Pattents incircuited and extended to Salt Butter Sope Leather Wine Sugar Allum Sea-coale Malt Cards and Dice and what not In order to these that notable project of shipmoney a device of Finches invention and shaped for the nonce suitable to the Kings designs it extenden to such a latitude as that by this one illegall power he might rayse moneys in what proportion he would where and when he pleased without Parliaments and so was it stated by the terrour which that fluttering bird Finch imprest on the Iudges to declare it legall by their extrajudiciall sentences though for their honour be it spoken three of them as Crook Hutton and Denham withstood it as a most illegall and unheard-of taxation against and destructive to the fundamentall Lawes of the Land and Liberties of the People We shall now passe it over though it was an invention which of it selfe would require a story not unworthy to be left to posterity how ever as long as it was on foot the King made use of it to the purpose and in two if not three yeares whilest it was put in practice raised not so little at 1000000 of poundes It is without question that what by monopolies the inhancing of the Customes and Rate Books Knighthood money and projects of this nature as the Fines in the Star-Chamber High Commission and depopulations with the sale of the Crowne Lands besides Subsidies and the Royall standing Revenue with divers other incomes most oppressive to the people the King within the space of ten or twelve years raised more Treasure than any two of his Predecessors in fourty years and yet none of our Kings had lesse occasion and this King more wanting as having for twelve years together no warres considerable neither any in expectation more than such as wilfully and most unjustly he undertook about the 15th year of his reign against the Scots and that to no other end but to advance his grand designe of invassalating the 3. Kingdomes as hereafter more evidently may be made to appear The King having thus far waded into the depth of his arbitrary strains to the great regret of the people and having for ten or twelve years together laid aside all thoughts of making use of Parliament which might controule so many of his illegall and irregular exactions in farther advance of his grand designe both to rule and raise money at will and pleasure having by so long a tract of time taught the people to forget Parliaments or not to hope for them and as he conceived well to have forwarded his greater work by the experience he had made of the passivenesse both of his English and Irish Subjects by the activity of his chief Instruments Strafford Canterbury and Cottington which principally then carried on the design in either Kingdom both in the Church and State which by time and degrees had so amated the spirits of the people as they seemed patiently to bear though unwillingly and not without some publike murmuration what loads might in the future be laid upon them but evermore in the midst of their resentments to cast the odium of their oppressions rather on the Kings ministers than on himself with the retention of a reverent esteem towards him as the least author of their sufferings when as himself alone was principall which invited him with the more boldnesse and lesse fear to the perfecting and speedy accomplishment of his mayn designe We may in the way of our relation avouch it and that for truth that both the Father and the Sonne were the most carelesse Courtiers of their people of any of our Kings and as regardlesse of the love and reverent esteem the universall Nation carried towards them an inexcusable error and shewes out unto us what in probability were and would be the issues of their Ingratitude We all know that popularity in private persons and the applause of the people are the ingredients of suspition and an errour which al wise and cunning Statists shun and avoid as tending to obscure the worth and dignity of their Master but in Princes it is a Vertue that most of all other their deportments takes most and soonest in the peoples affections we may boldly say it that neither of these two Princes were ever guilty of that attractive Vertue onely it hath beene since observed that at his comming out of Scotl. 1641. he was very prodigall in putting off his hat as he past the streets But omitting Paraphrases we have but even now said it that as to the Queens side in Court it was excessively profuse the Kings more moderate yet not so frugall but that there were a sort about his person to whom he participated his secrets and committed the managery of his arbitrary worke which did sufficiently lick their fingers We shall omit the Duke for he died within two years of the Kings accesse Digby and Cottington which in the former reign had laid the foundations of their after greatnesse but they which in this reign and in the midst of the Kings necessities spent lavishly lived at high rates and amassed most were VVeston the Treasurer Manchester Strafford Goring and the Gentlemen of the Bed-chamber neither did the farmers of the Customs go away empty handed yet we may see that as all or most of these had a time of getting and filching from the Crown so likewise did their Master in the end administer a sad occasion to rid most of them of their ill-gotten gains Having thus brought the King to the 15th year of his most unhappy reign and shewed out by what means wayes and instruments he raised monyes to supply his necessities and prodigallities of the Court what hitherto he acted was in calme and peaceable times though not without murmuration We shall anoncome to the hostile that fatall and sanguinary part of his unfortunate reigne He had hitherto led on his designe in a fore-game yet still in his wonted way of want the Queen-mother arriving holp on his expences Strafford the Archbishop and Cotington as the Kings prime agents had fitted all necessaries in a readinesse both the English and Irish patient in what formerly they had suffered and ready to be ridden and spur'd to the quick the mode of the French Goverment being stil in the eye of the Kings design as left unto him by his Fathers legacy and now again revived and quickned by the Queen Mothers instigation a Lady fatall to all places wheresoever she resided Strafford having raised in Ireland an Army of Papists to helpe on and at a deah lift and about this time there were divers Commissions issued out to certain Lords and Gentlemen with power to impose new and unheard of Imposts on all the commodities of the Land and in addition to these Commissions were granted to the Earl of Arundell to take the military charge of the Northern parts into his hands another to the Earle of Worcester to raise an army of Papists in Wales as it is well known to master
shews out unto us on how small or no cause at all he would be quarrelsome with his Great Councels and what he would be to all other Parliaments And the more to shew the regret he took at this motion he commands Glanvile a Lawyer a Gentleman of choice education and elocution then a Member of that House to attend the Fleet at Plymouth as he then said to let him understand what he so much desired to know as to the design and upon this miffe abruptly breaks up the Assembly without their assistance which on all honourable and fitting terms was not denyed him The Crown at this time was exceedingly indigent and indeed so beggarly and indebted that the Royall Revenues suffised not to defray the Court expences yet so high and haughty was the Kings heart that rather than to be beholding to the Parliament he was resolved to run any hazard that might befall him and in the midst of this extreme necessity sends Sir Sackvil Crow with the Crown jewels a Gentleman of high esteem with the Duke of Buckingham to pawn them in the Low-Countreys Wise men might then well beleeve that the King could not possibly be so wanting to himself or so poor in treasure as to be put on so dishonourable a streight when as with a good word or two in compliance with the Parliament he might have had before what in reason he would have desired and that at that instant the major part of the Queens Dowry was received but the truth was it was as soon spent as taken in the gayety of the English Lords attendants then on the new Queen at Paris where especially the Duke amongst others out vyed all the French Lords in the sumptuousnesse of his expences and bravery of his apparrell so that how rich soever the Queen and her attendants were then in their Wardrobes sure it is they came home poor enough in purse to the English Court. The Queens French attendants and dependants of both sexes being numerous were doubtlesse far too many to be maintained with any ordinary expence She was then not only in comparison a meer child but childish in her carriage and A la Francoise petulant in her comportment the King was then no more but her Tutor she his Pupil what after they both were in relation to each other and how those offices were inverted time and a little patience will shew but most certain it is that Madam Nurse like an other Philippina the Cajetan to Joan Queen of Naples was both her Oracle and Governess her only attendants or better may it be said her many nasty French appurtenances were more in number than ever were known to follow such an Emperours Governesse for so she then was to the Queen and such vermin they were as that the English Ladies but in respect to the Queen held them to be little better then as Scullions for the Kitchin yet were these the Locusts which then and a long time after devoured all in the English Court which was at that time with much adoe prodigally maintained at Salisbury whilst the King and the Lords of his Councell were all to seek how to defray his own expences and the wantonness of a Court promiscuously pestered both with domestick forrein idle and useless numbers of both sexes I was then in that Progresse and usually in the Court and a sad witnesse into what streights the King was reduced and were it not within the remembrance of many yet alive the relation might seem strange what in so new and greene a Reigne was both attempted and with boldnesse put in execution The prodigality of the Court then so much out-went the Royal Revenues that the Kings Officers and Purveyors had not wherewithall to defray the expence of the King and Queens Tables The King to begin the first President of his arbitrary Governmen sends for the Farmers of the Customes and gaines what possibly he could from them which by reason of the sicknesse and damp of Trade at London would then have put backe their contract upon him however money he had and would have it of them but that served not the turn some other course must be taken for present supply of the Kings wants Sir James Ley then newly made Earl of Marlborow was then Lord Treasurer VVeston and Cottington all new men and of very small beginings were the men shortly after under the Duke which principally then and after managed the Kings Treasury and were those which he had chosen and picked out as fit Ministers to be employed in his after arbitrary designes yet I am confident none of them all durst advise him for any thing which they found not suitable to his inclination The Kings next project then was how he might raise present moneys for from London he could not expect farther supplyes the Merchants and the a blest Citizens being fled the City by reason of the rage of the Pestilence whereupon he resolved to take it where he could find it the City of Salisbury a place of small circuit and of less trade was first prest with a loan of 1000 l. the City of Bristol as I remember with 3000 l. which was by some Aldermen of that City sent to the Court in excuse of their then present disabilityes denied but that served not their turns for they were presently laid by the heels untill the said sum was sent unto him this President being a caveat sufficient to all other of the Western Cities and Towns to send in what sums were skonced on them neither would this serve the Kings indigency but he borrowed of all the principall Gentlemen of the West which were known or conceived to be monyed men it is most evident that even then and at his first accesse to the Crowne he stood not on terms of love or hatred of his people for what he intended it appeared plainly he would do and what he acted he held it sufficiently legall as a piece of his birth-right and of right belonging to him as a King without looking into the nature of the English Soveraignty his will was the law he intended to rule by as to Parliaments his meaning as it appears was the same with Lewes the eleventh of France and in imitation of him to take them down together with their power as he had opportunity notwithstanding some few he called more for the supply of his present necessity than the good he intended to the publick and in the future as time should enable him to be his own carver of his Subjects estates and fortunes as that shortly after followed We have thus laid down in sincerity the beginnings of this unhappy Reign Now this pestilentiall Summer being well spent upon the approach of the Winter and decrease of the Sicknesse the King and the young Queen with all her French train drawes nearer to the City of London and being still in his wonted predicament of want in supply of the Court expences be pursues the game he was resolved to
of the most essentiall part thereof which by far more obligeth the Kings of England to observe than the preamble to that Oath penn'd of old by the Prelats Church-men for their own onely ends and interests a very inconsiderable party in respect of the quality of the Nobility and Gentry and that vast number of the Laity of which it seems the King reckoned of after the Popes computation to be extra Caulam either out of the Church or at best but the fag end thereof and accompts little better of them than as so many cyphers or his slaves at will at pleasure cleane forgetting or slighting the grand more essentiall part of his Coronation Oath which is confidently averr'd the late Arch Prelate purposely emasculated and never gave it him at his Coronation but left him at liberty which all men knows is that which obligeth the King to rule not onely by the Lawes in being but per istas bonas leges quas vulgas eligerit to govern by such good Laws as the Parliament shall chuse and the reason of this is most most perspicuous for the Lawes of England are not of that stamp as those of the Medes and Persians unalterable but changeable according to the vicissitudes of times and change of mens manners and at the Election of the people in their Representative the Kings assent being formall and onely a necessary appendant and by the intent of the Law his principall power consists in the executive part the Parliaments in the elective for it is without all question that never any of our Kings either abrogated or made any Law obligatory to the people by his onely lawfull power but by the Parliaments consent and election the nature of the Kings Office being more cumulative then privative to give rather than to take any thing from their subjects but here you may see what a latitude of power the King assumes to himself where he promiseth to the Queen to take away all the penal laws against Papists as soon as he shall be enabled to doe it without a word of by your leave Parliament so that you may manifestly see what he intended and that no other sence than his owne is here pind upon him you may further observe out of this Letter his windings doublings and fouldings and how dexterously cunning he was growne at playing fast and loose with RELIGION or with any thing else that might promote his mischievous designs leaving no way unattempted though to prophaning of Religion that he conceived might conduce to the visible good of his affairs as that was his usuall expression and what was that visible good think you other than to overpower the Parliament and then to rule as he listed But to shew unto you what a gamester he was at Hocus-pocus I pray look upon the Postcript of his Letter to the Marquesse of Ormond February 16. 1648. from Oxford viz. In case upon particular mens fancies the Irish peace should not be procured upon powers I have already given you I have thought good to give you farther order which I hope will prove needlesse to seek to renue the treaty for a peace for a yeare for which you shall prowise the Irish if you can have it no better cheap to joyn with them against the Scots and Inchiquine but I hope by that time my condition may be such as the Irish may be glad to accept les or I be able to grant more Observation Hence you may make your owne judgement what a Proteus the King was grown you may take this also into your observation as suitable to the rest that in all his Declarations Letters and Messages to the Parliament and after he had lost all and could stand up no longer and was a prisoner they were then directed to his two Houses at Westminster but during his power and so long as he had any hopes left him to conquer them he misses not throughout all his expresses to call them Rebels and in that capacity tacitely treats with them at Vxbridge which the Scots at Rippon utterly refused to treat with him unlesse he would withdraw and disown his proclamations in stiling them Traytors and although he calls them a Parliament yet was it with a mental reservation not so to acknowledge them as you may see in his 17 letter to the Queen where it seems she had schoold him to the purpose for acknowledging them to be a Parliament for which he makes a very humble and ample apology and sayes If there had been but two besides my self of my opinion I had not done it and the argument that prevailed with me was that the calling did no wayes acknowledge them to be a Parliament upon which condition and construction I did it and no otherwise and accordingly it is registred in the Councel books and with the Councells unanimous approbation but thou wilt find that it was my misfortune not my neglect that thou hast been no sooner advertised of it Observation I need not comment on these fine pieces of the Kings your own judgment may informe you what a quaint Iesuiticall jugler he was grown by the conversation he had with the Mother and the Daughter both of them being excellent proficients in the doctrins of Matchivill and surely under the Rose be it spoken himself no very bad Scholler in that kind of learning yet here you may see what pains he was put unto how to make a handsome excuse to save himself from a chiding but I forbeare to make further mention of his perfidious courses more than to put you in minde that so long as his vain imaginations prompted to over-power the Parliament and to reduce all to his own absolute pleasure it s most certain that he refused ali overtures for agreement with the Parliament other than such as before I have intimated he verily believed to make advantage of and this appears in his 9th Letter to the Queen March thirteenth from Oxford viz. Dear Heart What I told thee the last week concerning a good parting with our Lords and Commons here was on Monday last handsomly performed and if I now do any thing unhandsome or disadvantagious to my self or Friends in order to a Treaty it will be merely my owne fault for I confesse when I wrote last I was in feare to have been prest to make some mean overtures to renew the Treaty knowing that there were great labourings to that purpose but I now promise thee if it be renewed which I believe wil not without some eminent good successe on my side it shall be to my honour and advantage I being now as well freed from the place of base and mutinous motions that is to say of our mungrel Parliament here as of the chief causers for whom I may justly expect to be chidden by thee for having suffered thee to be vexed by them Observations We have here a plain proof of the former assertion that during the Kings power he would entertain no Treaties but
