further into His Majesties Meaning For they feared to fall upon a new Rock because His Majesty had pointed at no Person nor disclosed His Meaning by any Decipher or Intimation Nay says the Proctor I shall help this Mistake before you stir from hence Certainly there is one Clause in the Royal Letters which sets up the White at which all our Votes should aim For none hath declared a flat Refusal of this vacant Place but the Earl of Northampton therefore none else can be meant in this Passage That whomsoever we Choose the King will constrain him to hold It were not proper to think that any Grandee in the Realm beside that Lord should need to be constrained by the High Power and Prerogative of our Sovereign to be our Patron The Riddle being so luckily Unfolded by this Oedipus the Business was concordiously dispatch'd and then the King confess'd that they had hit upon the Interpretation of his secret Meaning Which abounded to the Praise of Mr. Williams's Solertiousness and indeed in an hundred Instances more he was as dextrous as in this to hunt upon a Fault and to recover upon a Loss But as Cicero says Orat. pro Cecinnâ cujus prudentiam pop Romanus in cavendo nunquam in decipiendo perspexit The Lord Privy-Seal soon after took his Oath with due Solemnity to be our Chancellor and gave civil Entreaty when the Esquire-Beadles or other Ministers of our Body came to him And we can boast of no more that came from him who went out of the World before his Sickness was suspected Jun. 15.16 14. The Golden Mountains we hoped for and promis'd to our selves from his Liberality came to nothing and the University was not the better for him by the worth of a Barly-Corn 29. There remains one Passage more justly devolved to be last and lowest for it had more of Success then of good Success in it in my judgment Dr. Clayton the Master of St. John's College died a good old Man about the beginning of June His Breath no sooner expired but the Fellows who have all Right of Election first began to Confer and then to Canvas for a Successor It was soon discovered that the swaying Men and that were fit for the bandy of such a Business meant to set up Mr. Owen Gwin one of the Senior Fellows Others look'd out for one that was Simplicitor optimus and they hit him It was the Darling of Divines Dr. Morton then Dean of Winton now Lord Bishop of Durham the Polycarpus of our Smyrna the Church of England whose Piety and Humility are Incomparable his Learning most Admirable and his long Age most Venerable Almost all the true Children of the Muses bless'd their Endeavours that acted for such a Man saying with the Psalmist We wish you good luck in the name of the Lord. But this Patriarch as I may call him was not like to carry the day by the Consent of the most Too few stood up for him too few by one especially and that one was Proctor Williams O how could one of his deep Reach and passing great Love to his Society prefer an obscure one scarce to be named before the Man that had all good Men's Applause Dr. Morton If there be any thing to be said to make it look fair on his part on one side it is this Mr. Gwin had been his Tutor A high Spirit of which he was guilty will rather Trespass then not repay the least Benefit it had receiv'd Nay a wise Man dare not incur such a Folly as to be Ingrateful Says Comines lib. 2. Mihi absurdum quiddam esse videtur hominem prudent em ingratum esse posse For great Ones before they will collate a Favour to make a Man and raise him up will desire to be satisfied how he hath carried himself to other Obligations What Fidelity hath he shewn to former Benefactors Ecclus. 3.34 He that requiteth good turns is mindful of that which may come hereafter The relation of Pupilship prick'd on Mr. Williams to do any thing that was in his power for him that had so much Interest in his Breeding But while he was struggling and wooing his Friends to advance that Choice he solicited Mr. Sen. house a very rare Preacher as Floury as the Spring-Garden afterward Bishop of Carlile who bespake him fairly again Sir if you desire my Voice to confer the Mâ—stership upon your self I will not deny you I know you though a young Man right worthy of it but your Tutor shall never have my Suffrage while I can say No. After he had prevailed to set Mr. Gwin over that great Society his Fortunes carried him away but he heard so much that he quickly dislik'd his own Work For there was another in that College whose Name is best conceal'd that was a robustious driver of Canvasses who took the whole Rule from Mr. Gwin a soft Man and given altogether to Ease into his own hand and was like the Major Domo by whom all Suits pass'd and every Student stoop'd to him for his Preferment To compare great Things with smaller such another as Victor says Mutianus proved after he had advanced Vespasian to the Empire by his Cohorts Fiduciâ meruorum factus insolens sawcy to meddle with all because he had deserv'd so much and nothing would content him unless nothing were denied him Mr. Williams heard of these Passages too late when he could not help the harm he had done But because he endured much compunction of Mind for it I will only commit him for this Fault to the castigation of the wise Poet Horace Qualem commendas etiam atque etiam aspice ne mox Incutiant aliena tibi peccata pudorem Horat. Lib. 1. Ep. 12. 30. It was time for him after the Settlement of these great Places upon others to look to his own Place in the ensuing Commencement which was even approaching The Inceptor-Masters by Prescription have the Right to choose out of the two Proctors whom they please to be the Father of the Act as we Cantabrigians call it It is a strange Aenigma that the Sons should beget their Father It lights commonly as if it were Postulatum Mathematicum upon the Senior But because he that now was the Elder if ever he had Polite Learning fit for such a Performance had out-grown it therefore because he was no Elder that could Rule well the Inceptors gave the Younger the double Honour This Commencement was as Gay and full of Pomp by the great Concourse of Nobles and Gentlemen as ever I saw The Acquaintance and Fame of the Proctor drew the most The Welch Gentry were enough to fill the Scaffolds Beside such as repair'd
thither at that Season from Lord Chancellor Elsmore's House and the very brave Attendance of the Lord Privy-Seal the lately confirm'd Chancellor of the University divers others attended the Elder Brother of the Act. Sir Charles Stanhop Knight of the Bath only Son and Heir to John Lord Stanhop of Harington a comely Gentleman that took his Degree of Master and well deserv'd it as much by the Proficiency of his Learning as by the Title of his Blood These Gallants must be Feasted by the Proctor and there was no Want I would there had been no Superfluity These Costly and Luxurious Meals are the Lard of our Commencements thrust in among the better Banquets of Scholastical Exercises The Proctors Table was more Sumptuous I understand my Comparison for the time then useth to be at a Mayoralty in London I do not reckon it among his clean and unblemish'd Praises But if I may presume to sit Judge over his Thoughts I believe He took Parsimony to be most uncivil Behaviour The Prevaricator made me smile when he gave him this Character to his Face Titus Largius primus Dictator Romanorum To express my self a little further These Messes of good Chear ought to be frankly set out at the times of such Genial and Gaudy Days It were a wise World if they could be kept within Moderation The wise and well-governing Heathen Romans had Leges Cibarias as old thrifty Cato term'd them Leges sumptum comprimentes in the Style of Tertullian in his Apology I take it from A. Gellius lib. 2. c. 24. that the Sum of 300 Sestertii and no more were permitted to be spent in feriis Solennibus which comes to about 40 Shillings or a little under as I cast it up with my Counters Yet Liberal Julius Caesar indulg'd on such Occasions the Expence of 1000 his Nephew Augustus bounded it up to 2000 which comes not altogether to 15 Pounds of our Money Ut his saltem finibus Luxuriae effervescentis aestus coercerctur And this was granted only to Senators the Princes of the World and not to Scholars and that neither but in Nuptiis Repotiis at the Feast of the Bride and the Repotations of the Bridegroom I want not Commission to spend this little Ink and it is but very little upon this Subject For the Holy Scriptures speak of Salomon's Feasts as well as of Salomon's Wisdom Howsoever these Junquets and the mention are quickly taken away with a Voider The Feasts of his Learning and Eloquence demonstrated in the Theatre of the Commencement that was the open House-keeping were far more delicious and sweet to the Ear then Meats could be to the Belly All his Speeches were damask'd quite over with most pleasant Allusions out of Greek and Latin Authors This was the last Scene acted on the Stage of that one Year's Office and it had the loudest Plaudite Indeed this was the Vintage when more then ever before he press'd out the ripe Grapes of his Elegancies Virgil. Georg. Tumidisbumasta racemis These were his Olympic Wrestlings wherein he got the Mastery in all sorts of Exercises As Laertius says of Democritus lib. 9. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 So this Champion got the best at all the Weapons of Philosophy Selected Questions were disputed and fit for the greatest Celebrity of the Year extracted out of the Politics Natural Theorems and the Metaphysics he became Victor in every Duel And so he shut up his Proctorship as to the Learned Trial of it here it ended with that General Testimony of his Praise Ut puderet virum altius extollere as Pollio says of Valerianus that neither we could give nor he with modesty receive a greater Commendation 31. These Performances being so well over he left Cambridge and made a happy Remove as a Consul well approved in the Year of his Magistracy was transposed into a Proconsulat or Charge of a Province to testifie the good liking of the People to his precedent Office By this Province I mean his Chaplain-Attendance in the House of Lord Chancellor Egerton a Nest for an Eagle From that Step in the House of Lord Chancellor Hatton Dr. Bancroft began to rise higher till he came to be Metropolitan of all England By the like Service in the House of Lord Keeper Puckering Dr. Vaughan first made his Abilities known and afterward got his Prince's Favour to sit in the See of London Now the Disciple whom these two great Prelates loved so well performing that Trust with Lord Egerton which they had done with his Lordship's Predecessors was their Match at least in Dispatch and Judgment and by God's Providence their Equal in Prosperity Yet before I settle him for good and all in this Honourable Family which will best be done in an whole Piece without disjoyning it I must bring him to Cambridge again by an Act of Revocation A fond Mother that dotes upon her dear Son whom she hath sent abroad to be Manner'd and Disciplin'd will pick many Occasions after a little absence to recal him But the Expedient and not the Fondness which made the University borrow him of the Lord Chancellor his Master after he had been 7 months away was this The King 's only Daughter the Glorious Princess Elizabeth was married at Whitehall to Frederick Prince Palatine and Chief Elector of the Empire at Shrovetide Nothing could be devised to Honour a Royal Solemnity with Bravery Tiltings Barriers Masques and all sorts of Triumphs which was not used and presented The Gallantry of the Court having had deservedly the first Place in Celebrating these Nuptials it was Resolved by the King's Majesty That His Son-in-Law the Elector with the Strangers of the Platz should be received for a Conclusion with an Academical Entertainment at Cambridge The Warning coming to Dr. Carew the Vice-Chancellor a Prudent Courtly Man and very fit for the Service Matters were put in a short time into Order and Readiness The Earl of Northampton our Chancellor was expected for Tradition Immemorial required him at such a season but the frugal old Man appeared not The Charge of great Fare and Feasting was not more Costly then Welcom to the brave Mind of Dr. Nevile Master of Trinity College who never had his like in that Orb I believe for a splendid courteous and bountiful Gentleman His Table was Graced with the Company of Prince Charles Prince Elector Frederick the Bridegroom Count Henry of Nassaw Lodwick Duke of Lenox with a most comely Concourse of Nobles and Gentlemen both of the German and English Nations In two distinct Nights a Comick and a Pastoral Fable both in Latin were Acted before their Highnesses and other Spectators by the Students of the same College This was Play the rest was Work The Scholastical Dissertations were the Work of the Day the Church of St. Mary being Scaffolded for that use 32. The Vice-Chancellor with the Sages of the Consistory concluded there should be a kind of Commencement extraordinary to Congratulate these Potentates and
which serv'd exceedingly to sweeten the general Opinion They that could dive furthest into Court secrets had found that it was a preferment that came to hand of it self neither lured to nor whistled to never sued for never sought for but as Mamertinus said of the Consulship which Julian bestowed upon him of his own Grace and proper Motion non modo nullum popularium deprecatus sum sed ne te quidem Imperator quem orare praeclarum cui preces adbibere plenissimum dignitatis est 'T is humane to wonder at such a Fortune 't were divellish to Envy it It qualified also that no detection could be made then or thereafter that he bought this Greatness unless in Claudian's sense Emitur solâ virtute potestas But this Place was pointed out by the King not for him that would give but to him that would not take to one that pretended to make no more requital than to serve God in his Calling to be True to the King and no Exactor upon his people If a Jearer shall cast in that no marvel if he paid nothing down to his up-lifter for he was low in Coffers and Credit and not worth a Bribe such a one says the same Truth that I do to the main but he Collects it falsely For the Dean was never Richer in present Coin in his Life than he was at that time which came to appear upon this Account that as soon as he was warm in this New Honour e'en within two Months after William Earl of Pembroke his Noble Friend made the Bargain with him to purchase his Grand-Fathers Lands in Wales which were slipt aside by ill Husbandry for which he disbursedten Thousand pounds not much more being to be added to the Seller which he borrowed wherein he Explained two things to the World by this one Act that such Monies as lay by him he gave not for his Office and those that he laid out he got not by his Office This was not his Forecast but the Lords above who takes care for every Sparrow He little thought to live upon that pittance in his Old Age. But God provided it that when the wide Throat of Sacrilege had swallowed down more than ever was devoured at one Gulp when the pleasant Vine of the Church of England with all the Fruitful Branches were cut down with the Pruning Hook of an Ordinance than this little Gourd in Wales should shadow over the head of our Jonah It was well said of Plato That a Prudent Man would lay by somewhat in Store to supply him neither was it superfluous though it did survive him for says he I had rather leave somewhat though to mine Enemy when I Die than stand in need of my Friends who may prove no Friends while I live 71. I am yet in the lingring Season of the Parasceve or induction preparative before the Candidate carried the Palm in his hand wherein he proceeded as far as the Line of a good Wit would let him run to gain public Equanimity to the Kings intentions For he besought His Majesty to clog the Grandeur of that place with such Terms and Conditions in his person as might comprize it in a less Size than it was ever before Received by any All which were his own Invention and his own seeking as it is somewhat detected in the Cabal pag. 56. but more largely drawn out in his own Papers and offered only to be Engross'd in an Act of Council First That the King would continue no Chancellor in that place above three years thenceforth which should first be put in practice in this Mans person Secondly That he should be admitted in the Nature of a Probationer for one year and half and if it appear'd the Charge of the Office to be above his Abilities yet doing Justice equally to his best power he should be Rewarded with an Arch-Bishopric or one of the best Bishoprics at the End of that Term. Thirdly If upon the expiring of one year and half it were found that he discharged the Trust to His Majesties contentment the Royal Pleasure should be signified to continue him to the Triennial Period Fourthly When three years were finish'd to have no further expectance to hold that Office but to give it over with a peremptory Resignation so I may say like Saladine the Great He carried the Winding Sheet of his Honour before him as a Banner Fifthly He moved earnestly that the Court of Chancery might have a Master of the Rolls of exact knowledge and judgment to sit with him Naming Sir Robert Heath the King's Solicitor but it was hindred by some that would try how he could Walk on such slippery Ground without a Staff to lean upon Sixthly He Petitioned for some of the principal Judges of the several Benches whom he Named that two at least should always assist him submitting himself humbly as a young Tree to be kept steady with such supporters A Prudent way to have many Sage Heads concur to produce one Act of Wisdom To say in the contrary it is best to leave the entire matter to one if he be of sound Intelligence is as gross a Flattery as that of the Orator in the Panegyric to Maximianus quid opus erat multitudine cum ipse pugnares What needed an Army in the Field when Maximian himself did Fight Now so many of the Orders forecited as concern'd the Mortality of that Office and set the period of his duration in it were Mortal Laws and utterly forgotten for he continued as he began without interpellation above four years till he was annihilated by his frown whose favour had Created him The Complication of those Restrictions served only for a Method of discretion in a due Season to keep that Dignity low shorn in appearance that it might not be blasted with the Lightnings of Envy Yet these things so dispread were more confirm'd in Vogue and Opinion by a Speech which he made to the King in the Audience of all the Lords of the Council when the Great Seal was actuall delivered to him at Whitehall July 10. which followeth Verbatim 72. Most Dread and Mighty Sovereign if I should think my self any way worthy or sufficient for this Great Place wherein Your Majesty is pleas'd to make Probation of me I were the most unworthy and insufficient Wretch in all the World But in good Faith I do not But as Conscious of mine own Weakness as I am quite astonish'd at Your Favour and Goodness I do not therefore trouble my Head to find out the Reasons of this Advancement because I take it for no Ordinary Effect but an extraordinary Miracle Deus qui Deo proximus tacito munera dispertit aribtrario beneficiorum suorum indignatus per homines stare judicium mavult de subditis dedisse Miraculum I must only lift up mine Eyes unto Heaven and beseech that God who some Ten Years since brought me like Elisha to be Servant only unto that Elias who under God and Your
His Majesty for a Pension to support them in their sequestred Sadness where they might spend their Days in Fasting and Prayer It was vehemently considered that our Hierarchy was much quarrel'd with and opposed by our own Fugitives to the Church of Rome who would fasten upon this Scandal and upon it pretend against our constant Succession hitherto undemolish'd with all the Malice that Wit could excogitate And indeed they began already For the Fact was much discoursed of in Foreign Universities who were nothing concerned especially our Neighbours the Sorbonists at Paris ' 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 1 Pet. 4.15 over-busie to have an Oar in our Boat Disputing it three several times in their Schools and concluded the Accident to amount to a full Irregularity which is an Incapacity to exercise any Ecclesiastical Act of Order or Jurisdiction His Majesty upon the eruption of these Scruples was called up to think seriously that his Sweetness and Compassion did not leave a Slur upon this Church which himself under Christ had made so Glorious It belonged to the four Bishops Elect to be most Circumspect in this matter expecting their Consecration shortly and to be informed whether they should acknowledge that the Power of an Arch-Bishop was Integral and Unblemish'd in a casual Homicide and submit to have his Hands laid upon their Heads Dr. Davenant shewed Reason That it behoved him not to be seen in the Opposition because the Arch-Bishop had Presented him to the rich Parsonage of Cotnam not far from Cambridge It was well taken for among honest Pagans a Benesiciary would not contend against his Patron Howsoever such as knew not the wherefore were the more benevolous to the Arch-Bishop's misfortune because so great a Clerk stood off and meddled not The Rhodian's Answer in Plutarch was not forgotten who was baited by his Accusers all the while that the Judge said nothing I am not the worse for their Clamours says the Defendant but my Cause is the better that the Judge holds his peace Non refert quid illi loquantur sed quid ille taceat The other three without Davenant stirred in it the most they could to decline this Metropolitan's Consecreation not out of Enmity or Superstition but to be wary that they might not be attainted with the Contagion of his Scandal and Uncanonical Condition The Lord-Keeper appearing for the rest writes thus to the Lord Marquess as it is extant Cabal p. 55. MY Lord's Grace upon this Accident is by the Common-Law of England to forfeit all his Estate to His Majesty and by the Canon-Law which is in force with us irregular Ipso facto and so suspended from all Ecclesiastical Function until he be again restored by his Superior which I take it is the King's Majesty in this Rank and Order of Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction I wish with all my heart His Majesty would be as Merciful as ever He was in all his Life But yet I hold it my Duty to let His Majesty know by your Lordship that His Majesty is fallen upon a Matter of great Advice and Deliberation To add Affliction to the Afflicted as no doubt he is in Mind is against the King's Nature To leave a Man of Blood Primate and Patriarch of all his Churches is a thing that sounds very harsh in the old Councils and Canons of the Church The Papists will not spare to descent upon the one and the other Heave the Knot to His Majesties deep Wisdom to Advise and Resolve upon A gentler Hand could not touch a Sore yet I think of his Judgment in this Point as Sealiger did of the sine Poet Fracostorius Ab suâ ipse magnitudine descendisse credi potest aliquando He flew lower at this Game then the pitch of his wonted Wisdom For the Question did hang yet upon this Pin Whether there were a Sore to be cured His Lordship had look'd attentively into the Canonists whom he could cite by rote with his happy Memory Their Decretals and Extravagants Un-bishop a Man that kill'd a Man and meant a Beast nay further if the Bishop's Horse did cast the Groom that water'd him into a Pond and drown'd him But if we Appeal from them to higher and better Learning their Rigour will prove Ridiculous The Fact is here confess'd But is Sin in the Fact or in the Mind of the Facient Omne peccatum in tantum est peccatum in quantum est voluntarium This is the Maxim of the Schools upon actual Sins and a true one A guilty Mind makes a guilty Action An unfortunate Hand concurs often with an innocent Heart Quis nomen unquam sccleris errori indidit Put the Case that these Writers are very inclinable to have Absolution granted incontinently to such Contingencies but to keep a bustle whether Absolution is to be given or not when there is no fault is to abuse the Power of the Keys Irregularities in that Superstitious Latin Church are above Number what have we to do with them That we did cut them off we did not name it indeed in our Reformation under Edward the Sixth c. for they were thrown out with Scorn as not to be mention'd among ejected Rubbish For we perceived they were never meant to bind but to open I mean the Purse He that is Suspended may entangle himself from the Censure with a Bribe The Canonists are good Bone-letters for a Bone that was never broken their Rubrics are filled with Punctilio's not for Consciences but for Consciuncles Haberdashers of small Faults and palpable Brokers for Fees and Mercinary Dispensations Therefore those plain-dealing and blunt People among the Helvetians otherwise Clients of the Roman Party serv'd them very well as Simler hath Page 64. of his History Cum Papa Rom acceptà pecuniâ Matrimonium contra canones concesserat populus recognitâ statuit Si divitious pecunià numeratâ hoc licitum sit etiam pauperibus absque pecunid fas essc And a little before Pag. 135. when those poor Cantoners could not enjoy their own in quiet for the Rent-gatherers of the Court of Rome they bid them keep off at their own peril with this popular Edict Si pergant nundinatores bullarum jus urgere in vincula conjiciontur ni huic renuntient aquis submorgantur scilicet ut ita bullae bullis eluantur Such resolute Men as these were too rude to be cozen'd So Irregularities should be used which are invented for the Prosit of Dispensative Graces having nothing in them to Unsanctisie the Order of a Bishop by Divine Law or the Law of Nature because they can be wiped away with a Feather if it be a Silver Wing and the Feathers of Gold But because these double Doctors of Canon and Civil Laws will pretend to some Reason in their greatest Folly it is not amiss to repeat the best Objection with which they stiffen their Opinion Thus they divide the Hoof That if one by chance-medly kills a Man being then employed in nothing that is evil
