Casuists cannot be ignorant how they annihilate and jeast with sin by their sociable Doctrine of Probable Opinion of Directing the Intention and such like as you may see more at large in the Mystery of Jesuitism of which the last Edition with its Additionals will yield you more satisfaction With these things I should be very unwilling to charge them did I not know that the Agitators of these Political evasions from Sin were the chief Casuists amongst them and their Books printed and reprinted by the consent of their Superiours For those men are very much to blame who scandalize a General Religion with the fancies and extravagancies of some private Writers for by this means might Rebelling-Presbyterianism King-killing Independentism deluded Quakerism and other Heresies be thrown upon the famous Church of England and several absurdities upon the Romanists which cannot be found in the Tridentine Council How obsequious this Order is to their Superiours Commands may be seen in many stories related by Hasenmullerus and others Ignatius himself being willing to throw away his life rather than disobey an ignorant Physitian Nor had it been handsom in him to have been refractory who was the Author of this obedient Constitution and wrote a long Letter from Rome to those of his Order in Portugal to perswade them to it which is yet extant What other Articles they have I need not relate these three being a sufficient taste and the rest of their Order may be had either in Italian or Latin To give a true Character of the Jesuite at large would be too tedious since one of themselves viz. Alexander Haius hath performed it well enough in few words viz. Jesuita est omnis homo one as fit to act any thing as he is able to comply with every condition meerly Tales quales as themselves were pleas'd to term it more publickly at Paris They are generally a sort of people more skilful in the causes and motions of the Body Politick than the Philosopher in the Natural being Richelieu's for plotting as quick-sighted as Lynceus as restless as the Bird of Paradice as insinuating and flattering as Clisophus or Charisophus more cruel than the ill-natur'd Barbarian and like the old woman Ptolomais never in their own Trade but when stirring up mischief and the best Actors on the Political Stage fit to undertake and finish any wickedness for which they have formerly been reproachfully banish'd France Bohemia Hungaria Moravia Turky and Venice though since with much ado restored Several of them have suffered in China England Scotland and other places for their villainies nor hath Germany suffered them to go unpunished nor could they expect more favour from many in that Countrey since the misery of it And the loss of the Palatinate if you believe Sir Simond D'ewes had its source from their Brains And one of this Society who suffer'd at Strasburg confest that he was one of the thirty Jesuits who were imploy'd to be Agents for the Roman Cause in the late German Wars and that their Orders were to poyson and make away the chiefest Officers or others who opposed the Emperour as my Author assures us And Teimurases Prince of the Georgeans a people lying upon the Caspian Sea will have none of them in his Territories whence they were forced to fly for that notorious Imposture of theirs concerning the head of that Martyred Queen Ketaban a story so commonly known that I do not a little admire at de S. Lazare for passing by the fraud and jugling of the Jesuites with silence and untruths Mendoza hot-headed Gret-serus and others of the same Society are as parties bound to commend the Honesty and Religion of this Order But the Ingenious Thuanus Pasquier who affords you Pleadings and Reasons against them and others though Roman-Catholicks think it not fit to attribute any goodness to the Jesuite knowing that he is a Subject too dangerous to live in Liberty in any well setled State Spain excepted these two reciprocally maintaining each other more through politick ends than true love of Religion I am confident Great Brittain and Ireland have felt the force of their active brains as the Raign of Queeen Elizabeth and the dangerous beginning of King James can testifie Nor were they any more beneficial to King Charles doing what they could to foment our Dissentions as the Long Parliament could not deny As appears by their Articles against Father Philips one of which was this The damnable Doctrine which he and other Jesuites have taught to destroy and depose Kings hath been the cause of the Civil Warrs like to befal these Kingdoms if God in his mercy did not prevent it And his Seditiousness is somewhat apparent by his Letter sent to Mr. Mountague in France and produced to the House of Commons June 25 in which was this expression Can the wise Cardinal endure England and Scotland to unite and not be able to discern In the end it is like they will joyn together and turn head against France And how vigilant the Cardinal was to keep the two Nations from uniting is visible from the presence and great endeavours of Mr. Thomas Chamberlain a Scotch-man Chaplain and Almoner to Richelieu amongst the Scots who play'd likewise his Cards well in England before our late Rebellion with Order not to depart from Scotland till things succeeding as the Cardinal wish'd he might return into France with good news of a perfect dissention betwixt England and Scotland And to this may be added the Industry of the Cardinal's Secretary in the said Nation where he carryed himself so cunningly that he was taken into Consultation with the Heads of the Covenanters And what good counsel could spring from such a Fountain cannot be ignorant to any who either understood the experience or knew the political biass of the said Cardinal which might well move him to say concerning our late Troubles That 't was easie for one with half an eye to have foreseen them Whereby it seems strange to me that he would never imploy a Jesuite if we may credit Mr. Howell though it may be that he supposed them too much linked to the Interest of Spain to doe him or France any good Nor is the multitudes of them in England any small probability of their bad Intentions being unwilling to hazard their lives as here they do unless upon some grand Design Jarrigius one of their own Society affirmeth that fifty of them clad in several habits kept Council in London whence they deputed a General Agent to Rome And Oliver Cromwell profest that he could prove by witness that they had a Consistory and Council that rul'd all the affairs in England as he could prove by the Particular Instrument then in his power And how formerly they swarm'd in England Mr. Gee will at large inform you And King James could never forget the miseries he suffered whilst King of
Consequence and good Law Treason to warr against him I shall now shew that the Parliament and not himself was the first beginners of these late Confusions the true rise of which I must fetch higher than the Presbyterian Party will give me thanks for And as a leading Card to this Discovery we must observe that a rebellious itching humour of incroaching upon and railing against lawful Authority was the main foundation of our miseries the source of which frantick temper I must draw from Geneva whose Disciples are commonly carryed on with more violence than the furirious Rhosne upon which the City boasts her situation In this City John Calvin confirmed his Presbyterian-Discipline in the same year that Ignatius Loyola the first Founder of the Jesuites was chosen their first General in a solemn manner viz. 1541. And just a hundred years after 1641. was the famous and reverend Church of England over-run and clowded by the Calvinistical Proselytes And as these two Orders of Presbytery and Jesuitism took their rise together so have they gone hand in hand through a blind zeal not only to derogate from but extirpate all Civil Authority not conducible to their Interests And as Calvin's Presbytery at first was begot by Rebellion and Treason they expelling from Geneva their lawful Prince and Magistrate So have their Children following the foot-steps of their Parents as what is in the bone will never out of the flesh made it their business to terrifie the World with this truth that as Schism so Sedition and they are inseparable And in this they have been no way hindred by their Lord and Master John Calvin whose inconsiderate zeal in some things was such that it was so farr from sparing any that it would throw its fury at Kings and Queens Witness his irreverent expression thrown against Queen Mary calling of her Proserpine telling us that she outstrips all the Devils in Hell And in this way of Rhetorick do other of his dear sons follow him as John Knox calls the same Queen wicked Jezabel and Devil and her Rule the monstriferous Empire of a wicked Woman And another Brother viz. Anthony Gilby calls her a Monster and one wanting no will to wickedness And yet this Lady whom they so much abuse and vilifie was as our Authentick Chronicles assure us a Woman truly pious merciful and of most chast and modest behaviour and every way to be prais'd if you consider not her Errour in Religion A charracter so glorious that I fear few of our Disciplinarians dare pretend to But their only railing against Princes doth not shew half their malice for they have found out fine wayes not only to dethrone but murther their Kings by their not only approving of such wickedness but perswading thereto And this power Calvin acknowledgeth to lye in the Parliament consisting of the Three Estates in each Kingdom telling them that they are perfidious and betrayers of their Trust if they do not restrain the Enormities of Kings And with him agrees one of our English Non-conformists Dudlie Fenner and allows the King to be taken away either by Peace or Warr. And what a stiff Enemy he was to our English Church you may imagine by the Education of his two Scholars Tho. Cartwright and Walter Trevers And Robert Rollock one of the Scottish Brethren confirms this way of King-killing under the notion of Tyrants But How furiously doth John Knox his Countrey-man incite the people to Rebellion telling them that Reformation of Religion belongs as well to the Commonalty as Kings and other Magistrates And that the common people may demand of their Kings true Preachers and that others i. e. in his sense Bishops may be expell'd But if the Rulers will not then they may provide themselves which they may defend and maintain against all that shall oppose them And that they may with-hold the fruits and profits from their false Bishops and Clergy And he tells them that their Princes Rulers and Bishops are criminal of Idolatry and Innocent Bloud and Tyranny And that no person whatsoever is exempted from punishment if he can be manifestly convicted to have provoked or led the people to Idolatry And that the punishment of Idolatry Blasphemy and such like doth appertain to the people as well as others And all these incitements are because the Queen was a Roman-Catholick of which he tells the Lords that if they grant Priviledge or Liberty they shall assuredly drink the Cup of Gods Vengeance and shall be reputed before his presence Companions of Thieves and maintainers of Murtherers And that he might make them more willingly throw off all Obedience he perswades them that It is not Birth nor Propinquity of Bloud that makes a King Lawful and plainly tells them that the Rule of a Woman is unlawful And these brave Doctrines he got printed at Geneva 1558. July 14. from whence he sends them into Brittain to move the people into Rebellion From the same place doth Beza afterwards write to Knox then in Scotland to perswade him to extirpate Episcopacy though the being of it might cause Peace and Unity And of this mind was his Patron John Calvin who profest that he could not Exercise the Office of a Minister unless the Presbyterian Government was confirmed and setled in Geneva From this City did Beza write into England to perswade them from all Formalities and Ceremonies used in our Church and from this place sprang all our Troubles about Non-conformity All this which hath been said as the Opinion of private men was publickly concluded on as Orthodox in Scotland if you will give credit to one of their chief Patrons Buchanan one who hath done an irreparable mischief to Princes by his villainous and wretched Book De Jure Regni apud Scotos a poysonous Well from whence the Long-Parliament and our late Common-wealths-men have drawn most of their Pleas and Arguments And is no small demonstration of the Authours Impudence to dedicate it to King James too good a Master for such a wretched Servant Nor was these things any way denyed in the same Nation of late dayes when 1638. August 27. it was ordered That the ablest man in each Parish should be provided to dispute of the King's Power in calling Assemblies and what they meant by this is no hard matter to discern considering that not only they had the moneth before maintained the power of Convocating to lye in themselves but also the same year had actively derided at the King's Authority and the next year bid him Battle And how little many of their Presbyters have since mended their manners may appear by that impudent piece of Non-sense Malice and Treason spoken by one of their Grandees Mr. Robert Duglas at our King's Coronation in Scotland and by him call'd a Sermon but how unbefitting that name as we now take the word to signifie is appropriated let any that dare call
leaving the Government of all to the Lords of his Parliament Which impudence of theirs hurryed them on so farre that they never left fighting till their King was murder'd but how uncertain Thus are the best men violently opposed by the wicked though the vertue and patience of the former might in reason mollifie the latter to obedience How wishedly will some pitty the case of Argalus and Parthenia the patience of Gryseld in Chaucer the misery and troublesome adventures of the Phanatick Lovers in Cleopatra Cassandra Amadis de Gaul Sidney and such like Yet all these as meer Romantick as Rablaise his Garagantua And yet with an unmoved apprehension can peruse the lamentable murder of Edward the Second of England and James the first and Milcolumb the first of Scotland the cutting off the head of good King Alpinus the poisoning of Fergusius the third by his own Queen and her stabbing her self the strangling of Malvinus by his own Queen and the throat-cutting of King Fethelmachus by a Fidler and besides these the martyrdome of old Queen Ketaban in Persia The stabbing of Henry the fourth in France The sacrilegious poisoning of the Emp. Henry the seventh in Italy The miserable death of Mauricius the Emp. with his Wife and five Children by the wicked Phocas And can read the fatall stories recorded by Boccace with lesse grief then the deplorable narrative of Arnalte's love to Lucenda And the patience of the good King Henry the sixth who being grievously struck by a murthering Varlet only made this Reply Forsooth and forsooth being his words for most earnest expression never using an oath ye do fouly to smite a King anointed so May be farre out-rivall'd by some with the misfortunes and hardship of some inchaunted Lover in Ariosto Parismus the two Palmerins or Mirrour of Knighthood And for the horrid murther of his late Majesty experience tells us that many have been so farre from contracting grief that they have so much triumphantly rejoiced at it that they have thought an action of so much wickednesse to have been honourable to them and their posterity for ever Thus have we come short to our Ancestors in fidelity and Loyalty by studying all occasions to rebell against our King They rather then undergo the ignominions title of Nithing i. e. a knave or a night-filcher swarme to the Service of their King we on the contrary rather then not be branded with the wicked name of a Traytor will court all occasions by our Rebellion to make our selves meritorious to a pair of Gallows And so to conclude this assertion I shall tell you that the Parliament wanted all the qualifications to make a warre really espousable No warre being lawful unlesse it be commanded by the Supream Authority the which the Parliament was not but the King if the Laws of our Land be an authentick Standerd And secondly the occasion of the Warre must be just which was wanting on the Parliaments side all their specious pretences being false and ridiculons their reasons suggested to the people to beget a Warre being to as small purpose as the Duke of Burgundy to quarrell for a cart-load of Sheep-skins or the two Brethren neer Padua about the disposal of the Starrs and Firmament And suppose their jealousies had been true yet it was Treason in them to warre against the Supream Authority the King according to the Laws of our Land and damnable according to the word of God Let Buchanan and such as he by supposing the Apostles and the Spirit to deal with us like Hypocrites evince to the contrary For if the Apostle Paul commandeth the Christians to be obedient to their Heathen and Tyrannical Kings who made it their sport to persecute Christians and that for Conscience-sake telling them that their power was of God certainly we are bound to obey a Christian Prince whose authority can be no lesse If we perceive our selves grieved resist we cannot but by Prayers and Obedience To which purpose the ancient Chaucer instructs us who certainly in this sung according to the rule of his time and therein neither false Law nor Gospel Lordes hestes may not be fayned They may wel be wayled and complained But men must nedes unto her lustre obey And so wol I there nis no more to sey The primitive Christians when collected into great Armies were honoured for their obedience never rebelling against but fighting or quietly living under their Heathen Kings as Tertullian will satisfie more at large But now we are so farre from being peaceable in a Christian Government that if occasion of rebellion cannot handsomly be pluckt by the fore-top yet we can create reason to our selves though upon a serious reflection we acknowledge such endeavours to be unjust Thus the Army when in obedience to the Parliament it had conquer'd and ruin'd the King and Kingdome and by the assistance of the sword and Satan had made themselves Lords and Masters over their Betters then I say when they were at the top of their prosperity they do seriously professe that the Parliament did justifie many extraordinary strange and doubtlesse in respect of the letter of the Law very illegal actions viz. Their taking up Armes raising and forming Armies against the King fighting against his person imprisoning impeaching arraigning trying and executing him cutting off his Head banishing his Children abolishing Bishops Deans and Chapters took away Kingly Government and the House of Lords broke the Crowns sold the Jewels Plate Goods Houses and Lands belonging unto the Kings of this Nation erected extraordinary High Courts of Justice and therein impeached arraigned condemned and executed many notorious enemies to the publick peace when the Laws in being and the ordinary Courts of Justice could not reach them These were strange and unknown practises in this Nation and not at all justifiable as is conceived by any known Laws and Statutes Thus have you the judgment of a ruling Army against their Masters and themselves though this their repentance was but to vindicate another infidelity But here after all this it may be objected that though some factious spirits of the Parliament have been too incroaching upon the King and the chief Incendiaries of these Warres yet why should I lay all this upon the Presbyterian account To which there needs no tedious reply if we do but consider that these factious people were all Non-conformists from whom if examples may be held for proofs as Schismaticks a self-conceited giddy hot-headed zeal and by consequence Rebellion is as inseparable as pride from Menecrates or Children when gallanted up in new cloathes For my part I am apt to believe that the Bloud of many thousand Christians shed in these warrs and before cryeth loud against Presbytery as the people only guilty of the first occasion of quarrel And that they have been the chief occasion of other slaughters may be credited not only from forraign stories but the authentick judgment of the ever great
declared that he could not in Honour and Conscience consent for by them he was not only devested of all Regal Authority but the Church ruined and his Loyal Party bound to suffer what deaths and miseries the Parliament please then they impiously Vote that no more addresses should be made to the King nor none received from him whereby they dash all hopes of a future settlement by the Kings ruling over them contrary to their former Vows and Protestations so that their seeming friendship by Treaties seems to me not unlike that of Rhadamistus King of Iberia whereby he betray'd well-meaning Mithridates King of Armenia to his destruction This action with their Vote against the Queen and that concerning Sir Fairfax's Commission doth not a little or'e-cloud the Presbyterians who think they come off with honour when they deny it was them but the Independants who beheaded his Majesty But what little difference there is in the offence let others judge The Presbyterians by this Vote of Non-address actually deny the King to be their King by professing themselves his enemies for ever and thereby they not subject to his Kingship or Rule And the Independents take him acknowledg'd thus by consequence by the Presbyterians to be no King and in the notion of no King behead him And what suitable intentions they had for more then disowning him may be collected from them selves in the reasons inducing them to such a Vote which were because he was a coutinual breaker of promise and trust His punishing of Prynne Burton Bastwick and such like dicturbers of the peace His Wars with Scotland His accusing some of the Members not forgot by some then in Parliament His raising War against or rather defending himself from the Parliament and such like accusatious which they call Tyranny And that He hath wholly forgotten his duty to the Kingdome they meant themselves and so thus conclude These are some of the many reasons why we cannot repose any more trust in him and have made those former resolutions that is the Votes against any more addresses Yet they say they will settle the Government though it seems without them so that the Army might very well tell us that these Votes were understood by all To imply some farther intentions of proceeding in justice against him and settling the Kingdome without him To this the Presbyterians cannot reply that the Army forced them because it is utterly denied by the Souldiery who look upon themselves with sorrow and shame because they were so slack in putting such a good action forward as they accusingly affirme themselves Nor can they say that they were out voted by the Independent-faction because 't is well known they were far the greater number till they were Secluded the House almost a year after And whether their thus Voting and Scandalizing his Majesty was done more like Presbyterians then good Subjects let those judge who know that it was once enacted Treason To attempt any harm to the person of the King Queen c. or deprive them of their Dignity Title or Name of their Royal Estates or standerously and maliciously pronounce by express writing or words that the King should be Heretick Schismatick Tyrant Infidel or Usurper or to hold from him his Castles Holds or Marches or Artillery or Ordnances of War Yet were the intentions of Parliament more severe against his Majesty the Army and others would be as wicked as the best of them of which some authentick testimonies will not be amiss And first you shall have the story of some pure Rogues chickens of the Parliaments and Armies own breeding and I warrant you brave boys for King and Parliament though their zeal for the latter devoured the former as appears by their Loyalty James Symball Deputy-Keeper of Winchester-house Prison said King's head upon the Tower-block Francis Wade being urged to drink the King's health denied it his reason was because the King was no King but a Tyrant having put the Parliament out of his Protection and so the whole Kingdome Robert White a Souldier on the Parliaments party being demanded what he would have done to the King had he met him in the head of his Army answered He would have as soon killed him as another man Words as full of Loyally as Harry Martin of chastity or the Rump of true piety If Doctor Chayfield must be brought upon his knees by the Long-Parliament for saying From all Lay-Puritans and all Lay-Parliament-men good Lord deliver me If Sir John Lamb must undergo the same punishment for setting up Organs If Master Hollis the Burgess for Newark upon Trent must be banished the Parliament-house for saying that the Scotch Army should be prosecuted with all rigour and extremity and speedily expulst the Kingdome by main force If Master Smith must be committed to the Gate-house onely for speaking against the Parliament If a poor Printer must be condemned to the same prison onely for Printing an Elegy in commendation of the Earl of Strafford If the Lord Digby's speech in the behalf of the Earl must be voted to the flames onely for being Printed And his Brother-in-law Sir Lewis Dives be condemn'd as a Delinquent onely for ordering the same to be Printed a thing allowable to all other Parliament-men If these and many more severe judgements be thought fitting by the Parliament what punishment is meritorius for the former verlits for vomitting out such hellish assertions against his Sacred Majesty But for all this you shall see how cleverly they came off as if with Saint Dominick they had never committed a sin worthy damnation or rather had been as innocent as the child unborn For though at first they were committed to prison by Serjeant Creswell Yet was it soon taken notice of by the Adjutators in the Army a sort of underlings secretly put on by Cromwell whom they call their Patron and Protectour to carry on his designs in the Army every Regiment having two who used to meet in Juntos and there consult for the seducing the rest of the Souldiers these Rabscallies who neither must nor durst be denied present the case of the former fellows to Sir Thomas Fairfax their nominal General desiring their releasment from their Tyrannical sufferings for so they call it He accordingly writes to Speaker Lenthall Upon which the Commons order the business to be consider'd by the Committee of Indempnity and to relieve them as they see cause and so how they came off you may judge The imprisonment of these men made such a noise in the Army that it presently flew as far as Yorkshire and was there taken notice on and by the Adjutators in Pointz his Army amongst other things sent up as a grievance to Fairfax Nor was this action then let alone but was the next year brought upon the stage again by the Sectaries of London Westminster and Southwark complaining of the imprisonment of such good
constaunce evel preveth A full great fool is he that on you leveth And all this by the power of a faithless rebellious schismatical and heretical Army compos'd of people betwixt whose hearts and tongues was a certain Antipathy so that it had been more credit to them had they been framed like the people of Quinbaia not unlike those Wywaypanamyans and other parts of Peru with their heads in their brests for then their tongues had been so near their hearts that they could not have given their tongues the lye But these were agreeable to the wicked man complained on by David who did not onely break his Covenants but was also full of deceit But this wickedness of theirs they indeavour to wipe out by affirming they did but follow the steps of the Parliament who swore to maintain the King yet cut off his head though 't is no excuse to save a thief from the gallows to plead that the knack of stealing was invented before his time This jugling is odious in any man but especially for a Souldier whose profession like our Knight errants is to right all people punish the wicked and relieve the opprest And thus taken no man can but honour his calling knowing that in a good cause none deserves his wages or pay better ventring life limbs and all that is dear to him for his Countries benefit But for your Souldiers of fortune who censure the goodness of their cause by the greatness of their pay and booty who venture their lives onely for their own private interests and fight meerly because they hate peace or because their former villanies in time of tranquillity would be brought to question who know no Conscience and acknowledge no Law but that call'd Martial the which though the severest yet so seldome put in practise or at least runs by partiallity witness the condemning and quitting the same once great man about the same falt that like the Rack in England 't is rather talk'd of then known As for these Banditi or rather wild Canables they are so much the Pest of a Nation that they were not unlike that antient plague call'd by the Northern-people the Grace of God yet for all it 's good name the effects of it was destructive And as they pray'd against the graces of God meaning that sickness so might we against our Army said to be composed of Saints though their actions and intentions were altogether wicked being constant to nothing but Gain whereby the Poets observation may more especially be appropriated to this Army Nulla fides pietásque viris qui castra sequuntur Venalésque manus ibi fas ubi maxima merces Nor faith nor piety these hirelings sway Thinking there is most right where is most pay These men were more fit to fight under the Banner of the one eyed Arimaspi who formerly used to wage war against the Gryffens meerly for the greediness of gold or the aviritious Syrians who like these men will perpitrate any thing for money then to list themselves amongst Christians who should first know the reason of the war before they enter into it and then act wholly for the publick good Not fighting pro and con according as their Officers prompted by private opens please to lead them on as if like Bull-rushes they ought to be obedient to every blast of their rotten-hearted Commanders And if cowardice a thing not to be separate from all honest men let the Philosopher think the contrary have been thought by the best Souldiers worthy of death what punishment is fit for these Needhamites who have no end or reason for their supposed valour but the destruction of those who are better then themselves as if like Envy in the Poet they repined at the flourishing of good things So that truly it may be said of them as the long-Long-Parliament usher'd on by their own confidence was pleas'd to affirm of the King That notwithstanding all the Vows and Protestations to govern by Laws which have been disperst throughout the Kingdom to blind and decieve the people the most mischievous principles of Tyranny are practised that ever were invented For if Le Sieur Colletet doth give us a true discription of Tyranny and he was both learn'd and ingenious enough to understand it we may easily conceive that it was never more practised then in these late times in England Ravir la paix le repos Accabler la France d'impos Rire du peuple qui soûpire Sons le joug d'un cruel Empire Remplir d'infames Garnisons Jousque au foger de nos maisons Vouloir qu' en nos propres familles Le soldat caresse nos filles Forcer en tout temps en tout lieu Les Loix de l'Estat de Dieu Sage Conrart c'est la manie De la nouuelle Tyrannie To over-cloud our peace and rest The Land with Taxes to infest To ' Abuse the people who do groan Under a Curst bloud-shedding Throne To cumber mankind with a Croud Of Garrisons base-born yet proud To let the Souldiers 'fore our eyes Abuse our Daughters as their prise Always to violate and withstand The laws of God and of the Land Is Sir if I can right define Of Tyranny the onely sign And this description agrees with those villanies to make up a Tyrant mentioned by the learned and amongst the rest that ever famous Saravia the Mauller of Beza And really the arrogancy of every beggerly Red-coat and intolerable pride and insolency of every upstart dung-hill-bred Commander many of their extractions being little better was such that we had cause to think as was formerly said of the days of King Stephen that there were in England as many Tyrants as Governours of Towns and Castles And I fear nor doth my doubt argue want of charity that many of them by their arrogant wickedness have not crost the Proverb Set a Begger on horse back and he will ride to the Devil For we know that such upstarts are naturally most proud which hath been held above an ordinary sin and what sign of repentance they have yet shewn I am altogether ignorant How our Nation was reformed after so much fighting for it's pretended happiness when our Kings Nobility Clergy and Gentry were thrown by as useless and Coblers Draymen and such Mechanicks set up in authority to domineer over us will make posterity blush to consider as it hath done Forraigners rather to abuse then pity us And will remain as a sign to posterity of the Armie 's abominable hypocrisie and falshood When they had the confidence to assert their first cause the just rights and liberties of all honest and good men in their peaceable and quiet living and not at all indulged either themselves or others in the troubling suppressing or abridging any though keen and froward against the Army in the free use and enjoyment of their just rights and liberties and all this and much more with simplicity impartiallity
