in his first Speech to his Privy-Council an hour after his Brother's Death printed by his own Command in these Words My Lords before I enter on any other I think fit to say something to you since it has pleased Almighty God to place me in this Station and I 'm now to succeed to so good and gracious a King as well as so very kind a Brother I think fit to declare to you That I will endeavour to follow his Example and most especially in that of his great Clemency and Tenderness to his People I have been reported to be a Man for Arbitrary Power but that is not the only thing that has been said of me And I shal endeavour to preserve this Government both in Church and State as it is now by Law established I know the Principle of the Church of England is for Monarchy and the Members thereof have shown themselves good and loyal Subjects therefore I shall always take care to defend and support it I know the Laws of England are sufficient to make the King as great a Monarch as I can wish And as I shal never depart from the just Rights and Prerogatives of the Crown so I shal never invade any Man's Property He that can reconcile this Speech with King James his after-Actings is the fittest Person I know to explain the Popish Notion of our Saviour's Body being in a thousand distinct Places at once In these Expressions he takes it very unkindly to have been reported a Man for Arbitrary Power and promises a great many things that are contradictory to it but how well he deserved the Character all his Conduct has made it appear with a Witness We have one of the most remarkable instances of King James's being against Arbitrary Power in this Declaration of the 12th of February 1686 / 7 for a Toleration in Scotland where we find these new coin'd Words thrice made use of Our Absolute Power with this addition Which all our Subjects are to obey without Reserve Now Absolute in its natural Signification importing the being without all ties and restraints then the true meaning of this seems to be That there is an inherent Power in the King which can neither be restrained by Laws Promises nor Oaths for nothing less than being free from all these renders a Power Absolute Though the Term Absolute was enough to stretch our Allegiance yet that which comes after is yet a step of an higher Nature tho' one can hardly imagine what can go beyond Absolute Power and 't is in these Words which all our Subjects are to obey without Reserve This in indeed the carrying Obedience many degrees beyond what the Grand Seignior yet ever claimed for the most despotick Princes in the World before Lewis le Grand's time thought it enough to oblige their Subjects to submit to their Power and to bear whatever they thought fit to impose upon them But till the fatal Days of the Dragoon Conversions it was never so much as pretended that Subjects were bound to obey their Princes without Reserve and to be of his Religion because he would have it so the only convincing Argument used by these booted Apostles of late So without doubt this Qualification of the Duty of Subjects was industriously put in here by King James his Jesuitick Counsels to prepare the Protestants of Scotland for a terrible Le Roy le vent since the poor Pretensions of the Conscience Honour Religion and Reason would have been reckoned as Reserves upon their Obedience which were all by the Expressions shut out Before I leave this Paramount Instance of King James's assuming to himself an Arbitrary Power beyond what the Great Turk claims and contrary to his own reiterated promises I must take notice of another very comprehensive expression in that same Declaration for a Toleration in Scotland and it 's this ' We think fit to declare That we will not suffer Violence to be offered to any Man's Conscience nor will we use force or INVINCIBLE NECESSITY upon any Man on the account of his Perswasion nor the Protestant Religion ' When I first read these Words I easily perceiv'd what caution was used in the choice of them for it is clear the general Words of Violence and Force are to be explained and determined by these last of INVINCIBLE NECESSITY So that King James very wisely promised only to lay no invincible Necessity on his Subjects but for all Necessities that were not Invincible they might expect to have felt a large share of them For Disgraces want of Imployment Finings Imprisonments and even Death it self are all Vincible things to a Man of a firmness of Mind yea the Violence of Torture the Furies of Dragoons and the Precedents used of late in France might have been fairly included within this Promise since a great and sublime Soul fortified with an extraordinary measure of Grace might be able to support under them Now since we have had so many experiences of King James's faithfulness to his Promises before he abandoned the Government I pray what Arguments has he of late given us that he will be more observing of his Word than hitherto he has been Sure the reducing Hereticks to the See of Rome is no less Meritorious than before nor King James by breathing a little of the French Air and concerting Measures with Lewis the Fourteenth become less Bigot King James concludes his Declaration with assuring all his pretended Subjects That if within twenty days after his appearing in person within England they return to their Obedience by deserting his Enemies and joining