and in this they were so earnest that they would not willingly withdraw whilest it was debated and then they had leave to depart with this Answer That the House of Commons had already endeavoured Relief from the Lords in their Requests and shall so continue till Redress be obtained Such Petitions as these were likewise from the several Classes of the inferiour Tradesmen about London as Porters Water-men and the like and that nothing of testifying an universal Importunity might be left unattempted Women were perswaded to present Petitions to the same effect While the Faction thus boasted in the success of their Arts Good men grieved to see these daily Infamies of the supreme Council of the Nation all whose Secrets were published to the lowest and weakest part of the People and they who clamoured it as a breach of their Priviledge that the King took notice of their Debates now made them the Subjects of Discourse in every Shop and all the corners of the Street where the good and bad were equally censured and the Honour and Life of every Senator exposed to the Verdict of the Rabble No Magistrate did dare to do his Office and all things tended to a manifest Confusion So that many sober Persons did leave the Kingdom as unsase where Factions were more powerful than the Laws And Just Persons chose rather to hear than to see the Miseries and Reproaches of their Country On the other side to make the King more plyable they tempt Him by danger in His most beloved Part the Queen concerning whom they caused a Rumour that they did intend to impeach Her of High Treason This Rumour made the deeper Impression because they had raised most prodigious Slanders which are the first Marks for destruction of Princes on Her and when they had removed all other Counsellors from the King She was famed to be the Rock upon which all hopes of Peace and Safety were split That She commanded no less His Counsels than Affections and that His Weakness was so great as not to consent to or enterprize any thing which She did not first approve That She had perverted Him to Her Religion and formed designs of overthrowing the Protestant Profession These and many other of a portentuous falshood were scattered among the Vulgar who are alwayes most prone to believe the Worst of Great Persons and the uncontrolled Licence of reporting such Calumnies is conceived the first Dawning of Liberty But the Parliament taking notice of the Report sent some of their House to purge themselves from it as an unjust Scandal cast upon them To which the Queen mildly answers That there was a general Report thereof but She never saw any Articles in writing and having no certain Author for either She gave little credit thereto nor will She believe they would lay any Aspersion upon Her who hath been very unapt to misconstrue the actions of any One person and much more the Proceedings of Parliament and shall at all times wish an Happy Vnderstanding between the King and His People But the King knowing how usual it was for the Faction by Tumults and other Practices to transport the Parliament from their Just Intentions in other things and that they might do so in this resolved to send Her into Holland under colour of accompanying their Eldest Daughter newly married to the Prince of Orange but in truth to secure Her so that by the fears of Her danger who was so dear unto Him He might not be forced to any thing contrary to His Honour and Conscience and that Her Affections and Relation to Him might not betray Her Life to the Malice of His Enemies With Her He also sent all the Jewels of the Crown that they might not be the spoils of the Faction but the means of the support of Her Dignity in foreign parts if His Necessities afterwards should not permit Him to provide for Her otherwise Which yet She did not so employ but reserved them for a supply of Ammunition and Arms when His Adversaries had forced Him to a necessary Defence It was said that the Faction knew of this conveyance and might have prevented it but that they thought it for their greater advantage that this Treasure should be so managed that the King in confidence of that assistance might take up Arms to which they were resolved at last to drive Him For they thought their Cause would be better in War than Peace because their present Deliberations were in the sense of the Law actual Rebellions and a longer time would discover those Impostures by which they had deluded the People who would soon leave them as many now did begin to repent of their Madness to the Vengeance which was due to their practices unless they were more firmly united by a communion of guilt in an open assaulting their Lawfull Prince The King hastens the security of the Queen and accompanies Her as far as Dover there to take his farewell of Her a business almost as irksome as death to be separated from a Wife of so great Affections and eminent Endowments and that which made it the more bitter was that the same cause which forced Her Separation from Him set Her at a greater distance from His Religion the only thing wherein their Souls were not united even the Barbarity of His Enemies who professed it yet were so irreconcileable to Vertue that they hated Her for Her Example of Love and Loyalty to Him While He was committing Her to the mercy of the Winds and Waves that She might escape the Cruelty of more unquiet and faithless men they prosecute Him with their distasteful Addresses and at Canterbury present Him with a Bill for taking away Bishops Votes in Parliament Which having been cast out of the House of Peers several times before ought not by the Course and Order of Parliament to have been admitted again the same Session But the Faction