Selected quad for the lemma: power_n
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A48206
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A Letter to a noble lord at London from a friend at Oxford upon occasion of the late covenant taken by both Houses.
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Friend at Oxford.
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1643
(1643)
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Wing L1691; ESTC R36362
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10,224
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15
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the proper businesse of your Army and yet I would you would leave men this liberty that you would not compell them to be worse then they have a mind to be and you would be contented to absolve them from the Law and trust them with their owne Inclinations though you pull downe the Inclosures use no violence to hunt them from their knowne Pathes let their owne love of Liberty lead them without being driven by your fury Consider the Liberty of the Subject before you found out this device to defend it how strongly was it guarded and fenced by knowne cleere excellent Lawes not capable of any dammage or inconvenience to which there was not a proper reparation remedy prepared if any little breaches had been made in this Fence for in comparison of the gappes you have since made in it in one hower what was done in 16. yeares before was but little with what diligence Industry and Bounty did His Majesty comply with you to make them up and so finished the Worke that if you had not taken all this monstrous paines to destroy it your Country now had been the wonder and Envy of Christendome in Peace and all the Ornaments of Beauty Plenty and Lustre which Peace desires to be adorned with What pressure or violation was offered to this Liberty when you first took up your defensive Armes See now to what degree you have advanced it as it hath reference to our Goods and Estates your Ordinances of sequestration your weekly Assessements and your Order for the 20th part abundantly expresses your Care as it hath reference to Our Persons the full Gaoles in all places and the very many Houses you have turned into Gaoles for the safe keeping of Our Liberty will be Rare Monuments to Posterity as it concernes Our Conscience you need no other Evidence though you have store then this your sacred Vow and Covenant If this be your course to defend Liberty I would you would for variety sake practise some way to destroy it it may be it might prove the more Soveraigne Remedy to the Common-wealth 'T is Mr Pyms third Observation of the evill Conscience of those who were in the late Plot they that pretended to take Armes to defend their owne Property obtained a Commission to violate the Property of others they would take the Assertion of the Lawes of the Land but assumed to them such a power as was most contrary to that Law to seize upon their Persons without due processe to impose upon their Estates without Consent to take away some lives by the Law Martiall this is a Text I hope your Lordship will beleeve and is so truly an instance of evill Conscience that if His Majesty had used these words in any of His Messages or Declarations they had been Voted at least an imputation upon both Houses and a Censure of their Proceedings But Mr Pym may Libell against you and in earnest you will find most of his speeches to be such without breach of Priviledge he hath found out too new Conservators of our Liberty which we never heard of till now instead of King Lords and Commons The Parliament that is the Close Committee the City and the Army are the three vitall parts of the Kingdome in which he saies not only the well being but the very life and being of it doth consist and yet they perswade your Lordship they are willing to disband this Army You will say these Invasions upon Liberty are the effects of these distempers which 't is your businesse to suppresse which being done the Subject shall have no more cause to complaine But my Lord We that live at a distance have well observed that the principles and foundations for all this mischiefe were laid long before your Mistresse Necessity was owned by you long before your Armies were raised all your Rapines all your Plunderings Imprisonings are not more destructive to the liberty of the Subject then your Votes of the 15th of March your assuming power so to declare Law that what you said or did was therefore Law because 't was yours How many men were imprisoned and undone by you expresly against the Law and the Petition of Right How many Acts of Parliament suspended and Actions done by you in a Diameter contrary to Acts of Parliament so that in truth all yout excesses since which you excuse by imputing them to your Army and the raising that Army are but superstructures upon the foundations you laid in your calmest and most undisturbed Government and there is nothing that you of the moderate Party have since refused to consent to which might not very well have followed