THE CHARACTER OF A Jacobite By what Name or Title soever Dignifyed or Distinguish'd Written by a Person of Quality Licuit semperque licebit Parcere Personis dicere de vitiis Luc. Conscius ipse sibi de se putat omnia dici Cato LONDON Printed for the Author 1690. THE CHARACTER OF A Jacobite c. JAcobites in general are a sort of Animals sprung from the Corruption of King James's Evil Government and carry two shapes in one Body like a Centaur or the Irish Virgin with a Fish in her tail half Protestant half Papist If they are of the Temporal Nobility they believe the Glitter of their Honour to be only the Reflection of King James's Favour and that the Rays of their Grandeur cannot shine with that lustre as they ought unless like Glow-worms Tails they may be permitted to glister in the dark of Popery and Tyranny They are the Mountains of Arbitrary Power and Magnificence which Tyrants erect to be the Atlasses and Colossus's to support Exorbitant Dominion And many times they owe their Advancement to a Serraband well danc'd the activity of their Bodies or the allurements of lovely Features And sometimes they are pickt out to combat with Colours flying all Authority of Law and Justice They love Grandeur but little of Nobility which would teach 'em to ascend to Greatness by other steps than that of their Countries Ruine They espouse the late King's Interest as many men when they grow Impotent marry their Old Mistresses But the support and the Interest being feeble alike 't is only to make the World believe the Conjunction at last to be honest Or else they think it ill manners to desert the late King in his Spiritual Amours with the Whore of Babylon because they know so well the proneness of their own Inclinations to their carnal Devotions Thô on the other side 't is strange they should have so little Esteem for the Protestant Religion because the Papists tell 'em it came out of Henry the Eight's Cod piece But certainly these Noble Jacobites are the oddest Courtiers in the World to worship a setting Sun and that in his Winter Quarter too when he can never expect to rise again but he must be surrounded with Mists and Foggs and Storms and Tempests which his warmth will ne're be able to disperse These Noble Jacobites are a sort of soaring Politicians that sin against all the Prospects of Sence and Reason in the Earth Were they not banded about the Eyes like so many Sons of Venus they who sit upon the Pinacle of the Kingdom and have the opportunity of distant views could not but with a clearer sight behold the sinking Estate of the rotten Interest which they labour to support But the Noble Jacobites are more sublime in their Politicks than others they can see into a Mill-stone not only as far but farther than other Men and their exalted and piercing Imaginations make such holes in Futurity that they can see through it as through a Cullender Then taking their magnifying Glasses they fancy they see their Idol King James far more pompous than ever and conceit themselves pearching about his Throne full plum'd with all the Glories and Preferments due to their pretended Merits And thus they that flatter'd him out of his Throne no less absurdly flatter themselves with Felicities of their own erecting by restoring him again All this while pursuing that abominated Maxim of the Kings Interest and consequently their own being separate from that of the Subject they tell the World that they have nothing to do with the People and thereby teach the People not to have any thing to do with them The late King conferr'd Titles upon 'em but their Titles afford 'em no Honour for they no sooner are invested with their Honour but they debase it with pick-thank Sycophantrie and Slavish Adulation And sway'd by the powerful Instigations of a pusillanimous Ambition to be great only in shew betray at once their King Themselves and their Countrey for instead of advising the King as they ought they give him such Counsel as they believe him inclined to and determine of his Welfare by his Desire which is a kind of setting the Sun by the Dyal so that the King never knows what time of day 't is among his Subjects Therefore it is that set before these Lordly Jacobites the sight of a guilt Coach and six Horses or a round Bag of Louy dors they are easily perswaded to sacrifice the Welfare of a whole Nation to their own Ease and Plenty In short then a true Jacobite Lord is a true Jefferies that is to say an Abandon'd Slave to Despotick Tyranny a Sejanus to his own Vices who will humour a Tiberius to the dispeopling whole Provinces rather than lose the sordid Advantage of insulting over his Inferiours A Jacobite of the first magnitude is one that will take no warning by the fatal Precipices from which he has seen so many of his own degree fall headlong The Destinies of Buckingham and Strafford are so far cancell'd in his thoughts that they prevail with him no more than the Fable of Phaeton It cannot be thought that all who were ennobled by the late King were of Ancient Descent