some choice golden Lewis's Art fully brandisht before their Eyes by a French Emissary And these plausible advices which so tickled him in his most sensible part prevail'd on him to Act in all things just the reverse of what he had sometime before been counsell'd by those who best understood and had all along when believed most successfully pursued and carried on the interest of that universal Sovereignty which they would have perswaded him to court gently but his hot Jesuited Councellors would needs have him attempt to ravish which impotent and ill tim'd Essay has now so much alarm'd the Coy Lady Vniversal Monarchy that if we mistake not having providentially untwisted her self out of his Arms and got clearly out of the reach of his violence she will not admit his cringing Addresses any more For looking not without cause upon both the Protestant and the Pope though most opposite in Principles to be most mighty obstacles in his way to universal Sovereignty the one as being perfectly inform'd in the knowledge of the truth in Jesus Christ and zealously affected to the Defence both of their Natural and civil liberty as Men and Subjects and of their Spiritual privileges as Christians and the other pretending not only a kind of Sovereignty over a great part of all Princes Subject of the Roman Communion namely the Clergy both Secular and Regular and all religious Persons and by them a dangerous rivalling influence over all the rest of their people But also holding as t' were the Balance of power in his own hand even in temporal matters between all Popish Princes and States and being no less intress'd for maintenance of himself and successors in that Power and Figure to hinder the growth of any one Prince to an excessive Grandeur than the Protestant were for the preservation both of their Civil and Religious Liberties and therefore having agreeably enough to the rules of Policy resolv'd equally upon the removal of both these dangerous adversaries by totally destroying the Protestants and casting Popery it self into a new Model that might dispose the whole body of Christians both Clergy and Laity to such a tame and supple temper as might make them alike susceptible of his intended universal Yoak Thus it pleased the Almighty Being to make him the very chiefest instrument himself in breaking the neck of these his greatest and ambitious Designs by leaving him to the infatuating delusions of new Jesuited Advisers whereby he forsook the more sure Maxims of his old sagacious Counsellors Richelieu Mazarin and the Le Telliers and to drive Jehu-like and rashly to attempt to do all at once what should have been enterpriz'd at very different Seasons and those wisely tim'd one after the other For at the same time the poor Protestants were so hotly persecuted and barbarously handled the Pope's Authority was then as briskly attack'd not only in the business of the Ragalia but in several other more fundamental points importing no less than the utter ruin of the whole Machine of that Ecclesiastical Monarchy insomuch that this great haughty Monsieur thought himself doubtless some prodigious Giant that could reach both poles at once with each arm one viz. That of the Northern Heresie as they term it and the Southern Supremacy and snapping them off short to make the World turn thence forward upon the sole Axle tree of his Arbitrary and imperious will as sufficiently appeared not only by the proceedings of the Sorbonne of the Assembly of the Clergy of Paris and of the French Kings chief Advocate Mr. Talon and by the strange acting of Mr. Lavardin at Rome it self and the writings of Mr. Maimburg The Writings and Actings of all which against the Authority of the Sea of Rome were hardly ever out-done by those they vainly call'd and at the same time persecuted as Hereticks but also by many odd Theses and Positions then maintain'd in several places up and down that Kingdom whereof these were some viz. I. That as Princes had the Power of nominating other Bishops to the Sees vacant in their Dominions so the greatest Prince in Christendom had a right of â—â—â—â—â—inating the greatest Bishop namely the Pope II. That the Election of a Pope by the private College of Cardinals was an Innovation III. That the Kings of France having some time delivered the Popes from the oppression of the Lombards and founded the new Empire of the West acquired thereby not only a right to chuse future Popes but that they are thereby still the only Rightful Emperours the eldest Sons of the Church and the greatest of Christian Princes Which by the way would be a stronger Argument to prove both the Empire Kingdom of France and the Election of the Pope c. to belong to the young Duke of Lorrain than to Lewis the 14th that young Prince being Lineally descended from Charles the great whose race that of the present French King supplanted IV. That the residence of the Pope is not fixed any more to Rome than it was formerly to Antioch but that it ought to be in the capital City of the greatest Christian Prince pro tempore or in such other place as he shall approve of V. That the French King in his Right