onely approve of but also protect thereby gaining infinite Proselytes as the Devil in the Northern Coasts doth his subjects by making them invulnerable And these they feed up and nourish with strange fears more fantastical then Lazarellos when he thought the dead man would be carried to his Master's house strongly fomented and agitated by unheard of Plots set a foot to destroy Religion and Nation like the Roterdam-ship which would kill the English under water and all this upon worsegrounds and reasons then the influence of a Talisman Though nothing was more false and impudent then these pretended dangers yet what by the authority and countenance of those Grandees who patronized such rumours and what by the power which the Tubthumping boute-feus had over the peoples inclinations and judgments whereby the Pulpit became the worst thing in the Nation many had not onely a bad opinion of the King but thought very well of the Parliament who in all their actions were far more sedulous then his Majesty but most of all as a hindg upon which themselves and designs hung in sending forth their papers to abuse the people by making the King's actions odious and their own for the best And of this they took special care not onely by appointing a Committee to consider of the most convenient way to disperse them and to give an allowance to their Messengers but also by taking care by Order that every Petty Constable or Tythingman throughout England shall have one of every one of their Orders Declarations c. and to read them publickly to their neighbours And how these flattering papers might work in the Country where they commonly believe all that is in Print is easily to be imagined considering that most of them heard but the reasons of one Party the Parliament taking a special care by Declaration that nothing which came from the King should be received or permitted to be read Whilst the Parliamentarian-papers flew plentiful about the Nation swoln with big praises of their worships the better to captivate the ignoranâ— people to their Lure who are naturally of themselves apt to gape after any novelty or change especially when any gain is like to be had by it as there was in this undertaking they knowing that Plundering would be permitted them and the Parliament assuring them that if they received any damage it should be repai'd them out of the estates of their enemies By these ways the Country was droled into an high conceit of the Parliament and nothing stuck with those of the more wise and honest sort but the word Treason which they knew they should incur by assisting the Parliament against the King But this doubt was presently wipt away in the opinion of many by the Parliaments distinction betwixt the Person and Office of a King as also by their daily protestations at the beginning of the Wars That they fought not against the King but against his wicked Council Of which Protestations in 1642. I shall give you a tast whereby you may the better distinguish between their tongues and hearts And first we shall give you the Vote by which the Army was first order'd to be rais'd which was thus Resolved upon the Question That an Army shall be forthwith raised King's Person defence of both houses of Parliament and those who have obey'd their Orders and Commands and preserving of the true Religion the Laws Liberty and Peace of the Kingdome And to confirm the people in their intentions for the preservation of the King they thus profess and protest House of Commons your Loyal Subjects who are ready to lay down their lives and fortunes and spend the last drop of their bloud to maintain your Crown and Royal Person and greatness and glory And they pray your Majesty to rest assured that they will always be tender of your Honour and Reputation with your good Subjects We seek nothing but your Majesties Honour and Peace and the Prosperity of your Kingdomes Their earnest intentions and endeavours to advance your Majesties Service Honour and Contentment c. Do resolve to preserve and govern the Kingdome by the Counsel and Advice of the Parliament for your Majesty and your Posterity according to our Allegiance and the Law of the Land As if there could be a greater care in them the King's friends at York of his Majesties Royal Person then in his Parliament The services which we have been desirous to perform to our Soveraign Lord the King and to his Church and State in proceeding for the publick peace and prosperity of his Majesty and all his Realmes Within the presence of the same all-seeing Diety we Protest to have been and still to be the enely end of all our counsels and endeavours wherein we have Resolved to continue freed and enlarged from all private aimes personal respects or passion whatsoever Who in all their Counsels and Actions have proposed no other end unto themselves but the care of the Kingdomes and the performance of all Duty and Loyalty to his Person Your Majesties most humble and faithful Subjects the Lords and Commons in Parliament having nothing in their thoughts and desires more precious and of higher esteem next to the honour and immediate service of God then the just and faithful performance of their duty to your Majesty and this Kingdome We the Lords and Commons are resolved to expose our lives and fortunes for the defence and maintenance of true Religion the King's Person Honour and Estate Will really endeavour to make both his Majesty and Posterity as great rich and potent as much beloved at home and feared abroad as any Prince that ever sway'd this Scepter which is their firm and constant Resolution And you shall declare unto all men that it hath been and still shall be the care and endeavour of both Houses of Parliament to provide for his Majesties safety Concerning the Allegations that the Army rais'd by the Parliament is to Murther and depose the King we hoped the Contrivers of that Declaration or any that profest but the name of a Christian could not have so little charity as to raise such a scandal especially when they must needs know the Protestation taken by every Member of both Houses whereby they promise in the Presence of Almighty God to defend his Majesties Person The Promise and Protestation made by the Members of both Houses upon the nomination of the Earl of Essex to be General and to live and dye with him wherein is exprest that the Army was rais'd for the Defence of the King's Person And we have always desired from our hearts and souls manifested in our Actions and in many humble Petitions and Remonstrances to his Majesty profest our Loyalty and Obedience to his Crown readiness and resolution to defend his person and support his Estate with our lives and fortunes to the uttermost of our power We
of the Earl of Manchester In which two Universities there was a thorough Purge to the perpetual reproach and ignominy of the Undertakers many famous and learned Doctors Heads of Houses Masters of Arts and others were turned out of their Fellowships and Colledges because they would not submit to that which was contrary to their Oaths and the Priviledges of both places imposed upon them by those who had no more authority in such things than they had to behead or rebel against their Master IX Contzenus saith these Revolutions must be done moderately and with abundance of cunning the first step being to make the followers and abetters of the contrary Opinion odious and as it were a scorn in the Countrey and this by disgracing them especially with things which seem most ridiculous absurd and hate ful to the common people either by nick-naming or any way else The scandalous Reports and Pamphlets thrown against both King and Bishop as Popish though they thought nothing less may be some sign what good use hath been made of Contzen's Observation What disgrace cast upon the decent Habits of Church and University though the first according to the Canons and the other appointed by the Statutes of the place What unseemly Titles given to Organs as Bag-pipes and what irreverent names to Churches as Steeple-houses How were the Clergy nick-named with the title of Hirelings Humane Learning as Heathenish and Scholars as professing enmity against the Gospel How Cromwel's Faction spread abroad Pamphlets against King City and Parliament 1647. that the people might take the Army for honest men is somewhat pointed at by Mr. Walker And since that What scurrilous Books hath been contrived by Needham Goodwin Milton Rogers and such like Billingsgate Authors is not unknown to to any Nor is it forgot what impertinent Reports the Long-Parliament spread amongst the People to make the King odious as that he was a Favourite to the Catholicks and those call'd Arminians which sufficiently demonstrated a Presbyterian malice since the first was false and the other no crime And this must also be laid in the dish of Archbishop Laud though Prynne and they knew that he wrote more against the Romanists than all our Brittain Presbyterians who have spent more time in the commendation of Rebellion than in the Service of God And certainly I may as well call Prynne a Stage-Player for writing his Histriomastix as he the Archbishop Papistical because he wrote so learnedly against them And as if this were not mischief enough the People must now and then be alarum'd with strange Reports of Forces from Denmark Lorraign and other strange places as if the Nation were to be conquer'd and the Natifs throats cut which if we yield yet will the ignominy only fall upon the Presbyterian Party who by their want of Allegiance would bring the King to such straits that his own Subjects were not able to defend him from their Tyranny They thought it fit for us to send aid into the Palatinate and yet unlawful for Denmark to assist his own Kinsman against his Rebellious Subjects It was convenient they thought to give help to the French against their lawful King yet held it abominable for Forraigners to give a good wish to the King of England against his rebellious people The Covenanters in Scotland might with honesty crave aid from the French King though a Roman-Catholick against their Anointed Soveraign But so must not the King of England from the Duke of Lorraign though his life endangered by his bloud-thirsty Subjects The Parliament forsooth may make a Pacification with the Irish Catholicks but the King must not harbour such a thought without grand aspersions If the King but march towards Scotland the malignity of envious tongues endeavours to blast his Reputation as not fit to wear the Crown But many thousands of the Scotch-Covenanters may come into England fight against their King kill his faithful Subjects and inrich themselves by their plundering and stealing from the honest People and for their villainies receive large rewards with the Epithet of Brethren and so they were but in Iniquity being guilty of High-Treason because marched and acted against the Kings consent who is the Supreme Authority of the three Nations And that the Supream Head may when rebell'd against for his own security and defence desire help of his Neighbours though of a different perswasion in Religion I think needs no dispute He that would lose his Kingdom quietly is as simple as the Rebel 's wicked and if his own Sword be not long enough for the tryal he may lawfully borrow his Friends If the Parliament stood so much upon their Priviledges I know no reason but that the King might maintain his Prerogative and if any Contradiction be betwixt these two they are obliged to yield to their betters Nor doth it thwart the practise of former times for the Supream Authority to desire assistance from people of a contrary Religion as may be seen by the following examples as I find them set down to my hand in a late French Treatise Aza the good King of Judaea procured assistance from Benhadad the Idolatrous King Syria And so did the Great Constantine imploy in his Armies many Heathenish Goths So were the wicked Vandals call'd into Africa by good Boniface And after this manner did Narses under the Emperour Justinian imploy the Pagan Lombards The good Arcadius Emperour of Constantinople though a Christian delivered the tuition of his young son Theodosius and the Government of the Empire till his Son came to age into the hands of Isdigerdis King of Persia a Heathen who accordingly kept his promise with the Emperour Heraclius the Emperour was beholden to the Saracens as Basilius and Constantine's sons to John Emperour of Constantinople were to Ostelzi And by these people were also Henry and Frederick Brothers to the King of Castile mainly benefited in their Wars against the French Ludouick Sforza Duke of Milan and others begg'd assistance from the Turk against the French as Maximilian of Austria did against the Venetians And if it be lawful to procure aid from Heathens certainly a Christian may seek help from those who profess Jesus Christ though in every thing they cannot absolutely agree But enough of this since the Presbyterian commits ten times more sin in Rebelling than the wickedst man can do in defending his own right though by the assistance of Turks and Infidels X. What a great stickler Robert Parsons the Jesuite was to overthrow both England and the Protestant Religion in it is well known the great States-man Cardinal D'Ossat taketh notice several times of his designs against these Kingdoms Some of his Plots and Contrivances shall follow as they were publisht by some Roman Catholicks One of his means is to alter the Municipal Laws of the Land that the Civil Laws might have sway 'T is needless to relate how the Laws have been chopped and changed by diversity of Governments not
knowing where to find a settlement amongst our selves and all as the Sword pleas'd and how conducible such repealing actions are to overthrow our setled and fundamental Laws is plain XI That the Clergy in England be put to Pensions This is a rule of as much concern as any in the Body Politick This is the way to make the Clergy slaves to every Usurper and so by their Preachments to gain Proselytes By this means none should receive any Preferment but pure Hirelings those who would hold forth to their Auditors every thing that their Pay-Masters thought good which would make them all like Clisophus belonging to Philip of Macedon to halt when their Masters were lame and in all things to comply with the Grandees Thus like Alexander's Apes that imitated his Army in Martial discipline have our Schismatical hot-heads with a Curse ye Meros ecchoed an Alarum answerable to the stroaks of their Bloud-thirsty Patrons Who like Father Time delighted not only to pull down men but also ruine the Foundations of famous Structures the eminent Monuments of our fore-Fathers Charity of which we have had some tastes and were in a fair way to see the work compleated as was probable by the great Petitioning and Writing against Tithes and other maintenance of and small encouragements to an Orthodox Clergy XII That all Colledges in Oxford and Cambridge be deprived of their Lands and Revenues and that the Scholars of them become Pensioners This is the thing which they have actively fail'd in and I hope will for ever Though what their intentions have been may be evidently drawn from their pernicious actions to discourage both Learning and the Ministry by scandals cast upon them and their studies as needless with whom some ignorant Boobies formerly agreed as John Ludgate Monk of St. Edmondsbury informs us and in his way confutes Craft of langage and of prudent spech Causeth prechours by spiritual doctrine Uertuously the people for to tech How they shall live by Moral Discipline Langage techeth men to plant Uine Enformeth folke to worship holy Church The Artificer trewely for to wyrche Yet ther be summe that pleynly tech and preche Have of Language this Opinyon God hath not moost reward unto speche But to the herte and to th' affection Best gan guyrdon the inwarde intencion Of every man nat after the visage But like the moveing of their inward carage c. The form of Preaching of late was come to that pass that unless he decryed Learning as useless or either sav'd or damn'd all though the latter was held the more plausible such was the peoples love to extreams he was held to want both gifts and a discerning spirit To shake hands with the Text and take no more notice of it then when it was named was a great sign of some extraordinary Inspiration but a good and solid Sermon was reproach'd with Humane Learning as if Literature were no more advantage to a Divine then the ancient Ship Argo to defend the great Stones upon Salisbury-Plain from being stoln away by the Parrots in Magellinica And this way they used to make Learning seem unnecessary and odious to the Vulgar that so with more plausibleness they might alienate their Lands For nothing else could be their intentions to cherish up Ignorance by suffering and encouraging Pratlers who had never seen a Colledge sacrilegiously to abuse Pulpits by which intimating to the People that a Cobler or Taylors-stall was as good a Nurcery for a Divine as either University And to make this more fesible a Band of Itinerants were foisted up in Wales under the Conduct of Vavasor Powell one if reports be true more fit to rub Horses heels than enter a Pulpit where they turn'd out the setled Ministry and so lock'd up the Church-doors that a Sermon was as rare there as they were too common in England It was another mans Concordance and their own Impudence that were their chief Interpreters of Scriptures The Fathers and other Commentators being held too much Popish and knowing to have any credit amongst such Illuminato's And thus was Learning openly trod down and Colledge-Lands thereby tacitly gaped after Thus have a wretched sort of people who like the Shark oft swallow that which was never intended them endeavoured what in them lay to root up the Foundation of Learning And this more pardonable than a late wicked crew of Matricides who have had not only their breeding but the best part of if not all their lively-hood from the Charity of Colledge-Founders yet have made it their business to scrible whole Books to incite the Rabble to lay these ancient Fabricks equal with the ground so that the University might well complain Heu patior telis vulnera facta meis Woe 's me how I am curst Despis'd and vilifi'd by those I nurst These like the Viper delight to live by the destruction of their Mother as if their greatest Triumph would be like the wanton Queen to carrouse in their Parents skull But of these I may speak hereafter and shall now only tell you that the Long-Parliament at their beginning took notice that courses had been taken to suppress Learning But a new Broom sweeps clean and though a child at first be careful of his new shooes yet at last he will delight in their pollution 'T is a sign of unspeakable malice and covetousness for people to grudge the benefit of others since it taketh nothing from them Those who repine at the Lands of the Clergy and Colledges might have some reason if they were taken from them But when charitable people no way related to these Grumblers shall give this or that to the incouragement of Learning or Piety you may as lawfully desire the Charters Lands and Commons belonging to Corporations as the Priviledges and Maintenance from the former and then Hell may as assoon plead sanctity as this covetous Varlet honesty XIII That Spain hath had real thoughts of the Conquest of England is probable not only by their 88. Invasion but their often endeavour upon Ireland And Dr. Sharp assured the Duke of Buckingham of the same And for the bringing of this Design about Thomas Campanella tells the Catholick King that nothing is more conducible than to foment discords amongst themselves the which may be done with their own money The same advice the great Politick Cardinal Richelieu upon his Death-bed communicated to the King of France as the only means to aggrandize the French Kingdom as a Venetian informeth us And some wise men think that our late distractions were but the result of his Brains And that either Party was assisted with Monies from Beyond-Seas I know not But rather on the contrary do believe that the Warr was maintained by our own Cash and besides that no small Sums have been jugled over the Water by some sinful Grandees that had run so far into wickedness that their Consciences told them that they had lived Islanders long enough and so must
himself loyal and rational be judge And truly what itching ears for Innovation and against Regal Authority some of the forraign Presbyters have is something palpable from the Letter of Gisbertus Voetius wherein he doth not only commend Prynne's Soveraign Power of Parliaments but saith that it ought to be translated into Latin and French for the benefit of the Reformed Divines and Politicians And Prynne himself tells us that it is translated into several Languages And what Pleas they may suck out of such Books against Monarchy cannot be ignorant to those who have seen what mischief the counterfeit Name of Junius Brutus a fit name for such a murtherous mind though the true Authour is supposed to be Beza and that printed in divers Languages hath laid open to those who are willing to perpetrate wickedness And how consentaneous to the Doctrines laid down in these Pamphlets their actions have been their often Rebellions in France but more especially in the dayes of Lewis the 13 th will shew us whom though he had pardoned several times yet would they never keep Articles but upon every advantage fly to their Arms again looking upon Regal Authority only as a Bug-bear to afright Children hoping in time by dwindling it to nothing to raise themselves to Superiority And how many men by these false Positions may be drawn to Schism and Rebellion is manifest from this one Example In King James his time one Knight a young Divine Preach'd at St. Peters in Oxford and in his Sermon maintain'd the Presbyterian Doctrines above specified for which being call'd in question he laid the fault upon some late Divines in forraign Churches who had misguided him in that point especially on David Paraeus who had asserted these Doctrines upon which his Comment on the Romans was publickly and solemnly burnt at Oxford 1622. June 6 th Cambridge and St. Paul's Cross in London The famous University of Oxford in a full Convocation concluding 25. June 1622. That such assertions were contrary to Scripture Councils Fathers the Faith and Profession of the Primitive Church and Monarchy it self and therefore condemned them as false wicked and seditious And did also affirm That according to the Scriptures it is not lawful for Subjects upon any terms to resist their King or Prince no not to take up Arms against him either for Religion or any other account whatsoever And for more sureness they did also Decree that every one before he took a Degree should swear to this The Opinion delivered in the sentence of these two famous Universities I shall value more than of an Assembly or Classis made up of all the Presbyterians in the World The consideration of these Disciplinarian Maximes I believe did make our ingenious Satyrist cry out Our Zeal-drunk-Presbyters cry down All Law of Kings and God but what 's their own If you desire to see any more of their wild and extravagant Principles you may consult Archbishop Bancroft's Industrious Book a piece that I am sorry is so scarse as it is and that for want of Re-printing while Calvert's shop dayly labours with the multitude of Fanatick Pamphlets and such Books as Smectymnuus must be printed and printed again and that with the addition of a long Preface by a great Time-serving Divine CHAP. VII The Rebellious Actions of the Presbyterians in Scotland till the Death of King James HOw agreeable the practise of the Brethren have been to these Treasonable Notions afore specified shall here in brief be laid down by their tumultuous Carriages in Scotland Whither these Principles kindled with a fiery zeal enough to eat up whole Kingdoms were carryed and the furiousness of them greatly augmented at the return of John Knox that great Incendiary of the Nation and Kirk of Scotland as a learned Doctor calls him from Geneva 1559. A man that still had the misfortune to carry Warr and Confusion along with him as if like Hippocrates's Twins he and they were inseparable witness the Combustions he made at Franckfort amongst the poor English Protestants fled thither for Religion where he was not undeservedly accused of High-Treason against the Emperor by comparing him in print to Nero and calling of him Enemy to Christ c. For which crimes he was forced to sculk away to Geneva thence to Deep in France and after that to Scotland whence after few weeks stay he fled back to Geneva but not setling there he returns to Deep again from which place he wrote divers Letters to the Scots to stirr them up to Rebellion and having by that means wrought some confidence among them returned to Scotland again By these Principles distill'd amongst them by this wandering Brother and the deadly Feuds of old betwixt the Nobility the Nation became miserably distracted The Kings and Queens thinking it hard measure to have their undoubted Rule and Soveraignty pluck'd from them by such inferiour Instruments and Vassals And on the other side the Congregators for so they then call'd themselves back'd on by several Hot-spurs scorned to yield subjection to any but themselves so that the disturbed Kingdom appeared to be governed by two distinct Authorities like Caesar and Pompey one party disdaining an Equal whilst the other denyed a Supream The Presbyters so farr extolling their own Priviledges as Christs Embassadours that many thought there was no Antichrist but Kings and such Civil Authority which cogitations nurst in them such a small esteem of their Rulers or Laws that they did not only think that to be their right which was most agreeable to their own humours but also that they might gain such things to themselves by the Sword As if Subjects need any more Priviledge then the course of Law At the beginning of the Reformation in Scotland the Queen-Regent favourably because contrary to her Religion allowed them the Bible in their own Language But they not content with this use their wonted Master-peice of Reviling upon which she was constrained to send for some of their Preachers to appear before her who accordingly came but with such a multitude of favourites and attendants that through fear of her own Person she was obliged to order by Proclamation all to depart who came unsent for a thing alwayes usual in the best of Governments yet was this so offensive to the Brethren that they throng in Tumults into her Privy-chamber and there threaten her with their weapons an act quite contrary to the Apostles and Primitive Christians so that she was constrained to pleasure them Afterwards she allows them liberty to use their Prayers and Service in the Vulgar Tongue provided they kept no Publick Assemblies in Edenbourgh or Leith for avoiding Tumults And in their Petition to her for the obtaining these favours they acknowledge that the Redress of all Enormities both Ecclesiastical and Civil did orderly belong to her But this acknowledging of her Authority lasted not long for when presently afterwards they demanded more liberty with a
denyes their Judicatory not being call'd by the Kings consent but for all this they judge him fit to be Excommunicated yet none would pronounce the Sentence against him till at last many of them being departed a young fellow named Andrew Hunter said that he was warned by the Spirit to pronounce the sentence and so ascending the chair read the same out of a Book This boyling humour of the Ministers troubled King James not a little which greatly augmented when they insolently refused to pray for the Queen his Mother then near herend though he had earnestly commanded them But the greatest of all was the execution in England how handsomly I know not though he greatly endeavoured to stop it But the King thinking to put an end to all tumults thought fit to reconcile the Nobility which at last he did Feasting them all at Haly-rud-house thence causing them to walk hand in hand two and two to the Market Cross at Edinburg where they sealed their Concord by drinking one to another The same peace he thought to have made with the Ministers but this not fadging all fell to nothing After this Huntley Bothwell Crawford Montross and Athol agitated by the Jesuits rebell but upon thier submission were pardoned Yet though the King was so easie to shew favour so was not the Presbytery who deprive the Bishop of Saint Andrews of all spiritual function for marrying the King's Cozen the Duke of Lenox his Sister to the Earl of Huntly though he did it by the King 's express Command yet was the King forced to dissemble his dislike of their insolency knowing their power and stubborness and having another thing in hand viz. his marriage with Ann the King of Denmark's Daughter whom to to fetch he presently took ship and married her in Upslo in Norway thence through part of Swedeland and Denmark he returned with her into Scotland where she was crowned though the accustomary unction was much opposed by the Ministry calling it a Jewish Rite abolished at Christs coming and introduced by the Pope After this Bothwell and some others conspire against the King endeavouring to seize upon his person at Haly-rood-house and Faulkland but without success and so was glad to fly into England The Presbyterie taking advantage against the King in these troubles Petition that the Acts made 1584. to restrain the insolencies of these hot heads should be abrogated which the King was constrained fearing lest they should also rebell against him upon a denyal in some sort to consent to Though the next year he assures them that he would not suffer the Priviledges of his Crown to be lessen'd nor Assemblies to meet without his Order but this they slightly answer by telling him that they will keep to the benefit allowed them the year before Nor shall they hold their tongue in the Pulpit upon just and necessary causes Such small esteem had they for their Soveraign though they would humble themselves to inferiour people in greater matters For when they had with the consent of the Council of Edinburgh made an Act that the Munday Market in that City should be alter'd to Tuesday The Shoomakers whom it most concerned gathered together before the Ministers doors threatning to chase them out of Town if they harp'd upon that string any more which was the reason of this Saying there Rascals and Sowters can obtain from the Ministers what the King could not in matters more reasonable Bothwell as aforesaid having fled to England for Treason returns again and being assisted with other Nobles and by the cunning of the Lady Atholl seizeth upon the King at Haly-rood-house where he constrains the King to pardon all and that several persons of quality should be turned from the King's service But the King getting to Sterling the Estates there decreed Bothwels actions to be Treasonable and the King not obliged to performance because forced whereupon Bothwell falling to open Rebellion is pronounced Rebell If the King's Authority could do this the Kirk thought they had as much power to excommunicate the Catholick Lords which the King the Lord offering themselves to Tryal endeavoured to stop telling them that they had nothing to do in such affairs but this denial so troubled and vext the Assembly that they order all of their fraternity to be in Arms For this insolency the King checking them they replyed That it was the Cause of God and in the defence thereof they could not be deficient Hereupon the King puts forth a Proclamation prohibiting all meetings yet for all this they kept on their Course so that the King was forced to yield Yet this procured him no peace though the birth of Prince Henry rejoyced him For Bothwell falls again into Rebellion assisted by Argile Arrol c. Nay the Presbyterie were so active in this Treason as to carry on his designs they give him the monies collected for the relief of their then distressed Brethren at Geneva By this means having got some forces together he fights the King's Party in which though he was not beaten yet shifts for himself dissolving his Souldiers Yet after this having joyned himself with some Catholick Lords to surprize the King again but being discovered flyes to open Rebellion and having with nine hundred men under the Command of Huntly beat Argile who had above 10000. upon Composition are pardoned but banished And Bothwell gets himself to France thence to Naples where he dyed miserably poor about the year 1624. The King for peace-sake and good policy had a mind to pardon and call home the banished Lords to which at last Mr. Robert Bruce the Minister consents provided that Huntly should not return but the King reasoning with him for Huntly too he imperiously answered I see Sir that your resolution is to take Huntly into favour which if you do I will oppose and you shall choose whether you will lose Huntly or Me for us both you cannot keep This is that Bruce whose popularity outvyed the King's who seeing one time what a multitude conducted him into Edinburgh said By my sale Bruce puts me down in his Attendants And this is he who had preached many years without Ordination nor would he be ordained which was the occasion of some disputes 1598. Yet for all this self-conceited pratler the Lords return which mads the Ministry who meet about it proclaim a Fast order inquiry to be made into their Favourites against whom they proceed with Censures and clamour as if the Kirk had been singing her Requiem The King troubled at these turbulent actions under his very nose by Proclamation dissolves them Whereupon they Petition him not to incroach upon the Limits of Christs Kingdom And these hubbubs were the more heightned by the Sermon of Mr. David Blake in which he ranted against the King Queen and Lords and call'd Queen Elizabeth an Atheist and a Woman of no Religion of which the English Ambassador complain'd and demanded satisfaction Upon