had now used their accustomed Engine a Tumult and it was then passed by the Lords and brought hither together with some obscure Threats that if it were not signed the Queen should not be suffered to depart By such impious Violences did they make way for that which they call'd Reformation This His Majesty signs though after it made a part of His penitential Confessions to God in hopes that that Bill being once consented to the Fury of the Faction which with so great Violence pursued an absolute Destruction of the Ecclesiastical Government would be abated as having advanced so far in their design to weaken the King's Power in that House by the loss of so many Voices which would have been alwayes on that side where Equity and Conscience did most appear But He soon found the Demagogues had not so much Ingenuity as to be compounded with and they made this but a step to the overthrow of that which He designed to preserve When His Majesty was come back as far as Greenwich He met with many informations how averse the Faction was
Cross and to the Service in the Quire He shewed as much humble Devotion there as he had manifested Princely Gallantry in his Justs admired and applauded by the People for His accomplishments in the Arts both of War and Peace That He could behave Himself humbly towards His God and bravely towards His Enemy pleased with the hardiness of His Body and ravished with His more generous Mind that the pleasures of the Court had not softned one to Sloth nor the supremest Fortune debauched the other to Impiety Anno 1622. Confident in these and other evidences of a wise conduct the King without acquainting his Council sends the Prince into Spain there to contract a Marriage with the Infanta and as a part of the Portion to recover the Palatinate which His Sisters Husband had lost and was by the Emperour canteld to the Duke of Bavaria and the King of Spain And herein He was to combate all the Artists of State in that Court the practices of that Church and put an issue to that Treaty wherein the Lord Digby though much conversant in the Intrigues of that Council had been long cajoled To that place He was to pass Incognito accompanied only with the Marquess of Buckingham Mr. Endymion Porter and Mr. Francis Cottington through France where to satisfie His Curiosity and shew Himself to Love He attempted and enjoyed a view of the Court at Paris and there received the first Impression of that Excellent Princess who was by Heaven destined to His chast Embraces Satisfied with that sight no lesser enjoyments of any pleasure in that great Kingdom nor Vanity of Youth which is hardly curbed when it is allyed to power could tempt His stay or a discovery of His Greatness but with a speed answerable to an active body and mind He out-stripped the French Posts which were sent to stop Him although that King had intelligence of His being within his Dominions immediately after their departure from the Louvre The certain news of His safe arrival at Madrid drew after Him from hence a Princely Train and raised the Censures of the World upon the King As being too forgetful of the Inhospitality of Princes to each other who when either Design Tempests or Necessity have driven their Rivals in Majesty upon their Coasts without a Caution they let them not part without some tribute to their Interest and a fresh Example of this was in the King 's own Mother who seeking refuge in England with her Sister Queen Elizabeth from a Storm at home did lose both her Liberty and Life This none daring to mind the King of his Jester Archee made him sensible by telling him He came to change Caps with him Why said the King Because replied Archee Thou hast sent the Prince into Spain from whence He is never like to return But said the King what wilt thou say when thou seest Him come back again Mary saies the Jester I will take off the Fools Cap which I now put upon thy head for sending Him thither and put it on the King of Spain 's for letting Him return This so awakened the King's apprehension of the Prince's danger that it drove him into an exceeding Melancholy from which he was never free till he was assured of the Prince's return to his own Dominions which was his Fleet in the Sea and that was not long after For notwithstanding the contrasts of his two prime Ministers there Buckingham and Bristol which were sufficient to amaze an ordinary prudence and disturb the counsels of so young a beginner in the Mysteries of Empire and the Arts of experienced Conclaves the impetuous attempts of the Spanish Clergy either for a Change of His Religion or a Toleration of theirs the Spleen of Olivares whom Buckingham had exasperated He so dexterously managed the Treaty of Marriage that all the Articles and Circumstances were solemnly sworn to by both Kings By a Civil Letter to the Pope which His Enemies Malice afterwards took as an occasion of Slander He procured a civil return with the grant of a Dispensation baffled the hopes of their Clergy by His Constancy in his own Profession and vindicated it from the odious aspersions of their Priests by causing our Liturgie to be translated into the Spanish Tongue and by His generous miene enthralled the Infanta for whom He had exposed His Liberty Yet having an insight into the practices of that Court that they would not put the Restitution of the Palatinate into the consideration of the Portion but reserve it as a Super-foetation of the Spanish Love and as an opportunity for the Infanta to reconcile the English Spirits who were heated by the late Wars into an hatred of the Spaniards and that this was but to lengthen out the Treaty till they had wholly brought the Palatinate under their power He conformed