may if he please divest the Cardinals of Rome of the right of Election of Popes or disown such as they shall choose and make an Arch-Bishop of Paris or any other prelate Pope that such Pope so nominated would be a true Successor of St. Peter though he should dwell at Paris or elsewhere and have no temporal Dominions and that he ought to be own'd as such by all other Roman Catholick Princes because nominated by the Successor of Charles the great and a Prince no less great in Power than he who was the restorer of the Papal Authority VI. That as the Temporal Dominions of the Pope were at first given him by French Kings they may be forfeited and taken back again and that for the peaceable enjoyment of them the Pope ought to grant freedom of Quarters to the French Kings Ambassador at Rome as an acknowledgment of the Sovereignty of him of whom he holds them and that he ought not to grant the like privilege to any other Ambassador These and many other such like Theses there were about the Pope's Power and Authority in Spirituals as well as Temporals whereby they allow'd him little more than what is granted by some Protestants and what any other Patriarchs do enjoy as is deducible from their own Writings in this you may see an Image of the new Popery intended by the French King who by this appears to be only so far for Popery as will serve his own turn to make both Pope and Papists his Vassals or Slaves what other meaning had he when he treated the Nuns of the Society so severely called the Nuns of the Infancy of Jesus and threw Madam Mondeuville into Prison for mediating c. Such is the favour he designs to afford them if ever in
Imprimatur May 16. 1693. Char. Heron. Constantinus Redivivus OR A FULL ACCOUNT OF THE Wonderful Providences AND Unparallell'd Successes That have all along Attended the Glorious Enterprises of the Heroical Prince William the 3d Now KING of Great Britain c. Wherein are Many Curious Passages Relating to the INTRIGUES of Lewis the 14th c. Carried on Here and Elsewhere Never Printed before c. By Mr. JOHN WHITTEL Sometime the onely English Chaplain to the Army LONDON Printed and sold by Tho. Harbin at the Wheat-Sheafe over against the Golden-Tun-Tavern in the Strand 1693. TO THE QUEEN'S Most Excellent Majesty August Madam IT being now about IX Years since I was first Conversant with Military Persons and heard the Sound of Drums and Trumpets as well in the Vnited Netherlands as Here and in Ireland And having the Honour to Bear in my Body the Marks of Fervent Zeal and Unshaken Loyalty to Your Sacred Majesty's Which is I confess the Principal Thing in this World I rejoyce in and value my self upon It hath so far encourag'd me as to cast these Unpolisht Papers at Your Majesty's Feet Containing an Account of the Miraculous Providences and Providential Successes That have all along attended the Glorious Enterprises of His Majesty King William for the Publick Good of Christendom But especially of the British Empire together with the Vnited Netherlands and of the Protestant Religion as in the Rest of Europe so particularly in Great Britain and Ireland it 's most Secure and Triumphant Seat And humbly to beg Your Majesty's Most Gracious Acceptance thereof I cannot say of this Enchiridium as the Jews sometime said to Christ of the Centurion although it Treats of so glorious a Subject Dignum est It is worthy that Your Majesty should accept it But I may truly speak in the Centurion's own Words Non Sum dignus I am not worthy to be Grac'd with Your Majesty's Favourable Acceptance As being Conscious of my small Abilities Neither are these Fragments deserving for Excellency of Style or Elegancy of Phrase which is not my Ambition therein Since the true Adamant is best polisht with its own Dust and Heroick Deeds are their own proper Encomium I have not for my own part whereof I can boast but the Honour of being sometime the only English Caplain to His Majesty's Army in the late blessed and memorable Expedition and of reading and dispersing then some hundreds of His Gracious DECLARATIONS between Tor-Bay and London to the Joy of all true Protestants and Dejection of their Adversaries To make no mention of my Service and Wounds received in Ireland c. There is no Man that hath endeavour'd to advance Your Majesty's most just Designs more than my self according to the small Sphere of my Power as is not unknown to several Noble Lords c. May then the covering of the Almighty Wings be ever spread over your Excellent Majesties and underneath the everlasting Arms may your Royal Persons be still most precious in the Eyes of all your Subjects and your Forces prosper by Sea and Land May you be blessed with an Obedient Religious and Loyal People throughout all your DOMINIONS and with a long and happy Reign over them in Health Wealth Peace and Godliness and after this Life may Your Majesties be Crown'd with Glory and Immortality is the Prayer of Your Majesty's most Loyal most Dutiful most Obedient Subject and Servant John Whittell THE Preface THE Author 's Principal Design is not here to Form a History of our Present Gracious Soveraign who is the Main