a Corruption in Opinion Sir says the Doctor I obey Your Commands with all my heart and with belief of some Success But in case upon the first or second Conference I bring the young Madam to some Access towards the Church of England without a total Recess from the Church of Rome will Your Majeshy discomsit a good Beginning and stay the Marriage whose Consummation is every day desired because the Party is not brought to the perfection of an absolute Convert To which the King answered I know that commonly Grace proceeds by degrees in conception and building up its Features as well as Nature but though you walk slow walk sure I cannot abide to be cozen'd with a Church-Papist So the Doctor received his Commission chearfully from His Majesty the rather because though he cunningly concealed how far he had entred yet he had assayed before to bring the Lady Katherine into a good liking of our Church with many strong and plausible Arguments and found her Tractable and Attentive She easily perceived that Conjugal Love would be firmest and sweetest when Man and Wife served God with one Heart and in one way and were like the two Trumpets of Silver made of an whole Piece Num. 10.12 And quickly she was confirmed by divers and solid Representations to confess that our Cathechism was a plain Model of Saving Truth and the Form of Matrimony in our Liturgy pleased her abundantly being as pious and forcible as any Church could make to bind up a sanctified and indissoluble Union And after some Prayers made to God for his secret Breathings into her such easie Demonstrations were spread before her that she confess'd our Ministers were fit Dispensers of the Ordinances of God and all Gospel-Blessings from Christ Jesus So the second Obstruction was master'd by the good Spirit of God and this Doctor 's Industry The Remotion of two such Impediments is not commonly accompass'd by one Head-piece Sometimes it is seen as Macrobius says yet very seldom Ut idem pectus agendi disputandi facultate sublime sit Lib. 2. de Som-Scrip c. 17. Now all things being made smooth for Love and Concord on the 16th day of May 1620. the Nuptials were celebrated between the Lord Marquess and his Bride the Lady Katherine Manners at Lumly-House on Tower-Hill where the Earl of Rutland lay Dr. Williams joyned them together with the Office of our Liturgy all Things being transacted more like to Privacy then Solemnity to avoid the Envy of Pomp and Magnificence I have been no larger then there was cause in this Report for the Negotiation in this Marriage said the Negotiator often unto me was the last Key-Stone that made the Arch in his Preferment 52. It behoved him therefore to spare no Pains nor Study to season the new Marchioness with such a measure of Knowledge as might keep her found in the Integrity of Truth He needed not a Remembrancer to keep his Diligence waking Yet the King was so intent that the Lady should become an upright and sincere Protestant that he proposed to his Chaplain now her Ghostly Father to draw up a pretty Manual of the Elements of the Orthodox Religion with which she might every day consult in her Closet-Retirements for her better confirmation A Book was Compiled accordingly but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 put forth and not put forth Twenty Copies were printed and no more and without the Author's Name in a Notion common to many By an old Prebendary of the Church of Lincoln The Copies were sent to the Lord Marquess and being no more are no more to be found for I have searched for one but with lost Labour I can truly say I have seen one and read it about 30 Years since which being in a negligent Custody is miscarried It contents me better that I have a written Copy out of which it was printed by which the Author could set it in order for the Press surer then I can now If I should miss to digest the Expunctions Interlinings and Marginal References as they were intended I should make the Work differ from it self though quite against my will But because it is a Golden Medal and sit to be worn like an Amulet against Seducers when this Web is spun and woven which I have in hand I will try my best Skill though a weak Aristarchus to fashion it into Native Contexture And if I can truly affirm it to be the very Mantle which fell from Elijah it shall be forth-coming in a Wardrode in the end of the Book If I fail in that I do not despair let this Letter sent with the 20 Copies to the Lord Marquess discover what sappy Kernels were in that Pomegranate My most Noble Lord MY most humble Duty and all due Respects remembred I have at the last according to His Majesties Intimation and your Lordship's made up for my Ladies private Use a little Stock as it were in Divinity and divided the same into three small Treatises The first to furnish her how to speak unto God by Invocation The second how to speak unto her self by Meditation And the third how to speak unto those Romanists that shall oppose her by way of Answer and Satisfaction Prayers are the most necessary for the obtaining Principles for the augmenting and Resolutions in these days for the defending of her Faith and Profession I held these three in some sort and more I held not to have been necessary The Prayers I have Translated from ancient Writers that her Ladyship may see we have not coyned a new Worship or Service of God Of the rest I received my best Grounds from His Majesty and such as I protest faithfully I never could read the like in any Author for mine own satisfaction If I be out in my Descant upon them I hope your Lordship will the rather pardon it because the Book is but private whereof 20 Copies only are imprinted and as many of them to be suppressed as your Honour shall not command and use I make bold to send these Books to your Lordship because I hope they will be more welcom and acceptable to both the great Ladies coming immediately from your Honour I humbly thank your Honour for affording me this occasion to do your Lordship any little Service who am in all affectionate Prayers and best Devotion Your Honour 's true Creature and Beadsman JOHN WILLIAMS From Your College at Westminster this 28th of November 1620. 53. I perceive by the Date of this Letter that the Book was printed six months after it was bespoken which could not be help'd because the Author was taken up almost all that Summer in making a progress to survey the Lands of the College of Westminster whereof he was become Dean by the Lord Marquess's Favour and Installed July 12. 1620. Dr. Tolson who preceded a man of singular Piety Eloquence and Humility in the March before had the Approbation of the King and the Congratulation of good Men for the Bishoprick
is put up to that Effect to settle the Custodes Rotulorum and the Clerks of the Peace for Term of Life upon the Persons who now possess them which as it is inconvenient so it is very prejudicial and derogating from the next Lord Chancellor Finally the Under-Officers do also Petition unto the Lords not without Encouragement to have some Collops out of the Lord Chancellors Fees and New Devices will daily spring up if the disposing be delayed any longer Now I hope when your Lordship shall use this Information to let the King see it that you will excuse me for the boldness that I am put upon by your great Commands The Lord Marquess being not a little Ambitious to present the King with Works of the Brain strongly wrought and well carded offered this Paper to his Majesty from the Dean of Westminster when the Ink was scarce dry which caused this unlook'd for saying from the King You Name divers to me to be my Chancellor Queen Elizabeth after the Death of Sir Christopher Hatton was inclined in her own Judgment that the good man Arch-Bishop Whitgift should take the place who modestly refus'd it because of his great Age and the whole multitude of Ecclesiastical Affairs lying upon his Shoulders Yet Whitgift knew not the half that this Man doth in Reference to this Office The Lord Marquess the less he look'd for those Words the more he lik'd them and Replied extempore Sir I am a Suitor for none but for him that is so capable of the Place in your great judgment Be you satisfied then says the King I think I shall seek no further The Lord Marquess impotent to contain his Gladness sent a blind Message to the Dean immediately That the King had a Preferment in the Deck for him He nothing aware of what the King had spoken in design to the Dignity of keeping the Great-Seal mistook the Message to be meant of the Bishopric of London now wanting a sit Prelate by the Death of him that was most fit while he lived Dr. King whose Soul Heaven received Mar. 30. In prospect whereof the Dean was a Suitor before But it hapned to him as Velleius said of Scipio AEmilianus AEdilitatem petens Consul creatus est He sued for the Edileship and because that was too little he was made a Consul This is the very manner as faithfully digested as any History can be contexed how this Preeminency dropt upon him that never dreamt of it It is not like to some mistaken Report that then went about and may yet be believed by some But thus much is copiously disclosed for their sakes that had rather be Disciples of Truth then Masters of Error 63. Such a Reader is invited to a further Collation engaging upon peril of offending God not to clam his Taste with the smallest Collection of Flattery The Chancellorship or a Title equivalent to that Office is a Supreme Dignity in the Empire of Germany and in all Christian Kingdoms and States and further then Christendom executed by the Grand Visier of the Port at Constantinople Only the Chief Pontiff of the See of Rome styles the Prelate of his Palace who presides in that Employment his Vice-Chancellor and no more And why Because says Gomesius in his Proem to the Rules of that Court Vices agit Cancellarii Dei quia Papa est Dei Cancellarius He can be but a Vice for the Pope himself is God's Chancellor Let him be as Liberal as he will to himself by his own Assumption I am certain he is not such by God's Nomination Leaving the Pontifical Court to its own Platform elsewhere the Chancellor is the Chief Magistrate under the Supreme Power of the King that sets him up To which purpose Budaeus in his Notes upon the Pandects p. 325. Cancellariatus summum est hodie honorum fastigium quasi quoddam summa quaeque ambientis animi solstitium This was it then which was marvel'd and look'd upon as a Rarity that the King should prefer the Dean of Westminster though very richly qualified in a Churchman's condition to the Estival Solstice of Honour as Budaeus calls it at one step who had never pass'd through the lower Ascendant Signs of the Zodiac of the Law But that great Master of Wisdom did never repent him that He had trusted such a Servant so far never gave the least sign of Displeasure to the day of his Death that He would Remove him never tax'd him that he had gone awry in any thing either as a public or private Person Which good Opinion he kept so constantly that after two years Probation in his Office I find these Lines in a Letter which he send to the Lord of Buckingham to Madrid May 11. 1623. The King's Grace to me is such that I profess before God I never received ill Word or clouded Aspect from him since the first day I served him in this great Place His Majesty would many times speak of him that He never met with a better States-man for a clear and far-reaching Judgment His Knowledge was a Political Circle that comprehended all things in it Bring any Matter unto him his Reason was never shallow nor at Low-Water He studied Foreign Courts as much as this at home and cared not what he paid to expert Ministers Strangers or Native to be acquainted with the Secrets of their Masters The best to whom he may be similized herein is Frier Paul the Servite of whom it is written When any News were bruited he seldom was mistaken in his Opinion whether they were true or false and nothing could be propounded to him to which he did not suddenly give an Answer and with that Solidity as if he had meditated much upon those Answers which were conceived presently under the Question Such an Eminency of Intellectual Parts opened the broad Gate for this Dean to enter into the Royal Favour As among Plants it is the property of the Palm-Tree says Philo lib. 1. de Vit. Mos that the Vital Virtue thereof is not in the Root which is under the Earth but in the top of the Trunk as in the Head which is next to Heaven And Pliny lib. 13. c. 4. accords well unto it Dulci medulla earum in cacumine quod cerebrum vocant The sweet and succulent Marrow in the top is the Brain and Life of the Palm So to them that enquire how Dean Williams shot up so soon to this Palm of Honour I will point to the top of the Tree even to the Marrow of his Brain Dulcis medulla in cacumine quod cerebrum vocant 64. Withal he was most Industrious and that not by fits but every day did conclude its Work as if he were not to live till to morrow No Cammel did bear more burden then he did when he first entred to sit in the Seat of Lord-Keeper or travel'd further with so little Food and less rest which he suffer'd the better because he was weary of Ease and loved Labour
it that the Impulsive of it was the supposed Irregularity which was then reviv'd but because he would not Licence a Sermon of Dr. Sibthorp's which the King sent to him by Mr. W. Murry of the Bed-chamber for his Hand to the Printing which he denied saying There was some Doctrine in the Sermon which was contrary to his Judgment I write I confess by hear-say but I heard it from his own mouth and have it in a Manuscript under his own Hand It had been a wild thing to rake up the Irregularity again out of the Embers since in the interim he had Consecrated many Prelates nay since he had Consecrated the Elements of Christ's Supper at the King's Coronation and set the Crown upon His Majesties Head And not long after he returned from Foord to a Parliament Summon'd to begin March 17. 1627. he Consecrated that Learned Divine Mr. Richard Montagu Promoted to the See of Chichester at Croydon Aug. 24. 1628. Yet that great Scholar had Presented his studied Papers for the Irregularity to the Lord-Keeper more then any man But now he was satisfied to be Consecrated by the whilom Irregular supposed And at the same time Dr. Laud then Bishop of London was Assistant with the Arch-Bishop to impose Hands Such Changes there are in Human Judgments 80. Perhaps I may be thought Irregular my self that I have knit the Election and Consecration of the Bishop of Lincoln to the long Series and Discussion of this famous Case I crave Pardon if I want one Now I step back to the Lord-Keeper who before the end of June was a Keeper of more then he desired the Earl of Southampton one of his dearest Friends on Earth being committed a Prisoner to his Custody A worthy Lord and of a gallant Freedom yet such as less then Kings do not like In the Session of Parliament which was then newly ended he was interpreted to exceed in some words against the Royal Prerogative a Stone of Offence that lay in many men's ways Beside he had Rebuk'd the Lord Marquess of Buckingham with some Passion and Acrimony for speaking often to the same thing in the House and out of Order Therefore he was Confined but with as much Gentleness as could be devised rather to a Nurse then a Jaylor But the Lord-Keeper though he lik'd his Guest yet he preferred his Liberty before that Liking and never gave over till he had got his Enlargement discharged him from the Attendance of Sir William Parkhust who as a Spy was sent to wait upon him at Tichfield that he might be lest only to the Custody of his own good Angel as he writes Cabal p. 59. Likewise in Tenderness to the Earl's Wealth and Honour he kept him from an Information in Star-chamber which was threatned and buoy'd him up at last to the King's Favour so as he might rather expect new Additions then suspect the least Diminution from his Gracious Majesty Though all this came purely from his Love and Industry yet of all that was obtained he would take nothing to himself but directed the Earl to cast his Eye upon my Lord of Buckingham Of whose extraordinary Goodness says he your Lordship and my self are remarkabe Reflections the one of his Sweetness in forgetting Wrongs the other of his Forwardness in conserring Court sies These Passages occur in the Printed Bundle But there is a Letter the Publisher of the former did not meet with it dated two days before Jul. 19. written to the Lord Marquess in behalf of that Honourable Earl and likewise of Mr. J. Selden my great Friend while he lived who was clap'd up at the same time because being a Member of the House of Commons in that Parliament he had preferred the danger of telling Truth before the safety of Silence Thus for them both together he Solicites My most Noble Lord WHat true Applause and Admiration the King and your Honour have gained for that gracious and most Christian-like Remorse shewed the E. of Southampton a Delinquent by his own Confession I refer to the Relation of others lest I might be suspected to amplifie any thing which my self had propounded The Earl if he be a Christian or a moral honest Man will endeavour to regain His Majesty's further Favour by more observance and to requite your unexpressible Goodness towards him by all true and hearty Friendship both which he deeply Vows and Protests Now poor Mr. Selden flies to the same Altar of Mercy and humbly Petitioneth your Lordship's Mediation and Furtherance He and the World take knowledge of that Favour your Lordship hath ever offorded my motions and my self without the motion of any and so draweth me along to Entreat for him The which I do the more boldly because by his Letter inclosed he hath utterly denied that ever he gave the least Approbation of that Power of Judicature lately usurped by the House of Commons My Lord The man hath excellent Parts which may be diverted from an Affectation of Applause of idle People to do some good and useful Service to His Majesty He is but young and this is the first Offence that ever he committed against the King I presume therefore to leave him to your Lordship's Mercy and Charity These soft words mollified Anger and Mr. Selden was Released by the next Pacquet that came from the Court in progress If the Stoics had been wise men truly the Lord-Keeper had been none for they pronounced with their Master Zeno in Laertius 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 That wise Men are not Pitiful But insooth there was never a greater Stickler then he to bring Afflicted Ones out of Durance and Misery when he could effect it by Power and Favour none that lent their hand more readily to raise up those that were cast down But if a Gentleman of Mr. Selden's merit were under the peril of Vindicative Justice he would stretch his whole Interest and cast his own Robe as it were to save him When he had brought him to Liberty he stay'd not there He perceived his Fortune in those days was not equal to his Learning therefore he conferred the Registership of the College of Westminster upon him not meaning to hinder his Growth with a Garment that was too little for him but he procured a Chapman that gave him 400 l. for his Right in the Place A Courtesie which Mr. Selden did never expect from the Giver and was repaid with more Duty and Love then the Giver could ever have expected from Mr. Selden And although that singular good Scholar Mr. Montagu did never agree with Mr. Selden as their Adverse and Polemical Writings about the Right of Tithes do evidence yet the Lord-Keeper made them both agree in his Favour and Patronage Which Mr. Montagu hath proclaimed abroad in his Treatise of Invocation of Saints Licensed for the Press with his Lordship 's own Hand in Right as he was his Visitor in the Colleges of Windsor and Eaton His Words may be found in the Epistle Dedicatory
and to raise divisions So they dealt now For they put a Paper into my Lord of Buckingham's hands to assist them for the Erection of Titulary Popish Praelates in this Kingdom A most Natural superfaetation with the motion whereof the Lord Marquess being amuzed he sent to the Lord Keeper for advice who damned the Project with these Reasons ensuing First it will set all the Kingdom on Fire and make his Majesty unable to continue those Favours and Connivencies to peaceable Recusants which he now most Graciously affords them Secondly It takes away from his Majesty an Hereditary Branch of the Crown which the Kings of this Land have ever enjoy'd even before the Conquest and hath never since the days of King John been so much as Challeng'd by any Pope to Wit the Investitures of Bishops Thirdly It is a far greater mischief in a State I mean in regard of the Temporal but not of the Spiritual good thereof then an absolute Toleration For a Toleration as we see in France doth so divide and distinguish Towns and Parishes that no place makes above one payment to their Church-men But this invisible Consistory shall be confusedly diffused over all the Kingdom that many of the Subjects shall to the intolerable exhausting of the Wealth of the Realm pay double Tithes double Offerings and double Fees in regard of their double Consistory And if Ireland be so poor as it is suggested I hold under Correction that this invisible Consistory is the principal cause of the exhausting thereof Fourthly If the Princes Match should go on this New Erected Consistory will put the the ensuing Parliament into such a Jealousie and Suspition that it is to be feared that they will shew themselves very untractable upon all propositions Fifthly For the Pope to place a Bishop in this Kingdom is against the Fundamental Law of the Land and the King will be held unjust and injurious to his Successors if to his utmost power he should not resist and punish This Draught was brought to the King who was glad such Pills were prepared to purge away the redundancy of the Catholic Encroachments And his Majesty gave Order to him who had confected them so well to Administer them with his best skill to the Spanish Embassador That they might work gently with him the Lord Keeper at his Visit made shew that he was startled at a heady motion that came from Savoy as he thought taking no notice of any Spanish Agent that had his Finger in it And besought his Excellency to send for the Savoyan and to wish him to throw aside his Advice for Titulary Bishops least it should hinder the King of Spain's desire in accomodating the Catholics with those Courtesies which had been granted which took so well with the Spanish Embassador his own indiscretion being not Taxt but the Folly laid at another Door that the motion sunk in the Mud and was seen no more I will add but one thing how distastful it was to him that the Papists should have so much as the shadow of a governing Church in this Realm taken out of a Letter Cabal pag. 81. Written to my Lord of Buckingham being then at Madrid dated Aug. 30. 1623. Doctor Bishop the New Bishop of Chalcedon is come to London privately and I am much troubled at it not knowing what to Advise his Majesty as things stand at this present If you were Shipped with the Infanta the only Counsel were to let the Judges proceed with him presently Hang him out of the way and the King to blame my Lord of Caterbury or my self for it Surely this doth not favour of addiction to the Purple-Hat or the Purple-Harlot Ovid. Nunquid ei hoe fallax Creta negare potes Nay it was a Pang rather then a Passion to the welfare of this Church which forc'd sentence of Blood out of his sweet and mi'ky Nature 106. Yet well fare those good Fellows that did not defame him for a Papist Much otherwise they charg'd him with a loud Slander and a long Breach for it continued in his days of Sorrow that he was a Puritan of what Colour Siâ—s Blew or Black Both these might he false so they were both could not be True David says of God's Servants whom he Tried as Silver is Tried in the Fire that they went through Fire and through Water Miseâ—ies of Repugnant Natures So Sometimes they pass through Defamations inconsistent and as contrary one to another as Fire and Water The Old Non conformists were call'd by the Nick Name of Puritans in Queen Elizabeth's days I know not who impos'd it first whether Parsons the Jesuit or some such Franion I know it grew not up like Wild Oats without Sowing But some Supercilious Divines a few years before the End of K. James his Reign began to Survey the Narrow way of the Church of England with no Eyes but their own and measuring a Right Protestant with their streight line discriminated as they thought fit sound from unsound so that scarce ten among a Thousand but were Noted to carry some Disguise of a Puritan The very Prelates were not free from it but Tantum non ni â—piscopatu Puritani became an Obloquy At the Session which these Arislarchusses held near to the Court in the Strand the Lord Keeper the most Circumspect of any Man alive to provide for Uniformity and to countenance it was scratch'd with their Obeliske that he favour'd Puritans and that sundâ—y of them had Protection through his Connivency or Clemency All the Quarrel in good Sooth was that their Eye was Evil because his was Good Such whom the Aemulous repin'd at as he cast it out himself were of two Ranks Some were of a very strict Life and a great deal more laborious in their Cure then their Obtrectators Far be it from him to love these the worse because they were Stigmatiz'd to the Offence of Religious and Just-men with a by word of Contumely Pacatus the Orator inveighed against it for a Rank impiety in his Panâ—g Quod Clarevati Matrorae objicicbatur atque 〈◊〉 exprobrabatur mulieri vi luae nimia Religio diligentius culta Divinitas I will lay it open in one particular The Lord Bishop of Norwich Dr. Harsnet a learned Prelate and a Wise Governour bate him perhaps a little roughness began to proceed in his Consistory against Mr. Samuel Ward a Famous Preacher in Ipswich who Appealed from the Bishop to the King And the King committed the Articles exhibited against him to be Examined by the Lord Keeper and by him to be Reported to his Majesty The Lord Keeper found Mr. Ward to be not altogether blameless but a Man to be won easily with fair dealing So he perswaded Bishop Harsnet to take his Submission and to continue him in his Lecture at Ipswich The Truth is he found so much Candor in Mr. Ward so much readiness to serve the Church of England in its present Establishment and made it so clearly appear that he had
of the King Now for your own private I make no question but I may say of you my Lord as one said of Coccius Nerva Foelicior longè quà m cum foelicissimus That you were greater a great deal in your own Contentment than now that you have worthily attained to all this Greatness But as in this World of Things every Element forsakes his Natural Disposition so as we many times see the Earth and Water evaporating upward and the Fire and Air darting downward ad conservationem universi as Philosophy speaks to preserve and maintain the common course So in this World of Men private Must give way to publick Respects Now if it be expected that I should say any thing for your Lordships Direction in this Great Office your Lordships Wisdom and my Ignorance will plead pardon though I omit it I will only say one word and that shall be the same which Pliny said to one Maximus appointed Questor that is Treasurer for Achaia Memenisse oportet Ossicii titulum Remember but your Name and you shall do well enough Your Lordship is appointed Lord Treasurer Take such Order in his Majesties Exchequer that your Lordship do not bear this Denomination and Title in vain and your Lordship shall be worthily honour'd for the happiest Subject in this Kingdom And surely as your Lordship hath the Prayers so you have the Hopes of all good Men that Si Pergama dextrâ defendi poterant If any Man living can improve the Kings Revenue with Skill and Diligence you are that good Husband And so I wish your Lordship as much Joy of your Place as the King and the State do conceive of your Lordship This was the Perfume which was cast upon the new Treasurer in his Robes of Instalment The King was pleased much in his Advancement For his Majesty had proved him with Questions and found that he was well studied in his Lands Customs in all the Profits of the Crown in Stating of Accompts And in the general Opinion the White-Staff was as fit for his Hand as if it been made for it The most that could be objected was that he was true to the King but gripple for himself A good Steward for the Exchequer but sower and unrelishing in Dispatch A better Treasurer than a Courtier There was nothing in appearance but Sun-shine and warm Affections between him and the Lord Keeper The Lord Treasurer I know well had cross'd the other in one or two Suits which had been beneficial to him and not drawn a Denier out of the Kings Purse He dealt so with every Man therefore the Sufferer gave little sign of Grievance It was not his Case alone Another Pick in which they agreed not I cannot say disagreed was about a Brood of Pullein which were never hatcht The last Parliament being dissolv'd it was well thought of by some of the Lords of the Council-Board to sweeten the ill relish which it had in some Palats with a Pardon of Grace that might extend to a fair Latitude for the ease of those that were question'd for old Debts and Duties to the Crown for concealed Wardships and not suing out Liveries and such charges of the like kind which put those that were secure in their Improvidence to a great deal of trouble and disanimated their best Friends for fear of such blind Claps to be their Executors When the Lord Keeper had brought this Pardon so near to his Birth that the Atturney-General was sent for to draw it up the Lord Treasurer mov'd That such as took out this Pardon should pay their Fees which are accustomed in that kind to such Officers as he should appoint that the Advantage might enrich the King and that himself might have that share which the Lord Chancellour us'd to have who put the Seal to those Pardon 's This was heard with a dry laughter and denied him But from thenceforth he struggled to correct the lusty Wine of the Pardon with so much Water that there was no comfort in it and falling short of that Grace which was expected was debated no more The Lord Keeper having obtein'd a good Report for the Conception of the Pardon and the Lord Treasurer a great deal of Envy for the Abortion it curdled in his Stomach into Choler and Mischief And wherefore was he angry with his Brother Abel Look what St. John answers 1 Epist Chap. 3. Vers 12. He endeavoured first to make a Faction in Court against the Lord Keeper and it would not hit because he had no Credit with the Great Ones Then he falls to Pen and Paper and spatters a little Foam draws up Ten What-do-you-call-Um's some of them are neither Charges of Misdemeanour nor Objections which were meant for Accusations but are most pitiful failings entramell'd with Fictions and Ignorance They are extant in the Cabal Pag. 72. which the Lord Keeper puts away as quietly as the Wind blows off the Thistle-Down Pusheth his Adversary down with his little Finger yet insults not upon his Weakness As Pliny writes to Sabin Lib. 9. Ep. Tunc praecipua mansuetudinis laus cum irae causa justissima est It was very laudable to be so mild when there was just cause given to be more angry Yet he complain'd by Letters to the Lord Marquiss as if he were sensible of the despite and unto him was very loud in his own Justification From whom he got no more remedy but that his Adversary was not believ'd And was will'd to consider that he dealt with one whose ill Manners would not pay him Satisfaction for an Injury Unto which the Lord Keeper rejoyn'd to the Lord Marquiss His Majesties Justice and your Lordships Love are Anchors strong enough for a Mind more tost than mine is to ride at Yet pardon me my Noble Lord upon this Consideration if I exceed a little in Passion the Natural Effect of Honesty and Innocency A Church-man and a Woman have no greater Idol under Heav'n than their Good Name And they cannot Fight nor with Credit Scold and least of all Recriminate to Protect and Defend the same The only Revenge left them is to grieve and complain Then he concludes Whom I will either Challenge before his Majesty to make good his Suggestions or else which I hold the greater Valour and which I wanted I confess before this Check of your Lordships go on in my course and scorn all these base and unworthy Scandals as your Lordship shall direct me What need more be said In the space of a Month they wrangled themselves into very good Friends and the Lord Keeper was Gossip to the next Child that was born to the Treasurer As Nazianzen says of Athanasius Encom p. 21. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 There was the Condition of two kinds of Stones in his Nature that are much commended He was an Adamant to them that smote him found and firm and would never break But a Loadstone to draw them to him that discorded with him though they were as hard as
up the greatest part of the Time in speaking to the Redress of petty Grievances like Spaniels that rett after Larks and Sparrows in the Field and pass over the best Game Therefore his Majesty to loose no time drew up a Proclamation with his own Pen Feb. 20 to this end that certain of the Lords of the Privy Council should have Power and special Commission to receive the Complaints of all the good People of this Land which should be brought before them concerning any Exorbitances Vexations Oppressions and Illegalities and either by their own Authority if it would reach to it to see them corrected or to give Orders to cut them off by the keenest Edge of the Laws That Complainants should be encouraged to present their Grievances as well by the Invitement of the Proclamation as by the Signification of the Judges to the Country and Grand Juries in their respective Circuits The Draught of this the Features of his Majesty's own Brain came by Post to pass the Great Seal Yet for all that Hast the Lord Keeper took time to scan it and sent it back with Advice that the Project would be sweeter if it were double refined presuming therefore that his Majesty would not be unwilling to stop a little at the Bar of good Counsel he wrote this ensuing Letter to the Court Feb. 22. May it please Your most Excellent Majesty 120. I Do humbly crave Your Majesties Pardon that I forbear for two or three days to seal Your Proclamation for Grievances until I have presented to Your Majesty this little Remonstrance which would come too late after the Sealing and Divulging the Proclamation First As it is now coming forth it is generally misconstrued and a little sadly look'd upon by all men as somewhat restreining rather than enlarging Your Majesties former Care and Providence over Your Subjects For whereas before they had a standing Committee of all the Council-Table to repair unto they are now streitned to four or five only Most of which number are not likely to have any leisure to attend the Service Secondly I did conceive Your Majesty upon Your first Royal Expression of Your Grace in this kind in a Resolution to have mingled with some few Lords of Your Privy-Council some other Barons of Your Kingdom Homines as Pliny said of Virginius Rufus innoxiè Populares Whose Ears had been so opened to the like Grievances in the time of Parliament as their Tongues notwithstanding kept themselves within the compass of Duty and due Respect to Your Majesty as the Earls of Dorset and Warwick the Lord Houghton Dr. Morton the Lord Dennie the Lord Russel the Lord North. And among the Lords Spiritual the Bishops of Lichfield Rochester and Ely and especially unless Tour Majesty in Your deep Wisdom have some Reasons of the Omission Dr. Buckeridge the Lord Arch-Bishop of Canterbury This mixture would produce the these Effects ensuing First An Intimation of Your Majesties Sincerity and Reality in this Proclamation Dr. Felton Secondly A more free and general Intimation to Parties Aggrieved who will repair soonear to these private Peers then to the great Lords of Your Majesties Council Thirdly The making of these Lords and the like Witnesses of Your Majesties Justice and good Government against the next ensuing Parliament and the stopping of their Ears against such supposed Grievances at that time as shall never be heard of in their Sitting upon this Commission Fourthly and Lastly The gaining of these Temporal Lords to side with the State being formerly much wrought upon by the Factious and Discontented If Your Majesty shall approve of these Reasons it is but to Command Your Secretary to interline these or some of these Names in the Commission which in all other respects is already wisely and exceeding well penn'd with two short Clauses only First That these Lords shall attend very carefully and constantly in Term-time when they are occasion'd to be at London Secondly That they be instructed to receive all Complaints with much Civility and Encouragement giving them full Content and Redress according to the merit of their Grievances For nothing will sooner break the Heart of a People or make them lose their Patience than when hopes of Justice are frustrated after the Royal Word is engaged But if Your Majesty in Your high Wisdom will overpass these Particulars which I have dutifully presented upon the return of the Proclamation as it is it shall be sealed and divulged with all expedition But these Reasons were not overpass'd Both the Proclamation and private Orders to the Lords Commissioners were reformed by the Contents of that weighty Letter His Majesty greatly inclining to the Lord-Keeper's Readiness and espying Judgment in all Consultations For as Laertius in Zeno's Life said of a famous Musician 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 That Ismenias could play well upon all Instruments So this was another Ismenias who had the Felicity to make all Deliberations pleasing and tuneable especially he had that way above all that I knew to make sweet Descant upon any plain Song that was prick'd before him It will be to the Profit of the Reader if I rub his memory with one Passage of the Letter for it is but one though it come in twice which presseth the King to Sincerity and Reality to fix his Word like the Center of Justice that cannot be moved Righteous Lips are the delight of Kings Prov. 16.23 And a King of Righteous Lips is most delightful Since the coercitive part of the Law doth not reach him upon what Nail shall those Millions that stand before his Throne hang their Hopes if his Word do not bind him A People that cannot give Faith to their Sovereign will never pay him Love It seems that the ancient Latin Kings did profess to use Crookedness and Windings of Dissimulation in their Polity therefore their Scepter was called Lituus because it bent in toward the upper end But the Scepter of thy Kingdom says David of GOD is a right Scepter A right one indeed For Contracts and Promises bind God to Man much more must they oblige the King to his People An Author of our own Dr. Duck in his very Learned Treatise De usu Juris Civilis p. 44. hath well delivered this Morality Princeps ad contractum tenetur uti privatus nec potest contractum suum rescindere ex plenitudine potestatis cum maximè in eo requiratur bena sides Falshood is Shop-keepers Language or worse but 't is beneath Majesty 121. A Parliament being not far of either in the King's Purpose or in Prospect of Likelihood Serj Crooke Cvew Finch Damport Bramston Bridgman Crawly Headly Thin 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Authurst Blng. Dâ—y the Lord Keeper was provident that the Worthies of the Law should be well entreated Their Learning being most comprehensive of Civil Causes and Affairs they had ever a great Stroke in that Honorable Council Therefore he wrought with his Majesty to sign a Writ for the Advancement of some
same Trust to him for this and he shall not fail After he had parted from the King so deeply Charm'd to bestir his Wits in this Negotiation he was as Active as one could be that had little to work upon The Prince and his Paranymphus the Marquess had wrote some Letters upon the way how far they had proceeded in their Journey But the Buen Message that they were come to the Cape of Good-Hope in the City of Madrid was not yet brought to the City of London where the conflux at this time was very populous their Errand being to hearken after News And the particulars they long'd to hear of were these Whether His Highness were Arrived at the Court in Spain When he would return again their Honest Affections ran too fast to look for that so soon Whether he were not Tamper'd withal to alter his Religion And some were so reasonable and well pleas'd some were not to ask Whether he were Married and would bring his Bride with him for hope of Future Issue As much Satisfaction was given to these Scruples from the Lord Marquess by the First Post that Arrived here as could be expected in so short a time as he had spent abroad Of which more in due time But before his Lordship 's came the Lord Keeper wrote again and again unto him to Assist the main business and to pour in such Counsels into his Lordship's Breast as keeping close unto them he might promise himself more Grace with the King and Commendation with the Subject Philosophers who wrote the Practices of a Good life agree That unfeigned Love doth Justifie it self in three Probations or in either of them when it is Faithful to a dead Friend who shall never know it or to a Friend undone in misery who cannot requite it or to an Absent Friend who doth not perceive it As none that have Faith and Candor will wish to declare their sincerity in the two former Experiments so neither will they fail in the opportunity of the latter 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 says Antient Thales in Laertius Remember your Friends as well far of as near you And in Rome says Lil. Giraldus These two Adverbs were Written under the Image of Friendship Longe Prope Be as Officious nay more to your Friend remote from you as when you are hand in hand together I have drawn out the Lord Keeper's Observance to his Raiser my Lord of Buckingham with this Pensil of Morality It would be tedious to fill up Leaves with those copious and punctual Relations which he wrote to his Lordship of all Agitations in the Court of Suits preferred to the King and how far he went about to stop them all till his Pleasure was signified in the next Return That which comes to the Institute I handle was thus Endicted bearing Date Marth 31. My most Noble Lord I Do humbly thank your Lordship for your Letter and all other your loving Remembrances of me by the last Packet It hath much revived me to hear of your Lordship's good Speed so far I was Yesterday with His Majesty the first time I saw his Face since your Lordship's Departure to know his Opinion of this Letter to the Count Gondamar which I send enclosed to stir him up to consummate the Marriage His Majesty lik'd it exceeding well yet I have sent it opened that if your Lordship and my Lord of Bristow who are upon the Place shall not allow thereof it may be suppressed Truly the Reasons are no Colours but very real that if new and tart Propositions sent from Rome occasioned by the Possession they have of his Highness's Person should protract this Marriage the Prince is in great danger to suffer exceedingly in the Hearts and Affections of the People here at Home and your Lordship sure enough to share in the Obloquies Better Service I cannot do the Prince and your Lordship than to thrust on the Ministers of the King of Spain with the best Enforcements of my Judgment who if they dead this Business with a Calm it is almost as bad as a cross Gale But my Lord I will not fail to continue as faithful to your Lordship as to mine own Soul Which to do at this time is not thanks-worthy his Majesty being so constant or rather so augmented in his Affections towards you as all your Servants are extraordinarily comforted therewith and the rest struck dumb and silenced But if any Storm which God will keep off had appeared your Lordship should have found a Difference between a Church-man and others who hath nothing to regard in this World but to serve God and to be constant to his Friend all the rest being but Trash to him who can confine his utmost Desires to a Book and a little Chamber But God Almighty never imparted unto you a greater Share of his Majesty's Affections that at this Time 131. This went by Sir J. Epsley After whom within three days Sir George Goring followed who was stay'd till April the 3d the next day after the joyful Packet came that his Highness saw Madrid by the 7th of March in our Stile and came thither in Health and good Plight after so much Travel by Day and Night so much hard Lodging such slender Fare in base Village-Osteria's Away went Sir George I said with Alacrity the next Day and carried these Lines to my Lord of Buckingham from the Lord Keeper My most Noble Lord IN Obedience to your Commands which I humbly thank your Lordship for I do write by this Bearer yet no more than what I have have written lately by Sir John Epsley All things stand here very firmly and well which may concern your Lordship only the Great Seal walks somewhat faster than usual which is an Argument that it was not my Lord of Buckingham only that set it a going We hear the Affairs proceed well where your Lordship is And here is conceived generally Great Joy and Acclamation for the brave Entertainment that the Prince hath received which the People did yester-night very chearfully express by Bon-fires and Bells only the Consummation of the Matrimony is wanting to consummate our Joys Yet the People spread it abroad upon sight of the Bonfires that all is perfected As they do also speak of your Lordship's Dukedom a Title which will well become both your Person and Employment The Patent whereof I believe the King will shortly send to you to testifie his Joy and to gratifie your Service But my Lord I am still against the Opinion of many wiser Men averse to your Lordship's Return hither as desirous as I am to enjoy your Lordships Presence untill you either see the Prince ready for his Return or that you may bring him along with you I have sent another Letter to my Lord Gondamar to be delivered or suppressed as your Lordship shall please to let him know by my Expostulations falling so thick upon him what is behoveful to be done If they make us stay their leisure
