you of it for I know it hath been long in your mind and often in your debates and therefore I thought it more necessary to warn others of what you are most likely to do And since you talk so much of the Duke of Yorks Loyalty and Love to his Prince I pray God preserve the King and keep him out of your bloudy hands I beg to know to what purpose your Lordship recites that my Lord S y was Lord Chancellor do you quarrel at any of his decrees or actions then or wherein did he not execute that Office as a great and good man should and what doth your Lordship mean by the certain strict Test for the discovery of Popery opposed by that Lord in Parliament the Test that was passed against Popery which every Officer is obleig'd to take is notoriously known was principally promoted by him If your Lorship mean the other bill of the Test which he opposed 't is the same with what the Duke of York hath passed lately in Scotland and is a great step to the Destruction of the Protestant Religion The truth is there are so many of these downright Popish touches in your Paper that I sometimes doubt whether it be your Lordships or no Since you are but a Papist of two years standing and yet they say young Proselites are the fiercest But this Paper must come from a Papist or Voted Enemy to the King and Kingdom since you tell us that you would have the days of Dissolving the two last Parliaments kept Festival Anniversarily in Commemoration of your deliverance from those great and apparent dangers wherewith you were encompassed whilst they were in Session None but such fellows and their Faction being then in danger But I find your Lordship extream angry at the word Faction since you will please to have it that your worthy Abhorrors and Addressors are not a Faction but the total of the Kings Subjects who conscienciously respect their own duty and the general welfare Pray my Lord let us examine this excellent position of your Lordships setting aside your heat and railing Does your Lordship think that the choice of Sheriffs the great care in returning select men for grand Juries The arts that were us'd to draw many of them into these Abhorrences are not well known to all the Nation We never doubt but you have choise of Gentlemen to make Sheriffs fit for your turn and they have Rogues to make under Sheriffs in every County Neither is it doubted that seventeen or eightteen men may be found in most Countys for your turn although in some and those great Countries you could not find above thirteen and in several other Countries you have failed absolutely and yet all this will not speak your Party the hundredth part of the Nation Hath your Lordship found out another way to make a distinction between the sence of the Nation and that of a dangerous Party than that of the House of Commons will you tell me that a Parliament chosen against all the opposition industry power and mony of the Court is not the sence of the greatest part of the Nation Will your Lordship affirm that this is a Faction and your Lordship the Papists the Duke of York and his Creatures are the only Loyal Subjects to the King and Government And what sort of People these make up may be guess'd by what you profess your selves for A Government infinitely worse than that in Turkey wherein the Law shall be of no other use but as a mask to the Princes worst actions and Tyranny Our Religion Estates Lives and Liberties Subjected to the most Arbitrary will of the Prince who being a man is as capable and lyable to be extreamly ill as any other besides what Law you allow to this King who is an excellent Prince as your King must be allowed to the next though he be the worst in nature And yet you will find out away that by naming Judges Sheriffs and Juries all things shall certainly go as the Court and great men order 't is already so compleat in Scotland where the Proverb is show me the man and I will tell you the cause This is away that no sober or honest men were ever for in any Country The zeal of your Lordships to preserve your greatness of your Duke to get a Crown and of the Papists to introduce their Religion hath outgone by many steps all that ever went before you I acknowledg it the Kings Prerogative to call Parliaments but Edw. the 3d. tels us he was sworn by his Coronation Oath to provide remedy in Parliament upon great Emergencis And our Laws have been very careful to fix the frequency of them And 't is that onely Court that can keep all the rest useful to the King and People they are brave spirits indeed and blest with a Popish Torish humility or rather stupid folly if not wicked villanous designes that are unconcerned when a Parliament should be called and leave it to the Prince whether he please to have any or no. The Law hath given us a right nay 't is our chiefest Birthright and without which we have nothing left us but are meer slaves to Parliaments within such a distance of time The Prince hath the Prerogative of appointing the day and dissolving when the business is done but the Prince is oblieged that we have Parliaments within our time and continued so as may be of effect to provide remedys for the Emergent evils His prerogative of appointing the day ought not to deprive us of our right of having them in such a time Neither ought his Power to dissolve them render them useless to us I am heartily sorry your Lordship is so ill instructed in the Protestant Religion that you ask what it is but you profess that your self and your fellow Addressors Abhorrors are zealous for the Religion by Law established in the Church of England so then you do not know the Protestant Religion but Religion by Law established you are well acquainted with what security will your Lordship give that when your Army is compleated and your Militia Abhorrers and Addressors muster'd that you will not tell us that the Religion established by Law in the Church of England is the Old Popish Religions setled by Magna Charta which is not repealable by any future Act. For this good old cause your Lordship and friends at Court hath nurst up the King of France to this height he is now in Christendom and all Europe is abundantly in your debt for it Qantum Religio potuit suadere malorum I own my self a friend to the Dissenting Protestants until your Lordship can find out an infallible decider of points of Faith I can give men leave to differ from me in opinion whilst they live soberly and honestly by me There are none I know so inconsistent with Government as the Papist who owns a forreign Jurisdiction and disolves all natural Religion to introduce his own And though your
