Patience was not overcome nor his nature changed by the Reproaches of his Accusers answers with so brave a Presence of Spirit such firm Reasons and so clear an Eloquence that he whom the mercenary Tongues of their Lawyers had rendred as a Monster of men could not be found guilty of Treason either in the particulars or the whole So that his Enemies were filled with madness that their Charge of Crimes appeared no other then a Libel of Slanders and the dis-interessed Hearers were besides the pleasure they received to find so great Endowments polluted with no hainous Crimes sensible of the unhappiness of those who are Ministers of State among a Factious people where their prosperous Counsels are not rewarded and unsuccessfull though prudent are severely accused when they erre every one condemns them and their wise Advices few praise for those that are benefitted envy and such as are disappointed hate those that gave them And such seemed the Fate of this Excellent Counsellour whom nothing else but his great Parts his Master's Love and Trust had exposed to this Danger The Faction being obstructed this way by the Earl's Innocency and Abilities from taking away his Life move the House to proceed by a Bill of Attainder to the making a Law after the Fact whereby they Vote him guilty of High Treason yet adde a Caution that it should not be drawn into a Precedent seeking to secure themselves from a return of that Injustice upon themselves which they acted on him intending to prosecute what they falsly charged him with the Alteration of Government Which yet passed not without a long debate and contention for many that had none but honest hopes disdained to administer to the Interest of the Faction in the blood of so much Innocent Gallantry and those that were prudent saw how such an Example opened the avenues to ruine of the best Persons when once exposed to publick hatred Therefore they earnestly disswaded such a proceed And fifty nine of the most eminent openly dissented when it came to the Vote whose Names were afterwards posted and marked for the fury of the Rabble that for the future they might not oppose the designs of the Factious unless they desired to be torn in pieces In two dayes the Lower House past the Bill so swift were the Demagogues to shed blood but the Lords House was a little more deliberative the King having amongst them declared His sense of the Earl's Innocency of whose slow Resolves the Faction being impatient there came a seditious rabble of about 5 or 6000 of the dreggs of the people armed with Staves and Cudgels and other Instruments of Outrage instigated by the more unquiet Members both of the House of Commons and the City to the Parliament doors clamouring Justice Justice and the next day to raise their Fury there was a report spred among them of some endeavours to prepare an Escape for the Lieutenant of Ireland therefore with more fierceness they raised their clamours some objecting Treason to him others their Decay of Trade and each one either as he was instructed for some of the House of Commons would be among them to direct their Fury and to give some order to their Tumult that it might appear more terrible or the sense of his own necessities and lusts led him urged his different motives for Justice and at last heated by their own motion and noise they guard the doors of the House of Peers offer insolencies to the Lords especially the Bishops as they went in and threaten them if their Votes disagree from their clamours And when they had thus made an assault on the Liberty of the Parliament which yet was pretended to be so Sacred they afterward set upon the neighbouring Abbey-Church where forcing open the doors they brake down the Organs spoiled all the Vestments and Ornaments of the Worship from thence they fly to Court and disturb the Peace of it with their undecent and barbarous clamours and at last were raised to that impudency as to upbraid the King who from a Scaffold perswaded them as they passed by to a modest care of their own private affairs with an unfitness to reign When some Justices of the Peace according to the Law endeavoured to suppress those Tumults by imprisoning the most forward and bold Leaders they themselves were imprisoned by the Command of the Commons upon pretext of an injury offered to the Liberties of the Subject of which one was as they then dictated That every one might safely petition the Parliament yet when the Kentish men came to petition for something contrary to the Gust of the Faction they caused the City Gates to be shut upon them and when other Counties were meditating Addresses for Peace by threatnings they deterred them from such honest undertakings And when some prudent Persons minded the Demagogues how dishonourable it was for the Parliament not to suppress such Mutinies they replied that their friends ought rather to be thanked and caressed By these and other Arts having wholly overthrown the freedom of that Council and many withdrawing themselves from such Outrages when scarce the third part of the Peers were present the Faction of that House likewise passed the Bill the Dissenters being out-voted only by seven Voices Yet all this could not prevail upon the King though the Tumults were still high without and within He was daily sollicited by the Lords of his Palace who now looked upon the Earl as the Herd doth on an hurt Deer and they hoped his Blood would be the Lustration of the Court to leave the Earl as a Sacrifice to the Vulgar rage Nor did the King any ways yield till the Judges who were now obsequious to the pleasures of the Parliament declared he might do it by Law and the Earl by his own Letters devoted himself as a Victime for the publick Peace and His Majesty's safety and then overcome with Importunities on all hands and being abused by bad dealing of the Judges as Himself complained to the Bishop of London who answered That if the King in Conscience found him not guilty He ought not to pass the Bill but for matter of Law what was Treason he referred Him to the Judges who according to their Oath ought to carry themselves indifferently betwixt Him and His Subjects but the other four Bishops that were then consulted Durham Lincoln Carlisle and the Archbishop of Armagh were not so free as the Bishop of London was and therefore the King observed a special blessing of God upon him He at last with much reluctancy signed a Commission to some Lords to pass that Bill of Attainder and another for Continuation of the Parliament during the pleasure of the Two Houses The passing of these two Bills as some thought wounded the King's Greatness more than any thing He ever did The first because it cut off a most exquisite Instrument of Empire and a most faithful Servant and none did more make use of this to pollute His
at first secretly they whispered and at last publickly imputed that horrid Massacre Which Slanders were coloured by the Arts of the Irish Rebels who to dishearten the English from any resistance bragged that the Queen was with their Army That the King would come amongst them with Auxiliary Forces That they did but maintain His Cause against the Puritans That they had the King's Commission for what they did shewing indeed a Patent that themselves had drawn but thereto was affixed an Old broad Seal that had been taken from an obsolete Patent out of Farnham Abbey by one Plunckett in the presence of many of their Lords and Priests as was afterwards attested by the Confession of many That the Scots were in Confederacy with them to beget a Faith of which they abstained from the Lives and Fortunes of those of that Nation among them On the other side to incourage the Natives of their own Party they produce fictitious Letters wherein they were informed from England that the Parliament had passed an Act that all the Irish should be compelled to the Protestant Worship that for the first offence they should forfeit all their Goods for the second their Estates and for the third their Lives Besides they present them with the hopes of Liberty That the English Yoke should be shaken off that they would have a King of their own Nation and that the Goods and Estates of the English should be divided among the Natives And with these hopes of Spoil and Liberty and Irish were driven to such a Fury that they committed so many horrid and barbarous Acts as scarce ever any Age or People were guilty of In the mean while nothing was done for the relief of the poor English there but only some Votes passed against the Rebels till the King returned to London which was about the end of November where He with the Queen and the Prince were magnificently feasted by the Citizens and the chief of them afterwards by Him at Hampton-Court For he never neglected any honest Arts to gain His Peoples love to which they were naturally prone enough had not His Enemies methods and impulses depraved their Genius But this much troubled the Faction who envied that Reverence to Majesty in others which was not in themselves and they endeavoured to make these loves short and unhappy for they discountenanced the prime advancers of this Honour of the King and were more eager to render Him odious For having gotten a Guard about them they likewise insinuated into the people dangerous apprehensions as the cause of that Guard and every day grew more nice and jealous of their Priviledges and Power The King's advices to more tenderness of His Prerogative or His Advertisements of the scandalous Speeches that were uttered in their House they interpret as encroachments upon their Grandeur and upbraided the King for them in their Petitions to Him But their greatest effort upon Majesty was the Remonstrance after which they took all occasions to magnifie the apprehensions of those Fears which they had falsly pretended to in it This the Faction had before formed and now brought into the House of Commons where it found a strong opposition by those wise men that were tender of the publick Peace and Common Good though those who preferred their Private to the General Interest and every one that was short-sighted and improvident for the future were so fierce for it that the Debates were continued all Night till ten a Clock the next Morning so that many of the more aged and Persons of best Fortunes not accustomed to such watchings were wearied out and many others not daring to provoke the Faction in this their grand Design left the House so that at last they carried it yet but by eleven Votes Which they presented with a Petition to take away the Votes of Bishops in the House of Lords and the Ceremonies in the Church and to remove those Persons from His Trust which they could not confide in yet named none but only accused all under the name of a Malignant Popish Party Which they had no sooner delivered than they caused it to be published in print To which the King answers in another publick Declaration but so much to the Discontent of the Demagogues to find their Methods of Ruine so fully discovered as they were in His Majesties Answer that they had recourse to their former Sovereign Remedy which sober men accounted a Crime and an indignity to Government the Tumults of the Rabble Who in great numbers and much confusion came up to Westminster some crying out against Bishops others belching their fury against the Liturgy and a third Party roaring that the Power of the Militia should be taken out of the King's hands To their Clamours they added rude Affronts to those Lords whom their Leaders had taught them to hate and especially to the Bishops at their going in or coming out of the House and afterwards drawing up to White-Hall they appeared so insolent as it was evident they wanted only some to begin for there were enough to prosecute an assault upon the King in His own Palace The Bishops thus rudely excluded from their Right and Liberty of coming to the Parliament Twelve of them afterwards protest against the Proceedings of it during their so violent Exclusion Which Protestation the Commons presently accused of High Treason and caused their Commitment to the Tower where they continued them till the Bill against their Votes in the Lord's House was past that they might not produce their Reasons for their Rights and against the Injustice offered unto them and then afterwards released them The King also saw it necessary to take a Guard of such Gentlemen as offered their Service for His Safety and to prevent the prophaning of Majesty by the rude fury of the People who used to make their Addresses acceptable at Westminster by offering in their passage some base Affronts at White-Hall But when the terrour of this Guard had reduced them to some less degree of Impudencie they then instructed by their Heads laboured to make it more unsafe to the King by seeking to raise the Rage and Jealousie of the whole City against Him For at Midnight there were cries out in the Street that all People should arise to their defence for the King with His Papists were coming to fire the City and cut their Throats in their Beds Than which though nothing was more false yet it found the effects of truth and the People by such Alarms being terrified from sleep the impressions of those nightly fears lay long upon their Spirits in the day and filled them almost with Madness The King therefore not alwaies to incourage these Violences with Patience but at last by a course of Justice to take off those whom He had found to be the Authors of these destructive Counsels the grand Movers of these Seditious practices and which was more the Inviters of a Foreign Force the Scotch Army into this Nation commands
His Atturney-General to accuse Five Members of the House of Commons and one of the Lords upon Articles of High Treason to be tried according to the Laws of the Land And He also sends some other Officers to seal up their Trunks and Cabinets in their several Lodgings and to secure their Persons This being related to the House of Commons wherein the Faction was now grown more powerful and with whom did joyn many men of Integrity in this Occurrence being too careful of the Priviledges of their House which yet secure none of the Members against Justice for Murder Felony or Treason they were so far from admitting the King's Charge against them that they accused the King of breach of Priviledge and Vote all those guilty of Enmity to the Commonwealth that shall obey the King in any of His Commands concerning them This obstruction of Justice so far moved the King together with the Advice of some of His Council that were also of the House of Commons as also an hope of rooting up the Faction this way that none through the hope of Concealment should be incouraged to conspire the publick Ruine that He Himself with about an hundred Lords and Gentlemen and their followers went to the House of Commons Where commanding His Attendants to move no further than the Stairs to offer no violence nor return any uncivil Language to any although provoked Himself with the Paltzgrave only enters the House and demands that the Incendiaries might be delivered into His hands with whom he promises to deal no otherwise than according to the Law But they whom He sought being before informed as it is reported of the King 's coming by the secret Intelligence of Marquess Hamilton and a Court Lady who having lost the Confluence of Servants with her Beauty sought now to prevent a solitude by politick Ministeries had forsook the place and withdrawn themselves into the Sanctuary of the City Wherefore the King having renewed His Charge without injury to any immediately departs But the Faction would not let Him so rest but prosecuted this attempt of His with all the Clamours that they possibly could raise spread the sparks of Dissension far and wide make the common People mad with Fears and Distractions stir up some in several Counties to bring Petitions for the Impeached Members and their Violated Priviledges and at last prepare an armed Rabble disposed into Order to bring the accused Demagogues to the House from their Coverts in London This coming to the knowledge of the King although many Gallant and Faithful Persons proffered their Service by mingling with the Rout or by being as Spectators to curb any Insolencies that should be attempted on Him yet was He resolved to withdraw Himself with the Queen and their Children to Windsor that He might permit their Fury to languish when it had no opposition and to give time for their jealousies and rumours to wax old and perish For the first Indignation of a mutinous Multitude is most fierce and a small delay breaks their consent and Majesty would have a greater Reverence if any at a distance The King's Wisdom was perceived by His Enemies and therefore to counterwork it and not to let the People sleep without fear lest they should come to be sober and return to the love of Obedience strange reports were every day brought of dangers from the King That Troops of Papists were gathered about Kingston upon the Thames where the County Magazine was lodged under the command of the Lord George Digby who was then famed to be a Papist though at that time he was an elegant Assetor of the Protestant Faith and Col. Lunsford who was characterised to be of so monstrous an Appetite that he would eat Children And Parties were sent to take them both which found no such dreadful Preparations At other times when the People on the Lord's days were at Divine Worship they were distracted from it by Alarms that the Papists who and from whence none could tell were up in Arms and were just then about to fire their Houses and mix their Blood with their Prayers That there were Forces kept in Grotts and Caves under Ground that should in the Night break out into the midst of the City and cut all their Throats And what was more prodigious and though ridiculous yet had not a few Believers in London That there were Designs by Gunpowder to blow up the Thames and choak them with the Water in their Beds Thus were the people taught to hate their Prince and by bloody News from every Quarter they were instructed to that Cruelty which they vainly feared and to adore those by whose Counsels they were delivered from so unexpected Dangers By all this the Faction gained the repute of Modesty inferiour to their supposed Trust when they demanded nothing else but the Command of the Tower and the Militia of all the Counties in England together with the Forts and Castles of the same For all which they moved the House of Commons to petition who desiring the Conjuncture of the Lords in the same were wholly refused by them Therefore stemm'd by the Faction they petition alone Which unlimited Power the King absolutely refused to grant unto them who He foresaw would use that as they had all His other Concessions to the ruine of the Author of their Power Yet was pleased to consent after He had demonstrated the Prejudice they required to the English Nation that they might send over an Army of 10000 Scots into Ireland and deliver unto them the strong Town and Port of Carickfergus one of the chief Keys of that Kingdom which was done to oblige the Scots to them in their future Designs And also He was pleased to wave the Prosecution of the Impeached Members and was willing to grant a Free and General Pardon for all His Subjects as the Parliament should think convenient But all this could not content them who had immoderate Desires and they were more discontented that they could not usurp the King 's Right than if they had lost their own Privileges therefore to bring the Lords to a Concurrence with them the hitherto prosperous art of Tumultuous Petitions was again practised and great Numbers from several Counties were moved to come as Earthquakes to shake the Fundamental Constitutions of their House and to require that neither the Bishops nor the Popish Lords should continue in their ancient Right to Vote among the Peers By this means they should weaken the King in the Voices of that House and whosoever they could not confide in they could fright Him from Voting against them by exposing him as Popish to the Popular Fury For this was the method of using the Petitions The most common Answer was with Thanks and that the House of Commons were just now in consideration thereof The Petitioners were taught to reply that They doubted not of the Care of the Commons House but all their Distrust was in the House of Lords where the
whether by a prosperous Success they could change their Crimes to Vertue Therefore they hastened all they could to raise Horse and Foot to form an Army equal to their Usurpation which was not difficult for them to do for they being Masters of London whose multitudes desirous of Novelty were easily amassed for any enterprise especially when the entring into this Warfare might make the Servant freer than his Master for such was the Licence was indulged to those Youths that would serve the Cause 20000 were sooner gathered that the King could get 500. The City also could afford them more Ordnance than the King could promise to Himself common Muskets and to pay their Souldiers besides the vast summs that were gathered for Ireland which though they by their own Act had decreed should not be used for any other enterprise yet now dispense with their Faith and imploy it to make England as miserable as that Island and the Contributions of the deluded Souls for this War they seized also upon the Revenues of the King Queen Prince and Bishops and plunder the Houses of those Lords and Gentlemen whom they suspected to be Favourers of the King's Cause And in contemplation of these advantages they promised their credulous Party an undoubted Victory and to lead Majesty Captive in Triumph through London within a Month by the Conduct of the Earl of Essex whom they appointed General Thus did they drive that Just and Gracious Prince to seek His Safety by necessary Arms since nothing worse could befall Him after a stout though unhappy Resistance than He was to hope for in a tame Submission to their Violence Therefore though He perfectly abhorred those Sins which are the Consequences of War yet He wanted not Courage to attempt at Victory notwithstanding it seemed almost impossible against so well-appointed an Enemy Therefore with an incredible diligence moving from place to place from York to Nottingham from thence to Shrewsbury and the Confines of Wales by discovering those Abilities with which His Soul was richly fraught unto His deluded Subjects He appeared not only worthy of their Reverence but of their Lives and Fortunes for His Defence and in all places incouraging the Good with His Commendations exciting the fearful by His Example dissembling the Imperfections of His Friends but alwaies praising their Vertues He so prevailed upon those who were not Men of many Times nor by a former Guilt debauch'd to Inhumanity that He had quickly contracted an Army greater than His Enemies expected and which was every day increased by those Lords and Gentlemen who refused to be polluted any longer with the practices of the Faction by sitting among them and being Persons of large Fortunes had raised their Friends and Tenants to succour that Majesty that now laboured under an Eclipse Most Men being moved with Pity and Shame to see their Prince whose former Reign had made them wanton in Plenty to be driven from His own Palaces and concluded under a want of Bread to be necessitated to implore their Aid for the Preservation of His and their Rights So that notwithstanding all the Impostures of the Faction and the Corruptions of the Age there were many great Examples of Loyalty and Vertue Many Noble Persons did almost impoverish themselves to supply the King with Men and Money Some Private Men made their way through numerous dangers to joyn with the fight under His Colours Many great Ladies and vertuous Matrons parted with the Ornaments of their Sex to relieve His wants and some bravely defended their Houses in His Cause when their Lords were otherwhere seeking Honour in His service Both the Universities freely devoted their Plate to succour their Prince the Supreme Patron and Incourager of all Learning and the Queen pawned Her Jewels to provide necessaries for the Safety of Her Husband Which Duty of Hers though it deserved the Honour of all Ages was branded by the Demagogues with the imputation of Treason This sudden and unexpected growth of the Strength of the King after so many years of Slanders and such industrious Plots to make him odious and contemptible raised the admiration of all Men and the fears of the credulous Party who had given up their Faith to the Faction when they represented the King guilty of so much Folly and Vice and some corrupted Citizens had represented Him as a Prodigie of both in a Scene at Guild-Hall in London an Art used by Jesuites to impress more deeply a Calumny that they could not imagine any Person of Prudence or Conscience would appear in His Service and they expected every day when deserted by all as a Monster He should in Chains deliver Himself up to the Commands of the Parliament Some attributed this strange increase in power to the natural Affection of the English to their Lawful Sovereign from whom though the Arts and Impulses of Seditiouc Demagogues may a while estrange and divorce their minds yet their Genius will irresistibly at last force them to their first Love and therefore they urged the saying of that Observing States-man that if the Crown of England were placed but on a Hedge-stake he would be on that side where the Crown was Others referred it to the full evidence of the wickedness of His Adversaries for their Counsels were now discovered and their Ends manifest not to maintain the common Liberty which was equally hateful to them as Tyranny when it was not in their hands but to acquire a Grandeur and Power that might secure and administer to their Lusts and it was now every where published what Mr Hambden answered to one who inquired What he did expect from the King he replied That He should commit Himself and all that is His to our Care Others ascribed it to the fears of ruine to those numerous Families and Myriads of People which the change of Government designed by the Parliament must necessarily effect But this though it argued that Cause exceeding bad by which so great a part of a Community is utterly destroyed without any absolute necessity for preserving the whole yet made but an inconsiderable Addition to the King whose greatest Power was built upon Persons of the Noblest Extract and the fairest Estates in England of which they could not easily suspect to be devested without an absolute overthrow of all the Laws of Right and Wrong which nevertheless was to be feared by their invasions on the King's most undoubted Rights For when Majesty it self is assaulted there can be no security for private Fortunes and those that decline upon design from the paths of Equity will never rest till they come to the Extremity of Injustice as these afterwards did Besides those that imputed the speedy amassing of these Forces to the Equity of the King's Cause His most Powerful Eloquence indesatigable Industry and most Obliging Converse there were another sort that suspending their Judgments till all the Scenes of War were passed resolved all into the Providence of God Who though He were pleased
approbation and consent of the Presbyters or the major part of them That competent maintenance and provision be established by Act of Parliament to such Vicarages as belong to Bishops Deans and Chapters out of the Impropriations and according to the value of those Impropriations of the several Parishes That for the time to come no Man shall be capable of two Parsonages or Vicarages with Cure of Souls That towards the settling of the publick Peace one hundred thousand pounds shall be raised by Act of Parliament out of the Estates of Bishops Deans and Chapters in such manner as shall be thought fit by the King and two Houses of Parliament without the Alienation of any of the said Lands That the Jurisdiction in Causes Testamentary Decimal Matrimonial be settled in such manner as shall seem most convenient by the King and two Houses of Parliament And likewise that one or more Acts of Parliament be passed for regulating of Visitations and against immoderate Fees in Ecclesiastical Courts and the abuses by frivolous Excommunications and all other abuses in the exercise of Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction in such manner as shall be agreed upon by His Majesty and both Houses of Parliament And if your Lordships shall insist upon any other thing which your Lordships shall think necessary for Reformation we shall very willingly apply our selves to the consideration thereof 13. February FOR the confirmation of the Ordinances concerning the Calling and Sitting of the Assembly of Divines and the taking the Covenant we conceive neither of them need be insisted on if the alterations of Church-Government be agreed upon between us and if they be not it will not be reasonable that we consent to those Ordinances And for the Covenant we cannot advise His Majesty to swear and sign the same nor consent that an Act of Parliament should pass for enjoyning the taking thereof by His Majesty's Subjects 13. February VVE do not yet conceive that the Directory for publick Worship delivered to us by your Lordships ought to be enacted or that it is so likely to procure and preserve the Peace of this Kingdom as the Liturgy or Common-Prayer-Book already established by Law against which we have not yet received from your Lordships any Objections which Liturgy as the same was compiled by many Learned and Reverend Divines of whom some dyed Martyrs for the Protestant Religion we conceive to be an Excellent Form for the Worship of God and hath been generally so held throughout this Kingdom till within these two or three years at the most And therefore since there are no Inconveniences pretended to arise from the Book of Common-Prayer to which we conceive the Directory is not more liable and since there is nothing commendable in the Directory which is not already in the Book of Common-Prayer we conceive it much better and more conducing to the Peace of this Kingdom still to observe the said Form with such Dispensations as we have expressed in our first Paper now presented to your Lordships and if there shall be any Alterations proposed by your Lordships of such particulars in the Book of Common-Prayer as good men are scrupled at we shall willingly endeavour to give your Lordships satisfaction in those particulars but as yet can make no further or other Answer than we have already done but shall be ready to receive such Objections as your Lordships shall think fit to make against the Book of Common-Prayer and your Reasons for introducing the Directory And for the Proposition concerning Church-Government annexed to your first Paper we have no Information how that Government shall be constituted in particular or what Jurisdiction shall be established or by whom it shall be granted or upon whom it shall depend And therein also we desire further Information from your Lordships 13. February VVE desire to see the Bills for the Observation of the Lord's day for suppressing of Innovations in Churches and Chapels and for the better advancement of the Preaching of God's Holy Word which are mentioned in your Lordships Paper of the 11. of Febr. we being very ready to consent to the subject Matter of those Bills We have expressed in our Paper delivered to your Lordships what we conceive fit to be done in the business of Pluralities which will prevent any inconveniences that way And when your Lordships shall give us your Demands concerning Papists and when we shall see the Acts for the regulating and reforming of both Universities of the Colleges of Westminster Winchester and Eaton and for the Education and Marriage of His Majesty's Children and the Children of His Heirs and Successors in the true Protestant Religion we shall give your Lordships such Answers as shall be fit being very willing to concur with your Lordships in any good means for the suppressing of Popery and advancement of the Protestant Religion And we are well assured that His Majesty hath taken a pious care for the Education of all His Children in the true Protestant Religion and having already married one of His Children to the satisfaction we conceive of all His good Subjects we are confident in due time His Majesty will so dispose of the rest in Marriage as shall be most for the advancement of Religion and the good and welfare of all His Dominions Their Answer to the First 13. February VVHereas we expected your Lordships resolution for His Majesty's assent unto the Bill for the utter Abolishing of Arch-Bishops Bishops c. we find by your Paper given in this Evening that your Lordships are not yet satisfied that the Bill should pass and you are pleased to express several Reasons and Objections against it which were at large answered and cleared at the publick Debate But what was then said by us is now by your Lordships wholly omitted nor may we in writing represent it again unto your Lordships it not being agreeable to the usage of Parliament to deliver Reasons for or against a Bill though we were willing by Conference in the Treaty to satisfy all doubts and remove all scruples which remained with you And so far were we from consenting that Episcopacy hath continued from the Apostles times by continual Succession that the contrary was made evident unto your Lordships and the Unlawfulness of it fully proved And as for that which your Lordships have propounded for uniting and reconciling all differences in the matter of Religion it is a new Proposition which wholly differs from ours is no way satisfactory to our desires nor consisting with that Reformation to which both Kingdoms are obliged by their solemn Covenant therefore we can give no other Answer to it but must insist to desire your Lordships that the Bill may be past and our other Demands concerning Religion granted The King's Commissioners Reply thereunto 13. February VVE conceive that our Answer to your Lordships concerning the Bill for the utter Abolishing of Arch-bishops Bishops c. was so reasonable that it clearly appears thereby that the passing that