Subject of the following Discourse Nor to give the World any Exact or Minute Account of His Glorious Actions Knowing well enough that Task has been and is perform'd daily by many Abler and Acute Pens who have already Engraven them with such Fair and Lasting Characters in the Adamantine Tables laid up in Honours Temple for the use of Posterity That doubtless they will be found there Brightly Legible when Old-Time shall have Eaten out and Effac'd those of Alexander and the Caesars And that for the People of this Present Age and of this Part of the World there are few or none of them but have either seen His Heroical Exploits heard the Fame of them or felt at least their Comfortable Influence which indeed has proved Beneficial to all but the Noxious part of Mankind and such as like Fishes and Monsters Prey upon the Rest And therefore knows well enough that 't would be Impertinent for him to pretend to Write a History in which it would be altogether impossible to say any New Matter or any thing but what has been already much better exprest by others No his Aims in this Essay are quite different from theirs for though he hath been himself an Eye-witness of some of His Majesties Greatest Archievements having been with him in two Important Expeditions and has already given the World an Account of some of the Chief Passages in them Of which be bears about him continually some very Vneasie though Honourable Marks Yet duly remembring that he serv'd Him More in Quality of a Divine than a Souldier in His Army And that the Present Age Swarms with a Race of Men that Attribute so much to Second-Causes that they scarce ever look up to God who is Causa Causarum the Author of All and so much Idolaters of Fortune that they will hardly allow any Room to Providence or an Over-ruling-Power Therefore the Author upon this Consideration has endeavoured so to Compile this Relation of His Majesties Actions as it may be more a HISTORY of God's Providence and Over-ruling-Power than of His Majesties GLORIOUS ATCHIEVEMENTS insisting properly upon the First as his Text and upon His Majesties Happy Successes and His Enemies Motions as only a good Comment upon it Needing indeed nothing else but a Full and True Application Being very sensible that herein He is so far from detracting from that he much adds to that Glory which His Majesty without flattery most Affects and Glories in Which is to give all the Glory of his Actions to God alone And being throughly convinc'd That His Majesty in that Point is very much unlike to the Vain-glorious Monarch of France Lewis the XIVth who Arrogantly Ascribes all the Honour of his Successes soly and wholly to himself as very properly he may all things well consider'd because whereas King WILLIAM'S Great Vndertakings are All Men who love the Truth must own really founded upon most Just Motives and directed purely to Noble Religious and Generous Ends yea even to the Common Good The French King 's on the contrary are Grounded upon so Wicked and Persidious a Bottom and tend so very much to the General Destruction of Mankind that for all his Innate Confidence being ashamed to Attribute them to the All-righteous God who knows his inward thoughts he with an Insolent Mind Arrogates them very fairly to himself for fear otherwise of being obliged to Father them upon a Worse Author But to
other Circumstances but such only as shall be purely necessary to set forth in Chrystal Characters how wonderful careful the good Providence of the Almighty has been all his whole life long to present him with fair Occasions in order to Signalize his most illustrious and incomparable Qualities How very industrious he hath been alwaies to cultivate those Divine Favours not at all for his own private Ends but meerly for the Publick Good and how he hath been commonly attended with Successes much beyond the Hopes of his greatest Friends or Fears of his grandest Enemies and the opinion of indeed the whole World Quid gaudium fando c. To proceed then though by the watchfulness he was obliged to have upon the Motions not only of the Armies of the Prince of Conde and Duke of Luxemburg but likewise of the English themselves who at that Juncture threaten'd a Descent he was hindred from affording any relief to Maestricht besieg'd the next Spring by a very powerful Army headed by the French King himself in Person yet upon Lewis the fourteenth's retreat after the taking of that place and upon the returning home of the English Fleet after the last Engagement on the Coast of Holland he soon repaired that loss by the retaking of Naerden which although it had in it a Garrison of two thousand nine hundred and thirty Men and was very well Fortified and abundantly stored with all manner of Necessaries yet he took it in the space of four daies maugre all Luxemburg's opposition and that again even contrary to the usual fortune of Sieges with much less loss to his own Men than to the besieged And not long after that carried the great stroke in the no less speedy and successful Reduction of the strong and famous City of Bonne the Seat of the Elector of Cologne then in the French confederacy