and ever owing Thanks to your Grace The Dispensation is come and with it good Tidings that your Carriage hitherto hath been so discreet and the Event so fortunate that our Master is wonderfully pleas'd But we were formerly never so desirous to see that Box that carries this Dispensation than we are now to open it and to know by reading the same what God hath sent us We all wonder at his Majesties Reservedness for it came hither on Saturday last this Day sevennight But his Majesty hath enjoyned Mr. Secretary Calvert silence therein And I believe for my part at the least that Mr. Secretary hath perform'd his Commandment We all think and the Town speak and talk of the worst and of very difficult Conditions My dear Lord You have so lock'd up all things in your own Breast and sealed up his Majesties that now our very Conjectures for more they were not are altogether prevented If things succeed well this course is best if otherwise I conceive it very dangerous But it were a great Folly to offer any Advice unto you who only know what you transact in your own Cabinet How then shall I fill up this Letter To certifie this only that all Discontents are well appeased and will so remain without doubt as long as Businesses continue successful But if they should decline I am afraid the former Disgusts of your appropriating this Service will soon be resumed And then how dangerous it is to leave your Friends ignorant of your Affairs and disabled to serve you I refer to your Graces Wisdom and Consideration I do believe none of us all would keep your Counsel without a Charge to do so this keeping Counsel is a thing so out of fashion nor reveal it if it be otherwise required c. The Lord Keeper in this Letter miss'd the true Cause why his Majesty did not yet impart a sight of the Dispensation to any of his Counsellors The reason was because it came to him in a private Packet And he expected it to be deliver'd to him as it ought by Publick Ministers the Ambassadors of the King of Spain who kept it dormant about a Fortnight in their Hands whether it proceeded from their Native Gravida to retein that long in their Stomach which needed no Concoction or to listen what the many-headed Multitude would say in London or out of some other State-juggling As I have laid forth in this what was mistaken by the L. Keeper out of his own Memorials preserv'd So in another Line he hazarded his Love to be ill taken representing to the Duke the Truth That the King did somewhat disgust his appropriating the whole Service to himself that is repulsing the Earl of Bristol or restreining him to silence where their Counsels were held I know not whether the Duke did so soon regret at this for it is the first time and 't is well plaister'd over with mild Counsel So Statuaries says Plutarch do not only hew and peck the Alabaster upon which they work but smooth it likewise which is the neatest part of their Cunning. By another Letter from the same Hand dated near to the former May 11. I perceive that the Duke our Lord Admiral demanded the Navy Royal to be made ready and to be sent to the Coast of Spain to conduct the Prince and his Followers Home Which the King gave order to be done But the Lord Keeper wrote to his Grace if it were not with the soonest the main Matter not grown yet to any colour of ripeness That the Charge would be very heavy to the Exchequer Such a Fleet must be costly to be set forth but far more costly to be kept long abroad As for Cost it was the least thing that was thought upon It was no time for Frugality The Stratagem was to have the Navy lie ready at Anchor in some safe distance from the Spanish Havens That if the Prince could recover no Satisfaction to reasonable Demands from stiff Olivarez and other Grandees Or if they persisted to burden the Match with insupportable Conditions his Highness after a short Complement might take his leave and have all things prepar'd at a Days warning if the Wind serv'd for his Reduction into England With this Fleet some precious Ware never seen no nor heard of in Spain before at least among the Laicks was transported thither the Liturgy of our Church translated into the Spanish Tongue and fairly printed by the Procurement and Cost of the Lord Keeper The Translator was John Taxeda the Author of the Treatise call'd Hispanus Conversus a good Scholar once a Dominican whom his Patron that set him on work secured to our Church with a Benefice and good Prebend He studied this Translation Day and Night till it was ended He that writes this was often at his Elbow to communicate with him when he put Questions how to proceed But the Lord Keeper himself with other Overseers that had perfectly learn'd the Castilian Language perus'd it faithfully and if there were not aptness in any phrase corrected it With his Majesties Privity and great Approbation two Copies of it were carried Religious Tokens the one to his Highness the other to my Lord Duke as the best and most undeniable Certificate that a particular Church can shew to vindicate the right Profession of their Faith from all Scandals and to declare their Piety in all Christ's Ordinances squared and practis'd by a publick Rule after the Beauty of Holiness A Book of Common-Prayer which all call a Liturgie is suitable to the Form of good Churches in all Ages reduceth us to good Notions from wandring Extravagancies preserves Harmonious Conformity between all the Daughter-Churches that are called from one Mother in one Realm or State It is our Witness to assoil us when we are spitefully charg'd with Errours so Chamieras Gerardus Camero Spanhemius Amyraldus and divers more the best of Modern Writers in defence of the Reformed way draw their second Rank of Arguments next to the Sacred Scriptures out of their Liturgies to justifie their Tenents Finally with this Office of Divine Worship he that celebrates Gods Service is ready at all times to offer up to God the Sacrifice of Prayer when some perhaps at some times are affected with Languor of Health and then not so sit to speak suddenly to God in the behalf of the People and when the most have Infirmity of Judgment and are unsit at all times Beshrew the Tettar of Pride that runs over many Wits and makes them care for nothing that 's made ready to their Hand and puts them in love with nothing but their own Conceptions What have we lost Nay What hath God lost in the Honour due unto him How is his Truth How is his Name How is his Glory dis-reverenced over all this Land since our Liturgie hath been Mortgag'd to the Directory 139. It would be remembred that this comes in upon the mention of the Fleet call'd for and hastned to weigh Anchor
by K. Philips Servants and too little by the Servants of his own Master Finally our English and Irish Papists who fill'd the Courts of Rome and Spain with Narratives of their grievous Persecutions which they did only fear and Petitions to conditionate the Match with their mitigation These were the main Sticklers to do a real mischief only to satisfie a Fantastical Jealousie The Tears of their Lamentation dropt upon the Popes tender heart so that to comply with them many a bitter Kernel was in the Core of the dispensation And I have Reason to suspect they were some Grains the worse that the French employ'd at Rome at that time did the worst Offices they could as the Lord Herbert our Kings Embassador in France wrote hither Cabal pag. 301. Those of the King of France's Councel at Rome will use all the means they can to the Pope in whom they pretend to have very particular Interest not only to interrupt but to break Your Majesties Alliance with Spain Many Rattle-Heads as well as they did bestir them to gain-stand this Match But as Pliny said in his Age Nat. Hist l. 29. So may I in our time Ingenicrum Italiae slata impellimur the Italian Wits are they that will take it in scorn if they bear not all before them For Example in this Dispensation How acute they thought themselves in their Policy and how Imperious I am sure they were in their Arrogancy It came to the Nuncio Residing at Madrid in April who was commanded to observe this Form in the Delivery That it should not be Open'd and Communicated before the King of Spain did take an Oath to be a Surely That the King of England should really perform all things required therein or if he fail'd in such performance or in any of them then the King of Spain with all his might and Power to take Arms against him What Though the Italians are so Witty for their own part do they suppose all people beside are fallen into a strong Delirium Had they cast our Water so ill to think us so Weak that before one Article was Publish'd or known we would be beholding to Sureties to undertake for us Or that we would submit to all with indefinite and undiscoursed Obedience It hapned fortunately that the Lord Keeper had dealt before with Mr. George Gage a full Romanist in Religion but a Faithful Subject to his King to be diligent in the Court of Rome and to spare no Cost upon his Purse to get a Copy of the Articles as soon as the Dispensation was Bulled and to send them under hand by the greatest speed to the Prince In which Mr. Gage did not fail 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 A Golden Key will open the strongest Lock in the Gates of Hell By this Providence his Highness knew what it was the Nuncio held so close in his Fist as soon as himself Yet took no Notice as if he had seen particulars but as if at adventure bad him suspend the Delivery of the Powers as long as he would for he knew that his Father would fly from that Offer That the King of Spain should Engage for him because his Majesties Conscience and his Writings divulg'd as far as Learning reach'd would not permit him to Subject himself to the Popes Propositions which he had no Authority to obtrude upon Free Princes no nor upon any Man â—ut of the Verge of his Suburbicary Jurisdiction So much Gâ—ndamar could have told them one that fate in the Spanish Junto out of the Lord Keepers Letter for it is his though his Name is omitted Cab. p 236. in these Remarkable Words His Majesty hopes that you are not Ignorant that the Treaty is between Him and your Master He hath no Treaty with Rome neither lies it in his way to dispute with them upon this Question It troubled the Nuncio that the Peremptory Clause which the Dispensation brought with it was thus slighted and it would keep stale no longer business was in such Haste Therefore they come to those who were our Princes employ'd Councellors to require of them to give their best help to rowl away this Stone which was the main Obstruction On our Part therefore we ask'd two Questions First Whether King Philip could take such an Oath for another King Guardians may take Oaths in the behalf of Minors whom they Govern'd for it was in their Power and it lay upon their Charge to perform that which they swore for Minors till they came to Age. We had heard of some who were wont in some places that procured the Causes of their Clients in Civil Courts to take an Oath in Animam Domini sui vel in Animam constituentis but such as Weighed Religion more by Conscience then by Custom detested it For who can Swear before God to oblige the Soul of another Since an Oath must be taken in Judgment as well as in Truth Jerem. 4.2 The Spaniards were be-gruntled with these Scruples And their Recourse was to a Convention of their soundest Divines to deliver their sentence upon it who walk'd as slowly and gingerly as if they had been founder'd They toss'd over Books they search into the Code the Casuists and Canonists Read tedious Lectures and cast up a Trench of a hundred Scruples to Besiege this little Question The Prince whose Humanity and Wisely-Govern'd Temper was admir'd of all took the wast of time that these Divines made in great Offence Now was the first time that he spake that unkind Word to Olivares That he was Wrong'd and wish'd himself in his own Court again Olivares Chased as fast that their Fatherhoods with their Mountains of Learning sate so long to bring forth a Mouse and blamed himself as it was reported in our Parl. Anno 1624. That the Devil put it into his mind to call that Assembly For all this the Divines would be known in their Place and would not break up their meeting till they had Resolv'd after twenty days what they determined to Conclude from the first hour That King Philip might take the Oath wherein yet we gained thus much on our part that a Point which was Resolved by the Pope and his Conclave subscribed by them all Committed to the Nuncio to be Advanced with St. Peters Authority might be disputed twenty days by a Chapter of private Divines Let them sit twenty days more to satisfie us whether it were good Theology or good manners to serve him so whose decisions they say are inerrable When the Grave Doctors of Salamanca had acquitted themselves so learnedly his Highness's Ministers moved another Question Whether King Philip would take the Oath as Procurator for our King who nor requir'd it nor was privy to any thing that was stuff'd into the Procuration To which a present Answer was given and no bad one it could not be Resolved before the Spanish Counsel saw how far our Prince and his Counsel would yield in points of Religion And how can we tell you that said
Opinion with his Highness and now a very fair and favourable Aspect from my Royal Master May I never enjoy the one or the other any longer than I shall return them both to their first Orignal and employ them to the last Drap in your Grace's Service Having not yet spoken with Sir Francis Cottington I shall not deliver my Opinion of the State of your Negotiation but go on with my Baeds and pray still unto God to bless and prosper it Only we have here many odd Relations of the same agreeing in this That the grand Business is much short of the Forwardness we expected and at this time in part dis-joynted First Some Distasts between your Lordship and Count d'Olivarez are reported to be of late in some sort skinned over rather than healed 2. Your casting of the Earl of Bristol from all Employment before suspected only is now freely discoursed 3. That Porter drew on your Grace and that your Grace drew on the Prince and pressed the King's Assent unto this secret Voyage and all upon a Foundation either imagined or mis-apprehended by Porter the first Mover Upon these Suspitions and five Weeks Silence taking a little Advice with my Lord Hamilton whom I observed most faithfully constant unto your Grace I touched upon his Majesty this Day Seven-night to feel how his Majesty stood affected in case you should return without your Errand And taking occasion to recommend that vigorous and active Course your Lordship was reported to run in pressing and forcing some speedy Resolution and averring that however it sped it was the only true Service an Agent could now do unto his Majesty His Majesty replied instantly That he did so interpret it and that none bat Fools or Knaves could otherwise censure it Which I profess before God I was glad at the Heart to hear fall from his Majesty And your Grace may do well to keep this Intelligence by you If I have offended in being thus bold I crave your Pardon it was the fervency of my Love and Affection And if I offend in the other Extream which is in omitting to say or do what I ought to do in your Service impute it to your own Silence and Reservedness your Grace being defective to your self and injurious to my Lord Hamilton and me if you shall not impart unto us freely and timely any ill Success which Good keep off that shall befall in this Negotiation For the good News I am content to take it upon Retail from Pauls but the worst I shall expect to hear at the first from your Grace I beseech your Lordship to take some Occasion to salute in a Letter to my Lord President the Lords of the Council who have ever been very observant in publick of you and yours and are much dejected with notice of some Letters wherein your Grace should intimate the contrary In good Faith your Grace hath found all Respect with the Body of the Council in all this time of your Absence And I hambly beseech you to take heed what Words you let fall concerning the Lord Treasurer All that are about you stand in need of his Favour as the World now goeth And in good Faith I never observ'd him since his coming to this Office more respectful to your Lordship and your Friends than he is at this Instant c. Truly no Proceeding could be more genteel to win the Hearts of all the Great Ones to his Grace and to keep them sure unto him than to perswade him that he had no Enemy 146. The Latter of the two Letters is come abroad in Cab. P. 78. whose Date should be June 28 whereof because it is in many Hands some Jaggs will suffice to be recited MY Love makes me sometimes write and many times fear fondly and foolishly for the which I hope your Grace will pardon me I have been srighted more three Weeks since about Quarrels and Jars which now Dick Greyham hath related in part to the King than at this present I am For God's-sake be not offended with me if I exhort you to do that which I know you do to observe his Highness with all Lowliness Humility and dutiful Obedience and to piece up the least Seam rent which Heat and Earnestness may peradventure seem to produce If the great Negotiation be well concluded let all private Disagreements be wrapped up in the same and never accompany your Lordship into England I beseech you in your Letter to the Marquess Hamilton intimate unto him your Considence and Reliance upon his Watchfulness and Fidelity in all Turns which may concern your Grace I have often said unto his Lordship that your Grace hath in many of my Letters expressed as much and so have pacified him for the time I have had an hours Discourse with his Majesty yesterday Morning and do find so disposed to yourdship as my Heart desireth yet hath been informed of the Discontentments both with the Conde d'Olivarez and the Earl of Bristol c. 'T is confest that these Advertisements so dutifully presented were sullenly taken It offended that the Lord Keeper look'd through his Grace's Infirmities with a quick Eye though with a noble Sadness He might have wrote somewhat else if he had been less Wise or less Honest Yet still he wrote for the Valuation of the Duke's Goodness to him was so great that the Sowerness of present Unkindness must be dipt in the sweet Sawce of former Benefits It is intoninus the Emp. Similitude cast Dirt into a pure Fountain 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 it will purge it out and supply clear and wholesome Water Immemiately before that is while the former of these Letters was upon the Way the Duke entrusted the Prince's greatest Secret and his own to the Lord Keeper with a Charge to carry it with him to the King being cautious that no Foot-step of it should remain under his own Hand or any other Therefore thus he salutes the Lord Keeper June 17. My Dear Lord THIS inclosed is a Letter from his Highness to His Majesty I pray you deliver it with your own Hands and read it likewise to him but when you are alone with him If you show him this Letter he will I am sure give you leave When it is read the Prince bids you either burn it or keep it for him I beseech you excuse me for not writing oftner I shall now every day be so busie that I shall have less Leisure than before Yet I pray you let me hear sometimes from you and how his Majesty uses you in my Absence for I am sure he knows you my Friend which I shall strive while I live to continue c. That which was sit to be kept in tenebris for that time may now come to light without Injury by his Gloss upon it who the King excepted only knew it Our Prince either was weary or was perswaded to be so with Articles upon Articles and Additions upon Additions in that Spanish Junto Therefore
Bridegroom from France In Anglià optimi cujusque animum ab Andini nuptiis esse aversum In the behalf of the Spanish Consulto did some of our Counsellors become odious as if they betray'd both Church and Kingdom so all that wished the Queen to the French Gallant Quasi ingrati in patriam principem sugillantur Camb. An. 1581. All as like as may be Mercury is as like Sosia as Sosia is like himself And the People are like themselves in all Ages who commonly suspect some Evil from their Governours when they will be wiser than they So that it is very rare to look to the Publick as it ought and to be in Possession of most Hearts but as Tul. Orat. pro Flacco said of a mutinous Concourse of the Trallians Patiamini me delicta vulgi à publicâ causà separare So I think not the worse of any Place if the Herd of the People break further than good Manners and Obedience They know not how to Rule nor is it fit they should know how they are Rul'd For they have Noses and smell not The Wisdom of a Kingdom is to be valued after it is calcinated from the Opinion of the multitude 149. Which presently is to be Tried For the Articles gain-said by a great Out-cry came to the Touch-Stone July 20. being Sunday and were presented before to His Majesty to Swear unto and to the Lords of the Council to subscribe their Approbation which were of two sorts Some belong'd to the Infanta and her Train of Houshold and no further Some belong'd to all the English that had taken the Mark of the Church of Rome in their Hand Of the former three and no more did seem to be Litigious First That the Princessa and her Servants should enjoy the Use of their own Religion without Trouble or Molestation and a Chappel to be built adjoyning to her Court for the more full and decent Exercise of it which held little dispute for the provident Councel of Q. Eliz. made no scruple to consent to the like in express Words Dux sui modo non sint Nativi Angliae Subjecti suam liberi Religionem exerceant in constituto aliquo loco in suis aedibus sine impedimento so the Foundation was laid of the Chappel adjoyning to St. James's place Secondly That the Princessa should be trusted with the Education of the Children lawfully begotten between them till they came to Ten Years of Age. A string that grated harshly yet heard by Wise-men with more Laughter then Fear For Childhood is not apt to take any perilous impression in intellectual Points and they would be often with the Father and those about him and unlearn corrupt Principles Chiefly it was foreseen that it was a Gratification that would die out of it self and expire in process of so long a time And in all Councils much must be ascrib'd to the Foresight of Prudence as Nepos says in the Life of Atticus Facile intelligi potest prudentiam esse quandam Divinationom Prudence sees so far before it that it comes not short of a kind of Divination Much more was allow'd to the Duke of Anjoy in the page Appealed to before Camb. anno 1558. p. 320. Si Dux supervixeru Roginae habebit tutelam liberorum si masculi non excesserint decimum Octavum Annum feminae decimum quintum I think those Counsellors ran too far into Temptation I am sure we were far more Cautelous and Restrictive Thirdly That the Clergy waiting upon the Princessa should be subject to no Laws or Statutes of England already made or that should be made hereafter Methinks no Honest man that lives in Humane Society should ask such an Immunity though it were possible to be Granted Yet their Clerks do not ask it but Arrogate it So Bellar. lib. 1. de Cler. c. 18. Clericks are not under the Laws of secular Princes by Obligation compulsory but directory That is they do well to conform to the Establish'd Laws of any Nation where they live for the maintenance of Peace and usual Commerce But if it seems better to them to avoid those Laws and not observe them they cannot be punish'd by no nor cited to the Courts of Secular Magistrates This Article K. James eraced out not only by his own but by St. Paul's Authority Rom. 13. Let every Soul be Subject to the Higher Powers to those Higher Powers that Receive Tribute and bear not the Sword in vain if any do Evil. Herein I commend the States of the Netherlands for that which I find in a Book call'd The Revolutions of the United Provinces p. 175. A Peace but few years since being brought to Conclusion between them and the King of Spain they agree that the Subjects of the King of Spain may Converse and Negotiate in all their Territories but with an express Prohibition of all Ecclesiastical Persons for the Plenipotentiary of the King of Spain maintain'd in a great Diet held at Munster that they were none of the K. of Spains Subjects or Subject to any Secular Power but only to the Pope of Rome A good work to thrust them out for Wranglers as our King thrust out this Article All Concessions that were thought Honourable and needful for the Infanta being pass'd over a contract steps forth in the behalf of all those in these Dominions that were of her Highness's Religion meaning so much and no more as was to be presently put in use It is almost not credible what strange Rumors ignorant Fear or perhaps malicious had buzz'd abroad That some of our fairest Churches Parochical nay Cathedral must be devoted to Assemblies of Papists for their Publick Use That Cloysters for Votaries Male and Female should be Erected c. Mensuraque Ficti Crescit audit is aliquid novus adjicit autor Ovid. The Demands were bad enough yet much under that presumption As they came from the Embassadors they were comprized under two Heads The First That a general Pardon should pass under the Great-Seal for the benefit of all Papists in this Land to acquit them from the Penalties of such Statutes as might take hold of them for the time past in case of Religion To which good words were given and after many Rubs and Reservations as shall be shewn the Seal was put to an Instrument for that purpose but kept in Lavender The other was the Gorgon's Head which Frighted the Lookers on that a Patent should be drawn up copiously with the same Seal to it to save the Recusants Ecclesiastical and Lay from the Penalties of all Statutes made against them for the time to come This is the Star call'd Wormwood that fell into the Waters of Debate Revel 8.11 Wherein the Spanish Agents were put off with many Delays and Wise Representations till in the End the Lord Keeper reduced it to this Issue That all Magistrates should be warned by Letters sent to them severally not to molest the Roman Catholicks upon any Statute till His Majesty
had signified his further pleasure and that when the Princessa had been Six Months in England this Favour should be confirmed to her further Content The like was not yielded in the business Agitated with the Duke of Anjoy but a strict Exception was put in Ut nulla Occasio Anglis ad leges constitut as violandas praeberetur It was an ill time for the Embassadors to ask such things when not only seditious Spirits but the best of Protestants who had nothing in them of the peevish and refractory were sick of an ill Digestion of Jealousies It was a hard seeming work to overcome for the Ravens Croak'd and the Doves mourned at it Yet it was a worse time to deny them when the Pledge of our Future Happiness stuck fast in a Foreign Kingdom and nothing could Conduct him home with such Celerity and Safety as some drops of Grace Distilling from the Prerogative Royal to stay the longing of the Pontifician Faction They are beguiled that think Marquess Inoihosa or 〈◊〉 Carlos de Colonna pluck'd us over our Line to get a Wife for the Prince it was to get him home Jam non de Gloriâ sed de Salate pugnandum est Curt. lib. 4. Let his Highness look to it in Spain to come home with a Glorious Bride but all Loyal Hearts look earnestly for him whether single or double was not the Chief Point And the Anxiety of his Majesty was What shall I do for my Son 1 Sam. 10.2 This was the Compass that guided the Lords of the Councel in their condescension to bring their young Master out of Peril though it were with the Ransom of too much Mercy to them who were not the best that deserv'd it But who it was that set the Edge of the Razor upon the Hoane who it was that surpass'd himself in this Negotiation that cut off difficulties smoothly leaving no Raggedness to be seen in the Clest of his distinctions will appear in the ensuing dispatch of the Lord Keepers to the Prince whose goodness will satisfie for the Prolixity May it please your Highness 150. IF I shall touch upon any Service which I may seem to have performed towards Your Higness I humbly beseech your Highness to conceive I do it not to pick Thanks and much less to put any acknowledgment upon your Highness but only to discharge my self of that part of Duty which all the World knoweth I do above all Men in the World owe unto your Highness Before I did imagine that his Majesty would take any Opinion of mine in the Signing and Swearing of this Treaty Sir Fr. Cottington your most worthy Servant had acquainted me with all the dispatch and permitted me to Read the Papers over Upon Saturday last the 12 of July the Council formerly warned to attend his Majesty the next day at Wansted were discharged and some hour after my self commanded to attend Suspecting thereupon I might be questioned to that Effect I sent for your Highness Secretary and heard from him it would be so indeed and that His Majesty was much troubled and perplex'd about his Oaths Presently Town-Reports were Raised of great Opposition among the Lords against this Swearing In so much as the shameless people had made two Orations the one to be of mine for the Oaths and the other of my Lord of Canterbury's against the same which they supposed prevailed with the King and the whole Councel when neither of us had heard or spoken one word in that Theme I spent in a manner all that Night in debating with my self the Streights that your Highness was unto and at the last fell upon this Resolution contained in this Letter which I deliver'd upon Sunday Morning in private to his Majesty with an excuse for my Boldness therein His Majesty accepted thereof very well and Read it over three or four times that day and seemed to me at that time to approve thereof in all Points and put off further Discourse till the Afternoon I was so far emboldned therewith that after Dinner because I found some whispring among the Lords present I stept again to His Majesty and deliver'd him an Opinion that for the Oath of the Lords his Majesty should not leave it to their Disputation but command them to take 〈◊〉 there being no matter of scruple or moment in the same as indeed there is not This his Majesty well approved of and put in practise afterward with good success The Council being met whereof some were there by Reason of their Attendance as my Lord Chamberlain Earl of Carlisle Lord Fenton and Mr. Treasurer others warned as the Duke Lord Treasurer Lord Marshal my self Sir R. Weston and the two Secretaries his Majesty made a Speech unto us full of perplexity because of your Highness's Streits and his own Remorse of Conscience Chiefly he insisted it would be frivolous to be put upon it to move the next Parliament to abrogate the Laws already Establish'd against Recusants which would not be Heard much less Granted and that in point of Conscience and Religion he could not promise that no Laws hereafter should be made against them This his Majesty having utter'd with much Passion and earnestness left us to hear all the Papers Read and having Commanded us very passionately to give him our best Advice retired into his Chamber and left us together for two hours After the End of the Reading many odd and extravagant Propositions were made of Advice to be given to his Majesty how to get your Person home again wherein I durst not say one word finding none of my Opinion unless it were Secretary Calvert nor my self to concur with any of theirs At the last pressed thereunto I said that I conceiv'd upon the Discourse of his Majesty we could not deliver any Advice or Opinion at all For if his Majesty made a Conscience of taking the Oaths and had already Framed unto himself this Conclusion the immoveable Rule in this Case is Quod dubitas ne feceris nor there was no more in Policy or Divinity to be said therein On the other side if His Majesty would otherwise declare himself that he was not moved in Conscience or Religion but only in Honour and Safety to Refuse those Oaths I did hope no Lord in this Company would Advise his Majesty to desert his only Son and to desert him in this manner in the Face of all Christiandom For to pretend an excuse to fetch him home to bâ—lpâ—his Majesty to facilitate these Affairs would never repair his Credit who had subscribed that which his Father would not make good nor was he himself any way able to accomplish Beside that I made it a Question Whether the King of Spain after all this wooing would so easily be deceived in Licensing him to depart At the last his Majesty Returning and calling upon us for our Advice all the Lords Assented to this last Opinion and told his Majesty they durst not Advise him any thing until he express'd himself
came thither privily out of Love he scorn'd to steal away privily out of Fear But when he heard that some were set in ambush to interrupt his Return he bore it Heroically and without strife of Passion because he knew no Remedy to help it and wrote to the King his Father to be couragious in the sufferance with these Lines That if his Majesty should receive any Intelligence that he was deteined in that State as a Prisoner he would be pleased for his sake never to think of him more as a Son but to reflect with all Royal Thoughts upon the good of his Sister and the safety of his own Kingdoms That Family and those Children with whom King Philip held less Amity than with the English secur'd us afterwards from those fears But for other things the Grandees of the Consulto till their heat had vapoured out stood upon such Terms as had no Equity or Moderation For when Sir Fr. Cottington return'd with our Kings Oath plighted to the annexed Conditions for the ease of the Roman Catholicks the Spaniards made no Remonstrance of Joy says the Prince in his Report or of an ordinary liking to it Therefore the Lord Keeper observing that they had an insatiate and hydropical Malady that the more they gulpt down the more they thirsted he tried if they would take this Julip as he prepared it in his Letter to the Duke of Buckingham July 21. May it please your Grace I Have Received yours of the 8 of Julyby the Lord Andover and heartily thank your Grace for the News though not so compleatly good as we desir'd yet better then for many days together I expected beside the hope I retain it may still be better His Majesty and the Lords have taken the Oaths and the Laws against the Roman Catholicks are actually suspended as upon my Credit and Honesty they were a good while before Now July August September and a piece of October are left for a further Probation This being so what good will it do that Wise and Great Estate to Publish to all Christiandom their diffidence of so just a Prince especially being Sworn and Deposed Your Grace knoweth very well I would the State of Spain knew as much that all our Proceedings against Recusants is at our Assises which are holden at this instant and do not return again till after the first of March So as all the probate of the suspension of the Laws against them betwixt this and the first of March will be seen and discerned by the last of our August For between that and the first of March there can be no Trial at all I know if this were understood in that place it were unanswerable For the Proceedings in the King's-Bench which only can be objected are altogether depending upon Indictments at the Assises so that the Spring once stopt as now it is these Rivers grow Dry and run no more This will mollifie all Stubborness which is Resolv'd to stoop to Reason c. Here 's a Remonstrance then which nothing could be more placid or more solid upon which I look as upon Thaboren in Parthia as Justin describes it lib. 41. Cuius loci ea conditio est ut neque munitius quicquam neque amoenius esse possit Just at this time the Days of Trouble look'd darker and darker in Spain The Prince disgusted to Treat with a People that ask'd much and granted little and Wire-drew Counsels into Vexatious length resolv'd to take his leave and shew'd the King of Spain his Fathers Royal and Indispensable Pleasure that no Proffer should interpose but that he should hasten him for which his Navy did attend him upon the Coast of Biscay That it was no fault of his that he must depart when the Treaty was so imperfect but in them that made it a Justitium or Intermission of all Proceedings because upon the Death of the Pope the Court of Rome was not open Olivarez to divert his Highness made Two Propositions First That the Prince would come in to the Conditions as they came formerly from Rome or to stay till new ones might be agreed upon and Ratified at Rome Hoc illud cornucopiae est ubi in est quicquid volo says Pseudolus in Plautus Grant the Conde to make his Reference to Rome and you grant him all That 's the Goats-Horn or Jugglers Box out of which he can fetch any thing with a sleight The Prince answer'd him very gravely for one so young as he made the Report at St. James's The first motion he had declin'd before neither had he chang'd his Judgment nor should they find him a Shechem to pass over into a New Religion for a Wife Gen. 34. The other Motion he accepted this way He would go for England to perfect the Articles there and let them do the like at Rome Olivarez admired at his Reply but took it up with this Answer That to be gone so soon and nothing Model'd to the Content of any side would be a Breach therefore he humbly besought his Highness to stay but Twenty Days and he swore by all the Saints of Heaven then he was sure it would be a Marriage The Duke of Buckingham standing by said It is well but it might have been as well Seven years ago Which put the Conde to a great Anger and in his Anger made him Fome out a Secret That there was no Match intended Seven Months ago and says he I will fetch that out of my Desk that shall assure you of it So he produced a Letter written to one Don Baltasar with King Philip III. his own Hand as he Vowed The Prince was allowed to Read it then as much as he would but not to take a Copy all this was declared to the next Parliament in the Banquetting-House His Highness with Sir Wal. Aston better Skill'd in the Castilian Language Translated the Letter as their Memories would bear it away and kept it for a Monument This is the Letter which I think Mr. Prinn was the first that divulged out of the Lord Cottington's Papers which he had Ransack'd Whether it were a true Letter of King Philip's lies upon Olivarez Credit it never came out of his Custody or whether the Prince and Sir W. Aston mist nothing of the right Sense of it through Frailty of Memory when they came to Recollect the Sum of it in private is not yet decided Salomon alluding to the Contradictions that are in some Mens Parables says They are like the Legs of the Lame that are not equal Prov. 26.7 Let the best Bone-setter in the Hundred set these Legs even if he can An Authentical Notary in Spain Conde Olivarez shews it under Black and White that Philip the Father of the Infanta who died Anno 1621 held our King in Hopes but never intended to give his Daughter to the Prince of Wales Hear the Evidence of the other side His Highness Remembred the Parliament That Sir Wal. Aston was struck Mute at the Reading of
c. to forbear any Moleslation of his said Subjects in respect of their Religion To send them forth with as much speed as conveniently may be that his Majesty may be freed from the Complaints of the Ambassadors Thrice again he was charg'd with the same Command To all which he answer'd He could do nothing without a private Warrant for it and that it was not possible to be agreed upon till he spake with his Majesty On the 6th of September the same Secretary writes again That an Exemplification of the Pardon should be deliver'd to the Ambassadors under the Great Seal That 's not hard to be done But upon what Limits and Conditions So the Lord Keeper rejoyns Sir G. Calvert is troubled again to satisfie that Scruple That no Copy of it should go out to any of the Roman Catholicks nor any of them be permitted to sue out their Pardons until his Majesties Pleasure be further known This came Sept. 8. The Lord Keeper held back yet till he knew what Assurance he should have from the Ambassadors to keep those Conditions Which held a Contest till Sept. 19. When Mr. Secretary Conway writes from Theobalds His Majesties Pleasure is That you deliver unto the Marquiss Inoiosa an Exemplification of the Pardon and Dispensation And his Majesty would not that you should press him for a Note of his Hand for Secresie and Stanchness for giving of Copies of the Pardon or Dispensation but only by Word to refresh his Memory of the faithful Promises he hath made in that Point to the King upon which his Majesty will relie Indeed it was order'd at Windsor Sept. 7. as appears in a Letter of Secretary Conways that when Marquiss Iniosa had the Exemplication all the Crast was in Catching that he should communicate them to none nor give Copies of them till we had knowledge from Spain of the Marriage or Desponsories There was nothing about these days that mitigated the Embassador more than a Trick that in sine did him least good Properly and without Levity it may be called a Flop with a Fox-Tail The Lord Keeper closed in with him not to be so hasty for Exemplifications which the Clerks of the Crown must write over soft and fairly A Matter of more weight should presently be set on foot not of Words but of real Benefit and Performance to his Party and to the Choice of them a Pardon for the Romish Priests that were imprisoned about which there had been struggling and yet nothing effected As the Lord Keeper seemed forward so to see the ill Luck it was cramp'd by a Letter from Sir Edward Conway Sept. 6. Dat. Windsor Right Honorable HIS Majesty hath signed the Warrant that was sent for the enlarging of the Priests out of Prison that he may shew the Reality of Performance on his Part in all that is to be done Yet his Majesty commits the Warrant to your Keeping without further Use to be made save only to pass the Great Seal which you may be pleased to expedite till important Considerations be provided for and satisfied As First That his Majesty receive Advertisement of the Marriage or Desposories Secondly That Provision be taken for these Priests that have expressed their Duties to the King either in Writing in his Defence or in taking the Oaths whose Protection his Majesty holds himself bound to continue and not to suffer them to incur any Danger for that their Conformity Thirdly That Order be taken that such Priests enlarged be not left at Liberty to execute their Functions publickly or at their Pleasure but only under such Limitations and Restraints as by the Pardon and Dispensations are provided 166. Of these three Caveats entred to modifie the Liberty which was Petitioned for and promised to the Priests the middlemost was a brave one wherein the Lord Keeper revenged himself on Inoiosa for all his Forwardness It aimed at one man Mr. Preston a Secular Priest Honest and rarely Learned The Author of the Works under the Name of Roger Widrington for the Oath of Allegiance The Author of that solid Piece called The last Rejoynder to T. Fitzherbert Bellarmine's Sculckenius and Lessius his Singleton upon that Subject Printed An. 1619. This Man for his own Preservation lay quiet in the Marshalsea his Death being threatned by the rigid Papalins This was he that was set forth as the only Evidence of his Majesty's Royal Mercy toward those that were in Holy Orders of that Religion the present Pattern of his keeping Promise according to the Articles But such a Priest as that if Marq. Inoiosa had been consulted for his Release perhaps he would have cried out Not him but Barabbas Preston had Leave that Summer twice or thrice to come to the Lord Keeper at Nonsuch where I saw them together discoursing as long as Leisure and Business would permit That Interview procured the Warrant for his Pardon from the King as followeth James Rex TO the Reverend Father in God Our Right Trusty and Right Well-beloved Counsellor Jo. Lord Bishop of Lincoln Lord Keeper of Our Great Seal of England Right Trusty and Right Well-beloved Counsellor We Greet you well These are to will and require to pass one Pardon and Dispensation according unto the Warrant directed unto you concerning the Roman Catholicks of this Kingdom in general for the Use and Benefit of Preston a Secular Priest now a Prisoner in our Prison of the Marshalsea And delivering unto the Spanish Embassador an Exemplification of the same Pardon under the Great Seal to keep the Original so Sealed under your own Custody untill you shall receive from Us some further Order Given at Our Court at Windsor Sept. 8. c. The Releasment of Preston was accordingly dispatched the first Fruits of the Common Grace expected by others sent as a Present to Don Inoiosa nay a Precedent for consequent Releasments So Secretary Conway to the Lord Keeper Sep. 17. His Majesty's Order to your Lordship was That the Pardon for this one Man should be exemplified as the Limitation and Rule to the Form of all the rest So as without Dispute or Controversie that was a present Possâ—ssion an Act performed by the King to be executed alike to each one to whom it appertains at the Time and upon the Conditions before specified the Sight whereof might give the Embassador Contentment But it was far from that Don John the Marquiss durst not say he was mocked but he fum'd like Lime that is slack'd with Water to see of all the Priesthood that man only enlarged whom above all he most hated Therefore his Violence augmented press'd the King so far that his Majesty caused the same Secretary to write again very roundly the next day to the Lord Keeper Right Honorable HIS Majest hath received from the Spanish Embassador a large Declaration of his Grievance by the great Delays he finds from your Lordship in point of the Pardon and Dispensation an Exemplification of which your Lordship hath Order to deliver