His mind to the resolves of His Father who said He would never marry his Son with a Portion of His only Sister's Tears and therefore inclined to a rupture But concealing His Purpose and dissembling His Knowledge of their Designs He consulted His own Safety and Return which His Fathers Letters commanded which He so prudently acquired that the King of Spain parted from Him with all those endearments with which departing Friends ceremoniate their Farewels having satisfied Him by a Proxie left with the Earl of Bristol to be delivered when the Dispensation was come Which as soon as He was safe on Shipboard by a private Express He commanded him to keep in his hands till further Order An. 1623. His Return to England which was in October 1623 was entertained with so much Joy and Thanksgiving as if He had been the happy Genius of the whole Nation and His entrance into London was as a Triumph for His Wisdom their Bonefires lengthened out the day and their Bells by uncessant ringing forbad sleep to those eyes which were refreshed with His sight Nor could the People by age or sickness be confined at home but despising the prescriptions of their Physicians went to meet Him as restored Health When He had given the King an account of His Voyage and the Spanish Counsels not to restore the Palatinate a Parliament was Summoned which was so zealous of the Honour of the Prince that both Houses Voted an Address to His Majesty that he would no longer Treat but begin a War with Spain and desiring the Prince's Mediation who was alwayes ready to gratifie the Nation therein to His Father they assured Him they would stand by Him with their Lives and Fortunes but yet when the War with the Crown descended unto Him they shamefully deserted Him in the beginning of His Reign When neither a Wife nor Peace was any longer to be expected from Spain both were sought for from France by a Marriage with Henrietta Maria the youngest Daughter of Henry the IV. The Love of whom the Prince had received by the Eye and She of Him by the Ear. For having formerly received impressions from the
Relations of His Gallantry when She was told of His passing through Paris She answered as it is reported That if He went to Spain for a Wife He might have had one nearer hand and saved Himself a great part of the labour Anno 1625. In the midst of these Preparations for War and Love King James died at Theobalds Sunday March 27. Anno 1625. and Prince CHARLES was immediately proclaimed at the Court-Gate King of Great Britain France and Ireland and so throughout all the Three Kingdoms with insinite Rejoycings The people expecting all the benefits of the happiest Government under Him whose private and vouthful part of Life had been so spent that it had nothing in it to be â—â—â—used and where the eager inquisitors for matter of Reproach met with no satisfaction An Argument of a solid Vertue that could hold out against all the Vices of Youth that are rendred more impetuous by Flatteries and Plenty which are contâ—nuâ—lly resident in great Courts For had any debauchery polluted His earlier days it had been onblished by those who in scarcity of just Accusations did invent unimaginable Calumnies Nor could it have been hid for in a great Fortune notâ—ing is concealed but Curiosity opens the Closeâ—â—â—nd Bed chambers especially of Princes and discovers their closest retirements exposing all their Actions to Fame and Censure Nor did the King deceive their hopes they being the happiest people under the Sun while He was undistuibed in the administration of Justice His first publick Act was the Celebrating His Fathers Funeral whereat He Himself was Chief Mourner contrary to the Practice of His Royal Predecessors and not conformable to the Ceremonies of State Either preferring Piety to an unnatural Grandeur or urged by some secret Decree of Providence that in all the ruines of His Family He should drink the greatest draught of Tears or His Spirit presaging the Troubles of the Throne He would hallow the Ascent to it by a pious act of Grief When He had pay'd that debt to His deceased Father He next provided for Posterity and therefore hastened the coming over of His dearest Consort Whom the Duke of Chevereux had in His Name espoused at the Church of Nostre-Dame in Paris and He receiving Her at Dover the next day after Trinity-Sunday at Canterbury began His Conjugal Embraces A Lady of most excellent Endowments who assumed to Her self nothing in His Good Fortune but the Joy and in His Evil bore an equal share for She reverenced Him not his Greatness Thus having dispatched the affairs of His Family He applyes Himself to those of His Kingdoms which too much Felicity had made unmanageable by a moderate Government And He seemed not so much to ascend a Throne as enter upon a Theatre to wrestle with all the difficulties of a corrupted State whose long Peace had softned almost all the Nobless into Court-pleasures and made the Commons insolent by a great Plenty The Rites and Discipline of Religion had been blotted out by a long and uninterrupted Prosperity and Factions crept from the Church into the Senate which were made use of by those that endeavoured the alteration of Government and the Resolves of that Council were the dictates of some heady Demagogues who fed the Vulgar with hopes of Novelty under the name of Liberty so that the King could not endure their Vices nor they His Vertues whence came all the Obstructions to His Designs for Glory and the Publick good The Treasury had been exhausted to satiate the unquiet and greedy Scots and the people were taught not to supply it unless they were bribed with the blood of some Minister of State or some more advantages for