to that Treatise as follow Let the World take notice if it may concern any your Honour is be unto whom next unto His most Sacred Majesty my most Gracious Sovereign and Master I owe more then to all the World beside Professing unseignedly in the word of a Priest Fâ—cisti ut vivam moriar ingratus 81. The Lord-Keeper being so great a Dealer in the Golden Trade of Mercy and so successful he followed his Fortune and tried the King and the Lord Marquess further in the behalf of some whom their dear Friends had given over in Despair to the Destiny of Restraint And those were of the Nobles For he carried a great regard to their Birth and Honour and knew it was good for his own safety to deserve well of those high-born Families The East of Nerthumberland had been a Prisoner in the Tewer above 15 years His Confidents had not Considence and a good Heart I say not to Petition but to dispute with the King how ripe the Earl was for Clemency and Liberty 〈◊〉 Majesty was very merciful but must be rubb'd with a Fomentation of hi◠〈◊〉 Oyl to make him more supple This dextrous Statesman infuseth into 〈…〉 how to compass the Design with what Insinuations and Argum◠〈…〉 were improved with the Earl's demulcing and well-languag'd Phrases And when it came to strong Debate the Lord-Keeper got the better of the King in Reason So the Physic wrought as well as could be wish'd and on the 18th of July the Earl of Northumberland came out of the Tower the Great Ordnance going off to give him a joyful Valediction Who turned his Thoughts to consider the Work of God that a Stranger had wrought 〈◊〉 Comfort for him in his old Age whose Face he had ne 〈…〉 never purchased by any Benefit nor courted so much as by the meâ—age of a Salutation Which his Lordship compared to St. Peter's Deliverance by the Angel of God Acts 12. when Peter knew not who it was that came to help him Though not in order of Time yet in likeness of Condition the Earl of Oxford's Case is to be ranked in the same File It was in April in the year following that he was sent to the Tower betrayed by a false Brother for rash Words which heat of Wine cast up at a merry meeting His Lordship's Enemies were great and many whom he had provoked yet after he had acquainted the Lord-Keeper with the long Sadness of his Restraint in a large Letter which is preserved he wrought the Earl's Peace and Releasment conducted him to the King's Chamber to spend an hour in Conference with His Majesty from whence a good Liking was begot on both sides Whom thereupon that Earl took for his trusty and wisest Friend using his Counsel principally how to Husband his Estate and how to employ his Person in some Honourable Service at Sea that the Dissoluteness of his Hangers-on in the City might not sink him at Land The Lord-Keeper did as much for the Earl of Somerset in Christmas-time before bringing him by his mediation out of the House of Sorrow wherein he had continued above five years that he might take fresh Air and enjoy the comfort of a free Life which was affected by him to gratisie the splendid and spreading Family of the Howards And they were all well pleased with him as were the greatest part of the Grandees except the Earl of Arundel for a Distast taken of which the Lord-Keeper need not be ashamed 82. Within Six Weeks after he was settled in that Office the Earls Secretary brought two Patents to be Sealed the one to bestow a Pension of 2000 l. per annum upon his Lord out of the Exchequer which was low mow'n and not sit to bear such a Crop beside the Parliament which was to meet again in the Winter could not choose but take Notice what over-bountiful Issues were made out of the Royal Revenue to a Lord that was the best Landed of all his Peers Yet the Seal was put to with a dry assent because there was no stopping of a Free River With this Patent came another to confer the Honour of the Great Marshal of England upon the same Noble Personage The Contents of it had scarce any Limits of Power much exceeding the streit Boundaries of Law and Custom The Lord Keeper searching into the Precedents of former Patents when the same Honour was conser'd found a great inequality and doubted for good Cause that this was a device to lay his unfitness for his great place Naked to the World if he swallowed this Pill But nothing tended more to the praise of his great Judgment with His Majesty He writes to my Lord of Buckingham to acquaint the King that he thought His Majesty intended to give to greater Power than the Lords Commissioners had who dispatch'd Affairs belonging to that Office joyntly before him and that all Patents refer to the Copy of the immediate Predecessors who were the Earls of Essex Shrewsbury and Duke of Somerset but my Lord leap'd them over and claim'd as much as the Howards and Mowbries Dukes of Norfolk did hold which will enlarge his Authority beyond the former by many Dimensions There is much more than this in the Cabal of Letters p. 63. And much more than I meet there in his own private Papers The King was much satisfied with the Prudence and Courage of the Man that he had rather display these Errors than commit them for fear of a mighty Frown so the Earls Counsel were appointed to attend the Lord Keeper who joyning their hands together examin'd the Obliquities of the Patent and alter'd them What would have follow'd if it had pass'd entire in the first Draught For being so much corrected and Castrated yet the proceedings of the Court of Honour were a Grievance to the People not to be supported The Decrees of it were most uncertain most Arbitrary most Imperious Nor was there any Seat of Judgment in the Land wherein Justice was brought a bed with such hard Labour Now I invite the Reader if he please to turn to the 139 pag. of Sir An. Wel. Pamphlet and let him score a Mark for his Remembrance at these Lines That Williams was brought in for this Design to clap the Great Seal through his Ignorance in the Laws to such things that none that understood the danger by knowing the Laws would venter upon This Knight when he is in a Course of Malice is never out of his Way but like an egregious Bugiard here he is quite out of the Truth For the New Lord Keeper walk'd so Circumspectly that he seem'd to fear an Ambush from every Grant that was to pass for the use of encroaching Courtiers if any thing were Ambiguous or Dangerous he was not asham'd to call for Counsel If any thing were prest against Rule he was inexorable 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Eth. He kept constant to Justice in its Flat Square I could be Luxuriant in instances nothing is
Clergy of England as being neither Parsons Vicars nor Curates be Licenced henceforward in the Court of Faculties only with a Fiat from the Lord Arch-Bishop of Canterbury and a Confirmation under the Great Seal of England And that such as transgress any one of these Directions be suspended by the Lord Bishop of the Diocess or in his Default by the Lord Arch-Bishop of the Province Ab officio beneficio for a Year and a Day untill his Majesty by the Advice of the next Convocation shall prescribe some further Punishment 102. These Orders were well brought fourth but Success was the Step-Mother Destinata salubriter omni ratione potentior fortuna discussit Curtius lib. 5o. Crossness and Sturdiness took best with the Vulgar and he was counted but a Cockney that stood in awe of his Rulers No marvel if some were brought to no State of Health or toward any Temper of Convalesence with these Mandates Nothing is so hardly bridled as the Tongue saith St. James especially of a mis-guided Conscience when their Bladder if full of Wind the least Prick of a Thorn will give it eruption A Fool traveleth with a Word as a Woman in Labour of a Child Ecclus. 19.11 Restraint is not a Medicine to cure epidemical Diseases for Sin becomes more sinful by the Occasion of the Law Diliguntur immodice sola quae non licent says one of the Exteriors Quintil. decl 1a. The less we should the more we would Curb Cholerical Humours and you press out Bitterness as it is incident to those that are strait-lac'd to have sower Breaths The Scottish Brethren were acquainted by common Intercourse with these Directions that had netled the aggrieved Pulpitarians And they says Reverend Spotswood P. 543. accuse them to be a Discharge of Preaching at least a Confining of Preachers to certain Points of Doctrine which they call Limiting of the Spirit of God But the Wiser Sort judged them both necessary and profitable considering the Indiscretion of divers of that sort who to make Ostentation of their Learning or to gain the Applause of the Popular would be medling with Controversies they scarce understood and with Matters exceeding the Capacity of the People But what a Pudder does some make for not stinting the Spirit or Liberty of Prophecying as others call it They know not what they ask Such an indefinite Licence is like the Philosopher's Materia Prima a monstrous Passive Subject without Form A Quid libet which is next to nothing Indeed it is a large Charter to pluck down and never to build up Every Man may sling a Stone where he will and let it light as Luck carries it But how can the House of God be built unless the Builders be appointed to set up the Frame with Order and Agreement among themselves according to the Pattern which was shewn in the Mount Try it first in Humane Affairs and see how it will sadge with them before we proceed to Heavenly Dissolve the publick Mint let every Man Coin what Money he will and observe if ever we can make a Marchandable Payment Their Confusion is as like to this as a Cherry to a Cherry Give their Spirit as much Scope as they ask Let them Coin what Doctrine they will with the Minting-Irons of their own Brain They may pay themselves with their own Money but will it pass with others for Starling Will it go for current Divinity To meet them home Suppose this Priviledge were allow'd yet every good Spirit will limit it self to lawful Subjection Yet these would not Then what Remedy in earnest none was try'd It is the height of Infelicity to be incurable As Pliny in his Natural History said of Laws made against Luxury in Rome which would not be kept down therefore the Senators left to make Laws against it Frustra interdicta quae vetucrant cernentes nullas potiùs quam irritas esse Leges maluerunt 103. Neither were uncharitable Suspicions like to mend For the Unsatisfied that sung so far out of Tune had another Ditty for their Prick-Song The King's Letters were directed to the Lord Keeper to be Copy'd out and sent forth to the Judges and Justices to afford some Relaxation of our Penal Laws to some but not all Popish Recusants Which made sundry Ministers interpose very harshly and in the Prophet Malachy's Stile Chap. 2. Ver. 13. To cover the Altar of God with Tears and Weeping and Crying but the Lord regarded not the Offering neither received it with Good-will at their Hands What could this mean as they conjectured but the highest Umbrage to the Reformed Religion and â—at Toerâ—ion of Popery Leave it at that cross way that they knew not whither this Project will turn Nay Should they not hope for the best Event of the Meaning A King is like to have an ill Audit when every one that walks in the Streets will reckon upon his Councels with their own casting Counters It is fit in sundry Occurrences for a Prince to disguise his Actions and not to discover the way in which he treads But many times the Wisdom of our Rulers betrays them to more Hatred than their Follies because Idiots presume that their own Follies are Wisdom Plaurus displays these impertinent Inquisitors very well in Trinummo Quod quisque habet in animo aut habiturus est sciunt Quod in aurem Rex Reginae dixerit sciunt Quae neque futura neque facta sunt illi sciunt Yet these Fault-sinders were not jear'd out of their Melancholly though they deserv'd no better but were gravely admonished by his Majesty Vivâ voce in these Words I understand that I am blamed for not executing the Laws made against the Papists But ye should know that a King and his Laws are not unfuly compared to a Rider and his Horse The Spur is sometime to be used but not always The Bridle is sometime to be held in at other times to be let loose as the Rider finds Cause Just so a King is not at all times to put in Execution the Rigor of his Laws but he must for a time and upon just Grounds dispense with the same As I protest to have done in the present Case and to have conniv'd only for a time upon just Cause howbeit not known to 〈◊〉 If a Man for the Favour shew'd to a Priest or Papist will judge me to be inclining that way he wrongs me exceedingly My Words and Writings and Actions have sufficiently 〈◊〉 what my Resolution is in all Matters of Religion That Cause not known to 〈…〉 in part unfolded by that grave Father Spotswood where I quoted him 〈◊〉 Says he The Better and Wiser Sort of his Country-men who considered 〈…〉 Estate of things gave a far other Judgment thereof than the Discontented 〈…〉 then our King was treating with the French King for Peace to the Protestants of France and with the King of Spain for withdrawing his Forces from the Palatinate At which time it was no way fitting that
he should be Executing the Riger of his Laws against Papists at Home while he did labour for Peace to them of the Religion Abroad The most likely way to obtain what he did seek of those Princes being a Moderation of the Severity of Laws against Priests and Papists at least for a time Thus far that wise man but the Reason was stronger than he enforc'd it For in sundry Places beyond our Seas the Churches of the most disconsolate Reformed were never so near if not to an Extirpation yet to an utter Dispersion Those in Bohemia and Moravia were hunted from Hole to Hole by the Emperor's Men of War The King of Spain was Victorious over the persecuted Servants of Christ in the Val-Teline The King of France prepared to lay Siege to Rochel and to all his fenced Cities that were in the Hands of the Protestants The Duke of Savoy was suspected that he would watch this time to surround Geneva with an Army while Cuspis Martis shin'd so sinistrously upon their Brethren every where Now what Remedy was more ready to pacifie these destroying Angels for their Sakes with whom we walk'd in the House of God as Friends then to begin in Clemency to those among us that carry their Mark Can a Kingdom be governed without such Correspondencies Salmasius in his Notes upon Simplicius introduceth Aristides Sirnamed the Just that he was compell'd to unpeg his Rigor and to make it go to a softer Tune in rugged Times 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as he translates it Quod rationibus patrae se accommodaret quae multâ injustitiâ opus habert Necessity is so great a Part of Reason that that is Justice which looks like Injustice because of Necessity Our good People forsooth would have the Protestants suffer no Ill Abroad under the Dominions of the Pontificians and yet mitigate no Severity to Pontisicians under the Dominion of Protestants Hand stulte sapis siquidem id est sapere velle id quod non potest contingore says the Comaedian This is wisely laid if a thing may be wisely laid which can never be effected I am not able to express this so well as the Lord Keeper hath done in his Sermon preached at King James's Funeral P. 49. This Blessed King in all the time I serv'd him did never out of deep and just reason of State and the bitter Necessity of Christendom in these latter Times give way to any the least Connivance in the World towards the Person of a Papist for to his Doctrine he never did he never would do nor was there any Consideration under Heaven would have forc'd him thereunto but he strictly guided himself in the same by some notable Precedent of Queen Elizabeth the Load-Star of all his greatest Actions and that in the very Point and bath'd his Favours in Showers of Tears I speak it in the Presence of Almighty God least those Intendments of his for the apparent Good of the State might scandalize for all that in an oblique Line his weak but well-meaning Subjects in their Religion and Doctrine This was a Testimony of the Integrity of these Proceedings almost three years after But for present and full Satisfaction here followeth a long Letter anticipated in the Cabal but here inserted in its proper Place which was written to the Lord Viscount Anan by the same Hand Sept. 17. 1622 declaring the Nature and Reason of the Clemency at that time extended to the Lay-Recusants of England Right Honourable 104. I Owe more Service to that true Love and former Acquaintance which your Lordship hath been pleased to afford me now these full ten years then to be sparing or reserved in satisfying your Lordship about any doubt whatsoever The Resolution whereof shall lie in my Power Concerning that Offence taken by many people both this side the Borders and in Scotland from that Clemency which his Majesty was pleased to extend to the Imprisoned Lay-Recusants of this Kingdom And my Letter Written to the Justices for the Reigling of the same which your Lordship did intimate unto me yesterday at Mr. Henry Gibb his House out of some News received from a Peer of Scotland This is the plainest return I can make unto your Lordship In the general as the Sun in the Firmament appears unto us no bigger then a Platter and the Stars but as so many Nails in the Pomel of a Saddle because of that Esloinment and Disproportion between our Eyes and the Object So there is such an un-measurable distance betwixt the deep Resolution of a Prince and the shallow Apprehension of Common and Ordinary people that as they will be ever Judging and Censuring so they must be Obnoxious to Error and Mistaking Particularly for as much as concerns my self I must leave my former Life my Profession my continual Preaching my Writing which is extant in the Hands of many my private Endeavours about some great Persons and the whole bent of my Actions which in the place I live in cannot be conceal'd to Testifie unto the World what favour I am like to importune for the Papists in point of Religion For the King my Master I will tell you a Story out of Velleius Paterculus A Surveyor bragging to M. Livius Drusus that he would so contrive his House Ut libera à conspectu immunis ab omnibus Arbitris esset That it should stand Removed out of sight and be past all danger of Peeping or Eaves-dropping was answer'd again by Drusus Tu vero si quid in te artis est ita compone domum meam ut quicquid agam ab omnibus conspici possit Nay my good Friend if you have any devices in your head contrive my House after such a manner that all the World may see what I do therein So if I should endeavour to flourish up some Artificial Vault to hide and conceal the intentions of his Majesty I know I should receive the same Thanks that the Surveyor did from M. Drusus I was not called to Counsel by his Royal Majesty when the Resolution of this Clemency to the Lay-Recusants was first concluded But if I had been asked my Opinion I should have advised it without the least Hesitation His Majesty was so Popishly addicted at this time that to the incredible exhaustments of his Treasury he was a most Zealous Interceder for some Ease and Refreshment to all the Protestants in Europe his own Dominions and Denmark only excepted Those of Swethland having lately provoked the Pole had no other hope of Peace Those of France of the Exercise of their Religion Those of the Palatinate and adjoyning Countries of the least connivency to say their Prayers then by the earnest Mediation of our Gracious Master And advised by the late Assembly of Parliament to insist a while longer in this milky way of Intercession and Treaty what a preposterous Argument would this have been to desire these mighty Princes Armed and Victorious to grant some Liberty and Clemency to the Protestants because himself
gained divers Beneficed Men to conform who had stumbled at that Straw that the Lord Keeper could do no less then compound the Troubles of so Learned and Industrious a Divine And I aver it upon the Faith of a good Witness that after this Bishop Harsnet acknowledged that he was as useful a man to assist him in his Government as was in all his Diocese Another Rank for whose sake the Lord Keeper suffer'd were scarce an handful not above three or four in all the wide Bishoprick of Lincoln who did not oppose but by ill Education seldom used the appointed Ceremonies Of whom when he was certified by his Commissaries and Officials he sent for them and confer'd with them with much Meekness sometime remitted them to argue with his Chaplain If all this stirred them not he commended them to his Old Collegiate Dr. Sibbs or Dr. Gouch Who knew the scruples of these mens Hearts and how to bring them about the best of any about the City of London If all these labour'd in vain he protracted the hearing of their Causes de die in diem that time might mollisie their refractory Apprehensions But had it not been better said some 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to stop the mouth of the unruly Tit. 1.11 I Answer Their mouth was slept in St. Paul's meaning Estius hath begun the distinction and it is easily made up Alind est silontium indicere quod est imperamis Alind ad metas saciturnitatis reduccre quod est docte redarguentis They were not imperiously commanded to be silent but enough was spoken wifely to their Face to put their Folly to silence Men that are found in their Morals and in Minutes imperfect in their Intellectuals are best reclaimed when they are mignarized and strok'd gently Seldom any thing but severity will make them Anti-practise For then they grow desperate Facundus Dominus quosdam aâ—fugam cogit quosdam ad mortem says Seneca And they are like to convert more with their sufferings then with their Doctrine He that is openly punish'd whatsoever he hath done he shall find Condolement But I will spend no more Words to wipe away this stur of Puritanism it needs not a laborious Apology 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as the Proverb is in Athenaeus Let Lubbars Talk of it over a Winter Fire when they Droll out Tales 107. Yet I want not matter how to wash out this spot of Jealousie by great Actions In this year 1622 he began to expend a great Sum upon St. John's College the Nurse of his hopeful breeding A right stampt Puritan is not a Founder but a Demolisher of good Works He laid the platform of his Beneficence on this Wife Four Scholars he Added to the 40 Alumni in the College of Westminster For their Advancement he provided and endowed four Scholarships in St. John's College upon their Maturity and Vacancy of those places to be Translated to them Two Fellowships he Newly Erected in that House into which only out of those four the best were to be chosen Withal he purchas'd the Patronage of four Rich Benefices to receive those Scholars and Fellows of his Foundation upon the Death or other Cessation of the Incumbents But the Chief Minerval which he bestowed upon that Society was the Structure of a most goodly Library the best in that kind in all Cambridge And as he had pick'd up the best Authors in all Learning and in all plenty for his own use so he bequeathed them all to this fair Repository This was Episcopal indeed to issue out his Wealth as the Lord brought it in in such ways This is the Purse that Mr. H. L. says he Ran away withal after he had departed with the Great Seal wherein we see how far the Portion of over-flowing wast which 〈◊〉 from Great Ones and is spilt if it were sav'd and well bestow'd would 〈◊〉 the Land with all sort of Monumental Bravery What a good Steward he was for his Master Christ Jesus's Houshold and how provident to put none into part of the Care but such as were Obedient to Civil and Sacred Rulers appears most in his happy choice of those upon whom he confer'd the livings that fell into his Patronage They were ever pick'd out of the best Learned the best Qualified the most Cordially affected to our most Godly Liturgy and to the Government of the Prelates Within these Apostatizing times wherein so many have departed from them without Cause I cannot remember any of his preferring but kept their Traces and to their best Power never run out of the Ring I have a short Story to tell and then I leave this Subject Among the poor distressed Protestants in Bohemia many of them were Braziers by their Occupation These sent sent some messengers from them with a Petition to his Majesty that they might Transplant a Colony into England London especially Men Wives Children and their full Families Signifying that they would bring with them to the Value of two hundred Thousand Pounds in Coin and Materials of their Trade That their Substance and Labour should be subject to all Customs and Taxes for the King's profit They desired to live in a Body of their own Nation and to serve Christ Jesus in that Church Discipline which they brought with them from Bohemia Though they had inclin'd his Majesty to admit them being a great Swarm of People and bringing Wax and Honey along yet the Lord Keeper diverted it from the Example of the Dutch and French that were setled among us These brought commodious Manufacture into the Realm but they brought a Discipline with it according to the Allowance of their Patent which was a Suffocation to the Temperate Crisis of our own Church Government Which Peril of Distemper would be increased by the Access of the Bohemick Congregation A great Forecast to keep our Hierarchy found from the Contagion of Foreigners and he was more Religious to keep the Church of England in its Sabbath and Holy Rest than to help out the Neighbours Ox that was fallen into the Pit Yet I have somewhat to alledge in the Behalf of the Bohemians I have in my little Library a Book printed 1633 eleven years after the Lord Keeper appear'd against their Petition called Ratio Disciplinae ordinisque Ecclesiastici in unitate sratrum Bohemorum Their Platform in that Piece comes so near to the old Protestant Church of England above all the Reformed that for my part I wish we had had their Company This is sufficient I am sure against those Opposite and Self-overthrowing Aspersions Let them do their worst there is one Metal that will never be the worse for them of whose Property this Lord partak'd It is Gold of which Pliny writes Lib. 33. N. H. c. 3. that nothing makes it more precious Quam contra salis aceti succos domitores rerum constantia The Spirits of Salt and Vinegar the most biting and sowrest Reproaches cannot hurt it with their Tartness That which corrodes all
