at the Rent if he leave it to me but as good as it was when he took it I will take it againe Nay notwithstanding Corn is so cheap I give any Tenant I have liberty to leave his Farme and I will take it I never did or ever will force any Tenant to keep his Farme Neither in all this time hath any Tenant come to me to take his Farme again Some indeed I would have outed of their Farmes being none of the best Tenants but could not perswade them I never arrested or imprisoned any Tenant for his Rent nor willingly used any severe course if I could indifferently be satisfied any other way I have scarce demanded my Rents of late because of the cheapnesse of Corn but have made all the shifts I could to get money to serve my occasions and spared my Tenants that they might not be forced to put off their Corn at too mean rates If these be the signs of an hard Landlord then I am one There is one Ellen of Stausfield I heare hath complained of me for being so I will tell you the case and then you shall judge whether I deserve it or not Last Michaelmas was two yeare I let a Farme there to him of forty pounds a yeare At the end of the yeare I sent to him for his Rent his answer was that it went hard with him the first yeare being to buy all his stock and seasons therefore he desired me to have a little patience till he could make money of his Corne upon his desire I did forbeare him About halfe a yeare after I sent to him againe and then he said Corn was so low that he could make but little money of it Upon this I forbore him till the other year was up and he indebted to me two years rent and went my selfe to him and wisht him to leave the Farme if he sound he could doe no good upon it Hee desired to keep it hoping the times would mend and offered to make over his stock to me for my security this he did and continued in his Farme and at Lady day next promised to clear all About a month after the time I sent to him to fulfill his promise and was informed that he had sold all his Corne driven away his Stock and carryed all his Goods and was gone himselfe and had left me about twenty pounds worth of Corne on the ground to satisfie for three yeeres rent which was six score pounds so I was to be a loser one hundred pounds by him This is the truth and who now doe you think did the wrong Many of these hardnesses have I used to my Tenants and have been so served by them To the Charge of living unmarryed To that Charge of my being unmarryed and not living so chastly and vertuously as a Christian ought to doe I confesse that for almost these twenty yeeres I have lived unmarryed and I thank Heaven I have an healthy able Body and have naturall and carnall affections in me and a love to Women and their company and I think he deserves to be un-mann'd that hath not I confesse I have been more vain and foolish with them then I ought to have been Heaven forgive me But for committing Fornication or Adultery with any Single or Marryed woman I protest before Heaven though perhaps few may believe it I am clear from it I never had illegitimate issue nor ever had carnall knowledge of any woman save of my owne Wife nor of her but as was fitting for procreation seldome or never after I knew her to be with childe Neither was this abstinence in me from any frigidity or disability in Nature for my dispositions that way were I thinke as strong as most mens Neither was it for want of invites and opportunities to it of them I had enough Nothing restrained me but the fear of offending Heaven vox illa terribilis alwayes sounding in mine eares Whoremongers and Adulterers God will judge This hath all along been the bridle to my unlawfull desires and I hope ever shall be To the Charge of neglecting Family duties To that of ordering my Family and duties thereto belonging I confesse it is an excellent thing when the Master can say I and my house doe and will serve the Lord But it is hard in a great and numerous Family to have all so well minded It is the Masters part to see them performe the outward duties of Gods service as Prayer and going to Church and to shew them the way by his own godly example this I was alwayes mindfull of frequenting the Church on the Lords day both Forenoon and Afternoon if not hindred by the weather or some extraordinary occasion and calling upon my Servants to doe the same And all the week after it was my constant course to pray with my Family once if not twice every day and if I had not a Levite in my House I performed the office my selfe 'T is true though in my owne private devotions Morning and Evening Iused constantly without failing my owne conceived Ejaculations to Heaven yet to my Family after the reading some part of the Scripture I commonly used the set formes of Prayers of the Church or of some other godly men which in publick meetings and no extraordinary occasion hapning I conceive to be very fitting and sufficiently warranted both from Moses David and Solomon who composed Prayers for the Church as likewise from Christ himselfe who made a Prayer for his Disciples and bid them pray This Our Father c. It is warranted also by the practice of Christ who sure had the Spirit of Prayer as much as any yet in his Agony he used no variety but three severall times as the Text hath it went and said the same words Father if thou wilt let this cup passe from me He quarrelled not at the set forme nor doe I know why any man should If another man have composed a Prayer whose words speak my minde to the full and peradventure more full then my own words can doe it why should not I use them Let thy heart and affections goe with his words and then they are thine owne I confesse I like not praying by roat and I think him but a dull Christian who cannot or does not upon extraordinary occasions pour out his soul to God in his owne words Thou mayest have some soars which none but thy own words can discover But at a publique meeting upon a generall confession of our sins when we all joyn together in Prayer what a pleasant harmony or rather thundering violence doth it use to Heaven gates to bring down a remission of our sins And this hath the Church of God used heretofore For my part I cannot dislike it so the publick be not omitted for I confesse Nothing speaks a Christian better then frequencie in prayer no duty comes neer it It makes thee acquainted with Heaven it begets a familiarity between thee and thy god that ye