this Blake is summon'd before the Council which so incensed Andrew Melvill that he labour'd to make it a Publick Cause and did so much That they declare it would be ill to question Ministers and boldly told King James who asked them if they had seen the Conditions of Huntly's Pardon That both he and the rest should either satisfie the Church in every point or be pursued with all extremity so as they should have no reason to complain of the over-sight of Papists And as for Blake they gave him a Declinator affirming it was the Cause of God whereunto it concerned them to stand at all hazzard and this Declinator was sent to all the Presbyteries in the Kingdom who were desired not only to subscribe it but to commend the Cause in their private and publick Prayers to God by which means they fancyed themselves so strong that they deny the King to have power to judge a man for speaking in Pulpit and that the King in what he had already done had so wronged Christs Kingdom that the death of many men could not be so grievous to them And therefore they ordain a Fast for averting the Judgements then threatning the Kirk This action so vext his Majesty that he forbad all Convocatings and Meetings but they little cared for him or his Orders for Mr. Walter Balcanquall did not only forthwith rail against the Court naming several of the chief Courtiers but desired all the well-affected to meet in the Little Church to assist the Ministry who did accordingly and Petition the King in behalf of the Kirk But the King asking them who they were that durst convene against his Proclamation was worshipfully replyed by the Lord Lindesey That they durst do no more then so and that they would not suffer Religion to be over-thrown Multitudes unmannerly thronging into the room the King departed and they went to the little Church again where Lindesey told them No course but one let us stay together that are here and promise to take one part and advertise our friends and the favourers of Religion to come unto us for it shall be either theirs or ours Upon which great clamours shoutings and lifting up of hands followed some crying to Arms others to bring out Haman for whilst the Lords were with the King being sent as above-said from the Little-Church Mr. Cranstone read to the People that story others cryed out The Sword of the Lord and of Gideon and so great were the Peoples fury rais'd on a sodain That if the Provost by fair words and others by threats had not tamed them they had done some violence These actions of the Kirkers makes the King leave the Town go to Linlithgow whereupon they resolve for Warr the Ministers agitating them Amongst the rest one John Welsh in his Sermon rail'd pitifully against the King saying He was possest with a Devil and compared him to a Madd-man and affirmed That Subjects might lawfully rise and take the Sword out of his hand In this fiery zeal they write a Letter to the Lord Hamilton desiring him to be their General telling him in it That the People animated by the Word and Motion of Gods Spirit had gone to Arms. But all came to nothing Hamilton refusing such rebellious honour carryeth the Letter to the King who orders the guilty Ministers to be apprehended who escape by flying into England and the Magistrates of Edenburgh are pardoned The overthrow of this one business strengthened the Kings Authority mightily which was also confirmed by the Assembly at Perth now better known by the name of St. John's Town The Ministry being now pretty quiet Ruthen Earl of Gowry conspired to kill the King but to his own ruin His Majesty for this Preservation orders that Thanks should solemnly be render'd to God but in this he found the Presbyters cross-grain'd denying to do any such thing for such a deliverance whereupon they were silenced yet afterwards shewing their willingness were restored In this year was King James his third son his second viz. Robert dying young Charles born afterwards King of England The next year was kept an Assembly at Burnt-Island whither Mr. John Davidson wrote a rayling Letter checking them for their cowardise in not opposing the ungodly telling them that the King was not sound and that Warr was more commendable than a wicked Peace But the graver sort rather pittyed and smiled at the mans madd zeal then troubled themselves to vex at him And now Queen Elizabeth dying King James the undoubted next Heir to the English Crown is at London Proclaimed accordingly whither he went to receive his Crown having thus happily united the two Kingdoms And here I shall leave off from prosecuting the Presbyterian Story in Scotland any further though I might tell you of their calling against the Kings consent an Assembly at Aberdeen to rant against Episcopal Government nor would they dissolve at the Kings command till they were proclaimed Traytors and yet did some of them scorn to acknowledge their Error and were by some of their Brethren vindicated to King James face in England the next year And many more instances of their Waspish humour in denying the Kings Authority might be shewn out of their own Historians who abound in such examples but if Symmetry will tell us the stature of the man by the proportion of his foot these may serve so much at this time to satisfie that I fear they will rather nauseate And really those who thought it a hard case that Mr. Blake should be punished for affirming in a Sermon 1596. That all Kings were the Devils Barns that the Kings heart was treacherous and that the Devil was in the Court and the guiders of it That the Queen of England was an Atheist and a wicked Woman That the Nobility and Lords were miscreants bribers degenerated godless dissemblers and Enemies to the Church That the Council were Holliglasses Cormorants and men of no Religion And in his Prayer for Queen Anne he said We must pray for her for the fashion but we have no cause she will never do us good Nor did he word it only but also rais'd Arms both Horse and Foot against the Kings consent These men I say who thought it unjust to have him questioned for such rebellious actions may also for ought I know think it strange with Buchanan that our Laws do not provide ample and honourable rewards for those who can boldly murder their Prince And yet must this Buchanan and Knox be cryed up as valiant noble bold and publick-spirited men and this present world scorned because we have no such fire-brands And whether this title is rashly thrown upon them let any ingenious man judge not only by their fore-mentioned tenets and actions against their Kings but by the answerable nurturing up of their Disciples who at the University of St. Andrews instead of Divinity Lectures had these Political or rather a ruine to
Policy Questions used to be discust 1. Whether the Election or Succession of Kings were the better Form of Government 2. How farr the Royal Power extended 3. Whether Kings might be censured for abusing their Power and deposed by the Estates of the Kingdom And how they stated these Questions let their deeds be judge as they are most proper and then let any man tell me if men of such turbulent spirits can be good Subjects and by consequence good Christians for I believe the World can scarse parallel in one Kingdom so many treasonable and impudent actions in so short a time as less then fifty years let but our late English madness of which theirs and our Presbytery were the Original be at this time excepted And most of these Actions you will find confirm'd and owned though in a different style by the History of The Scots Reformation wrote by whom I know not for a late Reverend Authour denyes it to be Knox's And it is the custom of men of this perswasion to Father their Brats upon others witness Wilson's History of King James a Book not to be believed in all things Nor is it all the Nation hath these spots There is a Church as well as Kirk of Scots And to vilifie the whole Kingdom because it hath nurst up some hot-spurs would be implacable malice and to bring all the World into Ignomy If the Proverb assure us That it is a good Family which hath neither Whore nor Thief in it 't will be a difficult thing to expel Vice from a whole Nation The Virgin-City Venice esteem'd one of the Glories of the World and whose Government for Exactness yields to none abounds with more Venerian pleasures than any of her Christian Neighbours The Spaniards are famous for loyal Subjects yet a Rebel is no Monster in Castile her self Scotland hath been the Mother of as famous men as any other Kingdom if Denmark Germany Poland and the Low-Countries may testifie their valour whilest France will assure you of their fidelity whose Kings have altogether trusted their persons to their Guardship But enough since David Camerarius hath writ a whole Volume in the Commendation of the Scottish Nation CHAP. IX The illegal malepart and impious Plots and Designes of our Schismatical Presbyterians in England in the Raigns of Queen Elizabeth King James and King Charles till the beginning of the wicked Long-Parliament NOr was this hot-braind humour fostered alone in Scotland but England also tasted the fiery tryal of their madd pranks Queen Elizabeth no sooner setled in her Throne but the Zealots deface all Monuments and Pictures in Churches they met withall nor did the ashes of the dead lie undisturb'd which caus'd the Queen to set forth a Proclamation against such violations But these men having their malice stopt against Stones and Glasswindores will vent it against those who can be sensible of injuries Goodman Whittingham Gilbie and others having learn'd their lessons at Geneva came roring over against our English Church venting their venom not only by their Preachments and Conventicling but also in Print The latter of these viz. Anthony Gilby of whom formerly born in Lincolnshire and of Christs Colledge in Cambridge tearmed our Ceremonies Liveries of Antichrist accursed Leaven of the blasphemous Popish Priesthood cursed patches of Popery and Idolatry Nor must the Ceremonies alone suffer but the Reverend Bishops too by others of the same gang as Throgmorton Penry Fenner Udal and such like Bravado's calling them Antichristian Petty-Popes Bishops of the Devil cogging and cozening Knaves dumb Dogs Enemies of God c. And for our Worship they affirmed it to be an impious thing to hold any thing common with Rome and from this Argument they refused to come to Divine Service But at last such was the vigilancy of the Queens Council that the fautours of these seditious Non-conformists were found out and Sir Richard Knightly and Sir Wigston were fined in the Starr-Chamber for receiving the Printers and Publishers of such Schismatical Books the celler of one of the Gentlemen bringing forth like Lucian some foul mouth'd Pamphlets against the Church or other Neither do these men mount their Battery only against the Church but also throw their wild-fire and indignation against the Queen and their Supream Authority witness Mr. Edward Deering of Kent's Sermon in which how unworthily let others judge he compared her Highness to an untamed Heifer and Christopher Goodman in a Book publickly vindicated Wiat's Rebellion affirming All who took not his part were Traytors to God his People and their Countrey And as some Common-Lawyers towl'd away by inticing tongues and Gold of the Non-conformists wrote against the Authority of Bishops so some pretending to the Civil and Canon-Law were obliged to oppose and deny the Queens Supremacy in Causes Ecclesiastical Nor might these fore-mentioned things seem strange since they were easily to be vindicated from some of the Geneva Notes upon our Bible where you may find the Disciplinarians highly to complain against Asa because he did not kill his Mother furiously calling of it lack of zeal and foolish pity And maliciously to compare our Arch-bishops Bishops Doctors and such like degrees with the Locusts though they carelesly seem to quit themselves in the exit And yet these are the very same men who profest to Queen Elizabeth That their Applications are such as may most appertain to Gods glory though how hide-bound they were at the same time from Charity may appear by their then slandering the Reverend and Learned Bishops with the ignominious title of ambitious Thus was Authority begun to be blasted by the Puritans a name now almost an hundred years old beginning in 1564. as Fuller thinks though Dr. Heylin out of Genebrard makes it two years younger though in a later History he seems to moderate its original between both viz. 1565. And these were so denominated as the word implyes and Genebrard and experience tells us because they thought themselves so much purer then other Christians that they would not perform Divine Service with them utterly rejecting all Forms used in the Primitive Ages and looking upon all decent Garbes to be unlawful in Church-affairs if different from the common wear or rather if not according to the Geneva-cut The Antiquity of this Name is very ancient as we may see in the old Hereticks who presumptuously call'd themselves Caethari i. e. Puritans the same with the Novatiani with whom the Parmenianistae in supposed purity did something agree and by this Name of Cathari I find Johnstonus in his large History to signifie our Non-conformists The Queen perceiving these men to sleight both her and the Bishops and to act only by the advice of private persons as Mr. Tho. Cartwright who affirm'd That we ought rather to conform our selves in Orders and Ceremonies to the fashion of the Turks then to the Papists Mr. Travers c. who had
denyed and put in a large Declinator and Protestation against their proceedings By these and other cross-grain'd humours of the Presbyterie the Duke perceiving the longer they sat the wider the breaches would grow dissolved the Assembly they opposing the King in all things though he had granted them all convenient requests To the dissolving of this Assembly all the Council consented and subscribed but the Earl of Argtle who ever after proved an instrument of mischief to both Kingdoms Against this dissolution the Covenanters protest and act accordingly but especially against Bishops whom they afterwards by their goodly Authority deposed and alienate their Lands no great matter God wot the Rents of all the Bishops in Scotland not amounting to seven thousand pounds sterling per Annum as a Native informs us And yet this small pittance amongst so many grave and hospitable Bishops was a great eye-sore to the Covenanters though several private Presbyterians might be nominated whose estate surmount this And not content with these actions they began to gird themselves to their Arms. Against whom the King marcheth and both Armies draw up near Barwick where a peace was concluded by which means Aberdeen escaped a scouring the Earl of Montross then misled a General of the Covenanters marching then against it with a Commission to burn it This peace lasted not long the Covenanters not sticking close to the Articles of agreement and which was more a great part of the walls of Edinburgh-Castle falling one night down and the King ordering the Governour and others to see it rebuilt the Covenanters would not suffer it by forbidding any materials to be carryed to its reparation And which was most of all they perceiving the King incens'd at their actions and therefore fearing some checks address themselves to their old Ally the King of France from whom they desired aid and assistance an action so strange for subjects to appeal from their own King to Forrainers and that against their King too that it will easily silence the old story of the King 's German horse Yet whether their Letter and Messenger was sent or no it matters not that it was drawn up and subscribed to be sent is certain which is as much By these affronts the King being sufficiently provoked raiseth an Army and marcheth against the Scotch Covenanters who with a great force had entred England and that with cheerfulness having more friends than the King they having some twenty eight Lords and Earls Whereas the King had not above twenty besides they had the good wishes of the English Prebyterians who by their Sermons Discourses and Pamphlets had made the King's actions and friends so odious to the people that many of the Royal Army marched unwillingly against the Scots wishing them victorious hoping by that means to work their malice upon our Bishops and other persons of quality And accordingly it fell out a part of the English being routed the Scots possess all Northumberland and the Bishoprick of Durham with Newcastle This Prosperity of the Covenanters cheers up our Nonconformists who in this joyning themselves with the Scots presently get the King assaulted for a Parliament which was granted and to sit Novemb. 3. at London and a cessation between the two Armies was made and orders taken for a further Treaty In the mean time the Scots Army miserably tormenting the Northern Counties of Cumberland Westmorland Northamberland and the Bishoprick of Durham from which they raised a Contribution of 850. li. per diem for their assistance a thing by many thought very strange that an enemies Army should thus by compact be maintained by those who wisht them farther off This Covenanting Army kept correspondency with the Parliament having a safe convoy granted by the King for their Letters by which means many an odd design was probably nurst up the Parliament giving them thanks and monies to boot for their good service But must the Scotch Covenanters be only guilty in affronting their King No that would derogate much from the zeal and forwardness of our English Presbyterians who had so far countenanced their Caledonian brethren as to have beseeched them into a native conspiracy and then beckoned them to a Southern march And therefore to shew their answerable forwardness they bestirr'd themselves to the purpose to get non-conforming Members chosen which accordingly answered their expectation in the short Covenant sympathizing Parliament whose refractory humours occasioned their sudden dissolution Our English Presbyterians perceiving now what a great stroak they had in choosing members thought it fitting to see what mettal their Proselytes were made of to which purpose several were instigated to murther that great Prop of Learning the Arch-bishop of Canterbury then the main eye-sore to our factious splrits and to carry on this design more unanimously a Paper was posted upon the Old Exchange May 9. exhorting all Prentices to rise and sack his house at Lambeth the Munday following supposing they had as much authority to tumultuate against the Reverend Bishops as the Covenanters had Of this plot the Archbishop having intelligence prepared for his defence and well was it that he did so for accordingly on the following Munday in the dead time of the night above 500. men well armed for the purpose assaulted his Palace endeavouring by all the strength and force they had to break open his Gates thereby to come to his person but he had so well provided for his security that all their attempts only shewed their devilish malice and murtherous intentions which was also demonstrated by their railing and cursing tongues The next day several of them were apprehended and imprisoned in the White-Lion prison who were violently released within three days by some of their wicked complices by breaking open the prison so unanimous were some of the Anti-episcopal men to intolerable villainy Nevertheless one of their Chief-tains was re-taken and for this rebellious riot was condemned and for example-sake hang'd and quartered which so terrified the rest of the Non-conforming brethren that a kind of a peace was outwardly kept for a while And as no small incendiaries to these intolerable practices were the wicked Pamphlets spred abroad to delude the vulgar by divers seditious persons but especially by Prynn Burton Bastwick and John Lilburn people of such implacable spirits that no government could satisfie them And were so hot-headedly led by their erronious and spightful Principles that as they took a pride in their own deserved sufferings so nothing could satisfie them but the Confusion of others Yet these men afterwards took such opposite interests that they became utter enemies endeavouring what in them lay not only to vilifie but ruine one another though Prynn still held up his head above the rest Thus were these Presbyterians the authors of our after-miseries that I may well sob with a time serving Poet Eheu Turba rapax primique miserrima belli Perfida gens Auctrix Alas the first promoters of our stirs Were
the perfidious hot-spurr'd Presbyters THE HISTORY Of the Wicked PLOTS and CONSPIRACIES OF OUR Pretended Saints BOOK II. CHAP. I. The mischievous and impudent Contrivances and Innovations of the wicked long-Parliament 1. Their slandering of the Court and Church 2. Their Affection to the Schismaticall Incendiaries 3. The Impudence and seditiousnesse of their Lecturers 4. Their designes to alter the frame of Civil Government 5. Their Plots to overthrow Episeopacy 6. Their stirring up the people to Tumults 7. The small esteem the Commons had of the King and Nobility Whereby it appears that it was not the King but the Parliament that occasioned and began the Warres HAving now and that as succinctly as I could somewhat discovered the peace-consuming zeal of our Presbyterians I shall come to the subject intended to wit our late unhappy Distractions The seeds of which was not only before sown by the Nonconformists but began a little to take root and sprout forth through the temper of our English Parliament 1628. and the after actions of the Scottish Covenanters by whom the King was cajol'd to call a Parliament to fit November the third 1640. A day ominous to the Clergy by a former president upon that day the 20. year of King Henry the Eighth that Parliament beginning which began the ruine of Cardinal Woolsey the power of the Clergy and the dissolution of those famous Monuments of Charity the Abbeys and such like hospitable buildings England hath afforded us many Parliaments yet but one of them honoured with the Epithet of Good and that some hundred years agoe though since his Majesty hath been pleas'd to memorize one with the character of the healing and blessed Parliament as many of our former Representatives have had several names added to them as the Parliament that wrought wonders The great Parliament The marvellous Parliament The Laymens Parliament because no Lawyer was to be in it The unlearned Parliament either for the unlearnedness of the Members or for their malice to learned men Barebones Parliament The short Parliament and in the same year 1640. did our long wicked Parliament commence and I have heard of a Mad Parliament No sooner did the long Parliament sit but their proceedings were hurryed on with that fiery zeal that if distractions had not followed thereupon it would have been as strange to the discreeter sort as Margaret Countess of Hollands year-like birth at Lusdunen to our Country-women or the story of the womanly girle who at six years old was brought to bed of a son in Indostain For instantly they fell upon grievances abuses in Religion violation of laws liberties and what not Concerning which their speeches flew plentifully about and releas'd the grand Incendiaries Prynne Burton Bastwick and Dr. Leighton and giving them great rewards Some of them being triumphantly guarded into London by many thousands of horse and foot with rose-mary and bays in their hands and hats Novemb. 28. which was not only an high affront to the Kings Authority but a political glass to the Nonconformists through which they might see the strength and unanimity of their own Faction who were grown so valiant that a little before this upon the fast day Novemb. 17. where Dr. Burgess and Marshall preacht above 7 houres before the Commons and before the Lords two Bishops but as the second service was reading a Psalm was struck up by some of the Brethren which presently disturbd the Divine service to the amazement of the civill and orthodox Auditors who could little expect any such thing without an express order by authority But this is no great matter in respect of their after actions which are so many against the King and Kingdom and that too before his Majesty's horrid murther that it is impossible for me in this Compendium to decimate them into a relation their very printed Acts and Ordinances in that time amounting to above 530. Besides their Declarations Petitions Remonstrances Votes Proclamations Messages Speeches and such like passages and all stuft with some worshipful thing or other by which their pretty actions were confirmed Yet as farr as brevity will allow me I shall endeavour to speak out and as plain as I can yet must I not accuse all nor half it may be of the members many of them spur'd on by their Loyalty following his Majesty and sitting in Parliament in the Schools at Oxford after whose departure the House at Westminster seemed like Pandora's box from whence all our future mischiefs and diseases flew over the Nation The Parliament a little after its beginning having triumph'd over divers persons of quality whom they knew to be opposers of their intended Presbytery thought it fitting to seek some absolute way of security to themselves for the future And to this nothing could be thought more conducible considering how they had gul'd an odium of Reverend Episcopacy into the simple people than by the certainty of Parliaments for which purpose they procured of the King who dreamt nothing of their after-games and fetches an Act for Triennial Parliaments And that their own actions might appear of more grandure by the stability of their own foundation they also obtain'd from his Majesty who was never wanting to grant any thing to his Parliaments pretended to be for the good of his subjects an Act whereby themselves should not be dissolved prorogued or adjourn'd but by their own consent By which means they were fancied by many of the Kingdome to be of such high Authority that neither King law or any power else could have any influence over them let their actions be never so treasonable or wicked And so might Phaeton suppose when his Father had given him the command of his refulgent Chariot though his indiscreet authority brought ruine to himself and destruction to some parts of the world And well may any one in this turn their own weapons against themselves and yet not be deem'd too medling Such a continuing-Commission is freely given yet cunningly procured to the Captain of a ship But when this Governour falls so farr distracted as to indeavour nothing more then the ruine of his Vessel by their own popular consequence his Commission is void as being no more able to govern his charge to the best This instance I quote more because oft alledged against Regall authority than for any similitude it carrieth unlesse upon our perpetual Parliamentary account And therefore the reviving of this long-Parliament by a modern Writer seems to be to as small purpose as Don Quixot's martial endeavours to retrive the I know not what Knight-errantry by his paper helmet his wind-mill and claret-butts encounters or Hortensius the self-conceited School-master in du Parques Franchion to obtain the Crown and Kingdome of Poland The King having as he thought pacifyed his Subjects in England having granted them what they desired thought it likewise expedient to settle all things in Scotland in a peaceable temper for which purpose he put himself to the
and Chapters Prebendaries c. So that in four dayes time the hasty Commons over-throw as much as in them lay the Reverend Church of England which had continued many hundreds of years a flourishing glory to the Nation The Commons for their parts having thus pull'd down the pale of our Church fastned and strengthened by so many Authentick and Fundamental Laws as old again as the House of Commons will not leave Religion without some Government No good souls they were more kind-hearted And therefore in the first place they Vote that all the Lands and Means belonging to Deans and Chapters Chancellors or Commissaries Archdeacons Deans Prebendaries Chapter Canon c. shall be taken away and disposed of to the advancement of Learning and Piety That is if their after-actions may be taken for Expositors to maintain Rebellion Heresie Sacriledge and ruine Universities for these mens promises like Hebrew must still be read backwards and after this rule did they send a request to the King by Secretary Vain That he would give them leave to look into his Revenues and Expences and they would make him the richest King in Christendom But the Parliament will not spend their time only in selling Lands but something must be considered of a Church-Government too and therefore they Vote that all Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction fit to be exercised in England shall be committed to such a number of persons and in such a manner as their Worships shall think fit Nor were they long without making the Nation happy with the discovery of their Intellectuals which was That six of the Clergy and six of the Laity should be appointed in every County for the setling of Church-Government But this was a little shaken by an after conclusion viz. That nine of the Laity and three of the Clergy in every Diocess should have power to exercise all Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction as shall be ordered by Parliament and to have their Monethly meetings for that purpose And the next day to make this hotch-potch Model more compleat they Vote That there shall be several select Committees of the Clergy appointed for the Ordination of Clergy-men into the Ministry But yet this Presbyterian Brat would not come to perfection And therefore to give more encouragement to the Covenanting-admirers they conclude That all Archiepiscopal and Episcopal Jurisdiction shall be exercised in this Kingdom by the Commissioners as there was by Bishops And the same day read the Bill for the using of Lectures taking away Cross in Baptism Surplis bowing at the Name of Jesus standing up at the Gospel Gloria Patri Pictures in Churches c. and conclude the day with the appointing of a Committee for the Propagation of the Gospel And the next day they give further power to their nine Commissioners to wit That after the first of August any five of them shall be a Quorum and have full power to try all Ecclesiastical Causes and to appoint Deputies under them in several places And after this they further agreed That if any of the nine Commissioners should dye that five or more of them are to choose another presently and so if any of them resign and that if any came to take Orders that these Commissioners shall appoint five Clergy men to grant Ordinations And for the more speedy putting of this medly in practise the Knights and Burgesses of every Shire are commanded to bring in the Names of the nine Commissioners for their several Counties to be appointed and that no Clergy-man be of the Commission Thus farr had the Commons thrown I cannot say built up this their confused Babylon when on a sodain an unexpected Remora was joyned to their further proceedings by some fallings out betwixt the Lords and them about the Protestation For the Commons having ordered that it should be taken all over the Kingdom were in this opposed by the Peers who threw it out of their House which so incensed the Commons that they presently Vote That what person soever shall not take the Protestation is unfit to bear Office in Church or Common-wealth And thinking that the Bishops were the reason of the Lords dissent appoint a Committee for impeaching them about the late Canons who accordingly Voted thirteen Bishops to be Delinquents whom the Lords also suspended their house till a further hearing And so violently were these good men persecuted by the Presbyters that they never left plotting till they had got them Voted Traytors and sent to the Tower Nor could they have any outward content any where considering the reproaches threats and curses daily thrown against them by the wicked the danger of their lives by Tumults and their Lands Voted from them long before by their and Religions Enemies the Non-conforming Commons though they agreed to allow them a liberal allowance during life and how unhandsomly the Parliament in this neglected this promise the Reverend Bishop Hall will satisfie you The Commons now having as they thought bridled the Bishops and their Party are resolved to root out the Common-Prayer Book too to which purpose some of them desire that it might be altered and some thing added to it the which after some speeches being put to the Vote it appear'd that there were then but 55. Disciplinarians in the House no more voting for Alterations so that the Book came off with credit the Orthodox Party knowing well enough that if that House once fell to alter it it rather belonging to able and lawful Divines they would equal the Tinker who made two holes for mending one The Anti-Episcopalians being thus baffled fall to it again getting it to be moved again in the House the next week where they came off with the like success And the next day being a Thanks-giving day for the Peace between the two Nations to shew their malice to Church-Government and countenance the Schismaticks the Commons would not go to St. Margarets Westminster as was by them appointed because the Bishop of Lincoln had caus'd a set Form of Prayer for that occasion to be printed and used in the Church the news of which so started their Worships that they turn'd tail and went to the preachment at Lincolns Inne But if the Commons were troubled at this they were after out of their wits and all stark-madd against the Lords Because they had put forth an Order and sent it all over the Nation strictly injoyning the reading of the Common-Prayer against which and many other Church-affairs the Commons the same day put forth a Declaration ordering it to be printed and sent over the Kingdom and with them they also got the nine dissenting Lords to protest against the Order made by the House of Peers This cross-graind action of the Commons so incensed the Lords that they left off sitting for a while causing the Hangings of their House to be taken down Nor did this any way vex the Commons