use of any such forces as the Parliament should send over against them and consequently to dis-enable them the more in levyes here for their own defence against him and his preparations as it evidently appeared within 3. moneths after by the said seizure of the Horses cloaths and provisions sent by Chester as also by his remanding over the Regiments sent before into Ireland to make use of them as it is visibly known he did against the Parliament But I pray extend your patience and look farther into this darke worke of the Kings take a short viewe of his next Message from Nottingham where he erected his Standard it bears date the 25. of August 1642. Next to this his Message of the 5th of Sept. 1642. with another of the 11th of September following in pursuance of the former peruse them all and you shal evidently see such notable juglings and Matchivilian dissemblings as would amaze any Christian eye to behold them compared with his actions his Pourtraicture and his own letters taken at Naseby I shall present them all in their order verbatim and first that of the 25 of August 1642. viz. We have with unspeakable griefe ef heart long beheld the distraction of this our Kingdome our very soul is full of anguish untill we may finde some remedy to prevent the miseries which are ready to overwhelm this Nation by a Civil War and although all our indeavours tending to the composing of those unhappy differences betwixt us and our two Houses of Parliament though pursued by us with all zeale and sincerity have been hitherto without the successe we hoped for yet such is our constant earnest care to preserve the publicke peace that we shall not be discouraged to use any expedient which by the blessing of the God of Mercy may lay a happy foundation of peace and happinesse to all our good subjects To this end observing that many mistakes have arisen by the Messages Petitions and Answers betwixt us and our two Houses of Parliament which happily may be prevented by some other way of treaty wherein the matter in difference may be more clearly understood more freely transacted we have thought fit to propound to you that some fit persons may be by you enabled to treat with the like number to be authorized by us in such a manner and freedom of debate as may best tend to that happy conclusion which all good men desire the peace of the Kingdom wherein as we promise in the word of a King all safety and incouragement to such as shall be sent unto us if you shall chuse the place where we are for the Treaty which we wholly leave to you presuming on the like care of the safety of those we shall imploy if you shall name another place So we assure you and all our good Subjects that to the best of our understanding nothing shall therein be wanting on our part which may advance the true Protestant Religion opPose Popery and Superstition secure the Law of the Land upon which is built as well our just Prerogative as the propriety and liberty of the Subject confirme all just power and Privileges of Parliament and render us and our people truly happy by a good understanding betwixt us and our two Houses of Parliament Bring with you as firm resolutions to doe your duty and let our People joyn with us in our prayers to Almighty God for his blessing upon this worke If this Proposition shall be rejected by you we have done our duty so amply that God will absolve us from the guilt of that blood which must be spilt and whatsoever opinion other men may have of our power we assure you nothing but our Christian and pious care to prevent the effusion of blood hath begotten this motion our provision of men money and armes being such as may secure us from further violence til it please GOD to open the eyes of our People Not to trouble you with further search I shall present you that Message of the 5th of September 1642. in pursuance of the former together with that of the 11th of the same Moneth tending all to the same purpose though the Observations on them you shall finde handled separatim and left to your more mature consideration We will not repeat what meanes we have used to prevent the dangerous and distracted estate of the Kingdome nor how these means have been interpreted because being desirous to avoid effusion of Blood we aere willing to decline all memory if former bitternesse that might make our offer of a Treaty readly accepted We did never declare nor ever intended to declare both our Houses of Parliament Traytors or set up our Standard against them and much lesse to put them and this Kingdome out of our protection wee utterly professe against it before God and the World and farther to remove all possible scruples which may hinder the Treaty so much desired of us we hereby promise so that a day be appointed by you for the unvoting of your Declarations against all persons as Traytors or otherwayes for assisting of us we shall with all chearfulnesse upon the same day recall our Proclamations and Declarations and take down our Standard in which Treaty we shall be ready to grant any thing that shall be really for the good of our Subjects conjuring you to consider the bleeding condition of Ireland and the dangerous condition of England in as high a degree as by these our offers we have declared our self to do and assuring you that our chief desire in this world is to beget a good understanding and mutuall confidence betwixt us and our two Houses of Parliament Sebtemb 5. 1642. Who have taken most ways used most endeavours and made most reall expressions to prevent the present distractions and dangers let all the world judge as well by former passages as our two last Messages which have been so fruitlesse that though wee have descended to desire and presse it not so much as a Treaty can be obtained unles we would denude our self of all force to defend us from a visible strength marching against us and admit those persons accompted Traytors to us who according to their duty their Oathes of Allegeance and the Law have appeared in defence of us their King and liege Lord whom we are bound in Conscience and Honour to preserve though we disclaimed all our Proclamations and Declarations and erecting of our Standard as against our Parliament all we have left in our power is to expresse the deep sense we have of the publick misery of this Kingdom in which is involved that of our distressed Protestants of Ireland and to apply our self to our necessary defence wherein we wholly rely on the providence of God the Justice of our cause and the Affection of our good people so far we are from putting them out of our protection when you shal desire a Treaty of us wee shall piously remember whose blood is to be spilt
man as instantly you may see fearfully protested at the receiving the Sacrament at Christ-Church in Oxford 1643. at the hands of the Bishop of Armagh where immediately before his communicating he beckoning to the Bishop for a short forbearance used these following expressions viz. My Lord I espie here many resolved Protestants who may declare to the world the resolution I do now make I have to the uttermost of my power prepared my Soule to become a worthy receiver and may I so receive comfort by the blessed Sacrament as I do intend the establishment of the true reformed Religion as it stood in its beauty in the happy dayes of Queen Elizabeth without any connivance at Popery I blesse God that in the midst of these publique distractions I have still liberty to communicate and may this Sacrament be my damnation if my heart joyne not with my lips in this Protestation Observation Having seriously considered this strange Protestation of the Kings on the taking of the Sacrament with the imprecation of his damnation if his heart joyned not with his lips as I compared it with his letter after to Ormond together with his many other Protestations I professe in the faith of a Christian I stood amazed what to think of him and his Religion considered againe as it was taken before a publick audience and yet the very next yeare after he makes no scruple or conscience to promise to Ormond the repeal of all laws against Irish Papists and likewise in his Letter to the Queen of the 9th of March 1645. he gives way to her to promise in his name the taking away of all penall Laws against the English Papists so that they shall inable him to doe it where it seemes he makes no manner of account of a Parliament without which as already is said never any King of England either made or repealed any one Law surely t is heer very plaine that he understood not the extent of his own power neither the nature of the English Soveraignty or that he was disposed not to know it but to rule without Parliaments provided that by the assistance of Papists he might be impowred to do it and then that his will should be a Law to the people just Tyrant like stat pro ratione voluntas but take the rest of his Letter to Ormond into your more mature consideration and then happily it will astonish you where he hastens him to clap up the Peace with the Rebels which so soon as it shall be accomplished he vowes haec verba in his Letter to him Number 23 January 7. 1644. All the earth shall not make me breake it but not doubting of a peace I must againe remember you to presse the Irish for their speedy assistance to me here and their friends in Scotland my intention being to draw from thence into Wales the peace once concluded as many as I can of my armed Protestant subjects and I desire the Irish would send as great a body as they can to land about CVMBERLAND Observation Here againe we have a sufficient proof of this most unfortunate Princes inflexibility his resolutions once fixt there were no hopes of their alteration they are his owne words all the earth shal not make me break it though such resolutions breake him in pieces and sure we are many thousands of his poor innocent Subjects through this only fault of his obstinacy T is an infallible truth that the wilfull man never wants woe but when one mans perverse will shall be the cause of the destruction of multitudes that 's a fearfull judgement and a remedilesse calamity We have allso in this Letter an evident testimony what an inveterat hatred he bare towards the English Nation and those Scots which took their parts which he hated beyond belief and all others which never so little fell a thwart his inclinations where I shall crave your favour to tell all of you that sided with him haply more for your own ends than out of conscience for it is most certaine that he made no other accompt of you but to satisfie his own lust in your destruction whatsoever he pretended and to prove this I will tell you a true story and it is this On the death of the late Earle of Northampton whose Commands in one of his Forrests he presently gave away of which Endimion Porter understanding prest him that the young Earle his sonne whose father was then newly slaine in his service was fit to have that conferred on him than on any other on which check of Porters he replyed and hath the Earle done more than became him to dye for his King This is no fable but a knowne truth whereby you may guesse how he esteemed of you all as if his Subjects were a sort of Sheep ordained to the slaughter for the obtaining of his lustful pleasure and not him as the Shephard ordained to preserve them as that flock committed to his care and charge from God himselfe you may instantly find this very story verified and set out unto the life in his former Letter in which with what earnestnesse he presses ORMOND to hasten over the Irish to his assistance yea to bring over as many of his armed Protestants to land in Wales as might inable him to over-power both nations to his absolute domination and revenge A most brutish resolution and of purpose to reset all his Kingdoms on a light fier in setting of Protestants against Protestants and Papists against both you may further observe how his displeasure grew to be so implacable against the Scots his native Subjects and to lay his designe to destroy them together with his English Subjects and the reason of this you may perfectly see in his Letter to Ormond Number 25. Feb. 25. 1647. viz. I do therefore command you to conclude a Peace with the Irish whatsoever it cost so that my Protestant Subjects there may be secured and my regall Authority preserved but for all this you are to make the best bargaine you can and not discover your enlargement of power till you needs must and although I leave the Managing of this great and necessary work intirely to you yet I cannot but tell you that if the suspension of Poynings act for such bils as shal be agreed upon there and the present taking away of the penall Lawes against Papists by a Law will do it I shall not think it a hard bargaine so that freely and vigorously they ingage themselves in my assistance against my Rebells of England and Scotland for which no condition can be to hard not being against Conscience and Honour Observation You may first observe in this Letter the large extent of the Kings Conscience and Honour in the next place his seeming care for the preservation of his Protestant Subjects in Ireland with a purpose rather to make use of them against their Brethren of England than to leave them in Ireland for their own defence where their service was much
Kings raised more treasure by undue exactions and spilt more innocent blood than all of the Norman Kings before him If the premisses are evident truths as they cannot be denyed why then should they be concealed and wrapt up from the sight of the world being so pertinent to be left as Looking glasses for their Successours to behold the deformed faces of their Ancestors so fit to be made known to the deluded number of the people baffled and befool'd with flam's and Fig-leaves what injury then or injustice hath the Parliament done to the Nation in rescuing their Liberties out of the hand of a King which nothing would content but their Invassalage what have they done more in cutting off him with his Posterity to whom he had entayled his designes than necessity hath inforc'd them to do in preservation of the Nation from that inevitable inthralldome which eminently was like and would have befallen the universall people had they not taken away the Effects by the Cause and by that Law of Necessity to which all others are subservient And have they done more than the Romans of old have left in president in the case of Tarquinius and the expulsion of his Posterity for lesse Tyranny and to change the Kingly Government into a Republick when as this most willfull Prince stood so constantly fix'd to his depraved Principles that no perswasions of a Court of Parliament no reason but his will could prevaile or content him but to be the absolute Master of such an immensity of power as that at his own time and pleasure might enable him not only to destroy himself but to overpower the whole Kingdom which to his uttermost he endeavoured and to wade all over in blood to the accomplishment as 't is most manifest by all his actions and the sequell of his owne story And have not the SCOTS on the same Reasons of State in divers presidents acted the like on their Kings when they found them perverse and intractable to any reason as t is manifest in the fatall examples of Dardanus their 20. King from Fergus in Romacus their 36 King and on Alpinus their 68 King all three of them beheaded for their Cruelties and Tyrannies besides twenty more of their Kings either put to death or deposed for their exorbitant Governments and hath the Parliament in this necessitated change of the late Kingly domination into a Common-wealth done more than the Hollanders were compell'd to attempt and happily accomplisht in the very like case when as on their many though fruitlesse Petitions to Philip the second of the invading of their ancient Immunities and slaughtering of 100000 of the Natives by Don Alvares de Toledo and others of his Vice-Royes and themselves utterly deprived of all hopes of redresse of their grievances but only to make head against his Tyranny This question I take the liberty to move to the most rigid Royalist by what right equity or Law of God or man is any Nation in the World bound up to such a blind and unnaturall obedience as to be deprived of self-defence and to sit still without seeking their own preservations whilst an irregular King shall either cut their throats inslave or denude them of their Freedomes when as both Scripture and the Law of Nature and Nations allows it them and that Royalists themselves and the most learned Jurists maintain and concur in one joynt opinion that Subjects in such cases both by Gods Law and that of Nature may defend themselves contra immanem saevitiem against barbarous hostility as Barclay confesseth Hugo Grotius avoucheth it for Law si Rex hostili animo in totius populi exitium feratur amittit Regnum If a King in a hostile way shall attempt to destroy his people he loseth his Kingdome and this stands with infallible reason but leaving this Argument as that which already is in the way of decifion by the sword which when we have all said what can be alleged is the best title of all Kings and Common-wealths and the same on which all or most of the Kings in the world have founded their powers and Soveraignties What a strange passion then and madnesse possesses his surviving party which during the life time and height of their masters power could not with all their united forces their many plots and continued practices prevaile against the Parliament or enable him to attaine to any peece of his ends whose boundlesse ambition lead him as we may safely beleeve to fight as well against Heaven as his own Subjects and saw it not or would not but pursued his designs so long as any power or hopes prompted him to beleeve that happily in the end he might be the Conquerour but but missing of all his aims and himself in another world that there should still remain so many of his defeated partizans which out of an old and inbred malice have found out a way as they vainly conceive how to be revenged on their Conquerors is the wonder of the times by presenting his Book with his picture praying in the Frontispiece purposely to catch and amuse the people magnifying all his misdeeds for pious actions canonizing him for a Saint and idolizing his memory for an innocent Martyr an imposture without other parallell than that of Mahomet considerations which for the generall satisfaction and for the better discovery of the truth of all affairs between the King and Parliament have principally induced me to take in brief the true dimensions of this Sainted King and innocent Martyr and to pull off that false vizzard wherewith his juggling partie hath deckt his Effigies and presented him to the publick view for the most pious Prince of this age that so the people may behold him in his native complexon true it is some other important reasons have moved me to undertake this task as having seen the many poor easie and beleeving people of this Nation too long mislead and cosened out of their understanding by his usuall protestations which God willing shall be made evidently cleer by the Kings own hand writing and by the self same artifices wherewith he had so often deluded and prevailed on the belief of too many of his own party pretending to knowledge above the ordinary rank of the vulgar other reasons have moved me hereunto as for satisfaction of some obstinate Royalists to whom I have wisht well and with whom I have had severall disputes on such particular subjects as may be seene in the subsequent reply ranckt betweene the breviary of the Kings reign and the observations on severall of his own Letters and Expresses and lastly to confute a new sprung up scandall most ungratefully and maliciously raised against the Parliament viz. That the present change of the Government both Civill and Ecclesiasticall the cutting off the King and his Posterity were Plots and Contrivances of a longer date and standing than this Parliament though pursued and accomplished by a party yet sitting at Westminster this