which was no sooner taken but that famous old General Montecuculi who was a proper Judge of Martial Conduct having left with him the command of the Imperial Army to join with his own He with them both made so formidable an Expedition towards the main Posts possessed then by the French upon the Rhine the Meuse and the Moselle that the French who wanted Men to re-implace those multitudes of good Soldiers they had too profusely squander'd away in their late rash and inconsiderate Enterprizes not being able to maintain Garrisons and Armies in both Frontiers as the State of Affairs then required rather than venture the loss of the places that composed the main Barrier of their Country towards the Rhine in this juncture of Distress and Consternation abandon'd immediately Woerden Herderwick Crevecoeur Bommel the City and Province of Vtrecht and most of all the rest of the places they had then taken in the united Netherlands whose Example was soon followed by their Allies the Munsterians And thus his Highness in some sence out-did Coesar himself vanquishing his Enemies even at a distance where he neither came nor saw and forcing them willingly to submit by the onely terrour of his August Name and made them with a very mortifying reverse of Fortune behold the period of their Victories in his bright and rising Glory which the most florid copious Pen can never sufficiently delineate to the Life In consideration of which most great and unexpected turn of Affairs from the very brink of irrecoverable Ruin and Destruction to a formidable State of Power Grandeur and Prosperity effected next and immediately under God chiefly by the Policies and extraordinary valour of the Prince The States General as in Gratitude strongly bound not only confirm'd the Charge of State-holder of the Provinces of Holland and West-Friezland in the person of his renown'd Highness during Life but setled it likewise in the Heirs-male of his Body begotten in lawfull Marriage by a publick Decree Dated the 2d of February 1674. The tenour of which being so signal and glorious a Demonstration of his high and Unparallell'd Merits we thought it would be a piece of Injustice not to insert and no small satisfaction to the Candid and Impartial Reader to Peruse Friday February 2d 1674. HAving taken into Deliberation by way of Resumption what the Lords Deputies of the City of Haerlem Proposed to the Assembly the 23d of January last past Whether it would not be expedient that the Charge of State-holder and Captain-Admiral of the Provinces of Holland and West-Friezland and Captain and Admiral-General of the Vnited Provinces should descend upon the Heirs-Males of his Highness the P. of Orange begotten in lawful Marriage as by the Rolls of the same Date more amply may appear We the Body of the Nobility and the Deputies of the Cities in the Name and in the Behalf of the Burghers and Commonalty of the said Cities have Declared and do Declare by these Presents that having deliberately Considered the State and Condition of the Government of these Countreys as it was in former times by the blessing of God under the Most Illustrious Princes of Orange of Glorious Memory his Highnesses Predecessors and particularly what has befallen this Republick for these 23 or 24 years last past till now we have observ'd that this Republick has been afflicted with several Calamities and Disasters as well Domestick as Foreign ever since the sad and unfortunate year 1650. That as to our Foreign Calamities we have never been without Wars or the Fears of Wars More particularly One most dreadful War between the Kingdom of England and these States which shook the very Foundations of the Government of these Countreys So that it hardly has recovered Breath ever since the said War and another against the Crown of Portugal in the years 1656 1658 and 1659 and another occasion'd by the Interest of the Northern Wars That in the year 1664 they had another New War with the King of Great Britain and now this present War more sad and fatal than all the rest And that during the whole Course of the said War this Republick has been forc'd to suffer many Affronts from her Neighbours to whom she was before a Terror That as to our Domestick Affairs we have been overwhelm'd with Intestine Divisions and Factions That from the year 1650 to the year 1660 several Members of this Republick have had a particular Aversion to the Person of the present Prince of Orange the only Son of that Illustrious Family and that Others on the contrary have zealously maintain'd that the said Prince ought not to be so ungratefully abandoned That the King of Great Britain being recall'd to the Government of his Dominions and passing through these Countreys in order to his Embarking for England this Republick testified as well to his Majesty as to the Princesses Royal and Dowager that they would take particular care of the Interest and Education of his Highness and to Restore him to the Dignities which his Illustrious Ancestors of Glorious Memory had enjoyed But that after the Death of the said Princess-Royal