with him he will grant them his full pardon and all past miscarriages shall be forgot This merits no other Answer but what has been already said Only this he must have the worst Opinion of the frailty of Humane Nature that can be brought to believe That any Man not altogether divested of his Reason can be prevailed with to join King James though he were in England except he be of that Religion that obliges him to assist a Prince that sets up so fairly for the Glorious Title of the Extirpator of Heresie and to venture all upon the uncertainty of seeing their Church Triumphant And if there be any of the Protestant Perswasion so strangely infatuated as but to wish his Return I shall entertain them with no other Answer but the recommending to them that place of Holy Writ Preached upon before the House of Commons of late by an eminent Divine Ezra 9. ch v. 13.14 ' And after all that is come upon us for our evil deeds and for our great trespass seing that thou our God hast punished us less than our Iniquities deserve and haft given us such a Deliverance as this Should we again break thy Commandments and joyn in affinity with the People of these abominations would'st not thou be angry with us till thou hadst consumed us so that there should be no remnant nor escaping Printed at London and Re-Printed at Edinburgh 1689.
though to amuse the Nation He allowed them the empty Names of Privy Counselors He had not brought three Kingdoms to the brink of Ruine nor upon Himself so hard a fate Yet I must acknowledge some part of the obligation we have to these Gentlemen that of late had the sole conduct of King JAMES His Affairs For in giving Him such Counsels as his greatest Enemies could have wish'd Him they prov'd the occasion of our being at this day happy under the Auspicious Reign of their Majesties being Princes of the same Religion and Interests with Their People And we may justly say as Themistocles of old we had undoubtedly perish'd if we had not perish'd How little is King James oblig'd to His Secretary that penn'd this Deelaration since he so foolishly rakes up the Remembrance of those things that made Him and His Government odious to the World by the names of Calumnies and Stories which it was so much His Master's Interest to bury in silence Good God! Were the late palpable and barefac'd Incroachments upon the Fundamental Laws of the Nation but Calumnies Were the open Violations of Solemn Oaths Promises and Ingagements but Stories Does King James or His French and Irish Councellors imagine that we have so soon forgot His Promises made in Council not many hours after His Brother's Death and his compicuous Breaches of them not many months thereafter Can we allow our selves to forget that all the Trusts both in Court Bench and the Army were filled up with these very Men whom Reiterated Laws had rendred incapable of them Was a Person 's sitting at the Council board whose very being found in England was death by the Law but a meer Calumny Can a few months be able to obliterate the Memory of that Affair of Megdalen Colledge one of the most open Invasions of Property that could be Have we lost the Remembrance of that Illegal Ecclesiastical Court and the Tyrannick Judgments past therein Have we not seen a Reverend Prelat suspended from his Function meerly because he would not do what he could not that is for not condemning a man unheard Have not we seen seven of the Spiritual Peers of England sent prisoners to the Tower and brought as Criminals to the Bar for barely representing the Reasons why they could not obey an Arbitrary Command contrary to their Conscience Both England and our Neighbouring Nation have too many Reasons to remember the Late King James's assuming to himself an Arbitrary and Despotick Power not only to dispence with Laws and the firmest Constitutions but to act diametrically opposite to them Can King James's Oratory perswade us That the continuing to Levy the Customs and additional Excise which had been only granted during the Late King Charles's Life before the Parliament could meet to renew this Grant was but a Calumny Was the strange Essay of Mahometan Government acted at Taunton and Lyme and the no less strange Proceedings of that Bloody Chief Justice in his Western Circuit justly term'd his Champaign for it was an open Hostility to all Law for which and the like Services he had the reward of the Great Seal were they all but Stories We have too good Reason not to forget the many Violences committed by the Soldiers of a standing Army in most Parts of England and Scotland which are the most severe and insupportable Invasisions of Property These and such like with a great many more were the things that render'd King James's Government Justly Odious to the British world and made these three Kingdoms groan after Liberty If so grave and tragick a Subject could allow it I could be almost tempted to laugh at that Expression in the Declaration of his Enemies not daring to attempt the proving these Charges to the World which is all one as if a Man in the severest fit of the Gout should be desir'd to prove that he is so when the Sense of the Pain proves too sad a remembrancer of his Distemper And indeed this part of King James's Declaration merits no other answer than that of the Philosopher to him who deny'd motion When making a step up and down the Room he vouchsafed him