a genteel Scholar he protested to all that were in presence that if he could obtain such a House to dwell in and no more than the Profits of such a Parish to maintain him he would go no further in the Desire of the Things of this Life But King James no Niggard in Liberality perswaded him to take more than he ask'd as Naaman urged Gehazi who was as willing to receive as Naaman to give 2 King 5.23 He was installed Dean of Windsor and admitted Master of the Savoy-Hospital in the Strand These together were worth to him 800 l. per Annum They brought in no less and he would not loose a Peny of his Due but studied to exact more than ever by Custom had been received by any of those Dignitaries Of which Sharking his Majesty once admonished him Yet his Veins were not full but he got himself presented by the Church of Windsor to a good Benefice says Mr. Ri. Montagu West Ilsly in Barkshire where he made a shift to read the Articles of 1562 in English pro more Clericali and subscribed to them But Jesurum waxed fat and kicked Deut. 28.15 For toward the end of January 1621 he came to Theobalds to be brought to the King and with as bold a Fore-head as ever any Face was drest in he became an humble Suppliant to his Majesty that he might have his Leave to return for Italy The Courtiers that stood by look'd up to Heaven in wonder For no Man dreamt of this Inconstancy and certainly no Man less than the King He that is not ready to do Evil is ever flow to suspect Evil of others But his Majesty carried it with high Wisdom For as if this Recoiler had told him no News he spake but this little and dismist him If you have a mind to be gone I will not stay you and at my first Leisure I will appoint those that shall confer with you about your Dismission A brave Contempt and well bestow'd upon a Proud Man that did not expect to be valued at a Trisle which was not worth the keeping Many have written before me the reason of this Arch-Bishop's retrograde Motion and likewise what it was that bore him up so stifly to be very confident or to seem to be to present himself before the Roman Conclave I shall not lose my Thanks I hope If I add my Observations with a little more than hath already been discovered First About the middle of Autumn Ann. 1621 Ant. de Dominis besought the King to confer the Arch-Bishoprick of York upon him A hasty Suitor for the Place was not void The Error came about thus The Arch-Bishop then in being called familiarly Toby Matthew was ever pleasant and full of becoming Merriment and knowing that his Death had been long expected was wont every year once or oftner to cause Rumours to be raised that he was deceased And when he had put this Dodgery strongly upon those at London that gap'd for the Vacancy to succeed him it was a Feast of Laughter to him to hear what Running and Riding there was to fill up his Room who jear'd them behind the Lattuce No wonder if Spalat a Stranger were catcht in this Trap but he had worse Luck than to be derided for his Forwardness for the King bade him sit quiet and seek no further It was not now as in Lanfranke and Anselm's Days to make a Stranger a Metropolitan of England The Man impatient that his Request had so large a Denial offers his Departure as 't is said before not distrusting but that the King would bid for such Ware as much as the Man thought himself to be worth But being over-shot and laid aside with Scorn he would have eat his Words and east out Speeches in oblique before some of the Council that whatsoever he had uttered he was dispos'd more to please the King than to please himself But he found no Place for Repentance And of all this the Lord Keeper is my Author 110. But what can be so quick sighted as the Devil that spies the first Spark of attentation and blows it into a Flame The vigilant Men at Rome knew better than we in England that the Jade had a mind to slip his Halter and to run away because we did not fill his Rack and plump him up with Provender Therefore in the beginning of January Hui tam cito a Packet came to his Hands from Cardinal Mellino whose Contents were That Paul the Fifth was dead from whose Anger he had made haste to be gone because he had provok'd him in defending the Venetian Quarrel against him but Gregory the Fifteenth of the Ludovisian Family was then in the Papal Throne as propense unto him of old as any Friend and as true to him as his own Brother That he had sent him an Apostolical Brief to Brussels for such Missives were not welcomed in England to give him Assurance of good Speed at Rome with a plenary Indulgence for all the Provocations of his Writings And Mellino added for that must not be left out That a great Dignity lay in Lavender for him Eaque valde opima So Dr. Crakanthorp cites it from Spalato 's own Mouth Pretium octuplicis stipendii eight times more in value than his english Preferments Defen Eccl. Angl. c. 8. art 5. But a Man not half so wise as Spalat might discern that if he did conside in this Ludovisian Pope alone the Security was very rotten Every Child presaged his Life was not long Death was ready to arrest him every day upon two Suits great Age and great Infirmity This Renego sailed from our Ports in the end of April arrived at Rome in June and this Pope the Hope of his Life and Fortunes expired July 8 Stilo Novo 1623. Neither was he ignorant of this Gregory's approaching Mortality his own Physicians confest he was of short Continuunce Be that very probable said they that undermined him and plied him with Packets from beyond Seas all the better For who is the Rising-Sun Who is the Prelate upon whom all Eyes are cast for the certain Successor but Cardinal Mellino his other Self the Undertaker for his Indemnity and Advancement Certainly he was bewitch'd with that Imposture yet an Imposture that had Truth in it as well as Cunning. The Conclave how Urban the Eighth was chosen Pope Aug. 6. 1623 was Printed at London by License An. 1642. Therein is discoursed how Cardinal Burgesi the leading Prelate of the Conclave labour'd so stifly for Mellino that July 22 he had fifteen Voices in the Scrutiny and eleven in the Access Which filled his Friends with Hopes to get ten Voices more to consummate the Election Again July 27 he had most Voices both in the Scrutiny and Access Whereupon Cardinal Sforza was so transported in his own Imagination to advance him that if Mellino might have been created Pope by Adoration as formerly the Custom would have done it but was crost by a new Bull it had been
he had dazled the World with that false Light he never pleas'd his Judges that had secretly tried the Constitution of his Conscience Sir Edward Sackvile who shortly succeeded his Brother Richard in the Earldom of Dorset was at Rome Ann. 1624. and had Welcom given him with much Civility in the English College so far that he presum'd to ask rather out of Curiosity than Love to see this Prisoner de Dominis Mr. T. Fitz-herbert the Rector did him the Observance to go with him to the Jayl He found him shut up in a Ground-Chamber narrow and dark for it look'd upon a great Wall which was as near unto it as the breadth of three spaces Some slight forms being pass'd over which use to be in all Visits says Sir Edward My Lord of Spalato you have a dark Lodging It was not so with you in England There you had at Windsor as good a Prospect by Land as was in all the Country And at the Savoy you had the best Prospect upon the Water that was in all the City I have forgot those things says the Bishop here I can best Contemplate the Kingdom of Heav'n Sir Edward taking Mr. Fitz-Herbert aside into the next Room Sir says he tell me honestly Do you think this Man is employ'd in the Contemplation of Heav'n Says the Father Rector I think nothing less for he was a Male-content Knave when he fled from us a Railing Knave while he liv'd with you and a Motley parti-colour'd Knave now he is come again This is the Relation which that Honourable Person made Ann. 1625. which I heard him utter in the hearing of no mean Ones 113. But by this time Spalat was dead either by his fair Death or by private strangling Gallo-Belgicus that first sent the News abroad knew not whither But he knew what became of his Body that it was burnt at the same place in Rome where Hereticks do end their Pain It is a Process of Justice which is usual with their Inquisition to shew such abhorrence to Hereticks that were so in their sense to call them to account though they be dead and rotten First They are so Histrionical in their Ceremonies as if they made a Sport of Barbarousness that they cite the dead Men three several Days to appear or any that will answer for them but happy they if they do not appear then their Carkasses or Bones are brought forth and burnt in the common Market with a Ban of Execration The latest that were used so among us were Reverend Bucer and Fagius at Cambridge Anno 1556. And Dr. Scot Bishop of Chester one of Cardinal Pole's Visitors defended it before the University Haud mirum videri debeat si in mortem quoque ista inquisitis extendatur Bucer Scrip. Angl. p. 925. Sic postulare sacros Canones p. 923. This is their Soverity from which the Dead are not free Now by the Blaze of that Bonfire in which De Dominis his Trunk was consum'd we may read an Heretick in Fiery Characters I mean as he was entred into the black Book of the Roman Slaughter-House He lived and died with General Councils in his Pate with Wind-Mills of Union to concord Rome and England England and Rome Germany with them both and all other Sister-Churches with the rest without asking leave of the Tridentine Council This was his Piaculary Heresie For as Aâ—orius writes Tom. 1. Moral Lib. 8. Cap. 9. Not only he that denies an Article of the Roman Creed but he that doubts of any such Article is an Heretick and so to be presented to Criminal Judgment Si quem in foro exteriori l gitime allegata proâ—ata probaverint in rebus Fidci scienter voluntarie dubitasse arbitrer cum ut v re propriè haeretiâ—um puniendum Therefore if Spalat had return'd a Penitent in their Construction and imbodied himself into that Church as only true and Apostolical he could not have suffered in his Offals and Carkass as an Heretick So the same Azorius confesseth Lib. 8. Cap. 14. And Alphonsus à Castro is angry with Bernard of Lutzenburg for holding the contrary Lib. 1. Cap. 9. Quis unquam docuit eum esse dicendum haereticum qui errorem sic tenuit ut monitus conviclus non crubuerit palinodiam cantare This was the success of the variable Behaviour of M. Antonius de Dominis De Domims in the plural says Dr. Crakanthorp for he could serve two Masters or twenty if they would all pay him Wages He had an Hearing as it is mention'd before in our High Commission To countenance the Audience of so great a Cause the Lord Keeper gave attendance at it I began at that end of his Troubles and having footed all the Maze am come out at the other 114. Johosaphat distinguisheth between the Lord's Matters and the King's Affairs 2 Chron. 19.12 So do I in the Subject before me I have given some Says of his Church-Wisdom in the former Paragraph I go on to set the Sublimity of his State-Wisdom in the latter I must look back to a small Service which he did perform in Michaelmas-Term 1621. for as much as the Conjunction of some things which rais'd a Dust in the Year following are sit to go together Upon the solemn Day when the Lord Cranfield then Master of the Wards and immediately created Earl of Middlesex took his Place as Lord Treasurer in the Exchequer-Chamber the Lord Keeper gave him his Oath and saluted his Admission with a short Speech following My Lord You are called to serve his Majesty in the Place of a Lord Treasurer by the most Honourable and most Ancient Call in this Realm the delivery of a Staff to let you know that you are now become one of the surest Staffs or Stays that our great Master relies upon in all this Kingdom And these Staffs Princes must lean upon being such Gods as die like Mon and such Masters as are neither omni-sufficient nor independent For St. Austin writing upon that place of the Psalm I have said unto the Lord Thou art my God my Goâ—ds are nothing unto thee observes that God only is the Master that needs no reference to his Servant All other Masters and Servants are proper Relatives and have a mutual Reciprocation and Dependence Eges tu Domino tuo ut det panem Eget te Dominus tuus ut adjuves labore As the Servant wants a Master to maintain him so the Master wants a Servant to assist him For the present supplying of this want in his Majesty I will say as the Historian did of the Election of Tiberius Non quaerendus quem eligeret sed eligendus qui emineret The King was not now to think of one whom he should choose but to choose one who was most eminent For as Claudian said of Ruffinus Taciti suffragia vulgi Vel jam contulerant quicquid mox addidit Aula You were stated in this Place by the Votes of the People before you understood the Pleasure
〈…〉 unsel being present keeping my Intention from my Chancellor himself from whom I never kept any of my weightiest Business Because if I had made him of my Counsel in that purpose he had been blamed for putting the same into my Head which had not been his Duty For it becometh no Subject to give his Prince Advice in such Matters In this Story it appears that the Father-King trod the way to his Son to undergo such an Audacious Journey in the pursuance of his Love Quid non effraeno captus amore Audeat Ovid. Then that he Persisted in his Principles of Secrecy for a generous End that he might not draw his Chief and Best Servants whom he loved most into a Snare of Guiltiness 127. Let Provision be made to the most that could be for the safety of all others yet Sir Ant. W. in his Court and Character of K. James hath one Exception That the King set this Wheel on Running to destroy Buckingham for the hatred which he had long bore him and would not think it ill to loose his Son so Buckingham might be lost also Pag. 149. O Horrid But the best is the Foundation is Rotten For Buckingham as all Men about the King would Testifie was in as high Favour at that time as any Subject was ever with his Sovereign But when Sir A. to make out the Proof he lays it upon Sir H. Yelverton displaced from the Office of Attorney General to the King and committed to the Tower 't was he that assured the Marquess that the King hated him more than any man Living pag. 159. Sir Harry was Unfortunate but too honest a Man to sow Discord between the King and his principal Peer and Attendant Now mark upon what Bottom the Contriver of this Tale doth wind his Forgery Sir W. Balfore at the time of his Lieutenancy of the Tower brought the Marquess at Midnight to Sir H. Yelverton's Chamber being then his close Prisoner Where Sir William heard those Passages and a great deal more between them And by one or other who came to the knowledge of it but this Sir Anthony O Wicked Servant to thy good Master O fowl Bird that defilest the Nest wherein thâ—u wert hatch'd and well fledg'd Thou art catch'd in thine own Lime for thou never couldst have Conserence with Sir W. Balfore or Sir H. Yelverton about such a matter For Learned Yelverton was never Prisoner to Valiant Balfore Sir Allen Apsley was Lieutenant all the time of that worthy man's restraint And Sir W. Balfore was not preferr'd to that Office of great Trust in more than four years after Sir Harry had obtain'd his Liberty when Knaves will turn Fools it is not amiss to be merry with them And I will fit Sir Anthony with a Jest out of Illustrius the Pythagorean p. 23. One Daphidas came to the Pythian Deity to beseech his Oracleship to tell him when he should find a Gelding of his that was gone astray You shall find him very shortly says Apollo's Minister I thank you for your good News says Daphidas but I have neither lost a Horse nor have a Horse to loose So I turn Sir Anthony over to the Committee of Oracles and proceed After the Princes Out Leap the King lingred at New-market till the time was nigh that every day Tidings were expected of his safe Arrival in Spain that he might shew himself to the Lords at White-hall with better Confidence which he did March 30. being the first day that the Lord Keeper spake with the King about his dear Sons Planetary Absence No sooner had he made most humble sign of his Majesties Welcome by Kissing his Hand but the King Laugh'd out this Question to him Whether he thought this Knight-Errant Pilgrimage would be lucky to win the Spanish Lady and to convey her shortly into England Sir says the Lord Keeper If my Lord Marquess will give Honour to Conde Duke Olivares and Remember he is the Favourite of Spain Or if Olivares will shew Honourable Civility to my Lord Marquess Remembring he is a Favourite of England the Woing may be Prosperous But if my Lord Marquess should forget where he is and not stoop to Olivares or if Olivares forgetting what Guest he hath Received with the Prince bear himself haughtily and like a Castilian Grandee to my Lord Marquess the Provocation may be Dangerous to Cross your Majesties good Intentions And I pray God that either one or both of them do not run into that Errour The King drew a Smile at the Answer but bit his Lip at the presage Discourse being Enlarg'd between them the King perceiv'd that his Counsellor had other Fears and that his Brain teemed with Jealousies of very hard Encounters which he knock'd upon softly that his Majesty might discern them and not seem to apprehend them Only thus far the King proceeded to ask him If he had wrote to his Son and to the Lord Marquess clearly and upon what Guard they should stand Yes Sir says he for that purpose I have dispatch'd some Packets Then continue says the King to help me and themin those difficulties with your best Powers and Abilities and serve me faithfully in this motion which like the highest Orbe carries all my Raccolta's my Counsels at the present and my prospects upon the Future with it and I will never part with you The Cause which made His Majesty so solicitous made the Lord Keeper need no Provocation to diligence He was before hand And upon the 25 of February by a Currier that was at Madrid almost as soon as the Prince he wrote two Letters following to his Highness and to the Lord Marquess A Letter to the Prince May it please your Highness 128 ALthough Prayer is all the Service That at this time either I the most obliged or any other the wisest of your Servants can perform unto you yet I Humbly beseech your Higness to pardon true Affections that cannot stay there but will be expressing of it self though peradventure neither wisely nor discreetly The Comick Writer held these two scarce competent Amare sapere And to exclude all shew of discretion I presume to write this First Letter of mine to your Highness without so much as excribing or taking a Copy of the same this opportunity admitting no leisure at all to do the one or the other Your Journey is generally reputed the depth of your danger which in my Fears and Representations your Arrival should be You are in a strange State for ought we know uninvited business being scarce prepared subject to be staid upon many and contrary pretenses made a Plot for all the Wisdom of Spain and Rome for all the contemplations of that State and that Religion to work upon And peradventure the detaining of Your Highness his Person may serve their turn as amply as their Marriage at least wise for this time and the Exploits of the ensuing Summer I write not this to fright you who have Testified to all the
World your incapability of that Passion But to give Your Highness to understand that I hope if you discover any â—ndment to detein your Princely Person under any fair Colour or Pretence whatsoever You will endeavour by all means possible to make your departure as secret as your Arrival was I pray God this may prove but my Folly and Jealousie And I thank God heartily that you have in Your Company the Earl of Bristow who for Advice and Counsel upon the Place is in my poor Opinion inferior to none in His Majesties Dominions Here is no Course omitted to still the Noise and to take away the Affrightments caused by your sudden departure I am a little afraid that the person of the Earl of Carâ— whom His Majesty hath posted after you will not prove so acceptable in the Spanish Court which I wish might have no Provocation at all while your person is there If it prove so he is a most willing Lord to please Your Highness and you may 〈◊〉 so of â—im the sooner back again I have endeavour'd to smooth and sweeten all things at home in the best accommodation that lay in me I have stayed a Collection which went on for the Grisons though I bear them good will least the King of Spain might take Offence thereat I have restored the Priests and Jesuits that were restrained in the New Prison to their former Liberty I have given special Order to the Judges for Sweetness and Doulcure to the English Catholicks I have twice Visited the the Spanish Ambassador and do now deny him no Suit he makes And all this with a Reflection upon that inestimable Pearl of curs which God hath now put into their Hands On the other side if things prosper according to your Highness's desire you will not fail to write to some person that will Publish it that nothing hath been represented to you there adverse or contrary to your Profession and Religion And that you were much Offended when you heard of those Surmises of this people that you took this Journey out of an Yielding and Recklesness in the Constancy and Sincerity of the same This Course will quiet the sond Jealousies at home Your Highness will now give me leave to Remember mine own Calling and to call upon you to do that which you have never failed to do to call upon God Morning and Evening for his Gracious Assistance and continual Protection to whose preventing accompanying and pursuing Grace I do most humbly and Devoutly now upon my bended Knees recommend your Highness Dominus Custodiat introitum tuum exitum tuum ex Lòc nunc usque in seculum Ps 121.8 A Letter to the L. Buckingham My most Noble Lord 129 ALthough the Service I can now only perform to your Lordship is praying and not writing yet my Affection will not suffer me to conceal my Folly in this kind I have no time to recollect my Thoughts this Gentleman who steals away after you is in such haste I have utter'd most of my Dreams unto his Highness who I know will impart them to your Lordship unless they shall prove so wide as out of respect to my Credit he shall be pleas'd to burn them If things prove so ill which God forbid as that his Princely Person should under Colour of Friendship larger Treaty or any Device be then detained longer then his liking be you my sweet Lord drawn by no Means Counsel or Importunity to leave his Person and to return without him If you should do so as I know you will not beside the disgrace thereof it would prove your certain Ruin If things prove well you need no Counsel your Adventure will be Applauded and great Note cast upon your Wisdom and Resolution But if the Health Entertainment and the principal business of His Highness nay if any one of the Three should miscarry You cannot in your Wisdom and great Experience in this Court but certainly knew that the blame will be laid upon you And therefore for Gods sake prepare your self accordingly by Mature Deliberation to Encounter it My Lord for fear others will not I will tell you the Truth If I Offend you with my Trusty Care I am sure your good Nature will blow it over before we meet again But in sooth all the Court and the Rabble of people lay this Voyage upon your Lordship The King would seem sometimes as I hear to take it to himself and we have Advis'd him so to do by Proclamation yet he sticks at it and many times casts it upon you both Thus Sir J. Epsley told me within this hour whom I sent to the Court of purpose to learn it Nay Faces are more sowred and Rumors of Dangers more Encreased because you have defeated some great Lords who expected to be imployed for the Conduct of the Infant a hither And though things speed never so well this Quarrel will remain But I would that might prove the greatest Danger If Your Lordship will Command me what to do in Your Absence I hope you believe you have a faithful Servant and wise enough to follow Directions I will be as Vigilant in your Affairs as my distance from the Court will give me Leave Your Lady is well but unapproachable and invisible Your little Daughter is very Pleasant and as it seems bids us hope the best in her Infantile Presagements My Lady Your Mother is well and chides me that I could not Divine and Prophesie of your Journey I will make bold to remember me to your Host as we conceive it the Earl of Bristow and his good Lady my loving Country-woman My Noble Lord my Humble Suit unto you and my best Advice is that as all the Lords in England sought your Lordship with all Observance in this Court so you will seek and gain the great Lords of Spain with as much Observance in the Court of Spain I ended His Highness Letter with a Text of Scripture and I have another for your Lordship Genes 24. ver 48 49. And I bowed my Head and Worshipped the Lord and Blessed the Lord God of my Master Abraham who hath led me in the Right-way to take my Masters Brothers Daughter to his Son And now if you will deal kindly and truly with my Master tell me that I may turn to the Right Hand or to the Left I Leave your Lordship in this Meditation and in Gods Gracious Protection for ever 130. These in the Levitical Phrase were but the Green Ears of the First Fruits The Sheaves of his Wisdom will follow after For more is to be look'd for how he proceeded then how he began All things went well and unanimously on the part of our English Counsellors in those Foreign Juntoes from hence and so forth at least to the beginning of May. Thus far 't was easie to please them all But there is one skill requir'd in a Calm at Sea another in a Tempest Though the Pilots good Will and Fidelity be constantly the