Bishop Jewel that Ambrose Chrysostome Jerome Augustine and many more holy Fathers together with the Apostle Paul agree that by the Word of God there is no difference between a Bishop and a Presbyter and that Medina in the Council of Trent affirms not only the same Fathers but also another Jerome Theodoret Primasius Sedulius and Theophylact to be of the same judgment and that with them agree Oecumenius Anselme Arch-Bishop of Canterbury and another Anselme Gregory and Gratian and after them many others that it was inrolled in the Canon Law for sound and Catholick Doctrine and publickly taught by Learned men And adds That all who have laboured in the Reformation of the Church for these 500 years have taught that all Pastors be they intituled Bishops or Priests have equal authority and power by God's word The same way goes Lombard Master of the Sentences and Father of the School-men who speaking of Presbyters and Deacons saith The Primitive Church had those Orders only and that we have the Apostles precept for them alone With him agree many of the most eminent in that kind and generally all the Canonists To these we may add Sixtus Senensis who testifies for himself and many others and Cassander who was called by one of the German Emperors as one of singular ability and integrity to inform him and resolve his Conscience in questions of that nature who said It is agreed among all that in the Apostles times there was no difference between a Bishop and a Presbyter For a conclusion we add that the Doctrine we have herein propounded to Your Majesty concerning the Identity of the Order of Bishops and Presbyters is no other than the Doctrine published by King Henry the 8. 1543. for all his Subjects to receive seen and allowed by the Lords both Spiritual and Temporal with the neather House of Parliament Of these two Orders only so saith the Book that is to say Priests and Deacons Scripture maketh express mention and how they were conferred of the Apostles by Prayer and Imposition of hands By all which it seems evident that the Order of Episcopacy as distinct from Presbytery is but an Ecclesiastical Institution and therefore not unalterable Lastly we answer That Episcopal Government which at first obtained in the Church did really and substantially differ from the Episcopal Goverment which the Honourable Houses of Parliament desire the abolition of The Bishop of those times was one presiding and joining with the Presbytery of his Church ruling with them and not without them either created and made by the Presbyters chusing out one among themselves as in Rome and Alexandria or chosen by the Church and confirmed by three or more of his Neighbours of like dignity within the same precinct lesser Towns and Villages had and might have have Bishops in them as well as populous and eminent Cities until the Council of Sardis decreed That Villages and small Cities should have no Bishops lest the name and authority of a Bishop might thereby come into contempt But of one claiming as his due and right to himself alone as a superior order or degree all power about Ordination of Presbyters and Deacons and all jurisdiction either to exercise himself or delegate to whom he will of the Laity or Clergy as they distinguish according to the Judgment and Practice of those in our times we read not till in the latter and corrupter Ages of the Church By all which it appears that the present Hierarchy the abolition whereof is desired by the Honourable Houses may accordingly be abolished and yet possibly the Bishops of those Primitive times be They are so far differing one from another In answer to that part of Your Majesties Paper wherein You require whether our Saviour and his Apostles did so leave the Church at liberty as they might totally alter or change the Church-Government at their pleasure we humbly conceive that there are Substantials belonging to Church-Government such as are appointed by Christ and his Apostles which are not in the Churches liberty to alter at pleasure But as for Arch-Bishops c. we hope it will appear unto Your Majesties Conscience that they are none of the Church-Governors appointed by our Saviour and his Apostles And we beseech Your Majesty to look rather to the Original of them than Succession Octob. 3. 1648. III. His MAJESTIES Answer to the Paper delivered to Him by the Divines attending the Parliament's Commissioners concerning Church-Government C. R. HIS Majesty upon perusal of your Answer to His Paper of the second of October 1648. findeth that you acknowledg the several Scriptures cited in the Margin to prove the things for which they are cited viz. That the Apostles in their own persons that Timothy and Titus by Authority derived from them and the Angels of the Churches had power of Church-Government and did or might actually exercise the same in all the three several branches in His Paper specified And so in effect you grant all that is desired For the Bishops challenge no more or other power to belong unto them in respect of their Episcopal Office as it is distinct from that of Presbyters than what properly falleth under one of these three Ordination giving Rules and Censures But when you presently after deny the persons that exercised the power aforesaid to have been Bishops or to have exercised Episcopal Government in that sense as Bishops are distinct from Presbyters you do in effect deny the very same thing you had before granted For Episcopal Government in that sense being nothing else but the Government of the Churches within a certain Precinct commonly called a Diocese committed to one single person with sufficient authority over the Presbyters and people of those Churches for that end since the substance of the thing it self in all the three forementioned particulars is found in the Scriptures unless you will strive about names and words which tendeth to no profit but to the puzling and subverting those which seek after truth you must also acknowledg that Episcopal Government in the sense aforesaid may be sufficiently proved from the Scriptures In that which you say next and for proof thereof insist upon three several Texts His Majesty conceiveth as to the present business that the most that can be proved from all or any of those places is this That the word Bishop is there used to signifie Presbyter and that consequently the Office and Work mentioned in those places as the Office and Work of a Bishop are the Office and Work of a Presbyter which is confest on all sides although His Majesty is not sure that the proof will reach so far in each of those places But from thence to infer an absolute Identity of the Functions of a Bishop and a Presbyter is a fallacy which his Majesty observeth to run in a manner quite along your whole Answer but it appears from the Scriptures by what you have granted that single persons as Timothy and Titus
from the effects of blind Zeal and over-bold Devotion XVII Of the Differences between the KING and the Two Houses in point of CHURCH-GOVERNMENT TOuching the Government of the Church by Bishops the common Jealousie hath been that I am earnest and resolute to maintain it not so much out of Piety as Policy and reason of State Wherein so far indeed reason of State doth induce Me to approve that Government above any other as I find it impossible for a Prince to preserve the State in quiet unless he hath such an influence upon Church-men and they such a dependance on Him as may best restrain the seditious exorbitancies of Ministers tongues who with the Keys of Heaven have so far the Keys of the Peoples Hearts as they prevail much by their Oratory to let in or shut out both Peace and Loyalty So that I being as KING intrusted by God and the Laws with the good both of Church and State I see no reason I should give up or weaken by any change that power and influence which in right and reason I ought to have over both The removing Bishops out of the House of Peers of which I have elsewhere given an account was sufficient to take off any suspicion that I encline to them for any use to be made of their Votes in State-affairs Tho indeed I never thought any Bishop worthy to sit in that House who would not Vote according to his Conscience I must now in Charity be thought desirous to preserve that Government in its right constitution as a matter of Religion wherein both my Judgment is fully satisfied that it hath of all other the fullest Scripture grounds and also the constant Practice of all Christian Churches till of late years the Tumultuariness of people or the Factiousness and Pride of Presbyters or the Covetousness of some States and Princes gave occasion to some mens wits to invent new models and propose them under the specious titles of Christs Government Scepter and Kingdom the better to serve their turns to whom the change was beneficial They must give Me leave having none of their temptations to invite Me to alter the Government of Bishops that I may have a title to their Estates not to believe their pretended grounds to any new ways contrary to the full and constant testimony of all Histories sufficiently convincing unbiassed men that as the Primitive Churches were undoubtedly governed by the Apostles and their immediate Successors the first and best Bishops so it cannot in Reason or Charity be supposed that all Churches in the world should either be ignorant of the Rule by them prescribed or so soon deviate from their Divine and Holy Pattern That since the first Age for fifteen hundred years not one Example can be produced of any setled Church wherein were many Ministers and Congregations which had not some Bishop above them under whose Jurisdiction and Government they were Whose constant and universal practice agreeing with so large and evident Scripture-Directions and Examples as are set down in the Epistles to Timothy and Titus for the setling of that Government not in the Persons only of Timothy and Titus but in the Succession the want of Government being that which the Church can no more dispense with in point of well-being than the want of the Word and Sacraments in point of being I wonder how men came to look with so envious an eye upon Bishops power and authority as to oversee both the Ecclesiastical use of them and Apostolical constitution which to Me seems no less evidently set forth as to the main scope and design of those Epistles for the setling of a peculiar Office Power and Authority in them as President-Bishops above others in point of Ordination Censures and other acts of Ecclesiastical Discipline than those shorter characters of the qualities and duties of Presbyter-Bishops and Deacons are described in some parts of the same Epistles who in the latitude and community of the name were then and may now not improperly be call'd Bishops as to the oversight and care of single Congregations committed to them by the Apostles or those Apostolical Bishops who as Timothy and Titus succeeded them in that ordinary power there assigned over larger divisions in which were many Presbyters The Humility of those first Bishops avoiding the eminent title of Apostles as a name in the Churches style appropriated from its common notion of a Messenger or one sent to that special Dignity which had extraordinary Call Mission Gifts and Power immediately from Christ they contented themselves with the ordinary titles of Bishops and Presbyters until use the great arbitrator of words and master of language finding reason to distinguish by a peculiar name those Persons whose Power and Office were indeed distinct from and above all other in the Church as succeeding the Apostles in the ordinary and constant power of governing the Churches the honour of whose name they moderately yet commendably declined all Christian Churches submitting to that special authority appropriated also the name of Bishop without any suspicion or reproach of arrogancy to those who were by Apostolical propagation rightly descended and invested into that highest and largest power of governing even the most pure and Primitive Churches which without all doubt had many such holy Bishops after the pattern of Timothy and Titus whose special power is not more clearly set down in those Epistles the chief grounds and limits of all Episcopal claim as from Divine Right than are the characters of these perilous times and those men that make them such who not enduring sound Doctrine and clear testimonies of all Churches practice are most perverse Disputers and proud Usurpers against true Episcopacy who if they be not Traitors and Boasters yet they seem to be very covetous heady high-minded inordinate and fierce lovers of themselves having much of the Form little of the power of Godliness Who by popular heaps of weak light and unlearned Teachers seek to over-lay and smother the pregnancy and authority of that power of Episcopal Government which beyond all equivocation and vulgar fallacy of names is most convincingly set forth both by Scripture and all after-Histories of the Church This I write rather like a Divine than a Prince that Posterity may see if ever these Papers be publick that I had fair grounds both from Scripture-Canons and Ecclesiastical Examples whereon my Judgment was stated for Episcopal Government Nor was it any Policy of State or obstinacy of Will or partiality of Affection either to the men or their Function which fixed Me who cannot in point of worldly respects be so considerable to Me as to recompence the injuries and losses I and My dearest Relations with My Kingdoms have sustained and hazarded chiefly at first upon this quarrel And not only in Religion of which Scripture is the best rule and the Churches Universal Practice the best commentary but also in right Reason and the true nature of Government it cannot be thought
Days then the Duke had done in so many Months before But in the mean while Rochel was barricadoed to an impossibility of Relief Therefore the Earl of Lindsey who commanded the Forces after some gallant yet fruitless attempts returned to England and the Rochellers to the Obedience of the French King As Providence had removed the great Object of the Popular hate and as was pretended the chief Obstruction of the Subjects Love to their King the Duke of Buckingham so the King Himself labours to remove all other occasions of quarrel before the next Session He restores Archbishop Abbot who for his remissness in the Discipline of the Church had been suspended from his Office and was therefore the Darling of the Commons because in disgrace with the King so contrary are the affections of a corrupted State to those of their Governours to the administration of it again Dr Potter the great Calvinist was made Bishop of Carlisle Mr Mountague's Book of Appello Caesarem was called in Proclamations were issued out against Papists Sir Thomas Wentworth an active Leader of the Commons was toward the beginning of this Session as Sir John Savil had been at the end of the last called up into the Lord's House being made Viscount Wentworth and Lord President of the North. But the Honours of these Persons whose Parts the King who well understood Men thought worthy of His Favour and Employment seeming the rewards of Sedition and the spoils of destructive Counsels the Demagogues were more eager in the pursuit of that which these had attained unto by the like arts And therefore despising all the King 's obliging Practices in the next Session they assumed a Power of reforming Church and State called the Customers into question for Levying Tonnage and Poundage made now their Invectives as they formerly did against the Duke against the Lord Treasurer Weston so that it appeared that not the Persons of Men but the King's trust of them was the object of their Envy and His Favour though never so Vertuous marked them out for Ruine And upon these Points they raised the Heat to such a degree that fearing they should be dissolved e're they had time to vent their Passions they began a Violence upon their own Body an Example which lasted longer then their Cause and at last produced the overthrow of all their Priviledges They lock'd the Doors of the House kept the Key thereof in one of their own Pockets held the Speaker by strong Hand in the Chair till they had thundred out their Votes like dreadful Anathemaes against those that should levy and which was more ranting against such as should willingly pay the Tonnage and Poundage This Force the King went with His Guard of Pensioners to remove which they hearing adjourned the House and the King in the House of Lords declaring the Injustice of those Vipers who destroyed their own Liberties dissolved the Parliament While the Winds of Sedition raged thus furiously at home more gentle gales came from abroad The French King's Designs upon other Places required Peace from us and therefore the Signiory of Venice by her Ambassadors was moved to procure an Accord betwixt Charles and Lewis An. 1629 which the King accepted And not long after the Spaniard pressed with equal necessities desired Amity which was also granted The King being thus freed from His Domestick Embroilments and Foreign Enmities soon made the World see His Skill in the Arts of Empire and rendred Himself abroad more considerable then any of His Predecessors And He was more glorious in the Eyes of the good and more satisfied in His own Breast by confirming Peace with Prudence then if He had finished Wars with destroying Arms. So that His Scepter was the Caduceus to arbitrate the differences of the Potentates of Europe His Subjects likewise tasted the sweetness of a Reign which Heaven did indulge with all its favours but only that of valuing their Happiness While other Nations weltred in Blood His People enjoyed a Profound Peace and that Plenty which the freedom of Commerce brings along with it The Dutch and Easterlings used London as the surest Bank to preserve and increase their Trading The Spanish Bullion was here Coined which advantaged the King's Mint and encreased the Wealth of the Merchants who returned most of that Money in our Native Commodities While He dispensed these Blessings to the People An. 1630 Heaven was liberal to Him in giving Him a Son to inherit His Dominions May 29. An. 1630. which was so great matter of rejoycing to the People of uncorrupted minds that Heaven seemed also concerned in the Exultation kindling another Fire more than Ordinary making a Star to be seen the same day at noon From which most men presaged that that Prince should be of high Undertakings and of no common glory among Kings which hath since been confirmed by the miraculous preservation of Him and Heaven seemed to conduct Him to the Throne For this great Blessing the King gave publick Thanks to the Author of it Almighty God at St Paul's Church and God was pleased in a return to those thanks with a numerous Issue afterwards to increase this Happiness For neither Armies nor Navies are such sure props of Empire as Children are Time Fortune private Lusts or Errors may take off or change Friends but those that Nature hath united must have the same Interest especially in Royal Families in whose Prosperities strangers may have a part but their Adversities will be sure to crush their nearest Allies Prospering thus in Peace at home a small time assisted His frugality to get such a Treasure and gave Him leasure to form such Counsels as might curb the Insolence of His Enemies abroad He confederated with other Princes to give a check to the Austrian Greatness assisting by his Treasure Arms and Counsel the King of Sweden to deliver the oppressed German States from the Imperial Oppressions And when Gustavus's Fortune made him Insolent and he would impose unequal Conditions upon the Paltsgrave the King's Brother-in-law He necessitated him notwithstanding his Victories to more easie Articles The next year was notorious for two Tryals An. 1631 one of the Lord Audley Earl of Castlehaven who being accused by all the abused parts of his Family of a prodigious wickedness and unnatural uncleanness was by the King submitted to a Tryal by his Peers and by them being found guilty was condemned and his Nobility could be no patronage for his Crimes but in the King's eyes they appeared more horrid because they polluted that Order and was afterwards executed The other was of a Tryal of Combate at a Marshal's Court betwixt Donnold Lord Rey a Scottish High-lander and David Ramsey a Scottish Courtier The first accused the last to have sollicited him to a Confederacy with the Marquess Hamilton who was then Commander of some Forces in assistance of the King of Sweden in which Ramsey said all Scotland was ingaged but three and that their friends had gotten
Popish Lords and Bishops had the greatest Power and there it stuck whose Names they desired to know And in this they were so earnest that they would not willingly withdraw whilest it was debated and then they had leave to depart with this Answer That the House of Commons had already endeavoured Relief from the Lords in their Requests and shall so continue till Redress be obtained Such Petitions as these were likewise from the several Classes of the inferiour Tradesmen about London as Porters Water-men and the like and that nothing of testifying an universal Importunity might be left unattempted Women were perswaded to present Petitions to the same effect While the Faction thus boasted in the success of their Arts Good men grieved to see these daily Infamies of the Supreme Council of the Nation all whose Secrets were published to the lowest and weakest part of the People and they who clamoured it as a breach of their Privilege that the King took notice of their Debates now made them the subjects of discourse in every Shop and all the corners of the Street where the good and bad were equally censured and the Honour and Life of every Senator exposed to the Verdict of the Rabble No Magistrate did dare to do his Office and all things tended to a manifest Confusion So that many sober Persons did leave the Kingdom as unsafe where Factions were more powerful than the Laws And Just Persons chose rather to hear than to see the Miseries and Reproaches of their Country On the other side to make the King more plyable they tempt him by danger in His most beloved Part the Queen concerning whom they caused a Rumour that they did intend to impeach Her of High Treason This Rumour made the deeper Impression because they had raised most prodigious Slanders which are the first Marks for destruction of Princes on Her and when they had removed all other Counsellors from the King She was famed to be the Rock upon which all hopes of Peace and Safety were split That She commanded no less His Counsels than Affections and that His Weakness was so great as not to consent to or enterprise any thing which She did not first approve That She had perverted Him to Her Religion and formed Designs of overthrowing the Protestant Profession These and many other of a portentuous falshood were scattered among the Vulgar who are always most prone to believe the Worst of Great Persons and the uncontrolled Licence of reporting such Calumnies is conceived the first Dawning of Liberty But the Parliament taking notice of the Report sent some of their House to purge themselves from it as an unjust Scandal cast upon them To which the Queen mildly answers That there was a general Report thereof but She never saw any Articles in writing and having no certain Author for either She gave little Credit thereto nor will She believe they would lay any Aspersion upon Her who hath been very unapt to misconstrue the Actions of any One Person and much more the Proceedings of Parliament and shall at all times wish an Happy Vnderstanding between the King and His People But the King knowing how usual it was for the Faction by Tumults and other Practices to transport the Parliament from their just Intentions in other things and that they might do so in this resolved to send Her into Holland under colour of accompanying their eldest Daughter newly married to the Prince of Orange but in truth to secure Her so that by the fears of Her danger who was so dear unto Him He might not be forced to any thing contrary to His Honour and Conscience and that Her Affections and Relations to Him might not betray Her Life to the Malice of His Enemies With Her He also sent all the Jewels of the Crown that they might not be the Spoils of the Faction but the means of the support of Her Dignity in Forein Parts if His Necessities afterwards should not permit Him to provide for Her otherwise Which yet She did not so employ but reserved them for a supply of Ammunition and Arms when His Adversaries had forced Him to a necessary Defence It was said that the Faction knew of this Conveyance and might have prevented it but that they thought it for their greater advantage that this Treasure should be so managed that the King in confidence of that Assistance might take up Arms to which they were resolved at last to drive Him For they thought their Cause would be better in War than Peace because their present Deliberations were in the sense of the Law actual Rebellions and a longer time would discover those Impostures by which they had deluded the People who would soon leave them as many now did begin to repent of their Madness to the Vengeance which was due to their Practices unless they were more firmly united by a communion of Guilt in an open assaulting their Lawful Prince The King hastens the Security of the Queen and accompanies Her as far as Dover there to take His Farewel of Her a Business almost as irksom as Death to be separated from a Wife of so great Affections and eminent Endowments and that which made it the more bitter was that the same Cause which forced Her Separation from Him set Her at a greater distance from His Religion the onely thing wherein their Souls were not united even the Barbarity of His Enemies who professed it yet were so irreconcileable to Vertue that they hated Her for Her Example of Love and Loyalty to Him While He was committing Her to the mercy of the Winds and Waves that She might escape the Cruelty of more unquiet and faithless men they prosecute Him with their distasteful Addresses and the Canterbury present Him with a Bill for taking away Bishops Votes in Parliament Which having been cast out of the House of Peers several times before ought not by the Course and Order of Parliament to have been admitted again the same Session But the Faction had now used their accustomed Engine the Tumult and it was then passed by the Lords and brought hither together with some obscure Threats that if it were not signed the Queen should not be suffered to depart By such impious Violences did they make way for that which they call'd Reformation This His Majesty signs though after it made a part of His penitential Confessions to God in hopes that the Bill being once consented to the Fury of the Faction which with so great Violence pursued an absolute Destruction of the Ecclesiastical Government would be abated as having advanced so far in their Design to weaken the King's Power in that House by the loss of so many Voices which would have been always on that side where Equity and Conscience did most appear But He soon found the Demagogues had not so much Ingenuity as to be compounded with and they made this but a step to the Overthrow of that which He designed to preserve When His