play for raising of Treasure without consent of Parliament by arbitrary projects whereof amongst many which followed he begins with that of Knighthood and calls to account under colour of an old obsolete Law all such Gentlemen and others within the limitation of that Statute as attended not his Coronation though by his own Proclamation he had before forbidden their attendance Shortly after comes in to his service Sir Thomas VVentworth who to shew what he would be and how serviceable to the Kings designes he might be was imployed into the North where he rigorously levyed a very considerable summe on the Gentlemen and Yeomen of those parts VVeston another of these Arbitrary beagles as an overseer to the Earle of Pembroke and other Commissioners was imployed into the West the treasure which was by this lawlesse project raised being come together was a very vast sum but it was as soon issued as levyed and served not to defray the moity of the Court expences insomuch as being still necessitated very shortly thereupon another Parliament was thought fit to be summoned this was no sooner assembled but the House of Commons on the tenth of May 1626. Charged the Duke of Buckingham with the late Kings death and sent up their Charge to the Lords the King being well acquainted therewith comes into the Peers House and tels them that he could be a witnesse to clear the Duke in evry particular of that charge and thereupon in terrour to the lower House by his Warrant under his hand attacheth and sendeth to prison Sir Dudly Diggs and Sir John Elliot as those which had the managery of that affair notwithstanding the House of Commons having the proofes and examinations in preparation against the Duke the King to make all sure and in arrest of farther proceedings against his chief privado the 15 of Iune following in a great rage dissolves that Parliament and on dis-robing himself said in a very stern comportment That it should be the last time he would ever put them on And here we may take into observation the lamentable effects of that innated duritie that naturall obstinacy and perversnesse of the violent will of this most unhappy Prince who in affront and despight of the Iustice of a Court of Parliament would not suffer his own Fathers death to be called to accompt or any further examination thereof to be taken for clearing the Duke But Gods Iudgments may not be arested and it is he that mauger the teeths of all humane powers will in his own good time bring to light and to Iudgment that crying sinne of Blood and have we not seen this verified to our amazement the Duke shortly thereupon to have dyed by the stab of a knife with no other words or prayers in his mouth than Gods wounds I am slaine and this most unhappy Prince to have ended his dayes at his own Gates by the axe of Gods just judgment and as we may say in fear and trembling to have taken his leave and last farewell of this world with no other acknowledgment of his faults and of those crying sinnes of bloodshed throughout the three Kingdomes but that of a Pharasaicall justifying of himself and his innocency insisting to his last without any repentance or sensibilitie of so much innocent blood spilt through his only willfulnesse but only of one wicked mans having throughout the whole course of the late and lamentable contest between him and the Parliament evermore covered over that stubbornnesse of his naturall inclination with those false colours and delusive umbrages of his Conscience Constancy and Reason as if his Conscience by divine appointment had been the Master Conscience of all the Kingdom and his Reason that ipse dixit that must overballance and regulate the sense and Iudgment of a Court of Parliament And have we not seen those bold and principall instruments of his whom he imployed in all his arbitrary projects the Earl of Strafford and the Archbishop of Canterbury for the enslaving of the three Kingdoms condemned to the block as misleaders of their incorrigible Master and to have taken their leaves of the world in the same pharasaicall way of justifying their innocency and without so much as one word of the repentant Publican God be mercifull to me a sinner and yet all of them by the seduced Malignant party held still in a kind of veneration and I know not by what strange delusion reputed for innocents and martyrs would they but look upon them as they were the actors and known fomenters of all the miseries we have suffered yea the only ingines and instruments whereby to have wound up soveraignty to the highest pitch of Tyranny and to make their Master instead of a King over Gentlemen and Freemen a Tyrant over slaves But having brought the King and his young Queen neere to the metropolis of the Kingdom and the sicknesse decreasing I shall in a short narration describe the after deportmeut of this most unfortunate prince Instead of Prayers and humiliations to God for his great mercy in the miraculous stay of that raging pestilence whereby 3. 4. and 5000 weekly died that summer only in London the Court notwithstanding was instantly in Iolity Masques Dancings Playes and Banquets all in expencefull and sumptuous ostentations were the frequent and assiduall exercises of the Court on the one side as to devotion the Queene had her Masse and Masse-Priests on the other side the King with his Laodicean luke-warme and fawning Prelates in a meer formality in shew of Godlinesse God knowes without the power thereof and in as neer a complyance one to the other as possibly their different devotion could permit And here I must not omit neither exempt out of the scene that part which the Bishops and Prelates acted in this interlude Comicall we may call it as to the beginning thereof but God knowes tragicall enough in the close The Bishops which in the former reigne had for divers reasons of State been admitted to the old Kings privacies and had speciall Influence on his Counsells were likewise transmitted to the favour and indulgency of this King but more especially in reference to the Presbytery of Scotland so averse to absolute Soveraignty so much affected by either King A Generation of Vipers which on any terms would have eaten the way to preferment through the entrayls of either Church or State these were the men the better to ingratiate themselves into the Kings favour that spared not to insinuat how dangerous the Puritan party here in England was as of a fraternity with the Presbyterians of Scotland would be if not timely lookt unto to the advance of Soveraignty apprehensions which as they soon took fire with the father so as much if not more with the sonne hence it was that the most active of them were admitted either to his favour or Councel of State but especially Doctor Laud the Bishop of London after Archbishop of Canterbury a person of a very
subtill and winding spirit proud as one raised out of the dust haughty and imperious in his place and as fit an instrument for the Kings turne as possibly he could chose out of the 26. Prelates There was also about this time as before is intimated taken into the Kings favour or rather brought in by the alurement of preferment Sir Thomas Wentworth whom the King immediately created a Baron and on the decease of Weston the Treasurer Earl of Strafford a Gentleman of great parts and patrimony a Common-wealths-man he had been and one that formerly in all Parliaments as much thwarted and withstood the arbitrary power of both Kings as any one whatsoever the King having won this Gentleman to be his owne bethought himselfe that these two with some others of the same stamp would be sufficient to whom to impart his grand designs the one for Church affairs the other for the State but both suitable to the ends he had in hand the last being of as high bould and haughty a spirit as he could possibly have pickt out of all the nobility Time will shew us and our own lamentable experience may better demonstrate how the one in Church affairs the other in civill administrations behaved themselves to the after prejudice and destruction of the three Kingdoms But as we have already said in the end to their own ruine and their Masters To leave this digression we have left the King and Queen at the Court let us returne where we left them in their different devotions the truth was how little care soever there was then taken either by the King or his time-serving Prelates of Gods service and true worship otherwise than in a formality or shew of Godlinesse either in the Court or throughout the Kingdom sure we are that the Queenes superstitious worship was specially provided for and a sort of Locusts there were in addition to her own Chaplins admitted the Kingdome styled by the name of Capuchins but cunning knaves and for these a new Chappell was erected with an habitation and large maintenance allowed them even in the face of the Court and eye of the Kingdom and to please the Queen Masses and Masse Priests were frequently permitted throughout the Land not only in a tacite connivence but in an open way of tolleration and in contempt of Gods true worship We may well admit that the wayes which the King then took could not be welpleasing to him which was never yet pleased with an Idolatrous mixt and halfe-fac'd worship or that the gayety and wantonnesse of a promiscuous Court could be maintained without an excessive charge neither that a perfidious shew and offer of a warre with France in the defence of the French Protestants would in the conclusion be well thought of either from abroad or at home when the King during the treaty of the marriage with the Queen on the earnest request of the princes of the Religion had engaged himself to protect them and to raise the siedge then before the Town of Râ—chell neither that feigned preparation which the King made by sea in their assistance will in time come to light when evident it was afterwards to all the World that in stead of defending them they were not onely slaughtered at Sea by the Kings shipping but by plain Treachery both their Cause undone and their forces defeated by Land a sinne which God in his justice could not passe over unpunished yet carryed on in such a mysticall way in that attempt on the Isle of Rea to the losse of honour and blood of some of the bravest men of the Nation insomuch that the World to this very day hath been held in suspence to what Religion the King himself stood most inclyned or whether the Father or the Son which with such ardency sought the Alliance of Spaine and France or else no where Families if not incestous yet of Idolatrous and Supersticious Religions which hath left the world in another amaze and in a puzzle to find out others inclination or whether to any Religion devoted if it be rightly considered as either Prince made and continued their secret addresses to the Apostolick see and that his Holinesse in both reigns had his Agents and Nuntioes here resident reciprocally and in interchange of the Kings Agents at Rome many clandestine conferences both with the King and Queene and the state of the Protestant Religion here howsoever openly profest by both Kings reduced to the next step of conformity with Rome when as that sordid and base complyance of the Bishops and Court-Clergy which if grace more than hopes of preferment had prevailed with them might have been a Remora or stay to either King and to have told them plainly how dangerous it was to their well-being if they attempted to make Religion the stalking-horse to their irregular designs and to bethink themselves that God was not to be deluded and how unsafe it would be for them Ludere cum sanctis But these were the men who even from the beginning of both reigns had only studied the inclinations of these Princes and rather took upon them to comply and incourage them than to have withstood either of them in the least of their many irregularities loosness in Religion such was the basenesse of these fawning Sycophants that the common theams of the Court Pulpits throughout both reigns were purposely pickt out where on to draw conclusions and doctrines of arbitrary power which was the usuall ladder most of them clim'd to preferment whence also we may observe Gods judgments both to have been shortly after powred out on the persons themselves and their functions in their extirpation and totall irradication of them without hopes of their restauration Hitherto we have deduced the History of this unfortunate Prince to the 3d. year of his Reign we shall now runne over the rest with as much brevity as the nature of the subject will permit The King at this time was in his wonted condition of want as his Father before him ever was so would he be in the same predicament Two millions of annuall Treasure or very neer could not serve their turns neither would it content them though in Scotl. 50000 l. per annum was more than ever King James could possibly raise without the assistance of the Estates assembled We may see the difference and what oprations change of Clymates can worke upon the nature of Princes comming out of poor Kingdomes into richer and with what Conscience they could dispence the care of their own souls to become as spunges to suck up the fruits of the poor passive people of England gained out of the labour of their hands and sweat of their browes when they had enough and more than ever any of the Kings of England did raise and in retribution of their love and loyalty towards them as by divers manifestations may be made appeare with how many slights and wyles with how much care trouble and vexation of spirit
with what expence of blood and treasure did this King labor to inslave the English Nation and to reduce the poor people as naturalized vassalls under the bondage of his lawlesse will and lust Can we make any other Comment on this subject but that which wise men have long since observed that these two Princes never loved the English Nation but in an odium altissimum had aforehand designed to oppresse them and utte rly to extinguish the memory of their ancient Freedoms and can we imagine they intended otherwise by the whole course of their Government When it appears what favours what large concessions and with what complyance and commiseration the late King took care of the Irish Rebells without the least retrospect how much English bloud had been most barbarously spilt by them if he were not conscious that no man was more guilty thereof than himself surely it may well amuse the world why he should be so pitifull and solicitous to have them spared and to brand the Parliament with cruelty for pursuing so just a revenge If we look Northward and examine what Favours Privileges and Countyes were without asking offered to be conferr'd on the Scots 1641. as he went unto them on the onely conditions that they would engage with him against the English Parliament On these considerations can it sink into any rationall mans conception but that he was an inexorable enemy to the Nation kinde to his own if they would have served his turn and an indeered Friend to those bloudy Irish and that on all opportunities his intent was to ruine and invassalate the English Nation though he and his perished as they did in the attempt But to return to our relation The King was now in the 15 yeare of his Reign and notwithstanding the many wayes by which he had raised no small treasure yet was he still indigent and bare in money the Court and the French spent it before it came in and as to any supply by Parliament it suited neither to the Kings good liking or his grand designe the discontinuance of Parliaments conduced more to the advance of what he intended to raise by power than he could expect by the ayde of Parliament since he had but even then closed up all ruptures with France and Spuin and no War in being or in expectation and consequently no ground left him that might presse or induce a Court of Parliament to be over-liberall with the purses of their Electors yet in this exigent and streight he suddenly resolves to call a Parliament where amongst many passages and debates Finch the Speaker of the lower house plaid his first prise in his assiduall disclosing to the King what soever past in the House insomuch as being discovered and on his usuall moving out of his Chair and the House he was at length withstood at the door by divers bold Gentlemen and Members of the Parliament and inforced to keep his seat this miscarriage was instantly