his power and a great favour too they that will be Protestants or will not be Papists thus Alamode de France being both equally destituted to utter Destruction And to convince you further that these were the real and unfeigned Designs of Lewis the 14th King of France a Friend of mine that intimately knew the Person assured me that when the French Clergy were assembled in the year 1682. he sent a skillful Antiquary into England to search diligently and most accurately our Records in the Tower and at Westminster to see and learn what steps King Henry the 8th had made in his Rupture with Rome and which of them might most effectually be put in practice by him in order to accomplish his foresaid ends But what followed from this Conduct of driving on so very furiously at one and the same time two such contrary designs as these were one towards the other to bring about the same self purpose Why the same that 's reported to have happen'd to the famous Wrestler Milo who in ostentation of his great strength endeavour'd to rive a sunder with his Arms the main Limbs of adouble bodied Tree He made a shift indeed to split them in part but not being able to go through perfectly with the Work was by their recoiling Force catch'd so fast himself between them as to be made a defenceless prey to the wild Beasts Thus Lewis the 14th by first persecuting the Protestants and attacking the Pope's Authority has reduced himself into a Labyrinth and brought a general War upon his Dominions c. By his most severe Persecution and endeavour absolutely to exterminate the Protestants he berest himself wholly of some hundreds of thousands of his wealthiest and most useful Subjects consisting of many of the most trading Merchants best Officers and expert Mariners and Seamen to the strengthening of his Enemies round about in the adjacent Countries and the utter ruin of many Roman Catholick Families their Creditors or that were of their Dependance and fill'd his Kingdom with Hypocrites and Malecontents who required as many Troops to watch over their Conduct which gave and will give continual Jealousies and Alarms as would have served him to compose a good Army to defend the largest of his Frontiers and that which was more fatal to him than all the rest these cruel and most barbarous proceedings of his exasperated the Spirits of the warlike and valorous English and thereby made it altogether impracticable for his great Ally King James to make himself Master enough of his People to be so serviceable to him in his Attempts towards universal Monarchy as he perhaps might have been is to sweeten the minds of the undaunted British Protestants Monsieur Lewis had politickly at the late King James's first accession to the Crown and voluntarily restored the French Protestants their old Liberties and Privileges which he solemnly swore to maintain at his Coronation For it must be acknowledged on all hands that they namely the Protestants were his faithfullest Subjects who put the Crown on his head out of a feigned or pretended difference to the late King James's intreaties and respect to the intercession of the English Church and Nation To have been thus before hand with us in Civility what savours would it not have extorted from the English Protestants towards the Papists here And what Jealousies would it not have suppress'd And how much more easily might we have been catcht by tickling than by scratching especially had he at the same time kept Quiet and justly observed the last concluded Truce with the Confederates But acting the quite contrary it made the late King James's Conduct by far the more narrowly inquired into and rendred all people both Jealous and Affraid even of his favours and made them justly suspect the sincerity of such a Prince though at the same time declaring himself for liberty of Conscience whom they saw so visibly and amicably to correspond with a notorious Tyrant of the same Religion so very eager upon Persecution as daily to fill his greatest and best Friends Dominions at so unseasonable a nick of time with whole Shoals or multitudes of Exiles in such a miserable plight as he knew could not but stir up the resentments of the hardy English Protestants against both Princes and thereby as we have said disabled his Ally from getting that power into his hands which was so necessary for his assistance in the accomplishment of those Ambitious projects he since unprosperously pursues And on the other hand by acting as we have instanc'd against the Pope and offering so plainly at a new Model of Popery yea and making such brisk attempts upon the temporal Dominions and Territories of the Pope himself and that in his own Capital City of Rome as he did by his Ambassador the Marquess of Laverdine who not only exasperated the then Pope Innocent the 11th a person not of a temper either to be hectored or to be wheedled out of the Rights and Respects he thought due to him from a Prince pretending to the Titles of Most Christian and of Eldest Son of the Church one who not only very well understood his own Interest and the whole drift of Lewis the 14th But likewise first of all gave the alarm to all other Princes of the Roman