the 9 Lords was not unsignificant viz. That if he look'd for any preferment he must comply with them in their waies and not hope to have it by serving the King Words of such a Mandrake-sound that they would have astonished a Roman ear whose generosity and vertue made them raise a Temple to Fidelity But all bonds of obedience and loyalty were hurld off by these sons of contradiction and Majesty it self so farr disrepected that Martin could with confidence wipe his lips with the whore in the Proverb and think he had done no wrong when he affirmd that the Kings Office is forfeitable and that the happiness of this Kingdome doth not depend upon him or any of the Royall branches of that stock and this was seconded by that worshipful Champion Sir Henry Ludlow who peremptorily said that he was not worthie to be King of England Nor are these words unbefitting the Father of such a known Son as Edmud Ludlow one of the Kings noted Tryers and an immortal Enemy to all goodnesse Church-government and literature Nor did the whole Parliament speak little lesse then the former when they affirmed he had no negative vote call'd all his Actions illegall and his Letters Declarations and Proclamations scandalous and false forbidding people to be obedient to him upon pain of displeasure declaring all such as did to be Traitors Taxing him with an intention towards Popery O implacable Malice foisted into the world by these his back-friends and spread abroad with abundance of impudence and malice by their zealous Myrmidon and Journy-work-jobber Prynne one that if he had lived amongst the Malabars in the East-Indies where long eares is a Token of honour comlinesse and bravery would have been held a man of no great credit But the best on 't is Pryn's scandalous pamphlet call'd the Popish Royall Favourite i. e. the King was many years ago learnedly and industriously answer'd to the Honour of his Majesty honesty of the undertaker and discredit and confusion of the Mercury-admiring accuser And therefore Mr. Baxter was somewhat to blame to cull such false trifles out of Prynne to prove the King reconcileable to Rome though he believes he was no Papist and this ten years after the Kings Beheading But to return to the Parliament who will yeild to none in bitterness against his Majesty who protest to him when no nearer York then New-Market That they would make use of that power which they had for their security and professing in the same paper that it was not words that could secure them And what their intention was in this may be gathered by voting some few daies before That the Nation should be put into a posture of Defence and only by Authority of Parliament And all those Extravagancies were acted by the Parliament in opposition and discredit to the King before his Majesty had so much as one man either in offensive or defensive Armes in a publick way So that he might well admire at those who charg'd him to be the first beginner and raiser of this Warre Thus the Kings mildnesse gave encouragement to those furious spirits who never left plotting till they had fill'd England with more villanies then Rome is in the vacancy of her Popedome or Tacitus could reckon up in the front of his History and this by their unjust dealings with him by warre and such like wickednesses though they might have consulted the Apothegm of that great Goth Athanaricus being good Divinity Law and Reason that A King is a earthly God and whosoever rebels against him is guiltie of his own death Nor doth the great Father of the Church intimate to us lesse obedience to our Kings then the former But these men cared little for reason or authority in any but themselves as appears by those impudent and irrational Propositions sent to the King at New Castle when they were Masters and had him in hold whereby he would be but a King of clouts and the Nobility and Gentry of his party bound to hop headlesse Articles so palpably wicked that an Italian through his Majesty looks upon them as distructive both to Church and State Nor could lesse be expected from these men in the height of their Pride and prosperity when at the beginning of these wicked Warres long before the stroak at Edghill The good King weeping as it were over the approaching ruine of his Subjects earnestly endeavours to perswade the Parliament to a Reconciliation in the lamentable breathings of Tancredi to the violent Rinaldo Dimmi che pensi far vorrai le mani Del civil sangue tu dunque bruttarte E con le piaghe ind egnede ' Christiani Trafiger Cristo ond'ei son membra e perte c. Ah non per Dio vinci te stesso Tell me what mean you now Will you yet stain Your hands in your friends bloud by Civill Warre And by your killing Christians now again Pierce Christ his side of whom we members are c. Ah no for Gods sake conquer your passion Desiring that they might both lay down their Armes and recall all their papers against each other upon an appointed day and so enter into a Treaty But they being carryed along with a Spirit of contradiction like the Scotch Presbyter who railing against King Church and Government and being commanded by King James to speak either sense or come down replyed like himself I say man I 'se nowther speak sense nor come down They I say resolved to run counter absolutely declare that they will not think of peace till the King have taken down his Standard left his Armies repair'd to the Parliament that so justice might be done upon those who had adhear'd to them and how by this his Majesty himself could escape they having some few daies before taxed him with most mischievous Tyranny I know not And in the same paper the lands of all those who were of the Kings party were forfeited and I think it is not unknown how they were disposed on afterwards Nor need we doubt but those men who without Blushing could Vote the Queen a Traitor would not care to draw up some blood into their faces soe they might have their revenge on his Majesty And whether this clause For the preservation of his Majesties person was voted to be left out in the New modled Commission the Commons and my Lord Fairfaz know best and what the meaning of such a seclusion was the revolution of a few years did fully import Thus did the English use the King as the Scots did their James the third who hated him as Mr. Drummond informes us because he got the love of his people by Piety and Justice and having taken up armes against him would not hearken to any termes of reconciliation unlesse he freely resigned the title of his Crown and Realm in favour of his Son then in theirs Hands and voluntarily deposed himself
and faithful men Thus might the King and People expect aboundance of Loyalty from this Army composed of Independents Levellers and such like Enthusiasts people of different ends in their private respects but all agreeing in the destruction of his Majesty Notwithstanding to make themselves favorites with the people they can protest that it is their desire that a firm peace in the Kingdome may be setled according to the Declarations by which they were invited and induced to ingage in the late war And that you might see what zealots they were for the honour safety and right of the King You shall have their own words We shall be as ready also to assure unto the King his just rights and authority as any that pretend it never so much All this is very good nor doth that which follows in another of their Papers bear less honesty viz. We desire the same i. e. right and just freedome for the King and others of his party And me do clearly profess we do not see how there can be any peace to this Kingdome firm or lasting without a due consideration of provision for the rights qutet and immunity of his Majesty his Royal Family and his late Partakers And this was subscrib'd to by Cromwell Hamond Ireton Sir Hardr. Waller Fleetwood Lambert Rich Lilborne Okey Hewson Scroop Harrison Barkstead Horton Pride Deane Cobbet Ewers Goffe and several others But how much their hearts differ'd from their mouths and hands may be known both by their former and after actions Thus like the Satyre in the Fable they breath'd as they pleas'd so that advantage came by it and 't is a bad wind bloweth no body any good After this manner in 1647. did they play fast and loose nor was the fashion alter'd in 48. In which two years was more Paper spoil'd betwixt Parliament and Army then hath been amongst the Turks since the first beginning of that Empire So lavish was the first as if they had intended to tear the Nation into rags for their supplies and so frugal the others who take more care for the preservation of Paper then the Parliament or Army did of their Consciences By this time and means these two parties endeavouring to discover one another's nakedness the good people began to perceive the knavery of them both and as with one voice murmur'd against their Tyranny and so indeavour'd what in them poor broken and harrass'd people lay to free themselves from such yoaks of slavery for which purpose the Prentises rise up in London though their Triumph was not long their timerous and self-ended Masters onely looking on though it may be some of them wish'd well Barwick was also surprised by the Loyal and Valiant Sir Mar. Langdale And Carltle by the truly Noble Sir Phil. Musgrave and Sir Tho. Glenham The same moneth the people of Saint Edmonds-bury rise up And those of Kent draw themselves to a considerable body A great part of the Navy revolts And the next week Pontfract Castle in Yorkshire was surprised by Col. Morris who was afterwards unhumanely butcher'd at York as Judge Puliston well remembers And the Scots under Duke Hamilton with a great Army enter England Whilst Argile Casels and other Kirkers in opposition mounts several thousands tatterdemallions upon the Craigs of Lieth near Edinbourgh valiantly to fight Munro waiting for them three miles off on plain ground but alas the Burrow moor where the Gallows stands was betwixt and Argile loved not to turn his face either that way-wards or against an enemy for there were no boats near The Messengers of this bad news one on the neck of another struck terror into the Parliament who perceiving now such an universal clamour for the Restauration of his Majesty that the condition of themselves if the people were not pacified seem'd desperate such an odium had their selvish actions pull'd upon them Whereupon something to please the people by making of them believe that their affections were also high towards his Majesty they null'd their former votes of no more Addresses to the King But this policy of theirs favour'd them not long for the Army having quash'd all these Royal insurrections grew so imperious that they look'd upon the Houses but as a Junta bound to satisfie their desires and accordingly began to act high which the Members perceiving thought it would befriend them more with the Nation to agree with his Majesty then to lye under the lash of every Schismatical though in this something related to themselves Trouper For which purpose they commence a Treaty in the Isle of Wight with his Majesty But this design of theirs was soon broken off by the self-denying for so they would be call'd Army who complain'd that the Houses intended to leave them in the Lurch by making peace with the King without comprehending them in it whereby they might lye under the censure of King and Parliament For which trick they accuse several of the Members and march up to London with an intention to shackle the two Houses which the Parliament perceiving and thereby their own ruin if not speedily prevented Vote the Kings Concessions to their Proposals lawful to make a firm peace upon Hoping by this means that not onely the Royalists but that the Presbyterians also would assist them against this Independent Army Though 't is no thanks to them upon such a pinch and their owne interest to make peace with his Majesty for if they had not been utter enemies to him they might have done it sooner and then their courtesie or rather Royalty had been double But now cry you mercy horse they would treat with the King not to save him but themselves So that for all the boasts of these Braggadocio's of their endeavours to preserve the King's person I shall easily be perswaded to believe that their intentions were as real and to as smal purpose as the Statue of Henry the great to defend the Parisians from robbing upon Pont Neuf Nor could any more be expected from them a true Royalist being as rare amongst them as a Virgin at sixteen in Marolle a village in France But now 't is too late for the Parliament to comply with the King the Army being resolved not to be govern'd by either of them considering what they might suffer as May himself confesseth if he should come to Raign again and for this jealousie the Nation may thank Cromwell and Ireton And the Army thus resolved the next day seise upon the major part of the Members whom they imprison suffering none to Vote but those who would dance after their Pipe Thus may some men better steal a horse then others look on Hasterig and Tate Knights for Leicestershire may without any fear disobey the Parliament in not returning when they sent for him But if the King deny them any thing then shall you hear a great clamour of the breaking of Priviledges of Parliament and nothing
but fire and sword must redress it When the King accused but five Members of High-treason and in a civil way went to demand them of the House the Parliament call'd it an Illegal Seditions and Traiterous act though I cannot vindicate them for it and this was one of the main occasions why the people joyn'd with the Parliament though in so doing they had no more reason then the roaring Blaces in the Counter-scuffle or Quixot's fighting with red-wine or wind-mills And certainly the King hath more right and law in each particle of his body then the whole Army could in reason pretend to And this possibly may be one reason why the Army presently acknowledg'd their secluding the Members to be a course in it self irregular and not justifiable And if the Parliament did so much dis-relish the King 's how might they abominate this of their hired Cossacks But I must confess they were paid with their own coyn the Souldiers sticking as close to their promises to fight for priviledges of Parliament as the Parliament to their Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy Vows and Protestations to maintain the King's person and Prerogative so that Neither barrel better Herring The Members being now reduced to a small number and the Lord 's flown away none being suffered to fit but those who had their Consciences like Fortunatus his purse full of gold and self-ends were from a name of several syllables like those of Brasil circumcised for Christians no man can now call them under the short title of RUMP and fagge-end of a Parliament with corrupt Maggots in it as Mr. Walker terms it And the truth of it is considering the many Members that went to the King with those Eleven forced away by the Army and this last Seclusion and then the Remaining will onely be the Rump of a Rump of a Rump of a Parliament That the Rumpers and the Army did comply together is palpable but whether they perswaded the Army to turn out the other members I know not though the Army did a little dash it in their teeth afterwards The Rump being thus fixt and back'd by an inconsiderable Army if either the Kingdome or London to give it no other Epithet durst know their strength compos'd of more Heresies then Rosse or Pratealus could imagin the Rump I say and the Army thus twisting their interests together go as boldly on to the distruction of others as Lazarellos blind Master leap'd to his own And first vote no more addresses to be made to the King and order themselves the supream Authority of the Nation And then two days after by the inspiration of some pretty Demon or other make an Ordinance of their supream Rebell-ships for the Tryal of his Sacred Majesty And having dapperly proceeded thus farre they in the next place conclude that Writts shall no longer run in the Kings name and at last bring the King to tryall for his Life where his declared and manifest enemies were his Judges under the title of a High Court of Justice A thing which the Army highly complain'd of several times the year before when it was their own case 'twixt them and the Parliament calling of it contrary to the law of nature that they should be judge in their own cause But now the case is alter'd quoth Ploydon the Army thinking it very fitting thut any be judges against the King so they do but make sure work of him And to bring this great thing about for all their protestations in favour of his Majesty all stones were turn'd that could be Several of the Sectaries like Hugh Peters were set up to prattle out the necessity of a Reformation in Government so that the people might take the change more peaceably Then were their several villaines imployd to vilifie his Majesty in print running through all the misfortunes of his Raign still implying that his own sins were the occasion of them all stuffing their pamphlets with abominable lyes set down with an infinite deal of malice and all applyed to the ignorant people with an aboundance of smooth-faced jugling most of them making perjury Hypocrisie and such like villanies as inseparable from his Majesty as the Devill from themselves Though if ones living writings and death do shew any thing of a man then there is no such thing as Belief if the world be not satisfied of his Majesties Vertues and Holinesse Besides these Pamphlets several people were instigated to Petition the Commons and General that speedy justice might be executed upon his Majesty and this as soon as the Army had conquered Hamilton and the rest of the Royalists Ponifract excepted For being now Maisters in the field they scorned to be bafled by an imprisoned King or a few talkers at VVestminster for both which they had laid rods in pisse Yet as a small cheat something to gull the world as if their actions were not so much their own as the desires and request of the whole Kingdome Petitions from several parts of the Nation must come thick and threefold clamoring for justice against the King One of the leading cards of this cheating game was thrown from London Westminster Southwark and Hamlets to the house of Commons and then another from Oxfordshire to the same house and the same purpose and a letter made up of the same ingredients from the Garrison of New-Castle and Tinmouth was not Sir Arthur Hazlerig then Governour to the Lord Fairfax And having thus begun they never leave off till they had petitioned the King to the block For the next month another Petition comes posting from Leicester-shire and 't is well known who were their Knights to the Commons desireing his Majesties speedy Tryall for all the passages hapned in his raign and this is back'd by another from the Maior Aldermen c. of New-Castle upon Tyne to the Commons and this hotly pursued by another from Yorkshire And to conclude this month a confident one was presented to the Generall from Iretons Regiment which was farre from complementing but struck home to the purpose In the next month Coll. Inglosbys Regiment solicits Fairfax to the same purpose which is seconded by Fleetwoods Whaleys Barksteads Overtons and blind Hewsons nor were the soldiers of New Castle Tinmouth Hartlepool and Holy Isle satisfied with their former paper but they also fall on again and clamour for justice and now also cometh the Petition of Coll. Hortons Regiment and on the last day of the month another from Sr. Hardresse Wallers tatter-demallions as also from Devonshire and Cornwall And in the next Month the General is stifly solicited for the Kings tryal by the rabble of Bristol Boston Glamorganshire Denbighshire Dover and Kent with the Cinque-ports and Canterbury in whose proposals are these words to the General First that you prosecute the execution of justice upon the person of the King Words strange to proceed from such a County as Kent who have oft
bradg'd of their Loyalty but if there be Knaves in all Families much more are there Rogues in all Provinces But not unlike to the former was the letter of Exceptions and Doubts made by sixteen Kentish Gentleman as they titled themselves directed from Maidstone to Speaker Lenthal for which they had not only his but the thanks of the house to boot In the next month the fatall stroak was given in which month for the more hastning of the Execution several Petitions made haste from many parts of the Nation to the same intent as the former One was presented to the General from the then Capt. Smiths Troop in Oxfordshire another from Hartfordshire with a third from Surrey and a hot-headed one from London to the House of Commons which was seconded by one from the Common-Councell of the same City to the same purpose and members But that which gave the deepest stroak of all was that Long winded Remonstrance from the General Counsel of Officers at St. Albans wherein after many extravagant expressions against his Majesty and some Common-wealth-like puny reasons for their so doing they think it fitting to proceed against the King the which thoughts of theirs they at last vomit out with more impudence malice and inhumanity then an Army of Savage Canabells could in these astonishing words That that capital and grand Author of our troubles the Person of the King may be speedily brought to justice for the Treason Blood and mischief he is guilty of Desires so abominably wicked that it is impossible for any but their inspiring Satan to give them a befitting descant And that they had before this an intention to alter the Government is palpable by the often consultations and proposals of their Agitators and themselves in 1647. about the Government of the Nation by succession of Parliaments some advising Biennial others Triennial and some other modells And now Cromwell and Ireton all along cheated the King under specious pretences Major Huntington demonstrated in his Articles against them to the Parliament Yet could Cromwell with good store of seeming sanctity by his natural brasen face presume to bring off all those his seeming pretensions for his Majesty under the Hypocritical and sacrilegious Vizard of profound Revelations from some Deity or other By which means he would seem to patronize all the Armies wickednesse upon Divinity So that the jugling humour of this Army well considered we may well question both the modesty and Religion of one of their scribling patrons who had confidence publickly to assert that the Nation had far lesse cause to be jealous of the innocency or integrity of the Army then the Disciples of Christ These treacherous dealings of a perfidious Army not a little assisted by the self-ended members brought his Majesty to his Tryall a thing found out but as a politick trick to blinde the people with their open intentions as may appear not only by their ridiculous indictment but their former votes and actions whereby 't is palpable that they were pre-resolved not only to alter the Government but also to cut him off as accordingly hapned to the astonishment of humanity And how ancient these wicked intentions of some of them were hatch'd was not a little hinted at by one of Cromwels Captains two years before at Daintry who then fully related the resolutions of the Army and himself to bring the King to destruction Nor was the Revelation of Mrs. Grace Cary of Bristol though I do not use to give credit to such whimms much out in this exactly pointing out before these Warrs the Beheading of the King And whether all Poets are Prophets or no need not here be discuss'd though I am confident that an ingenious Gentleman did prognosticate better then those time-serving Schismatical Scriblers Lilly Booker Culpepper or such like Sectaries when he sung the Requiem of the King and Kingdome at the beginning of the Warres They would not have the Kingdome fall By an ignoble Funerall But piously preferre the Nation To a Renowned Decollation The feet and lower parts 't is sed Would trample on and off the Head What e're they say this is the thing They love the Charles but hate the King To make an even Grove one stroak Should lift the shrub unto the Oake A new found musick they would make A Gamut but no Ela take This is the pious good intent Of Priviledge of Parliament Thus fell the best of men by the worst of Devills so that this one wicked action will verifie that old saying that Brittain is crouded with the multitude of Tyrants and the horrid Actors may be for the future judged by the more Noble inhabitants of Nicaragua in America who formerly as Solon appointed no Law for a mans killing of his Father had none for the murtherer of a King conceiving no man to be so unnatural as to commit such crimes And for that vast Chaos the City of London who thus basely suffred their King to be murthered before their faces their Ancestors will rise up in judgment against them nor will the valour of Sir William Walworth a former Lord Maior of that City be mentioned but in derision of those Schismaticks of late daies When King Richard the second was in danger of his Life and Crown by Wat Tylers Rebellion Walworth raising up the Citizens by crying out Yee good Citizens help your King that is to be murthered and succour me your Maior that am in the like danger Or if you will not succour me yet leave not your King destitute By means of which the Rebells were dispers'd and the King rescued This was the loyalty of that City in former times But how little they have trod the steps of their Ancestors let themselves judge and blush for shame For being no small occasion of the ruine of his Majesty The Beheading of whom puts me in minde of a story recorded in our Chronicles in King Richard the seconds time viz. Of an Image of Wax or an Head of Earth framed by Necromancy at Oxford which at a time appointed spake these words Caput decidetur caput elevabitur Pedes elevabuntur supra caput The Head shall be cut off the Head shall be lift up The feet shall be lift above the Head And never did it happen so true as at this time when a company of beggerly peasants by horrid Rebellion did not only cut off their Kings head but also made themselves supream But whether this was made for a prophesie or no I know not yet Nostradamus Physitian to Henry the second King of France one much given to predictions and in great repute in those times for them had a happy guesse when long since he prognosticated that Senat de Londres metront a mort leur Roy. The London Parliament shall kill their King An action so treacherous that it would not be expected from the Devill himself after so many vows and protestations
and uprightness of heart Yet all this not half so true as the sea burns let the Country people confide never so much in the Proverb 'T was a mad world my Masters when John of Leyden a Taylor must be made King of the Universe And Robert Kett a Tanner ruin our English inclosers according to his discretion Or Michael Joseph a Black-smith endeavour to correct the King and his Council Naples we may suppose was well reformed when Thomas Anello a poor Fisher-man would there rule the roast to the destruction of many stately buildings And the Kingdome of Spain had small reason to bless her happiness when the sortish Commonalty against their King the Emperor Charles the fifth and Nobility must be govern'd by the basest sort of people as Bodadilla a Cloth-worker at Medina del Campo Villeria a Skinner in Salamanca and such like offals of rationality What prosperity could they expect from their Junta's when in their great Assembly none durst speak but such as one Pinelles a Cloth-worker was pleased to order by the pointing to them with his Rod of an Usurpt Authority And what a Bedlam should we have had in England if the Inferior rusticks of Kent Essex c. under Wat Tyler a Taylor Jack Straw and others such low-born chieftains had prevail'd against King Richard the second who endeavoured to destroy the King Nobility and Clergy extirpate all Learning and overthrow all Government by their levelling humours For which purpose they murdered all persons of quality which fell into their clutches if not of their society burnt and distroy'd the best houses in London And had so little respect of persons that every slave amongst them would sport themselves upon the King's bed and impudently invite the King's Mother to kiss with them whose head they also broak in a Tyrannizing frolick And that their villany might be compleat by a bloudy Sacriledge they took Simon Tibald aliàs Sudbury Arch-bishop of Canterbury and in their devilish fury by eight mangling stroaks cut off his head and for more infamy set it upon London-bridge How parallel or rather excell'd our late Rebellion hath run to this is not unknown How hath our Nobility and Gentry been trod upon and that by the scum of Manhood whose wicked designes were mainly carried on for their utter annihilation And they began betimes witness that confident Petition of the Rascally Londoners at the beginning of the Long-Parliament that the House of Lords might not be distinct from the Commons but both to sit together by which means the King would be forced to descend too And with what applause the Commons received this durty Paper is clear from their swagring with it before the Lords whereas their Loyalty had been more shewn had they burnt the Petition and cut off the Presenters ears but then I believe some of the Composers would have pleaded Protection by Priviledge of Parliament for 't is more then suspected who set such people on work Thus was Nobility struck at and afterwards by the rabble held in real reproach so that their intentions seem'd to comply in wickedness with those dung-hil Rebels in Valentia who were resolved to destroy all the Gentry which occasioned a Hat-makers wife in Saint Catharines-street in the same City seeing some Gentlemen go by to shew them to her children and they asking the reason she replyed Because when you come to be men you may say that you have seen Gentlemen Nor is it the Gentry alone that suffer but how also have our Princes been not onely abused but murthered How hath learning been out-vapoured by ignorance And our Reverend Clergy outed by a swarm of Enthusiastick Schismaticks Nor do we want the loud Cry of a Reverend Arch-bishop to make the story alike Yet how far our modern Hectors are from Repentance I need not tell For my part I have a better opinion for the Tyrian slaves who slew all their Lords and Masters onely one by chance escaped call'd Strato yet afterwards on their own accord repented and chose Strato for their King then I have for those Scythians who though their occasional crime was not great would not be brought to obedience but by force and scourges CHAP. IV. The Grand Perjury of the Parliament and Army OF all things nothing is more destructive to government then Perjury and falseness amongst the retainers of these sins all Laws or Constitutions the foundation of Rule being of no validity Nor is this of it self onely a political fault but a great sin against the Almighty of which the Poet speaks like a good Divine as he might be for ought I know Quid enim magis esse profanum Aut mage turpe potest quà m sacris ludere pactis Vincláque divini violare sacerrima juris Nothing a man more base and wicked shows Then to break Sacred Promises and Vows Yet nothing hath been more familiar with our late Grandees then this which makes me sometimes apt to fancy that our Phanaticks hold all manner of Oaths unlawful though before a Magistrate meerly as a pretty salvo for their Perjury thinking those not fit to be kept which in the Original is unwarrantable to be taken And this reason as Prateolus doth hint was formerly in use amongst Priscillians who though they opposed the legality of Oaths yet had this for a rule amongst themselves Jura perjura secretum prodere noli Swear and forswear But from discovering your designs forbear Thus the Graecian Lysander made so little Conscience of Oaths that he affirm'd they were but to deceive men as false-play children And whether our Non-conformists are of the same opinion or no I know not though I am confident King James tells us and experience makes it not altogether untrue that they care as little for the Observation of Oaths as another Though I believe that many of them at their last hour will be asham'd at their hands either for holding them up at the Covenant or subscribing our late Engagements as Rodulphus the Duke of Schweben by some of our English Writers erroniously call'd Duke of Saxony was for violating his Faith to the Emperour Henry the fourth And without question if many of our Time-servers were to have their fidelity tryed by Ordeal a fashion amongst the Ancient Saxons there is few of them but would either burn their toes or end their dayes by their knack of sinking Or if we had but here some of those ancient Fountains mentioned by Alexander ab Alexandro how many thousands would make as good sport by diveing as Lazarello when shew'd about Spain in a Tub for a strange fish But to return to our late times in which we are first to consider the two Oaths one of Supremacy made in Queen Elizabeth's time and the other of Allegiance made in King James his reign wherein all are sworn to defend the Kings Person Progeny Power Authority and Priviledges and acknowledge him to be Supream over all