no other Refutation of his Ridiculous Assertion than these two words hiene Motus In fine It will be equally impossible to perswade the World that these Actions that tender'd King James's Government Odious to the world were but Calumnies and Stories as to perswade a Man upon the Rack that he feels no pain How unluckily have the Penners of his Declaration stumbled upon that Expression of his Enemies not caring what Slavery they reduce the Kingdoms to Quis tulerit Gracchâ—s That King James had in a great measure enslav'd these Nations and was upon the Ripening his designs in Conjunction with Lewis the 14th to teach us a French kind of Subjection has appear'd in legible Characters by the whole Scheme of his Actings But since his present Majesties Accession to the Throne there is not the least footstep of Slavery left us we are blest with a King that takes the Advice of his Parliament and owns to distinct Interest from that of his People a Prince who to deliver us from Popery and Slavery has ventur'd his All and who by his Conduct at home and his Allies abroad is capable to render us happy If our own Divisions and Folly do not precipitate us into an inevitable and unpitied Ruin. In the next place King James tells us That since his Arrival in Ireland the Defence of his Protestant Subjects as he calls them their Religion Priviledges and Properties is especially his care with the Recovery of his own Rights And to this end he has preferr'd such of them of whose Loyalty and affection he is satisfied to places both of the highest Honour and Trust about his Person as well as in his Army The Reading of these Lines puts me in mind of the parallel so exactly observ'd betwixt the French King and King James in all their Conduct and particularly in both their way of asserting the calm Methods used by them towards their Protestant Subjects When that Common Enemy of the Christian part of Europe as the present Pope was pleased to call him had outdone all the Nero's and Julian's of old in the Art of Persecution and had render'd himself abominated to the World by the Cruelties committed by his Dragoon Missioners upon those very people that had done him the best Offices and preserved the Crown upon his Head in this Minority yet at the very same time Lewis the 14th and his Ministers have had the Impudence to affirm That no other Methods were us'd to Convert these poor Victims but those of fair Persuasion and Calmness Just so King James that he may follow as near his Copy as possible having since his Arrival in Ireland abandoned the Protestants of that Countrey to the Merciless Rage of an Enemy irreconcilable from both a principle of Religion and Civil Interest who within his view had laid desolate
But here we have another Testimony of King James's Care of the Protestants in his turning out of all places in the Army those of that persuasion to make room for others of his own Religion It was the policy of all Nations to keep the people they had conquer'd in as great ignorance of the Art of War as possible lest some time or other they might shake off their Yoke by a vigorous Rebellion But King James inclin'd to take other measures and be at the greatest pains to teach an indocible Nation the use of Arms that they might learn in due time to shake off the English Government As to the other part of the above-mentioned Assertion That he had advanced several of the Protestants in Ireland to places both of the highest Honour and Trust about his person as well as in his Army To pass a just Judgment upon his Assertion we need only consider what sort of persons are at present about King James both in Civil and Military Capacities and we shall find it hard to meet with one single person of the Protestant persuasion in the number I could heartily wish that all King James his Actions could as easily admit an excuse as this For the Authority assum'd upon Him by Monsieur d' Avaux and his other French Guardians puts it almost beyond his power to employ English Roman Catholicks far less English Protestants At the Council-board we find none of the Protestants The Offices of Lord Lieutenant Chancellor Privy Seal Secretary of State Commissioners of the Treasury Lord Chief Justice Sollicitor General Attorney General and all the places of the Long Robe are enjoy'd by Roman Catholicks As to Military Capacities there is not one single Garison Fort nor Castle within the whole Kingdom except London-derry and Iniskilling but are fill'd up with both popish Governors Officers and Soldiers In the Army all the Field Officers are either French or Native Irish of the same Religion Yea the French's absoluteness both at the Council-Board and the Army has of late given the greatest Jealousie and Discontentment to some that have done King James the best service In the end of this first paragraph we are told That King James ly granting his Royal protection to such whose minds were shaken by the Arts of his Rebellious Subjects has dispell'd their apprehensions and effectually secured them against the attempts even of their private Enemies And then adds His Ears have been always open to their just Complaints And so far has his Royal Mercy been extended to those that were in Arms against him that he has actually pardoned several hundreds of them and most notorious Criminals are kept in an easie Confinement In reading this period I find