made known to the King who took it as an affront done to his own person and presently hereupon he not only dissolves the Parliament but commits to the Tower Hammond and Hubbard Knights Long Curreton and some others of the Members Neither could he be a long time pacified by the Lords of his Councell on the first hearing of this broil but needs he would with his guard have then fallen upon them in the house as a presage of that violence which he offered after to this Assembly in his owne person upon the instant of this dissolution of the Parliament he publisheth a Proclamation prohibiting the people not so much as to talk of more Parliaments and injoyn'd the Lords of his Councell on any conditions not to mention the word Parliament unto him a lesson which they all for ten years together at least punctually observed insomuch as all wise men then conjectured that the Liberties of the Kingdom were then buried together in the interment of all Parliaments Ten if not more years past between this Parliament and the dissolution of that quinto Maij 1639. during this intervall the King begins roundly with all sorts of proâ—ects and to raise mony both without the leaves of the Subjects and against the known Lawes of the Kingdome privy Seals and Loans were the first which he put in execution as a Tax if we may so call them that concerned not so much the Subject in generall as private reputed moneyed men other levies had likewise their course in their torns and in policy not to rush in and too hastily on the subjects propriety he falls on the sale of the Crown lands in Peâ—farm with the old rents or those doubled reserved to the Exchequer neither could all these projects though amounting to a very vast sum serve to defray the wastefullnesse of the Court which indeed as to his own side was in some proportion of moderation yet on the Queens side it was so excessively profuse that I aver it on knowledge besides her Joynture then newly consigned one hundred thousand pound Per Annum sufficed not for to defray her own expences and confident I am what by sales procured by her solicitations as much more was yearly drayned out of the Kings purse to satisfie that nasty trayn of her French followers Madam Nurse as to her own particular besides an expencefull way of living here at the Kings charge was well known to have transported at several times into France 100000 pound in good gold and certaine it is that that Pigmy Mountebanck Mountague the Queens dancing Master not worth one groat at his coming over inricht himself to the least value of 40000 pound it would be wearisome to recount what summes her Priests and Jesuits Musitians Fidlers and others of her retinue got and amassed by her onely sute to the King who then denyed her nothing that she desired for it is most true that before she attained the age of twenty years she began of a Pupill to be the Kings Regent and the after-story will assure it she became a fatall participant with him in most of his Counsells and his directrix in the Government but after her Mothers arivall both of them to have gained an interest in his inmost secrets and principall transactions of State an evident truth and more than stood with the Kings honour much less than suited with the welfare of the Nation These prodigall expences at Court could not choose but impoverish the Kings exchequer whether very little of the Royall Revenue arrived as commonly prevented aforehand by assignations to one or other of the Courtiers hence followed the multiplicity of Monopolies the ingrossing of all the Pouder into the Kings store and that to be no otherwise vendible but at double rates to the former and usuall prises In order to these followed the preemption of all Tobacoes to the extreme beggering of the adventurers and planters in the West-Indian Islands Coat and Conduct money had likewise it's turne and by degrees the Kings
the West marches to assist the Irish Army landing at Milford as need should require and the President my Lord of Bridgewater commanded to wave that place for his Majesties speciall service a person as it seems that was too honest to be wrought upon At the same time his Lordship Cottington was likewise made Lord Warden of the Tower with authority to take in Souldiers and to fortifie that piece which accordingly was put in execution and the White-Tower planted with many great Ordnance with their mouths forced against the City to the great amazement of the Citizens and the whole Kingdom What the King meant or intended by these irregular and prodigious acts of his let the most willfull Malignant make his own judgement when as the whole Kingdom was never in a greater calme of peace loyalty and quietnesse or in any appearance of insurrection The Excise at that instant was likewise in agitation and the very same house wherein now that office is erected in Broadstreet taken by Cottington to the same purpose and Strafford much a-about that time dispatcht into Ireland there to call a Parliament for assistance in relation to the intended Scotch War where he musters a new the Irish army gets four Subsidies presently returns for Engl. where a Parl. for the same end was likewise summoned not any thing now stood as Remora in the way of the Kings great designe but those refractory Scots this was the block that in the first place must be removed to begin this work of darknesse first fomented by the Bishops especially Canterbury here and that pragmattick Prelat of Scotland Maxwell with Hamilton and Traquair on the by These two assisted by Strafford had the whole managery of that affair We must not too much insist on every particular this Scotch work alone requiring a volume to derive it from its first fountain and originall as a project of the old Kings to introduce the Episcopal power and Church Government there conformable to that of England and to suppresse or master that of the Kirk Presbyterian power as the only obstruction to absolute Soveraignty Gods providence and his wayes are insearchable and the carriage of this work of darknesse is very remarkeable it hath left the world in a maze how the Kings designs by this Scotch enterprize should turne and overthrow the whole frame and fabrick of all his former projections and of so faire a fore-game so to bring it about as on the very nick of the accomplishment to lose both it his reputation and life and at a time when all wise men had given the freedoms of the English nation utterly lost and meerly by the wilfulnesse of his own irregular motions more beloved reverenced and obeyed than any of his Predecessors The state of the three Kingdomes as abovesaid but a little before this Scotch enterprise as to a any Warre from abroad mutinies and insurrections at home was well known to be in as great a calme of Peace and quietnesse as in any reign since the Conquest the subject passive loyall and obedient to the Kings will and pleasure himfelf at peace and amity with all his Allyes Confederates and Neighbour-Princes nothing could be Imagined to have troubled him but his own ambition and those restlesse appetites of his which would not suffer him to enjoy content in the mid'st of prosperity and to rest satisfied in the fruition of more abundance than ever any King of England attain'd unto In this requiem could he have seen it was his soule restlesse and as we may of truth say by no instigation more troubled than by hers which had the honour of his Bed an unhappy unquietnesse which his principall privadoes rather added fewell to the fire thereof than water to quench it they had studied his inclination which was the rule they walkt by not how to apply wholsome medicines to cure the raging malady of his ambition which by none was more cherish'd than by the Bishops and his formal clergy in the way wherein his will and lust had predominance over his reason such as had not only taken the same fiery infection but as much laboured therein as himself whose sunction and office if grace had guided them it properly was rather to have applyed antidotes than venome to their Masters disease and to have told him plainly where the fault lay But to returne to the relation of this Scotch enterprise the King as before is intimated through meer necessity was induced to call a Parliament not to reforme abuses crept into the Common-wealth better it may be said violently introduced through his ill Government and discontinuance of Parliaments the ancient remedies of publick grievances but to supply his own wants in reference to the war intended the Kings wants being more pressing than ever the servants of his own side in Court a good space before debard of their Wages purposely to scrape up moneys towards this needlesse Warre the Queens Servants on the other side were notwithstanding exactly paid It would be superfluous and impertinent to describe the whole story of this designe so obvious and generally knowne to all the Kingdom how first this affair was carryed on by sending a new Litturgy to EDINBVRGH as an experiment how the Scots would swallow the first bayt to their inthraldome how there the Litturgy was resented and with what after disgusts it was not only refused but detested How that Traquire and Hamilton one after the other were Commissioned with power instructions to inforce their conformity what Flames Invectives and Comments flew here abroad of the Bishops penning of their Rebellion how againe the Scots stood upon their punctillioes in defence of themselves and their Covenant against this innovation how many Petitions and Messages past between them and the King how at last on dispute between their Commissioners and his Majesties at their first Treaty in the North and the aversnesse of the Kings souldiers to imbrace the quarrel the King granted them his royall Pascification and sent them home well satisfied how againe on his Majesties returne his act of Pascification was here in Court resented by the Queen and the Bishops and with what Language the King was affronted to have brought home a dishonourable Peace and obstructive to his own designes how then this needlesse and willfull quarrell was revived and the Kings Pacification vilified and burnt by the hands of the common Hangman and the King easily brought on anew to muster a second Army to subdue those stubborn and rebellious Scots as generally then especially by the Bishops they were stiled when as by the Free-quarter of his first Army most parts of the County of York were beggered and the Soldiery unpaid how the Parliament and generally the people abhor'd this war and refused to contribute towards it how thereupon quinto Maij 1649. it was suddenly dissolved how on the very same day the Cabinet Councell sate in close consultation at White-Hall how to raise moneys to defray
entrance of his reigne answerable to his Fathers instructions began his arbitrary worke and in pursuance thereof had laid sundry destructive and darke plots how to invassalate the three Nations and by degrees to reduce them all under one Intire arbitrary and absolute soveraignty and when they took not the effect he desired being discovered and opposed by this Parliament then to set up his Standard and array the poore people against themselves which never any King of England durst attempt otherwise than by publick consent and against a forraigne enemy and at last to wage open Narre against his owne subjects and the representative of the Nation Plundering Fyring and desolating the Kingdom to the utmost of his power had you avouched thus much you had hit on the right and shewed your selfe both a friend to truth and your Country but it seems you still stand close to your old destructive principles as at first you sided with the King living so dead you persist to make good his cause whether right or wrong it mattered not much with most of your party the truth is how good or bad soever his cause was it was the bare name of a King and hopes of preferment which drew your Iron into the field and t is the very same at present which invites all of you to flatter and sooth up your selves with the empty name of Loyalty to bring in the new Crown'd King of Scots on the old score without looking to the preservation of the Liberty of your Country and proprieties of your own posterity and the sad consequence thereof as if the publick interest ought to be given up for the fulfilling of your desires and of one mans wilfull pleasure a strange dotage that hath possest you and more strange it is that you should now fall a fresh on a subject that loathes any man of ingenuity to think on it much more to treat on a theam so stale were it but in reference to the memory of him who is at rest But since I find that a kind of confidence possesses your intellectuals that all your allegations are unanswerable and that your provocations amounts to a challenge the fault must be yours not mine If in vindication of truth I lay open the grossnesse of all your errors in the manifestation of his which with such eagernesse and confidence you think your self able to defend being forced through your importunity and the nature of the taske you put upon me to run over the whole progres and managery of all the late Kings designs visible and long since very well knowne to all men of common understanding though I confesse I do not much marvell that your selfe amongst the rest of the facill beliefe have been deceived by the Kings woonted and plausible protestations especially as he handled the matter in the cunning and umbragious carrying on of all his close and hidden designs for I very well know many knowing Gentlemen which have had a long conflict with themselves what judgment to make on the first difference arising between the King and Parliament his Majesty so often protesting how much he intended the welfare of all his subjects how unwilling to embrew the Kingdom with blood how willing to embrace and conserve the peace of the Land how resolved to maintaine the true Protestant Religion how carefull and studious to uphold the Lawes and Liberties of the People how ready to preserve inviolable the privileges of Parliaments and how forward to supply his distressed Protestant Subjects in Ireland all which as a Copy of his counterfeit Countenance he so often protested and confirmed with Imprecations that truely the spirits of many wise men were amazed and a long time stood staggering what to be lieve in the case and doubtfull whether the Kings cause or the Parliaments was most just which party gave the first offence which began the Warre and of this number I confesse my self to be one which stood sometimes diffident in a controversy so variously attested but having made a diligent search into all the passages and transactions between both parties both from before the Sword was drawn and after to the year 1645 when the Kings Cabinet Letters were taken at Naseby and other manifests elsewhere I then began to bethink my self that which before I only admitted in a kind of Ambitious beliefe that the Parliament had then to deal with a King howsoever heretofore valued as a Prince of no deep reach who was not to seek without the help and influence of a malicious Councell to play his owne part I shall not say better but more dextrous and cunningly for his owne ends and to the reducing of the Kingdomes under his absolute power than any of those could direct him whom he most trusted with the mannagery of his designs and secrets truely Sir on that discovery on the publishing of his Letters let me tell you there were many thousands which fell off and from the opinion they held of his integrity and the Iustice of his Cause it being in the next degree to a miracle that after so full a disclosure of the Kings juglings and dissemblings there should any remaine to take his part and the wonder is the more remarkeable that since his death any man should believe him to be a Martyr but whom God hardens they shall be hardened let the Charmer Charme never so wisely some will be deafe and diffident of visible truthes never so clearly manifested of which number that you should perceveere to make one as by your sundry invectives it appears surely it hath not a little troubled me to see the excrescencies of your inveterate malignancy to break out even to obstinacy and so long to have blinded your judgment from discerning of truth from falshood and to have bard you from the right use of distinguishing between reason well weighed and fraud umbrated and attested with the usuall artifices of the royall protestations a faculty by your favour too too common with the King and those quaint pen-men which attended him with plausible Declarations frequently sent abroad ad faciendum populum to catch fools and as the Kings usuall phrase was to undeceive the people prepossest with the reality of the Parliaments Remonstrances when in truth the Kings ends were no other than to decoy the poor credulous Annimalls into an opinion of his good meaning towards them when he intended them most harme as we find it evident in the silly devises and quaint impresses of his money coyned at Oxford pretending that he took up arms in defence of the Protestant Religion the Laws and Liberties of the People and the Priviledges of Parliament when the direct contrary appeared by all his Actions and when as it was manifest that before he began to quarrell with the Scots he tacitely intended and even then designed to suppress Parliaments or so to qualify them that they should be onely usefull to his own ends not to the people and likewise to invade the Liberties of