Fight which being varied with different successes in the several divisions each party drew off by degrees and neither found cause to boast of a Victory The King being returned to Oxford the Parliament wearied with the Complaints of the oppressed Nation who now grew impatient under the Distractions take into Consideration His Majesty's two Messages for Peace and sent Propositions for it in the name of the two Parliaments of England and Scotland united by Solemn League and Covenant Which though they seemed the desires of minds that intended nothing less than the common Tranquillity yet the King neglects them not but hoping that in a Treaty Commissioners might argue them into Reason offers it which with much difficulty the Houses are drawn to accept but yet would have it at Vxbridge a place but about fifteen miles distant from London and above twice that distance from Oxford And accordingly Commissioners from both Parties met on Jan. 30. While the King was providing for the Treaty and forming Instructions for His Ministers the Faction found the Parliament other work by new designs and to habituate the People to an abhorrency of Peace fed them with blood The two Hothams first were to be the Sport of the Multitude and that the Father might have more than a single death he was drawn back in his journey to the Scaffold Decemb. 31. that his Son might be executed before him as he was Jan. 10. when after he had expressed his fury to those Masters whom they had served to their ruines his Head was chopt off And on Jan. 20. the Father is brought to the place that was defiled with his Son's blood and had his own added to it These were not much lamented by any for the memory that they first kindled the Flame of the Nation kept every eye dry The People thus fed with courser blood a cleaner Sacrifice was afterwards presented William Laud Archbishop of Canterbury and Primate of all England He had indured Imprisonment four years and passed through a Trial of many months in which he had acquitted himself with such a confidence as became the Innocency and Constancy of a Christian Bishop and Confessor but yet must fall to please the Scots and those merciless men who imputed God's anger in the difficulties of Success against their Prince to the continuance of this Prelate's life therefore he was voted guilty of High Treason by the House of Commons and was condemned in the House of Peers though they have no power over the life of the meanest Subject without the concurrence of the King when there were but seven Lords present and all those not consenting to the Murder to be drawn hanged and quartered And this was the first Example of murdering men by Votes of killing by an Order of Parliament when there is no Law It was moved they say by some that he might be shipp'd over to New-England to die by the Contempt and Malice of those People But this seemed too great an Honour because it would make his end as his life was much like that of the Primitive Bishops who for their Piety were banished to Barbarous Coasts or condemned to the Mines Or else it would be like an Athenian Ostracism and confess him too great and good to live among us Therefore this motion was rejected yet the Lords upon his Petition to the distaste of some Commons changed the manner of that vile Execution to that more generous of being beheaded To the Scaffold he was brought Jan. 10. after he had endured some affronts in his Antichamber in the Tower by some sons of Schism and Sedition who unseasonably that morning he was preparing himself to appear before the great Bishop of our Souls would have him give some satisfaction to the Godly for so they called themselves for his Persecutions which he called Discipline To whom he answered That he was now shortly to give account of all his Actions at an higher and more equal Tribunal and desired he might not be disturbed in his Preparations for it When he came to the Scene of his death he appeared with that chearfulness and serenity in his face as a good Conscience doth beautifie the owners with and it was so conspicuous that his Enemies who were ashamed to see his Innocency pourtraited in his Countenance did report he had drunk some Spirits to force his nature from a paleness He preached his own Funeral Sermon on that Text Heb. 12. 2. and concluding his life with Prayer submitted himself to the stroke of the Ax. He was a Person of so great Abilities which are the Designations of Nature to Dignity and Command that they raised him from low beginnings to the highest Office the Protestant Profession acknowledges in the Church And he was equal to it His Learning appear'd eminent in his Book against Fisher and his Piety illustrious in his Diary although published by One that was thirsty of his blood and polluted with many malicious comments and false Surmises to make him odious He was of so Publick a Spirit that both the Church and State have lasting Monuments of the Vertuous use of his Prince's favour at his Admittance into which he dedicated all the future Emoluments of it to the Glory of God and the Good of Men by a Projection of many noble Works most of which he accomplished and had finished the rest had not the Fate of the Nation checked the current of his Designs and cut off the Course of his Life He was not contented by himself only to serve his Generation for so he might have appeared more greedy of Fame than desirous of the Universal Benefit but he endeavoured to render all others as Heroick if they aimed at a Capacity for his Friendship for I have heard it from his Enemies no great man was admitted to a confidence and respect with him unless he made his Address by some Act that was for the Common Good or for the Ornament and Glory of the Protestant Faith Learned men had not a better Friend nor Learning it self a greater Advancer he searched all the Libraries of Asia and from several parts of the World purchased all the Ornaments and Helps of Literature he could that the English Church might have if possible by his Care as many Advantages for Knowledge as almost all Europe did contribute to the Grandeur of that of Rome The Outward Splendour of the Clergy was not more his Care than their Honour by a grave and pious Conversation he would put them into a power of doing more good but was severe against their Vices and Vanities He scorned a private Treasure and his Kindred were rather relieved than raised to any greatness by him In his Election of Friends he was determinated to the Good and Wise and such as had both Parts and Desires to profit the Church had his closest Embraces if otherwise it happened their frauds not his choice deserved the blame Both Papists and Sectaries were equally his Enemies one Party feared
one thing which perhaps might require a larger discourse That although no humane authority can dispense with an Oath Quia Religio juramenti pertinet ad forum Divinum yet in some cases it cannot be denied but the obligation of an Oath ceaseth As when we swear homage and obedience to our Lord and Superiour who afterwards ceaseth to be our Lord and Superiour for then the formal cause of the Oath is taken away and therefore the Obligation Sublatâ Causâ tollitur Effectus Sublato Relato tollitur Correlatum or when any Oath hath a special reference to the benefit of those to whom I make the promise if we have their desire or consent the obligation ceaseth because all such Oaths from the nature of the thing do include a condition When the Parliaments of both Kingdoms have covenanted for the abolishing or altering of a Law Your Majesty's Oath doth not bind You or Your Conscience to the observing of it otherwise no Laws could be altered by the Legislative Power This I conceive hath been the ground of removing Episcopal Government in Scotland and of removing the Bishops out of the Parliament of England And I assure my self that Your Majesty did not intend at the taking of Your Oath that although both Houses of Parliament should find an alteration necessary although which God Almighty avert You should lose Your self and Your Posterity and Crown that You would never consent to the abolishing of such a Law If Your Majesty still object that the matter of the Oath is necessary and immutable that doth not belong to this but to the former Argument 8. I have but one word more concerning Your Piety to Your Royal Father and Teacher of Happy Memory with which Your Majesty does conclude Your Majesty knows that King James never admitted Episcopacy upon Divine Right That His Majesty did swear and subscribe to the Doctrine Worship and Discipline of the Church of Scotland That in the Preface of the latter Edition of Basilicon Doron His Majesty gives an honourable testimony to those that loved better the simplicity of the Gospel than the pomp and Ceremonies of the Church of England and that He conceived the Prelates to savour of the Popish Hierarchy and that could His Ghost now speak to Your Majesty He would not advise Your Majesty to run such hazards for those men who will chuse rather to pull down Your Throne with their own ruine than that they perish alone The Lord give Your Majesty a wise and discerning Spirit to chuse that in time which is right June 3. 1646. III. His MAJESTY's Second Paper For Mr Alexander Henderson A Reply to his Answer to my first Paper June 6. 1646. Mr Henderson IF it had been the Honour of the Cause which I looked after I would not have undertaken to put Pen to Paper or singly to have maintained this Argument against you whose Answer to my former Paper is sufficient without further proofs to justifie my opinion of your Abilities but it being merely as you know for my particular satisfaction I assure you that a Disputation of well chosen Divines would be most effectual and I believe you cannot but grant that I must best know how My self may be best satisfied for certainly My Tast cannot be guided by another man's Palate and indeed I will say that when it comes as it must to Probations I must have either Persons or Books to clear the Allegations or it will be impossible to give Me satisfaction The fore-seeing of which made Me at first for the saving of time desire that some of those Divines which I gave you in a List might be sent for 2. Concerning your second Section I were much to blame if I should not submit to that saying of S. Ambrose which you mention for I would be unwilling to be found less ingenuous than you shew your self to be in the former part of it wherefore my Reply is that as I shall not be ashamed to change for the better so I must see that it is better before I change otherwise Inconstancy in this were both Sin and Shame and remember what your self hath learnedly enforced that no man's Reason can be commanded by another man's Will 3. Your third begins but I cannot say that it goes on with that Ingenuity which the other did for I do not understand how those Examples cited out of the Old Testament do any way prove that the way of Reformation which I commend hath not been the most perfect or that any other is lawful those having been all by the Regal Authority and because Henry the Eighth's Reformation was not perfect will it prove that of King Edward and Q. Elizabeth to be unperfect I believe a new Mood and Figure must be found out to form a Syllogism whereby to prove that But however you are mistaken for no man who truly understands the English Reformation will derive it from Henry the Eighth for he only gave the occasion it was his Son who began and Q. Elizabeth that perfected it Nor did I ever aver that the beginning of any Humane Action was perfect no more than you can prove that God hath ever given approbation to Multitudes to Reform the Negligence of Princes For you know there is much Difference between Permission and Approbation But all this time I find no Reasons according to your promise for a Reformation or change I mean since Q. Elizabeth's time As for your Romanorum Malleus his saying it is well you come off it with yet this I may say for it seems to imply as if you neither ought nor would justifie that bloudy ungodly saying and for your comparing our Reformation here to the Laodicean lukewarmness proved by Complaints Grievings c. all that doth and but unhandsomely petere Principium nor can Generals satisfie Me for you must first prove that those men had reason to complain those Churches to be grieved and how we were truly the Causers of this Schism and Separation As for those words which you will not use I will not answer 4. Here indeed you truly repeat the first of my two main Arguments but by your favour you take as I conceive a wrong way to convince Me It is I must make good the Affirmative for I believe a Negative cannot be proved In stead of which if you had made appear the practice of the Presbyterian Government in the Primitive times you had done much for I do aver that this Government was never practised before Calvin's time the Affirmative of which I leave you to prove My task being to shew the lawfulness and succession of Episcopacy and as I believe the necessity of it For doing whereof I must have such Books as I shall call for which possibly upon perusal may one way or other give Me satisfaction but I cannot absolutely promise it without the assistance of some Learned man whom I can trust to find out all such Citations as I have use of wherefore blame Me not
aforesaid Answer the Propositions for which We shall willingly receive whereever We are and desire if it may be to receive them at Brainford this Night or early to Morrow Morning that all possible speed may be made in so good a work and all inconveniences otherwise likely to intervene may be avoided VII From OXFORD April 12. MDCXLIII At the Close of the Treaty Concerning the Disbanding of all Forces and His Return to the Houses TO shew to the whole World how earnestly His Majesty longs for Peace and that no success shall make Him desire the continuance of His Army to any other end or for any longer time than that and until things may be so setled as that the Law may have a full free and uninterrupted course for the defence and preservation of the Rights of His Majesty both Houses and His good Subjects 1. As soon as His Majesty is satisfied in His first Proposition concerning His own Revenue Magazines Ships and Forts in which He desires nothing but that the Just Known Legal Rights of His Majesty devolved to him from His Progenitors and of the Persons trusted by Him which have been violently taken from both be restored unto Him and unto them unless any just and legal exceptions against any of the persons trusted by Him which are yet unknown to His Majesty can be made appear to Him 2. As soon as all the Members of both Houses shall be restored to the same capacity of sitting and Voting in Parliament as they had upon the first of January 1641. the same of right belonging unto them by their birth-rights and the free election of those that sent them and having been voted from them for adhering to His Majesty in these Distractions His Majesty not intending that this should extend either to the Bishops whose Votes have been taken away by Bill or to such in whose places upon new Writs new Elections have been made 3. As soon as His Majesty and both Houses may be secured from such tumultuous Assemblies as to the great breach of the Priviledges and the high dishonour of Parliaments have formerly assembled about both Houses and awed the Members of the same and occasioned two several complaints from the Lords House and two several desires of that House to the House of Commons to join in a Declaratien against them the complying with which desire might have prevented all these miserable Distractions which have ensued which security His Majesty conceives can be only setled by adjourning the Parliament to some other place at the least twenty Miles from London the choice of which His Majesty leaves to both Houses His Majesty will most cheerfully and readily consent that both Armies be immediately disbanded and give a present meeting to both His Houses of Parliament at the time and place at and to which the Parliament shall be agreed to be adjourned His Majesty being most confident that the Law will then recover the due credit and estimation and that upon a free debate in a full and peaceable Convention of Parliament such provisions will be made against seditious Preaching and Printing against His Majesty and the established Laws which hath been one of the chief causes of the present Distractions and such care will be taken concerning the legal and known Rights of His Majesty and the Property and Liberty of His Subjects that whatsoever hath been published or done in or by colour of any illegal Declaration Ordinance or Order of one or both Houses or any Committee of either of them and particularly the power to raise Arms without His Majesty's consent will be in such a manner recalled disclaimed and provided against that no seed will remain for the like to spring out of for the future to disturb the Peace of the Kingdom and to endanger the very Being of it And in such a Convention His Majesty is resolved by His readiness to consent to whatsoever shall be proposed to Him by Bill for the real good of His Subjects and particularly for the better discovery and speedier conviction of Recusants for the Education of the Children of Papists by Protestants in the Protestant Religion for the prevention of the practices of Papists against the State and the due execution of the Laws and true levying of the penalties against them to make known to all the world how causeless those Fears and Jealousies have been which have been raised against Him and by that so distracted this miserable Kingdom And if this offer of His Majesty be not consented to in which He asks nothing for which there is not apparent Justice on His side and in which He defers many things highly concerning both Himself and People till a full and peaceable Convention of Parliament which in Justice He might now require His Majesty is confident that it will then appear to all the World not only who is most desirous of Peace and whose fault it is that both Armies are not now disbanded but who have been the true and first cause that this Peace was ever interrupted or these Armies raised and the beginning or continuance of the War and the destruction and desolation of this poor Kingdom which is too likely to ensue will not by the most interessed passionate or prejudicate person be imputed to His Majesty VIII From OXFORD May 19. MDCXLIII In pursuance of the former SInce His Majesty's Message of the twelfth of April in which He conceived He had made such an Overture for the immediate disbanding of all Armies and composure of these present miserable Distractions by a full and free Convention in Parliament that a perfect and settled Peace would have ensued hath in all this time above a full month procured no Answer from both Houses His Majesty might well believe Himself absolved before God and man from the least possible charge of not having used His utmost endeavour for Peace yet when he considers that the Scene of all this Calamity is in the Bowels of His own Kingdom that all the bloud which is spilt is of His own Subjects and that what Victory soever it shall please God to give Him must be over those who ought not to have lifted up their hands against Him when He considers That these desperate civil Dissentions may incourage and invite a foreign Enemy to make a prey of the whole Nation That Ireland is in present danger to be totally lost That the heavy Judgments of God Plague Pestilence and Famine will be the inevitable attendants of this unnatural Contention and That in a short time there will be so general a habit of Uncharitableness and Cruelty contracted throughout the Kingdom that even Peace it self will not restore His People to their old temper and security His Majesty cannot but again call for an Answer to that His Message which gives so fair a rise to end these unnatural Distractions And His Majesty doth this with the more earnestness because He doubts not the condition of His Armies in several parts His strength
Advocate Rives and D. Duck. And afterward in a Letter of one of the Commissioners for the two Houses He sent inclosed this Note Nov. 2. C. R. The Bishop of Armagh the Bishop of Excester the Bishop of Rochester the Bishop of Worcester Dr. Ferne Dr. Morley XXXVIII From NEWPORT Sept. 29. MDCXLVIII Containing His Concessions HIS Majesty did use many earnest endeavours for a Personal Treaty which He hoped might have been obtained at Westminster between Him and His two Houses of Parliament immediately yet they having made choice of this way by you their Commissioners His Majesty did gladly and chearfully accept thereof in this place as a fit means to begin a Treaty for Peace which might put an end to His own sad condition and the Miseries of His Kingdom For an entrance whereunto His Majesty hath already expressed His consent to the First Proposition But finding you are limited by Instructions which you have no warrant to communicate unto Him and having cause by your Paper of the twentieth of this present to believe that you have no power to omit or alter any thing though He shall give you such reasons as may satisfie you so to do without transmitting the Papers to the two Houses at a far distance where His Majesties reasons expressions and offers upon debate cannot be fully represented and from whence their Answers cannot be returned without much waste of the time allotted for the Treaty here and having lately received another Paper concerning the Church containing in it self many particulars of great importance and referring to divers Ordinances Articles of Religion and other things eleven or twelve in number of great length and some of them very new and never before presented to His Majesty the due consideration whereof will take up much time and require His Majesties presence with His two Houses before a full resolution can well be had in matters of so high consequence To the end therefore that the good Work now in hand may by God's blessing proceed more speedily and effectually to an happy conclusion and that His two Houses of Parliament may at present have further security and an earnest of future satisfaction His Majesty upon consideration had of yours makes these Propositions following Concerning the Church His Majesty will consent that the calling and sitting of the Assembly of Divines at Westminster be confirmed for three years by Act of Parliament And will by Act of Parliament confirm for three years the Directory for the publick Worship of God in the Kingdoms of England and Ireland and Dominion of Wales And will likewise confirm for three years by Act of Parliament the Form of Church-Government which ye have presented to Him to be used for the Churches of England and Ireland and Dominion of Wales Provided that His Majesty and those of His Judgment or any others who cannot in Conscience submit thereunto be not in the mean time obliged to comply with the same Government or Form of Worship but have free practice of their own profession And that a free consultation and debate be had with the Assembly of Divines at Westminster in the mean time twenty of His Majesties nomination being added unto them whereby it may be determined by His Majesty and His two Houses of Parliament how the said Church-Government and Form of Publick Worship after the said time may be setled or sooner if Differences may be agreed and how also Reformation of Religion may be setled within the Kingdoms of England and Ireland and the Dominion of Wales And the Articles of Christian Religion now delivered to Him may in like manner be then considered of and determined and care taken for the ease of tender Consciences And concerning the Bishops Lands and Revenues His Majesty considering that during these troublesom times divers of His Subjects have made contracts and purchaces and divers have disbursed great summs of moneys upon security and engagement of those Lands His Majesty for their satisfaction will consent to an Act or Acts of Parliament whereby legal estates for lives or for years at their choice not exceeding 99 years shall be made of those Lands towards the satisfaction of the said Purchasers Contractors and others to whom they are engaged at the old Rents or some other moderate Rent whereby they may receive satisfaction And in case such Leases shall not satisfie His Majesty will propound and consent to some other way for their further satisfaction Provided that the propriety and inheritance of those Lands may still remain and continue to the Church and Church-men respectively according to the pious intentions of the Donors and Founders thereof and the rent that shall be reserved to be for their maintenance His Majesty will give his Royal assent for the better observation of the Lord's day for suppressing of Innovations in Churches and Chappels in and about the Worship of God and for the better advancement of the Preaching of God's Holy Word in all parts of this Kingdom and to an Act against enjoying pluralities of Benefices by Spiritual persons and Non-residency and to an Act for regulating and Reforming both Universities and the Colledges of Westminster Winchester and Eaton His Majesty will consent to an Act for the better discovery and speedy conviction of Popish Recusants as is desired in your Propositions and also to an Act for the education of the children of Papists by Protestants in the Protestant Religion As also to an Act for the true levying of the penalties against Papists to be levied and disposed in such manner as both Houses shall agree on and as is proposed on His Majesties behalf As also to an Act to prevent the practices of Papists against the State and for putting the Laws in Execution and for a stricter course to prevent hearing and saying of Mass But as to the Covenant His Majesty is not yet therein satisfied that He can either sign or swear it or consent to impose it on the Consciences of others nor doth He conceive it proper or useful at this time to be insisted on Touching the Militia His Majesty conceives that your Proposition demands a far larger power over the persons and estates of His Subjects than hath ever hitherto been warranted by the Laws and Statutes of this Realm Yet considering the present Distractions require more and trusting in His two Houses of Parliament that they will make no further use of the power therein mentioned after the present Distempers setled than shall be agreeable to the legal exercise thereof in times past or just necessity shall require His Majesty will consent to an Act of Parliament That the Lords and Commons in the Parliament of England now assembled or hereafter to be assembled or such as they shall appoint during the space of ten years shall arm train and discipline or cause to be armed trained or disciplined all the Forces of the Kingdoms of England and Ireland and Dominion of Wales the Isles of Gernesey and Jersey and the Town of Barwick
point of conversation which in My mind is the chief joy or vexation of ones life I dare say Thou wouldest pity Me for some are too wise others too foolish some too busie others too reserved many fantastick In a word when I know none better I speak not now in relation to business than 359. 8. 270. 55. 5. 7. 67. 18. 294. 35. 69. 16. 54. 6. 38. 1. 67. 68. 9. 66. Thou maiest easily judge how My conversation pleaseth Me. I confess Thy company hath perhaps made Me in this hard to be pleased but not less to be pitied by Thee who art the only cure for this disease The end of all is this to desire Thee to comfort Me as often as Thou canst with Thy Letters and dost not Thou think that to know particulars of Thy health and how Thou spendest the time are pleasing subjects to Me though Thou hast no other business to write of Believe Me Sweet Heart Thy kindness is as necessary to comfort My heart as Thy assistance is for My Affairs To My Wife 9. April 1645. by Binion XXXIV To the Lord JERMIN Oxford Thursday 24. April HArry Lest My Wife should not yet be fit for any business I write this to you not to excuse My pains but ease Hers and that She may know but not be troubled with My kindness I refer to your discretion how far to impart My Letter to Her or any other business that so Her health in the first place be cared for then My affairs And now I must tell you that undoubtedly if you had not trusted to Digby's sanguine complection not to be rebated from sending good news you would not have found fault with him for sending mistaken intelligence for if he should strictly tie himself to certain truths in this kind you must have nothing from him but My Proclamations or Ordinances from the pretended Houses But tell Me can you not distinguish between what we send you upon certainty and what upon uncertain reports without making an oath the mark of distinction And are you obliged to publish all the news we send you Seriously I think news may be sometimes too good to be told in the French Court and certainly there is as much dexterity in publishing of news as in matters which at first sight may seem of greater difficulty for as I would not have them think that all assistance bestowed upon Me were in vain so I would not have them believe that I needed no help lest they should underhand assist any Rebels to keep the balance of dissention amongst us equal For matter of News and present state of My affairs I refer you to Digby only this in general that if it please God to assist us this year but half so miraculously as He did the last My present state compared with what it was this time twelve-month I am very hopeful to see a joyful harvest before next Winter Nor do I think this in any humane probability possible except My Wife can procure Me considerable assistance both of men and money of which I conceive little reason to despair your last giving Me good hope concerning Lorrain and though I say not that for the other I have so good an Author as 196. yet I hope you will not much blame My confidence when 149. in hers the 10. of March says J'ay une Affaire assurée que vous donnerez 40000. Pistoles que Je vous eusse envoyé si J'eusse veu mon navire revenu avec l'estain In the last place I will impose that upon you that is not reasonable to expect from My Wife which is to give Me a continual account what Letters She receives from Me and what miscarry or come slowly to which end take notice that all My Letters to Her are numerarily marked on the top as this with 37. and likewise I now begin the same with you So farewel In your next let Me know particularly how My Wife is which though it be not as I would have it yet the perfect knowledge will hinder Me to imagine her worse than She is if well then every word will please Me. I have commanded Digby to write to you freely concerning Will. Murry which I hold to be necessary as concerning Montross's business To the L. Jermin 24. April 1645. concerning France XXXV To the QUEEN 39. Oxford Sunday 4. May. DEAR Heart The Rebels new brutish General hath refused to meddle with forein Passes so as yet I cannot dispatch Adrian May to Thee by the way of London which if I cannot very shortly I will send him by the West And now it I could be assured of Thy recovery I would have but few melancholy thoughts for I thank God My Affairs begin to smile upon Me again Wales being well swept of the Rebels Farrington having relieved it self and now being secured by Goring's coming My Nephews likewise having brought Me a strong party of Horse and Foot these quarters are so free that I hope to be marching within three or four daies and am still confident to have the start of the Rebels this year I am likewise very hopeful that My Son will shortly be in the head of a good Army for this I have the chearful assurance of Culpepper and Hyde Of late I have been much pressed to make Southampton Master of My Horse not more for good will to him as out of fear that Hamilton might return to a capacity of re-cozening Me wherein if I had done nothing both jealousie and discontents were like to arise wherefore I thought fit to put My Nephew Rupert in that place which will both save Me charge and stop other mens grumbings I have now no more to say but praying for and impatiently expecting of good news from Thee I rest eternally Thine 39. To My Wife 4. May 1645. by Malin S. Ravy XXXVI To the QUEEN Droitwich Wednesday 14. May. DEAR Heart Marching takes away the conveniency of sending My Letters so safe and quick to Thee as when I was at Oxford however I shall not fail to do what I can to send often to Thee There is so little news for the present as I will leave that subject for others only upon Saturday last I received a Dispatch from Montross which assures Me his condition to be so good that he bids Me be confident that his Country-men shall do Me no great harm this year and if I could lend him but 500. Horse he would undertake to bring Me 20000. men before the end of this Summer For the general state of My affairs we all here think it to be very hopeful this Army being of a good strength well ordered and increasing My Sons such that Fairfax will not be refused to be fought with of which I hope Thou wilt receive good satisfaction from himself It 's true that I cannot brag of store of money but a sharp sword alwaies hinders starving at least and I believe the Rebels Coffers are not very full and certainly we shall make as