King James would Impose upon our Belief and Senses something as much contradictory to it left as Transubstantiation and the one as hard to be digested as the other The Church of Rome tells us magisterially That albeit our Seeing Feeling Smeling and Taste combine together to assure us that the Bread and Wine is really such yet we must not give credit to these fallible Senses of ours but take it upon trust from the Church That what our Senses tell us to be Bread and Wine is quite another thing and that there is nothing there left of any such Elements after once the priest has mumbled over the three Words Thus King James having long accustomed himself to an Arbitrary power over our persons and properties when King He cannot refrain from venturing an Essay of it upon our Reasons and Senses even when he is laid aside For albeit out Senses are continually entertained with hundreds of Objects that bear in upon our Reason a certain perswasion that the poor protestants of Ireland are every day flying away from that Countrey at any rate to avoid the many Barbarities exercised upon them and that that Kingdom is become the Scene of Misery and Dissolution yet King James would have us wisely lay aside these mean helps of Sense and Reason and take it upon his bate Word that there is no such thing which I think very few will be inclinable to do If what is asserted upon this Subject be true and consequently our Senses and Reason so strangely beguiled It necessarly behoves us to pass no milder Judgment upon those Noblemen Bishops Gentlemen and persons of all ranks that have left their Countrey since King James's arrival there but that they are quite out of their wits For what better Name can be given to persons that have left their Countrey Estates and Employments to become here the greatest objects of Charity when not only they might have been safe at home but secured against the attempts of their private Enemies In this Word private Enemies we are obliged to King James's Secretary whether our of Ignorance or Design I know not for a fairly insinuated distinction of the Protestants in Ireland their private and publick Enemies We know that all Roman Catholicks are tyed by the Dictats of their Church to be Enemies to protestants and to extirpate them when it comes in their power And this as flowing from a publick Interest of Religion may justly be termed a publick Enmity But the Natives of Ireland over and above that publick quarrel of Religion have a private one of Revenge for recovering from the Protestants their Lands acquired by the Sword and no age has passed since the Conquest of Ireland but what has afforded bloody proofs of the revengful Spirit of that people upon this score If free quartering plundering robbing disarming seizing on Estates imprisoning murdering in cold Blood and the likâ— be a securing these poor Protestants against their private Enemies they have no reason to complain of King James his conduct But alas to be ruin'd and in the mean time to see the Authors of it boldly affirm that they do us all the Offices of kindness is the hardest of Fates I would fain know where are these hundreds that he has pardoned for those that flee every day from that unhappy Countrey cannot instance us a single one of them And for these that are kept in such easie Confinements their condition of all men is most deplorable seing they ly at the Mercy of an Enemy that waits but for a favourable juncture to Sacrifice them to their Revenge What sort of securing the Protestants of Ireland meet with against their private Enemies and what is the ordinary effect of protections given to these poor credulous people will appear by this one instruce among thousands of others of a protection given to a Farmer in the County of Antrâ—m in these Words I Richard Hamilton Lieutenant-General of his Majesties Forces in Uâ—ster do hereby receive into his Majesties protection the Body and Goods of James Hunter of Bully menach in the County of Antrim Yeoman and do promise and oblige my self that none of the Army shall molest and hurt him or take any thing from him Given c. The poor protected Man thus
â—â—oos'd returns of his House and follows his labour but anone down comes upon him the Rabble of the Army like an inundation of Goths and Vandals sweep all before them and leaves nothing behind them but a starving Family The wretched man making his address to Hamilton received this cold answer I promised to protect you from the Army but I have no power to restrain the Rabble In the beginning of the second Paragraph we are told of the Care King James has taken of the Church of England that they be not disturbed in the exercise of their Religion and possession of their Benefices and that all Protestant Dissenters enjoy Liberty of their Consciences without the least molestation And out of his Royal Care for the prosperity of his People as he calls them he has recommended to his Parliament as the first thing necessary to be dispatched to settle such a security and Liberty both in Spiritual and Temporal Matters as may put an end to these Divisions which have been the source of all their Miseries being resolved as much as in him lies to entail Liberty and Happiness on his People so far as to put it out of the power of his Successors to invade the one or revenge the other And this he takes God to witness was always his