the subject adulterate the true Protestant Religion with the superstitious mixture of Popery as it manifestly appeared by his admittance of a Jesuiticall crew into his own Court Cappuchins at Somerset-house with large maintenance even in the face of the Court and eye of the Kingdom with a generall connivence amounting to a tacite toleration to all Papists together with idolatrous Masses both in his own house permitted andused throughout the Kingdom in most Papists houses without controule in imitation of Solomon after that by his Wives he was turn'd Idolater to set up the abomination of Ashteroth even in the face of Jerusalem And as to his invading of the Libertyes of the people with his many other oppressions and irregularities we all know and have good cause to remember them The Breviary of his Life and unfortunate Reigne manifestly declares as to his intent of suppressing of Parliaments and future oppression of the people the observations I intend to send you with his own Letters sufficiently demonstrates by whose motion and Counsels those exorbitances were first by his own Fathers Instructions pursued found in his Cabinet at Theobalds immediately after his departure and whereof one was to quit himself by degrees of all Parliaments as too bold Co-partners in the Government with their Kings to run the future course of his government answerable to that of France and to verifie this I shall point you to King James his own Speech in open Parliament 1609. March 21. Where you may see what preparations he had provided for his Successor to rule by parallelling himself with God who he saith Hath power to create or destroy make or un make at his pleasure to give life or send death to judge all and to be judged or to be accomptable to none to raise low things and to make high things low at pleasure and to God are both Soul and Body due the like power saith this King have Kings they make and unmake their Subjects they have power of raising and casting down of life and death Iudges over all their Subjects and in all causes and yet accomptable to none but God alone they have power to exalt low things and abase high things and to make of their Subjects like men at Chess a pawn to take a Bishop or a Knight and to cry up and down their Subjects as they doe their money Whence you may observe this Kings Principles which in the Speech it selfe every where extant you may find that even this King whom the world stiled the Platonicall King and was reputed a pious Prince took the hint of his tyrannicall principles from a Bishop who in the very face and audience of a Court of Parliament preacht all these fine arbitrary doctrines and yet in the Speech it self fol. quarto you shall find the King defends him Hence you way perceive by whose counsells the late King steered all the course of his government after his accession to the Crown with the reason of his seldome calling of Parliaments and his often dissolving of such as he did call without their due effects I shall now faithfully relate the whole progresse of the War and by what female advice he was directed to the reducing of all the three Kingdomes under his absolute power and for your better satisfaction shall by the way present you with the orignall cause of his hatred against this Parl. and by what strange means it was summoned and at a time when all wise men had given all Parliaments for lost which although long since and by many more able pens than mine have been sufficiently manifested to the world yet for your sake I shall adventure to present them a new as having little more in addition to the elabourate pains of others than in some particulars which I find not as yet produced to the light of the world Briefly then It is a knowne truth that the King in that his unnecessary raising of a warre against the SCOTS and through the prodigality of the Court especially the petulancy and lavishnesse of the Queens side had so exceedingly exhausted both his Exchequer and Credit and reduced himself to that extreme Indigence that he knew not whither to turn himself neither as in the Breviary of his Reigne is exactly laid down could that great head-piece the grand Master for carrying on of all his Arbitrary work shew him how to dis-intangle himselfe out of that harle wherein his owne wilfull Inclinations had incumbred him We all know that the King on the entrance of the Scots at Newborne in August 1640. took a posting journey Northward to his Army Strafford being Commissioned Generall in the room of the Earl of Northumberland whither they were no sooner arrived but they found the Souldiery in little better than mutiny for want of their pay the whole army then lying on Free-quarter on the County of York and the King without so much money as would pay halfe a Regiment the Scots possest of the Town of Newcastle the Nobility having been exhausted in their attendance the Summer before yet to shew their loyalty they again repair to York amongst the rest the Earls of Hartford and Essex in their journey take an occasion by the way to addresse themselves to the Queen to whom they declare the sad condition wherein both the King and Kingdome were then reduced and that they saw no possible means other then a Parliament whereby to repair the State relieve the King and peece up the rents and breaches between both Nations on this expostulation they prevailed with the Queen to write her Letters to his Majesty to move him to condescend to the summons of this Parliament the mention whereof they very well knew without such a mediatrix would be very displeasing unto him these Lords being thus provided with her Majesties Letters repair to Yorke and presented them to the King and upon consultation with the rest of the Lords then attending his Majesty five and twenty of them joyn in a Petition to that purpose The Scots likewise and 200 Gentlemen of the County of York concurring in the same sute for a present summons of a Parliament Thus was his Majesty as I may say beleaguered on all hands not anyone but Strafford dissenting in the end what between the Kings urgent necessities and a concurrency of Petitions together with the Queens Letters which weigh'd most with the King was this Parliament contrary to the expectation of all men produced to the admiration of the Kingdom though against the Kings expresse vow taken at the putting off his robes as before is mentioned when he dissolved his second Parliament and in a contemptuous deportment threw them from him protesting that it should be the last time of their putting off or on Hence we may discern through what difficulties and streights this Parliament took it's beginning we may well say by Gods speciall providence and by hers principally as the instrumentall cause thereof which
soon after was it's greatest Enemy and not by the Kings choise and inclination as it is shamefully averr'd in his Pourtraicture whereas the bare name and mention of a Parliament was well known to be odious unto him and the very motion of calling any more prohibited by his own expresse charge to all of his Councell of State as that which he foresaw would be the onely impediment to the accomplishment of all his arbitrary designes so meerly brought to their ends but the summer before he waged the first warre against his native subjects the Scots an enterprise which the World knowes was the only Remora that checkt and choaked all his projections in the maturity of their birth which to recover on sight and his sense of the Parliaments proceedings he soon found he had no other way left him but by open War and force to suppresse them the mannagery whereof I shall now briefly present unto you The Parliament had its Summons from Yorke as all the Kingdom knows and the third of November 1640. sate downe at Westminster where according to the usuall Ceremonies the King in his own person in a set speech made a very gracious protestation viz. That he was fully resolved to put himself wholy on the love of his People and Parliament which if it proved not prosperous and a happy Parliament the fault should be none of his and that he was fully determined to commit the reformation of all things amisse to their regulation A profession which both took much with the House and all the Kingdom which had he been pleased to have performed and to have made good his word in not protecting the many delinquents questioned within a few moneths after the Parliaments first sitting downe as with justice honour and his Coronation oath he was obliged and in reference to his owne profit he might very well have forborne such tragicall issues could never have befallen himself and the 3. Kingdoms but having then entertained other designs and perceiving the Parliament to fly high and at his chief Ministers and woork-masters of his former arbitrary projects and on those which had fomented that unnecessary Warre against the Scots as the Earl of Straf ford and the Arch-bishop principally the Prelates and dissolute Clergy most of the Iudges and the Farmers of the Customes not for common faults but very high misdemeanours the King to crosse them most ignobly and against the justice of the Kingdome not only provoked but openly shewed himselfe both a defendor and protector of their Delinquencies and upon the distast he took on the commitment of Strafford was instantly known to have laid sundry plots and practises how he might dissolve the Parliament or utterly to destroy it which the Parliament perceiving and that the Queen under colour of accompanying the Princesse Mary into Holland was sent thither with the Crowne Jewels to buy Arms and procure forces to be sent him and Digby employed to the same purpose whereupon in prevention of the storme which they evidently then saw was like to fall on themselves and the Kingdom from beyond sea they moved his Majesty that the Kingdom might be put into a posture of defence and the militia deposited in such hands as they might confide in which he utterly refused to grant them as inseparables to the Crowne as he alleaged he was resolved to keep solely in his own power The Parliament in answer to this insist That the Kings power therein by the Law of the Land was only fiduciary allwayes in reference to trust the publik good safety of the Kingdō hence the contest by degrees grew to a separation and in furtherance of the dispute he also denyed the house to disband the Irish Army raised long before by Strafford and compos'd of Papists a storm which could not otherwise be expected but would if not timely prevented fall on them from Ireland whereof the Juncto at their very first sitting down had sufficiently informed them out of Straffords own mouth for what use and end that Army was raised viz. where he tels the King you have an Army in IRELAND to reduce this Kingdome when it was manifestly known to the world that it never was in a greater calm of peace and quietnes and the universall people in a more absolute obedience and as ready to be ridden as any slaves under the Grand Signior During this conflict the King would needs take a journey into Scotland notwithstanding the House by sundry petitions had earnestly moved him either to lay it aside or at least for some time to retard it but howsoever the King carried on his plots intentions in the dark with as much cunning as possibly could be devised yet they had then good reason to suspect that his journey Northward was to some other end than in leaving them to visit his Scotch Parliament as it after proved but on he would for Scotland and before he took his journey in a seeming providence to disburthen the Kingdome of the charge of the Scotch Army he first prest the house to disband with all their expedition that Army and to pay pay that of his own raising in the North but not a word of disbanding it upon this motion the House took it into their serious consideration apprehending it for a provident carefull and timely motion of the Kings and thereupon bethought themselves how first to disband and quit the Kingdome of the Scots untill Mr. Stroude standing up told the Speaker That they ought not in such haste to depart with the Scotch Army lest the sonnes of Zerviah in their absence would be too hard for them this speech the house soon apprehended and instantly resolved not to disband the one without the other army which the King perceiving being daily prest with Petitions of the Officers of his own Army fot their pay and himselfe not possibly able to content them as also that 25000 l. per mensem allowed to the Scots Army with 300000 l. by way of brotherly love given them by the Parliament in compensation of their losses through the Kings needlesse and unnecessary molesting them during the two Summers before amounted in the totall to so vast a sum as that neither himself was able to contribute a groat or the Parliament otherwise to discharge but by borrowing it on the Publique Faith It would amaze those which are happily ignorant of the managery of this work if I should tell them in what extremity of want the King was then reduced and how he durst adventure to struggle and after to trip up the heels of a Court of Parliament which without the least upraiding him with his profusions and irregular Regality were not only willing and ready to pay all those vast scores of debts contracted through his own wilful misgovernment but then had it in agitation how to improve his Revenues and to inable him to live of himself without squeezing his Subjects in honour splendour and plenty beyond any
he had privatly plotted and to send him into Ireland as in part is before noted but that he intended to force the Parliament to his will or utterly to annihillate it especially when he found that the Earl was condemned and his execution prest as a publick example to dye after which its most certain he meditated nothing more than war and to be revenged on the Parliament as it evidently appears by his sending over the Queen into Holland to buy arms Cockram into Denmarke and Digby in the same errand as also by his practising of the Army in the North to fall upon the Parliament together with the flight of Percy Jermin and Suckling as the onely persons first engaged in that Plot which durst not stand to the Test and in order to these his peremptory denyall to disband the Irish Army and his private addresses to other forreign Princes and States to supply him with men money and arms all which his practises were visibly known to the Kingdom to have been in agitation some of them before the Earle of Straffords execution other shortly thereupon which evidently shews that he was resolved at any rate and by force of arms to suppresse the Parliament In the universal disturbance of the whole Kingdome you may further observe how in pursuance of his mischievous designes notwithstanding the dislike the Parliament had of his determination to goe into Scotland and their humble motions to him to lay that journey aside or at least for some time to retard it as before is laid down yet would he needs goe and the reasons thereof are perspicuous considered as he made choise of his time to overtake the Scotch Army before they came to the borders and to attempt to corrupt the Commanders to turn to him and if that failed yet to give his Scotch Parliament all the content they would desire take the design farther What worke was made there concerning the Irish Rebellion what after his return home he made here in his assaulting the House in a warlike posture and his accusing the six Members as the most noted Common-wealths-men in terrour to the rest upon no other ground but on a vaine surmise of his own making of suspition of Treason where the proof is so plain by the first shedding of bloud at his own dores and the hostile manner of his entring the House attended with 300 armed men and most of them of desperate and forlorn Fortunes that the very bare deniall that the King made not the first Ware doth surpasse even impudence it self I am not ignorant that the Kings many protestations and not a few of them fortified with imprecations hath taken a firme footing in the belief of many half-witted men that his Cause was much better than it was but the wiser sort make their judgements of men by their actions not by their professions and they believe by the testimony of their sences what they see and feele they are bound to believe especially when a King in his private inditements which are the dictates of the Soule those addrest to a person which had gained an absolute power over the faculties of his reason and understanding such unbeleevers are not fit for humane society But omitting repetitions and further Comments wee have left the King at Yorke where for your better satisfaction it is fit that I put you in remembrance how there hee pursued the War in raising the people and inviting the Counties both farre and near to rise and side with him against the Parliament which in the Observations I shall send you will be made more manifest But that it may more fully appear upon what further grounds the King forsooke his owne house and the Parliament besides the pretended fear of Tumults of his own causing it was suggested unto him and he was made to believe That without his presence and concurrence with the Parliament they could not neither durst they vote or act any thing though never so relative to the safety of themselves and the Kingdome so that its apparent that either by fraud or force he was resolved to put an end to this Parliament and for farther proof of this I refer you to the Observations Now as to the main of your accusations the taking away of the Kings life and dis-inheriting of his Posterity I crave leave to defer this point to the last and to the conclusion of my animadversions where hapyily you will find the true reasons thereof and shall now proceed to the Change of the Government which you charge on the Parliament to be so long since plotted and as a power usurped and exercised by them in a dispotical way way of Tyranny in raising of money imposing of taxes and intollerable contributions on the whole Nation to take them apart I shall begin with the change of the Government as it is now established in the nature of a Republick which you know to be gotten by the Sword and likely so it is to hold by the same weapon as the Romans Saxons Danes and Normans got their Dominions here by Conquest and as the late King on that mere foundation intended to make his power absolute and A la Francoys in the needlesse endeavour wherof and to be more than stood with the constitution of the English Soveraignty you know how he lost all together with his life if your conscience cannot brook the present government as now it is established I see no other remedy left you but to quit the place you now live in and quietly if you would it suffiseth my Conscience that I live under it in the enjoyment of somewhat wherewith to subsist which I am sure was more than my self and many thousands more could do when and weresoever the late Kings armies were prevalent as to the Taxes and Contributions whereat you so much repine as insufferable and most illegally imposed on the people all that I shall say to it is that we which suffer them may all of us thank your party for it as inforced on the States by your only means for the defence of the common freedome of the Nation which as in the beginning of the late Warres your party under the royall Commissions invaded so you continually indeavour to subvert them by all the secret plots and practices you possibly can invent whereas could that malicious tumor of yours and that unquietnesse of your spirits by allayed and your selves perswaded by reason before it invades you the taxes you may be sure on 't would soon be abated why then can you not rest content with that change and government which were you not hood-winkt you might manifestly see Gods high and over-ruling providence to have carried on the worke both in a series of the many and miraculous victories of the Parliaments as also in disappointing all the late Kings designs and in discovering all your plots and practises even from the very beginning of the warre to the present which although they weigh not with you as