from some of those propositions which even your selves have before admitted defended and contrived I have troubled your Lordship longer in this Argument then I meant and have the vanity to beleeve that your often reading this over thought it be no more then you knew before may make some impression in you doe not think that which is in it selfe simply ill can be made good by a Vote or that the word Parliament can give Reputation to Actions absolutely wicked in themselves M. Pym tells you in this goodly Speech of his that a Parliament is but a Carkase when the freedome of it is suppressed that if it be deprived of its own Liberty it is left without life or power to keep the Liberty of others Alas my Lord though you will answer no other part of my Letter tell me upon your Honour would you have taken this last Covenant if you had had liberty to have refused it if you had not where is your freedom of Parliament can you yet look upon that Assembly with reverence think of your number think of their quality think sadly of their Actions and you will easily find a way and there is but one that I know to evade your Covenant It was unjustly impiously imposed upon you rashly unlawfully to say no worse taken by you you ought not you must not keep it But that 's not enough winde your self out of this Labyrinth with Courage and Magnanimity and in your Evening doe somewhat that may redeem the faults of the day Consider that these men who by your Assistance prosper in their bad wayes are doing their own businesse and every day make a Progresse to their own ends My Lord Say since all honest men have been undoing hath bettered his own Estate above twenty thousand pounds besides advancing his younger Sonnes to full and ample Revenues M. Pym hath swet to purpose and hath thrived so well in two years that he is your equall atleast They who abhorre Bishops revenge themselves at your charge and every Action that advances that Designe is more pleasant to them then life Your great Generall hath the Soveraign delight of opposing the King and having his Health drank with lowd Musique Pennington Ven Fulk and Manwaring are from broken beggerly contemptible Varlets become your fellow Peeres no doubt when they have reconciled your Lordships the Cōmons into one House will have the negative voyce which you two have snatched from the King deposited in their hands That vitall part of the Kingdom the City will never be trusted in your Custody who have managed all the rest so ill If any Accident should happen Providence or Victory to defeat them these men have been good and wary Husbands and have the fortitude to love any Country equall to their own Is your Lordship of a constitution fit to mingle with these men Is your Revenue improved or Exchequer inlarged since these troubles Is any one designe of yours satisfied by your concurrence or can you be content to dye a Peere of New-England or the Isle of Providence Is not your Reputation and Interest with all good men lost and have you one friend left whose face you knew a year before this Parliament These are Melancholique considerations but you must passe through them and then if some Noble at least honest resolution doe not possesse you resolve to dye the last of your name and to leave this Character behind you That notwithstanding all your discourse and pretence of Religion you would have turned Turke if the Major part of both Houses and the stronger part of the Kingdome had required you to take a Covenant to that purpose FINIS
A LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD AT LONDON From a Friend AT OXFORD Upon occasion of the late COVENANT Taken by both HOUSES crest Printed February 22. 1643. A LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD at London from a friend at Oxford upon occasion of the late Covenant taken by both Houses MY LORD I Have received your Lordships Letter of the 10th of this instant with much more trouble and sadnesse of mind then any thing you have sent me this whole ill yeare All your Declarations Votes Ordinances and Orders with your Generall's powerfull Commission to kill and slay all good People made not halfe that impression in me though I have not been tender in letting you know what I think of the best of those as your Sacred Vow and Covenant as you call them which with M. Pym's Speech at the Common-hall of the discovery of the great Plot I received inclosed in your Letter hath done Are all your humble and earnest desires and solicitations for Peace all your Pangs and Throwes for a Reformation in Religion delivered at last of a sacred Vow and Covenant against both Have you at last thought fit to tell the World that there is no possibility or hope of Peace but by blood and desolation Have M. Burroughes and M. Case so perverted all Texts of Scripture and Sergeant Wild and M. Glyn so confounded all Rules of Law that your Consciences are grown so dead to the one and your Vnderstandings so dull to the other that in plain English you promise God Almighty to assist any body to kill the King and set up new Covenants of your owne poynt blank