use in Scotland and thus the Duke of Matalone the chief of the Caraffa's falling out with the Prince of Sanza at a Ball had like to have brought their private injuries into a publick hostility to the trouble of the Kingdome of Naples Thus the insupportable malice of private men may be a publick detriment as the breach between the English and French was not a little widened by the hatred and brags of the Lord Cordes who us'd to say that he could be content to lye in Hell for seven years so he might win Calice from the English And to these I may add Don Pedro de Ayala Earl of Salvatierra who through the enmity betwixt him and his Lady Margarita whom the Court favour'd against him and therefore by way of opposition was invited to side with the Commonalty against the Emperour In which case the late Earl of Essex by a favourable construction was not much different Yet far is it from me to vindicate these mens actions but rather to mitigate some by considering the powerfulness of perswasion it being natural for a man to run into errors and mistakes and if of his own Temper he be so prone to vice how easy is it to draw him thither when he is made more flexible by the subtle allurements of his seeming best friends Many men who have been most serviceable and loyal have at first through mistakes slipt into some faults De la Force run himself so much into the displeasure of Lewis the thirteenth King of France that he was proclaimed Traytor but afterwards did so recover his Reputation with his Majesty that he received the Trunchion to be Marshal of France and grew to be a great favorite Sir Robert Clifford was a great adhearer to Perkin Werbeck but upon the sight of his error became very advantageous to King Henry the seventh in discovering the King's enemies The Macedonian souldiers did once muteny and that in a furious manner against Alexander but when they had considered the greatness of their crime they came weeping to him and that in such an humble manner confessing their faults and desiring his favour and pardon that story will scarce allow such another president And the King did not onely forgive them but satisfied their former desires by sending many of them home where by his special Command they were honoured not onely by having the chief places in Theaters but with Crowns also The Athenians would pardon him who confest his fault And the Abbot Serapion conquer'd the Devil by acknowledging the sin of Theft frequent with him when young If a woman by the true repentance of her most horrid iniquity obtain'd the pardon of Pope Innocent The King's grace and favour will not be wanting to those who by their timely repentance denote the reality whilst those who stave off the acknowledgement of their offence to the last can in reason expect no hopes of reconciliation their repentance being so late that it demonstrates rather a jugling and time-serving humor then a true and genuine remorse The Noble Earl of Montross that Scotish Oak and regal Buckler of fidelity and valour at first was as much peccant as the greatest Covenanter yet none proved afterwards more faithful to his Majesty and active against his former associates because the King's enemies then himself The great Earl of Strafford and Atturney General Noy were look'd upon at first great courters of the Commonalty and dis-regarders of Prerogative yet upon better insight became the greatest admirers of the King's Authority And I have heard of those who have so far grieved for their former actions that they have wish't themselves breathless when they first drew sword for the Parliament It is repentance that doth please God himself and Kings who are truely call'd God's upon Earth have received into favour their greatest enemies upon remorse of their former villanies Yet all mens intellectuals do not so sympathize as to perceive their errors at the same time Some with Sir F. Fortescue may know themselves erronious at the first onset others as we have too frequent examples are so stiff neck't opinionated that they will not be convinced of their guilt till their appearance before the greatest and last Tribunal As for the first they deserve pardon and favour because they deal ingenuously and like men of reason and nobleness whilst the latter merit the severity of laws and scorn And as I cannot plead for these so shall I never for those who did not onely oppose all Treaties with the King but those also who when any such thing was obtain'd still shoved it off by uncivil impudent and abominable Propositions framed either for the prolonging of war and bloud-shed or the reducing of his Majesty to be but a King of Clouts and so under the obedience and lash of their Schismatical Presbyterian Tyranny from which scourge I hope these three Kingdomes and all good people will for the future be delivered THE HISTORY Of the Wicked PLOTS and CONSPIRACIES OF OUR Pretended Saints BOOK III. CHAP. I. That the Presbyterians were not willingly and actively Instrumental for the uncapitulated restauration of his Majesty I Have often smiled at the Story of an old Knight who in the small space of one Battle changed his opinion twice and that with so much zeal and vehemency as to cry out when his Clerk brought him news that Prince Rupert had beat his enemies O the goodness of God! that will not suffer Traytors to prosper Those who fight against their King must expect to have God for their enemy c. And a Posset must be made too to cherish up the wearied spirits of the Messenger Yet scarce had finished his discourse against the wickedness of Rebellion when being truly assured of the mistake of his former information and that the Parliament remained victorious he alters his note and bauls out O the Gospel the Gospel the Gospel Blessed be God who hath thus put to shame the enemies of Reformation O! had the Malignants got the better we should have had Popery restored again But O the goodness of God who hath thus dispersed the members and raggs of Antichrist c. And after this manner did Master Gawen Hamilton who at Edinbourgh when the Victory seem'd to incline to the Queen Regent abused those of the Kirk but when the French were at last forced to retreat turn'd his coat and fought against the Queen Regent's party with all vehemency Old Savill in the Play rather then lose his beloved bunch of Keys would comply with any thing and how far a Presbyterian would stretch his Conscience rather then lose Authority must be left to judgment for I am apt to believe that many of them are not unlike Paulet the old Marquiss of Winchester who would rather bow then break being always of the King's Religion I have known some in these late times seriously deny any difference betwixt the Ministry and Laity and yet
actions of Master Love and a few of his associates as if this were sufficient to afford scraps of Loyalty to every particular Member of that Faction But to this may be answered First that if the story were as absolute Royal as man could imagine yet will it onely demonstrate that there were some three or four and twenty Presbyterians which were active for the good of his Majesty no more stirring in it as Master Love himself doth confess being utterly unknown to the rest of their party professing upon the Scaffold that the saying the contrary is onely a politick Engine to make the Presbyterian party odious so that the actions of these men are nothing to the vindication of the rest Besides compleat Loyalty they looked upon as odious But secondly the compleat honour of the story may upon very good grounds in the main be questioned For though they did sometimes meet at Master Love's house yet their Consultations were rather for the misery then benefit of King Church or Kingdome The main of their contrivances being to send to some about his Majesty advising them by all means to use their interests to Provoke Him i. e. the King to agree with the Scots and to take the Covenant as also to advise the Scots Commissioners that in their agreement with their King they should have a special respect to the Interest of Religion and Terms of the Covenant and to this purpose they must tumble out their prayers and send into Scotland to know whether they did maintain Religion and Covenant Interest So that the Scots were not onely guilty of their after Covenanting Tyranny with their betters but the English Brethren also by their thus thrusting on the design Hitherto we see all the Loyalty and affection by these men shew'd to their Soveraign was meerly conditionally and that upon a Covenant-account little beneficial to the King or his Party as may appear by the acknowledgement of one of their Patrons viz. Mr. Love I do retain as vehement a detestation of Malignancy whether in England or in Scotland as ever I did and shall in my place and calling oppose such a Design and Interest with as much zeal and faithfulness as ever Nor was his rancour towards the Kings best friends staid here but even upon the Scaffold just before his death as if thereby he intended to proclaim them odious to Posterity he thus endeavours to charm his Auditours I dye with my judgement set against Malignity I do hate both name and thing I shall retain as vehement a detestation of a Malignant Interest as ever I did And what he meant by a Malignant himself shall declare though 't is well enough understood I do not count the godly party our Covenanting Brethren in Scotland I do not count them a Malignant Party But who then he presently thus tells you My judgement then was and still is for bringing Malignants who did seduce him i. e. King Charles the first and draw him from the Parliament to condign punishment And the best friends his Majesty had beyond-Sea with him he calls desperate Malignants and bad Council so that I believe little honour can be attributed to this Conventicle for what they did However if through civility though not any share of merit we should grant that this little meeting was of a greater consequence for the benefit of the King than it either was or could be imagined though Mr. Love doth protest in the presence of God the searcher of all hearts that he knoweth no Plot or Design against the present Government i. e. Rump nor is he privy in the least to any preparations for or intendments towards any intestine Insurrections or forraign Invasions or to any Correspondencies now held with any in or of the Scottish Nation or any other whatsoever Though I say some credit were given to this Design yet will it not advance the reputation of the contrivers considering their after-submission to the Rump calling them the Supream Authority the Parliament of the Common-wealth of England c. Mr. Love professing That he is unfaignedly sorry for his so acting and promiseth never to plot contrive or design any thing to the hurt of this present Government Rump and that he is sorrowful for his high crimes and offences against the Parliament in his late and great miscarriages and desires them to pass by these sundry and great offences and at last thus fairly concludes That I shall devote the remainder of my dayes to the glory of God and good of his people the peace and safety of this Common-wealth against all the Malignant Enemies and opposers thereof Nor did he alone recant but also Jenkins Case and others of the same Club. Here we see a Company of Penitents hanging down their heads as if upon a Scottish-stool of Repentance acknowledging their Iniquity and sins for talking of the King with a great deal of remorse and sorrow faithfully promising for the future to live obedient subjects to their Rumpships and al this to procure the favour and love of those Usurping and King-killing Tyrants Yet when Love saw that all his whining and puleing would not work his Pardon but that they were resolved to let him bloud Then forsooth he thought it best to put a good face upon the business and so being on the Scaffold and perceiving no hopes of life he plucks up his courage and for the credit of himself and Brethren he begins to â—ant dapperly against the Rump affirming for all his former repentance That for the things I am condemn'd neither God nor mine own Conscience condemn me and I would not be look'd upon as a man owning this present Government I dye with my judgement against it and at last calls himself a Martyr Though he had a little before acknowledged himself guilty of the sentence of death justly passed on him And affirmed that he was insnared into the business and that through unadvisedness and weakness yet this complyance he boldly denyeth upon the Scaffold I am accused to be an Apostate to be a Turn-coat to be this to be that to be any thing but what I am but a long Sword a bloudy Scaffold hath not made me in the least to alter my Principles The truth of which I must leave to the Reader only telling him that the Margaiates in America scorn to submit to their Enemies because they know that it will not save their lives though probably if repentance would be an advantage they might be as ready as others If Mr. Love dyed a Martyr it was as unwillingly as ever man did it being the Rumps resolution for example sake not his constancy that brought him to the Block In plain English the man was of a hasty and violent spirit which seldom hath a rational or sound foundation and by many is accused to be the breaker up of the Uxbridge-Treaty by his ranting
for the distruction of our Church But if 8000 Fiends could no way endamage seven poor Fryers I hope nor they nor Presbytery will ever be able to do any mischief to the Church of England Yet as a descant upon the Objection of those who plead their activity in Sir George Booth's businesse I shall propose one Query Whether if the Presbyterians had supposed that our present King would have been so opposite to their Interests as his glorious Father was They would any way have bestirr'd themselves for his Restauration Here I would not be understood of those who at the beginning of these troubles had the misfortune to be of that Faction yet since turn'd to the true Church with an acknowledgment of their former errours and this through conscience not preferment the once-flourishing Church being then in a persecution But I intend those whose frantick zeal yet binds them up to Schism as well as those who are stuft with Presbytery in Sr. George's rising and since of whom I believe repentance is not yet impossible because I read that the Devill himself hath humbly acknowledged and confessed his offences But to the Query if they would not have endeavour'd his restorement being so qualified then must they needs have a large stock of confidence to demand thanks where none is due but rather an halter for their assistance in the businesse But if they did desire the King again and so qualyfied then must they either declare that they have been wicked Villains and Traytors against the late King or that this present King was help'd in by them more through their goodness to him than his own desert For my part I am apt to give credit to the negative really thinking that if they had had as bad thoughts of this King as of his Father who yet was better than the best of his enemies they would have made it their businesse to have kept him out though under favour 't is as much Treason to depose a Tyrant as a good King And I am drawn to be of this perswasion by these following Motives That they looked upon his Fathers non-complyance with their peevish humours as a monstrous wickednesse is a truth not hitherto denyed Wherefore else should Mr. Love pray that God would redeem him i. e. Charles II. from the iniquity of his Fathers house And not half an houre before his own death to be so farre out of Charity with the oppressed and Martyr'd King as to bluster out For my part I have opposed the Tyranny of a King And with this Love great in the eyes of the Presbyterians doth the grand Patron of that Sect in Scotland Mr. Robert Dowglas agree who had the impudence pardon that low expression for language cannot reach the wickednesse of his pretended Sermon to tell the King to his face several times of the sins of his Father and Family Of which I shall give you some taste and that in his own words It is earnestly wished that our Kings heart may be tender and be truly humbled before the Lord for the sins of his Fathers house And for the many evils that are upon that Family Again Our late King did build much mischief to Religion all the days of his Life And again Sir there is too much iniquity upon the throne of your predecessors who framed mischief by a Law such Laws as have been destructive to Religion and grievous to the Lords people And again I may say freely that a chief cause of the judgment upon the Kings house hath been the Grand-fathers breach of Covenant with God and the Fathers following his steps in opposing the work of God and the Kirk within this Realm And since he holds the King to be so wicked what must be done with him himself doth intimate in these following words This may serve to justifie the proceedings of this Kingdome against the late King who in an hostile way set himself to overthrow Religion Parliament Laws and Liberties If Elisha call'd judgment from Heaven upon little Children for calling of him bald-head What punishment do these Boute-feus deserve for throwing such false and wicked slanders and reproaches upon a just and good King If the Romans according to their custome broak the legs of the wicked accuser of Apollonius because he could not prove his words what tortures do those merit who so falsly revile their innocent Ruler And if Nerva would have servants slain as ungrateful wretches who presumed to accuse their Masters What death would he inflict upon those who had the impudence thus to vilifie their Soveraign But it was not Dowglas alone who thought the late Rebellion against the King to be lawful and commendable but others of them and those the chief too nor indeed do I remember that any Presbyterian denyed it Amongst its chief assertors thus doth Love declare himself I did it is true oppose in my place and calling the forces of the late King and were he alive again and should I live longer the cause being as then it was I should oppose him longer And of the same Rebellious humour is the much talked of Baxter who several times professeth that if he had not been on the Parliaments party he had been guilty of High Treason against the Higher power which his hasty zeal took to be the Parliament But I shall leave him to the meditation of the Rebels plea which if he do but seriously consider I am confident he may have a sight of his sins against which conversion I believe the Brethren pray daily And of this opinion concerning the lawfulnesse of the Warre was old Hall of Kings-Norton canting and recanting Jenkins of London mad-pated Crofton railing Vicars with the rest of the covenanting Diegoes It being one Article in their League and Creed that all Malignants that divided the King from his people c. contrary to the League and Covenant be brought to publick Tryal and receive condigne punishment and by whom this is meant needs no Oedipus to unriddle So that if the King offer to protect these eye-sores of theirs they think themselves obliged by their Oath to take Armes to punish the Kings best subjects according to their pretty oath And yet must these mens actions be held ever for the best as if they had taken infallibility from the Papall Chair Which puts me in mind of a Quaker who not long since through ignorance led a friend of mine above 4 miles out of his way going to Oxford and when he perceived his error greatly cryed up the good providence of God which had brought them that way because as he said for ought he knew they might have been rob'd had they gone the right road And how many of the Puritans have hug'd themselves because they have been in a wrong way against King and Church may appear by many of their Thanks-giving Sermons and speeches And whether these men can be call'd good
and at last fairly took the Old Knave by the beard giving him a swing from the seat of Correction to the utter discredit and defilement of his short Lecturing Coat and Sister-visiting black and white Caps for Two Caps he had and turns up that within You 'd think he wore a black Pot tip't with Tin These three younkers being now on Cock-horse so tryumph'd over their old wicked Parent that he durst scarce say his soul was his own not allowing him his will in any thing and by a just judgment of God paying him home in his own coyn as the learned and judicious Patron of our Church observeth For as this old jugler had impudently quiped the Reverend Church of England with what command or example have you for kneeling at the Communion for wearing a Surplice c for Lord Bishops for a penned Liturgy for keeping Holy-days c. So these three Mad-caps thus retort upon their amazed Father where are your Lay-Presbyters your Classes c. to be found in Scripture where your Steeple-houses your National-Church your Tithes and Mortuaries your Infant-sprinklings nay where your Meeter-Psalms your two Sacraments your observing a weekly Sabbath Shew us say they a Command or Example for them in Scripture Thus did these three hopefalls retort tearming all the old Knaves actions selvish worldly wicked and onely of humany institution which proceeding from his own Brats so perplext old Father Schism that being naturally of a cholerick temper he could no longer endure the injuries and ingratefulness of these three Hot-spurs who received life and nourishment under the shadow of his fiery zeal but that which touch'd his heart most was their plucking from him all Rule and Authority so that his credit could scarce obtain a beast to trott it to the next Lecture These affronts sufficient to make the Father run horn-mad and the multitude of Conventicles may allow some Presbyterian Cockolds or else what would the Sister-hood do prompts him to a resolution to free himself from the lash of these his three boys who out strip'd him in new inlighten'd zeal and being thus grown mad with dispair and willing to submit to any thing so he might be freed from this yoak and having consulted his pillow with aboundance of time and leasure he saw no way to quel these his insulting Children but the restauration of his Majesty And because a late repentance is better then none he hoped by thus working his own benefit to obtain his own pardon knowing the King's mercy to be as great as the Presbyterian wickedness Thus for his own advantage to obtain the return of his Majesty he procured a Parliament which to the joy of the Nation recall'd the King yet not according to the Presbyterian hopes who expected not a free but conditional return The truth of this Application must be left to the understanding Reader who shall be minded of the Spanish Proverb Hagase el milagro y hagalo Mahoma Let us but have our desires though the Devil or Turk be our instruments or Assistants And with this I am pretty confident the Brethren did not disagree is appearing by their long compliance yet hatred to be kept under that they did not care so be that they were but relieved from the Independent slavery though it were done by him whom they always hated and was the son of him who they always held for the Common enemy and whose friends they had solemnly sworn to punish and ruin What good wishes these people had for the King was meerly for their own ends as I am apt to credit when I consider their high complying with Richard one of their Chieftains viz. Master Baxter applying himself several times to him by way of a faithful subject and advising him how to behave himself the better to perpetuate his usurp'd authority and seem'd very discontented at his deposing And though many of them disliked Oliver yet if you do but inquire of Doctor Manton for so he is now for which he may thank the negligence of the Proposer I suppose he can inform you who it was that when Oliver was re-made Protectour 1657. pray'd so heartily for him in Westminster Hall And for the Saints of the Committee of Safety you would bless your self to see how the Brotherhood of Leicestershire accosted them humbling themselves under the protection of those Lords of Wallingford house declaring their utter dislike to the intentions of those who in Sir George Booths business stir'd for the King Nay should I say that some of this faction were a part of the very Rump it self I supposed the Brethren would be puzzel'd to prove the Contrary Thus like Diogenes's Archer do they hit every where but the right mark and this through an innated spirit of wickedness and inconstancy which puts me in mind of a story Robert King of Naples having desired Giotto then famous in Italy to paint him out his Kingdome drew an Asse with a Saddle on his back and smelling to another new Saddle and upon each Saddle a Crown and a Scepter the King demanding what he meant thereby he replyed Such is your Kingdome and Subjects for they desire new Lords daily I am confident that the best Hieroglyphick of a Time-server would be a fat-beneficed Presbyterian yet did that Faction but once grow powerful they would be like Giotto's Asse still smelling after new Governments and Neapolitan Courser in Boccalini always ready to cast his Rider So that if one should ask many of them Where was the binding force of their Covenant in Oliver's Richard's the Rump's and the Committee of Safety 's time there would be but a shuffling Answer return'd Thus I suppose the Query is sufficiently satisfied information being particularly given of their Opinions and Actions all running cross-grain'd to the King and his Interest and therefore I suppose little beneficial to his restauration A tast of which you may see in these few instances I. The late war against the King was lawful and commendable II. It is lawful for Subjects to fight against their King and so the oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy of small validity III. The King is not above the two Houses of Parliament and so they not subject to him IV. They are bound to oppose all Arch-bishops Bishops Deans Prebends c. having exactly sworn against them in the Covenant and so against Church-government appointed by the King and the Laws V. They are by the same Oath obliged to bring to condign Punishment all Malignants that is all those who assisted the King and were sufferers with him here or beyond-sea so that had these men been such a main stake in the King's restauration they would according to their Oaths and Cruelty either have stopt the King's friends as the Scots did from returning with him or have proceeded against them as Malefactors and Malignants and so have butcher'd them out of this world as they formerly did with the Arch-bishop of Canterbury Sir
were so farre for liberty of subject and Conscience that they hoped by their hands that God would fulfill the desires of him who prayd to Almighty God in the Kirk of St. Andro That He would carry through the good cause against all his Enemies especially against Kings Devils and Parliaments Are not these precious souls to promote the Holy League or to put forward the cause of Muntzer or John a Leyden Well if you will have any more of this Caledonian doctrine Then what do you think Was not he a dapper Covenanter that could thus twit his late Majesty We must not lose you and the Kingdome by preferring your Fancies and groundlesse affections before sound reason you should complain to the heart that the head is much distempered The Lyon must be cured of the Kings Evill Is not this a pretty reflection fitting to prompt a Rumper to do what he will against a King But if this be not enough Bradshaw may pick a small vindication from the Covenanters who thus assure Kings that The people may be well enough without them for there was NONE TILL Cains days Happy souls that have the sole power of understanding Scripture and History Nor is their knowledge stinted here only but they can as if they had a strange spirit of Divination even know the hearts of their betters for thus one of their Grandees R. B. from the Pulpit could assure his Beloved that the Lord hath forsaken our King and given him over to be led by the Bishops the blind brood of Anti-Christ who are hot Beagles hunting for the blood of Gods Saints Is not this fit stuff from the jaws of an hot-headed Covenanter I can tell you also that when his Majesty sufficiently provoked by these furious Rebells went himself to reduce them to obedience one of these Tub-Pratlers told his Hearers that they of the Holy Covenant were like Israel at the Red sea and Pharaoh and his host comming upon them And another H. R. was as forward as any of them when he compared the King to a Wicked Italian who delighted to kill men both in soul and body And was not the King highly beholden to these his gude Subjects And had no the reason to thank Mr. Cant. for his good opinion of and wishes for him when in his Sermon at Glascow he could dapperly pray to God To take away the Kings Idolatry But words are but winde and therefore deeds must do the feat for obtaining of which they think themselves obliged to vindicate any manner of murder or bloodshed Thus one of their Zealots highly applauding John Feltons stabbing the Duke of Buckingham God hath chalked out the way unto you God offer'd himself to guide you by the hand in giving this first blow will you not follow home The sprinkling of the blood of the Wolfe if we can follow the Lord in it may prove a means to save us c. But because the life of a Subject is too small a recompence for their Revenge the pouring out of Sacred Royall bloud would not be amisse as appears by the words of a Covenanting Brother Tell the Head it 's sick presse the people to Arms to strike the BASILIKE VEIN since nothing but THAT will cure the pleurisie of your Estate And is not this a good way to plead for Zion Is it not an hard case that none but these blood-shot eyes can discern the Pattern in the Mount Would not a man think King Charles the I by these Characters to be a stranger Monster than ever Aldrovandus heard of And can any man think that these Kirkers spoke like subjects when they publickly declared that We deserve and expect a proper word to their betters Approbation and Thanks from his Majesty And all this only for Rebellion according to Mr. Andrew Ramsey Minister of Edenburgh his Doctrine viz. That it was Gods will that the primitive Church should confirm the Truth by suffering and that now the truth being confirm'd It 's his will that we defend the Truth by Action in Resisting TYRANTS And what was meant by this word Tyrants the Time when the word was spoke doth sufficiently demonstrate And so little respect have these Brethren to the Supream Powers that a great Grandee well known in England if you say but Thomas Cartwright did thus proudly give his judgement concerning this Question Whether the King himself might be Excommunicated That Excommunication should not be exercised upon Kings I utterly mislike And how exactly these Disciplinarians Quadrate with the Jesuites in Politicks the learned Mr. Corbet under the Name of Lysimachus Nicanor hath Ingeniously discover'd which Book so handsomly exposed the Zealots that the Author being after murthered by the Irish Robert Bayly that Scavinger of Presbytery betwixt snarling and rejoycing could not refrain from crying out O the judgement of God! The Aethiopians paint the Devil white and look upon our Europians as not beautiful because not of their black and obscure Complexion And our dark-souled Puritans censure all Vertue and Loyalty as abominable because contrary to their Principles which perswades them to espouse such Maxims as these I. That it is lawful for Subjects to make a Covenant and Combination without the King and to enter into a Band of mutual defence against their King and all persons whatsoever II. After a Law is made and confirmed yet if the Subjects or rather as appears by practise if onely a part of them protest against such established Law or Laws Then that doth void all obedience to those Laws and the Protestors are discharged from any obligation to live under them although the Protestations and the validity of them be not discussed before the competent Judges of them III. A number of men being the greater part of the Kingdome because they are the greater may do any thing what they themselves do conceive to be conducible to the glory of God and the good of the Church notwithstanding of any Laws standing in force to the contrary And that these especially met in a Representative Assembly may not onely without the Authority of the King but against the express Commandement of the King and his Council and Judges declaration of it to be against the Laws of the Land sit act and determine of things concerning the Church and State as if there were neither King Council or Judges in the Land and several other such like dangerous positions as these whereby they ruin and destroy Kingdomes Which can never be upon a sure foundation as long as such Bonte-feu's are tolerated Schism being the chief overthrower of Nations Upon these Principles our English Presbyterians rebell'd against their Soveraign and upon the same account their Neighbours did in Scotland and then trudg'd forwards to the assistance of their Southern associates declaring the necessity of such a Rebellion Unless we will either Betray our Religion Liberties and Laws and all that we and ours do possess
into their hands i. e. The opposite and malignant Party of Papists Prelats and others the sons of defection and contention their adherents and suffer our selves to be cut off and massacred by such bloody and barbarous cruelty as they have executed this time past in Ireland and England There is a necessity of taking of Armes for mutual defence In this case it is most necessary that every one against all doubting be perswaded in his mind of the lawfulness of this undertaking and of the goodness of the cause maintain'd by him To assist our Brethren in England who are calling for our help and are shedding their blood in defence of that Power without which Religion can neither be defended nor reformed nor unity of Religion with us and other Reformed Kirks be attained To whom of old and of late we have made Promises of the real Declarations of all Christian duty and thankfulness and who upon our desires and their endeavours for unity in Religion have often warn'd us that the Malignant Party would bend all their invention and forces to interrupt the work and to ruin and destroy them in the undertaking of it which we see this day come to pass The Question is no sooner rightly stated but it is soon resolved the Lord save us from the Curse of Meroz who came not to help the Lord to help the Lord against the mighty when we look upon the cause which they maintain the Prayers Tears and Blood which they have poured forth and the insolencies and the blasphemies of the enemies we cannot doubt but inlargement and deliverance shall arise unto England God forbid and be it far from us to sit down at ease on this side of Jordan till our Brethren be possessed in the Liberties of the Kingdome of Christ. And this Seditious canting-language they second in another of their Declarations to the same purpose Unless we can which God forbid blot out of our thoughts the sense of piety and Religion toward God of honour and duty towards our Soveraign and of gratitude toward the Parliament and Kingdome of England we can in no wise resist our present call to this Expedition Very pretty that their duty to their King should oblige them to fight against him and his Authority But the people of this Gang are very much given to make Bulls and Non-sense This is not unlike to our Long-Parliament who thus very gravely Ordered To the intent that his Majesties Revenue might no more be mis-applyed and that the same may be imploy'd for the good of his Majesty and the Common-wealth The Lords and Commons therefore do Ordain That all his Majesties the Queens and Princes Revenue shall be seized upon But what if I should tell you that some of these Diegos can affirm for their excuse that they were bound by the Oath of Allegiance to take the Parliaments part against the King would you not think that the price of Oaths is faln very low Well if you will enquire of old Master Thomas Hall the Parson of Kings-Norton he can tell you what is the opinion of him and others in this case He is a notable Champion against May-poles and will give you aboundance of arguments to prove that they are the Devils Angle-rods which being well baited with Holy-sisters is the onely way to catch Puritans as an old woman told a zealous Grandee but enough of his precise and simple Objections of which I may say as the famous Selden said of some old fashioned Rhimes You may read them and then laugh at them If their Allegiance obliged them to fight against the King they may well suppose that by the Covenant they were bound to cut him off by the Article of bringing Malignants to punishent and what may be the sequel of such assertions I hope our Superiours will consider And what do you think of another swash-buckler of this Tribe who assures the world that the English had as much cause to rejoyce for their Conquests over his Majesty as the Israelites for their deliverance from wicked Pharaoh and his Egyptians And this use of Exhortation the better to advantage the memory of the whining Sisterhood he coughs out in as good Dogril Rhime as ever John Cotton or Vavasor Powel were guilty of a tast of whose hatred to the King's Party you may see in these following Sing praise sing praise unto Jehova high For he hath Tryumphed most gloriously O're all our foes The Horse and Rider He Hath tumbled down to deepest misery Yea all the rotten-rout of Romanists Papists and Prelates Atheists Royallists And Mad-Malignants void of grace or sence To whom God now hath made just recompence Why he should distinguish betwixt Royalists and Malignants I know not though I might very well and I am as ignorant what difference he finds betwixt a Romanist and a Papist unless all this be with the fellow in the Play to make up Meeter And who must this boaster be but the furious John Vicars one that hated all people that loved obedience as the Devil doth Holy water and could out-scold the boldest face at Billings-gate if Kings Bishops Organs or May-pole were to be the objects of their zealous indignation of which I shall give you but one tast to wit against his Sacred Majesty The King's Letter full indeed of much EVIL and Demonstration of no Change of heart from his former BLOODY CRUEL and UNKINGLY PRACTISES of the RUINE of Himself and His Kingdomes as much as in Him lay Is this fit to be Printed for the information of the people and yet Ja. Cranford thought it very fitting Was is convenient to dedicate such stuff as this to Almighty God yet the Author thought nothing more Would any man call this a fair and famous History yet Vicars himself could give it that Encomium Or could any imagine that such a Rayler against the King and Church should even the other day deserve the Title of The Worthy Patriot of his Countrey and yet so is he honoured but by whom Edward Thomas Mr. Pryn's Bookseller can better inform you than my self The truth of it is this man's Histories only look like a Company of Thanks-giving Sermons stitch'd up together as Georgius Hornius well Characteriz'd them Yet must I needs say that of all men that pretended to deep Learning and good History this Hornius of Strangers is the most partial in his short Story of our late English Wars which makes me somewhat mistrust the mans Principles seeing at his being then in England he might have more exactly informed himself if Interest had not sway'd him But I hope his History of the Scottish Rebellion and the beginning of the English when it is printed will be more Ingenuous or else I shall desire him to acquaint himself with his friend Monsieur de Parival or the two Italians Priorato and Bisaccione and other Forraigners who are more impartial I need not tell you how the Presbyterian