the end of the last Session was not to challenge Tonnage and Poundage as of Right but de bene esse shewing you the Necessity not the Right by which I was to take it until I had it granted unto Me assuring My self according to your general professions that you wanted time not will to grant it unto Me. Wherefore now having opportunity I expect that without loss of time you make good your professions and so by passing the Bill put an end to all Questions arising from this subject especially since I have cleared all scruples that may trouble you in this business To conclude Let us not be jealous of one anothers Actions for if I had been easily moved at every occasion the Order made on Wednesday last might have made Me startle there being some shew to suspect that you had given your selves the liberty to be Inquirers after Complaints the words of your Order being somewhat largely penned but looking into your Actions I find you here only Complainers not seeking Complaints for I am certain you neither intend nor desire the liberty to be Inquisitors after mens Actions before particular Complaints be made This I have spoken to shew how slow I am to believe harshly of your Proceedings likewise to assure you that the Houses Resolution not particular mens speeches shall make Me judge well or ill Not doubting but according to mine example you will be deaf to ill reports concerning Me until My Words and Actions speak for themselves but this Session beginning with Confidence one towards the other it may end with a perfect good understanding between us which God grant XV. To the Lords and Commons in Answer to their Petition for a Publick Fast January 31. MDCXXVIII IX MY Lords and Gentlemen the chiefest motive of your Fast being the deplorable estate of the Reformed Churches abroad is too true and our duties are so much as in us possibly lyeth to give them help But certainly Fighting will do them more good than Fasting Though I do not wholly disallow the latter yet I must tell you that this Custom of Fasts every Sessions is but lately begun and I confess I am not so fully satisfied with the necessity of it at this time Yet to shew you how smoothly I desire our business to go on eschewing as much as I can Questions and Jealousies I do willingly grant your request herein But with this note that I expect that this shall not hereafter be brought into Precedent for frequent Fasts except upon great occasions As for the Form and Time I will advise with My Lords the Bishops and then send you a particular to both Houses XVI To the House of Commons in Answer to their Declaration concerning Tonnage and Poundage Feb. 3. MDCXXVIII IX YOur Declaration being somewhat long may by reason require some time to reply unto it since as most of you cannot but judge that this giveth Me no satisfaction Therefore I shall give you some short Notes upon it I cannot think that whereas you alledge that the Bill of Tonnage and Poundage was brought in against the Priviledge of your House that you will offer to take so much Priviledge from any one of your Members as not to allow them the liberty to bring in any Bill whatsoever though it be in your power when it is brought in to do with it what you think good And I cannot imagine how coming hither only by My Power and to treat of things I propound unto you you can deny Me that Prerogative to recommend or offer any Bill unto you Though in this particular I must profess that this Bill was not to have been offered you in My Name as that Member of your House can bear Me witness As for the cause of delay of My business being Religion there is none of you shall have a greater care for the true preservation of it than My self which since it is confessed by your Answer ye must either think I want Power which cannot be or that I am very ill-counselled if it be in such danger as you affirm Though I may say much of this point I will say no more but that for all this I shall not stop My Ears unto you upon this subject so that in form and matter you transgress not your limits As for Tonnage and Poundage I do not desire it out of greediness being perswaded you will make no stop in it when you take it in hand as out of a desire to put an end to all Questions that daily arise between Me and some of My Subjects thinking it a strange thing if you should give ear unto those Complaints and not take the sure and speedy way to decide them Besides I must think it strange that this business of Religion should be only a hinderer of My Affairs whereas I am certainly informed that all other things go on according to their ordinary course Therefore I must still be instant with you that you proceed with this business of Tonnage and Poundage with diligence not looking to be denied in so just a desire And you must not think it much if finding you slack I shall give you such further quickening as I find cause XVII To the House of Lords at the Dissolving of His Third Parliament at WESTMINSTER Mar. 10. MDCXXVIII IX MY Lords I never came here upon so unpleasing an occasion it being the Dissolution of a Parliament Therefore men may have some cause to wonder why I should not rather chuse to do this by Commission it being a general Maxime of Kings to leave harsh Commands to their Ministers Themselves only executing pleasing things Yet considering that Justice as well consists in reward and praise of Vertue as punishing of Vice I thought it necessary to come here to day to declare to you My Lords and all the world that it was merely the undutiful and seditious carriage of the Lower House that hath caused the Dissolution of this Parliament and that You My Lords are so far from being causes of it that I take as much Comfort in your dutiful demeanours as I am justly distasted with their Proceedings Yet to avoid mistakings let Me tell you that it is so far from Me to adjudge all that House guilty that I know there are many there as dutiful Subjects as any in the world it being but some few Vipers among them that cast this Mist of undutifulness over most of their Eyes Yet to say truth there was a good number there that would not be infected with this Contagion insomuch that some did express their duties in speaking which was the general fault of the House the last day To conclude As these Vipers must look for their reward of punishment so you My Lords may justly expect from Me that Favour and Protection that a Good King oweth to His loving and dutiful Nobility And now My Lord Keeper do what I have commanded you XVIII To the Speaker of the House of Commons April MDCXL MAster Speaker I
done and Signed and Sealed accordingly as followeth At the High Court of Justice for the Trying and Judging of CHARLES STUART King of England Januar. 29. 1648. WHereas Charles Stuart King of England is and standeth Convicted Attainted and Condemned of High Treason and other high Crimes and Sentence upon Saturday last was pronounced against him by this Court to be put to death by the severing of his Head from his Body of which Sentence Execution yet remains to be done These are therefore to will and require you to see the said Sentence executed in the open Street before White-hall upon the morrow being the 30. day of this instant Month of January between the hours of Ten in the Morning and Five in the Afternoon of the same day with full effect And so doing this shall be your sufficient Warrant And these are to require all Officers and Souldiers and other the good People of this Nation of England to be assisting unto you in this Service To Colonel Francis Hacker Colonel Huncks and Lieutenant Colonel Phayre and to every of them Given under our hands and seals John Bradshaw Thomas Gray Ol. Cromwel Edw. Whaley Mi. Livesey John Okey Jo. Danvers Jo. Bourchier Rich. Ingoldsby W. Cawley J. Barkestead Isaac Ewer J. Dixwell Val. Wauton Symon Meyne Tho. Horton H. Ireton Tho. Maleverer John Blakeston Jo. Hutchinson Will. Goffe Tho. Pride Pe. Temple Tho. Harrison Hen. Smith Per. Pelham Ri. Dean Rob. Tichburne Hum. Edwards Dan. Blagrave Owen Rowe William Purefoy Ad. Scroope James Temple A. Garland Edm. Ludlow Hen. Marten Vincent Potter W. Constable Jo. Jones Jo. Moore Ha. Waller Gilb. Millington G. Fleetwood J. Alured Rob. Lilburne W. Saye Anth. Stapeley Gre. Norton Tho. Chaloner Tho. Wogan Jo. Venne Greg. Clement Jo. Downes Tho. Waite Tho. Scott Jo. Carew Miles Corbet Tuesday the thirtieth of January the Fatal Day being come the Commissioners met and ordered four or five of their Ministers to attend upon the King at James's where they then kept Him but his Majesty well knowing what miserable comforters they were like to prove refused to have conference with them That Morning before his Majesty was brought thence the Bishop of London who with much ado was permitted to wait upon Him a day or two before and to assist Him in that sad instant read Divine Service in his presence in which the 27th of Saint Matthew the History of our Saviour's Crucifixion proved the second Lesson The King supposing it to have been selected on purpose thank'd him afterwards for his seasonable choice But the Bishop modestly declining that undue thanks told him that it was the Lesson appointed by the Calendar for that day He also then and there received of the Bishop the holy Sacrament and performed all His Devotions in preparation to His Passion Which ended about ten of the clock His Majesty was brought from Saint James's to White-Hall by a Regiment of Foot with Colours flying and Drums beating part marching before and part behind with a private guard of Partisans about Him the Bishop on the the one hand and Colonel Tomlinson who had the charge of Him on the other both bare-headed His Majesty walking very fast and bidding them go faster added That He now went before them to strive for an Heavenly Crown with less solicitude than He had often incouraged His Souldiers to fight for an Earthly Diadem Being come to the end of the Park He went up the Stairs leading to the long Gallery in White-Hall and so into the Cabinet Chamber where He used formerly to lodge There finding an unexpected delay in being brought upon the Scaffold which they had not as then fitted He past the time at convenient distances in Prayer About twelve of the clock His Majesty refusing to dine only eat a bit of Bread and drank a Glass of Claret and about an hour after Colonel Hacker with other Officers and Souldiers brought Him with the Bishop and Colonel Tomlinson through the banqueting-Banqueting-house to the Scaffold to which the passage was made through a Window Divers Companies of Foot and Troups of Horse were placed on each side of the Street which hindred the approach of the very numerous Spectators and the King from speaking what He had premeditated and prepared for them to hear Whereupon His Majesty finding Himself disappointed omitted much of His intended matter and for what He meant to speak directed Himself chiefly to Colonel Tomlinson I Shall be very little heard of any body here I shall therefore speak a word unto you here Indeed I could hold My peace very well if I did not think that holding My peace would make some men think that I did submit to the Guilt as well as to the Punishment But I think it is My Duty to God first and to My Country for to clear My self both as an honest Man and a good King and a good Christian I shall begin first with My Innocency In troth I think it not very needful for Me to insist long upon this for all the World knows that I never did begin a War first with the two Houses of Parliament and I call God to witness to whom I must shortly make an account that I never did intend for to incroach upon their Privileges they began upon Me it is the Militia they began upon they confest that the Militia was Mine but they thought it fit for to have it from Me. And to be short if any body will look to the Dates of Commissions of their Commissions and Mine and likewise to the Declarations they will see clearly that they began these unhappy Troubles not I. So that as to the guilt of these enormous Crimes that are laid against Me I hope in God that God will clear Me of it I will not I am in Charity God forbid that I should lay it on the two Houses of Parliament there is no necessity of either I hope they are free of this Guilt For I do believe that ill Instruments between them and Me have been the chief cause of all this blood-shed So that by way of speaking as I find my self clear of this I hope and pray God that they may too Yet for all this God forbid that I should be so ill a Christian as not to say that God's Judgments are just upon Me many times he does pay Justice by an unjust Sentence that is ordinary I will only say this That an unjust Sentence that I suffered for to take effect is punished now by an unjust Sentence upon Me. That is So far I have said to shew you that I am an innocent man Now for to shew you that I am a good Christian I hope there is a good man that will bear Me witness that I have forgiven all the World and even those in particular that have been the chief causers of My Death Who they are God knows I do not desire to know I pray God forgive them But this is not all My Charity must go further I
If the time spent in this Parliament be considered in relation backward to the long growth and deep root of those Grievances which we have removed to the powerful supports of those Delinquents which we have pursued to the great necessities and other charges of the Commonwealth for which we have provided or if it be considered in relation forward to many advantages which not only the present but future ages are like to reap by the good Laws and other proceedings in this Parliament we doubt not but it will be thought by all indifferent judgments that our time hath been much better imployed then in a far greater proportion of time in many former Parliaments put together and the charges which have been laid upon the Subjects and the other inconveniences which they have born will seem very light in respect of the benefit they have and may receive And for the matter of Protections the Parliament is so sensible of it that therein they intend to give them whatsoever ease may stand with Honour and Justice and are in a way of passing a Bill to give them satisfaction They have sought by many subtle practices to cause jealousies and divisions betwixt us and our brethren of Scotland by slandering their proceedings and intentions towards us and by secret endeavours to instigate and incense them and us one against another They have had such a party of Bishops and Popish Lords in the House of Peers as hath caused much opposition and delay in the prosecution of Delinquents hindered the proceedings of divers good Bills passed in the Commons House concerning the reformation of sundry great abuses and corruptions both in Church and State They have laboured to seduce and corrupt some of the Commons House to draw them into Conspiracies and Combinations against the Liberty of the Parliament and by their Instruments and agents they have attempted to disaffect and discontent His Majesties Army and to engage it for the maintenance of their wicked and traiterous designs the keeping up of Bishops in their Votes and Functions and by force to compel the Parliament to order limit and dispose their proceedings in such manner as might best concur with the intentions of this dangerous and potent faction And when one mischievous design and attempt of theirs to bring on the Army against the Parliament and the City of London had been discovered and prevented they presently undertook another of the same damnable nature with this addition to it to endeavour to make the Scotish Army neutral whilst the English Army which they had laboured to corrupt and invenome against us by their false and slanderous suggestions should execute their malice to the subversion of our Religion and the dissolution of our Government Thus they have been continually practising to disturb the Peace and plotting the destruction even of all the Kings dominions and have employed their Emissaries and Agents in them all for the promoting of their devilish designs which the vigilancy of those who were well-affected hath still discovered and defeated before they were ripe for execution in England and Scotland only in Ireland which was farther off they have had time and opportunity to mould and prepare their work and had brought it to that perfection that they had possessed themselves of that whole Kingdom totally subverted the Government of it rooted out Religion and destroyed all the Protestants whom the conscience of their duty to God their King and Countrey would not have permitted to joyn with them if by God's wonderful providence their main enterprise upon the City and Castle of Dublin had not been detected and prevented upon the very Eve before it should have been executed Notwithstanding they have in other parts of that Kingdom broken out into open Rebellion surprized Towns and Castles committed murders rapes and other villanies and shaken off all bonds of Obedience to His Majesty and the Laws of the Realm and in general have kindled such a fire as nothing but God's infinite blessing upon the wisdom and endeavours of this State will be able to quench it And certainly had not God in his great mercy unto this Land discovered and confounded their former designs we had been the Prologue to this Tragedy in Ireland and had by this time been made the lamentable spectacle of misery and confusion And now what hope have we but in God when as the only means of our subsistence and power of Reformation is under Him in the Parliament But what can we the Commons without the conjunction of the House of Lords and what conjunction can we expect there when the Bishops and Recusant Lords are so numerous and prevalent that they are able to cross and interrupt our best endeavours for Reformation and by that means give advantage to this malignant party to traduce our proceedings They infuse into the People that we mean to abolish all Church-government and leave every man to his own fancy for the Service and Worship of God absolving him of that Obedience which he owes under God unto His Majesty whom we know to be entrusted with the Ecclesiastical Law as well as with the Temporal to regulate all the members of the Church of England by such rules of order and discipline as are established by Parliament which is his great Council in all affairs both of Church and State We confess our intention is and our endeavours have been to reduce within bounds that exorbitant power which the Prelates have assumed unto themselves so contrary both to the Word of God and to the Laws of the Land to which end we past the Bill for the removing them from their Temporal power and employments that so the better they might with meekness apply themselves to the discharge of their functions Which Bill themselves opposed and were the principal instruments of crossing it And we do here declare that it is far from our purpose or desire to let loose the golden reins of Discipline and Government in the Church to leave private persons or particular Congregations to take up what form of Divine Service they please for we hold it requisite that there should be throughout the whole Realm a Conformity to that Order which the Laws enjoyn according to the Word of God and we desire to unburthen the Consciences of men of needless and superstitious Ceremonies suppress innovations and take away the monuments of Idolatry And the better to effect the intended Reformation we desire there may be a general Synod of the most grave pious learned and judicious Divines of this Island assisted with some from foreign parts professing the same Religion with us who may consider of all things necessary for the peace and good Government of the Church and represent the results of their consultations unto the Parliament to be there allowed of and confirmed and receive the stamp of Authority thereby to find passage and obedience throughout the Kingdom They have malitiously charged us that we intend to destroy and discourage
Parliament being resolved that it should not be Our fault if all those particulars were not speedily provided for which seemed then to be the grounds of their desire Let all the World now judge what greater Obligations of Justice Favour Affection and Trust can a Prince lay upon His Subjects than We did upon both Our Houses of Parliament by these Acts and whether We did not in Our free Grace and Favour grant much more than had been asked of Us by that Petition presented to Us by some Lords at York in which was then thought to be contracted all that was grievous to Our People and all that was just and gracious for Us to do for them And in all the time in which these Acts were framing and passing though Our own personal Wants were notoriously known and unkindly unprovided for and themselves had asked leave to look into and settle Our Revenue which We consented to and therefore We might have expected some fruit of that pretended Care We never pressed them or made the least overture to them for Our own supply only desired them and 't was almost the only thing We did desire of them that they would use all possible expedition in the business of the Treaty that the two Armies might be speedily disbanded and Our Subjects eased of that heavy burthen which in time would grow insupportable and waste the whole stock of the Kingdom But We found the Faction We feared in the beginning grew still stronger and nothing converted or reconciled by all those Acts of Ours which would have made any Nation happy That whilst We were busie in providing for the publick they were contriving particular Advantages of Offices and Places for themselves made use under-hand of the former Grievances of the Subject in things concerning Religion and Law to change the Religion and Law of this Kingdom labouring that neither any thing the Subject had suffered from the Crown might be forgotten nor any satisfaction from the Crown to the Subject might be remembred And therefore in stead of acknowledging Our great Justice and singular Favour in passing those Acts they infused into Our People that We passed them unwillingly whereas We never made the least pause upon any of them but one that for the High-Commission Court and whether that was penned with that wariness and animadversion that there be not more determined by it than the major part of both Houses intended at the passing of it let themselves judge and that We meant not to observe them and grew so much confounded with the full measure of Our Favour that they would allow themselves no security of enjoying what We had freely given but by taking away any power from Us of giving more they must have a through alteration both in Church and State or else they should never enjoy the benefit of the Reformation We had willingly made Hereupon they oppose the disbanding of the Armies and give all delays to the Scots Treaty though the Commissioners for that Nation very earnestly pressed the hastning of it and in plain English declare That they cannot yet spare them that the sons of Zerviah were too strong for them And finding more haste to be made in the asserting the Civil Interests than they desired having a design to ingage this Kingdom into so vast a Debt that there might be no way of paying it but by the Lands of the Church and lest Our good Subjects might be too soon satisfied they hastned on to their design upon the Church which they at first disguised with a purpose only of removing the Bishops from their Votes in the Lords House This Bill passed the House of Commons in the House of Peers it endured several long free debates and in the end upon great and solemn deliberation was by the consent of very much the major part of that House absolutely rejected This was no sooner done but that Faction glad of the miscarriage of their former Bill the passing whereof they knew would have satisfied many of those whom they hoped now further to seduce produced a Bill to be tendred in the House of Commons for the abolition of Bishops out of the Church of England Root and Branch according to their first resolution as Mr. Pym told a Member of the Lords House by way of reproof That it was not enough to be against the Persons of the Bishops if he were not against the Function and for extirpation of all Deans and Chapters and reducing that admirable Frame of Government and support of Learning into a Chaos of Confusion that out of it they might mold an Vtopia no six of them had nor We believe yet have agreed on further than to destroy the present and out of the goodly Revenue which the pious Bounty and Devotion of former Ages had been so long in raising for the encouragement and advancement of Learning and Religion and which God hath blessed with so many eminent Men whose Learning and Lives have advanced the Doctrine of the Protestant Religion and many of them given their Bodies to the Fire as a Sacrifice to that Truth and Religion to erect Stipends to their own Clergy and to raise estates to repair their own broken fortunes And for the free passing of this Bill which to this hour they could never tell what to make of two Armies must be kept in the bowels of the Kingdom at 80000 pound a Month charge to the Commonwealth For about this Bill the House of Commons was so wholly taken up that in ten weeks none or very little other business could be thought of About this time or a little before after several Intimations of Treasons Plots and Conspiracies by the Papists of great Provisions of Arms by them and training Men under ground and many other false reports created spread and countenanced by themselves upon some general apprehensions of Designs against them a Protestation is made in the House of Commons for some union and consent amongst themselves to perform those Duties which if they had meant no more than they expressed had been sufficiently provided for by the Oaths they had already taken and what their former Duties obliged them to Hereupon a Protestation is framed and being put into such words as no honest Man could believe himself obliged by it to any unlawful Action was voluntarily taken by all the Members of the House of Commons and presently recommended to the House of Lords where it received the same countenance that is was looked upon as containing nothing in it self unlawful though some Members of that House refused to take it being voluntary and not imposed by any Lawful Authority Then 't is recommended to the City of London and over all the Kingdom by order from the House of Commons a strange and unheard-of Usurpation to be taken by all persons But in very few days upon conference amongst themselves and with those Clergy-men who daily solicite their unlawful and unwarrantable designs with the People they find