men bewitched and as I may say besotted with an incapacity or hardnesse of heart not to be convinced by any force of reason or arguments though providence it selfe visibly shews it out unto you that not only Gods special hand is in this great change of affairs but that he hath yet some greater worke depending on this which in his own good time he will bring to passe in throwing down that proud papall Monarchy and utterly to confound that man of sin who sits in the temple exaulting himselfe above God Sir Here may you be pleased to take in your more serious consideration by whom Kings reigne and cease to reigne and soberly to observe for what sins almighty God usually striks down the prowd Septers of Kings and binds their Nobles in chains of Iron and you may without presumption say and find it most true throughout all the sacred Scriptures that where Idolatry Injustice Oppression and Bloodshed have had predominance there Gods wrath hath inseparably attended the Authors and favorers and most severely punished those sins above all others and what in these sins have been either permitted acted or connived at by the late King howsoever faced out and denyed by himselfe and most of your party and his cause shamefully defended yet I suppose you cannot but acknowledge that they have not only been winked at but backt and authorised cnm privilegio And here give me leave to tell you that I have stood amazed at the impudence of your royal bookmen I shall only instance amongst ma ny in a sew as Judge Jenkins his Lex Terrae and other of his jugling fragments the Regall Apologie the Reliquiae Sacrae Carolinae but especially in that grand imposture of the Kings Pourtracture in all which that they should give the plain lye to truth conceale and smother the true intent of the lawes of the Land and contradict the Kings own Letters and expresses written with his own hand augments the admiration and much the more that they should with such acerbity exclaime against the ripping up of the faults of the dead when they themselves give the occasion in their frequent invective Pamphlets against the Parliament and in their justifications of a Prince whose inclinations lead him to the fulfilling of his own will though to the apparent losse of his Crowne and his dearest friends so violently were his inclinations driven on to the accomplishing of his designs when as neither the junctoes of France Spaine Denmarke the States of Holland or scarce any Prince Christian though most of them of his nearest allyes and solicited by all the artifices that man could invent would owne owne him when they understood the wayes and enterprises he most wilfully undertook and all of them upon due examination as unnecessarily undertaken and needlesly pursued with as much violence and craft as if they had some necessary dependence on his own salvation and the safety of his people when as God knowes they were most destructive the mishapen and illegitimat births of his own willful inclinations Now it would not be much impertinent to the subject you have sent me if I should tell you that I find not any one Nation in the world that hath had any great reason to be overmuch inamored with their Kings sure I am neither of us both how different soever in our principles have had any great cause given us to dote on our last considered as he raigned in blood and oppression and handled the matter both with his friends and foes whether forraigne or domestick witnesse those needlesse Warres he ingaged himselfe against Spayn and France in the entrance of his reigne afterwards with the Scots but espetially with this Parliament and the subjects of three Kingdoms not only to the beggering of them but the ruine of himselfe and his posterity and yet is this most willfull and bloudy Prince the only King which your party have so much admired defended and believed living and dead adored and esteemed for a Saint and a Martyr Sir You are a Gentleman well verst in History I shall therefore take the boldnesse to advise you to take the right demensions of all the Kings you have read of either in the sacred scriptures or prophane observe well all their actings and I dare be bold to say that you shall very rarely find any of them which have strictly tyed themselves to the duty of their office or to have executed their powers otherwise than to the extream detriment of their Subjects take them wheresoever they have been admitted either by the suffrage of the people as that hath been the best means to keep them within the bounds of moderation or permitted by the absurdity of succession whether wisemen or fools whether Children or of mature years or assuming their Soveraignties by the power of their Swords and doubtlesse you shall find few of them which have been over-mindfull of the good and welfare of their people neither to have had any due retrospect to the right ends of Government and that salus populi the safety and good of their Subjects for which all Kings had their powers originally ordained and given them from God never for their own private interests which most of the Kings of the World have evermore studied to advance and generally per fas et nefas right or wrong indeavoured to inforce as in this point we have all of us had a late and a lamentable experience where take this in the way that without all dispute all Kingly power and that despoticall domination of that great hunter Nimrod which was first by him usurped by force and from him as the first pattern of Royalty dispersed throughout most parts of the World yet we find not in all the Scriptures any vestigia or authentick proof that the succeeding Kings of the Nations came to their powers by any immediate institution from God but only permissive though it is most true that when such powers were in being and how usurpatiously soever obtained yet submission hath been by God himself enjoyned to those which lived under them untill for their injustice and extreme Tyranny God in his justice determined to transferre their powers to others as you may transparently see he hath done in our late change since then other powers than Kingly are now with us in being you and I both which live under them are bound in conscience to submit and obey them for all powers are of God And let me remember you for its worth your observation that the Israelites for a long time had no Kingly Government but in Egypt in the Wildernesse and after in the Land of Canaan for many hundred years together were no other than Ambulans Respublica a walking Common-wealth and onely governed by Judges and the Princes of their respective Tribes never by the absolute power of any one man Moses himself having his assistants even the Princes of the People untill through their own wantonnesse and contempt of that Government
which God had set over them and in his providence and love towards them knew to be fittest for them they obstinately rejected the gentle government of Samuel and weary of their own happinesse surfeiting as they did in the Wildernesse on that delicious food of Quails and Manna and wishing for the flesh-pots of Egypt in imitation of the Heathen they thirsted after a King and not unlike to Esops Frogs they prest Samuel to change their quiet and peaceable Block into a furious and devouring Stork their freedom into slavery as first with these Arguments That thy sonnes walke not in thy wayes but have turn'd aside after lucre took bribes and perverted judgement foul faults indeed and happily too true for wheresoever power without grace is invested faults there will be and many times foul ones too But this was not all that they resented it was their ambition and desire of novelty in a vain-glorious affectation that swayed with them to be like their Neighbour Nations and to have an illustrious and pompous domination over them but how this pleased God that Chapter with others shews us in a very sad dialect for God in his wrath gave them a King according to their desires yet he commands Samuel to shew them what would be the manner of a King and what Tyrannies he would exercise over them howsoever their hearts being set on a Kingly Goverment a glorious thing indeed in the outward shew and splendor thereof have a King they would without more dispute alleging other Arguments to Samuel viz. That he may judge over us go out before us and fight our battels But how most of their Kings executed judgement and what needlesse battles they fought for them and how much bloud of theirs was in many of their Kings reignes willfully and profusely spilt by most of the Kings of Judah and Israel as also what taxes and tributes were unnecessarily imposed on them their own Chronicles will best inform you and all this Kingly work what doth it amount unto more than to fullfill the will and pleasure and to maintain the pompe and splendor of one man and his whole family in the open and privileged oppression of a whole Nation Now if the History of the Kings of Iudah and Israel be not sufficient to inform your judgement of the oppressions and Tyrannies exercised by most of their Kings as a just judgement of God on the whole Nation for I may of truth aver that they were a stubborn generation and God answerable to their own hearts desires gave them their belly full of Kings when it was too late for their repentance then you may pick and chuse amongst all the Kings of the World and you shall find the best of them little better than Tyrants yea David himself a a man of blood and most perfideous in the case of honest Vriah and as the greater Fish in the Sea which eats up the lesser so Kings on the Land are commonly no more than Canniballs man-eaters and as a good Author describes them to be ex genere bestiarum rapacium a sort of ravenous beasts an undenyable truth especially where absolute Soveraignty is usurped by any one man and that derived in a succession which is the evill of all evils and the very same which your malignant party so vehemently drives at to introduce on the English Nation and to inslave a free borne people when your self being a rationall man very well knows that no man ab origine was born a slave but either by his own consent or by the ambition and pleasure of Tyrants was made so for who koows not that all men are of the self-same mold as Kings neither were Kings ever ordaind of God to govern their people otherwise than for their good never to be opprest and trampled on at theit own wills and lustfull pleasures But happily you may here charge me to intrench and presse with the most on the Honour and Power of Kings I answer I honour them as Gods own Ordinance amongst other Powers and am commanded by the Apostle to make prayers and supplications for them all especially for Kings and great reason we all have so to do lest they devoure us alive but if they presume to break over those limits and boundaries which Almighty God hath set unto them as of those and what they are you may best instruct your felfe out of Deutronomy and Ezekiel where you shall finde the King to be tyed up to strict rules as to read the law and to observe it all the dayes of his life that his heart be not lifted up above his brethren and as the Prophet tels them take away your exactions from my people remove violence and spoyl and execute judgement and justice c. Vpon these considerations I hope you will not blame me though I have not made one amongst so many which have sided with our late King in raising of war against his people and their Representative neither in plundring and desolating the Kingdom which howsoever those exorbitances amongst other of his faults have been palliated with as much finenesse of wit as the art of man could possibly devise yet I beseech you let truth appear which with a little of your patience you may more fully understand and then happily you will adjudge him guilty of much more than hath beene yet vulgarly charged on his accompt in the mean time remember our blessed Saviours oracle That it is fit offences should be but woe to those which occasion them Excuse me then though I tell you that I know none more guilty of the occasion of all our barbarous and brutish wars bloodshed rapine and of the imminent danger and utter desolation which at present threatens and hangs over three late flourishing Kingdoms than he who ended his vexatious dayes at his own gates and she which had the Honour of his bed together with her which was the mother and of all the mischiefs which befell all the places wheresoever she made her abode But happily you may again reply that I speak as a loser and true and so may you and one hundred thousand more of poore innocent sufferers speake in the same sad dialect as having felt the fearfull effects of the perversity of one mans will who in the power of a moderate SOVERAIGNTY and the love of his people by whom and by this very Parliament so hatefull unto him never any King of England was more honoured beloved obeyed and more courted and when time was might have been what a just Prince would have desited and should I aske you what might he not have been had he either at first and long after this Parliament late downe yea and long after the Warre began complyed with them as great reason there was he should have done and not to have protected Delinquents neither to have sided with such as most treacherously deserted their trust but to have relyed as at first he promised on his faithfull Councell
the Parliament I presume you will acknowledg it for a manifast truth that none of his progenitors were or could have been greater it honour power wealth and in reputation at home and abroad but the truth was so powerfull a domination his inclinations had over any other reason than his owne that the wayes of the Parliament though never so relative to his owne honour justice profit and welfare of the Kingdom were so averse and contrary to his genius then rather to be controuled or suffer any reformation to have been accomplished by them either in the Church or State and his disordered government to be regulgted by their advice he would and did run the hazard of his owne ruine his Posterity and people And as allready I have shewed you t is a manifest truth that he tacitely had designed many years before this Parliament sate downe not only to quit himselfe of this Parliament but of all others and as power should enable him to invade the freedoms and liberties of the English Nation howsoever in these particulars amongst many other of his faults it is far otherwise attested in divers of his expresses as also protested in his late book be it his own or not the evidence of his own private letters and the observations on them will clear that doubt Where then I beseech you tell me should the subject have had any propriety which by time and degrees would not have been swallowed up in that vast gulf of a prerogative royall where into not one year before the Parliament sate down all that the subject had was in a faire way of ingulfing neither wonder at this for it is an infallible truth that most Kings affect their own ends and injustice oppression and commonly tyranny are faculties inherent to most of them very seldome to look back to the proper ends for which they are ordained of God to advance the good and welfare of their subjects but generally you shall find them only to seek the improvement of their own powers soveraignties yea often times without any sensibility that their people are composed of the same flesh and blood as themselves to make havoke of their lives and fortunes sometimes to maintaine their power pride prodigallity and luxury and that which is worse if worse may be to fullfill their perverse wills and lustfull pleasures in the beggering and slaughtering of millions of their subjects for proof whereof we need not go farre for examples the indeavours of our own Kings to inslave their subjects yeelds us plenty of presidents and the French to this day feel the yoke of slavery impos'd on them by Lews th' eleventh in taking away their Conventio de le Estates and reducing that Government to be at his own disposement neither was Ferdinando of Spaine quiet in minde untill he had quit himself of the Justice of Arragon a Court not unlike the Ephori amonst the Lacedemonians or our Parliaments in England and Scotland which limited their Kings and kept them within the bounds of moderation the Hollanders also have had lamentable experience of the Ambition of Philip the second who on the massacre of 100000 of the Natives endeavoured to take away their ancient Immunities and to invassalate the whole 17 Provinces under his absolute power a strange passion in princes when no power will content them but that of absolutenesse to be masters over their Subjects lives and Fortunes surely if there be any anallogy between Shepherds and Kings as no doubt there is our blessed Saviour tells us that bonus pastor ponit vitam pro ovibus the good Shepherd or King layes down his life for his people and not to expose theirs to fullfill his own lustfull pleasure a sad and lamentable president whereof we have all felt in our late King Charls But to proceed I would fain know what your aims are that moves you with such impetuonsnesse to revile the present Government since I cannot imagine what other cause you have but in your endeavour to bring in the new Crown'd King of Scots on the old score thereby to re-make your selves in the unmaking and invassalating the rest of the English Nation which duely considered as the posture of affairs with us now are is so senselesse in reference to the bettring of the peoples conditions as that it exceedeth all the Chimaera's of the old Romances and which you cannot expect may possibly be accomplished without the effusion of an infinity of more bloud and by the swords of the Scots and barbarous Irish excellent cohabitants for the English if you think on 't when as you know they are generally hated by both those Nations though probable it is that your imaginations prompt you to beleeve that all of your party shall assuredly rise with them though in the undoubted fall of the rest of the Nation and not unlikely you flatter your selves out of the old remote potential hope with the plunder of London as the onely magazine of wealth that will make you all abundantly rich though in this too you may misse of your aims unlesse at an instant you can change your native dialect and speak Scoth Presbytery and Irish Tanestry in a trice neither ought you to beleeve that the Citizens will stand still whilst you cut their throates But what a strange peece of poverty possesses your intellectualls to beleeve that in such a change and turne of Fortune as all of you so much desire an English man howsoever principled shall long enjoy either life liberty or estate otherwise than at the discretion of the Conquerour and when the King either or both those Nations and other forrainers shall come in upon us and Lord it over us in a far higher strain of Tyranny than ever the Danes exercised in that short time they were here masters over our Ancestors If you foresee not this misery and the fatall consequence which necessarily must follow such a turn of Fortune I must leave you to your own will and expectancy yet must I not forbear upon these considerations to commend unto your more serious thoughts what kind and race of Princes which with such zeale you endeavour to bring in to govern over the English Nation where I shall present you with a very formidable observation as you may find it in the History of the Scotish Kings and it is this that seven if not eight of the last Scotish Princes of the name and family of the Stuarts one onely excepted came all to their ends by violent deaths a fearfull fate if you please to observe it and some of them to make away one another as for instance Iames the first who for his Tyrannny was cut off by the Nobility the second was slain at Roxborough the third at Bonoxborn the fourth at Plowden field the last three in as needlesse quarrells as our late King Charts engaged first against his native Subjects the Scots and on the heels of that War against the English and their Representative onely