A REPLY TO THE SECOND RETURN I Received yours in Print by the Penny-Post and expected the date from Ruff. Abbey and not from New-Market but I understand your Lordship hath given your Agents in this Town the Lye and not retired to your Country-house upon the Dukes coming but have rather Posted down to New-market with the new Hosanna of O Duke live for ever which was some years since O King live for even I find your Lordship is no good Judg of Styles for I can asure you the Letter was not the Earl of S 's and therefore you do ill to take this occasion of railing at him unless you are resolved to save charges and do that in your own Person which others are so unsuccessfully hir'd to It is a notorious false Testimony to say that Earl was raised from a mean Fortune when 't is well known his father in 1630 long before the troubles had a revenue between 8 and 9000 l. per annum And I have heard him often say he would yield himself to be the worst man alive if he in the Kings service got his maintainance or did lay up above half his Paternal Revenue and I think so able a man may be allowed at least to be maintain'd in so great imployments Neither do I understand that malicious hint of merited severity it was never applied to any man that had one of the chief hands in restoring a Prince to his Kingdom as I know he had without whose courage dexterity some men the most highly rewarded had done otherwise then they did therefore I have heard him say often that the Act of Oblivion was an Act of the Kings Honour and Justice but not of his Mercy it being a Treaty and Agreement much more sacred then any Act of Parliament can be and I must tell your Lorship and your Friends the Papists that if you consider what Promises Declarations and Engagements the Dissenting Protestants had both of his Majesty his Lords and his Bishops at the time of his coming over and how they have been since used and with what submission and Loyalty they have carri'd themselves you will not find a Parallel Instance But your Lordships business is to keep your Hounds in full cry against the pretended Association for since you cannot find one really in being a red-herring from your own Kitching must he hunted and trailed through the Kingdom to make a noise The malice is more then the wit in the matter You have broken down your Gates in the Chace and made so many Gaps in your own hedges that your Cattle are broke out and come to the Pound and what sort of Beast you trade in will be discovered 'T is an Impudence beyond the Jesuites to say that nothing was more exactly prov'd nothing more unquestionable and free from disputes then that the Association was seized in the Earls Closet Gwyn himself neither does nor dare positively swear it and 't is Judged in that great case of Monsieur Fouquet that a man is not answerable for Papers seiz'd when he is refu'd to deliver them upon Inventory Fonquets enemies were not more bloudy and inveterate than the Earls nor the concern of State against him higher And yet the Law of Nature and Reason can never Subject a man to so unreasonable a danger Besides was it ever heard that any man was questioned for a loose paper without any hand to it found in his Study that cannot be proved to this day nor ever will that he ever saw read or conferred with any about it Neither is it to be proved notwithstanding all this Popish Clamour and Abhorrours that ever any one man did ever sign or Act upon it or any thing like it But your Lordship is very plain in the matter and would have the Parliament men in the house of Commons who promoted the Association have their heads advanced to the house top I do not doubt but your Lordship and your friends the Papists whose Religion you have lately taken up and mean to use while it is convenient are of that mind but 't is for some other Votes they then made of declaring Enemies to the King and Kingdom for otherwise your Lordship and some of your friends are as much guilty as any of the house of Commons of the Association It being to be proved that the Association and the banishing the Duke for ever was your Lorships proposition in the Lords house in the last Westminster Parliament The first utterly disliked by the Earl of Shaftsbury as no expedient they could trust in since your Lordship and others of your make could not be kept from being in the head of it But those eminent and worthy persons of the Earl of Shaftsbury's Jury must be railed at at any rate Yet where your Lordship found that two of the Jury should say This is the same with that which we saw produced and promoted in the house of Commons I cannot tell I am sure there is no such expressions in the Proceedings at the Old-Baily Publisht by Authority But between the Veracity of a condemn'd Jesuite in Newgate and that of a Statesman mark'd 〈◊〉 by a Vote of the House of Commons for an Enemy to the King and Kingdom I see here is no great ods Your Lordship hath great reason to be angry for I confess they spoild the best design was ever laid by a damn'd Popish Party The Government according to Law with the help of Irish witnesses and well chosen Juries should have delivered you from all the honest worthy and considerable Protestants of England for 't is plainly confest by your Lordship how far you meant to go 't is a thousand pities that the City Charter were not gone and that your Lorship and your fellows might not have the naming of Sheriffs for London and Middlesex as well as the rest of the Kingdom and then 't is plain what Justice we should have