Parishes first by special Letters and earnest Sollicitations from the prime Leaders of this turbulent Faction after by Orders requiring such Ministers as would not accept their Recommendations to attend and shew cause All licence was given to those leud Seditious Pamphlets which despised the Government both of the Church and State which laid any Imputations and Scorns upon Our Person or Office and which filled the ears of all Our good Subjects with Lyes and monstrous Discourses to make them believe all the ill of the Government and Governors of Church and State Books against the Book of Common-Prayer and the established Laws of the Land suffered without reprehension to be dedicated to both Houses of Parliament whatsoever the Rancour and Venome of any Infamous person could digest published without control and nothing discountenanced and reproached but a dutiful regard of Us and Our Honour and a sober esteem and application to the Laws of the Kingdom This was the condition We found at our return from Scotland besides a strange groundless apprehension of Danger infused generally into the minds of Our good Subjects as if some notable Design were in hand against the Parliament against the City of London against the whole Kingdom of England There fell out an Accident whilest We were in Scotland concerning the Marquesses of Hamilton and Argile Those two Lords upon some information given to them that their Persons were in danger upon a sudden withdrew themselves from the Parliament in Scotland and for some few days removed out of Edenburgh Whatever they had been informed and what ever they suspected the Grounds of both were very fully examined by the Parliament there their Persons being of that quality and estimation in that Kingdom that they were sure of Justice Upon the whole themselves and the Parliament were satisfied that the Information first given to them could not be made good to the proof of any Design to the Danger of these Lords and the Examinations of the whole matter sent by Our direction to Our Parliament here How if all had been true that was imagined this business could so highly and nearly concern the Peace of this Kingdom and the present Safety of both Our Houses of Parliament We cannot imagine Yet upon the first report of it here which was the day before the first Meeting after the Recess without staying to hear the opinion of Our Parliament there who used all diligence in the examination or of Our Parliament here such strange Glosses and Interpretations were made upon that accident not without reflection upon Us and Our Honour as if at the same time there had been such a Design to have been executed here as they had fancied to themselves that to be and a sudden resolution was taken first by the Committee during the Recess after by the Houses to have a Guard for the defence of London Westminster and both Our Houses of Parliament which must needs make a great impression in the minds of Our good Subjects in a time when they were newly freed from the fears of two Armies to be awaked with the apprehension of Dangers of which seeing no ground they were to expect no end Matters being thus stated and all possible skill being used by that Faction and by their Emissaries of the Clergy who at the same time such Clamour was raised of the unlawfulness that the Clergy should meddle in Temporal Affairs were their chief Agents to derive their Seditious directions to the People and were all the week attending the doors of both Houses to be imployed in those errands to infuse the most desperate Fears into the minds of all Men that could be imagined To be sure that the memory of former bitterness might not depart they provide for Our Entertainment against We should come to London to present Us with a Remonstrance as they called it of the State of the Kingdom laying before Us and publishing to all the world all the mistakes and all the misfortunes which had happened from Our first coming to the Crown and before to that hour forgetting the blessed condition notwithstanding the unhappy mixture all Our Subjects had enjoyed in the benefit of Peace and Plenty under Us to the envy of Christendom objecting to Us the Actions of some and the thoughts of others and reproaching Us with matters which indeed never entred into Our thoughts nor to Our knowledge into the thoughts of any other reviling Us to the People and complaining to Us of the House of Peers whose Authority Interest and Privilege was then as much slighted and despised as Ours is since and easily passing over those singular Acts of Our Grace passed by Us this Parliament or ascribing them to their own wisdom in the procurement they concluded against a Malignant Party and that they had no hope of settling the Distractions of the Kingdom for want of concurrence with the House of Peers and that concurrence was desperate by reason of the Prevalency of the Bishops and of the Recusant Lords into which number all those Lords were cast who presumed to dissent from any Propositions made by the House of Commons When this Engine was prepared for the People by the prime Leaders of that desperate Faction it was presented to the House of Commons and the greatest industry and skill used that is imaginable by private Sollicitations Threats and Promises to procure consent that it might be passed by that House and after a long debate longer than ever was known in Parliament till three of the clock in the morning from ten the day before when very many through weariness and weakness were forced to leave the House so that it looked as was well said like the Verdict of the Starved Jury they carryed it by eleven Voices And shortly within very few days after Our return when We had been received with all possible expressions of Joy by Our City of London which was publickly murmured against and the chief advancers of that Duty and Affection discountenanced as if they envied Us the Loyalty of Our People and when it was publickly said in Our House of Commons upon some dispute of a pretended breach of the Orders of the House That their Discipline ought to be severe for the Enemy was in view that Remonstrance was presented to Us at Our Court at Hampton-Court by some Members of the House of Commons with a Petition contracting the sharp Language in the Remonstrance into less room amongst other things That We would concurr with Our People for depriving the Bishops of their Votes in Parliament for which there was no Bill passed both Houses and to employ such Persons about Us as Our Parliament might confide in We received this strange Petition and stranger Remonstrance graciously from the hands of the Presenters promised them an Answer and in the mean time desired that the Remonstrance might not be published to the People the thing it self and the printing any thing of the like nature being never heard of by the
direction of the House of Commons till this Parliament it being the first appeal to the People and of a dangerous consequence to Parliaments themselves But as in other things neither Our Desires or Commands have been considered without giving Us leisure to answer either the one or the other special direction is given for the printing that Remonstrance and equal care taken for the publishing it in all places and parts of the Kingdom Having taken this care for the shaking and perplexing the minds of all men the next work was to get such a Power into their hands as might govern and dispose of those Affections To this purpose they had from the beginning of the Parliament by reason of some complaints against the immoderate exercise of the authority of the Lieutenants and their Deputies in raising Coat and Conduct-money and some excesses in them had several debates in the diminution of the Office it self but still grounded upon the illegal Pressures used by them and upon some words in the Commission it self which though of long usage in very happy days were conceived not agreeable to the Law but they were so far from supposing the Office it self or Commission to be illegal that both Houses of Parliament had recommended two Lords to Us and desired Our Commission to make them Lords Lieutenants of Yorkshire and Dorsetshire the only end seeming then to be that good and approved men should be in those imployments and trusts But at last they resolved against the Office it self and would think of some other way to provide for the safety of the Kingdom in that point and in this they had a double end First to fright all persons Members of both Houses who had been Lieutenants and Deputy-Lieutenants to comply with them in their Votes lest they should be called in question for the execution of those Offices a Stratagem they had found to engage many persons to their Opinions as Sheriffs for the collecting Ship-money and all other persons who in truth were or might be made obnoxious to their Power then that by unsettling that whole business of the Militia throughout the Kingdom they might the more easily bring in their own power of governing it as they have since endeavoured to do And thereupon they presumed to bring in such a Bill into the House of Commons to place a General at Land and an Admiral at Sea by Act of Parliament with such Power and Authority over the Lives and Fortunes of all Our Subjects as should be liable to no control nor to be questioned by any Superintendent hand with a pre-pardon for whatsoever they should do under colour of those Offices either of which Officers should have been a much greater Man than Our Self and commanded in Our Kingdom above Us the matter of which Bill to shew their Design is since digested into their new Generals Commission and the pretended Ordinance to the Earl of Warwick And all this was then pretended to be a matter of absolute Necessity for the Preservation of Us and Our Kingdom but at that time it could procure no other credit than to be suffered to rest in the House as an evidence of the liberty might be used in the preferring of Bills They had by this time taken all the licence at their private Cabals to undervalue and vilifie Our Person and Our Power and in publick to give way and countenance to any Scandals upon Us. Letters from the Mayor of Plymouth that the Rebels in Ireland call themselves The Queen's Army and pretend the King's Authority for what they do and store of such Discourses upon such Evidence is every week printed in the Journals of the House which without doubt must be of great authority with Our People who must conceive such Informations to be not only fully and clearly proved but to be accepted and published upon very weighty reasons above the consideration of Our Honour and Safety And now they were to examine what notable credit their Remonstrance and their other general Infusions had got with the People and how ready they would be upon any occasions to venture themselves at their direction They had made themselves so terrible in the House of Commons that by their Threats and their Promises of Places and Preferments to several Men and by the absence of many they had gotten the major part But in the House of Lords their power was not the same that must be wrought another way yet there they had used all means to prevail upon the hopes and fears of such who they thought might that way be dealt with witness among many other things of the same nature that insolent Speech of Mr. Pym to the Earl of Dover That if he looked for any Preferment he must comply with them in their ways and not hope to have it by serving Vs. Shortly after their coming together upon the Recess a new Bill was preferred in the House of Commons for the taking away of the Votes of Bishops out of the House of Peers which being once rejected before ought not by the Course and Order of Parliament to have been admitted again the same Session but that was easily over-ruled and in the House of Commons it did pass many good Man the more willingly concurring therein upon hope that that Bill being once consented to the Fury of that Faction which with so great Violence pursued an absolute Destruction of the Ecclesiastical Government would be abated or that Rage being discerned they would lose that strength which supported them But the Lords quickly found that the Ring-leaders of that Faction had not Ingenuity enough to be compounded with and therefore with them it was not like to find so easie a passage Now their resort was to the People whom upon several occasions they had trained down to Westminster in great multitudes with Swords and Clubs and had often sent for them when any debate was like to be carried against them in either House the particulars whereof We are ready to prove Every Man will conceive We were in a great streight to find Our Self so much disappointed of that return the consciousness of Our own Merit and the many glorious Professions made by both Houses bade Us to expect We saw the Laws absolutely trampled under feet and a Design laid to ruin the Government of the Kingdom and to destroy Us and Our Posterity We saw this Design carried by a few Men whose Hatred and Malice to Our Person We found implacable and their Contempt of Us and Our Authority so visible and notorious that they forbore not to express it in their mention of Us in all companies We saw their Power and Interest to be so great that they were able to mis-lead very many honest Men and to countenance their actions under the name of both Houses of Parliament We were resolved that nothing they should do within those walls should provoke Us till time and the experience good Men should have of them should discover their purposes
therefore We applied Our self only to the Law hoping that the Insolence and Licentiousness of the People might by Our help be curbed by that Rule The Tumults grew so notorious and so dangerous that they Threatned and Assaulted the Members of both Houses whereupon the House of Peers which it seems the Lords present at the passing of one of their late Declarations wherein they deny there have been any Tumults had forgot at a Conference with the House of Commons twice very earnestly desired that they would for the dignity of Parliaments joyn with them in a Declaration for the suppressing such Tumults But the prevalency of that Faction was so great that though complaint was made by Members in the House of Commons that they had been assaulted and evil-intreated by those people even at the door of their House in stead of joyning with the Lords for the suppressing or punishing them several Speeches were made in justification of them and commending their Affections saying They must not discourage their friends this being a time they must make use of all their friends and Master Pym saying God forbid that the House of Commons should proceed in any way to dishearten people to obtain their just desires in such away which he had good reason to say himself and those other persons whom We afterwards accused of High Treason having by great sollicitation and encouragement caused those multitudes to come down in that manner The Lords having in vain tried this way appoint upon the advice of the Judges that a Writ be directed to the Sheriff and Justices upon divers Statutes which issued accordingly to suppress and hinder all tumultuous resort in obedience to which the Justices and other Ministers appoint the Constables to attend about Westminster to hinder that unlawful Conflux of People This was no sooner done but the Constables and Justices of the Peace were sent for by the House of Commons the setting such a Watch Voted to be a breach of Priviledgâ— and before any Conference with the Lords by whose direction that legal Writ issued out the Watch discharged and one of the Justices for doing his Duty according to that Writ sent to the Tower About the same time there was a Tumultuous Assembly of Brownists Anabaptists and other Sectaries called together by the Sound of a Bell into a place in Southwark where the Arms and Magazine for that Burrough were kept The Constable knowing such Meetings to be unlawful and the Consequences of them especially in such places to be very dangerous came amongst them He was no sooner come but he was reproached with words beaten and dragged in a barbarous manner insomuch as he hardly escaped from them with his life Complaint was made by him to the next Justices and Oath made of the truth of that complaint whereupon a Writ was sent to the Sheriff to impannel a Jury according to the Law for the examination and finding of this Riot This was complained of too and the meeting in how tumultuous and disorderly a manner soever pretended to be only for the drawing of a Petition against Bishops and that the Constable was a friend to Bishops and came to cross them and to hinder Men from subscribing that Petition Hereupon an Order was made in the House of Commons and the under-Sheriff of Surrey by it enjoyned that he should not suffer any proceedings to be made upon any inquisition that might concern any persons who met together to subscribe a Petition to be preferred to that House What Authority the House of Commons had or have to send any such Injunctions We cannot conceive yet by this any disorderly persons let their Intentions and demeanour be never so Seditious are above the reach of the Law and Justice if they please to say they meet to prepare any Petition to the House of Commons And 't is no wonder if after all this care taken to remove all those Obstacles the Law had put in the way to such Tumults all people took upon them to visit Our Parliament in such manner as they thought fit and thereupon great multitudes of mutinous people every day resorted to Westminster threatned to pull down the Lodgings where divers of the Bishops lay assaulted some in their Coaches chased others with Boats by water laid violent hands on the Archbishop of York in his passing to the House and had he not been rescued by force it is probable they had murthered him crying through the Streets Westminster-Hall and between the two Houses No Bishops No Bishops No Popish Lords and misused the several Members of either House who they were informed favoured not their desperate and Seditious ends proclaiming the names of several of the Peers as Evil and Rotten-Hearted Lords attempting the defacing the Abby at Westminster with great Violence and in their return from thence made a Stand before Our Gate at White-Hall said They would have no more Porters-Lodge but would speak with the King when they pleased and used such desperate Rebellious discourse that We had great reason to believe Our own Person Our Royal Consort and Our Children to be in evident Danger of Violence and therefore were compelled at Our great charge to entertain a Guard for securing Us from that Danger And yet all this Danger is so slighted that We are told in the last Declaration after We have so often urged it That it is a Suggestion as false as the Father of Lies can invent These Licentious and unpunished Tumults gave occasion to the Bishops who could not repair to the House without Danger of their Lives to make that their Protestation for the which they were forthwith accused of High Treason by the House of Commons and committed to the Tower by the House of Peers where they continued for the space of four Months at the least That small Guard We had taken for Our necessary Safety and the resort of some Officers who attended both Our Houses of Parliament for Mony due to them by Act of Parliament and upon the publick Faith to Our Court for Our Defence against those Tumults was objected against Us and divers counterfeit Letters were written and sensless Fears infused into the Citizens of London that We had a design of actual Violence upon that City and thereupon they were drawn into Arms and put upon their Guard against Us. So that there was not only no provision made for the suppressing of Tumults but that provision the Law had made against them discountenanced and taken away and We Our Self censured for taking so much strength about Us as might for some time oppose such Force as was like to be offered to Our own Gates What should We do We very well knew the Contrivers of all these Mischiefs who had by their exceeding Industry and Malice wrought this Distraction throughout the Kingdom such a defection of Allegiance in the Common people such a damp of Trade in the City and so horrid a Confusion in the Church and all this to
Members and further offfered to grant such a free and a general Pardon to all Our loving Subjects as should be thought fit by the advice of both Houses which We thought to be the best way to compose all Fears and Jealousies of what kind soever But the Business of these Men could not be done that way a general Pardon would never have settled the Militia and dispossessed Us of those Rights and that Power without which they could not compass their Designs They now resort to their old refuge the Common People of the City and Suburbs and whatever they desired these Men must ask for the satisfaction of the Fears and Jealousies of the City The City had been desired to lend a hundred thousand pounds for the relief of Ireland and their Answer is drawn up to their hands of their inability to lend and such Reasons given as might advance what had been upon general Discourses neglected The ten thousand Men proffered by the Scots for Ireland were not accepted A Bill having been offered Us for Pressing and in it a Clause not necessary to the present and therefore purposely as We conceive put in in hope We would upon that refuse it declaring Us to have no power to press a Power constantly practised by Our Ancestors and even in the blessed times of Queen Elizabeth Our pause upon it was urged as a Design to lofe that Kingdom although We had offered to raise ten thousand Voluntiers for that purpose if they would pay them The not securing the Cinque-ports though the Custody of them was in a Noble Person against whom the least exception could not be made and the not settling the Kingdom in a Posture of Defence the not removing Sir John Byron from being Lieutenant of the Tower whereby through distrust they were forced to forbear the bringing in of Bullion to the Mint when'tis notoriously known there was more Bullion brought in to Our Mint in the time that Gentleman was Lieutenant than in the same quantity of time in any Mans Remembrance the Votes of the Bishops and the Popish Lords in the House of Peers and all others things which were then in Design and had in vain been attempted by them by the refusal of the House of Peers several times to joyn with them were now urged as principal reasons by this Petition of London why they could not lend a hundred thousand pounds to Ireland and were pressed by several other Petitions contrived by them and presented to both Houses or to the House of Commons And these Petitions are carried up to the Lords by Master Pym who takes upon him to reproach them for not concurring with the House of Commons and impudently lays that Scandal upon Us That We had suffered many to pass by Our own immediate Warrant who were since Commanders in the head of the Rebels A false and abominable Scandal raised by his own Malice to draw Our good Subjects against Us without the least colour or shadow of truth as appears by those Answers they have published to Our Exception in that point wherein there is not the least Evidence of any such Warrant granted by Us though Master Pym be so great a Person that We can have no Reparation against him for that Calumny but had credit enough with the House of Commons to perswade them to charge themselves unjustly to excuse him and to take upon them that he had said nothing in that Speech but by their directions All this had not that quick operation with the Lords with whom though they had committed Twelve Bishops for Treason a thing themselves blush at and the Popish Lords had absented themselves they could not prevail to joyn in matters so unreasonable in themselves and dishonourable to Us therefore the House of Commons by themselves Petition Us thank Us for Our Message of the twentieth of January though they have since declared it to be a breach of Privilege resolving to take it into serious and speedy Consideration only desire for their security That We will put the Tower of London and all the Forts of the Kingdom and the whole Militia into such hands as should be recommended unto Us by them for the House of Peers had refused to joyn with them and so were upon the matter petitioned against and left out in the power of recommendation Sure this was the strangest Petition that till that time had ever been presented by the House of Commons to their King yet We returned a gracious Answer That if any particular should be presented to Us whereby it might appear that the Lieutenant of the Tower was unfit for the trust We had committed to him We would immediately remove him otherwise We were obliged in Honour and Justice not to put such a Disgrace upon him For the Forts and Castles that We were resolved they should be always in such hands and only in such as Our Parliament should have cause to confide in that We would have the nomination of them Our Self but that they should be always left if any thing were objected against them to the Wisdom and Justice of the Parliament For the Militia that when some particular course should be proposed to Us for the ordering of it We should return an Answer agreeable to Honour and Justice as appears more at large in Our Answer of the 28. of February to that Petition This gave them no better satisfaction than the former but finding that without the Consent of the House of Peers of whom much the major part though the Popish Lords and the Bishops were absent dissented from them and against Our Consent they were not like to prevail over Our People they resolve of another Attempt upon them their old friends the Multitude must be again brought down by the great Conductor Captain Venne who is notoriously known and proof thereof offered to be produced by Master Kirton to the House of Commons to have several times sent to and solicited People to come down out of the City with Swords and Pistols when he hath told them or sent them word by his Wife that the worser Party was like to have the better of the good Party and for all which publick offer neither was Master Venne then suffered to answer to this Charge nor Master Kirton allowed any time though many days were set to bring in the particulars and witnesses Many Persons are importuned to set their hands against the Lieutenant of the Tower That they durst not bring in any Bullion to the Mint for want of Confidence when they never brought in any in their lives and being asked how they could set their hands to such a Certificate when it was known that never greater quantity was brought in than at that time answered That they were directed by Parliament-men to do so or else they could not compass their Ends. And having gotten Multitudes of People of several Counties OF such as pretended to be so to deliver Petitions to both Houses and to desire leave
that they might protest against those Lords who would not agree to the Votes of the House of Commons as the Petitions of Surrey and Hartfordshire do and perswaded others in the name of many thousands of poor People in and about the City of London to Petition against a Malignant Faction which made abortive all those good Intentions which tended to the Peace and Tranquillity of the Kingdom and to desire That those Noble Worthies of the House of Peers who concurred with them in their happy Votes might be earnestly desired to joyn with the House of Commons and to sit and Vote as one entire body professing that unless some speedy remedy were taken for the removal of all such Obstructions as hindered the happy Progress of their great Endeavours the Petitioner should not rest in quietness but should be enforced to lay hold on the next remedy which was at hand to remove the Disturbers of their Peace and want and necessity breaking the bounds of modesty not to leave any means unassayed for their relief adding that the cry of the poor and needy was That such Persons who were the Obstacles of their Peace and Hinderers of the happy proceedings of this Parliament might be forthwith publickly declared whose removal they conceived would put a period to those Distractions after it had been said in the House of Peers That whoever would not consent to the Proposition made by the House of Commons concerning the Forts Castles and the Militia when it was rejected by a major part twice was an Enemy to the Commonwealth This Petition was brought up to the House of Lords by the House of Commons at a Conference and after the same day Master Hollis a Person formerly accused by Us of High Treason and a most malicious Promoter and Contriver of those Petitions and Tumults pressed the Lords at the Bar to joyn with the House of Commons in their desire about the Militia and further with many other expressions of like nature desired in words to this effect That if that desire of the House of Commons were not assented to those Lords who were willing to concur would find some means to make themselves known that it might be known who were against them and they might make it known to them who sent them Upon which Petition so strangely framed countenanced and seconded so great a number of the Lords departed that that Vote passed which they had so often before denied in order to the Ordinance concerning the Militia and since that time they have been able to carry any thing and upon the matter the Resolution of the House of Commons hath been wholly guided by those Persons who had given so plain evidence that they had the Multitude at their Command and hath wholly guided that of the House of Peers who with little debate or dispute have for the most part submitted to whatsoever hath been brought to them Shortly after they passed their Ordinance with such a Preamble as highly concerned Us in Honour and Justice to protest against and wholly excluding Us in whom that whole Power absolutely was and is from any Power or Authority in the Militia the Arms and Strength of the Kingdom and that for as long as they pleased And as if the matter were not worth the considering or that there ought to be no other measure to guide Us in point of Judgment or Understanding but their Votes it was ill taken that We did not immediately return Our Answer but took some time to consider it and We were again with great passion and impatience pressed to give Our Answer they being pleased to tell Us They could not but interpret the Delay to be in a degree a Denial and in the mean time to give Us an instance how modestly they were like to use such Power when We should commit it to them they presumed of themselves knowing We had appointed Our Son the Prince to meet Us at Greenwich in Our return from Dover to inhibite his meeting Us there and to endeavour to get him into their custody All these things considered and the Insolence and Injustice of the Ordinance We might very well have rejected that Proposition with a flat denial and just indignation but We easily perceived that Our good People were misled by the Cunning and Malice of those Boutefeus and thought it always compliance worthy a Prince to take all possible pains to undeceive such who are led into mistakings and therefore We returned to their Proposition for the Ordinance a gracious Answer and Animadversion made it evident to them that the Preamble was in it self untrue and against Our Honour to consent to and expressed Our clear intention in Our going to Our House of Commons We allowed all those persons recommended to Us except only in Corporations to whom a Right was formerly granted by Charter not consistent with this Ordinance and offered to grant such Commissions to them as had very long and happily been used in this Kingdom and which We had this very Parliament granted to two Lords at the instance and intreaty of both Houses If that Power should not be thought enough We offered to grant any should be first vested in Us and so we be enabled to grant but desired that the whole might be digested into an Act of Parliament whereby Our good Subjects might know what they were to do and what they were to suffer that there might be the least latitude for the exercising of any Arbitrary Power over them Which Answer We desire all Our Subjects to read and consider whether We did not thereby grant all which themselves had first desired and whether there was cause to vote such who advised that Answer to be enemies to the State and mischievous Projectors against the Defence of the Kingdom But as if all the Acts passed by Us amongst which that for the taking away the Votes of Bishops out of the House of Peers was the last were of no other value but as instances that We would never deny them any thing they immediately in great fury address themselves to Us with a new humble Petition as they called it but it was indeed a Threatning and told Us plainly That if We would not then in that instant give Our Royal assent to their Ordinance they were resolved to dispose of the Militia by the Authority of both Houses without Us advised Us to stay about London to put away evil Counsellors and to let Our Son the Prince be and continue at S. James's or some other of Our Houses near about London that the Jealousies and Fears of Our People might be prevented We must appeal to all the World whether considering what had been done in publick and said in private We had no cause of Jealousie and whether having such evidence of the Malice Guilt and Power of those accused Members who had designed to have taken the Prince Our Son from Us by froce it was not high time to remove a little further from