against peace 'T is the sword not disputes nor Treaties that must end this Controversie Wherefore turn your plow-shares into swords and your pruning hooks into spears to fight the Lords battels to avenge the blood of Saints which hath been spilt It must be avenged either by us or upon us I have sometimes feard alwaies praid that too much mercy and pitty in our State Physitians i. e. the Parliament might not retard the healing of this land Men who have deserted their trust falsified their Covenants how soon are they received into favour enjoy their Estates as if they were never enemies Oh! how are Neutralists and Malignants spared I have often thought that too much mercy towards Malignants hath made more Delinquents than ever justice hath punish'd mercy should not weigh down justice in God they are both equall why should it not be so in man Pitty to the bad hath proved cruelty to the good the sparing of Offenders hath made many worse few or none better To them that have shewd no mercy let judgment be shewd without mercy Guilt hath been contracted much innocent blood hath been spilt which must either be aveng'd on us or by us Oh there are many Malignant humours to be purged out of many of the Nobles and Gentry in this Kingdome before we can be healed The Lord heals a Land by cutting off these distemper'd members that endangers the health of the Land 'T was the Lord troubled Achan and cut him off because he troubled Israel O that in this our State-physitians i. e. the Parliament would resemble God to cut off those from the Land who have distemper'd it Melius est ut pereat unus quám unitas Men who lye under the guilt of much innocent blood are not meet persons to be at peace with till all the guilt of blood be expiated and avenged either by the sword of the Law or Law of the sword else a peace can never be safe nor just And then at the last tells you that the Parliaments cause and men are so good but the Malignants so abominably wicked that Heaven and Hell may almost as soon meet as these two make a peace I might also tell you how he hints upon the perfidiousnesse of Princes upon the deaths of King James and Prince Henry upon the losse of Rochell and the Irish Rebellion but I shall leave such false dirty slanders to be swallowed down by those Puritans who first spewed them forth yet did Ja Cranford think this houre of Rebellion very worth printing the better to perswade the people to embrace such wickednesse Which calls to my memory one expression then utter'd by Love That it was a very hurtful opinion that people must not defend themselves by force of Arms against their King What wickednesse this rebellious barrangue boaded I shall not say only desire you to observe that his Sacred Majesty was murther'd the same day four years that this blood-thirsty doctrine was vomited out by Love and the same day that Love dyed on was also honourd with the death of that bloody Tyrant Richard III. What do you think of another of these Champions viz. Mr. Samuel Rutherford No lesse man then Professor of Divinity at St. Andrews who thus yell'd out his malice against the Kings friends Bloody men who defend a cursed cause O enemies of the Gospel O Malignants and haters of the Lord and his Saints Malignants are but drawing blood of Christs heele in these bloody Warres He God suffereth Malignants to ride over his people that he may perfume the work of Hell in the enemies who are as it were skullions to purge the vessels of mercy and to humble them Malignants plow the Church and sow blood in the three Kingdomes The wicked of these Kingdomes malignants bloody-Irish rotten-hearted men such back-sliders and perjured Apostates as are in Scotland delivered to Satan and Excommunicated And after this speaking concerning the reasons of Gods judgments upon the Nation he thus delivers himself Others say Rebellion against the King is the cause but rather the not timous rising to help the Lord and his oppressed people against the mighty is the cause The defection of both Kingdomes to Altar-worship Imagery Idolatry Popish and Arminian doctrine c. And a little after this throws more dirt upon the King and his party than half his enemies had done before Yet was all this very pleasing to the Lords house then at Westminster who like true English Barons who should neither suffer their King nor their Peers to be abused the next day having consulted with their Pillows like themselves Order thanks to be given to Rutherfurd with desires also that he print his gudly geere I could also tell you how Samuel Anneley L. L. D. and Preacher at Cliffe in Kent very manfully perswaded the Parliament to do justice upon the King and not to treat with him any more yet highly extols and affirms the obligation of the Covenant so that some can cut off the Kings head by authority of the Covenant for which pretty salvo it may be the Commons ordered Mr. Boys to give the Dr. thanks where also they desire him to print this Queer come off I would also tell you of Mr. Matthew Barker formerly of James Garlick hithe London whence Mr. Freeman was wrongfully sequestred and plundred and his Curate Mr. Anthony turn'd out then of Mortlake in Surrey who earnestly in the pulpit perswaded the Parliament to continue in the wicked ways they had begun And that they do by all means execute justice And not to have any more Treaties and this man must have their thanks too from the mouth of Collonel Harvy I would also tell you how Mr. Tho. Brooks of Thomas Apostles whence Mr. Cooper was sequestred plundred and sent Prisoner to Leeds Castle in Kent furiously stirr'd up the Rumpers to do justice but because this was after the seclusion I shall neither speak of him or his being thankd by Sir John Bourchier The plain truth is should I give you a Bead-role of all the Treasonable rebellious and seditious expressions only utter'd from the Pulpit before the Parliament it self from the beginning of these warres till the Kings murther as I could soon do did I think it worth the while a Stranger might well suppose our English Pulpits not to be unlike that dreadful passage in Sir John Mandevile where so many Devills cunningly acted their parts to intise passengers to their perpetual ruine and well might he judge every Presbyterian black coat a Cataline whose only businesse is to promote Rebellion and Bloodshed yet was none of them ever checkt by but had the hearty thanks from the Parliament for so doing which shall stand as a perpetual in famy to the Presbyterians in the house whether secluded or a Rumper For had they any respect to his Majesty they would never have suffered him
and spent in these late distractions Nor did I as yet ever hear of any godly men that desired wert it possible to purchase their FRIENDS or money again at so dear a rate as with the return of these to have those soul-burdening Anti-Christian yokes re-imposed upon us And if any such there be I am sure that desire is no part of their Godlinesse and I professe my self in that to be none of the number Would not this man be a fit Chaplain to an Army of Cannabals whose delight is to devoure one another Well I shall desire to ask Mr. William one or two Questions which will be worth his answering I. Is Episcopacy such a devilish Government and Presbytery so good and necessary that the first ought to be null'd and the latter set up though the doing of it will cost an hundred thousand mens lives and the destruction of three Kingdoms and the King to boot II. Had not the King some friends that were truly Godly who wisht the Restauration of his Life Crown Throne Authority Supremacy and Prerogative and the Episcopal Church-Government too Or could no man that was Godly desire these things If not then III. Would the Brethren wish this King upon the Scaffold too provided that would free them from our Episcopacy Or do they think it fitting or lawful to rebell again and destroy so many families for the rooting out of our Bishops Though Mr. L'estrange will not shame the man by concealing his name Yet because I am pretty confident of no alteration in his judgment unlesse it be according to his custome from worse to worse I shall tell thee where thou maist find him out After thou hast put on a mortified countenance and obtain'd the art of a counterfeited cough but muster all the wickednesse thou canst hear of into thine heart foot it demurely to Mr. Jenkin's house I mean the very same man of Christ Church London the very same man that petitioned and recanted with a breath and if thou canst meet with him he may tell thee who was the utterer of that Sermon But not to trouble you any longer with particular instances I shall give you the Vote of a whole Club of London Levites where you may see what good opinion they had of the King The wofull miscarriages of the King himself which we cannot but acknowledge to be many and very great in his Government that have cost the three Kingdomes so dear and cast him down from his Excellency into an horrid Pit of misery almost beyond example Pray that God would give him effectual Repentance For subjects to give such a Character upon their Soveraign is the highest piece of impudence but for them to throw such aspersions upon the most vertuous of men is a malitious slander not to be found in Christians Yet was this piece of falshood approved of and subscribed to by 59 Presbyterian cushion-dusters about London all which in the same paper acknowledge the legality of the Rebellion If the King be such a wicked man as these Brethren make of him what must then be done with him Some of them say 't is no great matter if execution be done upon him However it may be most of them will agree with their Champion Mr. Baxter who decrees that he must be deposed Nor are the subjects afterwards to trouble themselves for his Restauration Nor is the Injured Prince himself to seek his re-settlement if the Common Wealth may prosper without him and so he is obliged to resigne his Government And thus the people being free from any obedience to him may choose another King Or if a Common-Wealth be pitcht upon it is not at all displeasing to Baxter who is not fond that is his word of any one Government above another only his desire is that the Parliaments may be Holy and this ascertained from Generation to Generation by such a necessary Regulation of Elections as I have after here at large described and that all those that by wickednesse have †forfeited their †liberties may neither choose nor be chosen But I shall leave Mr. Baxter to his own Repentance only I would put him in mind that once he thus magnied a Government of Traytors which were his Majesties profest Enemies If that Nation that is most happy of any upon Earth in a Government suited to the highest Interest and to Gods description Rom. 3. 3. should yet murmure and despise that Government It would be a most hainous sin and a terrible Prognostick especially to the guilty souls These men must be brave Subjects that make it their whole business to study Rebellion and where they cannot execute the King will imprison and spit upon the face of the person like those beyond Seas that hang the Effigies when they cannot ruine the life Of which Presbyterian wickednesse and policy thus a good Poet. By this self-pregnant sin improves to rh ' full Affront at London Treason growes at Hull A bold Repulse succeeds perplext abode Despis'd at home thrives to refus'd abroad Place tutors Place on Cities Cities call He may not here be safe nor there at all When lo the spreading mischief not content To force up breaches in One Element Invades his Navy doth insulting stand O're the joint-Trophies both of Sea and Land To gild this Rapine for the Vulgar eies They chase him through all His Capacities Shift lights and distances untill they see Another self in him which is not He. Vex Stills and Crucibles the Furnace ply To soft and drain a Chymick Majesty At last their careful sweats auspicious howr Drops him apart distinguisht from his Power I cannot but smile when I see the Independent girding at the Presbyterians and vindicate their own actions by the Disciplinarian Principles proving them to be as great enemies to the King as those who cut off his head as the laws of the land makes the Trespass as great felloniously to lop off the noble branches as to root up the whole body of the Royall Oak To which purpose one of the Presbyterian seconds though at last their Interest were differently bottom'd thus twits the Brethren If by the Covenant we were indispensably obliged to preserve his Person i. e. the Kings How comes it to pass that we were oblig'd by the same Covenant to wage Warr against him I have heard of a distinction betwixt his Power and his Person but never of any betwixt his Person and Himself So that if the Covenant would have dispenc'd any Souldier of England or Scotland to kill his Person by an accident of Wars as his life was oft in danger before he came to the Scaffold his death had been violent and the Obligation to preserve him had ended and yet according to this Argument the Covenant had not been broken Why then should these men think the World so dull as not to understand plainly enough that The Covenant provided for his Death more ways than one Though
this Objection may sound harsh in a Presbyterians ear who do not love to hear of their Iniquities yet that famous Geneva Bull Stephen Marshall can out-rore this though its clamours were as loud as the Nilan Thunderings of Catadupa Noysing it out to the World that if he had been so slain it had been none of the Parliaments fault for he might have kept himself farther off if he pleas'd These men rail against the Pope as Antichrist and the Whore of Babylon and their wording is all for they never yet proved it but whether they do not both tread in the same way both taking upon them to depose Kings let those who are skill'd in Story judge yet for my part I think that one of our Countrey-men was not amiss in this They depose Kings by force by force you 'll do 't But first use fair means to perswade them to 't They dare kill Kings now 'twixt you here 's the strife You dare shoot at the King to save his life And what 's the difference pray whether they fall By the Popes Bull or your Oxe-General Three Kingdoms you have striv'd to make your own And like the Pope usurp a Triple-Crown But somewhat more to this purpose the former Writer thus reasoneth If in matter of Supream Command we of the People may not obey any but the Husband or the King Why then did the Presbyterian Party for so many years oppose and not totally submit to their now supposed Husband Why did they Commissionate so many thousand men who by accident of Warr had the power though not the Chance to kill him Nay in the Parliaments Case it was alwayes conjoyntly argued by them that it was he the Husband that would have kill'd them the supposed Wife for which reason the Kirk of Scotland long ago sent him a Bill of Divorce unless he satisfied for the bloud of three Kingdoms Which of the two Parties it was that at last kill'd him belongs not much to the satisfaction of us the people though here questioned because those Parties as to that Act differ'd no more than Diminutio and Obtruncatio Capitis do for they who after a long Warr and by long Imprisonment dispoil'd him of that Regal power did according to the Term of the Civil Law Diminuere Caput Regis and they who in Consequence of his Civil death took away his Natural life did Obtruncare Caput Regis If he had been kill'd in an Action of Warr before should the Souldier or he who gave the Souldier Commission have answer'd for his life For the more clearing of this I shall desire Jack Presbyter to resolve me these two Quaeries First Whether he doth approve of Cook ' s Appeal or Vindication of the King's Tryal except where he demands Justice though I need not except it If he doth take him Jaylor and Lord have mercy upon him But if he doth not then Secondly Whether he can shew me any thing in that Hellish piece of Treason except when Cook doth vindicate his Majesty from some slanders but I can show the same wickedness in Books publish'd by the Authority of Presbyterians or made and printed by people of that Faction For a piece of Parallel I shall at present point you to one or two Instances See The Mystery of Iniquity yet working in the Kingdoms of England Scotland and Ireland Printed for Sam. Gellibrand 1643. Declaration of the Commons of England concerning no farther Address or Application to be made to the King 1647. A Remonstrance of the General Assembly of the Kirk of Scotland to his Majesty 1645. Mr. Robert Douglas being Moderator whose Sermon at Scoon 1651. you may also read John Vicars his several lying and scandalous Pamphlets And the several Presbyterian Books and expressions mentioned in this Book needless now to be repeated And to this purpose thus saith the learned Mr. Rich. Watson Whosoever will take the pains to compare the particulars in the Scottish Remonstrance which they brought in their hands when they came in upon the Covenant with those in the accursed Court proceeding against his late Royal Majesty may be able to do Dorislaw Steel Cook c. some little courtesie in their credit and plead for them that they drew not up but only Transcrib'd a Charge brought long since from Edenburgh to London Thus both Parties think the King alike guilty though it was the Presbyterian that first perswaded the Independent to think him so Then here must be all the difference The first declares him abominably wicked the latter being credulous believes the Declaration One part cowardly deliver him up I shall not hint upon the word selling to Execution and the other being more hardy strike the stroak Not that by this I lessen the wickedness of a Rumper as I cannot excuse that of a secluded Member since the latter knowingly destroy'd and kill'd the King 1642. the other under the notion of a private man murther'd Charles Stuart six years after The Laws of the Land not only in Killing but also in Fighting against the Kings Command making it Treason How to that Heaven did this Pilot Steer 'Twixt th' Independent and the Presbyter Plac'd in the Confines of two shipwracks thus The Greeks are seated 'twixt the Turks and Vs Whom did Bizantium free Rome would condemn And freed from Rome they are enslav'd by Them So plac'd betwixt a Precipice and Wolf There the Aegean here the Venice-gulf What with the rising and the setting Sun By these th' are hated and by those undone Thus Vertue 's hemm'd with Vices and though either Solicites her Consent she yields to neither Nay thus our Saviour to enhance his grief Was hung betwixt a Murderer and a Thief What the Powder-plot intended the Independent acted and I am confident the Presbyterians acted more mischief than Faux or his Complices Both of them were stopt in their designs and actions Only we know how farr the Romanists would have gone but we cannot understand what would have been the conclusion of the Puritans Villanies As we have a fifth of November in memory of one so shall we never think of the third of November but in detestation of the other two If the Presbyter would repent his former Vindications of the late Rebellion against their King It would convert the Act of Indempnity into one of Oblivion and people instead of dashing them in the teeth with their Iniquities would pitty their former blindness But when at this day they still continue in the same faults 't is not a sign of infirmity but real malice and enmity to that which is good Still we hear them perswade the people to the legality of the late Warr and that by consequence the same may be lawful against the Son which was against the Father and that upon such petit jealousies as their factious brains can possess the poor people with all whose easie natures are accustomed to take Pique against any thing that their hot-spurr'd Parson
summoned to the effect aforesaid presume to take in hand to decline the judgement of his Highness his Heirs and Successors or their Council in the Premises under the pain of Treason To make this way of Appealing more plausible to the People they are very willing to make a separation betwixt the two words Sacred and Majesty sticking close to Calvin who calls it blasphemy to yield the King a Supremacy in the Church under God and Christ to which purpose thus the Zealot Henderson delivered himself to his Majesty Such an Headship as the Kings of England have claimed and such a Supremacy as the Houses of Parliament crave with Appeals from the Supream Ecclesiastical Judicature to them as set over the Church in the same line of subordination I do utterly disclaim upon such reasons as give my self satisfaction And to this purpose against the Kings Supremacy in Church affairs he ranted before the House of Lords the year before Yet when he was Moderator of the Assembly of Glasgow in one of his Speeches there he attributed very much to the Kings Power in Ecclesiastical Causes and Assemblies and at last affirm'd That the King was Universal Bishop over all his Kingdom A Copy of this Speech his Majesties Commissioner James then Marquess of Hamilton used means to obtain but could not get it presently because those expressions had offended the Covenanters yet at last a Copy was sent him but with all those Expressions left out which were spoak in favour of the Kings Power in Ecclesiastical businesses by which one may guess at their jugling Another of these Brethren is very furious against the giving these Titles to the King and must call it Blasphemy too But this man is not only against this but also against the attributing any such Epithets as Vertuous Pious or Religious to our Superiours as if he had borrowed his breeding from Buchanan who rants against those who give the Titles of Majesty Lordship Illustrious c. And these two also agree very well together in slaundering those who will not fight against their Kings since they say Dame Nature knows no such distinction And this is agreeable to our Long-Parliament-Worthies who gravely declared it a fit Foundation for all Tyranny and a most distructive Maxim or Principle for the King to avow That He oweth an account of his Actions to none but God alone And that the Houses of Parliament joynt or separate have no power either to make or declare any Law And this power over the King Henderson doth not only give to the Representatives but also to the People over both them and the King especially in Reforming and so by consequence must make them also judges too and then shall we have a mad world my Masters If the Prince or Supreme Magistrate be unwilling then may the Inferiour Magistrate and the People being before rightly inform'd in the grounds of Religion lawfully reform within their own sphere and if the light shine upon all or the major part they may after all other means assayed make a publick Reformation And a few lines after thus to the same purpose It is not to be deny'd but the prime Reforming Power is in Kings and Princes quibus deficientibus it comes to the Inferior Magistrate quibus deficientibus it descends to the body of the People And this you must suppose to be a pretty Rule to make the People believe that no Religion can be true but the Presbyterians and the Covenanters and so a necessity of Reforming to their Directory For if not how will they answer the common Quaere How came they then or how durst they alter the Church Government against his Majesties express command Well necessity or no necessity the English Presbyterians will swear that they have power to Reforme and in that the King signifyeth but a Cypher For Could not they null Episcopacy against the Kings command Could not they devide their Lands amongst themselves against the Kings command Could not they Ruine the Common-Prayer-Book against the Kings command Could not they call a Pye-bald Assembly against his command Could they not swear a wicked Covenant against his command Could they not set up the Directory against his command Could they not set up Classical Provincial and National Assemblies against his command Could they not Murther and begger an Archbishop and others of the Orthodox and Loyal Clergy against his command Could they not destroy Cathedrals against his command Could they not make Perjury lawful against his command Could they not commit Sacriledge against his command Could they not turn the Kings Loyal Subjects out of both the Universities against his command Could they not make Schismatical Presbyterian Ordinations against his command Could they not make what they pleased to be Idolatry and Superstition against his command Could they not make Treason a Rule of Christianity against his command Nay could they not do any thing but make a man a woman and a woman a man according to Pembrokes oath and judgement For those who vote Loyalty Treason and cloak Rebellion with high Commendations and Religion will fancy a Legal Power into themselves obliging them to oppose their Prince And puft on with this perswasion a Puritanical Committee of our long Parliament order this to be Printed and Dispers'd in behalf of their Associates They have only used that Legal Power which was in them for the punishment of Delinquents and for the prevention and restraint of the Power of Tyranny of all which they are the legal Judges and all the Subjects of this Kingdom are bound by the Laws to obey them herein And this Opinion might be the reason why Prinne and his Fellows were so angry against that Murther'd Archbishop Laud for not suffering such seditious expressions as these to be used to the people in their Sermons It is lawful for the Inferior and subordinate Magistrates to defend the Church and Common-wealth when the Supreme Magistrate degenerates and falleth into Tyranny or Idolatry for Kings are subject to their Common-wealths And that Subjects may lawfully take up Armes against their Kings command and in their Sermons revile the Kings Court with Pride Avarice Idleness Flattery Folly Wickedness and such like Yet had a man in London but hinted half so much against the Parliament he had been claw'd for it to the purpose But it is not the English Puritans alone that would thus trample upon their Kings Nay the Scots too will be as wicked as them or else they could not handsomely call one another Brethren And this is especially practised by their zealous Hinters who deny the King to have no more to do in or with their Assemblies than the meanest Cobler amongst them whilst they thus Impudently told his Majesties Commissioner That if the King himself were amongst them he should have but one voice and that not Negative neither nor more affirmative than any one Member of their Assembly had Nor
will they allow the Civil Authority to have any thing to do with them or any of their Kirk-actions as I have formerly shew'd in their continual practise and for an assurance take one of their Declared Maxims As the Assembly cannot make Civill Laws nor repeal them nor impede the Parliament from making or repealing Civil Laws No more can the Parliament make Ecclesiastical Laws Originally nor repeal or hinder the Lawful Assemblies to repeal the same For albeit Acts of the Assembly are and may be ratifyed in Parliament that is only that the Civil Sanction may concur with the Ecclesiastical Constitution But will not stop the Assembly to recal their Own Act which being annull'd by them the Civil Ratification falls ex Consequenti For to maintain that the Kirk may not repeal her own Acts ratified once in Parliament is so derogatory to Christs Prerogative and Ordinance to the Liberty of the Kirk and Freedom of the Assembly to the nature and reason of all Ecclesiastical jurisdiction as we have more largely declared in the Protestation 22 September last that we believe few or none will be of that Opinion Nor will they allow the King to Dissolve any of their Juntos with which Impudent humour King Charles I. was sufficiently troubled For having by Proclamation Dissolved their Assembly at Glasgow 1638 They publickly deny his Authority for so doing declaring that It was most unlawful in it self and prejudicial to those Priviledges which Christ in his word hath left to his Church to dissolve or break up the Assembly of this Church or to stop and stay their Proceedings in Constitution of Acts for the welfare of the Church or execution of Discipline against Offenders and so to make it appear that Religion and Church Government should depend absolutely upon the pleasure of the Prince And after this they very solemnly protest against the departure of the Kings Commissioner 'till their humours be satisfyed a sufficient sign of their Presumption to be so malepert with one that represented the Kings Person and Authority but they go on in their boldnesse We again and again do by these presents cite and summon them and every one of them to compeer before this present General Assembly to answer to the premises and to give in their Reasons Defences and Answers against the Complaints given in or to be given against them and to hear Probation sed and Sentence pronounced against them and conform to our former Citations and according to Justice with certification of affairs Like as by these presents we summon and cite all those of his Majesties Council or any other who have procured consented subscribed or ratified this present Proclamation to be responsable to his Majesty and Three Estates of Parliament for their Counsels given them in this Matter so highly importing his Majesty and the whole Realm conform to the 12 Act King James IV. Parliament II. and protest for remedy of Law against them and every one of them Having thus begun to thunder they fall to work though they had no power to act being Dissolved by the Kings Command yet to it they fall in a furious Zeal not stopping at any thing which was once propounded so that in one hour they declar'd six General Assemblies to be null and void In another hour they condemn'd not confuted Armianism In another hour they deprived the Archbishop of St. Andrews and two other Bishops viz. Galloway and Brechen as at other times of that Kirk-Rump all the rest of the Bishops In another hour they declared Episcopal Government to be inconsistent with the Laws of that Church and Kingdom and so abolished it And thus in all haste without fear or wit in a very few dayes they had made almost an hundred Acts sometimes three or four at one time and sometimes more to the utter discredit of their Brethren of our English Assembly who sat hum-druming several years and after all expectations brought forth nothing worth a Mouse But the one was shackled and the other at liberty the one was over-rul'd and aw'd by a Parliamentary Nod but the other would neither be govern'd by God nor Man Though no question had that at London been their own Masters they would have been as hasty as their Brethren An English Covenanter being as good wildfire as any Kirker in Scotland But by this you may guess how deliberate our Northern Seers are how rationall they are that without Archimedes his Engine can skrew up a Government in a moment like those in the Arsenal in Venice who in less than two hours time can make and lanch a compleat Gally But enough of their denying the Kings Authority over them in their Assemblies I shall only give you one of their private Instructions by them carefully sent to some Ministers in every Presbytery in whom they put most special trust Private Instructions Aug. 27. 1638. That the ablest man in every Presbytery be provided to dispute De Potestate Supremi Magistratûs in Ecclesiasticis praesertim in Convocandis Conciliis de Senioribus de Episcopatu de Juramento de Liturgia corruptelis ejusdem How the Saints held these Questions need not be ask'd nor how partially they would go about them for I cannot well say study them When people once dispute Authority practice assures us that they are resolv'd for the Negative and when such questions as these are on purpose propos'd by a byass'd Zealot the Intention is only to confirm people in Opposition The Brethren long before this had found the benefit of such Discourses which made them now trudge in the same way For their seditious Predecessors in the University of St. Andrews insteed of Divinity had thrust up these Politick Questions Whether the Election or Succession of Kings were the better form of Government How farr the Royal Power extended Whether Kings might be censured for abusing the same and depos'd by the Estates of the Kingdom But besides those who expresly deny and fight against the Kings Supremacy his Majesty hath other Enemies to his Authority which are as dangerous amongst the People as any other And these are those who commend his Enemies and so approve their Actions not but that a wicked man in some things might be highly commended for other qualities Thus of one hand I find the great Gustavus Adolphus highly applauded but that he was a Protestant and on the other our Queen Elizabeth's Sister Queen Mary as greatly commended but that she was a Roman-Catholick yet for either of these simply aspersions are not to be cast upon Magistrates or others more inferiour However this hits not our case but the magnifying of those who are really wicked which Epithet let them take offence that will I shall freely bestow upon our Long-Parliament as being the Kings greatest Enemies the only cause of his ruine and the murtherers of many innocent Loyal Gentlemen By these Commendations the People are made to believe that