for out of the Low-Countreys 'T is true I did deny it and upon this account I was at that time with divers others a Prisoner in Upnor Castle Cause I knew none but we suspected it might be for fear of the Swedish Army least they should draw down this way and the Hollander joyning with them some party of this Nation might be assistant to them Just at this time when all the feares and jealousies were upon the Nation and many every where committed comes my Brothers Servant with a Letter and tells us of the neer approach of the Swedes The Governor of the Castle looked very strangely on the businesse and all my fellow Prisoners began to wonder to see a man come over to me at that time from thence and I was as much and more then any troubled at it but could not help it Yet to doe the best I could to avoid all suspition so soon as I had read the Letters I gave them to the Governor to reade one of which being in French I Englished to him not knowing but that he might suspect something of privacy I let him know that I was sorry the messenger came to me at such a time The Money I could not furnish him with being a Prisoner and had not but for my owne expences and I told the man I neither would nor durst let him have it if I did know where to get it and therefore wished him to returne againe as soon as he could for I knew there would be jealousies upon me so long as he was here I desired him not to come to me or to speak to me in private I knew there was nothing yet to charge me with but should I now be sending money over-sea they might then pretend to enough Therefore I wished the messenger to returne to my Brother and in a Letter which I sent then to him desired to be excused if I had some care of my own safety So I sent the messenger away having paid for his lodging and dyet and given him some money in his purse And to my sense I did in that juncture of time what was fittest to be done blame it who will The Ministers reply Sir said they you have given us most satisfactory and Christian answers to all these things you seem to be charged with we see how easie a thing it is for foule tongues to slander honest men behind their backs We onely wish that these your answers were made more publike to satisfie the world Gentlemen said I there is one thing more I am charged with which though it come not from you but from another hand yet may possibly be in your thoughts I would give some answer to that and then I have done The Charge of being a Royallist Some there are who seem to wonder why Sir George Sondes should be so great a Royallist having all along been so vertuously bred and made such profession of Religion THE ANSWER I confesse I was trained up in Religion from my child-hood and when I was sent to Cambridge had Doctor Preston a very eminent and godly man for my Tutor of whom I thank God I learned much good And by my familiarity with him I came acquainted with those who were most esteemed but I never to my knowledge heard from him or them but that a good Christian and a Royallist might stand together As they taught us in the first place to feare God so the next was to honour the King And I am sure nothing is more frequent in Scripture then the requiring us to performe our vowes both to God and Man And I am as sure I was bound by many severall Oaths to my King which I did not so readily know how to dispense with Yet I never was so great a Royallist as to forget I was a free-borne Subject Our King I was willing to have him but not our Tyrant or we his Slaves I was ever for Reformation in Church and State but not for Extirpation I was never against reducing of Bishops to their pristine function of taking care of the Churches nor of the rest of the Clergy to take them off from secular imployments But to unbyshop them and take away all orders and degrees and a certainty of maintenance from them this I understand not I was ever for Order Government both in Church and State Parity speaks nothing but confusion and ruine God is the God of order and therefore of his owne Courtiers he hath degrees Angels and Archangels and so is his Court also composed The sphears all differ in their magnitudes and move one within another his lights vary in their bignesse greater and lisser The Choristers of Heaven have their varieties and doe not all sing the same note and if in the Quires here the Organs should have pipes all of one size the musick would be but dull If the Bells were all Tenors there would be little pleasure in ringing and it would be a bad comfort where there is not as well a Treble as a Base Violl I can cost my eye on nothing in the whole Universe but hath and invites to degrees onely Religion must have its parity That which is the rule and order to all other things must that be out of Order what is the reason It is say they because our great Master so commanded it saying among you it shall not be so What is it he sayes shall not be so why you shall not tyrannize over and enslave those that are under you as the rulers of the Gentiles doe but he that will be chiefe among you let him be your servant And so he is and ought to be who governs aright The greatest Chieftaine is the greatest Servant and hath the greatest care of those that belong to him Ye call me Lord and Master sayes Christ and 't is true so I am and if your Lord doe such meane offices think not much for you to doe the like He forbids not Mastery but enjoynes humility and brotherlinesse This learned Divines make to be the true meaning and those that give it another sense are certainly mistaken But that is no wonder in these times Paul who was bred at the feet of Gamaliel and abounded in Revelations and was full of the Spirit yet at the difficulty of the worke said who is sufficient for these things who is able to wade into these depths and yet now our illiterate Mechanicks who must have seven years to learne their owne trade will at seven dayes or lesse undertake to teach this Oh Divinity thou that art the apex and chiefe of all Sciences thou to whom all other are but handmaids that art ars artium scientia scientiarum art made too cheap thus to be humbled Nor was I ever against taking away Monopolies and arbitrary impositions and Imprisonment of the free Subject Nor against lessening the exorbitancy of favorites who like Drones sucked and devoured all the Honey which the Common-wealths Bees with much toyle gathered I