Communion who thereby plainly seeing that not only their Territories but their Religion also was in no small danger from such designs and that the French Sultan intended Mahomet-like to have exterminated Popery properly so called as well as Protestantism and to have introduced by the Sword a third Religion hateful to both which was to have been Franco-Catholick more than Roman Catholick and to have been new Christened by that Name assoon as Paris by the prevailing Arms or more availing pieces of Gold of Lewis Le Grand should have been made the Metropolis General of all Christendom Hence he permits his Statue to be erected and adored by his Subjects in the posture of Prosternation he permits Holy-days to be Dedicated to them and Harangues to be made to them as if they were really so many Deities so that upon the Basis of these base Idols you may see these Inscriptions in Capital Letters TO THE IMMORTAL MAN Upon this Alarm of Pope Innocent the XIth all Europe began to look with a Suspicious Eye upon the Proceedings of the French Monarch and his Ally of Great Britain and minded more sharply every passage between them And though Lewis the XIVth endeavoured extreamly to throw dust in their eyes by extirpating and destroying the Protestants in his own Dominions out of a zeal as he feigned or profess'd to the Holy See yet they could not comprehend how that could possibly consist with his continual abetting and corroborating the Turks and supporting Count Teckely and his Protestant followers in Hungary and much less with his most Undutiful and Insolent Carriage to the Pope and with such formal Decisions as struck at the very Foundations of his Authority
ever set out in Great Britain under St. Peter's Banners since Queen Mary's days These were the Actions of Pope Innocent the XIth against Lewis the XIVth and such were the Remonstrances and Advices both of his Nuncio and the Spanish and Imperial Ambassadours in England to the late King James Which His Imperial Majesty afterwards in his Letter to the Late King in Answer to one from him relating the Doleful Story of his Abdication hints at and tells him Had they been followed he might still have been upon the Throne with all the Advantages of a Great English Monarch The obstinate neglect of which Councils the most safe and prudent that could be given to a Popish King of England at that time of the day together with the formidable growth and the aforesaid Insolent Proceedings of the French King caused both the Pope and the Ancient and Potent Houses of Austria and Bavaria not onely to League themselves together but also for their Common Defence both against French Popery and French Power which were advancing hand in hand to attack them And which if suffer'd to fix footing in England would shortly become altogether irresistible to Confederate Nay even with the Protestant Princes and Powers the one viz. the Temporal Princes of Austria and Bavaria Immediately and the other namely the Pope Mediately and Covertly by abetting and underhand promoting the Intrigues and Attempts of the others for the carrying on such Designs as should divide England from the French Interest though it were by the Dismounting a Prince of their own Religion and placing a Protestant upon the Throne They being very well satisfied it was much safer for Popery in General as well as for their particular Temporal Interests to see a Protestant wear the Crown of England though to the seeming disadvantage of the Popish Religion in that particular Kingdom that would help them to balance the excessive Power of France than to suffer a Popish King of Great Britain of the French Stamp to assist the French Monarch to enslave all other much more Catholick Princes depress the Papal Power it self and impose a Popery worse to them than what their erroneous fancies teach them to call Heresie But that which clincht the Nail home and which not only confirm'd them in those Resolutions but hastned them to a speedy execution of them were three very dangerous Attempts of the French King the one was the powerful Interest the French had made to get their Devoted Creature that Arch-Traytor to his Countrey the Quondam Prince William but now Bishop of Strasburg and Cardinal of Furstemberg to be chosen Elector of Cologne that he might be the more able to back his old Benefactour Lewis the 14th in all his Encroachments upon the Empire in awing the rest of the Electors on the Rhine and by them influencing the whole Electoral College to deprive the House of Austria of the Imperial Dignity by choosing Lewis the French Dauphin for King of the Romans or Successor to the Emperor instead of the Arch-Duke Joseph c. The second was his breaking so perfidiously the new made Truce though sworn to for twenty Years and under the pretence of backing the Election of his dear Cardinal and pursuing some extravagant Demands he was pleased to make in the name of the Dutchess of Orleans of the present Prince Palatine to besiege and surprise Philipsburg and committing a thousand Outrages and Hostilities elsewhere at a time when the Emperour trusting to the security of the twenty