Licentiousness Each of these single would have ennobled the Care of an Ordinary Prudence to have weathered out but when all these conspired with the traitorous Projects of men of unbounded and unlawful hopes they took from Him His Peace and that which the World calls Happiness but yet they made Him Great and affording Exercises for His most excellent Abilities rendred Him Glorious The different states of these Difficulties when like Clouds they were gathering together and when they descended in showres of Blood divide the King's Reign into two parts The first could not be esteemed dayes of Peace but an Immunity from Civil War The other was when He was concluded by that Fatal Necessity either to part with his Dignity and expose His Subjects to the injuries of numerous Tyrants or else to exceed the calmer temper of His peacefull Soul and make use of those necessary Arms whereby He might hope to divert if possible the Ruine of Church and State which He saw in projection In the first Part He had no Wars at home but what was in the Houses of Parliament which though their first Institution designed for the production of just Counsels and assistances of Government yet through the just Indignation of Heaven and the practises of some unquiet and seditious persons became the wombs wherein were first conceived and formed those monstrous Confusions which destroyed their own Liberty caused our Miseries and the King's Afflictions His First Parliament began June 18. At the opening of which the King acquainted them with the necessity of Supplies for the War with Spain which they importunately had through His Mediation engaged His Father in and made it as hereditary to Him as the Crown His Eloquence gave powerful Reasons for speedy and large summs of Money did also audit to them the several disbursements relating both to the Army and Navy that He might remove all Jealousies of mis-imployment and give them notice how well He understood the Office He had newly entred upon and how to be a faithful Steward of the Publick Treasure But the Projectors of the alteration of Government brought into debate two Petitions one for Religion the other for Grievances formed in King James's time which delayed the Succours and increased the Necessities which at last they answered but with two Subsidies too poor a stock to furnish an Army with yet was kindly accepted in expectation of more at the next Session For the Infection seising upon London the Parliament was adjourned till August when they were to meet at Oxford and at that time He passed such Acts as were presented to Him At the next Session He gave a complying and satisfactory answer to all their Petitions and expected a Retribution in larger Subsidies towards the Spanish War But in stead of these there were high and furious debates of Grievances consultations to form and publish Remonstrances Accusations of the Duke of Buckingham Which the King esteeming as reproaches of His Government and assaults upon Monarchy dissolves that Aslembly hoping to find one of a less cholerick complexion after His Coronation This inauspicious Meeting drew aster it another Mischief the Miscarriage of the Designs upon Spain For the supplies of Money being scanty and slow the Fleet could not go forth till October 8. an unseasonable time in the British Seas
to frighten the King and Parliament to hearken to their Pretensions of a lesser guilt Others considering their former Crimes and Injuries both to King and People and their damnable blasphemies of the Almighty God did truly judge that their preceding Iniquities had now habituated and temper'd them for the extremest mischiefs and that having proceeded thus far they would think their Safety consisted in an accumulation of their Sins Only they admired that these men would discredit their ancient Arts of pretending to God's Direction in which they could not so easily by every Vulgar judgement be deprehended by boasting of the Concurrence of the People which was too evident a Cheat for not one in a thousand through the whole Nation but did abominate their practices But others more Speculative knew it was the accustomed Method of the Subverters of a lawfull Magistracy and Invaders of a Tyranny first to seek the favour of the Rabble by high pretences of Liberty and Justice and then to boast of it as though they had it and were entrusted by the People to recover what they presented to their hopes and desires and that these men following the same practices would be the greatest Oppressors of those whom they pretended to vindicate The Parliament though hitherto they had been very obsequious to the Army yet the Members now meeting in greater Numbers than usually and preferring the utmost hazards to a Compliance with this Remonstrance laid it aside and fell to debate the King's Concessions which then lay before them This free and stout Carriage of theirs was much resented by the Souldiers who stormed at the contempt of those whose Grandeur depended upon their Arms. And lest they should miscarry in their Chief Design and lose the Sacrifice to their Ambition they immediately sent a Party of their Army into the Isle of Wight to secure the King these laying hold upon Him with a most Insolent Rudeness not permitting the delay of a Breakfast forced Him from the Island into Hurst Castle an unwholesome and sordid place The other part of their Army they cause to march towards London with all the imaginable signs of terrour as if they went to sack and plunder an Enemies Town When they had entred they were quartered in those Houses of the King and Nobility which were nearest the Parliament-House hoping by the greatness and nearness of the danger so to affright those