they are all Saints thereby inticing the Countrey to choose them for their future Representees that under their protection the Non-conformists might have more work to do or else by having a good opinion of them may stick close to them upon all occasions and pitty that the Cause these good men undertook had no better success but the discredit and ignominy of the Contrivers not forgetting the large sums of Money and Lands they cheated the King Church and State of If Rebellion Murther Sacriledge Schism Perjury Knavery and such like sins can make a man wicked and 't is well known where all these and many more vices were met together the Epithet will keep its ground secure against the fume and range of all the Schismaticks in England or Scotland Yet even since the King came in have they had many good wishes not unknown to the whole Nation and therefore I shall give you but one Instance and that of one old enough to know what they were but that he spake through a Covenanting Interest and these commendations of them are as they were 1644. when all those who were Loyal and good had left the House and followed his Majesty his Encomium is this A House full and free and these the best that ever England had for Piety towards God and Loyalty to their Soveraign A Parliament of Lords and Commons so pious so prudent so loyal and faithful to God and their King These Commendations are but like Libanius the Sophister's applauding and praising Julian the Apostate who amongst the many moral vertues that there are might possibly have a tincture of some What goodness these people had I know not yet can I guess at a large portion of their mischief Only one shall be mine instance viz. That they were the first Contrivers of these Wars they consulted the Rebellion they broach'd it and gave it life by their Votes and Declarations whereby they cunningly inveagled others into their sin yet being degrees in wickedness the worst of their Souldiers was not the tenth part so bad as these Members the first being knavishly inticed to act the others Command they contriv'd and plotted the Rebellion and drol'd on the Countrey to be obedient to their Orders under the specious shew of Reformation and Religion knowing the consequence of the old Rule never fails Quoties vis fallere Plebem Finge Deum They cannot be good Subjects to King Charles I. that commend his Enemies and they deserve no thanks from King Charles II. who praise those who did and voted and declared it lawful to fight against his Father thereby proclaiming to the World the legality of acting the same if they could get occasion against the Son 'T is needless to tell you how they violently made it their business to clip and pare the Kings Prerogative and Authority and amongst many other frivolously plucking away the Militia allowing the King through civility to carry a Sword by his side because he 's a Gentleman but not upon any occasion whatsoever to draw it that being forsooth the office and priviledge of their hands by which hanging a lock at his hilt but they keeping the Keys using him as they used their children giving them Gold in a Box which they must not finger only please themselves with its ratling by which means they will make themselves a Negative Vote in Peace and Warr. And after this fashion did their Covenanting Brethren of Scotland abuse their King taking all power of Arms into their own hands their reason being because The Kings Castles and Strengths are the Keys of the Realm and they knew no reason to the contrary but that they might keep their own Keys Thus would they make their King meerly Titular and a perfect Slave and Captive to their Wills Not unlike Sancho Panco who for sport-sake was made Governour of the Islands but had no Authority nay scarce liberty to eat his Victuals The rustick Biscayners cry up their priviledges so much that the King of Spain dare not go amongst them but well armed and guarded And good reason for they think their King to have so small Authority over them that he must bare one of his legs when he cometh upon the Frontiers of their Countrey and though they meet him as their King with what bravery they can and proffer him some few Maravidi's small brass-pieces each of them about the value of a Scotch Turner or Bodel somewhat less than our English farthing in a Leathern Bag hung at the end of a Lance yet for all this shew of great kindness they fairly tell him that he must not take them This Nation hath long enough felt the smart of crying Priviledges and Majesty it self hath been dar'd by that specious pretence Though they give him the Name of King yet they take all its Attributes to themselves though they call themselves Subjects yet like the Scots they do not Petition but with their Swords in their hands at the first denyal sounding an Alarum and at the second run themselves so farr into Rebellion that if something be not granted them they will destroy all As if they had swallowed up their Obedience with that ravenous Whirl-pool in Pentland Frith in the North of Scotland with which if either Ship or Boat shall happen to encroach they must quickly either throw over something into it as a Barrel a piece of Timber and such like or that fatal Euripus shall then suddenly become their swallowing Sepulcher Thus the Presbyterians make their Obedience a Bargain and if Interest out-bid the King He need not trouble himself by being a customer to these men who allow him no power but what they suppose he derived from them and which they can take to themselves again when they see occasion or please CHAP. IV. That the Presbyterians are but Conditional Subjects no longer obedient to their King or acknowledging Him than he serves their turn and is subservient to their fancies A Conditional Subject is the worst Animal in a Kingdom being the first Creature that shrinks from Government and always ready to destroy the Peace of the Nation for which and other things he will never want a reason grateful to the Rabble as long as he can cry out that his Subjection is but Conditional and the Magistrate having broke his part he 's no more oblig'd to his duty And this the people believing to be each mans case will make themselves Judges by which means the Authority of a single Person will ever be out-voted or over-worded That the King of England is Supream is certain That the greatest wickedness in the World cannot un-King him is as true The Law of the Land obligeth us to submit and makes it Treason to resist and the Scriptures bids us Obey but never Rebel for Conscience sake Every man is born with the Oath of Allegiance and is as much obliged to its observance before as after his taking it Though the Prince were Turk or
Heathen yet would he be as much King and have as much right to the Crown and Rule as if he were Presbyterian 'T is not the Religion of the Magistrate but that in me be what it will that I do call Religion or Conscience which obligeth my obedience to him The Roman-Catholick had as much Reason and Law for their Gun-Powder Treason as the Scotch and English Puritans for their many Rebellions and may as to themselves as much rejoyce for their delivery from the Presbyterian Tyranny as they from the others intended cruelty but in this they may both shake hands and cry quits Brother which hath made me smile as often as I hear a Disciplinarian rail against the Romanists for that wicked design since themselves have been as guilty only some difference in the method one putting their confidence in Fire and the other in the Sword The many Rebellions of these People and their resolutions never to lay down their Swords till the King would satisfie them in what they pleas'd is a sufficient manifestation of their Conditional Obedience and that they are not farther Subject to that Authority than the King is obedient to their Wills examples of which are yet fresh in every mans memory At the very beginning of their Rebellion they having declar'd those who adhear'd to the King to be Traytors and He had done the same to the Earl of Essex His Majesty unwilling to have the bloud of his Subjects shed and delighting in Peace sent to the Parliament to call in their Declarations against his Party and he would call in all his against them and their Associates and that both the Armies might be disbanded an Act of Oblivion to be pass'd and a perfect Peace compos'd And What could be more gracious then this yet this they deny Nor will they hearken to any Overtures of a Treaty with him unless he first call in all his Declarations against them Disband his Army yield himself to them and permit those who were with him to be proceeded against and suffer as Delinquents Thus will they have none of him unless he submit to them and permit his best Friends to be ruined And yet these men must think themselves so good Subjects that they deserve his Majesties thanks for their so acting and in so doing think themselves Obedient enough in all Conscience But if this be their duty I wish they would tell me what they think disobedience to be This rejecting their Soveraign is sufficient to stop the mouths of these men from railing against Pope Gregory VII call'd Hildebrand who having excommunicated the Emperour Henry IV. would not absolve him nor receive him into favour till throwing off all his Princely attire he had waited three several dayes in the coldest time of Winter bare-footed at the walls of Vercelli in Piemonte in Italy where the Pope then was to beg audience and forgiveness Phaëton had no reason to question his birth-right unless Phoebus would allow him the command of his flaming Chariot to the ruin of the Youth and a great part of the World And 't is strange Logick and impudence in our Puritans to deny themselves to be Subjects unless they command as Supream A pretty mode to trample upon Authority as if they had set for their pattern Pope Alexander III. who insteed of offering his Toe to be kist by Frederick Barbarossa set his foot upon the Emperours neck If at the beginning of the Warr they were so stubborn as not to receive their King into their favour unless he yield to their mercy and suffer his friends to be distroy'd he must expect stranger Conditions when they are heightned with bloud and villany For then must he ask them Pardon give them satisfaction and carry nothing about him but the bare Title or else he shall be none of their King To which purpose a whole Club of them having sufficiently rail'd against Hâ—m after all their lies scandals and hellish forgeries thus conclude their malice and obedience These are some few of the many reasons Why we cannot repose any more trust in him i. e. King Charles I. and have made those former resolutions yet we shall use our utmost endeavour to settle the present Government as may best stand with the Peace and Happiness of this Kingdom Here they quite renounce any more Obedience to him nay make it by Vote both of their Lords and Commons to be High-Treason for any to make any Application or Address to him And if these be good Subjects without all question 't is Treason to be obedient And what they meant by their utmost endeavours I know not only this I am certain of having thus thrown away the Father they never apply'd themselves to the Son unlesse it were the motion of some of them to proclaim him Traytor and the conclusion of them all was to send the Earl of Warwick to fight him How long before they had been resolved to renounce their King and his Government I know not yet the Earl of Loudoun then Lord Chancellor of Scotland a pretty while before this gave the King notice of their intentions telling him that Some are so afraid others so unwilling to submit themselves to your Majesties Government as they desire not you nor any of your Race longer to raign over them If your Majesty refuse to assent to the Propositions you will lose all your Friends lose the City and all the Country and all England will join against you as one man and when all hope of Reconciliation is past it is to be feard They will processe and depose you and sett up another Government They will charge us to deliver your Majesty to them and to render the Northern Garrisons and to remove our Army out of England And upon your Majesties refusing the Propositions both Kingdomes will be constrain'd to agree and settle Religion and Peace without you which will ruine your Majesty and your Posterity And if your Majesty reject our faithful advice and lose England by your wilfulnesse your Majesty will not be permitted to come and ruine Scotland And at the beginning of the same year when his Majesty from Oxford earnestly desired them that there might be a personal Treaty The Lords and Commons of the English Parliament and the Commissioners of the Scotch Parliament after they had impudently hinted at his Majesty as a most wicked person they expresly deny any such means for peace untill he had given them satisfaction and security And this was still their custome with his Majesty first must he satisfie them before they will hear any thing from him In the same year the Committee of Scotland tell his Majesty at New Castle We hope you come with intentions and full resolutions to give all just satisfaction to the joint-desires of both your Kingdomes And two daies after assure him that If your Majesty shal delay the present performing thereof we shal be necessitated for our own exoneration
to acquaint the Committee of both Kingd at London that a course might be taken by the joint advice of both Kingdomes for attaining the just ends exprest in the Solemn League and Covenant And to the same purpose but with abundance of railing against the King the year before did the General Assembly of the Scotish Kirk Mr. Robert Dowglass being Moderator expresse themselves to his Majesty And in this humour of conditional and malepert capitulating Subjects they continue nay even when people might perceive the Army bent against Monarchy or at least the Royal Family of the Stuarts For thus they endeavour to make people believe that the King cannot be truly King indeed unlesse he humbly give satisfaction to his covenanting people We leave it to be pondered by your Lordships whether they that obstruct and hinder the requiring of satisfaction and security from his Majesty in point of Religion before his Restitution to the exercise of his Royal Power do not upon the matter and consequence obstruct and hinder his Majesties deliverance and restitution whereof such security and assurance had from his Majesty might be a powerful and effectual means And a little after more fully declare themselves thus This Restitution of his Majesty to the exercise of his Royall Power before security had from Him for setling Religion your Lordships know by our eight desires and otherwaies is conceived by us to be inconsistent with the safety and security of Religion the bringing of his Majesty to some of his houses in or neer London before satisfaction and security had from him in point of Religion and in such other things as are necessary for the safety of the Kingdomes could not as we conceive but be an exceeding great discouragement and offence to the Presbyterianins England who will conceive that the Remedy is worse then the disease seeing your Lordships are obliged by the third Article of the Covenant to defend his Majesties person and authority in the preservation and defence of the true Religion and Liberties of the Kingdomes We conceive your Lordships should not demand from nor presse upon the Kingdome of England his Majesties Restitution with freedome and honour and safety except with that qualification in the Covenant and with a subordination to Religion and the Liberties of the Kingdomes And if all these things should come to passe then the Kirkers cry out that all is undone and so they leave it to judgment Whether his Majesty shall not be restored to his honour before Jesus Christ be restored to his honour and set upon his Throne of Government in his Church Whether his Majesty shall not be in a condition of liberty before the Ordinances of Christ have a free course And is this to endeavour the setling of Religion before all worldly interests Or rather to make it come after the Kings interest And If his Majesty may be restored with honour freedome and safety before such satisfaction had from Him we fear it shall lye as a great scandal upon this Kingdome And a little after they plainly subject his Majesty to their wills in the interpretation of the Covenant Whatsoever we owe to the King in civill matters distinct from the cause of Religion sure all these other duties are with a subordination to the glory of God and the good of Religion And we are very confident that it was and will be farre from the thoughts of the General Assembly under colour of his Majesties Honour to concurre with him or any in his Name in a cause which is hurtful and prejudicial to the good of Religion and to the other ends of the Solemn League and Covenant Yet this way of diffience and standing off with their Soveraign Mr. Robert Beyley wonders that any body should call a Fault As if these men have the priviledg to secure the person of the King when they please and then deny him either Authority or Liberty till he ask them forgiveness and give them satisfaction for his thinking much to be made a slave to their fancies Upon such like expressions as these a Parliamentarian makes this observation If the Scots Commissioners did plainly affirm to the Committees of both Houses at the Conference that they could not admit of the Kings presence in Scotland because of the divisions and troubles of that Kingdome which he might make such use of as to raise forces both against them and us What could this imply but that notwithstanding his person might be in safety in Scotland yet Scotland could not be in safety whilst his person was there And if they positively affirm it on their part may not we make a question of it on ours Thus both parties catch at what pretences they can to exclude the King from both his Kingdomes As they did with the Father so did they continue to act villany with the Son concerning which I shall give you the words of that great Mattyr of Loyalty the Noble and Valiant Marquesse of Montross And so little are these Godly and Religious men toucht with any sense of what mischieves they have already done That they begin afresh with his Majesty Our now Gracious Soveraign upon the same score where they left with his Father of ever blessed memory They declare him indeed to be their King but with such conditions and provisoes as robb him of all Right and Power For while they pretend to give him a little which he must accept as from them they spoil him of all that Power and Authority which the Law of God of Nature and of the Land hath invested him with by so long continued descent from his famous Predecessors They press him to join with those who by a Sacrilegious Covenant have confederated all his dominions in Rebellion and laid all Royall Power in the Dust Which in effect were nothing better then that he himself should asperse with Insamy the sacred memory of his ever Glorious Father that he should with his own hands destroy himself and ruine all such who have still been Loyall to him in his three Kingdoms These are the men who first entring England sollicited those of their faction to rise in that desperate Rebellion as a Prologue to the ensuing Tragedie which they meant to act These are they who were the chief and main Instruments of all the Battails Slaughters and Bloody occasions within that of their own Kingdome These are they who sold their Soveraign to a bloody and infamous Death yea these are they who still digg in his Grave and who are more pernitiously hatching the Destruction of his present Majesty by the same bare old antiquated Treacheries then ever they did that of his most excellent and most innocent Father Except he would subscribe to their fancies they would not allow him to be their King nor come amongst them which is confess'd by the Estates of Scotland themselves Scotland is desirous to imbrace him upon grant of their just desires and are most
any of your Protestations and seeming kindnesses may thank himself for his own distruction not a man of you but like Pope Sixtus IV. if the Poet hit right Fraudisque dolique Magister Et sola tantum proditione potens A Master of frauds and deceits And only powerful in Treacherous feats So stubborn and perverse are these People in their Iniquities that the King Church must either submit to their whimsies or else neither shall have Peace For if ever the Common-Prayer-Book be imposed again against the Authority ofthese seditious Caterpillers they plainly tell the present King that there will inevitably follow sad Divisions and widening of the Breaches which your Majesty is endeavouring to heal And in their second Paper to his Majesty they thus swagger Should we lose the opportunity of our desired Reconciliation and Union It astonisheth us to fore-see what doleful effects our Divisions should produce which we will not so much as mention in particular lest we should be mis-understood And in another place they threaten the King with what great Calamities will fall upon the People in his Raign if Episcopacy be fully setled And in another of their Pamphlets talks of the Worlds running into Confusion yet a little after assures the Bishops how patiently they will undergo this Persecution for such is Obedience in the Opinion of these men But how improbable it is that these men should continue in this Resolution shall be left to experience though any man may imagine that their words were farr from their intentions when they shall hear the same People tell the very same Bishops that they must make loud complaint of their Persecutions in their Sermons Prayers and other Discourses To which purpose thus take their own words It is easie to fore-see how those expressions in mens Sermons or Prayers or familiar Conference which seem to any mis-understanding or suspicious or malicious Hearers to Intimate any sense of Sufferings will be carryed to the Ears of Rulers and represented as a Crime And Nature have planted in all men an Unwillingness to suffer and deny'd to all men a love of Calamity and necessitated men to feel when they are hurt and made the Tongue and Countenance the Index of our Sense These Effects will be unavoidable while such Impositions are continued And while a fear of sinning will not suffer men to swallow and digest them These are the expressions not of private but the publick and chief persons of their Faction not singly neither for not a word of these past but with the approbation and consent of their wisest Grandees which may be for ought I know a Representative of their whole Body Yet here you see the Foundations of another Warr laid if their desires be not satisfied and if this do not signifie their Obedience to be no longer than the King and Bishops comply with their humours I will submit to be chain'd for a punishment to Jenkin's or Calamy's Pulpit for a twelve-month to learn the meaning of the Covenanters Gibbridge When they expresly declare that unless the King satisfie their desires there shall be Divisions Breaches aoleful Effects great Calamities Confusions and that they for their parts shall not hold their peace I must take it for granted that they are willing nay resolv'd if they can get opportunity again to renew their Rebellion and all this wickedness to retrive that hellish Imp their Covenant burnt by the Hang-mans hand by publick Authority And those who will thus out-face King Church Law and Authority must be as farr from being good Subjects as Ravaillac was when he stab'd his Soveraign CHAP. V. I. The wicked Reproaches the Presbyterians cast upon the present Episcopal Church II. What small reason they have to desire Toleration from the King and Episcopal Party since they deny the same to them with their scandals upon the Church as Popish which are wiped off III. Their slanders upon the late King and his vindication from his own Enemies IV. Their endeavours to begger the Episcopal Church V. Their stories of Gods judgments retorted THere is a Tale of Bajazet the first that he had an Ethiope born in India about him and having upon a march one day his Tent pitch'd near an high Tree He call'd the Ethiope and said Dre Areb if thou lov'st me go up to the top of that Tree The Indian scambled up presently so the Emperour sent presently for some to hew down the Tree the poor Ethiop begging his life all the while and that his Counsellors would intercede for him but nothing prevailing the Ethiop pull'd down his Breeches and with his Excrements and Urine did so bewray the hewers that they gave over work and in the interim the Ethiop gets down telling the Turks Counsellors Would all such privy Counsellors as you were so bewray'd whose Counsell cannot do as much good as mine Excrements There is nothing in this story that I do entend to be applicatory but to one piece of policy of the Presbyterians who at this time when all means else fail them make it one of their best Asylum's and last refuge to bespatter and vilifie those whom they take for their enemies And in this art they are so dexterous as to charme the simple people into a belief of their words each of their Lecturers being as active for England as the spirit Rigilde in Scudery's Master-piece was for to perswade the Spaniards into Tumults and Uproars And they are not ignorant how credulous the vulgar are A poor German was easily perswaded that a fellow was burnt at Auspurg for a Cheat by placing snow before an hot furnace and there to remain till it was hardened with the heat and then to have sold it for salt A priest once made some people so firmly believe that the Storks were men of a farre Country but only in winter Transfigured That they did all seriously profess for the future to have a greater respect and honour for those Birds If many men of good literature are apt to credit the stories in Gononus Metaphrastes Surius Dauroultius Nider Marulus Cantipratanus Lippeloo Caesarius and such like Sacred Romancies we may well suppose the Faith of the unlearned to be more easily wrought upon This makes them at this time throw about their dirt to the purpose perswading the people that nothing but wickedness and Sathan rules and over-spreads the whole Land To which purpose thus they send their Mercuries about and old Hall of Kings-Norton rants bravely I do verily believe there hath been a greater flood of open profanesse in ten weeks past than in ten years before Which is a pretty information to the people of what mischief the Kings return hath brought upon the Kingdome And to this purpose also Crofton when he tells us of the Suppressing pious painful Preachers thrust out and prophane drunken deboist canonical Common-Prayer-Book men forced in wheresoever a Bishops power can reach And this
order the same they deny its obligation when King Charles I desires any thing by order then they refuse also affirming that such things cannot stop the force of Laws Yet when his present Majesty by Proclamation gratiously giveth a kind of toleration then they take hold of it and will stand by it let the Act of Conformity say what it will to the contrary And indeed his Majesty is greatly beholden to them thus to testifie their Obedience It being the first time that ever they comply'd with King or Command in matters of Religion Nor is their present obedience upon any vertue or stress of the Command but that it is agreeable to their wills Balthassar Cossa and other Cardinals being at Bologna to choose a Pope several they named but none could content Cossa wherefore they desired him to nominate whom he would whereupon he declared that he would be Pope himself and so was chosen and nominated John XXIII After this manner do our Presbyterians no King Law Councill Convocation or any thing else can please them but what is of their own election or beneficial to their own designes When themselves make a Covenant then they will swear for uniformity and the ruine of those who do not agree with them But if the King and laws demand unity then they are for liberty of Conscience yet if the Anabaptists Independents c. being then in supremacy plead and allow that liberty then they cry out that the Church is undone for want of Government Though now being not Lords and Maisters they are against such a settlement and stick to that license granted by the Kings Declaration which though but temporary yet will they never quit its Freedome till they be come Conquerors again by Rebellion let King and Parliament act what they will to the contrary and in this I am confirm'd by an expression in one of their Grandees We doubt not but his Majesty will appoint such persons to review our Liturgy as will agree in one which shall not be liable to just Exceptions TILL THAT TIME HIS MAJESTY GRANTS A LIBERTY What arguments these Resolute hot-spurrs will make out of just exceptions and the last words till that time his Majesty grants a liberty may very easily be suspected and I am confident the event will shew to be most seditious pleading the Kings Declaration against their Future Conformity though the King Parliament and Convocation agree on the contrary Thus will they act like the Bitch in Justine which desired the benefit of a place to whelp in which being granted begs of the Shepherd liberty also to bring up her young there this being performed too then confidently demands for the future a propriety in that Kennell But these men might know that Agesilaus the great King of the Lacedemonians us'd to condiscend to the pleasuring of his Son when a Child by riding with him on an Hobby-horse and what liberty our King grants to consciences that are truly tender cannot handsomly be laid hold on by these wicked Incendiaries whose abominable actions proclaim them to have no Conscience unlesse it be to commit mischief If these men will not allow liberty to the Episcopal Clergy I know no reason they should have it themselves as for the first 't is plain of which take some examples Where you have the kneeling at the Sacrament call'd an horrible stumbling block and that the kneeler is a Thief and in the same place tells the people that if none would communicate with the Ring-leaders and Introducers they would be forced to desist and had desisted long ago for shame Nay he goeth farther and tells them that though they receive much good and comfort by the Common-prayer yet they sin if they go to it And fairly assures us that we are bound to oppose the Liturgy for otherwise the Superiours will be embolden'd to sin whilst they think that to be lawfully imposed which is by us received and obeyd Mr. Matthew Newcomen now a great man amongst them and an old Smecty M Nuan when the Presbyterians were top and top gallant if I mistake not preach'd a Sermon against Toleration And one of their great Pulpit-teers of Scotland publickly told our House of Lords that Liberty of Conscience is no remedy but Physick worse then the Disease And in the same temper were this mans Country men when they cry'd out God defend all those who will defend Gods cause and God confound the Service-Book and all the maintainers of it And this was the heat of the Scotch people at the beginning of their Covenant turning out all those that would not subscribe it though contrary to the Kings command They presently expell'd two Regents from the Colledge of Edinburgh for not taking it In Fyfe they order'd a Communion throughout their Churches at which they made every one to swear not to subscribe any thing but their Covenant Nor were there few Ministers in that Kingdom not subscribers of their Covenant whom they did not presently process and cite before their several Presbyteries and others were kept from their Priviledges Nor was this all One of their Ministers refused to pray for Sir William Nesbett late Provost of Edinburgh when he was lying upon his Death-bed only because he had not subscribed their Covenant Another pray'd God to scatter them all in Israel and to divide them in Jacob who had counsell'd the King to require the Confession of Faith to be subscribed by His Authority Many would not admit to the Communion those who had not subscribed their Covenant Others would not suffer children to be baptized in the Churches of those Ministers who were out of the Covenant though they were their own Parish-Churches but carryed them sometimes many miles to be baptized by Covenanting-Ministers One preach'd That all the Non-subscribers of the Covenant were Atheists and so concluded that All the Lords of the Kings Council and all the Lords of the Session were such because none of them had subscrib'd it Another preach'd That as the wrath of God never was diverted from his people until the seven Sons of Saul were hang'd up before the Lord in Gibeon so the wrath of God would never depart from Scotland till the twice seven Prelates the number of the Bishops in that Kingdom were hang'd up before the Lord there Another preach'd That though there were never so many Acts of Parliament against the Covenant yet it ought to be maintain'd against them all Another deliver'd in his Sermon That the bloudiest and sharpest Warr was rather to be endured than the least Error in Doctrine and Discipline And another of these Bloud-Hounds in his Pulpit thus furiously wished That he and all the Bishops in that Kingdom were in a bottomless Boat at Sea together for he could be well content to lose his life so they might lose theirs And what do you think of another of these Furies who affirm'd that Every man ought to be