came in place of it was most Happy in a thrice Noble Progeny All beside was Flat and Unfortunate Not an Inch of the Palatinate the better for us and we the worse for our Wars in all Countries I say no more but as Q. Curtius doth Optime Miserias forunt qui abscondunt They that hide their Miseries bear them best The Observator upon H. L. I will abet him writes no more then many have Whisper'd That the Ruin of P. Charles by the Spanish Match might have been prevented the Spaniard being for the most part a more steady Friend then the wavering French I am not skilful in them to make Comparisons thus far I will adventure positively The French are as brave a people as be under the Sun Yet for my part I think we might better want them then the Spaniard The Spanish Ladies Married to the Royal Seed among us have been Vertuous Mild Thrifty beloved of all Not such a one as Harry the Sixth had from the other Nation of whom Mr. Fuller says well in his Eccles History That the King's parts seemed the lower being overtop'd by such a High Spirited Queen The Spaniards are for the most generously bountiful where Service hath deserv'd it the best Neighbours in the World for Trades Increase A Friend to his Friend with his Treasure and with his Sword But withal Refractory in his own Religion and a Hater of ours and very False where he can take occasion to enlarge his Dominions wherein we had no Cause to fear him But if the Daughter of Spain had landed upon our Shore I believe we should have had more Cause to love him 172. Which was not to be look'd for after the Prince put off from the Coast of Biscay From whence he made such haste home as the Wind would suffer and he had it in Poop till he came to the Islands of Silly the remotest Ground of the British Dominion in the West whether some Delinquents were deported of old by the Roman Emperors Here the Navy was compelled to rest because the Winds were contrary From thence the Courtiers brought home a Discourse about an old Miller who was with long Experience Weather-Wise to Admiration For he told them exactly how long they should continue there and named the Hour when after one day and a half the North-West would blow and serve their turn The Seamen who had resorted thither before knew him so well and how his Prognosticks came to pass that they prepared to Launch against that opportunity which fail'd not and attain'd Portsmouth on the Fifth of October 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Odduss 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Though our Noble Traveller left the Lady behind that should have been his Penelope yet he came well home to his own Ithaca and to the Wise Laertes his Father His Highness left Portsmouth and came to York-House at Charing-Cross an Hour after Midnight early in the Morning Octob. 6. Praises were given to God for him in divers Churches at Morning Prayer The Lord Keeper composed an excellent Prayer for that Occasion which was used in the Chappel of Henry the VII and in the Collegiate Church at the accustomed Hours in that Place Bells and Bonfires began early and continued till Night Alms and all kind of Comfort were dispensed bountifully to the Poor and many poor Prisoners their Debts being discharg'd were Released But too often as St. Austin complain'd Publicum gaudium celebratur per publicum dedecus So Bacchanals of Drunken Riot were kept too much in London and Westminster which offended many that the Thanks due only to God should be paid to the Devil The Prince after a little rest took Coach with the Duke for Royston to attend the King his Father where the Joy at the enterview was such as surpasseth the Relation His Majesty in a short while retir'd and shut all out but his Son and the Duke with whom he held Conference till it was four Hours in the Night They that attended at the Door sometime heard a still Voice and then a loud sometime they Laught and sometime they Chased and noted such variety as they could not guess what the close might prove But it broke out at Supper that the King appear'd to take all well that no more was effected in the Voyage because the Profters for the Restitution of his Son-in-Law were no better stated by the Spanish And then that Sentence fell from him which is in Memory to this Hour That He lik'd not to Marry His Son with a Portion of His Daughters Tears His Majesty saw there was no Remedy in this Case but to go Hand in Hand with the Prince and his now prepotent Favorite Ducunt volentem fata nolentem trabuns Sen. Trag. It is easier to be led then drawn Presently it was obtain'd that is Octob. 8. That his Majesty should send an Express to the Earl of Bristol with his High Command to defer the Procuration entrusted with him and to make no use of it till Christmas whereas indeed the Power of it expired at Christmas for so it was limited in the Instrument which his Highness Signed at St. Lorenzo And by the next Post the Duke acquaints Sir W. Aston That the King himself had dictated the Letter then wrote unto him Cab. p. 36. which contain'd That His Majesty desir'd to be assur'd of the Restitution of the Palatinate before the Deposorium was made seeing he would be sorry to welcome home one Daughter with a Smiling Cheer and have his own only Daughter at the same time Weeping and Disconsolate My Lord of Buckingham had his Advisers about him yet he need not now be set on to prevent with all his Wit that the Prince might never have a Wife out of Spain 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 As soon should a Wolf Wed a Lamb. Aristoph Com. de pace But the King had such Esteem of the Spanish Wisdom that he did verily look that his Letters I mean these last sent to his Ambassador Resident there would quicken them to a short and real Satisfaction for the Prince Palatine's Distress and that the Treaty would sprout again which was wither'd with that obstacle 173. Our Dispatches at Court went all together that way so he that is diligent may Trace them to the end of January Some of the Letters of Mr. Secretary Conway at least somewhat out of them are useful to be produced which will also confirm the good course that the Lord Keeper took with the Spanish Ambassadors that he reserv d the Pardon and Dispensation from them to the end against all Contests of Importunity Nor suffered the Letters to the Lord Bishops and Judges to go abroad for the Suspension of some Penal Statutes whereupon the Fat of the Project of the Papists dript insensibly away at a slow Fire After the Prince had rested at Roiston but one Night his Majesty caused Directions to be sent to the Lord Keeper for the Enlargement of the Roman Priests
That if his Majesty should receive any intelligence that he was deteined in that State as a Prisoner he would be pleased for his sake never to think of him more as a Son but to reflect with all his Royal Thoughts upon the good of his Sister and upon the safety of his own Kingdoms Sic omnes unus amores vicit amor patriae And so far to the Supplements I must now explicate their Lordships Opinion who having by the Command of his Majesty taken into their Mature Considerations the whole Narration made by the Prince his Highness and my Lord Duke to both Houses in this place and all the Letters and Dispatches read unto them to corroborate the same And Lastly these Supplements and Additions recited before are of opinion upon the whole Bulk of the matter that his Majesty cannot rely upon or maintain any longer either of both these Treaties concerning the Match with Spain or the Restitution of the Palatinate with the safety of his Religion his Honour his Estate or the Weal and Estate of his Grand-Children And his Highness together with their Lordships are desirous to know whether you Gentlemen the Knights Burgesses and Citizens of the House of Commons do concur with their Lordships in this their Opinion which they ever referred to this further Conference with your Honourable House 192. As Plutarch said of the Laconick Apothegms 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 they were Clean and Sound Timber with the Bark taken off So the Reader may observe in these Reports that the Matter is Heart of Oak the Style clear from Obscurity and disbark'd quite from superduity But regarding the Auditors and their Affections at that Season nothing could be more proper for he spake to their Content as if he had been within them with Sweet and Piercing Expressions resembled in the Harp and the Quiver of Arrows with which the Heathen Trimm'd up Apollo their Deity of Graceful Speech They that detract from such Worth would be glad it were their own as says our compleat Poet upon the like A good Man 's Envied by such as would For all their Spight be like him if they could But this beginning presaged good Luck to the ensuing Counsels debated in that Session This is called to this day the Blessed Parliament and so Posterity will take it from us Says Tully very well 3. Philip. Magna vis est magnum numen unum idem consentient is senatus A full Senate Head and Members consenting in one carries a Majestick and Oraculous Authority with it This is the Confirmation of it when the people brought before the King the Fruits of their Wisdom which they had Studied And the King did ratifie him chearfully with the Wisdom of his Power They opened their Purse to him and which was more beneficial to them then if they had spared a little Mony he let fall some Flowers off his Crown that they might gather them up which indeed was no more then desluvium pennarum the Molting of some Feathers after which the Eagle would Fly the better He opened his Ear to them in all their Petitions and they listned as much to him and gave their Ear-Rings to Jacob Gen. 35.4 So the King and the Subject became perfect Unisons And as God doth knit his own Glory and the Salvation of mankind together so the King did imitate God and Married his Honour with the welfare of the Kingdom Who is it that reads the Statutes 21 Jacobi and doth not admire them The Peers took it to be their greatest Nobility to look well to the Publick And the other House did light upon the True Companion of Wisdom Sâ—data Tranquillitas a Calm Tranquility as Rivers are deepest where they Foam least And all the Land had cause of rejoycing that the House of Commons was never better Replenish'd in Man's Memory with Knights and Burgesses of rare Parts and Tempers especially the Gown-men of the Inns of Courts who were extoli'd for Knowledge and political Prudence as no Age had afforded a better Pack And I give the Lord Keeper his Right and no more knowing his Traces perfectly at that time that he labour'd as for Life to keep an Harmony between the King and this Parliament to suck out his Majesties assent to all their Proceedings that he might shew himself as good as he was great Which I think was the greatest certainly the happiest part of Honour that ever the Lord Keeper Merited How he mitigated Discontents and softned refractoriness how he obliged the leading Voices with benefits how he kept the Prerogative of the Supreme Power and the Extravagancies of pretended Liberty on the other side from Encroachments the Wise only knew but they that knew it not were the better for it and that he was chiefly us'd in Consultation for compiling those wholesom Laws which had their double Resining and Clarifying from Lords and Commons In all likelihood prosperous success might be expected from this Parliament because it was Pious and Pious because it was a strict preserver of the Holy Patrimony Allotted to God Quae 〈…〉 erunt quam quibus Deus praestitit auxilium says Ansonius to the Emperor 〈◊〉 What Counsels are more compleat then those that are help'd by God Nay What Councels can be more compleat then theirs that defend the Right of God As worser times would let the Clergy keep nothing so those times by their good Will would let them part with nothing Let the Trial be observ'd as the Case follows 193. The Duke of Buckingham lack'd a dwelling according to the Port of his Title and to receive a very populous Family It must be near to Whitehal and it must be spacious None could be found so fit as the Arch-Bishop of York his House It was nigh to Charing-Cross and he came little to it The Duke us'd the Lord Keeper to move Arch-Bishop Mathew for his Consent and to make the Bargain between them causing him to make prosser of such Lands in the County of York as should be equivalent or better then the House Garden and Tenements belonging to the Arch-Bishop's Place For nothing was intended but Exchange with considerable Advantage to him and his Successors And that was sure as touch because the House was to be past by Act of Parliament to the Kings Majesty So the Duke had made it his humble Request and drew on the King hardly to make a Chop with those Demeasnes to which the Name of God and his Christ were made the Feoffees in the first Donation for the use of that Tribe which peculiarly serves him in Sacred Offices Yet with instance and much Suit the King was wrought to it for the Duke's sake As M. Antony said to his Confident Septimius Quod Concupiscas tu videris quod concupieris certè habebis Tul. 5. Philip. So this Beloved Minion should be Wise to see what he ask'd for his Master had no Power to say him nay His Majesty was most Nice and Cautious to make the Composition
extract advantage out of it But wherein lies the way You shall have better Heads then mine to help you if you please to be directed by me None can furnish you with the right Art of it but some of our sage Counsellors of our Common Laws I wish you therefore my Lord to proceed with the special knowledg of the Roman Catholicks that stir most in this Project Let them cull out some of the Learnedest Practisers together Let the King's Attorney General make one for my sake For the rest let your Clients pick out as they like An hundred Crowns among them that is a Fee of five pounds a Man will not be ill bestowed upon them Let them lay their Heads together And I will lose all I am worth if you do not thank me for having referred you to those who will fetch out by their Skill so much to be Granted that you will never be put to Contestation hereafter that you obtain'd much of the King and are never the nearer The Courtiers with whom alone you have had to do to this time have Complemented with your Lordship So could I do likewise give you Large concessions in Words and in Wax but in effect nothing Like Galley Pots Entitled with the Name of Cordials but have Cob-Webs in them and no more My Lord all that I have to say is no more but this will you be lead by me or will you wander still Sir says the Embassador Use me honestly I am a Stranger and while I am in England I will surrender up self to your Directions Nay I will possess our Virtuous and Illustrious Madam that you are a clear dealing Man and of good Faith and most worthy of her Trust when she comes into a strange Land And after a very civil Farewel at the present Mounsieur Villoclare made use of those Instructions For though he Climbed not so High as he looked yet he Climbed better for he stood sure where he could not fall 228. Which Papers came to the King with more satisfaction as he was pleas'd to say then he could have expected Not any Line of Wisdom or Learning could be lost to him who saw as far and as soon as any Man into the Intellectuals of another For as the Lord Bacon wrote his Majesty had a light of Nature which had such readiness to take Flame and blaze from the least occasion presented on the least spark of anothers knowledg deliver'd as was to be admir'd And this was the last present in that kind that the Lord Keeper sent to the King who finding some indisposition of Health retired for fresh Air and quietness to his Mannor of Theobalds VVhere Jacob gather'd up his Feet into the Bed and yielded up the Ghost Gen. 49.33 The Lord Keeper on March 22. being Tuesday receiv'd a Letter from the Court that it was feared his Majesties Sickness was dangerous to Death which Fear was the more confirm'd for he dispatching away in all haste met with Dr. Harvey in the Road who told him That the King us'd to have a Beneficial Evacuation of Nature a sweating in his left Arm as helpful to him as any Fontinel could be which of late had failed And that argued that the former Vigour of Nature was low and spent This Symptome of the Kings Weakness I never heard from any else Yet I believe it upon so learned a Doctors Observation And this might well cause a Tertian Ague and a Mortal when the Spring had Entred so far able to make a commotion in the Humours of the Body and not to expel them with accustom'd vaporation After the L. Keeper had presented himself before his Lord the King he moved him unto chearful Discourse but it would not be He continued til Midnight at his Bed-side and perceiv'd no Comfort but was out of all Comfort upon the consultation that the Physicians held together in the Morning Presently he besought the Prince that he might acquaint his Father with his Feeble Estate and like a faithful Chaplain mind him both of his Mortality and Immortality which was allowed and committed to him as the principal Instrument of that Holy and necessary Service So he went into the Chamber of the King again upon that Commission and Kneeling at his Palat told his Majesty He knew he should neither Displease him nor discourage him if he brought Isaiahs Message to Hezekiah to set his House in Order for he thought his Days to come would be but few in this World but the best remained for the next World I am satisfied says the Sick King and I pray you assist me to make me ready to go away hence to Christ whose Mercies I call for and I hope to find them After this the Keeper now of his Majesties Soul kept about him with as much Diligence as a Body of Flesh could endure He was ever at hand helpful not only in Sacred but in every kind of Duty never from that time put off his Cloaths to go to Bed till his Master had put off his Tabernacle which appear'd in his Looks on Sunday Night when he return'd to VVestminster employed himself Night and Day unless the Physicians did compose his Majesty to rest in Praying in Reading most of all in Discoursing about Repentance Faith Remission of Sins Resurrection and Eternal Life To which the King made Answer sometimes in Latin always with Patience and full of Heavenly Seasoning which Hallowed Works were performed between them on VVednesday as a Preparation to the Passover on Thursday the Fortifying of his Majesties Soul against the Terrors of Death with the lively Remembrance of Christ's Death and Passion in the Holy Communion At which the King made most humble Consession of his Sins craved Absolution rendred the Confession of his Faith before many Witnesses Profess'd he Died in the Bosom of the Church of England whose Doctrine he had defended with his Pen being perswaded it was according to the mind of Christ as he should shortly Answer it before him 229. All this while God did lend him such Strength to utter himself how well he Relish'd that Sacred Banquet of Christ's Body and Blood and how comfortably the Joy of the Holy Ghost did flow into his Soul as if he had been in a way of Recovery And his mournful Servants that saw and heard it rejoyced greatly that unto that time Sickness did not compress his Understanding nor slop his Speech nor Debilitate his Senses and submitted more willingly to God to have their Master taken from their Head because they believed the Lord was ready to receive him into Glory The next day his Soul began to Retreat more inward and so by degrees to take less and less Notice of external things His Custos Angelus as I may call him his Devoted Chaplain stirr'd very little out of the Chamber of Sorrow both to give an Far to every Word the King spake in that extream condition and to give it him again with the Use of some Divine
Subjects Roman Catholicks and every of them as well by Information Presentment Indictment Conviction Process Seisure Distress or Imprisonment as also by any other ways or means whatsoever whereby they may be molested for the Causes aforesaid And further also That from time to time you take notice of and speedily redress all Causes of Complaints for or by reason of any thing done contrary to this our will And this shall be unto you and to all to whom you shall give such Warrant Order and Direction a sufficient Warrant and Discharge in that behalf There was no scrupling of this Order but it must be dispatch'd For though as a great Counsellor the Keeper was to be watchful over the Voices and Affections of the People and that he knew this was not the Course to keep the Subject in terms of Contentment yet he had no power to stop the Tide as in former days My Lord of Buckin would not stay to hear the Arguments of his Wisdom Altissimo orbe praecipuâ potentiâ stella Saturni fortur Tacit. 1 list lib. 5. The Planet of Saturn was in the highest Orb and ruled all the Influence of the Court Where was now the Cavil against the Spanish Match that in the Treaty for it it encroach'd too far upon Religion Indeed my Lord of Kensington writes from Paris Cab. p. 275. The French will not strain us to any unreasonableness in Conditions for the Catholicks And as much again p. 284. Their Pulse in matter of Religion beats temperately So he told us in another Pacquet p. 292. That the French will never abandon us in the Action for the recovering the Palatinate Which of these Engagements were broken last a more solid Question than to ask Which of their Promises were kept first They kept none Some chop out Promises as Nurses tell Tales to Children to lull them asleep As it is in the neat Phrase of Arnobius Somno occupari ut possint leves audiendoe sunt naenioe The Histories of Spain and the Netherlands as well as of England do not spare to touch that Noble Nation that none have taken greater liberty to play fast and loose with Articles and Covenants And as the French were inconstant to us so new Symptoms and new Apprehensions made us variable and inconstant to our selves Now a Letter must be sent to all Magistrates Spiritual and Temporal to cause them to suspend the Execution of all Laws against the Papists At the Term at Reading in November following Divulgation is made in all Courts under the Broad-Seal that all Officers and Judges should proceed against them according to Law After the Second Parliament of King Charles was broken up that is in the Summer that followed the Term at Reading by the Mediation of the French Embassador Marshal Bassampere new Letters come from the King to redintegrate Favours to the Recusants and that all Pursevants must be restrained and their Warrants to search the Houses of Papists taken from them And this continued but till Winter It was safe and just to return quickly again into the High-way of the Law for the shortest Errors are the best Especially in God's Cause Which Vincen. Lirin well adviseth Nos religionem non quo volumus ducere sed quò illa nos ducit sequi debemus We must take up the Train of Religion and come after it and not lead it after us in a String of Policy 5. Private Men may better keep this Rule than such as are publickly employed in the State But though the Keeper had no remedy but the preceding Warrant must be obeyed Yet he tryed his Majesty how his Service would be taken in stopping a Warrant upon another occasion bearing date May 23. Because the sumptuous Entertainment of the Queen and her magnificient Convoy being ready to land would be very chargeable he thrust in his Judgment to advise the King against disorderly Liberality And though he knew the Secretary Conway for no other than a Friend yet he lik'd not his Encroachment upon the Royal Bounty but signifies it in this manner Most dread Sovereign and my most gracious Master I Received this Morning a Warrant from your most Excellent Majesty to pass a Grant under the Great-Seal of England of the Sum of Two thousand Pounds out of the Court of Wards to my Lord Conway for Twenty One Years to come The which I durst not for fear of infringing my Duty to your Majesty and drawing some danger upon my self pass under the Great-Seal before I had made unto your most Excellent Majesty this most humble Representation First The issuing of so great a Lease of such a vast Sum of Money is under your Majesty's Favour and Correction disadvantageous to your Majesty's Service in regard of the time being in the face of that Parliament from which your Majesty is to expect a main Supply Secondly It is I believe without Prsident or Example that Pensions have been granted in Contemplation of Services for Years But for the Party's Life only My Lord of Middlesex his Lease of the Sugars is the only President in that kind which hath hapned during the time of my Service in this Place Thirdly The Assigning of this Pension upon the Court of Wards or any other Place than the Receipt of the Exchequer is directly against the Rules and Orders taken upon mature deliberation by your Father of Blessed Memory Fourthly This great Lord for so be is indeed is in the Eye and the Envy of many Men as your Majesty I fear it will hear e're long As having received more great Favours within these two Years than any Three Subjects within this Kingdom Although I do believe looking up to the hands that conferred them he may well deserve them all Most gracious Sovereign I am not ignorant of the danger I incur in making this Representation But I have put on an irremoveable Resolution that as long as you are pleased to continue me in your Service I will never from this time forth out of Contemplation of mine own Safety or any other carnal Respect neglect voluntarily any part of my Duty to my God or my King Which I suppose I had greatly forgotten without presenting your most Excellent Majesty with this Remonstrance And having perform'd this part of my Duty I shall most punctually obey your Majesty's Direction in this particular For this good Service it was well he had no check yet he had no gra-mercy to seem wiser than those that had prepared the business And though the Patent for that Pension was a flat Violation of good Order yet the Plea was it would be unkind to revoke it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Plutarch in the Life of Agis observes it in some Mens Humours Though a thing be ill undertaken it is held a shame to go back This Lord Secretary was the Keeper's cold Friend upon it but he lived not long and quitted his Office before he ceased to live Only some deckings of empty Titles were given him
Carriage of my Petitions and speedy return of an Answer and assur'd his Lordship it was as much Favour from him as I could expect or desire Then I took occasion to kneel afterward and thank'd his Majesty for his gracious Message sent by my Lord who presently told my Lord Conway of it and my Lord told me of it again And that the King left it to me when between this and Allhallowtide to deliver the Seal which he desir'd for the manner to be done most to my Content and Reputation and to have some time to send for him that was to succeed I answer'd I was ready whenever his Majesty would send his Warrant Which my Lord desir'd I would draw up and so we parted 26. I sent upon Tuesday the 18th of October to desire leave to speak with the King and Mr. Tho. Cary sent me word his Majesty would speak with me the next Morning But after Sermon the King told my Lord Conway what I had done and was in a long and serious Discourse with him Then my Lord Conway the King being gone to dinner followed me into the Cloyster and told me what the King had told him And that he conceiv'd his Majesty was afraid that I would press him to yield Reasons of those two Acts of his the removing me from the Seal and my abstaining from the Board That his Lordship found the King much troubled thereat and as a Friend nay as a Christian man he advised me by way of Counsel not to do so because it would much perplex the King and do me no good I answer'd That I should falsifie my Word to his Lordship if I should speak unto his Majesty upon any other Points than those of my Reputation and Means And should not come near those forbidden Rocks unless it were in one Point which I did intend to move but with his Lordship's Approbation and that was to preserve as much the Honoar of the King as mine own that for the manner of wishing my forbearance for a time from the Council-Board his Majesty laying nothing to my Charge would not be pleas'd to lay it as a Command by his Secretary but leave it to my Discretion who would be sure to use the matter as to give his Majesty no Offence That the rest of the Points were matters of means which I repeated to my Lord Conway one by one And his Lordship said He thought verily the King would grant them every one And his Lordship telling me again of his fear of the King's Offence if I should endeavour to unsettle his Resolution and that the King might fall sharp upon me I answer'd That his Lordship knew I had neglected the time to wrangle with the King which should have been done upon the first message Against which I had two unanswerable Objections The first that the King that dead is released me of the Restraint to three Years in my Office and continued me in the Place four Years The second that the King my Master delivered me the Seal as absolutely as his Predecessors did to other Keepers and Chancellors without reviving or mentioning any such Condition But that I had waved of all Objections and submitted at the first word to relinquish my Place And for sharpness or the like word which passed from his Lordship on Sunday last or that the King wisht my absence from the Board lest Matters might be further question'd his Lordship said he remembred it not I said Nec timeo nec opto it was a thing I did neither fear like a guilty Man nor rashly desire like a vain-glorious Man But my wishes were to retire to the Country as without a Charge by the King 's own Confession so as near as may be without any punishment which concern'd the King in Honour I thought as much as it did me For God never destroys his Creature but for some Sin And if his Majesty did think the losing of my Place did disquiet me to give him satisfaction I vowed and protested it did not which my Lord-Duke also had under my hand And that with his Majesty's leave and favour and some consideration had of my Fortunes I was willing to leave the Seal Only I expected I should remain a Councellor tho' lest to my discretion when to attend and be respected by the Lords from time time as a Member of the Board My Lord said He conceiv'd it no otherwise and that I might promise my self all respect from that Table and his Majesty in that kind Then said I my Lord There remains no more but that I shew a Letter to your Lordship written to his Majesty if you like it which shall speak all my mind because I will be utterly silent when I come at Evening before his Majesty save in preferring my Petitions in which your Lordship did encourage me Which Letter in the Copy his Lordship read over and carried the Authentick with him And so we parted 27. After Dinner his Majesty took the Letter and read that which followeth Most gracious Sovereign HAving done your blessed Father the best Service I was able while he lived I am sure such as was acceptable to him and some good Service at his Death and being now fitted with a great deal of Industry to do some Service to your Majesty in your great Affairs yet it is your Royal Pleasure to displace me not for any Crime or Unserviceableness but to satisfie the Importunity of a great Lord. But I am ready with all Submission to bow myself to the Pleasure of God and my King It is in your Majesty's Power to say to me your Vassal as a Greek Emperor did to an Arch-bishop Ego te Furne condidi ego te destruam I cast my self down at your Majesty's Feet and do render your Majesty my unexpressible Thanks that it hath pleased your Majesty to discharge me of this great Place without giving me any cause at all to use an Apology Yet being still haunted with the old Aspersions in Court the which were they true in any part would fret and tear my Soul in pieces give me leave dread Sovereign to make this last protestation in the sight of that God who must judge you and my Accusers if any such there be another day that in all my Carriage in the last Parliament I am not guilty in Thought Word or Deed of any one Act Advice Speech or Counsel disserviceable to your Majesty or any way diverting that end which your Majesty proposed unto us concerning that Assembly Upon the same protestation I likewise avow before God and your Majesty that I am not conscious of the least Unfaithfulness against my Lord-Duke by way of insinuating encouraging or abetting any one Clamour or Aspersion against his Grace or by omitting any one friendly Word or Action upon any opportunity I found to do him Service Your Majesty can tell how I put my Life into his Hand and Power above a Year since in the Business of the Spanish Embassadors
his Answers both because he limited them so warily in all his Concessions and because if he were left to himself he lov'd to keep his Word For he was observ'd in all his Reign that he seldom trod awry but by mistrusting his own Judgment and falling from it for their Perswasions that came short of him a great deal in Wit and Honesty It was an Error For a King should appear in that Magnitude that no Man should expect to deceive him or remove him from his Sentence If he be too passive he will be counted at the best but in the middle Rank of Men who should not be contented with mediocrity of Reputation For a Prince that is not valued for great and excellent will be contemn'd Yet blame not that which came not from Sin but from Softness And say of his Majesly as Eudaeus did of his Master Francis the first Vir ad omnia summa natus dignusque qui suâ—e naturae magis quà m hiantibus aliorum cupiditatibus indulgeret The forlorn Keeper felt the Heaviness of this Lightness who thought he had obtain'd much but excepting the four Advousons confirm'd to St. John's College he mist all that he sought for and expected After he had lest Salisbury which was the next day he could never receive a Farthing of his Pension nor bring it to an Audit to his dying day Was it not a Debt True But it must be forborn to be paid because he did not want it Must the Rich if they ask their own be sent empty away A Rule for none but the Conscience of a Leveller But I press it for him that he wanted it and more than it to do Works of Piety and Bravery to do Works of Splendor and Bounty which was all the Use that he knew to be made of Wealth As all is superfluous in a burning Candle but that which the Snuff sucks up to maintain the Light So the Life of every Man especially of a temperate Man is maintain'd with little What should he covet more than so much as will keep his Lamp in burning Nor was the King's Scepter after that day held out to becken to him to come towards his Majesty The Favour of a Prince is seldom found again when it is lost like Plautus his Captive Maid Semel fugiendi si data est occasiâ— nunquam post illam possis prendere if she take her to her Heels and be gone she will run away so far that she will never be taken The Attendants about a King are in the fault for this Who will grow Strangers and worse of a sudden to those that were lately in their Bosom if a King send them off with disgrace A cashiered Courtier is an Almanack of the last Year remembred by nothing but the great Eclipse Look for gentle Strains and Civilities among them from the Noâ—â—es to the Huishers but he that trusts to their Faith and Friendship may go seek That which this dismissed Lord did most pretend for was to be called again after some pause of time to the Council-board But he was utterly forgot and his grief must be the less because he was no Counsellor in the Management of those Contrivances which bred the Troubles as 't is thought wherein the Kingdom miscarried So he resolv'd not to offer his Presence where he should be checkt for appearing It is sagely noted by Symmachus Ep. p. 91. Qui excludi per improbos possimus abesse interim velut ex nostro arbitrio debemus Let it be my own act says he to refrain from the Imperial Palace and let not haughty and churlish Men have their Wills to exclude me But before five days were run out this relinquish'd Lord had intelligence how the Duke talk'd so minaciously and loudly that it made him throw all expectation of future Kindness over-board into the dead Sea of Despair Since this Disaster began he was never couragious and in good heart till then Now as Plato began he was never couragious and in good heart till then Now as Plato says of Socrates his Hemlock-Cup brought to him to drink it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 he did not sip it but carouse it off So much doth it profit a Man towards a settled Mind to let no false Comfort in when he is in the darkness of Misery Hermolaus Barbarus had many Troubles rushing in upon him after he was made Patriarch of Aquileia Whereupon he writes Politia Ep. p. 405. I am surrounded with Terrors and Opposition and I look for no better Times hereafter which is the best and only true Valour Non est fortis qui fortis est in spe qui perfert mala etiam si duratura viderit fortis est He that looks for better times his Hope is his Compensation but without Question it is too slack for Fortitude 30. The Sun is now Setting Upon the 25th of October Sir John Suckling brought the Warrant from the King to receive the Seal and the good News came together very welcome to the Resignant that Sir Thomas Coventry should have that Honour From whom the Kingdom look'd for much good and found it Between both those two Worthies in that Office I may state the Comparison as Quintilian hath done between Livy and Salust Pares eos magis fuisse quà m similes rather Equals than altogether like in the Management of the Place The Warrant under the Signet went thus Charles R. TRusty and Well-beloved Counsellor we greet you well You are to deliver upon the Receipt hereof our Great-Seal of England whereof you are our Keeper unto our Trusty and Well-beloved Counsellor Sir John Suckling Controuler of our Houshold the Bearer hereof And this shall be a sufficient Warrant unto you so to do Given under Our Signet at our Court at Salisbury the 23 d. of October in the first Year of our Reign Which was instantly obey'd And the Seal being put into a costly Cabinet in Sir John Suckling's Presence the Key of the Cabinet was inclosed in a Letter closed with the Episcopal Seal of Lincoln The Copy whereof remains in these Words Most gracious and most dread Sovereign HAving now no other Meditations left than how to serve God and your Majesty in the Quality of a poor Bishop I do humbly crave your Majesty's Favour in this last Paper which I shall present to your Majesty in this kind that I may president my self by two grave Bishops St. Ambrose and St. Chrysostom In the former I find myself dispos'd for this Civil as St. Ambrosewas for his natural Death Non ita vixi ut me vivere pudeat nee mori timeo quia bonum habemus Dominum That as I have not liv'd in my Place so altogether unworthily as to be asham'd to continue in the same so am I not now perturb'd in the quitting of the same because I know I have a good God and a gracious Sovereign For the other I present this my last and dying Request in the very last Words of St. Chrysostom
into the bottom of the Sea and fetch up Sponges so The Righteous shall hold on his way and he that hath clean hands shall be stronger and stronger Job 17.9 68. Neither did it deject the Bishop to be made a Gazing-stock by Disparagements The King's Coronation and his second Parliament began together at Candlemas and he was warned by Letter to serve at neither A Coronation being usually accompanied with a General Pardon should have cast a Frown upon none Yet his Place was not granted him to do his Homage among the Spiritual Lords nor to assist the Archbishop at the Sacred Parts of that high Solemnity as Dean of Westminster It is arbitrary and at the King's Pleasure to range that Royal Ceremony as he likes best to follow former Presidents or wave them to intrust what Ministers he likes in the Management except some Tenure or old Charter give admittance to some persons without exception Otherwise in the very principal performance says venerable Saravia De Christ Obed. p. 139. Ab Episcopo traditur corona quod potest furi à proceribus But the Dean of the Collegiate Church of Westminster did attend as a specal Officer at the Coronation of K. James after the manner of Deacon to the Archbishop of Canterbury it was Dr. Andrews which could not be granted him by Prescription for there was no Dean nor any such Dignity in the Church at the Coronation of Q. Elizabeth But upon the new Foundation Anno 3. of that Queen the Dean was intrusted with the Custody of K. Edward's Crown and the other Regalia and Decorum was kept thereupon to give him a great Employment of Assistance on that day Yet the Regalia were kept in a strong place of that Church long before For I find in Baron anno 1060. par II. That Pope Nicholas the Second gave a Charter to that Abby Ut sit repositorium regalium insignium What a busie Fisher was this that would have an Oar or a Net rather in every Boat Could not the Kings of England without him appoint the fittest place for the Custody of the Ornaments of their Imperial Majesties He that was so kind to dispose who should keep the Crown did mean That the King should not wear it without his Leave and Courtesie And let it be his Fault to be impertinent and to meddle with the keeping of Royal Treasure that did not concern him What is their Crime that have carried them quite away both Crown and Scepter and Robes from their ancient Sacrary I would that had been all This was wont to be the Mark of him that opposeth and exalts himself above all that is called GOD Dixi Dii est is 2 Thess 2.4 But what 's the matter that I have almost lost my self in this Loss I was about to tell that Bishop Williams must not wait in the Honourable Place of the Dean at the Coronation but in a Complement he was sent to Name one of the Twelve Prebendaries to serve in his room This was devised to fret him and to catch a Wasp in a Water-trap Bishop Laud was a Prebendary at this time and the Substitute intended at Court to act in the Coronation If Lincoln should Name him he had been laugh'd at for preferring the man that thrust himself by And if he did not Name him and no other he had been check'd for inscribing one of a lesser Order in the Church before a Bishop to so great a Service But his Wit saved him from either Inconvenience He sent the Names of his Twelve Brethren to the King resigning it up to His Majesty to elect whom he pleased A Submission which Climacus would call Sepulchrum voluntatis a dead Obedience without a sensible Concurrence And he stirred no more either by Challenge or Petition to do that eminent Office of the Deanery in his own Person but says in his Letter to the King That he submitted to that Sequestration for so he calls it It is wise to sit down when a man can trouble no Body but himself if he moves Especially I affect the Lesson which Erasmus gives in an Epistle p. 222. Pulchrius est aliquando modestia quam cansâ superare It is handsomer sometimes to excel in Modesty than to win a Cause 69. Other Reasons sway'd this circumspect man to carry it with no such Indifferency that he was not called to the Parliament But to do Honour to the King and to save his own Right nay the common Right of Peers he took a middle way between Crouching and Contumacy He call'd it His Majesty's Gracious Pleasure and was in earnest that he esteem'd it so to spare his Presence at the Parliament but he expostulated to have a Writ of Summons denied to no Prisoners no nor condemned Peers in the late Reign of his blessed Father Cab. p. 118. that accordingly he might make a Proxy which he could not do the Writ not receiv'd And he struggled till he had it in his own way and entrusted it with the Lord Andrews Bishop of Winchester it being the last Parliament wherein that famous Servant of God sate and the last year of his Life But the Mr. W. Sanders tells us p. 143. of his Annals of King Charles That Lincoln at this time continued not a Peer but a Prelate in Parliament Res memoranda novis Annalibus atque recenti historiâ Juven Sat. 2. This is a pitiful matter for what Bishop of Lincoln could be a Prelate in those days and not a Peer Is it his meaning that he did not sit among the Peers Nor did he sit among the Prelates in Convocation but by Proxy he sate in both places as Peer and Prelate A Letter sent from him to the King and dated March 12. will clear this matter and greater things or else it had not been publish'd 'T is large and confident searing the Duke's Greatness no more than the Statuary Work of a vast Colossus But as Portius Latro says in Sallust Gravissimi sunt morsus irritatae necessitat is 'T is no marvel if Necessity break good Manners which will break through Stone Walls says the Proverb And much Provocations attends not much whom it displeaseth The Letter follows Most Mighty and Dread Soveraign IT becometh me of all the rest of your Subjects having been so infinitely obliged to Your Majesty to cast my self down at your Feet and oppose no Interpretation Your Majesty shall be pleased to make of any of my Actions whatsoever Howbeit before the receipt of my Lord Keeper's Letter that I had carried my absence from the Parliament with as much Humility and Respect to Your Majesty as ever Subject of England did towards his Soveraign The delivery of my Proxy to the first Bishop Your Majesty named I excused mannerly to Your Majesty but with a private Reason to my Lord Keeper not to be replied against The second Lord Bishop is directly uncapable of that part of my Proxy which concerneth the House of Convocation These two Lords now named