he desired Leave from his Father that he might assay to depart from Madrid as secretly as he came thither Quando optima Dido Nesciat tantos rumpi non speret amores Aeneid 4. The Lord Keeper indeed had emboldned the Prince in February before to that Course but the King thought the Motion was not so seasonable at that time For his Highness was attended in Spain with a great Houshold of Followers and God knows whither the Sheep would be scattered or into what Pin-sold they should be thrust if the shepherd were gone And his Majesty still dreamt of of winning the Game and profest he saw no such Difficulties but that Patience after a while would overcome Perversness Howsoever it would be inglorious for the Prince of Wales to run away from the Frown of the Spaniards But least the Safety of so dear a Person should seem to be slighted or his Welcome Home retarded the Lord Keeper besought the King upon his Knees that his Majesty would write his Fatherly and Affectionate Letters to require his Son's Return giving them no Date but leaving that to be inserted when Business was crown'd with Opportunity This Counsel hit the Pin right and was followed and by God's Will who hath the Hearts of Kings and Princes in his Hand it pleased on this side and beyound the Seas 147. Great was the Expectation what the Month of July would bring forth as well in England as in Spain My Lord Duke had thrust himself into the greatest Employment that was in Europe when at first he had no Ground now no Mind to accomplish it A sorry Apprehension taken from Mr. Endi Porter carried him forth in all hast to make up the Match but there were others who desired his Grace to gratifie them with Concealment for their Good-will that sent Instructions into Spain to adjure him to do his utmost to prevent the Espousals Their Reasons were the two principal Places of Divine and Humane Wisdom God's Glory and his own Safety For God's Sake to keep our Orthodox Religion from the Admixture of that Superstition which threatned against the Soundness of it And no Corrosive so good to eat out the Corruption of Romish Rottenness creeping on as to give the Spaniard the Dodg and to leave the Daughter of Spain behind To his own Safety this Counsel was contributed These who made it their Study and were appointed to it to maintain the Grandeur of his Lordship met frequently at Wallingford-house to promote the Work Who had observed that some Impressions were gotten into the King's Mind and they knew by whom that his Majesty was resolved to be a Lover of Parliaments that he would close very graciously with the next that was called nor was there Likelihood that any private Man's Incolumity though it were his Grace himself should cause an unkind Breach between him and his People Therefore the Cabinet-men at Wallingford-House set upon it to consider what Exploit this Lord should commence to be the Darling of the Commons and as it were to re-publicate his Lordship and to be precious to those who had the Vogue to be the chief Lovers of their Country Between the Flint and the Steel this Spark was struck out that all other Attempts would be in vain unless the Treaty for the great Marriage were quasht and that the Breach of it should fall notoriously upon the Lord Buckingham's Industry For it was not to the Tast of the English if you will number them and not weigh them fearing some Incommodation to the Protestant Religion These Jonadabs 2 Sam. 13.3 the Subtle Friends of beauteous Absalom drew the Duke out of the King's High-way into the By-path of Popularity The Spaniards also stir'd up his Fire to struggle and appear against them For as the Earl of Bristol writes Cab. P. 20. He was very little beholding to them for their good Opinion Withal he was so head-strong that all the Ministers of our King that were joyned with him could not hold him in He had too much Superiority to think them his Fellow Servants that were so indeed And having nothing in his Tast but the Pickle of those new Counsels which his Governing Friends in England insus'd into him he pluckt down in a few Weeks which the other Part had been raising up in eight Years Centum doctúm hominum concilia sola devincit Dea Fortuna Plaut Pseud Act. 2. This unfortunate Accident did both contravene and over-match the Counsels of a hundred wise Men. A fatal thing it hath been always to Monarchs to be most deceived where they have trusted most Nay If they had all the Eyes of Argos their chiefest Confidents are able to abuse them on the blind Side Therefore the Observator is most injurious that puts a low Esteem upon King James's Wisdom P. 14. That he was over-witted and made use of to other Mens ends by almost all that undertook him So he may put the Fool upon Solomon who was cousen'd in Jeroboam whom he made Ruler over all the Charge of the House of Joseph 1 King 11.28 A Solomon may be mistaken in a Jeroboam and like his seeming Faithfulness and Sufficiency to the Undoing of his Posterity Little did the old King expect that the Man of his Right-hand whom he had made so strong for his own Service upon all Occasions would forget the Trust of his Gracious Master and listen to the Voice of Hirelings Which of the Members of my Partition will make the Duke excusable in point of Honour and Conscience Did he do it for the best to the King Did he think the Spanish Alliance would be fruitful in nothing but Miseries and that it would be a thankful Office to lurch the King in his Expectation of it Evil befall such double Diligence Perhaps it may be shifted off with the Name of a good Intent when it tampers with a Branch or Circumstance of an Injoyment but when it raiseth up the very Body of Instructions 't is no more competent with Obedience than Light with Darkness The Heathen would not brook it that had a grain of Philosophy in their Disposition that a Minister should alter the Mandates of his Superior upon Supposes to the better Ne benè consulta Religione mandati soluta corrumperentur Gell. lib. 1. c. 13. They thought that those Services which wanted the Religion of Obedience let their Aim be never so honest would prove improsperous Or did this great Lord do it for the best to himself I believe it If the Hope of the Match died away he lookt to get the Love of the most in England but if it were made up he lookt for many Enemies for he had lost the Love of the best in Spain Sir Wal. Aston foresaw wisely that there was no fear but that the Princely Lovers might joyn Hands in Sacred Wedlock if that Fear of the Duke could be removed So he writes Cab. P. 32. Would your Grace would commit it to my Charge to inform the
for Legal Notions When the Lord Keeper had done with the Living he began with the Dead and scrupled how their Dead should be Interr'd so as to give no offence nor be obnoxious to be offended The Resolution was brought to him that sent it That their Burials should be in their private Houses as secret as might be and without any sign of Manifestation but Notice to be given to the Parish-Clerk of their departure 164. Never was Man so entangled in an Els-lock all this while that could not be unravell'd as Marquiss Inoiosa till he publish'd his Choler in all sorts of Impatiency The Reader may take in so small a matter by the way that the Writer of these Passages said to the Lord Keeper That the Marquiss was the most surly unpleasing Man that ever came to his House His Lordship answer'd They were his Manners by Nature But he had been so vain to profess That he came an Enemy to us into England and for this Dowty Cause His Father was a Page to King Philip the Second while he lived here with Queen Mary and was discourteously used in our Court perhaps by the Pages Which was a Quarrel of Seventy Years old and bearing date before the Marquiss was born Which will cause a Passage of Dionysius the Tyrant of Sicily to be remembred who had robb'd and spoil'd some of the Islands under the Protection of Athens and when the Injury was expostulated he told them Their Countryman Ulysses had used the Sicilians worse 700 Years before as he believ'd it to be very true in Homer This Ambassador was a restless Man and held the Lord Keeper so close to turn and plow up the fallow of this Business that he would not give him the Jubilee of a Day to rest Yet the time do what he could had run at waste from the 20th of July to the end of August Then and no sooner the Frames of the Pardon and Dispensation were contriv'd and dispatch'd Yet the Mill would not go with this Water The Ambassadors call'd for more That two general Commands should be issued forth under the Great Seal the first to all the Judges and Justices of Peace the other to all Bishops Chancellors and Commissaries not to execute any Statute made against the Papists Hereupon the Spanish Faction was suspected that they had no hopes to bring some secret Drifts to pass but by raising a general hatred against our Government The Lord Keeper repulsed the Motion and wrote to the King being at Aldershot That whatsoever Instance the Ambassador makes to the contrary there was no reason why his Majesties Wisdom should give place to them He propounded That a private Warrant might be directed to himself to will him to write to the respective Magistrates fore-nam'd to acquaint them with the Graces which his Majesty had past for Recusants in that Exigence and to suspend their Proceeding till they heard further For as the Civilians say Cessant extraordinaria ubi ordinariis est locus Thus he contriv'd it that the King as much as might be should escape the Offence and let the Rumour light upon his private Letters For which he never put the King to stand between the People and his Errour nor besought him to excuse it to the next Parliament But as Mamertinus in Paneg. said of his own Consulship Non modò nullum popularium deprecatus sum sed ne te quidem Imperator quem orare praeclarum cui preces adhibere plenissimum dignitatis est Yet lest the Ambassador should complain of him to the Prince in Spain he writes to the Duke Cab. P. 8. Aug. 30. THat he had prevailed with the Lords to stop that vast and general Prohibition and gave in three Days Conference such Reasons to the two Ambassadors although it is no easie matter to satisfie the Capriciousness of the latter of them that they were both content it should rest till the Infanta had been six Months in England For to forbid Judges against their Oath and Justices of Peace sworn likewise not to execute the Law of the Land is a thing unprecedented in this Kingdom Durus sermo a harsh and bitter Pill to be digested upon a suddain and without some Preparation But to grant a Pardon even for a thing that is malum in se and a Dispensation with Poenal Statutes in the profit whereof the King only is interested is usual full of Precedents and Examples And yet this latter only serves to the Safety the former but to the Glory and Insolency of the Papists and the magnifying the service of the Ambassadors too dearly purchas'd with the endangering of a Tumult in three Kingdoms His Majesty useth to speak to his Judges and Justices of Peace by his Chancellor or Keeper as your Grace well knoweth And I can signifie his Majesties Pleasure unto them with less Noise and Danger which I mean to do hereafter if the Ambassador shall press it to that effect unless your Grace shall from his Highness or your own Judgment direct otherwise That whereas his Majesty being at this time to Mediate for Favour to many Protestants in Foreign Parts with the Princes of another Religion and to sweeten the Entertainment of the Princess into this Kingdom who is yet a Roman Catholick doth hold the Mitigation of the Rigour of those Laws made against Recusants to be a necessary Inducement to both those Purposes and hath therefore issued forth some Pardons of Grace and Favour to such Roman Catholicks of whose Fidelity to the State he rests assur'd That therefore you the Lord Bishops Judges and Justices each of those to be written to by themselves do take Notice of his Majesties Pardon and Dispensation with all such Poenal Laws and demean your selves accordingly This is the lively Character of him that wrote it Policy mixt with Innocency 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 says Nazianzen Cunning enough yet not divided from Conscience For Wit when it is not sheathed as it were in the fear of God will cut like a sharp Razor 165. All his Art would be requir'd to reconcile two things That the Ambassador should be put off no longer for so the King had now commanded by Dispatches from both the Secretaries And that he would finish nothing till he had heard either his Highness or the Duke's Opinion upon the Proceeding The general Pardon and the Dispensation were both sealed So he began But kept them by him and would not open the least Window to let either Dove or Raven fly abroad The King being return'd to Windsor signification was given that none of the Lords should come to him till he sent for them and was ready for Matters of moment No Superstructure could go on very fast when that Stone was laid From Windsor Sept. 5. Sir G. Calvert writes to him My very good Lord His Majesty being resolv'd to extend his Gracious Favour to the Roman Catholicks signifies his Pleasure That your Lordship should direct your Letter to the Bishops Judges
Madrid Novemb. 12. says Sir Wal. Aston whom I believe though others say later The tenth day after the Dispensation made known in the Church let the Betrothing be Solemnized and the tenth day after it the Marriage Then the Prince may take his own Time to return when he will but the Lady could not make ready for the Seas considering her Train that must attend her till March. The Prince did not like the Arithmetick of this Counting-Table More time than the first Week of September he was resolved not to spend in that Land The Coming of the Dispensation he would not await which might be failing thither upon the idle Lake in the Fary Queen â—oth slow and swift alike did serve their turn To stay and Consummate the Marriage in his own Person he knew was unfit in two Respects He must take a Blessing from one of their Bishops in the Face of their Church and submit to their Trinckets and Ceremonies which he had rather hear than see Then if the Infanta had Conceived they would keep her it is likely till she was delivered The Child must stay till it was strong to endure the Seas so it might come to pass to be bred up and Naturalized a Spaniard in Religion and Affection When the Clock would not go right with those Plummets the Junto cast the i me out ino another Figure that his Highness would out of Courtship wherein he excelled and out of great Love to his Mistress which he professed perfect the Desponsation in his own Person and trust no other with it the Marriage and the Lady should follow after that is upon the Certificate of their Embassador out of England that Conditions were performed there to which the King of Great Briâ— ain had engaged To this his Highness was short That he would linger no longer and play at Cards in King Philip's Palace till the Messenger with the Port-mantick came from Rome Neither would he depend upon Embassadors and their Reports when the Illustrious Damosel should begin her Journey towards England Embassadors might certifie what they pleased and inform no more than their great Master's Counsel inspired them At last his Highness took upon him to deside the Wrangling and cast out the sacred Anchor from the Stern to keep their Counsels from further Floating that he would be burdensom to the K. of Spain no longer the magnetick Vertue of his own Country drew him to it Yet to confirm that he lest his Heart behind with his Beauteous and high born Mistress he would Sign a Proxy and Assign it to K. Philip or his Brother Don Carlo or either of them which should remain in the Custody of the Earl of Bristol that the Espousals between him and the Infanta might be ratified within ten days after the dispensation unstopt the way unto them and he would leave it to the Princessa to shew her Cordial and Amorcuolous Affections how soon she would prepare to follow after him 168. Which stood for a Decree agreed and obey'd The King of Spain would have been glad if the Prince might be perswaded to stay longer in his Court But since after Six Months continuance there his Highness defir'd to breath again in his Native Air King Philip caused preparation to be made for it for freedom is the Noblest part of Hospitality and was dismiss'd with as much Honour and Magnificence as he was Receiv'd The Earl of Briâ—ol who certainly knew the day when he took his Leave writes to the Lord Keeper Cab. p. 21. That he would begin his Journey for England the 9th of Sept. others set it three days back and adds the day before I Conceive the contract will be which is false Printed it should be That the Day before he would Sign and Seal his Procuration for the Contract which Intelligence is Authentick being so Corrected Now looking upon those that were the Magnificoes of Spain when the Prince took his farewel of them and how dear they held him how they Voiced him beyond the Skies for the most express Image they had seen of Vertue and Generosity methinks his Highness should have behold it with his Eyes open and have inferred out of it that he could not be more happy then to marry with that Blood and to keep Friendship with that Nation He was most Gracious in the Eyes of all Great and under Great Never Prince parted with such Universal Love of all Cab. p. 16. and Bristol to the Lord Keeper p. 21. The Love which is here born generally to the Prince is such as cannot be believ'd by those that daily hear not what passeth from the King and his chief Ministers The most concern'd was the rare Infanta of whom says one out of the Spanish Reports Sander p 552. That she seem'd to deliver up her own Heart at parting in as high Expressions as that Language and her Learning could with her Honour set out Let not this Essay of her sweetness be forgotten that when the Prince told her His Heart would never be out of Anxiety till she had pass'd the intended Voyage and were safe on British Land She Answered with a modest Blush That if she were in danger upon the Ocean or discompos'd in Health with the rowling brackish Waves she would chear up herself and remember all the way to whom she was going For which she deserves to be Honour'd with Theogena the Wife of Agathocles for that saying Se nubendo ci non prosperae tantùm sed omnis fortunae iniisse Societatem Just lib. 20. When it came to the King her Brothers turn to Act his part of Royal Civility he carried the Prince with him to his most gorgeous and spacious Structure of the Escurial There he began That his Highness had done him favour beyond all compass of requital that he had Trusted the safe-guard of his Person with him and given him such an occasion in it to shew his Honour and Justice to part with him with as much Fidelity as his Highness desir'd or expected that there he was ready to perfect the Alliance so long in Treaty that he might call him Brother whom above all in the World he loved as a Friend The Prince Answered He had a better Heart to conceive then a Tongue to signifie how much he owed to his Majesty He hop'd the incomparable Infanta would thank him for the unparallel'd Courtesie shewn to him And because a drop of true meaning was better then a River of Words his Highness being encircled with the Noblest Witnesses of that Kingdom produced and Read his Proxy interpreted by the Earl of Bristol and committed to his Charge but first Attested to by the Hand of Secretary Cirica as a Notary of the greatest Place That this much pass'd it is certain Much more is Reported but it is contentious This Obligation intending to the Contract was thus dispatch'd in the Escurial of which let me say hereupon as Valerius of the Senate House of Rome lib. 6. Illam Curiam
All-Saints and the Fifth of November at White-Hall being wont to shew his Presence at those Solemnities Against Christmas he drew towards the City and no sooner Some better Offers were expected from Spain by that time or more certain Discoveries be found out of Carriage on both sides for hitherto all was received upon second hand Faith Therefore his Majesty was no sooner at White-Hall but he commissioned a Select Council to consider two things Whither the King of Spain had not been real to the last to satisfie the Desire of the Prince about the Marriage and whither in the Treaty for the Restitution of the Palatinate he had violated the League between the two Kingdoms as to deserve an open War to be proclaimed against him The Lord Keeper was one of the Junto but so far against his Mind that he wished before a Friend or two in private that a Fever in his Sick Bed might excuse him The Duke of Buckingham was mortally Anti-Spanish and his Anger was headed with Steel He assayed the Lord Keeper to hale him to his Judgment as an Eddy doth a small Boat and would have used him to the King to incline his Majesty to renounce Amity with that Nation but he found him as inflexible as a dried Bough He vowed to his Grace as he should have God to be his Protector that he would suffer all the Obliquy of the World before he would be drawn to the least Ingratitude against his Lordship Cab. P. 89. But when the King asked his Judgment he must be true and faithful Which was to say to do the Duke a Pleasure he cared not to deserve ill of himself but he would not deserve ill of the King which gave no Satisfaction Oh! How better is a poor Man's Liberty than the golden Servitude of a great Officer Must I lose my Patron unless I lose my Judgment Can there not be a true Heart where there is not Sameness of Opinion What a Structure is Advancement which hangs in the Air and consists upon no solid Foundation That great Lord desied the Keeper to his Face and in the hearing of many threatned to sink him because he could not board him And as Fulbertus said of Queen Constantia Cui satis creditur dum mala promittit Baron Annal. 12 28. com 12. If he promised an ill turn he would be sure to pay it if he could Once upon a time he could have done as much as that came to with half a Word to the King Now as his Lordship conceived his Strength lay among the Anakims and the self-will'd man plotted to sacrifice his old Friend to the Parliament the Intelligence came from the Venetian Embassador to appease the Dislike of Immunities which were none at all exercised towards the Roman Catholicks Yet there his Lordship faired and found it as hard to suppress him as to drown a Swan There is an Electuary which Physicians give to comfort the Heart called Pasta rogia the Lord Keeper was fed Lusty with this Royal Paste The King had wrought him so apt to his own Plight that the Power of a mighty Favorite could not wrest him from the Sanctuary of his Love Ye still his Danger was that the Duke thought out of Disdain more than Envy that he wore too many Copies of his Majesty's Favour He took nothing more Scornsully than what the King spake to the Earl of Carlisle in a Fit of Melancholly That if he had sent Williams into Spain with his Son he had kept Hearts-ease and Honour both which he lack'd at that time So it was thought to be next to an Affront that the first time the Lord Keeper came into the King's Presence after his Highness's Return into England which was a little before Christmas his Majesty looking intently upon him said thus to the Prince Charles There 's the Man that makes us keep a merry Christmas His Highness looking as if he understood not his Father Why 't is he says the King that laboured more dextrously than all my Servants beside to bring you safe hither to keep Christmas with me and I hope you are sensible of it Another Act of the King's Goodness drew a greater Frown upon him That in those Holy-days his Majesty of his own Accord no Solicitation preceding caused an Act of Council to be entred into the Book of that Honorable Table that an Arch-Bishoprick and he named York should be conserred upon him in the next Vacancy For which the Lord Keeper most humbly thanked his Majesty that he was pleased to think of him when his Majesty knew best that he thought not of himself Yet my Lord Duke resented it ill as if he climbed without his Hand to lift him up Arch-Bishop Mathew understanding how his Place was designed took occasion to be pleasant upon it It was a Felicity which Nature had given him to make old Age comfortable with a light Heart Non ille rigoris Ingratas laudes nec nubem srontis amabat Sil. lib. 8. But that much beloved Prelate sending his Proxy to the Lord Keeper against the following Parliament wrote to this Purpose That he was not a little troubled in former times to hear that the Bishop of London Doctor Mountain a decay'd Man and certainly near to the Grave should look to be his Successor For either himself must die before three years expired or that Bishop's Hopes would be all amort who must come suddenly to the See or not at all But it pleased and revived him that his Lordship was most likely to take his Place after him for he was young and healthful and might stay the Term of twenty Years and take his Turn time enough at the end of that Stage Then he shuts up his Letter As the Psalmist begins so I end Dixi Custodiam I love you Lordship well but I will keep you out of this Seat as long as I can 175. Now let the Collections of the last Antecedency be observed and there is not to be found in them why the Lord Keeper should forfeit a Dram in the Benevolence of his great Friend They are the Party-coloured Coat with which Jacob appareâ—â—ed him and which himself put not out to making But in the Select Council which met to resolve the two foregoing Questions he was active as any man If he come not off well in that let him be condemned To the first matter in proposal the Lords agreed that the Prince came Home with great and happy Renown because he had resisted so many and so strong Temptations to pervert him in Religion and that the Lord of Buckingham's Assistance was praise worthy in excess who held him steady and counter-work'd all Underminers They conceived that the Proceeding of the Spaniards to the most were generous in some things rather subtle than ingenuous as there is no Pomegranate but hath some rotten Kernels and that in all they were so tedious that it was able to provoke the Meekness of Moses though he had not a Drachm of