from Ancestor to Ancestor which is the Reason why they cannot be altogether blam'd if like the Statuaries Cat that would be starting after Mice after she was exalted to Humane Shape they pursue those baser Ends which true Nobility scorns However we are glad the Moral only can be fixed upon the Jacobite Race 'T is true that some of these Noble Jacobites lay claim to Conscience and upon that score pretend whole Ounces of Loyalty and Fidelity to King James But 't is a Character appropriated to these fort of Jacobites that they never think else they could never be so much mistaken in the distinction of Loyalty For how can ever they be said to be Loyal to a Person that never was true to himself Nor is it less absurd to believe they may be more Loyal to any one particular Man than to the Body of their Countrey in General For by this means they fall under the severe Character of preferring the Advantages of a single Person before the common Welfare And then their Loyalty soon discovers it self to be no more than a factious Adherence to a discarded Prince in hopes to wrest from the Kingdom by his Advancement the disappointed satisfaction of their Ambitious Ends which otherwise they give over for lost But what Virtues as well as Vices will not Self Interest infuse into a Noble Mind Of a sudden these Noble Jacobites are become the most Charitable and Believing Persons in the World They believe that King James has forgot to forfeit his Promises and Protestations they believe that he believes it is for no By-ends of theirs but purely out of Pity and Compassion that they seek his Return They believe they shall never be Closetted more but that Sympathy and Antipathy the Mass and
misfortunes of King James is a wonder having so little Charity one for another there being nothing more frequent among them than Envy Passion Repining and supplanting of each other And yet they are so insensible as to believe that their King James does not see through them unless because they have made him their Idol they think he has Eyes and sees not and that he knows he must satisfie the particular ends and aims of every individual Person or else there will never be peace in Israel They would be the best Marks-men in the World if they could but bring a great Gun as well as a little Text to bear upon any Subject whatever they aim at To prove Episcopacy they baulk all other Texts and take this Sirs what shall I do to be sav'd because the Greek word Sirs signifies Lords therefore they were Bishops that were spoken to Another to preach up Kingly Government chose for his Text Seek first the Kingdom of God Not the Common-wealth of God nor the Aristocracy of God but the Kingdom of God Ergo Kingly Government is the best Government A third to disprove Non-Residence finds out Mat. 1.2 Abraham begat Isaac For that if Abraham had not resided with Sarah he had never begat Isaac Another undertakes to prove the unlawfulness of the Bill of Exclusion from Job ch 36. v. 21. It is not lawful to do evil that good may come of it Another to prove the Excellency of Monarchy picks out Judg. 17. v. 6. In those days there was no King in Israel for had there been a King in Israel Micah had never made a Graven Image nor had the Levites Concubine ever been ravishe'd And thus their Sermons are a sort of Lampoons upon Scripture while they make use of it only to put their Shamins and Tricks upon the People and expose it dress'd up in wrested Interpretation to the Diversion of the worst of Libertines They pray to Heaven as if they believed there were no God or sought at least to make him the Author of their mischievous Contrivances They pray for King James spend all their most servent Ejaculations in their Cups and over their Coffee for King James as if they thought that God were a Favourer of Popery Tyranny Oppression and Slavery and yet would have us think they believe him to be the God of Mercy Truth and Justice But whatever they would have us believe 't is but an ill sign of the good Opinion they have of it to invoke Divine Favour upon the Enemy of their Religion their Laws and Liberties While they had the Power the Hook of recalling the Penal Laws and Test would not take but now they would recall the disappointed Angler and rather throw themselves into a precarious Toleration of a Popish Tyrant than abandon Dominion over their Protestant Brethren And thus they set up King James like the Brazen Serpent thinking to be safe by looking upon him when stung to inevltable Death by the fiery Serpents of Rome Look into their Conversations and you shall find 'em Wine bibbers to excess and frequently remov'd from the Coffee-house to the Tavern to carry on the Elections of Sheriffs and Parliament-men And 't is a shrewd sign they are no less addicted to the Smicket because they love so much as they do to see Religion with her Heels upward When they get into their Pulpits they make 'em roar like so many Matrasses of Aurum Fulminans under the Guard of an ignorant Chymist you 'd think they had been