by Your Majesty are without exception Were it not divulged in the Upper House that I am to have a Proctor thrust upon me against all Presidents and that I dare not refuse him because I am guilty of I know not what Crimes When I wrote unto Your Majesty humbly as became me my Letter deliver'd by Your Majesty to the Duke was publish'd by him as an Effect of a dejected and guilty Conscience When I shall obey your Majesty in the disposal of my Proxy my L. Duke may use that Act also not only to serve himself which I desire he should with all my Heart but principally to wound and deprave me Displeasures of Favourites which are without Ground are also without End Hoc habent animi magnâ fortunâ insolentes quos laeserunt oderunt His Grace hath told Your Majesty that I call'd the Chapter at Westminster against the12 th of May to have a Colour to come to the Parliament whereas the Chapter is appointed to be held at that day by the Statutes of the College He hath told Your Majesty that I held correspondence with the Earl of Bristol from whom I have received neither Letter or Message these two years as I will answer it with my Head He hath told Your Majesty and all the World beside that I stirred the Lower House at Oxford and have my secret Instruments against his Grace even in this Parliament If he be able to prove either of these Charges I will lose not only my Bishoprick which his Grace hath threatned against the fundamental Laws of the Kingdom to take away from me but withal my Life also My Case Dread Soveraign is miserable and the more because it is not mine alone Your Commands come immediately in your own Name and therefore must be readily obeyed Your Graces are streined through the Hands of another and therefore are either not at all as in my Case or not so purely and sincerely received And when Your Majesty punisheth pardon a Truth plainly deliver'd which you were wont to love Dread Soveraign you do it not like your self because you do it not your self A King be he never so severe when he chasteneth his Subjects doth punish them with Justice because they are his Subjects but yet with Mercy because they are his own An angry Lord that makes bold with the King's Authority lays on Load as upon Men and that without Mercy as upon the Subjects of another It was a Complaint of Vinius Galba's Favourite and it is most worthy Your Majesties remembrance Minore licentiâ grassatus esset T. Vinius si ipse imperasset Nunc subjectos nos habuit tanquam suos viles ut alienos And in my case for the present if I should stand upon my Right and refuse Your Majesty I must expect all Severity because another hath your Rod. If I shall yield and obey I must hope for no acceptation because another holds the Garland And for this other if I seek him my Letters are shew'd and I am made foul and guilty If I let him alone I am deprived of the Sun and the Rain the ordinary Graces and Influences of Your Majesty Lastly When I know and all the World beside that I sink only under the causeless Malice of a Subject yet doth that great man wash his Hands and publish to the vexation of my honest Soul That I lye buried under the immediate Hatred of my Soveraign And therefore with an humble Protestation against Fear of Punishment which cannot fall upon my Innocency or Hope of Favour sure to be kept back by the Greatness of my Adversary I do out of religious Duty and mere Obedience to Your Sacred Majesty and no other Respect whatsoever send this Proxy for my L. of Winchester which I humbly beseech Your Sacred Majesty to direct not to be sent to his Lordship until such time as there shall be Use thereof c. 70. Such as knew the Duke of Buck. Metal will say that this was like to be answer'd with a Mischief But it may be his Grace gave the other the more Liberty to write what he would because he had stopt his Mouth from speaking in Parliament Which was a Benefit For Athenagoras was not deprived of Athens but Athens was deprived of Athenagoras There is much Weight in the worth of one man And much might have been expected from one that was so active and well versed to stop the Breaches of Contentions if he had been used and sought to The Duke was ill advis'd to keep them out of the House by threes and fours of whose Opposition he was jealous and could not tye up their Tongues that fell upon him by hundreds Sir Edward Cook Sir T. Wentworth Sir Robert Philips were prick'd to be High-Sheriffs of Buckingham York Somerset Shires to put them into Incapacity to be Members of the Commons-House What said our Bishop to it being in a merry Pin when one told him For certain he should be restrain'd from his Place in the House of Peers What then Am I made High-Sheriff of Huntington-shire Such minute Policies are frivolous and may serve among Huntsmen to save the life of a Hare when a sew of the old Dogs are tied up and not brought into the Field But were there now enow able men in both Houses though half a score were spar'd to follow their Game without changing This was that Parliament that spent the best part of 18 Weeks in drawing up a Charge and prosecuting it against the L. Duke What should this Bishop have done there being neither fit for the offensive nor defensive part How far he was from intending to offend he exprest in a Passage about his Proxy that he desired the Duke should serve himself by it with all his Heart And I heard him my self dispute it with one of the sharpest Antagonists of his Grace in the time of the Session and stagger him That it was the safest way for the Publick Good to desist from that vexatious Charge with this subtle Similitude That if a Beast were got into a Field of Wheat if the Neighbors ran in and hunted it about with their Dogs they would tread down more Corn than five Beasts could devour if they were let alone So to spend so much Time and Pains upon a Charge against one Peer did let Opportunity run by wherein many good Laws might be made and lost the Common-wealth more than it could gain by this Impeachment Neither would he displease the King to appear against a Lord that was unto him in a manner his whole Court. Una fuit nemus arbor Ovid. And as Illustrius the Pythagorean records it that Tyberius the Emperor wrote his Letter thus for Polemo the Philosopher 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 He that will do Polemo wrong let him consider if he can give me Battel So His Majesty had wrapt up the Lord Duke as it were in his own Royal Robe to preserve him Yet if the Bishop had been in the
illa quibus conciliatur plebis animus cò usque ne differantur donec ea praestare cogi videantur Passing right is Sir J. Haward's Hist of H. IV. p. 4. says he The Multitude are more strongly drawn by unprofitable Courtesies than by churlish Benefits Among those that argued for this Petition de Droit I shall remember what past from two eminent Prelates Archbishop Abbot offer'd his own Case to be consider'd banish'd from his own Houses of Croydon and Lambeth confin'd to a moorish Mansion-place of Foord to kill him debarr'd from the management of his Jurisdiction and no cause given for it to that time harder measure than ever was done to him in his Pedagogy for no Scholar was ever corrected till his Fault was told him But he had fuller'd the Lash in a Message brought by the Secretary and no cause pretended for it And what Light of Safety could be seen under such dark Justice The Bishop of Lincoln likewise promoted the Petition but he was a great Stickler for an Addition that it might come to the King's Hands with a mannerly Clause That as they desir'd to preserve their own Liberties so they had regard to leave entire that Power wherewith His Majesty was entrusted for the Protection of his People which the Commons disrelish'd and caused to be cancell'd This caused the Bishop to be suspected at first as if he had been sprinkled with some Court-holy-water which was nothing so but a due Consideration flowing from his own Breast that somewhat might be inserted to bear witness to the Grandeur of Majesty A Passage in Xenophon commends such unbespoken Service lib. 8. Cyrip says he Hystaspus would do all that Cyrus bade but Chrysantus would do all which he thought was good for Cyrus before he bade him 77. In the Debate of this great matter among the Lords this Bishop hath left under his own Pen what he deliver'd partly in glossing upon a Letter which His Majesty under the Signet sent to the House May the 12th partly in contesting with the chief Speakers that quarrel'd at the Petition As to the former First the King says That his Predecessors had never given Leave to the free Debates of the highest Points of Prerogative Royal. The Bishop answered The Prerogative Royal should not be debated at all otherwise than it is every Term in Westminster-hall Secondly the Letter objects What if some Discovery nearly concerning Matters of State and Government be made May not the King and his Council commit the Party in question without cause shewn For then Detection will dangerously come forth before due time Resp No matter of State or Government would be destroyed or defeated if the Cause be exprest in general terms And no danger can likely ensue if in three Terms the Matter be prepared to be brought to Trial. Ob. 3. May not some Cause be such as the Judges have no Capacity of Judicature or Rules of Law to direct or guide their Judgment Resp What can those things be which neither the Kings-bench nor Star-chamber can meet them Obj. 4. Is it not enough that we declare our Royal Will and Resolution to be which God willing we will constantly keep not to go beyond a just Rule and Moderation in any thing which shall be contrary to our Laws and Customs And that neither we nor our Council shall or will at any time hereafter commit or command to Prison for any other cause than doth concern the State the Publick Good and Safety of our People Resp Not the Council-Table but the appointed Judges must determine what are Laws and Customs and what is contrary to them And this gracious Concession is too indefinite to make us depend upon that broad Expression of Just Rule and Moderation Especially be it mark'd That all the Causes in the Kingdom may be said to concern either the State the Publick Good or the Safety of the King and People This under Favour is abundantly irresolute and signifies nothing obtain'd Obj. 5. In all Causes hereafter of this nature which shall happen we shall upon the humble Petition of the Party or Signification of our Judges unto us readily and really express the true cause of the Commitment so as with Conveniency and Safety it be fit to be disolosed And that in all Causes of ordinary Jurisdiction our Judges shall proceed to the delivery or bailment of the Prisoner according to the known and ordinary Rules of this Land and according to the Statutes of Magna Charta and those six Statutes insisted on which we intend not to abrogate or weaken according to the true intention thereof Resp To disclose the cause of Imprisonment except Conveniency and Safety do hinder are ambiguous words and may suffice to hold a man fast for coming forth And if all Causes be not of ordinary Jurisdiction as I hope they are who shall judge which be the extraordinary Causes We are lost again in that Uncertainty So likewise for the Intention of Magna Charta and the six Statutes who shall judge of the true Intention of them That being arbitrary we are still in nubibus for any assurance of legal Liberty So the Concessions of His Majesty's Letter were waved as unsatisfactory 78. And the Bishop went on to shew that the Contents of the Petition were suitable to the ancient Laws of the Realm ever claimed and pleaded expedient for the Subject and no less honourable for the King which made him a King of Men and not of Beasts of brave-spirited Freemen and not of broken-hearted Peasants The Statute in 28 Edw. 3. is as clear for it as the day at Noon-tide That no man of what state or condition soever shall be put out of his Lands or Tenements nor taken nor imprison'd nor disinherited nor put to death without being brought to answer by due process of Law I know one Lord replied to this lately That the Law was wholsom for the good of private men and sometime it might be as wholsom for the Publick Weal that the Soveraign Power should commit to Custody some private man the cause not being shew'd in Law upon more beneficial occasion than a private man's legal Liberty And though the Hand of Power should seem to be hard upon that one person a Benefit might redound to many First be it consider'd if no Law shall be fixt and inviolable but that which will prevent all Inconveniencies we must take Laws from God alone and not from men Then be it observ'd that to bring the exception of a Soveraign Power beside the Laws in Cases determined in the Laws takes away all Laws when the King is pleas'd to use and put forth this Soveraign Power wherewith he is trusted and makes the Government purely arbitrary and at the Will of the King So shall this Reason of State eat up and devour the Reason of Laws Shew me he that can how the affirmation of a Soveraign Power working beside the Law insisted upon shall not bring our Goods and our
makes of his Master's Court. That it was a Divine Priviledge of the Kings of France that they had the gift of healing and could cure the Stromosi by the touch of their hand Si dedisset providentia ut consilia publica auspicatò inirentur and if they could thrust away flattery and false clamours with their hand it would be the happiest Government in Europe Lib. 2. Pandec fol. 36. This Commission sitting the Bishop of Lincoln's Adversaries thought they had him sure and had found his Laire presuming they could ripen some Trespasses of his in that kind for a Sentence in the Star-Chamber Jungant ur tum gryphes equis c. that had been strange to catch him in an over-sight about the Mammon of Iniquity For the Elogy which Grotius gives Lib. 1. Hist Belg. to William of Nassau was as much this Bishop's as it was that great Prince's Crudelitas avaritia nullo ab ingenio longiùs abfuere But what cannot great Men bring about when there are no Parliaments to overlook them As Tully says of Brutus Philip. 12. Multis in rebus ipse sibi Senatus suit All must be as Brutus will if Brutus will be as absolute as if himself were a Parliament Who but Mr. Ratcliff the King's Attorney for York and we know the Orestes to whom this Pylades was so dear was instructed to prepare a Bill to be put into the Star-Chamber against the Bishop who had laid his ear to the ground to hark after the digging of the Mine and knew the Substance of it before the Draught was fully penn'd Such as are so fortunate in their Discoveries and have intelligence of all Practices against them are the Moral of those fabulous People that are called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the Greek Tongue some of a strange plantation that could cover all their body with their Ears The charges upon which mr Ratcliff was devising an Information were two the one about the Fees of the Clerk of the Hamper which is according to Sir H. Spelman's Glossary Sport a grandior cui inferuntur pecuniae è sigillatione diplomatum brevium chartarum regiarum proveniâ—ntes which were as good as fixt before he came to be Lord Keeper The other was about Fees in the Episcopal Registry at Lincoln presented for undue in the persons of some Officers but without reflection on the Bishop whom one thing puzzled for he knew not whether there were a Mystery or Madness in it A Prelate or twain were consulted about this Bill of extorted Fees and they bid it good speed which was no less than to pull an old House upon their own heads for the Sums according to the Tables of their own Registries were the same or greater Did they think he would not plead it Communis culpae cur reus unus agor Proper l. 2. el. 10. Did they conceive but he would declare his Cause was theirs and theirs was his Or would they blow up themselves upon their own Deck to blow up him As Justin shews how desperate the Boeotians were in their malice against the Phocians lib. 8. Baeotii tanto odio Phocensium ardentes ut perire ipsi quà m non perdere eos praeoptarent Better had it been for the Reverend Fathers of Holy Orders rather to strengthen than to weaken one another for the Kite might come O holy Lord he came to soon who would make but one Morsel of them altogether 92. But before any Suit could begin the Bishop represented the Case in a Letter to the King May it please your most excellent Majesty BEing much wounded by a pinching and uneven Report drawn up by some Officer of your Majesties Commissioners for the Fees and presented unto your Majesty Jul. 1630. though but very lately come to my knowledge without any touch of the full and satisfying Answer which I had given some three weeks before unto the Lords Commissioners and to others in that behalf Although I am content as Men of My Calling ought to be to pass with the rest of the World through good report and bad yet I am not able to endure that impression which the said Relation may peradventure have wrought in your Majesties breast against me a Bishop that hath serv'd your Father in so near a place while be lived and closed his Eyes when he died and remains still in the number of your poor Chaplains free from the least suspicion of such sordid Avarice as might cause him to spot his Rocheâ— with the exaction of so mean a Sum as 20 l. a year which is the utmost of that pretended Extorsion The Charges prest upon me with many Words but no Matter at all are two The first concerning an Order for Increasing the Clerk of the Hamper's Fees 19 Jac. The second about Fees for Institutions and Resignations taken by the Bishop of Lincoln My Answer for the Clerk of the Hampers Fees consists of these Heads 1. That the King may justly and legally increase the Fees of all Offices in his own immediate donation not limited by Act of Parliament and hath ever been done so which was granted by all the Lords 2. His late Majesty before my coming to the Seal had referr'd the suggestions of the Clerk of the Hamper for this increase of Fees unto those four great Lords who had the Seal in their custody and that their Lordships by their report did allow the same and returned a Certificate unto his Majesty of all the Species wherein the Fees were to be increased which was confessed by two of their Lordships then present 3. This Certificate was recommended to me both by word of mouth from his Majesty and by direction upon a Petition subscribed to my Remembrance by the Secretary of State which Petition the Commissioners might call for from the Clerk of the Hamper who had it for the instructing of his Council and fortifying his Evidence 4. Upon my doubting of the form how this might be done by Law and President the King's Council learned to wit the Attorny and Sergeant did not in the Clerk of the Hanpers only but in the King's behalf satisfie the Court fully in both those particulars which is express in the Order 5. That thereupon the Court being assisted with one or two Judges without examining the Suggestions which the Court supposed to be sufficiently done by the former Referrees the Order was made which Order for the ease of the Subjects doth retrench and cut short very much of the Fees allowed by the former Certificate 6. For Orders made in the High Court of Chancery the Judge for that time being doth not conceive that he is responsable to any Power under Heaven beside the King himself And this was the effect of my Answer concerning that Order for encreasing the Fees of the Clerk of the Hanper My Answer concerning the Fees in the Diocess of Lincolnis wholly omitted in the Report as though I had been only called before the Commissioners but for form and it was to this effect
were living But though they are all under Earth Faith forbid that their Names should be abused to a wrong Report To keep History uncorrupt from such baseness 't is daintily observ'd out of the Poets by Salmasius Clymac p. 819. Apud orcum defunctae animae jurare dicuntur ne quid suos quos in vitâ reliquerint contra fas adjuvent The Souls departed take an Oath not to help their surviving Friends against Justice But no such Protestation needs in this Cause There is a Petition to be produced written with the Hand of Dr. Walker a Gentleman living and well known wherein His Majesty is minded that he had cancell'd this Complaint and had given his Royal Hand to confirm it What could be more sure Yet it turn'd to nothing the Wound was never suffer'd to heal by the daily Whispering of Bishop Laud diligent in the King's Ear. You may read of one in Suetonius's Caligula Cui ad insaniam Caius favebat So the King suffer'd this Prelate in excess of Power to turn and return Causes as he would and was obnoxious by the bewitching of his Tongue to facility of Perswasions to grant and retract as he possest him Which was seen too late in this excellent Passage of His Majesty in 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 I wish I had not suffer'd mine own Judgment to be overborn in some things more by others Importunities than their Arguments As Erasmus wrote honestly to a mighty Monarch Harry the Eighth Ep. p. 74. Eximia quaedam inter mortales res est Monarcha sed homo tamen And with much liberty our Poet Johnson in his Forrest p. 815. I am at feud With that is ill tho' with a Throne endu'd The Faults of the Blessed Charles were small yet some he had who having assured Lincoln he should never be question'd again about the matter brought against him by Lamb and Sibthorp yet remitted it to the Star-chamber The Defendant conceived it would spend like a Snail or the untimely Fruit of a Woman but when he found himself deceiv'd and that the Cause was glowing hot in Prosecution he sought the King's Clemency Quaedam enim meliùs fugiuntur quà m superantur it is in Erasm Ep. p. 18. He thought it better to fly the Trial than to get the Cause and he put up this which follows into the Hands of His Majesty The Humble Petition and Submission of John Bishop of Lincoln c. THAT although he is innocent from any Crime committed against your Majesty in thought word or deed yet abhorring as he finds by Presidents all other Bishops of this Realm have done Placitare cum Domino rege to have any Suit with his Sovereign Lord Master and Patron he casts himself in all humility at Your Majesties Feet and implores your Royal Mercy and Clemency Non intrare in judicium cum servo tuo coveting to ascribe his Deliverance to Your Majesties Clemency And whereas your most Excellent Majesty having in the fourth year of your happy Reign received the Opinion of the four Lords Committees concerning these very self-same Charges did in your Majesties Gallery at Whitehall admit this Defendant brought in by the Right Honourable the Lord Treasurer one of the said Committees to kiss your Majesties Hand and did use unto him this Defendant in the presence and hearing of the said Right Honourable Lord these gracious words That your Majesty was pleased to forgive all that was past and would esteem of this Defendant according as he should deserve by his Service for the time to come He most humbly beseecheth your most Excellent Majesty that according to that so gracious Remission and Absolution no further Prosecution at your Majesties Suit may be used against him concerning the said Charges all which he doth the rather hope for from your Majesty because he is a Bishop that hath endeavoured not to live scandalously in his Calling and hath formerly had the Favour from Almighty God with his own Hands to close your Majesties Father's Eyes and to have written and drawn up that Commission and Contract for your Majesties Marriage whereupon ensued to this Kingdom a most unvaluable Blessing and heartily prayeth that God who hath delivered your Majesty from your late Sickness may bless you in all Health Happiness and Prosperity So far the Petition I will not teach the Reader what Sallads to pick out of it but only the Herb of Grace that the Bishop kist the King's Hand upon the assurance of his Peace that the Offence which was taken was buried and should never rise up in Judgment more Nihil periculi Soloni à Pisistrato Diog. Laert. Now who ever liked Julian the Cardinal that made Ladislaus K. of Polonia break his League with the Turk And who will defend B. L. that made his Soveraign break his word with his Subject It was he and none else that put in an unseasonable Bar to hinder Lincoln the fulness of the Benefit I know none that had the nearest part in B. L's Favour that can deny it And let them turn it about as they will is it possible they should excuse it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 It is Theodoret's Ep. 2. Children see no uncomeliness in their Parents But although they will see no ill in the Person they must in the Fact For what a Trespass is this in Justice to punish that which was forgiven Let the King do Righteous Judgment like God in whose Throne he sits before whom this holds inviolable Peccata dimissa nunquam redeunt No not original Sin when remitted in Baptism it shall not be imputed to them any more that are damned for actual Crimes whereof they did not repent So Grotius cites it out of Prosper in Matth. c. 18. v. 34. Extinctam semel obligationem non reviviscere sed propter postrema crimina affici The most that seems to be against this Rule but falls in with it is this That when former Sins are forgiven and new ones are superadded the latter shall be punish'd the more for the ungratefulness of the Sinner Non quod jam remissa puniantur sed quod sequens peccatum minùs graviter punâ—retur si priora remissa non fuissent says Maldonat My Sentence is at the last of all with Syracides c. 29.3 Keep thy word and deal faithfully revoke not your Kindness pluck not up the Seeds of a Benefit which you had sown with your own Hand It is worse to turn Mercy than Justice into Wormwood 111. Destiny is unavoidable A Bill is filed in the Star-Chamber and prosecuted for the King for Revealing his Councils The Defendant made him ready for his Answer and plyed the King with Petitions together in Parody like Virgil's Aeneas Et se collegit in arma Poplite subsidens At first he tried Bishop Laud if he would be so generous as to heal the Wound that he had made and anointed him with the Weapon-Salve of remembrance of Friendship past and protestation of the like for ever he courted him to
Commenda's For the Money says the Bishop I am low in Cash but will make a shift to pay it To part with the Deanry will make an open Scar and no fair one Beside the Money is useful for the King's Revenue the Deanry is no Profit to His Majesty to take it from my hand and to put it into another and what the World hath given me I am willing to give it back again but what His Majesty's Father did give me and by the Mediation of His Majesty being Prince I can take no comfort in my Life if I be stript of it That Lord return'd again with a Message to leave him his Deanry and Commenda's but to raise up the Sum of Composition to 8000 l. The Bishop held up his Hands to Heaven in amazement at it But you will lift your Hands at a greater Wonder says L. Cottington if you do not pay it Well I will satisfie the King says Lincoln and I will sell some Land for it The Match is struck done 'tis and the Bishop as good as undone by it He delighted to do charitable Works but this would sear the Vein that it could run no more It was a sweet Apophthegm which I heard come from him when all was exhausted I care not for Poverty but I shall not be able to requite a Benefit God grant every good King a better way than this was to enrich him Fiscus bonorum Principum non sacerdotum damnis sed hostium spoliis angeatur I commend thee Symmachus for it p. 56. But on goes the Game the Bishop is dealing in London to take up a Cart-load of Money and that right worthy Attorney Sir J. Blanks was sedulous to draw up a full Pardon so absolute that it included more than the Bishop desired as this Letter to the L. Keeper will declare My very good Lord MR. Attorney hath once or twice sent unto me by my Man some imperfect Propositions about the manner of a Pardon which His Most Excellent Majesty should grant unto me which Propositions not speaking with Mr. Attorney himself I do not well understand for as it is delivered to me His Majesty's Offer's more than ever I desired by naming a general Pardon to wit to pardon all Offences contained in the two Informations and any other Offence or Misdemeanor I should desire particularly to be freedfrom which if it be so is as gracious a Favour from His Majesty as any reasonable man can expect But my good Lord I know nothing by my self that should of necessity be so solemnly pardon'd Yet hearing His Majesty's Inclinations to grant unto others in the condition that I stand general Abolitions and being not so wise as the last Parliament to refuse the benefit of a general Pardon I confess I fell in my Parley with your Lordship upon that way propounded unto me by my Counsel Learned But hearing of late it is construed by others as a kind of Capitulation with my Soveraign I beseech your Lordship I may wave it altogether and that your Lordship would represent me kneeling at His Majesty's Feet craving that his Goodness and Mercy only without any thing in Writing together with my Industry in his Service for the time to come may be the substance and extent of all my Pardon and this but for such things as by Informations or Petitions I have been though undeservedly presented as an Offender against His Most Excellent Majesty and desir'd to be proceeded against by His Majesty's immediate Directions If any other private Subject hath ought to say against me for any Trespass or Misdemeanour committed against himself and not His Majesty I desire no Protection but those of His Majesty's Courts of Justice against any such person whosoever c. December 11th 1635. From December it hung as it were between Heaven and Earth it will and it will not be done till the King had occasion to go to Windsor and the Bishop had order to lye at Eaton expecting to be sent for to kiss the King's Hand But who comes thither that was not look'd for it being the middle of the week but the Archbishop who malleated the King's Gentleness into stronger Metal When Lincoln had laboured for Peace from thenceforth it was as far set back as if it had never been in Treaty How was his good Soul toss'd about between Friends and Foes between Mercy and Frowns and now in the last Attempt put to Job's note c. 16. v. 11. God hath deliver'd me to the ungodly and turn'd me over to the hands of the wicked I was at ease but he hath broken me asunder and shaken me to pieces and set me up for a mark Intempestiva benevolentia nihil à simultate differt Polit. Ep. p. 26. A constant Enmity is more generous than to interrupt it with Offers of never-intended or never-composed Agreements Now the Archbishop look'd for the day when he should trample upon this Bishop in a Censure Azorius the Jesuite shall apply it for me Moral tom 1. lib. 13. c. 6. When the Order of the Knights Templars was plotted to be overthrown in a Council at Vienna in Dauphine says Pope Clement V. Etsi non per viam justitiae potest destrui destruatur per viam expedientiae ne scandalizetur filius noster rex Franciae If they cannot fall by Justice they must fall for convenience sake But here 's the difference in the Story There a Bishop did gratifie the King here the King did gratifie a Bishop 117. Proceed then to another Information since it must be so The first Cause being mortified a new one took life from it as Gorgias Leontinus his Mother was deliver'd of him when she was dead Viva fuit sterilis mortua facta parens as Dr. Alabaster writes in his Epigram upon it They are but ill Examples in the New Testament when an Accusation is turn'd into a new Species The Jews impleaded our Saviour at first that he said he would destroy the Temple c. and chang'd it before Pilate into another Charge that he made himself a King Paul was Indicted by the same Nation that he brought a Greek into the Temple to pollute it but it was turn'd into another matter Revilest thou God's High-Priest They that will not stand to their own Bill are more set upon Destruction than Justice Kilvert onerated the Bishop with Ten Charges together the use of the Court being as Judge Popham had regulated it to admit but Four at once But chiefly he was active to grime the Defendant with one foul fault Subornation of Witness that is to foment Perjury But the King's Counsel perusing the Depositions waved it and gave it another form Seducing of Witnesses a manifest injury to the attestation of Truth and for contraction in a new phrase Tampering with Witnesses as my Lord of Canterbury called it in his Sentence Perhaps it is not Subornation of Perjury but it is Tampering The Defendant thought to help himself with a Demur upon four Heads
North gave our Bishop a breathing time from his Troubles And when the Articles of Pacification made at Berwick were burnt in London true or uncorrupted I dispute not I that report this was the first that carried the Tidings to the Tower and I call God to witness the Bishop presently broke out into these words I am right sorry for the King who is like to be forsaken by his Subjects at home but far more by all Kings and Princes abroad who do not love him But for the Archbishop says he he had best not meddle with me for all the Friends he can make will be too few to save himself A fatal fore-sight of all impending and ensuing Mischiefs But do you not hope Sir said I that such Concussions as you fear to come to pass will give you your Peace and Liberty Possibly they will says he But no honest man shall be the better for a Scotch Reformation wherein the Hare-brains among us are engaged with them Which is like that of Rutilius deported in Banishment to Mytelene one comforted him with hope of Civil Wars and then all that were banish'd should return to Rome says Rutilius Quid tibi mali feci ut mibi pejorem reditum quà m exitum sperares That which did precipitate the common Fortune and made all things worse and worse was the King's very sudden dissolving the Parliament met in Apr. 1640. His Majesty had been forewarned by a worthy Counsellor and a dying man against that Error in the Christmas before Cujus mortem dolor omnium celebrem fecit Sym. Ep. p. 11. It was L. Keeper Coventry who made but one Request with his last Breath to the King and sent it by Mr. James Maxwel of the Bed-Chamber That His Majesty would take all Distasts from the Parliament summoned against April with patience and suffer it to sit without an unkind dissolution But the Barking of the living Dogs was sooner heard than the Groaning of a dying Lyon for that Parliament ended in a few days in its Infancy and in its Innocency but the Grief for it will never end The next came on Novemb. 3. with all Animosities that could be infused out of Scotch and English Distempers The Bishop of Lincoln Petitions the King by the Queens Mediation that he might be set at liberty and have his Writ as a Peer to sit in Parliament which was opposed by the L. Finch then Custos sigilli magni and Archbishop Laud as appears by a Letter written to Sir Richard Winn Octob. 3. in these words 130. Good Cousin WITH my hearty Thanks remembred for all your great however unfortunate care of me and my Affairs Though you would not let me know any thing that might be any Grief or Discomfort to me yet I hear it of other Hands That I am eternally bound to the Queens Majesty and bound to remain her Vassal as long as I live And that I owe much to some other great Lords of His Majâ—â—ty's Council And that his Grace by my Lord Keeper's bold and much-mistaken Information to His Majesty that the Parliament cannot examine Errors and Oppressions in such an arbitrary Court as the Star-chamber is doth keep off His Majesty from using his Clemency towards me or permitting me to employ my best Endeavours to serve him My Lords Grace and Secretary Windebank have good reason to wish me out of the Parliament and out of the World too if they conceive I have no other business there than to complain against them And so hath the Lord Keeper and Sir J. Lamb. If her gracious Majesty whom than willingly offend I will rather dye will be pleased to set aside the Relations those two Personages have towards Her Majesty and set her poor Servant at liberty to take his course for Redress for those intolerable Concussions they have used against him And that I do not speak herein beside my Books I pray you and your Friends to peruse the bundle of Papers I send you which I desire you to return to me c. Through the Perswasion of those about the King whom the Letter discovers Lincoln was like to lye by it and to be shut out of Mercy by an irreversible Decree But the Lords of the Upper House after they had look'd about them a while on Nov. 16. sent to the Lieutenant of the Tower to deliver him to then Officer of the Black Rod who conducted him to the Parliament and their Lordships gave him his Place among his Brethren in the Bishops-Bench The King did soon hear of his Carriage that he neither complain'd nor so much as glanced at his Persecutors As a true Lover of his Country said Cic. Ep. Fam. lib. 10. Non me impedient privatae offensiones quò minùs pro Reip salute etiam cura inimicis consentiam His Majesty heard more That he was his faithful Minister and Stable to stand for him in all motions and did not refrain to fall sharply upon those Lords to whom he owed his Releasement for not speaking dutifully of His Majesty and of his Actions with Reverence Upon it the King sent for him and had conference with him alone till after midnight and made him some amends for the Evils past by commanding all Orders filed and kept in any Court or Registry upon the former Hearings and Dependencies against him to be slighted cancell'd crazed that no Monument or Memorial of them might remain So Aâ—m Probus tells us what Reparation was made to Alcibiades after he was brought home to Athens from his Exile Pilae in quibus devotio scripta fuit contra Alcibiadem in mare praecipitatae post quà m à Spartá revocatus est To quote a nearer Example When Constantine let Athanasius return again to his See at Alexandria 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Athan. ad Solit. Vit. p. 823. All that was engross'd against Athanasius he commanded the Memory of it to be rid out of the way and all of it to be blotted out Look for such another Instance in Symmachus Ep. p. 127. of him that was thrice honour'd in being reinvested in those Honours from which he was degraded Majus quiddam est honorem restituere quam dedisse c. For Fortune may confer but only Judgment restores to Honour I am come to the end of those Suits with which our Bishop was overwhelmed and still made Defendant against the King Let Posterity observe how he was censur'd and grievously but for two things tampering with Witnesses never known before to be a fault in the Realm of England and for being suspected to have received two Letters in Cyphers of a mystical sence and as slight regard Being accused for divulging the King's Counsels and for Subornation of Witnesses he broke the neck of those Bills Being questioned for his Book in the High-Commission Court he wound himself out of the Labyrinth of all their Articles From an Hodg-potch of new Informations in Star-chamber he deliver'd himself by adventuring to appeal from that Court to the
Service and Affairs And in that respect as well as your common interest and duty we command your suitable compliance which we assure you shall be looked upon by us as a fresh acceptable Testimony of your Affections to Us and our Cause and preserved in our Royal remembrance with the rest of your Merits against the time when it may please God to enable Us to reflect thereon for your good Thus far his Majesty to make way for the Lord Byron a gallant Person a great Wit a Scholar very Stout full of Honour and Courtesie yet favour'd the English Interest above the Welsh in those Counties which did not take And the Dye of War run so false that he lost the Cast to one who had not the Ames-Ace of Valour in him Neither did the scatter'd Forces of those distressed Parts ever set them another Stake Prince Rupert observing the Royal Directions wrote largely as followeth May 16. 1644. To all Governours and Officers to all Sheriffs Commissioners of the Array or Peace all Vice-Admirals or Captains of Ships in the three Counties WHereas I understand by his Majesty's Letters unto me lately directed that the most Reverend Father in God John Lord Archbishop of York by reason of his great Experience and Imployments in the Affairs of this Kingdom as well under my Grandfather of famous memory as under his Majesty that now is hath been intrusted in the three Counties c. from the first beginning of these Troubles and gives his best Advice in Matters of Importance which have relation to the King's Service and the Peace and safe keeping of those Counties from all Invasions by Sea or Land And that he hath discharged that Trust reposed in him faithfully and successfully during the time of his abode in those parts My will and pleasure is That according to his Majesty's intimation to me you and every one of you in all matters of importance and moment touching or concerning his Majesty's or my Service under his Majesty in those Counties as also in all Matters of Questions Doubts and Variances which may fall out either among your selves or between your selves and the several Counties wherein you govern or command shall from time to come consult and advise with the said most Reverend Father in God and follow such his Advices and Counsels in the Premisses which shall be grounded upon the Laws of the Land or the pressing Necessities of these times and agreeing with our Directions and future Instructions from time to time RUPERT Nothing was wanting of Royal and Princely care to preserve the Archbishop in Conway-Castle yet all would not serve There was none whom Envy did more strive to hold down upon all occasions which his great Deservings brought upon him So true is that of Synesius de provid 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Vertue doth not quench Envy but rather kindle it One violent Person unframed all good Order who would submit to no Authority a hot Man for he was ever dry and he did not conceal it for he was always drinking 198. That Affront waited more leisure to break forth and suffered him to take a long and a tedious Journey in Winter to Oxford in obedience to these Lines which he received from his Majesty Decemb. 16. 1644. CHARLES R. WE having had frequent experience of your good Affection and Ability to serve us and having occasion at this time to make use of them here We have thought fit and do by these Presents require you to repair hither to Us to Oxon with all convenient expedition Desiring you to come as throughly informed as you can of the true condition of Our Affairs c. Presently he set forward though the ways were much beset and came in January with the first to the King for he had many things to represent and was not in his Element when he was consined in private Walls He took up his Lodging with the Provost of Queens-Colledge Dr. Christopher Potter a Master in Divinity and a Doctor of Piety He was received in the Court with much Grace where he saw his stay must be short For that City could not long receive so many Nobles and Gentry as came to make a Session of Parliament neither could so many of the King 's principal Friends be spared from their Countries Being then a good Husband of his time and having private Audience with his Majesty he gave him that Counsel to which Wisdom and Allegiance led him as Thraseas Paetus the famous Senator said Suum esse non aliam quà m optimam sententiam dicere One passage is fit to see the light which had much of prudence in it and too much of prophesie He desir'd his Majesty to be informed by him and to keep it among Advices of weight That Cromwel taken into the Rebels Army by his Cousin Hambden was the most dangerous Enemy that his Majesty had For though he were at that time of mean rank and use among them yet he would climb higher I knew him says he at Bugden but never knew his Religion He was a common Spokes-man for Sectaries and maintained their part with stubbornness He never discoursed as if he were pleased with your Majesty and your great Officers indeed he loves none that are more than his Equals Your Majesty did him but Justice in repulsing a Petition put up by him against Sir Thomas Steward of the Isle of Ely but he takes them all for his Enemies that would not let him undo his best Friend and above all that live I think he is Injuriarum persequentissimus as Porcius Latro said of Catiline He talks openly that it is sit some should act more vigorously against your Forces and bring your Person into the power of the Parliament He cannot give a good word of his General the Earl of Essex because he says the Earl is but half an Enemy to your Majesty and hath done you more favour than harm His Fortunes are broken that it is impossible for him to subsist much less to be what be aspires to but by your Majesty's Bounty or by the Ruin of us all and a common Confusion as one said Lentulus salvâ Repub. salvus esse non potuit Paterc In short every Beast hath some evil properties but Cromwel hath the properties of all evil Beasts My humble motion is that either you would win him to you by the Promises of fair Treatment or catch him by some stratagem and cut him short Now if it shall be objected Who reports this saving the Archbishop himself to magnifie his own parts that he was so excellent in fore-sight and as Ajax slighted his Rival Sua narret Ulysses Quae sine teste gerit I satisfie it thus His Servants and they that daily listned to his Discourses have heard it come from him long before the accident of saddest experience how some of them would live to see when Cromwel would bear down all other Powers before him and set up himself The King received it with a