Keeper did not unforesee how far this Cord might be drawn And that those Discontents which were but Vapours in common talk might thicken into a Thunder-Clap in an ensuing Parliament Which though it assembled not in 14 Months after yet this Prometheus had learn'd his Lesson That Safety is easiest purchas'd by Prevention An Instrument that is strung may be us'd upon a little warning Having thus studied the Welfare of the Duke he spake to him to this effect My Lord YOur Mother is departed out of the Bosom of the Church of England into whose Confession of Faith she was Baptiz'd a strong Schism in any to go away from that Society of Christians among whom they cannot demonstrate but Salvation may be had I would we could bring her Home so soon that it might not be seen she had ever wandered For it is a favourable Judgment among Divines Hormisda in Epist ad Anastasium Imperatorem Propè ab Innocentiâ non recedit qui ad eam sine tarditate revertit He seems almost not to have faln from Innocency that returns into it without delay But my Care I cannot dissemble it is more for your self Your Integrity My Lord is wounded through your Mothers Apostasie Perhaps you hear not of it For I believe it is late before any Truth meets you that is offensive It is one of the greatest Miseries of Greatness which Pollio imputes to Gallienus Nemo ei vera nec in bonis nec in malis nuntiat But it is time to let your Lordship know That the Mouth of Clamour is opened that now the Recusants have a Potent Advocate to plead for their Immunity which will increase their Number When this is banded in the High and Popular Court by Tribunitial Orators what a Dust it will raise I have touch'd a Sore with my Finger I am furnish'd with an Emplaster to lay upon it which I presume will Lenifie Only measure not the Size of Good Counsel by the Last of Success My Lord Your Mother must be invited or provoked to hear Debates between Learned Men speaking to those Points of Controversie that have staggered her Let her Ladiship bring her Champions with her Entertain her with many of these Conferences Let them be solemn as can be devised the King himself being ever present at the Disputes and the Conslux of great Persons as thick as the Place will permit Let your Lordships Industry and Earnestness be Conspicuous to catch at every Twig of Advantage much more to give Applause to every solid Reason which may bring your Mother home to a sound Mind again If her Ladiship recover of her Unstableness by these Applications you have won a Soul very precious to you and will raise your self up into the Fame of a Sincere Protestant But if the Light within her be Darkness and that she frustrate all hopes of her Reparation the Notice of your Lordships Pious Endeavours will fill the Kingdom with a good Report and will smell to every good Nostril like a sweet Savour My Lord Courage I set my rest upon 't that this Counsel will not deceive because you will labour your Mothers Conversion not as a Stratagem of Counterfeacance but upon my Knowledge from the very Mind of your Heart The Conferences went presently to work His Majesty singularly versed in Polemical Theology was Superintendent The Champion in whose Sufficiency the Lady most affied was Fisher the Jesuit With whom Dr. Francis White then Dean of Carlile first encountred and gave him Foil after Foil as the Colloquy did let the World know most impartially publish'd But Female Weakness was not evinced by Manly Performance The Logick of the Serpent had strong force upon Eve and that Infirmity is descended upon her Daughters Another Meeting was prepared wherein the Lord Keeper entred the Lists with Fisher because he had advised to those Disputes he was willing to be Active as well as Consultative As the old Rule would have Precept and Example to go Hand in Hand Cum dixit quid faciendum sit probat faciendo He had observ'd when he was an Auditor at the former Conflict that if divers of the Jesuits Postulata were yielded to him datis non concessis that the Church of England repurging it self from the super-injected Errors of the Church of Rome would stand inculpable So he labour'd to evidence if unnecessary Strifes were discreetly waved what little was wanting to a Conclusive Unity Ut quae non licuit per omnia ex necessariis partibus allegentur as the Emperor Justin wrote to Pope Hormisda The King did greatly commend his Charitable and Pacificatory handling of Controversies which gentle usage though it put the Jesuit out of his ordinary trot yet he fell into a shuffling pace and carried away the Lady behind him The Lord Keeper exposed not his part in Print as Fulgentius says of Frier Paul That he writ nothing with Intention to publish it unless Necessity constrein'd him The third 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that contended with the Jesuit both for the Palm of Victory and to bring Eye-Salve to the dim-sighted Lady was Dr. Laud then Bishop of St. David's who galled Fisher with great Acuteness Which the false Loiolite traduced and made slight in his Reports Whereupon the Bishop for his just Vindication Corroborated all that he had delivered with very strong Enlargement paying his Adversary both with the Principal and Interest and divers Years after finish'd it with an Auctarium which hath rendred it a Master-Piece in Divinity But all this labour was spent in vain as to the Countess's part and she left to be numbred among those of whom Christ foretold that they loved Darkness more than Light Qui scis an prudens huc se dejecerit Atque Servari nelit Horat. Art Poet. Yet on my Lord her Sons part that which was desir'd was Atchieved He had appeared in the Field an Antagonist to her Revolt whom he Honour'd and Observ'd with the most of Filial Duty So she was less Valued ever after and sent from the Court for her Obstinacy But he was Blazed abroad for the Red-Cross-Knight that was Unàs Champion against Archimago Yet it was not Printed to be Read and Judg'd of till the Parliament Sate which was now call'd 179. And lest the precedents of the King's Writs should be lost as his Houses and Revenues are embezel'd here follows the Copy of the Summons directed to the Lord Keeper under the Signet James Rex TRusty and well beloved Counsellor we Greet you well Whereas we are Resolv'd to hold a Parliament at our Palace of Westminster the Twelfth day of February next ensuing These are to Will and require you forthwith upon the Receipt hereof to Issue forth Our Writs of Summons to all the Peers of our Kingdom And also all other usual Writs for the Electing of such Knights Citizens and Burgesses as are to serve therein And withal to issue out all usual Writs for the Summoning of the Clergy of both Provinces
Wherein the Lord Keeper interceded with the Duke to the incurring a mighty Anger as may be seen by the Letters of Decem. 24. and Jan. 4. Cab. p. 99. If Threatings had been mortal Shot he had Perisht for he never had such a Chiding before but he kept his Ground because he held the fairer side of the Quarrel Dr. Meriton the Dean of York was lately Dead and much Deplor'd For he was an Ornament to the Church My Lord Duke entreated by great ones named a Successor that had no Seasoning or Tast of Matter in him one Dr. Scot But a Doctor Inter Doctores Bullatos for he never stood in the Commencement to approve himself beside too many Faults to be ript up I have known a Scholar in Cambridge so bad a Rider that no Man for Love or Price would furnish him with a Horse I would have thought no Man would have furnisht such a Scholar as this with a Deanery chiefly of York It came about strangely Scot was a Prodigal Gamster and had lost upon the Ticket to a Noble Person far more then he was worth Which Debt his Creditor knew not how to recover but by Thrusting him aided with my Lord Dukes Power into this Rich Preferment The Casuists among all the Species of Simony never Dream'd of this which may be called Simonia Aleatoria when a Gamester is Installed into a goodly Dignity to make him capable to pay the Scores of that which he had lost with a bad Hand And yet the Man Died in the Kings-Bench and was not Solvent The Lord Keeper intending to put of Dr. Scot from this place besought for the remove of those most worthy Divines Dr. White or Dr. Hall or to Collate it upon Dr. Warner the most Charitable and very Prudent Bishop of Rochester But he was so terrified for giving this good Counsel that he writes now he knew his Graces Resolution he would alter his Opinion and would be careful in giving the least Cause of Jealousie in that kind again Yet it is a received Maxime Defuturos eos qui suaderent si suasisse sit periculum Curt. l. 3. Certainly with others this might work to his Esteem but nothing to his Prejudice And I dare confidently avouch what I knowingly speak that I may use the Words of my industrious Friend Mr. T. F. in his Church History That the Solicitation for Dr. Theodore Price about Two Months after was not the first motive of a Breach between the Keeper and the Duke the day-light clears that without dusky conjectures no nor any Process to more unkindness then was before which was indeed grown too high The Case is quickly Unfolded Dr. Price was Country Man Kinsman and great Acquaintance of the Lord Keepers By whose procurement he was sent a Commissioner into Ireland two years before with Mr. Justice Jones Sir T. Crew Sir James Perrot and others to rectifie Grievances in Church and Civil State that were complain'd In Executing which Commission he came of with Praise and with Encouragement from His Majesty that he should not fail of Recompence for his Well-doing Much about the time that the Prince return'd out of Spain the Bishoprick of Asaph soll void the County of Merioneth where Dr. Price was Born being in the Diocess The Lord Keeper attempted to get that Bishoprick for Dr. Price But the Prince since the time that by his Patent he was styled Prince of Wales had Claimed the Bishopricks of that Principality for his own Chaplains So Dr. Melburn and Dr. Carlton were preferr'd to St. Davids and Landaff And Asaph was now Conferr'd upon Dr. Hanmer his Highness's Chaplain that well deserv'd it A little before King James's Death Dr. Hampton Primate of Armach as stout a Prelate and as good a Governor as the See had ever enjoy'd Died in a good old Age. Whereupon the Keeper interposed for Dr. Price to Succeed him But the Eminent Learning of Dr. Usher for who could match him all in all in Europe carried it from his Rival Dr. Price was very Rational and a Divine among those of the first Note according to the small skill of my Perceivance And his Hearers did testifie as much that were present at his Latin Sermon and his Lectures pro gradu in Oxford But because he had never Preach'd so much as one Sermon before the King and had left to do his calling in the Pulpit for many years it would not be admitted that he should Ascend to the Primacy of Armach no nor so much as succeed Dr. Usher in the Bishoprick of Meth. To which Objection his Kinsman that stickled for his Preferment could give no good Answer and drew of with so much ease upon it that the Reverend Dr. Usher had no cause to Regret at the Lord Keeper for an Adversary Neither did Dr. Price ever shew him Love after that day and the Church of England then or sooner lost the Doctors Heart 214. It is certain that all Grants at the Court went with the Current of my Lord Dukes Favour None had Power to oppose it nor the King the Will For he Rul'd all his Majesties Designs I may not say his Affections Yet the L. Keeper declin'd him sometimes in the Dispatches of his Office upon great and just Cause Whereupon the King would say in his pleasant Manners That he was a stout Man that durst do more than himself For since his Highness's return out of Spain if any Offices were procur'd in State of Reversion or any Advouzons of Church Dignities he interpos'd and stopt the Patents as Injurious to the Prince to whose Donation they ought to belong in just time and preserv'd them for him that all such Rewards might come entire and undefloured to his Patronage Wherein his Highness maintain'd his Stiffness for that foresight did procure that his own Beneficence should be unprevented And he carried that Respect to the Dukes Honour nay to his Safety for notice was taken of it that he would not admit his Messages in the Hearing of Causes no not when his chief Servants attended openly in Court to Countenance those Messages to carry him a-wry and to oppress the Poorest and whose Faces he had never seen with the least wrong Judicii tenax suit neque aliis potiùs quà m sibi credidit as Capitolinus makes it a good Note of Maximus He would believe his own Judgment and his own Ears what they heard out of Depositions and not the Representation of his best Friends that came from partial Suggestions Such Demands as are too heavy to ascend let them fall down in pieces or they will break him at the last that gives them his Hand to lift them up In this only he would not stoop to his Grace but pleas'd himself that he did displease him And being threatned his best Mitigation was That perhaps it was not safe for him to deny so great a Lord yet it was safest for his Lordship to be Denied It was well return'd For no Arrand was so privily conveyed
extract advantage out of it But wherein lies the way You shall have better Heads then mine to help you if you please to be directed by me None can furnish you with the right Art of it but some of our sage Counsellors of our Common Laws I wish you therefore my Lord to proceed with the special knowledg of the Roman Catholicks that stir most in this Project Let them cull out some of the Learnedest Practisers together Let the King's Attorney General make one for my sake For the rest let your Clients pick out as they like An hundred Crowns among them that is a Fee of five pounds a Man will not be ill bestowed upon them Let them lay their Heads together And I will lose all I am worth if you do not thank me for having referred you to those who will fetch out by their Skill so much to be Granted that you will never be put to Contestation hereafter that you obtain'd much of the King and are never the nearer The Courtiers with whom alone you have had to do to this time have Complemented with your Lordship So could I do likewise give you Large concessions in Words and in Wax but in effect nothing Like Galley Pots Entitled with the Name of Cordials but have Cob-Webs in them and no more My Lord all that I have to say is no more but this will you be lead by me or will you wander still Sir says the Embassador Use me honestly I am a Stranger and while I am in England I will surrender up self to your Directions Nay I will possess our Virtuous and Illustrious Madam that you are a clear dealing Man and of good Faith and most worthy of her Trust when she comes into a strange Land And after a very civil Farewel at the present Mounsieur Villoclare made use of those Instructions For though he Climbed not so High as he looked yet he Climbed better for he stood sure where he could not fall 228. Which Papers came to the King with more satisfaction as he was pleas'd to say then he could have expected Not any Line of Wisdom or Learning could be lost to him who saw as far and as soon as any Man into the Intellectuals of another For as the Lord Bacon wrote his Majesty had a light of Nature which had such readiness to take Flame and blaze from the least occasion presented on the least spark of anothers knowledg deliver'd as was to be admir'd And this was the last present in that kind that the Lord Keeper sent to the King who finding some indisposition of Health retired for fresh Air and quietness to his Mannor of Theobalds VVhere Jacob gather'd up his Feet into the Bed and yielded up the Ghost Gen. 49.33 The Lord Keeper on March 22. being Tuesday receiv'd a Letter from the Court that it was feared his Majesties Sickness was dangerous to Death which Fear was the more confirm'd for he dispatching away in all haste met with Dr. Harvey in the Road who told him That the King us'd to have a Beneficial Evacuation of Nature a sweating in his left Arm as helpful to him as any Fontinel could be which of late had failed And that argued that the former Vigour of Nature was low and spent This Symptome of the Kings Weakness I never heard from any else Yet I believe it upon so learned a Doctors Observation And this might well cause a Tertian Ague and a Mortal when the Spring had Entred so far able to make a commotion in the Humours of the Body and not to expel them with accustom'd vaporation After the L. Keeper had presented himself before his Lord the King he moved him unto chearful Discourse but it would not be He continued til Midnight at his Bed-side and perceiv'd no Comfort but was out of all Comfort upon the consultation that the Physicians held together in the Morning Presently he besought the Prince that he might acquaint his Father with his Feeble Estate and like a faithful Chaplain mind him both of his Mortality and Immortality which was allowed and committed to him as the principal Instrument of that Holy and necessary Service So he went into the Chamber of the King again upon that Commission and Kneeling at his Palat told his Majesty He knew he should neither Displease him nor discourage him if he brought Isaiahs Message to Hezekiah to set his House in Order for he thought his Days to come would be but few in this World but the best remained for the next World I am satisfied says the Sick King and I pray you assist me to make me ready to go away hence to Christ whose Mercies I call for and I hope to find them After this the Keeper now of his Majesties Soul kept about him with as much Diligence as a Body of Flesh could endure He was ever at hand helpful not only in Sacred but in every kind of Duty never from that time put off his Cloaths to go to Bed till his Master had put off his Tabernacle which appear'd in his Looks on Sunday Night when he return'd to VVestminster employed himself Night and Day unless the Physicians did compose his Majesty to rest in Praying in Reading most of all in Discoursing about Repentance Faith Remission of Sins Resurrection and Eternal Life To which the King made Answer sometimes in Latin always with Patience and full of Heavenly Seasoning which Hallowed Works were performed between them on VVednesday as a Preparation to the Passover on Thursday the Fortifying of his Majesties Soul against the Terrors of Death with the lively Remembrance of Christ's Death and Passion in the Holy Communion At which the King made most humble Consession of his Sins craved Absolution rendred the Confession of his Faith before many Witnesses Profess'd he Died in the Bosom of the Church of England whose Doctrine he had defended with his Pen being perswaded it was according to the mind of Christ as he should shortly Answer it before him 229. All this while God did lend him such Strength to utter himself how well he Relish'd that Sacred Banquet of Christ's Body and Blood and how comfortably the Joy of the Holy Ghost did flow into his Soul as if he had been in a way of Recovery And his mournful Servants that saw and heard it rejoyced greatly that unto that time Sickness did not compress his Understanding nor slop his Speech nor Debilitate his Senses and submitted more willingly to God to have their Master taken from their Head because they believed the Lord was ready to receive him into Glory The next day his Soul began to Retreat more inward and so by degrees to take less and less Notice of external things His Custos Angelus as I may call him his Devoted Chaplain stirr'd very little out of the Chamber of Sorrow both to give an Far to every Word the King spake in that extream condition and to give it him again with the Use of some Divine
his Answers both because he limited them so warily in all his Concessions and because if he were left to himself he lov'd to keep his Word For he was observ'd in all his Reign that he seldom trod awry but by mistrusting his own Judgment and falling from it for their Perswasions that came short of him a great deal in Wit and Honesty It was an Error For a King should appear in that Magnitude that no Man should expect to deceive him or remove him from his Sentence If he be too passive he will be counted at the best but in the middle Rank of Men who should not be contented with mediocrity of Reputation For a Prince that is not valued for great and excellent will be contemn'd Yet blame not that which came not from Sin but from Softness And say of his Majesly as Eudaeus did of his Master Francis the first Vir ad omnia summa natus dignusque qui suâ—e naturae magis quà m hiantibus aliorum cupiditatibus indulgeret The forlorn Keeper felt the Heaviness of this Lightness who thought he had obtain'd much but excepting the four Advousons confirm'd to St. John's College he mist all that he sought for and expected After he had lest Salisbury which was the next day he could never receive a Farthing of his Pension nor bring it to an Audit to his dying day Was it not a Debt True But it must be forborn to be paid because he did not want it Must the Rich if they ask their own be sent empty away A Rule for none but the Conscience of a Leveller But I press it for him that he wanted it and more than it to do Works of Piety and Bravery to do Works of Splendor and Bounty which was all the Use that he knew to be made of Wealth As all is superfluous in a burning Candle but that which the Snuff sucks up to maintain the Light So the Life of every Man especially of a temperate Man is maintain'd with little What should he covet more than so much as will keep his Lamp in burning Nor was the King's Scepter after that day held out to becken to him to come towards his Majesty The Favour of a Prince is seldom found again when it is lost like Plautus his Captive Maid Semel fugiendi si data est occasiâ— nunquam post illam possis prendere if she take her to her Heels and be gone she will run away so far that she will never be taken The Attendants about a King are in the fault for this Who will grow Strangers and worse of a sudden to those that were lately in their Bosom if a King send them off with disgrace A cashiered Courtier is an Almanack of the last Year remembred by nothing but the great Eclipse Look for gentle Strains and Civilities among them from the Noâ—â—es to the Huishers but he that trusts to their Faith and Friendship may go seek That which this dismissed Lord did most pretend for was to be called again after some pause of time to the Council-board But he was utterly forgot and his grief must be the less because he was no Counsellor in the Management of those Contrivances which bred the Troubles as 't is thought wherein the Kingdom miscarried So he resolv'd not to offer his Presence where he should be checkt for appearing It is sagely noted by Symmachus Ep. p. 91. Qui excludi per improbos possimus abesse interim velut ex nostro arbitrio debemus Let it be my own act says he to refrain from the Imperial Palace and let not haughty and churlish Men have their Wills to exclude me But before five days were run out this relinquish'd Lord had intelligence how the Duke talk'd so minaciously and loudly that it made him throw all expectation of future Kindness over-board into the dead Sea of Despair Since this Disaster began he was never couragious and in good heart till then Now as Plato began he was never couragious and in good heart till then Now as Plato says of Socrates his Hemlock-Cup brought to him to drink it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 he did not sip it but carouse it off So much doth it profit a Man towards a settled Mind to let no false Comfort in when he is in the darkness of Misery Hermolaus Barbarus had many Troubles rushing in upon him after he was made Patriarch of Aquileia Whereupon he writes Politia Ep. p. 405. I am surrounded with Terrors and Opposition and I look for no better Times hereafter which is the best and only true Valour Non est fortis qui fortis est in spe qui perfert mala etiam si duratura viderit fortis est He that looks for better times his Hope is his Compensation but without Question it is too slack for Fortitude 30. The Sun is now Setting Upon the 25th of October Sir John Suckling brought the Warrant from the King to receive the Seal and the good News came together very welcome to the Resignant that Sir Thomas Coventry should have that Honour From whom the Kingdom look'd for much good and found it Between both those two Worthies in that Office I may state the Comparison as Quintilian hath done between Livy and Salust Pares eos magis fuisse quà m similes rather Equals than altogether like in the Management of the Place The Warrant under the Signet went thus Charles R. TRusty and Well-beloved Counsellor we greet you well You are to deliver upon the Receipt hereof our Great-Seal of England whereof you are our Keeper unto our Trusty and Well-beloved Counsellor Sir John Suckling Controuler of our Houshold the Bearer hereof And this shall be a sufficient Warrant unto you so to do Given under Our Signet at our Court at Salisbury the 23 d. of October in the first Year of our Reign Which was instantly obey'd And the Seal being put into a costly Cabinet in Sir John Suckling's Presence the Key of the Cabinet was inclosed in a Letter closed with the Episcopal Seal of Lincoln The Copy whereof remains in these Words Most gracious and most dread Sovereign HAving now no other Meditations left than how to serve God and your Majesty in the Quality of a poor Bishop I do humbly crave your Majesty's Favour in this last Paper which I shall present to your Majesty in this kind that I may president my self by two grave Bishops St. Ambrose and St. Chrysostom In the former I find myself dispos'd for this Civil as St. Ambrosewas for his natural Death Non ita vixi ut me vivere pudeat nee mori timeo quia bonum habemus Dominum That as I have not liv'd in my Place so altogether unworthily as to be asham'd to continue in the same so am I not now perturb'd in the quitting of the same because I know I have a good God and a gracious Sovereign For the other I present this my last and dying Request in the very last Words of St. Chrysostom