learning of the Fire-chawing Mountebanks to carry burning Coals betwixt their Teeth their Breath is so hot They fling about their Bombs and their Granado's against the Phanaticks as if they were storming a Conventicle every word is a Snap-dragon or a Flash of Lightning enough to singe all the Periwiggs in the Congregation Strange that such fiery men as these should be for Passive Obedience But that 's a Virtue which they only Preach to others never practice themselves They make use of Passive Obedience as House breakers do of the little Engines called Betties to force open the Consciences of all that will not bow to their Baal and rob 'em of their Understandings They are so far from Passive Obedience themselves that never was any Hornets Nest in such an uproar as were they themselves when their warm Livings were in danger The Scripture says Obedience is better than Sacrifice but they cry Sacrifice is better than Obedience for if all their Opposers were sacrific'd there would be no need of Obedience Touch but their Coppy-holds and then instead of Passive Obedience they cry 'T is better to Obey God than Man and let their King de Jure make use of all his Right and Title to Command 'em he shall as soon Command a Cabbin in a rough Sea as get 'em to read any of his Acts or Declarations if they but smell a Rat in 'em to the Prejudice of their Cheese Their vain Hopes perswade them to Obey King James and their groundless Fears to Disobey King William Thus they hope in a Popish Prince and are afraid of a Protestant King abandon the Felicity they may justly expect from King William and hope in the Courtesie which they can never expect from King James like many Men that are afraid of Heaven and place their hopes in the Devil 's future Civility They believe all the rest of the Nation but themselves to be Crows and come with their Cherry-Garden Divinity to prove the difference between a King de Jure and a King de Facto as a King de Jure that has forfeited his Right by Breach of Law Breach of Faith Breach of Oaths Breach of all things by which a Sovereign claims his Sovereignty were any more than a vain Terror of their own erecting Heaven pull'd him down and they would heave him up again Now whether the Ancient Romans or these Jacobite Levites were the wisest must be left to Judgment for the one trusted to a Goose to preserve their Copitol the other to a Cock-match for the Restoration of their Exile Indeed the Cock is the more Martial Bird but the Goose was the more Fortunate But they thought to have been Crowing again upon their own Dung-hills and therefore they preferr'd a Cock-Match Plot before any other Plot. They had cry'd down the Popish Plot and the Presbyterian Plot was of King James's own making and fell with himself but they thought might be Ten to One laid upon the Success of a Cock-Match Plot. However it were by this you may discover the right Genius of a Jesuite and a true Jacobite the one was for Dispeopling the Nation the other for making a Cock-Pit of the Kingdom I would fain exempt 'em from having any hand in the Miscarriage of our Fleet a fatal Blow to the Ancient Honour of the English Nation which all Europe but their Confederate the French King still laments Since they that would betray their Countrey and their Deliverer would betray
Common-Prayer will kiss each other upon his coming back in two Chappels under the same Roof They believe that his Italian Wife will Forgive 'em his Priests will Pardon 'em and that He himself will acquit exonerate and discharge 'em for assisting to lift him out of his Kingdom They believe that young Perkin was truly begot and truly born at St. James's and that he is lawful Heir to the Crown They believe the French King like a Most Christian Prince will foregoe all his private Contracts and never sue neither him nor them with Fire and Sword for all the vast Summs he has lent upon the Mortgage of of the Brittish Dominions All this and more than this too long to be enumerated the Noble Jacobites believe to that degree that if their Faith were otherways employ'd there would not be an unruly Mountain in England But after all this is their unhappy Misfortune that all this extraordinary Belief of theirs serves only to betray their Weakness if it may not rather be called a kind of Frenzy as if their living formerly so near the Rays of a Crown had tann'd and Blackamoor'd their very Understandings for it is not rational to think these Exalted Jacobites believe these Absurdities as being in a Station to know better things by woful Experience but it shews them however given over to a fond or wilful Credulity which is a Vice of Judgment a feebleness like that of Maidens to be twice deluded so far from the Prudence of True Nobility that we seldom find an Irrational Mouse that having once scap'd the Bait will come near the Trap a second time But there is this Distinction between true English Nobility and Jacobite Frenchify'd Nobility that the one studies the Welfare the other the Ruine of the People one