years Truce was employing his Arms to repell the Turks the sworn Enemies of Christianity in the remotest borders of Christendom The third was his declaring War against Holland because they seem'd to oppose his base illegal violences in endeavouring to force an Election which ought to be free and that in a Country where the proud Tyrant had no right to meddle and which was so near their Frontiers and that too being not content with that as if he had had the late King James's Head under his Girdle he was pleased to threaten that England should do the like and as a forerunner of it perswaded King James abruptly and without any reason given to recall his Subjects out of the Dutch Service at a time when he had no visible occasion for them These Reasons all put together made the Roman Catholick Princes to league with Holland and the Protestant Princes of Germany and to favour the Blessed and Glorious Design of our present Sovereign Lord King William c. to endeavour to break the strong Chains that were preparing for all Europe by first breaking those of England and by seizing before hand of the Reins of Government over those most willing Nations that were so exceeding glad of his seasonable help in time of Need the Succession of which should he delay a Moment was visibly going to be most unjustly alienated from him by the means of a supposititious Child brought upon the Stage only for a blind and to be consign'd unto the Tyrannical hands of the French Monarch And lastly that which made an end of giving a through alarm to the Pope was the French King 's insulting and insolent proceedings by his Ambassador at Rome it self his invading of Savoy and Piedmont and carrying thereby the War into Italy which by the bye is now one of the most troublesome Thorns that he has in his foot and which he would most fain be rid of it having proved notwithstanding his Successes the most chargeable and incommodious War to him next that of England of any of the rest Which considerations made the Pope and the rest of the Roman Princes and particularly the Spaniards employ sundry Priests devoted to their interests but as so many Spies about the late King James to fish out the secrets of the Frenchified Cabal and to communicate the same from time to time to the late Spanish Ambassadour who failed not to advertise the King his Master the illustrious Prince of Orange and all the Allies nor yet to communicate them to the Nobility Gentry and qualified Citizens of England to whose secret advice thus obtain'd next to God Almighty we owe all the satisfactory light we have had into the dark Intrigue of the pretended Prince of Wales which above all things gave the last and most powerful Impulse to those Motions that brought about the late Happy and wonderful Revolution Having thus seen how the French King by catching too eagerly at Vniversal Monarchy and his Ally the late King James by adhering to the French Counsel more than to his own English Subjects stirr'd up the most zealous Princes of the Roman Communion and even the Pope himself to side with the Protestant Powers against them and readily to concur with these last even to the suppression of all hopes of their own Religions becoming predominant in England and rather than see it planted there by French hands We cannot therefore at all wonder that the Protestant Foreign Powers and the people of
imginable were made to conspire and concur with as much Union and Harmony as if they had been all 〈◊〉 one and the self-same Soul or 〈◊〉 who is Ens Entium as well as 〈◊〉 Causarum for even Enemies Friends Papists Protestants Winds and Seas all acted towards and promoted proportionably this grand and glorious design of Providence even while they contended most against it Because therefore it will not be a little edifying and instructive to us of these Kingdoms not only in our Religious but also in our Politick and civil Concerns to understand rightly and comtemplate in some measure the most miraculous method used by the Divine and over-ruling Power in producing this happy and never to be forgotten Revolution of great Britain and Ireland Before we proceed to give you any account of that we shall as far as we in a private Station could or think fit for particular Persons to prie into give you a short view of the several steps that were made on all sides towards it till at the last they were all deceived some very happily as being carried on far beyond their first proposed ends and the utmost of their hopes and the others with a more Melancholick Surprize finding themselves defeated of their Giant-like expectations and driven upon such Rocks as they thought they had steered the surest course to avoid And first we will begin with the French King his illustrious Highness the Prince of Orange's most inveterate and irreconcilable Enemy ever since the refusal of his Overtures for betraying his Native Countrey and shew what steps he himself though a great Master of Politicks made to this great and blessed Revolution which may by God's blessing prove in due time a means to bring him to Subjection to this ancient and imperial Crown of England