Members who were not so wicked as to comply with them that they should voluntarily withdraw and hiding themselves leave the possession to their own scanty Party For then the Violence would seem less and give more Authority to their unjust Decrees But the honest Members were more in love with Justice and therefore not terrified with the Menaces and Clamours of the Souldiers but as inspired with some unaccustomed Courage at this time and thinking themselves guarded by the Priviledges of Parliament with a greater boldness than usually they did upon just designs they appear in the House Where the Commoners re-assuming the consideration of the King's Concessions continued that Debate till past Midnight the Factious Party and the Creatures of the Army still raising new Doubts and Scruples multiplying Cavils and by tedious harangues wasting the time that the more Just Party which consisted most of Gentlemen of Fortunes not accustomed to such Watchings and Fastings might be wearied out and leave them to their own Resolves and also that they might give time to the whole Army to march into the City that Night Among the rest Sir Henry Vane who was born to disquiet the world and to be a firebrand of Communities yet still carrying his designs of Confusion under a feigned meekness and simplicity of the Gospel This Man in the Isle of Wight had perswaded the King not to be prodigal in His Concessions that He had already yielded more than was fit for them to ask or Him to grant and undertook to make it evident to the whole world yet now did most fiercely and perfidiously inveigh against the Concessions as designed by the King under the species of Peace to ruine the Parliament and Common-wealth Yet at last notwithstanding those Terrours without and Troubles within the House came to this Resolve that The Kings Concessions were a sufficient ground for Peace Which was carried by Two Hundred Voices and there were searce Sixty Dissenters The next day the same Resolve was passed by the Lords in the very same terms not one dissenting Who immediately adjourned for a week to wait whether this fury of the Army would spend it self after so generous an opposition And the House of Commons sent some of their own Members to acquaint the Lord Fairfax and his Officers of this their Vote This free and publick detestation of the Crime that was designed did extremely enrage the Projectors of it and the Democratick Party in the House mingled Threatnings with their Advices For One of the Chiefs of the Faction could not forbear to assure them that If they continued in this their Resolve they should never after have Liberty of meeting there again Which accordingly was executed for the next day they were to meet there the Colonels had placed a guard of two Regiments of Foot and one of Horse upon the House of Commons who strictly keeping all the Avenues thereto that none might enter without their Licence laid hold upon Forty Members that were Persons of the most known Integrity and highest Resolution they denied admission to One hundred and fifty more and suffered none to enter of whose servile compliance they were not well assured Some that had escaped their observation and got into the House by tickets as from Friends or Servants they invite forth whom being once without doors they violently force away while they in vain pleaded the Privileges of Parliament The imprisoned Members they vex and torture with great Indignities exposing them to the mockeries and insolencies of the Common Souldiers although there were among them many that had before Commanded Armies Brigades and Regiments in the Parliament's cause against the King and others that had been most importunate assertors of their first injustice to their Prince Those that beheld these vicissitudes wondred and acknowledged the just Judgement of God that had thus visibly and properly punished the Injustice of these men against their Lawful Sovereign by the ministry of their own more vile and mercenary Souldiers and did thus upbraid them with the falseness of their Principles by which they acted against the King the very same now serving to honest this violence that was committed on them for both equally pretended to a Necessity of Reformation and Self-preservation Others were inquisitive for the faith of these men who taking up Arms for the Sacred Privileges of Parliament had now left nothing but the Walls of that House For the Number that would serve them was not equal to the Name of a Parliament being scarce the eighth part of that Convention and not much above Forty in
the Glory of that God whose Minister He was so His Soul was stored with a full Knowledge of the Nature of Things and easily comprehended almost all kinds of Arts that either were for Delight or of a Publick Use for He was ignorant of nothing but of what He thought it became Him to be negligent for many parts of Learning that are for the Ornament of a Private person are beneath the Cares of a Crowned Head He was well skilled in things of Antiquity could judge of Meddals whether they had the number of years they pretended unto His Libraries and Cabinets were full of those things on which length of Time put the Value of Rarities In Painting He had so excellent a Fancy that He would supply the defect of Art in the Workman and suddenly draw those Lines give those Airs and Lights which Experience and Practice had not taught the Painter He could judge of Fortifications and censure whether the Cannon were mounted to Execution or no. He had an excellent Skill in Guns knew all that belonged to their making The exactest Arts of building Ships for the most necessary uses of strength or good sailing together with all their