The second thing called Culpable in him but was not was pick'd at by the cross Humours of some in the end of Q. Elizabeth's Reign They were of the old Stock of Non-conformitants and among the Seniors of his College who look'd four upon him because he was an Adherent to and a Stickler for the Discipline and Ceremonies of the Church of England these laid their Heads together to exclude him from Preferment but their Plot would not hit Others that were the most orderly Sons of the Church were not pleased with him because he frequented Reverend Mr. Perkins his Congregation It is true he was his constant Auditor while Mr. Perkins lived so early his well-kneaded Judgment took delight in clear and solid Divinity And he that is discreet will make his Profit out of every side or every Faction if you like to call it so 11. At the close of the most happy Reign of Q Elizabeth he Commenced Batchelor of Arts. And to make that Degree sit upon him with the better Credit within a Month he was made Fellow of his College with the advantage of that Seniority which promised him the Proctorship of the University if he lived to it according to the constant Order of that Society Filii prunae exultant volare Job 5.7 He was full of warmth and tended upward I find in a Letter which he wrote to King James 22 years after wherein he remembers the King That His Majesties Gracious Letters confer'd that Blossom of the first Preferment upon him He was no heavy Log to be lifted up to a Fellowship with a Court-Leaver But the Place being extraordinary for it was pregnant with the Pretorship there needed some Engine from above to settle him Without disparagement to his Merit it shall not be concealed that some of the Seniors did make resistance against him whose Suffrages are requisite by Statute for the Election of Fellows One or two of them were observed to stop the Advancement of all the most sharp Wits as far as they could Men not to be compared with the sweet Philosopher Plato but like him in this That Plato would not admit Homer into his Commonwealth for he was too great a Citizen for his City This was a Grief apparent that Mr. Aluy though himself departed into Ireland had left of his Spirit among them a Spirit devious from the Quiet and Happy Way of obeying our Church Discipline And this did season a few with a wrong Zeal to depress such whose Learning and prudent Behaviour did promise that they would be Champions for Conformity But he that was then the Pinacle of the Codege far higher then the low-roost Building of the rest was Dr. Playsere one of the Public Professors of Divinity and of most celebrated Eloquence let me carve a good Figure for his Memory in this Structure it was he that opened the stiff Soil and planted this young Sprig in his Fellowship and led him in his hand out of the Throng of Contradiction You may guess that the young Batchelor did Glory in it and had the sense of Juily in his mind when he said He had rather be Praised by Cato then have a Triumph voted to him by the Senate 12. Now our young Graduate began to run the Race of three years Course to the Degree of Master a time of loitering with too many but not with him It was his common Theme even when he was a Bishop if young Students were at his Table to inveigh gravely against Batchelors of Arts because commonly they mis-spent that Triennial Probation and left upon that place a Vacuum of doing little or nothing He that least of all committed that Crime might best set Judge upon the Guilty For his own part now his Clay was upon that Wheel it turn d about as Peripateties say of the highest Sphere with a most rapid Motion He surrendred up his whole Time to dive into the Immense Well of Knowledge that hath no bottom He Read the Best he Heard the Best he Conferr'd with the Best Excrib'd committed to Memory Disputed he had some Work continually upon the Loom And though he never did so much in this unwearied Industry as himself desired he did far more then all that did highly value him could expect Ingenium caeleste suis vâ—lecius amns surgit Ovid. His Equals of the same time began to find his Discourse far above their pitch in weighty Judgment and what was look'd for from him in his Public Exercises might be perceived by the Throng that come to Hear him and that none at the parting but Admired him All perceived that a Fellowship was a Garland too little for his Head and that he that went his pace would quickly go further then St. John's Walks 13. He that will dig diligently for Wisdom God will provide a Mine for him to Recompence his Labour my Proof lies thus Here was a Student that would take any pains to know much and God supplied him with as good Men in that Age as ever Cambridge afforded before or since that were able to teach him A Scholar can have no taste of Natural Philosophy without some conditement of the Mathematicks See the good luck of it that he had Mr. Edward Briggs within the Walls of the same College for his Master by whom he was initiated into the Principles of Geometry which never departed out of his tenacious Memory Yet he did but kiss the Cup of those Sciences and drank not deep Fruit that is next the Sun may change the colour but unless it hang long on the Tree it comes not to maturity He frequented Mr. Lively and Mr. Downes Duo Scipiadae the Professors of the Hebrew and Greek Tongues in the Publick Schools from whose full Breasts he suck'd most excellent Skill in those Learned Languages He had also other choice Praeceptors to perfect him in the Sacred Tongue Mr. Robert Spalden a modest and no less Learned Divine Fellow of St. John's and Rabbi Jacob a Jew born whom I remember for a long time a Commorant in the University with the Instruction of these two he dived far into the Mystery of that Holy Language But chiefly he did heartily acknowledge that the Hand of God did go with him that Dr. Overal was the King's Professor in the Chair of Divinity in his Years of soft Wax from whom he took such a right Orthodox Impression of stating Theological Controversies I ask'd him on a time what it was that pleased him in Dr. Overal above all others whom he heard to handle Determinations of Divine Points in a Scholastical Form He gave me this Answer because First Dr. Overal was used to prove his Conclusion out of two or three Texts of Scripture at the most and no more being such Places upon whose right Interpretation the judgment of the Cause did chiefly depend Secondly That above all Men that ever he heard he did most pertinently quote the Fathers both to the right sense of their Phrase which few did understand
taught to know him by that Name and his Stile at every Word was his Excellency The Duke was singularly Learned for one of that Eminency and Illustrious Blood Therefore it was thought meet to receive him in the Publick Schools with a disputation in Philosophy performed by the most expert Professors of it who were ready we were sure at the shortest warning I must do him Right to him that was the first Opponent that he charged the Repondent bravely with Arguments of the best Artillery It was Mr. Wrâ—n of Pembrooke-Hall now the Reverend and Afflicted Bishop of Ely whose Enemies God hath punisht with such hardness of Heart that he being never yet brought to Answer to the Objections of his Persecutors after Ejection out of all his Estate and after Twelve years of Imprisonment in the Tower he continues still in that cruel Durance But I look back to my own Matter Mr. Prectour Williams was the President or Moderator at this Learned Act who by discretion as well as other sufficiency outstript them all For as the Apostle of the Gentiles says He was made all things to all Men so the Proctor manag'd his part before this Prince alla Tudesea to Dutch-men he became a Dutch Philospher for all his Conceptions he confirm'd by Quotations out of Julius Pacius Gâ—â—lâ—â—ius Keckerman and others that had been Professors within the Districts of the Gorman Principalities which was so unexpressibly acceptable to the Duke of Wittenberg and his Retinue that they kept him in their Company so long as they stay'd in Cambridge and would never part with him and in fine carried him in their Caroaches to Nowmarket and acquainted the King what Credit he had done to their Country Philosophers 28. The next Passage is of another frame and tried his Judgment not his Learning The Earl of Salisbury that famous Lord-Treasurer had Govern'd our University as Chancellor from the Year 1600 with good liking to all Uxit dum vixit bene He lest this World May 24. 1612. In the Election of a Successor the Regent-House in whom the Choice was were improvidently divided The greater Number gave their Voices for Henry Earl of Northampton Lord Privy-Seal sometimes a Gremial of our Body superlatively Learned a Writer of Books in Queen Elizabeth's days that especially against Judicial Astrology is of as elegant Contexture as any that are written in more Sunny Climates Beside he was very Rich and a Batchelor a Founder already of a charitable and handsom Pile of Building at Greenwich Therefore such as devised all good ways to attract the Benevolence of Liberal and Wealthy Men unto us hoped he would be very beneficial to Cambridge his Mother which now cast her self into the Arms of his Governance and Patronage So far the adverse Part could not dislike him One and the only thing to them of ill digestion was that Vox populi not the Jealousie but the Clamour of Court and Country was that he was no better then a Church-Papist That certainly his Heart was more with the Consistory of Rome then of Cambridge These with whom this Objection stuck were close Students plain and honest Men the least of all others acquainted with the World abroad Therefore they run blindfold upon a desperate way and to discountenance or discourage the Lord Privy-Seal they put one far better then himself in balance against him the King 's second Son Charles Duke of York his Highness though then but in the 12th Year of his Age. The Lord Privy-Seal had far more Votes in the Scrutiny for his Election and so it was in all Post-haste signified unto him But he took on with all Impatience to be so Abus'd to be made Competitor with the King's Son and to prevail in the Election And the King was more Wroth with the Simplicity or rather Presumption of those silly Clerks that durst Nominate his Dear and Tender Son the Duke to any Place or Office before they had beg'd Leave in all Humility for the Royal Assent A few of these received a great Check for it at the Council-Table and were a while under the Custody of Pursuivants For their Error the whole University was under as black a Cloud of Displeasure as ever I knew it in all my time and floated like a Ship in a great Storm that knew not where to Anchor The King exclaimed at them for Heady Inconsiderate swayed by Puritanical Factions The Lord Privy-Seal the Elect Chancellor shrunk up his Shoulders and made an Answer of fine Words and well set together ' That he was not worthy to have the Primacy or Pilotship ' over the Argonauts of such an Argosie But in Rude English it was no better then that He scorn'd their Proffer The Lords of the Council told them plainly They deserv'd no Chancellor among the Peerage who had so spitefully confronted an Earl of that Eminency The Vice-Chancellor Dr. Gouch with the Sophies of the Consistory Resolved That this was not a Sore that would heal with delay therefore they dispatch Proctor Williams with their Letters to offer himself before the King though the Storm blew stiff against him So he came to the Court at Greenwich and casting himself upon his Knees before the King with his Letters in his hand the King with no pleased Countenance ask'd him what he would have Sir says he my self and they who sent me crave Justice of Your Majesty in the behalf of Your University of Cambridge which suffers under Your Displeasure in that sort as I believe never any of Your Subjects did before that nineteen Parts of a great Incorporation should be Condomn'd for the Frowardness and that unpreventable by all the Power we had of the twentieth Part and they the meanest of us all We beseech You Gratiâ—us Sovereign to Name a Chancellor to preside over us or suffer us to come to Your Majesty upon all Occasions as unto our Chancellor not made so by the suffrage of poor Scholars You are far above that but in the sublime Title of Your Kingly Office by which You are obliged to Protect all Your People that are Unprotected This confident Speech was enough to hint to so wise a King that this was not the Style of Guiltiness so Justice being even the Girdle of his Loins and Mercy dropping easily from his Lips like an Honey-comb without streining he gave the Petitioner his Hand to kiss and bad him bid those that sent him to take Courage in looking well to their Charge in the University All Errors lately committed were struck off They should have Power to choose their Chancellor for he would not take their Right of Free Election from them His further Pleasure should be declared in his Letters which would be at Cambridge before him if he made not haste home And indeed the Proctor and the Letters came thither both in a day which being opened signified to the Vice-Chancellor and the Heads assisting That they should forthwith call a Congregation and resume an Election for a
or improper to him and his Calling he is to be Acquitted by a formal Pardan as an Innocent but if he were acting in Indebitâ materia when he did it then it is to be gathered that God did give him up to that mischance that he might be disciplined for his Extravagancy by the Censure of the Church Now take the Illation That the Arch-Bishop fell into this Misfortune being unduly employed many Synods having prohobited Hunting to all Species of the Ministry Maldonatus lib. 2. de Sacr. p. 254. Quod nonnulli dicum irregularom esse Saccrdotom qui dâ—ns operam â—nationi juod illi non licebat homimm intersecit putans se feram intersicere falsum esi Sir H. Martin answered That Employment in undue matter is to be understood of Evil simply in it self Non de malo quia prohibitum not in a thing clearly lawful if it were not prohibited Are Clerks restrained from Hunting No wonder So they are by some Synodical Rules from playing at Tennis What mean such austere Coercions Nothing but to keep them from excess of Pleasure and Idieness which turn to be Avocations of their Studies and Attendance on the Church of Christ That in particular Hunting is no Unpriestly Sport by the Laws of England may thus be proved For every Peer in the higher House of Parliament as well Lords Spiritual as Temporal hath Permission by the Charta de Forcstà when after Sunmons he is in his Journey to the Parliament and not else to cause an Horn to be sounded when he travels through any of the King's Forests and to kill a brace of Bucks signification being given of his Intent to the Verdurers 78. The King had persect knowledge how these Things were discuss'd He saw that whether the Person of the Arch-Bishop were tainted by this Fact or not yet his Metropolitical Function was unsettled in many men's Opinions he heard that the Acts of Spiritual Courts were unsped and came to no end till Sentence were pronounced one way or other by the Supreme Authority Therefore a Commission was directed from His Majesty to ten Persons to meet together for this purpose about the beginning of October These were the Lord-Keeper the Bishops of London Winton and Rochester the Elects of Exeter and St. Davids Sir Harry Hâ—bart Lord-Chief-Justice of the Common-Pleas Sir John Dodderidge one of the Justices of the Kings-Bench Sir H. Martin Dean of the Arches and Dr. Steward esteemed the Papinian of Doctors-Commons These began to lay their Heads together upon the Third of October and then Conser'd upon the manner of their Proceeding The Lord Hobart and Sir H. Martin affecting that his Grace should send Counsel to Plead before them from which the rest dissented First Because no such Privilege was allowed him in the King's Letters directed to the Commissioners Secondly Because the Honour of the King and the Seandal of the Church which as yet made the adverse Party have no Counsel on their side Thirdly Because His Majesty required Information from those ten upon the nature of this Fact relying upon their Knowledge Learning and Judgments but not referring the Matter to their final Decision and Determination Indeed their Work to prevent Excursions was laid out in three Questions which they were commanded to Resolve and to Act no further And those were Debated till the 27th of that Month and in the end Decided with great Disagreement of Opinions The first Question Whether the Arch-Bishop were Irregular by the Fact of Involuntary Homicide The two Judges and the two Civilians did agree That he was not Irregular and the Bishop of Winton who was a strong Upholder of Incontaminate Antiquity coming to the same sense said He could not conclude him so The other five held He was Irregular The second Question Whether that Act might tend to a Scandal in a Church-man The Bishop of Winton the Lord Hobart and Dr. Steward doubted All the rest Subscribed That there might arise from such an Accident Scandalum acceptum non datum a Scandal taken but not given The third Question How my Lord's Grace should be restored in case the King should follow the Decision of those Commissioners who had found him Irregular All agreed it could no otherwise be done then by a Restitution from the King In the manner they varied The Bishop of Wiâ—châ—sâ—er Lord Hobart Dr. Steward were of one mind to have it done immediately from the King and from him alone in the same Patent with the Pardon The Lord-Keeper Bishops of London Rochester Exon and St. Davids to be directed to some Bishops by a Commission from the King to be transacted in a foâ—mal Absolution Church-wise Manu Clericali Judge Dodderidge and Sir Harry Maâ—â—in were willing to have it done both ways for abundant Caution The whole Business was submitted to His Majesty to determine it who took the shortest course to shew Mercy Sprevit caelestis animus humana consilia as Velleius said of C. Caeâ—ar So by his Broad-Seal He assoiled the Arch-Bishop from all Irregularity Scandal or Infamation pronouncing him to be capable to use all Metropolitical Authority as if that sinistrous Contigency in spilling Blood had never been done A Princely Clemency and the more to be Extoll'd because that Arch-Bishop was wont to dissent from the King as often as any man at the Council-Board It seems he loved him the better for his Courage and Sincerity For it was he that said to Jo. Spotswood Arch-Bishop of St. Andrews telling His Majesty That if he wrote an History of the Church of Scotland to which Labour he was appointed he could not approve of his Mother in all things that she did Well says the King speak the Truth and spare not Words after Salomon's Praise which are Apples of Gold in Pictures of Silver 79. But because when our Arch-Bishop's Unfortunateness was recent it appeared far worse to some scrupulous Ecclesiastics then it did in process of time therefore the Lord-Keeper with the two other Elects cast themselves at His Majesties Feet and besought Him That since they had declared before God and the World what they thought in that dubious Case they might not be compel'd by wounding their Consciences to be Consecrated by him but be permitted to receive that Solemnity from some other Bishops which was warrantable by His Majesties Laws This was easily granted and the Lord-Keeper was Consecrated in the Chappel of King Henry the Seventh at Westminster on the 11th day of November following by the Bishops of London Worcester Ely Oxford Landaff And the Elects of Sarum Exeter St. Davids in the Chappel of the Bishop of London's Palace Nov. 18. by the same Reverend Fathers From hencesorth the suspicion of the Irregularity was brought asleep and never waken'd more Mr. H. L. is quite mistaken pag. 71. of his History ' It is true the Arch-Bishop an 1627. was Commanded from his Palaces of Lambeth and Croydon and sent to a Moorish House in Kent called Foord but not as he conceives
to that Treatise as follow Let the World take notice if it may concern any your Honour is be unto whom next unto His most Sacred Majesty my most Gracious Sovereign and Master I owe more then to all the World beside Professing unseignedly in the word of a Priest Fâ—cisti ut vivam moriar ingratus 81. The Lord-Keeper being so great a Dealer in the Golden Trade of Mercy and so successful he followed his Fortune and tried the King and the Lord Marquess further in the behalf of some whom their dear Friends had given over in Despair to the Destiny of Restraint And those were of the Nobles For he carried a great regard to their Birth and Honour and knew it was good for his own safety to deserve well of those high-born Families The East of Nerthumberland had been a Prisoner in the Tewer above 15 years His Confidents had not Considence and a good Heart I say not to Petition but to dispute with the King how ripe the Earl was for Clemency and Liberty 〈◊〉 Majesty was very merciful but must be rubb'd with a Fomentation of hi◠〈◊〉 Oyl to make him more supple This dextrous Statesman infuseth into 〈…〉 how to compass the Design with what Insinuations and Argum◠〈…〉 were improved with the Earl's demulcing and well-languag'd Phrases And when it came to strong Debate the Lord-Keeper got the better of the King in Reason So the Physic wrought as well as could be wish'd and on the 18th of July the Earl of Northumberland came out of the Tower the Great Ordnance going off to give him a joyful Valediction Who turned his Thoughts to consider the Work of God that a Stranger had wrought 〈◊〉 Comfort for him in his old Age whose Face he had ne 〈…〉 never purchased by any Benefit nor courted so much as by the meâ—age of a Salutation Which his Lordship compared to St. Peter's Deliverance by the Angel of God Acts 12. when Peter knew not who it was that came to help him Though not in order of Time yet in likeness of Condition the Earl of Oxford's Case is to be ranked in the same File It was in April in the year following that he was sent to the Tower betrayed by a false Brother for rash Words which heat of Wine cast up at a merry meeting His Lordship's Enemies were great and many whom he had provoked yet after he had acquainted the Lord-Keeper with the long Sadness of his Restraint in a large Letter which is preserved he wrought the Earl's Peace and Releasment conducted him to the King's Chamber to spend an hour in Conference with His Majesty from whence a good Liking was begot on both sides Whom thereupon that Earl took for his trusty and wisest Friend using his Counsel principally how to Husband his Estate and how to employ his Person in some Honourable Service at Sea that the Dissoluteness of his Hangers-on in the City might not sink him at Land The Lord-Keeper did as much for the Earl of Somerset in Christmas-time before bringing him by his mediation out of the House of Sorrow wherein he had continued above five years that he might take fresh Air and enjoy the comfort of a free Life which was affected by him to gratisie the splendid and spreading Family of the Howards And they were all well pleased with him as were the greatest part of the Grandees except the Earl of Arundel for a Distast taken of which the Lord-Keeper need not be ashamed 82. Within Six Weeks after he was settled in that Office the Earls Secretary brought two Patents to be Sealed the one to bestow a Pension of 2000 l. per annum upon his Lord out of the Exchequer which was low mow'n and not sit to bear such a Crop beside the Parliament which was to meet again in the Winter could not choose but take Notice what over-bountiful Issues were made out of the Royal Revenue to a Lord that was the best Landed of all his Peers Yet the Seal was put to with a dry assent because there was no stopping of a Free River With this Patent came another to confer the Honour of the Great Marshal of England upon the same Noble Personage The Contents of it had scarce any Limits of Power much exceeding the streit Boundaries of Law and Custom The Lord Keeper searching into the Precedents of former Patents when the same Honour was conser'd found a great inequality and doubted for good Cause that this was a device to lay his unfitness for his great place Naked to the World if he swallowed this Pill But nothing tended more to the praise of his great Judgment with His Majesty He writes to my Lord of Buckingham to acquaint the King that he thought His Majesty intended to give to greater Power than the Lords Commissioners had who dispatch'd Affairs belonging to that Office joyntly before him and that all Patents refer to the Copy of the immediate Predecessors who were the Earls of Essex Shrewsbury and Duke of Somerset but my Lord leap'd them over and claim'd as much as the Howards and Mowbries Dukes of Norfolk did hold which will enlarge his Authority beyond the former by many Dimensions There is much more than this in the Cabal of Letters p. 63. And much more than I meet there in his own private Papers The King was much satisfied with the Prudence and Courage of the Man that he had rather display these Errors than commit them for fear of a mighty Frown so the Earls Counsel were appointed to attend the Lord Keeper who joyning their hands together examin'd the Obliquities of the Patent and alter'd them What would have follow'd if it had pass'd entire in the first Draught For being so much corrected and Castrated yet the proceedings of the Court of Honour were a Grievance to the People not to be supported The Decrees of it were most uncertain most Arbitrary most Imperious Nor was there any Seat of Judgment in the Land wherein Justice was brought a bed with such hard Labour Now I invite the Reader if he please to turn to the 139 pag. of Sir An. Wel. Pamphlet and let him score a Mark for his Remembrance at these Lines That Williams was brought in for this Design to clap the Great Seal through his Ignorance in the Laws to such things that none that understood the danger by knowing the Laws would venter upon This Knight when he is in a Course of Malice is never out of his Way but like an egregious Bugiard here he is quite out of the Truth For the New Lord Keeper walk'd so Circumspectly that he seem'd to fear an Ambush from every Grant that was to pass for the use of encroaching Courtiers if any thing were Ambiguous or Dangerous he was not asham'd to call for Counsel If any thing were prest against Rule he was inexorable 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Eth. He kept constant to Justice in its Flat Square I could be Luxuriant in instances nothing is
did now Imprison and Execute the Rigour of his Laws against the Roman Catholics I must deal plainly with your Lordship our Viperious Country-men the English Jesuits in France to frustrate those pious endeavours of his Majesty had many Months before this Favour granted retorted that Argument upon us by Writing a most malicious Book which I have seen and read over to the French King Inciting him and the three Estates to put all those Statutes in Execution against the Protestants in those parts which are here Enacted and as they falsly inform'd severely Executed upon the Papists I would therefore see the most subtle State-monger in the World chalk out away for 〈◊〉 Majesty to mediate for Grace and Favour for the Protestants by Executing at this 〈◊〉 the Severity of his Laws upon the Papists And that this Favour should 〈…〉 Toleration is a most dull and yet a most devilish misconstruction A Toleration looks forward to the time to come This favour backward to the Offences past If any Papist now set at Liberty shall offend the Laws again the Justices may Nay must recomm◠him and leave Favour and Mercy to the King to whom they properly belong Nay let those two Writs directed to the Judges be as diligently perused by these rash Censurers as they were by those Grave and Learned Men to whom his Majesty referred the Penning of the same and they shall find that these Papists are not otherwise out of Prison then with their Shackles about their Heels sufficient sureties and good recognizances to present themselves again at the next Assizes As therefore that Lacedaemonian opposed the Oracle of Apollo by asking his Opinion of the Bird which he grasp'd in his hand whether it were alive or dead So it is a matter yet controverted and undecided whether these Papists clos'd up and grasp'd in the Bands of the Law be still in Prison or at Liberty Their own demeanour and the success of his Majesties Negotiations are the Oracles that must decide the same If the Lay-Papists do wax insolent with this Mercy insulting upon the Protestants and Translating this favour from the Person to the cause I am verily of Opinion that his Majesty will remand them to their former State and Condition and renew his Writ no more But if they shall use these Graces modestly by admitting conference with Learned Preachers demeaning of themselves Neighbourly and Peaceably praying for his Majesty and the prosperous success of his Pious Endeavours and Relieving him bountifully which they are as well able to do as any other of his Subjects if he shall be forced and constrained to take his Sword in Hand Then it cannot be denied but our Master is a Prince that hath as one said plus humanitatis poene quam hominis And will at that time leave to be merciful when he leaves to be himself In the the mean while this Argument fetch'd from the Devils Topics which concludes a concreto ad abstractum from a favour done to the English Papists that the King favoureth the Popish Religion is such a Composition of Folly and Malice as is little deserved by that Gracious Prince who by Word Writing Exercise of Religion Acts of Parliament late Directions for Catechising and Preaching and all Professions and Endeavours in the World hath demonstrated himself so Resolved a Protestant God by his Holy Spirit open the Eyes of the People that these Airy Representations of ungrounded Fancies set aside they may clearly discern and see how by the Goodness of God and the Wisdom of their King this Island of all the Countries in Europe is the sole Nest of Peace and True Religion And the Inhabitants thereof unhappy only in this one thing that they never look up up to Heaven to give God Thanks for so great an Happiness Lastly for mine own Letter to the Judges which did only declare not operate the Favour it was either mispenned or much mis-construed It recited four kinds of Recusants only capable of his Majesties Clemency Not so much to include these as to exclude many other Crimes bearing among the Papists the Name of Recusanties as using the Function of a Romish Priest seducing the King's Liege people from the Religion established Scandalizing and Aspersing our King Church State or present Government All which Offences being outward practises and no secret Motions of the Conscience are adjudged by the Laws of England to be meerly Civil and Political and excluded by my Letter from the benefit of those Writs which the bearer was imployed to deliver unto my Lords the Judges And thus I have given your Lordship a plain Accompt of the Carriage of this business and that the more suddenly that your Lordship might perceive it is no Aurea Fabula or prepared Fable but a bare Narration which I have sent unto your Lordship I beseech your Lordship to let his Majesty know that the Letters to the Justices of the Peace concerning those four Heads recommended by his Majesty shall be sent away as fast as they can be exscribed I will not trouble your Lordship more at this time c. Your Lordships I. L. C. S. 105. The Letter as it exceeds in length so it excells in Judgment Yet thrusting into the midst of the Throng to part the Fray he got a knock himself For because he was principally employ'd by his Office to distribute the King's Favours to some of the adverse Sect he was Traduc'd for a Well-willer to the Church of Rome nay so far by a ranting fellow about the Town that he was near to receive a chief promotion from that Court no less than a Cardinals Hat At the first Bruit of this Rumor the Scandal was told him and one Sadler the Author discover'd which he despis'd to prosecute and pass'd it by with this moderation ' That the Reporters saw the Oar under Water and thought it was ' Crooked but he that had it in his hand knew that it was whole and streight An admirable Similitude to reconcile contraries to a good meaning for the Eye were not right if the Oar under Water did not seem broken to it And the Judgment were not right if it had not a contrary Opinion So the people that are upon the Shore judge one way for they look upon things beneath the Water But States-men judge another who work at the Oar or guide the Bark The Error of the former is tolerable the Sense of the other is Magisterial and unquestionable So great were this Lord's disaffections to that corrupt and unfound Church that he watch'd their Ministers more narrowly then any Counsellor when they shot beyond the Mark of his Majesties late indulgences It was ever the unlucky diligence of those that were Proctors to agitate the Recusants Cause to importune his Majesty for those things which they did not hope to obtain but the very offer of them with their Arts and Graceless Carriage would make the Council Table odious contribute much to embitter the Subjects
of the Gravest and Greatest Pleaders who were ripe for Dignity And a Call of Serjeants was splendidly solemnized for Number Thirteen for Quality of the best Reputation May 6 1623 Who on that Day made their Appearance before Lord Keeper sitting in the High Court of Chancery who congratulated their Adoption unto that Title of Serjeancy with this Oration AS upon many other Occasions so likewise upon this present in hand I could wish there sate in this Place a man of more Gravity and Experience than can be expected from me to deliver unto you those Counsels and Directions which all your Predecessors have successively received at this Bar. Yet among many Wants I find one singular Comfort that as I am of the least Ability to give so you are of the least Need to receive Instructions of all the Calls of Serjeants that any Man now alive can bring to his Remembrance You are either all or the far greater Number of you most Learned most Honest and well accomplish'd Gentlemen Lest therefore my Modesty or your Integrity might suffer therein I will not be tedious in this kind of Exhortation but like those Mercuries or High-way-Statues in Greece I will only point out those fair Ways which my self I confess have never trodden In the beginning for my Preface be assured that your Thankfulness shall be recommended to his Majesty who hath honoured you with this high Degree making your Learning only and your Integrity His Praevenient and all other Respects whatsoever but subsequent and following Causes of his Gracious Pleasure towards you Turning my Speech next to your selves I will observe mine own common Exordium which hitherto I have used to all those whom I have saluted with a few words when they were Installed in their Dignities and I have it from the manner of the old Romans Meminisse oportet Ossicii Tâ—lum Remember the Title of your Degree and it will afford you sufficient Matter of Admonition You are call'd Servientes ad Legem Sergeants at the Law Verba bractrata Words very malleable and extensive and such as contein more Lessons than they do Syllables 122. The word Sergeant no doubt is Originally a Stranger born though now for many Years denizon'd among us It came over at the first from France and is handled as a French word by Stephen Pasquier in his Eighth Book of Recherches and the Nineteenth Chapter They that are too luxuriant in Etymologies are sometimes barren in Judgment as I will shew upon the Conjectures of this Name For they are not call'd Sergeants quasi Caesariens some of Caesars Officers as the great Guiacius thinks Nor Sergents qu isi Serregens because they laid hold on Men as inferiour Ministers But Sergiens in the old French is as much as Serviens saith Pasquier a Servant or an Attendant As Sergens de Dicu the Servants of God in the old History of St. Dennis Sergens Disciples de la Sanchitè Servants or Disciples of his Holiness the Pope in the Life of St. Begue And Sergens d'Amour Servants of Love in the Romance of the Rose a Book well known in our Country because of the Translator thereof Geoffry Chaucer And therefore as Pasquier thinks that those inferiour Officers are called Sergeans that is Servants because at the first Bailiffs or Stewards employ'd their own Servants in such Summons So this more honourable Appellation of Sergeant at Law hath received it Denomination because at the first when the Laws were no more than a few plain Customs When as the Year-Books had not yet swelled When the Cases were not so diversified When so many Distinctions were not Coined and Minted When the Volumes of the Laws through our Misdeeds and Wiliness were not so multiplied Men employ'd their own Servants to tender their Complaints unto the Judges and to bring them home again a plain and present Remedy But afterward Multitude of Shifts begetting Multitudes of Laws and Multitudes of Laws Difficulties of Interpretations especially where the Sword had engraven them in strange Languages as those induced by the Saxons Danes and Normans into this Island the State was enforced to design and select some learned Men to prepare the Causes of the Client for the Sentence of the Judge and the Sentence of the Judge for the Causes of the Client who though never so Enobled by their Birth and Education yet because they succeeded in those places of Servants were also call'd Servientes Sergeants or Servants Great Titles have grown up from small Originals as Dux Comes Baro and others and so hath this which is Enobled by the affix unto it a Sergeant at Law 123. Though you are not the Rulers of Causes and Masters upon the Bench yet it is your Pre-eminence that you are the chief Servants at the Bar In the Houshold of our Dread Sovereign the Chief in every Office who Commands the lower Ministers is advanced to be called the Sergeant of his Place as Sergeants of the Counting-House Carriages Wine-Cellar Larder with many others In like manner your Name is a Name of Reverence though you are styled Servants For you are the Principal of all that practise in the Courts of Law Servants that is Officers preferr'd above all Ranks of Pleaders For every thing must be Ruled by a Gradual Subordination You are next in the Train to my Lords the Judges And some of your File not seldom employ'd to be Judges Itinerant But you are all constantly promoted to be Contubernales Commensales You have your Lodgings in the same Houses and keep your Table and Diet with those Pillars of the Law who therefore call you and love you as their Brethren Fortescue in his sixth Book De laudibus Legum Angliae Cap. 50. compares your Dignities with the chief Degrees of the Academies And there is no Argument that proves the Nobleness of the one but it is as strong and militant for the other I will touch upon the Reasons as they are set down in Junius his Book De Academiâ and apply them in order to this purpose First This Degree is as a Caveat to the whole State and Commonwealth that by it they may know whom to employ and whom not to employ in their weighty Causes and Consultations And so doth Fortescue appropriate Omnia Realia Placiata all the Real Actions and Pleadings of his time to the Sergeants only Secondly As St. Paul saith to the Corinthians Epistola nostra vos estis You are our Letter or Epistle So may we the Judges in our several Places say unto the Sergeants Epistela nostra vos estis You are by reason of your Degrees our Letters of Recommendation unto the Kings Majesty for his Choice and Election for the Judges of the Kingdom Because as Fortescue also truly observes no Man though never so Learned can be chosen into that eminent Place Nisi statu gradu Servientis ad Legem fuerit insignitus Thirdly and lastly This Degree of Honour is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a kind of
Cause It is the Author of the Observations upon H. L. his History of the Reign of King Charles pag. 137. He hath not bestowed his Name upon his Reader but he hath a Name 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 says Homer Odyss 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 I ought not to put him to the first Question of our Catechism Quo nomine vocaris For good Writers nay Sacred Pen-Men do not always Inscribe their Names upon their Books Scholars do invariably Father the Work and some of them say they have it from the Printer upon one that hath Wrote and Publish'd much favoring of Industry and Learning And they give Reasons which will come into the Sequel though a great while deferr'd why he blotts the good Name of King James Why he grates so often upon the mild Nature and matchless Patience of King Charles And if Fame have taken the right Sow by the Ear it is one that had provok'd the then Bishop of Lincoln in Print with great Acrimony Twenty years ago and that Anger flames out in him now as hot as ever Panthera domari nescia non semper saeuit Yet when that Bishop came out of the Tower and this Adversary sought him for Peace and Love because the Bishop was then able to do him a Displeasure he found him easie to be Reconciled What should move this Man to forget that Pacification so truly observ'd on the Bishops part who was the greater and the offended Party Naturale est odisse quem laeseris And Malice is like one of the Tour Things Prov. 30.15 That never say it is enough 'T is Degenerous for the Living to Trample upon the Dead but very Impious that he that was once a Christian nay a Christian Priest should never cease to be an Enemy The Words with which he wounds the Spanish Match through his side though otherwise he is one that witheth it had succeeded are these That that Bishop being in Power and Place at C◠the time of King James made himself the Head of the Popish Faction because he thought the Match with Spain which was then in Treaty would bring not only a Connivance to that Religion but a Toleration of it And who more like to be in Favour if that Match went on than such as were most zealous in doing Good Offices to the Catholick Cause Here 's a Knot of Catter-Pillars wrapt in a thin Cobweb so easie it will be to sweep them of The accused Person was always free of Conference Let any now living say that heard him often Discourse of the adverse Church if he did not constantly open himself not for a Gainsayer only but for a Stiff Defier of their Corrupt Doctrines although he was ever pitiful for Relaxation of their Penalties And would that Party cleave unto him for their greatest Encourager Encouragement was the least their Head could give them Beside the Thing is a Chimaera I never knew any Head of the Popish Faction in this Kingdom Others and Bishops in Rank above him have been traduced in that Name but who durst own that Office especially in the end of King James his Reign when every year almost was begirt with a Parliament and every Parliament procreated an inquisitive Committee for Matters of Religion What Mist did he walk in that neither Parliament nor Committees did detect him for Head or Patron or Undertaker call it what you will of the Pseudo-Catholick Cause could nothing but the goggle Eye of Malice discover him 135. Perhaps the Contemplation of the Spanish Match might embolden him so this Author would have us think It could not it did not take a little in the highest Topicks to both It could not For as the Anteceding Parliament was much taken with King James's Words That if the Match should not prove a fartherance to our Religion he were not Worthy to be our King so this his Majesties near Counsellor knew his meaning of which he often discours'd that when the Holy-Days of the Great Wedding were over his Majesty would deceive the Jealousies of his Subjects and be a more vigorous Defender of the Cause of the True Faith than ever And Judge the Bishop by his own Words in his Sermon Preach'd at the Funerals of that Good King that his Majesty charg'd his Son though he Married the Person of that Kings Sister never to Marry her Religion I said likewise he did not Look back to the first Letters he dispatch'd into Spain but much more let every Reader enjoy the Feature of his own Piety and Wisdom which he put into the Kings Hand to have his liking while his Majesties Dear Son was in Spain to Cure popular Discontents and sickly Suspicions which had come forth with Authority in October following if the long Treaty had not Set in a Cloud The Original Draught of his Contrivances yet remaining is thus Verbation That when the Marriage was Consummated and the Royal Bride received in England His Majesty should Publish his Gracious Declaration as followeth First To assure his Subjects throughout his three Kingdoms that there is not one word in all the Treaty of the Marriage in prejudice of our own Religion Secondly To Engage himself upon his Kingly Word to do no more for the Roman-Catholics upon the Marriage than already he did sometime voluntarily Grant out of Mercy and Goodness and uncontroulably may do in disposing of his own Mulcts and Penalties Thirdly That our Religion will be much Honoured in the Opinion of the World that the Catholic King is content to match with us nor can he Persecute with Fire and Sword such as profess no other Religion than his Brother-in-Law doth Fourthly That His Majesty shall forthwith advance strict Rules for the Confirmation of our Religion both in Heart and in the outward Profession 1. Common-Prayer to be duly performed in all Churches and Chappels Wednesdays and Fridays and two of every Family required to be present 2. Every Saturday after Common-Prayer Catechising of Children to be constantly observed 3. Confirmation called Bishopping to be carefully executed by the Bishop both in the General Visitations of his Diocese and every Six months in his own House or Palace 4. That Private Prayers shall no Day be omitted in the Family of him that is of the Degree of an Esquire else not to be so named or reputed 5. All Ladies and all Women in general to be Exhorted to bestow two hours at the least every Day in Prayer and Devotion 6. All our Churches to be Repaired and outwardly well Adorned and comely Plate to be bought for the Communion-Table 7. Dispensations for Pluralities of Livings to be granted to none upon any Qualification but Doctors and Batchelors in Divinity at the least and of them to such as are very Learned Men. 8. Bishops to encourage Public Lectures in Market-Towns of such Neighbouring Ministers as be Learned and Conformable 9. A Library of Divinity-Books to be Erected in every Shire-Town for the help of the poorer Ministers and Leave shall be