malevolent and vexatious Accidents Many of the one sort and the other were coincident in time yet it is no error to part them in the Relation because they are distinct in Condition His Vertues were ever in motion and so were his Crosses For the first he was not exalted in Mind because he knew they were the Gifts of God For the second he was not dejected for he knew they were the Tryals of God Joseph's party-colour'd Coat might portend many Changes in his Life but it was an Ornament and he woâ—e it with distinction from his Brethren because his Father lov'd him 32. I open the Door now to let the Bishop in to his Exchange He came to his Seat of Bugden at disadvantage in the Winter And Winter cannot be more miry in any Coast of England than it is round about it He found an House nothing to his content to entertain him 'T was large enough but rude waste untrimm'd and in much of the outward Dress like the grange of a Farmer From the time of his Predecessor Dr. Russel that was Lord Chancellor of England and sat there in the Days of Edward the Fourth and laid out much upon that place none that followed him no not Splendian Woolsey did give it any new Addition but rather suffered it to be overgrown with the Decays of an ill-favour'd Antiquity This Bishop did Wonders in a short time with the Will of a liberal Man and the Wit of a good Surveyor For in the space of one Year with many Hands and good Pay he turn'd a ruinous thing into a stately Mansion The out Houses by which all strangers past were the greatest Eye-sore these he pluck'd down to the Ground and re-edified with convenient Beauty as well for use as uniformity These were Stables Barns Granaries Houses for Doves Brewing and Dairies And the outward Courts which were next them he cast into fair Allies and Grass-plats Within Doors the Cloysters were the trimmest part of his Reparations the Windows of the Square beautified with Stories of colour'd Glass the Pavement laid smooth and new and the Walls on every side hung with Pieces of exquisite Workmen in Limning collected and provided long before The like and better was done for the Chappel in all these Circumstances and with as much cost as it was capable of For the over-sight from the beginning was that it was the only Room in the House that was too little He planted Woods the Trees in many places devised by him into Ranks and Proportions But Woods are the most needful Supplies for Posterity and the most neglected He fenced the Park and stored it with Deer He provided for good Husbandry and bought in the Leases of the Demeasnes for them that would stock the Grounds which improvidently and for hunger of Monies were let out to the very Gates And though Aristotle 4th Eth. say of a magnificent Man that he is not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 costly upon himself yet here was one of that Quality that laid out much for his own Delight and Satisfaction He loved stirring and walking which he used two hours or more every day in the open Air if the Weather serv'd Especially if he might go to and fro where good Scents and Works of well-form'd Shape were about him But that this was his innocent Recreation it would amount to an Error that he should bury so much Money in Gardens Arbors Orchards Pools for Water-fowls and for Fish of all variety with a Walk raised three Foot from the Ground of about a Mile in compass shaded and covered on each side with Trees and Pales He that reports this knows best that all the Nurseries about London for fair Flowers and choice Fruits were ransack'd to furnish him Alcinous if he had lived at Bugden could not have liv'd better And all this take it together might have stood to become five Ages after his Reparation But what is there that appears now or what remains of all this Cost and Beauty All is dissipated defaced pluck'd to pieces to pay it I mean for them that sing with grace in their hearts to the Lord Colos 3.16 First Well-tuned Musick was intermingled in the Liturgy of Prayers 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 says Basil Notions of Piety will sink further into the Mind through delightful warbling and a Lesson so pleasantly deliver'd lodgeth surer in the Memory Therefore the Agathyrsians in Plato's days put their Laws into Songs to prevent it in every Plebeian that he might not forget them Secondly It must be very profitable to sing some part of holy Service Quia cantans diutius super còdem moratur says Aquinas 2.2 Qu. 91. Art 2. the Understanding dwells the longer upon all that it pronounceth and knows that best which it rehearseth with leisure and distinction Nihil in transeursu oportet à Dris petere It is one of Numas's Laws in Plutarch and none of the worst of them not to run over Prayers in haste as a Bowl tumbles down a Hill but with pause and sober deliberation Thirdly all that love to have Church-work done with some of those holy Carols appeal to experience that they feel them now with a full Tide into their Heart sooner than plain reading Aristotle in his 19 Probl. gives the Cause why there is no Impression from Odours upon the Passions of the Mind and but little from Colours because the Objects of those Senses are conveyed into the Fancy without stirring or agitation but there is a great Consent between the Musick and the Spirits because so much Motion concurs with the Harmony how then shall the Affections be unstirr'd when God is praised by Asaph and the Quire Will not the Heart be more passionate when it applies it self to God in such tunable Solemnity than by that which is utter'd in the vulgar Mode of Elocution Fourthly David requires it of the Saints to make a chearful Noise to the God of Jacob. This is the use of Anthems to make us merry and joyful before the Lord. Can Flutes and Trumpets inspire a Resolution into the Breast of Souldiers Or why do they carry them to Battel Did Cornets and other Wind-instruments animate the robustious Greeks to stand out their Games with a Courage more than Manly 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Arist lib. 8. Polit. c. 5. It cannot be denied says that Philosopher but such Musick comforted them in their Conflicts as if it had been an Enthusiasm Turn it into a Church-way among good Christians and will it not have alike Operation there Will not a skilful Hymn made to God enliven and penetrate as far to a Heavenly end as other Minstrilsie had its effect in civil Applications But this Seraphical Devotion is shut out of doors and more than this O Lord thou seest it until he open the Way again who hath the Key of David 34. Some will not be brought to like this and some of later growth cannot easily be brought to understand it it being hard for them to miss
and known to Thousands Nam lux altissima fati-occultum nihil essesinit Claud. Paneg. 4. Honor. What Spight is this to be silent in that which was certainly so and to engrave with a Pen of Steel that which was ignominous uncertain nay a falsity which hath travelled hither out of the Mountains 200 Miles So Jos Scaliger revealed his Disdain against some Criticks in his Notes upon Manil. p. 175. Ubi reprehendendi sumus tunc nominis nostri frequens mentio alià s mirum silentium I need no Pardon that I could not hold in to leave this Admonition behind at the last Stage of his Episcopal Work his general Visitation which was applauded much by all except two sorts of men Some that had not done their Duty and were mulcted Quid tristes querimoniae si non supplicio culpa reciditur Horat. Od. 24. lib. 3. such could not escape Censure who suffer'd with moderation by one that appeared in his temperate Judicature rather to be above the Faults than above the Men. Two others and of the Ministry were sullen because they did not speed in their Presentments according to their mind the reason was the Complainants were found to be rugged and contentious not giving good Example of Yielding and Peace 62. Let me cast in a small handful of other things fit to be remark'd In adject is mensura non quaeritur The Bishop of Lincoln is a Visitor of some Colleges by their local Statutes in both Universities This Bishop visited Kings-College in Cambridge upon the Petition of the Fellows thereof anno 1628. when he shew'd himself to be a great Civilian and Canonist before those learned Hearers but the Cause went for the right worthy Provost Dr. Collins in whose Government the Bishop could perceive neither Carelesness nor Covetousness The most that appeared was That the Doctor had pelted some of the active Fellows with Slings of Wit At which the Visitor laugh'd heartily and past them by knowing that the Provost's Tongue could never be worm'd to spare his Jests who was the readiest alive to gird whom he would with innocent and facetious Urbanity The Provost of Orial-College in Oxford Dr. Tâ—lson with others of his Society visited the Bishop at his Palace of Bugdâ— with a Signification to the Bishop that they might eject one of the Members of their Foundation Mr. Tailour The Bishop saw there was small reason to raise such a Dust out of a few indiscreet words yet he satisfied Dr. Tolâ—on that Mr. Taâ—our should depart so it were with a farewel of Credit and he liked Mr. Tadour so well that he took him into his own House till he had provided the Living of Hempsted for him As 〈◊〉 said of his own Brother in Erasm Epist p. 417. Illius mores tales sunt ut omnibus possint congruere A benevolent Nature will agree with all men and please the Adversaries of both sides Those of young and tender years were much in his Care as appeared that he seldom travelled but Notice being given before he staid at some Town or Village to confirm such as were but even past children to lay his Hands on them and to bless them and did it ostener than the 60 Canon requires An ancient and an admirable Order when such were presented as were before made ready by being exactly catechized And for Childrens sakes he listen'd much what good Schoolmasters he had in his Diocess that bare the irksome and tedious Burden to rear up a good Seminary for Church and State such he valued and thought their Place was better than is usually given them in the World They are the tertia that make up a happy Corporation as Charles the Fifth thought who entring into any Imperial City or Burough was wont to ask the Recorder that did congraturate him Have you a good Magistrate Have you a good Pastor Have you a good Schoolmaster If he said Yes Then all must be well among you said the Emperor Our Bishop had the opportunity to consecrate Churches new re-edisied and Chappels erected which he perform'd with much Magnificence and Ceremony that the Houses of God his Houses of Prayer might be had in a venerable regard Nothing was more observ'd in that Performance than that at the hallowing of a Chappel belonging to the Mansion-place of Sir Gostwick in Bedfordshire the Knight's Son and Heir being born deaf and dumb and continuing in that defect no sooner did the Bishop alight and come into the House but the young Gentleman kneeled down and made signs to the Bishop that he craved his Blessing and had it with a passionate Embrace of Love A sweet Creature he was and is of rare Perspicacity of Nature rather of rare Illumination from God whose Behaviour Gestures and zealous Signs have procur'd and allow'd him admittance to Sermons to Prayers to the Lord's Supper and to the Marriage of a Lady of a great and prudent Family his Understanding speaking as much in all his motions as if his Tongue could articulately deliver his Mind Nor was any of the Prelacy of England more frequented than this Lord for two things First by such as made Suit unto him to compound their Differences that they might not come to the chargeable and irksome attendance of the Courts of Law Aversos solitus componere amicos Horat. Serm. 5. And so many Causes were referred to him and by no mean ones that he continued like a petty Chancellor to arbitrate Contentions Secondly Sundry did appeal to his Judgment for Resolution of Cases of Consciences and most in Matrimonial Scruples and of intricate Points of Faith as about Justisication and Predestination in which when he thought the doubting Person would not be contented with Discourse he gave them his Resolutions very long and laborious in Writing which gathered together and as I have seen them digested would have made an handsome Tractate but the worst Visitor that ever came to a Bishop's House seized on them and never restored them This was Kilvert a vexatious Prosecutor of many in the Court of Star-chamber for the King whose Lineaments are drawn out in the Ninth Book of Apul. Metam Omnia prorsus ut in quandam comorum latrinam in ejus animum vitia consluxerunt Every Beast hath some ill Property this Beastly Fellow had all He stands too near so good a Subject as is in hand for this is the lively Image of a renowned Bishop the Image but of one though the good Parts of many may be concentred in this one as the Agrigentine Painter made Juno by the Pattern of five well-favour'd Virgins All that I have drawn up of his Pastoral Behaviour was seen in the Day-light therefore as St. Paul said of the Corinthians whom he had commended so I may with Modesty apply it to my Subject If I have boasted any thing of him to you I am not ashamed 2 Cor. 7.14 Nor is this all of him in that Holy Charge not by a great deal but so much as is preserved in
into the bottom of the Sea and fetch up Sponges so The Righteous shall hold on his way and he that hath clean hands shall be stronger and stronger Job 17.9 68. Neither did it deject the Bishop to be made a Gazing-stock by Disparagements The King's Coronation and his second Parliament began together at Candlemas and he was warned by Letter to serve at neither A Coronation being usually accompanied with a General Pardon should have cast a Frown upon none Yet his Place was not granted him to do his Homage among the Spiritual Lords nor to assist the Archbishop at the Sacred Parts of that high Solemnity as Dean of Westminster It is arbitrary and at the King's Pleasure to range that Royal Ceremony as he likes best to follow former Presidents or wave them to intrust what Ministers he likes in the Management except some Tenure or old Charter give admittance to some persons without exception Otherwise in the very principal performance says venerable Saravia De Christ Obed. p. 139. Ab Episcopo traditur corona quod potest furi à proceribus But the Dean of the Collegiate Church of Westminster did attend as a specal Officer at the Coronation of K. James after the manner of Deacon to the Archbishop of Canterbury it was Dr. Andrews which could not be granted him by Prescription for there was no Dean nor any such Dignity in the Church at the Coronation of Q. Elizabeth But upon the new Foundation Anno 3. of that Queen the Dean was intrusted with the Custody of K. Edward's Crown and the other Regalia and Decorum was kept thereupon to give him a great Employment of Assistance on that day Yet the Regalia were kept in a strong place of that Church long before For I find in Baron anno 1060. par II. That Pope Nicholas the Second gave a Charter to that Abby Ut sit repositorium regalium insignium What a busie Fisher was this that would have an Oar or a Net rather in every Boat Could not the Kings of England without him appoint the fittest place for the Custody of the Ornaments of their Imperial Majesties He that was so kind to dispose who should keep the Crown did mean That the King should not wear it without his Leave and Courtesie And let it be his Fault to be impertinent and to meddle with the keeping of Royal Treasure that did not concern him What is their Crime that have carried them quite away both Crown and Scepter and Robes from their ancient Sacrary I would that had been all This was wont to be the Mark of him that opposeth and exalts himself above all that is called GOD Dixi Dii est is 2 Thess 2.4 But what 's the matter that I have almost lost my self in this Loss I was about to tell that Bishop Williams must not wait in the Honourable Place of the Dean at the Coronation but in a Complement he was sent to Name one of the Twelve Prebendaries to serve in his room This was devised to fret him and to catch a Wasp in a Water-trap Bishop Laud was a Prebendary at this time and the Substitute intended at Court to act in the Coronation If Lincoln should Name him he had been laugh'd at for preferring the man that thrust himself by And if he did not Name him and no other he had been check'd for inscribing one of a lesser Order in the Church before a Bishop to so great a Service But his Wit saved him from either Inconvenience He sent the Names of his Twelve Brethren to the King resigning it up to His Majesty to elect whom he pleased A Submission which Climacus would call Sepulchrum voluntatis a dead Obedience without a sensible Concurrence And he stirred no more either by Challenge or Petition to do that eminent Office of the Deanery in his own Person but says in his Letter to the King That he submitted to that Sequestration for so he calls it It is wise to sit down when a man can trouble no Body but himself if he moves Especially I affect the Lesson which Erasmus gives in an Epistle p. 222. Pulchrius est aliquando modestia quam cansâ superare It is handsomer sometimes to excel in Modesty than to win a Cause 69. Other Reasons sway'd this circumspect man to carry it with no such Indifferency that he was not called to the Parliament But to do Honour to the King and to save his own Right nay the common Right of Peers he took a middle way between Crouching and Contumacy He call'd it His Majesty's Gracious Pleasure and was in earnest that he esteem'd it so to spare his Presence at the Parliament but he expostulated to have a Writ of Summons denied to no Prisoners no nor condemned Peers in the late Reign of his blessed Father Cab. p. 118. that accordingly he might make a Proxy which he could not do the Writ not receiv'd And he struggled till he had it in his own way and entrusted it with the Lord Andrews Bishop of Winchester it being the last Parliament wherein that famous Servant of God sate and the last year of his Life But the Mr. W. Sanders tells us p. 143. of his Annals of King Charles That Lincoln at this time continued not a Peer but a Prelate in Parliament Res memoranda novis Annalibus atque recenti historiâ Juven Sat. 2. This is a pitiful matter for what Bishop of Lincoln could be a Prelate in those days and not a Peer Is it his meaning that he did not sit among the Peers Nor did he sit among the Prelates in Convocation but by Proxy he sate in both places as Peer and Prelate A Letter sent from him to the King and dated March 12. will clear this matter and greater things or else it had not been publish'd 'T is large and confident searing the Duke's Greatness no more than the Statuary Work of a vast Colossus But as Portius Latro says in Sallust Gravissimi sunt morsus irritatae necessitat is 'T is no marvel if Necessity break good Manners which will break through Stone Walls says the Proverb And much Provocations attends not much whom it displeaseth The Letter follows Most Mighty and Dread Soveraign IT becometh me of all the rest of your Subjects having been so infinitely obliged to Your Majesty to cast my self down at your Feet and oppose no Interpretation Your Majesty shall be pleased to make of any of my Actions whatsoever Howbeit before the receipt of my Lord Keeper's Letter that I had carried my absence from the Parliament with as much Humility and Respect to Your Majesty as ever Subject of England did towards his Soveraign The delivery of my Proxy to the first Bishop Your Majesty named I excused mannerly to Your Majesty but with a private Reason to my Lord Keeper not to be replied against The second Lord Bishop is directly uncapable of that part of my Proxy which concerneth the House of Convocation These two Lords now named
Parliament and had stood up to defend him where there was openly such defiance of Enmity between them he had been censur'd by all Judgment for double-mindedness or sawning And as Lanfrank charged one of his Predecessors Remigius Bishop of Lincoln Quod officio emerat Episcopatum So the World would have censur'd this Prelate that he kept his Place by Service Simony as Mr. Fuller calls it And with what Safety and Liberty he could appear let one Passage demonstrate The Duke demanded that the Attorney-General might plead for him in the House of Peers against the Charge transmitted by the Commons which was opposed because the Attorney was one of the King 's Learned Council and sworn to plead in Causes concerning the King and not against them And the King is supposed to be ever present in the noble Senate of the Lords It was rejoyn'd That His Majesty would dispense with the Attorney's Oath It came to be a Case of Conscience and was referr'd to the Bishop's Learning Some of them judged for the Duke that this was not an Assertory-Oath which admits no alteration but a Promissory-Oath from which Promise the King if he pleas'd might release his Learned Counsel Bishop Felton a devout man and one that feared God very learned and a most Apostolical Overseer of the Clergy whom he governed argued That some Promissory-Oaths indeed might be relaxed if great cause did occur yet not without great cause lest the Obligation of so sacred a thing as an Oath should be wantonly slighted And in this Oath which the Attorney had taken it was dangerous to absolve him from it lest bad Example should be given to dispense with any Subject that had sworn faithful Service to the Crown for which plain Honesty he was wounded with a sharp Rebuke And the reverend Author told me this with Tears Yet the Archb. Abbot said as much and went farther for whom Budaeus would stand up a great Scholar and a Statesman De Asse lib. 3. fol. 102. Neque turpe esse credo cos homines observare quibus apud Principem gratiâ slagrare contigit si non cosdem apud populum ordines infamiâ invidiâ slagrare videamus As who would say it is Duty to love a Favourite for the King's sake and it is Duty to desert him when he becomes a publick Scandal For no man will be happy to stick to him who is so unhappy to become a common Hatred All that Parliament was a long Discontent of eighteen weeks and brought forth nothing but a Tympany of swelling Faction and abrupt Dissolution whereby the King saved that great Lord who lost His Majesty in some expeditions Honour abroad and the love of his People at home This was another Fire-brand kindled after the former at Oxford to burn down the Royal House and the most piously composed Church of England For a wife Oratour says it is Isocr Orat. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 p. 243. The cause of an Evil must not be ascribed to things that concur just at the breaking out 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but to the forerunning Mischiefs which were soaking long to ripen the Distempers Well was it for Lincoln that he had no hand in this Fray for as the Voyagers to Greenland say When the Whale-fishing begins it is better to be on the Shore and look on E terrâ magnum alterius spectare laborem than to be employed in the Ships to strike them and hale them to Land 71. Say then that he neither did harm nor receive any by being shut out of this turbulent Parliament Yet his Advice had been worth the asking because of the Plunges that His Majesty was put to upon the Dissolution but he heard of no Call to such a purpose For no man looks on a Dyal in a cloudy day when the Sun shines not on it God's Mercy was in it for he sate safer at home than he could have done at the Council-Board at this time where much Wisdom was tryed to help the King's Necessities out of the Peoples Purses by a Commandatory Loan and with the least Scandal that might be for not to run into some Offence was unavoidable Pindar the Poet was call'd out of his House to speak with some Friend in the Street Castor and Pollux says the Tale-teller searce was his Foot over the Threshold when the Building sunk and all that were within perish'd Thus upon a time the least Shelter gave the most Safety as did the lesser Honour procure this man the more Peace But as Camillus in Livy thrust out of Rome and retired to Ardea prayed that they that had cashier'd him might have no need of him so this forlorn Statesman would have been satisfied to have his place at the Council-Table supplied by others if the King's Affairs had not wanted him at this instant when he suddenly slid down from his former value in the love of this People The Bishops most likely it came from them advised His Majesty first to fly to God and to bid a publick Fast first at Court then over all the Land about the fifth of July Bish Laud whose Sermon was printed preach'd before the King upon the 21st Verse of the 17th Chapter of St. Matthew This kind goeth not out but by Prayer and Fasting The Preface of the Book and the Exhortation publish'd to the observing that solemn Fast stirred up all good Christians to entreat God not to take Vengeance on the Murmurings of the People to keep their Spirits in Unity to divert the plague of immoderate Rain like to corrupt the Fruits of the Harvest and chiefly to preserve us from the Bloody Wars that Spain intended against us Intended says the Book for depredation of Merchants Ships was the worst they had done us Let the Reader gather this by the way That a publick Fast had not been indicted before by the Supreme Authority upon the Alarums of our Enemies Preparations In Eighty eight an Order came out call'd A Form of Prayer necessary for the present Time and State to be used on Wednesdays and Fridays that is certain Collects to be added to the Common Prayer Yet no Fast was bidden saving thus far That Preachers in their Sermons and Exhortations should move the People to Abstinence and Moderation in their Dyet to the end they might be more able to relieve the Poor c. The first Form to be used in Common Prayer with an Order of publick Fast for every Wednesday in the week for a time was set out by Queen Elizabeths special Command in Aug. 1563. when the Plague called The Plague of New-haven was rise in London In which Book is a passage to illustrate our Common-Prayer-Book for the first Rubrick prefixt to the Order for the Holy Communion That so many as intend to be Partakers of the Holy Communion should signifie their Names to the Curate over night or else in the morning either before the beginning of Common Prayer or immediately after That immediately after means that in