furniture were not unknown to Him He understood and was pleased with the making of Clocks and Watches He comprehended the Art of Printing There was not any one Gentleman of all the three Kingdoms that could compare with Him in an Universality of Knowledge He incouraged all the Parts of Learning and He delighted to talk with all kind of Artists and with so great a Facility did apprehend the Mysteries of their Professions that He did sometime say He thought He could get His Living if Necessitated by any Trade He knew of but making of Hangings although of these He understood much and was greatly delighted in them for He brought some of the most curious Workmen from Foreign Parts to make them here in England His Writings shew what Notions He had gathered from the whole store of Learning His Eloquence which He cloathed with a Wonderfull and most charming Eloquence Which was unquestionably so great that those who endeavoured to despoil Him of His Civil Dominions granted Him a deserved Empire among famous Writers The Book of His Meditations is alone sufficient to make His Assassinates execrable to all that in any Age shall have a sense of Piety or a love to Wisdom and Eloquence For so great an affection in the Breasts of men do excellent Writings acquire for their Authors that though they may be otherwise blameable yet their Works render their Memories precious and the violent Deaths of such increase their Glory while they load their Murtherers with Ignominy All men especially among Posterity deeming so great Wits could not be cut off but to the Publick Injury and by Persons brutishly mad or by some horrid sins debauched to an Enmity with mankind So that all suture times shall admire and applaud His Writings against them and curse their Injustice to Him His Wisdom was not only Speculative in His Writings but also Practical in His Counsels His Political Prudence None found out better means for accomplishing a Design provided safer expedients for the Ressorts of Difficulties or more clearely foresaw the Event at a Distance nor were any Counsels so prosperous as His own when they were vigorously prosecuted by those whom He intrusted with the Execution and He seldom miscarried but when He inclined to follow the Advices of others as He did in that inauspicious Attempt to take Gloucester wherein He forsook His own Reasons which He urged with all possible Evidence of Success to march towards London He saw into the Intrigues of His Enemies and had not the Treacheries which being secret are above the Caution of Humane Nature of some that followed Him opened to them His Designs He had by the Ordinary Course of Providence covered them with the shame both of Imprudence and Overthrow Those Miseries that the Faction after they got into Power brought upon the Nation and the Events of their destructive Enterprises were discovered and foretold by Him in the very beginnings to the deluded World who notwithstanding were Fatally blinded to chuse their own Ruine Whensoever His Secretaries had drawn up by the Direction of the Council Declarations or any other Papers and offered them to His perusal though both they and the Council had done their parts yet He would alwayes with His own hand correct them both as to Matter and Form He commonly using these words when He took the Pen in His hand Come I am a good Cobler and the Corrections were acknowledged by them all to be both for the greater lustre and advantage of the Writings His Instructions to His Ambassadors Commissioners Deputies were so full of Wisdom and such prudent provisions for all the Ressorts of those they were to treat with that there was nothing to be supplyed on their parts to make their Negotiations happy but seasonable Applications or a fortune to deal with reasonable men It was the Observation of a Noble Person who was dear to Him for his Wisdom and Faithluiness and was of His Council in all His Troubles that had the King been a Counsellor to any other Prince He would have gained the Esleem of an Oracle all His Proposals being grounded upon the greatest Reason and proper to the Business consulted about Those that have been forward to interpret His Actions by the Suceess and from thence have proceeded to the Censure of His Prudence considered not the numerous Difficulties in forming any Resolution nor the fallacious representations of Affairs to Him but only looked upon His unprosperous Resolves according to the Fate of unhappy Counsels which is to have that condemned which was put in Execution and that praised as best which was never tryed Thus was He made for Empire as well as born unto it and had all those Excellencies which The Censure of His Fortune if we had been free to chuse must have determined our Election of a Sovereign to Him alone there being nothing wanting in Him that the severest Censors of Princes do number among the Requisites of a compleat Monarch It was therefore the wonder of those who conceive every man to be the Artificer of His own Fortune how it came to pass that He had not that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 an uninterrupted current of Success which some men reckon among the constitutives of Happiness in all His Enterprises To Others that impute all our affairs here below to an inviolable Method of the Decrees of Heaven which yet they acknowledge just though dark it seemed one of the Riddles of Providence that a King of so great Vertues should yet be calamitous for let Posterity judge how great and how good this Prince was that could not be ruined even after a War which usually embitters the Spirits of those that are molested by it and a total Overthrow whose common Consequent is Contempt but by so various and