again In order to secure the success of the mighty Project which has been so eagerly pursued and carried on by Lewis the 14th for some Years past of attaining the universal Monarchy of the West it is not at all doubted by any well versed in Politicks but of all other things it was most highly necessary that his surest Alley the late King James should be fully and absolutely Master of his Kingdoms and till that were effected and put out of all danger of being Travers'd that it was no less needful for him namely the French King to treat his Protestant Subjects at home well nay rather better than ordinary to keep up a good correspondence likewise with the Pope and other Roman Catholick Princes to have religiously observed the Truce with the Empire to have dissembled for some time at least his resentments against the renown'd Prince of Orange to have restored him the Principality of that Name which he most unjustly extorted from his noble Ancestors to have perswaded his Uncle to have caress'd him to have kept fair with the Hollanders to have terrified no body with Arms of Cruelties but only to have supply'd his faithful Ally of great Britain constantly and privately with sufficient Moneys and carried on all his Intrigues elsewere only with the underhand and potent charms of Gold to have perswaded King James to have let alone the Intrigue of the pretended Prince of Wales to have abstain'd from multiplying Popish Chapels and publick toleration of Jesuits and Priests to have forborn the planting a Jesuitical Crew in Magdalene College to have abstain'd from sending Mandamus after Mandamus to violate the ancient Privileges of that Loyal and Famous University of Oxford to have forborn the sending of the most Reverend and right Reverend the Bishops those Pillars of our true Reformed Church of England into the Tower In a word to have contented himself only with new modelling Corporations and insensibly new regulating his Army and Court till all had been sure Had he been duly cautious and circumspect in these particulars it had been shrewdly probable if not an assured thing that a great part of the Clergy Nobility and Gentry of England would not have seen through the late king James's Designs nor at least have believed them till perhaps they had felt the Chains about their Necks that his Army would have stood by him till at last when things had been full ripe for it they had seen the greatest part of themselves ship'd off upon some suddain Foreign Quarrel and their places supply'd at home by Soldiers in French pay And this might have been peradventure so politickly managed as not to have alarm'd the illustrious Ancient and Warlike House of Austria the Hollanders perchance would have unconcernedly lookt upon it being so exceedingly busied about the Indian Gold and Treasures and the Kingdoms of England Scotland and Ireland might perhaps have been lull'd fast asleep by their present Peace vast Trading and Plenty And this step once gain'd the subtil Monsieur could have securely oppress'd the Spanish Netherlands once again over-run Holland and have invaded the Empire when the imperial Forces should have been perhaps as dreaming of no danger from the Rhine employed as far as Bulgaria or Romania in chasing the Turks and these were the Counsels of his wisest Ahitophel the late famous Louvois But he that taketh the wise in his own craftiness and maketh Diviners mad and brings good out of Evil caused that vulgar Proverb here to prove an Oracle That Quos perdere vult deus prius dementat God first blinds or renders foolish those whom he hath resolv'd to destroy for the deep and most surely laid Counsels of that great States-man were providentially over-rul'd by the fawning influence of Jesuited Heads whereof some were on Mens and some more advantageously placed on the necks of the charming and seldom failing Sex who working upon the French King 's unmeasurable Vanity and unlimitted Ambition very easily perswaded him that his Power was now grown so Formidable and all his Forces for Sea and Land so well disciplin'd that he needed not to be so much inslaved to those cautious Measures proposed by his Ministers of State as he had been hitherto but leaving those flow paces to the Sages of the House of Austria who placed most of their Majesty in deliberate Counsels and more slow Executions he might now resume his natural briskness and advance securely the nearest way to Glory especially since England was then under a Roman Catholick Prince entirely at his Devotion upon all occasions And with all seeing things at that time were in such a posture that the imperial Force was so wholly taken up in a War in the remotest Frontiers of Christian Europe there was no other Power that either durst or could timely and effectually oppose his Attempts either in Religious or civil Matters and that the most active Spirits that were best able or most disposed to obstruct the course of his prosperous advance were many of them as well Princes as their Ministers now become wonderful docile and disciplinable without word of Mouth or beat of Drum only by the bare Lustre and Loadstone of