against your Oathes of Allegiance and Supremacy and publish all this to the People as the Articles of your new Creed And yet that your Lordship should tell me that your Affection and Duty to the King continues still the same you have pretended it that you have still not only the same desire but the same hope of Peace and that you are confident that the Anabaptists and Brownists whom me thinks you have sworn to defend will shortly ship themselves for another Climate is so strange to me that Amazement it self is not more confounding You tell me of a trick your Lordships have found out to save you harmlesse from any obligation by this Oath a Salvo to all your other Oathes Lawfully taken and those being in a Diameter contrary to this you have upon the matter engaged your selves to nothing by this new Covenant and so have cunningly evaded the designe of the Contrivers Oh my Lord can you please your selves with these shifts Is this the Wisdome Vigilance Integrity and Courage of the Highest Court of Iudicature for so the House of Peeres in Parliament is to lead the People by their Example to so solemne an Act as a Covenant with God Almighty which at the instant you took it you intended should signify nothing Will the poor People of England whereof it may be too many have looked upon your example with Reverence and thought many things fit or lawfull only because you did them when they shall find that you have vowed in the presence of Almighty God the searcher of all hearts as you shall answer at the great Day when the secrets of all hearts shall be disclosed that you will according to your power assist the Forces raised and continued by both Houses of Parliament against the Forces raised by the King will they I say think that your Lordship intended nothing by this Vow but what you were obliged to by your Oathes of Allegiance and Supremacy that is to defend the King to the utmost of your Power against all Conspiracies and attempts whatsoever which shall be made against His Person His Crown and Dignity and to doe your best endeavour to disclose and make known to Him all Treasons and Conspiracies which shall be against Him to your power to assist all Iurisdictions Priviledges Preheminences and Authority belonging to Him or united to the Imperiall Crown of this Realme and indeed to doe all things which by this your new sacred Vow you have sorsworn to doe Will this Salvo reconcile all those contradictions is this subtilty the first fruits of your Humility and Reverence of the Divine Majesty your hearty sorrow for your own sinnes and the sinnes of the Nation and your true intention to endeavour the amendment of your own wayes For Gods sake my Lord talk not of preserving the true reformed Protestant Religion and opposing Papists and Popery when your Actions destroy the Elements of Christianity and admit a latitude to your Conscience to introduce Atheisme Rules which the Turkes in pure naturall honesty abhorre and detest Get your self to an opinion and avow it boldly see what you hazard and play your game out above board be a desperate Gamester if you cannot be a skilfull one so be capable of advantage by good luck but to be cozened and cheated to serve other mens turnes and to help to cozen your selfe by little shifts and evasions makes you be hated by them you serve despised by us and will make you be laught at when you are dead But my Lord admit you were indeed too hard for them by this Salvo and by the interposition of three or foure other words in order to the security preservation of the true Reformed Protestant Religion c. according to your power and vocation c. had notably reserved a liberty to your selves of complying with your former Oathes That Oathes were to be interpreted according to the Intention of the Person that takes them which being an instrument between God and us and so every Covenant being to be taken strongest against our selves cannot be admitted yet if another man who hath taken this vow believes himselfe obliged by it to the utmost Act even against the Life of the King hath not he reason to believe that you have bound your selfe to assist that Person in what he shall doe in pursuance of that Oath I would I were able to make an answer for you but admit farther that in all the promisory part which containes what you will doe or what you will not doe that you were safe and had engaged your selfe to doe no more or no lesse then your Duty pray consider the positive part what Salvo have you for that you doe believe that there hath been now is a Popish Traiterous Plot for the subversion of the true reformed Protestant Religion and the Liberty of the Subject and that in pursuance thereof a Popish Army hath been raised is now on foot in diverse parts of this Kingdom which Army you imply to be the Army raised for the King and therefore you promise to assist against it Now it seems your Lordship doth not beleeve the Preamble to be considerable or any part of the Oath for I am sure you cannot beleeve any Popish or Traiterous Plot to be on this side where the Treason is the Law will judge and where the