the Letter for upon the Death of the late King of Spain being sent from his Master our Soveraign to the King of Spain that now is to understand his Mind upon the Treaty of Marriage he receiv'd this Chearful Answer That he was sorry he had not the Honour to begin it but now he would pursue it with all Alacrity The Earl of Bristol is another Witness Cab. p. 27. I insisted that Two Millions for the Portion were by the last King settled and agreed with me That this King had undertaken to pursue the Business as it was left by his Father and to make Good whatsoever he had promised Thereupon I desired that the Original Papers and Consultoes of the last King might be seen which very honestly by the Secretary Cirica were produced and appeared to be such that I dare say there was not any Man that saw them that doubteth of the last Kings real Intention of making the Match So I leave these Contradictions to blush at the sight of one another But to me Olivarez his Fidelity is the Leg that halts For as Tully said of Roscius the Comoedians Adversary Quod sibi probare non possit id persuadere alteri conatur he could never persuade that vigorously to another which he disbelieved himself It is a tedious thing to be tied to Treat with one that cares not for his own Honour nor regards his Modesty with whom he Treats I mean that same Person that Bashaw of King Philip the Conde Duke who entramel'd as many Devices as his Pate could bring together to raise a Dust and made Demands meerly to satisfie his own Pride that he might boast he had ask'd them though his discretion taught him that he could never obtain them When Sir Fr. Cottington return'd to Madrid with the great Article procur'd to suspend the Penal Statutes of England in favour of Recusants he presented it to the Conde and expected as the Casttlian Phrase is Las Albricias a reward for bringing of good News the Conde stoop'd not so low as to give Thanks but having perused the Paper told Sir Francis it would be expected the Prince should Negotiate a plain Toleration for the Protestants that endured that which was in his Hand would patiently endure more Sir Francis Answered him with the Old Simile That his Lordship was no good Musician for he would peg the Minikin so high till it crack'd Concerning his Attemptings upon the Prince my supply is out of private Letters that came from Friend to Friend The Conde had Oblig'd his Honour to his Highness when he came First to the Court of Spain never to meddle with him about his Religion He kept not his promise but solicited his Highness that as he lov'd his Soul he would return to England a Catholic in his Sense Well my Lord says the Prince You have broken your Word with me but I will not break my Faith with God Another time he besought his Highness to afford his Company at a Solemn Mass No Sir says the Prince I will do no ill nor the suspicion of it Once more this Idern told his Highness that he would accomplish all that he could desire from the Crown of Spain if he would profess himself a Son of the Roman Church he should not only carry home the bravest Lady for Beauty Birth and Vertue that was but be made as great a King in Riches and Power as was in Europe But as the Prophet says Isa 63.5 Excandiscentia mea fulcivit me my Fury it upheld me so the Prince was heated at the Offer and gave this provocation to him that had provok'd him that it was such a another Rhadomontade as the Devil made to Christ All these things will I give thee if thou wilt fall down and Worship me Next to matters of Religion the stiffest thing that was tugg'd for in this Month was about the Restitution of the Palatinate The Secretary of the Elector came to Madrid with Letters to the Duke about it which were not first imparted to the King his Father-in-Law But all that shall be drawn up into one Process in the Transactions of August 155. But in all Disputes for Sacred or secular Matters the Ministers of our King were the more Naked and Unarm'd when they came to the push of the Spanish Subtleties because they kept not the correspondence with themselves If my Lord of Buckingham could have fashion'd his mind to draw the same yoke with the Earl of Bristol who was most conversant upon the place and best knew the Arts of that Nation success had been more Fortunate But those Civil Discords were the Cause of many disorders and incivilities Therefore the King imposed on the Lord Keeper to use his Pen once more to reconcile them which he did not fail to do the very next day which was his Majesties Remove to begin the Western Progress July 22. May it please your Grace I would not be troublesom with this Second Letter but chiefly to let your Grace know that you never stood in your Life more uprightly in his Majesties Favour then at this instant and that I shall need to pour out no other Prayers unto God but for the continuation of the same For Gods sake Write to my Lord Hamilton and acquaint his Lordship with some Passages of your Affairs For my self I shall be content to Rove and guess at them And I hope your Grace will be pleased to pardon this Excursion that is my running this second or third time into business which I am told but cannot by any means believe it hath already drawn your Grace's Offence against me It is a most Humble Zealous and earnest Petition to your Grace to Seal up and really confirm that agreement and reconciliation which to the great Contentment of all your Friends but the Regret of some among us you have made with the Earl of Bristol What I wrote formerly might be ill placed and offend your Grace but all proceeded from as true and sincere a Heart unto your Grace as you left behind you in all this Kingdom But the renewing of it now again hath a Root from a higher Power who hath observ'd your Grace his Favour so abounding towards me and my acknowledgments so far as my poor ability permitteth so returned to your Grace that he was pleased to say unto me this Morning upon this Theme That he knew you would regard any Representation that I should recommend unto you In good Faith his Majesty is more then Zealous not only of fair Terms of Friendship but of a near Alliance formerly spoken of between your Grace and that Earl Of whose Sufficiencies and Abilities I perceive His Majesty to retein an extraordinary good Opinion which in all Humility I thus leave to your Lordships Wisdom and Consideration The Earl of Bristol had heard how the Lord Keeper had ventur'd to make this Pacification and writes to him Cab. p. 20. That the Friendship of the Duke was a thing he did
which all Convenencies that were formerly thought upon will cease The Remedy which he propounds to fail without all these Shelves I never did light upon out of this Letter 'T is thus The Emperor as your Majesty knows by his Embassador desires to Marry his Daughter with the King of England ' s Son and I doubt not but he will be glad to Marry his Second Daughter to the Palatine's Son So all the Conventencies of Alliance will be as full in this For it accommodates the Matter of the Palatinate and the Succession of his Grand-Children without Blood or Treasure Here is a new Bride appointed for his Highness the eldest Daughter of the Emperor which is unlikely to be intended because it comes from none but such an Author as Olivarez and in as much as when Count Suartzenburg came about eighteen Months before Embassador to our King from Caesar this was not moved at that Oportunity and when the Prince came to Spain no shadow of it remained but it was vanished like a Morning-mist before the Sun Now follow their Whimsies and their In and Ou ts at the Consulto when the Prince was among them The first Onset that Olivarez gave was That they were ready to follow all the Demands of the King of Great Brittain concerning the Match for his Son to the Demands for his Son-in-Law he said they were not in their Power to effect his Country was extended upon by the Emperor his Electoral Dignity invested in the Duke of Bavaria And within this Charm they kept us long till we were weary with their Obstinacy and sate down a while as when Boys Scourge a great Top till they make it sleep At last the Prince's Highness offended that he could gain nothing by this Alliance for his dear Sister 's Good offered to give King Philip a Farewel that he might look timely at Home for the Relief of her Misery On this no man courts his Highness to stay so much as Olivarez and to slacken his Return revives the Consult of the Restitution promiseth the strongest Mediation that the King his Master could make with the Imperialists and Bavarians which if it were rejected but they hoped better he would be forward for his Part to stir up his Catholick Majesty to give his Brother the King of England Assistance by Arms to procure him his Satisfaction Yet whatsoever he said his Heart lay a thought farther and he had a Trick to redeem himself out of this Promise for he told his Highness in a Weeks space after that he found their Nation so linked to the Love of the House of Austria that they would never march chearfully into the Field against it For all this the Weather-cock turn'd and he was affrighted in a moment into a good Mind again So did his Highness report at St. James's that a false Alarum being brought to Madrid that Count Tilly with his whole Body of Foot and Horse was routed in Germany instantly the Conde Duke came with as much Fear as Hast unto the Prince and with as much Lowliness as his Knee upon the Ground vowed he would give him a Blank for the Restitution of the Palsgrave's Interest but when the Second that is the worst News came that the Duke of Brunswick was quite defeated the Mood was changed with the Man and he spake as loftily from that Matter as if the great Armada had been failing again upon our Brittish Ocean Into how many Paces did Hipocrisie put him Sincerity would have got him Honour dispatch the Work and saved him all this Trouble for with the same Study nay with far less men may attain to be such as they ought to be which they mis-spend in seeking to be such as they are not Quibus id persuasum est ut nihil mallent se esse quà m bonos viros iis reliquam facilem esse doctrinam Cic. de orat lib. 3. After that great Don Jasper had put himself to the Expence of all this Folly he riveted in two Straws more like than Wedges to cleave the Knot First Let the Marriage be Consummated and then despair not but the Princess Infanta would beg the Palatinate with her earnest Prayers that she might be received with Honour and Applause among her Husband's People That is Seal their Patent and we shall have an empty Box to play with Or else marry the Lady and leave her behind till the Business for the Palsgrave's Patrimony were accommodated which is like Velez's Trick in Gusman of Alfarach to 〈◊〉 away both the Bride and the Bride-Cake The great Projector held close to one Proposition at the last that since Prince Frederick the Elector had highly offended Caesar in the Attempt and Continuance of it in the Matter of Bohâ—mia no Account should be had of his Person but Restitution should be made to his Eldest Son by Marrying the Second Daughter of the Emperor in which Clause the Prince concurred But the Sting in the Tail was that he should be bred up in the Emperor's Court to mold him into a Roman Catholick Upon which his Highness broke off the Earl of Bristol as a sharp Letter chargeth him written by the Prince Cab. Pag. 17. swallowing down that Difficulty at a Gulp because without some such great Action neither Marriage nor Peace could be had But Sir Wal. Aston flew back saying He durst not give his Consent for fear of his Head Now we have the Duke Olivarez in all his Party-colours who knew that the Breach of Alliance with England would be transcendently ill for Spain yet he would hazard a Mischief unless he might tear a Princely Limb from the Protestant Religion not unlike to the Paeotlans in Justin lib. 8. Tanto edio Phoâ—sunn ardentes ut obliti cladium 〈◊〉 perire ipsi qâ—à m non perdere eos praeaptarent How the Duke Olivarez smoothed it a Letter of his which would make a Pamphlet for the length will manifest which to this day hath lain in Obscurity but is worthy to come abroad It follows 161. HIS Majesty being in the Escurial I desired these my Lords the Embassadors that they wou'd repair hither to the end that we might treat of perfecting those things which concern the Palatine forasmuch as might be done from hence wherein we procure as you know to give Satisfaction to the King of Great Britain through whose Intercession together with that of the most Excellent Prince his Highness we have procured to dispose things in Germany and have used those Diligences which you know The Means which hath ever seemed most easie and apt for the well addressing of this Business is to Marry the Eldest Son of the Palatine to the second Daughter of the Emperor bringing him up in the Court of his Caesareal Majesty whereby the Restitution both of the States and Electorate to the said Son might be the better and more satisfactorily disposed And in this Conformity we have ever understood and treated and propounded it here But now coming close to
unto him He complains further of want of Expedition in the Letters to be written by your Lordship to those principal Officers to whom it pertains for the Suspension of all Trouble and Molestation to the Roman Catholicks his Majesty's Subjects in matter of their Conscience His Majesty marvails not a little that the Pardon and Dispensation are so long delayed before they be delivered and the Letters so long before they are written His Majesty being troubled and offended that Cause should be taken upon these Delays by the Embassador to call into Jealousie his Majesty's Roundness and Integrity in Proceeding In all which Points his Majesty now prays you to give all possible Expedition that his Majesty may be no more soiled with the Jealousies and Suspitions of the Embassador nor importuned with their Requests for those things so entirely resolved on Albeit this Letter is so strict and mandatory the Lord Keeper presumed on the King's Goodness to write a Remonstrance to Mr. Secretary Conway flat against the Mandate with sundry Reasons to shew the high Expedience that the Instruments demanded should not yet be delivered To the which on the 9th of September Mr. Secretary sends back word Right Honorable I Have represented yours of the 18th to his Majesty who interprets your Intentions very well and cannot but think it good Counsel and a discreet Course had the State of the Business been now entire But as Promises have been past the Truth of a King must be preferred before all other Circumstances and within three Days you must not fail to deliver the Exemplification of the Pardon and Dispensation with the Coppy of the Letters c. Two Days after see the Hand of God September 21 a Post brought Intelligence that the Prince was departed with fair Correspondencies from the Court of Spain was certainly long before that time on Shipboard and would weigh Anchor as soon as Wind and Weather served him So in good Manners all Solicitations were hush'd and attended his Highness's Pleasure against he came into England These are the Performances of the Lord Keeper upon the Immunities which the Papists contended for to be derived to them by the Prince's Marriage with the Daughter of Spain Whither any States-man could have contrived them better I leave it to be considered by the Senators of the Colledge of Wisdom in my Lord Bacon's new Atlantis If it be possible for any to disprove these excellent Excogitations of Prudence with his Censure he will force me to say in this Lord's Behalf what Tully did for the Pontiss of old Rome Orat. pro resp Aurus Satis superque prudentes sunt qui illorum prudentiam non dicam assâ—qui sed quanta fuerit perspicere possint The Collection of all the precedent Passages were gathered by that Lord himself and stitched up into one Book every Leaf being signed with the Hands of Sir George Calvert and Sir Edward Conway principal Secretaries to his Majesty If it be asked to what end was that provided it was to shew he had a Brest-Plate as well as an Head-Piece It was to defend his Integrity against any Storm that dark Days might raise about the Spanish Matters It was a gathering thick when my Lord of Buckingham caused Mr. Packer his Secretary to write a Letter of Defiance to him Cab. P. 87. wherein every Penful of Ink is stronger than a Drop of Vicriol Take a Line of it That in the Spanish Negotiation he had been dangerous to his Country prejudicious to the Cause of Religion which he above all others should have laboured to uphold But rip up all his Actions turn the Linings outward shew any Stain-Spot in his Fidelity in his Innocency chiefly in his Maintainance of the Reformed Religion Therefore he met the Lord Duke couragiously Pag. 89. I do not in the least beg or desire from your Grace any Defence of me if it shall appear I betray'd my King or my Religion in Favour of the Papist or did them any real Respect at all beside ordinary Complement Therefore I appeal to all Posterity who shall read this Memorial how a Minister in his Office and intrusted with the whole weight of such a ticklish Negotiation could come off better with more Honour with lâ—ss Prejudice Photius in his Biblioth says of Saluslius the Cynick that he was a worthy Man but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 He had listed himself into that Sect of Philosophy which was carved out or exposed to Reproach and Contumiâ—y So this noble Councellor was as Harmless as he was Wise as Honest as he was Active But the Business which he underwent for his great Master and the Prince was Planet-struck with an ill Opinion of many and could look for no Thanks but from a few that were the Wisest 167. Especially most circumspect and diligent Endeavours if superior Providence hath decreed to make them barren shall not be pitied as they deserve but be insulted upon because they cannot reach their End The best Angler that is we commonly think he fish'd ill if he catch'd nothing Inde plaerumque eadâ—m sacta modò diligentiae modò vanitatis modò libertatis modò furor is nomen accipiunt Plin. lib. 6. Ep. Lucky Success makes a Fool seem wise and a wise man that is unfortunate shall be called a Fool. It is a hard Task to dig into the Mines of Poâ—icy when Event shall be the Measure both of Reward and Praise Yet all this must be endured after his Highness took his Leave of Spain the Donna Hâ—rmesa left behind the Stock of Love spent and in a while the Credit of it protested Our King was not ill disposed to the News that is Son made preparation to come Home The People began to be churlish that he staid so long And his Majesty look'd for no Good from that Part of the World while our Duke was in it He found that so long as he was so remote from his Tutorship he was heady a Novice in carrying Business and very offensive to the Crown of Spain The Prince was desirous to make haste from them that would make no better haste and could no longer endure the Pace of a dull Spanish Mule As a weary Traveiler's Inn seems still to go further from him so his Highness had attended long for a sweet Repose in Wedlock till it made him impatient and think that every Consuito cast him further back from the Fruition of his Joys The Junto of the Spanish States-men were very magisterial and would not bate an Inch but that every thing should be timed to a day as they designed it These were the Links of the Chain by which they pluck all Power to themselves First A Disposorios or Contract must go before the Marriage For that 's a Rule from which their Church doth never vary unless good Order be broken by clandestine Marriages To the Contract they could not go on in this Case till the Dispensation from the new Pope gave Authority for it That came to
being Eleven of them in the Tower Wisheech Newgate and no more This Favour had many Reasons to speak for it First To let all those who were inquisitive about the Event of his Highness Journey take notice that there was yet life in the Treaty by the motion of this Pulse Secondly To gratifie the most obnoxious of that Religion for requital of the Entertainment his Highness had among them Thirdly In Retaliation for the Prisoners that were set at Liberty in Spain to Congratulate the Princes welcom Fourthly That his Highness might keep his Word with those of that way who had done him good Offices abroad to whom he had said Cab. p. 251. That though the Marriage were broken his Catholick Subjects should not fare the worse for it Therefore hear what Mr. Secretary Conway Writes to the Lord Keeper October 7. Right Honorable HIs Majesty calling to Mind His promise to the Spanish Ambassadors for giving Liberty to the Priests requires your Lordship to prepare the Ordinance for their Liberty and to put it in Execution the rest of the Pardons being suspended till the Solemnizing the Marriage And His Majesty would that you should signifie so much to the Ambassadors in your own Person to acquaint them with His Mindfulness And then that your Lordship will be pleased to move the Ambassadors as giving them a good opportunity to do an acceptable Work that they would move for the Releasement of Dr. Whiting from Imprisonment who for his Sermon Preach'd at Hampton-Court stands committed but His Majesty will have him remain suspended from Preaching untill His further Pleasure be known Now for the Letters which his Majesty was made to believe were dispersed to the Magistrates Spiritual and Temporal about the Suspension of the Laws because his Majesty was disobeyed in it the Lord Keeper after he had seen the Inclination of the Court in three or four days wrote to the Secretary who knew all the Passages to put the Duke upon it to acquaint the King with the Naked Truth and fore-speak Displeasure Upon which Mr. Secretary Conway returns this Octob. 11. from Royston Right Honorable SO soon as I received your Letter with the like Observation that I will use in all your Command I took the Duke of Buckingham just as he was going to the King and had no more time with him but to tell him that Point touching your Wise and Moderate Retention of the Letters to the Bishops and Justices The Duke prepared the King so well as His Majesty gave me order to signifie to you that those Letters should still be retained unless some Complaints should make change of Counsels or the Accomplishment on the other side equal that of ours and occasion another step forward That Wise and Moderate way of your Lordships will ever get you Estimation and Ease I am glad to see how brave a Friend you have of the Duke And I know your Lordship will give me leave to make you as glad as my self that absence hath made no change towards my Lord Duke in the Kings Favour but his return if it be possible hath multiplied it And the Prince and He are for Communications of Counsels Deliberations and Resolutions as if they were but One. The King requir'd but one Thing more of the Lord Keeper that as he had addulced all Things very well to his Mind so the Ministers of the King of Spain might not Grudge that their Teeth were set on Edge with sower Grapes which he did effect most Artificially albeit the Ambassadors by his means had lost many Suits and more Labour as the Secretary was willed to acknowledge from Hinchingbrooke Octob. 25. Right Honorable I Delivered to his Majesty the good Temper you left the Embassadors in which gave his Majesty Contentment and moved his Thanks to you Your Humane and Noble Usage you may be sure will best beseem your Lordship and please others And when there is any Cause for you to take another Form on you be confident you shall have seasonable Knowledge For my Lord Duke hath as well a Noble Care of you as Confidence in you and Affection to you of which I am assured though a mean Witness So much was contrived and a great deal more to keep the Treaty from an utter dissociation till the next Parliament sate For the Coppy of the Memorials given January 19 by Sir Wal. Aston to the King of Spain professeth That because the Faculty for the Use of the Procuration expired at Christmas the King my Master that you may know the sound Intentions of his Proceedings with the good End to which it aims hath renewed the Powers and deferred the delivery of them only to give time for the Accomplishment and setling that which hath been promised for the satisfying his Expectations Cab. P. 39. Neither did the Spaniards return the Jewels which the Prince had presented at the Shrine of Love till the end of February at which Surrendry and not before the golden Cord was broken Nothing is more sure than that the Prince's Heart was removed from the Desire of that Marriage after the Duke had brought him away from the Object of that Delightful and Ravishing Beauty But all the while the King had his Head full of Thoughts brooding upon two things like the Twins that struggled in the Womb of Rebeckah the Consummation of the Marriage and the Patrimony of his Son-in-Law to be regained with the Dignity Electoral His Wisdom hovered between them both like the Sun at his Noonday Height Metâ distans aequalis utraque He knew he should be disvalued to the wounding of all Good Opinion if he did not engrast that Alliance into his Stem which he had sought with so much Expence of Time and Cost to strengthen and aggrandize his Posterity And he knew he should loose Honour with all the Potentates of Europe beside other Mischiefs if nothing were done for re-possessing the Palatinate Yet in sine he sate down and it cleast his Heart that he affected neither As a Canker eats quickly into soft and sappy Wood so an Error was gotten into his gentle Nature the same that Spartianus says had crept into Didius Julianus Reprehensus in eo praecipue quos regere authoritate sud debuit regendae reipub praesules sibi ipse fecit He submitted himself to be ruled by some whom he should have awed with Authority but he wanted Courage to bow them to his own Bent. A Prince that preserves not the Rights of his Dignity and the Majesty of his Throne is a Servant to some but therein a Friend to none least of all to himself 174. But he did so little bear up with an Imperatorian Resolution against the Method of their Ways who thrust his Counsels out of Doors that the Flies suck'd him where he was gall'd and he never rub'd them off He continued at Newmarket as in an Infirmary for he forgot his Recreations of Hunting and Hawking yet could not be drawn to keep the Feasts of
good the time So he spent four hours in Repetition without Halt with such Assurance such Gesture such Carving and Gilding that he might wonder at himself what Spirit was in him that day All that took the height of his Report by a skilful Parallax concluded that he had striven with his former Peices and had outgone himself Yet the fourth Part will suffice to be remembred because the Flower of it is anticipated in the Spanish Transactions after a monthly Method Beside I cannot help the Reader to that which I never saw the several Letters which were read to the stronger Confirmation of every Particular Business the Contents of them must be supplied by him that is Wise to make Conjecture and not by my Pen. For though it be not according to Nature yet it is agreeing to Honesty Vacuum potius relinquere quà m verum to leave a void Space rather than to fill it up with a Fable as Barrenness is incomparably to be less blamed than Adultery So I go on to make such Room as is fit for the Heads of that long Report which should not seem to be unsavory Coleworts sod too often for their Tast to whom they are well known already Debet enim talibus in rebus excitare animos non cognitio solum rerum sed recordatio as Tully speaks Philip 2. 186. The Lord Keeper plotted his Conceptions into that Order wherein the Duke of Buckingham the Discoverer had gone before him beginning from Michaelmas 1622 when the King sitting close with his Council at Hampton-Court the Dispatches of Sir Richard Weston his Majesty's Ambassador at Brussels were scanned before them Sir Richard being a Man in whose Election to that Place the Spanish Ministers were greatly pleased and commended the King's Wisdom that he did light upon him Yet Sir Richard sent Packet upon Packet that he found nothing from the Arch-Dutchess but inconstant and false Dealing For though she acknowledged she had Power from the Emperor to cause Cessation of Arms in the Palatinate and undertook to put that Power forth yet with the same Breath she blew hot and cold For at that Instant when no Excuse could be made for the Cheat Tilly fell to it spightfully to besiege Heidelburg when the War was now between the Emperor and our King for they had no body to invade but his Majesty's Subjects and Servants that kept it And what spark of Patience could be left us when by every Post we received comfortable Words from Spain and contrary Effects from Brussels Hereupon Mr. Porter was sent to Madrid and commanded to stay in that Court but ten Days for an Answer The Letters that he carried with him were to signifie that this should be the last Sending if no less would serve the Emperor's Revenge but the utter Extermination of his Majesty's Children both in Honour and Inheritance That the Neighbour Kings and States of Christendom did malign the Match between the Prince and the Insanta and laboured to stop that Conjunction which would make England and Spain formidable to them But they should not need to contrive a way to prevent it This unsufferable Unkindness would bring it to pass to their hand For what Comfort could the Prince have in such a Wife the nearest of whose Blood had utterly ruined his Sister and her Progeny The Messenger carried this Arrand with him to the President of all Affairs in that Kingdom Conde Olivarez one that may justly be censured to have more of Will than of Wit one that play'd foul with us and could not hide it Sometimes he would run back from our Propositions as if he would never come near us sometimes he would run into our Arms as if his Heart and all his Powers did grow unto us Nec constans in side nec constans in persidiâ Mr. Porter came back from him with a half-sac'd Satisfaction but withal the King of Spain's Letters which were there read contained a Talent of Hope but we found not a Grain of Reality Upon this Journey Porter did so well remember somewhat that sell carelestly from the Conde Duke wishing the Prince himself were there to see how ready the King his Master was to fasten an indissoluble Knot of Amity and embrace Alliance with him that his Excellent Highness I speak in his Presence what he knows hearing it with more Attention than was imagined put on that heroick and undauntable Boldness craved Leave of his Father that he might visit the great Ingeneers at their own Forge to see what they were working and how they would receive him and as we use to say Either win the Horse or loose the Saddle Here again says the Reporter my Lord Duke acquainted us how acceptable at the first the Arrival of the Prince did seem to Olivarez who in the Enterview in the Garden assured with great Oaths that all should be dispatched with sudden Resolution and that his Highness should be pressed to nothing that was not agreeable to Conscience and Honour and stood not with the Love of the People of England Then it was related That King Philip seemed most sensible of the Courtesie that such a Guest had visited him and that he would permit all to his own Asking as he did express it at their Meeting in the Prado The Lord Duke was very copious upon all the Negotiations in Spain from his Highness's Arrival to his Parting and the Lord Keeper mist not one Particular but beautified all and gave it Lustre which may here be spared in Repetition because nothing was added in Substance to that which is methodized upon it in the Months of the former Summer Much of the Day was spent to shew how deceitful Conde Olivarez was who like a crafty Marchant he gave a Tast of one Wine and upon the Bargain would sell of another Swear us often into the Possession of the Palatinate and yet embroiled us at the same Instant more and more with an Army Waved all Differences of Religion between us and them at the first and presently turned the Wheel from the Top to the Bottom and fell into insolent Propositions that the Prince could not make a fit Husband for their Lady unless he would become a Papist Sometimes he would aggravate how far we differed from the Catholick Confession of Faith as if the Gulph reach'd from Heaven to Hell Sometimes he colleagued as if we were near upon a Point and but a little Stride between us Et Stoica dogmata tantùm A cynicis tunicâ distantia Juvenal Then the Articles for the Marriage were brought in play and with what a number of new ones his Highness's Commissioners were surcharged and how irrespectively they stuffed the Book with strange and undisputed Additions and commonly the last which they presented were the worst Verres secum ipse certat id agit ut semper superius suum facinus novo scelere vincat Tul. Act. 7. in Verrem But our Ministers rejected those bastard Slips and all that Conscience English
possit penitus approbari 189. But the Unkindness of the Palatinate intervening the Prince reserv'd himself till he were satisfied therein And at his last Farewel engaged himself to leave a Proxy and did deposite the same in my Lord of Bristol's Hand who should keep it and use it as his Proctor and by his Direction His present Direction was That if the Confirmation came from Rome clear and entire which it did not then within so many Days he should deliver it to the King of Spain A second Direction was sent unto him the 8th of October 1623. That for fear a Monastery should rob his Highness of his Wife he should stay the delivery till that were clear'd and that his Highness should send him further Direction Your Lordships may hear the Letter if you please Read it Now because my Lord of Bristol in his Letter November 1. 1623. doth press so vehemently that the Prince had engaged his Faith and Power not to retract the same And that Cirica the Secretary had put it into an Instrument sign'd and seal'd Authentically I hold it most proper in this place to clear that Aspersion First His Highness told your Lordships plainly and directly that he had never by Oath or Honour engaged himself not to revoke the Powers more than by that Clause De non revocandá procuratione included in the Instrument it self Secondly I must let your Lordships know that it is lawful by the Civil and Canon Law and I Appeal herein to those Learned of that Profession now Assistants to this Noble House for any Man to revoke his Proxy and so likewise his Resignation notwithstanding that it hath the Clause De non revocandà Procuratione inserted within it Further and thirdly I affirm unto you That though the Prince had sworn not to stay or revoke his Proxy yet notwithstanding that Oath the Revocation is good in Law Jurans non revâ—are procuratorem si revocet non obstante juramento valebit revocatio Johan de Seluá Tract Doctri Vol. 5. I have digressed thus far to let your Lordships see plainly that my Lord of Bristol in this Charge upon the Prince hath forgotten himself very much and that his Highness might justly honourably and legally not only stay as he did but withal if he had so pleas'd absolutely revoke his own Proxy And now by the Mercy of God and his own wise and judicious Demeanor his Highness is arrived at Royston and hath made his Narration to the King how that he is return'd an absolute Freeman excepting only this one Condition and Limitation That if his Majesty may receive sufficient assurance from the King of Spain concerning the Restitution of the Palatinate then indeed he is obliged in Honour to go on to the Esposorios Otherwise free every way Free because of that which Olivarez had promised to his Highness before the return of Sir Francis Cottington Free because of what his Highness had said to Olivarez after the return of Sir Francis being constant to the same Principle in his dear Sisters behalf And free because his Power was staid justly legally and honourably His Majesty was glad as he had just cause to be of this wise and very circumspect Carriage in so great a Negotiation and told his Highness that he had played his part very well And now his Majesties part came upon the Stage Which was to provide with all Fatherly Love that his only Son should not be Married with a Portion of his only Daughters Tears And therefore his Majesty likewise presently requires the stay of the delivery of the Proxy until he had sufficient assurance for the Restitution of the Palatinate Which your Lordships will remember to be no new or springing Condition but the very same that is urged before and offer'd once by Olivarez in a blank Paper to his Highness which Paper was nobly returned by his Highness in his last answer to Olivarez The Provision his Majesty took herein your Lordships shall hear out of the Dispatch from Royston Octob. 8. 1623. 190. Your Lordships would conceive that upon this Dispatch the Earl of Bristol would take all Hints and Occasions to put off the Esposorios unless the required Assurance were first obteined But the Truth is and I am heartily sorry to find it he did not so First The Confirmation came from Rome alter'd and mangled And indeed of stopping the Power thereupon he labours with all his strength of Wit to hide and palliate the same Secondly When they had alter'd the Portion from 600000 in ready Cash to an Yearly Pension of 200000 and a few Jewels in stead of staying for all upon this Impediment he seems to approve and applaud the same Thirdly For the Assurance of the Restitution of the Palatinate which is the Foundation of the Marriage and Friendship he is so far from providing for it beforehand that he leaves it to be mediated by the Infanta after the Marriage Lastly In stead of putting off the Contract as any Man in the World would have done he is come to prefix a precise Day for the Esposorios These things your Lordships will soon observe out of the Letters that shall be read in the method that I will direct E. of Bristol 's Letters Octob. 24. 1623. and Novemb. 1. 1623. Out of this rash fixing of the Day in Spain which was controuled again by an Express from hence issued an unnecessary Discourtesie put upon that King by the Earl of Bristol and in a manner wantonly From that Discourtesie thrown upon them followed others cast upon us which being omitted the last Day his Highness commands me to mention them in this place As the taking away of the Title of La Princessa from the Lady and the debarring of our Ambassadors from any further Access unto her Person And with these the greatest Discourtesie of all that when they return'd unto us a poor meager and carion Dispatch concerning the Palatinate not worthy the reading and therefore wisely omitted the last Day yet the Earl of Bristol sent it with this Item That they were fain to antedate it for their Honour or else it would have been ten times worse Your Lordship may hear it if you please Madrid Decemb. 6. 1623. Well for all this big-blown nothing they have taken their Pen in Hand again and have sent unto his Majesty a Project of a Letter that if his Majesty shall so desire it shall be written unto him from the King of Spain and this Letter is the Hercules Pillars and the Nihil Ultra in the whole Negotiation of the Palatinate Read it Jan. 5. 1623. This Letter his Majesty hath scanned to a Syllable and imagining there might be some hidden Virtue to be extracted out of that Phrase Alzar la meno that King Philip will not take his Hand off the Business until our Master shall receive Satisfaction his Majesty sent unto the Spanish Ambassador for a Comment on the same and behold this all that they return to
strong and violent Machination in hand which had turn'd the Prince a most Obedient Son before to a quite contrary Course to his Majesties Intentions Thirdly That the Counsel began last Summer at Madrid but was lately ripen'd and resolv'd in England to restrain his Majesty from the Exercise of the Government of his three Kingdoms and that the Prince and the Duke had design'd such Commissioners under themselves as should intend great Affairs and the Publick Good Fourthly That this should be effected by beginning of a War and keeping some Troops and Companies on Foot in this Land whereby to constrein His Majesty to yield to any thing chiefly being brought into Streits for want of Monies to pay Souldiers Fifthly That the Prince and Duke inclosing his Majesty from the said Embassador and other of his own Loyal People that they might not come near him in private did Argue in them a fear and distrust of a good Conscience Sixthly That the Emissaries of the Duke had brought his Majesty into Contempt with the Potent Men of the Realm traducing him for slothful and unactive for addiction to an inglorious Peace while the inheritance of his Daughter and her Children are in the Hands of his Foes and that this appear'd by a Letter which the Duke had writ into Holland and they had intercepted Seventhly That his Majesties Honour Nay his Crown and Safety did depend upon a sudden Dissolution of the Parliament Eighthly They Loaded the Duke with sundry misdemeanors in Spain and his violent Opposition of the Match Ninthly That the Duke had divulged the King's Secrets and the close Designs between his Majesty and their Master K. Philip about the States of Holland and their Provinces and labour'd to put his Majesty out of the good Opinion of the Hollanders Tenthly That the Duke was guilty of most corrupt dealing with the Embassadors of divers Princes Eleventhly That all things were carried on in the Parliament with a headlong Violence and that the Duke was the Cause of it who courted them only that were of troubled Humours Twelfthly That such Bitterness and Ignominies were vented against the King of Spain in Parliament as was utterly against all good Manners and the Honour of the English Nation Thirteenthly Is a flat Contradiction to the Precedents wherein they made the Prince privy to dangerous things yet in this they say That the Puritans of whom the Duke was Head did wish they could bring it about that the Succession of the Kingdom might come to the Prince Palatine and his Children in Right of the Lady Elizabeth Thus lay the Notes of the Lord Keeper This is the Dirt which the Swallows or rather unclean Birds pickt up and made their Nest of it And this is not all But that which remains shall be burnt in the Fire Latere semper patere quod latuit diu Saepè eruentis veritas patuit malo Senec. in Aedipo In a Postscript the Paper prayed the King That Don Francisco Carondelet Secretary to Marquess Inoiosa might be brought to the King when the Prince and Duke were sitting in the Upper House to satisfie such doubts as the King might Raise which was perform'd by the Earl of Kelly who watch'd a fit Season for Francisco at one time and for Padre Maestro the Jesuit at another time who told their Errand so spitefully that the King was much troubled at their Relations 202. He that says U. Sanderson P. 562. that not a day past but that he was present and acquainted with all the Transaction of these pernicious Delators to the end should have said he knew it at the end when the Monster was brought to light then his History indeed will justifie it self that it did not startle the King But his Majesty's Sorrow increased while it was smothered and Fear set in apace till a wise Remonstrance resisted it And it was no Wonder that he was abused a while and dim sighted with a Character of Jealousie For the Parliament was about to land him in a new World to begin and maintain a War who thought that scarce any Mischief was so great as was worth a War to mend it Wherein the Prince did deviate from him as likewise in Affection to the Spanish Alliance but otherwise promised nothing but Sweetness and Obedience He stuck at the Duke most of all whom he defended in part to one of the Spanish Ministers yet at the same time complained that he had noted a turbulent Spirit in him of late and knew not how to mitigate it Thus casting up the Sum he doubted it might come to his own Turn to pay the Reckoning The Setters on expected that their Pill could not choose but have a most violent Operation And it wrought so far that his Majesty's Countenance fell suddenly that he mused much in Silence that he entertained the Prince and Duke with mystical and broken Speeches From whence they gathered all was not right and questing for Intelligence they both heard that the Spanish Secretary and the Jesuit Maestro had been with him and understood that some in the Ambassador's House had vaunted that they had netled the Duke and that a Train would take Fire shortly to blow up the Parliament While his Majesty was gnawn with this Perplexity he prepared for Windsor to shift Ground for some better Ease in this Unrest and took Coach at St. James's-House-Gate in the end of April being Saterday Afternoon He received his Son into the Coach and sound a slight Errand to leave Buckingham behind as he was putting his Foot in the Boot which brought Tears from him and an humble Prayer that his Majesty would let him know what could be laid to his Charge to offend so gracious a Master and vowed it by the Name of his Saviour to purge it or confess it The King did not satisfie him in it it seems the time of Detection in his deep Judgment was not come and he had charged all that were privy to the Occasion to be very secret Cab. P. 77. But he breathed out this Disgust That he was the Unhappiest alive to be forsaken of them that were dearest to him which was uttered and received with Tears from his own Eyes as well as the Prince's and Duke's whom he left behind and made hast with his Son for Windsor The Lord Keeper spared not for Cost to purchase the most certain Intelligence of those that were his feed Pensioners of every hours Occurrencies at Court and was wont to say That no man could be a Statesman without a great deal of Money Of this which had hapned his Scout related presently what he could see for he heard little Which News were no sooner brought but he sought out the Duke at Wallingford-House and had much ado to be admitted to him in his sad Retirement Whom he found laid upon a Couch in that immoveable Posture that he would neither rise up nor speak though he was invited to it twice or thrice by courteous Questions The Lord Keeper