Iames the fifth had the fortune to dye of a naturall death but as to his onely Daughter Queen Mary and mother 〈◊〉 King Iames the sixt it is manifestly knowne that she caused Henry Lord Darnley her second Husband to be cruelly murthered and only to make way to her third Marriage with Earl Bothwell her Paramour whom the States banished and shortly after call'd her to accompt for her Husbands murther and for that fact and other conspiracies against the State by the Votes of the major part of the Peeres and Commons in Parliament she was adjudged to die whereupon she fled into England where contriving sundry plots with the Papists and the Duke of Norfolke against Queen Elizabeth and restlesse in her ambitious contrivements to dispossesse the Queen Regnant of the Crowne you know to what end she came at Fodringay where we may safely believe that Gods just judgments overtook her when she little dream't to have dyed at the block what since became of her only Sonne King Iames and his two sonnes Prince Henry and our last King Charls though the manner of the two first deathes are still held in dispute yet we all know to what a fatall end the last came even at his own Gates and in the same place where the first blood was spilt by his own servants the Cavaleers pardon me then If I present you with an opinion of my own which I am confident is an infallible verity that allmighty God in his justice suffers not any man to come to a prodigious end but for such sinnes by him committed as are equivalent to that sin for which he suffered it is Gods own Oracle an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth and he that kils by the Sword by the same weapon or the like he shal surely dye for a conclusion take this as a knowne truth to all the Nation that both the late Kings as they were naturall Scots very rarely loved an English man sure we are not the Nation in generall and that very seldome either of them admitted any of the English into their Bed-chambers for generally they were all Scots neither took they any of the English Buckingham excepted into their secrets and as their privadoes untill Strafford was taken into our last Kings favour but no otherwise than as a meer States-man and a bold instrument to act any thing conducible his Masters designs and such projects which were suitable to his endeavours and inclinations otherwise I never knew any that were fit servants for him and it is most certaine that both the Father and the Sonne laid more subtill and cunning snares to insnare the English Nation than all of the Norman race before them the Father to have laid the foundation and the Sonne to build up the whole fabrick of absolute Soveraignty as insensibly at first and from the beginning of their reigns as possibly their designs could permit but King Charls towards his last and long before the Warres began openly and shortly thereupon in hostility and with morter tempered with more English blood than ever hath been so wilfully and profusely spilt by any one Tyrant in the World and for what cause and on what grounds I beseech you tell me more than for the Nug◠and idle fictions of a divine prerogative and to rule alone without other Law than his owne Will and without accompt to any but to God alone they are both the Fathers and the Sonnes owne Maxims just Tyrant-like quod principi placuit legis habet vigorem and yet which is the mystery and the wonder of the times is this wilfull King cryed up by his many partizans for the onely paragon of Princes and that which is of more admiration his Protestations in the common belief preferred and credited before his visible actions and Cabinet Letters which if men were not besotted I am sure best of all other evidences layes open the most hidden secrets of the heart But it is most certaine that before and a long space after the battle at Edgehill he refused all overtures of Peace though t is confest he made many motions for Peace to the Parliament but ever no other than on such disadvantagious terms as were utterly unfit for the Parliaments embrasure and the Kingdomrs security for we find them evermore accompanied with such restrictions reservations and ambignous conditions howsoever gilded over with plausible pretences that the Parliament at length durst not either trust him or any of his specious Declarations as in the observations on the Reliquiae Carolinae are manifested for it is most true that as soon as he had attracted a very considerable Army to his assistance by his artifices and the severall visits and the orations he made to the respective Sheriffes and Gentry before and after the setting up of his Standerd of the Counties of Yorke Lincolne Nottingham Leicester Chester Stafford Denby Flint Salop Oxford and Berks wherein he neither spared any pains or travel or lost a minute of time both to deceive and win the people to his cause and 't is evident that he had not onely written his particular Letters to most of the prime Gentlemen of the Kingdome to side with him but had sent his peremptory commands to most of the Colonells of the Parliaments Army sent into Ireland for the assistance of the distressed Protestants to repair to his ayde against the Parliament a treachery and a testimony beyond all others of the falsenesse of his heart considered as hereafter it shall be made more apparent unto you with the seeming zeal and care he pretended to bear to those poor Irish Protestants It is worth your further observation that this most unfortunate Prince having so often accustomed himselfe to fraud and dissimulation that it came at last to this sad issue that all his after Messages and Overtures made to the Parliament in the declination of his power and after he was a Prisoner though happily more really intended than formerly and atested with exceeding specious plausible Protestations some of them confirmed with his wonted Imprecations were not beleeved but suspected for fallacious so long had this most unhappy King like the Flie that playes with the flame which comes in the end to burn himself out of his own fury such power had his will and naturall inclinations over his reason where you may take an instance or two in the way for a proofe thereof When he first raised his Army at York for which he endeavours to flam off the Parliament that those forces were onely raised as a guard for the security of his Person and to confirme this he caused divers of the Fugitive Lords then attending him shamefully to attest that he had no intent thereby to levy War against the Parliament when immediately thereupon he began to march and to run from place to place as before is noted to raise more force and that which is most perfidious after he had erected his Standard at Nottingham he continued
byassed as it became a Christian King But that you may further understand why the King so peremptorily stood to the upholding of Bishops and to keep the Militia in his own sole power for that 's the meaning of his not quitting the Sword which all the world knows to be no otherwise by the intent of the Lawes of the Land Reason and the Law of Nature an inseparable flower of the Crown than Fiduciary alwaies in reference to a trust given our Kings by Parliament out of confidence that it shall be used to no other intent or end than the defence of the Kingdom and not to be perverted against it as all the ancient and modern Statutes import both in their preambles and texts Cast your eyes on his own Directions to the Vxbridge Commissioners number 21. where you may evidently see that it was not so much the scruple of his Conscience and Coronation Oath as in relation to his own particular designes and interests viz. That as it is the Kings duty to protect the Church so it is the Churches to assist the King in the maintenance of his Authority wherefore my Predecessors have been alwaies carefull and especially since the Reformation to keep the dependency of the Clergy intirely on the Crown without which it will scarsely fit fast on his bead therefore you must do nothing to change this necessary dependance Observation Here you have the true reason wherfore the King so much insisted on the keeping up of Episcopacy and how likewise the cunning Gypsies the Bishops had instill'd it into his apprehension what sure cards they were to keep the Crown fast on his head as if the Crown and Myter had been such inseparables as that the one could not subsist without the other observe withall what a queint Aphorism they first coynd and broched it to King Iames viz. no Bishop no King and judge you whether no Porter no King had not been the better maxime when as it is perspicuous that most of our ancient Kings had no such Enemies as the Bishops witnesse Tho. Becket to Henry the second Lanfranke to Henry the first Roger of Salisbury to King Stephen Orleton to Edward the second with divers others which almost in every Reign opposed their Kings and addrest themselves to the Pope for their Palls and Investitures indeavouring in what possibly they could to free themselves from any dependancy on the Crown untill Henry the eighths time who first of all our Kings freed himself of that servitude which had beene so fatall to most of his Predecessors But look a little further and you shall finde in the Kings 19th Letter to the Queen on the same subject Febr. 25. 1645. from Oxford viz. Thou needs not doubt of the issue of this Treaty for my Commissioners are so well chosen though I say it that they will neither be thretned nor disputed from the grounds I have given them which upon my word is according to the little Note thou so well remembers and to this not only their obedience but judgements concur againe in the same Letter and be confident that in making peace I shall ever shew my constancy in adhering to Bishops and all our friends and shall not forget to put a short period to this perpetuall Parliament but as thou lovest me let none perswade thee to slacken thine assistance for him who is eternally thine Observation Here we have a true Character of this unfortunate Kings naturall obduracy and the aversenesse of his Genius to alter any of his resolutions which once fixt he would effect on any hazzard whatsoever the Earle of Strafferd who best of all others of his arbitrary Ministers had most studied his inclinations needed not to have cherished this humour of the Kings when as in the prosecution of the wars against the Scots 1639. he counsels the King in haec verba Lose all I had or carry all again you may here see how he had aforehand bound up his Commissioners with such instructions from whence they were not to stir or yeeld in a jot as likewise how mindfull he was of the little Note and punctually to observe it a very fine note of remembrances I beleeve had we the honour to have seen it and were we not all of us of the English Nation a happy people to see our King governed by the directions and documents of a woman a strong Papist and of the house of Medicis by the Mother a most Emperious and dangerous generation of women and fatal to all places wheresoever they came a wife its true she was but such a one as ruled and over-ruled that stiffenesse of his constellation and effected more with him than either himself could doe or the most inward of his Councell of State durst attempt and on one caveat of hers would rather adventure the loss of his Crown than not to shew his constancy in the upolding of a Myter you may remember how much pains he was at with the Divines at Newcastle and the Isle of Wight and what tenents he held in his dispute with them concerning Episcopacy and that Bishops were of a Divine and Apostolik Institution which is true in some sense as those were which were instituted by the Apostles but that our late Bishops as they stood here from before and after King Edwards Reformation that they should be taken in with those of St. Pauls making in the generall notion or latitude of Bishops without any distinction as if those Bishops of the Papisticall Church were of the selfe-same nature and of like ordination as those of the Primitive times seemes to me a paradox 'T is true that at the time of the Reformation the dispute grew high at the black-Fryers amongst the Commissioners themselves whether Episcopacy should remain as it then stood or to reduce it to the originall patterne of the primitive Church as Bishop Latimer Martin Bucer and Peter Martyr would have had it but Bishop Ridly and the rest of the Commissioners most of them Bishops as Sir Iohn Heywood in his first Copy of his History of Edward the sixt layes it down would by no means assent unto it the other three maintaining that Bishops as then they stood were no other than chips of the papisticall block and of no affinity with St. Pauls Titmothy's or Titus Bishops neither could they be of any conformity with the ancient and primitive institution but the meer excrescencies sprouting out of the exuberancy of the Papacy long after the defection and adulteration of the primitive Church which defection from the ancient purity began immediately after Gregory the Great and I am very confident that there are none of our late Bishops so impudent as to maintaine that either the Britain or Saxon Kings whatsoever is fabled of King Lucius ever erected any Episcopall Sees or admitted of any Bishops that came hither before Austin the Monk and such others after him as were merely spriggs of the papacy and that long after the adulteration
made Levies either against him or the Law more than his own lawlesse Will and that the Parliament made no sooner Levies than it became them to oppose his Levies raised against them and the known Laws of the Land and that notwithstanding all those specious and umbragious Messages sent to the Parliament for Peace and Accommodation tending to no other end than to rocke the Parliament asleep and by his then frequent placentias to lull them into a slack and negligent remissnes in raising defensive arms against his Forces whilst himself by protracting of time might attract such an Army as would inable him to overpower both the Parliament and whatsoever Forces were as he sayes then in their march against him which he had no sooner drawn together but out of his confidence to have beaten the Parliaments Army to peeces not eight dayes before Edgehill fight he not onely utterly refused their Petion which would have been presented to him by the mediation of the Earl of Dorset for he had a good space before refused all accommodation but sent Rupert to the Commissary Generall who was to deliver it to tell the Earl of Essex then at Worcester that he would not receive any more Petitions from him or any of the Parliament Rebels of them all A known truth to many yet living and some of them sitting at present in Parliament whereby it manifestly appears that all his former and many Missives under the umbrage of Peace were mere dalliances both to mock the Parliament and to cosen the people into a belief of his reality and good meaning when he meant nothing more than to bob the Parliament by cunning and secret fraud untill he might ruine them by plaine and open force and then to pursue those naturalized appetites and arbitrary designes of his which so long before he had cherished in his heart which neither his Honour Reason and his Conscience whereof so often he talks could prevail with him to disgorge untill their over-growth inforced him to an untimely vomit 'T is most true that they which look on the first face of things and heed only the outside of objects without an intentive eye on their in-sides are easily deceived but such as will narrowly looke into all his Expresses compared with his deeds shall doutlesse soon finde that this unhappy King was one of the deepest and boldest dissemblers of any one Prince which the last Century hath produced and I am prone to beleeve that he took too much of the patterne of Lews th' eleventh of France who was wont to say that he desired to leave his Sonne no other Learning than Qui nescit dissimulare nescit regnare he that knows not to dissemble knowes not how to play the King and it hath been feared and by those which wisht him well that he was too much verst in the principles of Machiavill having in his life time practised and since his death left behind him so many eevidences thereof that many of the best heads have been induced to beleve that he came not behind any of the ITALIAN Polititians of this age But to take all these his three Messages together considered by any discreet man as their purport tends to one and the selfesame end and the time when they were sent to the parliament all of them whilst he was most busie and sedulously studious how and where to raise Forces both at home and abroad and it evidently shews that his intent in all his specious overtures of peace were to no other end than to befool the People and Parliament which he then began to know would not be cosened as having had sufficient experience of him practise indeed he might as he failed not to continue to delude the vulgar beleef and to keep in with the people but he then found there was no good to be done on a Court of Parliament for he perceived they meant not further to trust him than they saw him and to have yeelded to a treaty circumscribed with such large conditions and so unequally ballanced as so admit of such as he should send to treat with them out of Parliament which not unlikely would have been of those that had both deserted the Parliament and falsified their faith which to have indempnified and all other Delinquents as had repaired unto his assistance otherwise no peace with him what effects could a Treaty produce so much upbraided by his party on the Parliament for refusing it other than mockery when himself knew as well as themselves that they would not yeeld unto such a motion neither himself goe lesse than to take off all the Delinquents with impunity against all reason law and the antient president of all former Parliaments that alone being the greatest breach of privilege that ever was offered to a Court of Parliament and such a destructive project to the essence and being of Parliaments as in the future took away all power and privilege from them and necessarily conferr'd it on his own usurped Prerogative his negative claim being no more and scarce so much to enable him to doe in the future as he listed when as every vulgar spirit knowes it for Law that the King cannot neither ever durst any of our Kings rescue one Prisoner at the Bar out of the hands of Justice in any of the inferiour Courts of the Kingdome 'T is true that Henry of Monmouth being a rude Prince though after a tollerable King came openly and with violence to the Kings Bench in Westminster Hall and rescued Poynes his Servant arraigned for robbing and taking away the Kings Treasure at the Bar but the story tells us that the Judges laid the Prince by the heels for his pains and his Father the King thankt them for it much lesse then that this King should presume to rescue so many viperous Delinquents out of the justice of the great Judicature of the Nation which all of common reading know have acted sundry times in such a power as to depose severall of his Ancestors for their Tyrannies and hanged many of their chiefe Instruments Presidents which with good reason he might have more timely remembred and not have stood with his Sword in his hand to inforce so unjust senslesse and unreasonable a Proposition for a Treaty Observations on the Kings Pourtracture THe Kings Book which hath flown abroad and throughout the Kingdom as it were between the wings of Mercury and hath so much taken in the opinion of the vulgar beliefe and esteemed to be such an impregnable rampier incirculating his innocency that it hath been thought not assaultable I confesse at the first sight thereof it took for a while as his protestations formerly had done in many apprehensions but on a second consideration of the title The Kings Image with the dresse that is bestowed upon his Effigies in a posture of devotion in imitation of David in his ejaculations to Heaven surely I could not beleeve that such a peece of vanity was of the Kings designment