design The first part of this long period is but a repetition of what had been formerly said in the first Paragraph of the Protestants their Religion Priviledges and Properties being his chief Care and what truth that can bear we have shewed already There is one thing that I find King James was ever inclinable to value himself upon and which he here likewise mentions I mean his tenderness to Protestant Dissenters and his Principle for Liberty of Conscience They are very thick sighted that could not discern what lay at the bottom of this Liberty and what could be the true motive that should have induced one of King James's Religion to do it But because he has been at the pains so often during his Reign to assure us That it was his Opinion Conscience should not be constrained nor People forced in Matters of Religion and particularly in his Declaration for Liberty of Conscience dated August 4. 1687. I 'll beg leave to say That in this King James is no obedient Son of the Church of Rome for it has over and over again decreed the extirpation of Hereticks It encourages Princes to it by the offer of the Pardon of their Sins It threatens them to it by denouncing to them not only the Judgments of God but that which is often more sensible the loss of their Dominions It 's true Bellarmine tells us The Church does not always execute her power of deposing Heretical Princes though she always retains it and he gives a very good reason for it because she is not at all times in a capacity to put it in Execution So the very same Reason might have made it unadviseable to King James when he was so liberal of his Tolerations to extirpate Heresie because it could not be then easily done But we see the Right remains intire and is put in execution in such an unrelenting manner in our neighbouring Countries that it has a very Grace to see any Member of that Church pretend to be against constraining the Conscience in point of Religion And when we consider that neither the Policy and true Interest of France nor the greatness of their Monarch could withstand these bloody Counsels that are indeed parts of that Religion I could never see any reason to induce us to believe that the late Tolerations of Religion were proposed with any other design but either to divide the Protestants among themselves or to lay them asleep till it was time to give the alarm for destroying them And that in the Opinion of that Church the Glory of extirpating Heresie is valued above all other great Actions we have a remarkable instance in that famous Harrangue made by the Bishop of Violence to the French King in the Name of the Convention of the French Clergy at St. Germans in June 1684 where that Prelate having recounted the innumerable Conversions made by the Kings Orders Cares and Liberalities to use his very Words he subsumes thus Je bien même que chercherois vainement dans les sicoles passés que l'appulerois vainement a mon secours touts les eloges des pâ—â—miers des plus saints Empereurs It were says he in vain to search into the Ages past It were in vain to call to my assistance all the Panegyricks of the first and holiest of the Emperours And afterwards he treats him with the Title of the Great Restorer of the Faith and extirpator of Heresie and tells him that these infinitely surmount all his other glorious Titles And then speaking of his Masters great Victories in Germany Flanders c. and the Peace of Nimiguen made upon the back of them he concludes thus That the Fruit which the King had received by that Peace made it fully apparent what was the principal end he aimed at in the Victories meaning the Extirpation of Hereticks The late King James has always copied so fair after Lewis le Grand That we have no Reason to question but in this so glorious a work of extirpating Heresie it would have come up to the Original if his Designs and a favourable juncture of time had concurr'd together When he tells us That the first thing he has recommended to his Parliament is to settle such a Security and Liberty as may put an end to these Divisions which have been the source of all our Miseries I find the greatest exactness of Truth in these Words if we but take them in the sence and meaning of the Speaker viz. a Roman Catholick Prince For albeit we all know that the first thing recommended by King James to his Irish Parliament was The Repealing the Act of Settlement which is indeed the Great Charter by which most of the Protestants enjoy their Estates And tho' the destroying that Act gives a mortal blow to the Protestant Interest in Ireland yet according to the native Principles of King James his Religion the repealing of this Act of Settlement may well be called The setling a Security that may put an end to their Divisions which has been the source of all our Miseries That is to say King James from a Principle of Religion is resolved to remove that Barrier that protects the Protestants in Ireland in their Separation from the Church of Rome That by its removal he may be in a capacity conform to the Holy Dictates of that Church and the laudable Example of Lewis XIV to put an end to all Divisions in point of Religion by forcing them to return to the Mother Church by the calm Methods of late so happily used in France And this I am very inclinable to believe he may with a safe Conscience take God to Witness was always his Design I am