and any found so unjust so illegal as the proceedings against the Gentlemen of Kent for preparing and presenting a Petition agreeable in form and matter to all the Rules of Law and Justice by which Men are to be informed to ask any thing as the judgment against Mr. Binyon that he should be disfranchised be incapable of ever bearing Office in the Commonwealth imprisoned in the Gaol at Colchester for the space of two years and to pay three thousand pounds fine nothing being charged and proved against him that any Law or Reason could tell him he was not to do Though the Sentences in the other Courts were in some cases too severe and exceeded the measure of the offence there was still an offence somewhat done that in truth was a crime but here Declarations Votes and Judgments pass upon Our People for matters not suspected to be crimes till they are punished And have such proceedings ever been before this Parliament If Monopolies have been granted to the prejudice of Our People the calamity will not be less if it be exercised by a good Lord by a Bill than itt was before by a Patent and yet the Earl of Warwick thinks fit to require the Letter-Office to be confirmed to him for three lives at the same time that 't is complained of as a Monopoly and without the alteration of any Circumstance for the ease of the Subject and this with so much greediness and authority that whilest it was complained of as a Monopoly he procured an Assignment to be made of it to him from the person complained of after he had by his Interest stopped the proceedings of the Committee for the space of five Months before that Assignment made to him upon pretence that he was concerned in it and desired to be heard Of such soveraign Power was his Name as it could be no longer a Grievance to Our People if it might prove an Advantage to him A Precedent very likely to be followed in many Monopolies if they may be assigned to Principal members or their friends witness the connivence now given to Sir John Meldram for his Lights since his undertaking their Service at Hull Have Partiality and Corruption in Judges obstructed the course of Justice was there ever such Partiality and Corruption when their fellow-Members of either House are by them importuned and solicited for their Votes in causes before them and no other measure or Rule to the Justice of that faction than the opinions of the persons contending What sums of mony have been given to and what contracts have been made with some Members of either House who are of this powerful Faction We complain of for preserving this Man from being questioned and promoting an Accusation against that Man for managing such a Cause and procuring such an Order We are very well able to give particular Information which We shall willingly do when there may be such a sober and secure debate as becomes the Dignity and Freedom of Parliament and the Witnesses now within their reach may neither be awed nor tampered with before Trial. For how little care there is taken for discoveries of this nature appears by that which upon complaint of a slander against Master Pym was justified and the Author averred against him for taking thirty pound Bribe to preserve a Papist from legal prosecution which hath been so long suffered to sleep at a Committee Our Case is truly stated so truly that there is scarce any Particular urged or alledged by Us which is not known to many and the most to all Men. And must Our Condition be now irreparable Are the Injuries committed against Us and the Law justifiable And must We be censured for using all possible means to be freed from them or to be repaired for them because they seem to carry the Name Consent and Authority of both Our Houses of Parliament There is not a Particular of which We complain that found not eminent opposition in both Houses and yet for the most part not above a moiety of either House present The Order of the ninth of September an Order to suspend the execution of Laws in force passed when there were not above eighty Commoners of which many dissented and but twenty Lords whereof eleven the major part expresly contradicted it The first unseasonable Remonstrance the fountain from whence all the present mischiefs have flowed was carried but by eleven Voices after fifteen hours sitting when above two hundred were absent and was never approved by the Lords The business of the Militia was at least twice rejected by double their number in the House of Peers who consented to it there being no Popish Lord present and twelve Bishops in the Tower and yet this proposed again the House being made thin of those Lords who had formerly opposed it who went out immediately it being their usual course to watch such opportunities to effect their businesses after Master Hollis his Threats and then carried The Declaration against Us sent to New-market was carried but by one Voice in the House of Peers and by a small number in the House of Commons The justifying Sir John Hotham in his Act of High Treason was opposed by many Persons of great worth though neither House had half its number And We are very far from censuring all those Persons who concurred in these or any other particulars We believe very many of them stood not in so clear a light to discern the Guilt Malice Ambition or Subtilty of their Seducers But if in truth there were a consent entirely in both Houses of Parliament as We are most assured there will never be to alter the whole frame of Government must We submit to those Resolutions and must not Our Subjects help and assist Us in the defence of Laws and Government established because they do not like them Did We intend when we called them to that great Council or did Our good Subjects intend when they sent them thither in their behalfs that they should alter the whole frame of Government according to their own Fancies and Ambition and possess those Places during their Lives What Our opinion and resolution is concerning Parliaments We have fully expressed in Our Declarations We have said and will still say they are so essential a part of the Constitution of this Kingdom that We can attain to no Happiness without them nor will We ever make the least attempt in our thoughts against them We well know that our Self and Our two Houses make up the Parliament and We are like Hippocrates Twins We must laugh and cry live and dye together that no Man can be a friend to the one and an enemy to the other the Injustice Injury and Violence offered to Parliaments is that which We principally complain of and We again assure all Our good Subjects in the presence of Almighty God that all the Acts passed by Us this Parliament shall be equally observed by Us as We desire those to be which
the desire of both Houses of His Majesty's coming to His Parliament which they have often exprest with as full offers of security to His Royal Person as was agreeable to their Duty and Allegiance and they know no cause why His Majesty may not repair hither with Honour and Safety but they did not insert it into your Instructions because they conceived the Disbanding of the Armies would have facilitated His Majesty's Resolution therein which they likewise conceived was agreeable to His Majesty's Sense who in declaring His Consent to the Order of the Treaty did only mention that part of the first Proposition which concerned the Disbanding and did omit that which concerned His coming to the Parliament Oath of Officers They conceive the ordinary Oaths of the Officers mentioned are not sufficient to secure them against the extraordinary causes of Jealousie which have been given them in these troublesome times and that His Majesty's Answer lays some tax upon the Parliament as if defective and thereby uncapable of making such a Provisional Law for an Oath therefore you shall still insist upon their former desires of such an Oath as is mentioned in your Instructions If you shall not have received His Majesty's positive Answer to the humble desire of both Houses in these two first Propositions according as they are exprest in your Instructions before the twenty days limited for the Treaty shall be expired you shall then with convenient speed repair to the Parliament without expecting any further direction Jo. Brown Cler. Parliamentorum CHARLES REX TO shew to the whole World how earnestly His Majesty longs for Peace and that no Success shall make Him desire the continuance of His Army to any other end or for any longer time than that and until things may be so settled as that the Law may have a full free and uninterrupted course for the defence and preservation of the Rights of His Majesty both Houses and His good Subjects 1. As soon as His Majesty is satisfied in His first Proposition concerning His own Revenue Magazines Ships and Forts in which He desires nothing but that the just known Legal Rights of His Majesty devolved to Him from His Progenitors and of the Persons trusted by Him which have violently been taken from both be restored unto Him and unto them unless any just and legal exceptions against any of the Persons trusted by Him which are yet unknown to His Majesty can be made appear to Him 2. As soon as all the Members of both Houses shall be restored to the same capacity of sitting and voting in Parliament as they had upon the first of January 1641. the same of right belonging unto them by their birth-rights and the free election of those that sent them and having been voted from them for adhering to His Majesty in these Distractions His Majesty not intending that this should extend either to the Bishops whose Votes have been taken away by Bill or to such in whose places upon new Writs new Elections have been made 3. As soon as His Majesty and both Houses may be secured from such tumultuous assemblies as to the great breach of the Priviledges and the high dishonour of Parliaments have formerly assembled about both Houses and awed the Members of the same and occasioned two several complaints from the Lords House and two several desires of that House to the House of Commons to joyn in a Declaration against them the complying with which desire might have prevented all these miserable Distractions which have ensued which security His Majesty conceives can be only settled by adjourning the Parliament to some other place at the least twenty miles from London the choice of which His Majesty leaves to both Houses His Majesty will most chearfully and readily consent that both Armies be immediately disbanded and give a present meeting to both His Houses of Parliament at the time and place at and to which the Parliament shall be agreed to be adjourned His Majesty being most confident that the Law will then recover the due credit and estimation and that upon a free debate in a full and peaceable convention of Parliament such provisions will be made against seditious Preaching and Printing against His Majesty and the established Laws which hath been one of the chief causes of the present Distractions and such care will be taken concerning the legal and known Rights of His Majesty and the Property and Liberty of His Subjects that whatsoever hath been publisht or done in or by colour of any illegal Declaration Ordinance or Order of one or both Houses or any Committee of either of them and particularly the power to raise Arms without His Majesty's Consent will be in such manner recalled disclaimed and provided against that no seed will remain for the like to spring out of for the future to disturb the Peace of the Kingdom and to endanger the very Being of it And in such a Convention His Majesty is resolved by His readiness to consent to whatsoever shall be proposed to Him by Bill for the real good of His Subjects and particularly for the better discovery and speedier conviction of Recusants for the education of the Children of Papists by Protestants in the Protestant Religion for the prevention of practices of Papists against the State and the due execution of the Laws and true levying of the Penalties against them to make known to all the World how causless those Fears and Jealousies have been which have been raised against Him and by that so distracted this miserable Kingdom And if this Offer of His Majesty be not consented to in which He asks nothing for which there is not apparent Justice on His side and in which He defers many things highly concerning both Himself and People till a full and peaceable convention of Parliament which in Justice He might now require His Majesty is confident that it will then appear to all the World not only who is most desirous of Peace and whose default it is that both Armies are not now disbanded but who hath been the true and first cause that this Peace was ever interrupted or these Armies raised and the beginning or continuance of the War and the destruction and desolation of this poor Kingdom which is too likely to ensue will not by the most interessed passionate or prejudicate person be imputed to His Majesty His MAJESTY's Questions before the Treaty and the Committees Answers March 25. 1643. Mis MAJESTY desires to be answered these Questions in writing by the Committee of both Houses 1. WHether they may not shew unto Him those Instructions according to which they are to Treat and Debate with His Majesty upon the two first Propositions of which the last Message from both Houses takes notice and refers unto 2. Whether they have power to pass from one Proposition to the other in the Debate before His Majesty have exprest His mind concerning the Proposition first entred into 3. Whether they have power
let the woful experience of these last eighteen years judge where in a time of Peace and Plenty the power of issuing out Commissions to compel Loans a power in the King at His pleasure to impose a Charge upon the People to provide Ships without limitation of time or proportion a power in the Council-Board to commit Men and determine business without distinction of persons or causes the power of laying Impositions both upon Forein and Domestick Commodities and many other Acts of Oppressions was under the name and colour of a Legal Right thereunto practised and put in execution against which the Subject had no help of relief but was necessitated to submit and lie under the burthen And when at any time a Parliament was called being the only cure and remedy for these griefs it could no sooner touch upon these sores but it was dashed in pieces by a sudden Dissolution And now that a remedy is provided for that mischief by the Act for continnance of this Parliament it is attempted by the force and power of an Army to effect that which formerly could have been done with more ease and readiness And now they refer it to the censure of any honest Man whether they have not the warrant of Reason and Necessity to demand some security to enjoy that which His Majesty confesseth to be the Peoples right and in reference to that whether their Demand of having the Forts Castles and Shipping to be put into such hands as both Houses shall have cause to confide in was not both moderate and reasonable And touching their Demand and His Majesty's Answer to the Clause concerning the admission of Forces into those Forts Castles and Towns they must still submit it to all indifferent judgments how much Reason and Justice was comprehended in their Demand and how little satisfaction they received therein His Majesty answers That no Forces raised or brought in contrary to Law should be admitted which they could heartily wish heretofore had or hereafter would be really performed but they desire it may be considered what security this will be to the Kingdom to prevent the raising or bringing in of Forces contrary to law who shall be Judges of the Law when those Forces are once raised and once brought in Surely His Majesty will not acknowledge the two Houses of Parliament to be for His Majesty by several Declarations hath expresly denied them any such Power For contrary to their Declarations fortified with Law and Reason His Majesty published and affirmed the Legality of the Commission of Array and put the same in execution in most parts of the Kingdom hath authorized the Papists of the Kingdom to take Arms to oppose the Parliament and their Proceedings and to rob spoil and deprive the Protestants of this Kingdom of their Estates and lives hath by divers Proclamations and Declarations published the raising of Forces and taking up of Arms by the two Houses of Parliament and such as therein obey their Commands for their own defence and the defence of their Religion and Liberty assaulted by an Army of Papists and their adherents to be Rebellion and Treason and the taking up of Arms by the Papists and their adherents to be acts of Duty and Loyalty and all this urged and pretended to be warranted by the Law of the Land And they do not doubt but by the same Law persons legally impeached and accused in Parliament of high Treason as the Lord Digby Master Percy Master Jermyn Master Oneale and others are by the power of an Army protected from the Justice of the Parliament and yet all this while the People have not only His Majesty's Promise but His Oath to govern and protect them according to the Laws of the Land And now they appeal to the World whether such a general Answer That no Forces raised or brought in contrary to Law without admitting them so much as to declare their confidence in the persons that are to be entrusted with the Power be just or reasonable What is it otherwise in effect than to make those persons that are the Instruments to violate the Law Judges of that Law which to our sad experience is the woful and miserable present condition of this Kingdom And though by what had hitherto passed they had little cause to suspect such a happy issue to the Treaty as they heartily wished and most earnestly laboured for discovering not the least inclination of compliance to their just Demands but all or most of them answered with a Denial and that not without some sharpness and acrimony yet resolving to be wanting in nothing of their parts they enjoyned their Committee to press on the Proposition for Disbanding and humbly desire His Majesty's positive Answer thereunto which if assented unto by His Majesty would though not wholly take away the cause and perfectly cure the Distractions of this Kingdom yet at least take off the smart and pain under which both Church and State do most miserably languish and so better enable them to endure the expectation of a through Cure The Committee applied themselves to His Majesty accordingly and after some endeavour to protract the debate of this Proposition and desire that it might be deferred to the conclusion of the Treaty and that the time of the Treaty might be enlarged His Majesty being earnestly importuned to a positive and speedy Answer to the end the Kingdom might know what they might trust to His Majesty was pleased to return this Answer That as soon as His Majesty were satisfied in His first Proposition concerning His own Revenue Magazines Ships and Forts secondly as soon as all the Members of both Houses shall be restored to the same capacity of sitting and voting in Parliament as they had upon the first of January 1641. not intending to extend it to the Bishops Votes or to such in whose places upon new Writs new Elections have been made thirdly as soon as His Majesty and both Houses might be secured from such tumultuous assemblies as formerly assembled about both Houses which security His Majesty explains can be only settled by adjourning the Parliament to some place twenty miles from London His Majesty would consent that both the Armies should be disbanded and come to the Parliament Which in terms plain enough is as much as to say That until both Houses shall consent to those Demands He will not Disband His Army He will continue the War And what Reason or Justice is either in the matter or manner of those demands or what hope or expectation the People can have to see an end of their present Calamities they leave it to themselves to judge His Majesty in the beginning of the Treaty in His Answer to the Propositions of both Houses was pleased to express how unparliamentary it was by Arms to require new Laws but how to apply that to the two Houses of Parliament they must confess they are to seek they never having demanded any new Laws by Arms endeavouring
Reason insisted on by His Majesty That it is His Right by Law to which they should have added and contrary to Law forced from Him and not being able to deny that and yet being willing to deny something they quarrel at the Phrase and deny that this Power of disposing these Commands is by Law absolutely vested in His Majesty and that because He is trusted with them for the Defence and Safety of the Kingdom His Majesty still justifies what He said Himself and yet confesses all that they say too but only denies the Consequence for no Man is absolutely vested in any thing if being trusted with it to some end hinder him from being so The House of Commons is trusted with a Preparatory the House of Lords is trusted with a Judicatory the King Lords and Commons are trusted with a Legislative Power and all these have those Trusts vested in them for the publick Good and are not yet all these Trusts absolute that is subject to the Control of no other Power Is no Man absolutely vested in his Goods because all we have we are trusted with for the Glory of God His Majesty meant only that this was so absolutely vested in Him by Law as nothing but a new Law could without Breach of Law take or hold it from Him But the Declaration is content to admit that too only denies it to be a Reason why His Majesty should deny to alter that Law when by Circumstance of Time and Affairs that Power becomes destructive to the Commonwealth and Safety of the People the Preservation whereof is the chief End of the Law And His Majesty is equally ready to confess that it is no Reason but doth absolutely deny that this is the Case insisting that the circumstances of Time and Affairs hare made this Power more necessary than ever to remain in His Majesty for the protection and safety of His People and He claims Himself to be as absolutely trusted by Law with the final Judgment whether it be the Case or no and with a Power of rejecting any such Alteration upon any such Pretence if it appear but a Pretence to Him as either House is trusted to propose any such Alteration to the other or both to Him if it appear to them necessary and convenient But says this Declaration the two Houses of Parliament being the Representative Body of the Kingdom are the most competent Judges thereof And says his Majesty the Representative Body of the Kingdom is indeed and that is the King Lords and Commons else either the Head is no part of the Body or at least will be no longer than the Body please Indeed the two Houses in some sense represent the Kingdom in any Action which the Law which is the Rule of the Kingdom hath intrusted and enabled them to do but either one House or His Majesty do equally represent it in any thing which the same Law hath entrusted and enabled Him or them to do And for those Actions in which the Law requires the Consent of all three every one is to be allowed their own several distinct Judgment for themselves only and any one without the other two have as much Right as any two without the third to represent the Kingdom and to be competent Judges of the Case And His Majesty cannot be take notice how much Reason He had not to yield to this Demand since the grant of this Demand would be received as an Admission of this Case and it would Logically enough follow That if His People cannot be safe and He retain this Power He doth not deserve to retain any And if their Demands were granted and the Armies upon their Demands disbanded this Consequence in all Probability would soon be both perceived and prest But His Majesty may without Prejudice admit both Houses to be the most competent Judges in this particular and then put them in mind that before so many things had been done by the violent Party to turn the Tide of Fears and Jealousies before they had involved the King and Subject in a common Suffering and equally destroyed all the Property of the one and Prerogatives of the other by Orders and Ordinances and so there then appeared less necessity that this Power should remain in the Crown either for the preservation of it Self or of the People and little danger appeared to the People if this Power were thus shared the House of Lords did then twice deliver their Judgment That this Power in His Majesty was not become destructive to the Common-wealth and Safety of His People nor the Alteration of this Law necessary by twice denying to joyn with the Commons in their desire That part for the Ships and the Time were not then named of this Power might be shared and of this Law altered by which denial the Commons were forced to Petition for it by themselves Nor did they only deny it but both times in full Houses after long and free debates it was carried upon the Question above Twenty Voices and that at a time when all the Papist Lords had left the Town and hardly any Bishops were left uncommitted Twelve being at once clapt up upon an Accusation of Treason which they themselves have since been ashamed of enough to wave who were then the Persons usually represented to the People to be the evil Councellors of the Lords House and to whose prevalence it was imputed in the first Remonstrance of the House of Commons that their good and necessary Motions did not pass in that House And as they denyed it twice so they would have denyed it till now if the Petition of many thousand poor People about London who certainly did not then believe the Lords to be competent Judges and the Demand of the House of Commons joyned to it to be told the Names of those Lords who denyed it and the direct Threats of so many Petitioners to which the former Tumults gave sufficient credit that they would be really executed upon them had not made many of the Lords to be of his Mind who would not dispute with him who commanded thirty Legions and give way to the potent Minor part to appear the Major by absenting themselves and suffering them to pass what they pleased So that neither the Votes which then past to desire these particulars nor the Execution of these Votes and seizing these particulars with a Violence yet greater than obtained the Votes nor the multitude of Consequences of the same kind built upon that Foundation can at all be said to have had the Authority of both Houses though most of those Actions have been such as the Authority even of both Houses how full and free soever would not be sufficient to justifie And this Opinion of the necessity of altering the Law in these points was even then at most but the Opinion of the House of Commons awed by a few Members assisted by the Common People and together with them awing the Lords They next pretend
Parliament as they had upon the first of January 1641. the same of right belonging unto them by their Birth-rights and the free Election of those that sent them and having been Voted from them for adhering to His Majesty in these Distractions His Majesty not intending that this should extend either to the Bishops whose Votes have been taken away by Bill or to such in whose places upon new Writs new Elections have been made 3. As soon as His Majesty and both Houses may be secured from such tumultuous Assemblies as to the great breach of the Privileges and the high Dishonour of Parliaments have formerly assembled about both Houses and awed the Members of the same and occasioned two several complaints from the Lords House and two several desires of that House to the House of Commons to joyn in a Declaration against them the complying with which desire might have prevented all these miserable Distractions which have ensued which Security His Majesty conceives can be only settled by Adjourning the Parliament to some other place at the least twenty Miles from London the choice of which His Majesty leaves to both Houses His Majesty will most chearfully and readily consent that both Armies be immediately disbanded and give a present meeting to both His Houses of Parliament at the time and place at and to which the Parliament shall be agreed to be Adjourned His Majesty being most confident that the Law will then recover the due credit and estimation and that upon a free debate in a full and peaceable Convention of Parliament such Provisions will be made against Seditious Preaching and Printing against His Majesty and the established Laws which hath been one of the chief causes of the present Distractions and such care will be taken concerning the Legal and known Rights of His Majesty and the Property and Liberty of His Subjects that whatsoever hath been published or done in or by colour of any illegal Declaration Ordinance or Order of one or both Houses or any Committee of either of them and particularly the Power to raise Arms without His Majesty's Consent will be in such manner recalled disclaimed and provided against that no seed will remain for the like to spring out of for the future to disturb the Peace of the Kingdom and to endanger the very Being of it And in such a Convention His Majesty is resolved by His readiness to consent to whatsoever shall be proposed to Him by Bill for the Real good of His Subjects and particularly for the better discovery and speedier conviction of Recusants for the Education of the Children of Papists by Protestants in the Protestant Religion for the prevention of practices of Papists against the State and the due execution of the Laws and true levying of the Penalties against them to make known to all the World how causeless those fears and jealousies have been which have been raised against Him and by that so distracted this miserable Kingdom And if this Offer of His Majesty be not consented to in which He asks nothing for which there is not apparent Justice on His side and in which He defers many things highly concerning both Himself and People till a full and peaceable Convention of Parliament which in Justice He might now require His Majesty is confident that it will then appear to all the World not only who is most desirous of Peace and whose fault it is that both Armies are not now disbanded but who have been the true and first cause that this Peace was ever interrupted or these Armies raised and the beginning or continuance of the War and the Destruction and Desolation of this poor Kingdom which is too likely to ensue will not by the most interessed passionate or prejudicate Person be imputed to His Majesty His MAJESTY'S Message to both Houses May 19. in pursuance of the foregoing Message SInce His Majesty's Message of the twelfth of April in which he conceived He had made such an Overture for the immediate Disbanding of all Armies and Composure of these present miserable Distractions by a full and free Convention in Parliament that a perfect and settled Peace would have ensued hath in all this time above a full Month procured no Answer from both Houses His Majesty might well believe Himself absolved before God and Man from the least possible Charge of not having used His utmost endeavour for Peace Yet when He considers that the Scene of all this Calamity is in the Bowels of His own Kingdom that all the Blood which is spilt is of His own Subjects and that what Victory soever it shall please God to give Him must be over those who ought not to have lifted up their hands against Him when He considers that these desperate civil Dissentions may encourage and invite a Foreign Enemy to make a Prey of the whole Nation that Ireland is in present danger to be totally lost that the heavy Judgments of God Plague Pestilence and Famine will be the inevitable Attendants of this unnatural Contention and that in a short time there will be so general a habit of uncharitableness and Cruelty contracted throughout the Kingdom that even Peace it self will not restore His People to their old Temper and Security His Majesty cannot but again call for an Answer to that His Message which gives so fair a Rise to end these unnatural Distractions And His Majesty doth this with the more earnestness because He doubts not the condition of His Armies in several parts His strength of Horse Foot and Artillery His plenty of Ammunition which some Men lately might conceive He wanted is so well known and understood that it must be confessed that nothing but the Tenderness and Love to His People and those Christian Impressions which always have and He hopes always shall dwell in His heart could move Him once more to hazard a Refusal And He requires them as they will answer to God to Himself and all the World That they will no longer suffer their fellow-Subjects to welter in each others Blood that they will remember by whose Authority and to what end they met in that Council and send such an Answer to His Majesty as may open a door to let in a firm Peace and Security to the whole Kingdom If His Majesty shall again be disappointed of His Intentions herein the Blood Rapine and Distraction which must follow in England and Ireland will be cast upon the Account of those who are deaf to the motion of Peace and Accommodation CHARLES R. May 19. 1643. OUR express Pleasure is That this Declaration of the Lords and Commons of Parliament assembled at Oxford be read by the Parson Vicar or Curate in every Church and Chapel within Our Kingdom of England and Dominion of Wales MDCXLIV April 15. The Petition of the Lords and Commons of Parliament assembled at Oxford Presented to His MAJESTY the day before the Recess And His MAJESTY'S Gracious Answer to the same To the Kings most excellent