our blessed Saviours own oracle Mat. 12. 2. For there is nothing covered that shall not be revealed neither hid which shall not be knowne God knowes and so may you on your better consideration that I have made use of nothing but authentick authority or took up any passage on bare trust neither with the least intention to injure the memory of him who is at rest but only in vindication and manifestation of truth and to make that more visibly knowne to you which long since hath not been unknowne to many which happily if they would might speak more and that as this most unfortunate Prince was of all others most his owne enemy so had providence decreed it that he should be most injurious to his friends a most implacable enemy to Parliaments and utterly averse to all partnership in government other than Hers which was the principall instrument of his ruine the undoing of his posterity and the lamentable destruction of three flourishing Kingdoms As to the present Government and change of the Royalty or any other of your impetuous exclamations with the exceptions you take to the present Form different from the forms of ancient Parliament and as it was so lately altered without King Lords and the major part of the excluded Commons and that those which now sit at Westminster are no other than usurped powers acting in Tyranny as all of your party spares not to belch out both in private and publick I shall instantly give you both a short and satisfactory answer to every of them and first to the Government which you know to be gotten by Conquest and as heretofore I have told you by the same weapon wherewith the King intended to make it absolutely Monarchicall and A la Francoys As to the difference between the old and this new Form of Parliament I answer that the King himself was the first projector both in lessening altering and laming of the Parliament witnesse his taking into his Councell of State the Earles of Hartford Essex Bath the Lords Say St. Maur Falkland and Culpepper all of them known to be the most noted Common-wealths men of both Houses within two moneths of the Parliaments sitting down and within one year after to corrupt neer the moity of the Members of both Houses to make up his Mungrel Parliament at Oxford of set purpose to confuse and ruine all Parliaments by themselves As to the late purging of the Houses it is acknowledged that in the midst of such a confusion as was both raised cherished and fomented by the King himself and the Malignant party it was done by the power of the Army and as I take it on this ground that the major part of both Houses voted for the readmittance of the King on such condition which himself refused which the lesser and more foreseeing part well understood would in the end come to no other issue than the setting him up into his old power so to enable him a new to embroyle the Kingdomes having so long before engaged the Prince in his Quarrell and disciplin'd him in his designes in so much as no other hopes were then left the Parliament but either a perpetuating of the War and more bloodshed or the invassalage of the Nation which necessarily would be the consequence on the admittance either of the Father or the Sonne upon these grounds 't is confest that the Soldiery ended the controversie in assisting the weaker party in Parliament though doubtlesse the more able in judgement and foresight of the future evills and calamities which in all probability might and would befall the Nation which to prevent on the evidence of the Kings obstinacy it was resolved to remove the Effects by taking away the Cause in calling the principall Author of all the former bloodshed to his publick tryall to stop which issue it was farther resolved to cut him off together with his whole posterity and to cast that pilot overboard that not more out of ignorance than wilfulnesse would obstinately have sunke the Ship of the Publick in the vast Ocean of his Prerogative had it not been timely rescued and warp't into the safe Harbour of a Republick and in change the Regall Government into a Commonwealth as you now see it established by power and by the same power probable it is they will uphold it which as it is commonly conceived was the true state and managery of that businesse Where you may observe it as a very remarkeable event that even the major part of of both Houses which had stood so constant to the trust of their Countries to the very Vote of No more Addresses and were inclined to readmit the King as we may beleeve by Gods just judgement were taken away by force as the King himselfe by fraud had long before drawne away so many of the Members purposly to lame and weaken all Parliaments in the future Sir These are passages of a very transcendant nature and too high for our understanding and we know Gods ways and works are unsearchable yet as the Wise man tells us There is nothing new under the Sun and is there any thing whereof it may be said see this is new it hath been already fold time and was before us howsoever when you have spoken the worst you can of those which now sit in Parliament you cannot deny but the most of them are of the old legall Electron and the relicts of the old Form they which have been the cause of the maiming or lessening the number and quality of the old Form you may thanke them for it and not blame those that remaine faithfull to their trust for some kinde of Government the people must have and you evidently see that God hath given them both Courage to stand fast to the last and power to enable them to act as they do which as heretofore I have told you wil either bend you to obedience or breake you in your resistance As to the Injustice wherewith you charge them and the Tyranny you so much exclaim against I take not upon me to be so much their Champion as to defend every of their actions or any Injustice of which not unlikely some of them may be guilty for where power is invested faults there may be and foule ones too yet this much may be said in their defence that those of known integrity fail not to look into the demeanour of the faul ty and by severe punishment to make them examples of Justice I shall say no more but that should they faile in doing righteousnesse Judgement stands at their owne doores and the same God which gave them the power they now have will as soon devest them of it as he bequeathed it unto them and Samuel will tell them If you doe wickedly you shall be consumed both you and your King Now Sir for a close I shall onely tell you that it sufficeth me and all sober spirits that having thus long lived free from bloodshed and plunder under this Government which so lately under the Kingly power the whole Nation felt to their great grief and sorrow it behoves us then that we all rest content with Gods good will and pleasure and leave this great change to him as a worke of his own which I may say with Gamaliel If it be not of God it will surely fall but if from him he will establish it in spite of all those which shall withstand it t is most true that the Contributions and Taxes which you urge to be Tyrannically imposed on the whole Nation are very heavy to which I have already given you an answer viz. that we may all thanke your party for it that they are not onely continued but increast through your partyes onely means which cease not by their assiduall plots to disturbe the present peace and Government to their owne losse and grief of such as would willingly bear the burthen so they might enjoy their peace and quietnesse as having learned the sweetnesse of that old Addage defend me and spend mâ— In a word more I shall advise you in particular to rest content with that Government which Providence hath allotted us under which you may as yet live both secure and plentifull if you please dispose your self therefore to yeeld that Obedience which becomes all those that love the publick and their own domestick peace If not I feare me you will kicke against the pricks hurt if not utterly ruine your self and Family as many thousands of perverse Fools have done and fail not to remember that there is a Court of Iustice that spares none which shall disturbe the publick peace and that Government which we may safely beleeve God hath and will establish This is the Counsell of him who really hath a care of your preservation and so rests Your well-wishing Friend if you so please to esteem him Loe this is the man that made not God his strength but trusted in the abundance of his riches and strengthned himselfe in his wickednesse P. 52. 7. The words of his mouth were smoother than Butter but War was in his heart his words were softer than oyle yet were they drawn Swords Psalm 55. 21. But thou O Lord shalt bring them downe into the pit of destruction bloody and deceitfull men shall not live out halfe their dayes verse 23. FINIS * Balzack Sir Walter Raleigh * Barclay adver Monarch lib. 3. cap. 8. * Grotius de jure belli pacis lib. 1. cap. 4. * The Earl of STRAFFORD * â—1 Kings 11. 4 5 6 7. * Mountague * Vide the Juncto * Sir John Broke Sir Ralph Hopton Mr. Partridge and Mr. Green were of that Committee * Rom. â—â— * 1 Sam. 8. 3 4 5. * Rom. 13 4. * Deut. 17 19. Ezek. 45. 9 46. 18. â— * Deut. 17 19. Ezek. 45. 9 46. 18. â— * Vide the Juncto quinto Maij 1649 * The first copy was supprest expunged by the Bishops and the old Knight committed by K. JAMES to the Tower by the instigation of the Prelates * The Militia * Sir Rob. Cotton in the life of H. 3. * Psal. 28 Proverbs 28. 13. * The Earl of Strafford * Eccl. â— 9. 10. * 1 Sam. 1â— 15.
the same straine utterly denying and protesting that he had not then any manner of intent thereby to wage war with his Parliament as hereafter you shall more plainly see a strange delusion to flatter himself in dancing unseen in a net and that that he should not onely be able to deceive the People by his Protestations but to delude and cosen a Court of Parliament out of their understanding as you may see this verified in his owne Expresses sent to the Parliament from Nottingham and what a strange trick would he have put on the Parliament when from Yorke he sent them a Message that he had taken a resolution to go in person into Ireland to chastise those Rebels and to that purpose had determined to raise 2000 Foot and 200 Horse in and about the County of Chester for a guard to his person and to flatter himself with such a senseless device to delude the Parliament as if they understood him no better than to beleeve his designe to be reall when they perceived his drift was First to raise here a considerable force then to joyn with the Irish Army there and in the end to turn all his power on the Parliament It would be too wearisome to me to recount all the perfidious practices of this most unhappy Prince and too tedious to your selfe to read them I shall therefore for the present conclude and referre you to the animadversions and observations on the contrarity between his publick protestations and private Letters which you shall God willing receive very shortly and wherein I doubt not but that you will find so much fraud deceit and dissimulation of this King as will amaze you and turn the strong tyde of your belief hitherto poysoned with flams and such subterfuges as may shame any rationall man to be so long cosened and deluded by them No more Sir at present but that I desire and wish you to beleeve no otherwise of that which I have sent you than in your judgement you shall find suitable to truth and that as you shall see just cause to esteeme me as I am your well wishing friend Animadversions or Observations on the strange contrariety between the late Kings Declarations Missives Protestations Imprecations sent at severall times to the Parliament and his Pourtraicture compared with his own Letters taken at Naseby and some other of his Expresses not yet taken into publike Observation SIR I Have now sent you by your servant those observations which I promised you supposing that they will come to your hands so seasonably as to help to convince you that neither the Parliament began the late wars or that there could be any designe or plot laid of I know not how many years standing either of a factious party amongst them to disturbe the peace of the Kingdom take away the Kings life and his posterity or to alter the Government but that whatsoever hath fallen out since the sitting down of this Parliament hath been enforced by the King himself and by a concurrency of sundry causes arising from his own willfull inclinations the sins of the Nation and Gods speciall hand therein as a fearfull punishment upon us all If you think otherwise and that you shall persist in your errours I doubt not but these Observations will more clearly manifest unto you that the King was in all this tragicall contest both his own enemy and no such innocent Martyr as your party conceives him to have been and of this let his own actions and his private Letters speak and I shall be silent whose principall endeavour hath been no other than to give you satisfaction on your own provocation and that truth may appear to all those whom it concerns besides your self and first to the Observations on the Treaties for Peace after the War began The first overture for peace after the War began was without all question of the Parliaments at Colebrook which how it was accepted of by the King and on the nick thereof pursued by the drawing up of his Army in a mist the slaughter at Brayuford best shews out what was the Kings meaning which how he labours to defend it in some of his Expresses yet without doubt if it were not perfidious yet very suspicious of no fair meaning sure it was very retrograde to the procuring of a peace otherwise than as himself meant to have it by force The next overture for an accomodation was likewise of the Parliaments first motion and agreed upon to be at Oxford a place as inauspicious for treaties as Parliaments for it came to no other issue than to signifie nothing a game wherein the King was wel vers'd a proof whereof amongst many you may find in his eighth Letter to the Queen Jan. 3. 1644. from Oxford viz. The Portugall Agent hath made me two Propositions First concerning the reliase of his Masters brother for which I shall haeve 50000 l. if I can procure his Liberty from the King of Spain the other is for a marriage betwixt my Son Charles and his Masters eldest Daughter for the first I have freely undertaken to doe what I can and for the other I will give such an Answer as shall signifie nothing Observation Here you may first evidently see what a fine juggler the King was grown and into what a streight hee had driven himself to become a broker for money and instead of Friendship to a King to whose Agent in others of his Letters to the Queen he acknowledgeth himself to be more beholding for the transport of his Letters than to the French Embassadour and then as to the motion of marriage to juggle him out with an answer which should signifie nothing judge you whether it would not have been more Kingly to have dealt more plainly with the Agent and to have told him that he liked not the motion on reasons best known to himselfe than to have flam'd him off with a significavit rather of an affront than friendship The third motion for peace was also of the Parliaments first overture and tendred to the King at Oxford and agreed upon to be at Vxbridge where how that likewise was aforehand ordered and his Commissioners tyed up to his will and to the wrack of his own Instructions from which they were not on any conditions to recede is made very clear in the Postscript of his Letter to the Queen number 5th January 19. 1644. from Oxford viz. And be confident that I will not quit Episcopacy nor that Sword which God hath given into my hands Observation If the Quaere here should be made whether God had so absolutely given the power of the Sword into his hands as at his own will and pleasure to unsheath it against his own subjects and the Representative of the Kingdome whom by his Coronation Oath he was obliged to defend and protect doubtlesse no man is so madd to believe that the Kings resolutions in using it as he did to their destruction were so religiously