excommunicated that took not the Covenant and then any man might lawfully kill him who would put himself to so much trouble as to do it But we need not trouble our selves much by a recital of their words since their actions all along in that Kingdom were furiously hurryed on against Episcopacy or the Toleration of any thing that did thwart their Covenant And after this manner have we in England proceeded the Brethren thinking it impossible for any thing to thrive unless Episcopacy be pluck'd up root and branch of which take the words of Crofton I 'le stand by it It i. e. Episcopacy must be extirpated if King and Kingdom or Peace and Glory must be preserved from Gods angry extirpation It it not unknown to any that is conversant in their Writings and Sermons How for many years together they thundred before their Parliament the ruine of Episcopal Government pronouncing sad woes and judgements if any such things were tolerated which highly stir'd up the people of both Houses to act so fiercely against all Law and Reason for the maintenance of their wicked Covenant and Presbytery allowing no more mercy to the Orthodox Clergy than a Jew who sometimes might breathe amongst them but not do any thing in satisfaction of their Consciences These men being then Supream being against neutrality in Religion as well as Warr concerning which thus their Chieftains of both Kingdoms declare We give now publick warning to such Persons to rest no longer upon their Neutrality or to please themselves with the naughty and slothful pretext of Indifferency But that they address themselves speedily to take the Covenant and joyn with all their power in the defence of this Cause against the common Enemy and by their zeal and forwardness hereafter to make up what hath been wanting through their luke-warmness This they shall finde to be their greatest wisdom and safety Otherwise we do declare them to be publick Enemies to the Religion and Countrey and that they are to be censured and punished as profess'd Adversaries and Malignants Nor had they only the Solemn League but another Covenant as full of Treason and Wickedness as ever was invented by Satan and the refusers of this and none could take it but such wretches as themselves they Ordered to be dealt withall as Conspirators and Enemies and their Estates disposed of accordingly And besides this their Lords and Commons put forth another Oath stuft with non-sense for the preservation of themselves and their City with the power granted to seize upon the persons of all such as refused the said Oath Thus had these Puritans several gins laid to ruine the Orthodox and Loyal Subjects I might here tell of their giving Sir William Brereton and his Cheshire Associates Authority to turn out all the Ministers and School-Masters of that County who were for the King I might tell how they order'd every man upon his peril to submit to the destruction of Fonts Surplisses Organs painted Glass-windows c. I can also tell you how their Lords and Commons Ordain'd That if any Person or Persons shall use or caus'd to be used the Common-Prayer-Book That then every such person so offending therein shall for the first offence forfeit and pay the sum of five pounds For the second offence the sum of ten pound and for the third offence shall suffer one whole years Imprisonment without Bail or Main-prize And it is further Ordain'd That every Minister which shall not hence-forth pursue and observe the Directory for publick Worship according to the true intent and meaning thereof in all Exercises of the Publick Worship of God shall for every time that he shall so offend lose and forfeit the sum of forty shillings And that what person soever shall with intent to bring the said Directory into contempt and neglect or to raise opposition against it Preach Write Print or cause to be written or printed any thing in the derogation or depraving of the said Book or any thing therein contain'd or any part thereof shall lose and forfeit for every such offence such a sum of Money as shall at the time of his Conviction be thought fit to be imposed upon him by those before whom he shall have his Tryal provided that it be not less than five pounds nor exceeding the sum of fifty pounds I could also tell you how they turn'd out the learned and loyal Clergy and put into their places a company of Rebellious Schismatical Tub-thumpers such people being most advantagious for their turns and how they Order'd that if any of the Loyal Clergy endeavour'd to get their own again they should with all their friends and assisters be Imprisoned whereby many of them were forced to beg for their livings And many such like actions as these might be shewn whereby their malice appear'd visibly against the Episcopal Party and against the Toleration of any thing but their Rebellious Covenant and Schismatical Presbytery One of them tells us that This very Toleration hath been the principal cause of all our late Innovations Dislocations and Conflagrations And That no Orthodox sincere Christian can or dare cordially Ingage or bid God speed to the proceedings of Supream Power so long as they intend to allow a General Toleration of Errors and false Opinions How many Petitions were there yearly put up in behalf of the Covenant and that nothing should be allow'd but according to that League endeavouring what in them lay to raze out the very thoughts of Episcopacy And yet these men are now angry that they have not publick allowance for their sins If the Episcopal Clergy desire that they may have priviledge of Conscience according to the Laws of the Land Baxter blesseth himself and wonders they can have the confidence to ask such a favour and tells them that this denyal is so farr from being a Persecution that it is rather done for their greatest honour and accommodation For if you of the Episcopal Clergy should have liberty it would be the greatest blow that ever was given to your Government and the reason is because You would have a small Clergy and none of the best and the People in most Parishes that are most ignorant drunken profane unruly For the cause of their love to Episcopacy is because it was a shadow if not a shelter to the profane heretofore so that a Prelatical Church would in the common account be near kin to an Alehouse or Tavern to say no worse where some honest men may be and yet it is taken for the note of an honest sober man to be as little in them as may be 'T was the fashion of Andreas Ordogna that famous Painter of Florence to paint all his Enemies in Hell And what less malice Baxter and his Associates have against the Episcopal Clergy may in part be seen by their actions and railing and what reason they have now besides their Impudence to expect and demand a
Toleration since they so violently deny'd it to others I must plead ignorance especially the zealous Mr. Richard having been one of the greatest Enemies both to King and Church in all the Kingdoms Yet would they now gladly perswade the Bishops That there may be either a total abolition of Ceremonies or at least such a liberty that those who are unsatisfied concerning their lawfulness or expediency may not be compell'd to the practise of them or subscription to them Then they run to his Majesty and desire him That no Oaths or Promises of Obedience to the Bishops nor any unnecessary Subscriptions or Engagements be made necessary to Ordination Institution or Induction Ministration Communion or Immunities of Ministers And That there be no Law or Canon for or against them commanding recommending or prohibiting them And That your Majesty will endeavour the repealing of all Laws and Canons by which these Ceremonies are imposed that they may be left at full liberty Thus are they now for a perfect Toleration knowing in time that they and the other Sectaries by such a connivence may destroy all again either by a Presbyterian Parliament or another Rebellion by this liberty they having the conveniency to multiply their number both with the Great ones and Inferiour as a means for which they would have the Universities and Cathedrals too receptacles for their Faction which will be the only means to ruin both places by a continual Feud and Faction We further humbly beseech your Majesty That this liberty of forbearing the Surplice may extend to Colledges and Cathedrals also that it drive not thence all those that scruple it and make those places receptive only for a Party And that the Youth of the Nation may have just liberty as well as the Elder If they be ingaged in the Universities and their Liberties there cut off in their beginning they cannot afterwards be free and many hopeful persons will be else diverted from the service of the Church Here you may see their violence against Laws and the Church their furiousness for a publick Toleration the Mother of Confusion and their strange and sottish complaints to the People of unheard of Persecution against their Saintships never remembring that when they were Lords and Masters of Mis-Rule how many able Divines they turn'd out of their Livings and begger'd meerly for their Loyalty and yet these men would now be favour'd for their Schism and Rebellion They thought it very fit for their Friends of the Long-Parliament to turn above an hundred Ministers out of London and the neighbouring Churches and as many Scholars out of the University of Oxford under the notion of a Visitation with a great many out of Cambridge Nor was any thing their fault but their loyalty and opposition to the Covenant let that profest lyer Robert Bailey write what he will to the contrary who is sufficiently confuted by the learned Mr. Watson by his own sad experience and Querela Cantabrigiensis will farther evince But it is needless to talk of hundreds and scores when that great Persecutor John White well known to the Presbyterian London-Printers made it his boast that he and his had ejected eight thousand Church-men in four or five years yet was there none more ready and nimble to come into those sequestred places than the Covenanting Presbyterian let the honest ejected Royalist and his family beg or sterve Jack Zealot must have no charity to the wicked Are not the Brethren pert blades that can thus boldly demand Toleration of the King against whose Father and Himself they were such furious Enemies by rebelling against them and murthering their best friends Are they not confident Younkers that can expect such favours from the Bishops without ever repenting of their former Villanies whom formerly they so violently persecuted illegally imprison'd whose Lands they bought and sold murdred one of them and made it their business to extirpate and ruin all the rest Which are sufficient signs of the wicked disposition and uncharitableness of a Schismatick who thinks it an unjust Rule of our Saviour that they should do as they would be done to But alas the Puritans were framed up at the Council of Constance and so not to keep Faith with Hereticks They are the old Rogatiani newly vampt up and so believe no true Church but amongst themselves But as some London-Beggers use to stand In Graecians Coats with Papers in their hand Who are as them in diff'rent parts we meet English at home but solemn Greeks i' th' street Of whom uncloath'd and when the Truth is heard Constantinople only knows the Beard So this sly Masker lay its Tinsel by Is only Painted Zeal and Pageantry But Go lay your Vizard by your Masking stuff The Devil is tyred and Hell hath laugh'd enough The World descryes the Chest 't is quickly known They no Faith hate who have Resolv'd on none 'T is an easie thing to cast reproach upon the best of men amongst the Vulgar The Arians falsly accus'd Eustathius the Bishop of Antioch of Adultery the famous Athanasius Bishop of Alexandria of many other crimes meerly to make them odious to the World and throw them from their Bishopricks And the rabble of Tours falsly imputed strange wickedness to their Bishop Briccius Thus did our English Puritans scandalize Archbishop Laud of Popery though none writ more bravely against them Thus did they vilifie Dr. Cozin's now Bishop of Durham though none opposed them more stifly beyond Seas Thus was Chillingsworth slander'd though none repuls'd them more by Reason Archbishop Bancroft and Bishop Bromhall must lye under the lash of these abuses though they manifested their Innocency nor can Bishop Wren Bishop Pierce Bishop Taylor nay nor Bishop Usher himself escape the malignity of such detractors neither must that great Grotius a man of more learning than all his Enemies in the World in this shun the dirt and envy of a root of snarling Pigmies And when they can find no vice in the Person then will they make the Order and Office to be a sin worthy all manner of misery and persecution Though all their Reasons for so doing being well examin'd seem but like so many Cypress Trees which grow tall seem fair and glorious yet barren from all manner of fruit Nor do they any thing else but renew their old complaints having nothing to say but what was alleadg'd and abundantly confuted many years ago their present Arguments being not unlike the Ficus Indica whose boughs take root again in so multiplyed a fashion that you would almost suppose them to be a considerable Wood and yet 't is but all one and the same Tree growing originally from one Root yet with these they make a great Bravado and Cry though it be but like the sheering of Hoggs without the gaining of any Wool which is sufficient to nauseate any man from their Refutation the undertaking of it being to as small purpose as
O the height of Puritanical Malice were I a Caesar Vaninus I would call Presbytery the Father of Lies His enemies the Independents are farr more Civil in this than these Brethren of which I shall give you one or two Instances enough to cleer his Majesty from this Presbyterian slander John Cook then of Grays-Inn Barrister his Immortal foe when it was his purpose to cast all the filth that he could upon the King with an intention to make him odious to Eternity yet even then doth cleer him of this I do not think that the King was a Papist or that he design'd to introduce the Popes Supremacy in spiritual things into this Kingdome Nor that I think he did believe Transubstantiation God forbid I should wrong the dead And another of his profest Enemies viz. Will. Lilly thus vindicates the King He was no Papist or favour'd any of their Tenents And because an Enemies Commendation is held Authentick you shall see what a good King he was according to their own Opinions Of him thus saith the aforesaid Cook who yet demanded Justice against him for which Treason he since felt the Law He was well known to be a great student in his younger dayes He had more learning and dexterity in State affairs undoubtedly then all the Kings in Christendome And thus farther saith Lilly He was an excellent Horsman would shoot well at a Mark had singular skill in Limming and Pictures A good Mathematitian not unskilful in Musick well read in Divinity excellently in History and no lesse in the Laws and Statutes of this Nation He had a quick and sharp Conception would write his mind singularly well and in good language and style only he loved long Parentheses He would apprehend a matter in Difference betwixt party and party with great readiness and methodize a long matter and Contract it in few lines Insomuch that I have heard Sir Robert Holdorne oft say He had a quicker Conception and would sooner understand a Case in Law or with more sharpness drive the matter unto a head than any of his Privy Council Insomuch that when the King was not at the Council Table Sir Robert never car'd to be there He had also amongst others his special gifts the gift of patience Insomuch that if any offer'd him a long Discourse or Speech he would with much Patience and without any Interruption or Distaste hear their Story or Speech out at length He did not much court the Ladies He had exquisite judgement by the Eye and Physiognomy to discover the virtuous from the wanton he honour'd the virtuous He was nothing at all given to Luxury was extreme sober both in his Food and Apparel He could argue Logically and frame his Arguments Artificially If these qualities confest by an enemy do not make a good man Jack Presbyter can have small hopes to be so who hated him because he was too vertuous for them as the Devill envies honesty Amongst all the Plots and Designes these men have to overthrow the Church of England 't is none of the least to ruine its Glory by making it contemptible by Poverty For which purpose they endeavour to get all the Bishops Lands alienated or sold Dr. Burgess being their Champion and they will never question Law as long as Prynne hath any malice who toils and writes what he can to get the Lands confirm'd as they were sold by his Associates those Sacrilegious of the wicked long Parliament who impiously sold the Church Revenues to maintain their Rebellion against God and their King Had they been the Doners they might have had a more plausible Plea for their Alienation but since these Lands were given by other Pious and Noble Benefactors it shews their Devillish Avarice and Malice to meddle with or pocket up that which they had no claime to nor power over being but a Rump of two Houses actually in Rebellion against their King and so had no more Authority to conclude and act in such an high Concern without and against the consent of the King than the Pope hath to give away this or that Kingdom upon his form of Excommunication to any of his Favorites that can win it and wear it or poor Simnell had to the Crown in King Henry VII time Yet to have this wickedness confirm'd Burges and his Associats will offer severall hundred thousand pounds to his Majesty by way of gift thereby to hook him in to be pertakers of their sins a Presbyterian being like a Common Drunkard who is not satisfy'd with his own Excess but makes it his business that all his Neighbours too should be partners with him in his wickedness and debauchery But his Majesty is too Sacred and good to be toll'd away by such Miscreants it shews their abominable Impudence to imagine to perswade the Son to be an Enemy to the Church whose Father was a Glorious Martyr for it as if they would shew him a better way and Rule than the Example and Footsteps of his holy Parent To me it seems a strange piece of malicious Ignorance in them who will allow some knavish Lawyers to get by their prating some ignorant Physitians by distruction some cousening Trades-men by false dealing and some murthering Souldiers by plundring for some such there are in all faculties though their callings be lawfull and commendable two three or four Thousand pounds a year and yet think it an hard case or unlawful for a Reverend Bishop or Clergy-man who hath spent many years and all his own means in hard study and is held the most honourable preferment as much as the Soul excels the Body to possess that which other good charitable men have freely given him since such a deed of gift is so farr from endamaging our Presbyterian Grumblers that it is a main encouragement for their studies and preferment If they say as I have heard that these Benefactorships were given not to the men but the Diocesses by this retort they malepertly reflect upon the Kings discretion whose wisdom thinks such men fit for and capable of such Places But by this they may as well reason against Colledge and Hospital Lands and the Commons belonging to Corporations and when they have once taken these away they will eat up one another through avarice But enough of this only there was some ground for the observation that the only way to preferment was to be a busling Non-conformist Besides these and others they have another way to shake the foundation of Episcopacy and the peace of the Nation They know full well that nothing seems more formidable to the vulgar then a story of Gods strange judgments upon this or that And if they question the verball Narrative shew it them in print and 't is sufficient they having not confidence enough to deny that which cometh from the Press The story of a Spirit will fright these people out of their little witts and the relation of such a terrible
upon the wicked CHAP. VI. Some short Observations upon their Covenant AN understanding Gentleman assures us that A league amongst Subjects giveth law to a King breaks all bonds of Soveraignty and invites a people to seek for a New Maister And this dear-bought experience hath prov'd true to both Nations yet were the events of these Agreements more mischievous they would be courted by the seditious thinking such pieces of Perjury to be the best works of their Holy-days Since the reformation this mode of swearing against Authority hath been commonly practis'd in Scotland In their first Covenant 3 Decemb 1557. An Earl of Argile was the first subscriber and chief promoter and how active an Earl of Argile hath been in our days about such wickednesse need not here be related but I hope as the other was the first so this shall be the last Yet in this way hath the English been as faulty as the worst of them though I believe at first drol'd in by their Neighbours For when at the beginning of the Warres the English Commissioners went from the Parliament into Scotland to desire their assistance against the King and having addres'd themselvs to the Scotch Assembly delivering them a letter subscribed by some Presbyterian Ministers in which they complaind that their blood was shed like water upon the grouud for defence of the Protestant Religion they receiv'd a negative answer The Assembly telling them amongst other things That you cannot say you fight for the Reform'd Religion since you have not begun to reform your Church ye had thriven better if you had don as we did Begun at the Church and thereafter striven to have gotten the civil sanction to what ye had don in the Church A few days after Sir W. Ermin Mr. Hamden and the rest of the Commissioners were invited by some of their friends to make a new Address to the Assembly which they did the second time desiring a gracious Answer Upon this request the Assembly propounded to them this Will ye join in Covenant with us to reform Doctrine and Discipline conform to this of Scotland and ye shall have a better Answer Sir W. Ermin and the rest answered that they had not that in their Instructions but thank'd the Assembly and said they would represent it to the Parliament of England The Assembly replyd that there would be much time loosed ere they could go to the Parliament for their resolutions and thereafter to return to Scotland to draw up a Solemn League and COVENANT The danger was great and they were not able to resist the King But we shall draw up the Covenant here and send up with you some Noble men Gentlemen and Ministers that shall see it subscrib'd which accordingly was don only two or three words altered Thus was this spurious Wretch illegally begotten and brought forth by unlawful Parents by the Scots worship'd and ador'd as the only Idol fit to bless their undertakings and by their Brothers in mischief the English Long Parliament embraced who peremptorily enjoyn all people to swear Allegiance to it as their only supream Law and authentick Shibuleth to distinguish Treason from Loyalty Though what authority they had to impose such an Oath being against the Command both of King and Law must be left for Mr. Prynne to discover in some Terra incognita since we have no such custome amongst us Yet for all this Mr. Simeon Ash had the confidence in the Pulpit to wonder that any man should think that the Covenant was made here only to bring in the Scots when the Presbyterian Parliament and party was low in England Having thus seen the Birth of this Monster it might quickly be desected and the poison and mischief lodg'd in it might evidently be manifested to the whole world but that it hath formerly been don by more able pens However it cannot but seem strange to any that these men should swear to extirpate the Government of the Church by Archbishops Bishops c. which have been confirmd by 32 Acts of Parliament And they could never yet tell who made them Rulers over Israel and gave them power to such actions quite contrary to Magna Charta the laws of the Land and the Kings express command The first two are known to any one who hath heard any thing of the laws of the land and the latter is as true Yet because I have heard some deny and others question its truth I shall give you his Majesties own Proclamation against it 1643. By the KING His Majesties Proclamation forbidding the Tendering or taking of a late Covenant called a Solemn League and Covenant for Reformation c. WHEREAS there is a Printed paper intituled a Solemn League and Covenant for Reformation and Defence of Religin The honour and happinesse of the King and the peace and safety of the three Kingdomes of England Scotland and Ireland pretended to be Ordered by the Commons in Parliament on the twenty first day of September last to be Printed and published Which Covenant though it seems to make specious expressions of Piety and Religion is in Truth nothing else but a Traiterous and Seditious Combination against us and against the Established Religion and Laws of this Kingdome in pursuance of a Traiterous Design and endeavour to bring in Forraign Force to invade this Kingdome We do therefore straightly Charge and Command all Our Loving Subjects of what Degree of Quality soever Upon their Allegiance That they presume not to take the said Seditious and Traiterous Covenant And We do likewise hereby Forbid and Inhibit all Our Subjects to Impose Administer or Tender the said Covenant as they and every one of them will answer to the Contrary at their Utmost and Extremest Perils Given at our Court at Oxford this Ninth day of October in the Nineteenth year of our Raign GOD SAVE THE KING Than this what could be more plain and authentick yet a furious Presbyterian is pleas'd to tearm this action of the King Satanical slander and abuse a most impious and audacious Paper Atheistical boldness Impious and Platonical pleasure c. Besides the unlawfulness of its making and Imposition the qualities and conditions of the Brat were so impious that an honest man could never take it for several reasons amongst many other take these two or three 1. § They swear to extirpate Popery without respect of persons In which they might be ask'd What they would do with the Queen If they forced her Religion 't was Treason If they did not they are perjur'd 2. § This Oath makes them to be but Conditional Subjects swearing to preserve the Rights and Priviledges of Parliament and the Liberties of the Kingdom before the King or his Authority few of the takers understanding any of these things by which means they swore they knew not what And that this Oath obligeth them to be but conditional Subjects is plain they swearing To preserve and defend the Kings Majesties Person and Authority
In the preservation and defence of the true Religion and Liberties of the Kingdoms In which cases too themselves will be Judges so that the meaning is this as hath been proved before by several examples If the King will not obey the Covenant they are sworn not to obey nor defend the King 3. § By this Oath they commit absolute High Treason by nulling several Acts of Parliament made for the Preservation of the King and his friends For here they swear to bring to Publick Tryal to receive Condign Punishment the Kings best Subjects and Friends under the notion of Malignants whom they thus describe Evil Instruments by hindering the Reformation of Religion Dividing the King from his People or one of the Kingdoms from another or making any Faction or Parties amongst the People contrary to this League and Covenant And that justice may be done upon the wilful Opposers thereof By this they quite overthrow all Government making Loyalty Treason and Rebellion the only sign of a good Subject And how severe they stick to this murthering Article you shall see by one passage In the year 1646. the Parliament remaining Conquerours many of the Loyal Party thought it fit to compound for their Estates better to have something than nothing Amongst those in the County of Chester who were put to this hardship were Mr. Richard Brereton of Ashley Mr. John Wilson and others This highly perplext the Committee then at Chester who therefore wrote several Letters to the Youths at Goldsmiths-Hall desiring them never to take such friends to the King into Composition and one of their great sticklers at Chester Mr. S. C. thus delivers the Opinion of himself and his friends about this business The Gentlemen here conceive they are bound in Conscience and by their late National Covenant to do their duty in their place to bring Delinquents to condign punishment Here they will have no mercy but stick close to their wicked Principles And this Oath must receive no Interpretation For if we endeavour but to mitigate it then some strange curse or other will tumble upon the Nation as Crofton not long since affirm'd His Sacred Majesty and the Kingdom must submit to the plain and literal sense thereof though it seem as sower Grapes unless we will by Gods wrath set our own and childrens Teeth on edge 4. § The Covenant if it were in force would be the cause and maintainer of Rebellion for ever for in it they also swear to assist and defend all those that enter into this League and Covenant in the maintaining and pursuing thereof by which means they oblige themselves to all acts of hostility in its behalf though the King and Parliament as is now done should find reason for its nullity and 't is well known how oft they deny'd and defied their King upon this score O the Obedience and Charity of a Covenanter who like the wicked Jews combine together by Oath to kill those more holy than themselves needs must the malice of these men be so violent that they may be excus'd from saying the Lords-Prayer the very clause of forgiving their Enemies being enough to fright them into Dispair I wish I could say Repentance but that is a thing their zealous fury will not give them so much as leave to think on all of them hurryed on with that bloody rage as to cry out with that Levite in the Poet Blood Blood Blood destroy O Lord The Covenant-Breaker with a two-edg'd Sword Yet this Imp of wickedness the Brethren will not cast off The London-Ministers professing all the power on Earth cannot absolve them from it And Zach. Crofton keeps a great deal of clutter publickly affirming that it doth not only bind those who took it but those also who did not and that the Obligation of this Oath is for ever binding from Generation to Generation And in another of his flaunting Pamphlets he assureth the Reader That he doth and cannot but do it now contest for and assert the Solemn League and Covenant in that Religious part which must be promoted with out-most Zeal by all who wish well to the King and Kingdom though the Devil and his Instruments do endeavour to damp deaden and divert the discharge of duty And then afterwards tells them that Gods wrath will fall upon the King and Kingdom if Episcopacy be not extirpated and the Covenant observed to its literal sense and plain meaning And as they would thus continue it in fury so did they begin it as I have shew'd you before however I shall afford you one other piece of Canting confidence Mr. Andrew Cant the Father for the Son is now as bad in one of his Sermons at Glasgow told the Scots concerning their Covenant That he was sent to them with a Commission from Christ to bid them subscribe the Covenant which was Christ's contract and that he himself was come a Wooer to them for the Bridegroom and call'd upon them to come to be hand-fasted by subscribing that Contract And told them plainly That he would not depart the Town till he got the names of all who should refuse to subscribe that Contract of whom he promis'd to complain to his Master i. e. Christ As for the Obligation of the Covenant they themselves are sometimes forced to deny it unless they will make it a particular exception against all General Rules When the Scots in 1639. were a little troubled that Episcopacy was not absolutely abjured in their former Oaths which many thought binding to them The Covenanters thinking to take away that rub that all men might with more freeness embrace their Covenant declare publickly to the World that the swearer is neither obliged to the meaning of the prescriber of the Oath nor his own meaning but as the Authority shall afterwards interpret it and then by this Heathenish rule what will become of the binding force of the Covenant at this time Which is void also in the opinion of a great Presbyterian under the name of Theophilus Timorcus who thus shews himself Suppose that upon mature deliberation the Ministers that subscribed and took the Oath of Canonical Obedience find that it was an unlawful Oath or Subscription They are in such case only obliged to be humbled for their rash subscription and taking of that Oath and their second Oath against them will hold valid Now if they think this a sufficient salvo I shall only insert these four words Holy League and Covenant instead of the fore-mentioned four words Oath of Canonical Obedience and think the Absolution sufficient according to their own Argument Mr. Crofton tells us that the Oath which the King taketh at his Coronation for the defence of Bishops is of small validity because limited to the Laws of the Land But will this subordinate it to the Covenant Or will he make a little scribble-scrabble of a few perjured Rebels to be the Law of the Land If the