an actual King you also shall be known by advancing his nay your Enterterprize to be a valiant faithful and obedient People And now you are directed to choose your Speaker and present him to his Majesty Which was Sir Thomas Crew so well tryed for his worth in the Precedent Parliament that he was elected again in this To whose Oration the next day the Lord-Keeper answer'd as followeth Mr. Speaker YOU have endeavour'd to excuse yourself from this place of great Trust But I perceive by his most Excellent Majesty that I was not much amiss when I took you to be in the same Case that Evathlus was to Protagoras as Gellius reports it Lib. 5. c. 11. That is sure to be denied and to lose your Cause whether you argued strongly or faintly St. Paul was called Mercurius by the Lycaonians because he was the chief Speaker Acts 14.12 But to whom shall I liken you Truly to nothing but to yourself who have spoken more too learnedly and pithily the manner whereof hath confuted the Matter and your Rhetorick hath spoil'd your Logick For no Man that hath heard you speak can believe your unfitness to be a Speaker His Majesty therefore doth applaud and confirm your Election and commands me to return an Answer to some parts of that you have delivered Which though it was as all great and excellent Bodies are observ'd to be round and sphaerical in the Composition without a nook or a corner for a Man to lay hold upon yet as some late Mathematicians have born us in hand that they can find Quadraturam circ uli some corners in a Circle so for Method and Memory's sake Aut inveniam aut faciam where I do not find you must give me leave to make some parts and to run them over briefly distinctly and orderly You have said somewhat concerning yourself somewhat concerning the last Parliament somewhat of the Primus motor and Divine Intelligence which enliv'd the same somewhat of his Majesty's Entrance upon his Government and that in five several Respects First in respect of the Way which is by Parliament Secondly in respect of his Blood as the Son of Nobles Thirdly in respect to Succession to so worthy a Father Fourthly in respect of our Hopes of a rare and religious Government And Lastly in respect of his great Delivery in his famous Journey by Sea and Land Somewhat also you have said of our Religion as much recommended unto the King and much prosperous and profitable to the People Somewhat of the ancient Common-Law somewhat of cherishing our Friends abroad Somewhat of abating our Foes at home Somewhat of the Four Petitions presented to all Kings Immunity of Persons Liberty of Speech readiness of Access and benign Interpretation the four corner Stones which bear up the Structure of the House of Parliament I shall from his most Excellent Majesty make answer to these things according to your Sense and with my Method as they lie in order 11. First for your self you say little but you do much in yielding thus to his Majesty's Pleasure You offer'd a Sacrifice before the Sacrifice of your Lips an excuse from this Service and that was refused Now you offer up Obedience and that is amply accepted For Obedience is better than Sacrifice Quod felix faustumque sit a most happy Concatenation to open a Parliament when the Hearts of the People are in the Hands of the King and the Heart of the King in the Hand of God Secondly for the last Parliament it was happy indeed so accompted by our late so esteemed by our present Sovereign so denominated by the Effects which it produced For therein as you well observe those male-sida foedera and unfaithful Treatises were dissolv'd the King and his People indissolubly united the Flowers of the Crown a little pruned but with the Love of the Subjects better scented and perfumed Lastly if not more Bills of Grace yet surely more Bills from pure Grace passed and were enacted than in that Session of Magna Charta Gratia enim non est gratia si non sit gratis data And surely as Pliny said of Nerva Debebatur maximo operi haec veneratio ut novissimum sit autorque ejus statim consecraretur It became a Prince who was now ready to be Sainted in Heaven to close in that manner his Government here on Earth For I could never learn in all my Reading any other way for King or Subject than this one by the Kingdom of Grace to pass along to the Kingdom of Glory Thirdly for the part the King our Master bore in the late Parliament surely he was Actus primus the very proper Soul of that Politick Body Tota in toto tota in quâlibet parte now in the Committees as in the Members by and by with the Lords as in the Heart anon with the King his Father as in the Head of the Body and every where the principal Author of Life Motion and Resolution So that we may say to our now Sovereign as the Romans did by their Orator to the Emperor Trajan that he is no stranger to our Assembly Meminit quae optare quae sit queri solitus he cannot forget the Desires of the Commons nor the â—ishes of the upper House of Parliament Fourthly your five Circumstances for so I number them of his Majesty's Entrance into his Reign are very well noted and observ'd 1. That he begins it with a Parliament It is a sign indeed of his Love to that way Those Actions of Men are most pure and sincere Quae singendi non habent tempus that are done in such haste as admits no Fiction His Majesty was scarce proclaimed when the Writs went out and before the Solemnities of his Coronation behold him present in the midst of his People 2. That he comes into it with the Blood of Nobles Yes Mr. Speaker Deus est in utroque parente No King in Europe that breaths this day can shew so fair and so Royal a Pedigree 3. That by his Succession he hath sweetned much our loss of his Father A great and a glorious Act indeed And such an act as I will be bold to say in his Majesty's hearing could never have been done by any King not by himself had he been the Son of his Body only and not withal of his Mind and Vertues Herein indeed he equals his Father Neque enim de Caesaris actis Ullum majus opus quà m quòd Pater extitit hujus 4. For our hopes they have good cause God make us thankful to him for the same to sore high and to expect a King that shall exceed Hezekias in Policy of State for our Master I hope will never discover the Secrets of his Dominion to Foreigners and Strangers and equal him at the least in the Advancement of Religion You heard his Profession the last day His God above him his People under him his Heart within him and his Kindred about him must enflame his Zeal to this
most Friends And that 's a Friend that will incur Anger rather than leave his Friend to sooth himself in a Mischief It had been well for the Duke if his bold Friend had perswaded him to take that Counsel which Christopher Thuanus gave to the Cardinal of Lorain being in great Favour with Henry the 2d of France Si potentiam suam diuturnam cuperet moderatè eâ uteretur in politicá administratione leges regni conservaret alioqui fore ut publicae invidiae impar Procerum regni Nobilitatis contra se concitato odio aliquando succumberet Aug. Thua An. 1568. Secondly Some of the Lords of the Council were willing to spare the Keeper for that having a mighty standing Wardrobe of Reason likely he bore down that side which he oppos'd Why would not Plato endure Homer in his Utopia because he was too great a Citizen for his City And Aristotle lib. 3. Polit. c. 4. Says the Argonautes were weary of Hercules and dismist him 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 his main strength at the Oar was above his Fellows his parts were unequal in supere minence Nor did his Majesty like it well that he would never give over till he was Conqueror in the Argument that he held and he ever held him to be too nimble and versatile in his Discourses For the Taste of that good King's Mind was much like to his Palate he never loved Sauce with his Meat nor Sharpness in his Counsels He desired to see all his way before him and not to be led through Windings and Allies Another King was of that Conceit says Thua lib. 11. Franciscus magna ingenia suspect a habere coepit Thirdly The blaff that help'd to blow down this Cedar was the Breath of Obtreclators and Tale bearers Who are too much about great Men as it may be said by Allusion from the 66 Psal v. 3. After the vulgar Latin For the Greatness of thy Power shall the People be found Lyars unto thee These were too thick about the Duke and cherish'd with his Countenance and Liberality For Reward not Minstrils and you shall be sure to be rid of them If any are loth to put Bishop Laud in this Number I must either reform their Knowledge or write against mine own They are yet living that have heard it confest by the Lord Buckingham's Mother And these words are in the Manuscript remembred before Penn'd by Arch-Bishop Abbot That the Countess of Buckingham told the Bishop of Lincoln that St. Davids was the Man that did undermine him with her Son and would underwork any Man in the World that himself might rise St. Davids saw no Man in the prospect of likelihood but this one to carry the highest Miter from him Interna crevit Roma Albae ruinis as Livy says Fourthly my Lord-Duke was soon satiated with their Greatness whom he had advanc'd It was the inglorious Mark of those Thirteen Years of his Power to remove Officers Which was like a sweeping Floud that at every Spring-tide takes from one Land and casts it upon another In two Years of King Charles's Reign Williams Lee Conway Suckling Crow Walter had their Top-sails pull'd down by him and if Sir Henry Yelverton had liv'd not only Sir A. Welden writes it but common Rumour nois'd it that he had been promoted to the Place of the Lord Coventry Which was very prejudicious to the true Discharge of those Dignities As Theophrastus complains in Tully Men were so short liv'd that by the time they began to know the World Death snatch'd them out of it So a Magistrate can yield no great Fruit that 's pluck'd up before he be well rooted Antonnius call'd the Philosopher provided better for that as Capitolinus hath it as he was wise in all his Government 21. Still the Plot was busie against the Lord-Keeper to displace him with some colour of Charge And the King being come to Salisbury in September with a full Court it came to a Catastrophe He that was hunted after was at harbour at a House of the Lord Sand's in Barkshire five Miles from Windsor call'd Foxly Where he was surely inform'd that after much sifting spent after all that ever he did since his high Promotion the old Matter was renewed how he stirred up those that lifted at the Duke at Oxford which was urg'd with strange and punctual Confidence and was the weakest and least grounded Surmise that ever was hammer'd Therefore it was supplied with another Objection That at the same time and place he had abus'd the King with ill Counsel advising him to vail his absolute Sovereignty too much to a social Communication with his Subjects Which being divulg'd got him that was accus'd a strong Gale of popular Favour did his Majesty no right and cast the Duke upon such a Shelf as no High-tide could bring him off while he liv'd The Keeper hearing every day what Cavillations were fomented and heard to put him to blame and shame found it in vain to coast the Season any longer to have the Great-Seal tarry with him Only resolv'd on the 21st of September to prepare his way by his Pen before he went to Salisbury to salute the King's Ear with softness and to shew that he did not despond but that he was ready for a Justification if he were call'd to answer Which for all his Labour would hardly be believ'd For all Treasure hid in the Ground is the Kings But how will he find it So all truth that concerns his Justice and Prosperity is his But how will he know it This Man is not the first that made it true which Sidon Apoll. observes Lib. 3. Ep. 3. That it is dangerous serving of Kings in a near place who are compar'd by him to fire Qui sicut paululum à se remota illuminat ita satis sibi admota comburit It is a good Element or light and warmth to those that stand aloof but singeth that which comes too near it Yet nothing venture nothing have One Arrow must be shot after another though both be grast and never found again In aequo est amissio rei timor amittendi says Seneca Nay he loseth more quiet of Mind that looks every day to lose that which he loves than in the Minute when he is deprived of it One says When the Brunt is over the Heart will recover Time and long day will mitigate sad Accidents 't is a slow Medicine but a sure one 22. Now let the Letter to his Majesty be observ'd which was his Harbinger Most gracious Sovereign and my dear Master WHile I spare my self at home for a few days to be quite rid of an Ague which I brought from Southampton I do humbly crave your Majesty's Pardon to make my Address in these Lines which I will contract to so narrow a room as the Matter will possibly give me leave First as touching the Information of the Access I should give at Oxford to those dangerous Persons of the House of
And what Plot could I have against his Grace in the Meeting at Oxford when I oppos'd it at Hampton-Court and Ricot and would have had it put off at Woodstock That I am as mere a Stranger as any Lord that serves your Majesty to all those disaffected Persons that appear'd so opposite to your Royal ends in the House of Commons That I never spake in all my Life with any of them excepting one and at one time only and that by Order and Commission concerning any Parliamentary-business whatsoever That I am content if at any time admitted to my Answer I shall be sufficiently convicted in any of these Premises or any other Particular included under any of these to renounce your Majesty's Favour as long as I live and which is the only Hell upon Earth to me never look on your face again But if all these Informations against a poor Bishop that so served your Father in his Life and at his Death be grounded only upon Suspicion Malice or Misapprehension and be cried down as they needs must be by all the Members of the one and the other House pity me dread Sovereign and let me retire with the comfortable Assurance of your Majesty's Favour that I may spend my days quietly in the Service of my God in serving whom as I resolve to do I shall never fail to serve your Majesty whom God Almighty prosper with all Success in this World and with all Happiness and eternal Glory in that to come 28. The Letter being read He was call'd for to the King immediately and had access to make his Petitions His Requests were just modest and suitable to his Condition and the King's Answers Princely and Prudent The Petitioner ask'd first for his Majesty's Grace and Favour in general His Majesty granted it and gave him twice his Hand to kiss 2. The Petitioner humbly thanking his Majesty for his gracious Promise to take away none of his Church-Preferments till he had given better in lieu thereof besought his Majesty to keep the same benevolent Mind towards him The King said It was his Intention 3. The Petitioner besought his Majesty to remember his Father's Promise made before all the Lords that whensoever he took away the Seal he would place me in as good a Bishoprick or Arch-Bishoprick as he could a Promise not only seconded but drawn from your Father first by your Majesty The King said There was no such Place yet void when any fell then it would be time to make this Request unto him 4. The Petitioner besought that his Majesty would dismiss him freely and absolutely without any Command from the Table but to leave it to his discretion to forbear The King said He ever intended it so and never said a word to the contrary but expected he would not offend by voluntary Intrusion 5. The Petitioner besought that his Majesty would declare unto the Lords that he had willingly and readily yielded to his Majesty's Pleasure and that I part in your Favour and good Opinion and am still your Servant The King said He would but says he I look that no Petitions be made for you by any Man at that time but only for my Favour in general 6. The Petitioner besought that his Majesty in his good time would make his Atonement with my Lord-Duke either upon or without Examination of those Informations which the Lord-Duke had receiv'd against him The King said It became not him a King to take up the Quarrels between his Subjects And that the Duke had never exprest any such Enmity against him before his Majesty The Petitioner thank'd his Majesty for the last part of the Answer which revived him not a little as did a short Letter lately received from the Countess his Grace's Mother which he besought the King to read and 't was this Noble Lord I Must not forget my Promise to your Lordship I have had large Conference with my Son about you And he tells me that the King is determin'd to put another into your Place But for his own part he 〈◊〉 he is in Love and Charity with your Lordship And that he thinks your Lordship 〈◊〉 leave the Place better than you found it and that you have done the King good 〈◊〉 in it For the rest I shall give you better Satisfaction when I see you next than I 〈◊〉 do by Letter In the mean time I am sorry there should be any unkindness betwixt your Lordship and him that is so near to me and that wisheth you both so well Mar. Buckingham Burleigh Octob. 12. The Petitioner went on and besought that whereas by the King his Father's direction he had bought a Pension no new one but the fame that was paid to Viscount Wallingford of 2000 Marks per Annum and had disbursed 3000 l. down for it with which his Majesty was acquainted and lik'd it that his Majesty would be pleased either to buy the Pension of him for the Sum laid out and extinguish it or to assign it to be paid him out of the Tenths and Subsidies of the Bishoprick as before he had appointment to receive it out of the Hamper The King said Assignments were naught but he would take order with his Treasurer either to pay it or buy it as should be found most convenient 8. The Petitioner besought that his Majesty would please to bestow the next Prebend in Westminster that was void upon his Library-keeper as his Father had promis'd or to let him resume his Books again The King said it was full of Reason 9. The Petitioner besought that his Majesty would please to ratifie a Grant made by his Father of four Advousons to St. John's Colledge in Cambridge whereof two he had bought with his Money and two the King gave him for the good of that Society The King said He would ratifie the Grant and give way to amend any Errors in the Form or in the Passing 10. The Petitioner besought that he might have leave to retire to a little Lodge lent to him by the Lord Sandys where my Lord Conway may receive the Seal when his Majesty commanded it in his Journey towards Windsor The King granted it Lastly The Petitioner besought that the King would not be offended at him if upon his discharge reports were made that he was discontented which he protested he was not giving over so comfortably in his Majesty's Favour The King said He would do him that Justice and that he little valued Reports And with a sweet Countenance gave him his Hand to kiss with a gracious Valediction 29. Poets use to have quaint Allusions in their Fictions as when they tell us that Pallas struck Tiresias blind but gave him a Staff to walk with Quo veluti duce vestigiis inoffensis graderetur Politia Miscel p. 80. So the King had set the Keeper but a Week's Period to keep his Office but gave him good words to carry him merrily home And certainly his Majesty meant real Performance of all
the first settling of our Church in the Queens days Morning Prayer stopt at the end of the three Collects after the Apostle's Creed then the People had leisure before the Litany began either to retire or to betake them to private Prayers In this Interspace some Communicants had time to give in their Names to the Curate this is plain in that first Order for a publick Fast anno 5 Eliz. the words are After the Morning Prayer ended the Minister shall exhort the People assembled to give themselves in their private Prayers and Meditations for which purpose a Pause shall be made of one quarter of an hour and more by the discretion of the Curate during which time as good silence shall be kept as may be That done the Lâ—tany is to be read c. Now after the pause of scarce a minute made by this digression let the main scope of the King 's Fast indicted in July be remembred that great Humiliation with Fasting and extraordinary Prayer should be joyn'd together to avert the Peril of a Spanish Invasion therefore that we on the defensive should be ready with our Bodies and Purses to avert the Fury of our Enemies Though the Land was admonish'd of this in a religious way yet they condescended to part with Money very hardly They did only hear of an Enemy but they saw their Coyn collected from them Well did Tully write lib. 3. Ep. 24. Nulla remedia tam saciunt dolorem quae vulneribus adhibentur quà m quae maximè salutarta Say it was a Wound to our great Charter to call for Contribution without a Parliamentary way yet it was not the worse for the Wound that the Injection was sharp that cur'd it What we lost in the Privilege of Liberty it was presum'd we got in Safety 72. But the most did want that charitable Presumption and paid the irregular Levy with their Hand and not with their Heart A Prince that grieves his Subjects with a sconcing Tribute takes up Moneys at a dear Interest who should not live extempore but upon premeditation to act to day what shall be safe and honourable for ever Grotius is very political in a Passage to be found in his Proleg De jure belli pacis Qui jus civile pervertit utilitatis praesentis causâ id convellit quo ipsius posteritatis suae perpetuae utilitates continentur The People are unpleas'd upon this Levy and the Ink of a Remonstrance could not kill the Tettar A third Parliament is called to justifie the King's Act from Necessity in the face of the Kingdom It was determin'd by some about His Majesty that our Bishop should not sit in it The great Favourite knew his Discontents were encreased the Bishoprick of Winchester had been void and conferr'd upon another Archbishop Abbot removed for some months to Ford in Kent is brought to Lambeth to the Court to the Parliament Lincoln not only wanted these Sweetnings but was tir'd with defailance of Promises and defied with Threatnings so it was thought best to keep him out of the Parliament against all Right rather than suffer one with the Powers of his Parts to argue and vote against exorbitant Persons and Causes The Bishop stood upon his Place as a Spiritual Lord and resolv'd to let his Right be infring'd no longer Utrumne est tempus aliquod quo in Senatum venire turpe sit says Cicero pro domo ad Pontif. It can be no shame to come into the Senate it is a Disgrace to be kept out Therefore yielding all Obedience to Soveraignty unto the utmost of that which was due he disputed the Right of his Order so stoutly that he came to the House and continued in it to the last which he obtained the more resolutely because he look'd upon the King's Affairs with a desire to help him The L. K. Coventry had order to stop him by a Letter if he could which the other answered in these words R. H. and my very good Lord I Have received your Lordships Letter of the 17. of February but this day being the 25. of the same and although I could not desire more comfortable News from your Lordship than Leave of Absence from that Parliament in which my presence may be suspecled either by the King which my Innocency will not suffer me to believe or by any other near unto His Majesty yet being the Right of a Peer in this Kingdom that never convicled imprison'd or question'd for any Offence is not withstanding now against a second Parliament kept from his lawful and indubitable Right of sitting in that House and may be for any Comfort he doth receive from your Lordship intended to be debarr'd for ever from the same I must crave some time to resolve by the best Counsels God shall give me whether I shall obey your Lordship's Letter though mentioning His Majesty's Pleasure before mine own Right which by the Law of GOD and Man I may in all Humility maintain Especially His Majesty's Writ and Royal Proclamation of a far later date do either of them imply as your Lordship best knoweth an authentical Command I do know that of my Obedience to my Gracious Soveraign as of late I have found small acceptance so could I never find any limit or bottom And therefore I beseech your Lordship to make this no Question of the Act but of this Object only of my Duty and Submission But if I find I may without prejudice absent my self I will deal clearly with you my noble Lord in the second point I do refuse with all humble Duty and Vassalage unto His Majesty reserv'd to appoint for my Proctor the Bishop proposed And so I humbly take my leave The Courtiers knew not what would follow upon this Answer but a Course was follow'd by the Bishop as in the like Case before to cut a way between two Extreams Inter abruptam contumaciam deforme obsequium For the Parliament newly sitting the L. Keeper being demanded by John Earl of Clare whether this Bishop had a Writ sent to him and that being affirm'd the Peers call'd for his Assistance and without more ado the Parliament beginning March 17. he came to it before the end of that Month breaking the Restraint upon him not by attempt of his own Will but because it was the Pleasure of the Lords and as soon as he came he was quickly set a work for the upper House appointing to meet together at the Holy Communion Apr. 6. 1628. he preach'd the Sermon at that Solemn Occasion the Text being Gal. 6.14 and at the next Session he preacht again by their Lordship's order at a Fast kept on Ash-Wednesday Feb. 18. 1628. in the same Church upon Job 42.12 entituled Perseverantia Sanctorum Both these Sermons were printed by their Lordships direction two pieces so full of Learning and Piety that they were fitter for a longer perusal than for the short time wherein they were utter'd 73. At this great and high Assembly our
make a Governour But as our Cambridge term is he was staid with Nescio's He was not known in Court nor City for he had not shewn himself in a Pulpit in 20 years He that says no credit is to be given to the Information that he died a Papist I would he had proved it for as Cortesius writes to Politian p. 242. Plus de invento vero gaudeo quà m de victoriâ I had rather it were true than get the Victory But Wishes will not bring it about Nemo facit optando ut verum sit quod verum non est says St. Austin Ep. 28. By what colour or appearance can he be vindicated to dye a Protestant May we not as soon light a Candle by a Glow-worm In what did he seem to be a Son of our Reformed Church I do not mean as an Ape is like to a Man but as a Child is like to his Mother Hypocrisie dwells next door to Orthodox Doctrine but it never comes in to her Neighbour So the Upshot will bear it that the Bishop of Lincoln did justly discover his Kinsinan and Friend's Apostacy though his own blame did depend upon it Which will leave him the Praise that Erasmus gives to a L. Montjoy Ep. p. 162. Haec est tua n obilit as ut mentiri nescias si velis nec velis si scias 95. There would be no end to repeat with how many Quarrels this unfortunate Bishop was provok'd yet his Adversaries did but dry-ditch their matters and digged in vain though they still cast up Earth who were no better than the Arrians of whom Athanasius writes Lib. ad Sol. Vit. Agen. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 They fretted if they had spent a day wherein they could not do a Mischief And it will do the Sufferer no right to tell how he threw all day and cast not one good Chance but was worsted in all his just Appeals Quis enim suâ praelia victus Commemorare velit Metam l. 9. Yet I will insist in that noble Contest he had with the Archbishop of Canterbury about his metropolitical Visitation that hereafter when God shall send the like occasion as I trust he will the Diocesans of Lincoln may know what their stout Predecessor did alledge for their exemption This may come to pass But as the unknown Oratour said to Constantine in his Panegyrick p. 246. Ista felicitas viderit utrum adhuc meae aetati debeatur Archbishop Land enterprizing to visit his whole Province found opposition only from the Universities from Cambridge I am sure and from the Bishop of Lincoln whom next to the substance of the Cause one circumstance displeased that Sir John Lamb was commissioned to be the metropolitan Vicar to visit his Diocess Sir John had been very officious about him for many years I let it go with that of Tully to Atticus Pompeius Scauro studet sed utrum fronte an mente dubitatur And the Bishop had done as much for Sir John as he could have done for the Worthiest of all his Profession 'T is amplified enough before and makes another instance That so wise a man was not always circumspect in his Patronage Lamb was crafty and of much experience but in the running of some years he was hated of all men and much complained of that he was ravenous in taking Fees Like as one says of the Pope's drawing in Moneys from all Parties That he was a Participle that took from Clergy and Laity When he perceived these things distasted Bishop Williams and that he had not Encouragement from him as before and dreaming of Golden Mountains from another hand he turn'd the falsest man and the greatest Enemy to him in the World Archbishop Laud he 'd worm him quite from adhering to Lincoln and much good do him with him Whereupon I remember what Plutarch tells merrily of a goutish man that had his Slippers stolen from him says the man full of Pain I wish the Thief no more harm but that my Slippers were fit for him Well the Visitation being design'd and to be carried on by Lieutenant Lamb our Bishop wrote to my Lord of Canterbury as followeth 96. Most Reverend c. UPon the Message which I received from Mr. Sherman of your Graces intention to visit my Diocess this year being the year of mine own Triennial Visitation and the certain News I heard of Sir J. Lamb's collecting of Presidents to induce your Officers to stir up your Grace thereunto I have both by my self and others made some enquiry into the Records and several Registries of the Diocess and do find clearly that in Grosthead's time anno 1235. this Diocess had never been metropolitically visited and that ever since that time until now no Archbishop of Canterbury did visit this Diocess otherwise than in vacancy of the See but by the vertue and power of some particular Bull procured from the Pope or Letter of Assistance from the King's Majesty since the Supremacy was reassumed in this Realm And I find the several Bishops in these several Ages to have assented to these Visitations as they were Papal and Regal only not forbearing notwithstanding to exercise all manner of Act or Acts belonging to their Jurisdiction Episcopal not only in the times but in and on the very days of these Archiepiscopal Visitations and refusing to pay any Procurations or other Fees by vertue of a special exemption granted unto this See and some others by Pope Innocent the Fourth by the procurement of Bishop Grosthead deposited in this Registry and never waved by the Bishops of this See however some other of your Graces Suffragans have omitted peradventure as having not the custody thereof to implead the same Yet do I differ may it please your Grace in this particular from all my Predecessors in this See that I do believe your Grace may visit even by your own metropolitical Power all this Diocess unless this great Prescription of an hundred years may debarr the same but truly I do under Favour conceive that your Grace ought not to inhibit my ordinary Jurisdiction nor do any acts to impeach the same Nor can I find any word sounding that way in any one of all the Visitations kept as before is rehearsed by your Grace's Predecessors excepting only in Archbishop Cranmer's the last Archbishop who above one hundred years since visited this Diocess and yet Longland then Bishop of Lincoln did not only execute all parts of his Jurisdiction pendente visitatione metropoliticâ but the Dean of the Arches Archbishop Cranmers and the King 's chief Commissioner for that Service did freely and voluntarily of himself set all the Bishop's Officers at full liberty to exercise all their Jurisdictions after the first day of his Visitation reserving his Detections only to his own cognizance Now since this Visitation of Archbishop Cranmer which was more Regal than Metropolitical as appears by the Instructions given to the Commissioners at that time no Archbishop of Canterbury hath ever offer'd
same Building Where should we look for kindness but in the Rulers of the Church the noblest part of Christ's Family And kindness is nobleness says St. Chrysostom and mercy is a generous thing The Beraeans were more noble than the Thessalonians Acts 17. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 says he It doth not signifie nobleness of blood but gentleness of pity Now for the Book the Stone of Scandal at which his Grace stumbled so much it was known unto him that some things got into practice in the Church under his Government and by his Authority were disrelisht by a considerable part in his Province and they of the best conformity whose averseness he thought would be the stiffer by the contents of that Book His remedy was to bring the Author into question and to crush all that sided with him in his Person as the State Maxim goes Compendium est victoriae devincendorum hostium duces sustulisse Paneg. to Constantine p. 339. But which way shall the Book be brought into Disgrace with bad Interpretations It will do no good Forced Earth in time will fall to its own level First then besides some Answers publisht to decry it he incensed his Majesty with a relation of it in whose Ecclesiastical Rights it was mainly written for what he had collected and offered in a Paper to his Majesty Lincoln got a sight of it by the Duke of Lennox and proved that all the Matters of Fact set down against him were false and not to be found in the Book but that it strongly maintain'd the contrary Positions which when his Majesty saw he seem'd to take it ill from the Informer So these flitting Clouds were blown over before they could pour down the Storm they were big with His Grace sent the Book to the Attorney Generâ— to thrust it into an Information who return'd it back that it would not bear it Here again was Tencer's luck in Homer Il. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 He had a good will to hit Hector with an Arrow but he mist him Then in his Speech made against Burton Prin and Bastwick which he printed with a Dedication to the King he fell upon this Book reading out of his Notes that he that gave allowance to thrust it at that time into the Press did countenance thosethâ—ee Libellers and did as much as in him lay to fire the Church and State Now under colour to Censure others to fall upon a man that was neither Plaintiff Defendant nor Witness in their Cause would amount to a Libel in anothers mouth against whom Justice had been open But as Demosthenes says against Aristogiton 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a Sword is useless if it have not an edg to cut so this bitter flam was but a leaden Dagger and did not wound What remained next but take him Bull-begger fetch him into the High-Commission Court where his Grace was President Judge and might be Advocate Proctor Promotor or what he would And he was so hot upon it that three Letters were written by Secretary Windebank in his Majesties Name to hasten the Cause Whereas honest and learned Dr. Rive the King's Advocate knew not where to act his part upon it Lincoln is now in his Coup in the Tower whither four Bishops and three Doctors of the Civil Laws came to take his Answer to a Book of Articles of four and twenty sheets of Paper on both sides The Defendant refuseth to take an Oath on the Bible claiming the Priviledge of a Peer but his Exception was not admitted He stood upon it that himself was a Commissioner that they had no power over him more than he had over them which did not suffice him Then they come to the Articles whose Proem in usual form was That he must acknowledge and submit to the power of that high Court which he did grant no otherwise than in such things and over such persons as were specified in their Commission The second Article contain'd That all Books licensed by his Grace's Chaplains are presumed to be Orthodox and agreeable to sound and true Religion which he denied and wondred at the Impudency that had put such an Article upon him The third That he had licensed a Book when none but the Archbishops and Bishop of London had such power Nay says Lincoln my self and all Bishops as learned as they have as much power as they not only by the Council of Lateran under Leo the Tenth and the Reformatio Cleri under Cardinal Pool but by Queen Elizabeth ' s Injunctions and a Decree in Star-Chamber The fourth That he named a Book called A Coal from the Altar a Pamphlet The fifth That he said all Flesh in England had corrupted their ways The sixth That in a jear he said he had heard of a Mother Church but never of a Mother Chappel The seventh That again in a scoff he derived the word Chappel from St. Martin 's Hood The eighth That he said the people were not to be lasht by every mans whip The ninth That he maintain'd the people were God's people and the King's people but not the Priest's People The tenth That be flouted at the prety of the Times and the good work in hand The rest of the Cluster were like these and these as sharp as any of the seven and twenty Articles and one and thirty Additionals This was the untemper'd Mortar that crumbled away or as the Vulgar Latin reads it Ezech. 13.10 Liniebant parietem luto absque paleis So here was dirt enough but not so much as a little straw or chaff to make it stick together But such as they were the Bishop had the favour to read them all over once before he was examined a favour indeed not shew'n to every body After the Examination past over he required a Copy of it which the three Civilians voted to be granted but his Grace and Sir J. Lamb would first have him re-examined again upon the same Interrogatories to try the steadiness of his memory and to catch him in a Snare if he did vary An Error that may easily be slipt into by the tediousness of the Matter and the intricate Forms of the Clerk's Pen wherein an aged or illiterate man will scarce avoid the danger of Perjury But the Bishop being of a prodigious memory had every word by heart which he had deposed before against two subsequent Examinations which laid this Cause asleep till God shall awaken it and hear it on both sides at the last day 124. No worse could be lookt for than that their frivolous Articles should go out as they did in a Cracker And less was expected from that which followed whose steam when it came abroad was laught at in good Company but it cost the unfortunate Bishop some thousands in good earnest for Cyphers for Riddles for Quibbles for Nothing It made a third Information in Star-Chamber for like Herulus in Virgil Aen. 8. Ter letho sternendus erat The driver on and the dealer in it was the
that prosecutes for the King and so it was appointed to be taken out When this expunging was confirm'd and the Attorney General had made his Replication upon the Demur the Bishop knowing not how to wear the Yoke of a base Spirit any longer and full of the Courage that God had inspired into him Appeals from these intolerable Grievances to the High Court of Parliament in this Rejoynder That the Defendant doth and will 〈◊〉 maintain and justifie his Answers and all the matters and things therein contained to be true and certain and sufficient in the Law And that nothing thereof ought to be expunged which is necessary and pertinent to his Defence And in case any part so pertinent and necessary for his Defence under colour of scandal to a third person who may clear his Credit if he be innocent and be repaired with Costs be expunged and he and all others in the like case be left remediless in the Law The Defendant having no other Remedy left in a Defence against a Suit commenced against him in the King's Name doth humbly Appeal unto the High Court of Parliament when it shall be next Assembled humbly protesting against any Sentence as void and null which shall pass against him in the mean time for and because of the want of his just and necessary defence so taken away and expunged Much was added in this Appeal to defie Kilvert who had boasted to prosecute the Bishop to his degradation and the Bishop in the said Appeal disavows that the Court of Star-chamber had ever degraded or appointed to be degraded or ever will degrade or appoint to be degraded any Bishop or other Lord and Peer of the Parliament or take away their Freehold in point of Means Profit or Honour c. This Appeal was filed in the Office enter'd in the Clerks Books and Copies thereof were signed by the usual Officer although Sir William Pennyman Clerk of the Star-chamber took it off the File and blotted it out of the Books Sir William was ever of a laudable behaviour but durst not say them nay that thrust him upon this Rashness Who did not gaze at this Appeal as if it had been a Blazing-star Who did not discourse of it How did they who club together for News and trial of their Wits spend their Judgments upon it Some thought that excess of Wrongs done to the Bishop had distemper'd him to fall upon a course of Confusion to himself In plain words being bitten by so many mad Dogs they thought he bit again as if he had been mad Whereas he never did any thing with a more sober mind Insanire me â—iunt ultro cum ipsi insaniant Plaut in Menaech Some replied Let the danger be what it will the President tended to a Publick Good Audendum est aliquid singulis aut pereundum universis For are we not all Passengers as well as he in the same bottom And may we not be swallowed up in the same Shipwrack if our Pilots look no better to their Duty They that were acquainted with the best Pleaders thought to have most Light from them and askt if the Act did not exceed the Duty of a Subject And would it not leave the Author to the fury of the Court to be torn in pieces with a Censure Nay surely said the Gown-men there is no violation of Duty to His Majesty in appealing to his Parliament for he submits to the King who is the Head of the Body Or at the most it is Provocatio à Philippo dormiente ad Philippum vigilantem from K. Charles misinformed in Star-chamber to K. Charles among his best Assistants the three States of the Nation And for the minacy of a Censure do if they dare A Parliament will repair him when it sits and canonize their own Martyr Both they that lik'd and dislik'd the Appeal confest that the corruption of his Judges compell'd him to it Should Kilvert notoriously detected be suffer'd to escape by cancelling all that brought his Conspiracies to light Infixo aculeo fugere in the Adagy Strike in his Sting and fly away like a Wasp Suffer this and at this one dealing of the Game the Bishop's whole state had been lost of Fortunes Liberty and Honour Neque enim levia aut ludicra petuntur Praemia sed Turni de vitâ sanguine certant Discretion was to give place to Courage in this case Baronius tells us of Theodoret. ann 446. n. 27. That being incensed at the Tyranny of a Shark in Office that had seized upon all he had Uranius Bishop of Emesa advised him to make no words of it but to sit still by the loss Theodoret answers him bravely Non solùm prudentia sed fortitudo virtus est Fortitude is a Virtue as well as Prudence and is as laudable in her own turn and occasion Put the case to a Physician when he thinks there is no hope of a Patient what will he do The ancient Rule was Nescio an in extremis aliquid tentare medicina sit certè nihil tentare perditio est To give the sick man Physic is against Art but to give him nothing is to cast him away wilfully Here is Lincoln's condition who being denied the Justice of that Court had nothing to fly to in that Extremity but this Appeal with which he did so hough the Sinews of the Bill that from that day forward it never hopt after him 128. Because some did not stick to say that the Bishop might thank himself for his incessant Troubles that he did not take Conditions of Peace that were offered to him it must be presented here that Conditions indeed were tender'd such as Naash offer'd the Israelites to thrust out their right Eyes 1 Sam. 11.2 or as the Samnites released Sp. Posthumious and a Roman Legion overthrown at Caudis with slavish Ignominy But these were worse Ultra Caudinas speravit vulnera furcas Luca. lib. 2. The Bishop lying in Prison and sustaining the heavy weight of the first Censure July 11. 1637. he press'd the L. Coventry to move His Majesty for some mitigation of the Fine and to stop the violent levying of it since it stood in no proportion with the Charges of the Bill or the Presidents of the Court. Hereupon His Majesty tells the L. Keeper he would admit of no such motion but by the Mediation of the Queen The Bishop is glad of the News and could call to mind that in greater matters than this Princely Ladies had the Honour to make the Accord which the greatest Statesmen had attempted in vain as Madam Lovise Mother of K. Francis the First and Madam Margaret Aunt to Charles the Fifth Regent of the Low Countries made up that Peace between the Emperor and the King which other Mediators had given over for desperate Our Queen endeavour'd a Message of Clemency but that Honour was denied her The Earl of Dorset writes in her Name to the Bishop That all she could obtain of the King