his death receive him into thy armes of mercy that his mournfull Father may yet have this comfort that though thou hast made him Childlesse and left him not one Son alive on earth yet which is much better they may live with thee in Eternal blisse in Heaven Dear Father grant us this our request and that onely for thy beloved Son JESVS CHRIST his sake our Lord and onely Saviour Amen In his Examination at Maidstone before the Justices when he was asked what provoked him to commit so foule an act 't is strange to see how he seems to make my hard using of him to be the motive and provocation whereas it is well known to all that never Son was treated more tenderly by a Father I will set down the effect of his Examination and my Answer to himself by a Letter when I came to the knowledge of it and the true story of the Doublet he so much complained of attested by divers who were then by And when at last he asked forgivenesse of me and desired to hear from me you shall see my bowels toward him in my last Letter The effect of his Examination The fact of murthering his Brother he freely confessed before the Justices It is already in print and it is my grief to repeat it But being asked why he did it He answered It was because upon a difference between him and his Brother about a week before May day last concerning a Doublet his Father threatned that he would ruine him never look on him more keep him short while he lived and at his death make him a Servant to his Brother that whereas it was said by some that he had a thousand pounds a year I would not leave him a thousand groats and that I would make him as poor as his Unkle Nicholas and that for the space of four yeares last past he hath not had of his Father forty pounds he believeth not twenty and that his Fathers displeasure against him still continued These if truths might have been ground of discontent but no provocations to so wicked an act But he who is the father of murthers is also the father of lyes and taught man this lesson from the beginning We are all apt to lay our faults on others our Father Adam did it in Paradise The Woman whom thou gavest me said he she gave me of the fruit and I did eat As if he had said if thou hadst not given her to me I had never eaten of the forbidden fruit Oh ingratefull Adam to upbraid thy Maker who gave thee a Woman the best of Creatures for an help and not for thy ruine O wicked Son so to pervert thy Fathers words which were spoken to thee for thy amendment but not for thy hurt My Letter to him will declare the truth and in what manner the words were spoken to him Can it be imagined if any thing had past that had troubled him about that Doublet that it should provoke him to commit that foule fact a quarter of a yeare after especially since he had the same if not greater opportunity all along and all manner of respect and kindness both from his Brother me passing still to him to the very night before and all former quarrels quite forgot I had been from them seven weeks a Prisoner in Upnor Castle and did not see them but as they came sometimes to me passing between London and my house I came not home many dayes before and the very day before I and both my Sons were at Feversham to see a Match at Running a sport they delighted in wee were as pleasant as ever and so went to our Chambers Bed without the least shew of any discontent But I will shew you my Sons Letter to me and my Answer to him which will discover the truth of these things Freeman's Letter Most dear and loving Father ALthough through the heinousnesse of my offence I am become unworthy to see your face more in this world yet I hope such is your Fatherly goodnesse that you will vouchsafe to accept and reade these few and last lines of your dead Son Dead to your selfe dead to all this world and I hope through Gods grace dead to sin but alive to God through Jesus Christ our Lord Sir I praise God I am come to a sight and sense of my sin I begin to feel the weight of my burden but I hope the Lord Iesus will very shortly ease me in full assurance whereof I desire to be dissolved and to be with Christ Sir I desire you may have comfort in my death although you have had little in my life For I have sinned against heaven and before thee and am no more worthy to be called thy son The Lord make me worthy to be one of his Sir all I beg at your hands is your pardon your blessing your prayers which I doubt not to obtain I am now neer my journeys end and I hope in a very short time to rest in Abrahams bosome whither my Brother is gone before me Is gone hinc illae lachrymae and you my dear Father shall in Gods good time follow after Comfort your selfe with these words Sir I hope through the strength of Gods grace to look death in the face couragiously and depart this world penitently not doubting but that when I shall petition Lord remember me now thou art in thy Kingdome I shall to my unspeakable comfort receive that gracious answer from the mouth of my triumphant Saviour This day shalt thou be with me in paradise In prayer for which and assurance whereof through faith in the Lord Iesus with my humble thanks for your tender love and Fatherly care from my very cradle to this day although undeserved my humble duty presented to your self praying to God to make you happier without us than you were with us I humbly take leave Your Son for a few daies But I hope the Son of God for ever FREEMAN SONDES To his Letter I returned this Answer Son Freeman I Have received your Letter and like well of the words and desires you use therein and wish with all my soul you were as that speaks you That you were heartily sorry for that most high and crying sinne committed against your heavenly and earthly Father in so foulely murthering your most innocent brother Upon these hopes though never greater injury was done to man I doe really and fully forgive you And doe and have and shall as long as you have being here most heartily and earnestly every moment of time beg of God that he would give you a true sight of this and of all other your sinnes and receive you to his mercy and forgivenesse But let me tell you that will never be but upon a true repentance of all your sins and an acknowledgment of them and that let me be plain with you I yet see not in you For this most detestable fact you confesse indeed you did it but as much as in