Members of either House of Parliament who have not only deserted the Parliament but have also Voted both Kingdoms Traitors may be removed from His Majesty's Councils and be restrained from coming within the verge of the Court and that they may not without the advice and consent of both Kingdoms bear any Office or have any employment concerning the State or Commonwealth And also that the Members of either House of Parliament who have deserted the Parliament and adhered to the Enemies thereof and not rendred themselves before the last of October 1644. may be removed from His Majesty's Councils and be restrained from coming within the verge of the Court and that they may not without the advice and consent of both Houses of Parliament bear any Office or have any employment concerning the State or Common-wealth And in case any of them shall offend therein to be guilty of high Treason and incapable of any Pardon by His Majesty and their Estates to be disposed as both Houses of Parliament in England or the Estates of the Parliament in Scotland respectively shall think fit 5. That by Act of Parliament all Judges and Officers towards the Law Common or Civil who have deserted the Parliament and adhered to the Enemies thereof be made incapable of any place of Judicature or Office towards the Law Common or Civil and that all Serjeants Councellors and Attourneys Doctors Advocates and Proctors of the Law Common or Civil who have deserted the Parliament and adhered to the Enemies thereof be made incapable of any practice in the Law Common or Civil either in publick or in private And that they and likewise all Bishops Clergy-men and other Ecclesiastical persons who have deserted the Parliament and adhered to the Enemies thereof shall not be capable of any preferment or imployment either in Church or Commonwealth without the advice and consent of both Houses of Parliament 6. The persons of all others to be free of all personal censure notwithstanding any Act or thing done in or concerning this War they taking the Covenant 7. The Estates of those persons excepted in the first three preceding qualifications to pay publick Debts and Damages 8. A third part in full value of the Estates of the persons made incapable of any imployment as aforesaid to be imployed for the payment of the publick Debts and Damages according to the Declaration 9. And likewise a tenth part of the Estates of all other Delinquents within the joynt Declarations And in case the Estates and proportions aforementioned shall not suffice for the payment of the publick engagements whereunto they are only to be employed that then a new proportion may be appointed by the joynt advice of both Kingdoms providing it exceed not the one moity of the Estates of the persons made incapable as aforesaid and that it exceed not a sixth part of the Estate of the other Delinquents 10. That the Persons and Estates of all common Souldiers and others of the Kingdom of England who in Lands or Goods be not worth 200 l. sterling and the Persons and Estates of all common Souldiers and others of the Kingdom of Scotland who in Lands or Goods be not worth 100 l. sterling be at liberty and discharged 11. That an Act be passed whereby the Debts of the Kingdom and the Persons of Delinquents and the value of their Estates may be known and which Act shall appoint in what manner the Confiscations and proportions before mentioned may be levied and applyed to the discharge of the said engagements XV. That by Act of Parliament the Subjects of the Kingdom of England may be appointed to be Armed Trained and Disciplined in such manner as both Houses shall think fit The like for the Kingdom of Scotland in such manner as the Estates of Parliament there shall think fit XVI That an Act of Parliament be passed for the setling of the Admiralty and Forces at Sea and for the raising of such Moneys for maintenance of the said Forces and of the Navy as both Houses of Parliament shall think fit The like for the Kingdom of Scotland in such manner as the Estates of Parliament there shall think fit XVII An Act for the settling of all Forces both by Sea and Land in Commissioners to be nominated by both Houses of Parliament of persons of known Integrity and such as both Kingdoms may confide in for their faithfulness to Religion and the Peace of the Kingdoms of the House of Peers and of the House of Commons who shall be removed or altered from time to time as both Houses shall think fit and when any shall die others to be nominated in their places by the said Houses Which Commissioners shall have power 1. To suppress any Forces raised without Authority of both Houses of Parliament or in the Intervals of Parliaments without consent of the said Commissioners to the disturbance of the publick Peace of the Kingdoms and to suppress any Foreign Forces that shall invade this Kingdom And that it shall be high Treason in any who shall levy any Force without such Authority or consent to the disturbance of the publick Peace of the Kingdoms any Commission under the great Seal or Warrant to the contrary notwithstanding and they to be incapable of any Pardon from His Majesty and their Estates to be disposed of as both Houses of Parliament shall think fit 2. To preserve the Peace now to be settled and to prevent all disturbance of the publick Peace that may rise by occasion of the late Troubles so for the Kingdom of Scotland 3. To have power to send part of themselves so as they exceed not a third part or be not under the number of to reside in the Kingdom of Scotland to assist and Vote as single persons with the Commissioners of Scotland in those matters wherein the Kingdom of Scotland is only concerned so for the Kingdom of Scotland 4. That the Commissioners of both Kingdoms may meet as a joynt Committee as they shall see cause or send part of themselves as aforesaid to do as followeth 1. To preserve the Peace betwixt the Kingdoms and the King and every one of them 2. To prevent the violation of the Articles of Peace as aforesaid or any troubles arising in the Kingdoms by breach of the said Articles and to hear and determine all differences that may occasion the same according to the Treaty and to do further accordingly as they shall respectively receive Instructions from both Houses of Parliament in England or the Estates of the Parliament in Scotland and in the Intervals of Parliaments from the Commissioners for the preservation of the publick Peace 3. To raise and joyn the Forces of both Kingdoms to resist all Foreign Invasion and to suppress any Forces raised within any of the Kingdoms to the disturbance of the publick Peace of the Kingdoms by any authority under the great Seal or other Warrant whatsoever without consent of both Houses of Parliament in England and the
your Lordships are not satisfied that such Words as we have charged him with were spoken by him we are ready to produce the proof thereof to your Lordships Their further Answer 1. February WE will represent both your Lordships Papers concerning Master Love unto the Lords and Commons assembled in the Parliament of England at Westminster who will proceed therein according to Justice In the next place according to the order before mentioned do follow the Passages and Papers concerning Religion Their Paper 31. January ACcording to the Paper delivered by us to your Lordships yesternight we do now offer these Propositions following which concern Religion That the Bill be passed for abolishing and taking away of all arch-Arch-Bishops Bishops c. according to the Third Proposition That the Ordinances concerning the Calling and sitting of the Assembly of Divines be confirmed by Act of Parliament That the Directory for Publick Worship already passed both Houses of the Parliament of England and the Propositions concerning Church-Government hereunto annexed and passed both Houses be enacted as a part of Reformation of Religion and Uniformity according to the Fifth Proposition That His Majesty take the Solemn League and Covenant and that the Covenant be enjoyned to be taken according to the Second Proposition To this was annexed the following Paper of the 31. January That the ordinary way of dividing Christians into distinct Congregations and most expedient for Edification is by the respective bounds of their Dwellings That the Minister and other Church-Officers in each particular Congregation shall joyn in the Government of the Church in such manner as shall be established by Parliament That many particular Congregations shall be under one Presbyterial Government That the Church be governed by Congregational Classical and Synodical Assemblies in such manner as shall be established by Parliament That Synodical Assemblies shall consist both of Provincial and National Assemblies The King's Commissioners Paper 1. February HAving considered your Lordships Paper containing the Propositions concerning Religion with the Paper annexed and finding the same to contain absolute Alterations in the Government both of the Ecclesiastical and Civil State we desire to know whether your Lordships have power to Treat and debate upon the said Propositions and upon debate to recede from or consent to any Alterations in the said Propositions if we shall make it appear to be reasonable so to do or whether your Lordships are bound up by your Instructions to insist upon the Propositions without any Alteration Their Answer 1. February OUR Paper given in to your Lordships concerning Religion doth contain no Alterations but such as are usual in a time of Reformation and by the wisdom of the Parliaments of both Kingdoms are judged necessary at this time for settling Religion and Peace And as by our Commissions and Papers formerly shewed your Lordships we have made known our Power to Treat upon them so are we ready by Debate to shew how reasonable they are and that there will be no reason to expect that we should alter or recede from them But as for your demand of our shewing what farther Power we have by our Instructions it is that we have no warrant to do as we have already signified to your Lordships by a former Paper The King's Commissioners Paper 1. February YOUR Lordships first Proposition in the Paper concerning Religion referring to the Third Proposition sent to His Majesty we find that refers to the Articles of the late Treaty of the date at Edenburgh 29. Nov. 1643. and to the joynt Declaration of both Kingdoms We desire your Lordships we may see those Articles and Declarations and your Lordships second Proposition in that Paper referring to the Ordinances concerning the Calling and sitting of the Assembly of Divines we desire to see those Ordinances Their Answer 1. Feb. ACcording to your Lordships desire in the third Paper we now deliver in the Articles of the late Treaty of the date at Edenburgh 29. of November 1643. and the joynt Declaration of both Kingdoms and we shall speedily deliver to your Lordships the Ordinances concerning the Calling and sitting of the Assembly of Divines The King's Commissioners Paper 1. Feb. VVE desire to know whether the Propositions which we have received from your Lordships touching Religion be all we are to expect from you upon that Subject Their Answer 1. Feb. THere are other things touching Religion to be propounded by us unto your Lordships upon the Propositions formerly sent unto His Majesty from the Parliaments of both Kingdoms which we shall in due time give in unto your Lordships But we do first desire your Answer to the Paper touching Religion given in yesterday that some good progress may be made therein before the three days assigned to Treat upon Religion in the first place do expire The King's Commissioners Paper 1. Feb. VVE desired to know whether the Propositions we formerly received from your Lordships concerning Religion were all that would be offered concerning that Subject because we thought it very necessary since so great Alterations are proposed by you to have a full view of the whole Alterations that are desired since in an Argument of the greatest weight and highest importance we cannot possible give a present Judgment of any part till we have a prospect of the Whole But since your Lordships do not yet think it time to let us have a sight of the rest but first desire our Answer to the Paper delivered yesterday which contains many particulars of which we never heard before we shall apply our selves to understand the things proposed by you in such manner as we may return your Lordships a speedy Answer and to that purpose must desire your Lordships information in some particulars which are comprized in your Lordships paper And when your Lordships consider that the Directory for Worship being so long was delivered to us but yesterday that the Covenant the Articles of the Treaty of Edenburgh the Declaration of both Kingdoms which are comprehended within the First Proposition were delivered to us but this day and therefore we could return no Answer concerning the Bill for abolishing Arch-bishops and Bishops which is proposed to be passed according to the Third Proposition in which the said Articles and Declarations are comprehended and that the Ordinances for the Sitting of the Assembly are not yet delivered unto us we are confident your Lordships will not think us negligent in making as good a progress in the Treaty upon Religion as is in our power which we shall endeavour to advance with all diligence and the best of our understanding Afterwards the same first of February the Ordinances for the Assembly of Divines were delivered in After some debate touching the nature of the Church Government intended by the Paper annexed to the first Paper upon the Subject of Religion which are here before set down the Kings Commissioners delivered in this following Paper 1. Feb. THE Information we
will bear IV. That according to the seventh Head in the said Declaration an effectual course may be taken that the Kingdom may be righted and satisfied in point of Accounts for the vast sums that have been levied V. That provision may be made for payment of Arrears to the Army and the rest of the Soldiers of the Kingdom who have concurred with the Army in the late Desires and Proceedings thereof and in the next place for payment of the Publick Debts and Damages of the Kingdom and that to be performed first to such persons whose Debts or Damages upon the Publick Account are great and their Estates small so as they are thereby reduced to a difficulty of subsistence In order to all which and to the fourth particular last preceding we shall speedily offer some farther particulars in the nature of Rules which we hope will be of good use towards publick satisfaction August 1. 1647. Signed by the appointment of his Excellency Sir Thomas Fairfax and the Council of War Jo. Rushworth Secret Propositions presented to His MAJESTY at Hampton-Court upon Tuesday the seventh of September 1647. by the Earls of Pembroke and Lauderdale Sir Charles Erskin Sir John Holland Sir John Cooke Sir James Harrington Mr. Richard Browne Mr. Hugh Kenedy and Mr. Robert Berkley in the names of the Parliament of England and in behalf of the Kingdom of Scotland May it please your Majesty WE the Lords and Commons assembled in the Parliament of England in the name and on the behalf of the Kingdoms of England and Ireland and the Commissioners of the Parliament of Scotland in the name and on the behalf of the Kingdom of Scotland do humbly present unto Your Majesty the humble Desires and Propositions for a safe and well grounded Peace agreed upon by the Parliaments of both Kingdoms respectively unto which We do pray Your Majesties Assent and that they and all such Bills as shall be tendred to Your Majesty in pursuance of them or any of them may be established and Enacted for Statutes and Acts of Parliament by Your Majesties Royal Assent in the Parliaments of both Kingdoms respectively Heads of the Propositions presented to the King's Majesty for a safe and well-grounded Peace 1. His Majesty to call in his Declarations and Proclamations against the Parliaments of both Kingdoms 2. His Majesty to sign the Covenant 3. To pass a Bill for abolishing Bishops 4. To pass a Bill for Sale of Bishops Lands 5. To confirm the sitting of the Assembly 6. Religion to be reformed as the Houses agree 7. Such Vniformity of Religion to be passed in an Act. 8. An Act passed against Popish Recusants 9. For Education of the Children of Papists 10. For laying Penalties upon Papists 11. An Act for prevention of Popish practices And the like for the Kingdom of Scotland 12. For the Royal Assent to Acts for the Lords day for preaching against Innovations regulating Colledges and for publick Debts and Damages The like for Scotland 13. to pass the settling of the Militia and Navy 14. To null the old Great Seal 15. For settling of Conservators for the Peace of the Kingdoms 16. The joynt Declarations and the Qualifications against Malignants 17. An Act to be passed to declare and make void the Cessation of Ireland and all Treaties and Conclusions of Peace with the Irish Rebels 18. The settling of the Militia of the City of London 19. The Great Seal with the Commissioners of Parliament and all Acts by it to be made good His MAJESTIES Answer to the Propositions of both Houses Hampton-Court Sept. 9. 1647. For the Speaker of the Lords House pro tempore to be communicated to both Houses of the Parliament of England and the Commissioners of the Kingdom of Scotland CHARLES R. HIS Majesty cannot chuse but be passionately sensible as he believes all his good Subjects are of the late great Distractions and still languishing and unsetled State of this Kingdom and he calls God to Witness and is willing to give testimony to all the World of his readiness to contribute his utmost Endeavours for restoring it to a happy and flourishing Condition His Majesty having perused the Propositions now brought to him finds them the same in effect which were offered to him at Newcastle To some of which as he could not then consent without violation of his Conscience and Honour so neither can he agree to others now conceiving them in many respects more disagreeable to the present condition of Affairs then when they were formerly presented unto him as being destructive to the main principal Interests of the Army and of all those whose Affections concur with them And his Majesty having seen the Proposals of the Army to the Commissioners from his two Houses residing with them and with them to be Treated on in order to the clearing and securing the Rights and Liberties of the Kingdom and the setling of a just and lasting Peace to which Proposals as he conceives his two Houses not to be strangers so he believes they will think with him that they much more conduce to the satisfaction of all Interests and may be a fitter foundation for a lasting Peace than the Propositions which at this time are tendered unto him He therefore propounds as the best way in his Judgment in order to a Peace that his two Houses would instantly take into consideration those Proposals upon which there may be a Personal Treaty with his Majesty and upon such other Propositions as his Majesty shall make hoping that the said Proposals may be so moderated in the said Treaty as to render them the more capable of his Majesties full Concession wherein he resolves to give full satisfaction unto his People for whatsoever shall concern the setling of the Protestant Profession with Liberty to tender Consciences and the securing of the Laws Liberties and Properties of all his Subjects and the just Priviledges of Parliament for the future And likewise by his present deportment in this Treaty he will make the World clearly judge of his Intentions in matter of future Government In which Treaty his Majesty will be well pleased if it be thought fit that Commissioners from the Army whose the Proposals are may likewise be admitted His Majesty therefore conjures his two Houses of Parliament by the Duty they owe to God and his Majesty their King and by the bowels of Compassion they have to their fellow-Subjects both for the relief of their present Sufferings and to prevent future Miseries that they will forthwith accept of this his Majesties Offer whereby the joyful news of Peace may be restored to this distressed Kingdom And for what concerns the Kingdom of Scotland mentioned in the Propositions His Majesty will very willingly Treat upon those particulars with the Scotch Commissioners and doubts not but to give reasonable satisfaction to that his Kingdom Given at Hampton-Court the ninth of September 1647. His MAJESTIES Message to both Houses left by Him on His
Peers pro tempore and William Lenthal Speaker of the House of Commons My Lord and Mr. Speaker I Have received your Letter of the second of this Month containing the Names of those who are to Treat with Me and though they do not come at the time appointed I shall not wonder at first judging it too short in respect of My two Houses not of My self so that I did not imagine it could be kept as I then commanded Sir Peter Killegrew to tell you by word of Mouth and therefore it shall be far from Me to take Exceptions for their having elapsed the appointed time for God forbid that either my two Houses or I should carp at circumstances to give the least impediment to this Treaty much less to hinder the happy finishing of it I say this the rather because I know not how it is possible in this I shall wish to be deceived that in Forty days Treaty the many Distractions of these Kingdoms can be setled and if so it were more than strange that time enough should not be given for the perfecting of this most great and good Work which as I will not believe can be stuck on by the two Houses so I am sure it shall never be by Carisbrook 7. Sept. 1648. Your good Friend CHARLES R. I think fit to tell you because I believe in this Treaty there will be need of Civil Lawyers I have sent for My Advocate Rives and D. Duck. And afterward his Majesty desired the Persons named in this Note inclosed in a Letter of one of their Commissioners Novemb. 2. to be sent to Him C. R. The Bishop of Armagh the Bishop of Excester the Bishop of Rochester the Bishop of Worcester Dr. Fern Dr. Morley The Propositions of both Houses being the same which had been presented to his Majesty at Hampton-Court and little differing from those which had been largely discussed in the former Treaties at Oxford and Uxbridg for this reason as also because neither Party did publish the particulars of this Treaty we have thought fit to represent only what is Authentick and therefore shall add only His Majesties fair Offers in order to a Peace His MAJESTIES Propositions 29. Sept. 1648. HIS Majesty did use many earnest endeavours for a Personal Treaty which he hoped might have been obtained at Westminster between Him and His two Houses of Parliament immediately yet they having made choice of this way by you their Commissioners His Majesty did gladly and chearfully accept thereof in this place as a fit means to begin a Treaty for a Peace which might put an end to His own sad Condition and the Miseries of His Kingdom For an entrance whereunto His Majesty hath already expressed His Consent to the First Proposition But finding you are limited by Instructions which you have no Warrant to communicate unto Him and having cause by your Paper of the 20. of this present to believe that you have no power to omit or alter any thing though He shall give you such Reasons as may satisfie you so to do without transmitting the Papers to the two Houses at a far distance where His Majesties Reasons Expressions and Offers upon Debate cannot be fully represented and from whence their Answers cannot be returned without much wast of the time allotted for the Treaty here and having lately received another Paper concerning the Church containing in it self many particulars of great importance and referring to divers Ordinances Articles of Religion and other things eleven or twelve in number of great length and some of them very new and never before presented to His Majesty the due consideration whereof will take up much time and require His Majesties Presence with His two Houses before a full resolution can well be had in matters of so high consequence To the end therefore that the good work now in hand may by God's blessing proceed more speedily and effectually to an happy Conclusion and that His two Houses of Parliament may at present have further security and an earnest of future satisfaction His Majesty upon consideration had of yours makes these Propositions following Concerning the Church His Majesty will consent That the Calling and sitting of the Assembly of Divines at Westminster be confirmed for three years by Act of Parliament And will by Act of Parliament confirm for Three years the Directory for the Publick worship of God in the Kingdoms of England and Ireland and Dominion of Wales And will likewise confirm for Three years by Act of Parliament the form of Church-Government which ye have presented to Him to be used for the Churches of England and Ireland and Dominion of Wales Provided that His Majesty and those of His Judgement or any others who cannot in Conscience submit thereunto be not in the mean time obliged to comply with the same Government or form of Worship but have free practice of their own profession And that a free Consultation and debate be had with the Assembly of Divines at Westminster in the mean time Twenty of His Majesties Nomination being added unto them whereby it may be determined by His Majesty and His two Houses of Parliament how the said Church-Government and form of Publick Worship after the said time may be setled or sooner if Differences may be agreed and how also Reformation of Religion may be setled within the Kingdoms of England and Ireland and Dominion of Wales And the Articles of Christian Religion now delivered to Him may in like manner be then considered of and determined and care taken for the ease of tender Consciences And concerning the Bishops Lands and Revenues His Majesty considering that during these troublesome times divers of His Subjects have made Contracts and Purchases and divers have disbursed great Sums of Money upon security and engagement of those Lands His Majesty for their satisfaction will consent to an Act or Acts of Parliament whereby legal Estates for Lives or for Years at their choice not exceeding ninety nine years shall be made of those Lands towards the satisfaction of the said Purchasers Contractors and others to whom they are engaged at the old Rents or some other moderate Rent whereby they may receive satisfaction And in case such Lease shall not satisfie His Majesty will propound and consent to some other way for their further satisfaction Provided that the Propriety and Inheritance of those Lands may still remain and continue to the Church and Church-men respectively according to the pious intentions of the Donors and Founders thereof And the rest that shall be reserved to be for their maintenance His Majesty will give His Royal Assent for the better observation of the Lords day for suppressing of Innovations in Churches and Chappels in and about the Worship of God and for the better advancement of the Preaching of God's Holy Word in all parts of this Kingdom and to an Act against enjoying Pluralities of Benefices by Spiritual Persons and Non-residency and to an Act for Regulating and