memory and they may repent it when they want us Now what banding here was on every side to ruin the greatest Saint that ever ruled our Nation God was in them that came about him with their homage in such a time of hazard Magna negotia magnis adjutoribus egent Paterc And I am sure the Metropolitan of York was none of the meanest of David's Worthies for Plot and Direction He was fit for the Service and obliged to assist it For as Scipio Nasica very well No good man is a private man most of all if the weal publick needs him 172. But the King's Condition at York was not in such strength and readiness as it deserved though the brave and resolute Spirits about him thought not so They perswaded themselves that the very Name of a King would supply the want of Power and that they were on the right side as sure as God's Word could warrant them Causáque valent causamque tuentibus armis Ut puto vincemus Luca. l. 8. For all that the Parliament had made better preparation for a War First A most deluded People made to believe that his Majesty had gathered a Popish Army to change Religion Quod sibi probare non possunt id persuadere aliis conantur Cic. pro Rose Com. But upon this false Fame their great Preacher St. Marshall tells them pag. 6. of his Letter That they may secure their Religion against their King with a good Conscience Next they had the Nerves of War all the Money of London at their command and which was the worst of all Infelicities they had cheated his Majesty of his Navy and seized on his Magazines It was not sit that the King should stay out their Provocations and when they had soaled then see what was in their Belly Dubia pro veris solent Timere Reges Sen. Oedi. And it was not reasonable to abide their Courtesie who had voted for Delinquents all that did Service to their Lord and Master They did all they could to disturb the tranquillity of a Soul most excellently composed and to tire him out of his Principles He held out the first Olive-branch and sought Peace from them by a most gracious Message who in right should have begun But as Lasicius notes of the sullen-proud Russians Ni prior ipse salutaveris non salutaberis Theol. Mosc p. 64. They salute none that do not first uncover and salute them It was not once or twice that his Majesty sent but he persisted yet all in vain to draw a dutiful Answer from them And what 's more tedious than to cast all day and not to throw a good Chance Since nothing would serve them but to rally the Sons of the Earth the Titans of their Tumults and to fill up an Army with them the King retired into his deep Thoughts what was best to be done Hic magnus sedet AEneas secúmque volutat Eventus belli varios Aen. l. 10. A Prince of so much Religion and Mercy was not to learn That it was sit to be slow in an Enterprize of so high a nature For Kingdoms in their Channels safely run But rudely overflowing are undone says our English Horace It is Marcianus his Maxim in Zonaras 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 A King must never fly to Arms if a noble nay if a tolerable Peace may be had Yet again he did not forget that a prosperous Wind might blow away a Storm that was gathering before the Shower fell upon him Fest inandum antequà m cresceret invalida conjuratio paucorum Tacit. Hist l. 1. Be sudden before a Conjuration strengthen it self and give it no day And Pliny brings it for the Advice of Apollo's Oracle Biduo citiùs messem potiùs facere quam biduo seriùs Lib. 18. c. 3. Begin Harvest two days too soon rather than two days too late Alluding not to the Rural but the Politick Harvest Another and a good Genius too would say to the contrary What! will you embroil the Land in a Civil War Every Life that is slain in it on either side is the King's damage And the blood of Christians shed in rebellion is poured on the Devil's Altar Every Field and Town and Castle that 's spoil'd is the Kings loss who hath the dominion of all the Earth that serves him though not the Property His Majesty knew the worth and good Governance of many in his List Pacisque boni bellique ministri Aen. l. 11. But who could promise for so many hot Bloods as were upon the place that they would not rob and ransack the Innocent and make the Army odious by too much Cruelty upon the Nocent All are not a King's Friends that follow him so do Flies the smell of strong Drink but they that will maintain his Honour with Obedience as well as his Quarrel with Manhood If the Headstronger should be more in number Such an If is enough to discourage any one to be the Captain of a Civil War Nam in civilibus bellis plus militibus quà m Duci licet Tacit. Hist lib. 2. Their Commander dare not displease them so much he fears Revolt or Treachery And his Majesty's great Wildom could not like it that his Cavaliers were too consident and Secure Contemnendis quà m cavendis hostibus aptiores Idem Hist l. 4. No man could perswade them that there was either number wit skill or valour among the Rebels But says a Master of Military Art Veget. l. 3. Ille difficile vincitur qui de suis adversarii copiis rectè potest judicare It was safer for the Royal Battalion to know that the Enemy multiplied fast and pleased divers by laying themselves forth abroad to to all shew of Sobriety and Holiness though sincere Honesty had no Charge of them And Despair will make Chicken-hearted Souldiers couragious They that had drawn their Sword against their Soveraign must throw away the Scabbard They must purple their hands with slaughter in the Field or be hang'd in Ignominy What would they do to break all the Bands of the Law in sunder the King's Name and Authority which would not allow them their Book to save them These things might be so deliberated in the King's Camp or Cabinet I cannot definitely say it For after the Archbishop departed from Westminster to the North I never saw him more to confer with him from whom before I learnt all things in effect that I knew But as Tully writes L. de Senec. of L. Maximus Illud divinavi quod jam evenit illo extincto fore unde discerem neminem After I mist him who was wont to tell me not barely what was done but the reasons the fitness or incommodities of it I have heard somewhat but I understand little And I make as much moan for the want of him as St. Basil did for Martinlan Ep. 379. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 What skills it to hear many Discourse one after another when this one had gathered as much Experience and Wisdom as them all
Stop their Mouths with this that I shall faithfully tell you Sir William Parsons our Chief-Justice was much trusted with the King's Affairs in Ireland he deceasing his Friends and Executors sent his Papers to me to look them over In his Cabinet I found a Letter written by the King to warn him to look well to the Meetings of the Popish Irish for he had received certain Intelligence out of Spain that they were upon some great Design of Blood and Confusion And did His Majesty hold any Intelligence with those Miscreants who fetch'd his Intelligence as far as from Spain to prevent them Nulla sunt certiora quà m quae ex dubiis fact a sunt certa Quintil. lib. 5. The reliquation of that which preceded is it looks not all like Popery that Presbyterism was disdained by the King his Father had taught him that it was a Sect so perfidious that he found more Faith among the Highlanders Experience taught that it was not suitable to the Eternal Gospel for the Fautors of it did scarce Summer and Winter the same form of Discipline His hatred of Sacrilege taught him that upon the abdication of Episcopacy there was no likelihood but the Patrimony of the Church which is the Patrimony of Christ would be distributed by the Lords and Commons to their own but certainly to prophane uses 185. At the same time that a murmuring was raised for preserving or advancing Religion as much was pretended upon another score to recover Liberty Populo supervacanea est calliditas Saluf p. 75. The dull-headed People knew not all what this meant but rush'd on towards it and when the Beast did imagin it was loose from the Chain of Monarchy and Laws who could tye it up again They that say the whole Earth turns about will allow us to sit still but let these earthy Clodds follow their own motion Rest and Safety are out of hope to every man St. Paul says that a Liberty to sin is the greatest Captivity so a Liberty to be lawless is the greatest Bondage The Hedge of common Sasety is Law the Hedge of the Law are Penalties the infliction of Penalties is the power of the Supreme Governour Can the Subjects be at more Freedom if this Authority be taken away from one supereminent person Whereunto that ingenuous Gentleman Mr. Wrenn says very well Monarchy Asserted p. 79. It can be nothing but Madness voluntarily to expose ones self to Misery for the taking away of a Power in the room of which another equal Power must necessarily be substituted Yet it may be that Monarchy is excellens sensibile the Splendor of it is an Eye-sore and one would better endure the faint Beams of lesser and lower Planets To this I will reply with Capito Cossutius when the Roman Senate deprived Nero Caesar To overthrow Soveraignty Liberty was cried up but if Soveraignty be overthrown Liberty will be set upon Bolton p. 258. Let Judgment be pass'd upon the state of our own Monarchy the worst Enemy to it hath given this Testimony upon it Oceana p. 97. It was a Throne the most indulgent to and least injurious for so many Ages upon the Liberty of the People that the World hath known And indeed how could it be otherwise For the People preside in the House of Commons to debate the Grievances of all Counties Cities and Burroughs and to raise Levies of Moneys with Indifferency which is Democratical The Lords Spiritual and Temporal joyn their Wisdoms to debate the Proceedings of the Commons and are engaged in Honour to settle all things in Honour and Safety which is Aristocratical And His Majesty gathering up the results of their Prudence governs upon no other grounds and can neither abrogate the Laws already enacted nor enforce a new Law which is not pass'd and preserred unto him by both Houses which is the most inoffensive Regulation of Monarchy to please GOD and Man The most ancient Observator of the Temper of these three Governments made up into one with such Concinnity is Polybius lib. 6. thus he Some people are under a pure Monarchy some under an Optimacy some like a Democracy 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The best Government without compare must be that which hath collected the Properties of all the three into its Platform This is that equal Hand and it is our case that sets the Instruments in Tune one to another and the Voices to them all But it was exclaimed that our Monarchy kept not the bounds of Law untuned the Harmony as the Remonstrance Decem. 15. expresseth it in a raging stile Injustice Oppression Violence broke in upon us without any restraint or moderation And wherefore so much Outcry for Peccadilloes and verily occasion'd by the Undutifulness of former Parliaments and subsequent Necessities In some remediless Occurrences the wisest that sate in the House thought it would be more profitable to be insensible of them rather than too sharp because His Majesty had rectified the principal Grievances and was prepared to go on in the same Compliance and Serenity Now when the Pox was coming out Violence was the way to drive it in again And let the Censurers of Evils foregone look with Charity upon them and with Concessions of Humanity and they will find some slight Taxes levied which impoverisht no man the course of the Law still open to all it may be and will ever be in the winnowing the Chaff from the Corn there would be a little loss of Wheat Then all they that have howled against the Oppressions of the Soveraign if the Door of your Conscience be not too narrow to let out so great a Sin open the Wicket that this Slander may fly away into the Desarts of Forgetfulness yet rather of Repentance But if you could make your Proofs true That you wanted your native Rights and Liberties this will not justifie a rebellious War The Principle of the ancient Church is strong If the Magistrate command things contrary to God's Law suffer and resist not Much less do not resist though he command things contrary to his own Laws for to break his Scepter you wring the Scepter out of the Hand of God He alone is above him you are under him Men that have Leisure and Learning may read Chrysantus's Oration in Xenoph. Cyr. Pa. lib. 7. I will spend but one Passage of it here Fellow Souldiers says he we have obtained many Victories under our Lord Cyrus and are become the Conquerors of great Kingdoms and which way got we all we have 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 That is by our Governour There can be no greater Good than to preserve our selves in that Obedience Audi'n ' haec Amphiarae sub terram abdite Can the Ghost of John Pymm hear this whom no good man's Patience can forgive for making that dirty Remonstrance 186. Begin once again to detect this popular Cheat. The Ringleaders of the Impious War caress the People That if they will stick to them against the King and leave the Power
the World is more civil than in Ages past but the longer it lasts our Wars are more licentious and barbarous Livy says Fabritius was as innocent in War as in Peace Just in boasts of greater things lib. 25. Multa tune honest iùs bella gerebantur quà m nunc amicitiae coluntur Formerly they found honester Foes in the Field than we find Friends in the City When the rudeness of the common Soldier abated by courteous treatment the greater disliculty was to thrust back the Ambition of divers more than enough that would be Commanders Words of high Language past between him and some Gallants before they would sit down Ambrosius vir optimae ment is sed elatae says Lud. Molin Paren p. 539. So this Ambrose was not to be out-braved with a Buff-Jerkin and a Feather And though some of the Cavaâ—iers love not his memory for it to this time yet I shall give no scratch to Truth or Reputation to declare my self in his Defence that it was to be praised in him that he repuised the English from being chief Oâ—icers oâ—er the old Britains in their own Soil And it was prudence to preserve the Bulkly's that great Family of Anglesey in the Vice-Admiralty of those Seas rather than a valiant Gentleman born in Cambridgeshire for they will venture further with their own Deputy-Lieutenants Gentry and Landlord than with a Stranger The Western-men were never so well in heart as with their own Bevile Greenvile Ralph Hopton Killigrew Godolphin c. when they chang'd these for other Generals and Colonels their Purses were shut their Courage fell and their Duties were slackned In all these Contrasts the Archbishop prevailed and broke through Mutinies and high Threats which had been impossible but that he was ever most obliging and merciful in his greatest Fortune Bona sibi comparat praesidia misericordia He that would never hurt any when he might was most like if any to be shot free 196. Let it stick upon his good Name as a mark of Heroick Loyalty that he fell to these works upon his own cost and peril before the King was aware nor had yet requir'd it of him which will bring in that of Xenophon l. 3. Hist Hystaspas and Chrysantus were Cyrus his most faithful Ministers Hystaspas would do all that Cyrus bad him Chrysantus would do that which he thought was pleasing to Cyrus's Service before he bad him But when his Majesty heard of this Prelates Actions he posted Letters often to him and those so sweet and affecting that they did recoct his drooping Age into Youth and cozened him that he saw no danger in the Camp and selt no envy from the Parliament Of those Letters there are many reserv'd yet no more shall be produced than concerns the keeping of Conway-Castle because it turn'd to a sharp quarrel and procur'd him obloquy From Oxford Aug. 1. 1643. CHARLES R. MOst Reverend Father in God c. We are informed by our Servant Orlando Bridgman not only of the good Encouragement and Assistance you have given him in our Service but also of your own personal and earnest endeavours to promote it And though we have had long experience of your fidelity readiness and zeal in what concerns us yet it cannot but be most acceptable unto us that you still give unto us fresh occasions to remember it And we pray you to continue to give all possible assistance to our said Servant And whereas you are new resident at our Town of Aber-Conway where there is a Castle heretofore belonging to our Crown and now to the Lord Conway which with some charge is easily made defensible but the Lord Conwaybeing imprison'd by some of our rebellious Subjects and not able to furnish it as is requisite for our Service and the defence of those parts You having begun at your own charge to put the same into repair We do heartâ—y desire you to go on in that Work assuring you that whatsoever Moneys you shall lay out upon the Fortification of the said Castle shall be repayed unto you before the Cusiody thereof shall be put into any other hand than your own as such as you shall recommend Upon the backside of this gracious Letter this the Archbishop hath written with his own Hand I Jo. Archbishop of York have assigned my Nephew Mr. Will. Hookes Esq Alderman of Conway to have the Custody of this Castle mention'd in his Majesty's Letter under his Signet until I shall be repay'd the Moneys and Money-worth disbursed by me in the repair thereof by virtue of this Warrant And in case of Mortality I do assign my Nephew Gryffith Williams to the same effect Jan. 2. 1643. 197. New Motions and sudden started Counsels were no new thing at the Court in Oxford Now the illustrious Prince Rupert is made the Generalissimo and the Powers of the War are given to him The Lord John Byron is entrusted and furnish't with a part to secure North-Wales Neither of them had success according to his Cause or according to his Courage What Charge his Majesty gave to them both to listen to the Archbishops Counsels appears in the following Letters From the King to Prince Rupert Apr. 17. 1646 Right dear and right entirely beloved Nephew c. WHereas our most Reverend Father in God our right trusty and entirely beloved John Archbishop of York makes his abode in the remotest parts of North-Wales and hath been heretofore by reason of his great and long experience very useful to us in the advising and directing of the Commissioners of the Peace and Array in the several Counties of Carnarvan Anglesey and Merioneth in all things nearly concerning our Service Supplies and Assistance and that we have required the said Commissioners from time to time to listen to all his reasonable Counsels and Advice to that effect We thought it sit to let you understand that we have laid our Commands upon the said most Reverend Father in God to do you upon whom we have placed the care and government of those parts the like Service in this kind if you shall hold it fit to require it the said Archbishop humbly desiring us it might be no otherwise imposed upon him which we thought fit to signifie unto you As also that esteem we have of his Abilities and entire Affections in our Service which we desire you to encourage by all fair respects So we bid you heartily farewel Another of his Majesty's follows to the Archbishop Febr. 25. 1645. WHereas we have appointed the Lord Byron to Command in chief over all our Garrisons and Forces in North-Wales and hope that by his good Conduct in those parts our Service and the Countreys Security will be furthered with all diligence Nevertheless for his better and more effectual proceeding therein we have thought to fit desire the ready concurrence with him of your self and all our Friends knowing well how considerable advantage yours and their hearty and unanimous endeavours with him there will bring to our
for that which outgoes my Knowledge shall never undergo my Censure As our English People say Much Cry and little Wool these two Houses produced small things in the close Nothing more uncertain than what a Parliament will bring forth in the end At the Colloquy at Ratisbon Tanner granted that the Pope might err in a Council unless he used all due and ordinary means But the Jesuit in effect granted nothing For says he without all doubt and question he doth ever use those means But if a Parliament were all Popes and made out their Consults with the Line and Plumbet of the best Diligence Obliquity would fall out because all human Light burns dim in the Lanthorn of thick misty Passions It is observ'd that His Majesty removed one Parliament to Oxon in the first of his Reign this other in the nineteenth both rose up abruptly and gave him small content How is it that publick Councils were improsperous in those delicate Seats of Arts and Sciences The Genius of the place is not pleased with those Areopagites for they are not proper Visitors of its learned Foundations Themistius hath these words in an Oration upon the Muses 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 They all agree very well together but the Muses like no other company 200. Oxford wanted not Bishops at this time many lodg'd in it but they were excluded to sit and vote as Peers in Parliament yet their presence serv'd for very good use His Majesty had preferred Dr. Frewin the President of Magdalen-College to the Bishoprick of Lichfield and Coventry whom none of his Predecessors did exceed in Prudence Bounty and Advancement of learned Scholars who was consecrated by the Archbishop of York in the Chappel of his own College and feasted the Nobles and Clergy in a fair Room built at his own Cost It is not to be pass'd over that he left the Presidentship of that College a place of Security and Plenty to take a Bishoprick when those Dignities were voted out of the Church by the Disciplinarians and their Revenues offer'd to sale to pay the Charges of their Army Which was an act of as much Hope and Courage as that Roman's in Livy That when Rome was besieged by Hannibal bargain'd for and bought that piece of Land upon which the Carthaginians had pitch'd their Camp To return from this little Diversion into the great Road When the Parliament had made a recess His Majesty call'd a few able Statesmen to him in private among whom our Archbishop was one and being the first in precedency was called upon to begin and to say freely what might best be done to bring His Majesty and his faithful part out of those Troubles which the Lords and Gentlemen that lately undertook it had left no better than they found them The Archbishop was very backward and made many Excuses desiring to hear others that had been more assiduous in those great Affairs which being not granted he was honester than the Oracle of Apollo as Eusebius objects it to the Pagans lib. 6. Praep. Evan. c. 1. That the Oracle much importuned in a certain case and loth to give an Answer burst out into this passion Retine vim istam falsa enim dicam si coges An Evasion sit for the Couesels of the Devil But the Archbishop took his mark from St. Ambrose Ep. 29. to Theodosius Neque est imperiale libertatem dicendi negare neque Sacerdotale quod sentias non dicere So he broke into the matter Sir says he to the King my Opinion will be strange and I fear unwelcome If it please not yet do not impute it to Falshood or Fear but to Error and Mistaking Your Militia is couragious but small not like to encrease and then not to hold out Your Enemies multiply and by this time your Army hath taught them to fight They are in Treaty with the Scots to make a Recruit and the Princes and States beyond Seas to their shame give them countenance Their Treasurers at Westminster boast that it costs them large Moneys every month to keep Correspondence with their Intelligencers and Spies about you Your Souldiers in their March and Quarters are very unruly and lose the Peoples Affections every where by the Oppressions they sustain Out of these Premises I inferr and I engage my Life to your Majesties Justice and my Soul to God's Tribunal that I know no better course than to struggle no further since so it is the Will of God and to refer all to the pleasure and discretion of that unkind and insolent Parliament at Westminster but with the preservation of your Majesties Crown and Person to which they have all taken an Oath to offer no Hurt or Violence and have renewed it in many Protestations As likewise with the Indemnity of your Adherents for we save a Ship with the loss of the Goods not of the Passengers If any thing will soften them it will be this most pacifick and gracious Condescention The Heathens speak rudely that Constancy in Suffering will tire out the Cruelty of the Gods but certainly such a Sufferance and Self-denial as resigns up your Majesties Cause and Trust quite unto them will make the worst of them asham'd of their pertinacy and melâ—â—â— the best into a shower of Repentance But if your Majesty disdains to go so low and will not put the good of the Church and Kingdom upon their Faith to which Misery I fear our Sins have brought us I am ready to run on in the common Hazard with your Majesty and to live and dye in your Service There was danger in so much Plain-lealing for Xenophon lib. 2. Hist relates that in a Case to this as near as can be Archestratus was cast in Prison for advising the Athenians to take such Conditions of Peace as the Lacedemonians would give them after their great Overthrow at Aegos-potamos Yet some noble persons at the prosecution of this Consultation struck in with the Archbishop's Judgment the most dissented the King was not pleased in it and the Burden lay upon the Fore-man that began it Says the Son of Syrach c. 7 5. Boast not of thy Wisdom before the King The Note of Grotius is extant upon it Qui excellunt sapientiâ suspecti fermè regibus But the Gallantry of the Array were quite out of patience to hear of it their Heaven upon Earth was to see the day that they might subdue and be revenged of the Roundheads The common Souldier that subsisted upon Pay and Plunder had as lieve dye as lose his Trade Tanta dulcedo est ex alienis fortunis praedandi Liv. lib. 6. Now because this was called the Archbishop's Judgment though others consented and suffer'd hard words it will be to some purpose to unfold it a little and to defend the Innocent For he that lives may out-wear a Disgrace not he that is dead Therefore Arist maintains it in his ninth Problem that it is more just to do right to the Dead than to the Living
diligence it was registred among other Complaints when he could get no more The Instructions follow 1. Upon the Ninth of May 1645. Sir J. Owen Governour of Conway about Seven of the Clock in the Evening before the Night-guard was sent unto the Castle the possession whereof was placed by the King in the Archbishop of York and his Assigns upon great and valuable considerations by his gracious Letters and under his Majesty's Hand and Signet bearing date at Oxford August 1. 1643. did with bars of iron and armed men break the Locks and Doors and enter into the said Castle and seize upon the Place the Victuals Powder Arms and Ammunition laid in by the said Archbishop at his own charge without the least contribution from the King or the Country for the defence of the place and the Service of the King and the said Country 2. That being demanded by the said Archbishop to suffer two of the said Archbishop's men to be there with his rabble of Grooms and beggerly People to see the Goods of the Country preserv'd from filching and the Victuals and Ammunition from wasting and purloyning Sir John in a furious manner utterly refused it though all the Company cried upon him to do so for his own discharge yet would he not listen to any reason but promised the next day to suffer all things to be inventoried and the Lord Archbishop to take away what the would Sir John acknowledging all the Goods and Ammunition to be his 3. The next day he receded again from all this would not permit at the entreaty of the Bishop of St. Asaph his own Cousin-German any of the Archbishop's men to go and look to the Goods nor suffer his servants to fetch forth for his Grace's use who hath linger'd long under a great sickness and weakness either a little Wine to make him some Cawdles or so much as a little of his own stale Beer to make him Possets which all the Country conceive to be very barbarous 4. The said Sir John continueth rambling from place to place and detaineth still all the Goods of the Country laid up in this Castle as conceived to be owned by the Archbishop who was like to be responsal for them and had duly returned them in other years and threatens to seize upon the Plate and all things else of Value to his own use Than which no Rebel or Enemy could deal more outragiously 5. The Archbishop desires his Majesty would repossess him of the right of this Castle according to his Majesty's Grant made upon valuable consideration And that if his Majesty's pleasure be that Sir Jo. Owen or any other Man of more moderation and less precipitancy should be there he come under the Archbishop his Assignment as right requires and as Colonel Ellis and Mr. Chichely were content to do and did To the which the Archbishop as Colonel Ellis and Sir Will. Legg can witness was ever willing to give way 6. That howsoever the Archbishop may have all his Goods and Chattels all his Cannon Arms Ammunition Powder Provision in Beef Beer Wine Cheese Butter Oatmeal and Corn presently restored to him And what is wasted and made away may be answer'd to him by Sir John As also that all the Inhabitants of this and the Neighbour Countries may have their Goods presently out of the Castle before they be pilfered and imbezeled 7. Or otherwise that his Majesty and Prince Rupert his Lieutenant will graciously permit and suffer with their gracious favour the said Archbishop and Inhabitants of the Country to repair with their Complaints to the Assembly at Oxford and the Committee there against these and many other Outrages and Concussions of the said Sir Jo. Owen under colour of being Governour and Sheriff of this Town not warranted by any of his Commissions Every Line of this Remonstrance is just humble pathetical yet came to nothing The time was protracted from week to week and at last an Answer like to a Denial is given to Capt. Martin That it should be consider'd at more leisure One Hector a phrase at that time for a daring Russian had the ear of great ones sooner than five strict men that served the King unblameably before God and all his People But when the Messenger return'd to Wales and brought not the least satisfaction not a complemental Excuse to pacifie the Archbishop he said nothing lest he should have said too much But as Livy notes upon Fabius the Consul when Papirius Cursor was made Dictator over his head Apparuit insignem dolorem ingenti animo comprimi A great Spirit was chased with a great Indignity 204. Fifteen Months were run out after the Archbishop received this baffle to be postponed to Sir J. Owen the time is truly digited and a year of darkness and gloominess came upon this miserable Land Nasby Fight was struck the Lord Jacob Astly defeated the Western strong Holds reduced to Fairfax Chester surrendred Oxford it self begirt as Mindarus wrote to Sparta in his short Country Language 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 all that was good was undone Chester being possest by Col. Milton the Door into North-Wales he full of Animosity against the Royal Cause marcheth over Dee through Flint and Denbyshires unto the Town of Conway where the Conawians would as soon fight for a May-poll as for Sir J. Owen The amazed People turn to the Archbishop look upon his strong wisdom and grey hairs to stop the cruelty of the Conquerour and to lighten the yoke of their Misery And an aged Counseller is a Soveraign help at such a pinch 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Plut. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Long time of Life which robs us of all things else pays us the Principal again with Use in Knowledge and Wisdom The Archbishop's Grace calls some few to Counsel with him who agree to parly with Milton one that understood his own strength and their weakness The Welsh made some high Demands which were not heard patiently They perceived Milton's mind was at the Castle where the Archbishop's Wealth and of divers far and near was deposited which was ready to come every jot into the Colonels power whom they perceived to be rather haughty than covetous and they closed by insinuations with him relating how Sir J. Owen had surprized the Castle detained their Goods and insulted over them who had born Arms in the same Cause therefore they offer'd to joyn with him to put him into the Castle with condition that every Proprietary might obtain what he could prove by the Archbishops Inventory to belong to him and for the Overplus let it fall to the Colonels Mercy whose Consent the Archbishop's Art and fair Language drew on And not the least time being spent in delay the Soldiers entred the Castle both by Scalada and by forcing the Gates assisted by the Archbishop's Kindred and other Welch and Milton kept the Castle and kept his Word to let the Owners divide the Goods among themselves to which they laid
new Chancellor and that His Majesty would constrain him to hold it whosoever it were that the Congregation agreed upon The Heads were yet in a Quandary and knew not well what to do because the King was not more Particular and seemed to be ill pleased with the Proctor that he had dived no further into His Majesties Meaning For they feared to fall upon a new Rock because His Majesty had pointed at no Person nor disclosed His Meaning by any Decipher or Intimation Nay says the Proctor I shall help this Mistake before you stir from hence Certainly there is one Clause in the Royal Letters which sets up the White at which all our Votes should aim For none hath declared a flat Refusal of this vacant Place but the Earl of Northampton therefore none else can be meant in this Passage That whomsoever we Choose the King will constrain him to hold It were not proper to think that any Grandee in the Realm beside that Lord should need to be constrained by the High Power and Prerogative of our Sovereign to be our Patron The Riddle being so luckily Unfolded by this Oedipus the Business was concordiously dispatch'd and then the King confess'd that they had hit upon the Interpretation of his secret Meaning Which abounded to the Praise of Mr. Williams's Solertiousness and indeed in an hundred Instances more he was as dextrous as in this to hunt upon a Fault and to recover upon a Loss But as Cicero says Orat. pro Cecinnâ cujus prudentiam pop Romanus in cavendo nunquam in decipiendo perspexit The Lord Privy-Seal soon after took his Oath with due Solemnity to be our Chancellor and gave civil Entreaty when the Esquire-Beadles or other Ministers of our Body came to him And we can boast of no more that came from him who went out of the World before his Sickness was suspected Jun. 15.16 14. The Golden Mountains we hoped for and promis'd to our selves from his Liberality came to nothing and the University was not the better for him by the worth of a Barly-Corn 29. There remains one Passage more justly devolved to be last and lowest for it had more of Success then of good Success in it in my judgment Dr. Clayton the Master of St. John's College died a good old Man about the beginning of June His Breath no sooner expired but the Fellows who have all Right of Election first began to Confer and then to Canvas for a Successor It was soon discovered that the swaying Men and that were fit for the bandy of such a Business meant to set up Mr. Owen Gwin one of the Senior Fellows Others look'd out for one that was Simplicitor optimus and they hit him It was the Darling of Divines Dr. Morton then Dean of Winton now Lord Bishop of Durham the Polycarpus of our Smyrna the Church of England whose Piety and Humility are Incomparable his Learning most Admirable and his long Age most Venerable Almost all the true Children of the Muses bless'd their Endeavours that acted for such a Man saying with the Psalmist We wish you good luck in the name of the Lord. But this Patriarch as I may call him was not like to carry the day by the Consent of the most Too few stood up for him too few by one especially and that one was Proctor Williams O how could one of his deep Reach and passing great Love to his Society prefer an obscure one scarce to be named before the Man that had all good Men's Applause Dr. Morton If there be any thing to be said to make it look fair on his part on one side it is this Mr. Gwin had been his Tutor A high Spirit of which he was guilty will rather Trespass then not repay the least Benefit it had receiv'd Nay a wise Man dare not incur such a Folly as to be Ingrateful Says Comines lib. 2. Mihi absurdum quiddam esse videtur hominem prudent em ingratum esse posse For great Ones before they will collate a Favour to make a Man and raise him up will desire to be satisfied how he hath carried himself to other Obligations What Fidelity hath he shewn to former Benefactors Ecclus. 3.34 He that requiteth good turns is mindful of that which may come hereafter The relation of Pupilship prick'd on Mr. Williams to do any thing that was in his power for him that had so much Interest in his Breeding But while he was struggling and wooing his Friends to advance that Choice he solicited Mr. Sen. house a very rare Preacher as Floury as the Spring-Garden afterward Bishop of Carlile who bespake him fairly again Sir if you desire my Voice to confer the Mâ—stership upon your self I will not deny you I know you though a young Man right worthy of it but your Tutor shall never have my Suffrage while I can say No. After he had prevailed to set Mr. Gwin over that great Society his Fortunes carried him away but he heard so much that he quickly dislik'd his own Work For there was another in that College whose Name is best conceal'd that was a robustious driver of Canvasses who took the whole Rule from Mr. Gwin a soft Man and given altogether to Ease into his own hand and was like the Major Domo by whom all Suits pass'd and every Student stoop'd to him for his Preferment To compare great Things with smaller such another as Victor says Mutianus proved after he had advanced Vespasian to the Empire by his Cohorts Fiduciâ meruorum factus insolens sawcy to meddle with all because he had deserv'd so much and nothing would content him unless nothing were denied him Mr. Williams heard of these Passages too late when he could not help the harm he had done But because he endured much compunction of Mind for it I will only commit him for this Fault to the castigation of the wise Poet Horace Qualem commendas etiam atque etiam aspice ne mox Incutiant aliena tibi peccata pudorem Horat. Lib. 1. Ep. 12. 30. It was time for him after the Settlement of these great Places upon others to look to his own Place in the ensuing Commencement which was even approaching The Inceptor-Masters by Prescription have the Right to choose out of the two Proctors whom they please to be the Father of the Act as we Cantabrigians call it It is a strange Aenigma that the Sons should beget their Father It lights commonly as if it were Postulatum Mathematicum upon the Senior But because he that now was the Elder if ever he had Polite Learning fit for such a Performance had out-grown it therefore because he was no Elder that could Rule well the Inceptors gave the Younger the double Honour This Commencement was as Gay and full of Pomp by the great Concourse of Nobles and Gentlemen as ever I saw The Acquaintance and Fame of the Proctor drew the most The Welch Gentry were enough to fill the Scaffolds Beside such as repair'd
for Legal Notions When the Lord Keeper had done with the Living he began with the Dead and scrupled how their Dead should be Interr'd so as to give no offence nor be obnoxious to be offended The Resolution was brought to him that sent it That their Burials should be in their private Houses as secret as might be and without any sign of Manifestation but Notice to be given to the Parish-Clerk of their departure 164. Never was Man so entangled in an Els-lock all this while that could not be unravell'd as Marquiss Inoiosa till he publish'd his Choler in all sorts of Impatiency The Reader may take in so small a matter by the way that the Writer of these Passages said to the Lord Keeper That the Marquiss was the most surly unpleasing Man that ever came to his House His Lordship answer'd They were his Manners by Nature But he had been so vain to profess That he came an Enemy to us into England and for this Dowty Cause His Father was a Page to King Philip the Second while he lived here with Queen Mary and was discourteously used in our Court perhaps by the Pages Which was a Quarrel of Seventy Years old and bearing date before the Marquiss was born Which will cause a Passage of Dionysius the Tyrant of Sicily to be remembred who had robb'd and spoil'd some of the Islands under the Protection of Athens and when the Injury was expostulated he told them Their Countryman Ulysses had used the Sicilians worse 700 Years before as he believ'd it to be very true in Homer This Ambassador was a restless Man and held the Lord Keeper so close to turn and plow up the fallow of this Business that he would not give him the Jubilee of a Day to rest Yet the time do what he could had run at waste from the 20th of July to the end of August Then and no sooner the Frames of the Pardon and Dispensation were contriv'd and dispatch'd Yet the Mill would not go with this Water The Ambassadors call'd for more That two general Commands should be issued forth under the Great Seal the first to all the Judges and Justices of Peace the other to all Bishops Chancellors and Commissaries not to execute any Statute made against the Papists Hereupon the Spanish Faction was suspected that they had no hopes to bring some secret Drifts to pass but by raising a general hatred against our Government The Lord Keeper repulsed the Motion and wrote to the King being at Aldershot That whatsoever Instance the Ambassador makes to the contrary there was no reason why his Majesties Wisdom should give place to them He propounded That a private Warrant might be directed to himself to will him to write to the respective Magistrates fore-nam'd to acquaint them with the Graces which his Majesty had past for Recusants in that Exigence and to suspend their Proceeding till they heard further For as the Civilians say Cessant extraordinaria ubi ordinariis est locus Thus he contriv'd it that the King as much as might be should escape the Offence and let the Rumour light upon his private Letters For which he never put the King to stand between the People and his Errour nor besought him to excuse it to the next Parliament But as Mamertinus in Paneg. said of his own Consulship Non modò nullum popularium deprecatus sum sed ne te quidem Imperator quem orare praeclarum cui preces adhibere plenissimum dignitatis est Yet lest the Ambassador should complain of him to the Prince in Spain he writes to the Duke Cab. P. 8. Aug. 30. THat he had prevailed with the Lords to stop that vast and general Prohibition and gave in three Days Conference such Reasons to the two Ambassadors although it is no easie matter to satisfie the Capriciousness of the latter of them that they were both content it should rest till the Infanta had been six Months in England For to forbid Judges against their Oath and Justices of Peace sworn likewise not to execute the Law of the Land is a thing unprecedented in this Kingdom Durus sermo a harsh and bitter Pill to be digested upon a suddain and without some Preparation But to grant a Pardon even for a thing that is malum in se and a Dispensation with Poenal Statutes in the profit whereof the King only is interested is usual full of Precedents and Examples And yet this latter only serves to the Safety the former but to the Glory and Insolency of the Papists and the magnifying the service of the Ambassadors too dearly purchas'd with the endangering of a Tumult in three Kingdoms His Majesty useth to speak to his Judges and Justices of Peace by his Chancellor or Keeper as your Grace well knoweth And I can signifie his Majesties Pleasure unto them with less Noise and Danger which I mean to do hereafter if the Ambassador shall press it to that effect unless your Grace shall from his Highness or your own Judgment direct otherwise That whereas his Majesty being at this time to Mediate for Favour to many Protestants in Foreign Parts with the Princes of another Religion and to sweeten the Entertainment of the Princess into this Kingdom who is yet a Roman Catholick doth hold the Mitigation of the Rigour of those Laws made against Recusants to be a necessary Inducement to both those Purposes and hath therefore issued forth some Pardons of Grace and Favour to such Roman Catholicks of whose Fidelity to the State he rests assur'd That therefore you the Lord Bishops Judges and Justices each of those to be written to by themselves do take Notice of his Majesties Pardon and Dispensation with all such Poenal Laws and demean your selves accordingly This is the lively Character of him that wrote it Policy mixt with Innocency 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 says Nazianzen Cunning enough yet not divided from Conscience For Wit when it is not sheathed as it were in the fear of God will cut like a sharp Razor 165. All his Art would be requir'd to reconcile two things That the Ambassador should be put off no longer for so the King had now commanded by Dispatches from both the Secretaries And that he would finish nothing till he had heard either his Highness or the Duke's Opinion upon the Proceeding The general Pardon and the Dispensation were both sealed So he began But kept them by him and would not open the least Window to let either Dove or Raven fly abroad The King being return'd to Windsor signification was given that none of the Lords should come to him till he sent for them and was ready for Matters of moment No Superstructure could go on very fast when that Stone was laid From Windsor Sept. 5. Sir G. Calvert writes to him My very good Lord His Majesty being resolv'd to extend his Gracious Favour to the Roman Catholicks signifies his Pleasure That your Lordship should direct your Letter to the Bishops Judges