loves his Countrey the other hates it the one walks by the Rules of Honour and Justice the other values himself upon the Quirks of Policy the one would be deem'd Wise the other Crafty the one would be esteem'd a good Common-wealths Man the other a Cunning Politician the one asserts the Nations ancient Freedom the other would be a eringing French Bashaw rather than a Peer of England the one would redeem the other sell the Kingdom This sort of Jacobite Grandees are the Hedge-Sparrows that hatch King Lewis's Cockatrice Eggs in hopes that when England is become tributary to France they shall be rewarded with whole Hesperian Gardens full of Golden Pippins Not considering that Princes most affecting Arbitrary Power detest however a low-spirited Propensity to Slavery and that all the Reward which the Senate received for their servile Submission to Tiberius was only to be derided by that scornful Tyrant with the frequently repeated Sarcasm of O homines ad servitutem Paratos In short such Noble-men as these are like Barren Mountains that bear neither Plants nor Grass for Publick Use they touch the Skie but are unprofitable to the Earth and when they come to add the Unjustice of their Actions to the Worthlesness of their Persons their Exaltation becomes the Curse of the People To come now to the Jacobite Clergy for may all those of the true Sacred Order of the Church of England long enjoy the Honour and Veneration due to their Function I say then to come to the Jacobite Clergy they are such a Generation of Vipers so envenom'd with the poysonous Pamphlets of the Observator that you would swear they made it their business to swallow those weekly Pasquills and that the sayings of that same Charming Author being digested in their Stomachs has turn'd to real Nourishment They are a numerous Gang and haunt S 's Coffee-House in shoals where they sit Croaking like Froggs in March against the Government If they are of the Tribe of Levi the only Reason to be given for it is this that they are so butcherly inveterate against the Sichemite Whiggs upon pretence that they have ravished their Sister Dina the Church They cannot Study for hearkening after News and in Parliament time the Court of Requests is so crouded with 'em as if the Popes Consistory sate in the Painted Chamber If they can but get to be a Lords Chaplain they presently whip on a long Scarf and then Lucifer was not prouder when he exalted himself upon the Mount of the Congregation in Isaiah And yet these Scarfs are easily come by for a Man that showed the Puppet-Play of the Creation of the World but t'other day may lay Title to one if he can but slubber over a few Prayers in a Ladies Family They are a sort of meer Divinity Meteors that run whisking up and down to misguide the wandring People and vent their undigested Conceits as the winde of their airy Fancies agitates ' em You cannot perceive 'em to be Cripples and yet there is not one of 'em but halts most conspicuously between God and Baal They pretend to be Protestants but with an extraordinary Inclination to Popery that they may have two Strings to their Bow and be ready upon the Return of their Idol to fall down and worship his Will and Pleasure If the Church of Rome would but release the severity of her Pennances her work were done for thô they are passionately for whipping of others they do not much care to whip themselves They are the Pompeys and Caesars of Divinity that can endure neither Equals nor Superiours and rather than a Dissenter should get a Living among them if it were in their Power they would sacrifice him to Molock for they look upon the Dissenters as Forraigners that would eat the Bread out of their Mouths They say that Nebuchadnezzar did very well to throw the three Dissenting Children into the fiery Furnace because they would not conform to the Church of Babilon by Law establish'd Had they liv'd in the time of the Ten Persecutions what clean work would they have made with those Nonconforming Christians Or if any thing had sav'd a Remnant it would have been their Doctrine of Passive Obedience They idolize King James as the Heathen did their false Gods first make the Idol and then worship it Tyranny's the Moloch to which they would offer their own Posterity and their own Native Countrey the Place which they would make their Valley Gehinnon They pretend to be true Sons of the Church but use her no better than a Step Mother to offer the Price of her Preservation for the Redemption of her profess'd Enemy And so doing while they pretend to avoid their being Traytors to a pretended Prince they betray not only the People which they mislead but themselves as if the Church would ever be able to give them suck when they have assisted her Capital Foe to cut off her Nipples Whence it is apparent that they were never well read either in Scripture or Matchiavel thô it shews as truly that their Inclinations are more for the worst of Politicks than the best of Divinity All this while how they should be so charitable to the