to worry him who had as much relation to the place as himself where these good Deeds were done But there is a Writer and not one year scapes him but that he publisheth somewhat to bespatter the Bishop of Lincoln's good Name Odimus accipitrem quia semper vivit in armis Ovid. Art Amand. he it is that would cover all the Monuments of his Bounty with one Blot if he could find Readers such as he wish't that would take all that he vents without examination Mr. Fuller in his Church History of Britain after he had given some unhandsome Scratches to this Bishop parts with him thus Envy it self could not deny but that whit hersoever he went he might be traced by the foot-steps of his Benefaction That he expended much in the repair of the Abby-Church of Westminster and that the Library was the effect of his Bounty This is truth and praise-worthy in the Historian and yet I say not the Bishop is beholding to him for it because it is truth That 's Politian's judgment in an Epistle to Baptista p. 197. Pro vâ—ris laudibus hoc est pro suis nemo cuiquam debet Quis enim pro suo debeat But what says one of the Swallows to it that built under the roof of the Abby Just like a Swallow carried all the filth he could pick up to his Nest But worse then a miry Swallow he resembles those obscene Birds that use to flutter about the Sepulchres of the Dead and insults extreamly over the Grave of the Deceased in his Animadversions upon the Church History p. 273. That Lincoln received so much out of the Rents of the Colledge in the time when he was Lord Keeper four years and more that the Surplusage of all that he paid out in several sums respectively amounted to more then he laid out upon the Church and Library 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 says Demost orat 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 about the end The very Enemies of the dead cease to hate them when they are dead But as Anabaptists and Quakers say they are above Ordinances so it seems the Conscience of some Divines is above moral Niceties As to the Calumny squeeze it and in round Russian Language you shall wring out a great lye First before the Dean was Lord Keeper or dreamt of that honour that is before the Chapter had committed the Rents to his management he had repaired the great Ruins of the south side of the Church abutting upon the stately Chappel of Henry the Seventh If the Animadverter knew this why did he not separate it from that which was expended in those four years wherein he lays his Challengeâ— If he did not know it for it was done ten years before he was hatcht into a Prebend then when blind men throw stones whose head is not like to be broken For that which was laid out by the Lord Keeper to strengthen and beautifie the north side of the Abby to the end that the right Pay-master may be known and the mouth of all Detraction stopt the Chapter shall testifie in their Act as followeth Whereas there hath lately been divulged as we have heard an unjust report that the Right Honourable and Right Reverend Father in God the Lord-Bishop of Lincoln our Dean should have repair'd and new-built our Church on the north side of the same and south side of the Chappels belonging to it out of the Diet and Bellies of the Prebendaries and Revenues of our said Church and not out of his own Revenues We therefore the Prebendaries of the same with one consent do affirm That we verily believe the same to be a false and injurious Report And for our selves we do testifie every man under his own Protestation that we are neither the Authors nor Abettors of any such injurious Report untruly uttered by any mean man with intention to reflect upon his Lordship And this we do voluntarily record and witness by our Chapter Act dated this present Chapter Decemb. 8. 1628. Theo. Price Sub-Deacon Christopher Sutton George Darrel Gabriel Grant Jo. King Rob. Newell John Hâ—lt Gr. Williams Whether will we believe eight men in their right minds or one in his rage To slight the Bishops erecting such a beautiful Pile the Library of St. John's Colledge and put that of Westminster with it he is as froward as a Child that hath worms in his Stomach and tells us that it possibly cost him more Wit than Money many Books being daily sent unto him Vis dicam tibi veriora veris Martial It was not only possible but very true For what Library no not the Bodleian the choicest of England but grew up and doth grow by contributory Oblations as Athenaeus says Lib. 8. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The Symbols or Portions that many Friends bring in to furnish a publick work have good influence into it but the Founder is the Lord of the Ascendant A great deal of the like the Author hath crowded into a few Leaves I do not accuse it for want of Salt it is a whole Hogshead of Brine Wisely and mildly Melanchthou was wont to say Answer not Slanders but let them vanish Et si quid adhuc in hujus saeculi levitate quasi innat at brevi interiturum est cum autorum nominibus Camer p. 79. The worthy Works of the Bishop's excessive cost at Westminster and in both Universities will stand when Pamphlets shall be consum'd with moths The liberal deviseth liberal things and by liberal things he shall stand Isai 32.8 A fair Walnut-tree the more it bears the more it is beaten as it complains in the Greek Epigram 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 But such as yield the fruits of good works in this world shall become Trees of Life hereafter as I have read it from some good Pen He is well that is the better for others but he shall be happy for whom others are the better 91. Method hath digested the troubles about the Deanry altogether which is the reason why this Paragraph recoils five years back that is to 1630 to make a transition into the next disturbance A Commission was directed this year to very honourable and knowing persons the Lord Privy Seal Earl of Arundel Vicount Wimbleton Lord Wentworth Sir Hugh Middleton Sir W. Slingsby Sir Hen. Spelman Ed. Ascough Th. Brett Th. Bridgman to question the oppression of exacted Fees in all Courts and Offices Civil and Ecclesiastical throughout all England A noble Examination and full of Justice if due and convenient Fees thereupon had been straitned and appointed which was frustrated two ways First by indigent and craving Courtiers who enquired after such as were suspected for Delinquency and of great Wealth with whom they compounded to get them Indempnity though not a Doit of a Fee were abated Secondly By vexatious Prosecutions of abundance that were Innocent before Sub-committees where Promoters got a great livelyhood to themselves to redeem them from chargeable Attendance which deserves such a Complaint as Budaeus
to be re-examin'd after Issue joyn'd in case they recover'd A particular Charge being laid before you when the House of Commons is a Party and the Charge of so high a nature as Treason I shall not advise this Honourable House to use any Chiquancery or Pettisoggery with this great Representation of the Kingdom but admit them forthwith to examine their own Members yet with this Caution To hew the Names two days before they be produced to the Sollicitor of the Defendant that he may have notice of the persons But the House press for Secrecy in the Examination Well they are safe enough while they are in the Lord's hands who have Urim and Thummim perfect Knowledge and perfect Integrity and therefore nothing can be suspected Are not they surer than other Officers In ordinary Commissions out of Star-Chamber my Lord Ellsmore would not allow that any Clerks should be used to prevent Futility and Evaporation saying That the best Commissioner in England was not too good to be the King's Clerk Secondly I am as'kt about the Examination of the Peers and the Assistants of this House upon Oath There is no question to be made about the Assistants they are no Peers of this Kingdom but whether Peers may be produced as Witnesses and testifie upon Oath A question not sit to be now handled and impossible to be resolved out of the Rolls of the Parliament because the Peers give their Testimony both in this Court and others either way And I am confident a Peers Averment against his Fellow Peer cannot be refused either way especially in case of Treason For a Peer judgeth his Peer worthy of Death upon his Honour and therefore may witness against him upon his Honour In this Court and almost in this Case in Alze Pierce her Case 1 Rich. 2. Num. 21. Lord Roger Beauchamp swears upon the Holy Evangelists The Lord of Lancaster King of Castile and Leon is examin'd but not sworn Nay both ways have been declar'd in this House to be all one Your Lordships declaring that you did not bound limit or terminate your Assertion with your Honour but mount it and relate it up unto God that gave you your Honour and yielded your selves perjur'd if you falsisied in swearing upon Honour which is just the very same as if you sware upon the Holy Evangelists To swear upon Honour and rest there were Idolatry But to swear upon Honour with a Report and Relation to God who bestowed it upon your Lordships as a special Favour and Grace is as Christian an Oath as any in the World For new Scruples in the manner as to touch the Book to look on the Book to hold up a Finger or Hand to Heaven are Ceremonies which the House of Commons little regards but leaves them to us And the Lord of Strafford is so wise that he will never question the Honour of his Peers And why should we trouble our selves about the circumstance but leave each Lord called to testisie to call God as a Witness to his Assertion in which of these two manners it shall please his Lordship Not the Book not the Honour but the Invocation of God to bear witness to the Assertion makes the Oath 144. I am put to it by your Lordships to speak in the third place about the examination of Privy Councillors Here needs no distinction between Peers and Assistants This is part of a Privy Councillor's Oath That he shall keep secret all matters committed and revealed to him or that shall be treated of in Council 2. If any Treaty touch his fellow-Councillor he shall not reveal it unto him till the King or Council shall require it I collect now that matters of Fact he may reveal without violation of his Oath and that he may be examin'd of matters revealed unto him that were treated of in Council if they were not treated of in Council when he was present That a Privy-Councillor for all his Oath may be examin'd concerning Words Advices or Opinions of another Privy-Councillor otherwise given than in Council That Bed-chamber and Gallery Discourse is nothing to the Council-Table Private Entertainers of the King when the Counsellors attend at the Door are not to pass for Counsellors Ear-wiggs and Whisperers are no Counsellors but detracters from Counsellors If they advise the Destruction of the King the State or the Laws of the Realm there is nothing in the Oath to protect such an Ear-worm but he may be appeached For matters which touch another fellow-Councillor or matters committed otherwise to him or which shall be treated of in Council these are not to be concealed from all forts of men but from private men only not from the King not from the Council both those are in the Oath nor from the Parliament That Privy-Councillots may be examin'd by Command of the Parliament for things treated in Council 2. for things revealed unto them secretly from the King in his Bed-chamber 3. and especially for ear-wigging and treating with the King in private after things already settled in Council The Case of Alze Pierce 1 Rich. II. num 41. clears all these Doubts And it is the Case also of a Deputy of Ireland William of Windsor Lord-Deputy misbehaved himself in Ireland the Council directs Sir Nicholas Dagworth to go thither and to enquire into his Actions Windsor makes means to Alze Pierce to keep off this man under pretence of Enmity betwixt them This Shunamite that lay in David's Bosom prevails with the King to stay Sir N. Dagworth the Council-Order notwithstanding The Lords in Parliament question her for this act as having drawn with it the Ruin of the State in Ireland She pleads not guilty Issue is joyned The Lords produce inter alios John Duke of Lancaster upon his Honor and Roger Beauchamp Lord Chamberlain upon the Evangelists Alze produceth of her part the Steward and Comptroller of the Houshold All these four were Privy-Counsellors they depose all of them nothing else but matters treated of in Council and opposed by Alze Pierce treating with the King out of Council So that if this Record be true this Case is cleared Privy-Councillors may not be forced by ordinary Courts of Justice to reveal things treated of in Council but may be produced upon Oath and Honour to reveal such Secrets by the King the Council or the Parliament especially in detestation of Statewhisperers and Ear-wiggs yea though they had taken no Oath at all Yet God forbid a Privy-Counsellor should witness against his Fellow for publickly venting the freedom of his Judgment at the Board who is bound to advise faithfully not wisely as I do here this day Should any man be accused for an Error of Judgment O God defend peradventure my Error hath set all the rest of the Council straight Errores antiquorum venerari oportet si illi non errassent minùs ipse providissem otherwise you would take away all Freedom of Debates nay almost of very Thoughts If I knew any man
would witness against me for my Council-Table Opinion I would say to him as Gallus did to Tyberius Caesar Good Sir speak you first for I may mistake and you may witness against me for it in the next Parliament Some did make Laws with Ropes about their Necks What Must men give their Counsel as it were with Ropes about their Necks Solomon says When thou comest to a rich man's table put a knife to thy Throat But what 's here When we give Judgment as we are able among the Lords of the Council must we put an Ax to our Necks Beware of such Traps pittying the case of human Weakness 145. The fourth Question is thus comprized Whether some Members of the House of Commons may be present at the Examination Judicially they cannot the Judicature is in your Lordships but whether organically and ministerially is the Scruple to be satisfied I will be brief in my Conceptions what is against the claim of the House of Commons and what is for them This is not for them That 50 Edw. 3. one Love was a Witness in Lord John Nevile's Case Love denied what he had confest before two Knights Members of the Lower House The House of Commons send them to the Lords to confront Love which they did and Love was thereupon committed Now their being here was only to confront not to assist the Lords either judicially or ministerially Many things make for them why they may be there ministerially at least First Originally both Houses were together and so the Commons heard all Examinations Considerent inter se Modus ten Pl. and sate so till Anno 6 Edw. 3. by Mr. Elsing's Collections which are not over-authentick Secondly After that time they have all the House of Commons been present when Witnesses were sworn here Anno 5 Hen. IV. Rot. 11. swears his Fealty before the Lords and Commons and two or three days after by the same Oath and before the same persons clears the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Duke of York from a Suspicion of Treason laid to their charge The Commons were by and heard all this The third Reason is Mr. Attorny-General if this Lord were arraigned of Treason as I pray God bless him from deserving it would be by and observe his Defence and such Witnesses as he should produce for himself and would no doubt bring Counter proofs Sur le Champ and upon the sudden against the same if he were able The House of Commons is in this case the King's Attorny who make and maintain the charge So far out of brief Notes for take them to be no other you have a strong Judgment pass'd upon four Questions Says Tully in his Brutus of Caesar's Eloquence Tabulam benè pictam collocat in bono lumine He draws his Picture well and hangs it out to be well seen So here 's a Piece well drawn and placed in the light of Perspicuity His next Argument is very long but of that use to the Reader that he shall not sind so much Learning in any Author on that Theme that I know a Scholar would not want it They that fostered deadly Enmities against E. Strafford laboured to remove the Bishops from the hearing of his Cause This Bishop and his Brethren minding to him all the Pity and Help they could shew him the Opposites began to vote them out of Doors and would not admit them in the Right of Peers in this Cause because it was upon Life and Blood Lincoln maintains that the Lords did them Injury and that Bishops in England may and ought to vote in causâ sanguinis That they were never inhibited by the Law of this Land never by the Peers of the Land before this time That their voluntary forbearance in some Centuries of the Ages before proceeded from their Fears of the Canons of the Court of Rome and by the special Leave of the King and both Houses who were graciously pleased to allow of their Protestations for their Indemnity as Church-men when the King and Parliament might have rejected their Protestations if they had pleas'd And much he insisted upon it that the opponent Lords grounded their Judgment upon the corrupt Canons of the Church of Rome Indeed I find in my own Papers that the Monks of Canterbury complain'd against Hubert their Archbishop to the Pope for sitting upon Tryals of Life and Blood They could not complain that he went against the Laws and Customs of England but their Appeal was to the Pope's Justice and it was more tolerable for Monks to rake in the Rubbish of the Roman Courts than for English Barons And say in sooth must not Divines of the Reformed Church meddle in Cause of Blood 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Amph. Would they be laugh'd at for this Hypocrisie or abhorr'd For who more forward to thrust into the Troops of the late War than the Ministers whom they countenanc'd Have I not seen them prance about the Streets in London with Pistols in their Holsters and Swords by their sides And so for Edg-hill and Newberry c. Could they rush into so many Fights and be clear from cause of Blood Nay the Pontisical part make but a Mockery of this Canon for anno 1633 a Book was printed in Paris sill'd with a Catalogue of Cardinals Bishops and Priests who had been brave Warriours most of them Leaders in the Field the Author a Sycophant aimed to please Cardinal Richlieu and a Fig for the Canons Reason Canons Parliamentary Privileges nay Religion are to corrupt men as they like them for their own ends Now hear how this Bishop did wage his Arguments for the affirmative 146. It is to be held for a good Cause against which nothing of moment can be alledg'd such is this concerning the Right of Bishops to vote in causâ sanguinis First It is not prohibitum quia malum not any way evil in it self no more than it is an evil thing in it self to do Justice Secondly It was in use from the Law of Nature when the eldest of the Family was King Priest and Prophet Thirdly It was in use under Moses's Law and so continued in the Priests and Levites down to Annas and Caiaphas and after Christ's death till the Temple was destroyed as appears by the scourging of the Apostles by the stoning of Stephen and commanding St. Paul to be smitten on the Mouth Fourthly It was in use in the persons of the Apostles themselves as in that Judgment given upon Ananias and Saphira in the delivery up to Satan as most of the ancient Fathers expound that Censure to be a corporal Vexation And generally in all the Word of God there is no one Text that literally inhibits Church-men more than Lay-men to use this kind of Judicature For that Precept to be no striker 1 Tim. 3.3 is no more to be appropriated to a Bishop distinct from the rest of Christian men than that which is added not to be given to Wine that is immoderately taken Proceed we
Bishops Dispensations only but Mandates also And those Bishops have been fined at the Kings Bench and elsewhere that absented themselves from Councils in Parliament without the King 's special leave and licence first obtained Thirdly When they are forbidden interesse to be present the meaning is not in the very Canons themselves that they should go out of the room but only that they should not be present to add Authority Help and Advice to any Sentence pronounced against a particular or individual Person in cause of Blood or mutilation If he be present auctorizando consilium opem vel operam dando then he contracts an irregularity and no otherwise saith our Linwood out of Innocentius And the Canon reacheth no further than to him that shall pronounce Sentence of Death or Mutilation upon a particular Person For Prelates that are of Counsel with the King in Parliament or otherwise being demanded the Law in such and such a Case without naming any individuum may answer generaliter loquendo That Treason is to be punisht with Death and a Counterseiter of the King's Coin Hostien lib. 2. eap de fals monet allowed by John Montague de Collatione Parliamentorum In Tracta Doctor Vol. 10. p. 121. Fourthly These Canons are not in force in England to bind the King's Subjects for several Reasons First Because they are against his Majesty's Prerogative as you may see it clearly in the Articles of Clarendon and the Writ of Summons and therefore abolished 25 H. 8. c. 8. It is his Majesty's Prerogative declar'd at Clarendon that all such Ecclesiastical Peers as hold of him by Barony should assist in the King's Judicatures until the very actual pronouncing of a Sentence of Blood And this holds from Henry the First down to the latter end of Queen Elizabeth who imployed Archbishop Whitgist as a Commissioner upon the Life of the Earl of Essex to keep him in Custody and to examine him after that Commotion in London And to say that this Canon is confirm'd by Common Law is a merry Tale there being nothing in the Common Law that tends that way Secondly It hath been voted in the House of Commons in this very Session of Parliament That no Canons since the Conquest either introduced from Rome by Legatine Power or made in our Synods had in any Age nor yet have at this present any power to bind the Subjects of this Realm unless they be confirmed by Act of Parliament Now these Canons which inhibit the Presence of Church-men in Cause that concerns Life and Member were never confirm'd by any but seem to be impeach't by divers and sundry Acts of Parliament Thirdly The whole House of Peers have this very Session despised and set aside this Canon Law which some of the young Lords cry up again in the same Session and in the very same Cause to take away the Votes of the Bishops in the Case of the Earl of Strafford For by the same Canon Law that forbids Clergy-men to Sentence they of that Coat are more strictly inhibited to give no Testimony in Causes of Blood Nee ettam potest esse test is vel tabellio in causâ Sanguinis Linw. part 2. sol 146. For no Man co-operates more in a Sentence of Death than the Witnesses upon whose Attestation the Sentence is chiefly past Lopez pract crim c. 98. distl 21. and yet have the Lords admitted as Witnesses produced by the House of Commons against the Earl of Strafford the Archbishops of Canterbury and Armagh with the Bishop of London which Lords command now all Bishops to withdraw in the agitation of the self same Case Bishops it seems may be Witnesses to kill ont-right but may not sit in the Discussion of the Cause to help in case of Innocency a distressed Nobleman Whereas the very Gothish Bishops who first invented this Exclusion of Prelates from such Judicatures allow them to Vote as long as there is any hope left of clearing the Party or gaining of Pardon 4. Conc. Tol. Can. 31. And by the beginning of that Canon observe the use in Spain in that Age Anno 633. as touching this Doctrine Saepe principes contra quoslibet majestatis obnoxios Sacerdotibus negotia sua committunt Binnius 4. Tom. Can. Edit ult p. 592. Lastly In the Case of Archbishop Abbot all the great Civilians and Judges of the Land as Dr. Steward Sir H. Martin the Lord Chief Justice Hobart and Judge Doderidge which two last were very well versed in the Canon Law delivered positively when my self at first opposed them That all Irregularities introduced by Canons upon Ecclesiastical Persons concerning matters of Blood were taken away by the Reformation of the Church of England and were repugnant to the Statute 25 II. 8. as restraining the King 's most just Prerogative to imploy his own Subjects in such Functions and Offices as his Predecessors had done and to allow them those Priviledges and Recreations as by the Laws and Customs of this Realm they had formerly enjoy'd notwithstanding the Decree de Clerico venatore or the Constitution nae Clerici Saeculare c. or any other in that kind 150. The only Objection which appears upon any Learning or Record against the Clergies Voting in this Kingdom in Causes of Blood are two or three Protestations entred by the Bishops among the Records of the upper House of Parliament and some few Passages in the Law-Books relating thereunto The Protestation the Lords now principally stand upon is that of William Courtney Archbishop of Canterbury 11 Rich. 2. inserted in the Book of Priviledges which Mr. Selden collected for the Lords of the upper House In the Margin whereof that passage out of R. Hovenden about which we spake before about Clergy-mens agitation of Judgments of Blood is unluckily inserted and for want of due consideration and some suspicion of partial carriage in the Bishops in the case of the Earl of Strafford hath been eagerly pressed upon the Bishops by some of the Lords in such an unusual and unaccustomed manner that if I my self offering to speak to this Objection had not voluntarily withdrawn the rest of the Bishops and I had been without hearing voted out of the House in the agitation of a Splinter of that Cause of the Earl of Strafford's which came not near any matter of Blood An act never done before in that honourable House and ready to be executed suddenly without the least consideration of the merit of the Cause The only words insisted upon in the Protestation of Courtney's are these Because in this present Parliament certain matters are agitated whereat it is not lawsul for us according to the Prescript of holy Canons to be present And by and by after they say These matters are such in the which Nec possumus nec debemus interesse This is the Protestation most stood upon That of Archbishop Arundel 21 Rich. 2. is not so full and ample as this of Courtney's For the Bishops going forth left their Proxies with the