viz. because it was not The one Reason given by Your Majesty is because in the Churches which the Apostles themselves planted they placed Presbyters under them for the Office of Teaching but reserved in their own hands the Power of Governing those Churches for a longer or shorter time before they set Bishops over them Which under Your Majesties favour is not so much a reason why Bishops are not mentioned to be in those places as that they indeed were not The variety of Reasons may we say or Conjectures rendred why Bishops were not set up at first as namely because fit men could not be so soon found out which is Epiphanius his reason or for remedy of Schism which is Jerome's reason or because the Apostles saw it not expedient which is Your Majesties reason doth shew that this Cause labours under a manifest weakness For the Apostles reserving in their own hands the power of Governing we grant it they could no more devest themselves of power of Governing than as Dr. Bilson saith they could lose their Apostleship had they set no Bishops in all Churches they had no more parted with their power of Governing than they did in setting up the Presbyters for we have proved that Presbyters being called Rulers Governors Bishops had the power of Governing in Ordinary committed to them as well as the Office of Teaching and that both the Keys as they are called being by our Saviour committed into one hand were not by the Apostle divided into two Nor do we see how the Apostle could reasonably commit the Government of the Church to the Presbyters of Ephesus Acts 20. and yet reserve the power of Governing viz. in Ordinary in his own hands who took his solemn leave of them as never to see their faces more As concerning that part of the power of Government which for distinction sake may be called Legislative and which is one of the three fore-mentioned things challenged by the Bishops viz. giving Rules the reserving of it in the Apostles hands hindred not but that in Your Majesties Judgment Timothy and Titus were Bishops of Ephesus and Crete to whom the Apostle gives Rules for Ordering and Governing of the Church Nor is there any more reason that the Apostles reserving that part of the Power of Governing which is called Executive in such cases and upon such occasions as they thought meet should hinder the setting up of Bishops if they had intended it and therefore the reserving of Power in their hands can be no greater reason why they did not set us Bishops at the first than that they never did And since by Your Majesties Concession the Presbyters were plac'd by the Apostles first in the Churches by them planted and that with Power of Governing as we prove by Scripture You must prove the super-institution of a Bishop over the Presbyters by the Apostles in some after-times or else we must conclude that the Bishop got both his Name and Power of Government out of the Presbyters hand as the Tree in the wall roots out the stones by little and little as it self grows As touching Philippi where Your Majesty saith it may be probable there was yet no Bishop it is certain there were many like them who were also at Ephesus to whom if only the Office of Teaching did belong they had the most laborious and honourable part that which was less honourable being reserved in the Apostles hands and the Churches left in the mean time without ordinary Government The other Reason given why only two Orders are mentioned in those places is because he wrote in the Epistles to Timothy and Titus to them that were Bishops so there was no need to write any thing concerning the Choice or Qualification of any other sort of Officers than such as belonged to their Ordination or Inspection which were Presbyters and Deacons only and no Bishops The former Reason why only two Orders are mentioned in the Epistle to the Philippians was because there was yet no Bishop this latter Reason why the same two only are mentioned in these Epistles is because there was no Bishop to be Ordained We might own the reason for good if there may be found any rule for the Ordination of the other Order of Bishops in some other place of Scripture but if the Ordination cannot be found how should we find the Order And it is reasonable to think that the Apostle in the Chapter formerly alledged i Tim. iii. where he passes immediately from the Bishop to the Deacon would have distinctly exprest or at least hinted what sort of Bishops he meant whether the Bishop over Presbyters or the presbyter-Presbyter-Bishop to have avoided the confusion of the Name and to have set as it were some matk of difference in the Escocheon of the presbyter-Presbyter-Bishop if there had been some other Bishop of a higher house And whereas Your Majesty saith there was no need to write to them about a Bishop in a distinct sense who belonged not to their Ordination and Inspection we conceive that in Your Majesties judgment Bishops might then have Ordained Bishops like themselves for there was then no Canon forbidding one single Bishop to ordain another of his own rank and there being many Cities in Crete Titus might have found it expedient as those ancient Fathers that call him Arch-bishop think he did to have set up Bishops in some of those Cities So that this Reason fights against the Principles of those that hold Timothy and Titus to have been Bishops For our part we believe that these Rules belonged not to Timothy and Titus with strict limitation to Ephesus and Crete but respectively to all the places or Churches where they might come and to all that shall at any time have the Office of Ordaining and Governing as it is written in the same Chapter i Tim. iii. 14 15. These things I have written unto thee c. that thou mayest know how to behave thy self in the House of God which is the Church And therefore if there had been any proper Character or Qualification of a Bishop distinct from a Presbyter if any Ordination or Office we think the Apostle would have signified it but because he did not we conclude and the more strongly from the insufficiency of Your Majesties two Reasons that there are only two Orders of Officers and consequently that a Bishop is not superior to a Presbyter for we find not as we said in our Answer that one Officer is superior to another who is of the same Order Concerning the Ages succeeding the Apostles Your Majesty having in Your first Paper said that You could not in Conscience consent to Abolish Episcopal Government because You did conceive it to be of Apostolical Institution practised by the Apostles themselves and by them committed and derived to particular persons as their Successors and hath ever since till these last times been exercised by Bishops in all the Churches of Christ we thought it necessary in our Answer to
this That they would not suffer themselves to be over-aw'd with the Tumults and their Patrons nor compelled to abet by their suffrages or presence the designs of those men who agitated Innovations and Ruin both in Church and State In this point I could not but approve their generous Constancy and Cautiousness further than this I did never allow any mans refractoriness against the Priviledges and Orders of the Houses to whom I wished nothing more than Safety Fulness and Freedom But the truth is some men and those not many despairing in fair and Parliamentary ways by free deliberations and Votes to gain the concurrence of the major part of Lords and Commons betook themselves by the desperate activity of factious Tumults to sift and terrifie away all those Members whom they saw to be of contrary minds to their purposes How oft was the business of the Bishops enjoying their Ancient places and undoubted Priviledges in the House of Peers carried for them by far the major part of Lords Yet after five repulses contrary to all Order and Custom it was by tumultuary instigations obtruded again and by a few carried when most of the Peers were forced to absent themselves In like manner was the Bill against Root and Branch brought on by tumultuary Clamours and schismatical Terrors which could never pass till both Houses were sufficiently thinned and over-awed To which Partiality while in all Reason Justice and Religion my Conscience forbids Me by consenting to make up their Votes to Acts of Parliament I must now be urged with an Army and constrained either to hazard My own and My Kingdoms ruine by My Defence or prostrate My Conscience to the blind obedience of those men whose zealous Superstition thinks or pretends they cannot do God and the Church a greater service than utterly to destroy that Primitive Apostolical and anciently-Universal Government of the Church by Bishops Which if other mens Judgments bind them to maintain or forbid them to consent to the abolishing of it Mine much more who besides the grounds I have in My Judgment have also a most strict and indispensable Oath upon my Conscience to preserve that Order and the Rights of the Church to which most Sacrilegious and abhorred Perjury most unbeseeming a Christian King should I ever by giving My Consent be betrayed I should account it infinitely greater Misery than any hath or can befal Me inasmuch as the least Sin hath more evil in it than the greatest Affliction Had I gratified their Anti-episcopal Faction at first in this point with My Consent and sacrificed the Ecclesiastical Government and Revenues to the fury of their Covetousness Ambition and Revenge I believe they would then have found no colourable necessity of raising an Army to fetch in and punish Delinquents That I consented to the Bill of putting the Bishops out of the House of Peers was done with a firm perswasion of their contentedness to suffer a present diminution in their Rights and Honour for My sake and the Common-weals which I was confident they would readily yield unto rather than occasion by the least obstruction on their part any danger to Me or to My Kingdom That I cannot add my consent for the total Extirpation of that Government which I have often offered to all fit Regulations hath so much further tie upon My Conscience as what I think Religious and Apostolical and so very Sacred and Divine is not to be dispensed with or destroyed when what is only of civil Favour and priviledg of Honour granted to men of that Order may with their Consent who are concerned in it be annulled This is the true state of those Obstructions pretended to be in point of Justice and Authority of Parliament when I call God to witness I knew none of such consequence as was worth speaking of to make a War being only such as Justice Reason and Religion had made in My own and other mens Consciences Afterwards indeed a great shew of Delinquents was made which were but consequences necessarily following upon Mine or others withdrawing from or defence against Violence but those could not be the first occasion of raising an Army against Me. Wherein I was so far from preventing them as they have declared often that they might seem to have the advantage and Justice of the defensive part and load Me with all the Envy and Injuries of first assaulting them that God knows I had not so much as any hopes of an Army in my thoughts Had the Tumults been honourably and effectually repressed by exemplary Justice and the Liberty of the Houses so vindicated that all Members of either House might with Honour and Freedom becoming such a Senate have come and discharged their Consciences I had obtained all that I designed by my withdrawing and had much more willingly and speedily returned than I retired this being my Necessity driving the other my Choice desiring But some men knew I was like to bring the same Judgment and Constancy which I carried with Me which would never fit their Designs and so while they invited Me to come and grievously complained of my Absence yet they could not but be pleased with it especially when they had found out that plausible and popular pretext of raising an Army to fetch in Delinquents when all that while they never punished the greatest and most intolerable Delinquency of the Tumults and their Exciters which drave My self and so many of both Houses from their places by most barbarous indignities which yet in all Reason and Honour they were as loath to have deserted as those others were willing they should that so they might have occasion to persecute them with the Injuries of an Army for not suffering more tamely the Injuries of the Tumults That this is the true state and first drift and design in raising an Army against Me is by the sequel so evident that all other pretences vanish For when they declared by Propositions or Treaties what they would have to appease them there was nothing of consequence offered to Me or demanded of Me as any original difference in any point of Law or order of Justice But among other lesser Innovations this chiefly was urged The Abolition of Episcopal and the Establishment of Presbyterian Government All other things at any time propounded were either impertinent as to any ground of a War or easily granted by Me and only to make up a number or else they were merely consequential and accessary after the War was by them unjustly begun I cannot hinder other mens thoughts whom the noise and shew of Piety and heat for Reformation and Religion might easily so fill with Prejudice that all equality and clearness of Judgment might be obstructed But this was and is as to my best observation the true state of affairs between us when they first raised an Army with this design either to stop my mouth or to force my Consent And in this truth as to my Conscience who was God knows
Times much restrained I would have such men Bishops as are most worthy of those encouragements and best able to use them If at any time My Judgment of men failed My good Intention made my error venial And some Bishops I am sure I had whose Learning Gravity and Piety no men of any worth or forehead can deny But of all men I would have Church-men especially the Governors to be redeemed from that vulgar Neglect which besides an innate principle of vicious opposition which is in all men against those that seem to reprove or restrain them will necessarily follow both the Presbyterian Parity which makes all Ministers equal and the Independent Inferiority which sets their Pastors below the People This for my Judgment touching Episcopacy wherein God knows I do not gratifie any design or Passion with the least perverting of Truth And now I appeal to God above and all the Christian World whether it be just for Subjects or pious for Christians by Violence and infinite Indignities with servile restraints to seek to force Me their KING and Soveraign as some men have endeavoured to do against all these grounds of My Judgment to consent to their weak and divided Novelties The greatest Pretender of them desires not more than I do that the Church should be governed as Christ hath appointed in true Reason and in Scripture of which I could never see any probable shew for any other ways who either content themselves with the examples of some Churches in their infancy and solitude when one Presbyter might serve one Congregation in a City or Countrey or else they deny these most evident Truths That the Apostles were Bishops over those Presbyters they ordained as well as over the Churches they planted and That Government being necessary for the Churches well-being when multiplied and sociated must also necessarily descend from the Apostles to others after the example of that power and superiority they had above others which could not end with their Persons since the use and Ends of such Government still continue It is most sure that the purest Primitive and best Churches flourished under Episcopacy and may so still if Ignorance Superstition Avarice Revenge and other disorderly and disloyal Passions had not so blown up some mens minds against it that what they want of Reasons or Primitive Patterns they supply with Violence and Oppression wherein some mens zeal for Bishops Lands Houses and Revenues hath set them on work to eat up Episcopacy which however other men esteem to Me is no less sin than Sacriledg or a Robbery of God the giver of all we have of that portion which devout minds have thankfully given again to him in giving it to his Church and Prophets through whose hands he graciously accepts even a cup of cold water as a libation offered to himself Furtheâ—more as to My particular engagement above other men by an Oath agreeable to my Judgment I am solemnly obliged to preserve that Government and the Rights of the Church Were I convinced of the Unlawfulness of the Function as Antichristian which some men boldly but weakly calumniate I could soon with Judgment break that Oath which erroneously was taken by Me. But being daily by the best disquisition of Truth more confirmed in the Reason and Religion of that to which I am sworn how can any man that wisheth not my Damnation perswade Me at once to so notorious and combined sins of Sacriledg and Perjury besides the many personal Injustices I must do to many worthy men who are as legally invested in their Estates as any who seek to deprive them and they have by no Law been convicted of those Crimes which might forfeit their Estates and Livelihoods I have oft wondred how men pretending to Tenderness of Conscience and Reformation can at once tell Me that My Coronation-Oath binds Me to consent to whatsoever they shall propound to Me which they urge with such Violence tho contrary to all that Rational and Religious Freedom which every man ought to preserve and of which they seem so tender in their own Votes yet at the same time these men will needs perswade Me that I must and ought to dispense with and roundly break that part of My Oath which binds Me agreeable to the best light of Reason and Religion I have to maintain the Government and legal Rights of the Church 'T is strange My Oath should be valid in that part which both My self and all men in their own case esteem injurious and unreasonable as being against the very natural and essential liberty of our Souls yet it should be invalid and to be broken in another clause wherein I think My self justly obliged both to God and Man Yet upon this Rack chiefly have I been held so long by some mens ambitious Covetousness and Sacrilegious Cruelty torturing with Me both Church and State in Civil dissentions till I shall be forced to consent and declare that I do approve what God knows I utterly dislike and in my Soul abhor as many ways highly against Reason Justice and Religion and whereto if I should shamefully and dishonourably give my Consent yet should I not by so doing satisfie the divided Interests and Opinions of those Parties which contend with each other as well as both against Me and Episcopacy Nor can My late condescending to the Scots in point of Church-Government be rightly objected against Me as an inducement for Me to consent to the like in my other Kingdoms for it should be considered that Episcopacy was not so rooted and setled there as 't is here nor I in that respect so strictly bound to continue it in that Kingdom as in this for what I think in my Judgment best I may not think so absolutely necessary for all places and at all times If any shall impute My yielding to them as My Failing and Sin I can easily acknowledg it but that is no argument to do so again or much worse I being now more convinced in that point nor indeed hath My yielding to them been so happy and succesful as to encourage Me to grant the like to others Did I see any thing more of Christ as to Meekness Justice Order Charity and Loyalty in those that pretend to other modes of Government I might suspect My Judgment to be biassed or forestalled with some Prejudice and wontedness of Opinion but I have hitherto so much cause to suspect the contrary in the Manners of many of those men that I cannot from them gain the least reputation for their new ways of Government Nor can I find that in any Reformed Churches whose patterns are so cried up and obtruded upon the Churches under my Dominion either Learning or Religion works of Piety or Charity have so flourished beyond what they have done in My Kingdoms by Gods blessing which might make Me believe either Presbytery or Independency have a more benign influence upon the Church and mens hearts and lives than Episcopacy in its right
suffering thy Will in either Life or Death As I believe Thou hast forgiven all the Errors of my Life so I hope Thou wilt save Me from the Terrors of my Death Make Me content to leave the Worlds Nothing that I may come really to enjoy All in Thee who hast made Christ unto Me in Life Gain nnd in Death Advantage Tho my Destroyers forget their Duty to Thee and Me yet do not Thou O Lord forget to be merciful to them For what profit is there in my Blood or in their gaining my Kingdoms if they lose their own Souls Such as have not only resisted my just Power but wholly usurped and turned it against My self tho they may deserve yet let them not receive to themselves Damnation Thou madest thy Son a Saviour to many that crucified Him while at once He suffered violently by them and yet willingly for them O let the voice of his Blood be heard for my Murtherers louder than the Cry of Mine against them Prepare them for thy Mercy by due Convictions of their Sin and let them not at once deceive and damn their own Souls by fallacious pretensions of Justice in destroying Me while the conscience of their unjust Vsurpation of power against Me chiefly tempts them to use all extremities against Me. O Lord Thou knowest I have found their Mercies to Me as very false so very cruel who pretending to preserve Me have meditated nothing but my Ruine O deal not with them as blood-thirsty and deceitful men but overcome their Cruelty with Thy Compassion and My Charity And when Thou makest inquisition for my Blood O sprinkle their polluted yet penitent Souls with the Blood of thy Son that thy destroying Angel may pass over them Tho they think my Kingdoms on Earth too little to entertain at once both them and Me yet let the capacious Kingdom of thy infinite Mercy at last receive both Me and my Enemies When being reconciled to Thee in the Blood of the same Redeemer we shall live far above these Ambitious desires which beget such mortal Enmities When their hands shall be heaviest and cruellest upon Me O let Me fall into the arms of thy tender and eternal Mercies That what is cut off of my Life in this miserable moment may be repayed in thy ever-blessed Eternity Lord let thy Servant depart in Peace for my eyes have seen thy Salvation Vota dabunt quae bella negârunt FINIS An Historical TABLE of both PARTS That the Reader may the more easily discern the Order of those Historical Papers which are digested under their several Heads in the First Part and more readily conjoyn them in their proper Places with the Second it is thought fit to represent both together in this Table according to their Dates and Dependencies MDCXXV HIS Majesties Speech at the Opening of His First Parliament June 18. 1625. page 159 160 His Speech to both Houses at Oxford Aug. 4. 1625. ibid. MDCXXV VI. His Speech to the Speaker of the Lower House of His Second Parliament 1625 6. p. 160 His Speech to both Houses at White-Hall March 29. 1626. p. 161 His Speech to the House of Lords at Westminster May 11. 1626. ibid. A Declaration concerning His Two First Parliaments p. 217 MDCXXVII VIII His Majesties Speech at the Opening of His Third Parliament March 17. 1627 8. p. 162 His Speech to both Houses at White-Hall April 4. 1628. ibid. His Speech to the Speaker and House of Commons April 14. 1628. p. 163 His Speeches to both Houses in Answer to their Petition Jun. 2. 7. 1628. ibid. His Speech to the Lower House at the Reading their Remonstrance June 11. 1628. ibid. His Speech to both Houses at the Prorogation Jun. 26. 1628. p. 164 MDCXXVIII IX His Speech to both Houses Jan. 24. 31. 1828 9. p. 164 165 His Speech to the Lower-House concerning Tonnage and Poundage Feb. 3. 1628 9. p. 165 A Declaration concerning His Third Parliament p. 222 A Proclamation for suppressing false Rumours touching Parliaments Mar. 27. 1629. p. 230 MDCXXXVI VII His Majesties Letter to the Judges concerning Ship-money Feb. 2. 1636 7. With their Answer p. 231 232 MDCXL His Majesty's Speech to the Speaker of the Lower House of His Fourth Parliament 1640. p. 166 A Declaration concerning His Fourth Parliament p. 233 His Speech to the Great Council of the Lords at York Septemb. 24. 1640. p. 167 MDCXL XLI Of His Calling His Fifth Parliament See Icon Basil I. p. 647 His Speech at the Opening of His Fifth Parliament Nov. 3. 1640. p. 168 Six Speeches to both Houses Nov. 5. 1640. Jan. 25. Feb. 3. 10. 15. 1640 4. 1. Apr. 28. 1641. p. 168 seqq MDCXLI His Speech to the Lords concerning the Earl of Strafford May 1. 1641. p. 172 His Letter to the Lords May. 11. p. 138 See also Icon Basil II. V. p. 648 654 Two Speeches to both Houses Jun. 22. Jul. 5. 1641. p. 172 173 His Speech to the Scotish Parliament at Edinburgh Aug. 19. 1641. p. 173 Two Speeches to both Houses after His Return out of Scotland Dec. 2. 14. 1641. p. 174 A Petition of the Lower House With a Remonstrance of the State of the Kingdom Dec. 1. 1641. p. 241 243 His Majesty's Answer to the Petition p. 254 His Declaration in Answer to the Remonstrance p. 255 The Petition and Protestation of the Bishops Dec. 28. 1641. p. 258 MDCXLI II. Articles of High Treason against the Five Members Jan. 3. 1641 2. p. 259 His Majesties Speech to the Lower House concerning them Jan. 4. 1641 2. p. 175 His Speech to the Londoners at Guild-Hall Jan. 5. 1641 2. p. 175 See also Icon Bafil III. IV. VI. VII p. 650 651 656 658 His Message for Peace from Canterbury Jan. 20. 1641 2. p. 97 His Speeches to the Committees of both Houses at Theobalds Mar. 1. at Newmarket Mar. 9. 1641 2. p. 175 His Message from Huntingdon Mar. 15. 1641 2. p. 97 MDCXLII Two Speeches to the Gentry of Yorkshire April 5. May 12. 1642. p. 177 Of His Majesty's Repulse at Hull See Icon Basil VIII p. 659 The Nineteen Propositions Jun. 2. 1642 p. 260 His Majesty's Answer p. 262 See also Icon Basil XI p. 659 His Majesty's Declaration to the Lords at York Jun. 13. 1642. p. 271 With their promise thereupon p. 272 His Declaration concerning the Scandalous Imputation of His Raising War Jan. 1642. p. 273 With the Declaration and Profession of the Lords p. 276 Of the many Jealousies and Scandals cast upon His Majesty See Icon Basil XV. p. 680 A Proclamation forbidding Levies of Forces Jun. 18. 1642. p. 277 See also Icon Basil IX X. p. 661 665 His Majesty's Speeches to the Inhabitants of Nottinghamshire Jul. 4. of Lincolnshire Jul. 15. of Leicester Jul. 20. and the Gentry of Yorkshire Aug. 4. 1642. p. 178 179 180 Votes for Raising an Army against the King Jul. 12. 1642. p. 279 A Declaration of both Houses for Raising Forces Aug. 8. 1642. p. 280 His Majesty's
Martyrdom Jan. 30. 1648 9. p. 206 APPENDIX Concerning Church-Government Of the Differences between His Majesty and the two Houses in point of Church-Government See Icon Basil XVII p. 687 The Papers which passed betwixt His Majesty and Henderson concerning the Change of Church-Government 1646. p. 75 The Papers which passed betwixt His Majesty and the Divines attending the Commissioners of both Houses at Newport 1648. Append. p. 612 seqq THE END The Duke of Lenox the Earl of Arran in Scotland Some Writers who since have been convinced of their misinformation have named amongst those seven Lords the Lord Bruce Earl of Elgin but his Lordship upon the first notice of this report did to several Persons of Quality and Honour he conversed with and since hath affirmed to me that he was not then present and that his heart could never consent to the shedding of the blood of that excellent Prelate * A full Answer †The Regal Apology His Majestie 's Religion His Justice His Clemency His Fortitude His Patience His Humility His Choice of Ministers of State His Affection to His People His Obliging Converse His Fidelity His Chastity His Temperance His Frugality His Intellectual Abilities His Skill in all Arts. His Eloquence His Political Prudence The Censure of His Fortune A Presage of His Fall and the future State of the Royal Family His Recreations The Features of His Body His Children Acts 14. 23. Acts 6. 6. 1 Cor. 16. 1. 1 Cor. 14. 1 Cor. 5. 5. 3 Joh. 9 10. 1 Tim. 5. 22. Tit. 1. 5. Revel 2. 3. 1 Tim. 5. 19. Tit. 3. 10. * 5 15 26 29. of Decemb. 84 15. of Jan. 1645. * Jan. 23. 2 Feb. Passed by the Fag-end of the House of Commons Jan. 4. having been cast out by the Lords Jan. 2. Hereabout I was stopt and not suffered to speak any more concerning Reasons * defiance * Answer * four for it seems some came in after Here a Lady interposed saying Not half the People but was silenced with threats Upon the Earl of Strafford Pointing to the Bishop Turning to some Gentlemen that wrote Pointing to the Bishop These words were spoken upon occasion of private Discourse between His Majesty and the Bishop concerning the several Stages of man's life and his course through them in allusion to Posts and Stages in a Race * Cook 7. Report Calvin's Case Mr. Stroud Mr. Pym. Sir John Biron Lord Say His Majesty's gracious Message to both Houses of Parliament sent from Nottingham Aug. 25. 1642. by the Earls of Southampton and Dorset Sr. John Culpeper Chancellor of the Exchequer and Sr. William Vdal The Answer of the Lords and Commons to His Majesty's Message the 25. of Aug. 1642. His Majesty's Reply to an Answer sent by the two Houses of Parliament to His Majesty's Message of the 25 of August concerning a Treaty of Accommodation The humble Answer and Petition of the Lords and Commons assembled in Parliament unto the Kings last Message The humble Answer of the Lords and Commons assembled in Parliament unto His Majesty's last Message Message of Feb. 20. * to the Votes of both Houses and to their desire of a safe Conâ—uct His Majesty's Message of Apr. 12. at the end of the Treaty Inserted before pag. 353. * were presently His Majesty's Message replying to this Paper is inserted before p. 250. In His Message of April 12. pag. 353. Pag. 353. April 5. * The fourth of Edward the Third Artic. 1. against Roger Mortimer The King had put to him four Bishops four Earls and four Barons without whose consent or of four of them no great business was to be transacted Rot. Parliam 13 E. 3. N. 15 16. The whole Navy disposed of by Parliament N. 13 14. Admirals appointed and Instructions given to them N. 32. Instructions for the defence of Jersey and a Deputy-Governour appointed in Parliament N. 35. Souldiers of York Nottingham c. to go at the cost of the Countrey and what they are to do N. 36. A Clark appointed for payment of their wages by the oversight of the Lord Percy and Nevil N. 38. Sir Walter Creak appointed Keeper of Berwick N. 39. Sir Tho. de Wake appointed to set forth the Array of Soldiers for the County of York and N. 40 41 42 43. others for other Counties 14 E. 3. N. 36. The Parliament agreeth that in the Kings absence the Duke of Cornwal shall be Keeper of England N. 35. They appoint the Archbishop of Canterbury the Earls of Lancaster Warren and Huntington Councellors to the Duke with power to call such others as they shall think fit N. 19. Certain appointed to keep the Islands and Sea-coasts N. 42. The Lord of Mowbray appointed Keeper of Berwick N. 48. Commission to the Lord Mowbray of the Justices of Lentham N. 53 54 c. Commissions of Array to the Earl of Angois and others 15 E. 3. N. 15. That the Chancellors chief Justices Treasurers Chancellors and Barons of the Exchequer c. may be chosen in open Parliament and there openly sworn to observe the Laws Answer thus That as they sall by death or otherwise it shall be so done in the choice of a new with your assents c. 50 E. 3. N. 10 11. Ordered in Parliament That the King should have at the least ten or twelve Counsellors without whom no weighty matters should pass c. N. 15. A Commission to the L. Percy and others to appoint able persons for the defence of the Marches of the East-Riding 1. R. 2. N. 18 19. The Parliament wholly disposeth of the Education of the King and of the Officers c. N. 51. Officers for Gascoign Ireland and Artois Keepers of the Ports Castles c. 2. R. 2. Rot. Parl. par 2. artic 39. The Admiralty N. 37. In a Schedule is contained the order of the E. of Northumb. and others for the defence of the North Sea-coasts and confirmed in Parliament 6 R. 2. N. 11. The Proffer of the Bishop of Norwich to keep the Sca-coasts and accepted in Parliament 8 R. 2. 11 16. The names of the chief Officers of the Kingdom to be known to the Parliament and not to be removed without just cause 11 R. 2. N. 23. No persons to be about the King or intermeddle with the Affairs of the Realm other than such as be appointed by Parliament 15 R. 2. N. 15. The Commons name the person to treat of a Peace with the Kings enemies Rot. Parl. 1 H. 4. N. 106. That the King will appoint able Captains in England and Wales Stat. 4. H. 4. cap. 31 32 33. printed The Welch-men shall bear Office 5 H. 4. N. 16. The King at the request of the Commons removed his Confessor and three other Men from about him N. 37. At the request of the Commons nameth divers Privy-Councellors 7 and 8 H. 4 26. Power given to the Merchants to name two persons to be Admirals 7 and 8 H. 4. N. 31. Councellors appointed by