for our Lives and Fortunes The Masters of the Companies would then be hanged with the Journey-men And Sheriff Pilkimon's conscientious Surry Jury would be found at every Assizes eight Hundred Pound damages given to such a fellow that proved not a Penny damage received or possible to be received by it But since your Lorship and your friends have had so good a design spoiled I cannot blame you to be angry but I would very fain guess what you would next be at or whether your patience will hold out till the City Charter be taken away which I assure my self will be long before it be done I fear you will resort to back the Pattern in the mount and follow the President of your bloudy Predecessors the Gueses in France cut our throats and condemn us after since we will not quietly be condemned first and hanged after I am sure this is the next step can reasonably be expected from men of your Conscience and from the Principles and Interest you are carrying on Neither let any one blame me for minding
Lordship is pleased to add the word Rebel to the name Protestant yet it will agree much better with the Papists whose Religion is Rebellion and 't is impossible to find one true subject of them in the World to any but the Pope if they beleive their own Religion I find your Lordship is very kind to Court Converts and would pass over the blackness of all their former transactions and you have great reason since you are so lately one your self but be not deluded the Papists think not as you think they never forgive past offences Argile cannot be forgiven the being his Fathers son Nor the Duke of Lauderdale will not be forgiven the having brought the Covenant into England Twedale will find hereafter that 't will be remembred he sat in Olivers Parliaments And I should tell your Lordship that you will suffer hereafter by a halter of the Duke of Yorks providing but that my skill in Astrology hath told me a Garter of your own useing shall prevent it The jealous Churchmen that Govern the Popish Interest never forgives especially men capable of thinking and judging other things then they would have them Your Lordship is extreamly out when you tell us the Associations in Queen Elizabeths time were entred into with her consent and privity when the Queen her self in her speech to the Parliament in the twenty eight year of her Reign Did protest before God that she never heard or thought of such matter being wholly ignorant of it till a great number of hands with many obligations were shown her at Hampton Court signed and subscribed with the hands and seales of the greatest in this Land But you are pleased to call the several Parliaments that about that time so extreamly opposed the Succession of Mary Queen of Scots a Puritan Gang and have found out a Clergy Nobility and Gentry in the Clouds that were of another opinion no question there were some and great store of Papists in those days but I am sure the Parliament were violently against her succession as appears in the Rolls Nay and against her life too for it was then daily experienced that the Queen was not safe whilst the head of so desperate and bloudy a Religion as the Papists was in being Pray My Lord let me ask you freely is not this the very Case now 't was the Opinion of our Parliaments and the truth appears every day more and more Can your Lordship make a difference between the Case of Queen Elizabeth and her Popish Successor Mary Queen of Scots which your self have so wisely instanced in and brought upon the Stage and the present Case of our King and the Duke of York Hath the Papists appeared less bloudy in their Designes since that time Have they less Passion for introducing their Religion did the Queen of Scots discover more ambition for the Crown of England than our Duke hath she was a Prisoner in the Queens hands and in custody and had not the tenth part of the opportunity the Duke hath whose friends and creatures possess all the Governments and Commandments of Sea and Land fill the Courts and Councils so easy and unwary pardon me if I so say hath our King been But the D of Y s Loyalty is not to be disputed Though I remember the time when he got the Fleet from his Brother the Prince and swore it to himself And I appeal to the King whether he knows not of several attempts were made to set up the D. of York before his coming over and the Transactions in the Dukes name of the D. of B m and Collonel Banfield for the restoring the Duke to the Crown and not the Elder Brother are suffciently to be proved We are all witnesses of the Kings marriage by the Dukes Father in Law to a Lady of great birth but such as the Spanish Embassador then undertook to prove could have no Children and immediately upon this marriage the Duke as if sure of this matter sets up with Guards the Princes Lodgings at Court and seat in Parliament And all the Establishment of his house exactly suitable to the Prince of Wales His unparallel'd love to his Prince appeares in all this and in nothing more then the civil treatment the King at this hour receives from him and his party the throngs that tend the one whilst the King walkes the streets with two or three Pages of his backstayrs Our King is the first instance that was so willing to settle indubitably the Tytle of his Presumptive Heir and to strengthen his Power gives it up all to his Successor But he goes far that never turns especially in such perilous and unsafe ways Our King is not only an excellent well bred Gentleman but a man of great abilities and courage three things his brother wants Whenever the King will think of his own interest he will not want hundreds of thousands to dye at his feet multitudes would adore him that hate and fear the Religion and temper of his Brother Pray God bless the King and give him yet more and more the Spirit of discerning his Interest and friends and the courage to deliver himself from the hands of such unworthy base Traytors as we have reason to fear he is now encompassed with Shall ever be the hearty Prayers of Yours c. LONDON Printed for E. S. 1682.