in the Records of the Tower can be produced to exclude the Lords Spiritual from sitting and voting in Causes of Blood Sometimes by the great Favour of the King Lords and Commons not otherwise they were permitted to absent themselves never before now commanded by the Lay-Lords to forbear their Votes in any Cause that was agitated in Parliament So our Law Books say That the Prelates by the Canon-Law may make a Procurator in Parliament when a Peer is to be tryed Which is enough to shew their Right thereunto This is to be seen 10 Edw. IV. f. 6. placit 17. And That it is only the Canon-Law that inhibits them to vote in Sanguinary Causes Stamford Pleas of the Crown f. 59. And saith Stamford the Canon-Law is a distinct and separated notion and not grown in his Age to any such Usance or Custom as made it Common-Law or the Law of the Land 152. Coming now to an end it moves me little what some object That many worthy Fathers of this Church-reformed and Bishop Andrews among the rest did forbear to vote in Causes of Blood and voluntarily retired out of the House if such things came in question nor did offer to enter any Protestation I do not doubt but they had pious Affections in it though they did not fully ponder what they did I have heard that a main Reason was that of the Record and Statute of 11 Rich. II. That it is the honesty of that Calling not to intermeddle in matters of Blood Now the French word Honesty signifies Decency and Comeliness As though it were a butcherly and a loathsom matter to be a Judge or to do Right upon a Malefactor to Death or loss of Members But this is an imaginary Decency never known in Nature or Scripture as I said before but begotten by Tradition in the dark Foggs and Mists of Popery Such an Honesty of the Clergy it was to have a shaven Crown to depend on the Pope to plead Exemptions and to resuse to answer for Felonies in the King's Courts All these were esteemed in those days the Honesty of the Clergy And such an Honesty it was in the Prelates of England in the loose Reign of Rich. II to absent themselves when they listed from the Aslembly of the Estate contrary to the King's Command in the Writ of Summons and to the Duties of their places as Peers of Parliament Yet they had more insight into what they did than some of our Bishops for they never offer'd to retire themselves in those days before their Protestation was benignly received and suffer'd to be enter'd upon the Parliament-Roll by the King the Lords and the House of Commons I know those excellent men that are with God proposed other Scruples to themselves they doubted not of the Legality or Comeliness for an Ecclesiastical Peer of the Kingdom of England to vote in a Judgment of Blood they did it continually in passing all Appeals and Attainders in Parliament but it startled them because it is not the practice of Prelates in other parts of the Christian Church so to do and thought it better to avoid Scandal and the Talk of other Nations That there being in the High Court of Parliament and Star-chamber Judges enough beside them they might without any prejudice to their King and Country forbear voting in those Judicatures somewhat the rather because all our Bishops in England are Divines and Preachers of the Gospel and consequently to be employ'd in Mercy rather than in Judgment who never touch upon the sharpness of the Law unless it be to prepare mens Hearts to relish and receive the comfort of the Gospel Let the Piety then and the Good-meaning of those grave Fathers be praised but I say they forgot their Duty to the Writ of the King's Summons and the use and weight of their Place And now to close I protest without vaunting I cannot perceive how this can be answer'd which I have digested together And if so many Bishops cannot obtain their Right which is so clear on their side God send the Earl of Strafford better Justice who is but a single Peer 153. Blame not my Book that there is so much of this Argument I hope the Ignorant will not read it at all but let a knowing man read it again and when he hath better observ'd it he will think it short Some History-spoilers have detracted from our Bishop that though he pleaded much in Parliament to his own Peril in the behalf of E. Strafford yet he wrought upon the King to consent to give way to his beheading Says our Arch-Poet Spencer lib. 3. Can. 1. st 10. Great hazard were it and Adventure fond To lose long-gotten Honour with one evil Hand But he shall lose no Honour in this for first as Nazian Or. 27 rejects them that had raised an ill Report of him whom he praised 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 can you prove that they were sound in their mind that said so if any will believe it from such authors a good man hath lost his thanks Ego quod bené fec◠malè feci quia amor mutavit locum Plautus That which was well done is ill done because it is not lovingly requited Hear all and judge equally Both the Houses of Lords and Commons by most Voices found the Earl guilty of Treason they made the greater Quire but those few that absolved him sung better The King interceded by himself by the Prince his Son to save him craved it with Cap in Hand Being founder'd in his Power he could go no further the Subjects denied their Soveraign the Life of one Man so Strafford must be cast away Opimii calamitas turpitudo Po. Rom. non judicium fuit Cic. pro Plancio Whose Calamity is the shame of English Justice His Majesty for divers days could not find in his Heart to set his Hand to the Warrant for Execution for Conscience dresseth it self by its own light And I would he had been as constant to his own Judgment in other things that we might remember it to his Honour as Capitolinus testifies for Maximus Non aliis potiùs quà m sibi credidit The fate of it was that the Parliament would not grant Mercy to the Earl and would have Justice from the King according to their Sentence whether he would or no They threaten and were as good as their Word to sit idle and do nothing for publick Safety and Settlement the whole Realm being in distraction till the Stroke was struck All the Palace-Yard and Hall were daily full of Mutineers and Outcries His Majesty's Person was in danger the roguy Off-scum in the Streets of Westminster talk'd so loud that there was cause to dread it Though there is nothing more formidable than to fear any thing more than God yet the most eminent Lords of the Council perswaded His Majesty to make no longer resistance Placeat quodcunque necesse est Lucan lib. 4. Not he but Necessity should be guilty of it If he did
and Representation of the Clergy a third estate if we may speak either with Sir Edw. Coke or the ancient Acts of Parliament have been in possession hereof these Thousand years and upward The Princes of the Norman Race indeed for their own ends and to strengthen themselves with Men and Money erected the Bishopricks soon after the Conquest into Baronies and left them to sit in the House with their double Capacities about them the latter invented for the profit of the Prince not excluding the former remaining always from the beginning for the profit and concernment of the poor Clergy and the State Ecclesiastical which appears not only by the Saxon Laws set forth by Mr. Lambert and Sir H. Spelman but also by the Bishops Writs and Summons to Parliament in use to this very day We have many President upon the Rolls that in vacancy of Episcopal Sees the Guardian of the Spirituals though but a simple Priest hath been called to fit in this Honourable House by reason of the former Representation and such an Officer I was my self over that See whereof I am Bishop some 25 years ago and might then have been summoned by Writ to this Honourable House at that very time by reason of keeping the Spirituality of that Diocess which then as a simple Priest I did by vertue of the aforesaid Office represent And therefore most noble Lords look upon the Ark of God's Representative that at this time floats in great danger in this Deluge of Waters If there be any Cham or unclean Creature therein out with him and let every man bear his own Burden but save the Ark for God and Christ Jesus sake who hath built it in this Kingdom for saving of People And your Lordships are too wise to conceive that the Word and Sacraments the means of our Salvation will be ever effectually received from those Ministers whose Persons shall be so vilified and dejected as to be made no Parcels or Fragments of this Common-wealth No faith Gregory the last Trick the Devil had in this World was this that when he could not bring the Word and Sacraments into disgrace by Errors and Heretical Opintens he invented this Project and much applauded his Wit therein to cast Slight and Contempt upon the Preachers and Ministers And my noble Lords you are too wise to believe what the common people talk that we have a Vote in the election of Knights and Burgesses and consequently some Figure and Representation in the noble House of Commons They of the Ministry have no Vote in these Elections they have no Representation in that Honourable House and the contrary Assertions are so slight and groundless as I will not offer to give them any answer And therefore R. Hon. Lords have a special care of the Church of England your Mother in this point And as God hath made you the most noble of all the Peers of the Christian World so do not you give way that our Nobility shall be taught henceforth as the Romans were in the time of the first and second Punick Wars by their Slaves and Bond-men only and that the Church of God in this Island may come to be served by the most ignoble Ministers that have ever been seen in the Christian Church since the Passion of our Saviour And so much for the first thing which this Bill intends of sever from Persons in Holy Orders viz. Votes and Representations in Parliament The next thing to be severed from them by this Bill is of a meaner Mettal and Alloy sittings in Star-Chamber sittings at Council-Table sitting in the Commissions of Peace and other Commissions of Secular Affairs which are such Favours and Graces of Christian Princes as the Church may have a being and subsistence without them The Fartunes of our Greece do not depend upon these Spangles and the Soveraign Prince hath imparted and withdrawn these kind of Favours without the envy or regret of any wise Ecclesiaâ—ical Persons But my noble Lords this is the Case our King hath by the Statute restored unto him the Headship of the Church of England and by the Word of God he is Custos utriusque tabulae And will your Lordships allow this Ecclesiastical Head no Ecclesiastical Senses at all No Ecclesiastical Person to be consulted withal not in any circumstance of Time and Place If Cranmer had been thus dealt withal in the minority of our young King Josias King Edward the Sixth of pious memory what had become of the great Work of our Reformation in this flourishing Church of England But I know before whom I speak I do not mean to Dine your Lordships with Coleworts the harsh Consequents of this Point your Lordships do understand as well as I. The last Robe that some Persons in Holy Orders are to be stript of hath a kind of Mixture of Freehold and Favour of the proper Right and Graces of the King which are certain old Charters that some few Bishops and many Ancient and Cathedral Churches have purchased and procured from the ancient Kings before and since the Conquest to inable them to live quiet in their own Precincts and close as they call it under a Justice or two of their own Body without being abandoned upon every slight occasion to the Injuries and Vexations of Mechanical Tradesmen of which your Lordships best know those Country Incorporations do most consist Now whether these sew Charters have their Foundation by Favour or by Right I should conceive under your Lordships savour it is neither Favour nor Right to take them away without some just Crime objected and proved For if they be abused in any particular Mr. Attorney-General can find an ordinary Remedy to repair the same by a Writ of Ad quod damnum without troubling the two Houses of Parliament And this is all I shall speak to this Point 165. And now I am come to the fourth part of this Bill which is the manner of Inhibition heavy every way heavy in the Penalty heavier a great deal in the Incapacity For the weighing of the Penalty will you consider I beseech you the small Wyres that is poor Causes that are to induce the same and then the heavy Lead that hangs upon those Wyres It is thus If a natural Subject of England interessed in the Magna Charta and Petition of Right as well as any other yet being a Person in Holy Orders shall happen unfortunately to Vote in Parliament to obey his Prince by way of Counsel or by way of a Commissioner be required thereunto then he is presently to lose and forfeit for his first offence all his means and livelyhood for one year and for the second to forfeit his Freehold in that kind for ever and ever And I do not believe that your Lordships ever saw such an heavy weight of Censure hang upon such thin Wyres of Reason in an Act of Parliament made heretofore This peradventure may move others most but it does not me It is not the Penalty
Bridegroom from France In Anglià optimi cujusque animum ab Andini nuptiis esse aversum In the behalf of the Spanish Consulto did some of our Counsellors become odious as if they betray'd both Church and Kingdom so all that wished the Queen to the French Gallant Quasi ingrati in patriam principem sugillantur Camb. An. 1581. All as like as may be Mercury is as like Sosia as Sosia is like himself And the People are like themselves in all Ages who commonly suspect some Evil from their Governours when they will be wiser than they So that it is very rare to look to the Publick as it ought and to be in Possession of most Hearts but as Tul. Orat. pro Flacco said of a mutinous Concourse of the Trallians Patiamini me delicta vulgi à publicâ causà separare So I think not the worse of any Place if the Herd of the People break further than good Manners and Obedience They know not how to Rule nor is it fit they should know how they are Rul'd For they have Noses and smell not The Wisdom of a Kingdom is to be valued after it is calcinated from the Opinion of the multitude 149. Which presently is to be Tried For the Articles gain-said by a great Out-cry came to the Touch-Stone July 20. being Sunday and were presented before to His Majesty to Swear unto and to the Lords of the Council to subscribe their Approbation which were of two sorts Some belong'd to the Infanta and her Train of Houshold and no further Some belong'd to all the English that had taken the Mark of the Church of Rome in their Hand Of the former three and no more did seem to be Litigious First That the Princessa and her Servants should enjoy the Use of their own Religion without Trouble or Molestation and a Chappel to be built adjoyning to her Court for the more full and decent Exercise of it which held little dispute for the provident Councel of Q. Eliz. made no scruple to consent to the like in express Words Dux sui modo non sint Nativi Angliae Subjecti suam liberi Religionem exerceant in constituto aliquo loco in suis aedibus sine impedimento so the Foundation was laid of the Chappel adjoyning to St. James's place Secondly That the Princessa should be trusted with the Education of the Children lawfully begotten between them till they came to Ten Years of Age. A string that grated harshly yet heard by Wise-men with more Laughter then Fear For Childhood is not apt to take any perilous impression in intellectual Points and they would be often with the Father and those about him and unlearn corrupt Principles Chiefly it was foreseen that it was a Gratification that would die out of it self and expire in process of so long a time And in all Councils much must be ascrib'd to the Foresight of Prudence as Nepos says in the Life of Atticus Facile intelligi potest prudentiam esse quandam Divinationom Prudence sees so far before it that it comes not short of a kind of Divination Much more was allow'd to the Duke of Anjoy in the page Appealed to before Camb. anno 1558. p. 320. Si Dux supervixeru Roginae habebit tutelam liberorum si masculi non excesserint decimum Octavum Annum feminae decimum quintum I think those Counsellors ran too far into Temptation I am sure we were far more Cautelous and Restrictive Thirdly That the Clergy waiting upon the Princessa should be subject to no Laws or Statutes of England already made or that should be made hereafter Methinks no Honest man that lives in Humane Society should ask such an Immunity though it were possible to be Granted Yet their Clerks do not ask it but Arrogate it So Bellar. lib. 1. de Cler. c. 18. Clericks are not under the Laws of secular Princes by Obligation compulsory but directory That is they do well to conform to the Establish'd Laws of any Nation where they live for the maintenance of Peace and usual Commerce But if it seems better to them to avoid those Laws and not observe them they cannot be punish'd by no nor cited to the Courts of Secular Magistrates This Article K. James eraced out not only by his own but by St. Paul's Authority Rom. 13. Let every Soul be Subject to the Higher Powers to those Higher Powers that Receive Tribute and bear not the Sword in vain if any do Evil. Herein I commend the States of the Netherlands for that which I find in a Book call'd The Revolutions of the United Provinces p. 175. A Peace but few years since being brought to Conclusion between them and the King of Spain they agree that the Subjects of the King of Spain may Converse and Negotiate in all their Territories but with an express Prohibition of all Ecclesiastical Persons for the Plenipotentiary of the King of Spain maintain'd in a great Diet held at Munster that they were none of the K. of Spains Subjects or Subject to any Secular Power but only to the Pope of Rome A good work to thrust them out for Wranglers as our King thrust out this Article All Concessions that were thought Honourable and needful for the Infanta being pass'd over a contract steps forth in the behalf of all those in these Dominions that were of her Highness's Religion meaning so much and no more as was to be presently put in use It is almost not credible what strange Rumors ignorant Fear or perhaps malicious had buzz'd abroad That some of our fairest Churches Parochical nay Cathedral must be devoted to Assemblies of Papists for their Publick Use That Cloysters for Votaries Male and Female should be Erected c. Mensuraque Ficti Crescit audit is aliquid novus adjicit autor Ovid. The Demands were bad enough yet much under that presumption As they came from the Embassadors they were comprized under two Heads The First That a general Pardon should pass under the Great-Seal for the benefit of all Papists in this Land to acquit them from the Penalties of such Statutes as might take hold of them for the time past in case of Religion To which good words were given and after many Rubs and Reservations as shall be shewn the Seal was put to an Instrument for that purpose but kept in Lavender The other was the Gorgon's Head which Frighted the Lookers on that a Patent should be drawn up copiously with the same Seal to it to save the Recusants Ecclesiastical and Lay from the Penalties of all Statutes made against them for the time to come This is the Star call'd Wormwood that fell into the Waters of Debate Revel 8.11 Wherein the Spanish Agents were put off with many Delays and Wise Representations till in the End the Lord Keeper reduced it to this Issue That all Magistrates should be warned by Letters sent to them severally not to molest the Roman Catholicks upon any Statute till His Majesty
had signified his further pleasure and that when the Princessa had been Six Months in England this Favour should be confirmed to her further Content The like was not yielded in the business Agitated with the Duke of Anjoy but a strict Exception was put in Ut nulla Occasio Anglis ad leges constitut as violandas praeberetur It was an ill time for the Embassadors to ask such things when not only seditious Spirits but the best of Protestants who had nothing in them of the peevish and refractory were sick of an ill Digestion of Jealousies It was a hard seeming work to overcome for the Ravens Croak'd and the Doves mourned at it Yet it was a worse time to deny them when the Pledge of our Future Happiness stuck fast in a Foreign Kingdom and nothing could Conduct him home with such Celerity and Safety as some drops of Grace Distilling from the Prerogative Royal to stay the longing of the Pontifician Faction They are beguiled that think Marquess Inoihosa or 〈◊〉 Carlos de Colonna pluck'd us over our Line to get a Wife for the Prince it was to get him home Jam non de Gloriâ sed de Salate pugnandum est Curt. lib. 4. Let his Highness look to it in Spain to come home with a Glorious Bride but all Loyal Hearts look earnestly for him whether single or double was not the Chief Point And the Anxiety of his Majesty was What shall I do for my Son 1 Sam. 10.2 This was the Compass that guided the Lords of the Councel in their condescension to bring their young Master out of Peril though it were with the Ransom of too much Mercy to them who were not the best that deserv'd it But who it was that set the Edge of the Razor upon the Hoane who it was that surpass'd himself in this Negotiation that cut off difficulties smoothly leaving no Raggedness to be seen in the Clest of his distinctions will appear in the ensuing dispatch of the Lord Keepers to the Prince whose goodness will satisfie for the Prolixity May it please your Highness 150. IF I shall touch upon any Service which I may seem to have performed towards Your Higness I humbly beseech your Highness to conceive I do it not to pick Thanks and much less to put any acknowledgment upon your Highness but only to discharge my self of that part of Duty which all the World knoweth I do above all Men in the World owe unto your Highness Before I did imagine that his Majesty would take any Opinion of mine in the Signing and Swearing of this Treaty Sir Fr. Cottington your most worthy Servant had acquainted me with all the dispatch and permitted me to Read the Papers over Upon Saturday last the 12 of July the Council formerly warned to attend his Majesty the next day at Wansted were discharged and some hour after my self commanded to attend Suspecting thereupon I might be questioned to that Effect I sent for your Highness Secretary and heard from him it would be so indeed and that His Majesty was much troubled and perplex'd about his Oaths Presently Town-Reports were Raised of great Opposition among the Lords against this Swearing In so much as the shameless people had made two Orations the one to be of mine for the Oaths and the other of my Lord of Canterbury's against the same which they supposed prevailed with the King and the whole Councel when neither of us had heard or spoken one word in that Theme I spent in a manner all that Night in debating with my self the Streights that your Highness was unto and at the last fell upon this Resolution contained in this Letter which I deliver'd upon Sunday Morning in private to his Majesty with an excuse for my Boldness therein His Majesty accepted thereof very well and Read it over three or four times that day and seemed to me at that time to approve thereof in all Points and put off further Discourse till the Afternoon I was so far emboldned therewith that after Dinner because I found some whispring among the Lords present I stept again to His Majesty and deliver'd him an Opinion that for the Oath of the Lords his Majesty should not leave it to their Disputation but command them to take 〈◊〉 there being no matter of scruple or moment in the same as indeed there is not This his Majesty well approved of and put in practise afterward with good success The Council being met whereof some were there by Reason of their Attendance as my Lord Chamberlain Earl of Carlisle Lord Fenton and Mr. Treasurer others warned as the Duke Lord Treasurer Lord Marshal my self Sir R. Weston and the two Secretaries his Majesty made a Speech unto us full of perplexity because of your Highness's Streits and his own Remorse of Conscience Chiefly he insisted it would be frivolous to be put upon it to move the next Parliament to abrogate the Laws already Establish'd against Recusants which would not be Heard much less Granted and that in point of Conscience and Religion he could not promise that no Laws hereafter should be made against them This his Majesty having utter'd with much Passion and earnestness left us to hear all the Papers Read and having Commanded us very passionately to give him our best Advice retired into his Chamber and left us together for two hours After the End of the Reading many odd and extravagant Propositions were made of Advice to be given to his Majesty how to get your Person home again wherein I durst not say one word finding none of my Opinion unless it were Secretary Calvert nor my self to concur with any of theirs At the last pressed thereunto I said that I conceiv'd upon the Discourse of his Majesty we could not deliver any Advice or Opinion at all For if his Majesty made a Conscience of taking the Oaths and had already Framed unto himself this Conclusion the immoveable Rule in this Case is Quod dubitas ne feceris nor there was no more in Policy or Divinity to be said therein On the other side if His Majesty would otherwise declare himself that he was not moved in Conscience or Religion but only in Honour and Safety to Refuse those Oaths I did hope no Lord in this Company would Advise his Majesty to desert his only Son and to desert him in this manner in the Face of all Christiandom For to pretend an excuse to fetch him home to bâ—lpâ—his Majesty to facilitate these Affairs would never repair his Credit who had subscribed that which his Father would not make good nor was he himself any way able to accomplish Beside that I made it a Question Whether the King of Spain after all this wooing would so easily be deceived in Licensing him to depart At the last his Majesty Returning and calling upon us for our Advice all the Lords Assented to this last Opinion and told his Majesty they durst not Advise him any thing until he express'd himself